Obese Epidemic: Political, Economic and Scientific

[Aractus]

Have you watched the Catalyst program on cholesterol yet Daniel?

No I haven't, but 1. here's a link to it so that the other forum members can also view it and 2. I am aware as you know that blood cholesterol is not directly determined by the amount of cholesterol in the diet, however it can be affected (for the better or the worse) by diet. And 3. I did however watch the "Men Who Made Us Thin" videos, and here's another one in the same style:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAQr77QMJiw

But a bit more to do with science then "men who made us thin". The problem with that series is the extremes they take - so for instance they do attack Weight Watchers, which is one of the best commercial weightloss systems available, on the basis that it "doesn't work" long-term for very many people. They also mentioned a study done in the 50's (did I get that right?) where men were restricted to 1500 calories a day for 6 months - in a windowless basement environment where they were also forced to exercise the amount that the researches wanted - that study would have absolutely no credibility for making any conclusions on the effect of restrictive diets, and I'm surprised they brought it up. I mean it's just silly - if you deprive people of being in the general community, if you isolate them in a basement, and if you force them to exercise too much, etc, all of that is going to have an effect on their mental health, and to then make any claims that it's got anything to do with eating 1500 calories a day, you'd have to have a control group - which they didn't have. Yet that study is what they use to "prove" that diets "can't work".

All in all I wasn't overly impressed in that series, since they take such extremes. While the 16% figure is lower than I would have expected, as I already said, by the same logic you'd have to say nicotine patches are "snake oil". To compare Weight Watchers to Kevin Trudeau is ludicrous - Trudeau has been gaoled, sentenced to 10 years due to his diet con, WW has a healthy approach and educates the participants on nutrition so that even those who leave the program and saw absolutely no weight loss have nevertheless been educated on nutrition. You can't call education a con, that's ridiculous. There are many diets out there that are actually very dangerous - you know this Kichi, even a vegan diet can be dangerous for some people. You could say it's not good value, that may have some merit, but you have to compare it to other systems available to make a conclusion like that and WW generally ranks fairly well against others (link).

Now that I cut through all that bullshit I'll let you know about what I did find positive in that series. They did talk about the science of exercise and that people who work out at the gym, while their workouts do burn calories, are not usually burning "extra calories" and thus it's good for fitness but may not be helpful for weight-loss. Although, and here's the thing I don't think they acknowledged, building muscle is great for burning extra calories. They also talked about a virus that can cause people to get overweight, which I also found interesting.

Also, you can burn extra calories, as they mentioned, if you're prepared to exercise for 90 minutes 5-6 times a week.

In the video I posted above, at 30mins in they give children plates of chocolate-covered snacks after they already had a meal and found that they behaved consistent with a gene that predetermines whether you "want" to eat while you're already full. This reinforces current recommendation for healthy eating for people that want to loose weight: don't keep snacks in the home, or at your workplace, keep fresh fruit instead and when you feel like snacking just have fresh fruit.

They also found that extra calories affects different people differently - some people gain weight faster than others will.

At 45 minutes in they claim that the body "always wants to return to its pre-determined weight" - well that claim is nonsense. I mean it has some validity, but to make such a black-and-white extreme claim is ludicrous. I posted the videos of David Elmore Smith - he weighed 650 lbs, and then he lost most of his weight and got down to 220 lbs or something. According to their claim he would balloon back to the same size because he still has every fat cell. Well he had surgery given to him (and this proves why excess skin removal surgery shouldn't be given to people until they've proven they can keep the weight off), and as such much of that extra fat was cut off him with the skin and gone forever. Yet he still returned to 600 lbs (before dieting and he's now at 400 lbs). According to their theory that should have been impossible because much of the extra fat is gone - forever - it was cut out of him. So his returning to 600 lbs proves it wasn't caused by him having those extra fat cells as per their theory.