ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2023
Food insecurity as a cause of adiposity: evolutionary and mechanistic hypotheses.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT06800794 (Effect of Meal Timing and Dietary Changes on Metabolic and Behavioral Factors Involved in the Food Insecurity-Obesity Paradox), which is not on this map. Cited by 17 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Effect of Meal Timing and Dietary Changes on Metabolic and Behavioral Factors Involved in the Food Insecurity-Obesity Paradox
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of a water promotion and access intervention on elementary school students in the presence of food insecurity.Public health nutrition · 2024Trial
- The Direct and Moderating Effect of Food Insecurity on Obesity-A Cross-Sectional Study.Food science & nutrition · 2026Article
- Food insecurity, epigenetic age acceleration, and depression in middle-aged and older adults: a longitudinal cohort study.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Article
- Food Insecurity Associated With Higher Odds of Hypertriglyceridemic Waist Phenotype in Women: A Cross-Sectional Study.Food science & nutrition · 2025Article
- Ability to predict irregular periods of food depriviation improves body-weight regulation and reduces weight gain in food-insecure starlings.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- The long-term impact of obesity in pregnancy on offspring hypothalamic feeding pathways.Royal Society open science · 2025Review
- Childhood Food Insecurity Trajectories and Adult Weight and Self-Reported Health.American journal of preventive medicine · 2025Article
- Food insecurity promotes adiposity in mice.Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) · 2025Article
- Does food insecurity cause anxiety and depression? Evidence from the changing cost of living study.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
- Long-term effect of food insecurity on body weight gain and metabolic risk in a context of high socioeconomic vulnerability in a medium-income country: the SANCuité cohort, Brazil, 2011-2022.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- The association between food insecurity and obesity, a body shape index and body roundness index among US adults.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Review
- Childhood adversity trajectories and weight status in young adult men: a register-based study including 359,783 Danish men.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2024Article
- Experimental biology can inform our understanding of food insecurity.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Models of body weight and fatness regulation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Protein appetite as an integrator in the obesity system: the protein leverage hypothesis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Breaking down silos: the multifaceted nature of obesity and the future of weight management.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Food insecurity (FI) is associated with obesity among women in high-income countries. This seemingly paradoxical association can be explained by the insurance hypothesis, which states that humans possess evolved mechanisms that increase fat storage to buffer against energy shortfall when access to food is unpredictable. The evolutionary logic underlying the insurance hypothesis is well established and experiments on animals confirm that exposure to unpredictable food causes weight gain, but the mechanisms involved are less clear. Drawing on data from humans and other vertebrates, we review a suite of behavioural and physiological mechanisms that could increase fat storage under FI. FI causes short-term hyperphagia, but evidence that it is associated with increased total energy intake is lacking. Experiments on animals suggest that unpredictable food causes increases in retained metabolizable energy and reductions in energy expenditure sufficient to fuel weight gain in the absence of increased food intake. Reducing energy expenditure by diverting energy from somatic maintenance into fat stores should improve short-term survival under FI, but the trade-offs potentially include increased disease risk and accelerated ageing. We conclude that exposure to FI plausibly causes increased adiposity, poor health and shorter lifespan. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Causes of obesity: theories, conjectures and evidence (Part II)'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.