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"Making you fat." No, that isn't how obesity works. What you put in your face is directly responsible for how fat you become. The microbes are just a factor,

"Making you fat." No, that isn't how obesity works. What you put in your face is directly responsible for how fat you become. The microbes are just a factor, they aren't the root cause.

windexh8er 11y ago
I'm not sure it's quite that simple. There hasn't been much research around gut biome, however that's changing. This topic has been coming up much more recently and I've recently been reading "The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-term Health" by two Stanford researchers (Justin & Erica Sonnenburg). Just the first few chapters expose evidence that the simple correlation between consumption and static result is simply not true. The gut biome clearly plays a much more important role that we truly understand at this point in time.
- stray 11y ago
  You'll never convince the calories in/calories out crowd that there is still room for scientific inquiry. They are convinced. And they will entertain no opposing ideas.
  - RIMR 11y ago
    Calories in / Calories out is still perfectly valid. It's just that the same portion of the same food might be considered a different number of "calories in" for different people. The "big-boned" or "genetically fat" arguments still reek of BS, but it's worth humoring the idea that we aren't 100% efficient machines that absorb the exact number of calories on the Nutrition Facts box, or burn the exact number of calories displayed on the Treadmill screen... There's a intelligent middle-ground between equally ridiculous ideas that we are "Healthy at Every Size" and that we are perfectly tuned biological machines.
    - vonmoltke 11y ago
      That's the problem with the so-called "calories in/calories out" crowd: they think all food has a specific energy value that varies by statistically-insignificant amounts from person to person. That people lose weight when they eat an energy deficiency and gain it when they eat an energy surplus is not in doubt. What some people refuse to do is evaluate whether the same foods have different energy values for different people, rather than one global value. I'm not saying they do, but the most ardent "calories in/calories out" fanatics refuse to even acknowledge the question.
      - RIMR 11y ago
        I think human discipline is the most important factor in maintaining a healthy weight, and I find instances of "fatlogic" to be aggravating, but I'm not going to pretend that the human body is so simple that the Law of Conservation of Energy can be perfectly applied to our digestive systems...
    - npsimons 11y ago
      Anyone who thinks the treadmill calorie numbers are correct is deluding themselves. As for calculating actual TDEE's, there are ways to do it (see https://www.reddit.com/r/leangains/comments/2rv09z/this_is_how_you_calculate_your_tdee/ https://www.reddit.com/r/leangains/comments/2rv09z/this_is_h...), and once you've determined your TDEE, calorie counting with something like MyFitnessPal makes it so you can know what you're really taking in.
- MisterBastahrd 11y ago
  It's pretty much that simple. Unless someone has some sort of lymphatic condition that causes them to retain fluids or an undiagnosed metabolic syndrome, you aren't gaining weight unless you are consuming more than you are expending. That isn't to say that two identical people with two different gut floras would necessarily gain or lose weight identically while eating the same diet, but I've yet to see any evidence that an otherwise healthy person eating maintenance level calories is going to blow up like a balloon simply because his gut flora is different. A person with a healthy gut flora might be able to consume more calories without gaining as much weight, and it's important to understand WHY that is, but the fact remains that if you don't consume any more than you expend, you aren't going to gain weight (previously mentioned caveats notwithstanding). That said, the western diet is horrible for you. Go to any fast food restaurant and the only fiber you'll get is in the lettuce on your burger.
  - windexh8er 11y ago
    Fully agree on diet, but you should look at some of the data presented in the book. There is evidence - particularly the book talks about gut sterile mice and some of the studies showcasing weight gain scenarios vs non-sterile biome mice on an exact diet. While it's no silver bullet, dismissing the value of a healthy gut is not productive either. No evidence doesn't mean there isn't something worth pursuing. It's a relatively greenfield area of study at this point in time which is why it's interesting to watch it unfold.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > but I've yet to see any evidence that an otherwise healthy person eating maintenance level calories is going to blow up like a balloon simply because his gut flora is different. The whole point of the article here is that there is a line of research which has established, both in non-human models and human experiments, that "maintenance level calories" (especially when considering the content of food that enters the mouth, rather than what gets absorbed) are not a constant across different gut biomes. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/94/1/58.full http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/94/1/58.full http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Turnbaugh/publication/6617716_An_obesity-associated_gut_microbiome_with_increased_capacity_for_energy_harvest/links/00b7d51adf064f0dc0000000.pdf http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Turnbaugh/publicat... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3601187/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3601187/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3974587/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3974587/
