7 ms·

It would be interesting if they could find some food that flipped this on... clearly obesity is reaching epidemic proportions and there appears to be some corre

It would be interesting if they could find some food that flipped this on... clearly obesity is reaching epidemic proportions and there appears to be some correlation between this and the consumption of processed foods. It would be interesting to figure out if there's something in our food that is flipping the switch to lead down that path. Now that we have some (apparently) credible evidence correlating these switches with obesity, it would be handy to be able to see what to avoid to prevent this switch from being triggered... also if there's something that's not in control of the drug companies that we could eat to flip it back.

kybernetyk 11y ago
I don't know if you need a switch to flip the gene variant on/off when it comes to processed food. I lost 10kg since February by just not eating sugars anymore. I always assumed I wouldn't eat much sugar because I don't like sweets and I don't drink soda. But once I started counting added sugars in the processed foods I consumed it became clear I was consuming way too much of the stuff. Nowadays I just watch out to buy products with 0 sugar in it. Now that's of course no silver bullet but a pretty low hanging fruit when it comes to improving your overall health.
- epalmer 11y ago
  I've given up all carbs except what is in nuts and fibrous vegetables. My appetite is greatly reduced and U feel better. (Keto adapted diet) 21 libs down in 7 weeks. Blood pressure down a lot. Swelling down, energy up. Feeling better. And yes I do exercise. Try to do 5 hours a week. Probably average 4.5 hrs / week. It is frustrating that processors add sugar to virtually everything.
seiji 11y ago
some food that flipped this on Stop eating bread (yes, pizza counts as bread. beer counts as bread. stop it). Stop drinking calories unless you're exercising for 2+ hours at once (yes, fruit juice is bad for you. stop it). The practice of making "processed foods" is essentially just cramming carbs and salt into everything and making it as highly concentrated as possible. Much processed food (read: basically anything pre-packaged in a wrapper) is more like a high calorie MRE food brick instead of something you should be combining with other foodstuffs. We know how food interacts with human bodies. Water doesn't cause fat growth. Dietary fat doesn't cause fat growth (the chemical 'fat' isn't human fat tissue, so drinking a gallon of olive oil won't increase your fat stores). High glycemic sugars cause fat growth in non-glycogen depleted bags of bones. Turns out we can stop getting obese just by not eating things causing obesity.
- meursault334 11y ago
  I think this is likely the explanation. There isn't a food that "flips it on" it's always been on in some people and in others they are either highly resistant to this process or it is age-dependent. Fortunately the solution is to not eat the foods that this process depends on. I think this an important point because you can either wait for therapies that target these processes or simply stop eating crap and accept that some people are more able to eat crap than you are. Since I've cut processed food and bread entirely out of my diet I've lost a lot of weight pretty effortlessly. I don't think this experience is unique. I also know people that can eat lots of these foods without weight gain.
- elif 11y ago
  You're talking about a different kind of obesity i think. The only thing even remotely healthy about my diet is the vegan part.. but that makes me rely even more on the carb-heavy foods you attack. I eat tons of processed wheat-based food every day.. I drink heavy juices by the liter, and I am still seriously underweight. There is clearly a metabolic component, the control of which the OP was theorizing.
  - seiji 11y ago
    Oh, absolutely. I know people who subsist on nothing but ice cream, pasta, chipotle, and orange juice while not gaining significant weight. They aren't ripped, but they aren't overweight either. In the aggregate of society, the hyper-ectomorph phenotype isn't what people are fighting against. But, we must not forget about them either. Excessive school lunch programs of calorie restriction aimed towards stopping "fat kids" just pains the skinny kids who need way more calories than the 8 year old borderline diabetics. We need individual nutrition knowledge balanced against our body type. We can't say "everybody must do X," but we should say "People with A, B, C traits should really do X and Y to not be a health menace to society."
  - cmarschner 11y ago
    Current research shows a link to the type of gut bacteria we carry around. http://www.bbc.com/news/health-23970219 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-23970219
RIMR 11y ago
>there appears to be some correlation between this and the consumption of processed foods. Really? I would love a source on this, because it seems that the #1 reason is that the average portion size has increased greatly in the past 30 years while people are exercising less and less. It would be great if we could find a way to "flip a switch" to make weight-loss easier, but it's downright foolish to pretend that we are gaining weight for any other reason than that we are eating too much and exercising too little. This "processed foods make you fat" nonsense is infuriating because it just validates people's beliefs that their weight problems have nothing to do with their personal habits, instead placing the blame on the quality of the foods they've been eating.
- _delirium 11y ago
  There's a moderate amount of evidence that the type of food plays a significant role in overconsumption of calories. One factor is differing satiation for the same number of calories, i.e. 300 calories of some foods make you feel fuller than 300 calories of other foods. There is also something specifically weird going on with a handful of foods that seem to promote ongoing consumption to degrees seen much less often with other kinds of food. Soda and salty/fat snacks are two where people are observed consuming huge numbers of calories in kind of a chain-consumption binge, which is much less often seen with, say, pork chops or broccoli.
  - balabaster 11y ago
    What about the fact that our chemical laden foods feeds into addiction that perpetuates the cycle? We become addicted to the types of food we consume which causes us to want more than we should. This in combination with increasing portion sizes is exacerbating the problem.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      Also quite often documentaries shows (or at least claim-suggest) how much the """"food"""" industry loves to put sugar on top of the remains the sell as meals so it doesn't taste like sand.
otabdeveloper1 11y ago
> It would be interesting to figure out if there's something in our food that is flipping the switch to lead down that path. There is, it's called carbohydrates.
- mattmanser 11y ago
  There's been a heavy carbohydrates bias in our food for millennia. Bit strange to point at it now.
  - yellowapple 11y ago
    If anything, there's been a switch away from complex carbohydrates (grains and starches, particularly) as humans have gained easier and easier access to a wider diversity of foods, including - and particularly - simpler carbohydrates like sugars; the prevalence of fruit and added sugar (especially high fructose corn syrup, but even table sugar, agave, and other objectively-healthier sugar sources) in the modern diet could very well be worth examining as such an "environmental factor".
voidlogic 11y ago
>It would be interesting if they could find some food that flipped this on... That might be good for the health side of the crisis, but the graphs of obesity correspond with food waste as calculated by the NIH. Only 30% of the excess calories have gone to making us fat, the rest is waste, so solving the health side alone will not fix the economic or environmental sides of the issue. This issue is discussed in depth at the end of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPi1LQHBWBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPi1LQHBWBk
- voidlogic 11y ago
  Why the downvote? I was pointing out the the issue has many components, and this would only address one of them.
mhurron 11y ago
> appears to be some correlation between this and the consumption of processed foods http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/09/120914_EXP_drinksize.jpg.CROP.rectangle3-large.jpg http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_pol... There you go. We are eating more. As other nations adopt an American diet, they also eat more and get fatter. There may be other things as well, but far too many people are looking for the magic pill that lets them eat all they want and not get fat. Make sure you're eating a healthy diet and getting needed exercise, then you can move on. But god damn, act responsibly first.
BurningFrog 11y ago
A potentially explosive finding from this week says that many other species are also getting obese along with humans. Some environmental factor could be behind all of it http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1712/1626.short http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1712/1626...
- tonyedgecombe 11y ago
  We are the environmental factor.

