Daniel Lieberman’s Final Solution to Obesity

Evolutionary biology can tell me a lot about why I experience ecstasy when I pop a strip of golden-roasted chicken skin into my mouth. It can tell me a lot about why doing this too often isn't good for me. It can't tell me what to cook or when to go on a diet. When I make out a menu with my significant other, as I do once a week, I am not the least bit interested in the long term interests of my genes. I am interested in staying healthy as long as I can and in enjoying every bite. What I want is not mere life, to use Aristotle's distinction, but the good life.

Confusing evolutionary explanations of our evolved dispositions with moral imperatives concerning our behaviors is constant in discussions of human evolution. It is one of the chief obstacles to reading evolutionary biology clearly. It is especially bad when it comes out of the mouth of an evolutionary biologist.

Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard, has written a dumb and pernicious essay for the New York Times. He prostitutes and confuses his calling for the sake of defending New York Mayor Bloomberg's crusade against big gulp soft drinks.

Much of Lieberman's essay is devoted to an uncontroversial explanation for why modern humans have trouble keeping the weight off. For almost all of our history on this earth, human beings lived like other animals: close to the margin. Our ancestors survived long enough to become ancestors because they craved foods that promoted their survival. The most valuable of those foods were rare enough in what we call the environment of evolutionary adaptation. Now, due to technology and human appetites, they are abundant. This is very sudden in evolutionary terms and that presents us with some problems.

Obesity's fundamental cause is long-term energy imbalance — ingesting more calories than you spend over weeks, months and years. Of the many contributors to energy imbalance today, plentiful sugar may be the worst.

Since sugar is a basic form of energy in food, a sweet tooth was adaptive in ancient times, when food was limited. However, excessive sugar in the bloodstream is toxic, so our bodies also evolved to rapidly convert digested sugar in the bloodstream into fat. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors needed plenty of fat — more than other primates — to be active during periods of food scarcity and still pay for large, expensive brains and costly reproductive strategies (hunter-gatherer mothers could pump out babies twice as fast as their chimpanzee cousins).

Simply put, humans evolved to crave sugar, store it and then use it. For millions of years, our cravings and digestive systems were exquisitely balanced because sugar was rare. Apart from honey, most of the foods our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate were no sweeter than a carrot. The invention of farming made starchy foods more abundant, but it wasn't until very recently that technology made pure sugar bountiful.

That is a good explanation for why a lot of us have weight problems. So what should "we" do about it? Lieberman considers three options. One is to do nothing and hope that science can cure us. Another is to trust to public education, which Lieberman tells us isn't very effective. Apparently people don't behave the way he wants them to behave after he has finished admonishing them. Here's the third:

The final option is to collectively restore our diets to a more natural state through regulations. Until recently, all humans had no choice but to eat a healthy diet with modest portions of food that were low in sugar, saturated fat and salt, but high in fiber. They also had no choice but to walk and sometimes run an average of 5 to 10 miles a day. Mr. Bloomberg's paternalistic plan is not an aberrant form of coercion but a very small step toward restoring a natural part of our environment.

You have to love that term "final option." Lieberman wants government to "restore our diets to a more natural state through regulations." There are so many things wrong with this that I hardly know where to begin. The state of nature may have been blessedly free of obesity, but it is hardly something that any rational person would wish to restore. We live in the first period in human history where more people suffer from obesity than from malnutrition. These are the kinds of problems one should have.

Lieberman apparently thinks that "Mr. Bloomberg's paternalistic plan is a non-aberrant form of coercion," which means that he is not the least bit opposed to coercion. He also lets a rather larger cat out of his bag. If Bloomberg can forbid individuals from purchasing soft drinks, on the basis of this argument, he can also require them to "walk and sometimes run an average of 5 to 10 miles a day." Perhaps New York's finest on horseback with pellet guns would do the trick. This is totalitarian thinking.

