I’ve thought of this question before, but I was reminded of it by this thread.
1.) Fat people don’t last any longer without food than normal people, do they?
2.) Why not? Don’t camels survive on the fat in their humps?
Please bust my ignorance.
I’ve never done any research on the question, but in theory, they should indeed last longer. Why do you think they wouldn’t?
It’s just a piece of (possibly incorrect) information I’ve picked up.
AFAIK, starvation is linked to BMI (body mass index) levels, so somebody who starts out with a higher BMI would indeed take longer to starve to death (assuming they could consume water to remain hydrated).
Heck, think about the fact that many overweight people survive for months on weight-loss diets, and lose amounts of weight that it would literally kill a thin person to lose. The fat people literally are taking longer to starve to death (although of course, the idea is to stop the slow starvation once they’ve got their BMI down to the desired level).
You have to remember that your brain needs glucose to survive. If you can’t obtain it by dietary processes, either by direct ingestion of carbohydrates or by metabolism of protein, a portion of which converts to sugars, your brain will survive by converting bodily muscle tissue to glucose. It’s not picky about the source of the protein, and the cardiac muscle is as available as any other muscle.
On a low calorie diet with sufficient carbohydrates or protein a fat person will live longer, but on a starvation diet, maybe not.
But everyone, no matter how fat, requires water, pretty much every day.
I think they can survive longer on a ‘starvation diet’ where some food it taking in, but not totally without food, as they have able the same reserves of protein and carbohydrates as anyone has, just more fat. Once the other 2 run out that’s all folks.
The body has enzymes that can convert fats to carbohydrates and vice versa, so assuming someone is otherwise healthy, they can’t really run out of carbohydrates as long as they have body fat.
So when a morbidly obese person starves to death, there won’t be any fat on their corpse?
According to this article, thin people do indeed starve faster than fat people:
I dunno. The wikipedia article kinda suggests that you’ll start breaking down muscle tissue along with fats for energy once you start starving, and that the muscle loss might kill you before you deplete your fat stores. So concivable a person with little muscle and a lot of fat could still be mildly fat when starvation finally did them in.
That bit of the article isn’t very well written though, so maybe not. You’d sort of think that evolution would’ve stumbled upon a way to hold off on eating your organs until you’d lost the beer belly.
This would make more sense if the concept of a beer belly was older than a couple hundred years. Natural selection can’t do much about wacky theoreticals; how often would any pre-civilization (read: pre-agriculture) hominid encounter a situation in which it had such a surfeit of food that it grew to become fat, then ran out of food very suddenly?
My Dad and his Airborne Ranger buds used to have a saying about what happens when people get taken prisoner (in war):
“The fat ones get skinny and the skinny ones die.”
While it wasn’t based on a scientific study, I can vouch for their first-hand experience in the subject.
This would probably fall in the category of “starvation diet” as opposed to the complete lack of food intake though. . .
What about the question of body composition?
I’m 5’8, 265. Multiple body fat percentage tests show that if the liposuction fairies came in the night and removed all of my body fat I’d be 5’8 and 185. If they stopped at 10%, I’d be 5’8 and 204. This clearly puts me into the fat people category, but I’m not sure where between 204 and 185 I’d become a skinny person.
I work with a guy who’s my height and weighs 130. His thighs are smaller than my forearms. If the body needs to convert muscle tissue into glucose to survive, mine’s got a heck of a lot more to work with.
I suspect that if he were to start packing lard onto his frame he’d be into the fat guy category well before he hit 204.
Really, 5’8 and 185 is skinny? I’m 6’0 and I weigh around 207 or so and I’m a fatass. 
Though I guess maybe that means I have no muscle.
That’s incorrect. There’s an evolutionary reason why people get fat when they eat excess food - they’re storing energy which they can burn later.
So when people mention my weight, I can let them know that I’m stockpiling energy.
No, it’s me with 0% body fat. It’s my coworker with 50 lbs of added body fat. We’re both 5’8. He’d be a fat guy long before I’d be a skinny guy, and we’d starve at different rates.
You wouldn’t be skinny. You’d be muscular. You get a big workout every day from carrying around all that extra weight.
So, I can go down to zero percent body fat, and never be skinny?