I quit reading this thread because most of the experts posting here, save a few, aren't.

I'm not an expert on anything but that doesn't mean everything I talk about should be ignored. The same goes for all subjects by every poster here.

Likewise, the experts I have read are showing that an awful lot of experts have been wrong for years. The accepted treatment of diabetes has been insulin, yet that treatment is the leading cause of diabetes. In that sense, you can't read anything about diabetes because almost all of the experts have been wrong.

vitus979 wrote:
I object to the ones that I think are unjustified and infantilizing restrictions on personal freedom. Namely these:

You can regulate the food industry more, interfering with the market and taking away choice, by insisting that food actually be,...you know,..food, instead of the crap that is being sold to our citizens today. You can stop allowing merchants to sell obviously dangerous quantities of nearly pure sugar or salt and grease in the form of gigantic sodas and fries and other supersize fast food items.

Well yeah, those are a couple of the more extreme options I listed. I listed a whole slew of them, in direct response to your contention that there simply isn't anything we can do. I also acknowledged that some of the options wouldn't be palatable.


Like I said, I'm all for educational efforts and various means of informing the public and encouraging healthy choices. We do a lot of that already. Sure we could do more of it, but the problem is that so far, none of those efforts seem to be making a dent.

Do we? The government still considers loads of bread to be a healthy eating choice; shows equivalence of fruit juice and vegetable juice to fruits and vegetables, etc. I think their dietary advice encourages weight gain.

Why not apply an icon to every food product with unnecessary additives or unreasonable caloric content?

Couple that with a nauseating public relations campaign showing the affects of obesity - amputated limbs, skin problems from being folded up, etc.

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Brian

Gonna buy a fast car, put on my lead boots, take a long, long drive
I may end up spending all my money, but I'll still be alive

Doesn't mean there isn't some worthwhile stuff posted. It never occurred to me that the metabolic pathway for protein was a more complex chemical reaction and therefore more heat is released than for carbohydrate.
Bring what ya got, we'll sort through it.

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Brian

Gonna buy a fast car, put on my lead boots, take a long, long drive
I may end up spending all my money, but I'll still be alive

Unfortunately in the current market, there is greater net benefit from increasing obesity. There is greater margin on processed foods than fresh; the diet book/'diet' foods & meals/apps/tracking devices/etc is many billions; motorized chairs are a huge moneymaker; etc. The insurance companies are going to get their margin regardless of the total healthcare costs, so the only group to see a benefit are individuals, and there's not a good history there.

What if we allowed the insurers to set policy prices where par = morbid obesity? Then discounts are available for merely obese, and even greater for normal. They must be doing this already using some projected obesity rate, so skew it a little further to incent people.

That then raises all the arguments that obesity permanently or over a long period changes metabolic rate, so almost no-one will be able to move from one category to a more desirable one. Thinking about that, metabolic rate can be changed through pharmacology. Yes, there have been some disastrous substances put out there, but - my father was diagnosed with cancer of the thyroid when he was in his mid-30's, and it was removed. For the rest of his life (~45 yrs), his thyroid function was replaced with various drugs. For the most part, he never had problems, but on occasion when one medicine was superseded by another, there was a period of adjusting the dosage and that was mostly done by examining his weight. I think this is not uncommon to have to adjust for a defective/missing thyroid gland.

It might take a bunch of research to come up a drug appropriate to offset the changes that result from obesity, but what if it could be done? This will offend a lot of people, but it's probably a more desirable outcome for the population as whole than a lot of the marquee illnesses that command the majority of charitable and government funding today.

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Brian

Gonna buy a fast car, put on my lead boots, take a long, long drive
I may end up spending all my money, but I'll still be alive

And if you read the next paragraph of the one you quote, I'm saying exactly the same thing as that article is trying to articulate (though poorly).

Yes, eating different types of food at different times may very well have an effect on how efficiently that food is burned or stored. But the food is still energy in, and the efficiencies affect the energy out.

It in no way invalidates energy in vs energy out. That is the point I'm trying to convey. Energy in vs energy out is the basic principle behind all of this. Nuances on how different foods at different times affect this energy flow adds to our understanding. Saying it invalidates the basic principals is a step backwards in our understanding.

Maybe I'm not correctly understanding your argument. And I've forever been a simplistic calories in - calories burned = weight loss or gain. But to use made-up numbers and greatly oversimplifying the chemistry, if 100 kCal of sugar is converted by the body to 95kCal of glycogen + 5 kCal shed as heat; and 100 kCal of protein is converted by the body to 90 kCal of glycogen + 10 kCal shed as heat; even though the 1st Law is obeyed, eating an isocaloric diet of protein vs one of carbohydrate results in fewer calories in and a slight increase in body temperature that is regulated by the usual systems.

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Brian

Gonna buy a fast car, put on my lead boots, take a long, long drive
I may end up spending all my money, but I'll still be alive

I think you explained it perfectly.

Then it is not as simple as calories in - calories out, and forget any influence from insulin for the moment. 100 kCal of ingested protein requires less energy expenditure to balance than does 100 kCal of carbohydrate since more energy is lost in the conversion of protein to energy available to the body than for carbohydrate.

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Brian

Gonna buy a fast car, put on my lead boots, take a long, long drive
I may end up spending all my money, but I'll still be alive

Your "energy lost", or as before stated turned into heat, is a form of energy out.