by 04rob on 9/12/22, 12:33 PM with 380 comments
by vallassy on 9/12/22, 1:49 PM
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 bread. It seems like sugar is the elephant in the room that the mainstream doesn't want to talk about.
by kccqzy on 9/12/22, 8:24 PM
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.
by mellavora on 9/12/22, 1:39 PM
My dad decided to raise chickens back in the 80's. The broiler hens grew so fast that they broke their legs, and this was when fed on our kitchen waste (i.e. no growth hormones).
I do wonder how much of this spills over into human obesity; if everything you eat comes from a plant or animal which is hyperoptimizing for unhealthy growth rates, what does that do to the human body?
And if you are looking for a biological mechanism, it might be related to epigenetics. Not saying it is so, but am saying that a biological link is not a-priori impossible.
by CJefferson on 9/12/22, 1:06 PM
I haven't been taking it that long, but so far it's amazing -- I eat a balanced meal with an approriate amount of calories in it, and then I am full, and don't want to eat any more. Sometimes I snack and eat a biscuit, but then I don't feel any need to eat a second biscuit.
I'm not saying this is a long-term solution for me, or people in general, but what it has shown me is some people (me included) have managed to mess up their digestive systems badly enough it is incredibly hard to eat healthily -- I previously lost 8 stone (50 kg), but I was hungry every minute of every day, no matter what I tried. Once I had a bad patch I ended up putting all the weight back on.
by elil17 on 9/12/22, 12:59 PM
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.
by garren on 9/12/22, 4:25 PM
It feels like modern, Western, society is like living in a big Petri dish. It’s one big experiment in which we’re swimming in chemicals that we later find out interact with us and each other in negative ways. We should have reigned in these kinds of “innovations” decades ago. Americans are now urinating carcinogenic pesticides, rainwater even in most remote regions in the would is undrinkable [0], and we’ve had strong evidence for a while that some of the constituent components of commonly used plastics disrupt biological processes in humans and other animals.
In 50-100 years people will be looking back in horror at the kinds of self-inflicted suffering we’ve produced. And for what? Money? Convenience?
[0] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a40859859/rainwater...
by OJFord on 9/12/22, 8:26 PM
Obesity is, for at least the most part, plainly not caused by too many/wrong pesticides on fruit and vegetables. It is caused by (far) too many things that are not fruits and vegetables.
by davidn20 on 9/12/22, 2:13 PM
by oliwarner on 9/12/22, 2:24 PM
That and our move to sedentary, thinking jobs. Or prolonging the day with evening entertainment, so eating later. And services that make the worst food arrive on your doorstep in 30 minutes.
There are so many things above "plastics" we should blame first. But I'm sure blaming someone else is far more appetising than looking at our own lack of self control.
by kragen on 9/12/22, 1:36 PM
I am no expert in the area, just wondering what the hell is going on.
by YeahNO on 9/12/22, 2:46 PM
by JKCalhoun on 9/12/22, 12:54 PM
by dukeofdoom on 9/12/22, 1:31 PM
by tdehnel on 9/12/22, 8:31 PM
Literally not a single coherent explanation of how plastics might actually cause obesity, and a bunch of people going on about sugar and hormones.
by moistly on 9/12/22, 8:32 PM
> The problem of obesity isn't confined to just humans. A new study finds increased rates of obesity in mammals ranging from feral rats and mice to domestic pets and laboratory primates.
by rr888 on 9/12/22, 9:08 PM
by mensetmanusman on 9/12/22, 8:10 PM
We have never been more seditary, and sugar has never been more a part of our diet.
When my mother moved in and we started going on daily walks, she lost a pound a week for one year. When she injured her foot and stopped, with no diet change throughout the entire time, she gained it all back in a couple months.
I would be surprised if people gained weight with no diet change and introduced mostly standing or walking throughout the day into their life.
by londons_explore on 9/12/22, 1:57 PM
Since obesity causes millions of deaths annually, solving this warrants a covid-scale response. It should therefore be easy enough to direct a few billion dollars of funding into hundreds of avenues of research to find which those handful of pollutants are, what the main sources of them are, how to remove them, and how the effects of damage already done might be reversed.
I imagine that with a covid-scale response, we could guarantee that nothing new would contain any of the offending chemicals within a year, and perhaps within 5 years we could have replaced every piece of tupperware/insulation foam/whatever already manufactured goods contain it.
by fortran77 on 9/12/22, 2:18 PM
If we are to believe this, it would mean that "plastic" is making our bodies so much more efficient that there's extra energy that's being stored as fat.
I like to keep my weight exactly at 155# (as a 5'10 59 year old man).
