I must admit to be slightly stunned at reading Ed Thompson's response to
William Leonard's article in Scientific American, which appears to be a
massive over-reaction to what I felt was a pretty well-balanced article.
[I have to admit here to not having read the article as it appears in the
recent Human Evolution special, but as it first appeared in SciAm in Dec
2002, but as the Dec02 version has exactly the same title, and the same
quoted bullet point by ET, I assume it has much the same thrust.]

In response to Leonard's statement that "The health concerns of the
industrial world, where calorie-packed foods are readily available, stem
not from deviations from a specific diet but from an imbalance between the
energy we consume and the energy we expend."
ET somewhat sarcastically states "All hail the supreme Energy Balance
Equation!  For 'tis the cal'ries-in-minus-cal'ries-out that doth endow a
man his heretofore claim to health!  Human health is just THAT simple to
summarize and the 'masses' MUST now concur with this epiphany, no matter
how incongruent it is with the growing body of medical and scientific
evidence on the matter!"

I am afraid that yes for a lot of people, it really is that simple. In a
world where 200million people are obese, with all the consequent health
risks that this entails, and with an increasingly sedentary lifestyle in
the developed world, taking in any amount of essential fatty acids and
fish oils is not going to do as much for you as adjusting one's energy
balance: eating less or exercising more as a first step to improving
health will do more good as a whole for individuals AND for society than
specific dietary changes.

That is not to say that I disagree that diet composition should ALSO be
improved for certain groups or individuals. But for an educated individual
(as I assume) in this field such as ET to respond in such a manner is not
appropriate. An awful lot of overweight people are searching for a 'quick
fix' which they will fail to find. Until the message is clear that most
people will never be able just to eat as much as they want and stay as
thin as they like, then the growing trend of increasing obesity will
continue, while people desperately turn to pharmaceuticals or quack diets.
The irony of ET's response is that at the end of the letter, he seems to
concur with what I have just written in saying "I must elaborate that the
preventable medical costs expected to result from changes in diet and
lifestyle would add up to a sum greater than the initial cost of the diet
and lifestyle changes made (on a whole)... There are already a number of
promising, low-cost modifications of diet and lifestyle available to us:
such as vigorous exercise and an ample intake of fruits, vegetables, lean
meats, and fish (baked or broiled, but not fried)." Trouble is that this
good and sensible point is lost in the verbosity of the whole.

One has to ask if ET has something against Leonard, especially given what
he writes about the pressures of agribusiness, when Leonard is well known
for being an eminent nutritional anthropologist with a long history of
good and solid research in this area?

yours,

Tamsin O'Connell

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Dr Tamsin O'Connell
Research Laboratory for Archaeology
University of Oxford
6 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3QJ, UK
tel:01865-283641
fax:01865-273932
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