Our love for sugar and fat are evolved dispositions. So are our frequent desires to tell other people what to do and our bristling when someone tells us what to do. No history of sugar consumption can tell us that the governor of New York should decide what a guy in line at a taco stand should order. The balance between liberty and public order is far more important than the average weight of New Yorkers and it turns on rather different considerations.

I find Lieberman's essay offensive for two reasons. One is that how much Dr. Pepper I drink is none of his damn business. He is an enemy of liberty. The other is that he prostitutes good science in order make my diet and everyone else's his business. He is one in a long line of rascals who have exploited good science to justify appalling political agendas.

Comments

[Bill Fleming]

I've been thinking more along the lines of rerethinking food ingredients in mass manufactured food products... Japan has had pretty good success substituting stevia for sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Sugar is a drug, it's poison, and it's killing us. It's also the reason we had the slave trade (see Terrence McKenna's 'Food of the Gods' for a great overview of why society has chosen the drugs we can and cannot legally use.) It's not "don't tell me what I can an can't eat." It's "give us something better for us TO eat that doesn't cost an arm and a leg" ...so we don't have to lose our arms and legs eating the crap were eating now.

[larry kurtz]

South Dakota has chosen to discriminate by selectively targeting persons of color as they traverse the state yet you have chosen to bash some messenger in another jurisdiction for doing the same thing: how conservative of you, Ken.

[Donald Pay]

So, who's business is it? If it's yours, then you need access to all the information, every damn bit of it. That's one thing the food industry doesn't want you to have. They claim their manufactured food is a corporate secret, but what it really is a concoction of addictive ingredients. They don't want you to know that they fudge the information they put on their labels, most of which is outright lies.

Look at SD politicians who went to bat for the slime company, trying to keep people from knowing that product was adulterating their ground beef. They have learned the wrong things from their trips to China.

[Ken Blanchard]

Bill is afraid of evil food; Donald, of evil food companies. No one has any idea what Kurtz is saying, least of all Kurtz.

[Bill Fleming]

Not evil Ken, poison, and not afraid, awake.

[larry kurtz]

Agreed: it wasn't even a lousy rant.

Mayor Bloomberg is constituting chilling control of a legal substance that is a far greater health cost to his city while calling for reform of cannabis laws under his jurisdiction.

The state of South Dakota has chosen to spend millions in interdiction, legal, human, and prison costs discriminating against people that some say are suffering from the disease of addiction to cannabis while doing very little to stem its obesity epidemic enriching a medical industry praised for its political patronage in state elections.

Your new banner says "special emphasis on South Dakota," Ken. When will that start?

[Donald Pay]

Yeah, let's bring it down to South Dakota. I don't think it's still on the books (I might be wrong), but South Dakota's Legislature passed a bill. lobbied by corporate agricultural interests, making it illegal to "disparage" food products. Just talking about obesity and sugar, Ken, may put you at risk of being drug into court by the corporate food nanny state.

[duggersd]

If what you are eating is "poison" then don't eat it. There are all kinds of ways to find foods that do not contain the ingredients you consider "poison". I have no idea as to what your diet looks like, but one of the problems we deal with is we choose too often to purchased ready made food products. Just this morning we had rolls that all we had to do was raise them and bake them. I like making many of my own food products. Unfortunately, I also like to eat them.

[Donald Pay]

I'm all for adults taking responsibility for their own dietary and exercise habits. Kids, however, generally have to eat whatever mommy or daddy slaps down on their plate. You start kids eating manufactured shit, and they're going to become addicted, overweight and malnourished. You don't want kids smoking or eating too much sugar and unbalanced fat.

I'm not totally against the modern food industry. I eat locally grown and raised foods as much as I can, but I love the part of the food industry that brings fresh fruits and vegetables to us throughout the year.

There is an increasing number of scientific studies that indicate being slightly underfed from time to time increases longevity and health. There is something to fasting that resets the body's immune system.

