"... Could Be Linked to Obesity..."
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I wrote that ^ the app screwed somethin up I think.0
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lemurcat12 wrote: »goldthistime wrote: »rankinsect wrote: »
Well, the fact that for thousands of years, we were hunter-gatherers and then laboured in the fields and then laboured in the factories might have something to do with it. For most of human history, we were very active, and we didn't have enough food. So we became very efficient at using energy.
Evolution hasn't caught up to the 21st century internet age, where we do everything at the touch of a smartphone and sit on our butts at a desk for 8, 10, 15 hours a day, and where we have access to all the food we could possibly want. Our bodies weren't designed for that.
That's certainly true and doubtlessly plays some part, but there's likely more to it - the baby boomers had sedentary lifestyles and availability of lots of calories yet much lower obesity rates compared to today. Each generation of the past four is significantly more obese than the preceding generation, without that significant of lifestyle changes.
Baby boomers were sedentary as adults, yes, but much more active as kids. No video games, cartoons were only on tv Saturday mornings.
When I was a kid it was more like "go outside and play."
Play where? My local park area at the end of my street used to have monkey bars, slippery dips, etc
It was ripped out and replaced with one of those swing things with the pole in the middle.
Like a seesaw crossed with a swing set.
That's basically my same point about how things have changed. It's also why I mentioned that the parents I know often have to schedule physical activity for their kids and that it varies neighborhood to neighborhood.0 -
goldthistime wrote: »rankinsect wrote: »
Well, the fact that for thousands of years, we were hunter-gatherers and then laboured in the fields and then laboured in the factories might have something to do with it. For most of human history, we were very active, and we didn't have enough food. So we became very efficient at using energy.
Evolution hasn't caught up to the 21st century internet age, where we do everything at the touch of a smartphone and sit on our butts at a desk for 8, 10, 15 hours a day, and where we have access to all the food we could possibly want. Our bodies weren't designed for that.
That's certainly true and doubtlessly plays some part, but there's likely more to it - the baby boomers had sedentary lifestyles and availability of lots of calories yet much lower obesity rates compared to today. Each generation of the past four is significantly more obese than the preceding generation, without that significant of lifestyle changes.
Baby boomers were sedentary as adults, yes, but much more active as kids. No video games, cartoons were only on tv Saturday mornings.
Also, less air conditioning, TV's had dials and buttons you actually had to get up to change, power steering?!? What else?
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lemurcat12 wrote: »Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »Kimegatron wrote: »It just really seems... like a far stretch. Is everything just going to be linked now?
6 Degrees of Obesity.
Now instead of Kevin Bacon, they all just end in bacon.
Am listening to "Footloose" right now, actually. Does this count as being linked?
Ban dancing, and all the kids get obese.
Have you seen Kevin Bacon's male side kick from "Footloose"? He stopped dancing and look at him now.0 -
Yeah, I'm Generation... um, Generation No-Man's-Land-between-X-and-Y... and we spent our childhood outside playing in the street. When it got dark it was time to come inside. When we got a little older we'd hop on our bikes and go around the neighbourhood, and end up at whoever's house was closest for dinner. Nobody had cell phones. The rule was you had to phone if you were going to be elsewhere for dinner, other than that it was just assumed you were fine. We didn't have any video games, and the computer was strictly for homework.
I compare that to my friends' kids, and even the active ones don't have that much freedom or that much time to play. Their activity is more scheduled, and there always needs to be a parent supervising the kids at the park or whatever, or else someone might call the cops. We went to the park and played all the time and nobody would have thought twice about there not being an adult around.
This was me, as well, except we started having video games in earnest when I was in middle school. I'll admit I didn't go outside to play with the neighborhood kids much, mainly because they were mean, but there were often kids running around, playing various games or swimming during the summer. I did martial arts after school, though, to make up for the inactivity.
Then N64 came out and the Sims, and slowly around the neighborhood became more sedentary as a whole.0 -
I had friends who had video games as kids or teenagers. We didn't though. We were early adopters with the computer, but we mostly used it for homework or other things my parents deemed "educational".
Sure, by my mid-teens we got the internet, and by college I spent most of my time shut in my room on the computer. But before that? Lots of running around.0 -
_Terrapin_ wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »Kimegatron wrote: »It just really seems... like a far stretch. Is everything just going to be linked now?
6 Degrees of Obesity.
Now instead of Kevin Bacon, they all just end in bacon.
Am listening to "Footloose" right now, actually. Does this count as being linked?
Ban dancing, and all the kids get obese.
