- Basal metabolic rates in present-day Americans are substantially lower than they were in the past (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nqBxKGn... -- Yes, the link is from the aforementioned blog, but you can check the citations).

- Mean body temperatures today are lower than in the past (https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/1/22/21075218/no...).

- 13.2% of Americans have taken an SSRI in the past 30 days (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db377.htm). To be clear, depression and torpor are different conditions, but it seems reasonable that a torpid-like state might include depression-like symptoms, and that those might be treatable with SSRIs.

- Obesity has absolutely exploded in the past 40 years, and none of the prevailing hypotheses have much explanatory power (https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p...).

Market pressures ended up selecting a diet made of poisonous food that lies to your tastebuds and satiety center.

First, I'm not sure there's a strong case that our lifestyles today are any more sedentary than in, say, the 1970s (when obesity rates were around 12% rather than 30%). We had cars, transit, elevators, escalators, school buses, television, keyboards, etc. in the 1970s, while at the same time "going to the gym" was just not something that average people did on a regular basis. Even going jogging was mildly eccentric.

Second, this is looking at resting metabolic rates, not overall calorie expenditure, although there is probably some association between RMR and physical activity.

Which brings me to the third point, which is that you're just shifting the burden of answering question of "why are we fat?" to "why are we sedentary?". If we are in fact increasingly sedentary, it could be that an outside factor is causing both low RMR and sedentary behavior. Anecdotally, I (as a comparatively skinny person) have a lot harder time sitting still than some of my friends and acquaintances that struggle with their weight. They might consider spending a day in bed as a great way to recharge, whereas it is something I would only do if I were pretty miserably ill.

In 1969 48% of US kids walked to school; in 2011 it was 13%. http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_...

Public transit is actually great for walking since you are walking to and from a stop.

People have become so unused to children walking around unsupervised that it has become grounds to call child protective services.

Modern “western” people spend a tremendous amount of time sitting - either in an office or a car - and are almost totally sedentary.

In fact, so sedentary that the mere act of walking is considered “exercise”.

Frankly, I’m surprised the mental and physical outcomes aren’t even worse.

Your first sentence is obviously true. Your second one is probably false, since the total removal of that seems unlikely compared to evolution simply disabling it. I have no evidence that part of it remains, nor do I see any evidence of total removal.

Life science is based on observational evidence, and since humans are some mammals who have never been observed to undergo torpor, effects observed inducing mammalian torpor do not apply to humans. They're not making a positive evolutionary statement about human torpor never existing, just that any observed effects from linolenic acid on mammalian torpor do not apply to humans the way the other person was implying it does.

Plenish just has less LA, not zero, and they were trying to rule it out from a few genetic expressions they were looking at, not obesity.

Also: This is on male mice, which experience topor, which means they can dial their metabolisms way back.

Human metabolism just doesn't work like that. Studies have consistently shown that metabolism is pretty constant across the gamut of humans based on muscle mass, activity, and weight.

We do not experience torpor naturally. That does not exclude that you can blast a human body with the right amount of hormones or substances that act like ones and artificially induce torpor in humans. NASA has been researching ways to do that for years now [1], given that even a small amount of saved resources per human on a months-long space trip saves a lot of resources in total, not to mention the potential of a reduced metabolic rate also protecting the traveling humans from cosmic radiation-induced damage.

As for "how to induce torpor", well, we don't even know what exactly causes it in animals. We are just guessing - and we are at the same time also noticing that wide swaths of the population show up with a lot of health issues that used to be either rare or mostly spread on older people. Auto-immune diseases (allergies, diabetes, neurodermitis), precocious puberty, cancers of all kinds, obesity in young people, circulatory issues, Alzheimer's and other neuro-degenerative diseases, just to point out the most obvious and most-researched. And since there are only three major things that changed over the last hundred years from the previous default - our food, the introduction of heavy industry, plastics and pollution, and our way of living under modern capitalism (your ordinary medieval farmer did not work 40 hour weeks for the entire year for his whole life) - it is not surprising that correlations appear there. The key thing is to find out if the correlation also has a corresponding causation!

[1]: https://www.nasa.gov/content/torpor-inducing-transfer-habita...

We know from animal research that torpor/hibernation in non-human mammals creates a sleep deprived state. We know that there is no evidence of humans being able to enter a state of torpor. We know that humans have high sleep requirements for our brain function. It stands to reason that humans distant ancestors lost the ability to hibernate at some point and that it wouldn't work with our physiology.

Look, if we're going to make major life changes on the basis of this one study, you've missed the opportunity for an all-chocolate diet.

Does it have to be dark chocolate?

Eat more than a few tablespoons of any edible oil in one sitting and you'll definitely feel a difference.

Edit: using only added coconut oil in cooking is, upon reflection, a more probable interpretation. Sorry.

Edit: you added your edit while I was writing my comment :)

You can mix it in with things like coffee and shakes, easy way to get it.

https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml

Basically, any combination of coconut oil in your diet that isn't 100% coconut oil will lead to calorie gain.

What difference will I feel that couldn't be explained simply by my expectation that I would feel different?

The truth is that our stomach has a hard time digesting a sudden influx of MCT. Adding a large amount of MCT to a diet previously free of MCT will cause nausea. And that short term nausea is largely the cause of any "weightloss" seen by MCT. The studies that study MCT and show weightloss are all short term studies, and not the 6-12 month study you really need for weightloss.

In short, you'll feel a difference because coconut oil upsets your stomach. Not because it's a non-animal fat. Hell, we use sesame, peanut, canola, and olive oils all the time. Replace all your dietary fat with canola oil or olive oil and you'll not notice. Will probably have health benefits because of the reduction in saturated fats.

Coconut oil is mainly comprised of saturated fatty acids. Its closer to butter, not the refined PUFA oils.

Consuming anything to excess is gonna mess up your system, water included.

We also have genes that are related to cows, have you tried subsisting on grass?

Your argument is farcical and entirely based on the preaching of a snake oil salesman, in a comments section based on a torpid male mouse study that specifically refutes the argument you're making.