Word: control
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...knowing and doing are two very different things, as hundreds of thousands of lapsed weight watchers have learned to their despair. The trouble, according to one theory, is that our best intentions about weight control go up against several million years of human evolution. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors literally didn't know where their next meal was coming from. So evolution favored those who craved energy-rich, fatty foods--and whose metabolism stored excess calories against times of famine. Love handles, potbellies, thick thighs are all part of Mother Nature's grand design...
Untangling this metabolic mess will probably take decades. But given the immense profits waiting for whoever can invent a safe, effective weight-control substance, drug companies aren't waiting. With the clues they have in hand, pharmaceutical firms are now investigating about 60 compounds, most of them based on some of the 130 genes that have so far been implicated in weight control...
...made his triumphal entrance into Rome in 45 B.C., he celebrated by giving a feast at which thousands of guests gorged on poultry, seafood and game. Similar celebrations featuring exorbitant consumption of animal flesh have marked human victories--in war, sport, politics and commerce--since our species learned to control fire. Throughout the developing world today, one of the first things people do as they climb out of poverty is to shift from their peasant diet of mainly grains and beans to one that is rich in pork or beef. Since 1950, per capita consumption of meat around the globe...
...then there were almost 6 billion people. Thus in one lifetime the population quadrupled, and it's heading for 9 or 10 billion. In nature, when populations soar--and become densely packed--viral diseases tend to break out; then the population drops. This is nature's population-control mechanism. It happens with rodents, insects and even plants. There is no reason to think the human race is exempt from the laws of nature...
...greatest weapon against the bugs will always be our mind. Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, predicts that in the end, the fight will come down to the same old sleuthing methods that disease hunters have always used to find bugs and stop them. "Shoe-leather epidemiology" is what Koplan calls it. "You wear out your shoes investigating an outbreak," he says. "You go around identifying the source of the disease and figuring out how it's being spread, and then you remove the source. Even if it's Vibram-soled epidemiology...