Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Why is this appropriate for Slashdot, for the math, or for the obesity?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/06/why-the-campaign-to-stop-america-s-obesity-crisis-keeps-failing.html
According to this its a change of diet (as in the promoted healthy diet is anything but) in the 1970's and way too many sugars.
Fruit isn't so bad, because it has fiber -- this keeps part of the sugar in your bowls, until it gets refined by bacteria and farted. Plus you need the vitamin. Fruit juice is another story: might as well drink beer.
Some videos on sugar from the UC:
http://www.uctv.tv/skinny-on-obesity/
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.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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!"
Fruit is bad, but so is meat. I think we all know that. Veggies are also a problem with those carbs. Best just to eat water.
Neither preservatives nor flavor enhancers cause obesity. They may be unhealthy to eat for other reasons but when it comes to overweight problems it is calories that count.
Football Odds
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
From my personal experience, I recently lost a lot of weight. The biggest shift I made to burn off fat was to drastically reduce how much grain I consumed weekly. I exercised about the same amount during the time, but the weight loss tracked pretty closely to my change in diet.
Apparently (IANA Dietician), some fruit contain more Fructose than Glucose, which makes the fructose load more problematic. See for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose_malabsorption, which has lists. Fructose is further problematic in that it chelates some other nutrients, like Zinc and Iron, removing them from the digestive tract and preventing them from being absorbed (can't find the paragraph on Wikipedia anymore, might be wrong.)
There's another article (http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/PRN-this-is-your-brain-on-sugar-ucla-233992.aspx) that did the rounds this morning about the negative effects of fructose on learning and memory.
Of course, this article also mentions omega-3 fatty acids, which are sorely lacking in the modern western diet that relies heavily on wheat, corn, soy and sunflower, as well as on meats, dairy and eggs "grain fed" on these crops instead of natural green pasture. This lack (or rather the imbalance between omega-3 and omega-6 content in modern food because of this) also contributes to obesity (and other "lifestyle diseases" like cancer and diabetes).
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
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.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
This is news?
When I was a kid, and McDonald's were few and far between (early 70s) a McDonald's "meal" was a hamburger, fries, and drink.
That's a single hamburger, what is now a small fries, and a small beverage. That was a satisfying full meal for an adult. Is that even a kids meal any more?
Another example, I believe it was mentioned by a poster on slashdot. He was remodeling a 100yr-old farmhouse and he hadn't planned to, but found he had to rip out the cabinets as they were too small - the only plates that fit in the cupboard were the 9" (small) dinner plates, not our today-common 12" dinner plates.
Finally, I was talking with a friend that runs a restaurant. I asked him why their portion sizes were so massive. His response was that it was to camouflage the prices with extra food, since food prices were cheap - it's the labor that drives costs. If he offered a moderately-sized meal, it might cost $8. If he was to DOUBLE the amount of food on that plate, it would cost perhaps +$1. Conversely, cutting the amount of food in half would only save $1. Consumers are far more willing to pay $9 for a GIANT pile of food (they feel they're getting a bargain), than $7 for 1/4 the food. On the latter, they feel they're being ripped off.
-Styopa
Really? I spent a bit of time in the USA, in a variety of states, and I didn't find anywhere where it would have been difficult to afford to live on food cooked from fresh ingredients spending only a few dollars a day. Cooking a meal for a family would cost a lot less than taking them all to McDonald's.
I don't know where this idea that fresh fruit and vegetables are expensive comes from. They're the cheapest way of getting food, as long as you have time to cook (and 10-20 minutes a day is enough for that if you don't do anything too complicated).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm tired of this lie. My wife went on a health food kick 2 years ago. We've pretty much stopped eating out. Our food costs have dropped 20%. We're not eating fancy snobby "healthy" food, just real food. Do you really believe that $7x3 for meals at McD's is affordable, but $4 for a pound of hamburger, $.50 for 3 fresh potatoes, and 2 cups of flour for buns costs more than $21? Really? Add a head of lettuce, a whole bottle of dressing, and the oil to fry the potatoes, and I'm still well under your $21 "can't afford to eat healthy" meal.
If you don't have the time to cook this simple meal, the you're lying to yourself. You're just lying to yourself. The money you saved buys you an hour a day of labor if you're anywhere near the minimum wage. And that's a fat western meal. If you think a little about eating decently, instead of just replicating mcdonalds, you can do so amazingly cheaply. Rice? Cheap. Flour? Cheap. frozen veggies? Pretty damn cheap, considering. You don't need organic arugula in January to be healthy.
Coming from Germany with its huge culture around sourdough bread I was shocked when I shopped for bread in a Californian supermarket for the first time. It was late already, I just came from the airport and I just wanted to grab something to make a sandwich. When I unpacked the stuff and took the first bite, it was... just horrible. When I studied the packaging, I learned that they obviously added a metric fuckton of molasses to the bread. What... the...??? The stuff was sweeter than some of the cakes I was used to.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
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.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Cooking a meal for a family would cost a lot less than taking them all to McDonald's.
