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Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

theatlantic.com

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Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#21

Post by [deleted] »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #6
zacwest wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article you're writing a comment to: > A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher.

Its strange really. I'm on a ketogenic diet, and hear people preach the caloric balance constantly, that it doesn't matter what my macros are as long as I consume less calories than I burn daily. Yet, I consume close to my previous garbage diet calories and I lose about 2-3lbs/week due to my high fat/moderate protein/very low carb ( Go figure, it appears that caloric energy balance isn't the only factor.

[deleted]

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#22

Post by tdylan »

com2kid wrote: post #12
personjerry wrote: post #4

Weight gain is simple: calorie intake - calorie expenditure. The amount of calories in our food tends to go up over 20 years. Doing the same activities consumes the same amount of calories after 20 years. Thus we would have more caloric surplus, and likely gain more weight than people 20 years ago with less caloric food. Pretty simple imo.

There is a type of seaweed that if your average American eats it, there are zero calories absorbed. If most Japanese citizens eat it, they will absorb calories from it. There is a gut bacteria common in the Japanese population that extracts calories from this type of seaweed. "calories in" is that calories that went down your throat. It is calories that your body was able to digest, and "your body" includes many type…

Link to data/research?

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#23

Post by DiabloD3 »

I don't have access to the study, but I suspect it doesn't say what The Atlantic is saying it's saying.

I lost weight: I went from 340 pounds to 214 pounds in exactly a year, and then bottomed out at 184 eventually (I've been purposely trying to gain muscle lately, which has been causing my weight to meander in the 190s since then).

My caloric intake hasn't changed in a way that can explain such a weight loss. I went from eating 1500-2000 calories a day to 1500-2000 calories a day (as in, no useful change, nothing that can explain 126 pounds in a year, disproportionately more of it towards the start than the end).

Now, what I did change was drop all grains (grains, cereals, pastas, soy, rice), drop refined sugars (I still use coconut and true raw cane sugars (Muscovado, Barbados, or Turbinado) or straight up raw honey; all very sparingly, and corn syrup is banned in my house), dropped seed oils (no more "vegetable", soy, corn, or canola oils; replaced with coconut and olive oil, or leftover bacon fat when I have it), and legumes (I'm allergic to peanuts, and don't care for beans, so the only thing I lost there is peas; soy is a legume, but I include it in with grains due to how it is typically treated culinarily, and thus already banned in my house).

So, given my experience, people are fatter because of reasons that cannot be explained by calories, such as chemicals in the things I quit eating causing unusual weight gain and halting the natural process of us burning endogenous fat. And it isn't like I'm the only person who did this, it is estimated over a million people have tried Paleo or some variant thereof and have significantly lost weight if they were overweight as long as they stuck with the lifestyle.

Side note: I went from 340 to 214 with chronically under-exercising. I still chronically under-exercise to a point, even though I now lift weights and try to go on daily walks. I still don't get the high other people seem to get from exercising. So, you can't use "increased caloric burn" as why I lost so much weight, it just wasn't there.

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#24

Post by com2kid »

xiaoma wrote: post #16

> A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher. I think the recent obsession with macronutrients is a big part of the problem. I'm not sure if the macronutrient ratio I eat has changed much from when I was growing…

I agree, the macros look sort of the same, but the source of those calories is much different.

Just the types of cooking oil we use has changed a lot.

Look at what goes into cookies now. It used to be butter, now I've seen recipes with canola oil. (if anyone tells you to use canola oil in your baked goods, ignore them and use butter!)

There is evidence that gut bacteria is passed down from generation to generation, we could very well be seeing a delayed effect from public policy and health decisions made around the time the previous generation was growing up. oops.

I am sort of on the fence about processed foods. A lot of canned food was eaten previously, fresh vegetables were not available year round, but a lot of the canning was done at home in glass jars. I am not one to be paranoid, but now all our canned food comes in coated aluminum cans.

We have a few decades of aluminum cans being coated on the inside with BPA. It is know known that BPA can have harmful effects that take a long time to manifest.

The point is, there are a lot of potential culprits, and it is going to take a long time to figure out what state unbridled capitalism has left public health in.

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#25

Post by theophrastus »

Guzba wrote: post #10
personjerry wrote: post #4

Weight gain is simple: calorie intake - calorie expenditure. The amount of calories in our food tends to go up over 20 years. Doing the same activities consumes the same amount of calories after 20 years. Thus we would have more caloric surplus, and likely gain more weight than people 20 years ago with less caloric food. Pretty simple imo.