Have you seen Kevin Bacon's male side kick from "Footloose"? He stopped dancing and look at him now.
Didn't he die?0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »_Terrapin_ wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »Kimegatron wrote: »It just really seems... like a far stretch. Is everything just going to be linked now?
6 Degrees of Obesity.
Now instead of Kevin Bacon, they all just end in bacon.
Am listening to "Footloose" right now, actually. Does this count as being linked?
Ban dancing, and all the kids get obese.
Have you seen Kevin Bacon's male side kick from "Footloose"? He stopped dancing and look at him now.
Didn't he die?
Ouch...IDK. He was on a drama series in the last decade. A detective?!?
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_Terrapin_ wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »_Terrapin_ wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »Kimegatron wrote: »It just really seems... like a far stretch. Is everything just going to be linked now?
6 Degrees of Obesity.
Now instead of Kevin Bacon, they all just end in bacon.
Am listening to "Footloose" right now, actually. Does this count as being linked?
Ban dancing, and all the kids get obese.
Have you seen Kevin Bacon's male side kick from "Footloose"? He stopped dancing and look at him now.
Didn't he die?
Ouch...IDK. He was on a drama series in the last decade. A detective?!?
Ugh...yep....2006.
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Yeah, I'm Generation... um, Generation No-Man's-Land-between-X-and-Y... and we spent our childhood outside playing in the street. When it got dark it was time to come inside. When we got a little older we'd hop on our bikes and go around the neighbourhood, and end up at whoever's house was closest for dinner. Nobody had cell phones. The rule was you had to phone if you were going to be elsewhere for dinner, other than that it was just assumed you were fine. We didn't have any video games, and the computer was strictly for homework.
I compare that to my friends' kids, and even the active ones don't have that much freedom or that much time to play. Their activity is more scheduled, and there always needs to be a parent supervising the kids at the park or whatever, or else someone might call the cops. We went to the park and played all the time and nobody would have thought twice about there not being an adult around.
This was me, as well, except we started having video games in earnest when I was in middle school. I'll admit I didn't go outside to play with the neighborhood kids much, mainly because they were mean, but there were often kids running around, playing various games or swimming during the summer. I did martial arts after school, though, to make up for the inactivity.
Then N64 came out and the Sims, and slowly around the neighborhood became more sedentary as a whole.
I played 500 as a kid. Anyone else?0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »_Terrapin_ wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »Kimegatron wrote: »It just really seems... like a far stretch. Is everything just going to be linked now?
6 Degrees of Obesity.
Now instead of Kevin Bacon, they all just end in bacon.
Am listening to "Footloose" right now, actually. Does this count as being linked?
Ban dancing, and all the kids get obese.
Have you seen Kevin Bacon's male side kick from "Footloose"? He stopped dancing and look at him now.
Didn't he die?
If you watch Hollow Man, you can see his penis...
Just saying. Awesome Crichton book. Why they had to insert Bacon's penis, I dont know. But it's there...0 -
RockstarWilson wrote: »If a person eats right for their physical output, he/she will never become overweight/obese, or have most these diseases that are linked to something.
I eat tons of fatty meats, tons of coffee, have had tons of fast food, and I am on the upper end of overweight...I don't have one disease, or take one gosh damn pill. My cholesterol levels are better than 90% of "healthy" people.
The difference is...I move my *kitten*. So long as you move, your body knows what to do. Its Darwinian. Like a person said before me here: our bodies haven't evolved to handle unlimited food source with less energy expenditure.
My body certainly doesn't "know what to do", and I've never been sedentary. I was one of the kids who was out of the house all day, biking around the city, and back for dinner, and even as a kid, I was significantly overweight, becoming obese as a teenager. Apart from times I spent recuperating from injuries, I've always been fond of walking, averaging somewhere from 5-15 hours a week depending on the time in my life, and I regularly do a lot of outdoorsy things like hiking, skiing, etc. And without calorie counting, I don't just end up obese, I end up quite morbidly obese.
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DeguelloTex wrote: »
My kids' activity is not remotely like mine was at their age.rankinsect wrote: »
Well, the fact that for thousands of years, we were hunter-gatherers and then laboured in the fields and then laboured in the factories might have something to do with it. For most of human history, we were very active, and we didn't have enough food. So we became very efficient at using energy.
Evolution hasn't caught up to the 21st century internet age, where we do everything at the touch of a smartphone and sit on our butts at a desk for 8, 10, 15 hours a day, and where we have access to all the food we could possibly want. Our bodies weren't designed for that.
