From Derek Coggrave, London, UK
Carl Zetie highlights the issue of those who say that a change of attitudes, not the use of weight-loss drugs, is the way to tackle obesity (Letters, 6 July).
As has been pointed out many times, one reason why our ancestors avoided this problem was the struggle they had in accessing food. Hunting ruminants with horns could be lethal, so carnivores like us would only undertake this activity when hunger required it. Now, with a readily available supply of cheap food containing large quantities of sugar, salt, fat, artificial flavourings and preservatives, our species can consume calories with almost no effort: simply unwrap ready meals and use the microwave.
Species change behaviour to fit the ecological niche that has been enabled, previously by nature and now, in the case of Homo sapiens, by our own ingenuity. We have supercharged the rate of ecological change. Also, highly processed foods tend to be addictive.
To overcome this problem, we need to teach the very young why they might become obese and how this might be avoided. We also need to remove the temptation – the production of highly processed foods and their easy accessibility.
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The alternative is to continue down an evolutionary black hole we have created, which could be fatal.
