> A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher.
I think the recent obsession with macronutrients is a big part of the problem. I'm not sure if the macronutrient ratio I eat has changed much from when I was growing up with my grandmother's cooking, with the exception of three failed experiments with low carb diets and a couple of other small experiments.
The thing is that in the 80s, as a kid, I was more likely to be eating traditional American staples, like corn flakes or oatmeal and a banana for breakfast, and a typical meal would include meat, potatoes and a green vegetable. I drank some soda, but also about a quart of milk a day.
Now I tend to eat out 9 times a week instead of 2 and I eat a lot more processed food unless I make a concerted effort not to. I avoid soda for the most part, but on the whole there's a lot more stuff in my diet that my great-grandparents wouldn't have recognized as food. I don't remember the last time I drank milk.
Surely eating home baked bread or a piece of fruit isn't the same as eating a snack bar, eating meat isn't the same as drinking muscle milk, and fatty fish doesn't equate to pork rinds, etc. Macronutrient ratios just don't tell the whole story or even most of it.
I agree, the macros look sort of the same, but the source of those calories is much different.
Just the types of cooking oil we use has changed a lot.
Look at what goes into cookies now. It used to be butter, now I've seen recipes with canola oil. (if anyone tells you to use canola oil in your baked goods, ignore them and use butter!)
There is evidence that gut bacteria is passed down from generation to generation, we could very well be seeing a delayed effect from public policy and health decisions made around the time the previous generation was growing up. oops.
I am sort of on the fence about processed foods. A lot of canned food was eaten previously, fresh vegetables were not available year round, but a lot of the canning was done at home in glass jars. I am not one to be paranoid, but now all our canned food comes in coated aluminum cans.
We have a few decades of aluminum cans being coated on the inside with BPA. It is know known that BPA can have harmful effects that take a long time to manifest.
The point is, there are a lot of potential culprits, and it is going to take a long time to figure out what state unbridled capitalism has left public health in.
> There is evidence that gut bacteria is passed down from generation to generation, we could very well be seeing a delayed effect from public policy and health decisions made around the time the previous generation was growing up. oops.
This is something that doesn't get mentioned enough. Your gut bacteria play a large role in your health, and we're going so far as to do fecal transplants to resolve GI tract disorders. I wonder if anyone has done genome sequencing of gut bacteria to determine if its one of the primary causes of America's obesity problems.
"One woman suffering recurrent C. difficile infection was recently successfully treated with this procedure, but interestingly, she also rapidly went from normal weight to becoming obese after receiving the transplant. While the weight gain could be due to a variety of factors, the donor was also overweight, and the recipient had never struggled with her weight before. Researchers are therefore speculating whether something in the transplant could have played a role in her weight gain, and have described the intriguing case in Open Forum Infectious Diseases."
> one of the primary causes of America's obesity
> problems.
As any European who's spent time in the US can tell you, a dramatically simpler explanation is that portion sizes are enormous and many foods are "low fat" which mean they're loaded with sugar.
Stuff's ridiculously loaded with sugar. I stopped eating sugar for a few months on a whim. It's rather difficult to do so. Everything just pointlessly has loads of it. Even trying to use no-calorie sweeteners is difficult as some places like to tout how natural they are.
I went back to eating sugar but I can no longer stomach a lot of foods I would happily have eaten before. Everything is so sweet.
The sugar's not pointless - it's a cheap and effective way to make low-fat food taste good.
I gave up sugar (well, candy, anything that had refined sugar added, most fruit) for four months. I lost a lot of fat quickly, but it was exceptionally hard from a willpower perspective, and I'd get a massive high when I accidentally ate sweetened food. I'd love to give it up again, but my self discipline is currently needed elsewhere...
I watched a documentary called "Fed Up" that addressed this. I haven't verified the accuracy of the documentary, but here was the explanation it gave, which is consistent with your first sentence.
"Fat" was declared the enemy, so highly processed food providers started removing fat. The food tasted bad. So they added in sugar. So now people were eating much more sugar, but still craving fat, and seeking it from other sources. So it became a double whammy.
At the same time, as many products (such as dairy) were being made low-fat, the highly processed food industry needed something to do with all that fat, so it launched the "cheese glorious cheese" campaign, where highly processed cheese (with lots of added salt) was now added to almost every conceivable thing, at low cost (because it was left over from the milk). Cheese went into pizza toppings (extra cheese!), pizza crusts, processed mac n cheese, all kinds of approximations of previous foods. So now, Americans, instead of eating fat where it naturally exists, were instead eating lots of low fat processed food products with sugar to replace the fat, and then eating the fat in other products, with lots of added salt.
The other thing the documentary asserted (well, a physician in the documentary asserted) is that the popular believe that "a calorie is a calorie regardless of source" is incorrect in terms of how the body processes calories from different food sources. A calorie of sugar can lead to weight gain in a way that a calorie from other sources doesn't. Again, this is just what was in the documentary "fed up", I don't know much more about it than that.
Rather than focusing too much on the difference between Europe and the US, I think it might be useful to realize the difference between "big, corporate food" and an almost completely orthogonal supply system. Orange juice and a juiced orange may have almost nothing to do with each other, at this point (depending on the source, of course).
The reason I say this is that I think it would be foolish to count on the atlantic or a national border as safety, instead, think of something that has conquered the US food market (among other markets) and will absolutely expand and conquer new territory when possible.
It helped for me that I have a designated day in a week for sweets, where I get a chocolate or some favorite candy and eat it guilt free. Don't even crave it for the rest of the week. When you get the habit going, it's much easier.
One important thing though, I go and buy the sweets I'll eat on that particular day. If you have a habit of buying sweets and have it easily at hand, it's way harder (which goes for every addicting thing there is).
Is sugar that much cheaper than aspartame, sucralose, erythritol, or other fake sweeteners? I found that chewing on erythitol-based bars (Quest) sorta satisfied most of my need to eat sweets.
I suppose it's a bit of an arms race: keep adding sweetness to add a bit more flavour and soon we're escalated so far up the sweetness chain with no commercially viable way to back down.
I've been doing that and have seen pretty steady drops too. Since June when I started, I've dropped 11kg, with a rate of about 0.9kg per week. Asides from one weekend when I went to visit friends in the UK for a Real Ale Train trip, and a couple of slices of fudge cake in the office, pretty much the closest thing to processed sugar I've been consuming is some honey on soda bread in the evening. Once I run out of honey, I'll probably stop with that too.
The biggest thing I've done regarding fruit is getting rid of fruit juice. I don't think fruit itself is so bad, because of the sheer solid mass of the fruit itself. With fruit juice, that's mostly thrown away, and you're consuming what's essentially fructose water, which isn't particularly healthy!
Yes. Consumption is encouraged.
In Chicago a restaurant wanted to charge me a fee to share a meal with my partner. It was therefore cheaper by 1 dollar to buy an extra muffin nobody wanted to avoid the sharing fee than to just share what we actually wanted to eat.
A lot of the Lo fat lo salt versions that have been heavily marketed are worse a bit like reducing Co2 by pushing Diesel engines.
my specialty nephrology dietician commented when i asked about lo salt products "all the shit they put in it makes it worse" and that is a direct quote
true but again just a part of the problem (although a big one).
I recall, back in 2004 during summer break, I worked 6 weeks in LA (Universal Studios), and then moved to Maine to work in some resort. Needless to say, those places were continents apart. In those 4 weeks in Maine, I've seen roughly 5 fat people, non obese (also cca 2 black... err african american altogether).
