
Is Everything Getting Fatter? - dbcooper
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/08/21/is-everything-getting-fatter
======
jcfrei
I'm pretty confident that we'll see a reversal in the trend, for humans at
least. The last 70+ years have been unprecedented in the history of nutrition,
with high calorie and high fat food being more affordable than ever and with
the addition of additives (such as the "E numbers" in Europe) also tastier
than ever. We were simply unprepared to deal with such a high availability of
tasty and highly nutritious food, because most people didn't know what a good
diet looks like. the term diet in itself is a pretty new term, the whole
concept of choosing what you eat might seem pretty absurd to earlier
generations, which simply ate whatever they could get.

But I'm confident that current generations will adapt to these new
circumstances in our nutrition and start learning about their diets and start
teaching their kids how to eat properly. and I'm pretty certain that within 50
years or so, widespread obesity will be nothing but a short and weird artifact
during the turn of the millennium.

~~~
rubidium
I think you may be over-optimistic. I live in a poor neighborhood. Food stamps
are the norm. "high calorie and high fat food being more affordable" is true,
but the food necessary for a good diet is completely absent. The only food in
walking distance is the gas-station (think Big Gulps and Twinkies).

This isn't an educational problem, it's a systemic socioeconomic one. And it's
not likely to work itself out in the next 50 years.

~~~
mhuffman
Surely everyone in your neighborhood is not subsisting on Big Gulps and
Twinkies. When they get to the grocery store (even if it is just once per
month) to use those food stamps, there is food other than twinkies and big
gulps to be had, right?

There are clearly systemic socioeconomic issues, but this seems to be an
educational one. Being able to read the backs of packages and know what is
better for you at the same price point. For example how $2 bag of beans are
better for you than a $2 bag of chips (in general). Or $.75 canned vegetables
are better for you than $1 canned beefaroni (in general). The amount that it
takes to fill you up vs. the nutritional value / cost is obvious in those 2
examples but gets murky pretty quick for a lot of people.

People do not need to live off of fresh produce and coconut waters to not be
obese.

I think there isn't enough public education in this area, and I believe that
labeling requirements are not nearly as helpful as they could be and are often
deceptive (in particular to serving portions) to consumers.

~~~
Raphmedia
> Surely everyone in your neighborhood is not subsisting on Big Gulps and
> Twinkies.

Sadly, they do.

Vegetables, pastas, lean meats? Those are strangers to a lot of people.

Instead, people will buy TV-Diners, frozen french-fries, hot-dog sausages, mac
n' cheese. All things that won't fill you up unless you eat double or triple
portions.

It is indeed an educational problem. We teach good habits do kids, but old
habits die hard, especially for parents who don't have the time or education
to build effective meals.

~~~
BrainInAJar
> It is indeed an educational problem.

Have you ever been poor? When you get home from your 12th hour of working (at
your second job) and need to feed yourself & the kids the last thing you have
the energy to do is spend an hour cooking a nutritious meal, even if you had
the time to go out to the supermarket (by bus) and the money to stock up on
things that aren't going to go bad by the time you eat them. So you toss some
fish fingers and frozen french fries in the oven to feed your family before
you all go to bed to start the cycle again

~~~
mhuffman
Over 60% of people in poverty do not work at all or work one part-time job,
let alone 2 jobs. Of the 40% that is left, nearly all work a single (low-
paying) full-time job. The old canard about poor people working multiple jobs
and still on the edge of being homeless is true for a very tiny fraction of
people.

Btw, 12 hrs. a day for 5 days a week at minimum wage, puts a single person at
over double the poverty level (over $22k) in the US...just saying.

I grew up very poor (from a family of migrant workers) and I can say from
personal experience and observing many, many thousands of poor people over a
couple of decades, that it is almost exclusively an educational problem.

The easy stuff is easy (don't eat tubs of lard and ice-cream), but even
professional nutritionalists can not agree on what a healthy diet is, how can
you expect people with an average 10th grade or less education to do it? Those
fish fingers are marked "PACKED WITH OMEGA-3s!!!", the fries have "HALF YOUR
DAILY REQUIREMENT OF POTASSIUM!!! LOADED WITH VITAMINS!!!"

With millions spent on spinning shit food into something that sounds healthy
to people, they are being misled and confused because nutrition is complicated
and labeling is misleading for highly processed foods.

That frozen lean-cuisine dinner in the next freezer is better balanced, cost
the same as microwave fries, takes the same amount of time to nuke, but says
"Only 410 calories!" instead of "calcium-enriched" like the fries do, but how
to properly judge the differences without a strong background in nutrition?

------
dbcooper
Original paper is from 2011:

[http://m.rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org//content/278/1712/1...](http://m.rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org//content/278/1712/1626.short)

Citing papers:

[https://scholar.google.co.nz/scholar?client=tablet-
android-g...](https://scholar.google.co.nz/scholar?client=tablet-android-
google&espv=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=10925269364062618050)

------
nkuttler
> Now, feral rats could be chowing down on a greater abundance of rich food in
> the available garbage, but that doesn’t explain the upwards creep in ad
> libitum fed research animal weights.

That doesn't seem to make sense. So when feral animals eat more processed
"rich foods" and gain weight that's understandable, but when animals that live
with and are fed by humans gain weight it's a mystery? Could it be that animal
food production has changed in the same way as food production for humans?

