On Fri, 18 Sep 1998, James Crocker wrote:
> >If you want to be big and strong you are going to eat alot.
> If you want to be healthy and live a long time, you are going to eat a little. :)
This is a point that Gary Ditta discussed here some time back.
We tend to assume that it is a good thing to be have as much
muscle as possible. For one thing, dieters like muscle because
it is more attractive than fat and burns more calories than fat
(I guess that's two things). Thus more muscle means that one can
eat more calories without getting fat. We tend not to ask,
however, whether just burning more calories is a good thing in
itself, or whether it might have disadvantages.
From an evolutionary perspective, being able to eat more calories
without gaining fat does not make a lot of sense. Since fat is
how energy is stored, it seems that being able to store fat
readily would be an advantage, unless the supply of calories was
continuously overabundant. It's doubtful that this was the case
most of the time.
How much muscle is "good," apart from aesthetic considerations?
In functional terms, what matters is being *strong* enough and
having enough endurance to do what one needs to do. Beyond that,
additional muscle would be a disadvantage, since it must be fed
and watered and carted around all day. That is, beyond a certain
point additional muscle is simply *more work*. But what is that
point? I guess it depends upon one's niche. The strength
demands of one niche may be very different from the demands of
another niche. There must be a lower limit, however. If one
goes lower than this limit in terms of muscle mass, one would be
weak and lethargic.
Looking at pictures of HGs in the world today, I am struck by the
fact that they do not look like bodybuilders. They tend to
look very lean and compact. Archeologically, this is hard to
study, since muscle doesn't leave fossils. I wonder if the
matter of body composition really has been studied in
evolutionary terms. Has anyone read anything about this?
Todd Moody
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