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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Melissa BatesonORCiD, Gillian Pepper
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2023 The Authors. Food insecurity (FI) is associated with obesity among women in high-income countries. This seemingly paradoxical association can be explained by the insurance hypothesis, which states that humans possess evolved mechanisms that increase fat storage to buffer against energy shortfall when access to food is unpredictable. The evolutionary logic underlying the insurance hypothesis is well established and experiments on animals confirm that exposure to unpredictable food causes weight gain, but the mechanisms involved are less clear. Drawing on data from humans and other vertebrates, we review a suite of behavioural and physiological mechanisms that could increase fat storage under FI. FI causes short-term hyperphagia, but evidence that it is associated with increased total energy intake is lacking. Experiments on animals suggest that unpredictable food causes increases in retained metabolizable energy and reductions in energy expenditure sufficient to fuel weight gain in the absence of increased food intake. Reducing energy expenditure by diverting energy from somatic maintenance into fat stores should improve short-term survival under FI, but the trade-offs potentially include increased disease risk and accelerated ageing. We conclude that exposure to FI plausibly causes increased adiposity, poor health and shorter lifespan. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Causes of obesity: theories, conjectures and evidence (Part II)'.
Author(s): Bateson M, Pepper GV
Publication type: Review
Publication status: Published
Journal: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Year: 2023
Volume: 378
Issue: 1888
Print publication date: 23/10/2023
Online publication date: 04/09/2023
Acceptance date: 27/07/2023
ISSN (print): 0962-8436
ISSN (electronic): 1471-2970
Publisher: Royal Society Publishing
URL: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0228
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0228
PubMed id: 37661744
Data Access Statement: This article has no additional data.
