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Guest Post: The Obesity Puzzle
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Obesity and well-being are not just a matter of carbs/no-carbs; the causal chain is not that simple.
There are almost as many theories about why obesity has exploded in America and the world since the 1980s as there are researchers compiling data.
The rise in Body Mass Index (BMI) appears to correlate with the rise of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a simple carbohydrate.
Let's begin by comparing two charts from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) which depict obesity levels on a state by state basis: the first in 1985 and the second, a generation later in 2008.
Clearly, obesity has exploded into a pandemic in just a single generation.
Interestingly, all the usual explanations--the rise of fast foods, women joining the workforce and thus the decline of the home-cooked meal and the decline of physical labor jobs--fail to explain the dramatic increase for the reason that all these conditions were already present in 1985.
Women had already joined the workforce en masse, fast-food outlets were already on every corner and jobs requiring hard physical labor had already dwindled to a small percentage of our post-industrial, service-dominated economy.
So what is different between 1985 and the present? At least one factor is the increased consumption of sugary beverages--soda, specialty coffees, iced teas, fake "juices" (colored sugar water with 10% actual fruit juice)--and the addition of HFCS to everything from snacks to breakfast bars to canned soups.
As a consequence, consumption of fructose (both "natural" and high-fructose corn sweetener, HFCS) has skyrocketed.
Reader R.W. recently submitted this account of his own family's experience, and what they discovered by consulting with one of the nation's leading experts in Pediatric Endocrinology.
I’ve attached a YouTube film of a lecture by Dr. Robert Lustig, head of Pediatric Endocrinology at UCSF Medical School. This is an explanation of the biological--and political--mechanism that causes obesity and Type 2 diabetes, and why they’ve become an epidemic.We were fortunate to find Dr. Lustig when my younger son, Pat was an adolescent. Pat was a very heavy boy who gained weight despite being vigorously active (for example, he played water polo year round) and really not eating that much. I finally persuaded Pat’s pediatrician that there was something wrong with the boy’s metabolism. Pat’s blood test showed he had cholesterol and triglyceride counts that would be extreme for an obese 60-year-old--into the high 300’s.
There were no pediatric endocrinologists in our area at that time, so we were sent to UCSF. Dr. Lustig enrolled Pat in a study which I think is still ongoing. The upshot: cut out all fructose, and obesity and all its symptoms subside.
Pat, now 20, weighs 25 pounds LESS than he did in the 8th grade, although he is six inches taller. People literally do not recognize him. It is a very gratifying and amazing transformation. It was simple, but not easy. Pat worked very hard, and for a while was assisted with metformin. (He is now off the drug, and shows no ill effects or relapsed weight gain or high cholesterol or triglycerides.) But mostly it was about shunning all fructose, especially in drinks.
Fructose is addictive for the same reasons, by the same mechanisms, and producing many of the same pathologies as alcohol, as Dr. Lustig explains in the lecture. One of his catch phrases is: “Fructose is alcohol without the buzz.”
It’s 90 minutes. Stick with it. It’s a little dense in spots, but overall, it is a compelling story. Dr. Lustig puts it all in context. I know he and Michael Pollan are aware of each other, though when I asked him he said they haven’t had any formal collaboration. But their views of our food delivery system are totally aligned.
I’m hoping that once you see this, you will feel that it deserves a wider audience.
Sugar: the Bitter Truth (University of California TV)
Here is the puzzle: Everyone agrees that "empty calories" contribute to obesity, and many see simple carbohydrates as the key cause of obesity.
On the other hand, I personally know many slim, healthy Asians whose diet is based on white rice and processed-flour noodles--the very sort of simple carbs that are supposed to make us all fat. Yes, they also eat small portions of fish and meat and significant quantities of vegetables, but you can't get away from the fact that much of their caloric intake comes from processed carbohydrates.
The famous Mediterranean Diet is based on pasta as well as olive oil, fish, vegetables and wine: The Island Where People Forget to Die:
She found that her subjects consumed about six times as many beans a day as Americans, ate fish twice a week and meat five times a month, drank on average two to three cups of coffee a day and took in about a quarter as much refined sugar — the elderly did not like soda. She also discovered they were consuming high levels of olive oil along with two to four glasses of wine a day.
Social structure might turn out to be more important. In Sardinia, a cultural attitude that celebrated the elderly kept them engaged in the community and in extended-family homes until they were in their 100s. Studies have linked early retirement among some workers in industrialized economies to reduced life expectancy.
In Okinawa, there’s none of this artificial punctuation of life. Instead, the notion of ikigai — “the reason for which you wake up in the morning” — suffuses people’s entire adult lives. It gets centenarians out of bed and out of the easy chair to teach karate, or to guide the village spiritually, or to pass down traditions to children. The Nicoyans in Costa Rica use the term plan de vida to describe a lifelong sense of purpose. As Dr. Robert Butler, the first director of the National Institute on Aging, once told me, being able to define your life meaning adds to your life expectancy.
If carbs were the sole cause of obesity, then the Asians I personally know who probably get up to 60% of their calories from white rice or white-flour noodles should be grossly obese--instead, they're thin. (They only get fat if they live in the U.S. and start eating an American-style diet.) How do we explain this paradox?
I recently corresponded with David B. Collum, Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University, who noted two potentially important factors:
I was in Germany a month ago and noticed (1) the grocery stores no longer look like markets but rather supermarkets with all the brightly colored packages of processed food, and (2) the Germans are getting fat.
I am wholly convinced now that hidden carbs--not the potatoes and rice but the carbs in the processed foods--are what is putting on the pounds. After months of pondering why I was struggling to control weight despite some effort and listening to an econtalk podcast on the evils with carbs (and containing a nice dose of real biochemical flavor to the discussion), I dropped the carbs and dropped 30 lbs within 6 months.
