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A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

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Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#141

Post by msteffen »

Pyramus wrote: post #20

This series of blog posts is a fascinating read into conjectured factors behind the obesity epidemic. I wish the author had continued their rigor in reasoning throughout the two blog posts. Step by step the author is lured into proving a single factor explains the rise in obesity. That maybe a futile attempt from the outset. To make an example, the author notes, correctly and to the point, > "Calories are involved in…

My interpretation was: "what is responsible for the inflection point that occurred in 1980?"

Perhaps it's still not a single factor (which, I agree, would make a lot of sense) but IIUC that does raise the question of why there seems to be a single inflection point.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#142

Post by magneticnorth »

Mistletoe wrote: post #67

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ This popped in my mind since everything seemed to go off the rails with an abrupt change in obesity in the mid 70s…

This is fascinating, thanks for sharing.

Many (most?) of these plots have known, and different explanations - e.g. the wage stagnation at the top is due to public policy changes in the 70s; the rise in marriage age is probably due to birth control becoming prevalent in the 60s, but it is really interesting to see all the effects gathered in one place of the repercussions in the past 50+ years from all the societal and political changes that happened in the 60s and 70s.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#143

Post by SavantIdiot »

code_duck wrote: post #138
SavantIdiot wrote: post #135

> Combined with all the sugar they get from eating fruit, they end up eating about the same amount of sugar as Americans do. ... These are all unrefined sugars, of course Isn't it important to distinguish the type of sugar? I thought the 5-10% increase in proportion of sucrose to fructose was sufficient enough to result in significant difference between how types of sugar impact insulin response. E.g., the shift to m…

Is fructose considered easy to metabolize? It takes drastically longer to convert to glucose than other sugars, requires liver enzymes and can creates gastric upset in excess. It seems quite inefficient compared to carbohydrate sources like starch which are simply chains of glucose molecules that your body separates.

I think you have it backwards: fructose is a monosaccharide which is metabolized almost instantly, and sucrose is a disaccharide which requires additional energy to metabolize. Glucose is the end result, but glucose isn't what is added to industrial foods. So more effort is required to use sucrose than fructose, and I believe that is the source of the issue.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#144

Post by defaultname »

tzs wrote: post #121
defaultname wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's the fundamental, most basic truth. If there is anything that people who want to lose weight should do, it's eat less . Skip the snack. Smaller portions. That's incredibly hard to do, of course, and easier said than done, but ultimately it is behind virtually all successful weight loss. What is behind an enormous number of failed weight loss attempts are waving that away and believing some specific macronutri…

People in the 2000's weighed about 10% more than people in the '80s who ate the same amount of calories, with the same micronutrient distribution, and did the same amount of exercise [1]. And what about non-humans? Animals are getting fatter, too [2]. Some of this can be explained by humans eating more, hence making more food available to those animals that eat human leftovers or steal human food. But this weight gai…

The nonsensical "lab animal" argument has been debunked a dozen times. It is bullshit. For animal rights reasons, labs switched to rats and mice being given a perpetual, self-serve diet of food. Unsurprisingly they ended up fatter than mice and rats given portioned foods. When they are given portioned foods...what do you know, they're not fat any more.

"People in the 2000's weighed about 10% more than people in the '80s who ate the same amount of calories, with the same micronutrient distribution, and did the same amount of exercise [1]"

To say that the cited study is laughable gives it far too much credit. For instance it specifically and only considers leisure activities. As to self-described dietary results, the only takeaway is that people are far more full of shit now than then. It is Ginny in the Sopranos boasting about their diet while eating chocolate bars in the laundry room.

It's interesting how gullible people who are otherwise so discerning are when it comes to diet, particularly for dietary excuses. There is no field that has been so rife with study that upsets study, and gross scientific malpractice, as nutrition. But hey, here's one study where they mangled numbers from sets decades apart and drew some viral result. Serious groan.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#145

Post by kiba »

defaultname wrote: post #109
kiba wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't try to measure how much calories I eat. I just skip meals. Turn out it's a lot easier than eating less per meals. Fasting is much easier for me to do. However, when your parents constantly ask you if you want to eat, it's a bitch to resists the temptation. I had lost 20 lbs without needing to keep track of how much food I eat, as opposed to how many meals I eat. Anyway, I doubt reduction of calories is how yo…

> Anyway, I doubt reduction of calories is how you're going to keep your desired weight People at a healthy weight consume less calories. Caloric intake has a perfect correlation with obesity. The psychological element is hugely difficult, but the science of "if you eat more you're going to be heavier" is very firm. The Japanese eat, on average, 25% less calories than Americans. They have an obesity rate of 4% versus…

People at a healthy weight consume less calories. Caloric intake has a perfect correlation with obesity. The psychological element is hugely difficult, but the science of "if you eat more you're going to be heavier" is very firm.