I don't know where this idea that fresh fruit and vegetables are expensive comes from. They're the cheapest way of getting food, as long as you have time to cook (and 10-20 minutes a day is enough for that if you don't do anything too complicated).
This is one of the most annoying and common fallacies in this whole discussion.
Did you grow up in a house in the suburbs, with a functioning kitchen, at least one parent working only 9-5 and a real grocery store within walking/car/bus distance? Congratulations, you had a better food situation growing up than 60% of people in the united states.
I have a nice house in the suburbs, a kitchen with a functioning stove, a car that works every time I turn the key in the ignition, a fridge and freezer that work, a decent set of pots and pans, all the right knives, a cutting board, all the right spoons, a whole rack full of spices, an understanding of cooking given to me by my homemaker motherm and I can afford all this stuff on only one job.
It costs me $5-$10 to prepare a decent dinner for my family... But i interact with $400,000 worth of stuff most people don't have to do it. The most significant of which is priceless: My upbringing in a household where people were educated, mildly successful, and proficient at cooking.
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.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
yeah cause somebody who works exhausting menial labor for 8-12 hours a day is comming home to extrude noodles in their combo bathroom/kitchen sink, using fresh eggs from a grocery store they had to hop 3 busses to get to.
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.
Good grief, if this isn't a fantastic example of missing the forest for the trees....you have it almost exactly wrong.
Fat metabolism IS supposed to be the primary metabolic pathway. It is ideal for fueling the basal metabolic processes and low-level everyday activity. Why on earth would all mammals evolve the ability to store excess energy as saturated fat if the body wasn't fully prepared to run itself on that stored energy? Carrying around that excess weight is a hindrance, and if you have to have carbs present to make use of it I just don't see how it would confer the type of survival advantage that would bake it into the basic structure of our metabolism.
Taken a step further - what fuels mammals during hibernation?
If you look at the 'calorie requirement' calculators, the basal processes + everyday activity will always be the overwhelming majority of the calorie expenditure for a person during the day. Calories burned through exercise is substantially lower in all but the most extreme endurance athletes. this should be a pretty clear indication as to what is the more important metabolic process.
Your example of 'hitting the wall' during glycolytic exercise is also backwards. High-intensity glycolytic exercise is the EXCEPTION, not the rule. It is an activity that ISN"T supposed to happen frequently, and when it does happen it isn't supposed to be of a long duration. There is a very good reason we have only evolved the ability to store a fairly limited amount of glycogen - because historically, any more simply wasn't needed.
Taken together, IMHO these clearly illustrate why the low-carb/HIIT regimen is actually very successful as a strategy. Fat fuels your daily activity, with carbs 'topping up' the fairly minimal depletion of glycogen that occurs during the high-intensity activity. No one approach is ideal for everyone due to personal history etc, but there is a lot of science behind the low-carb/HIIT approach that very easily explains why it works well.
If potato chips are junk food, then so is a baked potato -- a potato is a potato. Grease with french fries or chips, butter with baked, no difference.
Meanwhile, I've never had a weight problem except the two years I was on Paxil and gained 40 pounds, and lost most of it despite trying not to when I stopped. Maybe this mathematician should add drugs to the equation. There's a woman that I see in the bar once in a while who used to be a crackhead. After stopping the crack she went from rail-thin to overweight in six months. And the number of drugs folks take today, and the number of new different drugs, especially prescription drugs is far more than in the '70s. No crack cocaine, no SSRIs, no ADD drugs (they hadn't even categorized ADD) etc. Pot makes some people fat and lots more folks are smoking it today. Rather than blaming "too much food" (I never knew many folks going hungry when I was a kid) maybe they should look at today's drug intake.
The "there couldn't be any fast food if food was expensive" in TFS is completely bogus. McDonald's has been around since 1940, Pizza Hut since 1958, long before they stopped paying farmers not to grow food and long before the obesity "epidemic". And when I was ten in 1962, a McDonald's hamburger, fries, and small coke was thirty two cents. How is that "expensive"? You'll pay ten times that much for the same thing today.
His history omits an important variable -- exports. After the government stopped paying farmers to not grow food, we started exporting so much that ADM's slogan is now "breadbasket to the world". We're not eating more because more's available, most of the extra food is being exported. It also neglects the size of soda, a small coke at McDonalds today is bigger than a large coke was in the sixties. Lots of caloric intake with nothing to curb hunger, a sure-fire way to obesity.
It also doesn't explain why poor people are more obese than middle class people. He would probably say "food stamps" but he'd be wrong. Poor folks are fat because cheap food is fattening --five pounds of potatos is only two bucks, TV dinners 89 cents, while expensive foods usually are far less fatteniing. Poor folks can't afford McDonalds very often, a small order of fries (1/3 of a potato) is a buck twenty while a five pound bag of raw potatos is only eighty cents more. Add a quarter pounder and a cole, and you'll pay the same price as two dozen burger patties and a loaf of bread at WalMart.
I'm sure the guy's maths are correct, but he's a mathematician, not a nutritionist, biologist, medical doctor, sociologist, or historian. A study like this would need input from all those fields and probably more to have any meaning. You don't ask a geologist about solar flares, after all.
Free Martian Whores!