While sugar is the current whipping boy for the obesity problem it doesn't appear that people who are obese eat more sugar than those who aren't, as least as a percentage of their diet.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC9867287/


I know I've heard Layne Norton talk about human randomized control trials where they match macronutrients and have one group where their carbohydrates are made up of a lot of sugar and one group where they aren't and basically there is no difference in any health markers, body fat, etc., which refutes the idea that some health gurus put forth that sugar and/or insulin causes much of our health problems.

I thought this thread was about a week in Italia.

It's OK, conversations have a way of meandering.

There is a theory that capitalist economic development works by breaking up life into ever smaller component pieces.

This allows for the maximization of profit, as each component pieces can be sold.

There is something about ancient villages and cities that makes this process more difficult for the development of capitalist consumerism.

This is why Italians are more "healthy" than modern suburbanites.

Historically Italian life had lots of "healthy" components embedded in it. There was the walk to work, the stores, the bus-stop. There were physical jobs. There was the evening social stroll.
There was food from local farms, and local fisherman..
There were traditional recipes.

In more developed consumerist society- "exercise" is pulled out of life. Good consumers are expected to pay for exercise. (Wealthy people are supposed to pay a lot). Haphazard exercise is kept to a minimum. There should be no exercise in transportation! No exercise in social life. No exercise at work!

But raw "exercise" isn't super palatable. You need doctors to tell you that have to. You need gimmicks to make you feel like you are exercising (when you aren't).

In short....
"Exercise" doesn't work.
Walking to the bus stop does.
Racing bicycles does.

The same is true for "health food".
Eating an expensive "health food" diet doesn't work.
Eliminating harmful components and replacing them with more expensive bits. (Or cheaper bits at the same price) that doesn't work....

Eating modest local food...
That might work.

It started that way but I mentioned a bot button issue and away we went.

My espresso machine gets delivered today. That was inspired by a week of marachinoes that were fantastic.

---

I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

In fairness, I don't think it's as much of a choice as people think, if at all.

But putting aside a question of whether there's even free will, I think there's some solid evidence that obesity is more an issue of the endocrine system that it is a mental health one. In other words, it's not merely enough to have certain "wiring" in the DL PFC (yes, I skimmed Sapolsky's latest book) in order to exercise the necessary self control. That said, I also don't think SDG's cuntishness is anything he had any control over. He just is what he is.


you are giving the fat asses an excuse when you say its anything other than the choices of food they elect to shove down their throats. Don't do that. it doesnt' help them.


But it isn't just a choice. The "choice" comes at a young age if you eat a lot of sugar/carbs that is a breakfast staple for kids (cereal, toast, orange juice). The body secretes insulin to remove the sugar and there is strong evidence that the addiction is a function of hormones. It's as hard or harder to stop eating sugar as it is to stop smoking and the bodies hormonal response is a big factor.

It's not as simple as blaming people, otherwise you would be saying that up to 80% of North Americans are simply heavy because of the choices they make. There is a lot of blame, particularly with the food industry being allowed to promote their food, the barrage of commercials and questionable dietary advise they provide and a healthcare system designed to treat disease instead of looking at prevention. We also allow ingredients in food that Europe has banned (particularly some GMO food and additives). Next time you are in Europe, look at the ingredients in a box of Kelloggs Fruit Loops and compare that to the list here (hint, we have double the ingredients and all of them are artificial).

To blame people with a blanket statement that they are solely to blame is way too simple.

Glad you're back posting.

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

So...

Thisisit: Obesity is a "mental health issue"
Free will and choice don't exist..

Velocibuddha: "Health" is religious bullsh#t (or marketing bullsh#t)- that's why it can't be treated or improved on.

On the other hand....

People who live boring village lives in rural Italy, Japan, Mexico.
They sometimes live forever!!!
And they look "healthy" to.

It's not just genetics. It's not a coincidence.
It's not a simple "choice" either.

But we can chose to live more deliberately.

My favorite author (that I have read this decade) is Italian Calvino.

It would be really fun to plan a trip to visit the real places, that inspired the fantastical settings of Calvino's novels.

I spent some time traveling from mountain village to mountain village around Nice.

Next time, I go to IMWC in Nice- I am going to take a month to cycle around Italy.

I don't think obesity is a mental health issue. I think obesity is an energy imbalance issue and that when you have abundant good tasting food around, some people are going to have appetites that lead to obesity. Being strongly motivated to not become fat for whatever reason can help but it's an uphill battle. It's no coincident that we finally seem to have effective weight loss drugs and they work by decreasing appetite.

Choice exists, the question is can a person opt to choose other than what they do choose.

