The Obesity Era

http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/david-berreby-obesity-era/

by mshafrir • 13 years ago

55 92 13 years ago

falcolas4• 13 years ago

Interesting read; I've encountered many of the problems signaled out here.

I'm overweight, and I've changed my life and my diet to try and fix it. When I took note of where I was, I was drinking between 4 and 8 mountain dews a day. I ate candy in prodigious amounts, and constantly ate until I was full.

Since then, I altered my diet and eating habits to where I drink no pop, and rarely have any kind of sugary treat. I eat only until I'm satiated, and in usually get out to exercise daily.

The end result? I'm the same weight as I was before. My weight has not changed in over 9 years now.

I sure I could go on a starvation diet (< 1,000 calories a day) and exercise for hours on end - it's worked to a limited degree in the past - but that's not willpower, that's torturing myself. The last time I tried, I was constantly tired and sickly, and after coming down with a nasty bout of the flu and recovering from it, all of my progress had been lost.

I've come to terms with my weight. I'm eating healthy, I'm exercising regularly, and I'm thinking of getting into a gym and working on my strength a bit more. I have accepted that getting to a "normal" weight again is not within my reach, unless something outside of my control changes.

[EDIT] Before critiquing my story with the usual tropes of "you're still eating too much and exercising too little", please read the entire article and realize that it may not be the perfect answer you think it is.

beachstartup• 13 years ago

you didn't mention how many calories per day you're eating, and what type of macronutrients.

you also didn't mention what kind of exercise you are doing. if you aren't doing deadlift, squat, overhead press, bench press, you're probably doing something way too ineffective to burn fat (hint: you need to build MUSCLE, as a man)

you have a general casual attitude about your descriptions, which is probably why you aren't seeing results.

revelation2• 13 years ago

if you aren't doing deadlift, squat, overhead press, bench press, you're probably doing something way too ineffective to burn fat

People trying to lose weight tend to overdo it and eat less than (or the wrong type of food) than is necessary to maintain their muscles. Building any more of them, as unlikely as it is to happen if you eat under your daily consumption, will not help with reaching their goal.

revelation2• 13 years ago

I respect your experience with your body and in weight loss, but did you keep track of what exactly you are eating every day and its energ content? It's easy to trick yourself into thinking you are eating less.

There might also be medical conditions that prevent you from losing weight.

eightpersimmons2• 13 years ago

This is one of the most frustrating things about how we, as a society, talk about obesity - we act like you can know something meaningful about a person's lifestyle and health from a single glance. Not to mention the related assumption that a thin body is inherently desirable and worth striving for.

A measurement like BMI, which is a great way of looking at a population, is a terrible way of understanding an individual, and the use of weight and BMI as a stand-in for health is infuriatingly wrongheaded.

falcolas4• 13 years ago

we act like you can know something meaningful about a person's lifestyle and health from a single glance.

Based on your sibling comments (which as of this moment consist of "you're still eating too much food and not exercising enough"), I agree.

joelrunyon• 13 years ago

I'd argue that most people - other than knowing they're overweight - know little about their lifestyle as well (or at least they don't know it as well as they'd like to think).

The prevalence of quantified self & self-tracking is starting to change this & when you're able to measure & track inputs better, you're better able to correlate the results with them as well.

mixmastamyk10• 13 years ago

You might try the link above given in my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5915794

The new info about sugars and starches is that the starches have the same effect on our bodies, they just work a bit more slowly. What does that mean? Well, we knew in the 90's that starches could rot our teeth just like sugar. But today we also know that grains (wheat, corn, rice, potatoes, oats, other empty carbs) raise blood sugar and are only a bit slower than actual sugar. They are chains of sugar.

In other words, if you don't get rid of the bread, pasta, and crackers too, removing sugar will have only limited effects.

falcolas4• 13 years ago

Yes, I've done Keto to various degrees (including Atkins), and had no success. Yet another fad diet with scientific backing that has no effect.

jacques_chester14• 13 years ago

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199212313272701

falcolas4• 13 years ago

Thank you for insinuating that I'm lying. :)

enraged_camel6• 13 years ago

>I eat only until I'm satiated

Yes, but what do you eat?