In this Econtalk podcast (time: 1:20) Taubes on Why We Get Fat, author Gary Taubes presented some interesting rat studies along with the following model: (1) carbs trigger insulin, (2) insulin triggers fat deposition, (3) insulin with carb depletion triggers carb craving (after dinner foraging). I think the complex vs simple carb issue finally makes sense to me also. Simple carbs spike the insulin but the complex carbs are released more slowly and thus spike the insulin less. We eat carbs AND fat with the carbs sending the fat to the muffin top. The Asian diet may be carb-rich/fat poor.
I think there is plenty of evidence to support these two points:
1. That there are significant amounts of simple carbs (HFCS etc.) "hidden" in the processed foods Americans consume in quantity, and
2. It is the ratio and type of fats and carbs that generates weight gain, not carbs alone--that is, a carb-rich, low-fat diet based on legumes and vegetables typical of traditional Asian diets does not lead to obesity, even though the carbs consumed are simple/processed white rice and white-flour noodles.
I would add a third factor, which is the paucity of vegetables, fruits and legumes in the American diet. Just avoiding carbs does not make one healthy.
It's not just avoiding carbs that counts, it's avoiding all processed foods and sugar-laden beverages.
Lastly, let's not forget exercise, which dramatically alters our metabolism, blood sugar and psyche. Cutting our processed foods and simple carbs (empty calories) is only the first step--the second equally important step is getting fit via daily or almost-daily exercise of the sort that builds muscle mass and endurance. People who live long healthy lives are always on the move, and are doing so with purpose.
Resources:
Gary Taubes' books:
This book presents evidence that vegetables and complex carbs are essential, meat less so:
These articles were written by a physicist who decided to investigate/experiment via his own weight loss program:
My new book Why Things Are Falling Apart and What We Can Do About It is now available in print and Kindle editions--10% to 20% discounts.
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Because they are one of the main revenue streams for media, sports and the like. Hence, a protected spieces in the public domain, just like..........
Sadly, like everything else, the public will be 'dumbed down' into thinking that obese is the 'new normal' and anyone who thinks otherwise is..........pick it: racist, elitiest, intolerant, ........and will heretofor become the new Dem voting block. Leading up to that, we'll have new laws & regulations that legislate that airlines have X quantity of oversized seats, doorways be enlarged, fatty parking, etc., etc. Considering though, this might Chris Christy an advantage come next presidential election :-)
Everything in the NorthAm supermarket appears to have some form of sugar in it - even bread and ketchup. Add to that all theh pop consumed and it's almost impossible NOT to consume more energy than the body needs. Even fruit has been bred to have a higher sugar content.
Why is anyone surprised by this?
Anything with WHEAT in it is a sugar bomb too. Bread has a higher glycemic index than sugar, because the carbohydrate in wheat, a glucose polymer, breaks down to glucose extremely rapidly in the small intestine.
Add modern vegetable oils full of omega-6 fatty acids that are in the processed foods, and you have a reclipe for inflammatory conditions, not just fattening, and INDEPENDENTLY of whether you get fat or not. Skinny does not equal healthy, BTW.
I know that when I leave Colorado to visit other states, usually in the Midwest, the large numbers of large people always surprise me. Add the tattoos, piercings, butt crack and belly bulges on display due to their low self esteem and poor fitting clothes and it's quite a spectacle out there anymore.
This country is already over the cliff in so many ways. For all the talk about socialism, parasites, takers and entitlements, it seems to me that the basic problem in the US is most people have meaningless, purposeless lives and just don't give a shit anymore. And, this is reflected in their physical existence.
I don't think BMI is an accurate tool to define obesity. At 6'3" tall and 210 #s my BMI works out to be 26.25 and that make me overweight. Now I work out 6 nights a week and I have roughly 8% body fat. If BMI were used as a tool to help determine insurance rates then I would be paying a higher premium even though I am in pretty good shape.
BMI doesn't "define" obesity at all, that's the thing. It's only real utility is in predicting mortality rates.
The fact that people don't want to keep this in mind is bothersome.
My girlfriend's a personal trainer--she tells me most of the folks in that business ignore BMI. It's a statistic for beancounters and actuaries, and it's being grossly misapplied.
indeed, BMI is yet another head-fake category dreamed up by the pharma/insurance corporations - they purposefully create "classes" that can be charged differing rates, or excluded, from the insurance bundling - and funnel people into the pharma racket - you gots high BMI? I gots yer drugs, c'mon over here. . .
does no one remember the insurance "height/weight" tables in the past? this is v2.0
that everyone walks around with their own "BMI" comparative in their head/chatter, well, that's a bonus. . . used to be only women who knew every calorie they ate. . .
Here is another one maybe someone can answer for me. At least 2 people in my family smoked from the time they were teenagers until their death's around 87-95 years old. Only spent the last few weeks of their lives in the hospital and were not a drain on the healthcare system. How did they live so long and pull that off?
A good 30 years ago, a buddy of mine's grandfather smoked filterless cigs...died at 88, not due to the smokes, but because he fell off of a horse at a state fair.
Some people live longer than others.
Some people get Chirrosis and some people don't look at Mickey Mantle and Peter O' Toole. Well O' Toole's liver proably looks like a piece of chuck steak, but he's still not dead!
Keith Richards.
end of.
I loved the fake headline in the Onion last July: 'Keith Richards' Housekeeper has Braced Herself for Finding Dead Body Every Morning Since 1976"d
Some people are just more poison resistant than cockroaches.
or they get their blood filtered, heh.
everyone in my fathers family smoked and they all lived long lives, but my father had COPD, probably from his years aboard ship, exposure to asbestors, and years of night work, double shifts, etc. you don't want to roll the dice with COPD.
i was invested in manville before buffet bought it and became very familiar with the asbestos lawsuits. the most interesting fact about cancer caused by asbestos was that 90% of the people harmed by asbestos were cigarette smokers. my conclusion was that cigarette smoking, especially multi pack/day smokers prevented the lungs from clearing out the crap they are assaulted with every day and is the real source of harm. someone who smokes less than half a pack per day along with a good diet and exercise have little to worry about. cigar or pipe smoking is probably even less harmful.
i prefer smoking cigars but my wife hates the smell so i smoke cigarettes. i think she wishes i smoked more cigarettes, did less exercise and ate more sugar and crap to avoid the hassle of a divorce.
