"If you want to stay lean, you'll want bacteria that are not very efficient"
I hope this article isn't suggesting that it is preferable to have less efficient digestive systems so that we can all eat more. Given the environmental impact of food production these efficient digestion microbes are something we should encourage. Maybe they are harmful because of insulin spikes ? But the article doesn't mention this.
You're partly right. The primary byproduct of bacterial fermentation is short-chain fatty acids. These do in fact stimulate the release of peptide YY, which reduces gastric motility. It is extremely unlikely that the bacteria are the ones "hacking" us though; short chain fatty acid production is the result of fairly ubiquitous, low level pathways whereas modulation of hormone release is a fairly specialized, high level function.
The energy surplus builds up obesity is on the order of 1%. It's not nothing, but it is marginal compared to the effect of food type choices do to the environment.
Environmentally the chief problem is that we are gorging ourselves on luxury foods (red meat as prime offender) that do enormous amounts of environmental damage and are actively harmful to our bodies. More broadly using the majority of farmland for animal feed is the issue. We need a major shift of diets to veggie.
(Awareness of animal treatment issues in the meat industry would help the cause too, but tangential issue...)
The problem is the efficiency in different things.
I have a disease that makes me very inefficient in absorbing protein and vitamins.
The amount of stuff (in both food, and actual medicinal supplements) I consume to just keep my body working, of course has calories in it, I don't want a efficient calorie absorption...
When your calories in is greater than your calories out, you gain fat. The point that the article is making is that one collection of gut bacteria may be more efficient at extracting calories from the same food than another collection, resulting in more "calories in."
What is disconcerting is the idea of engineering your gut bacteria to be less efficient at absorbing calories and nutrients in order to not require self control about what you give your body in the first place.
> When your calories in is greater than your calories out, you gain fat.
Wrong. Calorie surplus is neither necessary for nor a guarantee of fat gain.
When your calories in are greater than your calories out, you gain net energy content of body mass. If you have very low body fat already, you aren't going to be able to gain lean body mass without increasing net energy content, which means a calorie surplus; and a calorie surplus can sometimes, AFAIK, be beneficial in building lean body mass even if you haven't already driven your body fat %age to a very low level.
Conversely, you can gain body fat while losing lean body mass with a calorie deficit.
> What is disconcerting is the idea of engineering your gut bacteria to be less efficient at absorbing calories and nutrients in order to not require self control about what you give your body in the first place.
Why is that disconcerting? If excessive efficiency in this one function is associated with adverse health outcomes, and people with less efficient (than the level raising concern) gut microbiomes tend toward healthier weights and better health outcomes, preference for maximum efficiency in this area is a harmful microoptimization, like optimizing a firm's software development operations for maximum lines of code produced per day rather than business functionality delivered.
> Conversely, you can gain body fat while losing lean body mass with a calorie deficit.
Do you have any sources for this? I'm curious because it matches my experience the handful of times I've attempted even fairly harsh caloric restriction. A month or two in and my weight drops such a small fraction of what all "weight loss" calculators suggest it should (like, 1/20) that I doubt the "calories in, calories out, it's so simple bro!" crowd would believe me.
Meanwhile, anaerobic exercise cuts fat and builds muscle on me like crazy. Way, way more effective. Too bad since I find it way easier to cut calories (time commitment of zero, if not negative).
A calorie surplus is pretty necessary for a substantial weight gain. Let's include some control for water retention when measuring weight in the meaning of substantial there.
You seem to do this a lot, writing some pedantic elaboration on the wording of a comment while carefully ignoring the thrust of the meaning. Of course precision is useful to communication, but yeesh.
> A calorie surplus is pretty necessary for a substantial weight gain.
Sure, but that still doesn't justify the upthread claim "When your calories in is greater than your calories out, you gain fat."
You can maintain a calorie surplus and not gain fat, and if you are intending to gain a substantial quantity of lean body mass, you will need to. (That you can gain fat, within a certain range, while losing lean body mass on a calorie deficit was a less important aspect of my response; the key part was that the claim "moar calories => moar fat" is significantly wrong.
