

Speed of eating 'key to obesity' - chegra
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7681458.stm

======
RiderOfGiraffes
I'd like to believe this, and have no real trouble doing so, but I've just
spent the last several hours on activities that require me to be a complete
sceptic, so here are some thoughts:

================================

The researchers have found a statistical link. What they haven't yet done is
design a controlled experiment whose outcome is predicted by this apparent
correlation and then done the experiment.

A UK nutrition expert says that problems in signalling systems which tell the
body when to stop eating _may_ be partly responsible. _[emphasis mine]_

He said deliberately slowing down at mealtimes _might_ impact on weight.
_[emphasis mine]_

Australian researchers ... said that a mechanism that helps make us fat today
may, until relatively recently, have been an evolutionary advantage, helping
us grab more food when resources were scarce. _[What mechanism? No mechanism
has been proposed.]_

Dr Jason Halford ... said: "What the Japanese research shows is that
individual differences in eating behaviour underlie over-consumption of food
and are linked to obesity." _[No, it showed there is a statistical link.
Perhaps people who tend to be overweight have a drive to eat quickly.]_

"Other research has found evidence of this in childhood, suggesting that it
could be inherited or learned at a very early age." _[What other evidence? No
hint of references given, so we can't find out for ourselves.]_

... there was no evidence yet that trying to slow down mealtimes for children
would have an impact on future obesity rates. _[So the one piece of
experimental procedure that might really confirm this either hasn't been done,
or doesn't support the conclusion.]_

================================

Having said all that, when I lost weight recently I worked hard on eating more
slowly, and I do feel that it helped me feel less hungry on my 1600 kCal/day
"diet". My own experience would support the claims, but that's just anecdote.

It's not science, and neither is what the article reports. It's typical media.

~~~
jules
The mights don't really mean anything. This is just how scientists talk.

~~~
tel
It's a style built out of a community of skeptics design to encourage further
skepticism — so RoG is right on the money, right?

------
goodside
There's an obvious alternative explanation here: Overweight people are
generally hungrier than average. Hungrier people also tend to eat faster.
Eating speed does not cause obesity, but correlates with it because it proxies
a general propensity toward hunger.

Still, I suspect the article's conclusion is at least partially right, even if
it's a bit sensationalized, but the present evidence is fully consistent with
a non-causal relationship as well.

~~~
gaius
Have you ever eaten a meal, and afterwards felt uncomfortably full? Or have
you ever been interrupted halfway through a meal and when you came back, you
didn't want to finish it?

It takes about 20 minutes for satiety to kick in - the feeling that is the
opposite of hunger. The stomach takes this long to communicate with the brain.
If you eat quickly, you spend longer in the window of time between when you
have eaten enough and when the sensation of hunger diminishes. That's the key.

~~~
jerf
Yes, but when I stuff myself on one meal, accidentally or otherwise, my next
meal is smaller or sometimes even nonexistent. That won't _a priori_ lead to
obesity.

This does nothing to address the real question, does overeating cause obesity
or does obesity cause overeating? I'd be much happier if the dietary research
community would stop designing experiments that are intrinsically blind to
that question and start actually examining it.