Yes, but were 90 percent of all the exposed claimants cigarette smokers? If there were only 100 exposed claimants with only 10 non-smokers, and all of them had got cancer, ... 90 percent would be smokers.
After the whole low-fat high, carb-diet advice of the last thirty years, I am very unsure about almost any conventional wisdom these days. And there are things that bother me about the whole smoking=cancer line.
About twelve years ago, I was paid to do a meta-study on smoking and ill-health. What I found was slightly bizarre. At the time, there were no published medical research studies that were clean and non-biased, based on a western epistemology, that definitively showed smoking caused cancer. In fact, some of the research study results showed that, in some cases, it actually prevented cancer.
At that time, I simply wasn't prepared to believe smoking did not cause cancer but it always niggled me a) because I couldn't quite accept that there wasn't clear medical research to show the link when the idea was so strong in society, and b) because I became aware further claims were being made that were simply not backed up by research.
Then a few years ago, I came across something else that was rather interesting. Apparently, back in the 50s, some British MPs seriously questioned the idea that smoking was a primary cause of lung cancer because rates of lung cancer amongst smokers outside of towns and cities were extremely low. Their thinking was that if it did cause cancer, then why weren't those chain-smokers in rural areas dying of lung cancer at the same rate as townies? Instead, some of these MPs felt sure the real problem was urban air pollution.
Apparently, there was some suggestion that tobacco was being made the culprit because it was politically impossible to admit the more serious problem was air pollution, and that they couldn't really do anything about that.
This is one of those things I've always been curious about.
The idea that inhaling toxic chemicals into your lungs 20 or 40 times a day increases the risk of cancer is SO INTUITIVE that it's almost irresistable, but the evidence that smoking "causes" lung cancer has never been that compelling from my perspective.
I smoked for a lot of years, and while I don't think I have cancer, I know full-well that the quality of my life increased a great deal when I gave the shit up. Still, more than 2 years after quitting, I produce the occasional "mucus plug," and I think I may just be unfortunate enough to have been blessed with kinda shitty lungs. Oh, well.
i'm sure smoking did not help those people, but anecdotally, my father died from asbestos cancer (mesothelioma) and he never smoked a day in his life. He had worked for maybe a year in the Brooklyn Naval Yard on ships' radar in the late 1940s and he said he had to walk through clouds of asbestos dust every day. The stuff lies dormant in your lungs until you get old and weaker when your body can no longer tolerate it.
saw a tv special on two groups of Yaqui indians, one lived in Mexico and had a traditional diet, the other lived in the US. the US group had diabetes, and all the other obese problems. since you mentioned the pathology of alcohol, we should pay attention to ethnic and racial differences, and how diet seems to affect blacks, hispanics, nams more than caucasians. it could be that we really are different in physiological ways.
american obesity has a lot to do with the near outright banning of cigarette smoking, which women used for years to keep thin. after cigarettes there was mothers helpers, dexadrine, and speed for the truck drivers, and night shift workers (nobody has ever seen an obese meth head) and we would probably be popping them still, but there are side effects, and OTHER kinds of prescribed psychotrophic meds which reduce ANXIETY. anxiety is a great metabolism booster.
back in the 50's (last time America was thin) we had the bomb - major anxiety - and we ate potroast and mashed potatoes every night.
Well, yes all of that is true. But the food then is what we now call organic, and Mom or Grandma prepared it at home. It was REAL FOOD!
I'm 53, 6'1" 195 lbs. For breakfast, everyday, I have a to-go cup of tea (milk and sugar), and smoke a pipeful of my current preferred tobacco blend, as I drive to work.
For lunch I have left-overs from last nights dinner. My wife and I cook dinner from scratch 6 nights a week. We drink 2+ glasses of red wine with dinner 7 days a week.
My wife is also 53, 5'8", 125 lbs. She smokes 2 Macanudo Portofino Cafe cigars every day.
It's not going to be just one thing. Along with fructose, gluten has been suggested as a cause for 'wheat belly'. There are research results pointing to infectious causes for obesity.
http://topics.npr.org/article/0guceeU9vggLa?q=Harvard+University or http://www.jconline.com/article/20101104/NEWS09/101104029/1001/news Study: Obesity is contagious among friends- How Acquired Diseases Become Hereditary Illnesses
- 'According to senior author Andrew Gewirtz, PhD, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, "People are getting obese because they're eating more, but it suggests the reason they're eating more may not simply be that calories are cheap and available. The reason they're eating more may be an increased appetite resulting from changes in intestinal bacteria.." '
- obesity and adenovirus36 (scientific american)
- The Potbelly Syndrome Or, on Amazon, The Potbelly Syndrome: How Common Germs Cause Obesity, Diabetes, And Heart Disease (added 6/3/2009)
- Fat people harbour 'fat' microbes: Your gut bacteria may help to determine your holiday weight gain.
- Burden of Infection and Insulin Resistance in Healthy Middle-Aged Men . Diabetes Care
- An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increased capacity for energy harvest.
- Bacterial-Modulated Signaling Pathways in Gut Homeostasis (added 6/3/2009)
- TCS Daily - Eating Some Crow on Fat
- Discovery Channel :: News - Health :: Study: Gut Bacteria Determine Fat or Thin
- Lipid metabolic changes in experimentally induced ...[Indian J Exp Biol. 2001] - PubMed Result
- Obesity Virus?
