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Sport Is Unrelated To Obesity In Children
xiox writes "The UK government is planning to stop funding a study to understand obesity in children. The study fits children with accelerometers to measure how much energy each child uses in a day by moving. The results are surprising. Those children who do sports at school do not burn more calories than those who don't. Furthermore there is no correlation between body mass index and the number of calories used! The results are very interesting, suggesting that genetics and diet are the main reasons for childhood obesity, not sport. The UK government is trying to increase the amount of sport in schools."
excellent article, thanks for linking it. Seems I never have mod points when I want/need them. I started by cutting hydrogenated oils out of my diet, I'm working on high fructose corn syrup. I'm not 100% on either one, but I'm making conscious choices to cut back on both. I know this will be blasphemy on this site, but Mountain Dew contains "brominated vegetable oil". Gatorade, a "health" drink contains "glycerol ester of wood rosin". Tell me honestly, is there any way you would put that in your body if it wasn't hidden in some mile long ingredient list?
Watching my 10 year old niece grow up, I can say with some certainty, that obesity is at least in part, a learned behavior. She has been fed a steady diet of fast food and sweets, and is essentially instructed to "sit in front of the TV while Mommy does something else". Watching her morbidly obese mother sneak food and gorge herself to find solace has only reinforced negative eating habits. My wife and I took her skiing last weekend and she lied to me about her weight. 10 years old and she is ashamed of how heavy she is. She was almost in tears when my wife and I explained to her that for her own safety, she had to tell us what she weighed so her ski bindings could be set properly.
breaks my heart.....
You are being needlessly inflammatory, and posting from a position of ignorance. Her calorie intake was documented EXACTLY as I stated. Over a period of six months, she gained roughly 35 pounds, while eating approximately 300 calories per day. Those are the facts. The fact that you do not like those facts does not change reality.
I am a physicist, and what you are claiming is highly implausible to the point of being what we men of science term utter bullshit. Allow me to explain:
1. In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
2. Let's say she really is eating only 300 Calories a day (54,000 Cal in 6 months), and that she gained 35 pounds in six months. Normally, a pound of body fat contains about 3,500 Calories (pure fat is 9 Cal / g, but some of that pound is water). 35 lb X 3,500 Cal / lb = 122,500 Cal, which is 68,500 Calories more than she ate! (Never mind that a person typically burns somewhat over a thousand Calories a day at rest.)
3. This leaves a few possibilities:
a. The weight she gained was mostly water. Possible, but retaining water isn't true obesity.
b. She has a freak mutation that allows her to perform photosynthesis.
c. She has a freak mutation that has caused her body to grow a Stirling engine inside of her, and she was in thermal contact with hot and cold reservoirs with which the Stirling engine could exchange energy, thus allowing her to convert atmospheric CO2 and water into sugars, etc.
d. Some of the most fundamental and firmly held laws of physics are wrong.
e. You're wrong.
Those are the facts. The fact that you do not like those facts does not change reality.