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."

Comments

Sugar

[EEPROMS]

Very simply food manufacturers removed the fat in the 70's and replaced it with huge amounts of sugar. The problem with sugar is the brain doesn't see it as nutrition thus it doesn't suppress your appetite when you eat sugar filled foods.

Re:Sugar

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with sugar is the brain doesn't see it as nutrition thus it doesn't suppress your appetite when you eat sugar filled foods.

Are you sure about that? Empirical evidence does seem to point that candies and other sweets suppress appetite very well.

Re:Sugar

[EEPROMS]

to back up my above statement there is a good short scientific article regarding sugar that can be found here

Re:Sugar

[Thanshin]

Very simply food manufacturers removed the fat in the 70's and replaced it with huge amounts of sugar. The problem with sugar is the brain doesn't see it as nutrition thus it doesn't suppress your appetite when you eat sugar filled foods.

And, as we all know, marmosets are among the greatest consumers of manufactured foods.

Re:Sugar

[somersault]

Short term, perhaps. But then a few hours later, you crash and want more.

Re:Sugar

[MMC Monster]

You must be outside the U.S.

In the U.S. we've been using High Fructose Corn Syrup as our sweetener for a couple decades now. Why import something natural when you can synthesize something much worse locally?

Re:Sugar

[silentcoder]

>And, as we all know, marmosets are among the greatest consumers of manufactured foods.

These are laboratory marmosets which are, if anything, fed MORE on manufactured foods than even pet marmosets (since nobody gives a lab animal treats).
These are all animals that eat foods made in large scale commercial operations and poured out of a tin or cardboard box.

There is NO evidence of an obesity rise in WILD stocks of ANY of these animals.
What do humans and lab animals have in common ? Diets filled with processed and manufactured foods.

Now I am not saying that this is the cause or even that the GP is right- I am saying your reason for claiming he is wrong is outright idiotic.

Re:Sugar

[mrclisdue]

....and, Cuba has lots of sugar. But the land of the free is still mad at Cuba for actions 50+ years ago, so the country remains embargoed and impoverished. Russia, China, Vietnam? They're all good buddies now, lots of forgiveness to go around. Cuba? Fuckem.

Re:Sugar

[Errol backfiring]

No. You taste them, but that's different. Candies contain so much sugar (compared to the food we would eat in nature) that our bodies do not trust their own correction mechanisms anymore. This is called insulin resistance. This suppresses your feeling of having eaten enough, so you stay hungry. This is why you can eat the bag of candies completely empty in one go, even if (no, because) it contains more energy than you will need the entire day.

Re:Sugar

[Longjmp]

Sugar doesn't make you fat. Marriage makes you fat. [...]

What's the difference between a bachelor and a married man?

The bachelor comes home, looks into the fridge, finds nothing interesting, and goes to bed.
The husband comes home, looks in the bedroom...

Re:Sugar

[Mike Frett]

Depends who you are and what your metabolism is. My body is a Sugar factory, yet I'm considered underweight. Irrelevant to your comment and relevant to the article: you guys miss one thing, the Thyroid.

People with Thyroid issues usually have either weight gain or weight loss. And if your Thyroid has been removed, controlling your weight gain is damn near impossible. 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.

Let's face the facts, we have lots of Radiation in various forms around us now. I have no doubt about it's contributing factor to Metabolism. I'm missing half my Thyroid due to a nodule that grew and decided to take over. Thankfully for me, it wasn't Cancer and even thought I was suppose to gain about 10 pounds; I actually lost 10 -- the Doctors were stumped on that one since it went against their data.

ProTip: Don't let a General Surgeon remove your Thyroid, I ended up with a massive hematoma and damaged Parathyroids. Do yourself a favor and seek attention from a ENT. And make sure you're getting enough Iodine in your diets.

Disclaimer: These are NOT my opinions but the opinions of Doctors I've seen over many years of Thyroid issues that are ongoing.

Re:Sugar

[Anonymous Coward]

Diets filled with processed and manufactured foods.

Pointless statement.

There is absolutely nothing that says that processed or manufactured food should be any different form other food. Even if the food is entirely synthetic doesn't mean that it is in any way less healthy than non-synthetic food.
There could be something wrong with the processed food that obese people eat but that doesn't mean that it isn't possible to create processed / manufactured food that is healthier.

General fear of processed/manufactured/GMO/whatever isn't helpful and doesn't lead to a correct decisions. Instead you should point out the specifics on why current food is bad.
It's not like switching to a diet of organic natural sugarcanes is going to be healthier.

Re:Sugar

[dwarfsoft]

I watched this lecture recently about Fructose (and high fructose corn syrup). https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dBnniua6-oM

It was quite long (1.5 hours) but very informative in how bad HFCS is to us, and why low fat has caused this.

Re:Sugar

[somersault]

This is probably the best comment I've read here. I've successfully lost weight by controlling my carb intake, and so have some of my friends. But another friend just didn't lose any weight at all until I gave her some iodine supplements to help her thyroid. Her metabolism sped up (as evidenced by her hair growing much faster), and she started to lose weight.

Sucralose contains chlorine, which can block iodine reception in your thyroid. So at least one artificial sweetener is bad to ingest if you want to lose weight - especially if you aren't getting enough iodine in your diet.

Re:Sugar

[Salgak1]

The question is, WHICH processes are to blame? Obviously, the dropping of fat levels and the rise of HFCS look to be LIKELY causes, but it would be nice to see if this is confirmed by double-blind testing.

Notionally, take 10,000 rodents, and a basic food stock. Process some of the food for low-fat only, some for HFCS-only, and some for both. And, of course, the unprocessed as control. Other variables to explore would be physical portion size (based on 100% need and the raw food stock), caloric size (again, baselined to the control), and unlimited portions, for each food type. And run for a few generations. That should provide a decent statistical universe for drawing conclusions.

Rinse and repeat for other suspect methods/additives. We can't make rational decisions without good data. . .

Re:Sugar

[Thanshin]

"Marmosets are usually fed a basic commercial ration and provided with a variety of supplements such as fruit, vegetables, nuts, eggs, jelly, cheese, cat chow and yoghurt." - The common marmoset

From which of those do you suggest fat was removed in the 70 and "replaced with huge amounts of sugar"?

Re:Sugar

[The Grim Reefer]

Diets filled with processed and manufactured foods.

Pointless statement.

There is absolutely nothing that says that processed or manufactured food should be any different form other food.

That sounds like the defense the tobacco industry used for decades.

Even if the food is entirely synthetic doesn't mean that it is in any way less healthy than non-synthetic food. There could be something wrong with the processed food that obese people eat but that doesn't mean that it isn't possible to create processed / manufactured food that is healthier.

You're right. It doesn't have to be. Unfortunately, it's not like there is an incentive for these manufactures to do this. But there are considerable profits to be made in making the food as cheaply as possible. That's the problem.

Re:Sugar

[demonlapin]

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.