- BBC NEWS | Health | Obesity 'may be linked to virus'
- Bacterial-Modulated Signaling Pathways in Gut Homeostasis -- Lee 1 (21): pe24 -- Science Signaling
- An obesity-associated gut microbiome with increase...[Nature. 2006] - PubMed Result
- Obesity alters gut microbial ecology. [Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005] - PubMed Result
- Gut microbiota and its possible relationship with ...[Mayo Clin Proc. 2008] - PubMed Result
- Biology News: Fat people harbour 'fat' microbes
- Discovery Channel :: News - Health :: Study: Gut Bacteria Determine Fat or Thin
- Symposium: Emerging Role of Pathogens in Chronic Diseases ... Uses the term 'Infectobesity'.
The study also reports that even when you stop 'hanging out' with obese people the tendency to stay obese stays with you.
From the August 2010 Scientific American Magazine
One of the primary goals of genetics over the past decade has been to understand human health and disease in terms of differences in DNA from person to person. But even a relatively straightforward trait such as height has resisted attempts to reduce it to a particular combination of genes. In light of this shortcoming, some investigators see room for an increased focus on an alternative explanation for heritable traits: epigenetics, the molecular processes that control a gene.s potential to act. Evidence now suggests that epigenetics can lead to inherited forms of obesity and cancer.
http://www.wlshelp.com/news/intestinal-bacteria-can-contribute-to-obesity/#more-226
Press release at http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/eu-ibd030110.php
(added 6/3/2009)
CONCLUSIONS.Pathogen burden showed the strongest association with insulin resistance, especially with enteroviruses and C. pneumoniae seropositivity. We hypothesize that exposure to multiple pathogens could cause a chronic low-grade inflammation, resulting in insulin resistance.
(added 6/3/2009)
(added 6/3/2009)
with all these links, I can tell "obesity" is a subject near and dear to you.
so I won't bother you beyond calling out your first link'd premise,
obesity isn't any more contagious than alcoholism or smoking - if your PEER GROUP indulges in any behaviours that you emulate, is that "contagious"? is X-treme sports contagious?
enough with the demonising of folks, we're in crash 'n' burn mode, deal with personal stuff you have some measure of control over, and leave the social finger-pointing to the chimps.
edit: you pick'd up a red arrow while I was posting, not mine. . .
obesity isn't any more contagious than alcoholism or smoking
This may well be true, but it would make a lot more sense to try to collect some data before starting with the sweeping assertions.
Gene expression isn't tremendously well-understood, and there are several strong indications that things we've "always known" are genetic/hereditary may have started out being transmitted as infectious agents. The point being: the line between "contagious" and "hereditary" probably isn't clear and bright.
(Depending on how one thinks of "contagion," too, you can get into some interesting speculation about whether certain behaviors and traits (which don't appear to have physical correlates) are also spread as "infections." To use a simple and better understood example: we know that warts are caused by a viral infection, but wart EXPRESSION differs between people infected with papilloma based on other factors which are largely unknown. What if the body's tendency to store fat is similarly impacted by viral exposure? More recently, a Stanford anthropologist started speculating about how toxoplasmosis might impact a person's willingness to engage in high-risk recreational activities, like skydiving or riding motorcycles. This is not a joke, and it's not unfounded.)
okay, yes, I'd agree that,
if we're going the research route, rather than correlative gossip path. and if we're going to be intelligent about the subject, we're probably not going to have much of an audience here. . .
I'm going to guess that the "npr" link was yet another repeat of "if yer friends eat crap and get fat, then you'll get teh fats too" - which is fine, yes, if you all sup from the same trough, similar results may occur. and if you & your pals spend every evening in smoky bars getting legless, there may be a pattern to the consequences.
depending on your genetic history, of course. ^^
No doubt.
I think it's safe to say that usually the "correlative gossip" stuff is a result of someone in the entertainment industry misunderstanding the "research" stuff. We all do what we can. ;)
lol, you got a WTF from me there - I was editing to add, and got an access denied when I hit the button to post!
Don't Make Friends With Fat People...They're Contagious!too soon after caffeinating. . .
wheat these days is harvested before the naturally occurring fungi can break down the hull of the grain. this is why celiac disease is so prevalent in this modern age. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1932817/
that is, if you're lucky enough to eat non-monsanto wheat. fucking monsters just spray the harvest with herbicide to harvest it since it's cheaper.
Jo
Interlinking information.
Durum wheats lack gliadin (or have very low levels/and or non immunogenic inducing).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2696423/
The current wheats were selected for vigor, yield and other characteristics.
We could select cultivars for lower levels of gliadin.
while I'm no scientist, I did appreciate your link - but wonder, in all the labels applied to the various wheat cultivars, were any of these non-GMO? as jomama notes, this is becoming a source of poisoning, globally.
and the new global bible of food rules. . . sigh.
Not just gluten specifically the protein component gliadin.
Gliadin causes celiac disease, multiple myeloma, and increased appetite by stimulating the opiate receptors in the brain, it makes you hungry.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2696423/
There should be hydrogenated oils in your list somewhere, also.
A few years ago I was able to lose 145 pounds. It took 7 months and I am much happier now, despite all the money I paid to the divorce attorney.
don't feel bad if you gain 98 pounds back in a weekend
Other factors could be COST, TIME, and ADVERTISING.
Healthy foods cost more than high-fructose fast foods. My wife is a family doctor and is constantly trying to get her patients to eat better. One thing she hears a lot is when she gets someone back into her office after suggesting what foods they should be eating is how much more expensive healthy foods are.
Plus it also takes more time to prepare healthy foods versus take out. Maybe women were already in the workplace but I would assume that there are more women working now, especially in middle class, and they are probably working longer hours to maintain the same standard of living as 20 years ago. Both parents are working harder and longer hours, either because they are paid less in real terms and need the money or they dont want to lose the job.
