Do Antibiotics Contribute To Obesity? 252
sciencehabit writes "Farmers have long used antibiotics to make cows, pigs, and turkeys gain weight faster. Now, scientists claim that receiving antibiotics early in life may also make children grow fat (abstract). The researchers believe the drugs change the composition of the bacterial population in the gut in a crucial developmental stage that may have a long-lasting impact."
Can make them lose weight so why not? (Score:3, Interesting)
Farm Animals (Score:4, Informative)
Farmers use antibiotics on cows, pigs, and turkeys because they can't digest corn properly which leads to excessive gut bacteria (the corn diet makes them gain weight), and due to the unhealthy living conditions of shoving hundreds to thousands of animals together in a cramped warehouse.
Re:Farm Animals (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Farm Animals (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps you should try eating some fruits and vegetables as well.
Re:Farm Animals (Score:4, Informative)
It's not for everyone, and some GI disturbance is normal in the first week or two. But it works for me, very well, and it works because I'm never forced to be hungry. If I want food, I eat something from my list (which is actually pretty extensive, even with some pretty extreme carb limits of < 10 g/day). My long term plan is to stay off all the sugars and starches, eating a more or less paleo type diet (carbs come from veggies and fruits only), and I'm basically cool with never eating sugar/starch on a regular basis ever again. Why? Because this has transformed my life. I'm 37, I've almost always struggled with weight, and this has been pure magic to me. So if you haven't, give it a shot. And stay away from all the processed crap that is being sold in the Atkins name. It's processed crap. Have a couple of chicken breasts tossed in Buffalo wing sauce and served on some nice green leaf lettuce with a little Ranch dressing instead. That whole meal has less than 5 g carbs.
IAAD, IANYD, this isn't medical advice. Just personal experience. But it's an amazing experience.
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Sounds wonderful. I think I'll stick to running, the gym and my kayak.
Wait... (Score:2)
Sounds wonderful. I think I'll stick to running, the gym and my kayak.
I can see running in the gym; how do you run in a kayak?
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Strange, I don't see the word "in" anywhere in my post. Have you had your coffee today?
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Re:Farm Animals (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, diet is much easier than working out.
Don't get me wrong, I hit the gym 5 days a week, do rock climbing, surfing, and assorted outdoor activities.
However, there is truth to the saying that six pack abs are made in the kitchen. Every time I've had a six pack, it's been entirely because my diet has been in check. And when I eat fairly liberally, it doesn't matter how much I work out -- it is always much, much harder.
At the end of the day, it comes down to simple math. You just need to burn more than you eat and bring your body fat percentage to pretty low levels (>10%) for most people to see abs (although, if you are lucky and genetically predisposed, you can see abs at ~12-15% -- but most of us aren't). But sometimes, it's just a lot easier to not eat that bag of chips or only eat a salad for lunch and dinner than, say, run it off.
For instance, a bag of Lays kettle chips is ~200 calories and a regular size chocolate chip cookie is ~180 calories. A bowl of Cap'n Crunch with skim milk? 300 calories. Add some sugar to that, and just having these will put you over 600 calories. That's ONE hour of running at 6mph.
Instead, you can have some egg whites and oatmeal for lunch, two salads, and perhaps some baked lean meat or seafood for lunch and save yourself a whole lot of calories.
I save most of my calories for two things: protein and fat. Since my goal is to lose fat and not just weight, I make sure to preserve my muscle mass when I cut. How do I do this? By lifting more weights and eating more protein. And fat? Well, dietary fat is actually required, and I've found out that I need to take enough fat for sufficient T levels.
When it comes right down to it, carbs are almost not required, and I only save my carbs for my pre-workout and morning meals: the two times of the day when I actually need some energy.
Being active and just eating fairly healthy works for us because we are already in good shape, and have lifestyles where we burn at least as much as we consume. But the problem is, most people already have pretty shitty diets, and on top, they are absolutely inactive. So, for those people, diet is without argument the first step.
Your body cannot "get" fat from nowhere -- it cannot violate the laws of thermodynamics. As long as you are burning more than you are eating (i.e. eating below your maintenance calories), you WILL get in shape. You may not be muscular or be toned, but you will certainly lose weight. Unfortunately, if you do not lift weights and eat protein, you will lose both fat and protein -- but doing those two will help you preserve at least some muscle mass when you're cutting down.
