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Sewage Bacteria Reveal Cities' Obesity Rates

Posted by timothy on from the floral-research dept.

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.

17 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Gut flora by flaming+error · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Health problems, including obesity, may be caused by what's in (or missing from) gut bacteria.

    1. Re:Gut flora by gewalker · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes, but if you want to know how obese a city is you now have a new choice. A) Analyze at remains from the sewer B) Analyze photos from Facebook or C) Spend 5 minutes at the local Walmart.

    2. Re:Gut flora by beelsebob · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The news here for me isn't "here's a way to analyse a city's obesity rate", it's just yet another piece of evidence for "obesity is caused primarily by gut fauna". This would seem to add up with the obese population's assertion that losing weight is incredibly hard, while the non-obese population asserts "just eat less, it's trivially easy". The only way these two assertions can add up is if the two populations have some very different environmental factor going on. Gut fauna making obese people absorb much more of the energy from their food would seem to add up as just that kind of environmental factor.

    3. Re:Gut flora by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree, but, perhaps what a person eats shapes their gut fuana to best digest their diet. If you spend years eating only twinkies and ho-hos...

    4. Re:Gut flora by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you put on weight, you eat more than _your_ body needs. The amount of calories needed depends on your body and your activity level. Someone who runs around all day and takes the stairs and will burn more calories than someone who sits on their butt all day and always uses the elevator.

      Don't just monitor your intake, reduce it until you find that point where _your_ body loses weight. That point exists for everyone, go find yours. That might mean you need to eat less than other people if your gut flora is more efficient. If I eat like my body would like me to, I'd be at least 30 pounds heavier. Since I've been there and don't like it, I don't eat that much. In the end It comes down to willpower.

      So far all people I have seen trying but unable to lose weight said they don't eat more than others, but if you watch them they do. Here a bit extra, there a larger serving, soda instead of water, a snack during the afternoon... Everytime I ask them to stick to what I eat and match my amount they complain about being hungry and needing something to eat. Well, I feel some hunger to, but I don't act on it. That's where the willpower comes in.

    5. Re:Gut flora by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unfortunately the human body is not your average ICE. It doesn't "just" work on basic thermodynamics.

      It all starts with the fact that we not only consume "fuel". We actually consume quite a bit of stuff we cannot process. We actually MUST consume that stuff for without we start to get reeeeeally messed up. I dimly remember a NASA experiment where they tried to reduce astronaut food to the nutritious stuff. You know, to eliminate ... erhm ... waste. Guess what: Astronauts still shit. Because it didn't work out. The test people got REALLY sick. Sure, they got all the nutrition they needed, But I guess human can't really work if he doesn't poop.

      Which gets to part 2 of the problem: We shit stuff that is still quite nutritious. Ask your local fly population. Our "waste" is not just waste. There's quite a bit of stuff in there that could still be "digested".

      In a nutshell, the human body is not the best kind of engine. I'd actually be interested in how good our energy conversion rate is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is really, really shitty, even compared to the engines we build. And I'm not even talking about us using a good deal of the energy we consume just for heating. I'm talking about the energy we consume that goes out right our exhaust without us actually using it sensibly.

      And then there's of course the different metabolisms that will have different effects on different foods. Because 1000 KJ from one food source is by no means the same as 1000 KJ from another. And even the same food eaten by two different people will not be metabolized in the same way to the same efficiency.

      Sorry, but the law of thermodynamics alone won't cut it.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    6. 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).

    7. Re:Gut flora by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This whole business reminds me of the arguments over whether ulcers were caused by stress or bacteria.

      Turned out to be that some were caused by the one, and some by the other (about 1/3 of ulcers can be "cured" by taking the appropriate antibiotics).

      Maybe, by and by, we'll find that some obesity is caused by the wrong gut bacteria, and some by bad habits.

      Disclaimer: I've been moderately overweight. And I've been thin. Never was much trouble going from the one to the other and back.

