
The obesity era: The problem may be bigger than any of us (2013) - kevbin
http://aeon.co/magazine/health/david-berreby-obesity-era/
======
enraged_camel
_> >It isn’t hard to imagine that people who are eating more themselves are
giving more to their spoiled pets, or leaving sweeter, fattier garbage for
street cats and rodents. But such results don’t explain why the weight gain is
also occurring in species that human beings don’t pamper, such as animals in
labs, whose diets are strictly controlled. In fact, lab animals’ lives are so
precisely watched and measured that the researchers can rule out accidental
human influence: records show those creatures gained weight over decades
without any significant change in their diet or activities._

As the top commenter points out, this is incredibly misleading. Just because
the macronutrient ratios of lab animals has remained the same does not say
anything about the _contents_ of what they are being fed. For example, egg
protein is different than soy protein. If you switch from the former to the
latter while keeping everything the same, you will notice a difference.

The fact of the matter is that the companies that are producing the foods that
the lab animals eat are under the same market pressures as those producing
food for humans: they try to do their best to minimize costs, even if it comes
at the expense of the consumers' health. So it isn't at all surprising that
lab animals have gotten fatter along with humans.

I think as a nation we need to stop chasing overly complicated explanations of
the obesity phenomenon and apply Occam's Razor. A ton of people have been able
to successfully lose weight by paying attention to what and how much they eat.
Go to any bodybuilding forum on the Internet and look at before-and-after
photos and read accounts of how the transformation was accomplished. It
really, really isn't rocket science. If someone isn't able to lose weight when
they eat less, it is much more likely that they are doing something wrong than
that there are hidden factors that are preventing their weight loss. (I don't
blame them because there is an insane amount of misinformation on the topic
these days, partially thanks to "experts" who try to justify their research
and employment by sowing doubt and muddying the waters.)

~~~
dkural
Hey I fully agree with your overall point. If you don't eat more than you need
in calories, you won't gain weight. Simple as that.

I did have an objection regarding egg protein v.s. soy protein - perhaps you
meant impurities etc. If you are feeding them protein, and protein only, you
won't notice a difference. Proteins = amino acids. Egg protein is the same
thing as soy protein, which is the same thing as "meat" protein.. All of life
uses the same set of amino acids, which are made according to the blueprint in
genes (i.e. DNA), using essentially the same genetic code. It's literally the
same physical thing.

~~~
ScottBurson
This is as uninformed as it is vigorously stated.

Different foods have different amino acid profiles, meaning that the amount of
each amino acid varies, in some cases considerably, from food to food. Some
amino acids the body can make itself; others can be gotten only from food. As
ever, Wikipedia has a good starting point[0].

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid)

~~~
dkural
For caloric purposes this makes no difference. Thus - again, soy protein = egg
protein. Both will give you energy.

Even with fairly low levels of food consumption (i.e. not average american),
as long as it is varied, we get all the essential amino acids. Please note
that even people on pretty intense weight loss diets don't suffer from
"essential amino acid depletion"

The bacteria in our gut can synthesize all the amino acids by the way,
including essential ones, from pretty much any source of nutrients.

------
GuiA
> _A restaurant on a warm day whose air conditioning breaks down will see a
> sharp decline in sales (yes, someone did a study)._

Ugh, then link to the fucking study! I've spent a few minutes in Google/Google
Scholar trying to find said study, to no avail. Would love to see it if
someone finds it.

~~~
kbaker
This is where the article pulls that quote from I believe [1]:

> _Herman cited a consumer survey suggesting that after an air-conditioning
> breakdown, restaurant sales drop dramatically._

Which refers to this paper [2], it references this survey to support some
conclusions in the paper.

> _This literature has been supplemented by a survey designed specifically for
> this chapter (consumer survey, University of Toronto, unpublished data,
> 1991). Because of the anticipation that the scientific literature,
> especially on humans, might be skimpy, a questionnaire was sent to a number
> of restaurant and grocery chains in the metropolitan Toronto area asking
> about shifts in customer purchasing behavior as a function of environmental
> heat. This survey is by no means scientific, but it reflects the accumulated
> experience of merchants whose livelihood depends to some extent on
> accurately assessing how people 's food purchases vary with the heat._

> _More parochially, one Toronto restaurateur (unpublished data from consumer
> survey, 1991) conceded that "sales plunge during a heat wave .... People do
> not have the appetite for a large heavy meal when it is hot."_

So not that much of a study...

