Will take time for evolution to catch up

ninerbuff

To how we eat that is. Initially our bodies adapted to storing energy very efficiently due to scarcity of food thousands of years ago. But ever so recently with the abundance of food in industrialized countries being so available and cheap, our bodies are just storing extra calories quite quickly leading to the upswing of obesity in many countries now.
Now the body does mutate ever so slightly with a new generation, but it will take some time for it to become some inferno burning machine that doesn't rely on a lot of extra physical activity. Say like maybe a couple of hundred thousand years. Lol, unless we create some pill to do it.
Till then, to keep the weight down and closer to normal, it still comes down to eating the amount of calories you need to lose/maintain based on your physical output in a day.

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AnnPT77

I doubt that evolution will do it. In order for natural selection to select a trait, it's most commonly going to need to affect ability to reproduce somehow. Most of the bad consequences of obesity come home to roost after people have already had the opportunity to have offspring, and give those offspring a model of "normal" that won't serve them all that well, besides.

Given that medical science tends to gradually reduce our likelihood of dying young (even as we make ourselves less healthy, and technological advancements (broadly) tend to reduce humans' needs and desires toward movement during daily life . . . well, I'm not optimistic. Not even in thousands of years.

We don't evolve because it improves us; we evolve because evolutionary pressures weed out those with traits that make them less successful at living long enough to breed, loosely.

sollyn23l2

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I doubt that evolution will do it. In order for natural selection to select a trait, it's most commonly going to need to affect ability to reproduce somehow. Most of the bad consequences of obesity come home to roost after people have already had the opportunity to have offspring, and give those offspring a model of "normal" that won't serve them all that well, besides.

Given that medical science tends to gradually reduce our likelihood of dying young (even as we make ourselves less healthy, and technological advancements (broadly) tend to reduce humans' needs and desires toward movement during daily life . . . well, I'm not optimistic. Not even in thousands of years.

We don't evolve because it improves us; we evolve because evolutionary pressures weed out those with traits that make them less successful at living long enough to breed, loosely.

Exactly. Sickle Cell Anemia is a good example of this. Turns out, people with Sickle Cell Anemia are much more resistant to malaria. This led evolution to select for people with Sickle Cell Anemia in areas that were prone to malaria. Why? Because Sickle Cell Anemia, even though it is a chronic disease that can kill you, makes you more likely to live long enough to procreate, while malaria will kill people before they get that chance.

FunkmasterRex

Natural selection is a modern Darwinian theory of evolution. Evolution through genetic mutation predates Darwin and was understood by farmers and horticulturists in ancient times, way before the discovery of genes. Farmers knew how to breed animals and plants to achieve desired characteristics for hundreds, even thousands of years. They even took this as far as breeding humans in the same vein.
Also it doesn't take hundreds or thousands of years to engineer new characteristics through genetic manipulation. It can take as little as one generation - or much, much less. The new covid mRNA vaccines use genetic messenger code to evince covid-specific responses in our immune system.
Our genetic make-up can be altered to change our bodies' functions right now. As genetic technology advances, it may be able to affect how our body digests, stores and expends food and energy. This is likely to come about in the next couple of decades,

FunkmasterRex

The philosophical question is really, even if we could, whether we should, given all of the unknown and unintended consequences, as well as all of the ethical quandaries.

Xellercin

Humans are actually evolving pretty quickly right now, just not necessarily in terms of gene mutations. It's pretty well known in evolutionary biology that we're kind of in a post-DNA era of human evolution.

Evolution doesn't always benefit the species and doesn't always actually promote more reproductive fitness. Reproductive fitness is just one evolutionary pressure, but environment is a much, much bigger one.

Darwinian evolution, where reproductive fitness favours DNA mutations is a very, very limited slice of the evolutionary process.

Epigenetics and hormone response to systemic environmental pressures is far more rapid and sweeping than reproductive pressure on the propogation of spontaneous DNA mutations.

It doesn't matter if a gene was selected through assortative mating millions of years ago if hormonal disruptors in the environment modify how that gene is expressed and how hormones respond.

The environment can change, permanently, much, much faster than the accumulation of beneficial spontaneous DNA mutations. Also, the environment can begin to favour mutations that *aren't* beneficial, thereby propogating them throughout the species even more.

