The Mathematics of Obesity 655
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Carson C. Chow, an MIT-trained mathematician and physicist, has taken a new look at America's obesity epidemic and found that a food glut is behind America's weight problem, with the national obesity rate jumping from 20 percent to over 30 percent since 1970. 'Beginning in the 1970s, there was a change in national agricultural policy. Instead of the government paying farmers not to engage in full production, as was the practice, they were encouraged to grow as much food as they could,' says Chow. 'With such a huge food supply, food marketing got better and restaurants got cheaper. The low cost of food fueled the growth of the fast-food industry. If food were expensive, you couldn't have fast food.' Chow and mathematical physiologist Kevin Hall created a mathematical model of a human with hundreds of equations, boiled it down to one simple equation, and then plugged in all the variables — height, weight, food intake, exercise. The slimmed-down equation proved to be a useful platform for answering a host of questions. For example, huge variations in your daily food intake will not cause variations in weight, as long as your average food intake over a year is about the same. Unfortunately, another finding is that weight change, up or down, takes a very, very long time. Chow has posted an interactive version of the model on the web where people can plug in their information and learn how much they'll need to reduce their intake and increase their activity to lose."
Fruit is the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Fruit is the problem - it's full of sugar. I suppose low-sugar fruits are OK then.
Processed sugar is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Fruit isn't so bad, because it has fiber -- this keeps part of the sugar in your bowls, until it gets refined by bacteria and farted. Plus you need the vitamin. Fruit juice is another story: might as well drink beer.
Some videos on sugar from the UC:
http://www.uctv.tv/skinny-on-obesity/ [www.uctv.tv]
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In that case, just eat legumes - all the fiber (more, actually) with none of the sugar.
Re:Junk food is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a copy of The China Study (Score:5, Informative)
Other factors factored in, like activity, Campbell found surprisingly that many Chinese actually consume about 30% more calories than Americans, yet they had incredibly less overweight people. Again, he didn't compare a sedentary American to a field worker in China, he compared them to an office worker in China to make it fair.
So it wasn't just calories, it is the types of food. Processed foods and animal foods are to blame. China actually proves to be an excellent place to study because they have a wide range of groups that live the same way, eat the same way, and live in the same place most of their lives. Campbell found that the more animal foods and processed foods they ate, the more disease and obesity the had. This isn't just junk science, either. You can do the research for yourself. As third world countries get wealthier and adopt a western-style diet, they also adopt western disease rates and obesity. It is not just their genes. If they move here and start eating like us, they get our diseases at the same rates (or higher). There is nothing special about these people other than their diets.
Our diets combined with our lifestyles are killing us here...and if you want to cut your chances of cancer, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses down, the solution is simple. All you have to do is eat like you live in a 3rd world country. Less animal products and processed foods, more whole foods. It's that simple.
I do disagree with Campbell that you *have* to become a vegetarian. They do eat meat in China, just way less of it. But his studies on people that reversed massive heart disease just by becoming vegetarians is fairly impressive.
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It's exercise. Most importantly personal cars. When I lived in NYC 15 years ago, I very rarely saw fat people on the street.
Seriously, sitting in the car is worse than sitting in the office.
One day we all eventually move to a megalopolis of 3B people and there will be no obese people.
Re:Get a copy of The China Study (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know whether it is true whether Chinese eat more calories (I'd be sceptical). From trips to the north of China I've noticed their food is quite different to western food. Chinese there do not eat highly-refined foods as much as we do. Indeed, there is very little sugar in their foods. Their meals have substantial amounts of fresh vegetables, which tend to be cooked more lightly than over here. The most refined things they eat are the dough of their breakfast buns and pancakes, and of their dumpling & won-ton skins! When they snack, they seem to snack mostly on fresh fruit and nuts.
The calorific content stated for foods here is determined by burning up the food-stuff. I.e. it determines more the /maximal/ energy content. However, our bodies efficiency at digesting food is not uniform. Fibreous and/or more whole foods are literally harder to digest than more refined foods - it literally takes more energy to break such foods down than the more refined foods. Some of that energy goes toward the extra bacteria that are required to pre-process and break-down the extra fibre. Some of that food will literally go undigested, and through us.
Not all calories are equal.
Re:Get a copy of The China Study (Score:4, Interesting)
The Chinese have been exposed to agricultural foods the longest of any contiguous culture. Asians are more resistant to toxins (ie cancer rates for smokers significantly lower) than other races. I think that their isn't anything special about what they eat, they are just better adapted to a cheap carbohydrate (rice) diet.
Re:Get a copy of The China Study (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the same info from the Lancet. Per wikipedia, the Lancet is "one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals."
Cross off cancer here and insert diabetes, or obesity. If you bothered to do your own research, I guarantee you could could not just dismiss this as bullshit.
From the Lancet:
"In many [western] countries, peoples' diet changed substantially in the second half of the twentieth century, generally with increases in consumption of meat, dairy products, vegetable oils, fruit juice, and alcoholic beverages, and decreases in consumption of starchy staple foods such as bread, potatoes, rice, and maize flour. Other aspects of lifestyle also changed, notably, large reductions in physical activity and large increases in the prevalence of obesity."[18]
"It was noted in the 1970s that people in many western countries had diets high in animal products, fat, and sugar, and high rates of cancers of the colorectum, breast, prostate, endometrium, and lung; by contrast, individuals in developing countries usually had diets that were based on one or two starchy staple foods, with low intakes of animal products, fat, and sugar, and low rates of these cancers."[18]
"These observations suggest that the diets [or lifestyle] of different populations might partly determine their rates of cancer, and the basis for this hypothesis was strengthened by results of studies showing that people who migrate from one country to another generally acquire the cancer rates of the new host country, suggesting that environmental [or lifestyle factors] rather than genetic factors are the key determinants of the international variation in cancer rates."[18]
Re:Get a copy of The China Study (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm living in China and I've lost a considerable amount of weight. It has little to do with diet. They eat substantially more fat and oil as a part of their diet than Americans do. But what they do do is exercise and a lot more of it. In the months I've been in China I've only ridden in an elevator one round trip. Not because I was avoiding them, but because I haven't seen them. My apartment up north required me to walk up and down 4 flights of stairs every time I left to go to work or really anywhere.
