Weird Science

Is there some mysterious factor making most of us gain weight? Scientific American reports biostatisticians have found species other than humans have also been gaining weight over the last several decades - including rats, marmosets, cats, dogs, macaques, and mice.

I will propose a possible cause: we are healthier. My reasoning: our weight-gain biostat is set to compensate for weight loss caused by a variety of diseases. We are having fewer of those diseases, so our pre-civilization setting is "compensating" for presumed weight loss that no longer happens.

My reasoning comes from the outcome that followed when children stopped playing in bacteria-laden soil of barnyards; they began getting polio. Their environment was too clean. Maybe that is also our problem vis-a-vis weight gain.