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.
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: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).
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: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...
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,
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:How about we blame ourslef? (Score:1, Interesting)
I learned from a man expert in diet development for agricultural animals that no animal gets fat eating its natural diet. In fact they will not even over eat. Then I learned that McDonalds and KFC had for 50 years directed the development of crops for the encouragement of over eating. Literally they reformulated even things like potatoes for the purpose of causing Malnutrition causing over consumption as a natural compensation. As genetic engineering came in it was far worse.
In the 1930's to 1950's period considerable direction was done by the Agriculture Department of the USA which led world efforts to do things like suppliment vitamins and such in food to prevent malnutrition. No such effort exists today. As such the effort by ag marketers is to cause demand and that means deliberate malnutrition. As such even a Vegan who never ate at KFC (Now Pepsico) or McDonalds is affected by the engineering these people did. The epidemic of fat corresponds largely to their efforts and to the Genetic Engineers. This would produce as the study was done to see the illusion that the issue is quantity of intake calories. It is in fact the mix of nutrients in the food.
Having just lost 90 pounds myself and eating all I want on the diet, I know very well that this is true. I was IDDM, Hypertensive, Obese and generally quite sick. This is much better now but it took a massive shift is what I ate. The headgames buy the diet and Ag guys are getting thick. Bluntly they need regulated to return nutrition to foods and to discourage their activities that give us "Empty Calories" and things like that. Unfortunately there is a lot of blame the victim going on. The industry is attacking people. I am now free of IDDM and no longer Obese. Other health problems are fading away. Bluntly we need to tell these people that they cannot target the deliberate malnutrition of people to make them eat more.
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.
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:Drugs (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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?
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:Junk food is the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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: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.