[HN Gopher] Plastic might be making us obese
___________________________________________________________________
Plastic might be making us obese
Author : 04rob
Score : 162 points
Date : 2022-09-12 12:33 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| kccqzy wrote:
| If a factor can't explain why non-Hispanic Asians have much lower
| prevalence of obesity than any other race, I tend not to trust
| it. Are Asians simply using less plastic than other races?
|
| Look at the chart:
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db288.pdf The chart is
| simply striking. We should all be investigating what are the
| Asians doing right that all of us should learn from.
| causality0 wrote:
| Exactly. Lack of obesity in Asians, like good grades, is only a
| mystery to people who didn't grow up with Asian friends. It's
| behavior. More specifically it's discipline, both personal and
| familial. For an Asian kid, drifting out of line often means
| getting insulted and humiliated at home. I'm not saying it's
| worth it, but someone who gets shamed for ordering extra fries
| tends not to grow up to eat fast food five times a week.
| kgilpin wrote:
| Is it lower consumption of alcohol?
| brabel wrote:
| Food. Just see what they eat (and how much). It really is
| simple as that.
| swyx wrote:
| we eat a lot of noodles and rice though. speaking as a fat
| asian i feel like that factors a lot into it (that i'm
| actively working on now)
| imeron wrote:
| Don't forget that Japanese actively shame fat people! This
| is very much frown upon in Western societies but it works
| for them I guess.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| They don't feel even slightly bad about it. It's as
| prevalent as obesity isn't.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| Shame should be a powerful motivator. It doesn't seem to
| work too well in the west though.
| naikrovek wrote:
| shame is just as unhealthy as obesity. the west
| recognizes that, somehow.
| hollywood_court wrote:
| I suppose I should have clarified that I don't advocate
| for shaming others.
|
| But personal shame and shame avoidance has been the
| single greatest tool for my own success.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Why not genetics?
| scoofy wrote:
| Any explanation to the American obesity epidemic needs to
| explain why it exploded in the 1980s and has accelerated
| since then.
|
| Genetics would exactly fail this test.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Genetics _and_ plastic (or whatever else)?
| scoofy wrote:
| This is certainly plausible, but seems like a rather
| unreasonably complex potential solution.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The article said it isn't plastic only. The chart compared
| groups of Americans. Asian Americans were the only mostly
| immigrant group. The article said exposing mice to obesogenic
| chemicals before birth had effects later in their lives. 1
| chemical had effects for 3 generations.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| diet (not dieting, but their diet)
| rr888 wrote:
| Dieting too, esp the women seem to have a huge amount of
| pressure to be skinny.
| noja wrote:
| Why does the Mediterranean diet work so well? Because of the
| socialized healthcare.
|
| (in other words: "it's not the diet dummy", just like it's not
| the plastic)
| honkdaddy wrote:
| After living a year in Florida and then living a year in
| Serbia, I can't say I'm convinced it's the socialized
| healthcare is what makes Europeans so much skinnier than
| Americans.
| floxy wrote:
| Doesn't Serbia have one of the highest rates of tobacco
| smoking in the world?
| imtringued wrote:
| I think the skinnier Europeans are what makes socialized
| healthcare work. Lots of expensive to treat diseases are
| just a result of a poor diet.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Are Asians simply using less plastic than other races?
|
| Considering that Japanese use an absolutely terrifying amount
| of plastic for food packaging and aren't landwhales, I'd say
| the theory from TFA's headline is bunk.
| iszomer wrote:
| Or it could simply be explained as the Japanese culture of
| eating conservatively; portions tend not be "supersized"
| unlike in America.
| scoofy wrote:
| The data presented is Asian-Americans. Cultural traits,
| sure, but trying to explain the phenomena by referring to
| non-American Japanese culture is a bit of a stretch.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| That's right, but it's consistent with what the parent
| comment is saying: it's not the plastic packaging causing
| obesity. You're agreeing with a tone of disagreement.
| nostromo wrote:
| This is the blank slate fallacy, but about food. Human
| populations have natural variations -- and even if we all ate
| the same foods, some populations would be heavier than others.
|
| Imagine if you looked only to food to explain why the Dutch are
| taller than the Vietnamese. At best you'd get a small part of
| the answer.
| tsol wrote:
| Then why are lab rats also overweight?[1] What are they doing
| that asians aren't? Really I think you can't look at one single
| factor no matter how convincing you think it is
|
| 1- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-lab-rats-
| are-...
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| This article is not stating that lab rats are overweight. It
| is stating that some rats were made overweight by dosing them
| with these chemicals.
|
| There was a 2010 study that did suggest lab animals were
| fatter than previous years. However, it was not statistically
| significant for rats. Only mice. It did not specify a causal
| factor.
| nope96 wrote:
| This article is."A significant rise in obesity incidence
| has even been noted in laboratory rodents and primates -
| animals raised under strictly controlled conditions of
| caloric intake and exercise. The only possible factors
| driving weight gain for these animals, researchers believe,
| would be subtle chemical changes in the nature of the foods
| they eat, or in the materials used to build their pens."
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| "This article" referred to the one cited by the parent
| comment.
|
| The OP article does make this claim, though it does not
| cite a source. The only source for this claim that exists
| is the study I referenced, which you can read here: https
| ://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3081766/#!po=35..
| .
| [deleted]
| Qem wrote:
| Perhaps in those populations many generations consuming soy
| products selected for resistance against ill-effects from plant
| phytosterols, and against other endocrine disruptors as a side-
| effect.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Well if you want the One Number That Affects Asians, I think
| what stands out to me the most is the prevalence of lactose
| intolerance over there, approaching 90% the more easterly you
| go. They just do not do very much dairy.
|
| Less scientific, but a couple years ago I decided to transition
| to a more meat-lite diet and ended up turning to Asian
| cookbooks to make that happen. Veg entrees are just a novelty
| to western cuisines and everyone is stunlocked on meat
| substitutes instead of just doing well with the stuff that
| grows right out of the ground.
| novia wrote:
| You might be onto something. The US government has been
| subsidizing dairy products [1] and it has caused a huge
| surplus of whey, which people then try to add into anything
| they can because it's a cheap filler. But it wouldn't be a
| cheap filler if it weren't for the government propping up the
| production of cheese and butter. Dairy farmers in this
| country make so much milk that they will dump it. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.farmanddairy.com/top-stories/a-brief-history-
| of-...
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/orTNTwaZauQ
| Melatonic wrote:
| I would say food - most asian people I know (even ones that eat
| a pretty western diet) still randomly incorporate a lot of
| things that are Real Foods or processed type foods that are
| close to Real Foods. They also eat a lot (generally) more
| mushrooms and fermented food (and great variety of fermented
| food - not just yeast based stuff like yogurt).
|
| Does it really make sense that Western diets basically just
| ignore a whole kingdom of foods? Plants, Animals, Fungi. Those
| are the three. Why do we eat so few of the latter?
| less_less wrote:
| > They also eat a lot (generally) more mushrooms and
| fermented food (and great variety of fermented food - not
| just yeast based stuff like yogurt).
|
| Not that this detracts from the rest of your point at all,
| but yogurt is fermented by bacteria. There are milk drinks
| that are fermented by SCOBY though, like kefir.
| klipt wrote:
| Yeast is a fungus? So if you eat bread or drink wine/beer
| you're probably consuming some amount of fungus that way.
| elil17 wrote:
| A very long series of essays about this:
| https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p...
|
| The authors take the view that obesogens account for 100% or
| nearly 100% of the rise in obesity, which is definitely a
| controversial view. However, they do an awesome job giving an
| overview of the arguments for obesogens.
| Symmetry wrote:
| A pretty thorough critique of SMTM's lithium hypothesis.
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba...
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I find this to be a pretty lame analysis.
|
| > People in the 1800s did have diets that were very different
| from ours. But by conventional wisdom, their diets were worse,
| not better. They ate more bread and almost four times more
| butter than we do today. They also consumed more cream, milk,
| and lard. This seems closely related to observations like the
| French Paradox -- the French eat a lot of fatty cheese and
| butter, so why aren't they fatter and sicker?
|
| Lard doesn't make you fat. If anything it fills you up so you
| eat less and gain less weight. A lot more of the prior
| generations were also laborers which this acknowledges but
| really underplays.
|
| The section on why hunter gatherers aren't obese is answered by
| the fact that they are hunting and gathering.
| briefcomment wrote:
| This refutes your claims https://fireinabottle.net/torpor-
| sloth-and-gluttony-part-1-a...
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| This article is pathetic.
|
| It compares in excessive detail some old and frankly hard
| to follow tables to the present day guideline of 2,500
| calories and makes NO EFFORT to validate whether or not
| that's realistic.
|
| It also tries to use pictures from baseball game showing
| thin people in the front row as evidence of... something.
| This is still what you see today. Rich people are
| significantly thinner on average in america. And even in
| obese heavy areas, you don't see a lot of obese people
| walking around. Because... they're not walking.
|
| Here's an article citing an american average of 3,600
| calories consumed per day, up a whopping 24% since 1961.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/american-calorie-intake-
| last...
|
| Here's another article citing CDC data suggesting a 22%
| rise in caloric consumption leading into the year 2000.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/calorie.htm
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _The section on why hunter gatherers aren't obese is answered
| by the fact that they are hunting and gathering._
|
| This is obvious to anyone who used to be more active, and
| gained weight after they started sitting at a desk all day
| for work.
| elil17 wrote:
| I think saying that physical activity accounts for the
| differences in weight isn't supported by the evidence. I
| mean, surely if eating pure honey for half your calories but
| exercising a bunch led to good health outcomes and lower
| weight, we'd see people losing weight by exercising without
| dieting. We don't see that.
|
| Similarly, look at their article on obesity in different
| professions - it does not align with who does the most
| physical labor. Rather, certain professions with high levels
| of exposure to endocrine disruptions are the most obese on
| average.
| marcusverus wrote:
| It seems like you're projecting modern abundance backwards
| onto a period of relative scarcity. Hunter-gatherers could
| not possibly have satisfied half of their calories with
| honey.
|
| A google search indicates that: a) a pound of honey (~1500
| calories) would account for a little over half of a man's
| daily required calories (Google says 2500, but presumably
| an active hunter-gatherer required more), and b) the
| average (wild) beehive creates ~50 pounds of honey per
| year.
|
| For a single man to satisfy half of his caloric intake with
| honey, he'd have to consume ~7.3 beehives per year. A tribe
| of 100 would consume the production of ~700 wild beehives
| each year!
| elil17 wrote:
| The series of articles I posted talks about a tribe where
| this is the case. Very fit people who get a ton of
| calories from honey.
| Tade0 wrote:
| There's an interesting book supporting this idea:
|
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/603894/burn-by-
| herm...
|
| Basically measurements of calorie intake and burn rate
| indicate, that physical activity doesn't appreciably speed
| up metabolism.
|
| You still should exercise to avoid chronic diseases, but
| you can't outrun a bad diet.
| kiba wrote:
| You can outrun a bad diet IMHO. There's a point in which
| physical activity outrun the body's willingness to adjust
| basal metabolism.
|
| However, it is not really practical for most people to
| use exercises to burn calories. Rather diets are more
| important and more effective.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Doing a tough 1 hour exercise is not the same as being on
| your feet all day. You may be able to offset doing nothing
| all day with a burst of effort. You may not. People who are
| moving constantly are very rarely fat.
|
| I cannot find their article on professions. I'd be very
| skeptical. In general being poor in America means a
| terrible diet is likely so that's a huge part of the
| equation. It seems very unlikely that exposure to endocrine
| disrupters varies enough to explain the differences. People
| in poverty will have a huge variance in exposure but the
| obesity rates are high across the board.
|
| Especially if you see something like... idk, factory
| workers being called high exposure having high obesity but
| lower obesity than something like a dmv clerk that's
| totally sedentary but at worst median level exposure.
|
| Some groups will get HUGELY more exposure to some
| chemicals. I'm not convinced at all they represent the
| fattest groups. Which is a strong counterpoint if one is
| trying to claim this is the strongest effect.
| elil17 wrote:
| Why then, for example, are cleaning services workers,
| mechanics, and health workers all more obese than
| average? Those are jobs where you are much more active
| than an office worker. Those are all cases where someone
| gets exposed to chemicals (cleaning chemicals, lithium
| grease, and PFAS-based medical fabrics). In fact,
| healthcare support workers are more obese than healthcare
| technicians, even though technicians are more sedentary.
| Support workers are the ones changing PFAS-based
| curtains, garments, etc.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| The number one most obese job is a truck driver. Your
| hypothesis is that chemicals cause obesity. You cite
| cleaning services workers as receiving substantially more
| chemicals due to their work than the average person. Why
| then, are truckers more obese? If this is the primary
| factor causing obesity, and these people are receiving
| substantially more exposure than everyone else, why
| aren't they substantially the fattest group?
|
| Also fwiw, the idea that healthcare support workers are
| supposed to represent the largest exposure to PFAS
| because they're handling garments is ridiculous. I doubt
| healthcare support workers are even in the top 10% of
| actual exposure levels.
| Qem wrote:
| Fumes from upholstery and plastics in the dashboard may
| explain it.
