Chapter 10
Objective and Subjective Aspects
of the Drive to Eat in Obesogenic
Environments
Leslie Sue Lieberman
Introduction
Most people disavow the theory of aflat earth although members of the Flat Earth
Society are strong proponents in spite of numerous pictures from space that visibly
show the earth to be an oblate spheroid (Flat Earth Society 2014 ). It is a matter of
perception, perspective, and belief. Similarly, most peoplefirmly believe that they
eat less food, smaller portions, and fewer calories than they do in spite of many
visible and invisible cues to the contrary and the biomarkers of expanding waist-
lines and increasing body weights (Wansink 2010 ). These biomarkers of body size
including body mass index (BMI = weight (kg)/height (m)^2 ) are well known and
popular measures used by medical researchers, clinicians, and the general popu-
lation to assess overweight, obesity, and associated health risks (Grundy et al. 2004 ;
Trainer et al. 2015 ).
Humans are visibly, universally, getting fatter with globesity as a growing
concern for all nations (Delpeuch et al. 2009 ; WHO 2012 ). Worldwide obesity
prevalence doubled between 1980 and 2008 with approximately 1.4 billion over-
weight and half a billion obese adults aged 20 and older (Deitel 2003 ; WHO 2014 ).
In the USA over the same period, childhood obesity prevalence doubled and
adolescent prevalence quadrupled (CDC 2014 ; Ogden et al. 2014 ). In 2011, there
was a worldwide estimate of more than 42 million overweight or obese children
aged 5 or younger. Based on longitudinal and cross-sectional studies, obese chil-
dren have a 20–59.9% risk of becoming overweight or obese adults (Biro and Wien
2010 ; de Onis et al. 2010 ; Freedman et al. 2009 ; Guo et al. 2002 ; Quelly and
Lieberman 2011 ).
Many factors in evolutionary novel modern environments from cars to super-
sized cartons of calorically dense ready-to-eat foods bode poorly for stemming the
L.S. Lieberman (&)
Department of Anthropology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
©Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
L.L. Sievert and D.E. Brown (eds.),Biological Measures of Human
Experience across the Lifespan: Making Visible the Invisible,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-44103-0_10
195