Why is there an obesity epidemic?

jknops2

Why is 2/3 of the US overweight and 1/3 obese?


I have read too many quack “Garry Taubes” inspired ideas of carbohydrates etc., on MFP. But all these ideas are selectively using data and do not follow basic scientific principles, like calorie in and calorie out. Note if you reject basic science or evolution, think that there is a government/industry conspiracy making us fat and sick, please stop reading and go to your favorite quack blog. I don’t want to argue about basic scientific facts.





But the question is there, why is there the worldwide universal increase in obesity?


The most common hypothesis I have seen is the thrifty gene idea. We humans over consume food to be ready for lean periods. Or in other words evolution will favor humans that have genes that allow us to more efficiently use energy. Thus the obesity increase is because we just have too much food available and the lean times never arrive. And our food industry is very good at providing us with so much tempting, cheap, readily available food that we just can’t help ourselves. If this is true, well then we are pretty much stuck with the obesity epidemic, unless we regulate the food industry to make the food less tempting/available/cheap so that we lower energy intake.


Alternatively, what about antibiotics? Antibiotic use started in the 1950 and now are widely used by humans and also, even more, in the animal food industry. Antibiotics are a major food supplement, because antibiotics lead to higher animal weight gain, i.e. animals gain more weight per unit food intake. Or in other words, animals get fatter on the same amount of food. This is likely caused by evolutionary microbial community population changes. I can see that within a normal gut microbial population, evolution will favor those microbes that use energy/nutrients most efficient, which may lead to lower energy available for the host. Whereas antibiotic use will select for antibiotic resistance and not energy efficiency. Thus, an antibiotic influenced microbial gut fauna will be less efficient in using energy, leaving more for the host, allowing the host to absorb more energy from the food that it eats.

Of cause this also works the other way around, to increase weight gain, add an antibiotic to your diet (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/health/antibiotics-can-save-lives-of-severely-malnourished-children-studies-find.html?_r=0 )


Thus getting fat is, not just, the result of calories in, calories out. We need to consider the difference between the calories that we eat, the calories that we actually absorb and that we use, something that MFP can’t track. And our gut microbes are the key factor in this. And there are a lot of recent articles showing all kinds of correlations between the gut microbial fauna and obesity, diabetes, etc.

Let’s call this the antibiotic microbial selection - induced obesity hypothesis. (And of course there are very few original ideas anymore these days, there are articles arguing the same as I do here, see for instance (http://www.infektologia.hu/upload/infektologia/document/antib_growth.pdf)


So, if this is true, well than the use of all those antibiotics in the animal food industry is plain stupid, but just because of potentially creating antibiotic resistance in diseases (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/health/use-of-antibiotics-in-animals-raised-for-food-defies-scrutiny.html?pagewanted=all ), but also because antibiotic driven evolutionary microbial genetic changes may be driving the obesity epidemic.

Thus, if this is true, eliminating antibiotics as an animal food supplement has to be done, and all of us should limit antibiotic use as much as we can, especially in children.


Anything I am missing here?


And what other hypotheses explaining the obesity increase are out there?

lilpoindexter

Because food tastes good and we're intrinsically slobs with no self control.

savithny

"the end of overeating" has a lot of interesting stuff on how modern food processing overcomes our body's natural balance. Left to ourselves, on a whole foods diet, most people naturally adjust their intake to account for larger, more caloric meals.

But food processors very carefully layer on fat-salt-sweet at levels that literally freak out our body's ability to gauge satiation and calorie content. "In the wild" this would be a good thing -- things that sweet or fatty are so vanishingly rare that we need to take advantage of them when we find them, and gorge ourselves. But "in the wild" it would be okay because we wouldn't have access to those foods very often or for very long...

"End of Overeating" and "Catchiing fire" also talk about how processing actually makes food more caloric -- heavily processed, finely chopped food is essentially "pre-chewed" and we actually extract more calories from it.

DebbieLyn63

Because we eat too much and move too little. And society continues to raise the limit of what is considered an acceptable weight.
Super-sized portions. Video games and computer usage. And the exorbitant amount of sugar and junk food they we consume every year. Doesn't take a lot of experts and testing to figure it out. Basically we have become a lazy society who wants immediate gratification and doesn't want to feel any discomfort or deny ourselves anything.

missjanetleigh

I think it's the foods we eat boxed etc. Dr. Oz is already showing where the labels on some foods are wrong. Then you top the stress of the economy, and all the above.

eric_sg61

Because we eat too much and move too little. .

/end thread

meaningful99

I think cable television and the internet contribute greatly. As recently as the early 80s most homes only had a few television channels and only nerds used computers. Now people have hundreds of channels and the vast, endless diversion of the web to keep their butts sitting down instead of moving around. As a result, we literally stay still for a much larger percentage of our time than we ever did before.

smantha32

I would guess:

1. food companies fudging portion sizes on their packaging.

