The Mathematics of Obesity

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Carson C. Chow, an MIT-trained mathematician and physicist, has taken a new look at America's obesity epidemic and found that a food glut is behind America's weight problem, with the national obesity rate jumping from 20 percent to over 30 percent since 1970. 'Beginning in the 1970s, there was a change in national agricultural policy. Instead of the government paying farmers not to engage in full production, as was the practice, they were encouraged to grow as much food as they could,' says Chow. 'With such a huge food supply, food marketing got better and restaurants got cheaper. The low cost of food fueled the growth of the fast-food industry. If food were expensive, you couldn't have fast food.' Chow and mathematical physiologist Kevin Hall created a mathematical model of a human with hundreds of equations, boiled it down to one simple equation, and then plugged in all the variables — height, weight, food intake, exercise. The slimmed-down equation proved to be a useful platform for answering a host of questions. For example, huge variations in your daily food intake will not cause variations in weight, as long as your average food intake over a year is about the same. Unfortunately, another finding is that weight change, up or down, takes a very, very long time. Chow has posted an interactive version of the model on the web where people can plug in their information and learn how much they'll need to reduce their intake and increase their activity to lose."

Comments

How about we blame ourslef?

[Krneki]

The main problem is sugar.

It's everywhere and you don't need it. Drink only water and don't buy any food that has sugar (fructose excluded) in it.

You DON'T need it. You like it because your are an addicted junky.

It really isn't sugar, that is just one avenue

[Shivetya]

Far too many Americans are simply not active. This is compounded by the fact that while not active they have easy access to food that it too conveniently packaged for consumption. I love the people at work who blame medical conditions for their weight while consuming a whole bag of chips or having that bagel covered in cream cheese. People don't know the calories they are consuming and woefully underestimate the amount of them in the foods they eat.

So sugar is only part of the problem. I know lots of people who don't eat cookies, drink soda, or the like, and yet they little walking cubed shaped individuals. All because of the mass amount of carb and fat filled foods they consume.

Gone are the long days and long weeks of manual labor. Instead most Americans sit during their workday and spend only a third of their week at most working and traveling too and from work. I am not declaring that working only forty hours or less is bad; but lets be honest those we know who do more tend to get further; but it did leave many people with way too much time on their hands and they don't know what to do with it.

You can maintain a healthy weight and eat some truly trashy food. As part of a diet and exercise contest we have at work I set out to prove that some seriously trashy breakfast foods could be consumed while losing weight as long as the diet and exercise balanced out. This meant items like donuts or muffins with coffee and cream from Dunkin in the morning every work day for two weeks. Yet followed by sensible lunches and dinners which most of us kept logs for. Those who logged their food showed the most loss. That is the real key, knowing what you eat.

Predicting the next 100 posts

[sco08y]

Just so we can get them out of the way:

"I tried diet X and lost Y pounds, thus clearly establishing that substance Z is causing everyone to become fat."

"Moral failing Q is the real culprit! We need government policy R! I have no proof!"

"I'm from country C and we have no fat people. You Americans are fat, and I have a ridiculous accent!"

Re:Drugs

[Lumpy]

Baking your own bread makes HUGE changes in diet. Most bread in the store has a metric buttload of sugars added simply because they can. home made bread has t he minimum needed and it is usually consumed by the yeast.

Want to make that baked bread better? slow rise in the fridge overnight. the yeast will consumer more sugars and add in a lot more flavors. Sourdoughs are the best for you.

Get a copy of The China Study

[transporter_ii]

Other factors factored in, like activity, Campbell found surprisingly that many Chinese actually consume about 30% more calories than Americans, yet they had incredibly less overweight people. Again, he didn't compare a sedentary American to a field worker in China, he compared them to an office worker in China to make it fair.

So it wasn't just calories, it is the types of food. Processed foods and animal foods are to blame. China actually proves to be an excellent place to study because they have a wide range of groups that live the same way, eat the same way, and live in the same place most of their lives. Campbell found that the more animal foods and processed foods they ate, the more disease and obesity the had. This isn't just junk science, either. You can do the research for yourself. As third world countries get wealthier and adopt a western-style diet, they also adopt western disease rates and obesity. It is not just their genes. If they move here and start eating like us, they get our diseases at the same rates (or higher). There is nothing special about these people other than their diets.

Our diets combined with our lifestyles are killing us here...and if you want to cut your chances of cancer, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses down, the solution is simple. All you have to do is eat like you live in a 3rd world country. Less animal products and processed foods, more whole foods. It's that simple.