You can eat a whole bunch of processed carbs and starches until you're satiated, or you can eat chicken and broccoli until you're satiated. The results will be tremendously different.

Avoiding sugar is good, but by itself it is not sufficient - especially if you are still consuming copious amounts of carbs.

encoderer3• 13 years ago

I mentioned upthread, I was overweight. Not incredibly so, but certainly overweight. I was 6'2, 210, without very much muscle mass.

I gained maybe a pound a month during 2010 and 2011. Finally 12/2011 I had enough. I didn't like how I felt. What worked for me is this:

1. No depravation. I ate dessert every day. Period.

2. A large dinner (followed by that dessert) every day. Large as in, feeling totally full but not like so-full-it-hurts full.

3. Three 90 minute visits to the Gym every week.

4. A dramatic reduction in what I eat during the day. Dramatic. I went from free startup catered lunch every day (which is essentially like eating 2 dinners a day) to eating only raw during the day. That was my commitment: Nothing processed or cooked until dinner. But gorge myself at dinner if I wanted.

I started this 12/2011 and eat like this to this very day. It's easy now. In fact I hate it when I have to eat a big lunch. Today my lunch is 1 large apple, grapes, 5 strawberries, 1 small "Babybel Light" cheese and 3 water crackers. (I only added the cheese and crackers once I got down to under 170 and needed to eat more to stabilize my weight). I ate more fruit and veg the first 6+ months after I started this, I've just acclimated now to the smaller intake.

I cannot stress how important the big dinner was to me. Because I tried dieting before. Deprevation is very very hard to make work I think. And most importantly, what I've done was change my diet, not go on a diet. I can literally eat like this for the rest of my life. But a more conventional "diet" diet? No way. I'd hit some goal, then drop that misery like a bad habit, and probably slowly go back to the gaining 1 pound a month.

For me, at the gym, I was 28 but I'd never really done much time in the Gym. All i did for the first 8-10 months was cardio. The Elliptical. I'd just get on there for a full hour. The computer attached (as unreliable as it is) would usually indicate 800+ calories burnt. I had a handfull of 1000+. In one hour at the gym.

i morphed that later to 35 mins cardio, the rest alternating between isolating muscles (the machines) and free weights.

I mention all this not because I think I've discovered "the way." But your comments reminded me of how I felt before I did this. And now I'm so so happy I did. And here's what I really would hope, if I could pick the best outcome of my spending this 10 mins writing this:

People would read this and realize that they can innovate their own solution, borrowing a little from one diet, a little from another, weaving together a solution that works for them. What I do -- no breakfast, small lunch, huge dinner -- is basically 180* from what the conventional wisdom is. But it works for me. I iterated and found what works for me. To hell with the "experts." What I learned reading Pollan, etc, is that the science of nutrition is hardly a science at all and is full of contradictions and confusions.

pasquinelli• 13 years ago

"Dear obese PhD applicants: if you don’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation. #truth."

ha, what a jerk.

boneheadmed3• 13 years ago

As a practicing Endocrinologist I will go out on a limb and say excess carbohydrates are the problem leading to obesity. Sugar (or sucrose) is a particular problem as it will stimulate insulin release from the pancreas. Insulin promotes storage of glucose and I am convinced, the growth of fat cells. I have seen patients lose a tremendous amount of weight (34 lbs over 7 months) and lower blood glucose and their amount of diabetes medication simply through cutting out sugar and flour. They also reduced their overall carbohydrate intake. I presented the data at our annual Endocrinology conference recently. https://endo.confex.com/endo/2013endo/webprogram/Paper9044.h...

jurassic• 13 years ago

If anyone is interested in trying this diet, there's a good support community at reddit.com/r/keto

TeMPOraL• 13 years ago

I've lost 12 kg over 2 months of keto, so I endorse this :). Since then I returned to eating what I used to eat, but with less bread and pretty much 0 sugar (I got used to artificial sweetener and diet coke) and so far (4 months) I'm able to maintain my weight (with +/- 1kg variation).