If I want to go somewhere, chances are good I have to walk.
What's more, the Chinese government provides free fitness equipment for people to use, and people do use it fairly regularly.
The suggestion that it's got something to do with diet is specious. They burn the calories they eat, and nothing more.
Re:Get a copy of The China Study (Score:4, Interesting)
An honest question: Is smoking part of it? From what I've seen, a huge percentage of people in China smoke quite a bit. Obviously, this is hard on the lungs and heart in the longer term, but in the short term, it does burn more calories and tends to make people thinner. So are people healthier or do they just "look" healthier?
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If they're talking about the U.S., that last part is exactly backwards. Our consumption of starchy staple foods has gone way, way up. Almost nobody eats a burger without fried pota
Re:Get a copy of The China Study (Score:5, Informative)
To avoid the "appeal to unnamed authorities" fallacy, here's a specific person (Denise Minger) who specifically tore the China Study to pieces, and has graciously put up her formal critique, including references, here:
http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/08/03/the-china-study-a-formal-analysis-and-response/ [rawfoodsos.com]
tl;dr - the China Study ignored data that didn't support their basic conceit, and exaggerated data that did.
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First of all, we've known cheap calories were the problem for at least 20 years. For most of the world, and most of human history, one of the most vital statistics economists measure is calories-per-person. When you graph things like that against, say, economic freedom, there's a clear, strong relationship.
So one would expect our society to have the most calories per person.
However...we are also very sedentary, which we weren't in the past. So one could also argue we just don't move enough, which is to s
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The problem is that some people can tolerate carbohydrate toxicity, and others cannot. We all know that guy who does nothing but chug down sodas, sit on the couch playing xbox, and scarfs down pizza and pop tarts all day without gaining a pound. That guy doesn't have insulin resistance.
All those fat people you see at the mall? They've got insulin resistance, and their carbohydrate intake is what is driving their obesity.
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It depends.
Some people can handle a post-agricultural diet just fine. Others can't. You just have figure out what works best for you and ignore all of the stupid propaganda that assumes we're all the same.
We're not all the same. Contradictory anecdotes are to be expected.
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Want to find the fattest people in america? they all have two things in common.
1 - they eat fast food constantly.
2 - when they are not eating fast food, they are eating pre-processed food like TV dinners, or other ready to eat foods.
I have yet to find any obese people that are eating fresh fruits and veggies. The crap in cans does not count as that all has added salt and sugar.
It's simple. eat only fresh meat, veggies and fruits. But you have to prepare it yourself, or it must come from a restaurant
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I think you are just looking at a selective sample. My wife and son have health issues, so nearly everything we eat is home-cooked from fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats. I'm still pretty large.
Re:Junk food is the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
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The reason that I, personally, discount the "differing metabolism" argument is because most of the people I hear it from are the sort of excuse-making fat losers who live on steady diets of pizza and potato chips, or who insist on drinking most of a gallon of milk per day even though they can see in the mirror that their metabolism does not support that sort of behavior.
Re:Junk food is the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
To lose weight you have to consume fewer calories or burn more of them. Which makes it sound easy, which it is not.
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I'm in a similar boat - not morbidly obese, but I could safely lose 100 pounds. I've found that just using smaller plates help. The difference between an 8" and 12" plate doesn't sound like much, but it gives you more opportunities to evaluate your intake. When you're done with one serving, you can take a minute to decide if you really need to go back for more or if you've been eating larger servings because it was already on your plate. No need to starve yourself or make drastic changes to the foods yo
Re:Junk food is the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Eating less is quite difficult when you end up spending 3/4 of your day trying to ignore gnawing hunger.
Re:Junk food is the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? I spent a bit of time in the USA, in a variety of states, and I didn't find anywhere where it would have been difficult to afford to live on food cooked from fresh ingredients spending only a few dollars a day. Cooking a meal for a family would cost a lot less than taking them all to McDonald's.
I don't know where this idea that fresh fruit and vegetables are expensive comes from. They're the cheapest way of getting food, as long as you have time to cook (and 10-20 minutes a day is enough for that if you don't do anything too complicated).
Re:Junk food is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Cooking a meal for a family would cost a lot less than taking them all to McDonald's.
I don't know where this idea that fresh fruit and vegetables are expensive comes from. They're the cheapest way of getting food, as long as you have time to cook (and 10-20 minutes a day is enough for that if you don't do anything too complicated).
This is one of the most annoying and common fallacies in this whole discussion.
Did you grow up in a house in the suburbs, with a functioning kitchen, at least one parent working only 9-5 and a real grocery store within walking/car/bus distance? Congratulations, you had a better food situation growing up than 60% of people in the united states.
I have a nice house in the suburbs, a kitchen with a functioning stove, a car that works every time I turn the key in the ignition, a fridge and freezer that work, a decent set of pots and pans, all the right knives, a cutting board, all the right spoons, a whole rack full of spices, an understanding of cooking given to me by my homemaker motherm and I can afford all this stuff on only one job.
It costs me $5-$10 to prepare a decent dinner for my family... But i interact with $400,000 worth of stuff most people don't have to do it. The most significant of which is priceless: My upbringing in a household where people were educated, mildly successful, and proficient at cooking.
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> Did you grow up in a house in the suburbs
No, I did not.
I was "well enough off" that I ate free school lunches through most of my childhood. Any adult in my household held down their own job. NO ONE played the role of dedicated maid or house wife. It simply wasn't an option.
Although no one made excuses.
That's the difference between "poor" and working class.
Most people have never had this Ozzie and Harriet lifestyle that you see in old TV shows.
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with a functioning kitchen....a fridge and freezer that work, a decent set of pots and pans, all the right knives, a cutting board, all the right spoons, a whole rack full of spices
I think you have a different understanding of 'functioning kitchen' than most people, mate. If your goal is to cook healthy food that tastes at least as good as McDonald's and is cheaper, you don't need most of that stuff. Also, you don't have to live in the suburbs to have a nice kitchen, your statistic is kind of meaningless.
