Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes

by Nathan H. Lents

The hard truth is that humans in the developed world are surrounded with high-calorie foods that they are ill equipped to resist. For most of our species’ history, this just hasn’t been something anyone needed to worry about. Until the past couple of hundred years, most people didn’t have access to diets rich in meat and sweets. It was the industrial revolution that began to bring rich diets to the masses. Before that, stoutness in a man and plumpness in a woman were signs of wealth, power, and privilege, and the commoners were, like animals in the wild, prone to constant hunger. Overeating was a fine strategy when it wasn’t possible to do very often. But when people can pack it in three or four times a day, day after day, their feeble willpower doesn’t stand a chance of moderating intake to prevent unhealthy weight gain. Human psychology is no match for human physiology. This is why people too often treat every meal as if it were the last one before a long winter, as if they’re gorging themselves in anticipation of barely being able to find any food at all.