Finally, Advertisers are getting better at hooking kids on fast foods earlier and earlier. Happy Meals!
If the Powers That Be get the timing right, by the time the next revolution rolls around the enraged populace won't be able to get out the front door.
psssst, here's a secret: men can cook! and not just "celebrity chefs" or BBQ! and it doesn't make 'em teh gay!
don't tell anyone. . .
Oh dear! Hope mr miffed doesn't read this. He cooks 95% of our meals at home simply because he's often telecomunicating and has the time. Some BBQ but certainly not celebrity. Usually blackened veggies in broth and some fish or chicken. Veggies are seasonally purchased at our local farmers market and our meat at a family owned natural food store. Cooking at home is really not so difficult I'm not sure why people are so adverse to it. As long as you have a decent repertoire of easy to prepare recipes and a few key ingredients on hand. Then again we've never lived the event filled lives modern parents seem to lead these days where there is 10 minutes for dinner between Suzy's drill team practise and Johnny's baseball game. We just cut out all the noise much to the astonishment of our peers. Seems so incredulous there are so many cooking shows when Americans are only capable throwing a box in a microwave.
Sweety, if you do read this, you're the furthest thing to gay I know :-)
Miffed:-)
Drink a lot of water, walk a lot, work out, and don't eat crap--it's really not a huge "puzzle." Either you do it, or you don't...
but these days they have lasers that burn and breakdown fatcells so does it matter anymore?? Groupon already spams the service too..
After work last Saturday, I stopped off for a beer with a co-worker. There was a 21st birthday party going on with all these kids dancing and acting like retards. I was observing the bunch, and was struck by the fact that every one of the dozen or so girls was fat. The guys not so much, but still some of them were chubby as well. Worse yet was that they all chose to accentuate their rolls by wearing skin tight clothes; and, judging by their body language, thought they looked hot.
I told my co-worker, "If I looked like that I'd wear a gunny sack in public." She agreed.
People routinely ask me how I stay fit. Simple. I don't eat crap, no pop, and I walk a lot and lift heavy stuff often.
At 47, I'm still hanging tough at 5' 10" and 130 pounds.
Walk, bitchezz...
Wellbutrin? Ritalin? Adderall? what pills are all those girls on already? How you feel is a lot easier to control than how you look
5'10" and 130 lb = one skinny ass mother fucker.
I'm a woman, j.
That was hilarious, though. Thanks for the chuckle.
There's a local store here called "Torrid" that provides sexy chic clothing for obese women. I kid you not. We're talking satiny sequined dresses and tight fitting skinny jeans that have no business on anyone larger than a 6. For a laugh I've sat outside the entrance and watched these 3x girls strutting around in these outfits admiring themselves in the mirror with rolls of fat pouring out over their pants. They truly think they're hot. Almost as if there is a mass hysteria in young girls today; perhaps a form of reverse anorexia? Perhaps I'm just jealous. In my high school days I was the class fatty at 20 lbs over weight and cried myself to sleep from the teasing many a day. However, self delusion doesn't seem to be that great of an alternative. Reality bites eventually when your gangrenous foot is chopped off from diabetes. Well at least I hope it does. For some maybe not.
Miffed :-)
Kinda obvious. I can't believe how many "foods" contain HFCS.
Five years ago I went on a diet where I ate nothing except what a 'caveman' would eat...basically meat and vegetables. No sugar and no flour. Oh, once in a while I'd drizzle honey on almonds for a snack, but not much.
I lost 110 pounds in less than 8 months...with NO exersize. And don't listen to the people who think calories or fat are important; I pigged out. I'd routinely eat nice fatty rib eye steaks, keilbasa, butter, cheese, etc. It's counter-intuitive, I know, but it works.
Since then, I'll have times when I start gaining weight back, but all I do is go back to eliminating the sugar and flour, and the weight goes away. It's shockingly simple.
Despite my incredible weight loss, it's astonishing how many friends/family/co-workers simply will not listen to me, even when they're staring right at the results. They're all still parroting the Jenny Craig, count-your-calories, low-fat, portion-control blah blah blah agri-business propaganda. I want to choke people when I see them stocking their kitchens with "low fat" cheese, sour cream, dressing, whatever. Freakin fools. I think it's hilarious that every big fat person I know has a cabinet full of "low fat" or "fat free" this and that. I feel like saying "Jesus how FAT do you think you'd be without these wonderful products?"
Americans are fat fucks as a whole,nothing new here.
when they talk about how healthy the asian and med diets are they always fail to mention how little they eat(or used to eat). most americans i know would consider the traditional japanese diet a starvation diet.
"If you use less calories than you put in you get fat".
- my son, age 9.
Which is a tautology, and irrelevant to the problem, but he has received the USDA/Minstry of Education/Michelle O approved message, at great cost. How is he on phonics, spelling, math? Science is not going to be learnable at the school he is in.
Just because you swallow fat does not mean you digest it. It's much more difficult for your body to digest fat than sugar and simple carbohydrates.
Many people seem to believe that dietary fat is directly absorbed into the body as body fat. Nothing could be further from the truth. It must first be transformed into a sugar. Only then can it be transformed into storable body fat. Pig hearts can't be transplanted into humans and work, and for the same reason lard can't be transplanted into humans.
Look up "fatty acid" and "triglyceride" and get back to us Feral Serf. Body fat is stored as triglycerides, which are composed of three fatty acids(which can be different fatty acids) bound up with glycerol, and so yeah, there is a glucose molecule(just one) involved in the storage of any three particular fatty acid molecules(a hell of a lot more energy in those than in the glycerol backbone) that get stored in our fat. But realise that some fatty acids, quite a lot of them actually, found in the diet can be incorporated into our fat cells without being "converted" in any major way, and particularly not converted first into "sugar".