Our ability to keep people like me with genetic diseases alive is propogating our genes throughout the population far more than before our medical environment was able to keep us alive long enough to reproduce.

I've been studying neurobiological development for decades. When I see pop-science doctors spout off about evolution and DNA, it makes me embarrassed for them.

ninerbuff

AnnPT77 wrote: »

We don't evolve because it improves us; we evolve because evolutionary pressures weed out those with traits that make them less successful at living long enough to breed, loosely.

This is true. I neglected to remember what evolution really is.

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ninerbuff

sollyn23l2 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I doubt that evolution will do it. In order for natural selection to select a trait, it's most commonly going to need to affect ability to reproduce somehow. Most of the bad consequences of obesity come home to roost after people have already had the opportunity to have offspring, and give those offspring a model of "normal" that won't serve them all that well, besides.

Given that medical science tends to gradually reduce our likelihood of dying young (even as we make ourselves less healthy, and technological advancements (broadly) tend to reduce humans' needs and desires toward movement during daily life . . . well, I'm not optimistic. Not even in thousands of years.

We don't evolve because it improves us; we evolve because evolutionary pressures weed out those with traits that make them less successful at living long enough to breed, loosely.

Exactly. Sickle Cell Anemia is a good example of this. Turns out, people with Sickle Cell Anemia are much more resistant to malaria. This led evolution to select for people with Sickle Cell Anemia in areas that were prone to malaria. Why? Because Sickle Cell Anemia, even though it is a chronic disease that can kill you, makes you more likely to live long enough to procreate, while malaria will kill people before they get that chance.

Great example.

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ninerbuff

FunkmasterRex wrote: »

Natural selection is a modern Darwinian theory of evolution. Evolution through genetic mutation predates Darwin and was understood by farmers and horticulturists in ancient times, way before the discovery of genes. Farmers knew how to breed animals and plants to achieve desired characteristics for hundreds, even thousands of years. They even took this as far as breeding humans in the same vein.
Also it doesn't take hundreds or thousands of years to engineer new characteristics through genetic manipulation. It can take as little as one generation - or much, much less. The new covid mRNA vaccines use genetic messenger code to evince covid-specific responses in our immune system.
Our genetic make-up can be altered to change our bodies' functions right now. As genetic technology advances, it may be able to affect how our body digests, stores and expends food and energy. This is likely to come about in the next couple of decades,

I'm sure it's in the works. Even at this point it's becoming controversial on whether or not a parent would be allowed the right to control something like their kids hair/eye color before birth. Crazy how far we've come in the advancement of technology after genome project.


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ninerbuff

FunkmasterRex wrote: »

The philosophical question is really, even if we could, whether we should, given all of the unknown and unintended consequences, as well as all of the ethical quandaries.

Ha. Reality is MONEY will dictate how it goes. Our higher ups don't think in terms of what's best for us. It's what's keeps them at the top of the food chain. We never needed to create nuclear weapons. But we don't get to make those decisions as an average person.

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ninerbuff

Xellercin wrote: »

Humans are actually evolving pretty quickly right now, just not necessarily in terms of gene mutations. It's pretty well known in evolutionary biology that we're kind of in a post-DNA era of human evolution.

Evolution doesn't always benefit the species and doesn't always actually promote more reproductive fitness. Reproductive fitness is just one evolutionary pressure, but environment is a much, much bigger one.

Darwinian evolution, where reproductive fitness favours DNA mutations is a very, very limited slice of the evolutionary process.

Epigenetics and hormone response to systemic environmental pressures is far more rapid and sweeping than reproductive pressure on the propogation of spontaneous DNA mutations.

It doesn't matter if a gene was selected through assortative mating millions of years ago if hormonal disruptors in the environment modify how that gene is expressed and how hormones respond.

The environment can change, permanently, much, much faster than the accumulation of beneficial spontaneous DNA mutations. Also, the environment can begin to favour mutations that *aren't* beneficial, thereby propogating them throughout the species even more.

Our ability to keep people like me with genetic diseases alive is propogating our genes throughout the population far more than before our medical environment was able to keep us alive long enough to reproduce.

I've been studying neurobiological development for decades. When I see pop-science doctors spout off about evolution and DNA, it makes me embarrassed for them.

I am so interested in hearing more from you about this.


A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition