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What's Causing the Rise In Obesity? Everything.
Mr_Blank writes "We all know — because we are being constantly reminded — that we are getting fat. Americans are at the forefront of the trend, but it is a transnational one. Apparently, it is also trans-species: Over the past 20 years, as the American people were getting fatter, so were America's laboratory macaques, chimpanzees, vervet monkeys and mice, as well as domestic dogs, domestic cats, and domestic and feral rats from both rural and urban areas. Researchers examined records on those eight species and found that average weight for every one had increased. The marmosets gained an average of 9% per decade. Lab mice gained about 11% per decade. Chimps are doing especially badly: their average body weight had risen 35% per decade. What is causing the obesity era? Everything."
I heard something called 'mehth' can make you slim!
to back up my above statement there is a good short scientific article regarding sugar that can be found here
The article is so much more in depth than "it's sugar" or "it's excess calories", and reasons away these as just one of the growing body of hundreds of possible causes and proven links to obesity. Hence why this article is titled "What's Causing the Rise In Obesity? Everything." Any pithy "It's this one thing [someone] did [somewhere]" comment is highly ignorant.
Short term, perhaps. But then a few hours later, you crash and want more.
which is totally what she said
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM Sugar, the bitter truth.
Also
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/heresthething/2012/jul/02/
(transcript)
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/heresthething/2012/jul/02/transcript/
Just try, for 2 weeks - see just how hard it is.
HFCS is bad for you, but there's nothing special about it vis-a-vis cane sugar. Or agave nectar, or honey, for that matter.
Really. So you think it is chemically the same as glucose? The difference is that sucrose provides half sucrose half fructose. The fructose gets metabolized in an entirely different way to the glucose.
The two main issues are that fructose by itself provides energy in such a way that it does not make the body feel "full", and that unlike the normal sugar we would expect (sucrose) we get no glucose from using it as an alternative.
Normal consumption of fructose in a natural setting also would include fibre which helps signal the body about satiation. This has been a major contributing factor in the whole "processed foods" vs "weight gain" issue. HCFS is a major component of most of the processed products that we rely on for our bulk energy needs. Really, do take a look at the lecture. The biochemistry component on how fructose gets metabolized in the liver is very interesting.
Cheers, Chris
HFCS 55, the most common form of high fructose corn syrup, is so close to honey, the oldest and most natural of sweetners, in its sugar composition that identifying it's use as an adulturant is quite tricky.
From which of those do you suggest fat was removed in the 70 and "replaced with huge amounts of sugar"?
;)
Cat chow, for one. Cat count as obligate carnivores. They have zero need for sugar in their diet - They can't taste it), they can't even properly metabolize it. Bad for them. They do, however, have a high need for fat and protein.
And it pisses me off every time I go shopping for cat chow that I have to pay literally twice as much to get cat food that doesn't have 15-25% added carbs in it. Cat food should not have any carbs, except what comes incidental to whatever kind of horse they use as the basic ingredient. And you think you can't go wrong buying tinned more-or-less fresh meat for fluffy? Nope. Many brands even add sugar to that.
That said, I have to agree with you that wild marmosets probably don't eat a lot of doughnuts.
Yes, large quantites of fructose are toxic - supposedly has something to do with a pre-human mutation that let us scarf down fruit and efficiently store the fructose as fat in our liver against the lean times. Causes some problems if the lean times never come.
As far as high-fructose corn syrup is concerned:
table sugar: 50% sucrose, 50% fructose
HFCS: 45% sucrose, 55% fructose
It's not really a big deal. Yes, you'll increase your fructose intake 10% if you eat the same quantity as "sugar", but HFCS tends to be considerably sweeter, so you'll probably be using less and at least partially offset the difference. As long as you're not gorging yourself on sugars it's a non-issue, and if you *are* gorging yourself on enough sugars for the slight increase in fructose to be a problem, you're already doing much worse things to your body, it's just not designed to handle that kind of sugar intake. The only way it could be a significant issue is if the sucrose somehow stimulated fructose to be digested in safer manner, but I've never heard anything to suggest such a thing, and IIRC they follow rather different metabolic pathways.
The purported appetite-stimulation effects of HFCS are another thing altogether, and certainly a problem if real. As could be any interesting chemicals created as a side effect of the processing and deemed ""nonhazardous". Honestly I stopped paying close attention. Most of the sugar in my normal diet comes from fresh fruit these days, the easiest way I could think of to keep my sweet-tooth from turning me into a fat diabetic.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Since nobody outside of Thyroid problems understands that, it's easy to rationalize your hate and tell people to exercise and stop eating so much. It's not uncommon to gain 100 pounds in one week after a complete removal.