Different attitudes to activities, moving around and sport, different eating habits etc. They all play the game together to produce the result we all can see.
You want to have a real clue what you eat? Either do it yourself, or eat as much raw stuff as possible. Over time, you will get used to it and processed food will taste like a canal cooking.
This is actually quite a forefront of research right now and a lot gets overthrown, figured out anew and so on.
Very interesting, what might come from this line of research, but a lot of first insights really seem promising in furthering the understanding of how we process the things we ingest and what different role different types of colon-microorganisms play in what foods do us good and what not so much.
> The point is, there are a lot of potential culprits, and it is going to take a long time to figure out what state unbridled capitalism has left public health in.
Or the state public regulation has left public health in, such as the war on fat and the subsidies on corn.
I think what's best is to try to continue research in this area and try really hard to not declare that we've figured it all out yet again and throw the food pendulum in another random direction for the next x years.
Most food cans are steel. And the liners contain a small amount of BPA, they are not composed of it.
I agree that people shouldn't shy away from butter, cookies should be an indulgence and the type of fat shouldn't be a big deal, but canola oil is probably a better choice in general than corn or soy oil (that is, it's better than "vegetable oil").
I'm in the United States, and I don't know if I've ever seen an aluminum food can here. All of the Campbells Soup Cans, Canned vegetables, etc, are in steel cans. They are usually coated with a polymer that can break down into nasty things if it's heated, though. I found that out after heating many meals in the can over a campfire.
I think this is spot on, and came to comment likewise... I think the types of product we are using for our macros is way off base from even a few decades ago. I only had a little glimpse of how much so because I know someone very allergic to soy, and it's in almost everything these days.
I don't think that most things in particular are necessarily bad for you, but it might be worth taking a few steps back and switch to less processed foods... I don't think organic makes much of a difference for most foods (aside from berries)... But using oils that have to be heavily refined, perfumed and dyed to make them palatable doesn't make so much sense.
There's also recent studies on the affects of artificial sweeteners on digestion, trans fats and a bunch of other stuff. I think the push towards vegetarianism, low-fat, low-carb, etc as fads combined with industrialization of food has done a lot of harm to the public.
If you're young and relatively healthy, avoid processed/refined foods as much as possible, eat a variety of things and don't consume too many calories on a weekly average, and you should be okay. I'm 40, diabetic, insulin resistant, and wish I'd received that advice when I was younger.
I just think it sucks how much it really costs to actually cook for yourself... over the weekend I made 3 different pots of soup to have this week. I had some chuck roast that I braised in beef broth (store bought), used the roast in a menudo inspired soup (I don't like tripe), the braising liquid was combined with mushrooms and onions for another soup... I used the left over carcase from a roasted chicken to make another broth that I then used to make vichyssoise (sub some potato with cauliflower and parsnips). All told it cost about $160 for everything with about a gallon each of three soups... breakdown to 2-cup servings comes out to just under $7 a serving for a low-gl diet with a variety of veggies... That doesn't count adding other protein in my diet too.
Now make it a family of 4-5 and that budget is too high for families making under 40-60K/year. It's no wonder that boxed mac & cheese, hamburger helper and the like rule the roost at home along with the dollar menu at fast food places. With all the heavily refined, packaged, canned, frozen and just plain overly processed food that we all consume too much of, is it any wonder why we as a society are experiencing the problems we are?
I don't know how well supported it would be, but would really love to see food/nutrition/cooking as a core material in elementary schools... Actually bringing cooking into school lunches with a required prep rotation for all students would go a long way. It would cost more than those programs do today, but is using subsidy trades to turn chickens into chicken nuggets for school lunches really a good thing?
> I think the push towards vegetarianism, low-fat, low-carb, etc as fads combined with industrialization of food has done a lot of harm to the public.
What's wrong with vegetarianism? I would think it has lots of benefits. It's better for the environment, you don't risk eating very processed meat filled with hormones and additives, from animals often kept in horrible conditions. The meat industry is a textbook example of industrialization, which you consider very harmful. So what's the beef with vegetarianism?
I've just watched this and assuming it's unbiased which it seems to be, it makes a number of very compelling arguments to go vegetarian/vegan. Not least the huge water, grain and land requirements and the resultant methane emissions of eating meat which are globally unsustainable:
http://cowspiracy.vhx.tv/
Why does it have to be vegetarian all the way? There are some nutrients (vitamin B12, probably others) available only in animal-source protein.
It used to be that meat was luxury and eaten infrequently (once a week). Going back to a similar schedule would save water/energy without depriving people of necessary nutrients.
Some people don't want to kill animals that don't want to be killed. You may have different ethics but that doesn't imply anything bad about vegetarians.
You've gone all out for some high end luxury soups :)They sound delicious. But you can make nutripus delicious soups without spending that kind of money, for very little money in fact. Cooking can be done coat effectively but you have to remember the objective is not Masterchef finesesse.
I did home economics in school and I agree everyone should do some.
It's no wonder that boxed mac & cheese, hamburger helper and the like rule the roost at home along with the dollar menu at fast food places
For the vast majority of people, this is convenience, not cost. I can and do make nutritious, tasty, and inexpensive meals. But when I'm tired and not in the mood to cook, chicken nuggets and fish sticks are easier and the kids don't mind them.
As for the other stuff, I have absolutely no idea how you managed to make 3 gallons of soup for $160. I made about 2 gallons of beef stew a few days ago and the total cost would have been under $15 if I bothered to account for all of it.
Not quite top end ingredients, but higher end... grass fed, hormone free chuck roast, same for the chicken used... I'm in Phoenix so produce is kind of expensive to begin with, leeks were still $2/lb, and parsnips were a bit too... mushrooms at $4-6/lb, it adds up pretty quickly... realizing there was about $20-30 of groceries that didn't go into the soup, and some bits that I had on hand, so my estimates may be a bit off. I also tend to sub some celery root for potato too (used parsnips because the celeriac was anemic and way too much).
If I wanted to I could probably have done it for under $30 for a pot of soup (basic chicken no-noodle) for example. I happen to like a variety of flavors and ingredients.
that seems a bit too expensive. Where do you live? I can't imagine how it would cost more than 100 bucks for those ingredients, and I feel like if I went out to buy the ingredients right now (Chicago) I'd be able to make it for 80.
I'm in Phoenix, fresh produce tends to be a bit overpriced here... Also tend to favor hormone free meat, which runs about twice as much (give or take). It was actually closer to $120-130 now that I think about it.. I have a few items of groceries that didn't go into the soup, and estimated some of the things I already had on hand.
The most obvious explanation isn't mentioned. More exercise leads to more muscle, which leads to a higher BMI.
I cannot access the full text, but this isn't acknowledged in either the Atlantic piece or the abstract. There is no talk about more adipose tissue, less fat-free mass or higher bodyfat.
We cannot distinguish between good weight gain and bad weight gain based on BMI changes alone.
I have no particular expertise in this area, but I've been making the "we don't know why people are fat" argument to whoever will listen for a while. Doctors (socially, not at an appointment FWIW), academics… I'm actually quite surprised how often they've been thinking along the same lines and/or they are convinced by the general idea.
basically:
People have been getting fatter, to pathological levels for quite a while. The phenomenon is global. The conventional explanation is too much for and not enough exercise, caloric surplus.