One thing I noticed while on keto is that it reduced my appetite a bit.

eightpersimmons2• 13 years ago

This doesn't address what I think was one of the most interesting points in the article - weight gain is present even in lab animals with strictly monitored diets.

The implication being, of course, that this isn't the whole story, and we are doing ourselves a disservice by chalking up everything to diet.

(I don't mean to say you are wrong about this fact by any means - I'm not any kind of expert, and you sound very convincing.)

boneheadmed3• 13 years ago

I did read that point and find it perplexing. I would like to see hard data about that. For instance is the general diet for laboratory rats now the same as it was 50 years ago?

But also, if you have a look at my abstract, it does point to another potential cause of obesity and type 2 diabetes in humans (but naturally not the lab animals) - food addiction. The patients in this study were also successful (presumably) because they were actively involved in a 12 step program for food addiction.

On a personal note, I lost 30 lbs over 6 months by pretty much eliminating sucrose from my diet and also consuming a lower amount of carbohydrates (120 - 180 grams per day).

mixmastamyk10• 13 years ago

I was thinking about that myself and came up with the idea that perhaps their diet is changing.

I wouldn't be surprised if laboratory food was centralized around corporations just like human food. Meaning, I bet cheaper ingredients (more wheat/corn) have made their way into it over time. I can't imagine such peripheral industries not being affected.

magnusson5• 13 years ago

As a practicing internet commenter I will go out on a limb and say that's nonsense. Sugar tends to promote overeating because it makes foods highly palatable and rewarding to eat, but it doesn't cause fat gain independently of an energy surplus. See Surwit et al, Metabolic and behavioral effects of a high-sucrose diet during weight loss. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9094871

Obese women consuming a hypocaloric diet with 71% of their daily energy as carbohydrate and 43% of it as sucrose had no trouble losing fat. "Results showed that a high sucrose content in a hypoenergetic, low-fat diet did not adversely affect weight loss, metabolism, plasma lipids, or emotional affect."

Moreover, all carbohydrates, as well as protein, stimulate insulin release, and insulin is not in itself problematic: http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319

Reducing carbohydrate intake can be an effective weight loss method, but that doesn't mean that carbohydrates intake is uniquely responsible for obesity to begin with. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-h...

All of the world's longest-lived populations consume carbohydrate as their primary macronutrient.

mixmastamyk10• 13 years ago

No one serious is saying it is uniquely responsible. Just that the more sugar and starch eaten, the less time the body can stay in fat-burning mode, which is well known. Perhaps the obese-hypercaloric would have lost more with less sugar.

All the other variables and laws of physics still apply.

mixmastamyk10• 13 years ago

Interesting. My anecdote comes from a slightly different angle. I've always been in very good shape, lots of weightlifting and cardio my whole life, and been a very healthy eater. But, the "spare-tire" was always there, even with muscles bulging underneath.

Just for kicks I decided to try Steve Gibson's recommendation to remove sugar and starch from the diet. (https://www.grc.com/health/lowcarb.htm)

No knee-jerk here please, this isn't one of those butter-bacon-cheeseburger things. Nope, I eat tons of fresh veggies, lean meats, all smothered in olive-oil, nuts/flax, etc. I do actually allow myself some treats on the weekends for sustainability.

Still, one month later, for the first time in 20 years I no longer have a spare-tire. It makes perfect sense now that I think about it. As long as you fill yourself with sugar/starch you prevent the body from being able to go into fat-burning mode. Eat too much (as is common) and you go into fat-storage mode.

Bread may have built civilization, but now it builds waistlines.

johnrob• 13 years ago

Bread now builds waistlines only because we eat too much of it. I would be surprised if a normal sized person gained weight eating mostly carbs but staying below 1500 calories per day.

mixmastamyk10• 13 years ago

You're right on some level. But given that sugar and starch are packed into all processed food, I think it makes that level of calories difficult to sustain for most people. Note that the blood-sugar-rollercoaster that cheap carbs give makes you ravenous at the trough. An additional factor in why we eat too much of it.