That's certainly true and doubtlessly plays some part, but there's likely more to it - the baby boomers had sedentary lifestyles and availability of lots of calories yet much lower obesity rates compared to today. Each generation of the past four is significantly more obese than the preceding generation, without that significant of lifestyle changes.
I left the house after breakfast and came back when the streetlights came on. They move, but nothing like that.
ya know how you can't out exercise a bad diet?, activity is pretty irrelevant -it is all in the food choices - quality & quantity.
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ya know how you can't out exercise a bad diet?, activity is pretty irrelevant -it is all in the food choices - quality & quantity.
True. But the original question was about why there's more obesity now than there was 30, 40, 60, 100 years ago. And it's because overall as a society, we eat more and move less than we did back then.0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »goldthistime wrote: »rankinsect wrote: »
Well, the fact that for thousands of years, we were hunter-gatherers and then laboured in the fields and then laboured in the factories might have something to do with it. For most of human history, we were very active, and we didn't have enough food. So we became very efficient at using energy.
Evolution hasn't caught up to the 21st century internet age, where we do everything at the touch of a smartphone and sit on our butts at a desk for 8, 10, 15 hours a day, and where we have access to all the food we could possibly want. Our bodies weren't designed for that.
That's certainly true and doubtlessly plays some part, but there's likely more to it - the baby boomers had sedentary lifestyles and availability of lots of calories yet much lower obesity rates compared to today. Each generation of the past four is significantly more obese than the preceding generation, without that significant of lifestyle changes.
Baby boomers were sedentary as adults, yes, but much more active as kids. No video games, cartoons were only on tv Saturday mornings.
Even Gen X. The vast majority of my childhood involved lots and lots of outdoor play and rules about TV watching.
The same is often true of my friends' children, as they make time to take them to all kinds of activities that involve physical activity, but it seems like that's a lot more work today (and likely not the case in all neighborhoods or with less advantaged parents). When I was a kid it was more like "go outside and play."DeguelloTex wrote: »
My kids' activity is not remotely like mine was at their age.rankinsect wrote: »
Well, the fact that for thousands of years, we were hunter-gatherers and then laboured in the fields and then laboured in the factories might have something to do with it. For most of human history, we were very active, and we didn't have enough food. So we became very efficient at using energy.
Evolution hasn't caught up to the 21st century internet age, where we do everything at the touch of a smartphone and sit on our butts at a desk for 8, 10, 15 hours a day, and where we have access to all the food we could possibly want. Our bodies weren't designed for that.
That's certainly true and doubtlessly plays some part, but there's likely more to it - the baby boomers had sedentary lifestyles and availability of lots of calories yet much lower obesity rates compared to today. Each generation of the past four is significantly more obese than the preceding generation, without that significant of lifestyle changes.
I left the house after breakfast and came back when the streetlights came on. They move, but nothing like that.
ya know how you can't out exercise a bad diet?, activity is pretty irrelevant -it is all in the food choices - quality & quantity.
I don't think exercise is irrelevant. For one, if you look at the stats on people who keep their weight off long term, you will see that most of them exercise.
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Insulin is a hormone. We are and have been exposed to many modern day hormone disrupters. It's not that big of a stretch.0
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It's the main fact that this generation now and before, does not do much physical work as in the past. And a long time ago, there wasn't such things as ho-hos and twinkies. Loaded with fat and calories, and everything else. Give that to people who don't move much, add about 5 more for the rest of the day, and repeat. People gain weight, people become obese.
Nowadays obesity is becoming "linked" to the obese parents. Giving the children the problems they have.
In my teens, there wasn't much food in our house, and I was active on our little farm. I had chores to do, horse back riding and walking to my friends place. Because internet "dial-up" wasn't something we could afford. Not even a "cellular phone". And only three channels on the tv.
So most my time was spent outside.
Got married, stopped moving around like I did. Had a car and internet and a cell, so everything was at my fingertips. Ate a lot of junk food and I was on borderline of obesity myself.
And I'm noticing a lot now, parents are letting there children be sucked into their phones because they're not bugging the parents. Working in a retail store, I see who knows how many children that are sitting in the shopping cart and completely engrossed with their phones while their parents shop.0 -
goldthistime wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »goldthistime wrote: »rankinsect wrote: »
Well, the fact that for thousands of years, we were hunter-gatherers and then laboured in the fields and then laboured in the factories might have something to do with it. For most of human history, we were very active, and we didn't have enough food. So we became very efficient at using energy.