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As far I know chickens do not eat grass (even if it force fed, I am not certain they can survive on it). Are you sure about that?
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On reading more, it seems young chicken (most commonly available supermarket chicken) can indeed digest grass. It seems to give it proteins and vitamins, but no calories. So I assume by grass fed chicken, they mean chicken fed with grass among other things.
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Try cutting out the cupcakes and bread. Go paleo, cut out all grains, eat only vegetables, meat, fatty meat, organ meat, and a bit of fruit. I am fairly sure you'd not be fat after two years on such a diet. Not kidding either so don't mod me funny.
Or keep the bread, eat mostly real* food and get a few active hobbies. If you can get in good enough shape to maintain a high level of physical activity and find ways to make that physical activity enjoyable, you can eat all of the cupcakes you'll want (made with real ingredients, not that processed crap).
All this is assuming no other medical abnormalities.
*Avoid foods made by faceless, profit driven strangers.
Re:Farm Animals (Score:4, Informative)
yup. the antibiotics are to correct the improper diet, not to cause weight gain. The prophylactic use is just bad, but the fact that these medicines are given to all livestock even when they are not sick yet is only because they will get sick eventually. The feed lots have nothing to do with healthy conditions.
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Being packed in together hip deep in their own waste doesn't have anything to do with healthy conditions? We should subject you to the same and see how long you last.
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Being packed in together hip deep in their own waste doesn't have anything to do with healthy conditions? We should subject you to the same and see how long you last.
I'm not certain berashith was saying what you think he was saying. I would be if he'd said that feedlots have nothing to do with unhealthy conditions. Either way, I believe it would be more useful and ethical to not subject livestock to hostile living conditions than to begin subjecting humans to them.
Oh goody. (Score:2, Insightful)
Just what we need... yet another anti-medicine headline. I'll go ahead and invoke the rule [wikipedia.org]: No.
Look, parents... it's not the antibiotics making your kids fat, it's you feeding them too much, then telling them to clean their plate because kids in Africa are starving. It's not the antibiotic-resistant superbugs making your kids sick, it's the day care center and school you send them to with myriad other kids and their bacterial cornucopia. It's not the vaccines giving your kids learning disabilities, it's the
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While I don't disagree with most of what you said, I do think you're overstating your disagreement a bit. They said "contribute", not "cause". Is it fair to say that antibiotics may contribute to obesity? Quite likely, yes. The extent to which they contribute is a second discussion, and by all indications it's not significant. Even so, acknowledging that there may be an issue is a first step to better medical practices in the future. If antibiotics' contribution made the difference in pushing a mere 1% of o
Re:Oh goody. (Score:4)
Just what we need... yet another ant-science post.
Did you read the peer-reviewed paper linked in the article? They gave antibiotics to one group of inbred (genetically identical) mice, and witheld them from a control group of mice. The mice given antibiotics early in life had increased fat mass, altered GI bacteria populations, and alterations in genes that control lipid metabolism.
That's not caused by failing to eat well and exercise. These were the same strain of mice raised in the same conditions. Tell me, since you're so sure this can't be true, how do *you* interpret this data?
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Besides this is not anti-medicine. The study proposes judicious use of antibiotics and discourages overuse, I dont see any conclusion that could be consider anti-medicine.
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I interpret the data as it's presented: The antibiotics caused a very slight increase in fat. It's not nearly enough to cause obesity on its own, and anyone who looks into the actual research will (hopefully) see that. However, the excited parents I complain about do not often look into the actual research, rather simply extrapolating from the headlines and brief summaries they see on the nightly news.
Re:Oh goody. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just what we need .. yet another self-righteous poster who didn't bother to read the freaking article. No one is saying that antibiotics are the sole or even the major reason that children are fat. No one is denying that over-eating is a huge reason for obesity. All these scientists have concluded is that, based on their analysis of evidence, babies who were exposed to antibiotics within the first six months of life were more prone to being overweight at 10, 20, and 38 months of age. They only reported this correlation, and cautioned that there was no causal relationship yet.
