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Plastic might be making us obese

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#101

Post by bombcar »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #41
scarmig wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To an extent, but we're 10x richer than we were in 1900; we do not eat 10x as many calories. And it's poor people who eat more calories now, not rich people.

> it's poor people who eat more calories now, not rich people That's my point; if you look at a map of obesity rates in the US overlaid with a map of poverty, there's a very strong correlation. The cheap access to calories today makes it easier to overconsume. In the past, the high cost of calories meant that only the wealthy could really ever become obese (outside of genetic factors).

The snide comment would be that obesity and unbearable debt are indicators of lack of control, and that poor people will have this more (because lack of control leads to being poor).

But even if absolutely true, how do you solve for that? Laws limiting what you can purchase/eat would simply be a non-starter.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#102

Post by sp332 »

davidn20 wrote: post #88

Yes, plastic MIGHT be making us obese. But, we definitely know high caloric intake and sedentary lifestyle makes us obese. I don't understand why obesity is such a mystery. People are creatures of path of the least resistance. Developed countries have highly dense caloric food and people are inactive most of the day due to cars and office jobs.

"Developed countries" don't have 40% of high school students clinically obese. Only the US does.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#103

Post by oliwarner »

Maybe? It's easier to believe that 100 years of massively increasing calorie density and engineering chemical perfection in terms of hitting the body's pleasure markers might have had a larger effect.

That and our move to sedentary, thinking jobs. Or prolonging the day with evening entertainment, so eating later. And services that make the worst food arrive on your doorstep in 30 minutes.

There are so many things above "plastics" we should blame first. But I'm sure blaming someone else is far more appetising than looking at our own lack of self control.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#104

Post by ThinkingGuy »

mellavora wrote: post #46

So something else I wonder. Over the last 50-90 years we've selectively bred our entire food chain to prioritize rapid growth, then pack it full of growth hormones to accelerate this. My dad decided to raise chickens back in the 80's. The broiler hens grew so fast that they broke their legs, and this was when fed on our kitchen waste (i.e. no growth hormones). I do wonder how much of this spills over into human obesi…

For what it's worth, growth hormones are prohibited in poultry in the US.

https://extension.msstate.edu/publications/publications/chic...

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#105

Post by bombcar »

KaiserPro wrote: post #15
elil17 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just saying "cheeseburgers" or "calories in, calories out" fails to explain why people eat more calories now than they did before. There is a vague, and I think very unhelpful, sense in society today that this is some sort of mass moral failing. In reality there are a few factors that could, alone or in combination, explain this change in average behavior. The most convincing to me: chemicals could be messing with ou…

In the UK average calorie intake has been dropping, but thats negatively correlated to kids being fat. I would suggest that the big change is the amount of activity that an average kid does. which seems to be conducive to the calories in/vs out. the cause of this is complex. But a lot of it relates to stranger danger. Parents don't let their kids out after school unattended (for various reasons) which means they are…

Also, it's not the activity that matters much as simply being further away from food while doing it. The amount of calories you burn running through a forest playing Robin Hood is minuscule; but since you're thousands of feet (miles even) from your fridge, you can't just continue to eat all the time.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#106

Post by PartiallyTyped »

jjallen wrote: post #65
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if you are looking for a biological mechanism, it might be related to epigenetics Very unlikely as afaik everything non parasitic gets broken down by our saliva and stomach acids.

That's not my understanding, at least in animals. Those who ate younger plants and/or animals lived longer. Sorry can't find a citation right now.

I had put some thought on this and my hunch was that consuming younger plants and/or animals means fewer "forever chemicals" getting accumulated in the body.

However, that doesn't disprove the hypothesis that DNA can survive the digestive tract. If this [1] is to be believed, it very much does so. The question is, can epigenetic information / ie folds, survive?

[1] https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/questions/does-d...

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#107

Post by tstrimple »

mylons wrote: post #71

is it possible to be in a caloric deficit and still gain weight if this is true? or is a caloric deficit + weight loss just a thermodynamics problem

Sometimes it's a little more complicated than just calories in vs calories out. See Cushing syndrome. We are aware of hormone imbalances which promote excess fat build up, often at the expense of muscle mass. It's possible plastics could be effecting hormones in a similar way.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#108

Post by FollowingTheDao »

mellavora wrote: post #46

So something else I wonder. Over the last 50-90 years we've selectively bred our entire food chain to prioritize rapid growth, then pack it full of growth hormones to accelerate this. My dad decided to raise chickens back in the 80's. The broiler hens grew so fast that they broke their legs, and this was when fed on our kitchen waste (i.e. no growth hormones). I do wonder how much of this spills over into human obesi…

Amylase Trypsin Inhibitors might be playing a role as well. We have selected for this to be higher in crops since it leads to greater pest resistance.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4807301/

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#109

Post by suoduandao2 »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #39
suoduandao2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bun probably causes inflammation/leaky gut for a lot more people than area aware it does. Modern wheat is a weird organism.

What’s weird about it? Is emmer or kamut much better? What about red fife, a strain of wheat from ~170 years ago?

The hybrid varieties bred in the late 50's have about 50x the amount of gluten as previous strains of wheat did.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#110

Post by bombcar »

refurb wrote: post #51
elil17 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just saying "cheeseburgers" or "calories in, calories out" fails to explain why people eat more calories now than they did before. There is a vague, and I think very unhelpful, sense in society today that this is some sort of mass moral failing. In reality there are a few factors that could, alone or in combination, explain this change in average behavior. The most convincing to me: chemicals could be messing with ou…

I lived in SE Asia for a while. Obesity is almost non-existent, though rapidly increasing for children. I tried to figure out why. Was it lifestyle? More manual labor? No, even office workers weren't obese. Running was viewed as some weird western habit. Few people went to the gym. Most just went for walks for exercise. Was it diet? Maybe. But plenty of local foods weren't exactly healthy. Mostly processed carbs. Lot…

This is almost certainly the sum and totality of it. Edge cases? Sure. But it's pretty obvious that portion size has something to do with it, when a standard "American breakfast" rocks in at near a thousand calories (before adding juice and sides).
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