Well written and enjoyable anthropological study.

Surprisingly snarky account, but I wish it had stayed true to the calorie count info instead of discussing energy of all kinds.

Picked this up after hearing him on a podcast - interesting but quite depressing book the looks at food / eating / exercise & diet it’s impact on ourselves & the planet.
Chapter on energy constraint interesting - from his research
“Humans and other species adapt dynamically to changes in daily physical activity, maintaining total energy expenditure within a narrow range. Chronic exercise thus suppresses other physiological activity, including immunity, reproduction, and stress response. This exercise-induced downregulation improves health at moderate levels of physical activity but can be detrimental at extreme workloads.”

This book was surprisingly good. It is heavily focused on the science of eating and metabolism and explains a lot of things that I had noticed in my own life but couldn’t explain. For example, why exercise does not really help you lose weight. I also really liked learning more about evolution through the lens of diet.

3.5 stars rounded down.

I read this book to research efficient energy-burn strategies, and the gist is that there is none. Our body is such a sophisticated system, which compensates for the "excessive loss" of energy masterfully, and more often than not, allows no argument.
The discussion of different types of exercise was interesting too.

Overall, the science is solid and fun to read, but at times it felt like the author had a bunch of anecdotes he wanted to mention in a chapter before his opinion, not the other way around, making the information flow a little hard to follow.
Also only limited new information for me, though the reference provides a good list of further readings.