Re:Sugar

[demonlapin]

Processed and manufactured have nothing to do with GMO, and I have no problem with GMOs because, well, everything we eat today is a GMO compared to its wild ancestors. However, processed and manufactured foods are different from natural ones in very real ways: for starters, they contain a lot more sugar and starch. This isn't a nefarious plot, it's just chemistry. Sugar is cheap, it undergoes Maillard reactions (so it browns nicely), and it has osmotic effects that allow it to retard the growth of bacteria, so shelf life goes up. Starch is pretty similar - look at the shelf life of crackers. Some people handle sugar very easily, but quite a lot don't. I think your throwaway line at the end about sugarcanes indicates that you know this.

Re:Sugar

[smpoole7]

> AFAIK HFCS is just as bad a sucrose

The makers of HFCS say that it's the "same as sugar" (i.e., table sugar, i.e., sucrose), but that's not strictly accurate. It really should be compared to *invert* sugar, in which the glucose and fructose molecules have been separated. Bakers have been using that for centuries: take sucrose and heat it with a mild acidic solution (such as lemon juice), and there you go.

The problem is it's hard to know whom to believe about HFCS. My wife and I have essentially cut out added sugar. We don't even have sugar in our house. And yet, we still both struggle to keep our A1C under 6-7. In our case, walking and mild exercise have made the biggest difference. (Ah, the joys of getting older.) :)

Now for the fine print: "we don't have sugar in our house ..." yeah, I know. Actually, we do. Someone did a comparison between cereals, cookies and breads from a couple of decades ago, and the manufacturers are adding considerably more sugar now, because that's what consumers want.

As for lab animals becoming fatter, I think that's simple: they're being fed processed foods as well. Think about it: do you throw your cat a slab of meat every evening, or do you open a can or pour some dry food? The latter are LOADED with added carbohydrates. Loaded. Cats are CARNIVORES.

My biggest complaint about HFCS isn't the syrup, per se, it's that Monsanto and ADM have ruined my corn. They've modified the corn to be sweeter, so that they can get more HFCS and ethanol from it. I used to love corn on the cob, but given that Sandy and I have tried to stop eating so much sugar, it's sickeningly sweet to us now. We buy locally-grown, unmodified corn whenever possible. Rarely from a supermarket.

Re:Sugar

[evilviper]

Very simply food manufacturers removed the fat in the 70's and replaced it with huge amounts of sugar. The problem with sugar is the brain doesn't see it as nutrition thus it doesn't suppress your appetite when you eat sugar filled foods.

There are survival foods which are mostly sugar, yet people eating them don't get the sensation of starving to death.

And what "food manufacturers" do shouldn't affect EVERYONE. I'm sure there are lots of people who rarely or never eat processed food, yet they're getting fat along with everyone else.

And something else also happened in the 70s... food packaging and serving switched away from glass, and went to plastics... From canned food to baby bottles, plastic chemicals like BPA and other phthalates are leaching into your food. BPA is recognized by your body as estrogen, and excess estrogen is known to cause weight gain...

Re:Sugar

[Errol backfiring]

Well, maybe you should follow the links you cite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food clearly points to http://www.potatopro.com/newsletters/20100310.htm when it says there are currently no GMO potatoes marked for human consumption, but the linked page shows this information is outdated.

Re:Sugar

[dwarfsoft]

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.

Re:Sugar

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Sugar

[pla]

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. ;)

Re:Sugar

[hawkinspeter]

I always think that artificial sweeteners are very bad for dieters as they train the body to expect sweet food all the time. They also train the body to not expect many calories from sweet food, so they tend to make the consumer hungry as the body searches for calories.

It can be surprising how quickly your tastes can adapt to reducing (or increasing) the sweetness in your diet.

Re:Sugar

[bill_mcgonigle]

Marriage makes you fat

You know what they say, the #1 food that makes people obese is wedding cake.

Re:Sugar

[Immerman]

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.

Re:Sugar

[jon3k]

lol fructose is just a disaccharide, its technically a more complex carb chain than glucose (monosaccharide). do you mean high fructose corn syrup? you're sort of right. typically what you see is HFCS55 which is 55% fructose and 41% glucose. to put it in perspective, granulated sugar is 50/50 fructose/glucose. so HFCS is only marginally more fructose than regular sugar, so you're wrong. but you're also right, because sugar, hfcs and all the other high glycemic carbs are what's really causing this problem.

Re:Sugar

[blueg3]

Most applications of HFCS use versions that are between 40% and 60% fructose. The other 40-60% is, of course, glucose.

Table sugar, sucrose, is a disaccharide that consists of glucose and fructose combined. When it's metabolized, very early on, it's hydrolyzed into its constituent parts (glucose and fructose), which are then metabolized normally. So by the time you're talking about actually using the sugar for energy, HFCS and sugar are the same.

There's some evidence that the metabolic feedback early on of sucrose, glucose, and fructose have subtly different effects.

But fructose, pre-hydrolysis, is not some rare chemical only found in HFCS. Agave syrup is about 75% fructose / 25% glucose. Fruit is quite heavily weighted toward fructose. Honey is roughly equal parts glucose and fructose (plus a weird collection of other sugars). Invert sugar, which is created in the kitchen from sugar, is a common component of many candies and confections. Invert sugar is just hydrolyzed sucrose -- 50% glucose and 50% fructose. (Heat sucrose in water and some of it will invert. Add a bit of acid and stick with it and most of it will invert. Now you've basically recreated HFCS.)

There's nothing chemically special about HFCS. Despite the label "high fructose", which is chemically accurate but terrible marketing, it's not really high in fructose relative to other common forms of sugar. It's also, despite claims, not enormously cheaper than sugar. It's cheap, yes. Sugar is also cheap. A lot of companies have been moving from HFCS to sugar because the cost difference is small and the marketing edge is big.

The problem with HFCS is that sugars in general, along with fats and salt, are really overused in processed and prepared foods.

Re:Sugar

[Kjella]

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.

Re:Sugar

[rtaylor]

Few few people ate dozens of kilograms of honey per year.

The quantity of HFCS in a typical modern diet is rather large.

Re:Sugar

[CreatureComfort]

But, but... if they DON'T add sugar, then grandma will think it tastes TERRIBLE when that's all she can afford.

Re:Sugar

[TheCarp]

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.

Re:Sugar

[fearofcarpet]

lol fructose is just a disaccharide, its technically a more complex carb chain than glucose (monosaccharide). do you mean high fructose corn syrup? you're sort of right. typically what you see is HFCS55 which is 55% fructose and 41% glucose. to put it in perspective, granulated sugar is 50/50 fructose/glucose. so HFCS is only marginally more fructose than regular sugar, so you're wrong. but you're also right, because sugar, hfcs and all the other high glycemic carbs are what's really causing this problem.

Sucrose is cleaved into fructose and glucose by enzymes in the saliva, but there is also an odd glitch in our metabolic pathways that tends to divert energy derived from free fructose directly into fat storage instead of converting it all to glucose. One theory is that since fruits ripen during the warm months and fruits often contain an abundance of fructose, that it once served as a trigger to start storing fat for Winter, but who knows. The problem boils down to more calories in than out, but it can make a difference how those calories are consumed.

Re:Sugar

[s.petry]

Hybrid foods are not the same as GMO foods, and making such a claim reeks of either ignorance or willful collusion. GMO foods, the ones that most people have problems with, contain genes that can not happen in nature. Forcing bacteria genes into corn for example to get them to produce insecticides on the stalk (as one of many foreign genes introduced into GMO corn).

