Obese Epidemic: Political, Economic and Scientific

[Aractus]

My personal opinion is that the problem is eating too many carbohydrates in combination with not moving enough.
That's what makes people fat, I think.

Yes, this is what the "food industry" has been telling people to believe: that people just "aren't moving enough" as opposed to "are over consuming our products".

Have you seen any peer-reviewed scientific literature showing that people are moving less than their weight-equivalent peers (parents) 20 or 30 years ago?

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I must be from another planet, because the question as stated in one of those doco's is why is anyone not overweight in a society geared towards overconsumption? Also, as Dr. Robert Lustig puts it, if you want to loose weight you are forcing your body to experience starvation. When you're hungry you eat, you get a release of dopamine and leptin. If you don't eat, your body experiences starvation as it converts body mass (typically fat or muscle) to energy. Most people don't want to endure that. Thus something like 80% of people who go the surgical rout for weight loss (gastric bypass, lap band) end up regaining some or all of the weight they lost.

David Elmore Smith (lost weight through training, not surgery - but he did have surgery to remove excess skin):

Weight Loss (2003-2009):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYr1cCBghFY

Weight Gain (2009-2012):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKFMpNjEvxc

Weight Loss (Dec. 2012-Apr 2014): 200lbs (as reported on his facebook page).[hide]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0dwm-Hu-0Y

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Anyway, Kichi, you can get fat over consuming any food it doesn't have to be sweets or snacks. Going to McDonald's and ordering a Big Mac is certainly healthier than ordering a Big Mac meal with fries and a coke. But McD's just like everywhere else want the up-sale and their menu is deliberately geared towards it. Having a few glasses of wine adds up as well - at about 130 calories a glass (small glass). So just two glasses of wine a day could equal 1/2 pound gain in fat over the course of a week.

Over consuming is great for business![/hide]

You seem to be missing the thrust of those videos you posted.

4 glasses of wine a day and I am losing weight!

go figure that out.

I was illustrating how the eating patterns are so engrained in our society, and the flow-on effect to individual patterns. So for example David Smith lost a lot of weight, and he achieved it through diet change far more than through his training which he emphasized more (because it would have been physically impossible for him to loose weight while consuming as much as he used to no matter how much exercise he did), and the point was even after doing this and looking in the mirror and seeing a hunky looking stud, and even becoming a trainer, he still struggled and then regained much of the weight. In the video I posted that's on his Youtube channel he talks about how he's now getting psychiatric help to deal with his eating problems, and he says that he wishes he had that help years ago (ie the first time round).

There are plenty of other examples - the winner of the USA's original Biggest Loser series ended up regaining most of his original weight - not surprising considering that the show had (and still has) a very unhealthy approach to weight loss and doesn't address the reason the contestants gained weight in the first place. It replaces one horrible, unhealthy and unbalanced lifestyle with another.

They take a long time to say very little IMHO.

Mass produced corn > corn syrup > pretty much all that's in fast food
Sugar/fructose > worse than fat
Food industry denial and propaganda

Research has shown that Fructose, like Ethanol, is metabolized only in the liver (this encourages visceral fat production). It's a little strange that he keeps calling HFCS "Corn Syrup", really he could just call it "Corn Sugar" after all we all understand that "Cane Sugar" is not the original sugar cane, it too has been processed. His graphic showing that Fructose gets converted to fat is wrong - it's over simplified, a fat cell contains stored triglycerides, and sugar (glucose) contributes something like 1/3rd of the molecule. So it's true that sugar is used to build fat, but it's not true that it can be converted straight to fat.

Of course the food industry exists to make money.

Yes and for the record I'm not saying that's a problem. The availability of cheap food and a reliable food source with a competitive environment is good for consumers.

Did you see the program mention that the epidemic is also in the developing world?

No, but other studies have been done on the introduction of snack foods into India, China and the like and the effect it's had on changing eating habits and also its contribution to obesity. However, they've been given it because of the success of those products in the USA, the UK, Australia etc just like how we get the technology that first gets tested in Japan (Japan for instance got the DVD format in 1995, two years before the USA and four years before Australia).