Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 182 posts

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

#121

Post by thorin »

MichaelGG wrote: post #63
peteretep wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

Make all your own food (including bread), then you can control the amount of sugar you put in. Not difficult!

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

#122

Post by citeguised »

DanBC wrote: post #94
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…

How we measure the calorific value of food doesn't seem to give us the number of calories a body can extract from food. There are several reasons for this. One promising area of research is gut flora. Someone could have a gut flora that makes it harder to absorb calories. Someone else could have a gut flora that makes it easier to absorb calories. Here's one paper that links gut flora to anorexia. (Read carefully, th…

> How we measure the calorific value of food doesn't seem to give us the number of calories a body can extract from food

Of course not but if we stick to the maximum we still can use this value to calculate our intake when we try to lose weight. If the body extracts fewer calories, even better for the weight loss. I'm not talking about people who need to optimize a few % body-fat; I'm talking about BMI > 30.

> Statements like this are an effort to help fat people to lose weight by creating treatments that work rather than just yelling judgemental but useless advice at them

Why is "eat less" judgmental? If somebody wants to stop smoking, would you consider "stop smoking" judgmental?

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

#123

Post by visakanv »

netcan wrote: post #107

I have no particular expertise in this area, but I've been making the "we don't know why people are fat" argument to whoever will listen for a while. Doctors (socially, not at an appointment FWIW), academics… I'm actually quite surprised how often they've been thinking along the same lines and/or they are convinced by the general idea. basically: People have been getting fatter, to pathological levels for quite a whi…

I've tried to do some reading about all of this... the main argument that makes sense to me is that it has to do with increased consumption of sugar. To oversimplify, sugar triggers an increase in insulin, and something about insulin (I can't remember the precise details) changes the way the body processes food– it stores more of it as fat.

The bulk of these ideas come from Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat. Here's a summary of the process: http://www.columnfivemedia.com/work-items/infographic-carbs-...

The scary part is that you start secreting insulin just by THINKING about carbs, sugar and so on. I haven't heard people discuss this... but if it's true that insulin is secreted, ADVERTISING could be contributing to obesity. Which is disturbing. I hope I'm wrong.

I'm not super well-informed on this subject, but I would like to be and welcome any thoughts and suggestions and corrections and so on.

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

#124

Post by [deleted] »

netcan wrote: post #107

I have no particular expertise in this area, but I've been making the "we don't know why people are fat" argument to whoever will listen for a while. Doctors (socially, not at an appointment FWIW), academics… I'm actually quite surprised how often they've been thinking along the same lines and/or they are convinced by the general idea. basically: People have been getting fatter, to pathological levels for quite a whi…

[deleted]

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

#125

Post by citeguised »

dasil003 wrote: post #83
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…

> how much we eat is moderated by satiety mechanisms

No, it's moderated by our fork. It also means being hungry a lot and keeping exact track of your calories, just like poor people need to track their expenses.

(Been there done that with both money and weight)

The »subtleties of nutrition« don't matter if you are huge (BMI > 30) and want to get down to a healthy level. Once you are there you still can optimize and find out what works best for you.

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

#127

Post by tdkl »

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…

It helped for me that I have a designated day in a week for sweets, where I get a chocolate or some favorite candy and eat it guilt free. Don't even crave it for the rest of the week. When you get the habit going, it's much easier.

One important thing though, I go and buy the sweets I'll eat on that particular day. If you have a habit of buying sweets and have it easily at hand, it's way harder (which goes for every addicting thing there is).

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

#128

Post by maxerickson »

visakanv wrote: post #123
netcan wrote: post #107

I have no particular expertise in this area, but I've been making the "we don't know why people are fat" argument to whoever will listen for a while. Doctors (socially, not at an appointment FWIW), academics… I'm actually quite surprised how often they've been thinking along the same lines and/or they are convinced by the general idea. basically: People have been getting fatter, to pathological levels for quite a whi…

I've tried to do some reading about all of this... the main argument that makes sense to me is that it has to do with increased consumption of sugar. To oversimplify, sugar triggers an increase in insulin, and something about insulin (I can't remember the precise details) changes the way the body processes food– it stores more of it as fat. The bulk of these ideas come from Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat. Here's a summa…

Advertising could be contributing more directly, food companies are large enough that they serve the entire market, so one of the few ways they can grow is to get people to eat more.

You are describing prediabetes and insulin resistance. Excess sugar is probably a contributor, but also probably not the only one.

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

#129

Post by DennisP »

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…

The laws of physics say you can't burn energy you don't have.

If you're restricting calories and your body isn't doing a good job of mobilizing energy from fat reserves, then one way or another you'll burn less energy. You'll fidget less, think poorly, turn up the thermostat, lack the motivation to exercise, and if you do get a little exercise you won't be very vigorous about it. No amount of willpower can overcome thermodynamics.

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

#130

Post by mattlutze »

cdnsteve wrote: post #126

Does this study take into account the exponential growth of portion size? Food portions in the USA are out of control, four times larger than the 1950's. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/23/portion-sizes-infog...

"They found a very surprising correlation: 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. In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans."

^ The 3rd paragraph of the article.

Post reply on HN