Half the world will be obese by 2035

[wizbang 13]

Genetics……………

This explains all the fat people on old photos .

[Besserwisser]

Only in the sense that hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution has designed us genetically to eat meat, and thrive on the dense nutritional value of a meat diet.

Gluttony results when we subvert our genetics and consume a vast overabundance of carbohydrates, provided to us at low cost by BIG AG.

Obesity is not usually the result of gluttony, but only the result of eating the Standard American Diet. SAD, bigly.

The reference was really to my contemporary (exc)usage dictionary..."It's not my fault, it's my genes".

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[Bflat]

"One in three Americans weighs as much as the other two." -David Sedaris-

[TerryLL]

Nah. Hunter-gatherers in moderate climates eat meat when they can get it, but it's generally intermittent, not that reliable, and most of their calories come from gathered plants. Some of these, particularly fruit, are very abundant in season, and it made evolutionary sense to eat lots of it when it was available.

A worse diet through agriculture is by no means a modern thing, and has little to do with 'BIG AG'; early farmers were notably worse-nourished than the hunter-gatherers who lived near them, but had a much higher population per acre, and thus bigger armies.

Nah.
Contemporary hunter-gatherers in moderate climates do consume lots of fruits. But we evolved as meat-eaters over hundreds of thousands of years. The reliance on agriculture is a recent development in human history.

BIG AG along with BIG FOOD has everything to do with the abundance of starchy carbohydrates and GMO foods that our species is poorly adapted to use as our principal source of nutrition. Hence we are plagued with insulin resistance, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, high abdominal fat, T-2 diabetes, and a wide spectrum of inflammatory ailments.

[LeeG]

i'm half obese already

now I’m well fed

[Too Little Time]

Many of us make a choice. I prefer to not be too fat to do what I want to do. That standard is different than a BMI standard.

Some people like the comfort that food provides. That is their choice. I am not about to suggest I have a right to limit their choice.

[George Jung]

Had a women say at a visit the other day 'I lost 200 pounds of worthless fat'.

Intrigued, I asked 'how?'

'I got a divorce'.

True story.

[L.W. Baxter]

i dunno, terry. certainly modern processed foods, rich in fats and sugars, are fundamental to epidemic obesity, but humans have been omnivores since before they were humans.

and it is perfectly possible to be healthy, at a healthy weight, on a diet that includes only occasional meat. look around the world. diets based on beans and rice, or tubers, or corn. add in eggs and dairy, thise evils of farming.

[TerryLL]

i dunno, terry. certainly modern processed foods, rich in fats and sugars, are fundamental to epidemic obesity...

Exactly.

[Rigadog]

I fear it will change the earth's orbit.

[Keith Wilson]

Contemporary hunter-gatherers in moderate climates do consume lots of fruits. But we evolved as meat-eaters over hundreds of thousands of years. The reliance on agriculture is a recent development in human history.

Quite true. I actually think we're about 80% in agreement here; agriculture is very recent in evolutionary terms. But hunting with primitive weapons is chancy and intermittent. Sometimes you have lots of meat, sometimes none, and you have to eat pretty much every day. Except in very cold climates, gathered plants (of many, many different types) form the daily basis of the diet, and most of the calories. But many kinds of gathered plant foods are also very intermittently abundant; fruit in season, for example. That's why hunter-gatherers generally eat an amazingly large variety of plant species.

OTOH extrapolating from modern hunter-gatherers to our distant ancestors 100 or 500 thousand years ago is a bit dubious; the modern folks have mostly been pushed onto marginal land by much more numerous and better-armed farmers. But I think the principle holds.

BIG AG along with BIG FOOD has everything to do with the abundance of starchy carbohydrates and GMO foods that our species is poorly adapted to use as our principal source of nutrition. Hence we are plagued with insulin resistance, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, high abdominal fat, T-2 diabetes, and a wide spectrum of inflammatory ailments.

And here is where I'd disagree. 'BIG AG" is a very very recent development, and GMO food, whatever its virtues or faults, is a complete red herring; it has nothing at all to do with the problem. Agriculture, yes - starchy grains are by far the easiest way to produce enough calories to support a large population on not too much land. That's been going on for thousands of years, although we've gotten much more efficient lately.

It's pretty simple, I think. We evolved where food was intermittently abundant, normally scarce, and where lack of food, even starvation, was a far, far larger problem than obesity. It was very much to our ancestors' advantage to eat as much as they could possibly hold when food was plentiful, particularly high-calorie greasy meaty stuff and sweet things. If they did, they might survive the next famine and pass on their genes. Now a whole lot of us, all over the world, can go to the market and buy enough of almost anything to easily give us 10,000 calories a day. Having a feast when the tribe's hunters kill three deer, or gorging on ripe mangoes for a week is fine; having a large bacon cheeseburger and a super-size chocolate malt for lunch every day, not so much. The evolved behaviors that worked well for much of our history are not very helpful in our current environment.

