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Plastic might be making us obese

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#171

Post by wtetzner »

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…

I suspect something we're eating more of now (seed oils, chemicals in processed foods, something else?) is causing us to store more fat that we otherwise would have. i.e. we seem to store all excess calories as fat, but maybe that's not actually what a healthy human body would do.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#172

Post by elil17 »

dayvid wrote: post #64
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…

Spend 2 days and write down everything you eat or drink in a spreadsheet with calorie count (including oil and condiments). Use a digital scale if possible for more accurate measurement. The answer will be glaringly obvious. Most people don’t do this and spend their lives wondering why they can’t control their weight. Some quick culprits: sodas and juices (huge amount of calories), excess oil in food cooking (oil has…

Right, you'll see how many calories you eat. But you won't see why you eat that many calories. Plenty of people try very hard to count and limit calories, but stories of successful weight loss are still the minority of cases. Most people can't lose more than 10 or 15 pounds without starting to get really hungry. Similarly, most people can't intentionally gain more than 10 or 15 pounds without starting to feel that they are unable to eat more.

You can say the main solution is not eating out, or anything else, but the fact that losing weight is hard demonstrates the fact that no solution is easy.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#173

Post by elil17 »

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…

Or they have less exposure to obesogens and therefore don't want to eat as much, leading restaurants to offer smaller portion sizes. There's a correlation, but not necessarily a causation.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#174

Post by elil17 »

marcusverus wrote: post #125
elil17 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think saying that physical activity accounts for the differences in weight isn't supported by the evidence. I mean, surely if eating pure honey for half your calories but exercising a bunch led to good health outcomes and lower weight, we'd see people losing weight by exercising without dieting. We don't see that. Similarly, look at their article on obesity in different professions - it does not align with who does…

It seems like you're projecting modern abundance backwards onto a period of relative scarcity. Hunter-gatherers could not possibly have satisfied half of their calories with honey. A google search indicates that: a) a pound of honey (~1500 calories) would account for a little over half of a man's daily required calories (Google says 2500, but presumably an active hunter-gatherer required more), and b) the average (wi…

The series of articles I posted talks about a tribe where this is the case. Very fit people who get a ton of calories from honey.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#175

Post by olddustytrail »

reedjosh wrote: post #142
mfer wrote: post #111

Our food chain has a lot to do with obesity. There are many studies on this stuff. We eat 5 times as much meat on average as people did 100 years go. Animal based products are a major source of fat. People used to eat more fruits and vegetables. The fat type has shifted with more fat (which has higher calorie per gram amounts than carbs or protein) and fat moving from polyunsaturated fats to saturated fats (which cau…

We eat unnatural amounts of polyunsaturated oils today. You have it completely backward. The amount of vegetable based fats consumed 100 years ago was significantly less. It wasn't until chemical extraction was introduced that we could consume as much vegetable based fat as we do today. Saturated fat is actually more stable and by far healthier.

I'm afraid you are the one who has it completely backwards: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/different-f...

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#176

Post by Auracle »

I do a lot of high school senior photography. It's hard to talk about this without sounding crude as a guy but something that I've noticed that contrasts with when I graduated high school (2006) is just how many girls have huge breasts. I think there were 2 girls in my grade that were skinny and had what would be called "large" breasts. Most other skinny girls had the standard A or B cups.

Now a very large portion have what must be D cups. I've tried to look up studies but I couldn't find any that controlled for weight.

This was also the first year I had not one, but two, morbidly obese girls. One was so large I ran out of poses pretty much right away as she couldn't clasp her hands together behind her back, couldn't do the same near her waist in front, and she couldn't even sit down on the ground - only kneel. She told me she wanted to be a lawyer. I find it incredibly sad that you could be that large already at that age. I can only imagine how difficult it would make life.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#177

Post by elil17 »

oneoff786 wrote: post #144
elil17 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think saying that physical activity accounts for the differences in weight isn't supported by the evidence. I mean, surely if eating pure honey for half your calories but exercising a bunch led to good health outcomes and lower weight, we'd see people losing weight by exercising without dieting. We don't see that. Similarly, look at their article on obesity in different professions - it does not align with who does…

Doing a tough 1 hour exercise is not the same as being on your feet all day. You may be able to offset doing nothing all day with a burst of effort. You may not. People who are moving constantly are very rarely fat. I cannot find their article on professions. I’d be very skeptical. In general being poor in America means a terrible diet is likely so that’s a huge part of the equation. It seems very unlikely that expos…

Why then, for example, are cleaning services workers, mechanics, and health workers all more obese than average? Those are jobs where you are much more active than an office worker. Those are all cases where someone gets exposed to chemicals (cleaning chemicals, lithium grease, and PFAS-based medical fabrics). In fact, healthcare support workers are more obese than healthcare technicians, even though technicians are more sedentary. Support workers are the ones changing PFAS-based curtains, garments, etc.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#178

Post by elil17 »

bombcar wrote: post #72
oneoff786 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this to be a pretty lame analysis. > People in the 1800s did have diets that were very different from ours. But by conventional wisdom, their diets were worse, not better. They ate more bread and almost four times more butter than we do today. They also consumed more cream, milk, and lard. This seems closely related to observations like the French Paradox — the French eat a lot of fatty cheese and butter, so w…

It's calories in/calories out for the majority - sure there's edge cases where you an discuss more "efficient" bodies, etc, but I daresay our diets are way more caloric than they used to be. And a lot of that is portion size and "added eating" between meals. I'd love to work out just how many calories the various soda companies ship a year.

But the key thing is why are they more caloric. Is it that we are hungrier, is it that foods changed? These are questions that are testable if we start doing policy experiments.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#179

Post by spicyusername »

Auracle wrote: post #176

I do a lot of high school senior photography. It's hard to talk about this without sounding crude as a guy but something that I've noticed that contrasts with when I graduated high school (2006) is just how many girls have huge breasts. I think there were 2 girls in my grade that were skinny and had what would be called "large" breasts. Most other skinny girls had the standard A or B cups. Now a very large portion ha…

> just how many girls have huge breasts.

One reason I've heard to explain this is a rise in the consumption of certain kinds of hormonal birth control.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#180

Post by paulryanrogers »

briefcomment wrote: post #166
ac29 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I consume multiple times more sugar than the average person, and I'm thin as a rail with a healthy metabolism. The average American consumes around 125g of sugar per day [1, 2]. This is about 500 kcals. Multiple times that would mean most of your daily calories are coming from sugar, unless you are very physically active. [1] https://www.sugar.org/diet/intake/ [2] https://www.thediabetescouncil.com/45-alarming-stat…

Yesterday, I had 3 bottles of coke at 40g of sugar each, 4 cups of OJ at 25g of sugar each, and 1/3 a pound of fudge, which I think is about 50g. That's around 270g of simple sugars. If you care about carb intake, I also had 7 idlis, which is an indian rice cake, and a dosa, which is a rice crepe, which probably adds a significant amount of starch. I probably reliably have 2x the average for simple sugars

May I ask if you're under 45?
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