But no matter. Random Internet poster dude who didn't read the article is going to rail against anti-medicine when it is actually he who is railing against a team of scientists making a scientific conclusion.
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Just what we need... yet another anti-medicine headline. I'll go ahead and invoke the rule [wikipedia.org]: No.
It's not; if it's anti- anything, it's anti-misuse. Also, Betteridge's Law of Headlines is a poor tool for disputing the validity of a scientific study.
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Just what we need... yet another anti-medicine headline. I'll go ahead and invoke the rule [wikipedia.org]: No.
It's not; if it's anti- anything, it's anti-misuse. Also, Betteridge's Law of Headlines is a poor tool for disputing the validity of a scientific study.
In this case, there might be a corollary to Betteridge's Law that states that if it is possible to answer the question in the affirmative due to scientific validation, the headline will still imply that the positive effect is greater than it is in reality.
Of course, if you talk about a 1.6% percentage over a large population, it does start to add up.
On the other hand, compared to causes such as "poor portion control" and "very high carb meals being more affordable for the poor", it is probably not going to
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Humans don't take antibiotics every day, but when my son was very young (under three years of age) he was frequently on antibiotics due to recurring ear infections. We wouldn't even know about it (they didn't produce the kinds of crying or ear-tugging that is supposedly symptomatic) until we went to the pediatrician for other reasons and he said "wow, his ear is really infected" and gave us more antibiotics.
Ultimately we ended up getting tubes put in his ears, which largely cleared up the chronic ear infec
oh, That's why I'm fat? (Score:5, Funny)
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[looks at the 280 calorie coke bottle at my desk and two crumpled baggies of Cheddar Jalapeno Cheetos] Yep, That's it. Exposure to antibiotics at an early age. QED.
If you hadn't had the childhood antibiotics, you could have enjoyed an extra baggie of Cheetos.
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nope, it is because you (along with a significant fraction of the people around me) continually think kilocalories are calories. There is a factor 1000 difference in there, you know! That coke bottle you are talking about? that's 0.28 megacalories!
Sugar consumption makes kids get fat (Score:5, Informative)
Followed very closely by a diet heavy in carbohydrates, thanks to a failed and scientifically baseless "low fat" dietary guidelines that promote a "low fat" diet high in carbohydrates.
It staggers me to watch fellow parents pour gallons of sugar down their kids throats -- "look, it's low fat and free from high fructose corn syrup!!!!" despite the fact that it contains apple juice as a "natural" ingredient, which is just injected for its fructose content -- it's like HFCS without the corn syrup.
If you don't want your kids to get fat, feed them eggs and sausage. If you want them to get fat, feed them juice, soda, and lots of grains and watch them swell like cows in a feedlot.
Re:Sugar consumption makes kids get fat (Score:4, Insightful)
Fruit juice is a horrible way to get your vitamins. Eat the actual fruit which includes the fiber (also an important ingredient). I'm gonna go eat some fiber right now: Popcorn.
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Thankfully, that is a rediculously easy process that requires no special equipment. Doesn't take that much longer than the microwave either.
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Popcorn often has lots of fat unless you make it yourself.
And don't be afraid of a little bit of good quality fat. I use about 1 Tablespoon of high quality peanut oil to pop about 1/2 c of popcorn in a large pot. Given the residue still on the bottom of the pot, probably only half of that makes it onto the popcorn, and the yield is enough for about six people to have a good-sized serving. The quality peanut oil has a nice peanut flavor, so you don't need to pour butter on it (or even worse - manufactured
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It staggers me to watch fellow parents pour gallons of sugar down their kids throats -- "look, it's low fat and free from high fructose corn syrup!!!!" despite the fact that it contains apple juice as a "natural" ingredient, which is just injected for its fructose content -- it's like HFCS without the corn syrup.
I was in the Target cereal aisle last night, looking for something for the kids to eat (once in a while) and only two of the cereals had fewer than 6 g of sugar per serving (I eat one with no sugar,
Switch them to oatmeal (Score:2)
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Yeah, as I said, "once in a while" - oatmeal is our standby. It keeps quite well pre-made too. I do:
melt on high (~14KBTU):
3T unsalted butter
add:
3c old fashioned oats
roast until 'nutty', then add:
3 c hot water
(warning - hyper boil). add:
1/2 t sea salt
Cook until ~ half water is absorbed then reduce to medium-low and add:
1 t cinnamon
stir in, add:
3 c skim milk
1/4 c erythritol
1/8 t pure st
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You forgot the increasingly sedentary lifestyle as a major contributor.