If your goal is to have healthy, homecooked food without spending too much money, well, people living in bamboo huts in developing countries manage to meet that goal.
Re:Junk food is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm tired of this lie. My wife went on a health food kick 2 years ago. We've pretty much stopped eating out. Our food costs have dropped 20%. We're not eating fancy snobby "healthy" food, just real food. Do you really believe that $7x3 for meals at McD's is affordable, but $4 for a pound of hamburger, $.50 for 3 fresh potatoes, and 2 cups of flour for buns costs more than $21? Really? Add a head of lettuce, a whole bottle of dressing, and the oil to fry the potatoes, and I'm still well under your $21 "can't afford to eat healthy" meal.
If you don't have the time to cook this simple meal, the you're lying to yourself. You're just lying to yourself. The money you saved buys you an hour a day of labor if you're anywhere near the minimum wage. And that's a fat western meal. If you think a little about eating decently, instead of just replicating mcdonalds, you can do so amazingly cheaply. Rice? Cheap. Flour? Cheap. frozen veggies? Pretty damn cheap, considering. You don't need organic arugula in January to be healthy.
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The things that will make you fat:
Wheat
Corn (including HFCS)
Rice
Oats
Potatoes
Sugar
Too much Dairy
Too many fruits
Things that won't make you fat are on this shopping list [marksdailyapple.com]. 80-90% of what goes in your mouth should be animal proteins and fats and lots of vegetables.
Look at the list of things that makes people fat and think about fast food.
Any burger/sandwich place: Fries or chips, Soda pop, and the bun on any burger or sandwich are a recipe for weight gain. Get a salad and the insides of any burger/sandwich, and
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You're looking at it from a perspective of great privilege.
For example: do you have a grocery story in your neighborhood that cells vegetables? That is assumption #1 most people don't realize. Impoverished areas have quick-e-marts, because why would a grocery chain with fresh produce open in a ghetto?
Second: if you didn't have a car, how long would it take for you to get to the nearest grocery store? What about if the nearest store was outside your ghetto, and took 1-hour both ways on public transportati
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The most expensive "baking" potatoes top out at about $1 per pound when they are not on sale (and they are often on sale). The smaller potatoes bought in bulk in large bags are going to be a lot cheaper per pound.
3 potatoes for 50 cents is not unrealistic.
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Yeah that's flat-out horseshit. I eat a prepared lunch at Wegman's every weekday, for about $5.00. Buying the ingredients would be even cheaper.
You know what makes you fat? As the article says, input vs. output. It's not "oh god sugar" or "oh god fat" or "oh god carbs". You're eating more than you're expending. More than you need. That's it. So when you see that poor bastard that weighs 350 lbs? That poor bastard is spending way more money than he needs to. And if it's on fast food, it's more expensive than
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Bullshit. The human body isn't a simple engine - it is a dynamic, actively regulated system. In the case of fat cells, fat accumulation is regulated by the hormone insulin, not by how many calories one puts in one's mouth. When you see that poor bastard that weights 350 pounds, horking down a pizza like he's starving, it's because he *is* -> the carbohydrate in his diet has caused blood sugar spikes, which causes insulin levels to rise,
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No, fat people are fat because they are insulin resistant, and consume a diet of carbohydrates that is too high. Now perhaps you can rephrase this as "poor self control over carbohydrate intake" (after all, starches and sugars behave like drugs), but the answer isn't to reduce calories, the answer is to reduce carbohydrate.
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Re:Junk food is the problem (Score:5, Informative)
1.) My post was refuting the claim that junk food is cheaper than good food. Wegman's is a grocery store that also makes food cafeteria style, and my bloodwork after changing my diet to go to lunch there will attest to the healthiness of the food. I know McDonald's is terrible food. I was saying there's no economic reason to go there.
2.) The 510 calorie count for a quarter-pounder includes two slices of cheese, which you didn't include in your home-cooked version. There are 70 calories in a slice of cheese. You don't have 146 calories to make up, you have 6. There is no extra crap, there is exactly the correct amount of crap. You don't have to resort to either magic sauce or Hollywood accounting of cheese to make the argument that fast food is awful for you.
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Physically, buying fresh food is cheaper. Time wise it is more expensive.
My wife and I have saved a ton of money by making our own bread, pasta sauce, soups, etc. We only eat fresh fruits, veggies, and meats and have saved tons.
However, the time investment to make a jar of salsa and can it, or to make a large pot of pasta sauce or chicken stock for the next month or two is probably out of the range of time a single mother with two jobs has.
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Only if you equate healthy with triple-bio free-range happy rice watered with a genuine Buddhist monk's scrotal sweat.
Re:Junk food is the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
If potato chips are junk food, then so is a baked potato -- a potato is a potato. Grease with french fries or chips, butter with baked, no difference.
Meanwhile, I've never had a weight problem except the two years I was on Paxil and gained 40 pounds, and lost most of it despite trying not to when I stopped. Maybe this mathematician should add drugs to the equation. There's a woman that I see in the bar once in a while who used to be a crackhead. After stopping the crack she went from rail-thin to overweight in six months. And the number of drugs folks take today, and the number of new different drugs, especially prescription drugs is far more than in the '70s. No crack cocaine, no SSRIs, no ADD drugs (they hadn't even categorized ADD) etc. Pot makes some people fat and lots more folks are smoking it today. Rather than blaming "too much food" (I never knew many folks going hungry when I was a kid) maybe they should look at today's drug intake.
The "there couldn't be any fast food if food was expensive" in TFS is completely bogus. McDonald's has been around since 1940, Pizza Hut since 1958, long before they stopped paying farmers not to grow food and long before the obesity "epidemic". And when I was ten in 1962, a McDonald's hamburger, fries, and small coke was thirty two cents. How is that "expensive"? You'll pay ten times that much for the same thing today.
His history omits an important variable -- exports. After the government stopped paying farmers to not grow food, we started exporting so much that ADM's slogan is now "breadbasket to the world". We're not eating more because more's available, most of the extra food is being exported. It also neglects the size of soda, a small coke at McDonalds today is bigger than a large coke was in the sixties. Lots of caloric intake with nothing to curb hunger, a sure-fire way to obesity.
