Whether it’s a summer barbecue with friends, your favourite fast food takeaway, or Christmas dinner, we can probably all recall times when we’ve eaten more food in one sitting than we needed to. Plenty of research has looked at the long-term health effects of overeating calories – which include increased fat storage, impaired endocrine (hormone) control and changes to our skeletal muscle and fat tissue. Yet little is known about how our body copes with these one-off occasions of overindulgence, and whether they have any effect on our overall health – which is what our latest study aimed to find out.
Humans have a huge capacity to overeat over an extended period of time. For example, members of the Massa tribe participate in Guru Walla, the traditional fattening festival where they attempt to gain as much weight as possible by eating as much as they can. Many members gain 11 kilograms of fat in just two months by eating roughly 8700 calories per day – more than three times what most adults are advised to eat in a day.