I'm 30 now. While I grew up with an Atari, Nintendo, etc in the house, I always found plenty of time to go outside, ride a bike, climb a tree, etc. PhysEd was an integral part of school at every level. We had an "Olympics" at various grades where every kid in that grade would compete in track and field events. Every kid I knew was at least somewhat active, and there wasn't a single kid nearly as obese as your common fatty today.
No. (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason 85% of Americans over age 30 are fat is because (1) they eat too much sugar and (2) too large portions. See the video "sugar the bitter truth".
It seems people keep trying to blame other things (too much TV, too much gaming, too much bacteria or antibiotics) instead of themselves. You weighed 120-140 when you were 18 (less for girls)..... no reason you can't weigh that now.
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
Even portion size can be less of an issue if you are eating 20% or fewer calories in carbohydrates. Fat intake will produce a leptin response, making you feel full and not wanting to eat any more.
Carbohydrates, especially fructose (as Dr. Lustig points out in "Bitter Truth) suppresses the leptin response -- you don't feel full, the metabolization process of simple carbs just locks away the energy as fat accumulation and preventing you from using it for energy, making you even more hungry.
I went low carb about 8 months ago and I took the idea of "eat until you were full" seriously, thinking maybe I could knock back a couple of steaks at a time. I couldn't; I lost all interest in eating once the full feeling kicked in.
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I wish that worked for me. I remember eating 1.5 lbs of hamburger and still feeling hungry. downing steaks like there was no tomorrow. In fact the high protein low carb diet for me almost as bad as no monitoring at all. Low calorie has been the only thing that has any effect on my weight, and it is the hardest one to actually maintain due to the excessive hunger pains, shakes and mood swings along with an easy access remedy to them; to eat.
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It seems people keep trying to blame other things (too much TV, too much gaming, too much bacteria or antibiotics) instead of themselves. You weighed 120-140 when you were 18 (less for girls)..... no reason you can't weigh that now.
I can somewhat apprciate what you are saying, because I think the only "secret" to maintaining a healthy weight is eating a sensible diet of real food (not fast food or frozen dinners) and being active.
However, to do so requires resisting fairly strong social and economic pressures to a) work as much as possible and b) devote every other minute towards consumption, usually of industrialized foods and sedentary entertainments. These pressures are woven into our economy and reinforced constantly by advertisi
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You weighed 120-140 when you were 18
No I didn't, but I'm also 6'3".
US Obesity (Score:3)
A decade later, we have an obesity epidemic. Is there really a need for an explanation?
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AS has been shown, many times now, someone asking you to super size will often get a reflexive yes.
DO you know why supersize was created? Because there had been a stigma with asking for a large. SO a marketing firm was hired and they came up with a way to move more food.
So portion size increased, a lot, and people are buying the supersize.
No it wan't impossible, but it had been frowned upon. Look up David Wallerstein.
Burgers are no almost 5 times in size to what they where in 1950. when you have generation
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For people like me who tend to eat two meals a day (I'm in the habit of skipping breakfast as I tend to feel sick if I eat shortly after waking up), a 1000 Calorie meal is just about right. What makes me mad about all this stuff about fat people and messing with portions and taxing or removing certain types of food is that it also effects skinny people such as myself (I'm 5'11 and 120 pounds).
If you only eat two meals a day, that is all the more reason to make both of them good meals and not garbage convenience foods. Moreover, if you are buying real food you tend to get a discount if you buy in bulk. So that is a win-win for you.
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For people like me who tend to eat two meals a day (I'm in the habit of skipping breakfast as I tend to feel sick if I eat shortly after waking up), a 1000 Calorie meal is just about right. What makes me mad about all this stuff about fat people and messing with portions and taxing or removing certain types of food is that it also effects skinny people such as myself (I'm 5'11 and 120 pounds).
If you only eat two meals a day
Or are very active. Or breakfast is something light and not high calorie.
