The Fat of the Matter

The Obesity Paradox and Nature’s Hidden Agenda

By Dr. Rajagopal Soondron

Whenever our expert historians talk about the hunter-gatherers of many millennia ago, we immediately visualize those ancestors walking the savannah from place to place, alone or in small groups — looking for tubers and fruits or hunting some small quarry. The picture coming to our mind’s eye is of people who were moderately muscular with flat bellies; being daily on the move to look for their next meal was costly in terms of energy; any excess zeal in their outings was a health hazard. No wonder they could not accumulate fat. After all, nuts, tubers, and some rare lean venison carried little lipids — not the optimal scenario for a healthy brain, which essentially needs fatty acids, cholesterol, and good lipids for its development.

When the earth was wild and humans were wanderers, survival shaped our bodies. Pic – Vani Gupta-India Today

Some authors believe that later gregariousness opened the way to big game hunting for more venison — which gave a boost to further brain development. However, it was the agricultural era that prompted changes in our ancestors’ further evolution and body contour. Becoming agriculturists, they soon discovered that harvesting cereals or other eatables gave them a real safety margin for a starchy food reserve. The fear of missing the next meal slowly faded from their psyche. Eventually, eating some extra food was even seen as a wonderful new experience for the gustatory buds and stomach.

And the inevitable consequence of that extra food, combined with a more sedentary life, stimulated body fat accumulation! If some of us — obese modern people — start blaming these ancestors for transmitting their greed and fatty genes to us, then we should have second thoughts.

The present theory advanced by some experts suggests that our lean hunter-gatherer ancestors lacked sufficient energy reserves to engage in other activities, particularly complex mental processes. The agricultural era, however, addressed this limitation by enabling the accumulation of adipose tissue. This provided a significant evolutionary advantage — a vital reserve of energy that supported greater cognitive capacity, improved planning, and more effective responses to internal and external threats. Admittedly, during periods of floods or droughts that affected harvests, some populations would inevitably face starvation. Yet those with slightly higher body fat were more likely to survive than their leaner counterparts.

Far be it from us to suggest that these agriculturists used their increased energy solely for positive purposes. More likely, their first plans often involved attacking neighbouring tribes with more fertile land or greater access to water, or confronting groups with different traditions, beliefs, and totems. Thus, over the ages, we see that Homo sapiens gradually capitalised on this newfound energy to manage life’s challenges — for better or for worse — sustained by accumulated body fat and carbohydrates.

The Present View

It is a déjà vu scenario: over time, many of our human activities seem to revert back to square one. Nowadays, many of us are trying to eliminate as much of our ponderable fats as possible — either for health reasons or for cosmetic appearance — to imitate those lean and flat-bellied hunter-gatherers of yesteryears by eating more nuts and greens and engaging in strenuous physical activities! At the other extreme — in the midst of plenty of processed food — many of us are being cajoled by businessmen to eat more, which spells the downfall of many an obese individual.

However, mention must be made of two recent medical articles on “The Obesity Paradox,” which might remind us of the role played by that agricultural fat in our evolution. They mentioned that lean patients do not do as well as those who are slightly obese — especially after surgery.

Medical researchers long ago invented the Body Mass Index (BMI) in the 50s; if this BMI is between 18 and 25, it is considered the best health option; the 25 to 29 group is classified as slightly overweight, and 30 and above signals impending medical ill health and complications.

But in the postoperative phase, it is found that those in the second group — slightly obese with a 25–29 BMI — are the ones who do better than the leaner ones! The rationale is that this group has fat reserves which help to feed the attending postoperative catabolic fasting period, thereby sparing muscle energy; but the leaner group has only muscle mass energy to feed that very catabolism — so in the long run, their skeletal system will be weakened and they will fare worse.

Could this hint that it is good news to have some fat reserve in our body in case we have to undergo some stressful conditions — such as the droughts or floods of long ago, or the catabolism following an operation?

Speculating

And what is to be said of those varying degrees of pot bellies accompanying us as we age — more evident in men?

Why should we be handicapped by extra weight? The truth is that after 40 or 50, there is a decline in all of our physiological and anatomical wellbeing; our appetite decreases and our energy requirement plummets. Mother Nature dixit. However, she has a hidden agenda for us.

Taking pity on us, she decides to gift us with a pad of belly fat so that a reserve of energy is readily available to see us through the last few years of our declining life — to make up for our reduced mobility, our failing organs, and failing taste buds. Scientifically, it is not proven — but we can have some fun by stretching our imagination and speculating. Some good fat and agricultural carbohydrates have never done us harm; in fact, they could have been at the origin of our brain’s exponential evolution since the dawn of agriculture.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 27 February 2026