Your comments betray your lack of information. Opinions do not substitute for facts based on research. Anyone keeping up with research on obesity knows its a complex problem with many factors. While some are fat from over eating or eating the wrong foods many more eat sparingly and do not lose weight. The striking statistics showing that a miniscule # of people able to maintain weight loss make it quite clear that there are physiologic mechanisms at work that are not yet understood.
If it comforts you to believe that obese people have no self controls and are lazy gluttons by all means tell yourself that fairy tale.
>> Your comments betray your lack of information.... you...believe that obese people have no self controls and are lazy gluttons
Well then, by all means, inform me as to the real problem!
What is it? Government representatives are packing sugar down their throats against their will?
Seriously: after your last post, you owe it to yourself, your tinfoil-hat group, and me as well, to spell out EXACTLY HOW all this sugar is getting into the guts of all these fat people.
HOW? Spell it out, Einstein. I must be too ignorant to perceive, since (silly me!) I’m assuming they’re all voluntarily EATING it.
>> make it quite clear that there are physiologic mechanisms at work that are not yet understood.
So that’s quite clear, is it?
Then use that (claimed) “fact” to demonstrate exactly why endemic obesity is a RECENT (last two or three decades) problem.
If obesity is truly a physiological problem, and not one of intake/burn ratio, simple logic would dictate that endemic obesity would have been a problem throughout history.
History shows that not to be the case, however.
Awaiting your learned reply.
Are you of the opinion that a body can consume less energy than it burns and still gain weight?
The striking statistics showing that a miniscule # of people able to maintain weight loss make it quite clear that there are physiologic mechanisms at work that are not yet understood.
Overeating is a learned behavior. It can also be unlearned. Our society has become increasingly sedentary and no longer possesses a basic understanding of science, especially human nutrition. This is the problem, not some unknown physiological mechanism.
Obesity in the US is a phenomenon that has risen since WWII and our lifestyles since then have become more dramatically lethargic. Meanwhile, science and technology have combined to make food production and distribution much more efficient so that the average adult spends much less than 20% of their income on food and they have buying power to purchase more than the bare necessity. Nutritional education is lacking and the stigma attached to obesity has been removed so it's OK to be obese.
The genetic basis that was in our recent ancestors who were relatively trim are the same genes that are in us producing the same enzymes and controlled by the same hormones, yet we are obese. It seems to me that the answer for the majority of us is that we eat too damn much for the calories we burn.