It also doesn't explain why poor people are more obese than middle class people. He would probably say "food stamps" but he'd be wrong. Poor folks are fat because cheap food is fattening --five pounds of potatos is only two bucks, TV dinners 89 cents, while expensive foods usually are far less fatteniing. Poor folks can't afford McDonalds very often, a small order of fries (1/3 of a potato) is a buck twenty while a five pound bag of raw potatos is only eighty cents more. Add a quarter pounder and a cole, and you'll pay the same price as two dozen burger patties and a loaf of bread at WalMart.
I'm sure the guy's maths are correct, but he's a mathematician, not a nutritionist, biologist, medical doctor, sociologist, or historian. A study like this would need input from all those fields and probably more to have any meaning. You don't ask a geologist about solar flares, after all.
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Think of fruit this way (Score:3)
Re:Fruit is the problem (Score:5, Funny)
Fruit is bad, but so is meat. I think we all know that. Veggies are also a problem with those carbs. Best just to eat water.
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Obese people not infrequently are self-delusional about what they eat. They'll say "But I only eat fruit & veg", but if you observe them it can often be quite a different story.
Re:Fruit is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really news IMHO (Score:2)
That the primary problem with people becoming obese being that they consume too much food is hardly news, nor is it news that food is much more abundant these days than it was in the past.
That said, it is interesting to read about this approach to studying obesity. And the simulator was also kind of interesting although it told me that in order to maintain my current weight I need to increase my energy intake by 300-800 kCal/day (depending on activity level specified) which is sort of odd since I'm currentl
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More than that even, weight change can go up and down quite drastically in a short period of time, so I'm not sure what the summary is on about. This looks like a case of "mathematical models not accurately representing reality" I reckon.
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I recently watched Ken Burns' Prohibition documentary, and was struck again and again by how many people were overweight despite the image of Americans back then as skinny.
Re:Not really news IMHO (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect one contributing factor is that in the past (100+ years ago) food simply wasn't as abundant as it is today, not to mention that in the 19th century you couldn't just pop a microwave pizza weighing in at 1200+ kCal, wait two minutes and then eat. Cooking took time. Just look at candy, on my way home from work I pass by a grocery store, right next to the checkout they have candy, large 200 gram candybars each packing 1200 kCal or so worth of energy, and they're being sold for less than SEK 20 (~$2.8), even if your income is low that means an hour's worth of work will buy you a lot more than the energy you need in a day.
I don't even want to know how much energy is in proper pizza from a pizzeria but I doubt it's less than 2000 kCal...
How about we blame ourslef? (Score:5, Informative)
It's everywhere and you don't need it. Drink only water and don't buy any food that has sugar (fructose excluded) in it.
You DON'T need it. You like it because your are an addicted junky.
It really isn't sugar, that is just one avenue (Score:5, Informative)
Far too many Americans are simply not active. This is compounded by the fact that while not active they have easy access to food that it too conveniently packaged for consumption. I love the people at work who blame medical conditions for their weight while consuming a whole bag of chips or having that bagel covered in cream cheese. People don't know the calories they are consuming and woefully underestimate the amount of them in the foods they eat.
So sugar is only part of the problem. I know lots of people who don't eat cookies, drink soda, or the like, and yet they little walking cubed shaped individuals. All because of the mass amount of carb and fat filled foods they consume.
Gone are the long days and long weeks of manual labor. Instead most Americans sit during their workday and spend only a third of their week at most working and traveling too and from work. I am not declaring that working only forty hours or less is bad; but lets be honest those we know who do more tend to get further; but it did leave many people with way too much time on their hands and they don't know what to do with it.
You can maintain a healthy weight and eat some truly trashy food. As part of a diet and exercise contest we have at work I set out to prove that some seriously trashy breakfast foods could be consumed while losing weight as long as the diet and exercise balanced out. This meant items like donuts or muffins with coffee and cream from Dunkin in the morning every work day for two weeks. Yet followed by sensible lunches and dinners which most of us kept logs for. Those who logged their food showed the most loss. That is the real key, knowing what you eat.
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So sugar is only part of the problem. I know lots of people who don't eat cookies, drink soda, or the like, and yet they little walking cubed shaped individuals. All because of the mass amount of carb and fat filled foods they consume.
Then there's the successful dieters who still sit on their ass, and that ass is flat. I see women all the time who are conventionally attractive, but they just look frail and I'm afraid I'd hurt 'em. Sitting on ass is likely to become the new fat, which used to be a sign that you were rich. Now the sign of being rich is that you are thin but weak since you can afford to eat the best food, and afford to go to the dietician, but you don't do anything for yourself.
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>>while consuming a whole bag of chips or having that bagel covered in cream cheese
I love American food...
I visited the US for a week a while ago, and gained 3 kg (5 lb), I was aiming for 5 kg. If you go to Prague you go an a beer binge, in Amsterdam its a drugs bunge, but if you go to the US you go on a food binge.
I worked out that if I lived there for a year I would weigh about 230 kb (460 lb).
Re:It really isn't sugar, that is just one avenue (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not declaring that working only forty hours or less is bad; but lets be honest those we know who do more tend to get further;
Science and reality both say you, and those whose viewpoints you represent are deluded. /. posted an article on this very subject [slashdot.org] 2 months ago today.
Labor, experiments, and industry all agree that a 40-hour work week is better for everybody - individuals and companies. Productivity by people who regularly work more than 40 hours per week is lower than those who work 40 hours.
The only reason people get ahead for working longer hours is because a generation of managers appears to have been taught to think that bums in seats = productivity. So longer hours = increased likelihood of promotion. It's a vicious cycle that's fuelled by people like yourself who speak with no understanding of how the human mind and body work. As a matter of fact,
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Labor, experiments, and industry all agree that a 40-hour work week is better for everybody - individuals and companies. Productivity by people who regularly work more than 40 hours per week is lower than those who work 40 hours.
Given current unemployment, it might be nice to change that to 30 hours per week. Medieval serfs worked less than 40 hours a week. I wouldn't trade places with them, but the point is still made. Haven't we supposedly realized massive improvements in efficiency since then? Where is all the extra work going, when it comes to just subsistence living? No, you MUST work to keep the system running over people, or you don't get health care. Welcome to the corporatocracy.