[1]
[http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v30/n11/full/0803326a.html...](http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v30/n11/full/0803326a.html#bib45)

[2]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK236229/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK236229/)

------
greglindahl
It would be nice if articles like this didn't attack a strawman: Most people
who think that eating less and exercising more can help obesity don't think
that 100% of obesity is caused by laziness.

~~~
Afforess
I disagree. Anecdotally, any discussion of obesity I have seen on internet
forums (typically reddit) places the blame entirely on the overweight people.
This is not helped by the rather silly trend of the fat-is-beautiful group,
which only encourages the opposite fat-shaming groups.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Anecdotally, any discussion of obesity I have seen on internet forums
> (typically reddit) places the blame entirely on the overweight people.

"Most people who think that eating less and exercising more can help obesity"
and "the loudest voices on the internet forums Afforess frequents who think
that eating less and exercising more can help obesity" are not the same groups
of people.

------
ghouse
Perhaps the US tax code should stop subsidizing corn syrup and other processed
food inputs. As it is now, the tax payers pay twice -- once for the subsidy,
and then again for healthcare.

~~~
alecco
Indeed. Also, why not do the same that worked before with big tobacco? Ban
soft drink sport sponsorships. Ban advertisement of high sugar/hfcs foods to
children. Add surgeon general notes to junk foods.

Health consequences are paid by the rest of society, in one way or another.
Nurses say hospitals are filled with obese patients. It's getting out of
control.

~~~
jaggederest
Or just add a calorie tax. That would pretty effectively do the trick. Would
negligibly affect the cost of low-calorie-density food, but boy that soda
and/or butter becomes expensive.

~~~
mendort
That'd be great way to establish a regressive tax. Luxury foods don't have
more calories than cheap ones so as a percentage of cost cheap food prices
would increase more. Not to mention that percentage of income spent on food
for low income people is much higher than % of income spent on food by rich
people.

~~~
humanrebar
Then add: a more aggressive earned income tax, a more generous child tax
credit, or a guaranteed minimum income (or some kind of hybrid plan). If the
problem is that some people can't afford things, attack that problem directly.

Legally guaranteeing that parents can put their 26-year-olds on their family
healthcare plan is also regressive (it doesn't help uninsured families), but
that didn't stop it from being enacted.

------
kauffj
The fact that animals have experienced significant weight gain is by far the
best evidence the author provides to support a factor exogenous to the
calories-in-calories-out model. What are the leading explanations for this
phenomenon?

~~~
michaelochurch
I can't answer your question, because I don't know (the OP covers the leading
explanations, as far as I know) but... calories-in/calories-out is technically
correct, but there are some complexities.

Calories in: calorie counts are guesswork. For the healthier foods, there's
even more uncertainty about calories. You know exactly what you're getting
with Coke, but you shouldn't be drinking much of that if you're trying to lose
weight. If you eat an apple instead, you're talking about 10 to 20% variation
each way in calorie count. Finally, there are individual variations based on
the microbes in our gut, and how we absorb nutrients.

Calories out: people vary in basal metabolic rate (BMR) and we don't always
know why. Even if we could get a good idea of how many calories we were taking
in each day, and we can't, most of us have no idea of what we're burning.
There are ways to tip the scale (build more muscle, spend more time in cold
temperatures, and, obviously, be more active) but it's impossible to know, in
general, how many calories you burned in a day.

Given that an error of 50 calories per day is 5 pounds gained per year,
precise calorie counting isn't possible. It's largely a problem with two
factors:

1\. Individual metabolic variation. People with shitty metabolisms are going
to get fat if they eat restaurant meals portioned for 24-year-olds. For 40-50%
of the population, eating portions that the median person can is going to lead
to fatness.

2\. Silent failure. The body punishes calorie errors on the negative side
(hunger) or even tries to adapt (low energy, starvation mode) in ways that are
counterproductive in modern times. It doesn't punish, in any immediate way,
positive calorie errors.

~~~
kyllo
Also, a calorie is not a calorie. The body spends much less time and energy
digesting simple sugars and starches, compared to proteins and fats, and
because carbs are digested so much more efficiently, they contribute more to
weight gain. It is possible to lose weight simply by reducing carbohydrates as
a percentage of diet, even if total caloric consumption remains constant.

Satiety is also a major factor, probably the most underrated factor in
successful weight loss. Because the body digests them more slowly, high fat
and protein foods stave off hunger much longer than high carb foods do, so
people naturally tend to consume fewer total calories on a low carb diet, due
to reduced hunger and cravings.

