[Timesink]

This is part two of a ten-part series on the myths and science surrounding obesity. Part One is posted here (and what a fun thread it was!).

[EggsAckley]

Here we go again! LOL!
I'm glad these articles are being posted!

[lambo]

Bookmark to read later.

[laweeks]

I'll never forget going on a sales call about 10 years ago and being told to wait in the lobby for a while because the person I was to see had just died that a.m. Uncomfortably I waited for a bit, and a guy came out to tell me that the death of the person I was to see caught everyone by surprise because the dead guy was in the best of health, in his early 40s, had NO body fat, and exercised every morning before work. In fact, he had dropped dead while working out on an exercise bike that morning at the "Y".

The guy they sent to tell me this bad news was wheezing, had a cigarette and cup of black coffee in one hand, a big cream-filled donut in the other hand, powdered sugar all over his tie, and had to be 50 pounds overweight, and appeared to be in his late 50s. Coulda' been a good Seinfield episode! ROTFLMAS (but not then of course!)

[Xenalyte]

Of course, none of this article is true, since we all know people are overweight solely because they lack willpower.

Or something. Did I get that line right?

[foreverfree]

bump

[caisson71]

Great post. It won't influence those into fads however.

[Sam Cree]

These threads are fun. Thanks for posting them.

Although, so far, I disagree with what I perceive as the main thrust of the articles, that obesity isn't related to eating too much of certain foods.

[Timesink]

Ping for the rational, intelligent posters, on either side of the debate, from the first thread.

[Rennes Templar]

IMHO, these articles are a bunch of crap. As a practicing Doctor of Chiropractic for 20 yrs with a specialty in nutrition, for anyone one to imply that activity and food intake are not related to obesity is trying to sell something. There are two causes of obesity in America: Inactivity and addiction to sugar. For anyone to imply that sucrose does not affect health in general and weight is ludicrous. But we alternative practitioners are used to this from orthodox sources. Americans are addicted to sugar. We consume nearly 150 pounds a year now.I challenge anyone reading this to go four days without any food that has sugar in it. Bet you can't make it. The other cause is incorrect individual food intake patterns. I recommend anyone interested to read the books on individual meatabolic typing. One mans diet food is anothers scale breaker. By the way, I practice what I preach. I'm 51 yrs old, 6-2, 170lbs and ran a 14.2 sec in the 100 meter at the Senior Olympics. Sorry I can't reply to comments now, got to get back to work.

[Ditter]

"If its decided then....... that I must die. I think I'll have another piece of pie."

[RockyMtnMan]

I'll weigh in on this thread because of recent events in our household. My wife has started running and dieting to lose a few pounds.

She has been frustrated because the weight wasn't coming off fast enough. Then I pointed out to her that she was trading lean mass for fat mass. She already looks great, but hey I'll let her tear herself down until she reaches supermodel.

She wanted to know how I could lose so much weight so quickly. The answer I gave her is that I burn twice the number of calories (I run faster) on one of my runs and eat the same amount of food she does.

Weight loss boils down to burning more calories than your body needs to function. Unfortunately some people's bodies need a ridiculously small number of calories compared to others. Genetically this is an advantage in a world where food is scarce. But we all know food is not scarce in the good ol' USA just take a trip to Chilli's and try to eat the whole plate.

A friend of mine can consume 3X what I can and he is in better shape than me. He exercises all day long and needs the calories to function.

[Zipporah]

Thanks for posting this.. very interesting. More than diet IMHO is that kids are too seditary and not only kids but adults. The more muscle you have the faster your metabolism. I eat pretty much what I want now that I have found an exercise program that works. I was going to the gym 4 or 5 times a week and not getting near the results. This is the program: www.t-tapp.com

[Walkingfeather]

Bttt

[jjm2111]

"A study in the September 2000 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition actually found sugar in the morning resulted in better mental performance in children and adults."

Yeah, sugar in the form of a banana or orange juice, not Coke or TootyFrooty cereal.

The best way to stay thin is to eat less, excercise more, and stay away from processed food. Fat isn't great and I have a hard time believing that a diet of soda and potato chips is a good diet. (Not that a soda and/or a bag of chips every now and again is a mortal sin, either).

[jjm2111]

After reading both articles, my opinion is that they are agenda driven.

With the rare exceptions, fat people are 100% responsible for their weight. Even those who have body types pre-disposed to fat benefit from a healthy diet and excercise.

Personally, I believe it's the processed food and the ridiculous amount sugar that people consume that makes them fat. Look at kids these days. So many kids are chubby compared to just 15 years ago.

[jjm2111]

BTW, this is a good thread.

[aruanan]

The problem with people talking about genes or the environment is that they don't realize that if someone has a genetic predisposition toward having greater fat deposits, the way those deposits are filled is by having a greater energy intake than energy expenditure since merely having the predisposition won't create the fat out of thin air.

Some blame individual foodstuffs. One of the current food demons is high fructose corn syrup. I had someone tell me that he wasn't talking about table sugar, he was talking about fructose. Well, table sugar is 50% (by molarity) fructose. There's also far too little known by the general public about basic nutritional physiology. So here goes, from an earlier post:

To: SamAdams76; TomB

Is sugar making us fat?