OTOH, the fact that average life expectancy has doubled or tripled in most of the world over the past century or two might put things in perspective a little.

[L.W. Baxter]

Exactly.

yes, i was quibbling with other points. while certainly we are evolved to eat meat, your statement "evolved as meat-eaters" implies that we are carnivores, first and foremost. the evidence is that we are evolved to be opportunists, and a wide range of diets can be healthy.

and, i think the blame you lay on big ag is overstated. the bulk products of big ag--the cereal grains, legumes, corn, tubers and root vegetables--are all quite good and nutritious, if you get them in whole form and prepare them without additives. the trouble is with the commercial processing of the commodities, in which products are created to be sweeter, fattier, and saltier in competition for consumer dollars.

the problem isn't gmo corn. it's that people eat their corn in the form of doritos.

[LeeG]

Gotta say eating and drinking carbs makes want to eat and drink more carbs but if I have a tin of sardines I don’t want to eat more sardines or carbs. I’m really slow to figuring this out.

[bluedog225]

6812850[/URL]]I'm the same weight I was at 18-29, 154lbs.

Genes, a lifetime habit of not having lunch, a dislike of sugary drinks, activity and probably luck.

Discipline. Simple but not easy. 6’ at 172 lbs and can drop 10 at will. By not eating much and exercising.

[L.W. Baxter]

^^and i think "discipline" is actually the key to the short term functioning of "diets". or supplements. like the "paleo diet". or magic pills.

people go on a dietary regimen, and the weight loss and improved fitness they experience at first is attributed to the formula. but, the discipline of the diet promotes discipline of behavior. portion control, more physical activity. more consciousness generally of what is going in the mouth, and how one is expending energy.

but after a while, the overall discipline and consciousness fades, and then the magic formula "fails" as well. the fact is, many dietary formulas can work just fine. we are built that way. but its hard to maintain discipline in this modern world of ease and convenience.

[bluedog225]

I don’t agree that there is any implied short-term implication regarding personal discipline. Other than one’s general impression of the character of people.

[Jim Mahan]

Yes, and the exercise part of the two factors actually moderates the hunger craving response. So shop, as Michael Pollan says in the Omnivore's Dilemma, IIRC, shop around the perimeter of the grocery store and get whole foods rather than prepared and packaged stuff. When I lost nearly fifty pounds, down from a personal high of two-oh-five, it was because She and I had made a choice, not to lose weight, to diet, per se, but to eat healthier. And then at about the same time, I had for completely separate reasons, decided I needed to build some stamina for my mallet swinging arm to do carving scupture, and about the same time decided, more or less out of the blue, and again without consciously deciding to do it to lose weight, start a daily regimen of situps and pushups. And back then we had a big dog and I made my daily morning walk be forty minutes instead of the twenty I try to do now. But the key, for me, was that I've always been relatively thin and getting that weight on was an unconscious thing that happened in my early forties. Being on a new prescribed drug might've had an effect, too. And when we chose to change how we shopped and cooked, doing it for long term health instead of short term weight loss, we both kept it off. And we've back-slided a bit, too, and instead of having a more or less total moratorium on sugar, we started having a little ice cream in the evening.

Like when I quit drinking. I was motivated, not for a goal of being totally sober or getting healthy per se, but my main impetus was to not ever be nagged on for it again, and to prove the annoying couples counselor wrong. And that worked. The couples therapist told me, agreeing with my Wife, that I probably was an alcoholic and suggested that I 'just go check out AA and see what some other folks have done in their lives.' And I decided on the spot that I would prove her wrong, that I wasn't addicted. And I just got lucky, expecting it to be hard and it wasn't at all. Haven't had even a whisp of anything with alcohol in seven years, next month. Not wanting to die young and tragic is also a good motivation.

[bluedog225]

Whatever you call it, most of the principles of aa apply to food and would help my friends and acquaintances who can’t control their eating.

Even though it is killing them.

[bluedog225]

I don’t eat sh!t.

[john welsford]

Bad timing for a thread about scones!

I'm cooking a batch of those for friends coming for afternoon tea today.

We're none of us obese, perhaps have a couple of spare kilograms but not grossly overweight.

My dog keeps my weight about right, she's bouncing up and down by me right now and if I open the door she'll be out by the gate waiting for me to come with lead in hand.