~~~
huehue
This is absurd. You're overestimating and basing all your theory on the
thermic effect of food while failing to understand how hormones affect our
metabolism.

Fat and protein are not an optimal source of energy and its use as such will
force the body to open up certain pathways that are metabolically inefficient
and potentially ruinous in the long term.

Cronic ketogenic dieters for example have extremely slow metabolisms and
present symptoms of hypothyroidism.

~~~
kyllo
You're reading too much into what I said. None of your claims actually
contradict mine. This part actually supports what I said:

 _Fat and protein are not an optimal source of energy and its use as such will
force the body to open up certain pathways that are metabolically inefficient
and potentially ruinous in the long term._

Yes, that's exactly why low-carb diets work. They force your body to use a
less efficient fuel, which is an effective way to counteract the problem of
having _too much fuel_. And while ketogenic dieting may be "potentially"
ruinous in the long term, obesity is _definitely_ ruinous in the long term.

I'm not really a pro-keto person, I think strict keto diets are too extreme
for the long term. On the other hand, it's evident that a high carbohydrate
diet provides energy that is excessive and unsuited for modern, sedentary
lifestyles. Most of us would be a lot less overweight if we simply ate fewer
carbs (like <40% of total calories)

------
sheepmullet
The real issue is nobody wants the slow and steady option.

If you are overweight you can lose a pound/month with only a few minor changes
to your diet. You won't feel any more hungry than you usually do. You won't
feel a lack of energy or ability to think.

But a person who is 60 pounds overweight won't do this because it will take 5
years to lose the weight. Instead they will jump from one diet to the next to
the next binge to the even stricter diet and in 5 years be no better off than
when they started.

~~~
glenra
People who have been fat and then lost weight have a different metabolism than
people who stayed at the same lower weight throughout. Most people who lose a
significant amount of weight gain it all back and then some within three
years. Your theory that losing _slower_ would be more sustainable than losing
_faster_ is interesting, but do you have any actual evidence for it? If
calories in/calories out were all there was to it, shouldn't it take no
willpower to merely _stay_ at the lower weight once achieved, regardless of
how quickly that loss were achieved?

As for me, I think the real issue is that we still really have _no idea_ why
people have collectively gotten fatter and thus have no advice to give that
_consistently_ works to completely reverse that process. What we have are
guesses as to what _might_ work. And most of these guesses are wrong.

~~~
sheepmullet
"Your theory that losing slower would be more sustainable than losing faster
is interesting, but do you have any actual evidence for it?"

I think losing weight quickly for a short period of time (4-6 weeks) works
very well (e.g. V-Diet). I also think losing weight slowly over the long term
(max 1 pound per month) also works well.

I think most people try somewhere in the middle of the two extremes and it
just doesn't work. Trying to lose weight quickly for an extended period just
doesn't work for all but the most motivated people.

For evidence in support of losing weight slowly and almost effortlessly take a
look at the book Mindless Eating. It covers a lot of interesting research.

------
steakejjs
Obesity is a great example of an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of
cure.

Having been overweight and borderline obese I have a certain mindset that my
level of fitness is achievable by anyone who puts in the effort. I firmly
believe this.

There is a load of research supporting this, that a calorie is a calorie, and
I suspect it will stay that way...

~~~
ericb
Yes, and anyone should be able to hold their breath for 3 minutes. Oh wait,
that's hard? Is it possible there is a strong biological drive that makes it
difficult? So does that mean these drives affect our behavior? Imagine there
was a similar drive for food. Let's call it "hunger." If such a drive existed,
it is conceivable it would vary from person to person, and things would be
more complicated than "a calorie is a calorie" because there's this whole
strong drive drive influencing things. What if other factors could mess with
the strength of this drive?

Thank goodness this is all hypothetical, otherwise "a calorie is a calorie"
might be just a meaningless platitude.

~~~
judk
Your analogy and message would be more pleasant if you didn't wrap it in the
confusing and unfriendly sarcasm.

~~~
ericb
A fair point.

I have tried putting this in friendlier terms at times, but my perception is
that most people who hold the reductionist view want fatness to be a morality
tale where bad things happen to people who _deserved it_. That notion offends
me, and it seems far-fetched since this is happening in animals, too. That or
someone is generalizing from their n of one anecdote to all people.

