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Sewage Bacteria Reveal Cities' Obesity Rates

benonemusic writes A new frontier in data mining: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts surveyed bacteria from human waste in the municipal sewage systems. Surprisingly they found different proportions of bacterial species in cities that correlated with obesity rates in those municipal areas. The researchers believe that these bacterial samples can yield city-level information on other diseases as well. Hopefully this isn't just a messy case of spurious correlation.

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  1. Re:Gut flora by cfalcon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Cool, I got modded troll for speaking the truth. Hell, in high school, two brothers- the fat one ate almost exactly half of what the thin one ate. In his 20s, the thinner brother finally had to start paying attention to what he ate (not literally "twice what a normal person would think a meal is"), but he's definitely not fat to this day. The fat one did weight watchers and other shenanigans, and still struggles to have a reasonably body to this day. Yes, he was eating "more than he needed", but you fucking know what? He's essentially been hungry his whole life, and the "amount of food his body needs" is QUITE clearly an amount that he ends up in constant hunger over.

    That's the important part about all this. Did you know that the blood of two normal weight men, one who lost weight YEARS ago, and one who never had any tendency towards fatness, have vastly different levels of the hormones linked to satiety and hunger?

    Yes, of course you can lose weight by eating less than your body needs to maintain its current weight. But that's never NOT been the case, and "starve yourself thin" is not why thin people are thin. They aren't starving. That's the point. There's very clearly triggers. Assclowns can mod me -1 all they like- it's very clearly the truth.

    What about the study where they tried to get inmates to gain weight by overeating, and none could? If you think it's as simple as food consumed, you're willfully blind to reality (presumably, a reality which benefits you in some way, or at least you believe that to be the case).