is it possible to be in a caloric deficit and still gain weight if this is true? or is a caloric deficit + weight loss just a thermodynamics problem
Plastic might be making us obese
71–80 of 392 posts
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#72A 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…
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.
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#73Well that plus the cheeseburger
Would it change your perception if you look at overeating as a symptom rather than a cause? A common enough symptom for untreated diabetes is eccessive thirst. Why should some ailments not cause lack of satiety or edcessive hunger. Or even metabolic issues. Complex ones. Imagine that the basis for the obesity pandemic may in fact lie in other, lack of proper digestive bacteria and yeast for example. I feel that point…
Regardless of the causes of the caloric intake, managing said intake is still the responsibility of said individual. Unless the chemicals involved block the ability to take dietary decisions, of course, but that's a different discussion.
From my point of view as an obese individual: It is the cheeseburgers. And the lack of excersize. And the long days working at a screen with few breaks.
Change is hard and bad habits are not easy to get rid of. Especially when you've spent a few decades getting used to them when you were young and unwise.
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#74Earlier 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…
And some of these metastidies indicate our measure of calorie may be off. Lab rats fed controlled diets with measured activity have gotten fatter over the decades. Somehow those rats are extracting more energy from their food or becoming more efficient at producing the measured amount of activity.
The whole lab animals got fatter on controlled diets thing is based on a single study. It’s not a statistically significant trend for rats. It is for mice. I don’t have any particular gripes with the methodology but I am not totally convinced it’s well controlled
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3081766/#!po=35...
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#75Is 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…
I've tracked my diet pretty regularly over the last several years. The one constant in every weight-gain cycle for me is a sugary treat after a meal. This is true even when I've otherwise kept my caloric intake constant.
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sugar and seed oils (vegetable oils). Practically impossible to avoid especially in "food deserts".
Quoted post unavailable.
So avoid "food deserts". It's not difficult. -arbitrage
> Food Desert: Urban area in which it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food.
Yeah, just move somewhere else! Lol. This is the kind of half-baked bullshit answer I expect from reddit not from Ycomb.
Troll somewhere else dude.
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#77Is 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…
> 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 big surplus of calories in day to day food (combined with too little physical activity)
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#78My 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.
An omitted possible third factor here is that of selection bias.
Perhaps those drawn to so-called "weirdo diets" are also those more likely to maintain their weight loss.
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#79Earlier 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…
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.
Thanks to corn subsidies, we have high fructose corn syrup in many foods you wouldn't expect to find it. Milk by-products are the same way. My wife recently developed lactose intolerance, so we've been finding milk products in tons of things you wouldn't have expected it. Instant ramen? The flavor mix includes milk solids. Cheap hot dogs? More milk solids. Flavored chips, even when not cheese flavored? They have lactose too. Many brands of chicken nuggets or fish sticks? Milk is everywhere! We subsidize some of these industries to the point of over production which leads to companies finding "clever" ways of utilizing that excess often to the detriment of the population at large.
Re: Plastic might be making us obese
#80My 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.
Blaming plastic seems incredibly strange to me, given that plastics are practically universally present in American life but obesity itself is not universal.