...medicine director the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, began his presentation of how it has come to be that almost seven out of every 10 Americans are overweight or obese. Hill gave the keynote talk, "Strategies to Address the Obesity Epidemic," at the Ecology of Obesity conference held at Cornell June 6 and 7, 2005.

The obesity epidemic is the result of a modern-day mismatch between our biology and our environment, which Hill says has created a perfect storm. On the one hand, biology works against our efforts to maintain a healthy weight, stemming from a time when, as hunter-gathers, humans needed to get enough food in a food-scarce environment. Doing so took constant physical effort.

"So our biology says: eat whenever food is available and rest whenever you can," Hill stated.

On the other hand, today's environment is radically different. Modern people no longer need to be constantly on the move foraging and hunting for food. Today Americans sit still while waiting at a drive-through window for a meal based on the cheapest ingredients industrialized agriculture has to offer: fat and sugar.

"We have engineered physical activity right out of our lives by the way we've built our communities," Hill said pointing to the universality of the automobile and suburbs designed to promote the movement of people...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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