That latter bit is biochemical nonsense. We have a very effective transport system for moving fatty acids around in the blood stream, and in and out of cell, fat cells and other cells, AS FATTY ACIDS, without need of converting them to a "sugar", in the measure that is even possible. Some saturated fatty acids can be burned directly by the intestinal wall tissues as part of their metabolism. Some fatty acids from food, notably MCTs that make up a good part of coconut oil, need not get packaged by the liver for transport in the blood stream and so can travel around and get burned directly in tissues. There is a lot going on here, sure, but the story where fats have to be converted first to glucose or whatever before being taken up by fat cells or other cells is nonsensical.
Another bullshit WMD story. I'm counted as obeese on charts but have very little body fat, it's all muscle (that's not sarcasm). I'm not the only one that falls into this area, either. Comparing stats from around the world, Europe is just as "fat" as the US is so these people need to pull their head out of their ass and get off their high horse.
Brick shit house bitchez!
remember the "height/weight" insurance tables, used to determine premiums?
yeah, it's like that.
and pharma uses it as a baseline for prescriptives, hand in glove, meds/insurance.
Hmmm. Maybe most of you should just stfu and watch the aforementioned video, "Sugar the Bitter Truth" by Dr. Robert Lustig http://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM
Processed foods are the culprit. PFs directly block proper digestion and the most important part after that - having a nice squishee.
Eat unprocessed, simple, whole foods (meat, oils, vegetables, fruit, rice, potatoes, etc.). No corn. No unfermented soy. Most everything in the first aisle of your "super" market.
And a little exercise.
DIY food.
That's why all the simple diets work: no fats, lots of fats, no protein, lots of protein, lots of veggies, few veggies, beans blah blah blah. Simple foods can't not work!
It aint that hard.
Stay away from corporate crap food.
Is it not cool they got off Governor Christie's butt for a while to let him do his work after the hurricane? He'll get to it in his time and heavy people make their choices and more education and encouragement works, not trying to force it. I just hate the way the press takes this and turns them into "evil" people with the way some articles are written, they need help and education and when ready things will move.
man, i gotta think obesity mostly comes from spendin too much time typin inane answers on blogs.
Climate controlled environments, TV & the Internet are to blame for our collective lack of exercise. I hate to say it, but when I was a child we stayed outside as much as we could if for no other reason than to avoid chores. Yes; mother was home most of the time.
I was sent for a physical for a job I did. The doctor was a scrawny mousy dipshit. He writes on my physical that I am overweight. I asked why: I can bench over 300#, run 4 miles in 30 minutes over the hills, I can hold my own. He says I'm overweight compared to 'the average' for my height, then scurries away as fast as he can. So when I hear that Americans are fat, I think of this punk. The same academic scammers that faked the AGW scam are getting paid to cook the fat numbers. The government & their msm propagandists lie about everything else, why would you believe this media hype? DYOH, TFY.
That is probably half of it. However, look around. There are a lot of heffers roaming about.
Obesity is an excellent example of moral hazard. The only fat people around here are tourists & some banksters & their beggar swine. Couldn't care less.
There's honestly no mystery here at all. What is food? It's energy, plain and simple. Curious why the obesity rates are skyrocketing? Once upon a time (let's call it since the advent of man) man actually had to work and the food provided was rarely in excess of the energy needed to do said work. Furthermore the food available actually took effort to acquire and was not any more calorie dense than actually was needed to meet the purpose. Non-calorie-dense food means you get full on amounts that are filling. And then of course, you work it off.
So what changed? In short, as far as physical work goes, people have gotten LAZY at the same time they have gotten addicted to the feeling of being "stuffed" rather than just "not hungry". Throw into the mix the marketers who discovered that sugar and fat increase the carnal demand for their products. So we have energy-dense foods in large portions to satisfy the "full" feeling and at the samse time we have lazy people who do not work it off. Surplus in energy = more fat stored. It's really as simple as that.
To track global obesity, look no further than the advent of american "fast food". In which a single meal will meet or exceed a day's energy requirements. There's no effort required to get it and basically every single thing on the menu is based on carnal desire linked with portions small enough to leave you wanting more to get the full feeling. That full feeling is very base instinct for humans. Of course it feels good, it's an evolutionary incentive to fill up when you can, because who knows when the next meal is coming. Gathering does not leave you full, hunting does. Hunting success was a time-to-time thing not every day and you fill up when it's fresh. Why do you think so many cultures had celebrations around the success of the hunt? No fires and dancing for a good day of gathering. Celebrations for a harvest. which was also the pay-off day once a year for agriculture. Other than that? You're suppossed to be hungry.
Why were feasts linked with holidays? PR basically. Convert those heathens by giving them a new reward day.. go through the motions and it's all yours.
So this rare feast which once upon a time was limited to certain periods of time with the rest of the year basically being not-hungry at best can now be duplicated essentially at any time. Furthermore, food prices are pretty messed up in terms of value. Being able to create something both dense AND cheap is what led to many national dishes. It was not the norm and that's why it was special. It was like cheating the system. Essentially the energy bars of the past. Now? Eating healthy can actually cost more than stuffing your face with crap. It's evolutionary instinct to take advantage of it, especially when it's been stuffed full of every spice and chemical legally on the table to satisfy all carnal urges.
Corn syrup is also to blame in some respects. HFCS. Fructose, aka fruit sugar... is in guess what? Fruit. Recall those hunting and gathering days? Well when you're gathering you gather all you can, and you eat it immediately because it's not gonna keep. Evolutionary development encourages to eat as much fruit as possible when available. Gathering is for the times between the hunts as subsistence, and between the harvests as a supplement to make up for bad harvests. It's why fruit is not filling despite the energy it contains. It's evolution's way of saying "eat more stupid, you're gonna need it!".