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A modest 5k run will take around half an hour. Not eating that candy bar and soda will take you zero hours.
I'd suggest that it's the time, more than the effort, that makes people not exercise. If I could spend some of the time I spend working, exercising without losing pay, I would. I'm not going to spend my free time doing anything I don't want to do.
SUGAR is POISON (Score:3, Insightful)
Sugar IS indeed a poison, like alcohol...in fact, alcohol and sugar both get turned into FAT, which is killing us because we eat too damn much of it.
Anyway, on a personal note, I have cut out sugary drinks (no sodas) I only allow a few coke zeros (yes I know they are also poison, but I still drink a couple a month). Similarly, cut out fast food, white bread, beef, anything processed, juice, salt. Cook everything yourself then you know what goes in
HFCS is POISON (FTFY) (Score:3)
Sugar is a needed and necessary nutrient for our bodies. But, much like anything else, the poison is in the dose. For example, our bodies are mostly made up of water. Good old H2O, necessary for all life on Earth. But drink too much water in too short an amount of time and you can die from electrolyte imbalance. By and large it's the dose, not the substance that is poisonous.
Our bodies were designed to take in small amounts of natural sugars from fruits and vegetables. Large amounts of sugars will, as
Sugar isn't that bad (Score:3)
Sucrose and glucose cause insulin spikes which cause fat to be stored. If you've not eaten fat within 2 hours either side, they just make you hungry, but aren't a direct cause of becoming fat.
Caffeine seems to block fat storage to some degree as well as help you burn those calories.
Being inactive probably also causes fat to be stored. Those calories have to go somewhere.
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The main problem is sugar.
YES
It's everywhere and you don't need it. Drink only water and don't buy any food that has sugar
YES
(fructose excluded) in it.
Ahhhghhh - train off the rails! If you mean fructose that's bound up with fruit fibers - sure, fine. The fiber slows down the absorption. And honey for some reason absorbs slowly (we don't know why).
What's really important is the rate of fructose absorption. If it's too fast, the liver just turns it into fat - similar in process to heavy drinking - and po
Why is this appropriate? (Score:5, Funny)
Why is this appropriate for Slashdot, for the math, or for the obesity?
Re:Why is this appropriate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the Campaign to Stop America's Obesity Fails (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/06/why-the-campaign-to-stop-america-s-obesity-crisis-keeps-failing.html [thedailybeast.com]
According to this its a change of diet (as in the promoted healthy diet is anything but) in the 1970's and way too many sugars.
Source code would be nice (Score:2)
A cursory look at the app and I can see some definite uses. I've been wanting to create (mostly for my wife and myself; but theoretically for others later as open source) a personalised diet planner application based on some fuzzy logic, the "USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference" data, and user input for common/preferred/available meals. Combining it with the formula used in this simulator would be really helpful.
Unfortunately, I don't actually see the formula or source code to the app a
This is some model (Score:2)
"Well, what do people do when there is extra food around? They eat it! This, of course, is a tremendously controversial idea. However, the model shows that increase in food more than explains the increase in weight."
So he's not just modelling physiology, he's also modelling economic decisions? And he's modelling the impacts of various government policies?
I wouldn't be surprised if poor people ate more food when the price went down, as they are highly affected by food costs, and they are the ones who experie
Predicting the next 100 posts (Score:5, Informative)
Just so we can get them out of the way:
"I tried diet X and lost Y pounds, thus clearly establishing that substance Z is causing everyone to become fat."
"Moral failing Q is the real culprit! We need government policy R! I have no proof!"
"I'm from country C and we have no fat people. You Americans are fat, and I have a ridiculous accent!"
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
"I'd go to the gym but gas prices make it too expensive a journey"
"I can't afford fresh food"
"My genetics make me eat birthday cake"
"They don't make push-bikes large enough for my frame"
"The objects on my desk have started to orbit me"
"I don't like sports; I only like birthday cake"
"It's my birthday and it's my cake"
"Fatties run in my family! Well, actually they waddle, and the scooter only travels at a walking pace"
"Nom, nom, nom
Re: (Score:3)
and at least hundreds of parameters? (Score:2)
> created a mathematical model of a human with hundreds of equations
and at least hundreds of parameters?
Chowing down... (Score:2)
Model Validation ? (Score:2)
A mathematical model is a simplification of the underlying system. That means it is worthless unless validated against experiments. Even after validation, the model cannot make predictions ouside the range where it has been validated.
Statements like "huge variations in your daily food intake will not cause variations in weight, as long as your average food intake over a year is about the same" seem go way outside where there could possibly have been any experimental validation, and suggest that this MIT res
Corn and Processed Grains (Score:5, Interesting)
From my personal experience, I recently lost a lot of weight. The biggest shift I made to burn off fat was to drastically reduce how much grain I consumed weekly. I exercised about the same amount during the time, but the weight loss tracked pretty closely to my change in diet.
Re: (Score:3)
Interesting. I think another factor that people ignore is epigenetics. It was found that the incidence rate of diabetes in some town in Europe that had good records seemed to be related to what people's grandparents ate.
I have no idea whether it is true, but if there are epigenetic factors at work, then the best we can hope to do is prevent obesity in kids who have not been born yet, or find some way to manipulate our own epigenetic programming.
I think it is more likely... (Score:3)
... that the advent of Television (watching movies together, cartoons, simpsons, etc) was much more damaging. How many people are glued to TV or a screen in case of the net these days?
The truth is our minds find it easier to find positively stimulating things on screens then being active.
Just follow the physics diet. (Score:4, Informative)
I think I found this here like 5 years ago and I've kept it since.
http://muller.lbl.gov/TRessays/22-ThePhysicsDiet.htm [lbl.gov]
I've emailed Richard last year by the way and he's still the weight he achieved in that article 9 years later.
FWIW: I'm an endomorph who DOES believe that some people hold weight easier, crave carbs and sugar more than others and have a lower BMR. However science is science - these things only make up a small fraction of the work. 95%+ is simply putting in the effort.
