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A Cultural History of Fat

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Re: A Cultural History of Fat

#61

Post by pygy_ »

DanielleMolloy wrote: post #53
pygy_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you agree with me, but still want to ridicule my argument ("parody of itself")? I'm also quite surprised to see a statistician use anecdata as arguments. Humans are predictably irrational, there are mountains of scientific evidence on the topic [0, 1]. The industry plays us like fiddles to get us to consume ever more. There are more parameters than the ones I described above (socialization and long term hormonal e…

For all these market forces that are making profits off addictions it is interesting to see how they manage to get away with it in public perception by addressing personal responsibility - while their products are engineered to induce addictions and diminish will power. I found this study about the tobacco industry's use of the personal responsibility rhetoric: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318333/ Co…

The fantasy that humans have unbridled free will is both pervasive and highly toxic.

It conveniently ignores piles of neuropsychological studies on the topic and it is also used to justify "tough on crime" policies that do more harm than good.

Re: A Cultural History of Fat

#62

Post by pygy_ »

logfromblammo wrote: post #60
pygy_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've had a carb rich diet since the neolithic revolution. The obesity epidemics started after WW2. I don't think that they are related.

Government dietary recommendations became politicized in 1980, and increasingly separated from both nutrition science and comprehensibility to the public with each 5-year revision. In 1967, the bacterium used to produce the enzyme that turns corn syrup into high-fructose corn syrup was perfected, and HFCS became available in industry. In 1983, it was confirmed as GRAS status, and started replacing sucrose sugar in fo…

Lots of correlates, Let's untangle that a bit...

- Poverty can't be causal here, since it doesn't match either the timing nor the geography of the epidemics.

- Intergenerational epigenetics is a secondary factor, but it can't be causative in the first generation.

- While the adenovirus study is interesting I'd be surprised its spread mapped with the time/space patterns of the obesity epidemics worldwide.

I mention geographical spread because the epidemics seems to spread along with industrialization, e.g. urban China is affected, while rural China isn't (yet?). The spread of the epidemics seems to map well with the spread of Western junk food. The following parameters could somehow make sense if Japanese folks weren't so lean

- delay in child rearing (where the effect size is minor)

- chronic sleep deprivation (and wow, 1/3 US adults sleeps less than 6 hours per night whereas 1/3 gets more than 8 hours).

- Microbiota is interesting, but known to be influenced by diet. So a problematic microbiota could be a maladaptative change consecutive to a bad diet, that perpetuates the issue.

These factors also apply to Japan, which has resisted the junk food onslaught for cultural reasons. Japan has ~3% of obese folks, and that was the case before they started aggressively monitoring belly fat in middle aged folks. Japanese folks who migrate to the US and adopt the local diet grow fat, so the difference isn't genetic.

————

This leaves us with food composition and marketing as the main causal factors.

Re: A Cultural History of Fat

#63

Post by logfromblammo »

pygy_ wrote: post #62
logfromblammo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government dietary recommendations became politicized in 1980, and increasingly separated from both nutrition science and comprehensibility to the public with each 5-year revision. In 1967, the bacterium used to produce the enzyme that turns corn syrup into high-fructose corn syrup was perfected, and HFCS became available in industry. In 1983, it was confirmed as GRAS status, and started replacing sucrose sugar in fo…

Lots of correlates, Let's untangle that a bit... - Poverty can't be causal here, since it doesn't match either the timing nor the geography of the epidemics. - Intergenerational epigenetics is a secondary factor, but it can't be causative in the first generation. - While the adenovirus study is interesting I'd be surprised its spread mapped with the time/space patterns of the obesity epidemics worldwide. I mention ge…

- Why can't poverty be causal? An essential part of food composition and marketing is price. As your disposable income decreases, the composition of items on the McDonald's value menu becomes more relevant to you, and the quality of the produce at Whole Foods markedly less so.

- Intergenerational epigenetic influence means that factors that are no longer overtly visible may have a lasting effect. If, for example, leaded gasoline exhaust fumes made grandma fat, that contributory cause could then invisibly propagate to a later generation via epigenetic regulation attached to gametes and occurring in utero.

- In 2011, someone suggested that Ad-26 and Ad-35 be used in an Ebola vaccine, to work around preexisting Ad-5 immunity in targeted populations. The anti-vaxxer nonsense notwithstanding, the hypothesis that an unknown obesity vector has been spread via routine vaccination, without any other adverse symptoms or side effects, has not yet been tested. Better fat than dead, though.

