You started out with such good intentions. The weekly paleo-vegan meal plan, the homemade muesli, the detox tea, the blender swiped in the sales for the bargain price of £79.99 …
Two weeks post-Christmas binge, though and the New Year New Me diet isn’t as “fun” nor “achievable” as you told everyone it would be. Isn’t January depressing enough as it is without subjecting yourself to quinoa salad and artichoke juice?
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But your cravings for anything fried, carb-loaded, and/or covered in a layer of milk chocolate might not just be down to a lack of willpower. According to a new study from the University of Bristol, humans have evolved to develop an almost unavoidable urge to overeat, especially during winter.
Using computer modelling to predict how much fat animals should store—assuming that natural selection provides a perfect strategy to maintain the healthiest weight—researchers from the university’s College of Life and Environmental Sciences created a model to predict how the amount of fat animals store should respond to food availability and risk of being killed by a predator when foraging.
The model showed that animals, including humans, should have a target body weight—above which they will lose weight and below which will attempt to gain weight. Simulations found that subconscious controls against becoming overweight would be weak and easily overcome by the “immediate rewards of tasty food.”
Hello, leftover Thorntons selection box.
This is because in our past, cave-dwelling days, being overweight did not pose as much of a threat to survival as being underweight. The urge to maintain body fat is even stronger during winter, when food is scarce in the natural world.
Lead author Dr. Andrew Higginson explained: “The model […] predicts animals should gain weight when food is harder to find. All animals, including humans, should show seasonal effects on the urge to gain weight. Storing fat is an insurance against the risk of failing to find food, which for pre-industrial humans was most likely in winter.”
In other words, it’s not your fault you only made it to day two of the Sirtfood diet.
The study also disproves the “drifty gene” hypothesis, which some researchers say explains why certain people become overweight and others do not.
Higginson said: “You would expect evolution to have given us the ability to realise when we have eaten enough but instead, we show little control when faced with artificial food. Because modern food today has so much sugar and flavour, the urge humans have to eat it is greater than any weak evolutionary mechanism which would tell us not to.”
You heard the man. Throw out the gluten free rice cakes, stop looking at the fitspo Instagram accounts you guilt-followed on Boxing Day, and submit yourself to the glorious, gluttonous realities of evolution.
