Debunking the Hunter-Gatherer Workout
27th August 2012
This is a nice theory. But is it true? To find out, my colleagues and I recently measured daily energy expenditure among the Hadza people of Tanzania, one of the few remaining populations of traditional hunter-gatherers. Would the Hadza, whose basic way of life is so similar to that of our distant ancestors, expend more energy than we do?
Our findings, published last month in the journal PLoS ONE, indicate that they don’t, suggesting that inactivity is not the source of modern obesity.
August 27th, 2012 at 10:02
We’ve known this for years. My intro anthropology courses back in the Dark Ages detailed studies in which it was shown that hunter-gatherers on average expend no more energy and have more free time than agricultural or industrial societies.