> You seem to do this a lot, writing some pedantic elaboration on the wording of a comment while carefully ignoring the thrust of the meaning.
The thrust of the meaning was that calorie surplus/deficit alone controls body fat. This is fundamentally and critically wrong, because it ignores the fact that activity patterns and other factors will control whether a calories surplus (for example) manifests in fat gain (with constant or decreasing muscle) or muscle gain (with constant or decreasing fat) or both muscle and fat gain in some ratio.
> Wrong. Calorie surplus is neither necessary for nor a guarantee of fat gain.
I was excluding exercise from my (admittedly) very simplistic rule of thumb of weight gain. You seem to have a general understanding of nutrition, so I would say to you that it is absolutely disingenuous to those who don't have that understanding to say that calorie surplus != fat gain. It's a general rule, and it applies to the majority of people.
> Why is that disconcerting?
It's disconcerting in the same way that liposuction is disconcerting. You could make very similar arguments about liposuction as you did about gut engineering: if it improves health, then it's a good thing. But at the end of the day, it doesn't address the issue of being able to control what you do with your body in the interest of your health. Getting too fat? Just reset your gut bacteria, regardless of what other unknown hormone changes it will have. It's ridiculous.
> It's disconcerting in the same way that liposuction is disconcerting. You could make very similar arguments about liposuction as you did about gut engineering: if it improves health, then it's a good thing.
Liposuction is generally cosmetic; I'm not aware of it ever being indicated for health reasons. (Though, given that, while most body fat changes do not involve changes in the number of fat cells, just growing or shrinking existing cells, extreme adult weight gain does result in gaining additional fat cells which don't go away with weight loss, its at least plausible that there might be some situations where it would be the best approximation to achieving the state the body would have had without the intervening extreme weight gain.)
> But at the end of the day, it doesn't address the issue of being able to control what you do with your body in the interest of your health.
If overweight people have more efficient gut microbiomes, the problem they have compared to normal-weight people isn't a self-control problem, its a gut biome problem. Insisting that it must be addressed as a self-control problem (dubious whatever the source of the problem is, if that's not the most efficient intervention) seems downright perverse.
> Insisting that it must be addressed as a self-control problem (dubious whatever the source of the problem is, if that's not the most efficient intervention) seems downright perverse.
Perverse is taking a high-functioning part of your body (the efficiency of your gut bacteria) and destroying completely it because you don't want to stop eating more than your body needs. Especially since we know how much our gut bacteria affects our body in general.
> Perverse is taking a high-functioning part of your body (the efficiency of your gut bacteria) and destroying completely it because you don't want to stop eating more than your body needs.
Viewing something operating out of normal parameters that provide desired outcomes is, as I stated upthread, a harmful microoptimization.
High-function is hitting the ideal for your needs, not just getting bigger numbers on some measure that ignores its role in the system. With many body systems, excessive function is bad, and when we understand how it is bad and how to treat it, we do.
We don't complain that is bad to treat a "high-functioning" immune system and that people with disorders resulting from overactive immune systems should instead learn the self-control to avoid triggers rather than seeking treatment.
I'm really surprised at how hard you are pushing this gut bacteria idea. As I said elsewhere, we've barely scratched the surface of how our bodies are affected by changes in our gut bacteria, and you seem immediately on board with changing it completely in order to help lose weight. As I, and others, have said, there is a simpler solution, one that applies positively to all aspects of health and happiness in life: self-control. But you seem bent on the idea that 2/3rds of adults considered overweight or obese have "abnormal gut bacteria" and the best solution for them is to completely rewrite it, consequences be damned. No point continuing this argument.
> I'm really surprised at how hard you are pushing this gut bacteria idea.
I'm really surprised at how hard you are twisting what I've said.