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| it's easier to explain it by more stress, less money,
| less ability to care for their health or eat healthily,
| etc etc.
| IMTDb wrote:
| > They ate more bread and almost four times more butter than
| we do today. They also consumed more cream, milk, and lard.
| This seems closely related to observations like the French
| Paradox -- the French eat a lot of fatty cheese and butter,
| so why aren't they fatter and sicker?
|
| Because the issue is - in fact - the sugar, not the fat
| (https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/theres-no-sugar-
| coating-...).
| ianai wrote:
| Those diets also didn't have added sugars and salts to
| everything. It's serious work requiring reading all the
| nutrition labels to get groceries sans questionable additives
| in the US.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Thanks to corn subsidies, we have high fructose corn syrup
| in many foods you wouldn't expect to find it. Milk by-
| products are the same way. My wife recently developed
| lactose intolerance, so we've been finding milk products in
| tons of things you wouldn't have expected it. Instant
| ramen? The flavor mix includes milk solids. Cheap hot dogs?
| More milk solids. Flavored chips, even when not cheese
| flavored? They have lactose too. Many brands of chicken
| nuggets or fish sticks? Milk is everywhere! We subsidize
| some of these industries to the point of over production
| which leads to companies finding "clever" ways of utilizing
| that excess often to the detriment of the population at
| large.
| cestith wrote:
| French fries often have dairy in the coating. It's
| everywhere.
| artificial wrote:
| Have you tried A2 or Raw milk? I'm sensitive and those
| changed things. I like A2 since I can get it at Target,
| and I have no problems with Raw milk. Consuming those
| before say cheese or ice cream or pizza helps massively.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The rise of transnational food companies helped make this
| an almost ubiquitous global development in developed
| nations, the growth of obesity in our neighbor to the south
| Mexico over the last 40 years or so is a pretty good
| example.
| minton wrote:
| I found the Yuka app makes this much easier. Just scan the
| UPC and it'll show you a x/100 score. I use it for nearly
| everything.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yuka-food-cosmetic-
| scanner/id1...
| [deleted]
| ianai wrote:
| Thank you! I've installed it and will try it out soon.
| Looks good.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's calories in/calories out for the _majority_ - sure there
| 's edge cases where you an discuss more "efficient" bodies,
| etc, but I daresay our diets are way more _caloric_ than they
| used to be.
|
| And a lot of that is portion size and "added eating" between
| meals. I'd love to work out just how many calories the
| various soda companies ship a year.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Eh. I think people drastically underestimate the variance
| on calories absorbed (the effective amount in) and the
| calories used for general homeostasis and metabolism (the
| effective amount out) excluding exercise.
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| what i find interesting is that most people don't realize
| that the majority of your calories out is actually breathed
| and peed out. it doesn't, eh, turn into heat or something
| silly like that, which is common wisdom.
| elil17 wrote:
| But the key thing is _why_ are they more caloric. Is it
| that we are hungrier, is it that foods changed? These are
| questions that are testable if we start doing policy
| experiments.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| I don't know why they're still grasping at straws. We know why
| we're fat, the science has already been concluded, and a dozen
| papers get published every year continuing to hammer nails in a
| coffin we already buried: diets low in salt and/or low in
| saturated fat and/or high in oxidized unsaturated fats and/or
| high in carbohydrates and otherwise devoid of nutrition case
| weight gain, and the Standard American Diet prides itself on
| being all four.
|
| Washington Post doesn't publish stories about _those_ papers.
| imtringued wrote:
| Yes, pretty much. The problem is some cherry picked studies
| from the 70s that are just plain misinformation. Atkins did a
| huge disservice to humanity.
| pjdesno wrote:
| "A significant rise in obesity incidence has even been noted in
| laboratory rodents and primates - animals raised under strictly
| controlled conditions of caloric intake and exercise. The only
| possible factors driving weight gain for these animals,
| researchers believe, would be subtle chemical changes in the
| nature of the foods they eat, or in the materials used to build
| their pens."
| notaboredguy wrote:
| It's just calories in and calories out.
| oliwarner wrote:
| Maybe? It's easier to believe that 100 years of massively
| increasing calorie density and engineering chemical perfection in
| terms of hitting the body's pleasure markers might have had a
| larger effect.
|
| That and our move to sedentary, thinking jobs. Or prolonging the
| day with evening entertainment, so eating later. And services
| that make the worst food arrive on your doorstep in 30 minutes.
|
| There are so many things above "plastics" we should blame first.
| But I'm sure blaming someone else is far more appetising than
| looking at our own lack of self control.
| csours wrote:
| Hunger is incredibly hard to study because it is made up of many
| physiological sensations and psychological responses to those
| sensations, and none of those are readily comparable between
| individuals.
|
| So we don't really study hunger very much - there are some really
| good studies out there, but not very many.
|
| And we don't talk about managing hunger, we talk about managing
| calories and managing weight.
| swamp40 wrote:
| There is a Nobel Prize waiting for whoever figures this out. I am
| glad scientists are finally taking it seriously. Statistically,
| something is most definitely out of whack.
| OJFord wrote:
| This is absurd. The authors should look at what some people (or
| perhaps they themselves, and that's the issue) have in their
| trolley (cart?) next time they're shopping (storing? ;)).
|
| Obesity is, for at least the most part, plainly not caused by too
| many/wrong pesticides on fruit and vegetables. It is caused by
| (far) too many things that are _not_ fruits and vegetables.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| And it's not like everyone is obese.
|
| There's a large proportion of people who eat healthily, avoid
| processed food, keep their portion sizes regular and refrain
| from too much alcohol.
|
| Unsurprisingly these people are in good shape despite probably
| being in close proximity to the plastics/chemicals described in
| the article.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| I'm always really skeptical of claims about obesity for more
| than one person. Obesity is defined in terms of BMI, which is
| severely limited as a metric for health. An individual with
| more muscle mass and higher bone density is healthier than
| the alternative, but their BMI will be higher. Not all body
| mass is bad.
|
| This tends to confirm my own anecdata, which is that I'm not
| surrounded by overfat people after all. I do see morbid cases
| from time to time and in certain population centers. A mostly
| healthy population with a small number of extremely overfat
| cases is going to appear to have bad BMI stats on the whole.
| scoofy wrote:
| This is an utterly naive assessment:
|
| To answer the question of "why are people obese" with "not
| eating enough fruits and vegetables" completely ignores that
| all the research that demonstrates that it's simply not true.
|
| Why do obese people rapidly gain weight after losing it, even
| with diets that wouldn't cause normal weight people to gain any
| weight? Why do obese people seem to be simply more hungry than
| normal weight people.
|
| There are myriad questions that your thesis doesn't and can't
| answer. It would also be _trivial_ to prove this thesis true,
| yet obesity still tends to confound scientists, especially with
| childhood obesity, which did not even exist three generations
| ago.
| kragen wrote:
| My guess is that obesogens are to blame, but that they're in
| food, not plastics. This is because people on weirdo diets
| (vegans, carnivore, ultra low fat) all lose weight and keep it
| off, even when they are using the same amount of plastic as
| everyone else. The common denominator is that they stopped eating
| industrially manufactured food.
|
| I am no expert in the area, just wondering what the hell is going
| on.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Blaming plastic seems incredibly strange to me, given that
| plastics are practically universally present in American life
| but obesity itself is not universal.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Did anyone say plastic is the only factor?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| They're claiming its the primary factor even though it's
| not obviously higher among the obese populations.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Who said plastic is the primary factor? The Washington
| Post's expert said determining what fraction of obesity
| is related to chemical exposure is difficult. The 1st
| comment said plastic wasn't a factor.
| kragen wrote:
| Some kind of plastic might be a risk factor, even if not
| everyone who is exposed to it becomes obese. Cigarettes were
| once practically universally present in American life, but
| that did not make lung cancer universal.
|
| But blaming "plastic" is ridiculously general; it's not very
| far from blaming "matter", "energy", or "technology". To take
| one example, there's a fairly plausible causal link between
| halogenated flame retardants in polyurethane foam for
| furniture and feline hyperthyroidism. Polyurethane is a
| plastic (WP: "Polyurethane is a commodity plastic."), or,
| better, a large family of plastics, but even if the link
| turns out to be real and strong, it would not be very
| accurate to say "Plastic causes feline hyperthyroidism."
|
| As for "incredibly strange", since most people have no idea
| what is causing the obesity pandemic despite many researchers
| looking, anyone who _does_ figure it out will unavoidably
| have an incredibly strange idea. There 's nothing wrong with
| an idea being incredibly strange; in this case it's a
| necessary precondition to being correct!
|
| Still, as I said, I suspect it's not a plastic, but one or
| more food additives. There have been promising preliminary
| results from fecal transplants for obesity treatment that
| suggest that the intestinal microbiome is a significant
| factor (see de Groot, Frissen, de Clerq, and Nieuwdorp 2017).
| So my attention is particularly drawn to things that affect
| the intestinal microbiome. Unfortunately, everything you eat
| affects it.
|
| Some of my own incredibly strange ideas, which probably are
| not correct, are:
|
| * Titanium dioxide nanoparticles: these are commonly used as
| a white food coloring (E171), and there's some evidence they
| migrate to the pancreas and stay there, where conceivably
| they cause damage in ways that larger titanium dioxide
| particles do not.
|
| * Propionate salts: these are commonly used as fungicides,
| for example, in bread and on peaches. Many bacteria produce
| them as a fungicide, including human gut commensals, but it
| wouldn't be surprising if adding them in effective quantities
| changed the ecological equilibrium in the intestinal
| microbiome. These are GRAS (E280, E281, E282, E283) and an
| experiment apparently showed _behavioral_ difference in
| children fed calcium propionate (Dengate and Rubin 2002).
| (Many propionate _esters_ are also used as artificial
| flavorings, but in much smaller quantities, and I don 't
| think those flavorings are effective fungicides.)
|
| * Xanthan gum (E415), a slime produced by the broccoli black
| rot bacterium, commonly used as an emulsifier or thickener in
| salad dressings, egg substitutes, and oil-well drilling mud.
| Representing a significant source of energy that most gut
| commensal bacteria cannot digest, it has been shown to
| produce changes in the human intestinal microbiome.
|
| * Widely used artificial sweeteners of various kinds (E950,
| E951, E954, E955); there have been studies suggesting that,
| although these do not provide a significant number of
| calories, they may still provoke significant changes in the
| human intestinal microbiome. This might also be true of
| things like steviol (E960) or cyclamate (E952) but those
| clearly aren't in wide enough use to cause the obesity
| pandemic by themselves.
|
| * High-fructose corn syrup has been suggested by many people,
| but in my view it is an unlikely candidate, because sucrase
| turns sucrose into high-fructose corn syrup in the human
| small intestine.
|
| * Livestock is commonly dosed with significant amounts of
| hormones and antibiotics in order to promote rapid weight
| gain, because meat is sold by weight. Some of these hormones
| and antibiotics are present in the resulting meat. It
| wouldn't be very surprising if, under some circumstances,
| they also produced weight gain in the humans who eat it.
| (But, as I said above, people on fad carnivore diets tend to
| lose weight.)
|
| But most likely it'll be something nobody has even suspected
| previously.
| rtb wrote:
| http://achemicalhunger.com
| themitigating wrote:
| "Weirdo" diets? Why make such an insulating simplistic judgment
| when discussing diets?
| kragen wrote:
| You're reading a value judgment into my wording that isn't
| there, probably because you need to be more of a weirdo.
| acuozzo wrote:
| An omitted possible third factor here is that of selection
| bias.
|
| Perhaps those drawn to so-called "weirdo diets" are also those
| more likely to maintain their weight loss.
| kragen wrote:
| It's possible!
