ABSTRACT
For most people, an abundance of food is a relatively modern phenomenon — certainly when viewed against the whole of man’s evolution and even in the context of recorded history. The abundance has coincided with industrialisation and the reduction in the expenditure of energy required for subsistence and transport. This chapter is concerned with the relation between food — both its quantity and quality — and these modern epidemics. The deceptive feature of height/weight tables is that they obscure the effects of ageing. Apart from fat distribution, there are other differences in body composition and shape which influence weight in relation to height. The fundamental cause of obesity is, of course, an excess of food energy which is then stored as fat.