Very recently there were a few experiments using both GMO and hybridization to get water resistant rice. They were able to naturally do so with hybridization much cheaper and easier than with GMO. I'm hoping to see toxicology and nutritional studies to see how much difference there is in the final product.

Believing that GMO is safe because some big company told you is ignorant. Not very long ago, cigarettes were touted as a cure for many things and we were told how they were safe. It took years and years of lawsuits to get them to simply admit "Smoking may be dangerous to pregnant women." and a dozen more years to finally admit it was carcinogenic among other things.

Re:Sugar

[LordLimecat]

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...

Re:Sugar

[TheCarp]

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.

Re:Sugar

[LordLimecat]

So your response to the challenge "synthetic isnt worse for you" is "speculate, speculate, speculate, FUD".

Why not actually post some sources? Here, Ill do it for you.

But there are considerable profits to be made in making the food as cheaply as possible.

And clearly organic farmers are immune to this, right? I guess the difference is that when a non-organic farmer contaminates his produce, he can fall back on irradiation to sterilize his produce, while the organic farmer cannot. Still feeling good about organic?

Re:Sugar

[sgbett]

When you disregard the entire thesis because you don't like one of the things the person said. Does that make your counter argument credible?

Seriously there is a massive body of scientific evidence that implicates refined sugars as being a significant factor in things like obesity and metabolic syndrome.

The body is complicated, and figuring out what is good for people is hard. Further complicated by the fact that it doesn't necessarily correspond with what is profitable.

Here is a another thing you might not like for its 'sensationalist' nature, but its worth considering: Sugar acts like a drug. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_addiction

Re:Sugar

[somersault]

Well, there's an awful lot of "everyone knows" type stuff out there about it, but here's one article about the effects of chloride in rat's thyroids. There's also a lot out there about flouride and thyroid function. Flouride is even worse than chloride apparently, and much harder to expel from your body once it's bound, due to the lighter weight and greater reactivity.

Re:Sugar

[TheCarp]

Normally I would completely agree except, there is a difference here. People are not increasing their consumption of water, exposure to oxygen, or even ingestion of glucose, to the point that they are manifesting toxic effects.

The rise in diabetes, heart disease, and liver damage, are seeming to indicate that fructose consumption IS in fact reaching levels that are manifesting toxic effects in the form of those diseases, which are exactly what we would expect from chronic exposure to excessive levels of fructose.

Sugar is a poision, just like many things are poisons, but unlike those many things, a large percentage of the population is exposing themselves to toxic amounts of it.

Re: Sugar

[smaddox]

Set aside 90 minutes to watch this video: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&desktop_uri=/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

I promise you won't regret it.

Re:Sugar

[Agronomist Cowherd]

How much do you drink? Most of our weight is water, and while most of the food we eat is also water, just retaining a gallon of water per day would add 56 pounds to your weight in a week. Some of that from a few pounds of food, some from drink, some absorbed through respiration. We aren't closed systems, only taking in what we eat under controlled conditions.

Re:Sugar

[demonlapin]

Because he responded to something I didn't say, and doesn't appear to know the difference between sucrose and glucose and which one is produced by cane. HFCS is compositionally almost indistinguishable from sucrose, which is what cane sugar is.

Re:Sugar

[Belial6]

While 100 pounds in a week sound exagerated, the human body is approximately 60% water. So, if right off the top, you could theoretically gain 100 lbs of weight by consuming 40 lbs of food. Now add in the fact that 60% is an approximation. Presumably there is some variance in the percentage of water that make up a human. Then add that by some accounts a very large percentage of the population is suffering from chronic dehydration. I am not making a claim, but if thyroid removal in some way triggers a persons body to store more water, this theoretical person could, instead of being below the 60% line, be over the 60% line.

I am not agreeing to the 100 pounds in a week claimed by the parent poster, but I can certainly conceive of a universe where his claim is true. Thus calling it a ridiculous exaggeration out of hand seems like a pretty weak rebuttal. Particularly since his point would still stand if he had said 50 lbs in a month.

Re:Sugar

[drinkypoo]

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.

The problem with HFCS isn't so much the fact of eating HFCS as how it is actually used. The comment at the top of this thread really nailed it. In some recipes you can effectively replace oil with HFCS if you throw enough citric acid in to balance out the flavor. This has two immediate benefits to the processed food industry. First, HFCS is cheaper than even lousy vegetable oil. Second, oil goes off, but sugar and citric acid are both food preservatives. Not only does the substitution reduce the problem of spoilage of the oil, but it also actually helps preserve the other ingredients of the food. This, and not the chemical composition, is the reason why you should put a product back down if you see HFCS in the list of ingredients. It's technically food, but if you compared the recipe from something from (for example) The Joy of Cooking, all of the recipes would most closely match something from the dessert section except for the perplexing inclusion of a crapload of citric acid.

"IT'S A COOKBOOK! A COOKBOOK!"

[Tekoneiric]

Aliens are fattening us up for the slaughter...

Re:"IT'S A COOKBOOK! A COOKBOOK!"

[blackest_k]

It's probable that feral rats are living on the same foods we are, it may be that there is a problem with some of the food we manufacture.

One thing a lot of processed food has in common has is a long shelf life and salt and sugar are common preservatives. we know this inhibits bacteria outside our bodies how is this effecting the bacteria within our bodies? Would this make a difference in to how our bodies process food?

I don't diet but I am diabetic and I have become a bit more sensitive to what I am eating, my body weight is steadily dropping and the better I control my blood sugars the less i weigh. I am more likely to buy from the outside aisles. of course it means nothing in the general statistics. I do think it makes a difference.
     

There's a solution.

[mybeat]

I heard something called 'mehth' can make you slim!

Well America isn't number 1 in being fat

[Mashiki]

That title goes to Mexico. So cheer on, someone else has you beat on this.

Re:Well America isn't number 1 in being fat

[Anonymous Coward]

What? America is not the number 1? That's not acceptable! EAT MORE!

Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[Ardyvee]

Yeah, it sure it is all about excess calories. No, it isn't just about excess sugar, which is what:

Very simply food manufacturers removed the fat in the 70's and replaced it with huge amounts of sugar. The problem with sugar is the brain doesn't see it as nutrition thus it doesn't suppress your appetite when you eat sugar filled foods.

suggest, because:

The reason why your caloric intake is such as it is, why your burning efficiency is lower, or why you're less active and hence burn less are obviously quite a complex set of conditions

which isn't really reduced to food manufactures removing fat and replacing it with sugar (let alone the validity of this claim and it's applicability to the considered population). And this is what I believe was what AC was trying to point out and you reinforced.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, go and read TFA. The entire article is about demonstrating that the "it's simple thermodynamics" answer is pure bullshit. I'll give you a hint as to part of why it's bullshit –humans are not closed systems. It's not true that the energy we use and the energy input as food are equal. We for example, poop.

The article even gives strong evidence that it's got nothing at all to do with simple thermodynamics, citing that lab animals, which are fed regulated diets with specific calorific values are gaining weight at the same rate as humans are.