Even worse, I feel like this platitude is used as an excuse to stop thinking.
The _least interesting_ part of this whole thing is the thermodynamics--to the
point of being so uninteresting that I can't believe it gets talked about. How
about why are people eating more? Do some foods satiate hunger better? Why is
the problem accelerating over time? What is causing animals to weigh more--has
their willpower diminished? A calorie is a calorie misses the point so
thoroughly it infuriates me.

Apologies for the tone.

------
WBrentWilliams
First, a snark admission. I read the article and the comments concurrently. I
was not disappointed in how quickly the reductionists came out to defend their
favorite theory of caloric thermodynamics.

That said, I will provide an personal anecdote for your perusal and make one
suggestion. First, the anecdote: I dropped from a weight of 205 - 210 pounds
to a weight of 145 pounds over the course of three years. I am back up to 155
pounds. Yes, that last detail is important to my story. I am 5-foot-8-inches,
so this is a radical change of BMI. Why did I lose so much weight? A radical
change in diet.

I have a medical condition for which I was trying to avoid the most expensive
treatments. I moved (not overnight) to a diet that removed virtually all
grain-based and tuber-based carbohydrates. My carbohydrates came from fruits
and leafy vegetables. No, I do not advise this diet for anyone unless they are
trying to avoid the drugs that comes with my condition.

It worked. I went off the over-priced 1890's-era anti-inflammatory medication
and stayed it for three years. Then, my symptoms returned.

New doctor, who said nothing about my diet and threw steroids and more anti-
inflammatory meds at me. Those did not work. I lost even more weight, down to
135 pounds. I even went off my diet. Yes, it was good to eat bread, potatoes,
and rice again.

Finally, I gave in and accepted that I would be on a ludicrously priced
biological. Symptoms arrested. Now, back to my old diet. I have ten pounds to
lose to get to my target weight.

What I am suggesting is that reductionism works. My diet notebooks shows a
slight reduction in calories by removing grain-and-tuber carbs. However, it
only takes you so far. There is room for wholism and seeking an understanding
of exactly how a given source of nutrients is metabolized.

~~~
frio
If you don't mind my asking -- what is your condition? I've got Ulcerative
Colitis, and tried a similar diet (the Specific Carbohydrate Diet) to
reasonable success. I've also had a few rounds of Infliximab (Remicade), which
has helped me reach remission.

~~~
WBrentWilliams
You quite correctly diagnosed my ailment and diet. I wasn't (and still am not)
wild about being on Infliximab, but it's better than the alternative. I'm also
quite thankful for my University position and the very good insurance that
comes with it.

~~~
frio
To take this completely off-topic: I was surprised when the SCD had a good
effect. I found it wasn't 100% accurate; there were certain food groups I
could tolerate, and others that I couldn't. Which the diet accounts for;
everyone's physiology is different. However, for what it's worth, I (and a
group of people in a local UC group) found the low FODMAP diet correlated well
(which is more recently researched than the SCD, and a little easier to
manage). Unfortunately for me, my illness also overcame the strengths of the
diet.

Here's the "one weird trick" part though. There's a documented negative
correlation between appendectomies and occurrence of UC/Crohn's. There's
early, but growing evidence that an appendectomy may work as a treatment for
some types of UC (at least in the young). After my last flare, we tried an
appendectomy -- the alternatives were a lifetime of Infliximab (which is
expensive for our public health system), or a full colectomy (which, in all
honesty, I was leaning towards anyway). It worked, and I'm now in full
remission. I don't know whether it'll be lasting, but my related eye
conditions (which persisted during a limited round of treatment with
Infliximab during an earlier flare) have vanished too. I've since relaxed my
diet, although I still have a lot of probiotic yoghurt.

It's worth checking Google Scholar -- there are some openly available
literature reviews. I believe there's some discussion on
[https://crohnology.com/](https://crohnology.com/) too :).

Good luck with your illness. It's a hard road, no matter which path you take.

------
qthrul
If the lab animals were getting "fatter" decade over decade then I have to
wonder if the lab animals were living in lab environments that were
increasingly air conditioned or steady state temperatures decade over decade
as well.

Seeking out some kind of mystery trace compound seems like an invitation to
overlook more basic environmental factors like the living conditions.

------
yummyfajitas
_One recent model estimated that eating a mere 30 calories a day more than you
use is enough to lead to serious weight gain._

The article here is being a bit misleading. The calories in/calories out model
says that if you add 30 calories/day to your diet, you will get a little
fatter and stop.

[http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/weight_stability.html](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/weight_stability.html)

If you actually experience serious weight gain, it's because you first added
30 calories/day to your diet, then added 30 more, and continued for a long
time.

[http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/inanity_of_overeating...](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/inanity_of_overeating.html)

This is nonsense that Gary Taubes was pushing a few years back - it's sad to
see that it's become a mainstream meme, particularly when simple arithmetic
shows it's misleading.

The article goes further off the rails: _Why, if body weight is a matter of
individual decisions about what to eat, should it be affected by differences
in wealth or by relations between the sexes?_

Clearly, a woman living in India will make the exact same choices as a woman
in Sweden - her environment will never lead to different choices.

This idea that gaining/losing weight is hard is nonsense. I do it regularly.
About 7 months ago I was finishing up a bulk - I weighed 240lb, and added an
extra 45lb for chinups. After my cut I was 196 and rocking a 6 pack.

I ate 5 meals a day plus a snack while bulking, little more than rice and dal
and some eggs while cutting. It's called self control.

