[HN Gopher] A Contamination Theory of the Obesity Epidemic
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A Contamination Theory of the Obesity Epidemic
Author : jasonhansel
Score : 17 points
Date : 2021-07-23 21:49 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (osf.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (osf.io)
| trhway wrote:
| >So what changed in 1980?
|
| Effects of the agriculture policies starting 1973 which resulted
| in HFCS everywhere?
|
| Including sugar replacement with HFCS due to tariffs
| https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1/25...
|
| "On the demand side, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was
| beginning to make inroads as food and beverage manufacturers
| sought to replace sugar with a less expensive input. As prices
| dropped, the International Trade Commission opened hearings to
| determine whether or not imports were the source of "serious
| injury or threat thereof" (USDA, December 1976, 15) to the
| domestic industry and, in March 1977, recommended that imports be
| restricted. President Ford, anticipating this recommendation,
| increased the tariff on raw sugar from 0.625 cents to 1.875 cents
| per pound in September 1976.
|
| When the 1977 Food and Agriculture Act took effect on November 8,
| 1977, a price support/ loan rate program was established (see
| "Price Support Loan" section). To reduce government expenditures
| on this new program, President Carter raised import fees to 2.7
| cents per pound for raw sugar and 3.22 cents for refined sugar.
| The import fee, coupled with the import duty, served to control
| imports in the late 1970s. Both the fee and duty reached their
| peaks in early 1979, when the fee for raw sugar was 3.22 cents
| and the import duty was 2.8125 cents per pound. "
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Or glyphosate and/or neonicotinoids.
| smegcicle wrote:
| preservatives prevent the natural breakdown of food, so it
| doesn't seem surprising that they could have a negative effect
| on digestion
| getpost wrote:
| My money (and my dietary choices) are on excess PUFA as a key
| contributor to obesity.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHnPinYI2Yc
|
| https://fireinabottle.net/torpor-sloth-and-gluttony-scd1-cau...
| alejohausner wrote:
| Polyunsaturated fats are known to suppress thyroid function,
| this leading to lowered metabolism and weight gain. A quick
| search brought up this:
|
| ANTI-THROID EFFECTS OF PUFAS (POLYUNSATURATED FATS) AND HERBS
| January 2012 Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences
| 13(2)
|
| Authors: Basar Altinterim Malatya Turgut Ozal University
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| I prefer the other theory I've heard: the body's gauge on
| starvation is not based on caloric intake, but based on
| nutritional intake; ergo, low nutrition diets that have
| sufficient calories (such as the Standard American Diet) make the
| body think winter is coming soon, and time to get extra plump.
|
| This is mainly the basis of my dieting. I reached a peak of 340,
| and in exactly a year, while maintaining the same CICO, but
| changing from the SAD to strict non-Keto Paleo, became 214, and
| then eventually slimmed down to the 175-185 range.
|
| I now eat mainly focused on nutritional density, and keeping the
| weight off is easy.
| nickff wrote:
| CICO meaning calories-in-calories-out? Please avoid undefined
| and uncommon acronyms.
|
| Did you do food diaries/journals as you increased weight, and
| as you lost weight? I have lost significant amounts of weight
| by reducing caloric intake, and noticed that my records on the
| way up and down were very different.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| I believe so. It sounds like he doing paleo without keto. I
| may be wrong, but basically just eat food on the perimeter of
| the super market. Veggies, meat, dairy. Nothing processed.
| alejohausner wrote:
| I was looking forward to this. It's the conclusion to a
| discussion posted here earlier [1].
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27796557
| retrac wrote:
| Edit: The following is mostly a non sequitur. My response was
| based in part on a misreading of the article's arguments. They're
| concerned primarily with the "consolidation" of obesity since
| about 1980 without any obvious changes for why. The changes for
| why were in the previous decades and the chickens should have
| come home to roost by 1980. Yet we are indeed much more obese
| than in 1980 but not more sedentary. So... why? This I have to
| say, is in fact somewhat mysterious.
|
| I have a contention with the "obesity hasn't been reversed in any
| population" claim. Here in Canada, child obesity has in fact
| decreased in recent years, after several decades of continual
| increases. Given that childhood obesity, and obesity in general,
| has been a major social issue everyone is aware of and has been
| working hard on (I assume), the small decrease in proportion to
| the amount of energy invested, is rather depressing. Still, maybe
| cause for some hope.
