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The Obesity Era

aeonmagazine.com

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Re: The Obesity Era

#61

Post by jacques_chester »

glenra wrote: post #59
jacques_chester wrote: post #29

The preponderance of evidence is that net caloric balance predicts weight. http://examine.com/faq/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-loss.htm... Given the choice between "astonishing phenomenon never before detected in history" and "record-keeping errors", I know which horse Occam is telling me to bet on. And it's not that HFCS has more Higgs bosons.

What, exactly, are you calling an "astonishing phenomenon never before detected in history"? Are you saying that chickens and monkeys got fatter over time due to "record-keeping errors"? Are you claiming the "fat virus" effect - that if you give chickens or monkeys or rats or mice a certain human cold viruse, they get fatter - is due to "record-keeping errors"? Have you read anything of Gary Taubes? He argues that th…

> Are you saying that chickens and monkeys got fatter over time due to "record-keeping errors"?

Depending on the margin of error, yes.

> Are you claiming the "fat virus" effect - that if you give chickens or monkeys or rats or mice a certain human cold viruse, they get fatter - is due to "record-keeping errors"?

I'm claiming that getting fatter is completely explained by net caloric balance. Insofar as a virus depresses metabolism, it is still explained by net caloric balance. Insofar as a virus increase appetite, it is still explained by net caloric balance. Insofar as measurement fails to be adjusted for either scenario, it's a record-keeping error.

> He argues that the phenomenon of some local culture getting unusually fat in spite of the usual suspects not being present, is something that has been seen a great many times in history...but has been ignored or misinterpreted until recently.

Anthropology is not a substitute for metabolic ward studies and controlled-diet studies and medical fasting studies and twin studies. All of these find that caloric balance has predictive power, modulo noise and measurement error.

If energy or matter is being destroyed by viruses, there would be detectable evidence.

Lethal amounts of radiation, for example.

> You can't derive the direction of causality from that relationship.

Given that changing caloric balance temporally precedes changes in body mass and body fat, and that the outcomes can be predicted to within a few percent in controlled conditions, and that the mechanisms of lipogenesis and lipolysis are well studied, yes. I believe that I can deduce just such a causal system.

Re: The Obesity Era

#62

Post by jacques_chester »

mietek wrote: post #50
jacques_chester wrote: post #29

The preponderance of evidence is that net caloric balance predicts weight. http://examine.com/faq/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-loss.htm... Given the choice between "astonishing phenomenon never before detected in history" and "record-keeping errors", I know which horse Occam is telling me to bet on. And it's not that HFCS has more Higgs bosons.

Have you actually looked at the studies cited, and checked the fat—protein—carbohydrate ratios used? For example, this 2009 study used the following ratios to conclude "low-carb" diets aren't better than regular reduced-calorie diets: 20%—15%—65% 20%—25%—55% 40%—15%—45% 40%—25%—35% http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19246357 None of these are actually low-carb. The recommended ketogenic ratio is: 60%—35%—5% Try Peter…

You've missed the point, which is that body mass is directly predicted by total calories and is not statistically distinguished regardless of macronutrient composition. There are multiple studies listed, you just picked one.

Review articles come to the same conclusion:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15351198

Re: The Obesity Era

#63

Post by jacques_chester »

enraged_camel wrote: post #55
nsxwolf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also skinny people who burn calories for no apparent reason, like in the Vermont Prison Overfeeding Study. I do not lose weight on low calorie diets, period. I get hungry and sick and cold for weeks on end, and my weight does not budge. My most successful periods of weight loss have been on high fat, zero carb, very high calorie diets. I know what I was eating - I measured everything correctly, regardless of…

The Vermont Prison Overfeeding Study actually perfectly explains what you experience on low calorie diets. http://idealbodyweights.blogspot.com/2009/08/vermont-prison-... "The rapid weight loss these prisoners experienced is the mirror image of what happens when overweight people try to lose weight. If your set point is too high and you try to lose weight quickly, your body will fight to defend that weight and slow d…

You are wrong. The body can and does assimilate dietary fat into adipose tissue.

Low-carb diets work by reducing total dietary calories; a secondary contributing cause is satiety from an increase in protein.

Re: The Obesity Era

#64

Post by glenra »

jacques_chester wrote: post #61
glenra wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, exactly, are you calling an "astonishing phenomenon never before detected in history"? Are you saying that chickens and monkeys got fatter over time due to "record-keeping errors"? Are you claiming the "fat virus" effect - that if you give chickens or monkeys or rats or mice a certain human cold viruse, they get fatter - is due to "record-keeping errors"? Have you read anything of Gary Taubes? He argues that th…

> Are you saying that chickens and monkeys got fatter over time due to "record-keeping errors"? Depending on the margin of error, yes. > Are you claiming the "fat virus" effect - that if you give chickens or monkeys or rats or mice a certain human cold viruse, they get fatter - is due to "record-keeping errors"? I'm claiming that getting fatter is completely explained by net caloric balance. Insofar as a virus depres…

One particularly interesting point Taubes makes is that there exist people (with various conditions) who are simultaneously emaciated and obese. Someone can be obese in the lower half of the body and emaciated in the top half or vice-versa. In this circumstance, your theory suggests they should simultaneously eat more AND eat less to fix it.