~~~
aianus
> This idea that gaining/losing weight is hard is nonsense.

Fat people have it easy, they only have to deal with the discomfort of eating
too little.

Gaining weight is on a whole different level. I can try to play through the
pain and eat more when I'm already full but it doesn't do me any good if I
throw it back up or have diarrhea. Both of which happen frequently as soon as
I start trying to bulk.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Yeah, I should have been clearer that a bulk can be difficult - I was mainly
focusing on the cut, which is what most people claim is hard.

Certainly there are people who gain a lot more muscle from a bulk than I do.
I'm on the wrong side of 30...

------
alecco
I'm a skeptic. But this article rings way too much like what the tobacco
industry published back in the 50s and 60s. And what climate change deniers
published more openly in recent times. Ask any dietician, in particular
pediatrics. Ask any obesity researcher. They are super clear on what's going
on with the current obesity epidemic. And they squarely blame soft drinks and
processed foods with their multibillion dollar advertising budgets.

Confusion and distraction. That's what trillion-dollar industries do when they
are cornered.

Remember, many contrarian science authors were later exposed as shills. Like
Malcolm Gladwell. Also, it might not be a matter of influence. Contrarian
articles get a lot more viewers by people in denial, guilt-shifting and all.

So, I'm very skeptical to this skeptical piece. But it's worth reading.

~~~
Pxtl
I work in public health research and the blame on soft-drinks is not
unanimous. Soft drinks are pointed-at because they're the simplest target.
Dropping soft-drinks is not a life-shatteringly hard change to make, and it's
effective.

But at the same time, other things are being assessed for their contribution.
Suburban sprawl, the dual-income household, and the rise of more sedentary
hobbies are all being examined.

Now, soft drinks are still _a_ cause for the modern obesity epidemic, just not
_the_ cause. There are many other shifts in modern lifestyles that are also
contributing.

edit: clarification. Also, caveat: I'm IT in public health, not a researcher.

~~~
AJ007
Anything that spikes blood sugar is going to cause problems because the
individual is stuck riding a sugar high and attempting to prevent or get out
of the following crash. This is a daily, hour to hour struggle. Describing it
as anything less would be a disservice. Trying to not eat after a blood sugar
crash is as difficult as a male with peak testosterone passing up sex.

Dropping soft drinks, if you substitute with water/tea/coffee, will be a life
altering change. I did it, dropped 10 pounds within a month, never gained it
back, (already fairly thin at that point) and stopped getting cavities. Over
the following years it made it so much easier to convert my diet from
pizza/frozen foods to fresh vegetables and unprocessed meat. I drink minimal
alcohol, but for those individuals who drink heavily giving up soft drinks may
not prove to have much or any impact.

There are food products that should be consumed rarely -- holidays, and humans
are consuming them every day. The behavior goes from every day to perhaps 50%
of the food consumed is stuff that any registered dietician will say isn't
very healthy for you. Just sit in a grocery store and watch what morbidly
obese people purchase verse someone who is thin and fit (and not a drug
addict.) Night and day.