Corn Syrup is likely a larger contributor (Score:3)
Nearly every kind of childhood snack (soda, corn chips, candy) contains corn syrup in one form or another. I'd suspect that long before anti-biotics.
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/ [princeton.edu]
http://www.naturalnews.com/036886_cattle_feed_candy_corn_syrup.html [naturalnews.com]
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Could the Princeton lab photo be any more obviously-posed? Well at least the girls are cute.
Reminds me of a Playboy video of similarly cute girls.
Except they took their labcoats off.
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It's just as artificial as their conclusions.
Such a bad "study"
.
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I think you're confusing corn syrup with HFCS. It's the F in HFCS that is detrimental to a healthy metabolism, not the maltose in standard corn syrup.
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Yes, he was using corn syrup, but that horrid study he linked to was HFCS.
And there is no evidence that HFCS is any worse the sugar. And like all sugars, it should be avoided.
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I have high regard for Lawrence Lustig and his research. He concluded that fructose is the really bad carb, due to how it's metabolized. Table sugar has 50% fructose, HFCS has 55% fructose, both are almost equally bad and should be avoided because of their fructose content. OTOH, the glucose content is harmless, but somehow it's clumped together with the bad fructose under the label "carbs are bad".
It's quite possible that "sugars" that do not contain fructose are OK in a balanced diet; it's just that in US
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There is no evidence corn syrup is and different the sugar.
That Princeton study that everyone keeps point to is seriously flawed.
And natural news isn't worth shit, scientifically.
Oh, and Corn syrup is sweeter then sugar, so less is used then sugar.
I would suspect ALL SUGARS AND FATS before antibiotics.
quotes from the article (Score:2)
The researchers looked at data collected from more than 11,000 children born in Avon, U.K., in 1991 and 1992. Those who had been treated with antibiotics in the first 6 months of their lives had a higher chance of being overweight at 10, 20, and 38 months of age.....The differences in weight were small, and there was no correlation between antibiotic use in the first 6 months and weight at 7 years
Clearly it's a preliminary study, and not all variables have been controlled for. They have two other quotes from scientists:
The new data are "not convincing," says Michael Blaut, a microbiologist at the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Potsdam, Germany. And David Relman, a microbiologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, calls the work "provocative" but says some of the data are "a bit vague and unclear."
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This could also mean - drumroll, please - that kids who are sick longer tend to weigh less. If you have a society which tends to be fat, a child having an untreated illness (no antibiotic) may tend to be sick longer, which would reduce their weight. The sickness being treated with the antibiotic may be a cause of weight loss.
Grains, not Antibiotics make Livestock gain Weight (Score:2, Informative)
Farmers don't give livestock antibiotics to make them gain weight, they give them grains to do that, and then they have to give them antibiotics so that they don't die from the grains. Cows, for example, are ruminates which are designed (or evolved, I guess I should say) to eat grass, not grain, which would kill them before they could be brought to market without the use of antibiotics. Antibiotics makes grain feeding possible, but it is actually the grain, not the antibiotics which leads to the weight ga
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Yeah, and now we have evidence that it might not be just the excess grains.
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Bulletin!!! (Score:2)
Eating too much, especially too much fatty foods, makes you fat.
Instead of blaming arbitrary organizations for society's problem with obesity, how about putting the blame squarely on the people who are eating too much in the first place?
Re:Bulletin!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Eating too much, especially too much fatty foods, makes you fat.
Eating does not make you fat. Marriage makes you fat. Compare the waistlines of your single and married friends, and you'll see what I mean.
A bachelor opens his refrigerator, looks at what is inside, and then goes to bed. A married man goes to bed, looks what is in inside, and then goes to the refrigerator.
For the love of god! (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to work with a Morbidly obese man that ate 3 LARGE subs from the local sub place every day. He would also order a full sized bag of potato chips along with it which he wouldn't eat with the subs... he'd finish the subs, then need to go to the bathroom to drop a deuce and would take the chips with him and eat them while he was taking a dump. Not kidding. He would sit in there for 45 minutes crapping, eating his chips and talking to people that came and went from the bathroom as he did. It was insane.