("Good Calories, Bad Calories" has already been brought up, but I would point
out that if there is anything to take away from that book, it is not that he
has proved the point that obesity causes overeating, rather than the other way
around. The point he _really_ proves is that it is a reasonable hypothesis
that fits the facts, including the experiments that have been done, and it has
_not been adequately tested_. It has been unscientifically discarded-by-axiom.
If it is put to the test and fails, so be it. But this appears to be _yet
another_ experiment that fails to distinguish between the two cases at all,
and therefore is not all that interesting to me. This, BTW, is not news to
Taubes, it is all he really claims, too.)

~~~
euccastro
_If_ the mechanism that stores glucose into fat is triggered by glucose peaks,
as some people claim ("graze don't gorge"), then stuffing yourself in one meal
and skipping the next may lead to more fat accumulated for the same calorie
intake.

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Evgeny
Personal anecdote: I eat quite fast and I have no troubles keeping my weight
at a stable 75kg at 178cm height. Secret? Well, I know generally how much I
eat, so that's how much I put on my plate. When it's finished, it's finished,
no matter if it took me 5 or 50 minutes to munch through stuff. And of course,
if I sometimes give in and consume a lot of pizza, ice cream or similar - I
will see my weight go upwards, even if I eat that pizza veeeery slow...

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jasonkester
It never ceases to amaze me that otherwise smart people will sit down to a
meal and eat until they are physically incapable of stuffing more food into
themselves. Every single time. The concept of "meal" is synonymous with eating
until full, rather than eating until no longer hungry.

Further amazement comes when these same people, now obese, don't immediately
do something about it. If you had any other terminal condition, you would do
anything in your power to fix it. If you're fat, you just ignore it and get on
with life.

It all seems so simple, watching from the outside.

------
micheljansen
Although this is a pretty old article, I think it's still pretty relevant.

Interestingly, a colleague of mine has graduated on the subject by designing
an augmented dinner plate to help people adjust their speed of eating:
<http://www.lissakooijman.nl/changing%20eating%20patterns.htm>

She's currently working with dieticians and people suffering from obesity to
develop this into a product. I don't know all the details, but they certainly
seem to benefit from changing their eating habits.

------
narrator
The only thing that affects how much weight you gain or lose over a period of
time is calorie consumption, your height, age and weight, and to a lesser
extent, your activity level.

Here's everything you need to know:
<http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/hackdiet.html>

Literally, that's it. Read the hacker diet and you won't need to listen to or
read another thing about dieting for the rest of your life.

------
davidwparker
Based on my personal experience in the military, I'd have to disagree with
this. Perhaps obese people are just plain hungrier and that drives them to eat
faster? But eating faster in itself does not lead to obesity.

------
ck2
Correlation does not imply causation, though there is probably some truth
here.

------
jacksoncarter
The key to obesity is simple:

    
    
      Calories In > Calories Burned = Weight Gain
    

If you consume calories that you do not burn, you store them for later use in
fat. Is that simple answer incorrect or do people refuse to believe it because
they don't want to increase output or consume less?

This is a subject of irrationality I have trouble understanding. The answer is
there and known, but it isn't believed or accepted or something. Or do we
accept it, but we just have a greater desire to avoid manual labor than change
our habits.

~~~
goodside
"If you consume calories that you do not burn, you store them for later use in
fat."

This is completely and utterly not true. There is significant caloric content
in excrement, and countless factors that determine how much of the food you
consume is absorbed or excreted. Many weight-loss drugs (e.g., orlistat) exert
their effects by preventing absorption rather than consumption.

~~~
jacksoncarter
If I change the word "consume" in my comment to "absorb" then the point is the
same. I'm not really one to care to argue about particular words used in the
discussion, but more the point of the discussion.

If you consume fewer calories, you also absorb fewer calories. Is that not
true?

Your comment only reinforces my point, which is that people would rather
consume more, that is, pay for a doctor to prescribe a drug, pay for the drug,
consume the drug on a regular basis, than simply consume less food or do more
work. I'm sure orlistat has a huge list of side effects. It probably does
stuff to your body they don't even know about. It would be better to consume
less food or burn more calories than to consume a drug to enable the
overweight person to consume more food than they need. And think of the moral
implications of over-consumption. Doesn't it seem odd that we are selling
people pills to enable them to consume more than they need? What about those
who need more than they get?

Yet, people choose to consume the drug. The question is, Why? and you didn't
even come close to answering that question, but rather focused on a semantic
issue that doesn't move us any closer to _understanding_.

At one point, I too was overweight. I ate 3 big meals a day, I sat behind a
computer all day. I never exercised. Then I started eating less and exercising
and I lost weight and became healthier.

~~~
goodside
I'm not involved in any great moral war between discipline and sloth. I'm a
civilian. I'm sorry for making you waste your bullets.

The factors that determine how much of one's food intake passes through the
body undigested are numerous, and the overall effect is far from negligible.
In addition to possible effect of eating speed discussed in the article,
caloric absorption is impacted by food's flavor intensity, its texture
(particularly whether it's wet or dry), how readily the food can be converted
to glucose (glycemic index), whether the flavor has been previously associated
with elevated glucose in the the subject, what time of day the food is
consumed, how long it's been since the previous meal, how much food is
consumed in a sitting, whether the food is consumed along with flavored
beverages (even calorie-free ones), and whether consumption is followed by
physical activity, rest, or sleep.

Your point was that weight-gain is simple. It is not.