The science has come a really long way since I was a child in only the 1990s.
We believed the only healthy diets were extremely low fat. Get rid of fat
whenever possible, exercise, and you will be very healthy. No on credible
believes that anymore. The problem now is largely behavior modification
methods. Perhaps a success with behavior modification will trigger challenges
pivoting the US food supply off corn/soy/wheat production but that is
solvable.

~~~
judk
What's wrong with soy, as a health concern? I have only heard monoculture GMO
and industrial land mismanagement concerns

------
jqm
I can't imagine being overweight. But I don't consider this some sort of
virtue. I think I just don't have the appetite some people do. Sometimes I get
tired and worn out and then consciously realize it's because I haven't eaten.
And this before I actually feel hunger. I assume some people just feel hunger
more than others. Maybe this is because I don't eat a lot of junk. Who
knows.... but we do vary. Why the epidemic? Maybe junk?

------
ZoF
I was 293 pounds as of last November, 199.6 as of last night(although that was
after a run and before dinner so I'd actually place my weight at ~203 right
now). I'm 6'3".

What follows is anecdotal opinion based upon my own inherently flawed
perception and interpretation of said weight loss. Even if my
experiences/difficulties are representative of societies as a whole, the
nature of self-analysis over a long period of time is such that any
conclusions I draw here should be taken with some degree of skepticism.

The three most difficult aspects of weight loss for me were:

a.) Accepting that there wasn't a quick fix.

b.) Accepting that I'm not rational.

c.) Accepting that it was my own actions that got me to this point. (and, to
some degree, forgiving myself)

I ate ~600 calories a day from November 2013 - June 2014. From June 2014 - Now
I've been eating ~1600 calories a day.

Before that I had attempted(among a myriad of other things) eating
nothing(hhehehe) with the full intention of starving myself until I had
reached a healthy weight range. In retrospect, it seems entirely illogical, so
many of my decisions in that time period did.

It took me longer than I'd like to admit to accept that the starvation-relapse
cycle was likely doing more harm than good. Similarly, the acceptance that one
day of too-intense exercise wasn't worth the following 3-day
recovery/justification period of inactivity. It's better to intake a
sustainable amount of calories and to partake in a sustainable amount of
exercise.

With this realized(and a plan-of-action of some sort in place), the largest
difficulty for me was irrationality. I found fighting it with logic,
reasoning, and fact was the solution. Weighing myself regularly was hugely
important. It was interesting to see how transient my interpretation of my own
self-image was; having a record of my actual weight made it much easier to
overcome any unjustified self-loathing.

I had bad days, relapses, especially towards the beginning. I _strongly_
believe that weight gain, much like depression, is a vicious self-feeding
cycle. Weight-loss/fitness is a self-feeding cycle as well, the difference
being that eating _will_ provide you immediate satisfaction, whereas the
benefits reaped from exercise/diet need to be manufactured in your own head.

With regards to exercise, I started with running one mile a day, eventually
two/three(and so on), I would take several day breaks in between at the
beginning; as of now, the last time I ran less than six miles was over a week
ago. I also started lifting back in June when I increased my caloric intake.

I'm definitely interested to see how I handle maintaining my weight once I
reach my target of ~185.

The differences in energy/mood/confidence are amazing, highly recommended my
fellow humans :)

------
tokenadult
The article notes a fact that so far hasn't come up in the discussion here:
"For the first time in human history, overweight people outnumber the
underfed, and obesity is widespread in wealthy and poor nations alike. The
diseases that obesity makes more likely — diabetes, heart ailments, strokes,
kidney failure — are rising fast across the world, and the World Health
Organisation predicts that they will be the leading causes of death in all
countries, even the poorest, within a couple of years." This is a good
corrective to many theories about obesity, because cross-national comparisons
will show that people can become obese on a variety of diets, and not all
countries that have rising rates of obesity have the mix of foodstuffs as the
United States.

I saw the submission and the first few comments before I cooked a home-cooked
meal for my sons. (My wife is coming home from a soccer tournament trip with
our daughter, so it is definitely my turn to cook this evening.) A book
recommended in an earlier thread by a Hacker News participant, _The Diet Fix:
Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work_ ,[1] intrigued me enough when it
was recommended here that I checked it out of my public library and read it
cover to cover. The book is sensible and based on both scientific research and
the author's own experience as someone who likes to eat a lot. The advice in
the book boils down in large part to 1) do your own cooking, 2) know that your
diet will fail every time you eat out, and 3) keep a food diary if you really
want to be aware of what you eat. I do number 1 almost all the time. By the
official designations on the United States federal government body-mass index
website,[2] my current body mass index classifies as "overweight," but that is
the optimal weight range for a middle-aged adult, epidemiologically, for
