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Plastic might be making us obese

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#361

Post by astrange »

bilsbie wrote: post #233
kccqzy wrote: post #210

If a factor can't explain why non-Hispanic Asians have much lower prevalence of obesity than any other race, I tend not to trust it. Are Asians simply using less plastic than other races? Look at the chart: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db288.pdf The chart is simply striking. We should all be investigating what are the Asians doing right that all of us should learn from.

Why not genetics?

There are hardly any situations where genetic differences between humans are the entire causal chain for any outcome.

When someone tells you otherwise, it’s a good sign they don’t understand statistics. (Scientists commonly don’t understand statistics, since it’d be harder to get papers published if they did.)

Strictly speaking it’s never true, because the environment could always contain a cure for your genetic disorder and your environment just happens to not have contained one so far in your life.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#362

Post by astrange »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #286
imeron wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that Japanese actively shame fat people! This is very much frown upon in Western societies but it works for them I guess.

They don't feel even slightly bad about it. It's as prevalent as obesity isn't.

There’s fat Japanese people. They drink so much it’d be a surprise if there weren’t.

They’re also getting strangely more common in porn, maybe because their society is getting so old.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#363

Post by ThePadawan »

boltzmann-brain wrote: post #214
ThePadawan wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, "bog standard" bread could have less sugar, but some sugar is essential for this style of bread. I fully agree. As a German I do want to point out that American style sandwich bread is a very specific style. Sugar goes into it much as it does into challah dough or brioche - but all these stradle the cake-bread boundary for me. If you want sugar in your bread, you gotta suffer through the process of making pum…

what does pumpernickel have to do with sugar?

Its very high acidity dough combined with its long, low bake makes the starches break down into sugars more compared to other breads.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#364

Post by edanm »

CodeSgt wrote: post #153
frankzander wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Peanut butter, mayonnaise, beef jerky But that's packed with fat calories as well and fat has a much higher energy density as carbohydrates. As an European I'm very very astonished over the size of the food portions in fast food restaurants in the US. If this portion size is the same on the diner table than it's not only sugar but a lot of non necessary calories. I don't think it's entirely caused by sugar but by a…

But fat increases satiety much more quickly than sugar. 500 cals of fats will make you feel "fuller" than 750 or even 1k cals of sugar. That's what makes sugar so much worse. Is may not be as colorically dense, but we can comfortably guzzle down far more empty calories from sugar than from fat.

I think separating the two is not a good idea.

Very few people will just eat a spoon of white sugar. Very few people will eat a stick of butter.

But almost everyone can binge on a box of cookies, where the main ingredients are butter and sugar (and flour I suppose.)

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#365

Post by Broken_Hippo »

Tyr42 wrote: post #297
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add to this: A lot of home cooks were taught to add a bit of sugar to the bread to help the yeast. I used to mix yeast, water, and a bit of sugar together to get the yeast started. I mostly did this because I learned to make bread before the internet, and this was common in instructions that I could access.

https://youtu.be/AqFeXxa_NTk This guy experiments with sugar levels and how it affects yeast. Turns out the water absorbing properties of sugar also has a large effect in the other direction, so maybe it doesn't really help the yeast

Sugar can inhibit yeast development: This is generally only an issue with sweet doughs, though. A teaspoon of yeast won't have that effect, especially if it is in a half cup of water.

But more importantly, in the times before the internet, you just couldn't reason like that. If your mother and grandmother and great-grandmother all start bread by dissolving yeast and a small amount of sugar in some water... well, you do it too. The cookbooks sometimes told you this if it wasn't too terribly old (old cookbooks expect you to know a lot, and directions get sparse).

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#366

Post by DiabloD3 »

pjdesno wrote: post #267
DiabloD3 wrote: post #261

I don't know why they're still grasping at straws. We know why we're fat, the science has already been concluded, and a dozen papers get published every year continuing to hammer nails in a coffin we already buried: diets low in salt and/or low in saturated fat and/or high in oxidized unsaturated fats and/or high in carbohydrates and otherwise devoid of nutrition case weight gain, and the Standard American Diet pride…

"A significant rise in obesity incidence has even been noted in laboratory rodents and primates – animals raised under strictly controlled conditions of caloric intake and exercise. The only possible factors driving weight gain for these animals, researchers believe, would be subtle chemical changes in the nature of the foods they eat, or in the materials used to build their pens."

Except science says look at the stress levels of such prison-like conditions. Lab animals usually have insufficient physical activity and insufficient "play" to keep the animals at sufficiently natural cortisol levels for that animal, and a lot of the science being generated from these animals is marred by lack of care when handling the animals.

The vast majority of papers, no matter if they support a position I hold or not, are simply garbage. It is a continued waste of public and private resources to not consider maintaining the natural state of the animals and expect the science resulting from it to have any meaningful impact.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#367

Post by chiefalchemist »

jjallen wrote: post #351
chiefalchemist wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but HFCS is cheaper. Cheaper means it ends up in more products. Cheaper means more gets consumed. I mentioned in another comment above that circa 2003-ish the NYT Sunday mag ran an opinion piece that proposed that gov subsidies of corn were contributing to the obesity crisis. Lower corn prices === lower price for HFCS === more HFCS in more products === more products at lower prices === more sweetener calories be…

Sugar is negligibly expensive. It's just so cheap. In a wealthy region such as W. Europe, I can't even see the price differential mattering.

When you're manufacturing at scale pennies add up. If not, then how else do we explain the rise in the use of HFCS?

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#368

Post by hollywood_court »

aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #359
naikrovek wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you've come through that unharmed you're a miracle. shame is a fantastic motivator and holy cow is it one of the most caustic things ever to the recipient's psyche.

If your countrymen allow you to make it to a "600lbs life" without abject comment, then they have done you a disservice; certainly you're bound to feel more shame and discomfort dealing with being in that state.

Everyone on my mother’s side of the family are obese. Extremely obese. They all told me that it would happen to me due to genetics. They never mentioned their sedentary lifestyles or the packs of cigarettes or the 2 liters of soda they consumed each day.

I was so ashamed of them growing up that I was motivated to never allow myself to become that way.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#369

Post by dominotw »

briefcomment wrote: post #295
dominotw wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fixing the deranged metabolism > with a healthy metabolism. how are you measuring that you have 'healthy metabolism'.

Standard measures like blood pressure, avg body temp, thyroid levels

those don't measure 'healthy metabolism', what does that even mean.

Re: Plastic might be making us obese

#370

Post by BizarroLand »

docandrew wrote: post #346
BizarroLand wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly, no, but it is possible to have the expectation that your body would be burning 1700 calories a day by simply existing (using any online calculator will give you a rough idea of what your "Basal Metabolic Rate", or BMR, should be. But if you have metabolic damage, you may have a lower metabolic rate than expected, meaning that the same 1200 calories a day that should cause you to lose a lb a week is actually…

What does your exercise routine look like? If you’re going overboard on cardio you might have some better luck hitting the weights, _adding_ back in some calories in the form of extra protein and doing a bit of body recomp. It’s tough, mentally to increase calories after losing that much weight, and tougher still to see the scale increase after working for such a long time to drop weight. The nice thing about increas…

I'm on the same line of thinking as you.

I've been hitting the gym, doing mostly heavy lifting 2-3x a week and easing off on my calorie restriction. The weight is going back on fairly quickly but I'm also seeing good gains and progression in my strength & lifts.

For instance, when I started, one arm curl was at about 35 lbs, now 3 months later I'm curling 55, bench was 120, now it's 160 (but I'm not pushing hard on gaining bench) and squat machine has gone from 175 to 280.

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