kybernetyk 11y ago

I don't know if you need a switch to flip the gene variant on/off when it comes to processed food. I lost 10kg since February by just not eating sugars anymore. I always assumed I wouldn't eat much sugar because I don't like sweets and I don't drink soda. But once I started counting added sugars in the processed foods I consumed it became clear I was consuming way too much of the stuff. Nowadays I just watch out to buy products with 0 sugar in it. Now that's of course no silver bullet but a pretty low hanging fruit when it comes to improving your overall health.

epalmer 11y ago
I've given up all carbs except what is in nuts and fibrous vegetables. My appetite is greatly reduced and U feel better. (Keto adapted diet) 21 libs down in 7 weeks. Blood pressure down a lot. Swelling down, energy up. Feeling better. And yes I do exercise. Try to do 5 hours a week. Probably average 4.5 hrs / week. It is frustrating that processors add sugar to virtually everything.

seiji 11y ago

some food that flipped this on Stop eating bread (yes, pizza counts as bread. beer counts as bread. stop it). Stop drinking calories unless you're exercising for 2+ hours at once (yes, fruit juice is bad for you. stop it). The practice of making "processed foods" is essentially just cramming carbs and salt into everything and making it as highly concentrated as possible. Much processed food (read: basically anything pre-packaged in a wrapper) is more like a high calorie MRE food brick instead of something you should be combining with other foodstuffs. We know how food interacts with human bodies. Water doesn't cause fat growth. Dietary fat doesn't cause fat growth (the chemical 'fat' isn't human fat tissue, so drinking a gallon of olive oil won't increase your fat stores). High glycemic sugars cause fat growth in non-glycogen depleted bags of bones. Turns out we can stop getting obese just by not eating things causing obesity.