> If energy or matter is being destroyed by viruses

The viruses don't need to destroy or create energy, they just need modify the set point. (Which could be done by increasing hunger, decreasing satiety, or decreasing metabolism.) "net caloric balance" is true by definition yet is utterly useless as an explanation of why people gain or lose fat or have trouble doing so. What needs to be explained is why for some people their metabolic rate and hunger demands make them stable at a LOW set point and for others their metabolic rate and hunger demands give them a HIGH and/or INCREASING set point. There are lots and lots of environmental factors that COULD explain some of this. For instance, obesity in the US has increased as smoking has decreased; people who quit smoking tend to gain weight.

Re: The Obesity Era

#65

Post by magnusson »

glenra wrote: post #58
dublinben wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The long term solution to keeping your weight down is to eat at your maintenance level. If you do not eat more than your your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), you simply will not gain weight. If you eat less than your TDEE, you will lose weight. This might not be easy, but it's pretty simple.

That implies TDEE doesn't change. But we know that TDEE does change when people diet. (One study found that a group of people who lost 10% of their weight through dieting had their resting metabolism decline by an average of 15%.) We don't actually know how TDEE reacts to weight loss in general - how much it declines or for how long it declines in response to a particular level of loss. We also don't know how subject…

>(One study found that a group of people who lost 10% of their weight through dieting had their resting metabolism decline by an average of 15%.)

Can you post a link to this study?

>We don't actually know how TDEE reacts to weight loss in general

I don't think this is something "we don't actually know." Lots of weight loss studies have been done in which energy expenditure has been carefully measured, so there's plenty of data on this.

Re: The Obesity Era

#66

Post by magnusson »

boneheadmed wrote: post #6

As a practicing Endocrinologist I will go out on a limb and say excess carbohydrates are the problem leading to obesity. Sugar (or sucrose) is a particular problem as it will stimulate insulin release from the pancreas. Insulin promotes storage of glucose and I am convinced, the growth of fat cells. I have seen patients lose a tremendous amount of weight (34 lbs over 7 months) and lower blood glucose and their amount…

As a practicing internet commenter I will go out on a limb and say that's nonsense. Sugar tends to promote overeating because it makes foods highly palatable and rewarding to eat, but it doesn't cause fat gain independently of an energy surplus. See Surwit et al, Metabolic and behavioral effects of a high-sucrose diet during weight loss. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9094871

Obese women consuming a hypocaloric diet with 71% of their daily energy as carbohydrate and 43% of it as sucrose had no trouble losing fat. "Results showed that a high sucrose content in a hypoenergetic, low-fat diet did not adversely affect weight loss, metabolism, plasma lipids, or emotional affect."

Moreover, all carbohydrates, as well as protein, stimulate insulin release, and insulin is not in itself problematic: http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319

Reducing carbohydrate intake can be an effective weight loss method, but that doesn't mean that carbohydrates intake is uniquely responsible for obesity to begin with. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-h...

All of the world's longest-lived populations consume carbohydrate as their primary macronutrient.

Re: The Obesity Era

#67

Post by enraged_camel »

jacques_chester wrote: post #63
enraged_camel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Vermont Prison Overfeeding Study actually perfectly explains what you experience on low calorie diets. http://idealbodyweights.blogspot.com/2009/08/vermont-prison-... "The rapid weight loss these prisoners experienced is the mirror image of what happens when overweight people try to lose weight. If your set point is too high and you try to lose weight quickly, your body will fight to defend that weight and slow d…

You are wrong. The body can and does assimilate dietary fat into adipose tissue. Low-carb diets work by reducing total dietary calories; a secondary contributing cause is satiety from an increase in protein.

How does it do that without insulin?

Re: The Obesity Era

#68

Post by magnusson »

enraged_camel wrote: post #67
jacques_chester wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong. The body can and does assimilate dietary fat into adipose tissue. Low-carb diets work by reducing total dietary calories; a secondary contributing cause is satiety from an increase in protein.

How does it do that without insulin?

Acylation Stimulating Protein

Re: The Obesity Era

#69

Post by enraged_camel »

magnusson wrote: post #68
enraged_camel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it do that without insulin?

Acylation Stimulating Protein

ASP stores fat in adipose tissue, but it's nowhere as effective as insulin. ASP secretion is controlled by chylomicrons, which are very short lived, and that makes it so that only a very limited amount of dietary fat can be stored as body fat.

Re: The Obesity Era

#70

Post by DanBC »

glenra wrote: post #23
boneheadmed wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did read that point and find it perplexing. I would like to see hard data about that. For instance is the general diet for laboratory rats now the same as it was 50 years ago? But also, if you have a look at my abstract, it does point to another potential cause of obesity and type 2 diabetes in humans (but naturally not the lab animals) - food addiction. The patients in this study were also successful (presumably)…

> I did read that point and find it perplexing. The "fat virus" theory would perfectly explain it. If some of our co-evolved viruses and bacteria have been making us more prone to accumulate fat and it's contagious , the lab animals caught it too. So their metabolism slows down to allow them to accumulate weight on the same diet that used to be merely sufficient for sustenance. On a personal note: I also lost 30 poun…

> How to reliably lose weight and keep it off is still basically an unsolved problem.

No, it really isn't.

"Eat less calories than you burn". It's that simple. Even if we include various viruses and bacteria that help us lose weight or help us gain weight, and we include various disorders that help us lose weight or gain weight, the answer is still "Eat less calories".

Unless of course you're saying that getting people to change behaviour, for ever, is tricky. In which case I agree with you.

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