[duggersd]

The problem with your scenario, Donald, is that you seem to be advocating having the government tell the parents what they can and cannot feed their children. I have noticed that chunky kids usually have chunky parents. I am not sure what evolutionary phenomenon explains this.

[Stan Gibilisco]

My 88-year-old monther used one word to describe Bloomberg's edicts: "Silly." That'll just about cover it for me.

I think Bloomberg is only acting to restrict the size of a soft drink that can be sold over the counter. So, instead of buying one big 24-ounce drink, people with a real sugar craving will buy two 16-ounce drinks, or three 12-ounce ones, or five 8-ounce ones.

Or better yet, a liter bottle of Jack Daniels.

Bloomberg can restrict what vendors can sell me, but he can't restrict what I put into my mouth. I think a whole bunch of people ought to sit on Bloomberg's office building steps (or out in the yard or wherever) and guzzle shot-glasses of sugary Kool-Aid by the dozens!

For my part, I can't have sugar anyway. Nature has already seen to it that I can't get obese by consuming it. If I have a single sugary soda, someone'll have to come clean my brain and guts up off the ceiling, walls, windows, and furniture.

And I eat broccoli by the pound-bag, too. And I swim a mile a day without fail. So take that!

Silly. That'll cover it just fine, Herr Bloomberg. Oh by the way, someone ought to take a photo of you next time you're at the beach, dude, and see how well you practice what you preach.

[Stan Gibilisco]

Dios Mio! I meant not "monther" but "mother." Clearly, I needed another 12-ounce Diet Dew before I hurled the foregoing blant. Or maybe two, or three ... yee-ha!

[Stan Gibilisco]

On a more serious note, I find Lieberman's final sentence troubling indeed: "We have evolved to need coercion."

By whom?

[Bill Fleming]

It's nice that you find it troubling, Stan, but that doesn't shange the truth of Lieberman's assertion.

The answer to your question "by whom" is "by each other." http://www.deadlypowers.com/

The paradox is that the "coercion" began as stress relief from a real fear of being eaten. Now it's relief from the stressful (and arguably fatal) consequences of eating what we've eaten.

But the remedy is the same. We have to talk each other out of it.

http://www.deadlypowers.com/

[Stan Gibilisco]

Bill,

I'm glad that at least one person in this world full of contradictions has a handle on absolute truth, for I sure don't have it.

My thoughts after writing the note above were, "Either Lieberman's assertion is false (in which case the discussion ends on the spot) or else it's true (in which case it might go on forever)."

I agree with your opinion that it's true.

Humans in civilized societies have prescribed and accepted coercion for centuries in the form of prescribed punishments for committing crimes. Better not steal my truck, or you might end up in jail. That sort of thing. Some even go so far as to say that if you are not a good person, you can expect to gnash your teeth and weep in a lake of fire forever and ever.

People often will not do the right thing unless forced to some extent. I agree with that.

The problem comes in when we start to get the idea that we have to force every single move or non-move, creating a state where everything is either mandatory or forbidden.

Actually, I don't find Bloomberg's edicts all that unreasonable. And therein lies exactly the most fearsome part. Today, it's soda pop. Tomorrow, you won't be able to buy Vermont cheddar in packages larger than four ounces. Next day, you won't be able to buy more than a half dozen eggs at a time. Then your insurance company will start tracking all your purchases; cash will be outlawed and the use of smart debit cards mandated. If you buy more than a certain quantity of potato chips in a period of time, your health insurance premiums will rise. Then finally, the day will come when a uniformed officer shows up at your door and arrests you for defeating the smart debit card and buying three dozen eggs in a single day by making six trips to the store. For, you see, the purchase, and not only the sale, of excessive quantities of forbidden items will have become criminal.

The road to Orwellian totalitarianism is paved with good intentions. The stairway to absurdity comprises a thousand logical steps.