Meanwhile after an example lunch of fish, veggies, and olive oil I feel full and satisfied almost all day (with the same range of calories).

awakeasleep• 13 years ago

Yeah. I'm betting that once this is figured out, carbs will be listed with the 'addictive' stuff like sugar. Not necessarily bad for you, but something that tends to alter your behavior.

I feel like most of us seriously underestimate how delicious and engaging carbs are. Even adults will sometimes go overboard and fill up on bread before a real meal.

smtddr• 13 years ago

Same here, I went on a diet(ultimately became a lifestyle change) trying all kinds of things... but in the end... I lost nearly 40lbs by simply eliminating bread & sugar. Blogged about it, but be warned - my workout routine is based on Nintendo's Wii Fit Plus. Don't laugh, it worked for me! - http://blog.sanriotown.com/minusworld:hellokitty.com/2011/06...

asteli• 13 years ago

The article points to by-products of industrialization (namely industrial chemicals and artificial lighting) as potential culprits in the case of rising obesity, but the distribution of obesity doesn't match level of industrialization across countries. Obesity is seemingly focused in North America plus other anglophone countries, while mostly absent in other highly industrialized countries like Japan and Norway. Red herring, perhaps?

snogglethorpe• 13 years ago

Hmm, well one thing I've noticed is that people in Tokyo walk/bicycle a lot more than most people in any American city I've lived in. Not intentionally, really, but simply as a side-effect of the non-car-oriented transportation system and urban design that results in highly walkable environments. Anecdotally, co-workers who had temporary assignments to other locations where they drove everywhere complained of gaining 5-10kg over the year or so they were there.

I regularly see things in Japan like dressed-up women in high-heels, elderly people, and other non-particularly-athletic-looking types, sprinting up long staircases to make the train. In the U.S. I would be quite surprised to see anyone sprinting in public...

Portions also often seem to be smaller. While of course it's easy enough to order large portions in Japan ("oomori kudasai!"), there's far less of the feeling of hard-to-avoid excessively large portions I often seem to get in the U.S. In Japan, "small" always seems to be on the menu, and is often the default; in the U.S., not so much...

I think it's important that such things are not unusual and "intentional" actions that you have to remember to do (and can easily shirk), but rather are a side-effect of the environment, and so happen all the time, even when you're tired, even when you're busy, even when you're out with friends to play, etc.

null_ptr• 13 years ago

People that lack analytical thinking are doomed. They are preyed on from every angle by unscrupulous companies peddling their processed garbage. No sandwich without mayo, no salad without dressing, no food marketed to children without loads of sugar and artificial ingredients. Entire aisles of frozen fatty foods, entire aisles of soda and chips. Shelves and shelves of sugar-laced yogurt. The key lies in the individual's hands, but governments must step in and put an end to the criminal businesses that peddle their poison to a largely ignorant population.

nsxwolf3• 13 years ago

Who in their right mind would eat a sandwich without mayo, or a salad without dressing? Come on. Mayo and salad dressing predate big evil corporations, you know.

gummify3• 13 years ago

I saw on the news today that 70% of the US is a size 14 or larger now. Shocking. In addition to the need for sugar and starch reduction, a lot of grocery foods are not as natural as we think they are. Having lived in European and Asian countries I can say that the people there are less calorie conscious and sometimes eat more than Americans do but their food options and ingredients seem more wholesome and less processed than in North America. Is it worthwhile to investigate who controls the health standards in manufacturing of food?

gummify3• 13 years ago

An example of foods consumed in North America but banned in EU http://www.buzzfeed.com/ashleyperez/8-foods-we-eat-in-the-us...

nsxwolf3• 13 years ago

What is a size 14? That's the size of a woman's dress in the United States, but certainly not anything for man (maybe very large shoes). What standard are you going by?

Also, sizes in the US are pretty much all over the map. Pants sizes in the US are measured in inches, and they can easily be 4 inches different than what a tailor will measure with a tape measure.

gummify3• 13 years ago

I was going by a woman's US dress size. This would equate to a woman's Large and approx. 32" waist. For men, the average suit size is now a US 44.

