Researchers Find Children 'Burn So Much Energy, They're Like a Difference Species' (bbc.co.uk) 63
A study of 6,400 people "from eight days old up to age 95, in 29 countries," finds that the human metabolism "peaks at the age of one, is stable from 20 to 60 and then inexorably declines," writes the BBC.
Long-time Slashdot reader Hope Thelps shares their report: The study, published in the journal Science, found four phases of metabolic life:
- birth to age one, when the metabolism shifts from being the same as the mother's to a lifetime high 50% above that of adults
- a gentle slowdown until the age of 20, with no spike during all the changes of puberty
- no change at all between the ages of 20 and 60
- a permanent decline, with yearly falls that, by 90, leave metabolism 26% lower than in mid-life
"The most surprising thing for me," one of the researchers tells the BBC, "is there is no change throughout adulthood — if you are experiencing mid-life spread you can no longer blame it on a declining metabolic rate."
Science magazine's headline? "Little kids burn so much energy, they're like a different species, study finds." [T]he first comprehensive study of energy use over the human life span has quantified their burn rate: Infants between the ages of 9 and 15 months expend a stunning 50% more energy in 1 day than adults do, adjusted for body size. These wee dynamos consume and use up energy even faster than pregnant women and teenage boys, most likely to fuel their energetically expensive brains and organs. "Little people are not burning energy like small adults," says Duke University evolutionary biologist Herman Pontzer, who led the new analysis of data from around the world. "They are burning energy superfast ... like a different species."
Long-time Slashdot reader Hope Thelps shares their report: The study, published in the journal Science, found four phases of metabolic life:
- birth to age one, when the metabolism shifts from being the same as the mother's to a lifetime high 50% above that of adults
- a gentle slowdown until the age of 20, with no spike during all the changes of puberty
- no change at all between the ages of 20 and 60
- a permanent decline, with yearly falls that, by 90, leave metabolism 26% lower than in mid-life
"The most surprising thing for me," one of the researchers tells the BBC, "is there is no change throughout adulthood — if you are experiencing mid-life spread you can no longer blame it on a declining metabolic rate."
Science magazine's headline? "Little kids burn so much energy, they're like a different species, study finds." [T]he first comprehensive study of energy use over the human life span has quantified their burn rate: Infants between the ages of 9 and 15 months expend a stunning 50% more energy in 1 day than adults do, adjusted for body size. These wee dynamos consume and use up energy even faster than pregnant women and teenage boys, most likely to fuel their energetically expensive brains and organs. "Little people are not burning energy like small adults," says Duke University evolutionary biologist Herman Pontzer, who led the new analysis of data from around the world. "They are burning energy superfast ... like a different species."
Noooo! This can't be! (Score:5, Funny)
When people are fat it's because of their metabolism, not because they're shoving whatever they can find down their gullet while sitting on their fat asses all day looking at their phone.
This is one of those fake studies. I know it is because I did my own research on the internets.
You're misrepresenting the study (Score:3)
Re: You're misrepresenting the study (Score:1)
WTF units are you using there? Pounds? There's no way that you need 'ruthless dieting' to stay under 300(!) pounds in weight.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
None.
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Simple science, that's what he's talking about.
I don't know if you know this, but humans are what's called "warm blooded." That means that they have to expend calories to maintain a constant body temperature. At 300 pounds of weight, you need to spend somewhere on the order of 6000-8000 calories A DAY just to maintain that body weight.
In no sense is dropping below a 6000 calorie A DAY diet considered "ruthless dieting."
Unless you're claiming to somehow be an over-unity engine, producing energy out of nowher
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Simple science, that's what he's talking about.
I don't know if you know this, but humans are what's called "warm blooded." That means that they have to expend calories to maintain a constant body temperature. At 300 pounds of weight, you need to spend somewhere on the order of 6000-8000 calories A DAY just to maintain that body weight.
In no sense is dropping below a 6000 calorie A DAY diet considered "ruthless dieting."
Unless you're claiming to somehow be an over-unity engine, producing energy out of nowhere.