So what happens when you take that fruit sugar and dump it into everything? Well, everything becomes far less filling. Couple that with the addiction to eating to excess and bingo, you have a winning formula if you're in marketing and sales. People will eat far more than they need of your thing, FEEL they need it, and thus buy more and tada, more profits for you! This in turn triggers the economies of scale, allowing for mass production of these high-calorie, energy-dense foods which magically become cheaper than they should be. This was not a huge problem originally when it first came out. People still had to be rather physical in their labors and it was all in all a benefit. See: national dishes and why they happened. Cheating the system, cheating nature. See things like MREs for warfare, tiny little packages of food packed with all you need for high endurance fighting. A major change from the days where going to war meant pillaging the countryside for sustinence. And to make it even better, it tastes GOOD or at least decent compared to the early attempts. No more hardtack, salted pork and chewing on coffee beans for you!
Look at the origins of fast food, such as pizza. It was never intended to be what it has become. It was a peasant food. Cheap ingredients, properly composed, a little bit of cheese for protein and it's filling. This is also a trait of national dishes on the other end of the spectrum. The ones that are filling, but empty and devoid of excess nutrition. Shut up that growling stomach and feel satisfied to get it off your mind. Doesn't taste all that good, but meh, it's something.
These very basic formulas have been corrupted in society. The filling has been adulterated and crammed full of things to make it "taste good", the non-filling has been abused. Remember that taco bell burrito thing a few years back? How to make it a half pound but still be cheap and more "filling" than the rest? Toss in some potatoes. Cheap carbs, oldest trick in the book. Carbs however are fleeting, you'll be hungry again soon, and that's where the protein comes into play... it's why cheese is on pizza. It's why meats were added to pizza. It's why traditional ramen has a tiny bit of meat in it. It's why deli meat for sandwiches exists. Cheap carbs with some meat for balance. Poor people foods. On a base level they are appealing to us because we know what they really are. Once you find ways to make them bigger, more attractive, it's irresistable. Once you find a way to make them less-filling at the same time, you can super-size them and appeal to the hunter-gatherer instinct. If you have a place in society that uses this fuel, you're golden. It will sustain you and provide the energy needed.
What happens though... when physical labor requirements start falling? What happens when the food supply continues on the marketing tragectory? Welp... fat people everywhere. Going to the gym used to be the work you did anyways everyday. It's why historically, fat people were associated with being rich. The ability to eat well and not have to work it off. It's been flipped of course now. To fight it as a human is to betray evolution and base instincts. It's why dieting typically just leads to failure. The key to it is in society and food itself. Human nature is to conserve energy. There's a desire to increase productivity and lessen the labors required for the same output. Fighting that, is also fighting evolution. The only thing left is to attack the food itself. Sadly though, there's too much profit motive in it all, and to attack it means falling back to foods prices that are rational and breaking habits that have been going on for decades. As it stands now, it's politically impossible to enact regulation on the food supply, waaaaaay too much money involved. Until that changes either from natural disaster or a shift in mindset that recognizes the core issue and demands change.... people just gonna get fatter.
The interesting factoid is that a 2005 CDC study found that obese people lived the longest, and the CDC concluded that was consistent with other studies.
More than 65 million adults and 10 million children suffer from obesity, considered one of the leading causes of life-threatening diseases. Being morbidly obese can compromise your health, shorten your life, and even cause death. If you are overweight, the probabilities of developing heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure increase significantly. Here are the top 10 obesity-related diseases.
1. High Blood Pressure — High blood pressure is the primary cause of death among Americans older than 25. About 75 million people suffer from high blood pressure or hypertension, which is a major risk factor for heart disease. Blood pressure tends to increase with weight gain and age. It is not known why obesity is a major cause of high blood pressure. However, research has shown that obese patients displayed an increase in blood volume and arterial resistance. For people who are overweight and have high blood pressure, losing as little as 8 pounds can help reduce blood pressure to a safe level.
2. Diabetes — Obesity is considered one of the most significant factors in the development of insulin resistance, and insulin resistance can lead to type 2 diabetes. According to the World Health Organization, more than 90 percent of diabetes patients worldwide have type 2 diabetes. Being overweight or obese contributes to the development of diabetes by making cells more resistant to the effects of insulin. A weight loss of 15-20 pounds can help you decrease your risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Read: Exercising with Diabetes.
3. Heart Disease — According to the American Heart Association, obesity is a major risk factor for developing coronary heart disease, which can lead to a heart attack or stroke. People who are overweight are at a greater risk of suffering a heart attack before the age of 45. Obese adolescents have a greater chance of having a heart attack before the age of 35 than non-obese adolescents. If you are overweight, losing 10-15 pounds can reduce your risk of developing heart disease. If you exercise regularly, the risk of developing heart disease falls even more. Read: Benefits of Cardiovascular Exercise.
4. High Cholesterol levels — High cholesterol is one of the leading causes of heart attacks. Cholesterol is transported through your blood in two ways: the low –density lipoprotein (LDL), which transports cholesterol to the cells that need it, and the high-density lipoprotein (HDL), which is the healthy cholesterol that reduces your risk for heart attack. Having high LDL levels raises your risk of having heart disease by 20 percent. Losing 11-20 pounds can help you significantly reduce your cholesterol level.
5. Cancer — A study by the American Heart Association found that being overweight increases your chances for developing cancer by 50 percent. Women have a higher risk of developing cancer if they are more than 20 pounds overweight. Regular exercise and a weight loss of as little as 12 pounds can significantly decrease the risk.
6. Infertility — Being obese can cause changes in the hormonal levels of women, which can result in ovarian failure. Women who are 15-25 pounds overweight are at a higher risk of suffering from infertility and ovarian cancer. Our bodies need to be at an appropriate weight to produce the right amount of hormones and regulate ovulation and menstruation. Don’t think men are immune to infertility. Overweight men have a greater chance of developing motility and a lower sperm count. Shedding 12-14 pounds can help you lower the risks.
