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The REAL Cause of the Global Obesity Epidemic
World Wide Obesity Epidemic
Some 68% of all Americans are overweight, and obesity has almost doubled in the last couple of decades worldwide. As International Business Tribune reports:
Studies conducted jointly by researchers at Imperial College London and Harvard University, published in the medical journal The Lancet, show that obesity worldwide almost doubled in the decades between 1980 and 2008.
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68 per cent of Americans were found to be overweight while close to 34 percent were obese.
Sure, people are eating too much and exercising too little. The processed foods and refined flours and sugars don’t help. And additives like high fructose corn syrup – which are added to many processed foods – are stuffing us with empty calories.
But given that there is an epidemic of obesity even in 6 month old infants (see below), there is clearly something else going on as well.
Are Toxic Chemicals Making Us Fat?
The toxins all around us might be making us fat.
As the Washington Post reported in 2007:
Several recent animal studies suggest that environmental exposure to widely used chemicals may also help make people fat.
The evidence is preliminary, but a number of researchers are pursuing indications that the chemicals, which have been shown to cause abnormal changes in animals’ sexual development, can also trigger fat-cell activity — a process scientists call adipogenesis.
The chemicals under scrutiny are used in products from marine paints and pesticides to food and beverage containers. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found one chemical, bisphenol A, in 95 percent of the people tested, at levels at or above those that affected development in animals.
These findings were presented at last month’s annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A spokesman for the chemical industry later dismissed the concerns, but Jerry Heindel, a top official of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), who chaired the AAAS session, said the suspected link between obesity and exposure to “endocrine disrupters,” as the chemicals are called because of their hormone-like effects, is “plausible and possible.”
Bruce Blumberg, a developmental and cell biologist at the University of California at Irvine, one of those presenting research at the meeting, called them “obesogens” — chemicals that promote obesity.
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Exposed mice became obese adults and remained obese even on reduced calorie and increased exercise regimes. Like tributyltin, DES appeared to permanently disrupt the hormonal mechanisms regulating body weight.
“Once these genetic changes happen in utero, they are irreversible and with the individual for life,” Newbold said.
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“Exposure to bisphenol A is continuous,” said Frederick vom Saal, professor of biological sciences at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Bisphenol A is an ingredient in polycarbonate plastics used in many products, including refillable water containers and baby bottles, and in epoxy resins that line the inside of food cans and are used as dental sealants. [It is also added to store receipts.] In 2003, U.S. industry consumed about 2 billion pounds of bisphenol A.
Researchers have studied bisphenol A’s effects on estrogen function for more than a decade. Vom Saal’s research indicates that developmental exposure to low doses of bisphenol A activates genetic mechanisms that promote fat-cell activity. “These in-utero effects are lifetime effects, and they occur at phenomenally small levels” of exposure, vom Saal said.
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Research into the impact of endocrine-disrupting chemicals on obesity has been done only in laboratory animals, but the genetic receptors that control fat cell activity are functionally identical across species. “They work virtually the same way in fish as they do in rodents and humans,” Blumberg said. “Fat cells are an endocrine organ.”
Ongoing studies are monitoring human levels of bisphenol A, but none have been done of tributyltin, which has been used since the 1960s and is persistent in the marine food web. “Tributyltin is the only endocrine disrupting chemical that has been shown without substantial argument to have an effect at levels at which it’s found in the environment,” Blumberg said.
Concern over tributyltin’s reproductive effects on marine animals has resulted in an international agreement discontinuing its use in anti-fouling paints used on ships. The EPA has said it plans next year to assess its other applications, including as an antimicrobial agent in livestock operations, fish hatcheries and hospitals.
Bisphenol A is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in consumer products, and the agency says the amount of bisphenol A or tributyltin that might leach from products is too low to be of concern. But the National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, is reviewing bisphenol A, and concerns about its estrogenic effects prompted California legislators to propose banning it from certain products sold in-state, a move industry has fought vigorously.
Similarly, the Daily Beast noted in 2010:
{Bad habits] cannot explain the ballooning of one particular segment of the population, a segment that doesn’t go to movies, can’t chew, and was never that much into exercise: babies. In 2006 scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health reported that the prevalence of obesity in infants under 6 months had risen 73 percent since 1980. “This epidemic of obese 6-month-olds,” as endocrinologist Robert Lustig of the University of California, San Francisco, calls it, poses a problem for conventional explanations of the fattening of America. “Since they’re eating only formula or breast milk, and never exactly got a lot of exercise, the obvious explanations for obesity don’t work for babies,” he points out. “You have to look beyond the obvious.”
