I am loving the magazine Psychology Today, thinking of subscribing. Just read about a dozen articles I could talk about here, but the one that struck me most was entitled "Eternal Curves" by Will Lassek and Steve Gaulin - well qualified writers on the subject, one being a former assistant surgeon general and the other an anthropology professor.
The intro caught my eye: "Men 'know' something significant about women's bodies that women don't. And it all has to do with nature's mandate to produce children with the greatest array of survival skills." Lots of research into the body types that fire men's brains and it's not what most women think. When presented with three body types: a supermodel, a playmate and an average US female, women were most drawn to the supermodel and assumed men would be too. The average supermodel is tall, weighs 115 lbs. with average measurements of 32,23,34 and a waist/hip ratio of .69. The average playmate weighs about the same but is four inches shorter with average measurements of 35,23,35 and full thighs and butts - a hip/waist ratio of .66. In contrast, the average US woman is shorter still (six inches shorter than the supermodel and a few inches shorter than the playmate) but weighs thirty pounds more with average measurements of 37,29,39 and a waist/hip ratio of .75.
Men are programmed at some deep primordial level to prefer curvy women with a waist size that is 60 to 70% of their hip size (the playmate, not the supermodel as most women in the study predicted). "American males, it has been calculated, spend some $3B a year to gaze at women with hourglass figures, those whose small waists blossom into sinuously curvy hips." No surprise there! But wait, there's more. It's the REASON that's so interesting and it has to do with certain kinds of fat and the intelligence of our species. It also may explain why American women are, on average, twenty pounds heavier than they were twenty years ago and why there has been a decline in the intelligence of American children. Men, it seems, are doing their part in trying to preserve the intelligence of the species by preferring women with hourglass figures (survival of the fittest, more on that in a bit), but there's a problem when the average American woman's body is morphing into something that is evolutionary undesireable.
Human females carry seven times the fat of other animals. "Only bears ready to hibernate, penguins facing a sunless winter without food, or whales swimming in arctic waters have fat percentages that approach those in normal, healthy, trim young women." Seriously? A slim woman has a higher BMI than a hibernating bear? Who knew? Obvious question is, "Why?" The answer has to do with the needs of the enormous human brain which is actually mostly made of fat. But not just any type of fat - Omega-3 which only comes from external sources - the food we eat. In women, the Omega-3 fat is stored in the hips and butt - when a mother nurses, the Omega-3 is drawn from those stores. With each subsequent baby, those Omega-3 reserves are depleted with the first baby getting more than his fair share - may be the reason why the eldest child is often the smartest and why the baby of the family may be a ne'er do well.
In the last twenty years, the diet of the average American has been lacking in Omega-3 fat. Food politics and subsidies have skewed diets to include less Omega-3 fats and much more Omega-6 fats. Couple of reasons for that. Food shelf life is extended when Omega-3 fats are removed and replaced with more stable Omega-6 fats. "Most Omega-6 fat comes from chemically processed oils extracted from soybeans and corn." Another factor is the diets of the animals we're eating. Animals fed corn are also Omega-3 deprived (versus having them graze on grass which is high in Omega-3). Article goes on to say that both fats are needed in equal measure in our bodies and that historically we've consumed them in equal amounts. It's only in recent history that has become skewed - these days the average American consumes twenty-five times the amount of Omega-6 versus Omega-3 fat.
So what does this all mean? Most of us are Omega-3 deprived. American women grow fatter because they need to lay more fat on their bodies - because their fat is low in Omega-3, more fat is needed to nourish infant brains. It's their body's way of compensating. And yet, even with an extra twenty pounds, the Omega-3 stores are deficient to the job at hand - our kids are not as smart as, say, Japanese kids from mothers who may have fewer fat stores, but the fat they do have is super rich in Omega-3 because of their diets.
After reading this article, I'm going to go back to, what was once, a daily habit of taking Omega-3 fish oil. I was one of those people who couldn't take the pills - they went down easy enough but all through the day, I'd burp little burps that tasted disgustingly of fish oil - gross. Friend turned me onto a different kind of fish oil which is more expensive but doesn't have the same burp effect. It's called Coromega and it comes in little foil packets that you squeeze on a spoon. It's bright orange - looks and tastes like frosting (really - no fish taste at all!) and best of all it doesn't revisit you later.
Challenge today could be reading the article - here's the link (not the whole article, maybe you can subscribe or pick up a copy of the latest issue called Sixth Sense at your newsstand?), and then adding Omega-3 into your diet. We are all deficient in it, men too, and I suspect there are more stories about what the deficiency is doing to us.
Peace,
Sarah
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