It is uncontroversial that by reducing calories in one's diet that it will cause weight loss. The controversy is centered around weight control, whether an individual can keep the weight at a stable level over the long run. In that sense, all diet fails.

I would contend that how many calories a person eat is only a proximal cause of obesity, especially since CICO is actually an incorrect model of how our body work.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#146

Post by tsimionescu »

defaultname wrote: post #115
tsimionescu wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is well known and undisputed. The question is: when can you stop eating less than your body is telling you that you should? Did you ever get rid of the hunger? I lost about 30kg (105 -> 75) by eating less, excersing more, all in about the span of a year. I never stopped feeling hungry overall for this period, constantly had to fight the urge to eat more. In periods where high stress reduced my willpower, I start…

"That is well known and undisputed." Unfortunately, loads of people in this very thread are disputing it. This submission is based upon the bizarre hope that there's a mysterious external influence that's actually causing people to gain weight, and not the merely coincidental simultaneous rise in caloric intake. The psychological element is complex and profoundly difficult. That is without question.

It's very possible that there is an external influence that's causing people to feel the need to eat more and gain more weight from what they're eating - this is precisely my point, and the point of the article.

The fact that you can force yourself to eat less than you feel the need to and lose weight in the process does not prove, as you seem to think, that weight gain is simply explained by people being weak willed and eating burgers instead of salad. You still have to ask why this change actually occurred, since it seems that it has occurred in the general US population about 50 years ago and most of the world has been following suit.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#148

Post by tsimionescu »

defaultname wrote: post #109
kiba wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't try to measure how much calories I eat. I just skip meals. Turn out it's a lot easier than eating less per meals. Fasting is much easier for me to do. However, when your parents constantly ask you if you want to eat, it's a bitch to resists the temptation. I had lost 20 lbs without needing to keep track of how much food I eat, as opposed to how many meals I eat. Anyway, I doubt reduction of calories is how yo…

> Anyway, I doubt reduction of calories is how you're going to keep your desired weight People at a healthy weight consume less calories. Caloric intake has a perfect correlation with obesity. The psychological element is hugely difficult, but the science of "if you eat more you're going to be heavier" is very firm. The Japanese eat, on average, 25% less calories than Americans. They have an obesity rate of 4% versus…

> People at a healthy weight consume less calories. Caloric intake has a perfect correlation with obesity. The psychological element is hugely difficult, but the science of "if you eat more you're going to be heavier" is very firm.

The word 'psychological' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. We have no reason to believe it is more or less likely for overeating to be caused by psychological rather than metabolic or other systemic reasons.

The fact of the matter remains that some people struggle with their weight while others don't. CICO doesn't address this at all.

Of course, CICO also doesn't work very well when comparing between people, despite your claim. For example, people with endocrin disorders are well known to lose or gain weight disproportionately in relation to their diets. Base metabolic rates vary significantly between people, even healthy ones. There are other discrepancies as well, which mean that, knowing person A and person B eat the same amount of calories and exercise the same amount will not help you to predict the weight gain/loss difference between them.

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#149

Post by JoeAltmaier »

tsimionescu wrote: post #148
defaultname wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway, I doubt reduction of calories is how you're going to keep your desired weight People at a healthy weight consume less calories. Caloric intake has a perfect correlation with obesity. The psychological element is hugely difficult, but the science of "if you eat more you're going to be heavier" is very firm. The Japanese eat, on average, 25% less calories than Americans. They have an obesity rate of 4% versus…

> People at a healthy weight consume less calories. Caloric intake has a perfect correlation with obesity. The psychological element is hugely difficult, but the science of "if you eat more you're going to be heavier" is very firm. The word 'psychological' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. We have no reason to believe it is more or less likely for overeating to be caused by psychological rather than metabolic or…

Yes of course. But its a fact: a given person can restrict calories from where they are at, and lose more. That's physics. Anything getting away with that simple algorithm is fairly classed under "psychological".

Re: A Chemical Hunger: Mysteries

#150

Post by readonthegoapp »

EMM_386 wrote: post #94
readonthegoapp wrote: post #17

I thought we already figured out at least part of the problem or the main problem Sugar Yutkin Lufkin Etc Book: Pure, White, and Deadly

The article covers this, and sugar is not the root cause: > A Tanzanian hunter-gatherer society called the Hadza get about 15 percent of their calories from honey. Combined with all the sugar they get from eating fruit, they end up eating about the same amount of sugar as Americans do. Despite this, the Hadza do not exhibit obesity.

you have a lot of confidence in a theory that sugar is not a main or the root cause of obesity, all based on...a single tribe?

that eats unprocessed sugar? including that found in fruits??

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