I have a fri3nd that has an over active thyroid and she's very fit. she had a six pack when she was younger. she didn't really work out. so makes me think hormones are a big part of it too.
Plastic might be making us obese
31–40 of 392 posts
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#32A very long series of essays about this: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p... The authors take the view that obesogens account for 100% or nearly 100% of the rise in obesity, which is definitely a controversial view. However, they do an awesome job giving an overview of the arguments for obesogens.
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…
Those diets also didn't have added sugars and salts to everything. It's serious work requiring reading all the nutrition labels to get groceries sans questionable additives in the US.
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#33Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#34Well that plus the cheeseburger
which part of a cheese burger is bad for you?
The burger itself is probably the healthiest part of it.
It’s the bun (full of corn syrup and carbs), a massive amount of sodium, the condiments (also corn syrup), a side of fries (mostly carbs), a soda (even more corn syrup). By the time you’ve finished a decently sized burger you’ve eaten enough sugar, sodium and carbs for the entire day.
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#35Well that plus the cheeseburger
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…
> Just saying "cheeseburgers" or "calories in, calories out" fails to explain why people eat more calories now than they did before.
Junk foods at high-availability, low cost, offering low-to-zero satiety per-calorie, and habit-forming addictive potential. The answer is pretty much in your sentence. Add to the fact, eating well on a budget requires you to prepare food at home. Lots of pressures funnel people to obesity. In the before-times (if you want to set your clock well before the obesity epidemic), two-income households weren't a thing for the most part and manufactured junk foods were a novelty on the market. People kept more active even at leisure, with tv being the novel and singular screen-based entertainment device that not everyone could afford at outset.
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fast food portions being larger, poorer eating habits passed on from generation to generation, the internet, the smartphone, presumably more stress and anxiety.
Are fast food portions actually larger? I remember getting super sized combos when I was a kid (maybe even in HS, I forget when they got rid of them) but they're gone now, and on the rare occasion I get fast food the portions seem reasonable.
Drink sizes are WAY bigger. I remember small fries used to come in a little white paper sleeve. In the US, I haven’t seen those in years.
That said, this 2011 study from Cambridge University says portion sizes have not grown significantly.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-n...
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#37A very long series of essays about this: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p... The authors take the view that obesogens account for 100% or nearly 100% of the rise in obesity, which is definitely a controversial view. However, they do an awesome job giving an overview of the arguments for obesogens.
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…
The section on why hunter gatherers aren’t obese is answered by the fact that they are hunting and gathering.
This is obvious to anyone who used to be more active, and gained weight after they started sitting at a desk all day for work.
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#38My guess is that obesogens are to blame, but that they're in food, not plastics. This is because people on weirdo diets (vegans, carnivore, ultra low fat) all lose weight and keep it off, even when they are using the same amount of plastic as everyone else. The common denominator is that they stopped eating industrially manufactured food.
I am no expert in the area, just wondering what the hell is going on.
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
which part of a cheese burger is bad for you?
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?
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#40A very long series of essays about this: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p... The authors take the view that obesogens account for 100% or nearly 100% of the rise in obesity, which is definitely a controversial view. However, they do an awesome job giving an overview of the arguments for obesogens.
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…
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 the most physical labor. Rather, certain professions with high levels of exposure to endocrine disruptions are the most obese on average.