One day I walked by his desk and instead of his usual 3 subs he had a full rotisary chicken and a 2 liter of coke (not diet) sitting on his desk. I stopped in shock and asked "Why do you have a rotisary chicken on your desk?!?" He replied "My doctor has had me on a diet for months and I'm just not loosing weight. I've been sticking to turkey sandwiches, but they weren't working so he told me to try chicken instead. They don't have chicken subs at the sub place so I picked this up at the grocery store." He then proceeded to pick the rotisary chicken clean.
If you're over 200lbs it's either because you don't exorcise or your a body builder. If you're over 250, it's because you don't exorcise and you eat too much (or your an Olympic body builder) STOP EATING
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He would sit in there for 45 minutes crapping, eating his chips and talking to people that came and went from the bathroom as he did. It was insane.
Or genius? One time I lost 10 pounds after being laid up for a week with a stomach virus.
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Actually it is the *eating less* that controls body mass ("earth weight" if you must use the term "weight"). There is no normal (non-surgical, non-diahorrea) way of losing mass without eating less. Smaller portions, less sugar and almost no snacks will work.
Exercising will not counter the effects of eating too many calories (not matter what form they come in - fruit has plenty of calories too, it's just they are not "empty" as you get additional vitamins and minerals too). I exercise nearly every day of
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Burn more then you eat.
And weight is FINE for talking about an object on a relativity gravitational object. Earth weight would just be stupid. Let me know when we colonize other planets, or have morbidly obese people in space.
"This toned me up a great deal but made zero difference to my mass."
The you must of increased you intake.
Depends (Score:2)
Not all antibiotics are the same. Some make it difficult to eat.
The evidence a few years ago pointed to the animals body needing less energy to digest food.
I don't have access to this new study from this machine, so I won't comment on it. Although I would be surprised, we would have seen obesity much early if this was the case.
Got lots of antibiotics early in life ... (Score:2)
... never had problems maintaining a normal weight, and I love potato chips and ate a ton of it growing up.
Is this study maybe sponsored by the American Corn Syrup Council?
Stool transplant (Score:2)
Ever heard of this [wikipedia.org]?
It's still in its testing stages, but it might explain this phenomenon. Even though it's been in literature for more than fifty years, now, Dutch physicians are conducting a mass study, right now. It seems to be highly effective against pseudomembranous colitis which is caused by an overflow of Clostridium difficile in the gut flora with the only therapy being a high dose of Metronidazol or Vancomycin orally. However, a stool transplant from a healthy donor has been suspected of being at
They Do, Just Not By Much (Score:5, Informative)
No.
That's not exactly right. I read NPR's coverage of this earlier today [npr.org] and vastly prefer their title and interpretation of results:
Could Antibiotics Be A Factor In Childhood Obesity?
It turns out that it's a factor but it's likely a small factor quoting an expert from the NPR coverage:
"Although the effect was small on an individual level," Dr. Leonardo Trasande, the lead pediatrician on the study, tells Shots, "we predict that that this rise in body mass would increase the overweight population in the U.S. by about 1.6 percent."
And to summarize, this is not some over hyped stop using antibiotics trash, the conclusion is:
"We're not saying that children with severe infections shouldn't be treated with antibiotics," Blaser says. These findings just reinforce our need for judicious use of them.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
Re:They Do, Just Not By Much (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not even a matter of the size of the overweight population, IMO. I think it's more a matter of the types of obesity we're seeing. It is common to see people who have gone way beyond "fat" or "obese" and have moved well into the category of comic book science-experiment-gone-wrong fat. I was looking at some family pictures going back to the Eisenhower Administration -weddings and stuff- and some photos from Riverview Amusement Park (which closed in the '60s), and while there are fat people there, you don't see the Jabba-size, extra blubbery, gunt-fat that you see today. People are fat now in places they were never fat before. Rolls on the neck and in the upper-arm and their ankles and along the sides of their heads. Slabs of fat along the tops of the feet that cover the shoes. Chins and jowls that lay outside the collar like blubber lapels. Hands that look like catchers' mitts. Butts bigger around than an innertube from a semi. Curtains of blubber from the shoulder to beneath the back of the armpit that look like they might be some kind of navigation flaps on a deep ocean creature.
