Medical X-Press – Staff Writer
Forager-horticulturalist children in the Amazon rainforest do not spend more calories in their everyday lives than children in the United States, but they do spend calories differently. That finding provides clues for understanding and reversing global trends in obesity and poor metabolic health, according to a Baylor University researcher in a study published in Science Advances. “Conventional wisdom suggests that an increasingly sedentary and germ-free lifestyle, resulting in low daily energy expenditure, is a primary factor underlying rising rates of obesity in the U.S. and elsewhere,” said Samuel Urlacher, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology at Baylor University. “The findings of our study challenge that notion. We demonstrate that Amazonian children with physically active lifestyles and chronic immunological challenges don’t actually burn more calories than much more sedentary children living here in the U.S.”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-12-muchnot-littlemay-core-weight-gain.html