~~~
DanBC
"Ad libitum" means the food is unrestricted.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_libitum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_libitum)

Asking why rats given unrestricted food had lower weights in 1980s than today
seems like a reasonable question.

Has the food recipe changed? (And how has it changed?) because if the calorie
content of the food hasn't changed but the recipe has changed we might be able
to challenge the calories in calories out crowd.

~~~
zdean
"...we might be able to challenge the calories in calories out crowd."

Not really. If they have unrestricted access and the recipe has changed, the
simple balance of sugars, fats, and proteins per serving could be having an
impact on their total caloric intake.

~~~
graeme
A semi-common calories in calories out argument is that it doesn't matter what
you eat, you just need to make sure that you eat less calories than you use.

This is (probably) technically true, but it's not a very useful statement if
certain foods are likely to make us eat more before feeling full.

So the rat example would support that reasoning.

------
logfromblammo
Adenovirus 36 is zoonotic, and causes obesity in mammals and birds, including
humans, rodents, chickens, and monkeys.

The gut biome is significantly different between obese and non-obese
individuals, though so far, no causative mechanism has been proven in either
direction.

------
mirimir
I'm guessing that it's an environmentally stable lipophilic chemical. There
are _a lot_ of them.

~~~
filoeleven
My first thought was chemical as well due to the recent series of articles
about DuPont's use of the surfactant C8[0] and how they continued to use it
for fifty years after knowing that it caused major problems in humans and was
leaking into the environment[1]. This chemical is now ubiquitous, it's in
everybody, and it's an endocrine disruptor, meaning that it screws with living
systems that are controlled by hormones, and it does so in very small doses.

There are literally thousands of unstudied, unregulated chemicals in
industrial use in America. Chances are high that there are a number of them
doing a number on us.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanoic_acid)

[1][https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/11/dupont-
chemist...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/11/dupont-chemistry-
deception/)

~~~
mirimir
It's arguable that most industrial organic chemicals are degraded in the
environment in one way or another. But some aren't. And others have
environmentally stable degradation products. So there are probably at least
tens of thousands of persistent, anthropogenic, organic chemicals.

The lipophilic ones are most hazardous, because they bioaccumulate through the
food chain. Also, the more volatile ones tend to get trapped in polar regions.
So lipid levels for Eskimos and penguins are higher than those for more
equatorial populations. I wonder if body mass has increased more in recent
decades among polar populations than among equatorial populations.

------
nichochar
In america, definitly yes. In Europe, not from what I can tell

~~~
barking
Completely unscientifically I think that the French look slim by comparison
with Americans. Not so the British though.

~~~
DanBC
UK has high rates of obesity. UK's rate of obesity is higher than most of
Europe. It's a problem.

[http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/29/uk-western-
eu...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/29/uk-western-europe-
obesity-study)

> In the UK, 67% of men and 57% of women are either overweight or obese,
> according to the Global Burden of Disease study, published in the Lancet
> medical journal. More than a quarter of children are also overweight or
> obese – 26% of boys and 29% of girls.

That's much worse than international comparisons:

[http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(14\)60460-8/abstract)

> Worldwide, the proportion of adults with a body-mass index (BMI) of 25 kg/m2
> or greater increased between 1980 and 2013 from 28·8% (95% UI 28·4–29·3) to
> 36·9% (36·3–37·4) in men, and from 29·8% (29·3–30·2) to 38·0% (37·5–38·5) in
> women. Prevalence has increased substantially in children and adolescents in
> developed countries; 23·8% (22·9–24·7) of boys and 22·6% (21·7–23·6) of
> girls were overweight or obese in 2013. The prevalence of overweight and
> obesity has also increased in children and adolescents in developing
> countries, from 8·1% (7·7–8·6) to 12·9% (12·3–13·5) in 2013 for boys and
> from 8·4% (8·1–8·8) to 13·4% (13·0–13·9) in girls. In adults, estimated
> prevalence of obesity exceeded 50% in men in Tonga and in women in Kuwait,
> Kiribati, Federated States of Micronesia, Libya, Qatar, Tonga, and Samoa.
> Since 2006, the increase in adult obesity in developed countries has slowed
> down.

------
nichochar
In america, definitely yes. In Europe, not from what I can tell

~~~
DanBC
No country has managed to lower the rate of obesity. Some countries are seeing
slower rises in rates of obesity, and some countries have much lower rates of
obesity than international averages.

But Europe is probably getting fatter.

~~~
jahnu
A few countries appear to have lowered adult obesity rates according to this
data...

[http://www.oecd.org/els/health-
systems/49712491.pdf](http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/49712491.pdf)