> As I said elsewhere, we've barely scratched the surface of how our bodies are affected by changes in our gut bacteria, and you seem immediately on board with changing it completely in order to help lose weight.
Questioning your basis for finding the idea that interventions involving gut bacteria might be applied, and then challenging the validity of statements you offered in response is different from being "completely on board" with particular interventions. I think its an interesting line of research that opens up both a potential better understanding of the source of the current epidemic and, to some extent independently of whether it does that, might also open a very productive avenue for interventions in an area where the tools we have clearly aren't working very well.
> As I, and others, have said, there is a simpler solution, one that applies positively to all aspects of health and happiness in life: self-control.
Self-control is not a solution -- its a state. A solution is a course of action that can result in a desired state.
> But you seem bent on the idea that 2/3rds of adults considered overweight or obese have "abnormal gut bacteria"
Er, no, I've never said all overweight adults have abnormal gut bacteria. (I wouldn't be surprised if there was a significant correlation, to be sure.)
> and the best solution for them is to completely rewrite it, consequences be damned.
I don't recall ever arguing that the best solution for all (or even any) is to do that; I have said if the evidence shows that the most effective intervention for overall health some subset of that population involves intervention directed at the gut microbiome, it makes no sense to insist that it must be solely addressed as a self-control problem.
You seem to be wedded to the idea of a one-size fits all solution to the extent that not only is it what you offer, but that you can't even see anyone disagreeing with you as offering anything but the same type of solution.
- Yet another step towards not having to be responsible for your own actions & choices
- Given how big of an impact agriculture has on the planet, figuring out how to allow people to eat many times more food simply for the sake of eating it seems... irresponsible to say the least. If anything we should be working in the other direction, so that people require less food.
> Given how big of an impact agriculture has on the planet, figuring out how to allow people to eat many times more food simply for the sake of eating it seems... irresponsible to say the least.
If this environmental concern justifies compelling people who are born with unusually efficient microbiomes to not have that condition treated and corrected, despite the health benefits, does it also compel people born with normally or under efficient gut microbiomes to have that "condition" treated and corrected so that they have more environmentally-sound, hyper-efficient gut microbiomes, notwithstanding the health and weight-management challenges that will pose for them.
Are their other health conditions that people ought to leave untreated to reduce environmental footprint? I mean, certainly if we just didn't treat life-threatening conditions and let people die, we'd save both their downstream food consumption and the resources (some of which are themselves, or have as inputs, agricultural products) used in the treatments, which, if "the impact agriculture has on the planet" is sufficient to deny treatments that might increase it, ought to be a compelling concern.
(Of course, on the other hand, since part of the point of treating extra-efficient gut microbiomes is to help people lose weight, which will [by reducing maintenance needs] mitigate the agriculture impact they have from its initial peak, and reduce the energy cost of transporting them, etc. -- often born through fossil fuels, which also have a tremendous impact on the plant -- I'm not convinced that even on its own terms your criticism is all that well thought out beyond the very short-term impacts.)
> More than 1 in 3 adults are considered to be obese.
> More than 1 in 6 children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are considered to be obese.
Do you mean to say that 33% of quantifiably obese adults have unusually efficient gut bacteria? These aren't strange outliers, it's one third of the adult population.
> Do you mean to say that 33% of quantifiably obese adults have unusually efficient gut bacteria?
Its not implausible that a substantial share of them do; there's a lot of interesting hints in recent research suggesting that elements of modern lifestyles in the US may have substantially affected gut microbiomes over the last several generations, starting with very early life changes that affect the way they get initially established.
An important part of the obesity epidemic -- though almost certainly not its sole cause; diet and activity pattern changes with effects other than via the composition of the microbiome certainly exist -- may well be widespread disruption of normal gut microbiome.
You are putting words in his mouth here, as I read it, as you rely on your belief that obesity can only be the result of overeating.
- The microbiome is a factor, which is only in the past few years being explored.