Several hypotheses regarding decrease in dietary quality have been tested, and found to be unsupported by evidence. The corn lobby has quite a vested interest in proving that HFCS is not significantly different from cane sugar sucrose in prepared foods, so you can find a lot of very narrow studies comparing HFCS to sucrose that all conclude they are the same dietarily, without going anywhere near price, or politics, or comparisons with the fats that both sucrose and HFCS have been replacing over the years. I foresee future studies declaring (cheap) palm oil to be dietarily equivalent to other (more expensive) oils, without ever noting the impact of prices on recipes and diets. Broader studies likely have a harder time getting funding.

Microbiota are also influenced by location--even temporary changes in location. Montezuma's Revenge and Delhi Belly and trail trots can all cause rapid change in one's gut constitution.

Observing Japanese who migrate to the US and preserve their previous diet could be elucidative. If they don't change anything about their lives other than their location, would they grow fatter?

Re: A Cultural History of Fat

#64

Post by ABCLAW »

stdbrouw wrote: post #13
pygy_ wrote: post #5

A company that produces food that is more appetizing and less filling than its competitors will sell more of it and beat them in terms of revenue and profit. They either have to align themselves or die/be assimilated. Even without any ill intent, growth seeking in the food industry would have lead to an obesity epidemics. https://soundcloud.com/user-876103472/grow

If I eat a snickers bar and afterwards I'm still hungry, I'm not necessarily going to eat another snickers bar. If I eat a very flavorful salad but perhaps am not feeling quite satiated, next time I'm not necessarily going to order the competitor's product that is drenched in olive oil. I'm sure there is some truth to these sorts of "survival of the fittest" arguments, but you can only simplify how people reason abou…

Maybe not in the individual instance, but in the aggregate, sure you will.

Humans eat foods that reward them, because that's how dopamine works. We've figured out how to optimize the rewards, too: Salt. Fat. Sugar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)

Re: A Cultural History of Fat

#65

Post by pygy_ »

logfromblammo wrote: post #63
pygy_ wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of correlates, Let's untangle that a bit... - Poverty can't be causal here, since it doesn't match either the timing nor the geography of the epidemics. - Intergenerational epigenetics is a secondary factor, but it can't be causative in the first generation. - While the adenovirus study is interesting I'd be surprised its spread mapped with the time/space patterns of the obesity epidemics worldwide. I mention ge…

- Why can't poverty be causal? An essential part of food composition and marketing is price . As your disposable income decreases, the composition of items on the McDonald's value menu becomes more relevant to you, and the quality of the produce at Whole Foods markedly less so. - Intergenerational epigenetic influence means that factors that are no longer overtly visible may have a lasting effect. If, for example, le…

> - Why can't poverty be causal?

Because most poor people around the world are not fat and have never been until recently. In the countries affected by the obesity epidemics, it may be causal, but it doesn't explain why obesity struck somewhere and not elsewhere.

> - Intergenerational epigenetic influence means that factors that are no longer overtly visible may have a lasting effect.

Agreed 100%, it has an impact in the long run, but as a secondary factor, not as a trigger.

> - vaccines

I don't understand the point you're tying to make (beside "fuck anti-vaxxers", and I couldn't agree more). Specifically, I don't understand the link between these specific anti-Ebola vaccines and the possibility that vaccines could cause obesity.

> - HFCS...

A high fructose diet causes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (a close cousin of metabolic syndrome), and that is well established. In general I have little trust studies that are privately funded. Too much room for bias.

IIRC the Japanese who migrate and keep their traditional diet don't grow fat. This is purely out of memory though, from something I read or heard a long time ago, and I could be wrong.

Re: A Cultural History of Fat

#66

Post by traek »

Spooky23 wrote: post #56
molloy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I was bringing up the price in comparison to the price of plant milks from a consumer's standpoint—while plant milks seemingly have a high markup from raw materials to product (transportation and storage costs aside), our perception of what makes it expensive has an unrealistic anchor in the subsidized cost of cow's milk. Paying $12 for a gallon of cow's milk vs. $5 for a gallon of oat milk changes the picture a…

I get your point, but it's much more complex than that. Leaving aside the issues with directly comparing plant milk with actual milk, the economics are not what you lay out. Oat milk is really yet another industrial corn product. The caloric content isn't cloudy stuff squeezed into water, it's fructose from corn. In the quest for price stability, corn subsidy is one of the main knobs used by USDA from a subsidy and p…

> Oat milk is really yet another industrial corn product. The caloric content isn't cloudy stuff squeezed into water, it's fructose from corn.

This is just factually untrue. Here's the ingredients for the most popular oat milk brands, found from a Google search:

1. Oatly: Oat base (water, oats 10%), rapeseed oil, calcium carbonate, calcium phosphates, iodised salt, vitamins (D2, riboflavin and B12).

