Volume 51, Number 15 · October 7, 2004
Mystery in the Heartland
By Jason Epstein
What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
by Thomas Frank
Metropolitan, 306 pp., $24.00
The vestigial adaptations to primordial rigors that have shaped human nature become troublesome, even deadly, as environments change. Take for example the human addiction to sugar and fat, the physiological basis for the worldwide success of America's fast food diet, with its beckoning aroma of sizzling meat, its sweet shakes and sodas and now the source of widespread pathology, complaint, and controversy. The evolutionary function of these ancient appetites—fat stored as a hedge against famine and sugar for quick energy to flee predators or seize prey—is now in today's much different environment morbidly maladaptive, even fatal, yet irresistibly attuned to our evolved nature, even among the abstemious Japanese whose oily salmon, tuna, and eel over sweetened rice are also an international favorite and, except for the important substitution of fish oil for animal fat, nutritionally analogous to a Big Mac and a shake.
Review, 2416 words
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