- thyroid hormone levels are a big factor
- genetics are a factor (note that identical twins raised in different environments tend to end up more alike each other in BMI than like their siblings in the same environment)
- genetic low-response to cardio (check out the recent University of Bath study)
- viruses are a factor (AD-36 being one known one)
One thing that changes gut flora is the amount of fibre a person eats. If a nation eats less fibre it makes sense that a large portion of that nation will experience changes in gut flora.
Your assumption is that obese / overweight individuals are seeking abnormally inefficient bacteria, as opposed to their perhaps having abnormally efficient microbes. I'm sure the world of the overweight is comprised of many types: those who simply overeat beyond their "normal" bacteria's ability, those who eat their way to super-efficiency, those who accidentally (antibiotics, food poisoning maybe, Caesarean-section-delivery -- who knows?) arrive there, etc.
Simply labeling it a problem of self-control paints with far too wide (and pejorative) a brush. Let's assume a hospitalization somehow leaves you with a more efficient gut -- how easily can you stop eating, say, 250 calories a day? (Research shows: not easily, and not forever.)
Also a very bad assumption, but that I see a lot, is that increasing or decreased absorption and use of one nutrient affect all others equally...
I have Hashimoto's Disease, and people tell me that I should just eat less, to stop gaining weight randomly...
The problem is that I absorb calories too easily, and use them too slow, while I have problems absorbing everything else (and using everything else).
The result is that I need a very high protein and vitamin intake (medics even told me to use some supplements, for example it has been years that I am taking vitamin D in the maximum "safe" known dosage, and my blood levels are still in the "dangerously low" level) to keep my body barely working properly (Barely because I struggle to keep lean mass, not only in muscles, but also hair, nails, skin... my hair is constantly falling, nails break for no reason, and sometimes layers of my skin start to peel off).
But the amount of resources I need to keep my body working, has in themselves more calories than my body uses...
So my choices are: don't eat and get rapidly worsening health, or eat and get fat.
Sorry, the article doesn't say that at all. It does say:
"If you want to stay lean, you'll want bacteria that are not very efficient," says Claire Fraser, a professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Comments like this piss me off so much. The article was about the role of gut microbes in weight loss, and you're here preaching diet advice that has nothing to do with the article.
The top comment does the same thing telling people to worry about caloric intake when the evidence is with higher protein and fat diets to lose weight.
I don't even know where to begin with all the pseudo-science half truths and ignorance in this post. For starters, basically all the blue zone diets are high carb with low to moderate fat, lots of vegetables and fairly limited animal products. Elite athletes prefer high carb diets by an overwhelming majority. Multiple studies have demonstrated the beneficial effects of carbohydrate intake on the gut microbiota. Just about the only population where low carb, high fat makes sense is sedentary people who are morbidly obese and highly insulin resistant.
By the way, congrats on finding a lifestyle that works __for you__. Don't go around preaching like it's the one true path. Nobody likes a zealot.
Elite athletes prefer high carb diets by an overwhelming majority.
Really? Your (modern) data for this is... ?
Elite athletes pay more attention to nutrition now than ever; can you name any with a 60%+ carb intake? The days of the "carb loading for endurance" myth are long past.
A pre-competition glycogen depletion training block, where a significant amount of medium intensity training is logged in a fasted/glycogen depleted state, followed by a glycogen load immediately prior to competition is the gold standard in terms of competition preparation for sports that need a mix of aerobic and anaerobic endurance.
As for athletes that get the majority of their surplus calories from carbs rather than fat, look up various world champions and google their diet:
There is a bit of movement towards paleo eating in the MMA community (though oats, potatoes, rice and dairy are still typically consumed) and offseason bodybuilders/powerlifters will frequently eat a balanced mix of carbs and fat. Almost nobody at the top levels does low carb/high fat though.
>Keto, Adkins, etc...They work. But they're not diets. It's a healthy lifestyle choice.
Diets don't work because diets end. I have heard before "If you have an goal that you consider the 'end' of your diet, you've already failed".