7. Back Pain — Obesity is one the contributing factors of back and joint pain. Excessive weight can cause injury to the most vulnerable parts of the spine, which carries the body’s weight. When it has to carry excess weight, the odds of suffering from a spinal injury or structural damage increase. Being overweight also raises the risk of developing osteoporosis, lower back pain, arthritis, and osteoarthritis. Losing 10-15 pounds can help you decrease the risk of developing these problems.
8. Skin Infections — Obese and overweight individuals may have skin that folds over on itself. These creased areas can become irritated from the rubbing and sweating, which can lead to skin infections.
9. Ulcers —According to a study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), obesity can be a contributing factor to the development of gastric ulcers. Gastric ulcers occur when there is an imbalance between the amount of hydrochloric acid that is secreted and the enzyme pepsin. Overweight men are at a greater risk of developing gastric ulcers than women. A weight loss of as little as 7 pounds can help reduce the risk.
10. Gallstones —Being severely overweight increases the risk of developing gallstones, especially in women. Gallstones are caused when the liver releases excessive amounts of bile, which is stored in the gallbladder. Gallstones are more common in older women and those with a family history of gallstones. Losing 4-9 pounds reduces the risk of developing gallstones. Moderate exercise also can help lower your risk.
References
http://www.mediweightlossclinics.com/patients/resources/articles/obesity-facts/
American Heart Association, National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
http://www.doctorslounge.com/primary/articles/obesity_death/
CDC: Obesity approaching tobacco as top preventable cause of death
The CDC has also been telling people for years that deer ticks are the only variety of ticks that spread Lyme disease.
Epic fail.
The first thing that boggled my mind about America was the portion sizes! Good god, the whopper is enough for the whole damn day. The vegetables are lovely, but they taste of nothing. The chicken too. ..everything taste like nothing. Too much cheese on everything. Too much salt...Everything was out of whack. No, it wasn't a podunk village from nowhere, by the time I arrived here, I had travelled the world. But to get back to the topic. Our food SUCKS! You know when I recapture the taste of real food? I grow it. If I had to go back to providing 100% for myself, I'd probably be a vegetarian, I don't have the heart to kill a chiken. But that would be OK. Learn to cook. Discard any recipe that asks for anything that is pre-packaged, velveeta cheese, stuff out of boxes. Frozen and occasionaly canned is OK. Make your own dressings. Buy more produce than cans and boxes. Be very selective about your meats. Learn to cook, try different cuisines and recipes that uses more unprocessed foods, do everything from scratch. Learn to knead dough, make your own pizzas, bread, cakes. I think when we gave up cooking from scratch was when we started getting fat.
Do it for 6 months. I promise you, at the end of that time, you will be able to tell the difference. You're not going to be able to know this, unless you jump out of the toxic stream.
See above. There's an econmic incentive to make base foods taste like nothing. And it doesn't help much when you overload everything with seasonings. It just makes it all worse. Spices and peppers and hell, even salt were highly valued for their miraculous ability to make shit taste decent. Like drugs though, you build a resistance to it all and it becomes the new normal. Leaving the old-normal as bland and lacking. Of course there's the other part to it, where growing things bigger than they should be deprives them of their natural dense flavors, but when you sell based on weight there's no reason not to. And hell, you can make up for that with some additives later.
MSG
Is in absolutely everything. Every snack off the shelf, every pre-packaged everything. There's nothing wrong with adding a bit now and again to real food.... odds are it's still far less of it than you'll find in a few handfulls of potato chips.
The vegetables are lovely, but they taste of nothing.
Oh, man. Tell me about it.
I grew up in rural NYS near several smallish family farms. When I was a kid, we used to get a half or a bushel of tomatoes from them in August, and they were the most delicious things I recall from my youth, despite being somewhat misshapen and lumpy with the omnipresent scars on the skin.
Today, I live in NYC, and I can buy the most BEAUTIFUL tomatoes year 'round--perfectly spherical with just the right color and a tiny floret of green stem left on top, imported from who-the-fuck-knows where...
....but I can't find ANY that have any flavor.
Barking at the wrong tree.
It's THE COMBINATION of fats/carbons AND FOOD ADITIVES which lead to epidemic obesity for poor eating junk food. Corporations are responsible together with regulators who are far far behind.
Eating junk our bodies accumulate bad FOOD ADITIVES which stimulate our system to dilute total poison percentage by adding more weight. Positive bad neverending loop.
In this sick sick world I would not be surprised if obese people get offer to end recycled to cut funeral costs. Soap anyone?
Barking at the wrong tree.
It's THE COMBINATION of fats/carbons AND FOOD ADITIVES which lead to epidemic obesity for poor eating junk food. Corporations are responsible together with regulators who are far far behind.
Eating junk our bodies accumulate bad FOOD ADITIVES which stimulate our system to dilute total poison percentage by adding more weight. Positive bad neverending loop.
In this sick sick world I would not be surprised if obese people get offer to end recycled to cut funeral costs. Soap anyone?
So many theories. Let me simplify the concept. You shove too fuggen much food down your cake hole, you get fat.
Are we now clear on the problem? And yes, your arse looks like two pigs wrestling under a blanket.
"It is the ratio and type of fats and carbs that generates weight gain"
Gotta watch Dr. Lustig once more. He explains in detail what the fructose part of the HFCS does to the liver, and how it plays havoc with the insulin level. And now the lack of fiber in processed food enhances further consumption - of the same fatal processed crap.
"It's not just avoiding carbs that counts, it's avoiding all processed foods and sugar-laden beverages."
Yep, gotta eat more natural diets, from fresh apples to cereals and vegs.