
Fatness and Thinness in the Middle Ages - ubac
https://www.medievalists.net/2020/06/fatness-thinness-middle-ages/
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dnprock
I grew up in Vietnam. There were similar positive attitudes towards overweight
bodies. The country was ravaged by wars and famines. Overweight bodies mean
prosperity. It's changing now in Vietnam, however. They're converging to views
of other countries.

One thing to note is the way people acquiring body fat was somewhat different.
They don't consume sugar and highly processed food. They eat a lot of normal
foods. They have body fat but often strong and muscular.

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ulisesrmzroche
This has more to do with far less sedentary lifestyles than sugar and
processed food. A calorie is a calorie.

You can’t get muscle unless you move.

~~~
grawprog
>A calorie is a calorie.

Not true. There's a difference between complex carbohydrates provided by
fruits, vegetables meat and other unprocessed food. Simple carbohydrates like
are shorter and break down faster providing less energy per food unit
consumed. Complex carbohydrates are longer and take longer for our bodies to
breakdown giving more energy over a longer period of time.

~~~
mason55
For the purposes of satiety you are correct. For the purposes of bodyweight, a
calorie is a calorie. How that bodyweight is stored (fat vs muscle) is
dependent on exercise + whether the calorie is from a fat, carb, protein or
alcohol (the four macronutrients).

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chongli
Satiety vs calories is everything. If you give people “all you can eat” bland
boiled potatoes with no butter or salt and nothing else, they will not
overeat. They will lose weight.

The same goes for rats. Give them all they can eat of bland nutritional rat
pellets and they’ll maintain body weight. Give them Doritos and McDonald’s, on
the other hand, and they’ll gain weight like crazy.

It should be a surprise to nobody that capitalism has optimized junk food to
be as addictive and non-filling as possible.

~~~
BoorishBears
I'm not a dietitian, but I'm pretty sure that's wrong...

They're very starchy and high in carbs, and very low in protein.

So you can eat tons of them and still not feel full.

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nradov
I'm pretty sure chongli is correct about the plain boiled potatoes. How many
can you eat before you're sick of them? It's easy to test for yourself, go
peel and boil some potatoes right now.

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vajenetehais
You are not proving him he is wrong. You are talking about a different
phenomena: satiety is different from getting sick of something.

If you reach satiety your body and brain won't want to eat more.

If you are sick of something, you will just switch to something else.

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walrus01
The cultural concept of being slightly overweight as a sign of wealth and
prosperity is seen in other regions:

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

[https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a3513/forcefeeding...](https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a3513/forcefeeding-
in-mauritania/)

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ericmcer
This is anecdotal but I recall reading some science somewhere to back it up.
During a fast or if I am cutting weight heavier women become more attractive
to me.

~~~
themodelplumber
That's a pretty funny anecdote. :) I am in the middle of a moderated dirty cut
[0] right now myself and here's what I've noticed:

* I'm the one who feeds our cats. And they also end up losing weight when I'm on a cut, even though I didn't intend for that to happen.

* I randomly find myself surfing Japanese euro-foods photos on IG, creating screenshot collections on my phone, and sending them to family members who love food.

* I have to act more like the traditional/archaic effeminate archetype or I'm screwed--I have to compensate for the harshness somehow. So I'll spend more time making art, listening to music I like, going easier on my body, loving on pets, etc.

Anyway...you got me smiling, thinking about this stuff. Thanks.

0\. [https://www.friendlyskies.net/intj/mdc-moderated-dirty-
cut](https://www.friendlyskies.net/intj/mdc-moderated-dirty-cut)

~~~
prawn
I'm prone to aggressively planning dinners with friends and browsing
restaurant websites whenever I skip lunch at work. Always takes me a while to
recognise the fever that's overtaken me.

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InfiniteRand
Malayali (Kerala, India) culture has the common developing world fatness =
prosperity mentality to some degree (minus the Indian love toward asceticism),
but we have the added factor of having the defining movie star of my parents
generation (And pretty big star still) being a rather pudgy guy (Mohanlal!)
and that does shape people’s views on things.

It’s a funny interplay with stars that they shape their appearance to fit
societal expectations but at the same time shape them.

~~~
kondu
You can see a similar parallel in the Telugu film industry too! Most of the
big stars in my parent's time were pudgy(chiranjeevi, NTR, ANR, for example).
Most of today's stars on the other hand are rather lean and fit like you'd
expect.

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woodandsteel
A friend of mine whose parents immigrated from Poland before WWII told me that
in the old country fat women were valued as wives because their weight was
seen as proof they didn't have tuberculosis.

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sn41
It seems that in Polynesia, South Pacific and traditional Hawaii, the leaders
in society were ideally fat and massive. My guess is that these were the
people who were better suited to survival on long voyages across the Pacific.

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toomanybeersies
It's not helped by the abandonment of fresh traditional foods and their
replacement with highly processed imported foods, such as canned spaghetti and
corned beef. Polynesian countries are also large importers of cheap fatty cuts
of meat that aren't eaten in more developed nations, such as turkey tails and
lamb flaps (both of which are delicious, but incredibly fatty).

The traditional Polynesian diet is quite healthy, fresh fish, root vegetables
like yams and taro (as well as their leaves), and coconuts. You have to eat a
lot to get fat eating that kind of food. One thing I noticed when travelling
Fiji (not geographically Polynesia, but culturally) is that outside of the
cities this kind of diet is fairly common, and obesity is a lot less common.

Most Samoans and Tongans I know back in New Zealand have terrible diets. They
basically eat white bread, tinned spaghetti, corned beef, instant noodles, and
rotisserie chickens. I had a mate who would for dinner would put back a whole
chicken and 5 packs of noodles; or a loaf of white bread, 2 tins of spaghetti
and a tin of corned beef. He worked in demolition and did boxing as a sport,
so he burned the calories, but it was completely lacking in proper nutrition,
just carbs and sodium.

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DoreenMichele
I'm guessing the positive associations with weight for women is due to
promoting fertility. If a woman is too thin, she can't conceive. You have to
have some extra calories to have a baby.

The American obsession with thinness means that some women can "cure" their
fertility problems by gaining five pounds.

~~~
koolhead17
>> The American obsession with thinness means that some women can "cure" their
fertility problems by gaining five pounds.

Or it can be because the way our bodies are portrayed in media and fashion
world?

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DoreenMichele
That's just another way of saying the culture does this thing. If you are
inferring that I am personally blaming individual women and implying they are
neurotic, your inference is in error.

My sister had serious fertility problems. She read many articles on the topic
over the years and we talked about me possibly serving as a surrogate for her
should she be simply unable to have a child of her own. She forwarded me some
portion of those articles, so I am somewhat well read on the topic of
fertility issues for American women.

It takes about 25,000 stored calories to support a pregnancy. Being
underweight suppresses ovulation. Anorexic women can outright lose their
periods.

I suspect this fact probably helped women pass themselves off as male soldiers
and male pirates historically. Such professions are pretty physically
demanding and I suspect it may have caused a lot of women to have fewer
periods or no periods while passing themselves off as male, thereby helping
them to hide their gender.

My oldest son has pointed out that we are probably underestimating the number
of women who did that because, by definition, those that fully succeeded were
never identified and died as male. A recent-ish story supports that
suggestion.