A lifestyle change is what is needed to lose weight and keep it off. If you reach your weight and "stop dieting", that just means you're reverting back to the habits that lead to your original weight gain...
Please don't listen to blanket nonsense like stop eating carbs. They are not unhealthy, and serve as fuel for whatever exercise/activity you choose to do. Exercise more and eat a well balanced diet including carbs, fat, and protein.
> Keto, Adkins, etc...They work. But they're not diets.
Its "Atkins". And they absolutely are diets.
> It's a healthy lifestyle choice.
The aspect of lifestyle that concerns what foods you consume is called "diet". Keto, Atkins, etc. are lifestyle choices, and the specific kind of lifestyle choices they are is diets.
> Two years ago I was 70kg. Now I'm 59 ~ 61kg on average, I have more muscle mass, more energy and I feel great.
Two years ago I was 150kg. Now I'm 127kg on average. I have a lot more muscle mass, more energy, and I feel great. And I haven't taken a radically low-carb diet (and, in fact, the biggest change I made was exercise -- I stabilized my weight before that with a diet change that I've sustained, but not a radically low-carb one, though I've tried radically low-carb diets in the past, with no success [though not as much adverse health impact as my wife had when she tried them].)
Most people wanting to lose (or stop gaining) weight in the US could probably use cutting their intake across the board, and simultaneously cutting the share of that made up by carbs. Radically carb-cutting is useful for lots of people, but not everyone.
Most people could also use more exercise (again, any particular radical program may be useful for some people, but not everyone.)
Eight years ago I was 87kg, with a waist circumference of 102cm (40in) and a BMI of 26. Today I hover around 69-71kg, and I never once counted calories or went on keto, atkins or any exclusionary diet. I reduced my intake, increased my expenditure (CICO) and lost weight. I feel fan-f*cking-tastic, but that's more to do with my exercise regimen (resistance training for the win!) than anything else. I still eat carbs, just not as many as I used to.
You're right, diets don't work, it has to be lifestyle changes. But I'll second the other response to you that blanket statements are confusing the issue. Weight loss is simple to understand (CICO), but not easy to do. Find things that work for you, simple small changes that will last a lifetime, because otherwise they won't stick.
Also, gut microbes don't make people fat, eating too much does. Gut microbes may have an effect on cravings, hunger signals, etc, but ultimately it's the hand under control of your brain that puts food in your mouth.
And this advice may even apply if you are thin. For years I concluded that my sugar cravings were because I was thin and had no fat reserves. If I missed a meal, or if I didn't code with Gatorade by my side, my skin would feel like it was crawling. I'd then experience fatigue.
Reducing carbs was not easy. I felt withdrawal symptoms for weeks. But now, I can skip meals without becoming irritable. Fatigue after lunch doesn't happen anymore.
To offset the loss of calories, I eat more nuts. Also, when I eat a pasta based meal, I keep the portion small and add a can of sardines for the protein.
No, that isn't how obesity works. What you put in your face is directly responsible for how fat you become. The microbes are just a factor, they aren't the root cause.
I'm not sure it's quite that simple. There hasn't been much research around gut biome, however that's changing. This topic has been coming up much more recently and I've recently been reading "The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-term Health" by two Stanford researchers (Justin & Erica Sonnenburg). Just the first few chapters expose evidence that the simple correlation between consumption and static result is simply not true. The gut biome clearly plays a much more important role that we truly understand at this point in time.
Calories in / Calories out is still perfectly valid. It's just that the same portion of the same food might be considered a different number of "calories in" for different people.
The "big-boned" or "genetically fat" arguments still reek of BS, but it's worth humoring the idea that we aren't 100% efficient machines that absorb the exact number of calories on the Nutrition Facts box, or burn the exact number of calories displayed on the Treadmill screen...
There's a intelligent middle-ground between equally ridiculous ideas that we are "Healthy at Every Size" and that we are perfectly tuned biological machines.