I do disagree with Campbell that you *have* to become a vegetarian. They do eat meat in China, just way less of it. But his studies on people that reversed massive heart disease just by becoming vegetarians is fairly impressive.

Re:Get a copy of The China Study

[transporter_ii]

Here is the same info from the Lancet. Per wikipedia, the Lancet is "one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals."

Cross off cancer here and insert diabetes, or obesity. If you bothered to do your own research, I guarantee you could could not just dismiss this as bullshit.

From the Lancet:

"In many [western] countries, peoples' diet changed substantially in the second half of the twentieth century, generally with increases in consumption of meat, dairy products, vegetable oils, fruit juice, and alcoholic beverages, and decreases in consumption of starchy staple foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, and maize flour. Other aspects of lifestyle also changed, notably, large reductions in physical activity and large increases in the prevalence of obesity."[18]

"It was noted in the 1970s that people in many western countries had diets high in animal products, fat, and sugar, and high rates of cancers of the colorectum, breast, prostate, endometrium, and lung; by contrast, individuals in developing countries usually had diets that were based on one or two starchy staple foods, with low intakes of animal products, fat, and sugar, and low rates of these cancers."[18]

"These observations suggest that the diets [or lifestyle] of different populations might partly determine their rates of cancer, and the basis for this hypothesis was strengthened by results of studies showing that people who migrate from one country to another generally acquire the cancer rates of the new host country, suggesting that environmental [or lifestyle factors] rather than genetic factors are the key determinants of the international variation in cancer rates."[18]

Re:Get a copy of The China Study

[hsthompson69]

To avoid the "appeal to unnamed authorities" fallacy, here's a specific person (Denise Minger) who specifically tore the China Study to pieces, and has graciously put up her formal critique, including references, here:

http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/08/03/the-china-study-a-formal-analysis-and-response/

tl;dr - the China Study ignored data that didn't support their basic conceit, and exaggerated data that did.

Re:Calorie counting is wrong

[dunkelfalke]

Sorry, but this is wrong on so many levels. You see, while you get energy from stored fat, it is a quite energy intensive process itself if fat should be the main energy source. You can experience the "hitting the wall" effect yourself after a long endurance training. When the glycogen storage is depleted, the body switches completely to fat burning and suddenly you don't have any energy to go on and breathe much faster, might even faint.

Fat burning is meant to be an additional energy source, not the primary one. The reason why fat is stored is:

1) you have eaten too much food. Otherwise the fat would be all used up

2) You have got far too much fat mixed with carbohydrates in the food. Well, duh, the body takes what it can use right away and stores what it can use only with some effort.

Your example with lab rats is very misleading because in the experiment the own control mechanism of rat's organism was artificially overridden. This matters to healthy organisms who don't receive additional insulin exactly how? Right, not at all.

Oh, by the way, the insulin doesn't just tell "fat cells to open up and absorb it", it also (and this is actually its primary task) tells the muscle tissue and liver to absorb sugar so they can convert it to glycogen, which is the primary source of short- and middle-term energy for your body. Only the absolute excess of carbohydrates is stored as fat - and fat, of course, for already explained reasons.

Of course, if your glycogen storage is still almost full, then most of what you just ate would be in excess and will be stored as fat. So yes, you indeed get fat because you overeat. Either don't overeat (which is difficult) or deplete your glycogen storage by using your muscles, then you'll be fine.

The only reason why these "carbs are bad" - posts are marked as insightful is that most people don't want to admit that their own behaviour is a part of the problem.

Oh, and don't even try to mention Inuit, they are a result of selective breeding and adapting from childhood on. They eat rotten meat that would kill many Europeans due to high levels of cadaverine.

Re:Junk food is the problem

[19thNervousBreakdown]

1.) My post was refuting the claim that junk food is cheaper than good food. Wegman's is a grocery store that also makes food cafeteria style, and my bloodwork after changing my diet to go to lunch there will attest to the healthiness of the food. I know McDonald's is terrible food. I was saying there's no economic reason to go there.

2.) The 510 calorie count for a quarter-pounder includes two slices of cheese, which you didn't include in your home-cooked version. There are 70 calories in a slice of cheese. You don't have 146 calories to make up, you have 6. There is no extra crap, there is exactly the correct amount of crap. You don't have to resort to either magic sauce or Hollywood accounting of cheese to make the argument that fast food is awful for you.