time.com on Diabetes
Evolutionary biologists suspect that a predisposition toward diabetes developed among certain ethnic groups—such as Pima Indians or Americans of African descent—as a result of repeated, perhaps even recent, bouts of starvation. Those individuals who were better able to decrease energy expenditures during a famine survived and passed on the trait to their offspring. Unfortunately, that ability seems to cause insulin resistance when food is plentiful. In other words, says Dr. Peter Nathanielsz, director of the Center for Women’s Health Research at New York University, “you come out into the world—at least the developed world—and there is no shortage of cheap, fast food. Your thrifty metabolism has prepared you for the wrong future.”
Starvation? Not by their own hands. Oh, combine that with deeje’s post on gallon sized pickle jars:
For Vlasic, the gallon jar of pickles became what might be called a devastating success. “Quickly, it started cannibalizing our non-Wal-Mart business,” says Young. “We saw consumers who used to buy the spears and the chips in supermarkets buying the Wal-Mart gallons. They’d eat a quarter of a jar and throw the thing away when they got moldy. A family can’t eat them fast enough.”
Simultaneously making Vlasic look good on paper, and destroying itself because of their own actions…
Stop this train, I want to get off.
Leave a comment