The "it's basic thermodynamics" people would have you believe that if you consume 2030 calories, and gain 30 calories worth of fat a day, that you could eat 2000 calories and magically lose weight. As TFA points out, if this were true, losing weight would be a simple matter of not eating 3 peanuts a day. The reality is that it's much harder than that. The reality is that if you consume 2000 calories instead of 2030, many people's bodies biochemistry will simply decide to poop out 30 calories less fat.

At 2030 calories input, your body may well decide to do the following:
- Use 1500 calories on doing things
- store 30 calories
- poop 500 calories

At 2000 calories input, your body may well decide to do the following:
- Use 1500 calories on doing things
- store 30 calories
- poop 470 calories

At 1500 calories input, your body may well decide to do:
- Use only 1200 calories, make you feel tired and depressed
- store 30 calories
- poop 270 calories.

At a certain calorific intake, from certain foods, with certain genetics, certain viruses, certain chemical conditions, certain lighting and heating conditions ..., your body will decide to do all kinds of different things. So no, it's not simply a matter of telling overweight people "eat less, do more". It's not that simple.

Unfortunately, the kind of people who think it is that simple tend to be people who are thin because of all kinds of environmental factors. Because of that, they think it's trivial to be thin, and hence lambast the fatties for their "lack of willpower", when the reality is actually massively more complex than that.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[Eivind]

Certainly, in principle that's entirely true. In practice though, our bodies have evolved to try *really* hard to extract as much energy as possible from the food we digest. To our detriment today, eating 500 kcals/day too much wouldn't matter if the body would just take "what it needs" and poop the rest.

There's no indication that consuming more calories will cause your body to digest significantly fewer of them. But it is true, like you write, that on very low calorie diets, your metabolism and thus energy-consumption will tend to fall. So you might eat 1000 kcal less, but your metabolism slows by 300 kcal, so your weight-loss is slower than expected.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[Bongo]

And also, most of our energy is used in the base metabolic rate. The body can adjust that a little here, a little there.

Another little point, children overeat because they are growing. But they don't grow because they overeat. It is the body's control systems which regulate what the body is doing and thus, how much to eat.

Sugar / carbs, being available in unnatural quantities, flummox this system. It puts the body into a mode where its aim becomes to store fat, and it'll get the energy to store fat even by destroying muscle if it has to. Lab rats which died of heart failure because they were being underfed, starved, and they burned up their muscle tissue, whilst keeping their fat tissue -- they died obese and starved. (see Taubes for the ref.)

But instead of recognising the conventional energy-balance model has failed, "common sense" blames it on "lack of will power".
(Thermodynamics as a law hasn't failed, it is still true for bodies, but they reasoning that fat loss is just about calorie counting and exercise has failed.)

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[Taxeman]

Contrary to what you're saying, the problem has everything to do with thermodynamics. You just don't seem to get the "simple thermodynamics" argument.

You're right that the energy used by the body might vary, and right that it's difficult to control or assess the difference between the input energy and the used energy. Still, you're missing an important limit in your calculation.

At 0 calories input, your body may well decide to do the following:
- Use only 750 calories
- store -750 calories
- poop 0 calories.

There is no way around it. You can *force* your body to use more than you eat, and you *will* lose weight. This can be done by eating less, or moving more. This isn't easy, would not necessarily be considered 'healthy', but that's not the point. The point isn't about whether you'll feel depressed or tired, it's about conservation of energy.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[Anonymous Coward]

So which of these is your proposal for someone gaining 30 calories worth of fat from 2030 calories intake per day?
  Change to zero input, causing instant lethargy, depression, other health complications, and causing your body to store everything it can when you have lost sufficient weight, and hence for the net actually to be weight gain after all's said and done.
  Eat 1015 calories a day instead, causing your body to still go into starvation mode, store as much as it can, poop nearly nothing, and making you lethargic and depressed, and hence unable to exercise properly.
  Eat somewhere in the "traditional" diet range, of 1500 to 2000 calories a day, which, as the article points out, doesn't actually work, you will simply poop less out, and/or feel more tired and do less.

The point actually is that you in many cases *can not* force your body to use more than you eat in a way that doesn't ultimately result actually in either weight gain, and/or more health complications.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[evilviper]

if you consume 2000 calories instead of 2030, many people's bodies biochemistry will simply decide to poop out 30 calories less fat.

Then you repeat the process with 30 fewer calories again, and pretty soon you WILL lose weight. It's simple physics, you WILL lose weight after cutting down on calories.

Whatever is going on might make it easier for our bodies to gain fat, or stimulate our appetites so we're not naturally regulating like previous generations, or anything else. But none of that changes the laws of physics... you CAN still lose weight if you have enough will power to be slightly hungry for a long time.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[dywolf]

youre body doesnt "decide" to poop out calories. who the hell taught you biology?

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[MaskedSlacker]

Or you could learn to read and you'd realize that he actually agreed with the article.

The reason why your caloric intake is such as it is, why your burning efficiency is lower, or why you're less active and hence burn less are obviously quite a complex set of conditions

That's a perfect summation of the entire article. Where he disagrees is the claim that consumption is irrelevant because of this.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[Le Marteau]

I'm sorry but it clearly is excess calories. If you burn more than you eat, you will lose weight. It's basic thermodynamics.

No need to be sorry.

Anyway, it is more complicated than "basic thermodynamics". You can't just take the calorie counts, as derived from a laboratory process, and say that is what your body is using.

Not 100% of the caloric value of foods is burned. For example, feces has a caloric content. The caloric counts posted on packaging accounts for this, but it is only an approximation. And it is often wildly incorrect.

So stop with the condescending "I'm sorry it's basic thermodynamics." It's more complicated than that for a number of reasons... I have only touched on one.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[MaskedSlacker]

the TV switch, the car switch, the refrigerator switch. After those switches disconnect electrical energy,

What the hell kind of car do you drive?

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[Vintermann]

In practice though, our bodies have evolved to try *really* hard to extract as much energy as possible from the food we digest. To our detriment today, eating 500 kcals/day too much wouldn't matter if the body would just take "what it needs" and poop the rest.

But there are still differences here. For instance, descendants of islanders get diabetes B more easily.

It's not a given that lack of food was the primary driver of selection in our ancestors. Today's hunter-gatherers, who live in far more marginal areas than most of our ancestors did, still don't live at the edge of starvation by any means.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[jabuzz]

Perhaps true, but if you where to watch the U.K. Channel 4 program Secret Eaters you would come to understand that overweight people don't eat ~2000 Calories they eat *MUCH* more than that. For really obese people they eat more than double that.

Not only that it clearly showed that obese people outright lie to themselves and others about how much food they consume.

The basic premise of the program is the people keep a food diary of what they eat for a week, and the programme makers engage in 24/7 surveillance over the same period to record what they actually eat.

The reality is that people are getting fatter because they are consuming more calories. You only need to look a Cuba to see it all playing out. The austerity brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union the calorie intake dropped and people lost weight across the board. The economy recovered, calorie intake surged as did waist lines. That's peer reviewed research in a high impact journal dumass.

http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f1515#ref-40

In the end it *REALLY* is hard thermodynamics. If you are over weight unless you are suffering from a really really rare and invariably fatal genetic condition stop stuffing your face and exercise more and you WILL loose weight over the long term.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[hendrikboom]

Well, in the GP's model, there is a limit.

At less than 30 calories, you can no longer store 30 calories as fat.