Free will is the illusion that a person could have chosen other than what they did choose. Because we can imagine that being the case, we fool ourselves into thinking it's the reality. When if you could rewind a person back to that moment with all the exact inputs in their brain, they would always make the same choice. Hence choices are determined and free will is an illusion.

Once upon a time I generally agreed with SDG....

"Being overweight is about bad choices..'

"If people...
Just went outside more.
Slept better
Walked places
Or did adult soccer.
Cooked with whole foods..'

Recently I have had experiences with people who have mental health issues:
Sometimes they are too depressed and have a very hard time making good choices.
Sometimes they are on bipolar medication that makes them fat, damages their eyesight and balance, and they lose their soccer scholarships. And don't really know how to exercise - if not for sport.
Sometimes they are just weak minded and believe what's most convenient for them. (I am just muscular. Walking once a month on a treadmill is cardio. Weightlifting once a month is strength training. Chipotle and Splenda are health foods).


Yes - mental health is a factor.
Yes - bad choices are a factor.
Yes- there are powerful institutions that try to force bad choices upon us..

My problem with the absence of free will idea.

Consumer capitalism owns big Science. It owns most academia...
It's constant advocacy for deterministic theories is rather convenient...
"You have to make bad choices. It's in your genes. Buy more Monsanto, Pfizer, Facebook. You have to.
They fund us!!"

But...
Consumer capitalism doesn't own the scientific method, logic or observation.
It just owns how theses things are used.

I think you give academia far too much credit if you think most of what is going on some how has the potential to make people money in any immediate way and is therefore tainted by capitalism.

Supposedly 3.9 million people in the USA (as 2022) were employed in post-secondary education.


That pays for quite a few houses, cars, bottles of coke.

As for the "research" product...

I don't fully understand how "research" funding is divvied up. But I do not know that "profitable application" is very important.

Dumb radicals ( like young VB) get very little.
Dumb reactionaries do better.

Academia sure, science less so.

Generally science is mostly funded by the govt. from entities like the NIH and NSF. Universities take a large cut of that for providing the facilities and such, the rest the researcher spends on the studies (e.g. paying grad students, buying equipment, etc.).

And the government is largely controlled by lobbyists for corporate entities...

I am looking at biographies of the directors of the NIH and NSF..

I see a lot of...
Corporate medicine.
And big, corporate tech.

Certainly nothing even remotely critical of consumer capitalism would EVER find it's way anywhere near the top of those institutions..

The belt needs to match the shoes. I learned that watching James May in Italy.

Also, sweets for breakfast. I though that was an Italian thing.

Edit: my attempt to return to the topic after my derail.

The govt. establishes the pot of money available, who gets the money is for the most part decided by other scientists who are experts in the respective fields sitting on panels that review the submitted grants and score them. I'm not saying there's no corporate/consumer capitalism influence just that in most instances that's not what's driving who is getting funding.

So...

Thisisit: Obesity is a "mental health issue"
Free will and choice don't exist..

Velocibuddha: "Health" is religious bullsh#t (or marketing bullsh#t)- that's why it can't be treated or improved on.

On the other hand....

People who live boring village lives in rural Italy, Japan, Mexico.
They sometimes live forever!!!
And they look "healthy" to.

It's not just genetics. It's not a coincidence.
It's not a simple "choice" either.

But we can chose to live more deliberately.


Obesity isn't a mental health issue.

There is good research from Dr. Jason Fung (book called The Obesity Code) where he argues that obesity is a hormonal disorder that causes overeating, rather than the reverse.

The hormonal change is the result of the over consumption of sugar so initially in humans, there is a choice to eat sugar but there is more to it than simply saying calories in = calories out or just stop eating. Different calories have a far different impact on your body, it's not just calories. Try eating 2,000 calories a day of wild salmon and vegetables and then do the same of eating nothing but candy and cereal.


The main point is there is more to it than simply saying everyone should just make better choices and presto, obesity is solved.

Someone looking at the research that refutes Fung's claims, if anyone is interested.

Well, yeah, this is exactly the point.

This has already been done. Multiple people have lost weight eating horrendous foods, like a diet of pure ice cream, yet they lose weight when there is a calorie deficit.

A little more pithy and up to date critique of Fung.




Yes, it's not like these studies haven't been done of matching calories via low vs. high carb diets (and low vs. higher insulin), normal eating vs. intermittent fasting. If you match calories (and protein because of the relatively large thermogenic effect of protein), you see similar results.


My favorite case study of someone eating crappy food and still losing weight was the scientists who ate a diet of twinkies (I think he also had one can of vegetables a day). And not surprisingly all of his metabolic markers of health improved along with his weight lost becaues energy balance seems to be a very big driver of metabolic health.

Porca Miseria! Questo thread e’ stato dirottato!
(What the fck! This thread has been hijacked!)