The search for the non-obvious has led to a familiar villain: early-life exposure to traces of chemicals in the environment. Evidence has been steadily accumulating that certain hormone-mimicking pollutants, ubiquitous in the food chain, have two previously unsuspected effects. They act on genes in the developing fetus and newborn to turn more precursor cells into fat cells, which stay with you for life. And they may alter metabolic rate, so that the body hoards calories rather than burning them, like a physiological Scrooge. “The evidence now emerging says that being overweight is not just the result of personal choices about what you eat, combined with inactivity,” says Retha Newbold of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in North Carolina, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “Exposure to environmental chemicals during development may be contributing to the obesity epidemic.” They are not the cause of extra pounds in every person who is overweight—for older adults, who were less likely to be exposed to so many of the compounds before birth, the standard explanations of genetics and lifestyle probably suffice—but environmental chemicals may well account for a good part of the current epidemic, especially in those under 50. And at the individual level, exposure to the compounds during a critical period of development may explain one of the most frustrating aspects of weight gain: you eat no more than your slim friends, and exercise no less, yet are still unable to shed pounds.
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Newbold gave low doses (equivalent to what people are exposed to in the environment) of hormone-mimicking compounds to newborn mice. In six months, the mice were 20 percent heavier and had 36 percent more body fat than unexposed mice. Strangely, these results seemed to contradict the first law of thermodynamics, which implies that weight gain equals calories consumed minus calories burned. “What was so odd was that the overweight mice were not eating more or moving less than the normal mice,” Newbold says. “We measured that very carefully, and there was no statistical difference.”
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`Programming the fetus to make more fat cells leaves an enduring physiological legacy. “The more [fat cells], the fatter you are,” says UCSF’s Lustig. But [fat cells] are more than passive storage sites. They also fine-tune appetite, producing hormones that act on the brain to make us feel hungry or sated. With more [fat cells], an animal is doubly cursed: it is hungrier more often, and the extra food it eats has more places to go—and remain.
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In 2005 scientists in Spain reported that the more pesticides children were exposed to as fetuses, the greater their risk of being overweight as toddlers. And last January scientists in Belgium found that children exposed to higher levels of PCBs and DDE (the breakdown product of the pesticide DDT) before birth were fatter than those exposed to lower levels. Neither study proves causation, but they “support the findings in experimental animals,” says Newbold. They “show a link between exposure to environmental chemicals … and the development of obesity.” [See this for more information on the potential link between pesticides and obesity.]
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This fall, scientists from NIH, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and academia will discuss obesogens at the largest-ever government-sponsored meeting on the topic. “The main message is that obesogens are a factor that we hadn’t thought about at all before this,” says Blumberg. But they’re one that could clear up at least some of the mystery of why so many of us put on pounds that refuse to come off.
Pthalates – commonly used in many plastics – have been linked to obesity. See this and this. So has a chemical used to make Teflon and other products.
Most of the meat we eat these days contains estrogen, antibiotics and powerful chemicals which change hormone levels. Modern corn-fed beef also contains much higher levels of saturated fat than grass-fed beef. So the meat we are eating is also making us fat.
Antibiotics also used to be handed out like candy by doctors. However, ingesting too many antibiotics has also been linked to obesity, as it kills helpful intestinal bacteria. See this and this.
Arsenic may also be linked with obesity, via it’s effect on the thyroid gland. Arsenic is often fed to chickens and pigs to fatten them up, and we end up ingesting it on our dinner plate. It’s ending up in other foods as well.
The National Research Council has also found:
The effects of fluoride on various aspects of endocrine function should be examined further, particularly with respect to a possible role in the development of several diseases or mental states in the United States.
Some hypothesize that too much fluoride affects the thyroid gland, which may in turn lead to weight gain.
No, Everything Won‘t Kill You
In response to information about toxic chemicals in our food, water and air, many people change the subject by saying “well, everything will kill you”. In other words, they try to change the topic by assuming that we would have to go back to the stone age to avoid exposure to toxic chemicals.
But this is missing the point entirely. In fact, companies add nasty chemicals to their products and use fattening food-producing strategies to cut corners and make more money.
