Groundbreaking Study Finds Math Still Works

(And too many calories still make you fat, dammit.)

Well, stop the presses and alert the Nobel committee: The Science™ has done it again. After years of painstaking research, hundreds of millions of dollars in grants, and a sample size so broad it included both IT executives and cavemen, a global team of scientists has made a discovery that will change the course of human history:

Eating too much makes you fat.

And when I find that overfeeder, I’m going to give him a piece of my mind!

I know. I’m reeling, too. I’ve been walking around thinking the planet’s obesity problem was not drinking enough water and having an unlucky blood type. Maybe some past life karma. Now you’re telling me that not eating a sleeve of Oreos in bed every night is the holy-grail ticket to Slimville we’ve all been searching for?

Well, rats.

Apparently, we needed 4,000 adults, 34 populations, and a battery of researchers from multiple universities to confirm that when you consume more calories than you burn, the scale goes up. They call this “energy intake.” I call it “Thanksgiving.”

The study authors found that whether you spend your days sitting in a cubicle or running from woolly mammoths, the modern man/woman burns roughly the same calories as our ancestors did.

Translation: It’s not your desk chair, Karen. It’s the bottomless bag of Funyuns.

“The differences in body fat that we see across populations likely aren't due to major differences in activity level or total daily energy burned,” authors Amanda McGrosky and Amy Luke told Fox News Digital. “Rather, excess body fat is likely primarily the product of too many ‘calories in,’ or eating more calories than are burned.”

It’s almost poetic how shocked they are. Like, have these people not noticed that as portion sizes have quadrupled, so have human beings?

FOUR TIMES larger. That explains a lot.

I hope you’re already sitting down, because this cutting-edge study also found that ultraprocessed foods like Doritos are easier to overeat than, say, raw liver or kale, because they are “highly palatable” and “engineered to override our biology.” Wait, foods that taste really good are easier to overindulge in? Thank you, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Without you, I’d still be wondering why I never find myself craving stewed beets and barley water.

Just in case “calories in > calories out” wasn’t science-y enough, the experts brought in some extra experts to validate their findings. “You can’t out-train a bad diet,” agreed Dr. Brett Osborn, a Florida neurosurgeon [who was not involved in the study]. Which is amazing because like many people, I’ve been waiting decades for a mental mechanic to confirm that I cannot, in fact, eat my weight in Taco Bell every day and then undo it with an 11-minute Peloton ride.

But don’t throw away your sneakers just yet! Exercise, we are told, still has “benefits,” like making you strong and less stressed, even if it won’t make your pants any looser. You just have to shift your mindset from “burning calories” to “trying to build enough muscle to haul yourself to Costco for the free samples.”

So there you have it. After decades of conflicting advice, billions in funding, and the combined IQ of at least three academic institutions, the verdict is in: too much food makes us fat. I, for one, cannot wait for next week’s blockbuster study: “Scientists Shocked to Discover That If You Don’t Water Plants, They Die.”

I know I probably shouldn’t poke fun at a sensitive topic like this. Clearly people need to hear that what you put in your mouth matters if you’re trying to lose weight. Then again, there’s always Ozempic.🤦‍♀️LMK what you think in the comments!

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