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I have no doubt that many of these plethora of chemicals that are
| in our every day environment are endocrine disruptors or worse,
| most of us would be surprised just how significantly we have
| changed the chemistry of our environments over the last century.
| But I'm not convinced that they're the cause for obesity.
| Contributors, sure. The cause? Your body has to make fat out of
| something, with or without an endocrine disruptor. I've never met
| a fat person that doesn't drink soda every day.
|
| It's sugar and seed oil. That's what it comes down to. Most of
| what we eat is not food really, but the last mile in a marketing
| campaign, it barely even qualifies as a product. That combined
| with the rise in sedentary work and recreation is all you need to
| explain it.
| kerrsclyde wrote:
| I thought this article was going to cite plastic as being the
| container of choice for most of the ultra processed junk that
| supermarkets are selling and we shouldn't be eating.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I am very skeptical the effect would be meaningful relative to
| diet/exercise.
|
| We have never been more seditary, and sugar has never been more a
| part of our diet.
|
| When my mother moved in and we started going on daily walks, she
| lost a pound a week for one year. When she injured her foot and
| stopped, with no diet change throughout the entire time, she
| gained it all back in a couple months.
|
| I would be surprised if people gained weight with no diet change
| and introduced mostly standing or walking throughout the day into
| their life.
| evancox100 wrote:
| The problem with "calories in - calories out = weight gained"
| is that even though it is of course true (thermodynamics), it
| explains nothing. If I asked you "Why do children grow
| bigger?", and you said "because they eat more calories than
| they expend", again you would be correct but have told me
| nothing. And if a child wasn't growing like they should, you
| wouldn't say "just keep feeding them more", you would look for
| possible disruptions of their hormonal system.
|
| The reality is that the body is a finely tuned bio mechanical
| system with feedback loops that are capable of regulating your
| resting metabolic rate in order to target weight gain, loss, or
| stasis. The question is why are so many people's regulation
| loops so out of whack?
| evol262 wrote:
| They are eating too much, and their regulation of hunger
| impulses is out of whack.
|
| There are essentially zero studies which show subjects on a
| controlled diet under observation having more than a +/-5%
| different in metabolic efficiency. The burden of proof is,
| frankly, on those who are looking for _anything except for_
| overconsumption as the cause.
| rockostrich wrote:
| bradhe wrote:
| I was pretty sure it was the over eating but I'll happily blame
| plastic...
| bgro wrote:
| I don't know the last time I could trust an article or even
| scientific paper about weight / diets / food effects.
|
| You'd think the vast amounts of scientific papers would be
| conclusive, but they're constantly contradicting each other or
| people uncover ulterior motives, like having shares in a
| questionable weight loss company.
|
| In some of these cases, the source material uses inappropriate
| sample sizes or has other similar problems, or references other
| studies that had problems like this.
|
| I bet if you type "X is the reason for obesity," you will find
| information for any noun.
|
| Here's a partial list of topics off the top of my head from the
| best of my ability that I believe have been blasted as the
| definitive one-and-only "root cause" of obesity: [Sugar,
| Aspartame, Plastic, Butter, Margarine, Carbs, Milk, Bread, Fruit,
| Nuts, Phones, The Internet, TV, Video Games, Your job in general,
| Canned Products, Gluten, Pollution, Global Warming, Cars, Cheese,
| Alcohol, No Exercise, Cardio-only exercise, Blue Light (from
| electronics in general)]
| oblio wrote:
| It's sugar + sedentarity. It's always been sugar + sedentarity.
| At least for high levels of obesity, towards morbid obesity.
| tdehnel wrote:
| Close. Not just sugar, but calories of any kind + sedentary.
| oblio wrote:
| True, but from I remember, sugar is worse than just fat.
| CJefferson wrote:
| I've recently started taking 'liraglutide', which is an appetite
| suppressant.
|
| I haven't been taking it that long, but so far it's amazing -- I
| eat a balanced meal with an approriate amount of calories in it,
| and then I am full, and don't want to eat any more. Sometimes I
| snack and eat a biscuit, but then I don't feel any need to eat a
| second biscuit.
|
| I'm not saying this is a long-term solution for me, or people in
| general, but what it has shown me is some people (me included)
| have managed to mess up their digestive systems badly enough it
| is incredibly hard to eat healthily -- I previously lost 8 stone
| (50 kg), but I was hungry every minute of every day, no matter
| what I tried. Once I had a bad patch I ended up putting all the
| weight back on.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| The MUFAs in olive oil and a-linolenic acid (like from flax
| seed) are natural GLP-1 agonists:
|
| https://nutritionandmetabolism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10...
|
| Edited to add:
| https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/fo/d0fo0...
| dstick wrote:
| Interesting. Does that help with all forms of caloric intake?
| Alcoholic / sugar beverages included?
| sithadmin wrote:
| In general, yes, but beverage intake results can vary a lot
| based on behavioral factors. If one frequently drinks sugary
| beverages or even alcohol to attempt to sate a hunger drive
| (e. g., due to leptin resistance), it could dramatically
| reduce intake of those things. But if intake of those
| beverages are driven by other factors such as poor judgement
| in beverage selection for hydration or alcoholism, it's not
| likely going to result in much of a change.
|
| As far as medical solutions go, something like naltrexone is
| probably a better fit for discouraging unhealthy
| food/beverage selection, especially (but not necessarily)
| when paired with bupropion. The combo dramatically blunts the
| positive neurochemical effects of eating artificially
| sweet/salty/fat foods + drinking alcohol (and nearly
| eliminates the perceptible benefits of alcohol as well - it's
| a very surreal experience).
| bilsbie wrote:
| Was it hard to get it? Is it expensive?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| https://m.goodrx.com/victoza
|
| $1000 for 3 pens.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I'm not overweight and I tried liraglutide for other reasons
| and it had the same effect on me.
|
| Obviously it's the whole "is your blue my blue?" conundrum, but
| at least some of us that aren't overweight could also eat all
| day too. Dieting for anyone is hard. It seems like once you go
| below what your body is used to you're going for be super
| hungry.
| sithadmin wrote:
| 'an appetite suppressant' is really underselling liraglutide.
| It also corrects insulin resistance, which accounts for some
| degree of it's effectiveness as a weight loss aid beyond it's
| effects on slowing the GI tract.
|
| GLP-1 agonists are truly an amazing class of drugs. It's
| absolutely absurd that they're generally not covered by
| insurance for non-diabetics, even when they yield such obvious
| benefits for obese people.
| omginternets wrote:
| >It also corrects insulin resistance
|
| Is liraglutide doing that directly, or is it mediated by
| people eating less sugar?
| sithadmin wrote:
| Directly. It stimulates insulin release from the pacreas.
| omginternets wrote:
| Eesh... that doesn't seem great. How does this not cause
| further habituation?
| sithadmin wrote:
| Human and animal studies demonstrate that it doesn't seem
| to worsen insulin resistance if treatment is ceased, but
| probably doesn't significantly improve it either.
| omginternets wrote:
| Weird. That's quite intriguing.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Within the UK they remain restricted too.
|
| However, more and more at target populations i.e. obesity +
| diabetes/obesity related secondary condition or even at risk
| for diabetes i.e. ethnicity based.
|
| Are being offered these treatments.
|
| It really will be a new age for obese patients.
|
| The first and exercise tactic is a lost battle, ideally we'd
| be bringing up a generation that can manage their weight but
| we've failed at that. This is a really good option.
|
| Metformin is similarly excellent drug even in absence of
| diabetes.
| sithadmin wrote:
| As a non-diabetic (though demonstrably insulin resistant
| and leptin resistant), I've found metformin's gastro side
| effects and impact on blood glucose levels to be annoyingly
| unpredictable. Metformin also causes a noticeable drop in
| testosterone that can be especially counterproductive for
| men if weight loss/maintenance is a goal and one already
| has relatively low baseline testosterone levels.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Definitely heard that the gastro side effects are
| unacceptable to many and can even impact social life.
|
| I'd heard a bit about the testosterone, i.e. that you
| don't get the testosterone rise associated with
| successful management for diabetes. And perhaps Metformin
| short circuits that. Also that it might correlate with
| the life expectancy improvement and it does make sense
| since Metformin is also used for PCOS with wide ranging
| benefits not limited to insulin resistance but actually
| reducing androgenic effects of the condition.
|
| Do you think you'll continue with Metformin? I've
| genuinely was close to starting on it some years back
| (despite having no (pre) diabetes.).
| sithadmin wrote:
| Metformin never really yielded noticeable benefits for me
| (neither in terms of fat loss nor any bloodwork metrics)
| above and beyond other lifestyle changes I had already
| made, so I discontinued it after a trial period of about
| 4 months.
|
| The MD I was working with argued that I could have seen a
| impact on weight loss if taking a more extreme approach
| to dieting (basically an extremely high protein, moderate
| fat, moderate carb diet with 300-400 calories of intake
| every ~4 hours from sunrise to sunset) in conjunction
| with the metformin, but that approach didn't really fit
| my lifestyle at the time. If done correctly, this
| ostensibly maximizes the gluconeogenesis inhibition
| effect of metformin in conjunction with minimizing fatty
| acid synthesis by keeping blood levels at a consistent
| glucose deficit (thus encouraging lipolysis). I was also
| unconvinced that this isn't a just-so story, and thus I
| preferred to take a traditional 'keto' diet route (which
| has a lot more evidence backing it).
| bilsbie wrote:
| Why do they report these huge obesity rates but whenever I go out
| in public almost no one is overweight?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Because the obese people are not walking around outside much.
| They're also generally poorer and likely far outside your
| social circle.
| 0xfeba wrote:
| Rural America skews it.
| rory wrote:
| Where do you live?
| londons_explore wrote:
| I doubt that obesity is caused by "hundreds" of chemical
| pollutants... I suspect it to be more like a handful that cause
| the most effect.
|
| Since obesity causes millions of deaths annually, solving this
| warrants a covid-scale response. It should therefore be easy
| enough to direct a few billion dollars of funding into hundreds
| of avenues of research to find which those handful of pollutants
| are, what the main sources of them are, how to remove them, and
| how the effects of damage already done might be reversed.
|
| I imagine that with a covid-scale response, we could guarantee
| that nothing new would contain any of the offending chemicals
| within a year, and perhaps within 5 years we could have replaced
| every piece of tupperware/insulation foam/whatever already
| manufactured goods contain it.
| mellavora wrote:
| So something else I wonder. Over the last 50-90 years we've
| selectively bred our entire food chain to prioritize rapid
| growth, then pack it full of growth hormones to accelerate this.
|
| My dad decided to raise chickens back in the 80's. The broiler
| hens grew so fast that they broke their legs, and this was when
| fed on our kitchen waste (i.e. no growth hormones).
|
| I do wonder how much of this spills over into human obesity; if
| everything you eat comes from a plant or animal which is
| hyperoptimizing for unhealthy growth rates, what does that do to
| the human body?
|
| And if you are looking for a biological mechanism, it might be
| related to epigenetics. Not saying it is so, but am saying that a
| biological link is not a-priori impossible.