In the same way that the financial crisis, BP oil spill and Fukushima nuclear disaster were caused by fraud and greed, we are daily exposed to obesity-causing chemicals because companies make an extra buck by lying about what is in their product, cutting every corner in the book, and escaping any consequences for their health-damaging actions.
In fattening their bottom line, the fat cats are creating an epidemic of obesity for the little guy.
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Thanks nmewn, I needed that.
It is very true that toxins is one of the major causes of obesity. There is one or two keys factor not mentioned. Toxic environment and neurotoxins like MSG and food colorings have been around long than the sudden ramp up in obesity and morbid-obesity that has occured in the US.
I think aspartame (soon to be superceded by neotame) and, most especially, GMO "foods" (corn, soy, sugar, etc.) are the key causes. The human body treats these extremely poisonous substances as toxins and tries to get rid of them through normal means. But when the body cannot and when it is overwhelmed by these substances, it tries to isolate them by building fat cells around them and tries to put some distance between the isolated toxins and the major organs. Hence the fat belly.
Match the introduction of aspartame (on the first day Ronald Regan was inaugurated) and GMO "foods" (early 1990s) to the exponential rise of obesity in the US and one will realize the cause and effect.
Sure, aspertame is bad, but there are many other witches in the brew ha ha. Plastics. Estimated americans consume a pound and a half of plastic every year. Yummy, so good for my tummy.
Lack of minerials in our food supply. Congress was once involved with this issue about the over farming. Something like 1934. They don't talk about it now, it must be fixed.
Lower oxygen levels. O2 cleanses all things. So exercise evolves around more oxygen intake, into the muscle tissue and into your brain.
Cook foods and loss of enyzemes. We are living balls of energy and food is the fuel. We don't run well on shitty food.
Synthetic drugs, food and drink. Sure, go ahead keep folling the body. Very funny. The bod ain't laughing, either.
If it's good enough for our sly and devious Chinese friends (plastic rice, melamine in pet food, toxic adulterated infant formula), then it is good enough for me!
Taking a look at B*rry's Surgeon General seems like obesity is low on the list of priorities:
http://yuru.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Obama+Announces+Regina+B...
Strangely, these results seemed to contradict the first law of thermodynamics, which implies that weight gain equals calories consumed minus calories burned.
This tells me the researcher does not know wtf he is doing...he does not understand the system under test.
Strangely, these results seemed to contradict the first law of thermodynamics..........
So you created something out of nothing - Holy fuck - you would be an instant trillionaire.
Didn't read the whole thing but stopped when you started to "defy the laws of physics".
It's actually the recent lack of "second hand smoke" in the environment due to the criminalization of smoking. Everyone knows that smoking keeps you thin. McD's is just a substitute for nicotine. Pick your poison. Mines called Marlboro.
camel "blue" here, since we're so fucking stupid we think camel "lights" means "gud 4 yu"
I like my Soylent Green with a little fat content. It work better in hamburger helper.
It looks like the future diet of the the non-aristocracy is going to be Soylent Green with Pink Slime, washed down with a cold Brawndo - It's got ELECTROLYTES!
If you don't smoke Tarryltons... FUCK YOU!
Is this possible? Use the Amish population as a control group. I've never seen an obese Amish person...
Faculty of Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. sgenuis@ualberta.ca
Abstract BACKGROUND:Bisphenol A (BPA) is an ubiquitous chemical contaminant that has recently been associated with adverse effects on human health. There is incomplete understanding of BPA toxicokinetics, and there are no established interventions to eliminate this compound from the human body. Using 20 study participants, this study was designed to assess the relative concentration of BPA in three body fluids-blood, urine, and sweat-and to determine whether induced sweating may be a therapeutic intervention with potential to facilitate elimination of this compound.
METHODS:Blood, urine, and sweat were collected from 20 individuals (10 healthy participants and 10 participants with assorted health problems) and analyzed for various environmental toxicants including BPA.
RESULTS:BPA was found to differing degrees in each of blood, urine, and sweat. In 16 of 20 participants, BPA was identified in sweat, even in some individuals with no BPA detected in their serum or urine samples.
CONCLUSIONS:Biomonitoring of BPA through blood and/or urine testing may underestimate the total body burden of this potential toxicant. Sweat analysis should be considered as an additional method for monitoring bioaccumulation of BPA in humans. Induced sweating appears to be a potential method for elimination of BPA.