|
| > Something seems to have changed. But surprisingly, we don't
| seem to have any idea what that thing was.
|
| We don't? While exactly how much this is a factor is contended, I
| thought it was near-consensus at this point that it's because we
| are less physically active. The timeline certainly fits -
| beginning about 1890 and ending about 1975 -- that is the period
| from the beginning to universal adoption of the car.
|
| Between home appliances, powered vehicles and industrial
| automation, many modern people don't actually have to _do_
| anything physical. Hauling their corporeal form between various
| chairs is literally all the exercise many people get.
|
| This would be unfathomable to my great-grandparents. They walked
| to the store then hauled the groceries home. They walked a few
| miles every Sunday to go to church. They walked to work. They
| tended the fields largely with manual labour and a horse. They
| mowed the garden and yard, by hand. Every nail in the home,
| driven by hand. Ground meat for dinner? Minced by hand. And by
| then, industrialization had already completely changed things for
| them, to their own grandparents, giving them what they must have
| thought an amazing amount of free time and leisure. (My great-
| grandparents clothes were almost certainly machine-woven, for
| example.)
|
| If we're eating as many calories, or slightly more, as our
| grandparents did, while barely moving in comparison to them, is
| it any surprise we all got really fat? In fairness to the paper,
| I suppose one could view this social change as a mimetic
| contagion of a sort.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a
| disaster for the human waistline.
| chillpenguin wrote:
| I'm pretty sure we are eating more calories than our
| grandparents did, too. Portion sizes for common things are much
| larger now. You can look at muffin sizes for example and how
| the average muffin is physically larger today. Same with
| burgers, soft-drink cup sizes, etc.
|
| But yeah I agree with everything you said as well regarding
| lack of physical exercise.
| yeuxardents wrote:
| Certainly the addition of ubiquitous sugary snacks and drinks
| everywhere as well contributes, how is that discounted so
| easily. So much processed food within a 2 minute car rides
| reach, and it only require 30 paces into and out of the store
| for 2000kcals in treats!
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| This is certainly true from an personal anecdotal perspective.
|
| The minute I went from college where I was very active to an
| office job the pounds piled on.
|
| What's interesting is that if you're poor modern Capitalism
| doesn't allow much free time to exercise, which might explain
| why the obesity epidemic effects the poor more.
| zosima wrote:
| The mystery is not the modest increase of obesity from 1890 to
| 1975. This increase is very likely caused by reduced activity
| and increased caloric consumption. It is the dramatic increase
| in obesity from around 1980 and onward that is a mystery. And
| part of the mystery is that animals living around humans, in
| the wild or in the lab, seems to have gone through a similar
| increase in body weight.
|
| The article goes through why this dramatic increase can not
| just be due to reduced exercise or increased caloric
| consumption, but must have some other, unknown factors, to
| explain it.
| human wrote:
| Increased gravity?
| sedatk wrote:
| "We're less active" probably isn't the right answer. Members of
| African hunter-gatherer tribes spend the same amount of
| calories as an average American[1]. I think the real answer is
| more about dietary changes rather than lifestyle.
|
| https://news.yale.edu/2012/08/02/hunter-gatherers-expend-sam...
| flavius29663 wrote:
| this is fascinating, I couldn't have guessed this.
|
| This is in the same category as: sit on the couch watching TV
| and you're spending almost the same amount of calories as a
| walking person.
|
| Maybe it also matters _how_ you spend those calories. Fasting
| helps a lot, westerners don 't fast. I assume hunter tribes
| fast more and also have lots of short bursts of energy.
| saurik wrote:
| > If we're eating as many calories, or slightly more, as our
| grandparents did, while barely moving in comparison to them...
|
| So you don't think that people who do more work are "supposed
| to be" more hungry and thereby eat more food? The people I know
| who are leaner seem to just not get hungry as often--or as much
| --as I seem to get... and hell: I've gone through periods where
| I'm gaining weight and periods where I'm losing weight, and
| when I'm gaining weight I feel like I'm hungry constantly and
| when I'm losing weight I find eating a bit tedious.
| voisin wrote:
| > I thought it was near-consensus at this point that it's
| because we are less physically active.
|
| Except wild animals are also getting obese. I doubt they are
| becoming less physically active.
| [deleted]
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