Obesity is a societal failure. Not a personal one.

[paredown]

For anyone interested, this is a "gift link" for the NYTimes article that XWTin started with if anyone cares to read the article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/o...smid=share-url

[Marvinlungwitz]

Rate of metabolic decline in adults does not start until age 60, and is only 1%/year:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe5017


The cost of an apple is similar to a 1.5 - 2 Oz candy bar. Also:

https://www.lsuagcenter.com/profiles...e1608129724542

However, it does indeed take time to prepare and cook some of those unprocessed foods.

[wkeller79]

Originally Posted by fourflys

this is where your argument breaks down IMO.. the idea that everyone has the luxury of "a couple hours of week of moderate exercise", while certainly a good intention, is just not realistic for thousands (tens of thousands prob) of folks who work a couple of jobs, then come home to take of the kids while the other caregiver (if there is one) goes out to work.. and, again, eating healthy food for these folks is also a luxury as well most of the time..

To be fair, the amount of kids people have is their decision. Do you (people in general) really need two, three, four, five, etc children? That is a lot of time and financial stress.

[mstateglfr]

Originally Posted by HenryA

Unless you have some particular competition performance goal in mind you are just fine at 220. I suspect you would probably be considered a real tall, real skinny guy by 99% of the people asked.

For sure.
As an adult, I chose a couple of activity/sports though where at the competitive end I am not skinny- cycling and volleyball. Its funny how perception based on circumstance skews things. I am 2xl in Rapha(they dont make larger) and dont even own some of the boutique US brands since their 2xl results in an overstuffed sausage look. I fully accept this, but will comment that it cant help the confidence/perception for many people.

But yeah- unless almost all people have some particular competition performance goals in mind, we are almost all just fine at 5% over whatever weight we ideally want to be.
...but its then still there as a constant reminder of health and/or appearance(depending on person and circumstance).

[unterhausen]

Originally Posted by Marvinlungwitz

While trying not to offend anyone (nor encourage anorexia), let’s not forget that VO2 max has mass in the denominator, as does power to weight ratio.

There is a thread on the trainerroad forum about how to get to 5 w/kg, and the only people that did it said they did it by losing weight.

That's why I always say that cycling is an eating disorder.

[mstateglfr]

Originally Posted by paredown

Taking a left turn, someone posted a glowing "remember how great it was when we all sat down for family meals" nostalgic post on Facebook. For whatever reason, it struck me as being part of the deliberate myopia of boomers.

Who produced the full meals at home in the '50s? If you were poor like us, you had a stay-at-home mom, who worked very hard knocking out three squares a day, not to mention the baking and canning to supplement that. If you were solidly middle class--it was a toss-up between stay at home mom and a housekeeper--the example that jumps out--the Bailies in 'It's a Wonderful Life"--where dad is scraping by--still have a cook/housekeeper. The well-to-do--full-time family cooks and other household help. (Look at the ads for apartments in NYC that have servant's quarters--and this was not just the 1% of its day.)

The evil genius of capitalism is that we have driven those moms out of the house to be income earners, since the costs of living require two incomes to get by. (BTW, no one appreciates the cost and sacrifice of those moms who "ran the house" and set their dreams aside...) For the poor (like the families where we work on Habitat houses) the parents are likely to have two, and sometimes three jobs to make ends meet--sometimes the grandmas pick up the slack, but a lot of the time, it is a quick dinner at Mickey-Dees because everyone is exhausted;

Two busy parents, throw in commuting and modern scheduled time for kids--where's the time for thoughtfully and carefully prepared foot? I have a friend who was raised half time by her dad and step mom--two professor family--and they NEVER prepared a home cooked meal. It was all from the freezer and microwaved.

Add that to the list from above--and some of the causality changes:

So I recognize my childhood and adulthood has been a result which mixes privilege with hard work and luck. That needs to be said before the following...

I grew up playing multiple travel sports, my sister did the same, both parents worked, and we had a lot of family meals together. It had to have been exhausting for my parents to balance all that out. And as we got older(and busier), we had fewer weeknight meals together, and those were traded for fast food. That reality actually made it even clearer why the family meals were so important as a contrast. I was lucky to have parents that talked about nutrition(to the point of me rolling my eyes a lot) and expecting us to know that what we were choosing was healthy/unhealthy as well as why.

Yes, families are busy right now. Yes, many families have parents that are two ships passing, especially in the evenings. Yes, many families have only one parent. All these are challenges to the two observations I pointed out when it comes to families.
And yet- if those things arent expected, we end up here- an obesity epidemic.
Parents can talk about portion control, healthy eating habits, and nutrition in the car, on the bus, when kids get ready for bed, and other times of the day besides the traditional sit down dinner.