A person gains weight because they intake more calories than they expend. Certainly. A room gets more crowded when more people enter than exit. Obviously true. Neither of these statements tell you why that is happening though, and that is important thing. So, why are people eating more calories? Or, since the articles says they aren't, could the sources of calories matter? (They do.)

This simple thermodynamic model intake minus expenditure leaves out (at least) one dynamic metabolic feature: this engine can change its tendency for storage (weight gain) in a single organism or in a community of organisms given time. A change in the community storage tendency is what is alluded to in the linked article. That is, the organism can allow the excess calories to pass on by, or it can store it as fat (or glycogen). This, for instance, is the holy grail of weigh managing pharmaceuticals: to discover those effectors of "now store every un-expended calorie (as fat)". So finally it's something like: intake - expenditure = available for storage, but might not be stored.

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#27

Post by com2kid »

tdylan wrote: post #22
com2kid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a type of seaweed that if your average American eats it, there are zero calories absorbed. If most Japanese citizens eat it, they will absorb calories from it. There is a gut bacteria common in the Japanese population that extracts calories from this type of seaweed. "calories in" is that calories that went down your throat. It is calories that your body was able to digest, and "your body" includes many type…

Link to data/research?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1256757...

Actual suspected caloric difference is minimal, after all, well, it is seaweed, not a very dense food stuff. :)

I'm not going to link to antibiotics causing gut flora problems, it is well known and responsible doctors actually can prescribe a nice little compact pill full of gut bacteria that replaces the ones wiped out as a side effect of antibiotics.

The stuff about a biased diet messing up gut bacteria is also hard to find research on (I've read it, but it is a PITA to find again). Basically different bacteria specialize in breaking down different types of food. If you have a diet lacking in some major food group, that stock of bacteria runs low.

Vegans can have this issue if they go back to eating meat. There is typically some tiny supply of the needed bacteria left and the population is restored after awhile, but the initial few hamburgers can be somewhat uncomfortable.

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#28

Post by [deleted] »

tdylan wrote: post #22
com2kid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a type of seaweed that if your average American eats it, there are zero calories absorbed. If most Japanese citizens eat it, they will absorb calories from it. There is a gut bacteria common in the Japanese population that extracts calories from this type of seaweed. "calories in" is that calories that went down your throat. It is calories that your body was able to digest, and "your body" includes many type…

Link to data/research?

[deleted]

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#29

Post by johnthedebs »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #23

I don't have access to the study, but I suspect it doesn't say what The Atlantic is saying it's saying. I lost weight: I went from 340 pounds to 214 pounds in exactly a year, and then bottomed out at 184 eventually (I've been purposely trying to gain muscle lately, which has been causing my weight to meander in the 190s since then). My caloric intake hasn't changed in a way that can explain such a weight loss. I went…

How carefully were you tracking calorie intake? It's notoriously difficult and I simply don't believe you ate 1500-2000 calories at 340lbs and didn't lose weight (not that you need to convince me).

In any case, congrats on the achievement!

Re: Study: people who eat and exercise the same as people 20 years ago are fatter

#30

Post by toomuchtodo »

com2kid wrote: post #24
xiaoma wrote: post #16

> A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher. I think the recent obsession with macronutrients is a big part of the problem. I'm not sure if the macronutrient ratio I eat has changed much from when I was growing…

I agree, the macros look sort of the same, but the source of those calories is much different. Just the types of cooking oil we use has changed a lot. Look at what goes into cookies now. It used to be butter, now I've seen recipes with canola oil. (if anyone tells you to use canola oil in your baked goods, ignore them and use butter!) There is evidence that gut bacteria is passed down from generation to generation, w…

> There is evidence that gut bacteria is passed down from generation to generation, we could very well be seeing a delayed effect from public policy and health decisions made around the time the previous generation was growing up. oops.

This is something that doesn't get mentioned enough. Your gut bacteria play a large role in your health, and we're going so far as to do fecal transplants to resolve GI tract disorders. I wonder if anyone has done genome sequencing of gut bacteria to determine if its one of the primary causes of America's obesity problems.

"One woman suffering recurrent C. difficile infection was recently successfully treated with this procedure, but interestingly, she also rapidly went from normal weight to becoming obese after receiving the transplant. While the weight gain could be due to a variety of factors, the donor was also overweight, and the recipient had never struggled with her weight before. Researchers are therefore speculating whether something in the transplant could have played a role in her weight gain, and have described the intriguing case in Open Forum Infectious Diseases."

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/woman-becomes-...

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7228/full/nature0...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1176910/

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