num_pages: 320
description: Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett tackles the obesity and fitness crisis from an evolutionary standpoint. In the modern jungle of burgers couches and remote controls obesity is an enormous and growing epidemic. Weight-loss books and diet gurus urge us to listen to our bodies but our instincts are designed for the African savannah not food courts. The sugary and fatty foods that we as hunter-gatherers are programmed to forage used to be hard to come by. Now they're as close as the vending machine down the hall.Radical changes are necessary and fortunately are biologically easier than small or gradual changes in diet. Barrett tells us how to reprogram our bodies break food addictions and ignore our attraction to supernormal stimuliartificial creations that appeal to our instincts more than the natural objects they mimic. Barrett delves into scientific researchfrom animal ethology to evolutionto show the disastrous direction in which our instincts have led us and how using our intellect we can get back on course. 50 illustrations
language: English
title: Waistland: The R/evolutionary Science Behind Our Weight and Fitness Crisis
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company