I can also confirm that adjusting diet is far, far far more rewarding than excercise for weight loss, despite other health benefits. Just as his article says.
Re:Just follow the physics diet. (Score:4, Informative)
I think I found this here like 5 years ago and I've kept it since.
http://muller.lbl.gov/TRessays/22-ThePhysicsDiet.htm [lbl.gov]
I've emailed Richard last year by the way and he's still the weight he achieved in that article 9 years later.
FWIW: I'm an endomorph who DOES believe that some people hold weight easier, crave carbs and sugar more than others and have a lower BMR. However science is science - these things only make up a small fraction of the work. 95%+ is simply putting in the effort.
I can also confirm that adjusting diet is far, far far more rewarding than excercise for weight loss, despite other health benefits. Just as his article says.
I agree with what you post, but research now shows that very often, it's not a craving for carbs, but an actual addiction to them in terms of the way they effect brain chemistry. As such, just like quitting smoking or giving up drugs and alcohol, since there is a chemical dependency, it is not as easy as one would think. Obviously, just as many people can drink and not become alcoholics. Many can overeat and not become addicted to carbs. But for many, they do, and for them, will power often is not enough.
Re: (Score:3)
I am really glad you posted, because as I hit post I forgot to breach the topic of food addiction.
I've been watching a lot of supersize vs superskinny (ermmtv on youtube, whole series uploaded!) and observing my own behaviour for 34 years.
I dont' need to go into the sobstory but ultimately I 101% believe in food addiction, without question. I am a major major comfort eater and the sensation is incredibly addictive.
Just to note, when you shovel food in it's utterly mindless, the voice in your head saying "y
Re: (Score:3)
It's not really about the amount of what you eat. It's more about having the right ingredients. I made a long post further up you might check out. Drop the wheat, corn, rice, potatoes, sugar, and limit dairy and fruits, and eat healthy amounts of meat and vegetables, and you can eat until full find yourself at a healthy number of calories, with most of the recommended nutrients covered.
Read marksdailyapple.com for info about this diet and a moderate exercise recommendations (5 hours of walking and 1 hour of
Duh? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is news?
When I was a kid, and McDonald's were few and far between (early 70s) a McDonald's "meal" was a hamburger, fries, and drink.
That's a single hamburger, what is now a small fries, and a small beverage. That was a satisfying full meal for an adult. Is that even a kids meal any more?
Another example, I believe it was mentioned by a poster on slashdot. He was remodeling a 100yr-old farmhouse and he hadn't planned to, but found he had to rip out the cabinets as they were too small - the only plates that fit in the cupboard were the 9" (small) dinner plates, not our today-common 12" dinner plates.
Finally, I was talking with a friend that runs a restaurant. I asked him why their portion sizes were so massive. His response was that it was to camouflage the prices with extra food, since food prices were cheap - it's the labor that drives costs. If he offered a moderately-sized meal, it might cost $8. If he was to DOUBLE the amount of food on that plate, it would cost perhaps +$1. Conversely, cutting the amount of food in half would only save $1. Consumers are far more willing to pay $9 for a GIANT pile of food (they feel they're getting a bargain), than $7 for 1/4 the food. On the latter, they feel they're being ripped off.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years back, I lost a lot of weight (about 80 pounds). One of the big things that helped was eating my meals on the small dinner plates instead of the big ones. This gave me the illusion of having more food than I really had. Try it sometime. Put the exact same amount of food on a big plate and on a little plate. Ask someone (who doesn't know they have the same amount) to tell you which plate has more food. Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly), the illusion of eating a lot of food versus very little food makes you feel fuller. About the only exception we made to the small plate rule was when we had salads, but we didn't load these up with unhealthy dressings and the like. The bigger plates became vehicles to transport more veggies into us.
Calorie counting is wrong (Score:3, Informative)
The energy balance equation of, food eaten equals fat stored minus exercise, is used in a very misleading way. Most assume you can manipulate it yourself by eating less and exercising more. But that ignores entirely the body's own control system. There are some lab rats that were starved to death by underfeeding, in an experiment, and whilst they starved to death they were gaining fat and died obese. Why? Because they were also receiving insulin and this told their bodies to store fat no matter what, even if they were not being fed, so they converted their muscle and organs into fat and stored that instead. They died of weak heart mucles and heart failure.
It is like a child eats extra to grow but he doesn't grow because he's eating extra, he eats extra and grows because the body's hormones are controlling things and telling the body to eat more and grow. It is all about hormones. Why do diabetics take insulin? To CONTROL their blood sugar. That's what insulin does. Insulin decides that you have to lower that blood sugar. And how does it control it and get it out of the blood stream? It tells fat cells to open up and absorb it. That's what "lowers" your blood sugar. The insulin decides to store it. And as it is storing it, your normal metabolism is still hungry. So the energy equation is used wrong. You don't get fat because you overeat, you overeat because you're getting fat.
What drives up insulin levels beyond normal, beyond what our 100,000 year old bodies are used to? Carbohydrates. You can eat fat and that'll be converted to energy and you'll want to move more. But eat carbs in the massive unusual quantities that we do, like pasta, pizza, bread, potatoes, and sugared drinks, and it all turns to sugar and insulin has to be produced in huge quantities to deal with it. Your normal blood sugar is one teaspoon of sugar. That's it. That's all we're made to deal with. So insulin goes nuts trying to deal with all that "healthy slow release energy" and eventually you get obese and you get diabetes.
The food pyramid was a huge shift towards grains (bird food) and away from fat. The fat / heart disease / lipid hypothesis was wrong 50 years ago and by committee "we have to tell the politicians what to regulate even if we aren't sure ourselves" consensus opinion ended up dominating and it is still wrong today. Eating a low fat high carb diet is a recipe not only for obesity but also depression. Just try switching to a genuine low carb high fat diet (see Sweden's latest magazine, "LCHF") and try it for yourself. After a month carbs just don't look like food anymore. Sleep better, feel lighter, feel satiated all the time (fat is filling, whilst carbs increase appetite or make you sleepy) and have more mental clarity. YMMV but that's been my experience to my surprise.