Actually, you hit that limit earlier unless you also stop pooping.

-- hendrik

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no, in practice, that's not true at all. In practice, you can't simply eat 30 calories less per day and magically lose weight. In practice, people make "floaters", which are simply poops with lots of fat (and hence energy) in them.

The practice of the situation is that your body does a lot of very complex stuff to try and regulate the right level of energy, the right level of storage etc. It doesn't simply try to extract everything it can.

More so, many genetic and environmental factors can affect how your body choses to do that given any one set of circumstances.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[evilviper]

There's actually almost no evidence that calorie restriction diets work (in fact there is much more evidence in favor of low carb type diets).

That's so idiotic it hurts my head to read it.

ALL DIETS involve calorie restrictions. Low-fat diets, low-carb diets, Mediterranean diets, all-kelp diets, etc., they ALL involve reducing calorie intake as the fundamental first step in the diet program.

No studies have shown any type of diet is more effective than any other (beyond the margin of error). Whether you follow Atkins, or the FDA pyramid, or Jenny Craig, or anything else, your chances of success are the same, and you'll lose the same amount of weight. It's the "diet" part, consuming slightly fewer calories, that causes the weight loss and health improvements.

Calorie restriction ALWAYS works. There's no way for it not to. All the body reactions that can cause gains or reduce losses, are entirely temporary and rather short-term. And starving is never required... Just keeping yourself very slightly hungry for a few weeks, rather than stuffing your face at every opportunity.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[rand.srand()]

I've manipulated my weight by over 30 pounds down and up since the beginning of the year. I've done it on a schedule based on calorie intake and burn measured carefully. I average 3.5 workout hours a week. I've spent just as much time eating over my calories burned as I have eating under. And I'm not eating superfoods or no carbs, or no fat, or whatever other fad... I'm eating pretty much the same stuff I always have just on a budget. My weight change has been impossible to detect day-to-day on the scale it's been so slow yet the total impact has been huge.

For years I believed the calorie thing was bunk and indeed I managed my "weight" but got fatter and fatter with the scale largely in the same range. When my weight would go up I'd cut back and lose weight... but it didn't impact my physical dimensions. So last year I said that was it and decided to get serious.

Losing weight is a mental task. It's the time and consistency that it takes that is so brutal. Society suffers from a negative feedback loop where everything promises quick results, and when you don't get them, it feels impossible. The reality is losing a pound a week of fat is rapid weight loss. And when your weight fluctuates by a few pounds a day it can take a long time for readily apparent results to show up. But if you stack up 26 weeks of weight loss you will feel like a champion and it didn't take superhuman effort on any given day to do it.

Start today and by the end of the year you'll see major changes. Or you can keep doing what you are doing thinking the calorie math doesn't work and you will probably keep on the same trend line.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[fearofcarpet]

youre body doesnt "decide" to poop out calories. who the hell taught you biology?

Food moves through the intestine at roughly a constant rate. If it takes more time to absorb calories than it does to make it to the colon, then those calories don't make it into your bloodstream. That is why liquid calories are so dangerous; they are very efficiently absorbed and don't contain the fiber, etc. necessary to feel full.

Re:Failure to even Attempt to process the article.

[skids]

You can try this yourself. Go on a restricted calorie diet for about 3 days... say 25% less then you need. On the forth day, have some sugar water fed to you by IV, since you had vasovagal syncope on day 3 and are under observation at the hospital.

FTFY.

Games and Beer

[ciderbrew]

Late late nights, Games, Beer and doing fuck all about it for years. But they are symptoms of depression and wanting escapism. A knee injury doesn't help. Also, a dumb sense of being able to lose a few KG with magic when I finally get the motivation to put the effort in. But Skyrim and Arkham Asylum have to take some blame, they should have sucked more so I could put them down.
Thanks for asking.

Re:FP

[ciderbrew]

Actually obesity is the defence against the peeders. No one wants the ugly fat child. Keep Em fat and safe people!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

the study seems defeatist

[nimbius]

more data should be required before we make such a broad spectrum 'everything is getting fat because of everything' claim, which is absolutely as absurd as it sounds. In the cases of laboratory controlled animals, im willing to venture a sedentary and stressful lifestyle has accumulated their girth.
in the case of people, we've stopped eating real food entirely for both convenience and lack of nutritional education. Some of us work odd hours or multiple jobs and just dont have time to cook. places like wendys offer a reasonable facimile of food but the ingredients list for even a hamburger bun starts to look more like the back pages of an organic chemistry lab book. Most 30somethings like myself havent the slightest idea, nor care, about how to cook their own food outside of a cardboard box and boil-point water. And packaged food companies agree this is the way it should be. There is no more home economics, we emerge from primary education with no more than an understanding of hunger and satiation.

I also think its a cultural thing. Jamie Oliver, for all the work hes done in targeting childhood obesity and healthy eating, still cooks an alarming number of recipes that youd never think to serve the majority of a populus thats overweight. This holds true for most chefs, celebrity or not. Browned butter and whole cream are still entirely acceptable additions to most semi-casual and upscale dining experiences despite the well proven fact theyre killing us. There are only four meats we readily consume on a daily basis yet theyve replaced hundreds of vegetables in nearly every meal of the day. Many adults simply avoid healthy vegetables like onions, tomatoes or broccoli alltogether, picking from their meal and instead focusing on pasta or meat.

articles like this that just throw in the proverbial towel arent helping. We need competent nutritional education and responsible industry to start offering food that is both nutritious and healthy. Yet as with most industries the change often comes from the consumer, and its often met half-hearted and begrudgingly.

Re:the study seems defeatist

[thegarbz]

This holds true for most chefs, celebrity or not. Browned butter and whole cream are still entirely acceptable additions to most semi-casual and upscale dining experiences despite the well proven fact theyre killing us.

While it's irrefutable that these are unhealthy I disagree that this can be considered a cause of the current problem. Up-scale restaurants generally have a tendency to cook the old school way, a beautiful meal often seasoned with it's own fat, and a wonderful array of tasty vegetables on the side. Yes butter and cream are killing us, but they were also killing my great grandma who's recipe book would drive a health advocate to sudden cardiac arrest. Even my still alive 97 year old grandma loves cooking roast and the day after they take the left over fat and shortening and spread it out on a sandwich for lunch.

The recent alarming trend is a horrendous intake in sugar, not in fat. People have been consuming excessive portions of fat for 100s of years without an obesity epidemic. Sure it's not helping but I would point to things which have changed in the last 20 years such as a massive surge in the consumption of HFCS rather than age old delicious recipes consumed by our far thinner ancestry.

Re:the study seems defeatist

[m00sh]

Browned butter and whole cream are still entirely acceptable additions to most semi-casual and upscale dining experiences despite the well proven fact theyre killing us.

They are not proven or if you think they are proven, the proof is under a lot of dispute. The major papers and studies that constitute "proof" have been found to have major statistical and analytical problems. One such problem was that all correlations to saturated fats to heart disease did not control for sugars and carbs. People who were eating high saturated fats were also eating higher sugars and carbs but it was not controlled because the researcher believed sugars/carbs to be harmless.