Anecdotes are not statistical data; but I cannot lose weight on more than about 1000 calories a day, especially not if I follow the USDA guidelines for percentages of Carbohydrates (which are ridiculously-high).
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At 3000 calories you're already eating enough for 1.5 people a day, so hey, at least you're flat-out admitting you're over-eating.
Pretty much any time anyone claims that they "only eat" a small number of calories and "still can't lose weight" what they really mean is that they're not counting the thousands of calories a day they get through snacking.
Count everything. Unless you're somehow existing off zero-point energy, it's a simple matter of calories burnt over calories eaten. Period.
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Unless you're somehow existing off zero-point energy, it's a simple matter of calories burnt over calories eaten.
I'm not here to defend overeating, which was how I got fat and what doing less of makes/made me less fat, but it's not really a simple matter. Not everyone burns the same amount of calories doing things, not everyone burns as much fat doing the same things even if they do use the same amount of energy, not everyone stores the same percentage of what they eat, etc. Some people can simply eat more without getting fat; alternately, some people always feel hungry unless they're eating arguably too much.
One thin
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Truth. You aren’t going to be 300lbs from eating healthy meals. Fat comes from excess calories.
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You aren’t going to be 300lbs from eating healthy meals. Fat comes from excess calories.
Eating does not make you fat. Marriage makes you fat.
Just compare the waistlines of your single and married friends to see what I mean.
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After almost a year and a half of carefully following the dietician-mandated, doctor-approved diet and with regular exercise, I now weigh 405 lbs. I've discussed this with my doctors and their opinion was to stick to the diet, even if it resulted in weight gain.
Of course, they also recommend a second surgery for bariatric bypass because all their transplant patients gain weight from following t
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You are close to their level of idiocy, but not quite. You also need to point out how this finding is "racist", "sexist", and how BMI is a racist lie.
It always cracks me up how the Fat Acceptance Movement tries to glom onto other more popular or more legitimate movements to back up their insane nonsense. Their favorite is to pretend all non-white people have completely different bodies so that means BMI and all fat stigma are racist.
Sure, you can laugh at a big fattie on the corner eating a triple decker ic
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It's more like some people literally poop out about half of the calories they consume and some people don't. But the hunger drive "assumes" they do.
Thus the reports of people getting their intestinal microbiome altered effortlessly losing dozens of pounds without even an intention of doing so.
Biology does vary (Score:3)
When people are fat it's because of their metabolism, not because they're shoving whatever they can find down their gullet while sitting on their fat asses all day looking at their phone.
This is one of those fake studies. I know it is because I did my own research on the internets.
All you have to do is have a handful of friends to know you are incorrect.
Everyone knows someone who lives off pizza and beer, never works out, and is reckless with every health decision AND skinny as a toothpick...and someone who is eating meager salad every time you see them and still fat. I know some pretty chubby marathon runners...eat super healthy and small portions, don't drink, do everything right and are still surprisingly heavy. In contrast, everyone has that friend who lives off fast food, fr
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No one has ever accused Slashdot's editors of being good at their job.
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It is also spelled correctly near the end of TFS, if -- correction, considering -- we are being lazy.
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Difference species? (Score:2)
So they are .diff's who exist only as DNA strands that contain the difference in genetic code between the two parents?
Plotted against growth rate? (Score:2)
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Not like a different species (Score:1)
Not like a different species, but just like humans. I assume they were studying humans, anyway. The data was on humans. I don't see how they can conclude that data on humans indicates the humans are not humans. They are obviously humans, unless there is some bizarre heisenbergish schrodinger thing going on that says that a human can spontaneously change into another species when its metabolism is measured.
Far more likely is that the researchers are bad at communicating and could not cough up "We thought we
Re: Not like a different species (Score:2)
Do you understand the concept of hyperbole and metaphor or are you just another robotic aspie forever taking everything at face value and unable to extrapolate intent?