2. Califia: Oatmilk (Water, Oats), Sunflower Oil, Minerals (Dipotassium Phosphate, Calcium Carbonate, Tricalcium Phosphate), Sea Salt

3. Pacific Foods: WATER, OATS, OAT BRAN, CONTAINS 1% OR LESS OF: GELLAN GUM, SEA SALT, TRICALCIUM PHOSPHATE, VITAMIN D2. *ORGANIC

4. Silk Oat Yeah: Oatmilk (Filtered Water, Oat Extract), 2% or less of: Sunflower Oil, Vitamin and Mineral Blend (Calcium Carbonate, Vitamin A Palmitate, Vitamin D2, Riboflavin (B2), Vitamin B12), Malt Extract, Dipotassium Phosphate, Gellan Gum, Sea Salt, Sunflower Lecithin, Locust Bean Gum, Ascorbic Acid (to protect freshness).

None of these have corn syrup or added fructose.

Re: A Cultural History of Fat

#67

Post by traek »

Spooky23 wrote: post #56
molloy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I was bringing up the price in comparison to the price of plant milks from a consumer's standpoint—while plant milks seemingly have a high markup from raw materials to product (transportation and storage costs aside), our perception of what makes it expensive has an unrealistic anchor in the subsidized cost of cow's milk. Paying $12 for a gallon of cow's milk vs. $5 for a gallon of oat milk changes the picture a…

I get your point, but it's much more complex than that. Leaving aside the issues with directly comparing plant milk with actual milk, the economics are not what you lay out. Oat milk is really yet another industrial corn product. The caloric content isn't cloudy stuff squeezed into water, it's fructose from corn. In the quest for price stability, corn subsidy is one of the main knobs used by USDA from a subsidy and p…

> The plant milk phenomenon is all about allowing massive agribusiness to take over a big product category that has remained regional.

You don't need plant milk for that. For proof just see Fairlife, the Coca-Cola Company's attempt to turn milk into a branded good.

Re: A Cultural History of Fat

#68

Post by otabdeveloper1 »

pygy_ wrote: post #52
otabdeveloper1 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've had a carb rich diet since the neolithic revolution. This isn't true. The modern diet gets 90% (asspulled number, sorry) of its energy from sugar, white flour and potatoes. None of these three really existed in any measurable quantities three hundred years ago. Sugar especially is something only very modern people started to eat in huge quantities.

Bread was the staple food for most of that period. GP was contrasting modern and paleo diet. It would be wiser to contrast 1918 with 2018 (and I agree with you that refined sugar and starch are most likely involved in the current mess).

> Bread was the staple food for most of that period.

No, not really. The refined white flour we eat today basically didn't exist until very recently.

Their bread wasn't like our bread. It was coarsely-ground and made of bran, barley and rye. Compared to what we eat today, it had much higher fiber content and more fat. It would have been much harder for our ancestors to mainline pure carbohydrates by eating bread like we do.

Carbs in themselves aren't so bad, but the problem is that your body won't ever be sated by eating carbohydrates. (Kids around Halloween will attest.) Eating pure carbs is a very bad idea.

Re: A Cultural History of Fat

#69

Post by otabdeveloper1 »

ip26 wrote: post #46
otabdeveloper1 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've had a carb rich diet since the neolithic revolution. This isn't true. The modern diet gets 90% (asspulled number, sorry) of its energy from sugar, white flour and potatoes. None of these three really existed in any measurable quantities three hundred years ago. Sugar especially is something only very modern people started to eat in huge quantities.

Yeah, I begin to wonder if we need to be a little more specific when talking about this, e.g. not just "carbs" but "simple carbs" and "complex carbs", or "refined" & "unrefined". We've dealt with this once before with saturated & unsaturated fats, vs trans fats.

Carbs are carbs. The biggest problem is that you won't feel full or know when to stop if you're eating just carbs. You need fats or fibers to stop eating, hence "unrefined".

Re: A Cultural History of Fat

#70

Post by pygy_ »

otabdeveloper1 wrote: post #68
pygy_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bread was the staple food for most of that period. GP was contrasting modern and paleo diet. It would be wiser to contrast 1918 with 2018 (and I agree with you that refined sugar and starch are most likely involved in the current mess).

> Bread was the staple food for most of that period. No, not really. The refined white flour we eat today basically didn't exist until very recently. Their bread wasn't like our bread. It was coarsely-ground and made of bran, barley and rye. Compared to what we eat today, it had much higher fiber content and more fat. It would have been much harder for our ancestors to mainline pure carbohydrates by eating bread like…

I never said it was white bread... Besides, I agree with the rest of your comment.
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