If you ride the bus or walk down a busy street in a less-affluent area, you're going to see people today who would never have been seen in 1955 outside of a circus. There's a website where they show pictures from side-shows of the 40's and 50's and the fattest of the fat person exhibitions were smaller than folks you'll see every single day. Go over to Wal-Mart right now and just walk around the grocery section for 10 minutes if you don't believe me.
This isn't normal fat any more. There's something else going on. You cannot get that fat just by having an extra cheeseburger or too many oreo cookies. This is lab-accident fat. Freak fat.
I'm pretty sure we'll learn sometime in the next few years that there are some specific industrial pollutants (some which are probably common ingredients in processed foods) that are causing this strange effect. It can't be from overeating alone. There have always been people who overeat, but there were never the kind of mutant-looking fat people who are so common today.
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Stranger Danger/over protecting kids.
Kids need a lot of exersize more then a healthy fit adult can follow their kids around. However we have became over sensitive on kid safety. That we lock our kids inside and the go out when you the parent wants them too.
Keeping the kids indoors gets them on bad habits and lack of exersize get them to pay less attention in school so they medicate them and become more docile.
This is a new development 20 years or so in the 2,000,000 year old species.
Yes there are other fact
Re:They Do, Just Not By Much (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't just get fat because a random chemical made them gain weight.
You cannot violate the laws of thermodynamics -- people are fat because they eat more and burn less.
Look at people in concentration camps. They were experimented with all kinds of chemicals on them and yet, they look emaciated. The reason? They did not have enough food (the only exception is perhaps the Kwashiorkor syndrome which is caused by protein and nutritional deficiency and water retention, but even they look emaciated -- just with fat bellies and such caused by oedema).
As a society, we've made it incredibly easy for people to consume a lot of calories with very little effort. That's why people are fat. People eat more when they should be eating less, people drive when they should be walking and running, and people do not part-take in any physical activities.
When was the last time you know when people you know played a game regularly? Some friends of mine and I play tennis regularly at a neighborhood park, and we are amazed at just how empty the tennis, basketball, soccer, baseball, and all the other courts are. Even on weekends with great weather.
When was the last time you could get a 4 oz or 8 oz drink? When was the last time you could ask for half or a quarter of the portion size? Last year, when my wife and I came back from traveling in Asia and Europe, we landed in NYC and went to grab some good old American food. I was amazed when the size of the soup and salad that were brought to me was at least 4x the size of a large portion in Asia and Europe.
People are fat because they've become lazy slobs who cannot do portion control and who do not give a shit about getting in shape. Let's stop looking for reasons and excuses and call it for what it is -- gluttony and sloth.
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I was looking at some family pictures going back to the Eisenhower Administration -weddings and stuff- and some photos from Riverview Amusement Park (which closed in the '60s) ...
Yes, I have made the same observation recently. Take Laurel and Hardy - I remember in my childhood how everyone agreed that mr Hardy was unbelievably fat, but looking at the pictures now, he seems almost slim. Things really have gone overboard, and for a long time now.
Another interesting experience - in the last few years I have been growing steadily fatter, and a couple of months ago I got a stern warning from my doctor; I was just on the verge of being diabetic or having metabolic syndrome. That scared th
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And those are the boys.
Re:They Do, Just Not By Much (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer, like all good scientific answers, is maybe – with many different avenues. There is a feedback loop between antibiotics, obesity, and nutation that we are just figuring out.
For a better article, go to the Economist’s “Me, Myself, US”. There are a lot of other good articles out there. http://www.economist.com/node/21560523 [economist.com]. The NPR Article is only a small part of the beginning of the bigger question on how we interact with our friendly bacteria.
Feed cows antibiotics and you change their gut flora – change the gut flora and you change how fast they can put on weight.
Or better yet, take a look at fat mice/humans and skinny mice humans – they have different gut flora and thus different nutritional profiles (production of vitamins, storage of fat, etc.). Swap skinny/fat and the gut flora follows. Swap gut flora and the nutritional profile follows.
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Overuse of antibiotics and antibiotic cleaners is merely creating creating superbacteria. They kill 99.9% of germs, but the 0.1% left behind proliferate and carry their immunity to the next generation. It's like evolution in action..... in your bathroom.
