I've been asked by a few people to weigh in on a recent NYT article, Debunking the Hunter-Gatherer Workout, that discusses the following study (free full text): Hunter-Gatherer Energetics and Human Obesity. I didn't have a whole lot to say until I wrote this, and now it's rather long ... so I guess I did have quite a bit to say after all ;-) But first, a little link love for Colby Vorland of nutsci.org who discussed this back in July: Westerner energy expenditure compared to a hunter-gatherer population is equivalent. In addition, Colby had discussed Energy expenditure and physical activity level are not higher in developing countries compared to industrialized. I encourage reading both.
So from the NYT article:
We found that despite all this physical activity, the number of calories that the Hadza burned per day was indistinguishable from that of typical adults in Europe and the United States. We ran a number of statistical tests, accounting for body mass, lean body mass, age, sex and fat mass, and still found no difference in daily energy expenditure between the Hadza and their Western counterparts.