This is not nonsensical. We know that caloric restriction leads to weigh loss. We can also see that various other approaches can result in weight loss. Carbohydrate restriction, for example. But, this doesn't give us a complete (or possibly even relevant) answer.
This requires another 'why' and a 'why now.' All it takes is a small sustained caloric surplus over long periods to reach obesity. People have had access to these calories, in large populations or in pockets for a long time. There have been periods of regional caloric wealth and certainly periods of caloric wealth within subcultures/classes. If caloric surplus is the key idea, why do we have these caloric surpluses today.
There were sedentary workers even in ancient times, certainly in the 20th century. Today's sedentary worker is fatter than yesteryear's. Today's carpenter is fatter than a carpenter in 1972. Why? A carpenter in 1972 had plenty of access to calories, similar physical lifestyle.
IMO, this is an epidemic and we need an explanation that works at epidemic levels. We need to explain the change in populations weight, not differences in individual's weight. The answer to the first is probably different to the second.
"Gut biome" may be an answer. Antibiotics. Parasites are another interesting possibility.
In any case, I don't think it's coincidence that fad diet books and other pop science is so successful. We do not have an answer from science. I don't eves think the right question is usually asked.
Didn't read the study, but part of the explanation could be that people spend less time outside and are generally in warmer environments. Omnipresent AC, different clothing, better insulation all means that the body burns less calories to keep itself warm.[0]
"[...] in the U.K., average living room temperatures rose from 64.9F/18.3C in 1978 to 66.4F/19.1C in 2008 and bedroom temperatures increased from 59.36F/15.2C to 65.3F/18.5C."[1]
This is an excellent example. The other thing I would assume is that a lot more of everyday activity in the 1980s required a little more human physical input and a little less waiting for a machine to stop. Using or even moving typewriters, manual steering, prepping food, cleaning without machines doing small prep instead of standing in front of a microwave, getting up to change the TV station.
While we could construct modern measures, I doubt we have good measures for all of the micro-tasks in the 1980s..
Travel agents in 1980 did less physical work than ER nurses do in 2015 whether measured in micro-tasks, macro-tasks, steps per day or anything else. But, secretaries from the 1980s were (I'm guessing, but this is probably true) less fat than ER Nurses today.
> Travel agents in 1980 did less physical work than ER nurses do in 2015 whether measured in micro-tasks, macro-tasks, steps per day or anything else.
My point is that that is an assumption, if we choose to believe 1% of the last 30 years of technological innovation in convenience is real then the environments are a better explanation than changes to their inhabitants.
A travel agent in 1980 may walk to work, clean the house without a vacuum, scrub the floor, lift and lug all sorts of heavy devices, reference books, carry and hang laundry, etc... Anyone today has higher odds of having to drive to work, having a roomba and easy surfaces at home, carrying a tablet or just a phone, having no steps in their living area and an elevator at work, not cooking at all by 1980's standards, having a private washing machine, being afraid to walk after dusk...
Then for the 40 hours they actually spend at work, there are various equipment and practices to no longer lift patients frequently in the ER, etc. Many nurses are spending a lot of time reading things, comparing numbers, following (manual?) push carts and entering pill data. A few ER nurses may be doing more exercise now, but the average could look shockingly low to a travel agent from 1980.
I would expect the articles premise if I ran the study. That makes me more suspicious of the outcome; we find what we expect to find when a study can't be perfectly controlled. Swapping the 1980s and 2010s environments is a perfect example of poor control.
I've tried to do some reading about all of this... the main argument that makes sense to me is that it has to do with increased consumption of sugar. To oversimplify, sugar triggers an increase in insulin, and something about insulin (I can't remember the precise details) changes the way the body processes food– it stores more of it as fat.
The scary part is that you start secreting insulin just by THINKING about carbs, sugar and so on. I haven't heard people discuss this... but if it's true that insulin is secreted, ADVERTISING could be contributing to obesity. Which is disturbing. I hope I'm wrong.
I'm not super well-informed on this subject, but I would like to be and welcome any thoughts and suggestions and corrections and so on.
Advertising could be contributing more directly, food companies are large enough that they serve the entire market, so one of the few ways they can grow is to get people to eat more.
You are describing prediabetes and insulin resistance. Excess sugar is probably a contributor, but also probably not the only one.
People are fat because of all the little and big things they do on a daily basis.
What you eat is the most important thing. How you exercise is next.
What you do in your leisure time is important too. In the 70s, I don't recall anyone binge-watching Netflix while sitting on a couch. TV just wasn't that great and there were only a few specific times per day or week that were something you might be interested in. I don't remember many people playing video games for hours at a time. Sure some minority of people did but the games just weren't that fun and anyone that played Pacman on the Atari 2600 knows that. Kids played outside more, and throughout the neighborhood not just in their own back yard. Adults socialized outside more. There was no Facebook to spend hours per day sitting and reading. I don't think the 70s had Amazon.com either so people burned more calories walking through stores. I distinctly remember shopping with my parents as a kid and it was exhausting walking through a mall for hours.
I don't see any evidence the study took any of this technological change into consideration.
These things absolutely explain why I am fatter than you, why Jane is skinnier than Phyllis. They are useful if Jane wants to gain weight or Phyllis wants to lose it.
I don't think they are are enough to explain changes in the population over time though. I don't think habits have changed that much, first of all. Maybe fewer video games were played but fewer people did fun runs and cross fit too. Either way, there definitely were some coach potatoes and office workers in the 70s and there are some now. But our coach potatoes are bigger than our parents'.
"I have no particular expertise in this area, but I've been making the "we don't know why people are fat" argument to whoever will listen for a while. Doctors (socially, not at an appointment FWIW), academics… I'm actually quite surprised how often they've been thinking along the same lines and/or they are convinced by the general idea."
May I present my broad theory ?
Americans, across a very broad swatch of behaviors, haven't broken away from the social norms and habits of living on a farm.
You (my fellow American) drive a big truck, eat "3 squares" a day, serve HUGE portions, don't specifically exercise and generally overequip and overfuel our entire lifestyle because we can't remember we're not on the farm anymore.
My father grew up on a farm, my wifes grandparents both grew up on a farm, and everyone in their lineage going back ... forever ... were living rural, agrarian, peasant lives. So depending on who you are in the United States, you are perhaps 1-2 generations removed from a radically different lifestyle.
It's going to take more than one generation to become well-practiced at being urban, and a pseudo-rural suburban environment coupled with a TV shouting "YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH TRUCK!@" is not helping ...
it ain't that hard, and it actually makes sense. i can take a look in my own family and it's apparent.
answer is - we became lazy, so slowly that many actually think that nothing changed. sample job you mention - carpenter now doesn't do as much physical work as he used do do 500 years ago. the ones who don't use modern approach, they are skinny, muscular athlete-looking types, even if they are 50-60 years old.
most people really have very sedentary lifestyle, and even the same profession got more passive over time. you don't need to run around that much in the office searching for some document, if you have DMS for that. all is electronic, reachable with few clicks/taps. Especially in US, but also generally in 1st world countries, people are using cars all the time. For my parents, the only way to do shopping was to carry 10-20kg shopping bags 500m back home from shop, usually few times a week. These tiny examples stack up.
Add to this crappy oversweetened, junkish food most people are eating, and it couldn't end up any other way. I live practically in France (Geneva), but most colleagues eat fine tasting, buy shitty composition-wise foods. Most countries fare worse on this. A bit of veggie at the plate doesn't make it magically good and healthy.
