"Once our babymaking days are over, fat is stored in larger quantities and also stored more centrally, where it is easiest to carry about."

"That way, if times get tough we can use it for our own survival, thus freeing up food for our younger relatives."

Should we not honor fat, including — precisely — the very thing we've been hating: the way we get fat in middle age?

These changes strongly suggest that middle age is a controlled and preprogrammed process not of decline but of development....

[Middle age is] a resilient, healthy, energy-efficient and productive phase of life that has laid the foundations for our species’s success. Indeed, the multiple roles of middle-aged people in human societies are so complex and intertwined, it could be argued that they are the most impressive living things yet produced by natural selection.

The fat middle of middle age is an advantage evolution built into the human animal.

By the way energy-efficient is the right term. People who complain about their "slow metabolism" as if it's dysfunctional are not thinking straight. They're just sad they can't without consequences be the fuel-guzzlers they'd love to be. (If we personalized our cars more, we might see our gas-guzzler cars as lovable gourmands, taking lusty pleasure in scarfing down lots of extra food. And — lucky them! — they never put on a pound!)