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| For what it's worth, growth hormones are prohibited in poultry
| in the US.
|
| https://extension.msstate.edu/publications/publications/chic...
| chasil wrote:
| This is truly shocking.
|
| "...tributyltin or TBT, a chemical used in wood
| preservatives, among other things. In experiments exposing
| mice to low and supposedly safe levels of TBT, Blumberg and
| his colleagues found significantly increased fat accumulation
| in the next three generations."
| sherr wrote:
| Where is that quote from? I could not see it in the
| (interesting) linked article.
| chasil wrote:
| It's this paragraph in the article on the Washington
| Post:
|
| "Importantly, recent research demonstrates that obesogens
| act to harm individuals in ways that traditional tests of
| chemical toxicity can't detect. In particular,
| consequences of chemical exposure may not appear during
| the lifetime of an exposed organism but can be passed
| down through so-called epigenetic mechanisms to offspring
| even several generations away. A typical example is
| tributyltin or TBT, a chemical used in wood
| preservatives, among other things. In experiments
| exposing mice to low and supposedly safe levels of TBT,
| Blumberg and his colleagues found significantly increased
| fat accumulation in the next three generations."
| tdehnel wrote:
| Utter nonsense. Even if growth hormone made it into finished
| meat, and then if enough was bioavailable to have an effect on
| humans, growth hormone causes the development of muscle (meat)
| as well as fat. So you'd expect to see people being more
| muscular (and taller, with stronger bones).
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Amylase Trypsin Inhibitors might be playing a role as well. We
| have selected for this to be higher in crops since it leads to
| greater pest resistance.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4807301/
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| > And if you are looking for a biological mechanism, it might
| be related to epigenetics
|
| Very unlikely as afaik everything non parasitic gets broken
| down by our saliva and stomach acids.
| jjallen wrote:
| That's not my understanding, at least in animals. Those who
| ate younger plants and/or animals lived longer.
|
| Sorry can't find a citation right now.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I had put some thought on this and my hunch was that
| consuming younger plants and/or animals means fewer
| "forever chemicals" getting accumulated in the body.
|
| However, that doesn't disprove the hypothesis that DNA can
| survive the digestive tract. If this [1] is to be believed,
| it very much does so. The question is, can epigenetic
| information / ie folds, survive?
|
| [1] https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/d
| oes-d...
| [deleted]
| Engineering-MD wrote:
| Epigenetics is to do with how genes are activated and DNA is
| folded around his histones. I would be very surprised if DNA
| could survive digestion and influence human genetic
| expression/epigenetics. There may be other mechanisms I guess
| (and things like abnormal protein folding like prion diseases
| can influence other nearby proteins) but I think I'm grasping
| at straws.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Hormones are sometimes ingested and they have an impact.
| Engineering-MD wrote:
| That is certainly true, I was addressing the epigenetic
| side of things. In his thread he was referencing fast
| growing chickens fed scraps only
| johnatwork wrote:
| I've been wondering about this too.
|
| I'm not well versed in the domain to say one thing or another
| so I will wait to form a concrete opinion before I hear from an
| expert in the field. I am very curious though like you, if
| there's a relation between the two.
| davidn20 wrote:
| Yes, plastic MIGHT be making us obese. But, we definitely know
| high caloric intake and sedentary lifestyle makes us obese. I
| don't understand why obesity is such a mystery. People are
| creatures of path of the least resistance. Developed countries
| have highly dense caloric food and people are inactive most of
| the day due to cars and office jobs.
| sp332 wrote:
| "Developed countries" don't have 40% of high school students
| clinically obese. Only the US does.
| [deleted]
| davidn20 wrote:
| Yes, it's bad in the US, but obesity is rising worldwide.
| Obesity, in general, correlates with GDP per capital.
| sp332 wrote:
| Then why are poorer people more obese?
|
| Edit: still talking about the USA here.
| davidn20 wrote:
| Poorer people are more obese is only true in richer
| countries or in countries where the poor doesn't have to
| starve. As for why poor people are more obese in well-off
| countries. Again, it's the path of least resistance. Poor
| people are generally less educated and less likely to
| think long term. It's easier to eat junk food than to put
| in the time and effort to make a well balance meal.
|
| Btw, I'm not blaming the poor, being poor is hard. I grew
| up under the poverty line. Overcoming poverty is a huge
| task and more should be done.
| OJFord wrote:
| Availability of cheap crap is much higher in more
| developed/high GDP countries I suppose.
|
| In extremis, if you only eat what you can grow, rear, and
| trade for, then you're not eating breakfast ~cereal~
| sugar, ready meals, crisps, etc.
|
| It's a bit tangential, but this is similar to how such a
| lifestyle isn't even cheaper - it's not the only shopping
| those people can afford - most of my meals probably cost
| less, because I take an interest in cooking and eating
| (i.e. I'm buying vegetables not ready meals) but that
| doesn't mean there's always (or even that often really,
| especially amortised over all uses) an out-of-reach
| expensive ingredient.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I haven't been able to find a source claiming higher than 16%
| for US high school students, fwiw. I wouldn't bat an eye if
| europe caught up soon.
| aaomidi wrote:
| And for me I don't understand why people think obesity is such
| a simple problem?
|
| Every single other thing in our body is complex and has chains
| and chains of reactions and impacts. Why is obesity the single
| one where the answer is "obvious"?
|
| Anyway I agree that we should change how we design our cities,
| etc to deal with our sedentary lifestyle.
| TimedToasts wrote:
| Eat less? No, too complex. Instead: change how we design our
| cities.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I mean, yes. We have to do the redesign for a multitude of
| reasons. Including the impacts our current cities have for
| scalability of various services and growth. Also how it's
| fucking our response to climate change.
| tdehnel wrote:
| Oh knock it off
| aaomidi wrote:
| Knock what off?
|
| American cities are designed horribly. We are a nation of
| car dependency.
| rr888 wrote:
| My pet theory on obesity is how varied and delicious food is
| these days. Literally my grandparents ate homemade porridge,
| cheese sandwiches, Potatoes/Carrots/Cabbage/BeefOrPork nearly
| every day of their lives. No wonder they didn't over eat. New
| generation has a huge number of yummy dishes to choose from.
| csours wrote:
| This isn't just your pet theory, it has a name and significant
| support - The Cafeteria Diet https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33
| 309818/#:~:text=The%20Cafe....
| tdehnel wrote:
| This has got to be the most idiotic, speculative comment section
| of the year.
|
| Literally not a single coherent explanation of how plastics might
| actually cause obesity, and a bunch of people going on about
| sugar and hormones.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| > Literally not a single coherent explanation of how plastics
| might actually cause obesity
|
| I don't think the onus for that is on the commentariat here.
| Rather it's on the Washington Post article to bridge these
| studies of mouse adipose tissue to human health outcomes. It
| doesn't do that very well, so you're going to see some decrying
| of potential alarmism and alternative explanations.
| CountSessine wrote:
| Diet is an HN magnet for bike-shedding and anecdotes.
| garren wrote:
| > Nearly 1,000 obesogens with such effects have already been
| identified in studies with animals or humans. They include
| Bisphenol A, a chemical widely used in plastics, and the
| phthalates, plasticizing agents used in paints, medicine and
| cosmetics. Others include parabens used as preservatives in food
| and paper products, and chemicals called organotins used as
| fungicides. Other obesogens include pesticides and herbicides,
| including glyphosate, which a recent study found to be present in
| the urine of most Americans.
|
| It feels like modern, Western, society is like living in a big
| Petri dish. It's one big experiment in which we're swimming in
| chemicals that we later find out interact with us and each other
| in negative ways. We should have reigned in these kinds of
| "innovations" decades ago. Americans are now urinating
| carcinogenic pesticides, rainwater even in most remote regions in
| the would is undrinkable [0], and we've had strong evidence for a
| while that some of the constituent components of commonly used
| plastics disrupt biological processes in humans and other
| animals.
|
| In 50-100 years people will be looking back in horror at the
| kinds of self-inflicted suffering we've produced. And for what?
| Money? Convenience?
|
| [0]
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a40859859/rainwater...
| DeadMouseFive wrote:
| For what: the profit of capitalists.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I don't think you need "capitalists", since socialists would
| be using the same toxins by fiat from a central committee.
| "For profit" is likely ok too.
| moistly wrote:
| Overlooked throughout this discussion, afaict, is an explanation
| as to why _animals_ are also getting fatter.
|
| > The problem of obesity isn't confined to just humans. A new
| study finds increased rates of obesity in mammals ranging from
| feral rats and mice to domestic pets and laboratory primates.
|
| https://www.livescience.com/10277-obesity-rise-animals.html
| Melatonic wrote:
| This is certainly an interesting one if true
| YeahNO wrote:
| Calories certainly aren't the only factor. If you feed animals
| the same exact diet and they have similar exercise habits and
| their excrement has the same caloric value, why does one get
| obese while the other doesn't? Genetics, epigenetics and gut
| biome likely all contribute to the problem.
| https://nautil.us/what-if-obesity-is-nobodys-fault-234639/
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I do a lot of high school senior photography. It's hard to talk
| about this without sounding crude as a guy but something that
| I've noticed that contrasts with when I graduated high school
| (2006) is just how many girls have huge breasts. I think there
| were 2 girls in my grade that were skinny and had what would be
| called "large" breasts. Most other skinny girls had the standard
| A or B cups.
|
| Now a very large portion have what must be D cups. I've tried to
| look up studies but I couldn't find any that controlled for
| weight.
|
| This was also the first year I had not one, but two, morbidly
| obese girls. One was so large I ran out of poses pretty much
| right away as she couldn't clasp her hands together behind her
| back, couldn't do the same near her waist in front, and she
| couldn't even sit down on the ground - only kneel. She told me
| she wanted to be a lawyer. I find it incredibly sad that you
| could be that large already at that age. I can only imagine how
| difficult it would make life.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| > I find it incredibly sad that you could be that large already
| at that age. I can only imagine how difficult it would make
| life.
|
| As someone about this size, but has also been relatively "fit"
| at this size (I used to be able to go on casual 10+ mile hikes
| on weekends, pre-pandemic), it's also our health system failing
| us. I've never had a doctor give me a better answer than "diet
| and exercise" to change things. I got to a level of fitness
| where I could go on 10 mile hikes, which is a hell of a lot
| more fit than a lot than many Americans, yet they'd still give
| me doom and gloom and uninterested answers. It's exhausting.
|
| America does not _treat_ obesity well, and I feel like there 's
| not good enough research going into it. I love to see reporting
| like--and hope there's more to come, in hopes that it changes
| both clinical mindsets and also how we think about obesity.
| It's more than what you eat.
| cnasc wrote:
| > I've never had a doctor give me a better answer than "diet
| and exercise" to change things. I got to a level of fitness
| where I could go on 10 mile hikes
|
| I don't mean this to be rude, but it sounds like you paid
| attention to just one half of the doctor's advice?
| cptcobalt wrote:
| Not so--significant dieting, zero soda or desserts, etc.
| But that's not as comparatively interesting for the
| argument as "can go on 10 mile hikes any weekend, yet made
| no progress". My point is directly intended to respond not
| just with anecdata, but that we have more work to do in
| research, diagnosis, and treatment of it.
|
| I don't mean this to be rude, but it sounds like you jumped
| to a quick conclusion based on preexisting simple
| expectations about obesity?
| cnasc wrote:
| > I don't mean this to be rude, but it sounds like you
| jumped to a quick conclusion based on preexisting simple
| expectations about obesity?
|
| I think this is unwarranted sarcasm, given that I could
| only comment on the information you provided in your
| post.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| I accept that feedback at face value.
| spicyusername wrote:
| > just how many girls have huge breasts.
|
| One reason I've heard to explain this is a rise in the
| consumption of certain kinds of hormonal birth control.
| true_religion wrote:
| So the funny thing is I was hearing the same thing ( that the
| average cup size had increase to C) back when I graduated high
| school in the late 90s.
|
| I think non anectodally, this trend is something that has been
| going on for a long time. If I remember correctly we blamed
| microplastics in the water minicking estrogen, and starting
| puberty earlier.
|
| What is the truth is probably unknown.
| bsder wrote:
| 1) I have a suspicion that girls are getting birth control
| pills at _much_ earlier ages than they used to. Putting a girl
| on bith control pills in the middle of puberty is going to have
| an effect somewhere and weight gain is one of the documented
| effects of birth control.
|
| 2) Girls getting fatter likely triggers other changes as well.
| Given that the female body works very hard to shut down
| reproduction when fat is scarce, it may very well supercharge
| reproductive changes when fat is plentiful.
|
| 3) I think you heavily underestimate the number of girls who
| get breast implants. For a while, it seemed like every 16-year-
| old girl was getting them. You could notice a significant
| contrast when shifting between areas with different
| socioeconomics--blue-collar areas mysteriously had lots of
| girls with much smaller breasts than white-collar ones.