Also, most people lack any kind of discipline when it comes to food. Spoiling oneself ("treat yourself" bullsh*t), small cheat snacks that somehow don't count to whole food equation, people focused too much on work, and not on their well being.
I could go on and on, but why, its apparent. we are to blame, nobody else. you and I choose every day what we put in our mouth, and how much physical exercise we do. Eat better, less (especially dinner), exercise more and all will be good. But for many people, for some reason this seems to be too-hard-to-succeed challenge in life.
my father is still working in the same company, doing +- the same job and guess what... he is moving around much less. I could go on with examples that are valid across the globe.
computers in one or other form, albeit amazing, also got us move around much less. people are happy they can regulate lights from their cellphone, rather than getting up and walking those 3 meters...
Two big increases in consumption are in chicken and cooking oils. The average American eats 40 pounds more chicken than their grandparents and 30 additional pounds of fat and oils.
for example, when was the last time you "ran to the store" to grab something like milk? I wouldn't call that exercise but it's definitely something current generation lost compare to all the previous ones.
Including myself and friends, our weekend preferred activity are changing from going out (to parks, movies etc) to "Netflix and chill".
think about this, "Running" didn't become a thing until the late 70s. People simply didn't do much to stay "fit" before that. You can attribute it to biomes or genetics, but this is just within one or two generation.
What I would find interesting is if we can find data similar to what we record with fitbits, ie. # of steps per day etc. from people 30/40 years ago, and compare to actual fitbit data of today. I'd wager we'd find some interesting correlations.
This study relies on the NHANES data which is self-reported: Respondents have to recall what they ate. So an alternative and more likely explanation is that people are far better at deluding themselves than they used to be.
I would also assume that there's less structured eating schedules in homes now than there used to be, which would make it more difficult to catalog exactly what was ingested.
Even the methodology for acquisition of the self-reported data used in this study has changed over the years.
> In NHANES I (1971–1975) and NHANES II (1976–1980), in-person interviews were used to obtain self-reported dietary information via a 24-h dietary recall questionnaire that assessed food and beverage intake for weekdays only. In NHANES III (1988–1994), dietary information was obtained through a self-reported 24-h dietary recall using a computer-assisted, automated, interactive method for any day of the week. In NHANES 1999–2002, a multiple-pass computer-assisted dietary interview format was used to collect detailed self-reported information about all foods and beverages that were consumed the day prior to the in-person interview (weekday or weekend). In NHANES 2003–2008, 24-h self-reported dietary recalls were performed twice (3–10 days apart) using an automated multiple pass method.
I'm highly suspect of this one. This seems like an interesting avenue of exploration, but this data seems too weak to make broad claims from.
Yes and moreover we have statements such as " it’s harder for adults today to maintain the same weight as those 20 to 30 years ago did, even at the same levels of food intake and exercise." and "In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans."
These conclusions from a study with 36,000 people out of some 300 million Americans?
To determine whether the relationship between caloric intake, macronutrient intake, and physical activity with obesity has changed over time.
Methods
Dietary data from 36,377 U.S. adults from the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) between 1971 and 2008 was used. Physical activity frequency data was only available in 14,419 adults between 1988 and 2006. Generalised linear models were used to examine if the association between total caloric intake, percent dietary macronutrient intake and physical activity with body mass index (BMI) was different over time.
Results
Between 1971 and 2008, BMI, total caloric intake and carbohydrate intake increased 10–14%, and fat and protein intake decreased 5–9%. Between 1988 and 2006, frequency of leisure time physical activity increased 47–120%. However, for a given amount of caloric intake, macronutrient intake or leisure time physical activity, the predicted BMI was up to 2.3 kg/m2 higher in 2006 that in 1988 in the mutually adjusted model (P < 0.05).
Conclusions
Factors other than diet and physical activity may be contributing to the increase in BMI over time. Further research is necessary to identify these factors and to determine the mechanisms through which they affect body weight.
I do not have access to the fulltext but from the abstract, it seems they may only have included structured leisure time physical activity like playing football one hour every Monday (what could "Physical activity frequency data ... in 14,419 adults between 1988 and 2006" plausably include?)
I would think there is less unstructured physical activity nowadays. Both at home and at work.
I've noticed the same thing geographically. Twice now, I've taken a "sabbatical" and moved to Quito, Ecuador for a year to be near family. Both times, I lost weight when I arrived, stabilized at a leaner equilibrium, then gained the weight back when I returned to North America.
Could be nutritional, could be bacterial, could social. Whatever it is, the effect is dramatic.
The study factored in the nutritional value of the food, so your comment seems counter to their findings.
"...eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher."
Except the calories are obsolete (meaningless)
A lot of the food now is higly processed, ground to microns, resulting in way higher "usable engergy" that can be extracted.
Especially the "cheap" food - full of awful sugars, stabilised fats or other junk, gelatine, mechanically abused.
Your answer may look unscientific (hand-wavy, with the word "meaningless" being too strong, that's how I explain the downvotes), but I guess if eating is (partially) feeding gut bacteria, then the micro structure of the food could well matter a lot with regards of which kinds of bacteria it promotes and which it weakens, and hence change the composition of the biome.
It was bizarre that the article did not mention trends in other behaviours that effect weight, like sleep and stress level. Millenials are arguably more stressed out than people the same age a generation ago, due to increased student loan debt, unstable job market and poor job security. This constant stress of course contributes to how well your body can maintain a healthy weight. There should be a rigorous study comparing relative stress levels over generations, but it is not hard to imagine that this is broadly true.
This is very true. And commute distances. I've found my time allocated to exercise goes down with increased commute time. I've also found my commute distances go up with home prices, as i need to go further out to afford the same amount of space.
You can't eat the same foods people ate 20 years ago. The cows aren't the same. The chickens aren't same. Cows and chickens today are more obese and eat more antibiotics than they used to be.
It's due to what we feed them, as well. We even feed corn to farmed Salmon, which makes their Omega 3&6 ratios the opposite of what they naturally are.
There's a bunch of stuff that might be going on here.
People mostly don't know what they're eating. They don't know the calorie content; they don't know the macro / micro nutrient content. They don't know how much they're eating, nor how much they should be eating. Food (and I have nothing to base this on) feels more engineered and feels like it's deceptively marketed (gummy bears being sold as "FAT FREE FOOD!" is a scumbag tactic). We're seeing similar levels of broscience ("Avoid all sugar!") as we saw in the 80s ("Avoid all fat!") and it's probably not helpful.
I'm also interested in what they corrected for. Did they correct for increased prescribing of psychiatric meds? The US has a lot of "off label" prescribing of such meds; prescribing of these meds has increased dramatically since the 1990s; many of them list increased appetite and weight gain as side effects. (And the weight gain is not just a function of increased appetite).
I don't have access to the study, but I suspect it doesn't say what The Atlantic is saying it's saying.
I lost weight: I went from 340 pounds to 214 pounds in exactly a year, and then bottomed out at 184 eventually (I've been purposely trying to gain muscle lately, which has been causing my weight to meander in the 190s since then).
My caloric intake hasn't changed in a way that can explain such a weight loss. I went from eating 1500-2000 calories a day to 1500-2000 calories a day (as in, no useful change, nothing that can explain 126 pounds in a year, disproportionately more of it towards the start than the end).