John Welsford

[David W Pratt]

thank you Kieth.
If you look at our jaws and teeth, we clearly evolved eating a lot of plants. We lack the shearing carnassials of carnivores, and have the vestiges of large molars for masticating veggies. The human mandibles are fused in the front (the chin) like that of cows and pigs, and carnivores that hunt large prey singl,y all of which need to be able to bite hard. Pack hunting carnivores, like wolves, have separate mandibles connected by cartilage. They kill large prey with numerous smaller bites.

[LOKI]

Every time I have ventured over the border to the USA and I go to eat I am stunned by the amount of food on my plate. Way too much for me at one sitting and sometimes I get a doggy bag. Is this the cause or a reaction to American eating habits?

[Besserwisser]

Every time I have ventured over the border to the USA and I go to eat I am stunned by the amount of food on my plate. Way too much for me at one sitting and sometimes I get a doggy bag. Is this the cause or a reaction to American eating habits?

Woody Allen tells the story of his first visit to London. He ordered bacon & eggs. He got a strip of bacon and an egg. Said he just stared at the plate in shock & disbelief. Large helpings are undoubtedly not helpful.

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[Besserwisser]

The invoking of evolution to explain why the contemporary western diet makes us fat is to, um, over-egg it a bit. Is it not simply that the energy incomings are greater than the energy outgoings?

Anyway, as an aside, sugar was in the Middle Ages just one of the many spices that played key roles in the culinary and medicinal life of the times.

But while most of the others have fallen into disuse in the West, sugar's upward trajectory continues. It's sugar exceptionalism.

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[JayInOz]

Eat a good meal before you go grocery shopping. If you aren't hungry you don't buy nearly as much crap. Buy the food you need for the week or however long your groceries are supposed to last, and don't buy more stuff unless it's a staple or an ingredient you've run out of. And as we get older and slower and physically weaker, we don't need nearly as much food to sustain us. I'm constantly trying to get my missus to cook less food. I'm not doing stupidly long days of gut busting work any more- I only need half as much food as before. I don't like over eating just because it's on my plate and if I don't eat it the food will be thrown out and the cook will be offended JayInOz

[skuthorp]

We don't eat out much but as a result of my birthday I have been shouted several meals most of which were a task to finish.
We had 70 people at the sailing club today, very very few could be called obese.

[George.]

When we eat out, it is mostly under one condition: walk to the restaurant and back. If it is nearby, take a long, pleasant detour.

[LeeG]

I don’t think half the world will be obese in 12 yrs.

[Fitz]

I saw an hour and a half long presentation yesterday on High Fructose Corn Syrup. The crap is in everything and it is poison.

[bluedog225]

I think people don’t understand what eat your vegetables really means. Fixing dinner.

8486DF3D-98FF-449F-B59F-5CFDB8DDA2AC.jpg

[L.W. Baxter]

nice virtue signal, dawg.

looks like thirty bucks worth of veggies, minimum. and no calories.

[Keith Wilson]

Anyway, as an aside, sugar was in the Middle Ages just one of the many spices that played key roles in the culinary and medicinal life of the times.

Expensive, rare, and not a significant part of the diet of the average person.

[Dikhaut]

According to this article half of all of us will be overweight or obese.

Probably higher in the US

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/overwei...ration-report/

Look at all the folks here with many thousands of posts logged. It would seem that keyboard tapping must be their only form of exercise. I wonder what the obesity percentage is here?


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[Too Little Time]

I saw an hour and a half long presentation yesterday on High Fructose Corn Syrup. The crap is in everything and it is poison.

That is an unfair characterization.

There is a fellow - thin but not particularly thin who eats much more junk food when hiking. 9000 calories of M&Ms, gummy bears, and the like when doing serious hiking. He saves the 3000 calories of protein and fats for the end of his day otherwise they keep him feeling full and he is unable to eat enough. For him serious hiking is 40-50 miles/day for almost 2 months. It is hard to make an argument that he is being poisoned.

Individuals make choices. Let them.

[WszystekPoTrochu]

Inverted syrup had a very bad reputation a few years back, but newer studies found no direct causality pointing to it. It seems that maybe simply going from two soft drink servings per week in 1940s to two servings per day in 2000s (on average - think about the outliers!), along with similar changes in other dietary behaviours, is what causes issues. That or Big AG went the route tried out by Big Pharma and started falsifying research if the latter, we'll probably know soon enough.

It still is worth noting that the stereotypically obese place on earth uses sugars where others wouldn't - e.g. in hamburger buns.