| tristor wrote:
| > 3) I think you heavily underestimate the number of girls
| who get breast implants. For a while, it seemed like every
| 16-year-old girl was getting them. You could notice a
| significant contrast when shifting between areas with
| different socioeconomics--blue-collar areas mysteriously had
| lots of girls with much smaller breasts than white-collar
| ones.
|
| Citation definitely needed for this. Cosmetic surgery in the
| US is not covered by insurance and requires parental consent
| for patients under 18. While I do see more young women (and
| men) with "body modifications" like tattoos under 18, I
| strongly doubt we have a significant number of parents who
| are taking their teenage daughters in to get breast implants
| before they've even finished high school.
|
| Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
| [deleted]
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Maybe now we can finally get the FDA to ban glyphosate (Round-Up)
| like they do in the EU. It is currently impossible to purchase
| oat cereal in the U.S. that doesn't have some level of glyphosate
| in it. Cheerios is loaded with it.
|
| So something sold as "heart healthy" is loaded with obesogens and
| will contribute to obesity.
| mfer wrote:
| Our food chain has a lot to do with obesity. There are many
| studies on this stuff.
|
| We eat 5 times as much meat on average as people did 100 years
| go. Animal based products are a major source of fat. People used
| to eat more fruits and vegetables. The fat type has shifted with
| more fat (which has higher calorie per gram amounts than carbs or
| protein) and fat moving from polyunsaturated fats to saturated
| fats (which causes lots of medical problems).
|
| In there is the growth hormone. Kids "mature" physically at
| younger ages now than they used to. Kids to stop stop dairy or a
| lot of mean may physically mature at the older slower pace.
|
| Eating less fruits, vegetables, and whole grains means less
| fiber. Most people (in the US anyway) are deficient in fiber.
| Fiber traps certain fats and cholesterols so they aren't
| absorbed. So, we absorb more fats.
|
| Then there are processed foods.
|
| So much about our diets have changed in the last 100 years. A lot
| is known and we even know how to eat to be really healthy. It's
| just not widely known by the general public.
| reedjosh wrote:
| We eat unnatural amounts of polyunsaturated oils today. You
| have it completely backward.
|
| The amount of vegetable based fats consumed 100 years ago was
| significantly less. It wasn't until chemical extraction was
| introduced that we could consume as much vegetable based fat as
| we do today.
|
| Saturated fat is actually more stable and by far healthier.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| I'm afraid you are the one who has it completely backwards:
| https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-
| types/different-f...
| reedjosh wrote:
| Checkout this book:
|
| https://thebigfatsurprise.com/
|
| Looks like the NHS is behind the times.
|
| In the US they've removed statements like the one you
| linked to. It's becoming scientific consensus that
| saturated fat doesn't cause heart disease.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| I'd rather trust the expertise of doctors who've actually
| studied this stuff than a moron journalist, thanks.
| adrian_b wrote:
| What you say is correct, but incomplete.
|
| The unnaturally high consumption of PUFA is not for all kinds
| of PUFA, but mainly for linoleic acid and related fatty acids
| (a.k.a. omega-6 acids).
|
| The consumption of the other main kind of PUFA, omega-3
| acids, is frequently lower than before, as those are abundant
| mainly in some animal organs (which are more seldom consumed
| now) and in fish.
|
| In small quantities linoleic acid is an essential nutrient
| for humans, but in large quantities it must be converted into
| other fatty acids, because it is not a normal component of
| human fat, and that can be a burden for the liver.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Your comment completely ignores the content of the article you
| are commenting upon.
|
| You concentrate on the "normal" nutrition stuff like fat, fiber
| and carbohydrates, without even asking _why_ do people eat more
| than 100 years ago.
|
| The article talks about the fact that food now _contains a lot
| of totally unnatural chemical substances_ that our ancestors
| never encountered and that such substances may throw off our
| sense of satiety and disrupt other mechanisms directly related
| to obesity.
|
| That is a serious problem. An apple or a piece of meat laced
| with various chemicals isn't the same as 100 years ago. It
| seems you choose to ignore this difference.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I'm very skeptical. I think there are some things that may make
| us "feel hungrier" but there's nothing changing our metabolism.
|
| If we are to believe this, it would mean that "plastic" is making
| our bodies so much more efficient that there's extra energy
| that's being stored as fat.
|
| I like to keep my weight exactly at 155# (as a 5'10 59 year old
| man).
|
| Once a year, I "bulk" and go up to 160 while doing more strenuous
| weight training. The math always works exactly -- for every 3000
| extra k/cal I eat, I go up a pound. When it's time to "cut" back
| to 155#, for every 3000 k/cal deficit I drop a pound.
|
| 15 years ago, I got fat. I stopped paying attention to what I was
| eating. Got my weight up to 205#. I lost it by strictly counting
| calories. The math worked perfectly. I went to 1200 k/cal and
| lost 2 pounds a week. Exactly. Every week.
|
| Eating no more calories than your body needs works for everyone.
| You cannot create matter out of thin air, no matter what fat
| people will tell you.
|
| The Obese and Overweight cost society greatly. The fact that
| they're consuming more than they need, use more fuel to move
| around, and get sick and require more medical care costs us
| trillions. It's time they stopped pointing their fingers at
| "plastics" and started obeying the laws of thermodynamics.
| tstrimple wrote:
| > but there's nothing changing our metabolism.
|
| Why would you be so confident when we know for a fact that
| hormone imbalances can absolutely impact our metabolism.
| Including signaling to your body to produce and store more fat
| than it normally would. Cortisol the hormone produced in stress
| responses is shown to do exactly that. Using yourself as an
| anecdote isn't useful in anyway.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Matter isn't created out of thin air.
| tstrimple wrote:
| That was never the claim. Nice attempt at a straw man
| though. You seem to be under the impression that body fat
| only accumulates in scenarios with excess calories. That's
| explicitly wrong. What some of these metabolic disorders do
| is prioritize the accumulation of fat from calories over
| sustaining other parts of the body. There are multiple ways
| that your body converts calories into energy, and they can
| be thrown off by hormones. Some metabolic conditions, like
| Cushings, overstimulates the production of body fat
| starving the muscles of energy so they atrophy.
|
| To put it in clearer terms, you could take two people of
| identical sex, height and weight and feed them the exact
| same diet with the exact same exercise routine and still
| have one pack on more body fat due to hormonal issues
| impacting how they metabolize food. Telling the person
| who's gaining fat to just eat less isn't helpful or
| healthy. They need to address the condition causing the
| additional body fat accumulation and it's not excess
| calories.
|
| To be perfectly clear, I'm not suggesting that this is the
| case with microplastics. I don't think we have the research
| to determine that yet. I'm merely disputing the inane "just
| eat less bro" nonsense that tends to crop up in these
| threads.
| librish wrote:
| This assumes 100% of energy is absorbed from food which
| isn't true as far as I know.
| wtetzner wrote:
| > I'm very skeptical. I think there are some things that
| may make us "feel hungrier" but there's nothing changing
| our metabolism.
|
| > If we are to believe this, it would mean that "plastic"
| is making our bodies so much more efficient that there's
| extra energy that's being stored as fat.
|
| I think it's likely the opposite, e.g. there's something
| (not necessarily plastic) throwing off hormones, so the
| body ends up storing more of the calories as fat than it
| would if it was healthy. It's not at all clear (to me, at
| least) that a healthy human body would continue to store
| fat indefinitely, regardless of how many calories were
| being consumed.
| mylons wrote:
| is it possible to be in a caloric deficit and still gain weight
| if this is true? or is a caloric deficit + weight loss just a
| thermodynamics problem
| wtetzner wrote:
| > is it possible to be in a caloric deficit and still gain
| weight if this is true?
|
| No, that would defy the laws of thermodynamics. However, it
| _is_ possible to consume more calories than you burn and lose
| weight, because there are complexities around how your body
| decides to store fat, signals to burn fat, etc.
|
| Even if it was simply a thermodynamics problem (which I don't
| think it is), there are also issues with appetite. Sure, you
| can count calories for the rest of your life, but doing that is
| not only difficult to measure correctly, but very difficult to
| maintain if you still feel hungry all the time.
|
| I think one of the reasons a ketogenic diet works for a lot of
| people is that after a period of adaptation, you stop getting
| hungry every 4 hours.
| bombcar wrote:
| I suspect it's a modifier at the edges; if X calories you gain
| Y weight per day, this can make that Y+(some percentage).
|
| All these "we found the cause of obesity" dance around the
| problem.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Sometimes it's a little more complicated than just calories in
| vs calories out. See Cushing syndrome. We are aware of hormone
| imbalances which promote excess fat build up, often at the
| expense of muscle mass. It's possible plastics could be
| effecting hormones in a similar way.
| kazinator wrote:
| I believe it's thermodynamically possible to be in a caloric
| deficit while gaining _fat_. The body won 't gain mass, because
| it will be losing lean tissue, and that has a lot more mass per
| calorie stored than fat, due to protein being less energy dense
| to begin with, but mainly due to lean tissue having a lot of
| water mass.
|
| Say that a body is in a caloric balance, and at the same time
| in a strange state in which it is storing N calories as fat,
| while releasing N calories from breakdown of lean tissue: a
| lean-to-fat conversion is going on, so to speak. That body will
| be losing mass, because a calorie of lean tissue represents
| much more mass than a calorie of fat storage.
|
| If that same body then starts to release N + M calories from
| lean tissue, it will still be losing mass, while gaining fat.
|
| The only question of how physiologically likely are these
| thermodynamically valid situations. We do know that people who
| experiment with "yo-yo dieting" can end up with worsened body
| compositions, but probably not due to gaining fat _while_
| dieting but rather (1) losing lean tissue while dieting, while
| losing some fat and (2) rebound weight gain while not dieting
| possibly exacerbated by a lowered metabolism due to less lean
| tissue.
|
| Still, consider this thought experiment. A dieting person wears
| a backpack which is considered part of their body. Every day, a
| hundred grams of lard is added to the backpack, and this lard
| is counted as part of their caloric intake. The person diets
| and exercises in such a way that there is a caloric deficit.
| That person will be undeniably gaining fat in that backpack.
| It's thermodynamically possible for the body to be promoting
| fat storage in some area, regardless of what else is happening.
| wyre wrote:
| Appetite and metabolism is much more complicated than a
| thermodynamics problem.
|
| A calorie deficit implies knowledge of metabolic rate which can
| be highly variable. While calories in can be trivially counted,
| calories out needs to be calculated and cannot assume a
| significant level of accuracy.
|
| Regardless, the problem with solving the obesity epidemic isn't
| that people can't lose weight, but is keeping weight off after
| reaching a goal weight.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Strictly, no, but it is possible to have the expectation that
| your body would be burning 1700 calories a day by simply
| existing (using any online calculator will give you a rough
| idea of what your "Basal Metabolic Rate", or BMR, should be.
|
| But if you have metabolic damage, you may have a lower
| metabolic rate than expected, meaning that the same 1200
| calories a day that should cause you to lose a lb a week is
| actually just under maintenance calories.
|
| Anecdotal, but this happened to me. I lost 100 lbs through diet
| and just got stuck. Couldn't lose any more to save my life. I
| ate 300-500 calories under my expected calorie expenditure
| every day.
|
| Then, I got my metabolism tested and found that my BMR was at
| 300 calories a day under what it should have been, which meant
| that I was eating maintenance or overeating by 200 calories a
| day (and I was already feeling starving at that point!)
|
| To cut another 300-500 calories out of my diet would have been
| untenable. I'm still trying to figure out what I can do.
|
| Exercise more? Check. Do blood work and make sure everything is
| in order? Check. Vary my diet or try different diets? Check.
|
| I think the only thing left is to try chemicals. Nothing else
| seems to either raise by base metabolism or decrease my intake
| needs.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I have a fri3nd that has an over active thyroid and she's very
| fit. she had a six pack when she was younger. she didn't really
| work out. so makes me think hormones are a big part of it too.
| cestith wrote:
| Plastics and many other things happen to mess with hormones.