Now, what I did change was drop all grains (grains, cereals, pastas, soy, rice), drop refined sugars (I still use coconut and true raw cane sugars (Muscovado, Barbados, or Turbinado) or straight up raw honey; all very sparingly, and corn syrup is banned in my house), dropped seed oils (no more "vegetable", soy, corn, or canola oils; replaced with coconut and olive oil, or leftover bacon fat when I have it), and legumes (I'm allergic to peanuts, and don't care for beans, so the only thing I lost there is peas; soy is a legume, but I include it in with grains due to how it is typically treated culinarily, and thus already banned in my house).
So, given my experience, people are fatter because of reasons that cannot be explained by calories, such as chemicals in the things I quit eating causing unusual weight gain and halting the natural process of us burning endogenous fat. And it isn't like I'm the only person who did this, it is estimated over a million people have tried Paleo or some variant thereof and have significantly lost weight if they were overweight as long as they stuck with the lifestyle.
Side note: I went from 340 to 214 with chronically under-exercising. I still chronically under-exercise to a point, even though I now lift weights and try to go on daily walks. I still don't get the high other people seem to get from exercising. So, you can't use "increased caloric burn" as why I lost so much weight, it just wasn't there.
How carefully were you tracking calorie intake? It's notoriously difficult and I simply don't believe you ate 1500-2000 calories at 340lbs and didn't lose weight (not that you need to convince me).
It is very difficult to track calories if you don't eat exact portion sizes listed on boxes. I calculated what I used to eat, and what I eat now, based on things I regularly ate. I figured I'd have to be off somewhere around 1000+ calories in my calculations to have lost as much weight as I did during the start of that year.
I have had this conversation with people before, and the only thing that would have probably helped here is measuring calories being flushed down the toiled, something that is difficult, expensive, and not really worth it outside of actual scientific studies.
Also, I went from being habitually tired, not sleeping well, and also diagnosed with pre-diabetus, to being full of energy, having a much better mood, sleeping well, and having a sharper mind. Weight loss alone doesn't explain this, my change in diet alone doesn't explain this, but both together increasing and stabilizing my energy levels seems to explain this.
Don't underestimate the psychologic effects. A few years back I lost about 20kg in six to nine months --- by eating less and better, mostly --- and plotting my weight on the graph and watching the slow but steady downward trend was always a big mood-lifter.
And feeling better leads to a positive reinforcement loop; feeling good about yourself leads you (well, it works on me, at least) to do more things that make you feel better about yourself.
There are lab rats (whose hormones/genetics have been fucked with) that can literally die of starvation while remaining nearly spherical with excess fat. When their food is removed, their bodies ignore the stored fat and strictly cannibalize muscle and other tissues until the rat dies.
Being fat is much more complicated than calories in minus calories burned.
> There are lab rats (whose hormones/genetics have been fucked with) that can literally die of starvation while remaining nearly spherical with excess fat.
I bet there aren't. You'll need to cite that claim.
> They will consume the protein in their muscles and organs rather than surrender the fat in their adipose tissue. [...] They lost 60 percent of their body fat before they died of starvation, but still had five times as much body fat as lean mice that were allowed to eat as much as they desired.
Eh, he might actually be right. I seem to remember seeing a study saying something like that, but I can't find it after my contractual maximum of 5 minutes of Googling.
I did the same for a bit over a year (went from 460# to 360# that year), minimal activity.. since then I've hovered between #365-380 though... I haven't been as strict as that first year... A couple months ago I spent two months relatively high stress and ate a lot of fast food.. was inching towards 390 again... The past 2 weeks have been back on track (staying fairly strict in my diet) and back to 370 again.
It's purely anecdotal, but the fewer grains I eat (I do have some legumes, but try to limit them), the better I do all around. In general if I stay under an estimated glycemic load of 100/day, I loose weight with not other real changes in terms of calories or exercies.
Staying away from soda (Diet Dr Pepper) has been much harder... mostly drink water, but have a soda about every other day. I try to cook about once a week, usually soup that's easy enough to eat during the week and supplement with some meat along with fruit & nuts. It isn't easy, especially the first week... also, it's definitely more expensive avoiding heavily processed foods all around.
What you're talking about is macronutrients (amount of sugars vs. saturated fats vs. protein, etc.), and if the study is correct, it specifically claims that changes in macronutrients, even when coupled with a measure of total calories consumed and levels of exercise, fail to fully account for the observed increase in obesity rates.
I absolutely agree with the assessment of "it's things that cannot be explained with calories." In China, within the span of a generation nearsightedness went from a minor condition to one spanning the majority of the cohort. That's something brought on by industrial lifestyles, but we never want to turn to food as a culprit. Food tastes good, after all. Food is life.
But if you take the idea seriously, then the problem is - which ones? For me, I've arrived at the answer, more of less, of "dairy and poultry." The first one, specifically casein(milk) protein, gives me all sorts of small issues if I treat it as a staple - joint inflammation, hayfever, trouble concentrating, elevated heart rate, etc. It may have been responsible for my scoliosis and nearsightedness too, though I'll never know for sure. The second tends to trigger migraines. I've only ever managed to become substantially overweight by consuming a lot of dairy and sugar, and as soon as I cut those out I slimmed down again.
Fortunately I don't have to put my foot down too much to make a compromise. When I have a burger it's always the plainest burger, since all the others have cheese. Nearly any snack food manufactured to taste "addictive" will contain the odious phrase "milk protein", with the exception of some potato chip flavors. The most unavoidable one is pizza, but I can take a hit there occasionally. And I'll default to lower-GI foods like oatmeal where I get the opportunity - although I tried the "avoid grains" strategem a while ago, it was never something that resulted in a _reaction_ like milk, it was more a matter of "after having milk I wanted to eat more."
Now, if I could get my mom to actually try following this plan I would be content. But despite apparently experiencing many similar issues in a more stark, life-impacting fashion, she is far, far too stubborn to give up her 4 AM coffees with milk, her various yogurts, cheeses, etc. She will, in fact, point to the microbiome as a reason to consume those things.
Is the near-sightedness being blamed on nutrition, or lack of exposure to bright sunlight in early childhood, or both? I've seen papers that proposed both causes.
Health studies, especially when reported by some article in som publication without an original source are a mess.
I personally am extremely skeptical of what the Atlantis says the findings of the paper are. I lost 50 lbs while eating a box of pop tarts per day while counting macros. It's anecdotal but that's the basis for my beliefs, and a lot of science supports it.
One issue with health studies is how data is collected. Numerous studies have shown that a huge number of people are incapable of accurately tracking the number of calories they consume per day, and consistently under report their numbers. I believe it, it's hard in today's eat out culture. So...how sure are we that people were consuming the same number of calories?
This is just one issue. There are tons more. If you happen to be in this thread and you are looking for health advice, my recommendation is to head to /r/fitness and read the FAQ.
Does this study factor in the huge life style changes over 20 years? Far more access to cars, and far more spending entire days sitting down (computer jobs, Netflix binge watching, etc). A lot of how we live has changed in 20 years, I'm inclined to think the problem lies there, not in environmental factors.
I'm aware of that. You didn't however have such a reliance on cars, nor the convenience afforded to having a car (e.g., the popularity of drive-thrus now, which were only getting started in 1980). There is such easy access to things like Netflix and Steam - it is very easy these days to waste entire days away without even noticing.
Compare sugar intake now and 20 years ago, sugar metabolizes to fat in the body. So that food is fat free, but high in sugar leads to the same thing in the body anyway.