Evolution hasn't caught up to the 21st century internet age, where we do everything at the touch of a smartphone and sit on our butts at a desk for 8, 10, 15 hours a day, and where we have access to all the food we could possibly want. Our bodies weren't designed for that.
That's certainly true and doubtlessly plays some part, but there's likely more to it - the baby boomers had sedentary lifestyles and availability of lots of calories yet much lower obesity rates compared to today. Each generation of the past four is significantly more obese than the preceding generation, without that significant of lifestyle changes.
Baby boomers were sedentary as adults, yes, but much more active as kids. No video games, cartoons were only on tv Saturday mornings.
Even Gen X. The vast majority of my childhood involved lots and lots of outdoor play and rules about TV watching.
The same is often true of my friends' children, as they make time to take them to all kinds of activities that involve physical activity, but it seems like that's a lot more work today (and likely not the case in all neighborhoods or with less advantaged parents). When I was a kid it was more like "go outside and play."DeguelloTex wrote: »
My kids' activity is not remotely like mine was at their age.rankinsect wrote: »
Well, the fact that for thousands of years, we were hunter-gatherers and then laboured in the fields and then laboured in the factories might have something to do with it. For most of human history, we were very active, and we didn't have enough food. So we became very efficient at using energy.
Evolution hasn't caught up to the 21st century internet age, where we do everything at the touch of a smartphone and sit on our butts at a desk for 8, 10, 15 hours a day, and where we have access to all the food we could possibly want. Our bodies weren't designed for that.
That's certainly true and doubtlessly plays some part, but there's likely more to it - the baby boomers had sedentary lifestyles and availability of lots of calories yet much lower obesity rates compared to today. Each generation of the past four is significantly more obese than the preceding generation, without that significant of lifestyle changes.
I left the house after breakfast and came back when the streetlights came on. They move, but nothing like that.
ya know how you can't out exercise a bad diet?, activity is pretty irrelevant -it is all in the food choices - quality & quantity.
I don't think exercise is irrelevant. For one, if you look at the stats on people who keep their weight off long term, you will see that most of them exercise.
I am living evidence that you can out-exercise a "bad" diet. Every food is a fuel source, bottom line. And the ONLY way for the body to metabolize that fuel properly is through physical activity. Of course..."bad" is subjective. I eat a diet most wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.
We are engineered like dogs. Dogs naturally want to run. When they are confined to the house all the time, they usually get fat (Chihuahuas are an exception, those little rat dogs).
I live with a 34 year old obese man who has a severe case of gout. That is paired with high blood pressure, and he is pre-diabetic. He can barely walk at 34. He told me that he has never watched what he ate, and hardly ever exercised. Two weeks ago, he went to the ER after eating a food he couldn't, asparagus. That woke him up.
Now, he is taking walks between flare ups, he is making his own meals, learning about how he got into this condition, and tracking his calories trying to lose weight.
He got this way because his energy expenditure was not only inadequate for weight maintenance, but for nutrient processing as well. If the blood doesn't flow fast enough, it cant get things where they need to be in a timely manner (namely, before the next meal). His consumption of sugary foods caused his knee to develop crystals that create intense pain to the joints those crystals are in.
Bottom line...there are no absolutes here. It is an interconnected web of Darwinian goodness. You need to eat less to lose weight, but you also need to exercise to offset the lack of expenditure vs intake (or hunger?). You need good nutrition to provide essential minerals, but your body can only use these minerals if the process is expedited enough. And the fuel your body takes in can only be applied to the right places (ie sugars oxidized as glucose instead of stored as ATP) if you allot enough physical activity to do so (increasing blood flow). If you do not, you store it for winter...or a flood, or whatever it is people save fat for.
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This thread is hilarious.Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »Kimegatron wrote: »It just really seems... like a far stretch. Is everything just going to be linked now?
6 Degrees of Obesity.
Now instead of Kevin Bacon, they all just end in bacon.
The three factors cited in the OP would have very weak correlations, if any, as opposed to say the increase in portion sizes, or high fructose corn syrup, or (most significantly) behavioural changes such as exercising less whilst eating more.
Magazines cite "studies" all the time without referencing them, because they're taking things out of context, making convenient claims, and selling the story. People who write magazine articles often don't understand the science behind the articles. Basically, take it all with a huge grain of salt and keep logging!
The best thing we can do for our kids is be good role models, and be aware of creating issues for them around food/body image etc.
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Two threads a few days back were on obesity and pollutants, sorry, was going off of that, since this topic seemed so open ended.0 -
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_Terrapin_ wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »Kimegatron wrote: »It just really seems... like a far stretch. Is everything just going to be linked now?
