Office Workers = hunter gatherers?

Image from Time magazine article

While reading my fitness/nutrition-related news articles this morning I came across one that really made me go, "Hmm...". The Telegraph (a UK newspaper), published an article titled "Office workers burn as many calories as hunter gatherers". After reading it (which I suggest you do, as well), I realized that there must be some kind of bias going on with the writing of this article. The author, Nick Collins, suggests that office workers today burn a comparable amount of calories to our hunter-gatherer counterparts in traditional societies (and also the versions of ourselves from pre-industrialized society). Additionally, Collins claims that the startling rise in obesity in our present society is not in fact attributable to our more sedentary lifestyle but our diet, stating that:

"The vast majority of what we spend our calories on is things you will never see like keeping our organs and immune system going. Physical activity is just the tip of the iceberg. If you spend a bit more [energy] on something like physical activity, you spend a bit less on something else but you do not notice it. This study shows that you can have a very different lifestyle, but [energy use] all adds up to the same level no matter what."

This doesn't make a lot of sense scientifically speaking. To put it simply, Collins is saying that we burn a maximum number of calories per day and if you exercise and burn calories in that manner then you will not burn calories through the normal day to day use of your organ and immune systems. Something here doesn't add up. We have a whole multi-billion dollar industry devoted to the notion that you need to be active to burn additional calories and here this guy says it doesn't really matter? 

Image from Daily Mail article

I did some research and it turns out that Collins was writing about a peer-reviewed scientific study about Hunter-Gatherer Energetics and Human Obesity, and was summarized by the Telegraph (as noted above), Time Magazine, BBC News, and the Daily Mail, among other news outlets. The picture accompanying the Daily Mail article with the headline "Good news for couch potatoes!" is especially disturbing to me. Why are we promoting the sedentary lifestyle in this way? Has medicine, health science, and general statistical evidence not shown us that obesity leads to loads of health problems and eventual death? 

The Center for Disease Control in the United States states that "regular physical activity is the best thing you can do for your health". I took a screen cap of the some of the benefits they claim come from physical activity. 

At least in the BBC report on the scientific findings, the author stated that 

"Being active is really important to your health but it won't keep you thin - we need to eat less to do that. Daily energy expenditure might be an evolved trait that has been shaped by evolution and is common among all people and not some simple reflection of our diverse lifestyles."

This idea was also stated in the original peer-reviewed article being discussed. It's an interesting idea that we, as humans, have evolved to change our metabolic rate as needed in order to maintain our lifestyles. The article itself suggests that the physical activity rate of the Hazda hunter-gatherers studied by the researchers was much higher than the levels observed in Westerners, leading one to wonder if our basal metabolic rates have increased in order to keep up with our increasing rate of consumption in Western society. This would be an interesting study to pursue, but really it's neither here nor there with regards to my blog today.
 

Taken from WALL-E. These guys burn as many calories as hunter-gatherers.

My issue is that this article, and the series of news outlets that covered its release, can mislead a whole group of people who don't take it for what it is: simply a fact about the calorie-burning levels of office workers and hunter-gathers. It is not a get-out-of-jail free card telling us that exercising is futile. The author of the Telegraph article, who claims to be a scientific columnist is directing a whole slew of readers into the misconceived notion that you are, on your own, going to burn the max calories you possibly can without doing anything out of the ordinary with regards to physical activity. This is totally and completely preposterous, and the fact checkers over at the Telegraph should have noted it before it went to print. Granted, in the UK the obesity levels are nowhere near as alarming as those in the US, but without some consideration they could be easily on the tails of their American counterparts. In Medical News Today, an article was published a few weeks ago claiming physical activity and exercise to be the most powerful tool in helping aid the sick people in the U.S. This is paramount, given that the US Congress is currently working on the "Affordable Care Act" where they are deciding how to help those with high medical needs and how to prevent this from becoming an even more crippling issue than it is at present. This article (or series of articles) based on findings that could lead to a seriously disadvantageous thinking on the part of many "Westerners" really was the rock in my shoe this morning and I simply had to share my point of view.