There are so many things wrong with the current dogma around the food pyramid that you have to undo many issues before you can wade your way to some clarity. But the best thing is to actually try it for a period, and see if what the proponents of LCHF and paleo say is true. Your own body can tell you.
Go and check what that research about bad fat and heart disease was actually based on, how they've repeatedly failed to show in good controlled studies that eating low fat is good for you, or that counting calories and exercising lets you lose wight. Those studies keep failing but the advocates keep hoping the next big study will show it. The start in rise in obesity coincided with the start of that advice about fat being the devil and to make most of your food plate carbs (sugar) instead. It has been a massive experiment on the public and it has gone catastrophically wrong, but rather than say that they just call people weak willed and lazy. All those carbs and sugar simply drive up your hunger whilst storing it as fat and keeping you tired.
Re:Calorie counting is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but this is wrong on so many levels. You see, while you get energy from stored fat, it is a quite energy intensive process itself if fat should be the main energy source. You can experience the "hitting the wall" effect yourself after a long endurance training. When the glycogen storage is depleted, the body switches completely to fat burning and suddenly you don't have any energy to go on and breathe much faster, might even faint.
Fat burning is meant to be an additional energy source, not the primary one. The reason why fat is stored is:
1) you have eaten too much food. Otherwise the fat would be all used up
2) You have got far too much fat mixed with carbohydrates in the food. Well, duh, the body takes what it can use right away and stores what it can use only with some effort.
Your example with lab rats is very misleading because in the experiment the own control mechanism of rat's organism was artificially overridden. This matters to healthy organisms who don't receive additional insulin exactly how? Right, not at all.
Oh, by the way, the insulin doesn't just tell "fat cells to open up and absorb it", it also (and this is actually its primary task) tells the muscle tissue and liver to absorb sugar so they can convert it to glycogen, which is the primary source of short- and middle-term energy for your body. Only the absolute excess of carbohydrates is stored as fat - and fat, of course, for already explained reasons.
Of course, if your glycogen storage is still almost full, then most of what you just ate would be in excess and will be stored as fat. So yes, you indeed get fat because you overeat. Either don't overeat (which is difficult) or deplete your glycogen storage by using your muscles, then you'll be fine.
The only reason why these "carbs are bad" - posts are marked as insightful is that most people don't want to admit that their own behaviour is a part of the problem.
Oh, and don't even try to mention Inuit, they are a result of selective breeding and adapting from childhood on. They eat rotten meat that would kill many Europeans due to high levels of cadaverine.
Re: (Score:3)
I can't mod because I commented above, but the post above is awesome! I also want to chime in that the food pyramid has been replaced by "my plate". This has been the case for a few years, now.
As for counting calories, it is the fundamental unit of measure for energy. I have shed a bit of weight and like to think of my body as a rational system. In the fact that the storage of fat and gains in girth are because I was eating too much energy than what I needed to survive so my body stored the weight. The Hac [fourmilab.ch]
Re: (Score:3)
It seems rational but the causality is not simple. Your body can "decide" what to do with the energy you eat. It can burn it or store it. If it decides to burn it, your metabolic rate goes up (in my case I felt hot a lot) and you can have more impulse to move around. But equally your body could decide to store that energy, in which case you get fat, you feel tired (the energy has been stored already) and you metabolism goes down. That's what confuses a lot of the arguments, which direction does the causalit
Exactly wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, but this is wrong on so many levels. You see, while you get energy from stored fat, it is a quite energy intensive process itself if fat should be the main energy source. You can experience the "hitting the wall" effect yourself after a long endurance training. When the glycogen storage is depleted, the body switches completely to fat burning and suddenly you don't have any energy to go on and breathe much faster, might even faint.
Fat burning is meant to be an additional energy source, not the primary one. The reason why fat is stored is:
1) you have eaten too much food. Otherwise the fat would be all used up
2) You have got far too much fat mixed with carbohydrates in the food. Well, duh, the body takes what it can use right away and stores what it can use only with some effort.
Good grief, if this isn't a fantastic example of missing the forest for the trees....you have it almost exactly wrong.
Fat metabolism IS supposed to be the primary metabolic pathway. It is ideal for fueling the basal metabolic processes and low-level everyday activity. Why on earth would all mammals evolve the ability to store excess energy as saturated fat if the body wasn't fully prepared to run itself on that stored energy? Carrying around that excess weight is a hindrance, and if you have to have carbs present to make use of it I just don't see how it would confer the type of survival advantage that would bake it into the basic structure of our metabolism.
Taken a step further - what fuels mammals during hibernation?
If you look at the 'calorie requirement' calculators, the basal processes + everyday activity will always be the overwhelming majority of the calorie expenditure for a person during the day. Calories burned through exercise is substantially lower in all but the most extreme endurance athletes. this should be a pretty clear indication as to what is the more important metabolic process.
Your example of 'hitting the wall' during glycolytic exercise is also backwards. High-intensity glycolytic exercise is the EXCEPTION, not the rule. It is an activity that ISN"T supposed to happen frequently, and when it does happen it isn't supposed to be of a long duration. There is a very good reason we have only evolved the ability to store a fairly limited amount of glycogen - because historically, any more simply wasn't needed.
Taken together, IMHO these clearly illustrate why the low-carb/HIIT regimen is actually very successful as a strategy. Fat fuels your daily activity, with carbs 'topping up' the fairly minimal depletion of glycogen that occurs during the high-intensity activity. No one approach is ideal for everyone due to personal history etc, but there is a lot of science behind the low-carb/HIIT approach that very easily explains why it works well.
Re: (Score:3)
Because otherwise they would starve if they cannot get a meal in time.
Humans don't hibernate. And the closest human relatives eat mostly fruits, which are carbohydrates. Besides, what is so difficult in understanding "emergency ration", which the fat storage is? To make an easier to underst
The author's name (Score:3)
Chow, an MIT-trained mathematician and physicist
The fact it's written by Chow is making me hungry.
Chow? (Score:3)
Ah, models. (Score:3)
First off, standard "correlation is not causality" caveat.
Second, obesity is a disease driven by the hormone insulin. Insulin (in insulin resistant people) is what causes fat cells to accumulate fat. Chronic insulin levels are driven by chronically elevated blood sugar levels. Chronically elevated blood sugar levels are caused by carbohydrate intake, the only food type that causes significant blood sugar rises.