NovemberWest• 13 years ago

You want to really be concerned: I have read some things that indicate "vanity sizing" means what used to be a 14 (say 20 years ago) is now labeled a 10.

jacques_chester14• 13 years ago

The preponderance of evidence is that net caloric balance predicts weight.

http://examine.com/faq/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-loss.htm...

Given the choice between "astonishing phenomenon never before detected in history" and "record-keeping errors", I know which horse Occam is telling me to bet on. And it's not that HFCS has more Higgs bosons.

schoper2• 13 years ago

True. But what causes the overeating?

jacques_chester14• 13 years ago

Cheap, tasty food.

mietek3• 13 years ago

Have you actually looked at the studies cited, and checked the fat—protein—carbohydrate ratios used?

For example, this 2009 study used the following ratios to conclude "low-carb" diets aren't better than regular reduced-calorie diets:

20%—15%—65%

20%—25%—55%

40%—15%—45%

40%—25%—35%

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19246357

None of these are actually low-carb. The recommended ketogenic ratio is:

60%—35%—5%

Try Peter Attia's Eating Academy for some highly informative reading:

http://eatingacademy.com

jacques_chester14• 13 years ago

You've missed the point, which is that body mass is directly predicted by total calories and is not statistically distinguished regardless of macronutrient composition. There are multiple studies listed, you just picked one.

Review articles come to the same conclusion:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15351198

glenra8• 13 years ago

What, exactly, are you calling an "astonishing phenomenon never before detected in history"?

Are you saying that chickens and monkeys got fatter over time due to "record-keeping errors"? Are you claiming the "fat virus" effect - that if you give chickens or monkeys or rats or mice a certain human cold viruse, they get fatter - is due to "record-keeping errors"?

Have you read anything of Gary Taubes? He argues that the phenomenon of some local culture getting unusually fat in spite of the usual suspects not being present, is something that has been seen a great many times in history...but has been ignored or misinterpreted until recently.

The preponderance of evidence is that net caloric balance predicts weight.

An equally valid way to put that is "the preponderance of evidence is that weight predicts net caloric balance." You can't derive the direction of causality from that relationship.

jacques_chester14• 13 years ago

Are you saying that chickens and monkeys got fatter over time due to "record-keeping errors"?

Depending on the margin of error, yes.

Are you claiming the "fat virus" effect - that if you give chickens or monkeys or rats or mice a certain human cold viruse, they get fatter - is due to "record-keeping errors"?

I'm claiming that getting fatter is completely explained by net caloric balance. Insofar as a virus depresses metabolism, it is still explained by net caloric balance. Insofar as a virus increase appetite, it is still explained by net caloric balance. Insofar as measurement fails to be adjusted for either scenario, it's a record-keeping error.

He argues that the phenomenon of some local culture getting unusually fat in spite of the usual suspects not being present, is something that has been seen a great many times in history...but has been ignored or misinterpreted until recently.

Anthropology is not a substitute for metabolic ward studies and controlled-diet studies and medical fasting studies and twin studies. All of these find that caloric balance has predictive power, modulo noise and measurement error.

If energy or matter is being destroyed by viruses, there would be detectable evidence.

Lethal amounts of radiation, for example.

You can't derive the direction of causality from that relationship.

Given that changing caloric balance temporally precedes changes in body mass and body fat, and that the outcomes can be predicted to within a few percent in controlled conditions, and that the mechanisms of lipogenesis and lipolysis are well studied, yes. I believe that I can deduce just such a causal system.

foxylad2• 13 years ago

My friends, I have discovered a miracle cure for weight gain. It's simple, painless, and you don't have to cut out whole food groups. Best of all, I'll tell you what it is - here and now - at no charge! Here it is...

A SMALL PLATE.

That simple. Go out and buy a really individual side-plate, and make that what you always eat off. If you need seconds, OK - but after a few days you'll find that you can actually get by quite happily with one helping.

I'm sure we do eat too much sugar (way too much), but we eat too much everything. I started putting on weight when I was 40, and this is the thing that stopped it. It would be fascinating to measure our grandparent's plates, and what size meals they consumed. Despite a more active lifestyle, I bet they ate far less.

aantix• 13 years ago

Thank-you for making a mockery of Hacker News and not directly addressing any of the points in the article.

