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Plastic might be making us obese

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#191

Post by cnasc »

cptcobalt wrote: post #187
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…

> 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. As someone about this size, but has also been relatively "fit" at this size (I used to be able to go on casual 10+ mile hikes on weekends, pre-pandemic), it's also our health system failing us. I've never had a doctor give me a better answer than "diet and exercise" to change things. I got…

> I've never had a doctor give me a better answer than "diet and exercise" to change things. I got to a level of fitness where I could go on 10 mile hikes

I don’t mean this to be rude, but it sounds like you paid attention to just one half of the doctor’s advice?

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#192

Post by sherr »

chasil wrote: post #126
ThinkingGuy wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, growth hormones are prohibited in poultry in the US. https://extension.msstate.edu/publications/publications/chic...

This is truly shocking. "...tributyltin or TBT, a chemical used in wood preservatives, among other things. In experiments exposing mice to low and supposedly safe levels of TBT, Blumberg and his colleagues found significantly increased fat accumulation in the next three generations."

Where is that quote from? I could not see it in the (interesting) linked article.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#193

Post by aaomidi »

TimedToasts wrote: post #151
aaomidi wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for me I don’t understand why people think obesity is such a simple problem? Every single other thing in our body is complex and has chains and chains of reactions and impacts. Why is obesity the single one where the answer is “obvious”? Anyway I agree that we should change how we design our cities, etc to deal with our sedentary lifestyle.

Eat less? No, too complex. Instead: change how we design our cities.

I mean, yes. We have to do the redesign for a multitude of reasons. Including the impacts our current cities have for scalability of various services and growth. Also how it’s fucking our response to climate change.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#194

Post by adrian_b »

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.

What you say is correct, but incomplete.

The unnaturally high consumption of PUFA is not for all kinds of PUFA, but mainly for linoleic acid and related fatty acids (a.k.a. omega-6 acids).

The consumption of the other main kind of PUFA, omega-3 acids, is frequently lower than before, as those are abundant mainly in some animal organs (which are more seldom consumed now) and in fish.

In small quantities linoleic acid is an essential nutrient for humans, but in large quantities it must be converted into other fatty acids, because it is not a normal component of human fat, and that can be a burden for the liver.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#195

Post by chasil »

sherr wrote: post #192
chasil wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is truly shocking. "...tributyltin or TBT, a chemical used in wood preservatives, among other things. In experiments exposing mice to low and supposedly safe levels of TBT, Blumberg and his colleagues found significantly increased fat accumulation in the next three generations."

Where is that quote from? I could not see it in the (interesting) linked article.

It's this paragraph in the article on the Washington Post:

"Importantly, recent research demonstrates that obesogens act to harm individuals in ways that traditional tests of chemical toxicity can’t detect. In particular, consequences of chemical exposure may not appear during the lifetime of an exposed organism but can be passed down through so-called epigenetic mechanisms to offspring even several generations away. A typical example is tributyltin or TBT, a chemical used in wood preservatives, among other things. In experiments exposing mice to low and supposedly safe levels of TBT, Blumberg and his colleagues found significantly increased fat accumulation in the next three generations."

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#196

Post by seventhtiger »

2000UltraDeluxe wrote: post #149
seventhtiger wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can heroin addiction be treated with heroin intake management?

Going cold turkey on food would be unhealthy, so some kind of management is required. I didn't grow fat because I have a slow metabolism (and I do), or because I'm addicted to a specific unhealthy type of food; I'm fat because I made a major switch in lifestyles (hard labour to desk job) without any changes to my diet, and because I kept prioritizing other things than my health for decades. After a while it became ob…

This nuance you're adding is not optional or dismissable. It's essential complexity to solving the problem.

Calorie in calorie out is not false. It's just not useful. Like saying to go to the moon you need to go up.

Calorie in is appetite. Calorie out is metabolism. The specifics of how these are affected, and the solutions to fixing them, are a lot more fruitful than reaffirming the second law of thermodynamics.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#197

Post by pengaru »

vallassy wrote: post #52

Is it the plastic though, or is it the sugar? Over my last few years of reading, I've convinced myself that sugar is the main culprit in massive obesity in Western countries, especially the US (i.e. high fructose corn syrup). Sugar is in everything (like plastic, I suppose). Look at the ingredients of what you buy and you'll be surprised where it turns up. Peanut butter, mayonnaise, beef jerky, even bog standard brea…

> Is it the plastic though, or is it the sugar?

The two are not mutually exclusive.

We know fructose is a problem. We know bisphenols and phthalates (endocrine disruptors found in plastics) are problems as well.

It's both.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#198

Post by cptcobalt »

cnasc wrote: post #191
cptcobalt wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. As someone about this size, but has also been relatively "fit" at this size (I used to be able to go on casual 10+ mile hikes on weekends, pre-pandemic), it's also our health system failing us. I've never had a doctor give me a better answer than "diet and exercise" to change things. I got…

> I've never had a doctor give me a better answer than "diet and exercise" to change things. I got to a level of fitness where I could go on 10 mile hikes I don’t mean this to be rude, but it sounds like you paid attention to just one half of the doctor’s advice?

Not so—significant dieting, zero soda or desserts, etc. But that's not as comparatively interesting for the argument as "can go on 10 mile hikes any weekend, yet made no progress". My point is directly intended to respond not just with anecdata, but that we have more work to do in research, diagnosis, and treatment of it.

I don’t mean this to be rude, but it sounds like you jumped to a quick conclusion based on preexisting simple expectations about obesity?

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#199

Post by cnasc »

cptcobalt wrote: post #198
cnasc wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never had a doctor give me a better answer than "diet and exercise" to change things. I got to a level of fitness where I could go on 10 mile hikes I don’t mean this to be rude, but it sounds like you paid attention to just one half of the doctor’s advice?

Not so—significant dieting, zero soda or desserts, etc. But that's not as comparatively interesting for the argument as "can go on 10 mile hikes any weekend, yet made no progress". My point is directly intended to respond not just with anecdata, but that we have more work to do in research, diagnosis, and treatment of it. I don’t mean this to be rude, but it sounds like you jumped to a quick conclusion based on preex…

> I don’t mean this to be rude, but it sounds like you jumped to a quick conclusion based on preexisting simple expectations about obesity?

I think this is unwarranted sarcasm, given that I could only comment on the information you provided in your post.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#200

Post by Taikonerd »

dataflow wrote: post #56

If we assume everyone agreed tomorrow that the cause is 100% plastics, what can we actually do about this? What would our lives look like if we were to address this?

Probably not "ban all plastics." That's not practical.

But we could do more research into what compounds specifically are harmful, and then find substitutes for them.

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