| aantix wrote:
| "Thus, rigorously collected national data provide no support for
| higher energy consumption as a driver of the obesity epidemic
| since 2000. Strikingly, these data do not even support increasing
| energy consumption as a consequence of the obesity epidemic,
| i.e., that as people gain weight, they need to eat more. Rather,
| the data suggest that Americans have been eating relatively less,
| for their larger body sizes, over the last 2 decades."
|
| https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/115/6/1445/6572830?fbc...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| https://archive.ph/rmlCA
| TacoToni wrote:
| thank you
| vallassy wrote:
| Is it the plastic though, or is it the sugar? Over my last few
| years of reading, I've convinced myself that sugar is the main
| culprit in massive obesity in Western countries, especially the
| US (i.e. high fructose corn syrup).
|
| Sugar is in everything (like plastic, I suppose). Look at the
| ingredients of what you buy and you'll be surprised where it
| turns up. Peanut butter, mayonnaise, beef jerky, even bog
| standard bread. It seems like sugar is the elephant in the room
| that the mainstream doesn't want to talk about.
| tarboreus wrote:
| Timeline doesn't work out, really. People ate a lot of sugar
| before the 80s and 90s where the obesity epidemic took off.
| Timeline points more to plastic and/or lithium, as suggested by
| Slime Mold Time Mold.
|
| Sugar is pretty bad for you, though.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| It could be both, and might even include other factors as well.
| bena wrote:
| Here's the answer. It's a factor. As is sugar. No one thing
| is going to solve the problem, but everything helps.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| > even bog standard bread
|
| Yes, we definitely have too much sugar in everything, but as an
| amateur baker I will defend sugar in bread. Sure, you don't
| need it in a baguette or a rustic boule, but it is
| indispensable for a nice, soft sandwich loaf. It's not there to
| make the bread sweeter. It makes the bread softer, it boosts
| the yeast for a nicer rise, and it keeps it from going stale as
| quickly.
|
| Granted, I don't use a ton of it. My favorite sandwich bread
| recipe[0] is 8g of sugar to 500g flour, and with my long loaf
| pan I typically get 20-25 slices, so maximum 400mg a slice.
| Quite good compared to my favorite supermarket bread at 2g a
| slice.
|
| Sure, "bog standard" bread could have less sugar, but some
| sugar is essential for this style of bread.
|
| [0] https://www.nigella.com/recipes/old-fashioned-sandwich-
| loaf, omitting the butter and oil and using cultured buttermilk
| instead of spoiled milk or sour cream. I say "omitting the
| butter", but I do still butter the loaf pan. I just don't
| include any in the dough itself.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > but it is indispensable for a nice, soft sandwich loaf
|
| There's a difference between the kind of bread you're making,
| and Wonder Bread. Wonder Bread is just an oversized
| marshmallow.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| > Sure, "bog standard" bread could have less sugar, but some
| sugar is essential for this style of bread.
|
| I fully agree. As a German I do want to point out that
| American style sandwich bread is a very specific style. Sugar
| goes into it much as it does into challah dough or brioche -
| but all these stradle the cake-bread boundary for me.
|
| If you want sugar in your bread, you gotta suffer through the
| process of making pumpernickel like everyone else, gosh darn
| it! /j
| boltzmann-brain wrote:
| what does pumpernickel have to do with sugar?
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I'll add to this: A lot of home cooks were taught to add a
| bit of sugar to the bread to help the yeast. I used to mix
| yeast, water, and a bit of sugar together to get the yeast
| started. I mostly did this because I learned to make bread
| before the internet, and this was common in instructions that
| I could access.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| https://youtu.be/AqFeXxa_NTk
|
| This guy experiments with sugar levels and how it affects
| yeast.
|
| Turns out the water absorbing properties of sugar also has
| a large effect in the other direction, so maybe it doesn't
| really help the yeast
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| The difference between a nice brioche - made with plenty of
| sugar, with a soft, fluffy character - and a standard loaf of
| french bread is quite large. I spring for the french bread
| only because it's cheaper. Bread with sugar is superior.
| gretch wrote:
| That's pretty much the point though isn't it? Everything is
| a bit (or a lot) better to the human brain when you add
| sugar
| Eleison23 wrote:
| I consume nothing but sourdough, because of the simplicity
| of ingredients and no sugar is necessary in its recipe.
| Lately I've found that "take-and-bake" loaves can be
| purchased, frozen, and freshly baked on demand. It works
| out great, and I love the simple, honest flavor of San
| Francisco style sourdough for sandwiches or just a buttered
| slice to go with my supper.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Look for real sourdough bread. ("San Francisco style") The loaf
| is round, and the bread has to rise more slowly.
|
| Years ago I dug through every bread in the aisle to find the
| one with the least amount of sugar. I went home with a weird-
| looking sourdough loaf, and I've been hooked ever since.
|
| In CA, most grocery stores carry it, because it's a local
| style. In MA, I have to go to Trader Joes to get it at a good
| price.
| briefcomment wrote:
| I consume multiple times more sugar than the average person,
| and I'm thin as a rail with a healthy metabolism. Sugar in
| itself isn't likely to be bad. Sugar in addition to a deranged
| metabolism is probably bad. Fixing the deranged metabolism,
| (which is likely to be caused by various environmental factors)
| will probably be the best solution.
| evol262 wrote:
| What's your daily caloric intake, though? It's not _just_
| sugar that 's negative. Traditional diets which are high in
| either carbohydrates or fats are broadly ok, it's the
| combination which is problematic, because it's all the
| caloric consumption of fats at 9kcal/g along with
| ghrelin/insulin spiking/dropping with carbohydrates (at
| 4kcal/g) which is an issue, because all of a sudden daily
| caloric intake is much higher.
| briefcomment wrote:
| The OP's point was that sugar is a problem in itself, so I
| was addressing that. You're saying it's total caloric
| intake which is a different claim. I do eat a good amount
| of fat, from the fudge and the dosa for example. Idk what
| my total caloric intake is like, but it's probably around
| 2k
| dominotw wrote:
| > Fixing the deranged metabolism
|
| > with a healthy metabolism.
|
| how are you measuring that you have 'healthy metabolism'.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Standard measures like blood pressure, avg temperature,
| thyroid levels
| ac29 wrote:
| > I consume multiple times more sugar than the average
| person, and I'm thin as a rail with a healthy metabolism.
|
| The average American consumes around 125g of sugar per day
| [1, 2]. This is about 500 kcals. Multiple times that would
| mean most of your daily calories are coming from sugar,
| unless you are very physically active.
|
| [1] https://www.sugar.org/diet/intake/
|
| [2] https://www.thediabetescouncil.com/45-alarming-
| statistics-on...
| briefcomment wrote:
| Yesterday, I had 3 bottles of coke at 40g of sugar each, 4
| cups of OJ at 25g of sugar each, and 1/3 a pound of fudge,
| which I think is about 50g. That's around 270g of simple
| sugars. If you care about carb intake, I also had 7 idlis,
| which is an indian rice cake, and a dosa, which is a rice
| crepe, which probably adds a significant amount of starch.
|
| I probably reliably have 2x the average for simple sugars
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| May I ask if you're under 45?
| briefcomment wrote:
| Yes haha. I'm sure my habits will change as I age
| pengaru wrote:
| > Is it the plastic though, or is it the sugar?
|
| The two are not mutually exclusive.
|
| We know fructose is a problem. We know bisphenols and
| phthalates (endocrine disruptors found in plastics) are
| problems as well.
|
| It's both.
| jjallen wrote:
| I'm American living in Europe. There is sugar in every packaged
| food here too just FYI.
|
| And not just in the country I live in, it's basically
| everywhere in grocery stores.
|
| So sugar is not the only culprit.
| dorchadas wrote:
| I'm an American in Europe, and really, what I've noticed here
| is it's _natural_ sugar in stuff, whereas in America it 's
| HFCS. I can't help but wonder if that's part of the
| difference. I list 5-10kg easily without watching what I ate
| (and drank much more cause there's nothing else to do of an
| evening in Ireland), while keeping the same activity level or
| slightly less. There's _something_ different in the food, and
| I can 't help but think real sugar and lower levels of it is
| a key thing.
| scoofy wrote:
| This is going to be an extremely challenging thesis to
| explain the phenomena, as HFCS and sucrose are effectively
| chemically identical once they hit the stomach.
| lupire wrote:
| "Lower" is far more important than "real".
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I've found myself looking at 8 different kinds of mayonnaise
| now, and still can't find one that has added sugar (apart from
| the ingredients listed under 'contains less than 2% of...").
|
| There is Miracle Whip but that is a bit of a reach to call
| mayonnaise.
| wyre wrote:
| I've seen it discussed here in the past that when controlling
| for sugar consumption there isn't any correlation with obesity
| and that the causes of the obesity epidemic are more enigmatic
| than blaming it on sugar.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I've tracked my diet pretty regularly over the last several
| years. The one constant in every weight-gain cycle for me is a
| sugary treat after a meal. This is true even when I've
| otherwise kept my caloric intake constant.
| imtringued wrote:
| Blood sugar spikes do strange things to our hunger response.
|
| If your blood sugar is too high the body may produce an
| emergency response to keep blood sugar down and it may
| overshoot which makes you hungry much sooner.
| loopdoend wrote:
| Sugar and seed oils (vegetable oils). Practically impossible to
| avoid especially in "food deserts".
| arbitrage wrote:
| So avoid "food deserts".
|
| It's not difficult.
| ketzo wrote:
| So true -- I don't understand why so many people choose to
| be poor!
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Yeah. It's not difficult.
|
| Unless you are poor, that is.
| imchillyb wrote:
| So avoid "food deserts". It's not difficult. -arbitrage
|
| > Food Desert: Urban area in which it is difficult to buy
| affordable or good-quality fresh food.
|
| Yeah, just move somewhere else! Lol. This is the kind of
| half-baked bullshit answer I expect from reddit not from
| Ycomb.
|
| Troll somewhere else dude.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| There is a good point to this though.
|
| Poor people immigrate all the time, for better work,
| better opportunities, family, whatever.
|
| My guess is rarely for access to higher quality food.
|
| When I was poor I wasn't incapable of moving.
|
| It's an interesting idea, migration based on quality
| food.
| decremental wrote:
| revscat wrote:
| And are you not upset because of psychopathic tendencies?
| You certainly seem to be disdainful when someone
| expresses empathy. I'm upset about climate change because
| it personally affects me, but I'm also upset about armed
| agents of the state murdering Black citizens without
| repercussion. I'm white. Do you find my response to be
| "overly-emotional"?
| decremental wrote:
| cestith wrote:
| I'm fairly certain imchillyb is a member of the group of
| humans who need to eat food and think other humans also
| need to eat food.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Did you mix up desert (sand) and dessert (cake)?
| serf wrote:
| a food desert is a (usually) hyperbolic phrase used to
| describe areas where access to nutritionally balanced
| food is hindered by something like scarcity or economy
| and replaced with access to food that is cheap and
| plentiful but nutritionally unsound.
| JTbane wrote:
| I've seen a lot of broscience that says "seed oils and PUFAs
| are bad". Is there actual evidence for this?
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| There is a great book that goes into this whole topic
| called Deep Nutrition. Also, anecdotally, I see a lot of
| correlation between PUFAs and FUPAs.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| For balance, here's a rebuttal to the fad that seed oils
| are our nemesis: https://www.the-
| nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-...
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Yes, broscience exaggerated the point, but they are not far
| from correct.
|
| It depends on genetics and the amount and type of PUFA
| consumed. The Fatty Acid Destaurase genes will dictate how
| bad short chain PUFA's (Seed oil's) are for a person. These
| people should stick to fatty fish.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0026
| 0...
|
| Omega 6 PUFAs are more inflammatory than long chain PUFA's.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7990530/
|
| It just so happens that most seed oils contain tremendous
| amounts of Short Chain Omega 6 fatty acids.
| frankzander wrote:
| > Peanut butter, mayonnaise, beef jerky
|
| But that's packed with fat calories as well and fat has a much
| higher energy density as carbohydrates. As an European I'm very
| very astonished over the size of the food portions in fast food
| restaurants in the US. If this portion size is the same on the
| diner table than it's not only sugar but a lot of non necessary
| calories. I don't think it's entirely caused by sugar but by a
| big surplus of calories in day to day food (combined with too
| little physical activity)
| CodeSgt wrote:
| But fat increases satiety much more quickly than sugar. 500
| cals of fats will make you feel "fuller" than 750 or even 1k
| cals of sugar. That's what makes sugar so much worse. Is may
| not be as colorically dense, but we can comfortably guzzle
| down far more empty calories from sugar than from fat.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Seems impossible to avoid I guess?
| odyssey7 wrote:
| Especially if there is no cure for inherited damage already
| done.
|
| A solution would include medical therapies in addition to
| avoidance.
| Havoc wrote:
| Well that plus the cheeseburger
| mylons wrote:
| which part of a cheese burger is bad for you?
