Burn is about metabolism. How we burn our calories, why our industrialised civilisation is overweight, and why moving our bodies is good. As an evolutionary anthropologist, Herman Pontzer led studies with the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer tribe in Tanzania and compared the metabolism of this ethnic group, that goes around looking for food all day, and us, that just have all of it at our fingertips. The results are amazing and slightly depressing. Seems that the only way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories. An excellent book, well written, with tons of data. A book that I will have to read again.
“You are what you eat isn’t just a well-worn cliché, it’s how life actually works. One shudders to think about the sizable proportion of Americans who are literally walking, talking, reformulated Big Macs. My kids are built and powered almost entirely from chicken nuggets, pasta, yogurt, and carrots. I myself am fueled largely by pretzels and beer. How does it all work?”