Herman Pontzer

At a glance

• Herman Pontzer is an American evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, where he teaches evolutionary anthropology and global health. He studies how the human body spends energy.
• Using the doubly labelled water method he measured the daily energy expenditure of the Hadza, hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. Despite their active lives they burned about as many calories per day as Westerners.
• From this he developed the ‘constrained energy expenditure’ model: moving more does not raise expenditure indefinitely, because the body saves energy elsewhere.
• In a large study (Science, 2021) of more than 6,000 people his team showed that metabolism, adjusted for body size, stays remarkably stable between ages 20 and 60 and only declines afterwards.
• He brought this research together in the book Burn (2021).
• For longevity, his work explains why exercise mainly benefits the heart, brain and metabolism, and is less of a weight-loss tool.
• Takeaway: move every day for your health, and manage your weight mainly through what and how much you eat.