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| The bun probably causes inflammation/leaky gut for a lot more
| people than area aware it does. Modern wheat is a weird
| organism.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| What's weird about it?
|
| Is emmer or kamut much better? What about red fife, a
| strain of wheat from ~170 years ago?
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| The hybrid varieties bred in the late 50's have about 50x
| the amount of gluten as previous strains of wheat did.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Fascinating. I was curious because I eat the three I
| mentioned kind of like rice (along with barley and oats).
|
| I'm behind on this science. A 50x increase in gluten
| sounds crazy, but I don't know how much gluten is known
| to be bad. For example, I sometimes eat things with wheat
| gluten powder as a primary ingredient. It doesn't seem to
| cause harm, but maybe I'm missing something.
|
| I certainly don't think of it as a health food (nothing
| so heavily processed is), but is it actually harmful?
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| The science on gluten is ongoing and controversial, but
| the position I believe will ultimately be vindicated is
| that some people seem to derive no ill effects while many
| others develop a mild allergy to it, which can fly under
| the radar and lead to all sorts of chronic inflammation
| issues if the person keeps eating it. As a result,
| there's no 'standard safe dosage' of gluten, some people
| become violently ill if they encounter a trace, others
| (myself included) find a lot of seemingly unconnected
| annoyances clear up if they avoid it for a few weeks.
| Excess weight gain seems to be one of those, though in my
| case the major symptom was actually an excessively fast
| metabolism.
| rleigh wrote:
| It's not necessarily the wheat itself, though residual
| glyphosate and other herbicides are a concern, it's more
| the industrial processing of it. Industrial baking is
| very different to traditional baking, and the proteins
| may be exposed to the immune system in very different
| ways as a result, i.e. different epitopes.
| mellavora wrote:
| the 1/2 liter "small" soda which comes alongside it
| mylons wrote:
| which isn't in any of the words i used
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The burger itself is probably the healthiest part of it.
|
| It's the bun (full of corn syrup and carbs), a massive amount
| of sodium, the condiments (also corn syrup), a side of fries
| (mostly carbs), a soda (even more corn syrup). By the time
| you've finished a decently sized burger you've eaten enough
| sugar, sodium and carbs for the entire day.
| tzs wrote:
| A Big Mac and large fries at McDonalds comes to 1040
| calories and 102 g of carbs (9 g of which are added
| sugars). That's 39% of the calories coming from carbs,
| which is generally considered to be a moderate level of
| carbs in the medical literature.
|
| Get a double Quarter Pounder with cheese instead and its
| 1230 calories and 101 g of carbs (10 g of which are added
| sugars). That's 33% of calories from carbs, which is also
| in the moderate carb range.
|
| As far as the burger itself goes, a doubler Quarter Pounder
| with cheese is 740 calories and 41 g of carb (10 g of which
| is added sugars). That's 22% of calories from carbs and
| would count as a low carb item in much of the medical
| literature.
|
| Americans tend to go overboard. They hear that cutting back
| on carbs has been shown to have some benefits, and they
| think this means they have to cut back from the 50-60%
| calories from carbs diets they are on to 5-10%. That is
| very hard since it eliminates most breads, pastas, rice,
| potatoes, and deserts. It is costly and/or time consuming
| to maintain such a diet. Most who try will fail for those
| reasons.
|
| In fact much of the benefits from reducing carbs will come
| with a more modest reduction to around 40%, which can be
| achieved without having to largely give up the
| aforementioned foods. It is much easier to stick with it
| when you can still eat at most restaurants, including most
| fast food places.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| People ate fast food and drove everywhere in 80s/90s what
| changed that it's worse now?
| lancesells wrote:
| Fast food portions being larger, poorer eating habits passed
| on from generation to generation, the internet, the
| smartphone, presumably more stress and anxiety.
| pc86 wrote:
| Are fast food portions actually larger? I remember getting
| super sized combos when I was a kid (maybe even in HS, I
| forget when they got rid of them) but they're gone now, and
| on the rare occasion I get fast food the portions seem
| reasonable.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Are fast food portions actually larger?
|
| Oh my god, yes.
|
| "Free refills" also didn't become standard until some
| time in the 90s. In the 80s, a refill cost money and
| often the cups were smaller to begin with. You'd buy a
| pitcher (just like with beer) if you wanted a lot at a
| bit of a discount. You can see this on an ad on a pizza
| hut in the skater movie Gleaming the Cube, near the end
| of the film. Now the idea of buying a pitcher of soda
| makes no sense because everywhere has free refills, but
| almost none did in the 80s. In the early 90s some places
| did but it was often just during certain hours (lunch,
| say) as a draw. It spread from there until it became
| normal, fast-food joints started letting you fill (and
| re-fill) your own cup, et c.
| mathewsanders wrote:
| I moved from New Zealand to the United States and one of
| my early culture shocks was the large portion sizes. I'd
| order food to go and it would easily be two meals.
|
| I wondered if it was some sort of expectation that when
| you ordered food at a restaurant that there was always
| excess you could take home in a 'doggy bag' which seems
| to be fairly common in the US but not typical in my
| experience in NZ or Australia.
|
| I've definitely become accustomed to it and I can now eat
| that full American sized serving :(
|
| Funnily enough, most of the time the cheeseburgers are
| smaller here in the US than NZ!
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Drink sizes are WAY bigger. I remember small fries used
| to come in a little white paper sleeve. In the US, I
| haven't seen those in years.
|
| That said, this 2011 study from Cambridge University says
| portion sizes have not grown significantly.
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-
| the-n...
| pc86 wrote:
| I received one of those paper sleeves the last time I
| went through a drive through maybe 4 or 5 weeks ago, but
| that's not to say the sleeve itself didn't get larger.
| bombcar wrote:
| The "cost to supersize" seems to me (but I have no proof,
| maybe I have more money now) to have gone down relative
| to the meal cost, so it's more and more of a "no brainer"
| upgrade.
|
| Maybe if they were required to price it backwards, where
| the meal costs $x and you can get a _ten percent
| discount_ if you order small, that would "trick" people
| into eating less.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The paper talks about epigenetics and these chemicals, but
| isn't it possible the diet and lack of physical activity
| affected future generations as well? If not via epigenetics,
| perhaps via gut flora being passed down and spread?
|
| They talk about lab animals with controlled diets and
| activity becoming fatter on average over the decades, and
| point to chemicals as the only possible culprit. I find that
| quite possible or even probable, but isn't it also possible
| the gut flora is evolving to be more efficient at processing
| modern food?
| elil17 wrote:
| Just saying "cheeseburgers" or "calories in, calories out"
| fails to explain why people eat more calories now than they did
| before. There is a vague, and I think very unhelpful, sense in
| society today that this is some sort of mass moral failing. In
| reality there are a few factors that could, alone or in
| combination, explain this change in average behavior. The most
| convincing to me: chemicals could be messing with our endocrine
| systems and making us hungrier or food scientists could be
| designing more appealing food that just overloads our desires
| to eat.
| adrian_b wrote:
| As an anecdotal experience, I have stopped eating any kind of
| commercial bread many years ago, despite the fact that I like
| bread.
|
| The reason was that I could not become satiated when eating
| commercial bread, before eating huge quantities, which filled
| me up. It is much easier for me to not start eating something
| than to stop after beginning to eat, so I gave up completely
| on eating bread.
|
| Nevertheless, I have started this year to make at home a
| bread every day when I wake up, which I eat at breakfast.
| Unlike commercial bread, this home-made bread satiates me
| completely without eating too much of it, and until late in
| the evening, when I usually have my 2nd daily meal.
|
| This was unexpected and I am wondering about the cause. One
| possible reason is because this home-made bread is more
| protein-rich than commercial bread, because before baking I
| wash the dough for a few minutes, to remove a part of the
| starch.
|
| There is also the possibility that it might matter that this
| is pure bread, made of flour and water without anything else
| added, unlike the commercial bread, which includes a huge
| list of additives. I believe that the additives may also have
| an influence because, as far as I remember, with the bread
| eaten when I was a child I did not have the same problem of
| lack of satiety like with the modern commercial bread.
| elil17 wrote:
| It could also be that home made bread is chewier and so it
| takes longer to eat, or that it's a psychological effect
| from having made it yourself.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I do not think that there is any psychological reason,
| because I was very surprised by this, as it was contrary
| to my expectations.
|
| However you are right that it is chewier than commercial
| bread and I have also thought that this may be an
| additional explanation. I believe that the longer chewing
| time contributes to the satiation effect, but it cannot
| explain all of it, as I remain satiated for many hours,
| and I do not believe that the extra chewing can have a
| lasting effect.
|
| In any case the fact that most modern food requires much
| less chewing than traditional food is indeed a likely
| contributory factor to the tendency of eating more at a
| meal than it was common for the previous generations.
| dayvid wrote:
| Spend 2 days and write down everything you eat or drink in a
| spreadsheet with calorie count (including oil and
| condiments). Use a digital scale if possible for more
| accurate measurement. The answer will be glaringly obvious.
|
| Most people don't do this and spend their lives wondering why
| they can't control their weight.
|
| Some quick culprits: sodas and juices (huge amount of
| calories), excess oil in food cooking (oil has a ton of
| calories), side dishes and snacks (chips, French fries,
| crackers, etc.).
|
| On the satiety level, if you eat out a lot or processed
| foods, most have little fiber and aren't that satiating (e.g.
| you can eat a whole bag of chips or thing of crackers and
| want more). Either more fiber or protein.
|
| Really the main solution is to limit eating out if you live
| in America. I eat out once a day maximum. Otherwise you'll
| most likely hit a caloric surplus.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > Most people don't do this and spend their lives wondering
| why they can't control their weight.
|
| My experience with obese and morbidly obese individuals in
| the northeast US suggests to me that the problem is more
| related to mental health & addiction than a lack of
| information & education.
| bombcar wrote:
| The immense marketing around "healthy" vs "unhealthy" food
| has also contributed to it. Most people consider a glass of
| orange juice to be "healthy" and a can of Coca Cola to be
| "unhealthy" but a can of coke has 140 calories and the
| exact same size of orange juice is 150 - but most people
| drink a _glass_ of orange juice which is often 16-20
| ounces, getting you up near 300 calories.
|
| Sure the orange juice is probably "healthier" per calorie,
| whatever that means, but you're still drinking a lot of
| calories.
| elil17 wrote:
| Right, you'll see how many calories you eat. But you won't
| see _why_ you eat that many calories. Plenty of people try
| very hard to count and limit calories, but stories of
| successful weight loss are still the minority of cases.
| Most people can 't lose more than 10 or 15 pounds without
| starting to get really hungry. Similarly, most people can't
| intentionally gain more than 10 or 15 pounds without
| starting to feel that they are unable to eat more.
|
| You can say the main solution is not eating out, or
| anything else, but the fact that losing weight is hard
| demonstrates the fact that no solution is easy.
| refurb wrote:
| I lived in SE Asia for a while. Obesity is almost non-
| existent, though rapidly increasing for children.
|
| I tried to figure out why. Was it lifestyle? More manual
| labor? No, even office workers weren't obese. Running was
| viewed as some weird western habit. Few people went to the
| gym. Most just went for walks for exercise.
|
| Was it diet? Maybe. But plenty of local foods weren't exactly
| healthy. Mostly processed carbs. Lots of salt. Plenty of deep
| fried foods.
|
| Then after eating like a local for a while I realized it.
| Portion size. I'd say the average meal is maybe half the
| portion size you'd get in the US. I'd go out to eat at a
| restaurant and think "I'm not that hungry", then order
| something anyways. But it was never a lot of food. Very
| common for people to have a soup dish for lunch - maybe a few
| strips of meat, an egg, a handful of noodles and ton of
| vegetables. Add it all up and it's not many calories.
|
| It looked to me like people weren't obese because _they ate
| less_. But that was the societal norm. Sure people would
| gorge themselves at special events like weddings or fancy
| dinners out. But most of the time they were eating meals of
| maybe 400-500 calories each.
| elil17 wrote:
| Or they have less exposure to obesogens and therefore don't
| want to eat as much, leading restaurants to offer smaller
| portion sizes. There's a correlation, but not necessarily a
| causation.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is almost certainly the sum and totality of it. Edge
| cases? Sure. But it's pretty obvious that portion size has
| something to do with it, when a standard "American
| breakfast" rocks in at near a thousand calories (before
| adding juice and sides).
| KaiserPro wrote:
| In the UK average calorie intake has been dropping, but thats
| negatively correlated to kids being fat.
|
| I would suggest that the big change is the amount of activity
| that an average kid does. which seems to be conducive to the
| calories in/vs out. the cause of this is complex. But a lot
| of it relates to stranger danger. Parents don't let their
| kids out after school unattended (for various reasons) which
| means they are inside not burning off as many calories.
|
| The other thing to remember is that food is now cheap. Its
| perfectly possible to be in the bottom 20% of the UK income
| bracket and still have enough cash to eat more calories than
| you need. (This is a good thing. People starving in the UK is
| unforgivable.)
