Acharya Prashant: You are in front of food and you see how your body wants to lunge towards food. And do you know why the body wants to lunge towards food? Especially, let’s say, sweetmeats or high-calorie items? Why? – Because evolution taught it to, because the survival of the body is dependent greatly on the brain and the brain consumes 10-25% of the body’s energy. The body wants to have just energy and energy comes from calories, not proteins or vitamins. Even today when are you declared dead? – When the brain is dead. So, the body wants to preserve the brain the most and the brain requires a lot of energy. Even when you’re sitting idle, but thinking, then a lot of calories are being burnt. The brain wants calories and calories.
Just as a survival trick, the body is attracted towards high-calorie food and it says, “Just gulp it down in one go.”
There is another reason – whenever high-calorie food is available, let’s say, you come to a mango tree and there are four mangoes, if you don’t take them down immediately, they won’t be available. You cannot store them, there were no fridges and also there was a lot of competition. The monkey was your nearest competitor. Four mangoes, your tribe, the other tribe and so many monkeys, so what did he want to do? Eat as quickly and as many as possible. Now they are in, now nobody can take them away. So, the body learns to accumulate fat.
You know, the body does not accumulate anything else too much. If you take in a lot of vitamins, they will be excreted out. The body does not learn to store them; the body uses them rightly, but cannot store them beyond a point. Similarly, for minerals, salts—the body cannot store them beyond a point, where they are flushed out; but for fats, the body says, “More, more and more” and stores them till you become 200 kilograms. And when you become 200 kilograms, the body says, “Give me more of them.”