longer lifespan. But correlations found in observational studies do not prove
causation, and I might not be any worse off if I lost a bit of weight to come
down to the "normal" weight range I was in during most of early adulthood.
Until I was in my late twenties (that is, until after I got married), was thin
--no, make that gaunt--because I did all my own cooking and I tried to spend
as little as possible on food. I wonder how much my experience is different
from that of other people I see commenting here on Hacker News because of age
--I am a generation older than most participants here--and how much is
different because of birth cohort--just about everyone I knew when I was
growing up was slim.

All around the developed world, Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at
even higher ages is still rising.[4] But obesity (overweight that is more
excessive than just being "overweight") is still increasing in all those
countries, and indeed in nearly all countries of the world. Animal
experimental models are pretty convincing about obsesity-as-such causing many
kinds of illness and early mortality, and it will be an interesting question
to see if obesity trends outrun the other trends that are improving healthy
lifespan for most people in most places at all ages.

The article reminds us of the astonishing fact that this trend even cuts
across species, as long as the species are in the care of current human
beings: "Consider, for example, this troublesome fact, reported in 2010 by the
biostatistician David B Allison and his co-authors at the University of
Alabama in Birmingham: over the past 20 years or more, as the American people
were getting fatter, so were America’s marmosets. As were laboratory macaques,
chimpanzees, vervet monkeys and mice, as well as domestic dogs, domestic cats,
and domestic and feral rats from both rural and urban areas. In fact, the
researchers examined records on those eight species and found that average
weight for every one had increased. The marmosets gained an average of nine
per cent per decade. Lab mice gained about 11 per cent per decade. Chimps, for
some reason, are doing especially badly: their average body weight had risen
35 per cent per decade. Allison, who had been hearing about an unexplained
rise in the average weight of lab animals, was nonetheless surprised by the
consistency across so many species. 'Virtually in every population of animals
we looked at, that met our criteria, there was the same upward trend,' he told
me." Exhorting lab animals to exercise more is of course not likely to help
them much.

After the author reviews a number of hypotheses about obesity and possible
causes for obesity rates rising, most of which we have discussed before here
on HN, the summary paragraph makes an important point: "No one has claimed, or
should claim, that any of these 'roads less taken' is the one true cause of
obesity, to drive out the false idol of individual choice. Neither should we
imagine that the existence of alternative theories means that governments can
stop trying to forestall a major public-health menace. These theories are
important for a different reason. Their very existence — the fact that they
are plausible, with some supporting evidence and suggestions for further
research — gives the lie to the notion that obesity is a closed question, on
which science has pronounced its final word. It might be that every one of the
'roads less travelled' contributes to global obesity; it might be that some do
in some places and not in others. The openness of the issue makes it clear
that obesity isn't a simple school physics experiment." In other words, we
still have to do a lot of research, and as I noted as I began my comment,
maybe different countries have different obsesity problems with different
causes.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Diet-Fix-Diets-
Yours/dp/0804137579](http://www.amazon.com/The-Diet-Fix-Diets-
Yours/dp/0804137579)

[2]
[http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmic...](http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmicalc.htm)

[3] [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-obesity-
paradox/](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-obesity-paradox/)

[4]
[http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...](http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box/scientificamerican0912-54_BX1.html)

------
michaelochurch
What's amazing to me, and a bit shameful, is that we haven't figured out a
safe way to speed up the body's metabolism to the rate of a 95th-percentile
17-year-old. That's a level that we know is safe. (Obviously, if you increased
the metabolism too far, you'd run into issues with heat stroke and
malnourishment.) I'm astonished that we haven't found a treatment that can let
everyone have that.

I think that obesity is maybe 10 to 20% personal fault. Some people overeat,
or eat stupidly, and I've seen that. However, I think that socioeconomic
forces (and food supply issues, and I wouldn't be surprised if ambient toxins
were involved) produce most of the remainder. There are a lot of people who
eat reasonably, exercise as much as they reasonably can given their work
commitments, and are still fat. We're not supposed to live in the
psychological monoculture of modern work, or to have inflexible 8- to 12-hour
commitments on the majority of our days. Inactivity and low energy levels (a
consequence of living amid hierarchical, bureaucratic organizations in which
almost everyone's a subordinate) do a lot of damage. The trans fats and high
fructose corn syrup aren't doing people any favors.

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nardi
That is an amazing title. Bravo.