Because of attitude like yours, butter and cream are replaced with canola/corn/soyabean oil because it is unsaturated fat/plant oil. These oils are industrial products going through high temperatures, chemicals and storage processes and even though they are unsaturated and "good", they are unstable and full of impurities.

Many adults simply avoid healthy vegetables like onions, tomatoes or broccoli alltogether, picking from their meal and instead focusing on pasta or meat.

And, you know why? Because, vegetables need fat to make them tasty and bring out their flavor. If you start throwing out the fat, vegetables start tasting like grass. If they are cooked properly with fat and seasonings, they are great. Even seafood like shrimps and crabs legs were once considered food that didn't taste good. Only by cooking them with butter, it has reached its status as it has now.

So, stop believing saturated fats are bad for you. It's just a product of the 80s advertising campaign that hammered the point that fats are bad for you by showing saturated fats in semi-solid form in lower temperatures clogging drains and making the connection that your arteries are the drain and saturated fats clogs both.

Re:the study seems defeatist

[m00sh]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat#Association_with_diseases [wikipedia.org] it doesnt really matter if i "believe" theyre bad for me. Scientific research seems to conclude saturated fats are linked to varying extents with both heart disease and cancer.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/saturated-fat-healthy/#axzz2cZ2Fmnln

Scientific research does NOT seem to conclude saturated fats linked to heart disease. It is still being highly debated. Just one side of the argument got support from a senator decades ago and popular culture embraced it.

Sure, there are papers that show correlations but as I said they are flawed. There are plenty of refutes and other papers that show saturated fats help in heart disease.

'tastes like grass' is an incredibly subjective assertion. the conclusion that fat 'brings out their flavour' is also baseless considering fermentation and roasting are readily available alternatives which have been used for centuries. Beets, Carrots, Corn and cucumber all have a distinctive flavour despite the lack of fat.

Fermentation and roasting rely on the starches and glucides. Vegetables high in starches and sugar tastes good raw. But, of course, in the modern food world with sugar, they can't compete on sugar. Vegetables that are low in both starches/sugar and fat can be eaten but cooked right with fat, they bring out the flavors of the vegetables. Yes, it's a highly subjective opinion but as someone who has cooked heaps of vegetables like broccoli and spinach that even kids have loved to eat, I stand by it.

hydrogenated oils go through chemical processing in order to introduce hydrogen. as for cream, or butter, not a single drop reaches a supermarket before being pasteurized at 'temperatures'.

I could make butter at home but I can't make corn/soyabean/canola oil at home. So, they are still industrial foods in my book.

The problem isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't that obesity runs in the family; it's rather nobody runs in the family!

Watch it from start to finish

[AbRASiON]

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.

People who can't stop

[DNS-and-BIND]

The author obviously has his pet topic, which is that it's not anyone's fault that anyone is fat. Sorry, but I've lived around too many fat people. They eat. They eat a lot. Honestly the author goes on far too long about "it's not their fault" and doesn't spend too much time discussing "why".

I can buy that there's something in food these days that may cause people to become heavier than they otherwise would become. But I don't buy the fact that this mystery chemical has made a nation of blobs. It may be a contributory factor, but it's not why obesity happens.

Frankly, I think that companies like McDonald's have successfully hacked the human brain and created foods that people just can't say no to. It's not all of us, I get nauseous eating McD's more than once a week (the smell outside the restaurant is enough to drive me away) but there are plenty of us who are wholly unable to resist. And by "unable to resist" I mean exactly that - your conscious mind might know it's bad, but you just can't help yourself because the food is so delicious. That this "flavor" is a bunch of old, tired cows mixed with industrial chemicals is beside the point. You've been hacked - you could say no, but you really don't want to. The idea of living without McD's for the rest of your life is repellent, a life hardly worth living at all.

I live overseas, and I've seen this myself with the locals and foreigners alike. The locals freaking love McD's and KFC. There's nothing like it in their cuisine and some of them (not all) just can't stop going there. Especially kids. Then, there are foreigners who upon discovering the local (awesome) food spit it out and won't eat anything but Western food. Seriously, I've known people who have lived locally for years and who every day eat nothing but Subway, Starbucks, McD's, KFC, Papa John's, Pizza Hut, etc. If I suggest we go and get a bowl of noodles or other local stuff and I receive a wide-eyed, "You eat that shite, mate? It's garbage!"

Look no further than the closest thing he makes to a hypothesis: "being poor is stressful, and stress makes you eat, and the cheapest food available is the stuff with a lot of âempty caloriesâ(TM), therefore poorer people are fatter than the better-off." Stop right there at the "stress makes you eat" part. WTF man? No it doesn't. Maybe it does FOR YOU, perhaps FOR SOME, but it's hardly universal.

Conclusion: the guy wanted to write 4,700 words to get his name in print and support his pre-existing political views, not because he had something insightful to say.

Re:People who can't stop

[N1AK]

Stop right there at the "stress makes you eat" part. WTF man? No it doesn't. Maybe it does FOR YOU, perhaps FOR SOME, but it's hardly universal.

Not my favourite part of his article but you're splitting hairs if you only accept statements that are universal. Your own post says "The locals freaking love McDs" WTF man? but by your own criteria-> No they don't. Maybe it does for that ONE, perhaps for SOME.. can you see how that kind of nitpicking doesn't add anything as it's obviously not meant literally.

There is a well researched correlation between stress, over-eating and unhealthy-eating.

You're right that personal responsibility and control are important and some people tend to ignore these, however it is also true that factors outside individual control (brain hacking as you call it for example) play a massive part and masses of people ignore those. A common opinion of fat people is that they're fat because they're lazy, weak etc with no recognition that yes they played a part but so did food manufacturers, governments etc and we should be dealing with both.

Re:People who can't stop

[dadelbunts]

The cheapest food available is actually going to the store and cooking your own food. Most people are too lazy to do this, or to exercise, so we get articles like this telling them its not their fault. I have seen someone say their doctor was fat shaming them, because whenever they went he told them to lose weight as it was affecting their health. This is the society we live in now.

Re:People who can't stop

[evilviper]

Frankly, I think that companies like McDonald's have successfully hacked the human brain and created foods that people just can't say no to. It's not all of us, I get nauseous eating McD's more than once a week (the smell outside the restaurant is enough to drive me away) but there are plenty of us who are wholly unable to resist

This makes NO SENSE. Most people don't eat out more than once a week, yet they're overweight. Some people don't EVER eat at McDonalds or similar fast-food places, and yet they're fat, too.

Your anecdote, that you know some fat people with no self control, does NOT apply to EVERY OVERWEIGHT PERSON OUT THERE. Your dislike of McDonald biases you to be only too happy to blame them for every ill in the universe, but that's not supported by ANY evidence.

Conclusion: the guy wanted to write 4,700 words to get his name in print and support his pre-existing political views, not because he had something insightful to say.

His observation that laboratory animals are even getting fatter is pretty hard to discount, and really indicates a bigger problem. Nothing you've said can POSSIBLY account for this data. So it's YOU who has nothing insightful to say.

Is it genetic modifications to foods? Herbicides or Pesticides used on crops? HFCS? Calorie-free sweeteners? Or something else?

My money is on BPA and other phthalates. They are recognized by the body as estrogen, and have been "shown to affect the developmental and reproductive systems." Estrogen has effects on the body like weight-gain (retaining more calories as fat), and fatigue.

