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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

#81

Post by MichaelGG »

peteretep wrote: post #79
MichaelGG wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff's ridiculously loaded with sugar. I stopped eating sugar for a few months on a whim. It's rather difficult to do so. Everything just pointlessly has loads of it. Even trying to use no-calorie sweeteners is difficult as some places like to tout how natural they are. I went back to eating sugar but I can no longer stomach a lot of foods I would happily have eaten before. Everything is so sweet.

The sugar's not pointless - it's a cheap and effective way to make low-fat food taste good. I gave up sugar (well, candy, anything that had refined sugar added, most fruit) for four months. I lost a lot of fat quickly, but it was exceptionally hard from a willpower perspective, and I'd get a massive high when I accidentally ate sweetened food. I'd love to give it up again, but my self discipline is currently needed e…

Is sugar that much cheaper than aspartame, sucralose, erythritol, or other fake sweeteners? I found that chewing on erythitol-based bars (Quest) sorta satisfied most of my need to eat sweets.

I suppose it's a bit of an arms race: keep adding sweetness to add a bit more flavour and soon we're escalated so far up the sweetness chain with no commercially viable way to back down.

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

#83

Post by dasil003 »

citeguised wrote: post #80

Oh, so the laws of physics changed? Wow! No but seriously, this is a terrible article. As soon as you read »…a professor of _kinesiology_ and health science…« you know the statements are coming from people who believe in esoteric pseudoscience. If your burn more energy than you take in, you lose weight. Everything else doesn't make sense. You can get fat by eating 5000 calories worth of paprika every day. Statements…

I don't especially want to defend the article but this whole first-law-of-thermodynamics approach to explaining weight gain is definitely the most useless idea that somehow always rears its head around here. It's not only useless on its face since how much we eat is moderated by satiety mechanisms rather than weights and measures, but it also ignores the complexity of nutrition and metabolism and the fact that weight has only a loose correlation to overall health.

As much as you're not going to fix your health by reading superficial linkbait articles, you also will not do it by taking a smug reductionist view that allows you to dismiss the subtleties of nutrition which still remain frustratingly beyond the reach of conclusive hard science.

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

#84

Post by CPLX »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #47
johnthedebs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

There are lab rats (whose hormones/genetics have been fucked with) that can literally die of starvation while remaining nearly spherical with excess fat. When their food is removed, their bodies ignore the stored fat and strictly cannibalize muscle and other tissues until the rat dies. Being fat is much more complicated than calories in minus calories burned.

> There are lab rats (whose hormones/genetics have been fucked with) that can literally die of starvation while remaining nearly spherical with excess fat.

I bet there aren't. You'll need to cite that claim.

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

#85

Post by peteretep »

MichaelGG wrote: post #81
peteretep wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sugar's not pointless - it's a cheap and effective way to make low-fat food taste good. I gave up sugar (well, candy, anything that had refined sugar added, most fruit) for four months. I lost a lot of fat quickly, but it was exceptionally hard from a willpower perspective, and I'd get a massive high when I accidentally ate sweetened food. I'd love to give it up again, but my self discipline is currently needed e…

Is sugar that much cheaper than aspartame, sucralose, erythritol, or other fake sweeteners? I found that chewing on erythitol-based bars (Quest) sorta satisfied most of my need to eat sweets. I suppose it's a bit of an arms race: keep adding sweetness to add a bit more flavour and soon we're escalated so far up the sweetness chain with no commercially viable way to back down.

I believe that high-fructose corn syrup is, because of subsidies.

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

#86

Post by desdiv »

abrons wrote: post #26

The article mentions prescription drugs but doesn't mention a widely used over the counter one: nicotine. US smoking rates are down about 50% over the last 20 years. (That's overall, I couldn't find any details by cohort.)

Good thinking, but the researchers already adjusted for smoking status [0][1].

[0] http://i.imgur.com/mQZ1ST9.png

[1] http://i.imgur.com/Hi1x4Ab.png

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

#87

Post by agravier »

agravier wrote: post #39

It's due to sugar in the vast majority of cases. Some starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

I'd like some explanations for the downvotes. What I wrote is documented and I provide a link to a good source of explanations.

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

#89

Post by Gatsky »

peteretep wrote: post #57
toomuchtodo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 disorder…

> one of the primary causes of America's obesity > problems. As any European who's spent time in the US can tell you, a dramatically simpler explanation is that portion sizes are enormous and many foods are "low fat" which mean they're loaded with sugar.

Yes. Consumption is encouraged. In Chicago a restaurant wanted to charge me a fee to share a meal with my partner. It was therefore cheaper by 1 dollar to buy an extra muffin nobody wanted to avoid the sharing fee than to just share what we actually wanted to eat.

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

#90

Post by elktea »

vph wrote: post #54

You can't eat the same foods people ate 20 years ago. The cows aren't the same. The chickens aren't same. Cows and chickens today are more obese and eat more antibiotics than they used to be.

It's due to what we feed them, as well. We even feed corn to farmed Salmon, which makes their Omega 3&6 ratios the opposite of what they naturally are.
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