6 Degrees of Obesity.
Now instead of Kevin Bacon, they all just end in bacon.
Am listening to "Footloose" right now, actually. Does this count as being linked?
Ban dancing, and all the kids get obese.
Have you seen Kevin Bacon's male side kick from "Footloose"? He stopped dancing and look at him now.
Chris Penn died in 2006 at the age of 40. He was apparently 300 lbs. at the time of his death.0 -
Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »Kimegatron wrote: »It just really seems... like a far stretch. Is everything just going to be linked now?
6 Degrees of Obesity.
Now instead of Kevin Bacon, they all just end in bacon.
You need to post more
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They say linked because if magazines published "factor X correlates with obesity with a p-value of Y", there would be a serious negative correlation in magazine sales and positive correlation with eyes glazing over.
Saying government is the cause of all the worlds ills is an extreme golden hammer fallacy that is looking for order in something where there will be none. Some issues require systems solutions, so cannot be addressed as system. Deal with the far scarier prospect that bad things happen for no reason at all sometimes and that no one is totally in control.
You can't outrun your diet, but it is pretty hard to eat while running. The thing about activity is it probably puts humans closer to the conditions they evolved their satiety levels in - time spent without access food limiting the amount of time spendable consuming food, while moving generating a higher baseline of food (calories) expended. You can look at National Weight Control Registry's James Hill discuss similar in https://youtube.com/watch?v=8kNcaESoDng
Obesity isn't something people are going to really evolve out of. Evolution works on problems that affect reproductive success. The issues of obesity usually start affecting quality of life after a person's reached an age where reproduction is often over. Most of the developed world is generally living fairly free of evolutionary pressure of any kind - probably the most serious pressure on modern first world people is still disease resistance.0 -
Let's see... I'm maintaining at 3700. My BMR is right around 2100. What would happen if I kept eating 3700 but stopped the exercise? Oh, yeah, I'd be obese again in relatively short order.DeguelloTex wrote: »
My kids' activity is not remotely like mine was at their age.rankinsect wrote: »
Well, the fact that for thousands of years, we were hunter-gatherers and then laboured in the fields and then laboured in the factories might have something to do with it. For most of human history, we were very active, and we didn't have enough food. So we became very efficient at using energy.
Evolution hasn't caught up to the 21st century internet age, where we do everything at the touch of a smartphone and sit on our butts at a desk for 8, 10, 15 hours a day, and where we have access to all the food we could possibly want. Our bodies weren't designed for that.
That's certainly true and doubtlessly plays some part, but there's likely more to it - the baby boomers had sedentary lifestyles and availability of lots of calories yet much lower obesity rates compared to today. Each generation of the past four is significantly more obese than the preceding generation, without that significant of lifestyle changes.
I left the house after breakfast and came back when the streetlights came on. They move, but nothing like that.
ya know how you can't out exercise a bad diet?, activity is pretty irrelevant -it is all in the food choices - quality & quantity.
1600 extra calories a day, less what I'd burn slouching around the house, is nothing like irrelevant.
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Analogy of how these things spiral out of control.
Someone (apparently someone new to planet earth) notices that some days more people carry umbrellas than other days. After observing this for a while, they note that on the days more people are carrying umbrellas, it tends to rain more.
They hire some scientific think tank to perform a study. The results confirm their observation - People carrying umbrellas is linked to a higher chance of precipitation that day.
Men's Health headline: Want to cause rain? Just carry an umbrella to work!!!
MFP Poster: I read a study that I can cause rain by carrying an umbrella to work. Would it work better if I carried 4 umbrellas to the grocery store?
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ya know how you can't out exercise a bad diet?, activity is pretty irrelevant -it is all in the food choices - quality & quantity.
True. But the original question was about why there's more obesity now than there was 30, 40, 60, 100 years ago. And it's because overall as a society, we eat more and move less than we did back then.
Yes. And daily activity certainly does matter.0 -
juggernaut1974 wrote: »Analogy of how these things spiral out of control.
Someone (apparently someone new to planet earth) notices that some days more people carry umbrellas than other days. After observing this for a while, they note that on the days more people are carrying umbrellas, it tends to rain more.
They hire some scientific think tank to perform a study. The results confirm their observation - People carrying umbrellas is linked to a higher chance of precipitation that day.
Men's Health headline: Want to cause rain? Just carry an umbrella to work!!!
MFP Poster: I read a study that I can cause rain by carrying an umbrella to work. Would it work better if I carried 4 umbrellas to the grocery store?
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This discussion has been closed.
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