Dewie• 13 years ago

I started putting on weight when I was 40,

A late bloomer, huh... did you stay active your whole youth and then stopped for some reason? Or did you have an I-can-eat-anything-I-want metabolism in your youth which then petered out a little? I do wonder...

foxylad2• 13 years ago

A little of both, I think. It coincided with a more sedentary job, but I've noticed a lot of small aging-related changes in my body (nostril hair going crazy, fingernails getting rougher, that sort of thing) at about the same time, and I don't think they are related to the job.

enraged_camel6• 13 years ago

The mechanics of weight gain and loss are fascinating. Every time I read an article like this it makes me appreciate the complexity of the human body even more.

That said, the issue as a whole is not rocket science, and should not be treated as such. While it is very interesting to examine and discuss how the human body treats various types of calories, at the end of the day the closed system that is the human body is still governed by calories in minus calories out. It is impossible for someone to continue to gain weight if they are eating less calories than they are consuming. Literally. Impossible.

The problem is one of human psychology, both at the calorie consumption side and calorie burning side.

On the consumption side, there are two main causes. First, for overweight and obese people, the act of putting food in their mouths and drinking high-calorie drinks has become so second nature that their minds simply stop registering it after a while. This is why in scientific studies and surveys that examine the topic, overweight and obese participants massively under-report what they ate throughout the study while those who have trouble putting on weight (the so-called "hardgainers") over-report it. The mind underplays the importance of events and situations it is familiar with (such as eating) and vice versa.

The second reason is that even when people do pay attention to how much they are eating and count the calories at that moment, they are terrible at estimating their daily or weekly intake. They try to do "mental accounting," the most common example being "I ate a salad at lunch today, so it's OK for me to order some fries at dinner." For obvious reasons, this approach fails hard.

There's also the calorie burning side. Just like most people are terrible at estimating how much they are eating, they are also terrible at estimating how much they are burning. For example, walking counts as exercise for a surprisingly large number of people, yet walking for an hour straight at moderate pace burns only about as many calories as in a slice of bread. And yet the mental accounting comes into play afterward during dinner and they justify their bad habits by telling themselves they exercised that day.

There are other issues, such as the way food companies manufacture their products in very specific ways so as to maximize their consumption, or the way they market to children. But in my opinion these are at the periphery. Ultimately the matter is about the individual. It's about how much they individual eats. Not what they say they eat, but what they actually eat.

nsxwolf3• 13 years ago

There's also skinny people who burn calories for no apparent reason, like in the Vermont Prison Overfeeding Study.

I do not lose weight on low calorie diets, period. I get hungry and sick and cold for weeks on end, and my weight does not budge. My most successful periods of weight loss have been on high fat, zero carb, very high calorie diets. I know what I was eating - I measured everything correctly, regardless of all the patronizing "fat people are unaware of how much they really eat" talk.

enraged_camel6• 13 years ago

The Vermont Prison Overfeeding Study actually perfectly explains what you experience on low calorie diets.

http://idealbodyweights.blogspot.com/2009/08/vermont-prison-...

"The rapid weight loss these prisoners experienced is the mirror image of what happens when overweight people try to lose weight. If your set point is too high and you try to lose weight quickly, your body will fight to defend that weight and slow down your metabolism. But if your set point is within a normal range, your metabolism will speed up when you gain weight quickly."

In other words, if you have been fat for a while, then drastically reducing calories will cause your body to fight the changes, which will make you feel sick and cold for a while. That said, adjustment is inevitable.

Low carb and zero carb diets are great for losing weight reliably though, because without carbs the pancreas does not secrete insulin, which means your body cannot store the excess calories in adipose tissue. So it either has to burn it or excrete it.

encoderer3• 13 years ago

Would LOVE to know why people moded you down. Maybe because you're saying "it's up to an individual" and many individuals who have struggled with weight take umbrage to that? I don't know. But if so, I wish they'd mention that instead of just modding you down.

The Obesity Era

Related Stories