Phthalates are everywhere, from plastic baby bottles to canned food. It's only in the past generation that we've been exposed to them at astronomical levels, which coincides nicely with the epidemic of weight gain. A few more years of research, and we might find we've all been poisoned, and have to deal with these side-effects of cheap plastic food/drink containers for the rest of our lives.

Re:People who can't stop

[golrien]

The author obviously has his pet topic, which is that it's not anyone's fault that anyone is fat. Sorry, but I've lived around too many fat people. They eat. They eat a lot. Honestly the author goes on far too long about "it's not their fault" and doesn't spend too much time discussing "why".

I didn't get that from the article at all. The word "fault" doesn't turn up once. Nobody is trying to pretend that you can eat lots of food and lose weight. Pretty much the entire article is about factors other than overeating that can contribute to being overweight, so I don't see how you can think that the author doesn't spend enough time discussing "why" in there.

Re:People who can't stop

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Strawberries are sweet and generally used in desserts. They're treats.

Try pricing out stuff like beans, kale, cabbage, spinach etc. instead. Inexpensive and very filling.

Betteridge's Law

[Anonymous Coward]

What's Causing the Rise In Obesity?

No?

Or is it under Godwin's jurisdiction:
What's Causing the Rise In Obesity? Hitler

Either way there's clearly no individual responsibility in it, we'll just blame everything.

Lazyness

[dadelbunts]

God i hate articles like this. Everything isnt causing obesity, lazyness is. Want to know why im fucking fat? Cus im fucking lazy and like to eat pizza while watching 4 episodes of TNG on Netflix. From people too lazy to go buy groceries ( i had someone tell me it was virtually impossible to buy groceries because they didnt have a car) to people being too fucking lazy to cook, or exercise even the slightest bit. You can eat whatever food you want, as many calories you want, if you burn it off you wont be fat, you might have other health complications but thats another story alltogether. Combined with people telling them that "its ok", "not your fault" and "out of your control" that make it worse. Obese people just go "oh its not my fault fuck it", stuff their faces with food, dont work out, baloon up, then shrug like they had no control over it. Its bullshit. People need to start accepting some personal responsibility for their actions.

Re:Lazyness

[evilviper]

Want to know why im fucking fat? Cus im fucking lazy and like to eat pizza while watching 4 episodes of TNG on Netflix

Exercise is absolutely insignificant next to the baseline caloric intake. Any dietician will tell you the same. You have to get as much exercise as a marathon runner to lose substantial weight without changing your diet. It's almost ALL about diet.

Re:Lazyness

[davide marney]

Those lazy Marmosets, lab rats, mice, and chimps! No wonder they're getting fat.

Re:Lazyness

[evilviper]

I have never seen anyone who exercises regularly and still is fat...

You've got the cause and effect backwards... Fat will prevent you from doing much exercise, making you tire quickly, blowing out your joints, and your respiratory and circulatory systems just can't keep up with the huge demands on a body twice the normal size.

Re:Lazyness

[evilviper]

I burn an extra 400 calories a day on the crosstrainer.

You're effectively running 1/8th of a marathon each day, and you're doing it every single day, which is atypical, so almost a marathon each week.

And you're STILL not burning a significant number of calories. You would completely erase all your work by just eating 5 cookies, or drinking 2 bottles of Gatorade.

Re:Lazyness

[RivenAleem]

Well, if you've been doing plenty of regular exercise and still managed to get so fat you start to do damage to your joints, then something has gone seriously wrong somewhere.

I do wonder at people who only put the slightest amount of skimmed milk in their tea/coffee because they are worried about their weight. I grew up drinking 2-3 pints of full fat milk a day, I absolutely loved the stuff. Though, the 3 (primary school) and 6 (secondary school) mile (10km) daily commute on the bike may be a contributing factor to keeping slim.

The GP's comment is still valid, I do not see people who regularly exercise become/be fat. You'd have to be doing something deliberately wrong (be a sumo wrestler) to pull something like that off.

Re:Lazyness

[Overzeetop]

It's only about diet if you make it about diet.

Let me ask - if you got a $10000 check in the mail - say you won a small lotto prize - that would make a significant difference in what you could buy in entertainment over the next year, yes? More meals out, more movies, more shows - probably a 2-5 fold increase over normal? And yet, that's probably only 15-25% of your salary.

Same thing with food. 1600-2200 calories a day for a full grown male would be a low-moderate activity bench mark rate. Add just 500 calories average of exercise a day and you go from counting every goddamned cornflake to draining a Big Gulp at lunch, or doubling your primary meal size a couple times a week.

Put me on 1800 calories a day and I'll start looking for ways to cheat. Put me on 2300 calories a day and I don't even have to count.

That 500 calories a day? 45 minutes running or swimming or cycling will burn that off. I get more than that walking 9 holes of golf. Heck, I probably burn more than that just working around the house on the weekends - no organized exercise required.

Re:FP

[lightknight]

Actually, I hypothesize it's a link between the focus on a decrease in recess (unordered recreational time) and an increase in environmental stress (in other words, and contrary to official accounts, we might want to shorten the work day, but increase the efficiency of the work during that shorter period). Too much stress, not enough proper outlets (because they all cost too much now...and people aren't making enough to make use of them), results in a catastrophic / cascade failure scenario.

If we have a large die-off in the future, in a short period of time, then perhaps, if these comments survive, we will have an idea where to look next time.

Re:Nope.

[Megane]

I would also blame gut parasites. For instance, simply having most of the human population wearing shoes significantly breaks the life cycle of tapeworms. Parasites and gut bacteria are one of the few things that could affect so many species all at the same time.

Eating too much

[Charliemopps]

Personally I'm a bit tired of all of these media invented excuses. If you're overweight in almost all cases with very few exceptions it's YOUR fault.
You eat too much.
You eat crappy food.
And you likely have all sorts of psychological excuses to make the above two points plausibly not your fault in your own mind.

While going to college I worked as a cashier at a grocery store for a while and saw it all. Morbidly obese people coming in on Food Stamps or other government assistance because they were "Disabled" due to their weight, and using those funds to buy almost entirely junk food. And no small amount either. Cases upon cases of Soda, frozen chicken wings, etc... The ironic part was they seemed to feel he most guilty at the checkout and I, their cashier was their confessor. So they'd tell me all about how this was the "Diet" Swanson's family pack of salsbury steak yet they still couldn't lose any weight!!!

Too each their own, if you want to eat until you're 500lbs and die of a heart attack at an early age? If you think "Big is beautiful" or whatever the catch phrase is now... great! I'm cool with that. But lets not let people lie to themselves. Yes there may be a lot of environmental factors that make gaining weight easier now, and you may have some societal engrained habits that are hard to break, but the choice is still yours. There's no undiscovered bacteria that's going to make you obese even if eat salads all day (yes, I've had people tell me this was why they were over weight) It's a very simple process, eat less... a lot less, and you will lose weight. There is no such thing as big boned, you are not just a "big person" you can be as skinny as any person on TV if you want, although maybe not as attractive and successful, at least you wont die at 45.

Yes I realize that now every obese person with a Grande Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino in their hand is going to mod me down this morning... but hey, I'll outlive you anyway, so mod away!

