We're Built to Survive Famine... But We Don't Eat Like It
Editor's note: For decades, a "hidden" epidemic has been spreading around the country. And it's been linked to the deaths of 10 times as many Americans each year as COVID-19 has killed to date.
We're talking about the obesity epidemic. Earlier this week, we detailed the substantial toll it has left on our nation's health and economy, and some of the reasons why. And we also revealed a previously unthinkable, unbelievable cure for this seemingly unstoppable epidemic.
In this weekend's Masters Series, in a special two-part Q&A, Stansberry Venture Technology editor Dave Lashmet – a Stansberry Research analyst, researcher, and inventor for more than 30 years – discusses more about the obesity epidemic and the cure that he's identified.
He says this little-known drug from a tiny pharmaceutical company will make big mainstream headlines soon, is clinically proven, and that early investors could potentially make 50% returns in this company's stock in the near term and 20 times their money in the next few years.
Stansberry Digest editor Corey McLaughlin interviewed Dave recently about the science behind the obesity epidemic, how we got to this point, and the tremendous opportunity in this tiny stock that virtually no one knows about... We hope you enjoy.
We're Built to Survive Famine... But We Don't Eat Like It
Corey McLaughlin: In general, how big of a problem is the obesity epidemic to the health and economy of the country?
Dave Lashmet: The key point is that when we were kids, "Hey, look at that fat guy," was a unique and strange phenomenon. There just weren't morbidly obese people around. Morbid obesity was less than 1% of the U.S. population in the 1980s. And general obesity was less than 10%. So some people were overweight and very, very few people were morbidly obese.
We can use 1986 as an example... We would have less than 1% morbid obesity and somewhere around 6 to 7% BMI [Body Mass Index] over 30. What we've seen today is what was less than 10% is over 40% and what was less than 1% is more than 6%. So it's basically gotten five times more extreme and has exploded like an epidemic. The costs are extraordinary.
One reason costs are extraordinary is, once people hit 65, everyone has to pay their medical care. More than half of Americans hitting 65 are obese. Obesity among seniors is what everyone has to pay for. What's the cost of obesity? More joint damage, more risk of Type 2 diabetes, Type 2 diabetes drugs, dialysis machines, being driven to your dialysis machine appointment, and cardiovascular effects, and the fact that you have to go into managed care or nursing homes quicker.
It's not just an individual burden. It's an individual burden until you're 64. As soon as you're 65, it's a national health crisis.
CM: So what's driving this epidemic?
DL: The twin drivers are mechanization and a mix of salt and sugar. That our jobs are mechanized and our vehicles are mechanized means that we don't move as much. And humans physiologically crave salt [which] means, if we salt [our] foods, people will buy them. Salted chocolate is the double-whammy. If you split it out to salt and sugar, that and mechanization is what's driving the obesity epidemic.
Prepared foods with more salt and sugar lead to more weight gain. And more mechanization leads to less weight expenditure. You're not burning as many calories. If you take in more and burn less, then you tip the balance. Humans are built to survive famines and yet we don't face them. That's what's really happening.
CM: That's so interesting... We're built to survive famines. That reminds me of the saying that we can survive without food, but not water, for however long?
DL: You only have as much food for winter as you generated at harvest. There's Amazonian tribes that will break down a big feast from a kill between three and seven days. If you look at hunger-strike people, they clearly have a reason that they're on hunger strike and they're suppressing their own urges. If you're looking at sick people in the hospital who are really sick, their hunger can shut down because they have other things they're dealing with.
Practically, most people are going to break a hunger strike by day 12. And to be in strong health, to go bring down game among Amazonian tribes or tribes in Africa, they're bringing home a major kill every seven days. So practically, you can make about a day until a lack of fresh water is going to hurt you. And for food, it's about a week.
But you can be on reduced calories, which allows traveling from Fiji to the Hawaiian islands. You have all the food that was stored and you want to not lose your way. You can also fish along the way and hope for some rainfall to give you water. But fundamentally, if you don't find the island you're looking for, you're going to have to start reducing your calorie intake. That's why you want to store a lot of food before you go.
That's the third element. It's not just how much food you have for how long or reduced calories, it's also how much fat stores you have. Pregnant women put on a lot of weight so they can breastfeed, so they have energy reserves available for the newborn. That's based on stored energy, like all other mammals. Mice better eat every 12 hours or they're in trouble. Their hearts beat 500 times a minute. They're physiologically not like us. But other large land mammals have heart rates that are about the same speed. A 150-pound mammal has the same energy needs as another 150-pound mammal.
Humans are physiologically pretty close to wild boar or pigs in body weight, cardiovascular fitness, and food storage. It's probably impolite to call us pigs, but it's probably fair to call us wild boar.
CM: Practically, when you talk about the mechanization and BMI, what was it like before the 1980s? Has this progression been happening all along the Industrial Age and the obesity growth is exponential at this point?
DL: It's the dual tipping point. England has pretty good stats about how many people biked to work in 1946 and how many people biked to work in 2016. Over that span, it went from about 50% of people biked to work to 5% of people biked to work because of that expansion of trains and subways.
The lack of exercise we get in our commute and everyday life is because we could get places through mechanization. Also true of long-distance travel. If you look at what happened with flight routes in 1946, there were no flight routes, to today... There's a lot more people traveling by air, through the start of the COVID epidemic, then ever before. TSA was reporting 2.2 million screenings a day in March.
So almost 1% of the adult percentage was on the move in a plane every day, which is a metric for the mechanization of the country. We weren't riding horses, which is basically an exercise. My oldest daughter used horse riding as her gym classes in high school. It's exercise. Control your posture, control your hands... It's probably as hard as riding a bike. Horses and bicycles were displaced by automobiles, buses, trains, mass transit, and jets. That completely replaced the exercise of a commute.
And then mechanization in the job... Driving a GPS-controlled, air-conditioned harvester is not the same as driving a stick-shift harvester that's open-air, in part because you're facing different heat or cold, which changes how your body has to adapt to its environmental condition with its metabolic burn rate to maintain a core body temperature...
Editor's note: Stay tuned to your inbox tomorrow for the conclusion of our Q&A with Dave. He'll talk more about the obesity epidemic and the tiny company that he says has developed a clinically proven cure for it.
And in the meantime, if you want to learn more about Dave, the tremendous "20X" opportunity he has identified for early investors, and the little-known pharmaceutical company behind the drug, click here to watch his brand-new video presentation.
And for current Venture Technology subscribers and Stansberry Alliance members, you can find the research on this groundbreaking opportunity right here.