Whoa (Score:2)
It's nice to see it quantified I suppose (Score:2)
I have (or rather had, they're out of college now) a kid , but in terms of feeding them I generally just bought the food and didn't think much of it, but when it was pointed out to me how much kids need to eat it kind of shocked me. I always thought in terms of kids been cheaper to feed than adults because they're smaller.
And yes, I'm not the brightest tool in the sh
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I have two grown-up kids, and when they were small, we never forced them to eat. We gave them food. They ate it. If they didn't, no problem. Their weights are quite normal, but I don't think either of them eats fast food (unless you count kebabs).
As a teenager, my sister ate nothing but potatoes for about 18 months, and then nothing but apples for another 18 months. After that, she ate normally. She is now 65, vegan, and on the thin side.
I was extremely thin when young, but I gr
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Then why are the meals on kids's menus at restaurants always smaller-portioned?
Children are constantly growing (Score:1)
Of course, children are constantly growing, that's where energy goes, hence higher metabolism. I know whenever every year or two that I get off my fat behind and start exercising some of the energy is going into growing muscle, instead of straight into the gut. It doesn't compare to child gaining an inch in height that year though. And where as an adult like myself has to dedicated hours out of a day for exercise (which I can only keep up for a few month out of year reasonably), that kind of growth (energy
Researchers Find Children 'Burn So Much Money (Score:3)
much more than a different species.
Tinkering (Score:2)
Kids (Score:1)
This is news?
Kids run around ALL the time.
They will exhaust both parents in a matter of hours.
100 calories a week (Score:2)
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> Carrying a stone of weight around with you at all times takes quite a bit of effort = calories.
It often slows you down and discourages exercise. There is often a very potent feedback loop with gaining weight. It's also exacerbated for the many Type 2 diabetics who become insulin resistant, produce more insulin, are more hungry due to insulin, and start gaining weight which causes more insulin resistance. The feedback until their blood sugars exceed the renal threshold, roughly 200 mg/dL in US units, an
Food insecurity (Score:4, Insightful)
Fucking seriously? How about linking sources that are real?
The actual study I had to click through to. PDF. [pnas.org] A 2014 study DOES NOT EVEN REMOTELY APPROACH THE CLAIMS IN THE TITLE OR IN THE BBC ARTICLE. I clicked through to find out to what extent changes in metabolism caused by diet and lifestyle changes are addressed. lolnope. It doesn't make any claim that could require that to be addressed. It's about the brain's metabolism and nothing else. I so look forward to three weeks of clickbait based on this garbage science journalism. Please, tell me more about how hunger and weight retention don't change and fuck all the fatties. I'm looking forward to that and the other side which will completely fail to address any science and use social-justice-based emotional reasoning to say "no that's wrong".
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Given that you say yourself that the study you link to doesn't match up with the account in the BBC article, why do you say that that's the study they're talking about?
The science article does provide that link but specifically notes that it is to a different study (from back in 2014...):
"The growing brain is likely the key energy sucker in little kids, says biological anthropologist Chris Kuzawa of Northwestern University. Kuzawa did not participate in this study, but in 2014 his team found that the brains
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I believe that this link is as close as you can get without a login;
https://science.sciencemag.org... [sciencemag.org]
learn English (Score:2)
Sure they do (Score:2)
Their energy powers several star wars universes.
One of the more interesting findings... (Score:2)
One of the more interesting findings in this study was that there can be up to like a 25% delta between people of the same apparent build, height, etc.. in terms of metabolism. My guess (too lazy to read through the thing) is that e.g. 95% of people fall within a few percent of each other, and 5% of them vary much more greatly.
Based on how Twitter, Reddit, etc.. work this will turn into a mythology that fat people aren't fat for any reason but it's because all of them, that what, 40%?, of the country are ju
Obesity (Score:2)
Hohum (Score:2)
Metabolism rate in warm-blooded animals is largely a function of size, due to surface area / volume ratio.
People generally get fat because they consume more calories than they burn. It's long been known that this occurs due to hunger regulation, not metabolic rate.
This "study" is trivial.