The only way you could possibly gain 100 pounds in a week is if you eat >14 pounds of food per day. Even if my body suddenly had a 100% food to energy conversion rate and spent no calories at all I doubt I could add more than 3 to 4 pounds a day as that's the gross weight of my food, so the only way that could happen is on an extremely high calorie eating binge. It's exactly this kind of ridiculous exaggeration that leads to people not taking you seriously.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yes but it is also a poison. Sucrose too, but only because sucrose is one fructose and one glucose bonded, and the body has no trouble breaking that bond.
Problem with fructose is it is only processed in the liver. I am going off memory here, if you want a more in depth discussion from an expert google "Sugar the bitter truth" a video by an endocrinologist. So.... while only about 10% of the glucose that you ingest is processed in the liver, 90% of the fructose is.
The liver's process for dealing with these produces several products, which include both VLDLs (the worst kinds of cholesterol, far worst than you get from fat, which is mostly more boyent cholesterol...even not all LDLs are created equal) AND it produces hormones which supress appetite.
So sucrose is 50% fructose. If you use sucrose It splits 50-50 into glucose and fructose. 10% of the glucose and 90% of the fructose go to your liver... or about 55% of the total you ingested. If you use fructose, thats the full 90%.
Since it supresses appetite, you tend to eat more. A kid given a soda before a meal tends to eat more during the meal than a kid who doesn't.
As for spoilers on the video.... the problem more comes down to reduction in fiber. Fiber increases fullness, slows down the absorbtion of sugars, and is always found with sugars in nature. A glass of fruit juice is every bit as bad, and does the same liver damage, as a shot of whiskey. (alcohol is a carbohydrate too remember). You can't really overeat if you are munching on apples. Remove the juice from the fiber, and you can pack in the calories like nobodies business.
Know anyone who ever got diabetes from chewing on sugar cane? Didn't think so. Good luck trying it.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Really. So you think it is chemically the same as glucose?
No, but cane sugar isnt glucose; its a disaccharide composed of a glucose linked to a fructose, ie roughly 50% of each.
Guess what the most common forumations of HFCS are?
55 fructose - 42 glucose
42 fructose - 53 glucose
Oh look, one of those has a higher glucose:fructose ratio than "healthy" sucrose.
Its been said a million times: HFCS is a bogeyman. Sometimes, in some situations, it can be less healthy, but the problem is one of quantity consumed, not what particular type of sugar youre eating. I would suggest that one of the causes of obesity is these stupid food fads that promise that X is the miracle cure to weight, and you can do whatever you want as long as you eliminate X. Guess what, cutting off HFCS does you no good if you replace it with cane sugar or lard or tons of carbs or...
The answer is actually quite simple, so simple that most people miss it.
Processed food generally means the fiber has been removed in some manner or another or involves low fiber foods to begin with. Fiber increases feelings of fullness, and slows the absorbtion of sugars, which supress fullness, increase the worst kinds of cholesterol, and damage the liver (sugar is processed similarly to alcohol, which does the same things wrt cholesterol and liver damage)
Also, since "fat" was demonized as increasing cholesterol, and removing fat from processed food leaves it tasting like cardboard, "low fat" food has been loaded up with sugar.... which, is demonstrably worst than the fat it replaced.
Ignore all the talk of "toxins" and "not natural" or any of the other BS, it really is that simple. Its the fiber/sugar/fat connection that is huge. Average simple sugar consumption has skyrocketed while fiber intake hasn't. It answers not only why we have more diabetes and heart disease but, why people eat more in general.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
That's because nobody would ever say anything so ridiculous, since it's false. Processed and manufactured food bears almost no relationship at all to natural organic
Organic is a word that doesnt even have a scientifically defined meaning (unless we're talking organic chemistry, which, guess what, organic farmers are not). Its a stupid buzzword defined arbitrarily by legislation based on some stupid assumption that a naturally derived chemical is different than a synthetically derived one. Sometimes that may be true (the synthetic may have byproducts in it). Sometimes its false and just raises prices (rainwater is probably not healthier than water produced in a lab by burning hydrogen).
Read up here.
Let me summarize the differences:
Nutrition--
A 2012 survey of the scientific literature did not find significant differences in the vitamin content of organic and conventional plant or animal products, and found that results varied from study to study.
Contamination--
while literature reviews found no significant evidence that levels of arsenic, cadmium or other heavy metals differed significantly between organic and conventional food products.
...
Only three studies reported the prevalence of contamination exceeding maximum allowed limits; all were from the European Union.[6] The American Cancer Society has stated that no evidence exist that pesticide residue will lead to any form of cancer.
Bacteria--
The 2012 meta-analysis determined that prevalence of E. coli contamination was not statistically significant (7% in organic produce and 6% in conventional produce). Four of the five studies found higher risk for contamination among organic produce.
Can it be? Theres actually no real science behind "organic is healthier" other than perception bias? Wow, what a shocker.