Arch Environ Contam Toxicol. 2011 Aug;61(2):344-57. Epub 2010 Nov 6. Blood, urine, and sweat (BUS) study: monitoring and elimination of bioaccumulated toxic elements. Genuis SJ, Birkholz D, Rodushkin I, Beesoon S. SourceUniversity of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. sgenuis@ualberta.ca
AbstractThere is limited understanding of the toxicokinetics of bioaccumulated toxic elements and their methods of excretion from the human body. This study was designed to assess the concentration of various toxic elements in three body fluids: blood, urine and sweat. Blood, urine, and sweat were collected from 20 individuals (10 healthy participants and 10 participants with various health problems) and analyzed for approximately 120 various compounds, including toxic elements. Toxic elements were found to differing degrees in each of blood, urine, and sweat. Serum levels for most metals and metalloids were comparable with those found in other studies in the scientific literature. Many toxic elements appeared to be preferentially excreted through sweat. Presumably stored in tissues, some toxic elements readily identified in the perspiration of some participants were not found in their serum. Induced sweating appears to be a potential method for elimination of many toxic elements from the human body. Biomonitoring for toxic elements through blood and/or urine testing may underestimate the total body burden of such toxicants. Sweat analysis should be considered as an additional method for monitoring bioaccumulation of toxic elements in humans.
While I buy this reasoning and do use saunas, I think calling certain chemicals the "real" reason for the obesity epidemic is a bit much.
The human body didnt evolve with McDonalds on every corner and office work keeping it sedentary 60 hours a week. To me, leaving out that the natural response to an abundance of high calorie low nutrient food, stress that cannot be fought with innate "fight or flight" responses, and cube life is to get fat, is majoring in the minors.
They put veal in cubicles...
Excellent post....
Minimize exposure to plastics, industrial perfumes and dyes, antibacterial "formulas".....
What was that study on Reduced IQ and exposure to flame retardants...
Fuck "Better living through chemistry"....
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And we wonder why kids are so fucked up today...
Edit: here it is
http://www.nchh.org/Portals/0/Contents/Article0357.pdf
your average walmart customer weighs in at porky 17st1 whilst the average customer at zabar a slender 10st
it aint the toxins in the air, rather it's an inverse relationship of exposure to toxic assets
1 http://consumerist.com/2011/01/study-walmart-is-making-people-fatter.htm...
It's stupidity. No one is to blame but themselves.
Ditto others' formatting comments
LOL
I got junked? LOL
I'd like to share this, but the formatting is askew, can someone fix it so the "Researchers have studied" part is not justified left over the entire text under it? One word per line over the remaining text makes it rather hard to read.
Thanks for the fix!
Something is wrong with the script.
Ghost Virus, we all have it.
http://www.us-cert.gov/current/#microsoft_releases_advanced_notification_for7
Very sad that animals are experimented upon, tortured and tormented, to 'learn' things for humans.
To these poor animals, humanity is the Devil from Hell.
One day in the future, current humanity will be condemned as barbaric and sadistic torturers, for allowing the experiments on animals to take place.
Better for us humans to die earlier in our lives, than to torment these poor creatures, as Jesus said, the 'least of the brethren'.
Quick, everyone, go to page 2. "Gastric bypass, no surgery, only $480" ad suddenly appeared. Modern tech is incred.
PS - I eat like a pig, including junk food, work out like a demon...and feel/look great. Try less time at the computer, more time on the bicycle.
Food of the Gods...the Reptilians are fattening us up for the slaughter. Kissinger salivates.
That almost sounded poetic --- mind if I haiku it (with necessary modification)?
Food of the Gods
man-cows fattened for slaughter
Rothschilds lick their lips
I junked ya for bad Haiku formatting.
5-7-5
ROR!
What was the problem?
Haiku is five-seven-five
which is what I did.
Who the fuck is downarrowing me here --- and why?
Assholes.
you've only got 4 syllables in the first line.
how about
food apocalypse
fatten mancows for slaughter
rothschilds lick their lips
DOH!
(Sheepishly hangs his head)
I edited my original after first posting it, and changed the first line without going back to count the syllables --- sorry guys (and gals)!
Akak, bad poet
hangs his head in abject shame
Cannot even count.
incorrect haiku
editing error to blame
we're all still assholes
Haiku is formless
You structure your poetry like children
Stupid Americans
Continuing the religious theme - God placed animals on the earth for the good of man. If I could sacrifice a million mice to save a human soul I would do it in a heartbeat.