So, go back to 1970 and promote say, nothing but beef or pork production, and you can have a glut of food, without obesity. Promote "healthy" whole wheat, or sugary fruits, or starchy corn, that raises blood sugar levels, and you'll get obesity.
Stop eating carbohydrates. It's simple.
food superstitions are off the chart (Score:4, Interesting)
It's amazing to me how irrational people become as soon as the subject of food comes up. Science? Evidence? What's that? People convince themselves of all kinds of ridiculous ideas about food and nutrition, none of which have even the slightest shred of evidence to back them up. Probably because people don't want it to be simply a matter of calories. It's another example of intellectual hedonism. People don't want to believe that the quantity of food they are eating is just too much. So they simply choose not to believe it. Instead they invent some simple rule that does not rely on calorie counting or ever being hungry. Fat doesn't make you fat. Sugar doesn't make you fat. Preservatives and MSG don't make you fat. "Refined" foods don't make you fat. Fast food doesn't make you fat. Burgers and donuts don't make you fat. Even insulin doesn't make you fat. If you are overweight (as I am) the only thing you can blame is your own lack of self-control. It's calories that make you fat. Fat people simply eat too much for the amount of physical activity they engage in. You could live on pure fat or pure sugar and huge amounts of preservatives and lots of MSG and as long as you didn't exceed 1000 calories per day you wouldn't gain weight. In fact you would probably lose it.
It is true that some restriction diets are effective, but not for the reasons usually given. If all you eat is low calorie vegetables you are very unlikely to gain weight and quite likely to lose it. That's because most people cannot manage to eat enough low calorie vegetables to gain weight. Some vegetables are so low in calories that you would pretty much have to eat them continuously the whole day. Carbohydrate restricted diets are popular these days. They don't work because 'carbohydrates make you fat'. They work because people seem to more easily be able to eat fewer calories on those diets. They are probably the most effective diets if you can stay on them because protein makes you feel full faster and keeps you feeling full longer. I've tried this but I feel truly awful for the first couple of days. I get really depressed without any carbohydrates. So I haven't been able to stay on it for long. I also find that I can quite easily overeat on all protein diets. So I'm back to counting calories again anyway.
I've had better luck with calorie restricted vegetable diets, but the problem with those is that I have to constantly eat throughout the day to not feel hungry. I can eat a huge bowl of Romaine lettuce and within an hour I am hungry again. Not only is it a huge amount of work to keep filling my stomach with low calorie vegetables, but it's very expensive and tiring to constantly be preparing food.
I've lived in several countries besides the US and none of those countries have as many overweight people as the US. The only other country I have visited which seems to be able to compete with the US in terms of obesity is Italy. In most countries people eat high calorie foods. The reason they do not get fat is simply because they don't overeat. It really is that simple. Just stop eating before you feel full. You should still feel at least a little bit hungry. One of my most successful diets was achieved just by eating my meals with a thin friend of mine. I ate exactly the same things he did in exactly the same amounts at every meal. He wasn't on any kind of special diet. He just didn't eat all that much food. I lost a lot of weight and I was left only slightly hungry.
Re: (Score:3)
3500 Cal in a pound of fat. This means a caloric deficit of ~500 Cal a day is sufficient to lose one pound of fat per week. Of course, this doesn't work out so simply, which is why the equation provided here is so nice.
A lot of the weight lost can be from water -- not just fat. But claims that you can lose 10 lbs. of fat in a week? Complete bullshit.
Re:long time? (Score:4, Informative)
of course, if you exercise as part of the lifestyle change, you'll be putting on muscle, which weighs a lot more than the fat you're losing.
I've just run the simulator in TFA on my known variables for the last year (I got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and had to make some very controlled, measured, changes to my lifestyle which got me back to being healthy).
It said I'd have lost over 30Kg over that year. I actually lost just under 10Kg, but went from being unable to run for more than 100m to completing a 12Km fun-run and confidently entering for a half-marathon in 3 months' time. I also lost about 6inches off my waistline (as in I gained a waist!).
Also, humans are not controlled by variables and equations. The equations describe an average person, who doesn't exist. They're useful approximations, but in the end just approximations.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a "magical notion". Fiber in fruit keeps fructose in the gut, where it is digested by gut flora and turned into tasty flatulence. I happen to know this because my daughter is fructose intolerant.
Re:Wrong Again (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently (IANA Dietician), some fruit contain more Fructose than Glucose, which makes the fructose load more problematic. See for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose_malabsorption [wikipedia.org], which has lists. Fructose is further problematic in that it chelates some other nutrients, like Zinc and Iron, removing them from the digestive tract and preventing them from being absorbed (can't find the paragraph on Wikipedia anymore, might be wrong.)
There's another article (http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/PRN-this-is-your-brain-on-sugar-ucla-233992.aspx) that did the rounds this morning about the negative effects of fructose on learning and memory.
Of course, this article also mentions omega-3 fatty acids, which are sorely lacking in the modern western diet that relies heavily on wheat, corn, soy and sunflower, as well as on meats, dairy and eggs "grain fed" on these crops instead of natural green pasture. This lack (or rather the imbalance between omega-3 and omega-6 content in modern food because of this) also contributes to obesity (and other "lifestyle diseases" like cancer and diabetes).
Re: (Score:2)
but I gave up after about the 20th dialogue box.
This is one of those apps where the "help" instructions are more complicated than going in and using it.
Re:Drugs (Score:5, Informative)
Baking your own bread makes HUGE changes in diet. Most bread in the store has a metric buttload of sugars added simply because they can. home made bread has t he minimum needed and it is usually consumed by the yeast.
Want to make that baked bread better? slow rise in the fridge overnight. the yeast will consumer more sugars and add in a lot more flavors. Sourdoughs are the best for you.
Re:Drugs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
>>The obesity epidemic is most likely caused by an endocrine disruptor that affects many or all mammals.
Yes, the endocrine disruptor is called "McDonalds".
Whenever it is introduced to a country, the obesity rates skyrocket.