Also look at the sizes of portions, soda and food packages they have all increased too.
Fast food consumption which is high in sugar and fat has also increased.
I've just read "In defence of food". It's a little sensationalist, but the author makes a good point that we've been blaming this or that nutrient and in the process we've become more and more unhealthy.
Amongst others we blamed cholesterol, we blamed fats, then saturated fats, now we're starting to blame carbohydrates. The problem starts from the reductionist science being applied, coupled with the constant lobbying of the food industry of course. What happens is that nutrition is an incredibly complex subject and nutritionists can only blame what they can currently measure. The result is a whole industry of processed foods that have lost their nutritional value. And for the food industry, that's OK because processed foods are more profitable.
The problem is not naturally occurring sugar. The problem is high fructose corn syrup and (to a lesser extent) sucrose and the current practice of injecting these substances in processed foods, because these sugars are fooling our senses and create addiction. But we are talking about refined carbohydrates. The sugar in fruits is totally fine and in fact there are signs that we don't eat enough fruits. But why stop at sugars? Margarine was certainly a bad idea, as was every other idea that the nutritionists' community ever had.
So really, if you want an enemy, that's certainly processed foods and the weakest cult-like science that human kind ever practised. To this day doctors are still advising patients to avoid saturated fats, even though there's zero evidence of saturated fats provoking cancer or heart disease or obesity. To this day you can see low-fat products, like low-fat milk that's artificially coloured and enriched with powdered milk, being sold because of health claims. Expect to see Omega-3 in bananas.
The whole point of this study was that the difference exists even after controlling for micronutrients. Your low-fat high-sugar theory is incompatible or at least insufficient.
I suspect the answer has to do with the microbiome and its cumulative response over decades to antibiotics and tiny changes introduced in food (shifts in cooking oils, dairy product additives, even animal feed that then indirectly impacts our own microbiome when we eat meat or eggs or dairy, etc.). The problem is that studies on the microbiome tend to be limited and recent. Long-term studies are especially lacking. What we do have indicates the microbiome may be vital to not just digestion but also our immune system function, emotional well-being and weight.
Probiotics might be helpful here, but in no way are we close to an exact science on the microbiome.
I think I've read several places that the wheat we eat today is significantly different from the wheat people ate in the old days. If I remember correctly, our wheat contains much more gluten, since high-gluten wheat makes bread fluffier etc.
And entertainingly this reckons increasingly industrialy generated wheat is now so devoid of any nutrients, even pigs won't eat it?
http://www.grainstorm.com/pages/modern-wheat
Is it just me or is it becoming increasingly more difficult to get the truth on any matter, because you're wading through so many layers of human generated FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt)?
"They found a very surprising correlation: A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher. In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans."
Sure, but it isn't the same person. If my bmi23 diet is 2000 calories and I eat 2000 calories, I will probably have a bmi of 23. If my bmi23 diet is 1800 calories and I eat 2000 calories, I will probably have a higher bmi.
I guess a clearer way to say what I am getting at is that bmi is descriptive, not predictive, so a shift in the bmi maintained by a given calorie intake could be explained by a shift in the habits of the population, so that the modern group achieves a given bmi at higher calorie intakes.
"The authors examined the dietary data of 36,400 Americans between 1971 and 2008 and the physical activity data of 14,419 people between 1988 and 2006. They grouped the data sets together by the amount of food and activity, age, and BMI."
^ The previous paragraph to the one I quoted above.
Methods
Dietary data from 36,377 U.S. adults from the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) between 1971 and 2008 was used. Physical activity frequency data was only available in 14,419 adults between 1988 and 2006. Generalised linear models were used to examine if the association between total caloric intake, percent dietary macronutrient intake and physical activity with body mass index (BMI) was different over time.
Results
Between 1971 and 2008, BMI, total caloric intake and carbohydrate intake increased 10–14%, and fat and protein intake decreased 5–9%. Between 1988 and 2006, frequency of leisure time physical activity increased 47–120%. However, for a given amount of caloric intake, macronutrient intake or leisure time physical activity, the predicted BMI was up to 2.3 kg/m2 higher in 2006 that in 1988 in the mutually adjusted model (P < 0.05).
Conclusions
Factors other than diet and physical activity may be contributing to the increase in BMI over time. Further research is necessary to identify these factors and to determine the mechanisms through which they affect body weight.
What I think I'm seeing is a confusion with the conclusions. What they found was:
1988: Daily calories = x, leisure play = y, observed BMI = z
2006: Daily calories = x, leisure play = (1.47 to 2.2)*y, observed BMI = 2.3 + z
The same amount of calories today results in greater BMI.
Either the average person's body composition today has a greater percentage of muscle and that's throwing things off, or something else is up with how we live that's making us heavier.
But, we see other studies out in the wild that suggest average fitness is lower, which leads me to think the former solution might not be the case.
This article is very depressing news. But, as technologists we are used to dealing with a new reality and change. I think many people will use this as an excuse to give up. It really means more than ever we should get outside or into the gym. Speaking of which I feel like I should go for a walk and get some fresh air.
That's not what I got out out if; they mentioned: avoid chemicals in food or packaging (i.e. eat organic - no antibiotic/hormone laden meat) - avoid artificial sweeteners - avoid antidepressant and unnecessary medication.
Meat is fine, as long as you don't eat something too industrial.
I'm kind of tired of these studies. They don't know why we are fatter. Personally, I think it's a lot of factors, and maybe even a virus?
That aside, moderate exercise has so many positive benefits, why not do a little. I have no idea if it helps lose weight, but working up a slight sweat daily, has helped me greatly over the years. Not so much with weight, but psychologically. Yes--it's been my major drug since 8th grade. (It seems like 8th grade is when society injects those needles of stress, on so many levels?) I do other drugs, but exercise has been my major addiction for years. I don't tell people. I'm actually embarrassed by it.
I've been fat and skinny. When I was fat, I didn't need to exercise as much in order to get the psychological benefits from exercise--in my case, it's always been some kind of cardio.
My point is if you don't feel well, and you don't have any physical reason not to exercise; give it a shot. You don't need to do marathons; just walk(fast, or slow, or run small distances--then walk). Exercise until you work up a good sweat.(I need at least 45 minutes now, but when I was heavier I just needed 20 minutes/daily. That was a hidden benefit from being overweight?) I guarantee after a little while, you will feel better. You might lose weight. You might improve your blood numbers. I can guarantee you will feal better, and will get to like the slight muscle pain the next day. In my case
I need to exercise daily. Some people get the psychological boost from just exercising occasionally. I think your occupation plays a role? My father worked construction and was always sweaty. I would never tell him to exercise. You will come to like the slight muscle pain the next day. I've been around people who don't have any pain the next day, but not me. I ache when I arise. Yes, your legs/body will hurt when you wake up the next day. I've never had anyone tell me to be be prepared to hurt the next day, but the hurt becomes a good hurt with time.
I've always hated getting up in the mornings, and don't know if my exercise régime is to blame, but once I get going; I'm glad I worked up a sweat the previous day. (I sugesseted sweating because, in my experience, if I don't sweat profusely; I don't get the same psychological bump. Maybe it's psychosomatic--I am a bit of a Nut?
nonono. no. you don't get it. we need to find something, someone else evil to blame. it's not us, cannot be us, we're perfect, and we won't change just because it makes sense.