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Not just "stranger danger", but fewer people (in the US,
| and AIUI increasingly other parts of the developed world)
| live in a place where you can do anything without driving.
| As a result, not only are children barred from operating
| independently of their parents' time, but _everyone_ is
| more sedentary, by nature of replacing active travel with
| automotive travel at every opportunity.
| bombcar wrote:
| Also, it's not the activity that matters much as simply
| being further away from food while doing it. The amount of
| calories you burn running through a forest playing Robin
| Hood is minuscule; but since you're thousands of feet
| (miles even) from your fridge, you can't just continue to
| eat all the time.
| wtetzner wrote:
| I suspect something we're eating more of now (seed oils,
| chemicals in processed foods, something else?) is causing
| us to store more fat that we otherwise would have. i.e. we
| seem to store all excess calories as fat, but maybe that's
| not actually what a healthy human body would do.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > fails to explain why people eat more calories now than they
| did before
|
| Wouldn't this also intuitively be related to the fact that a
| calorie today is much, much "cheaper" (in terms of labor
| required to acquire the calorie for both the producer and the
| consumer) than a calorie was even 100 years ago due to
| advancements in agriculture and distribution?
| scarmig wrote:
| To an extent, but we're 10x richer than we were in 1900; we
| do not eat 10x as many calories. And it's poor people who
| eat more calories now, not rich people.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > it's poor people who eat more calories now, not rich
| people
|
| That's my point; if you look at a map of obesity rates in
| the US overlaid with a map of poverty, there's a very
| strong correlation.
|
| The cheap access to calories today makes it easier to
| overconsume. In the past, the high cost of calories meant
| that only the wealthy could really ever become obese
| (outside of genetic factors).
| bombcar wrote:
| The snide comment would be that obesity and unbearable
| debt are indicators of lack of control, and that poor
| people will have this more (because lack of control leads
| to being poor).
|
| But even if absolutely true, how do you solve for that?
| Laws limiting what you can purchase/eat would simply be a
| non-starter.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| There have been many studies looking at this phenomenon.
|
| One hypothesis is that this is due to "food deserts"
| where the lack of access to fresh foods leads to over-
| reliance on processed foods for caloric needs.
|
| It is no coincidence that there is also a strong
| correlation between food deserts (at a national and local
| level) with lower income. The solution probably isn't
| banning specific foods, but to solve the access problem
| and address socio-economic factors. Better health and
| nutrition education may also be key.
| bombcar wrote:
| The food desert thing should be testable, no? Like
| identify one of the worst ones, and subsidize a normal
| grocery store for however many years necessary, and see
| what it has done?
| scarmig wrote:
| I mean, if we were confident one particular food source
| contributes more to obesity than others, we have a
| solution that we know would work: tax it (and ideally
| dedicate revenues to some kind of universal food tax
| credit). People would consume less of it at the margin
| and then be less obese.
|
| It would rankle some people, but so do taxes on alcohol
| and nicotine. My big concern is that I'm skeptical
| whether we can really identify those "bad" foods and that
| even if we could whether we could ensure the government
| would whitelist/blacklist the correct foods.
|
| As far as lack of control goes, I'd be curious if
| fatter/poorer people would do worse on some kind of adult
| marshmallow test. Maybe see if you can get them to sit
| perfectly still for 20 minutes in exchange for a monetary
| reward. I don't have a strong sense that they'd do worse
| than skinnier/richer people.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's the solution everyone wants "identify bad food and
| tax/ban it" - but when apple juice has as much or more
| calories than soda, what do you do? A per-calorie tax
| might work if you rebated it correctly, but the mechanics
| of that would be insane. Perhaps it could be tied to
| basic income - we will tax calories at ten cents per
| calorie, and give each person 2000 calories (200$) a day
| ...
| scarmig wrote:
| That's interesting. A large side of fries at Macdonald's
| would be $50 (though I suppose everything else would also
| jump a lot in price). Definitely creates a strong
| incentive to consume less.
|
| Implementation wise, it probably would be best to begin
| at something like half a cent per calorie and then
| ratchet it up until we hit some target number (or until
| we discover it doesn't actually influence behavior). Then
| at the end of the year people get a $4000 dollar tax
| credit.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Possibly, but intuition is often wrong. We need actual
| research to prove or disprove that hypothesis.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| And some of these metastidies indicate our measure of calorie
| may be off. Lab rats fed controlled diets with measured
| activity have gotten fatter over the decades. Somehow those
| rats are extracting more energy from their food or becoming
| more efficient at producing the measured amount of activity.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| The whole lab animals got fatter on controlled diets thing
| is based on a single study. It's not a statistically
| significant trend for rats. It is for mice. I don't have
| any particular gripes with the methodology but I am not
| totally convinced it's well controlled
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3081766/#!po=3
| 5...
| erispoe wrote:
| It's also much easier to eat a very high amount of calories
| in relatively little volume, compared to any other time in
| history. It's very easy to eat thousands of calories in what
| would be a healthy volume of vegetables. Pack more calories
| and people will eat more calories before they actually feel
| full.
| slothtrop wrote:
| > Just saying "cheeseburgers" or "calories in, calories out"
| fails to explain why people eat more calories now than they
| did before.
|
| Junk foods at high-availability, low cost, offering low-to-
| zero satiety per-calorie, and habit-forming addictive
| potential. The answer is pretty much in your sentence. Add to
| the fact, eating well on a budget requires you to prepare
| food at home. Lots of pressures funnel people to obesity. In
| the before-times (if you want to set your clock well before
| the obesity epidemic), two-income households weren't a thing
| for the most part and manufactured junk foods were a novelty
| on the market. People kept more active even at leisure, with
| tv being the novel and singular screen-based entertainment
| device that not everyone could afford at outset.
| elil17 wrote:
| Sure, I think that's a very plausible explanation. It also
| points to specific, testable policy changes. For example, a
| government could build a low cost (subsidized), healthy
| competitor to fast food. Alternatively, a government could
| implement a comprehensive "sin tax" scheme on "low quality"
| calories coupled with expanded food stamps (to ensure the
| poorest people can afford healthy alternatives).
| Governments could even go into food desserts and open
| health-focused grocery stores. We could see if low cost/low
| quality calories are the issue via a legislative
| experiment.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've often thought that government-run "soup kitchens"
| providing basic nutritional food in small portions should
| be _everywhere_ - no requirements to eat there, if Bill
| Gates and Buffet want to have lunch at the free soup
| kitchen who cares.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I like the Japanese school-lunch system. Kids develop a
| familiarity with real food, which stays with them into
| adulthood (and reduces the likelihood of obesity ever
| occurring), and parents don't have to worry about it.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| What a low effort comment - as if burgers and cheese and big
| ole pieces of meat didn't exist before plastics? HN's comments
| are supposed to make the conversation more interesting and more
| engaging.
| xkbarkar wrote:
| Would it change your perception if you look at overeating as a
| symptom rather than a cause? A common enough symptom for
| untreated diabetes is eccessive thirst. Why should some
| ailments not cause lack of satiety or edcessive hunger. Or even
| metabolic issues. Complex ones.
|
| Imagine that the basis for the obesity pandemic may in fact lie
| in other, lack of proper digestive bacteria and yeast for
| example. I feel that pointing at obesity as just lazyness is
| just not constructive. I am not obese and have never suffered
| from it so this is not from a point of self defense. Just a
| thought.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| Regardless of the causes of the caloric intake, managing said
| intake is still the responsibility of said individual. Unless
| the chemicals involved block the ability to take dietary
| decisions, of course, but that's a different discussion.
|
| From my point of view as an obese individual: It _is_ the
| cheeseburgers. And the lack of excersize. And the long days
| working at a screen with few breaks.
|
| Change is hard and bad habits are not easy to get rid of.
| Especially when you've spent a few decades getting used to
| them when you were young and unwise.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > Change is hard and bad habits are not easy to get rid of
|
| Which is exactly why no expert in treating addiction
| suggests using willpower to "cold turkey" as a treatment.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| I don't think anyone suggested going cold turkey on food.
| acuozzo wrote:
| Your reply is delightfully pedantic.
| seventhtiger wrote:
| Can heroin addiction be treated with heroin intake
| management?
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| Going cold turkey on food would be unhealthy, so some
| kind of management _is_ required.
|
| I didn't grow fat because I have a slow metabolism (and I
| do), or because I'm addicted to a specific unhealthy type
| of food; I'm fat because I made a major switch in
| lifestyles (hard labour to desk job) without any changes
| to my diet, and because I kept prioritizing other things
| than my health for decades. After a while it became
| obvious that change is needed, but boy is it difficult to
| lose weight once you've had it for 20 years!
|
| The solution is managing my diet. Sure, some variables
| may change (such as chemicals affecting my body), but I
| still need to keep consuming less calories than I burn in
| order to do something about the issue.
| seventhtiger wrote:
| This nuance you're adding is not optional or dismissable.
| It's essential complexity to solving the problem.
|
| Calorie in calorie out is not false. It's just not
| useful. Like saying to go to the moon you need to go up.
|
| Calorie in is appetite. Calorie out is metabolism. The
| specifics of how these are affected, and the solutions to
| fixing them, are a lot more fruitful than reaffirming the
| second law of thermodynamics.
| samatman wrote:
| A cheeseburger is a terrible metonym for unhealthy food.
|
| The large fries and enormous glass of corn syrup aren't welded
| to the burger, which has a perfectly fine nutritional profile
| for an entree.
| baremetal wrote:
| There is an old saying "If you want something done right, you
| have to do it yourself"
|
| I take that to heart. Including what I put in my body. I have
| little to no faith in modern food. And so I grow my own. I know
| where it came from and what went into it. And yes, I have had my
| soil tested.
|
| Rely on modern food at your own peril. You are what you eat, as
| they say.
| hamiltonians wrote:
| maybe the bmi is also wrong. if your index is labelng half or
| more of ppl as diseased, maybe the index is broken. except for
| jockeys, meth addicts, and runners, most men are going to be
| aleast borerline overweight by 30. i dont know any thin people.
| maybe we need to make drugs legal..that will fix it. perhaps
| there is a good biological reason people weigh more, why fight
| nature.
| jscheel wrote:
| BMI was not created to be a marker for health, it was created
| by a mathematician to calculate government food allocations. It
| blows my mind that we still use it.
| dataflow wrote:
| If we assume everyone agreed tomorrow that the cause is 100%
| plastics, what can we actually do about this? What would our
| lives look like if we were to address this?
| Taikonerd wrote:
| Probably not "ban all plastics." That's not practical.
|
| But we _could_ do more research into what compounds
| specifically are harmful, and then find substitutes for them.
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