That's the problem with the so-called "calories in/calories out" crowd: they think all food has a specific energy value that varies by statistically-insignificant amounts from person to person.
That people lose weight when they eat an energy deficiency and gain it when they eat an energy surplus is not in doubt. What some people refuse to do is evaluate whether the same foods have different energy values for different people, rather than one global value. I'm not saying they do, but the most ardent "calories in/calories out" fanatics refuse to even acknowledge the question.
I think human discipline is the most important factor in maintaining a healthy weight, and I find instances of "fatlogic" to be aggravating, but I'm not going to pretend that the human body is so simple that the Law of Conservation of Energy can be perfectly applied to our digestive systems...
Anyone who thinks the treadmill calorie numbers are correct is deluding themselves. As for calculating actual TDEE's, there are ways to do it (see https://www.reddit.com/r/leangains/comments/2rv09z/this_is_h...), and once you've determined your TDEE, calorie counting with something like MyFitnessPal makes it so you can know what you're really taking in.
It's pretty much that simple. Unless someone has some sort of lymphatic condition that causes them to retain fluids or an undiagnosed metabolic syndrome, you aren't gaining weight unless you are consuming more than you are expending.
That isn't to say that two identical people with two different gut floras would necessarily gain or lose weight identically while eating the same diet, but I've yet to see any evidence that an otherwise healthy person eating maintenance level calories is going to blow up like a balloon simply because his gut flora is different. A person with a healthy gut flora might be able to consume more calories without gaining as much weight, and it's important to understand WHY that is, but the fact remains that if you don't consume any more than you expend, you aren't going to gain weight (previously mentioned caveats notwithstanding).
That said, the western diet is horrible for you. Go to any fast food restaurant and the only fiber you'll get is in the lettuce on your burger.
> but I've yet to see any evidence that an otherwise healthy person eating maintenance level calories is going to blow up like a balloon simply because his gut flora is different.
The whole point of the article here is that there is a line of research which has established, both in non-human models and human experiments, that "maintenance level calories" (especially when considering the content of food that enters the mouth, rather than what gets absorbed) are not a constant across different gut biomes.
Fully agree on diet, but you should look at some of the data presented in the book. There is evidence - particularly the book talks about gut sterile mice and some of the studies showcasing weight gain scenarios vs non-sterile biome mice on an exact diet. While it's no silver bullet, dismissing the value of a healthy gut is not productive either. No evidence doesn't mean there isn't something worth pursuing. It's a relatively greenfield area of study at this point in time which is why it's interesting to watch it unfold.
This is ideology, and not a very useful one either.
Humans are just animals, and despite the illusion of will power and decisions and all that other junk, we eat as we do because 500,000 years ago our ancestors risked famine constantly.
We're optimized against lack of calories, and not optimized for excess calories at all.
What this means is that, for the vast majority of people, if you have it to put it in your face, you will, and while you can occasionally refuse this, you won't do so often enough to matter unless your a "fitness" fetishist (fit for what?).
I'm speaking in the context of the Western world, because we aren't particularly interested in studies of the indigent. The US is overweight because of the quality and quantity of food they eat.
>What you put in your face is directly responsible for how fat you become.
To be equally pedantic, it's not what you "put in your face", but how much. Microbes are a factor in weight gain and weight loss just like diet and exercise are also factors. There is no "one simple trick" to lose weight, there are a variety of factors that, if understood, can help us understand the safest, most efficient ways to maintain a healthy weight.
The problem with that idea is that we know that we are exceedingly bad at regulating our food intake. And as long as we struggle with finding ways to reliably regulate our intake by adjusting how much and what we eat, if there are simple ways to regulate the calorie intake by reducing uptake from the stomach that will still potentially help a huge amount of people.
I hope this article isn't suggesting that it is preferable to have less efficient digestive systems so that we can all eat more. Given the environmental impact of food production these efficient digestion microbes are something we should encourage. Maybe they are harmful because of insulin spikes ? But the article doesn't mention this.