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Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

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Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#41

Post by kragen »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #35
kragen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

olive oil has been widely available for the last 7000 years, butter for ten thousand years, but the obesity pandemic is only 50 years old

But they were relatively expensive and scarce. And no-one is getting fat by drinking litres of olive oil or eating tubs of butter. It's a combination of more high-calorie convenience foods and a more sedentary lifestyle than even just 50 years ago.

the fact that no-one is getting fat by drinking litres of olive oil would seem to conclusively disprove your hypothesis as previously stated

the cost of edible oil has not been a bar to access to calorie-dense foods for at least centuries if not millennia

clearly the proximate cause of obesity is eating more and metabolizing less (both by way of lower exercise and lower basal metabolism). but why are people doing that? did they lose the gene for willpower in a single generation? that seems implausible

it seems to closely follow industrially-mass-produced foods, but the relevant feature of those foods is clearly not that they are more convenient or higher in calorie density than a can of crisco or an amphora of olive oil; they aren't

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#43

Post by kragen »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #36
kragen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is substantial, but not convincing, evidence that much current obesity is due to an infectious etiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectobesity the cure you suggest fails on 95% of obese people, though like many pseudoscientific quack cures, it does appear to work at first, and actually does work in a few cases the implied etiology doesn't hold up to the most casual critical thinking: resting and eating hav…

Diet and exercise absolutely does work. It's just that when you frame the intervention as TELLING people to eat less and exercise more, it is very ineffective. So from a physician's standpoint, it's not a great approach.

it's almost as ineffective when undertaken on your own initiative; that's where the 95% number comes from

diet and exercise is clearly the proximate cause of obesity, but the question is what drives diet and exercise, and what changed so suddenly?

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#44

Post by vgatherps »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #36
kragen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is substantial, but not convincing, evidence that much current obesity is due to an infectious etiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectobesity the cure you suggest fails on 95% of obese people, though like many pseudoscientific quack cures, it does appear to work at first, and actually does work in a few cases the implied etiology doesn't hold up to the most casual critical thinking: resting and eating hav…

Diet and exercise absolutely does work. It's just that when you frame the intervention as TELLING people to eat less and exercise more, it is very ineffective. So from a physician's standpoint, it's not a great approach.

Beyond the fact that just telling people to do so is ineffective, my experience is that most people have a very poor idea of what is and isn't calorie dense (I've been there!), how many calories they consume in snacks, or how to eat in a way that leave you feeling full without gobbling down calories.

I've been around people who made legitimate good-faith efforts to diet and eat "healthy", but have no idea that "just a bowl of rice to go with it" and "I need my afternoon milk tea" and maybe another snack are like 500+ extra calories each day, that hardly even leave you full.

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#45

Post by Pigalowda »

kragen wrote: post #34
xeckr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't look like obesity is infectious, so calling it a pandemic doesn't seem appropriate. The cure is eating less and exercising more. Many have done it.

there is substantial, but not convincing, evidence that much current obesity is due to an infectious etiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectobesity the cure you suggest fails on 95% of obese people, though like many pseudoscientific quack cures, it does appear to work at first, and actually does work in a few cases the implied etiology doesn't hold up to the most casual critical thinking: resting and eating hav…

A very small proportion of obesity is secondary to hypothyroidism which isn’t supplemented with synthroid/thyroid hormone, hypothalamic/pituitary axis dysfunction, adrenal corticotroph, or exogenous corticosteroids. If viruses are blamed its going to be pseudoscience to sell pills.

An accepted rule of nutrition/diet/physiology is that an excess of 3,500 calories will lead to a gain of 1lb of fat.

The basal metabolic rate for an adult in the United States is 1,731 calories (numbers based on averages returned in google, 38.1 years old, 5’11, 181 lbs).

So 1,731 calories for a sedentary person is really easy to surpass. If they surpass that by a few hundred calories a day then they’ll gain a pound every 10 days(ish). After ballooning up they can jump on the ozempic train and lose weight. Or just stay obese.

If you don’t know anyone on ozempic then I’ll share - the weight loss appears mostly due to discomfort. Eating what they used to do becomes very uncomfortable due to abdominal pain/nausea and constipation. So they calorie restrict and they start to lose weight because they’re below their BMR.

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#46

Post by kragen »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #38
kragen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

olive oil has been widely available for the last 7000 years, butter for ten thousand years, but the obesity pandemic is only 50 years old

Let's be real though - sugar tends to be a lot more palatable than butter, especially when baked or dissolved in acid. I could eat an entire bag of crunch bars, but set me down with a box of sticks of butter and I'm not going to make much progress. Fats also tend to be more filling, and aren't as addictive as sugar, especially refined sugar. So I think the real cause here is we've discovered novel ways for making hug…

i think it's almost certainly something about industrially-mass-produced food that tubs of butter don't share, so i think you're a bit closer to the mark. and sugary drinks are surely an especially bad food even among industrially-mass-produced foods

clearly calorie density alone is not it. and i don't think it's even as simple as 'palatability'. even if you mix cacao, butter, sugar, vanillin, and citric acid into candy, you can't get people to live off the candy

and brown sugar mixed with dried lemon juice and oil has been cheap for... significantly longer than the 50-year-old obesity pandemic

so, what changed? why is food now so addictive?

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#47

Post by hwillis »

s5ma6n wrote: post #9
ekianjo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PEG is not plastics...

It is a petroleum-based polymer, tomato vs tomato...

Tons of common plastics are made from plants. PLA, the most common FDM 3d printing plastic, is made from corn. Ethylene in particular is also naturally occurring- it's one of the most important plant hormones.

Plastic implies it is solid, which is wrong.

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#48

Post by sjducb »

kragen wrote: post #19

i guess they'll just have to use lalr(1) more seriously, i wonder if something like this is a cause of the obesity pandemic: an unrecognized widespread immune response to a novel food additive provoking continuous low-level inflammation though probably not peg itself; e1521 is not in that many foods, not like xanthan gum or nanoparticles of titanium dioxide

Or the widespread allergies

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#49

Post by orangepurple »

s5ma6n wrote: post #6

Apparently PEG is/was the one of the reasons of the severe allergic reactions in mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (Moderna, Pfizer)[0] That's plastics for you folks... [0]: [Translated from German]( https://www-aerzteblatt-de.translate.goog/archiv/217236/COVI... )

You're forgetting about Aluminum

Re: Study shows antibodies against PEG in 83% of the German population

#50

Post by thfuran »

didgeoridoo wrote: post #5
tjrgergw wrote: post #2

> It has long been known that people can form defenses and thus antibodies against viruses. But antibodies can also develop against polyethylene glycol (PEG), a substance used in cosmetics, food and medicine. People can develop antibodies against things which are not foreign micro-organisms. TIL. (Obvious once you think about it. What you really develop antibodies to are proteins on the surface of micro-organisms) We…

I don’t think the news here is that PEG can be targeted by antibodies (research companies have been manufacturing anti-PEG antibodies for decades), but that anti-PEG arises naturally (and frequently!) in the adaptive immune system. Might be a good biomarker to adjust dosing and estimated pharmacokinetics of PEGylated drugs; it might make sense to take another look at PEG-based therapies that failed Phase II/III with…

>but that anti-PEG arises naturally (and frequently!) in the adaptive immune system.

According to the PEG wiki, that has apparently been known for decades.

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