Summary - In the 1930s Southern Women were eating more unsaturated fats than Northern Women and had lower metabolic rates. By 1985, American women everywhere were eating lots of unsaturated fat and had uniformly low metabolic rates. At the very least, a theory of obesity should have some predictive value in the real world. The idea that metabolic rate is partially controlled by the degree of fat saturation has predictive value in this instance.

Metabolic rates have dropped since the 1930s in parallel with penmanship and the rise in vegetable oil consumption.

Editorialized. True title is "Metabolic Rates in the American South in the 1930s".

Can someone explain to a layman, is it good to have a high metabolic rate? It can burn more calories, so the risk of obesity becomes lower, isn't it?

Exact. The main point is that modern diet heavely based on PUFA (vegetable oil) is interfering with metabolic level and thermogenesis.

Basically all hibernating mamalian are inducing hibernation metabolism and fat storage due to high availability of seeds/grains (vegetable oil) and sugar during summer.

The legacy of our hibernating ancestor hits us hard as far as adopting high unsaturated fat diet like modern diet is triggering fat storage reaction and lowering thermogenesis at cells level by modifying chemical reaction of mithochondrie.

Common Torpor during daylight is one of the numerous symptoms of lower metabolic rate.

All this to prove that one calorie is not equal to another calorie outside the scope a physical rules of thermodinamic in order to increase the temperature of one liter of water by 1 degree celsius.

Living organism are not just water, and bio-chemistry is far more complex than those radical reducting stupid dogma.

So don't do what Donny Don't does?