Choosing to not make time is just that- a choice. It may feel like there is no choice in the matter because little Timmy has soccer, little Bella has dance, and one parent is working- but it is a choice. And if you choose to instead be busy as a family(we certainly are, so this isnt me saying thats wrong), then parents need to figure out time to teach and show healthy eating habits.
Heck, while getting fast food- talk about why this food tastes good. Talk about why it isnt healthy to always eat this food. Talk about the cost difference between this food and prepared at home food. That right there, with consistency, can be huge.
Also, very few people work 7 days a week. Whatever someone's day off is- batch cook and/or batch prep some meals. Its a lot of work, but this is all a lot of work. The easy way has led us to where we are now.




I just refuse to believe busy families have no way to teach kids healthy eating habits and help instill them. Families parents are super busy with work is really difficult to overcome, I totally recognize that. And yet, doing nothing different will only further this issue.

[sg8357]

Originally Posted by adub

[snip]
Western society (lead by the USA) is becoming soft, complacent, fat and lazy. (42% obese) It is so much easier to change the norms than promote challenging people to be better. This is a big part of the demise of western society.

Western Civ has been in terminal decline since 1840, 1914 or 1937
depending on your favorite author.

If people were skinny think of the shareholder value that would be destroyed,
FritoLay, CocaCola, McDonalds, Starbucks et al, you are talking about cutting the heart out the US Food Industry.

[Spinner]

After my "career" and during my "pre-retirement" years, I worked at a locally-owned, high-line grocery store in an affluent area. Whenever I saw an obese person in the aisle, I quickly observed that I could predict what items would be in their cart: soda, potato chips, candy, cereals, prepared frozen foods, ice cream, pastries, etc.

In a similar fashion, whenever I saw lean, athletic types, their carts were typically filled with produce, fish, chicken, and other nutritional foods.

Eating junk begets eating a lot of it. Have you ever seen an individual eat a "single" portion of potato chips. If I start eating said junk, I can't stop either and that's why it is not in my house.

[Dired]

This podcast came across my radar recently and while it probably deserves it's own post, I'll just leave it here. The speaker makes those wearable sensors that measure sugar in real time, but that's not the main focus of the podcast, she covers a ton of different topics about the food and medical industries and how they interact. I consider this essential listening.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ffU1eqXZtoRsfeWIqVani

[batman1425]

Originally Posted by AgilisMerlin

i don't understand the post above at all

A major contributor to obesity is gut microbiome. How we are born (traditional or c-section), what our parents feed us, how many rounds of antibiotics we get early in life, all play into shaping what our microbial communities ultimately become. The majority of that plays out over the first 3 or 4 years of life. After that, the biodiversity that we are going to have is more or less fixed. We can give it nudges in different directions, but making substantive changes after that point is very difficult. Those microbes talk to us (biochemically), we talk back, and they have substantive changes on our physiology and long term health outcomes.

Obesity can be a microbially transferable outcome, lots of experimental evidence and case reports in patients to support this. There is also strong evidence to support that the way the western world lives (not just diet - see examples above) is rapidly and fundamentally changing the ecology of the microbes in and on us. We are losing biodiversity. Microbes that used to be cornerstone species in the human gut are now completely extinct in people from the western world. That loss of biodiversity is a determinant of obesity and other conditions that were once thought to be exclusively genetically, behaviorally, or environmentally based.

Originally Posted by jimbolina

And, dare I add the elephant that isn’t in the room is evolution has not factored-in this wholly unnatural phenomenon, which has only been burgeoning for say, maybe the past 100 years at the very most, compared to TWO MILLION years of hominids hunter-gathering, and the like

Precisely, and that diet is one of the most important determinants for what our microbiome becomes, and how it works. The western diet/lifestyle has fundamentally changed the composition and function of our microbes and on a time scale that our own evolutionary mechanisms cannot keep up with. Evidence suggests that these microbial changes are key contributor to the increased rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other conditions whose rate of increase simple can't be explained by genetics.

Originally Posted by Mr. Pink

The nation's leading killers are heart disease and cancer, both highly aggravated by obesity. Covid victims are, first, old, second, obese. Usually both. Young Covid victims were mostly obese.

This is an example of what Dr. Martin Blaser, a physician/scientist at NYU calls "The modern plagues" resulting from "antibiotic winter". The way we live, what we eat, how we abuse antibiotics (not just at the Dr. office but also in agriculture) are changing the biodiversity of our microbes in such a dramatic, and permanent way, that as a population, we are now far more susceptible to poor outcomes. Dr. Blaser wrote about this years ago, and we watched an example of it happen in real time during COVID. His focus is on the antibiotic side of this story, but diet plays a critical role as well.