It's like junk food is a complete mystery for last 20 years, and we don't have a free will and we are not actually choosing what we buy or eat. the fact that sweet stuff is not healthy was known to me as a kid 25 years ago, without all the science. Everybody knew it.
I'll say something many won't like - people got weak, not only physically, but mentally. We cannot handle pain that was common before, we frown upon hard physical work, because its well... hard. We seek professional challenges, but other, more important ones, are often sidelined.
Also, completely agree with you. Doing sports, anything that makes your heart pumping and your body sweating like pig is by far the best thing one can do for his/her health. Regularly/often is the key, the only true key. Unless one is paraplegic, there is no excuse good enough to be valid. But guess what - it's hard :)
There is a type of seaweed that if your average American eats it, there are zero calories absorbed.
If most Japanese citizens eat it, they will absorb calories from it.
There is a gut bacteria common in the Japanese population that extracts calories from this type of seaweed.
"calories in" is that calories that went down your throat. It is calories that your body was able to digest, and "your body" includes many types of bacteria that are unique to each person and also unique to different population groups (meaning that some populations share commonalities in gut flora).
It is possible that certain antibiotics have wipe out some types of gut flora, allowing others to proliferate more. That alone could increase calorie absorption. (Or cause a host of other problems!)
It is possible that having a diet too heavily reliant upon one type of food results in an imbalance of some type. The problem is, this is a brand new area of research and we just don't know yet.
But it is sure as heck known that it is more complicated than "calories in food down the throat".
This sounds incredibly interesting, and I would like to know more about this. You wouldn't happen to know the name of the seaweed or have a link to a study, would you?
Actual suspected caloric difference is minimal, after all, well, it is seaweed, not a very dense food stuff. :)
I'm not going to link to antibiotics causing gut flora problems, it is well known and responsible doctors actually can prescribe a nice little compact pill full of gut bacteria that replaces the ones wiped out as a side effect of antibiotics.
The stuff about a biased diet messing up gut bacteria is also hard to find research on (I've read it, but it is a PITA to find again). Basically different bacteria specialize in breaking down different types of food. If you have a diet lacking in some major food group, that stock of bacteria runs low.
Vegans can have this issue if they go back to eating meat. There is typically some tiny supply of the needed bacteria left and the population is restored after awhile, but the initial few hamburgers can be somewhat uncomfortable.
I'm betting that increased use of antibiotics is a key factor. Antibiotics are used in livestock management to increase feed efficiency. And young adults today have taken far more antibiotics than young adults had done in the 60s. So they use food more efficiently.
> A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher.
Its strange really. I'm on a ketogenic diet, and hear people preach the caloric balance constantly, that it doesn't matter what my macros are as long as I consume less calories than I burn daily. Yet, I consume close to my previous garbage diet calories and I lose about 2-3lbs/week due to my high fat/moderate protein/very low carb (<15g/day of carbs) diet.
Go figure, it appears that caloric energy balance isn't the only factor.
From someone who's been doing keto for several years now.
A: Pre-Keto, odds are you we underestimating how many calories you were eating. Unless you were tracking every single thing you ate, there is a high probability you just didn't realize how many calories you were consuming.
B: It is super hard to over eat on Keto. It is possible, take lots of liquid calories in (heavy cream can do this easily!), and there are some other real screw ups, but eating 3000 calories of steak is pretty damn hard.
C: What you are reporting is common for people who have a lot of weight to lose. At some point it becomes a lot harder, at first you just have to sort of watch things, then you eventually do have to count calories. (Especially if you want a six pack, holy crap do you have to count calories!)
It's definitely hard to eat too much when you aren't taking in starchy carbs or sugars.
Made a vichyssoise the first time a few days ago (subbed most of the potato with cauliflower and parsnips) and have to say it was about the most filling soup I've ever eaten... had trouble eating the 2-cups I usually do for a "serving" of soup.
If going a more Paleo inspired route, fruit is probably the most easy to over do. I try to stay under a GL of 100/day, being diabetic it's risky for me to stay in keto too much, ketoacidosis is not fun at all.
Thanks for that info! Did you ever experience symptoms similar to eye fatigue? I think I might be not consuming enough sodium and/or potassium; I'm going to up my doses of both to test my theory.
Everyone seems to warn about sodium and potassium while on keto - magnesium too. Apparently the suggested intakes are quite high and supplementing is the only way to get there. It might have just been placebo or drinking a hot cup of broth (with potassium salt in) but it made me feel better some days.
I'd also second that it's really hard to eat a massive amount of calories on keto. Water loss and perhaps some changes might make you leaner but most likely, over time, you're simply getting a lot less than, I dunno 3000 that isn't hard to do on a sugary diet.
Magnesium is good. Potassium, I eat leafy greens or Ostrim (http://www.protos-inc.com/), which is low fat but has no carbs and lots of potassium. They also taste good, they are one of my after gym gotos.
Gaining muscle on keto /is/ hard. You can do it (/r/ketogains can help!) but wow you have to stuff yourself, which is sort of odd for Keto!
A quick search says the recommendation amount of potassium a day is 4.7G for adults. While spinach and those Ostrim things are high (Ostrim says 330mg of potassium), you still have to eat a LOT to get close to the recommendation. I found it easier to throw that potassium salt into chicken bouillon (getting sodium + potassium).
Also it's funny how the supplments folks are allowed to sell potassium. There's regulatory issues of having more than 99mg per pill (could damage stomachs or something). So these companies market compounds with potassium that aren't in bio-available forms.[1] "550mg!" people see, making them think they're all set (and hah, pulled one over on terrible government regulators). Nope. Same happens with magnesium. Seems rather misleading, even though they are printing the truth.
Nothing about eye fatigue, but I forgot to have any potassium for a month (err, oops, I ate lots of veggies but no leafy greens!) and my BP shot up to something like 170/90. My doctor was concerned and also confused.
On the way out of her office I remembered I hadn't had any potassium for awhile, stopped by the grocery store, picked up some spinach, and a handful later (about a few minutes) the constant headache I'd had for a week straight went away.
I drank a cup of salt water last night to drag my sodium levels up, and the eye fatigue feeling is gone. Thanks for the pointer about potassium though!
It's an absolute limit. Perhaps there are specific modes that are a a few percent more or less efficient. Nonetheless, you eat less than you burn, you lose weight.
Gut flora is a big possibility as to the discrepancy. I imagine there are some gut flora that are more adapt at breaking down carbohydrates than others, saturating the body in unnecessary energy to absorb.
From your comment it appears you weren't tracking avurately before, "close to".
If you track energy expenditure as well as precise caloric intake you'll lose the same quantity of mass, give or take a few percent.
The point of the study, from what I can tell, was to show that calories+macronutrients+exercise, the three main current targets of anti-obesity intervention, fail to account for a large portion of observed population-scale changes. They aren't arguing generally against total energy balance being involved, only that those three quantities don't constitute a sufficient measure of total energy balance. The implication would be that there are likely other sources of variation, e.g. changes in digestion, metabolism, etc. (the study doesn't really go out on a limb and speculate on that part).
You think it's "pretty simple" because you haven't done any in depth research on the subject. Telling people to eat less and move more to lose weight is a recipe for failure. You have no qualifications but keep repeating the calories in calories out mantra. Until you've told this to hundreds of your patients and watching hundreds of them fail despite your useless advice, stop trying to shove your foot into the nutritional science door.