Once a year, I "bulk" and go up to 160 while doing more strenuous weight training. The math always works exactly -- for every 3000 extra k/cal I eat, I go up a pound. When it's time to "cut" back to 155#, for every 3000 k/cal deficit I drop a pound.
15 years ago, I got fat. I stopped paying attention to what I was eating. Got my weight up to 205#. I lost it by strictly counting calories. The math worked perfectly. I went to 1200 k/cal and lost 2 pounds a week. Exactly. Every week.
Eating no more calories than your body needs works for everyone. You cannot create matter out of thin air, no matter what fat people will tell you.
The Obese and Overweight cost society greatly. The fact that they're consuming more than they need, use more fuel to move around, and get sick and require more medical care costs us trillions. It's time they stopped pointing their fingers at "plastics" and started obeying the laws of thermodynamics.
by slowmovintarget on 9/12/22, 3:19 PM
So something sold as "heart healthy" is loaded with obesogens and will contribute to obesity.
by swamp40 on 9/12/22, 1:21 PM
by bgro on 9/12/22, 8:10 PM
You'd think the vast amounts of scientific papers would be conclusive, but they're constantly contradicting each other or people uncover ulterior motives, like having shares in a questionable weight loss company.
In some of these cases, the source material uses inappropriate sample sizes or has other similar problems, or references other studies that had problems like this.
I bet if you type "X is the reason for obesity," you will find information for any noun.
Here's a partial list of topics off the top of my head from the best of my ability that I believe have been blasted as the definitive one-and-only "root cause" of obesity: [Sugar, Aspartame, Plastic, Butter, Margarine, Carbs, Milk, Bread, Fruit, Nuts, Phones, The Internet, TV, Video Games, Your job in general, Canned Products, Gluten, Pollution, Global Warming, Cars, Cheese, Alcohol, No Exercise, Cardio-only exercise, Blue Light (from electronics in general)]
by mfer on 9/12/22, 2:32 PM
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 causes lots of medical problems).
In there is the growth hormone. Kids "mature" physically at younger ages now than they used to. Kids to stop stop dairy or a lot of mean may physically mature at the older slower pace.
Eating less fruits, vegetables, and whole grains means less fiber. Most people (in the US anyway) are deficient in fiber. Fiber traps certain fats and cholesterols so they aren't absorbed. So, we absorb more fats.
Then there are processed foods.
So much about our diets have changed in the last 100 years. A lot is known and we even know how to eat to be really healthy. It's just not widely known by the general public.
by aantix on 9/12/22, 10:02 PM
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/115/6/1445/6572830?fbc...
by nineteen999 on 9/13/22, 12:21 AM
What might make us lose our obesity is regular exercise, building a reasonable amount of muscle mass, eating less food and better food, consuming less alchohol, spending less time sedentary in front of a computer screen, etc.
by kerrsclyde on 9/12/22, 1:38 PM
by mylons on 9/12/22, 2:04 PM
by csours on 9/12/22, 9:43 PM
So we don't really study hunger very much - there are some really good studies out there, but not very many.
And we don't talk about managing hunger, we talk about managing calories and managing weight.
by baremetal on 9/12/22, 5:34 PM
I take that to heart. Including what I put in my body. I have little to no faith in modern food. And so I grow my own. I know where it came from and what went into it. And yes, I have had my soil tested.
Rely on modern food at your own peril. You are what you eat, as they say.
by betwixthewires on 9/12/22, 9:05 PM
It's sugar and seed oil. That's what it comes down to. Most of what we eat is not food really, but the last mile in a marketing campaign, it barely even qualifies as a product. That combined with the rise in sedentary work and recreation is all you need to explain it.
by ameminator on 9/13/22, 12:07 AM
by dataflow on 9/12/22, 1:52 PM
by DiabloD3 on 9/12/22, 9:21 PM
Washington Post doesn't publish stories about those papers.
by hamiltonians on 9/12/22, 8:41 PM
by notaboredguy on 9/12/22, 1:53 PM
by moneywoes on 9/12/22, 12:55 PM
by bilsbie on 9/12/22, 8:47 PM
by bradhe on 9/12/22, 2:59 PM
by AuryGlenz on 9/12/22, 5:16 PM
Now a very large portion have what must be D cups. I've tried to look up studies but I couldn't find any that controlled for weight.
This was also the first year I had not one, but two, morbidly obese girls. One was so large I ran out of poses pretty much right away as she couldn't clasp her hands together behind her back, couldn't do the same near her waist in front, and she couldn't even sit down on the ground - only kneel. She told me she wanted to be a lawyer. 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.
by Havoc on 9/12/22, 12:56 PM