When I teach human microbiome I and use a book that he wrote about: "Missing Microbes". It's a good read and explains the science underlying these outcomes in a really accessible way.

[Mikej]

Just look at what people walk out of a gas station with and look at the prices. A 20oz coke is 2.19$ a grab bag of funions is 2.09. Yet that person only put 5$ of gas in their car?


Oh, and video games and the fact that kids have a phone, tablet or computer or tv in their face 14 hrs s day- to me that is where it starts.

[rallizes]

lol who could possibly have predicted how this thread would go

[choke]

4 words: high fructose corn syrup.

[nmrt]

I have been following the microbiome research for more than fifteen years now. I have tried very hard to see if there is any "take-home" message here. Despite the plethora of excellent studies, some from faculty from my university, there is so much we do not understand about the microbiome, that all I can take away from all of this is that it all all very interesting.

That the gut microbiome is diverse in childeren or in people in agrarian societies, and that the diversity of these microbiomes can decrease when switched to a western diet is interesting. But then, having a different microbiome does not neccesarily mean having a different funtional core. In fact, many functional gene profiles are similar despite variance in microbiome diversity.

I can keep going on studies I find interesting. The research is so vast. But is there anything concrete that can be harnesed from this reseacrh to make some viable public policy or just some take-home-message for people, I am all ears. It would be great if you could share your thoughts.

Originally Posted by batman1425

A major contributor to obesity is gut microbiome. How we are born (traditional or c-section), what our parents feed us, how many rounds of antibiotics we get early in life, all play into shaping what our microbial communities ultimately become. The majority of that plays out over the first 3 or 4 years of life. After that, the biodiversity that we are going to have is more or less fixed. We can give it nudges in different directions, but making substantive changes after that point is very difficult. Those microbes talk to us (biochemically), we talk back, and they have substantive changes on our physiology and long term health outcomes.

Obesity can be a microbially transferable outcome, lots of experimental evidence and case reports in patients to support this. There is also strong evidence to support that the way the western world lives (not just diet - see examples above) is rapidly and fundamentally changing the ecology of the microbes in and on us. We are losing biodiversity. Microbes that used to be cornerstone species in the human gut are now completely extinct in people from the western world. That loss of biodiversity is a determinant of obesity and other conditions that were once thought to be exclusively genetically, behaviorally, or environmentally based.



Precisely, and that diet is one of the most important determinants for what our microbiome becomes, and how it works. The western diet/lifestyle has fundamentally changed the composition and function of our microbes and on a time scale that our own evolutionary mechanisms cannot keep up with. Evidence suggests that these microbial changes are key contributor to the increased rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other conditions whose rate of increase simple can't be explained by genetics.



This is an example of what Dr. Martin Blaser, a physician/scientist at NYU calls "The modern plagues" resulting from "antibiotic winter". The way we live, what we eat, how we abuse antibiotics (not just at the Dr. office but also in agriculture) are changing the biodiversity of our microbes in such a dramatic, and permanent way, that as a population, we are now far more susceptible to poor outcomes. Dr. Blaser wrote about this years ago, and we watched an example of it happen in real time during COVID. His focus is on the antibiotic side of this story, but diet plays a critical role as well.

When I teach human microbiome I and use a book that he wrote about: "Missing Microbes". It's a good read and explains the science underlying these outcomes in a really accessible way.

[benb]

Originally Posted by XXtwindad

1) The BMI standard needs to be completely dismantled. At six feet and 195, I qualify as "overweight" (with all due modesty...hardly). Many athletes have more muscle than the average population, which isn't reflected in the chart. The chart was developed by insurance actuaries in the 1940s. It's antiquated junk and should be ditched immediately.

This one is always funny. I completely assume you have a ripped 6-pack and your doctor looks at you and says you're clearly not overweight/overfat. If you're not and you have visible fat on your mid section maybe the doctor is not agreeing with your assessments of your fitness level, body fat, and lean body mass levels.

Most of the time I see this trotted out in the real world it's a guy who has a visible gut and is holding onto high school football fame.

What I hear in the real world is doctors giving up on trying to get their obese patients to even listen to anything about weight loss. Not doctors falsely claiming low % body fat people with a lot of muscle are overweight based on BMI.

Doctors have better things to do than try and argue with obviously athletic people with good test results about BMI. They have lots and lots of really unhealthy patients to treat.

The whole issue has been politicized to death. Everything has changed.. diet, activity levels, what people do in their spare time to entertain themselves. No one wants to admit any part of it might be screwed up or anything might need to change.