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Professor Herman Pontzer in NYT RetroReport: Tanzanian Study Has Implications for Understanding Exercise and Obesity

When Professor Herman Pontzer went to Tanzania to study energy expenditure in the hunter-gatherer Hadza population, he was surprised to find that, in spite of their more active lifestyle, the Hadza burned calories at roughly the same rate as more sedentary, urban populations in the West.   http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000004122971/the-unexpected-science-of-exercise.html  "Hunter-gathering populations are a lot more active than we are in the West," said Pontzer, "and we expected to find that the Hadza would burn a lot more calories than people in Western societies do...but we found absolutely no difference in calories per day. That was a real surprise." The reason for this, Pontzer surmises, is that the "body spends most of its energy on things we don't see: immune system, reproductive system...with the Hadza, even though they're more active, they're spending less energy on these unseen tasks." Pontzer concludes that, over time, the human body will adjust to increased activity, and keep the level of energy expenditure to roughly what it was before the increased activity. The human body is not a simple adding machine, "calories in and calories out: in fact, we know they're a lot more dynamic and complex than that."

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