meursault334 11y ago
I think this is likely the explanation. There isn't a food that "flips it on" it's always been on in some people and in others they are either highly resistant to this process or it is age-dependent. Fortunately the solution is to not eat the foods that this process depends on. I think this an important point because you can either wait for therapies that target these processes or simply stop eating crap and accept that some people are more able to eat crap than you are. Since I've cut processed food and bread entirely out of my diet I've lost a lot of weight pretty effortlessly. I don't think this experience is unique. I also know people that can eat lots of these foods without weight gain.
elif 11y ago
You're talking about a different kind of obesity i think. The only thing even remotely healthy about my diet is the vegan part.. but that makes me rely even more on the carb-heavy foods you attack. I eat tons of processed wheat-based food every day.. I drink heavy juices by the liter, and I am still seriously underweight. There is clearly a metabolic component, the control of which the OP was theorizing.
- seiji 11y ago
  Oh, absolutely. I know people who subsist on nothing but ice cream, pasta, chipotle, and orange juice while not gaining significant weight. They aren't ripped, but they aren't overweight either. In the aggregate of society, the hyper-ectomorph phenotype isn't what people are fighting against. But, we must not forget about them either. Excessive school lunch programs of calorie restriction aimed towards stopping "fat kids" just pains the skinny kids who need way more calories than the 8 year old borderline diabetics. We need individual nutrition knowledge balanced against our body type. We can't say "everybody must do X," but we should say "People with A, B, C traits should really do X and Y to not be a health menace to society."
- cmarschner 11y ago
  Current research shows a link to the type of gut bacteria we carry around. http://www.bbc.com/news/health-23970219 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-23970219

RIMR 11y ago

>there appears to be some correlation between this and the consumption of processed foods. Really? I would love a source on this, because it seems that the #1 reason is that the average portion size has increased greatly in the past 30 years while people are exercising less and less. It would be great if we could find a way to "flip a switch" to make weight-loss easier, but it's downright foolish to pretend that we are gaining weight for any other reason than that we are eating too much and exercising too little. This "processed foods make you fat" nonsense is infuriating because it just validates people's beliefs that their weight problems have nothing to do with their personal habits, instead placing the blame on the quality of the foods they've been eating.

_delirium 11y ago
There's a moderate amount of evidence that the type of food plays a significant role in overconsumption of calories. One factor is differing satiation for the same number of calories, i.e. 300 calories of some foods make you feel fuller than 300 calories of other foods. There is also something specifically weird going on with a handful of foods that seem to promote ongoing consumption to degrees seen much less often with other kinds of food. Soda and salty/fat snacks are two where people are observed consuming huge numbers of calories in kind of a chain-consumption binge, which is much less often seen with, say, pork chops or broccoli.
- balabaster 11y ago
  What about the fact that our chemical laden foods feeds into addiction that perpetuates the cycle? We become addicted to the types of food we consume which causes us to want more than we should. This in combination with increasing portion sizes is exacerbating the problem.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Also quite often documentaries shows (or at least claim-suggest) how much the """"food"""" industry loves to put sugar on top of the remains the sell as meals so it doesn't taste like sand.

otabdeveloper1 11y ago

> It would be interesting to figure out if there's something in our food that is flipping the switch to lead down that path. There is, it's called carbohydrates.

mattmanser 11y ago
There's been a heavy carbohydrates bias in our food for millennia. Bit strange to point at it now.
- yellowapple 11y ago
  If anything, there's been a switch away from complex carbohydrates (grains and starches, particularly) as humans have gained easier and easier access to a wider diversity of foods, including - and particularly - simpler carbohydrates like sugars; the prevalence of fruit and added sugar (especially high fructose corn syrup, but even table sugar, agave, and other objectively-healthier sugar sources) in the modern diet could very well be worth examining as such an "environmental factor".

voidlogic 11y ago

>It would be interesting if they could find some food that flipped this on... That might be good for the health side of the crisis, but the graphs of obesity correspond with food waste as calculated by the NIH. Only 30% of the excess calories have gone to making us fat, the rest is waste, so solving the health side alone will not fix the economic or environmental sides of the issue. This issue is discussed in depth at the end of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPi1LQHBWBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPi1LQHBWBk

voidlogic 11y ago
Why the downvote? I was pointing out the the issue has many components, and this would only address one of them.

mhurron 11y ago

> appears to be some correlation between this and the consumption of processed foods http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/09/120914_EXP_drinksize.jpg.CROP.rectangle3-large.jpg http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_pol... There you go. We are eating more. As other nations adopt an American diet, they also eat more and get fatter. There may be other things as well, but far too many people are looking for the magic pill that lets them eat all they want and not get fat. Make sure you're eating a healthy diet and getting needed exercise, then you can move on. But god damn, act responsibly first.

BurningFrog 11y ago

A potentially explosive finding from this week says that many other species are also getting obese along with humans. Some environmental factor could be behind all of it http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1712/1626.short http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/278/1712/1626...

tonyedgecombe 11y ago
We are the environmental factor.