This guy says it perfectly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzjkNKHa2UQ
(0:56)
The creatures used for testing to improve and extend human lives are NOT "brethren"! Mother Gaia has decived you.
12 Monkeys
Fuck the makeup industry.
About Palm Oil
http://www.orangutans.com.au/Orangutans-Survival-Information/About-Palm-...
Western world wants to look pretty and is this the way to do it?
Everywhere I go in America they’re there, mountainous creatures waddling down the street armed with their XXL Big and Tall outfits, burritos in hand, with gargantuan partners and morbidly obese children drinking Super Big Gulps filled with sugar soda. Sweating through their pits at the slightest effort and mouth breathing like some woolly mammoth out of Ice Age, these disgusting creatures are everywhere and it is only getting worse. This is an epidemic that is to America what AIDS is to Africa
My proposal: The Fat Tax
It would be insanely easy. Just tax all that shitty processed food. Have the FDA identify what food is “Junk food” by factors like percentage of calories from fat and sugar and then tax by the calorie. Then return the money in salad subsidies. If you went to McDonald’sand a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese was $8 and a salad was on the Dollar Menu, what would you eat? Money changes people’s behavior. It would also motivate the food manufacturers to make more healthy food and the pattern would be self-reinforcing.
http://www.singledudetravel.com/2011/07/fat-people-the-aids-of-america/
CharlieSTD, better than a "fat tax", how about a tax on diabetics? We could also force people to go to clinics to be tested for being pre-diabetic and tax those people who are, though at a lower rate than for diabetics.
You're Hella lame.
Your proposal is for still more government intervention, more taxation and more subsidy? I would have thought the panacea of the saintly "good bureaucrat" had been discarded on the ash heap of history by now.
Excellent, what could possibly go wrong with this scenario?
There will never be a food that cannot be taxed enough once that door is opened. And of course, there will never be a subsidy that is too much to meet the lack of demand for things being thrown in the dumpster out back.
As much as I hate square fish...lol...people don't go to McDonalds for a salad in a plastic bowl. But I do look forward to your wonderful world of more varieties of prarie grass to graze on at the local grocery store ;-)
I know it's not the best libertarian solution, but it would work. Look at the decline in smoking that accompanied high cigarette taxes.
You trust the FDA to determine what's good food and what's not? Ever notice that since the government put out the food pyramid ("Eat grains! Lots of grains! Overload on grain carbs for every meal! Make sure not to have any fat in your diet at all!"), the obesity rate went through the roof?
They don't know shit about nutrition, and if you want to see obesity get really bad, just give the government the power to make us eat what they think is healthy. We'll all be eating fat-free nutripaste and waddling into the pharmacies for our insulin shots within the year.
Giving government domain over free peoples lives is not an option, it's a cop out. Why does government need to grow in order to solve every problem real or percieved?
Society made smokers pariah's with governments blessing, that had as much to do with the decline in smoking as anything else. But people still smoke, so you will still have fat people as well.
And at what cost to the fraternity of all of us, really, when you think about it.
All we did was segregate ourselves into smokers and non-smokers. With non-smokers looking down their nose in disgust at the smoker and smokers pointing back at them laughing for being annoying busy bodies.
So we continue down the road of Balkinization, separating further and further into sub groups while asking government to give us all cover for sniping at each other.
Some of the illusions are ideals such as "FREEDOM" and the "INDIVIDUAL." Great shackles used to bind the minds of those that might be unhappy with their lot in life. By espousing what appear to be "obvious" truths, focus remains fixated in the darkness of lies.
There is no antecedent or opposite to Truth. In Truth one can see that all that exists are the powerful and the powerless. Masters and slaves living on the plantation is the only truth in our world and the sooner we start to realize this the sooner we can all get on with being good little drones. Or least we are conditioned to do so. We cry for FREEDOM but don't even have any idea just what that means. Instead we think of it as the absence of tyranny.
Tyranny only exists because it is tolerated in the hearts of those that toil for the hope of some future reward. When no reward manifests (that future is near) then and only then will there even be a chance of reconfiguring the plantation. How it will unfold is anyone's guess but it must certainly be due. The inequities of the masters have become so large as to virtually guarantee a reset. However, this reconfiguration won't be for the ideals of freedom and the individual but yet for a new cohort of masters and slaves.