Re:Eating too much

[Dcnjoe60]

Personally I'm a bit tired of all of these media invented excuses. If you're overweight in almost all cases with very few exceptions it's YOUR fault.

And the animals that are gaining weight, too? For instance, did we all of a sudden start overfeeding lab rats and lab mice? Did ferral dogs and cats all of a sudden start ignoring nature and quit eating when full? It's one thing for humans, it's another thing for the animals mentioned in the article.

Re:Eating too much

[Charliemopps]

Same cause. They're eating too much. Over abundance of food and they have no concept of obesity or early death. There have been studies that have shown links between abundance of food, Obesity, early death and advanced genetic mutation. In short, in the wild, if you've got lots of food, you get fat and live even if you have a mild mutation. You have a better chance of passing on your mutated genes but as a trade off you die early which extends the abundance of food situation for your offspring.

Processed food is NOT the same

[Anonymous Coward]

There is absolutely nothing that says that processed or manufactured food should be any different form other food.

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 food except inasmuch as some of the pure chemicals that they both contain are identical.

The bulk of industrial processed food is completely different in structure, texture, in its overall nutritional balance, in its micro-nutrients, and in the many toxins it contains. And the bad processed food is accompanied by equally bad environmental byproducts of the industrial food and farming chemical industries, such as the widespread presence of glyphosate not only in our food but in our water and even air.

That we and animals in our environment are unavoidably being affected through ingesting a manufactured diet of chemicals is not an outlier theory, it would be a miracle if it were not happening. We know it is because our gut flora is a mess, and our lab animals show the same symptoms whereas in the wild they do not.

Re:Processed food is NOT the same

[LordLimecat]

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.

Re:Processed food is NOT the same

[X0563511]

OMG! CHEMICALS!

You know what? Everything - literally everything - is made of chemicals.

Re:Wasn't there some sort of virus?

[Macchendra]

Not a dream. It is adenovirus 36. Mentioned in the article too. Every girlfriend I've ever had must have exposed me to this, lol.

Re:High Rise

[xaxa]

I was about 13 when I visited a Texan diner, on the first day of a holiday. My mum ordered a salad. "What dressing do you want?" There's a choice?! She asked for the normal one.

A large bowl of salad was provided, and a bowl of pink goop -- probably 75cl or so. My mum asked what the goop was. The waitress said, "that's your thousand island dressing, here, I'll show you" and tipped the whole lot over the salad.

At a fast food place in Texas the five of us chose what we wanted. My mum ordered it "one large hotdogs, one large cheeseburger... oh, is that the large hotdog? Wow, ok, nothing else". The two items fed my parents and three children.

Re:FP

[MRe_nl]

Clearly Saint John got it wrong and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are Conquest, War, Obesity and Death.

Re:FP

[Sponge Bath]

No one wants the ugly fat child.

What about with fava beans and a nice chianti?

Re:FP

[__aaltlg1547]

And mice feel the same way?

Re:so who to blame , wallst or govt or fiat money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it was all the nuke testing done on the planet, seriously, 500+ nukes in the air and orbit and underground, cant be healthy can it.

Ah, there's that phrase I love: can't be healthy/good for you. It seems every time I hear or see that phrase, it's someone who doesn't really quite know what they are talking about and just has a hypothesis from their gut. They want to say it's bad for you, but have absolutely no evidence of that, so they just say it can't be good.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:FP

[ChrisMaple]

Insisting that people work more efficiently is one of the most effective ways of increasing their stress level.

What is making us fat? well ... DUH

[LoRdTAW]

Here is what is making people fat: (tl/dr: Sugar, cheap & plentiful fatty foods, sedentary lifestyle, stress and distracting entertainment)

Sugar - Everything is pumped so full of sugar its almost unbearable. Soda, juices candies are big sources of sugar. And that was a result of cheaper high fructose corn syrup which is added to make the food item more appealing. Just think of how much sugar in in the 2 to 4 cups of coffee you drink per day when you order it with some sweetener or flavor. You can't even buy a supposedly healthy fruit juice without it being loaded with as much sugar as a soda. I drink fresh brewed iced tea, either green tea with a bit of honey added or regular black tea both with fresh lemon. Very refreshing, a thirst quencher and good for you. I cut out soda a few years back though I do enjoy a Coke every now and then as a treat.

Low quality food - Animal fats and carbs. Two things that our body can use for nutrition but eat in too large of quantities. Our brains are also wired to enjoy savory foods through evolution to ensure we ingest enough protein. But we are overexposed to such foods and are over indulging in them as as a result. Food is cheap and plentiful in developed nations and bad food is the cheapest food. We have restaurants serving up boatloads of fatty foods loaded with carbs. Fast food is notorious for this because most of them are burger joints serving up fatty meat on a carb bun and carb fries soaked in more fat. And to top it off its cheap and fast. when you're stressed out, running around all day, have a deadline, boss harping on you, it can become overwhelming and eating can help relieve stress. So you run to McBurgerdys and pick up a triple bypass bacon cheese burger with a side of fat fries and wash it down with a tub of sugar water. Its too easy to get a hold of this junk. I am guilty of this along with many many others. I try to cook but too often am I distracted by stress to deal with it.

Sedentary lifestyle - We have many jobs where a worker sits in a chair all day. Once they return home they are burnt out by stress (see below) and plop down on a couch in front of the TV. The only time they may have free time is on weekends providing they aren't burnt out from family or partying. Life is way too fast paced and full of stress and problems.

Stress - Work, trying to make ends meet family etc all contribute to mental stress which slows people down. You escape by watching TV, playing Video games, surfing the web or some other hobby. Some hobbies involve exercise but for a majority, it doesn't. rush rush rush! go go go! now now now! This is mentality killing us. Then throw in the shitty economy where the cost of living is outpacing many peoples income.

Entertainment - We are at a point where entertainment is on demand and interactive. People get lost for hours watching TV, playing video games or surfing the web. Its too easy to plop in front of the TV or computer and be immersed in an alternate world where we can escape the daily stress of our lives. The real world sucks but video games offer an alternate world where we play a hero or are at the top of the gaming food chain. BOOM headshot! Take that bitch! Feels good doesn't it? Better than typing up TPS reports, meeting deadlines, hunting down bugs etc. Fuck work. That is why you have people who lose jobs, spouses and even their lives. The virtual world is better than the real world. And TV is the same thing, we follow an immersive story or laugh at jokes and gags which take us away from our stressful lives. Before Radio, TV and video games many people drowned their stress in alcohol at local pubs. People are always looking to escape.

I'm not getting fatter

[1s44c]

I'm losing fat actually. Get some exercise and cut out the high fructose corn syrup.

Screw going to a gym, just buy this book:
http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Your-Own-Gym/dp/0345528581

Re:so who to blame , wallst or govt or fiat money?

[GLMDesigns]

Hmmm. Don't think so. The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not fatter than their contemporaries. In fact if they survived the first few years they lived as long as everyone else. This holds true for the 100+ people who had the misfortune (or great luck) to survive BOTH Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

W = mg

[Earth Dweller]

Hold everything! What if the "g" is increasing rather than the "m" ?

Re:FP

[ciderbrew]

You've destroyed my point and included a citation. You are a power /. user.