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Sadly their interpretation is not what I expect to be hearing soon in my (liberal-biased) community. Instead, I'll hear something like "See? This is one more reason not to use antibiotic cleanser in my bathroom, even when sick!"
Sounds good to me. They're doing the right thing for the wrong reason, but it is better than doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason.
I have two friends who are experts in the area - one who currently research on the effects of antibiotic resistance in medical context, another who is a food microbiologist and worked with research on food preservatives for two decades (and has a PhD on it) and now is a pensioner, but somewhat active. I've talked to both of them about antibiotic soaps. Both says that ant
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Indeed. Antibacterial is a-okay; I use bleach derivative, personally. Antibiotic? Who the hell would do that?
Actually, antibacterial isn't too good either - you create bacterial communities of resistant bacteria [wikipedia.org]. Use of antibiotics and antibacterial should be avoided when it's not strictly needed, so that it continues to work when it is [guardian.co.uk].
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Resistant to bleach? Really? Did you even read the post you're replying to?
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If full animals can develop immunities to large quantities of arsenic in a few hundred years then bacteria can develop a bleach immunity in no time at all.
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Right, just like the Jews developed resistance to Xyklon-B, or how the victims of the Spanish Inquisition developed resistance to fire and trauma.
Some things just don't develop resistance the same way.
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Right, just like the Jews developed resistance to Xyklon-B, or how the victims of the Spanish Inquisition developed resistance to fire and trauma.
Well, if you were to apply them at a low rate over a thousand generations, they might evolve a resistance. But you might not like the techniques they'd use to implement their resistance to your attacks, since their resistance might very well leave you dead.
The thing about bacteria is that for many species, a "generation" is on the order of 20 or 30 minutes. They can evolve "slowly" over thousands of generations, but that might only be a few months of our time.
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The GP is using antibacterial in it's literal sense. Bleach is antibacterial. However, many things that are labelled "antibacterial" use antibiotics, which can lead to resistance.
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Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
The plural of "anecdote" is not "data". And for that matter, neither is the singular.
More to the point (Score:2)
There are other things in this particular anecdote which are known to negatively affect weight gain in both children and adults.
(In anecdotes, such contributing factors are often overlooked and/or hidden, which is a big part of the reason why anecdotes, even from people you trust, are hard to integrate with data.)
Brilliant! (Score:3)
I'm inclined to agree. IF they do, I can offer a counter-example where they didn't. My son had a series of ear infections during the 1st year of his life and was on antibiotics almost continually from 3 months to 9 months. He also had a serious problem with allergy-induced bronchial infections as well as the odd case of Scarlet Fever. At 23 he's what most people would call "skinny".
Wow, massive sample set there, Elmo, with impeccable use of controls and a double blind study. If you read the actual research, this is talking primarily about childhood obesity so your son's weight at age 23 is particularly useless at this juncture -- he could well be eating tubs of greek yogurt daily for all I know. From the article:
Those who had been treated with antibiotics in the first 6 months of their lives had a higher chance of being overweight at 10, 20, and 38 months of age.
Notice that they don't go into year 23. From another article [npr.org]:
we predict that that this rise in body mass would increase the overweight population in the U.S. by about 1.6 percent.
So at the time of taking antibiotics, this study says that your infant son could have had a slight increase in
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I think the final bite of sarcasm was a little too much. (Or maybe a little too close to grim reality these days.)
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Most people in the South?...
If so, that could still mean he's overweight.
FTFY
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To expand on AC's short (but correct) answer, no because there are nations where people take antibiotics more often than they take baths or change underwear, where no prescription is needed, and America is fatter than all of them. U.S. is actually quite strict (relatively speaking) on the use of antibiotics.
And whatever happened to personal responsibility? Why must there be an external source of blame for one's obesity (or poverty or stupidity or...)? You're fat cus you ate too much. Not because the evil in
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well a side effect of not having infections is not having to expend energy fighting them, when you don't expend energy you store it and become larger as a result.
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I'm to sure where you got yurts from. The suggestion is that quite a few problems might be solved if children (never mind adults) didn't undergo an average of 20 courses of antibiotics, many unnecessary, before they become adults.