Gender and energy balance: sex differences in adaptations for feast and famine

According to this theory/review, the cross-culturally common finding of more women than men among the obese is at least in part a consequence of sex differences in evolutionary selection pressure. James and Trayhurn claim that the propensity to obesity is linked to th ability to survive a fast and both may involve reduced heat production. The present theory extends this relationship to sex differences in energy balance. According to the theory proposed here, mammalian females were subjected to more severe selection pressures during times of short food supply than males were and hence females were under more pressure to evolve mechanisms to facilitate survival during famine, which led to sex differences in obesity. The data relevant to sex differences in starvation survival, obesity and heat production, and the possible evolutionary roles and implications of sex differences in chromosomes and in organizational and activational sex hormones are reviewed. The conclusion is that evolution has created a linkage between sex chromosomes, hormones and energy balance, and this linkage is at least in part responsible for the greater resistance of the female to famine and for her greater tendency to become obese in times of feast.