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    8. Re:Gut flora by disambiguated · · Score: 3, Informative

      TFA says "the microbiome can influence, and be influenced by, a range of characteristics such as weight, disease, diet, exercise, mood and much more." So they acknowledge the causation can go both ways.

      But it gets even more interesting. According to a Ted talk I saw about this the other day, there are apparently two different ways that our gut microbes might cause obesity. One is related to what you said:

      Which gets to part 2 of the problem: We shit stuff that is still quite nutritious. Ask your local fly population. Our "waste" is not just waste. There's quite a bit of stuff in there that could still be "digested".

      From the Ted talk:

      When we take the microbes from an obese mouse and transplant them into a genetically normal mouse that's been raised in a bubble with no microbes of its own, it becomes fatter than if it got them from a regular mouse. Why this happens is absolutely amazing, though. Sometimes what's going on is that the microbes are helping them digest food more efficiently from the same diet, so they're taking more energy from their food, but other times, the microbes are actually affecting their behavior. What they're doing is they're eating more than the normal mouse, so they only get fat if we let them eat as much as they want.

      So apparently some microbes allow you to extract more energy from your food so you put on more weight for a given amount of calories. But other ones might affect your appetite somehow. There's more in the talk, and it's not just mice: there's research in humans as well.

  2. I'm affraid the data is ... by Laxator2 · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... complete crap.

    Sorry, had to say it.

  3. There is other evidence by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I read a recent story where someone who had a fecal transplant (which affects gut flora) suddenly had a dramatic weight gain as a result.

    It seems like that could work the other way also, as a really quick way to get thinner faster...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:There is other evidence by ebrandsberg · · Score: 3, Informative

      The opposite has also been observed (http://gizmodo.com/the-secret-to-weight-loss-might-be-poop-transplants-fro-1265888152). As someone who is married to someone who has struggled with her weight for all her life, and has done everything including a strict 1000 calorie diet with very little results, I KNOW there is more to it than "just don't eat as much". The people that don't have the issue or haven't lived with it don't understand the issue, and assume that "it is their fault".

  4. mhm by fisted · · Score: 4, Funny

    At least that data is pretty much anonymized.

    --
    CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
  5. The obivous conclusion by radarskiy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If obesity is purely a moral failing, then gut flora must be purely a moral failing too.

  6. Correlation of antibiotic use and obesity by si3n4 · · Score: 3, Informative

    major co-incidence today as my PBS station was putting on it's fundraiser series of every diet plan guy in the world. So much fluff to info, but one person was arguing this same viewpoint (gut biota and tendency to be obese) and showed a startling pair of maps - one with the level of antibiotic prescription and the other with the level of obesity. Startling overlap. Google "antibiotic obesity map" Theory being that the use of antibiotics disturbs the balance or microbes and set more of the population up for obesity. Since the idea is that different bacteria feed on different foods this comes back to skipping refined cards and sugars and eating more vegetables - basically the same kind of prescription they all end up with - and trying to skew the population faster with probiotics. On thing I do now is that every thin person out there is not a paragon of good eating and exercise and not every fat person is a pig with their head in the trough. I was never a skinny person but got progressively more massive with age until one doctor finally thought to test my thyroid which was pretty much crapped out. On the synthetic stuff now and slowly morphing back to - well, something thinner.

  7. The Real Poop by fyngyrz · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sewage Bacteria Reveal Cities' Obesity Rates

    No shit?

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  8. Re:So, which bacteria are the good ones? by NetFusion · · Score: 4, Funny

    There are studies that have shown that it is extremely difficult to change you gut flora by simply ingesting a probiotic pill. What little life makes its way through the hostile environment of the stomach finds a world with very few free niches to colonize and no preferred food sources to live on. The more effect way is to just eat the kinds of foods the life you want to live in your gut thrive on. All life comes covered with the microbes necessary to digest itself and return it to the soil. You are what eats what you eat. If you want to get healthy microbes in your diet, eat non pasteurized fermented foods like sauerkraut.