While I respect the knowledge of doctors, often the "wisdom" they have does not agree with one another. We need a better approach than gut feeling. I highly doubt simply telling a mantra like calories in vs. calories out to patients is going to change their behavior much (does the doctor spend months in the home of a patient helping them follow their advice?). It's not a very scientific way to go about it.
While that's also certainly true, the article says that in this case the calorie intake was the same. They were guessing gut bacteria could be different. Maybe the formula is calories in * bacteria efficiency - calories out?
A person gains weight because they intake more calories than they expend. Certainly.
A room gets more crowded when more people enter than exit. Obviously true.
Neither of these statements tell you why that is happening though, and that is important thing. So, why are people eating more calories? Or, since the articles says they aren't, could the sources of calories matter? (They do.)
This simple thermodynamic model intake minus expenditure leaves out (at least) one dynamic metabolic feature: this engine can change its tendency for storage (weight gain) in a single organism or in a community of organisms given time. A change in the community storage tendency is what is alluded to in the linked article. That is, the organism can allow the excess calories to pass on by, or it can store it as fat (or glycogen). This, for instance, is the holy grail of weigh managing pharmaceuticals: to discover those effectors of "now store every un-expended calorie (as fat)". So finally it's something like: intake - expenditure = available for storage, but might not be stored.
And the other variable is how well the body turns fat reserves back into available energy. If that mechanism is inefficient then the equilibrium will be higher body fat.
People seem to have an idea that every human body can just instantly burn however much fat it needs to burn to meet demand. It seems more likely that there's a limit to how fast the body can burn fat, which for some people is unusually low, and that if there's not enough energy available you'll be forced by thermodynamics to move less, think poorly, and produce less body heat.
Right, but physiology, psychology, and even sociology can all influence both calorie intake and expenditure. Send a kid to football camp, and they'll eat more and spend more calories.
So: hard problem. Not strictly a technical problem, either.
I'd recommend reading Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. He explains how this is not really the case. It was written back in 2007; I'm sure there's more research out there to prove this point.
Taubes' end-of-the-book hypothesis about Atkins diets and the like isn't that great, but the whole initial portion of the book trashing the fat hypothesis is great. If you enjoy scientific writing, I promise that you will get a lot out of it, whether you agree with him or not. He's a fantastic writer, and an exhaustive researcher.
As soon as you read
»…a professor of _kinesiology_ and health science…«
you know the statements are coming from people who believe in esoteric pseudoscience.
If your burn more energy than you take in, you lose weight.
Everything else doesn't make sense.
You can get fat by eating 5000 calories worth of paprika every day.
Statements like these only help people who have weight-problems to have an excuse not to do anything about it.
I don't especially want to defend the article but this whole first-law-of-thermodynamics approach to explaining weight gain is definitely the most useless idea that somehow always rears its head around here. It's not only useless on its face since how much we eat is moderated by satiety mechanisms rather than weights and measures, but it also ignores the complexity of nutrition and metabolism and the fact that weight has only a loose correlation to overall health.
As much as you're not going to fix your health by reading superficial linkbait articles, you also will not do it by taking a smug reductionist view that allows you to dismiss the subtleties of nutrition which still remain frustratingly beyond the reach of conclusive hard science.
> how much we eat is moderated by satiety mechanisms
No, it's moderated by our fork. It also means being hungry a lot and keeping exact track of your calories, just like poor people need to track their expenses.
(Been there done that with both money and weight)
The »subtleties of nutrition« don't matter if you are huge (BMI > 30) and want to get down to a healthy level. Once you are there you still can optimize and find out what works best for you.
I see, so fat people just need to knuckle down and starve themselves until they are reasonable weight and only then start to pay attention to the overall function of the human organism and their particular incarnation of it? That seems utterly backwards if not willfully ignorant.
Keeping a calorie deficit doesn't mean starving yourself. You need 3000 calories a day? Eat 2000, you'll lose about 1 kg in a week. At least it works for me and lots of other people I know. Sure it's hard to keep 2000 when you usually eat 3000-5000, but health is worth it.
If your overweight is life-threatening you'll want to lose body-fat asap, which you will not achieve if you first try to understand every detail of digestion and nutrition. See it as kind of first-aid.
I know that losing weight is very hard and that the behavioral change is the key, not the unknown details of nutrition. I just wish people (especially my doctors and family) pushed me much earlier to the right behavior.
You don't need to know ever detail, but the metabolic effects are super important. If you eat the same amount of calories of Snackwells (or some other supposedly "healthy" processed snack food option) compared a steak, you are going to need an insane amount of willpower to avoid overeating when you come down from the glycemic rollercoaster.
How we measure the calorific value of food doesn't seem to give us the number of calories a body can extract from food.
There are several reasons for this. One promising area of research is gut flora. Someone could have a gut flora that makes it harder to absorb calories. Someone else could have a gut flora that makes it easier to absorb calories.
> Statements like these only help people who have weight-problems to have an excuse not to do anything about it.
No. Statements like this are an effort to help fat people to lose weight by creating treatments that work rather than just yelling judgemental but useless advice at them. "Eat less food" does not work on populations. "Exercise more" does not work across populations.
> How we measure the calorific value of food doesn't seem to give us the number of calories a body can extract from food
Of course not but if we stick to the maximum we still can use this value to calculate our intake when we try to lose weight. If the body extracts fewer calories, even better for the weight loss.
I'm not talking about people who need to optimize a few % body-fat; I'm talking about BMI > 30.
> Statements like this are an effort to help fat people to lose weight by creating treatments that work rather than just yelling judgemental but useless advice at them
Why is "eat less" judgmental? If somebody wants to stop smoking, would you consider "stop smoking" judgmental?
The laws of physics say you can't burn energy you don't have.
If you're restricting calories and your body isn't doing a good job of mobilizing energy from fat reserves, then one way or another you'll burn less energy. You'll fidget less, think poorly, turn up the thermostat, lack the motivation to exercise, and if you do get a little exercise you won't be very vigorous about it. No amount of willpower can overcome thermodynamics.
Yes I had the same problems when I started counting calories. It's very hard of course, and if I stop keeping track there is also the danger of eating again like I always did, thus gaining back all the 20 kilos.
The thinking poorly/lack of motivation part was over two weeks after starting, thankfully.
Restricting your diet is no fun at all, that's why you need to know what your motivation is. (mine is Dad's/Granddad's Diabetes)
Why the dismissal of kinesiology?
It seems to be closely related to what you say in the next sentence: "If your burn more energy than you take in, you lose weight".
I think the recent obsession with macronutrients is a big part of the problem. I'm not sure if the macronutrient ratio I eat has changed much from when I was growing up with my grandmother's cooking, with the exception of three failed experiments with low carb diets and a couple of other small experiments.
The thing is that in the 80s, as a kid, I was more likely to be eating traditional American staples, like corn flakes or oatmeal and a banana for breakfast, and a typical meal would include meat, potatoes and a green vegetable. I drank some soda, but also about a quart of milk a day.
Now I tend to eat out 9 times a week instead of 2 and I eat a lot more processed food unless I make a concerted effort not to. I avoid soda for the most part, but on the whole there's a lot more stuff in my diet that my great-grandparents wouldn't have recognized as food. I don't remember the last time I drank milk.
Surely eating home baked bread or a piece of fruit isn't the same as eating a snack bar, eating meat isn't the same as drinking muscle milk, and fatty fish doesn't equate to pork rinds, etc. Macronutrient ratios just don't tell the whole story or even most of it.