Neither sugar (sucrose, which is glucose and fructose in a 1:1 ratio) nor high fructose corn syrup (which has a greater than 1:1 ratio of fructose) is making us fat. A diet with an energy intake that exceeds an individual's energy output is what makes him fat.

The truth is relatively simple, but that won't stop this thread from being filled with outlandish nonsense. The following can be used to separate fact from nutzoid nutracrap.

Fructose* (a six carbon sugar) enters the glycolytic pathway and is used in exactly the same way as glucose (another isomer of the same molecular formula and known as dextrose, grape sugar, or corn sugar). In fact, glucose is phosphorylated on the 6 carbon to become fructose 6-phosphate. Fructose 6-phosphate is phosphorylated again on the 1 carbon to become fructose 1,6 diphosphate. Dietary fructose (whether it comes from sucrose or from honey or from fruit or from high fructose corn syrup) is phosphorylated on the 1 carbon and then on the 6 carbon, ending up as fructose 1,6-diphosphate, the same as glucose.

Neither glucose nor fructose is made into fat in the human body. Fat cannot be converted into glucose. The human body makes very, very little fat de novo. The way one gains fat is principally from fat in the diet that is stored in adipose tissue. If you took a sample of all the fats you ate over a year's period and compared their types and relative quantities to the fat in a tissue sample of your adipose tissue, you'd find they were almost exactly the same.

The way you accumulate such fat has to do with your body's storage capacity for the three macro-nutrients (proteins, carbohydrates, and fat) when faced with dietary excess. The body has no real storage form of protein. Protein intake in excess of physiological needs for protein synthesis results in the constituent amino acids being deaminated and catabolized either in the glycolytic or lipolytic pathways depending on the type of amino acid. Carbohydrate intake can be buffered through about three days worth of storage in the form of glycogen, a polymer of glucose molecules. Relative to proteins and carbohydrates, fat has almost unlimited storage capacity.

When ones energy intake exceeds output, the body compensates by prioritizing the catabolism of macronutrients. Proteins have most immediate priority, followed by glucose, followed by fats. If the continued excess of caloric intake threatens to overtax the glycogen storage capacity, the body shifts substrate usage away from fat oxidation (nearly all your resting metabolic rate is accounted for by fat oxidation) and toward glucose oxidation. The result is that energy intake that exceeds energy output is preferentially saved by the storage of dietary fat.


*So any time you have one unit of sucrose, 1/2 of that is fructose. And it is principally the fructose in sugar, not the glucose, that makes it taste sweet. This is why it takes much less fructose to sweeten something to the same degree as it does sucrose. Maltose is two molecules of glucose. Lactose is one molecule of glucose and one of galactose. All hexose dietary sugars (fructose, glucose, and galactose) are eventually converted into fructose 1,6-diphosphate.

126 posted on 07/03/2003 2:51 PM EDT by aruanan

[Consort]

The Lard acts in mysterious wheys.

[A CA Guy]

"We are grateful to ExxonMobil, AT&T, Nasdaq, McDonalds, Microsoft, and General Motors Corporation for their support."

It's amazing that a internet site sponsored by McDonalds would ever come to these conclusions! LOL

This was all just a fun joke I guess. Thanks

[King Prout]

Genetics and heredity are important. However...

Problems arise when one tries to realistically examine and discuss this area. Too much sensitivity about certain demographic groups and their common and decades-consistent behaviors, and the unintended consequences on these groups (and, thus, the national averages) these characteristic behaviors produce. Locking in recessive alleles for medically undesirable traits.

For those who have pointed out that it is impossible for the genome to have "evolved" (mutated) in so short a time as to produce the apparent sudden upsurge in chronic and morbid obesity rates: You are correct.

However, I must ask you to examine the following general "hypothetical" scenario and ask yourself what effect it *might* have on the gene pool - NOT the genome - respecting incidence and concentration of genetically heritable multi-gene-dependent unfortunate phenotypic expressions (such as asthma, predisposition for heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, glandular imbalances, *perhaps* tendencies towards obesity, and -ummm... how to put it politely?- a "spectrum of congenital and incurable permanent ineducability"):

1. A subpopulation started from a narrow founding set of genetic donors undergoes several generations of sexual promiscuity.
2. These commonplace promiscuous and ephemeral interludes produce a large percentage of illegitimate children of unknown paternity per generation, as well as decrease the length of a generatioal span from the notional 25 years to something more closely approximated by 17 years.
3. These illegitimates continue the promiscuous habits of their progenitors, leading to a significant increase in the incidence of unintentional incest by way of unknowing couplings of demi-siblings, close cousins, etc...
4. These common cases of accidental incest lead to inbreeding on a population-wide level over the course of several generations.
5. The general inbreeding leads to various "founders' syndromes" (one minor and mild example that shouldn't get me in serious trouble: cajuns) and the "locking in" of various recessive alleles as homozygous pairings.
6. These homozygous recessives lead to an increase in the incidence of particular phenotypic expressions, many of them (most of them, actually) medically undesirable.

Can you see that a process as described above, if there are indeed "fat genes", might account for a sweeping shift in the gene pool, leading to a massive shift in rates-of-incidence of obesity types in the phenotypes of a general population, without need for an impossible rate of genetic mutation?