As for "By whom" should the coercion be done, the answer will be, "By those with the most lawyers, guns, and money." It has always been thus. The entire spirit of this country derives from another axiom I dare put forth: "We have evolved to need freedom."

If my axiom must in the end compete in a zero-sum game with Lieberman's, I pray to the God of my Understanding that mine wins.

[Bill Fleming]

Interesting rumination, Stan. I've been through similar ones, and arrived at freedom as the (perhaps undescovered) fundamental. And again another paradox. Almost exactly as quiclky as we discover and rediscover this, time after time, we go about contriving ways to give it and take it away. In other wirds, we don't fight to fet it, we fight to keep it. (...some of us do, anyway... on good days ;^)

[Bill Fleming]

Sorry about the terrible typing. I'll slow down. Anyway, the curious thing is that we defend our addictions in the name of "liberty." It's a free country, I can eat and drink and smoke and sniff and swallow anything I please. Well, yeah, unless it's addictive. If you're addicted, you have to eat and drink and smoke and sniff and swallow the substances you're addicted to. You surrender your liberty for a feel good. Like sugar. And stuff.

[Stan Gibilisco]

Yes, one can become enslaved to the ideal of freedom. (No, I am not being snarky. I went through a phase during my drinking days when I actually had to surrender my freedom in order to save it.)

My freedom to swing my arms around ends where your face begins. So if I wreck my health, should I expect you to pay for it (in medical insurance premiums or taxes or whatever)?

Speaking of coercion, that, too, comes in degrees, and it can be mixed right in with freedom. Maybe we had better be careful what we say on blogs like this ...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/17/conservative-bloggers-taking-precautions-over-swat-ing-attacks/

Freedom and coercion can in fact come in the same package, eh!

Love is hate. Yin is yang. Freedom is slavery. I am you. All for one and one for all, and we're stuck with things that way.

May the debate never end.

[Bill Fleming]

I am the eggman, they are the eggmen...

[Bill Fleming]

If you wreck your car (or your health) and you are in the same risk pool as I am, and I am healthy, yes, Stan, I am expected to pay for it. If you don't have insurance, and have to go to the emergency room, yes, we all pay for it. Yes, and yes. We are our brothers' keepers. ...and eggmen.

[Ken Blanchard]

Bill finally got around to bottom line. Because all of us have decided to guarantee Stan's health insurance, whether he likes it or not, we can make him pay his share whether he likes it or not. Because his choices may make it more expensive for us to impose insurance on him, we get to coerce him into eating the way we think he should. Next we get to make him exercise.

There is a term for that kind of thing. It's called a protection racket.

[larry kurtz]

Is it time to embrace our inner moral hazard?

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/european-debt-crisis/spains-bailout-good-idea-or-moral-hazard

[Stan Gibilisco]

Well, I already eat steamed broccoli by the pound, salads by the mixing-bowl full, plenty of omega-3 fish, and I swim a mile a day. But by golly, if you try to make me give up my pink slime and Diet Dew, I'll fight you to the bitter end!

[Stan Gibilisco]

Larry, some people are hard-wired for self-destruction, and there ain't nothing you, nor I, nor Mayor Bloomberg, nor Barack Obama, nor God, nor the devil can do about it.

[Ken Blanchard]

Stan, my sword is at your service.

[Bill Fleming]

Ken missed the point. He's going to pay for Stan's health care and vice versa either way. We already have Universal health care and mandatory taxes. It's just the least intentional and most expensive way of doing it possible. (And here I was starting to think you two guys were smart ;^).

p.s. let's not get started with the 'sword' metaphors, okay boys?

[Stan Gibilisco]

But Bill, how else but with a sharp sword can I cut through my 93-percent lean pink slime as I listen to the BBC offer their views about Syria and Egypt and Greece and France and all those other enlightened places every morning at 6:00 GMT?

[Bill Fleming]

Use your light saber, Stan. Put it on "low" though if you want to keep it rare. Anything else, bud?