
Obesity and emotional problems appear to develop together from age 7 - laurex
https://neurosciencenews.com/emotion-obesity-neurodevelopment-12077/
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dalore
I really believe it's society increasing consumption of carbohydrates that
causes this. Reading the literature from Tim Noakes and seeing the effects it
has on kids and adults in The Magic Pill it's hard to argue that it certainly
has some effect.

I don't think it's "caloric surplus" as they claim. It's the wrong type of
calories.

~~~
hprotagonist
For literally thousands of years, the vast majority of humanity has subsisted
on bulk carbohydrates as the vast majority of their diet.

Peasants ate {bread,oatmeal,congee, gruel...} and not a whole lot else, for
most of recorded history, and for most of recorded history, most humans were
peasants.

It has to be more than just "carbs bad", because summed across population, we
eat WAY LESS percentage carbs per person now than we did in 1100 AD. We eat
more, period, and we exert ourselves less, and i think that's got to count for
a lot.

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apta
There's probably a difference between whole carbs, and the majority of what is
available today in the market (refined and processed carbs). That probably
plays a role here.

~~~
imtringued
Yes it basically boils down to the fact that most processed foods have added
sugar or carbohydrates and you only see food that is easy to preserve in your
local supermarket (whole grain flour becomes rancid quickly, food is picked
unripe, etc). It's effectively fast food but without the stigma.

~~~
dalore
Yes real food goes off quickly and so isn't as profitable. Meanwhile most of
the food on the supermarket shelves have so little nutrition that even
bacteria won't eat it, it's cheap to make, stores long, and has higher profits
then real food.

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pmiller2
Interestingly enough, personality traits are pretty much solidified by age
7[0]. That suggests that 7 years old is not an arbitrary number in this study.

[0]: [https://www.livescience.com/8432-personality-set-life-1st-
gr...](https://www.livescience.com/8432-personality-set-life-1st-grade-study-
suggests.html)

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mcfunk
It's almost like both mental health and weight gain have underlying
relationships to hormones, inflammation, etc which, when out of balance, can
cause issues with both-- and can mutually reinforce both for endogenous and
exogenous (i.e. bullying, fatphobia, discrimination) reasons.

~~~
AstralStorm
I wonder why even run this analysis? Is it because someone said "being fat is
no problem"?

I'd rather see interventional RCTs instead for this at risk group.

~~~
mcfunk
It seems like research to show correlation between the two is a helpful step
on the way to having such studies on intervention, though. I feel like the
prevailing sentiment would be to consider the two separately.

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AstralStorm
Totally ignoring confounder of being ostracized by newly discovered "rules of
kids". Awareness of such rules develops around this age but not the higher
order ethics which would moderate certain behaviors.

So, whom should the intervention be targeted at, obese kids, "evil" kids? Is
this even actionable?

Also the most important question is why would a 7 y.o. be obese. Caloric
surplus takes a long time to accumulate after all - so essentially something
is terribly wrong with their diet or something related.