2. fast food with no fiber and everything being supersized.

3. over consumption of processed sugar since it's added to absolutely everything now. only 40 years ago people consumed about 100 pounds of sugar a year now it's closer to 200 pounds.

4. laziness due to improvements in technology/sedentary lifestyles.

smantha32

I think cable television and the internet contribute greatly. As recently as the early 80s most homes only had a few television channels and only nerds used computers. Now people have hundreds of channels and the vast, endless diversion of the web to keep their butts sitting down instead of moving around. As a result, we literally stay still for a much larger percentage of our time than we ever did before.

yes.

benol1

The super-abundance of cheap energy-dense foods and the rise of a sedentary work culture and lifestyle.
I think it has a lot to do with it.

fitfreakymom

Because we eat too much and move too little. And society continues to raise the limit of what is considered an acceptable weight.
Super-sized portions. Video games and computer usage. And the exorbitant amount of sugar and junk food they we consume every year. Doesn't take a lot of experts and testing to figure it out. Basically we have become a lazy society who wants immediate gratification and doesn't want to feel any discomfort or deny ourselves anything.

this

WinnerVictorious

"they" are fattening us up so that we make more filling meals.

366to266

Waste of time thread.

You immediately cite the cause, announce that you stubbornly refuse to believe it, and then want people to waste their time thinking up a heap of wrong answers?

<sigh>

fitfreakymom

I think cable television and the internet contribute greatly. As recently as the early 80s most homes only had a few television channels and only nerds used computers. Now people have hundreds of channels and the vast, endless diversion of the web to keep their butts sitting down instead of moving around. As a result, we literally stay still for a much larger percentage of our time than we ever did before.

yes.

and this

bethira

http://littledutchwife.com/2013/02/20/new-york-times-nutritional-conspiracy-a-look-behind-the-scenes-at-the-trickery-employed-the-get-you-to-eat-cheetos/

Take this article for what it is, and I'm not saying it explains it all, but let's face it. Processed foods are yummy, convenient and designed to make us overeat. Would I rather eat an oreo or a homemade whoopee pie? The whoopee pie, or course, but that requires a lot of time and effort to create, where the oreo gives me the same basic concept by wandering to the cupboard and opening a bag. And then once that bag is open, it's really darned easy to just keep consuming ... and consuming ... and consuming.

Few would argue that the average American just doesn't exercise enough and eats too much, but the decks are stacked against us. Unless we are willing to walk away completely from every frozen dinner, fast food place and convenience food we have to learn to mix these foods with smart choices, and most people will not or cannot make those choices.

Just one fatty's opinion.

JipsyJudy

I think a lot of it has to do with the processed food industry. The advertising they do is a big part of it, but I also think it's addictive. If a person who has only eaten home grown, home cooked food all his life eats a Starbucks brownie or a packaged chocolate chip cookie he's probably going to want another one. And thus the domino sequence toward obesity begins for him. Also, the processed food industry is a big part of why we associate eating with happiness. We see that connection made all the time, in ads, and movies, in TV shows, and increasingly in novels! (There are entire classes in writers workshops on how to inject food and eating into your novel to keep your reader engaged in what the character is doing.) And finally the processed food industry has made us a world of grazers who eat all day long and in all circumstances.

I just started reading a book, recommended by a friend here, called The Thin Commandments. It has great insights into the phenomenon of food carvings and overeating. I'm only halfway through, and I'm already recommending it.

redheaddee

Because big macs taste good and exercise is hard :laugh:

Bizzeemamanj

"they" are fattening us up so that we make more filling meals.

Well...soylent green *is* people.

redheaddee

Or could be this...Taken at a local McDs (seriously, I took this picture myself.)

msleanlegs

I think part of the problem is our mindset as a society. There's too much peer pressure to eat junk and be lazy. Not saying there aren't people doing the right thing diet-wise out there, but I know with my own extended family and friends and neighbors, people think you're wasting time attempting to eat healthy and exercise. The junk food kills slowly enough that people will blame everything but their eating habits on whatever obesity-related disease they obtain. Or they'll find that one anomaly and say "See! He's been eating a dozen ding dongs a day for 30 years and his cholesterol is just fine." Anything to avoid facing the hard truth that eating junk and not exercising is like playing russian roulette with your health - except the bullets to blanks ratio has been reversed.

Duck_Puddle

Wait. So I got morbidly obese because of the antibiotics I took for 2 weeks of the last 20 years and not because I sat on my fat @ss eating 4k calories a day? Well thank god! For a minute I thought I got fat cause I ate too much and didn't exercise.

PS-obesity isn't a "worldwide" problem.