xsmasher 11y ago
The question is, how MUCH of a difference does your digestive efficiency make. 5% ? 10% ? I doubt there are people getting twice as many calories out of a meal than the average person.
- stray 11y ago
  Another good question is whether the gut flora have any effect on the brain. And if so, how much?
  - DanBC 11y ago
    http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v4/n10/full/tp201498a.html http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v4/n10/full/tp201498a.html
- learc83 11y ago
  5% more efficient with a 2,000 calorie diet is 100 calories per day. That's about 10 extra pounds worth of calories per year.
RIMR 11y ago
>What you put in your face is directly responsible for how fat you become. To be equally pedantic, it's not what you "put in your face", but how much. Microbes are a factor in weight gain and weight loss just like diet and exercise are also factors. There is no "one simple trick" to lose weight, there are a variety of factors that, if understood, can help us understand the safest, most efficient ways to maintain a healthy weight.
NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
This is ideology, and not a very useful one either. Humans are just animals, and despite the illusion of will power and decisions and all that other junk, we eat as we do because 500,000 years ago our ancestors risked famine constantly. We're optimized against lack of calories, and not optimized for excess calories at all. What this means is that, for the vast majority of people, if you have it to put it in your face, you will, and while you can occasionally refuse this, you won't do so often enough to matter unless your a "fitness" fetishist (fit for what?).
- MisterBastahrd 11y ago
  The vast majority of people are not obese, yet they have 24/7 access to food. Seems like there's a disconnect in your reasoning there.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    > The vast majority of people are not obese, Obesity rates in the US are pretty high. http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/Pages/overweight-obesity-statistics.aspx http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistic... > More than 2 in 3 adults are considered to be overweight or obese. > More than 1 in 3 adults are considered to be obese. > More than 1 in 20 adults are considered to have extreme obesity. > About one-third of children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are considered to be overweight or obese. > More than 1 in 6 children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are considered to be obese.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > The vast majority of people are not obese, yet they have 24/7 access to food. The vast majority of people in the world do not have access to bountiful food. In the US, where the vast majority do have such access, an absolute majority are at least overweight, and more than a third are obese.
    - MisterBastahrd 11y ago
      I'm speaking in the context of the Western world, because we aren't particularly interested in studies of the indigent. The US is overweight because of the quality and quantity of food they eat. And 66%? That's a vast majority.
vidarh 11y ago
The problem with that idea is that we know that we are exceedingly bad at regulating our food intake. And as long as we struggle with finding ways to reliably regulate our intake by adjusting how much and what we eat, if there are simple ways to regulate the calorie intake by reducing uptake from the stomach that will still potentially help a huge amount of people.

"Making you fat." No, that isn't how obesity works. What you put in your face is directly responsible for how fat you become. The microbes are just a factor, they aren't the root cause.

windexh8er 11y ago

I'm not sure it's quite that simple. There hasn't been much research around gut biome, however that's changing. This topic has been coming up much more recently and I've recently been reading "The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-term Health" by two Stanford researchers (Justin & Erica Sonnenburg). Just the first few chapters expose evidence that the simple correlation between consumption and static result is simply not true. The gut biome clearly plays a much more important role that we truly understand at this point in time.

stray 11y ago
You'll never convince the calories in/calories out crowd that there is still room for scientific inquiry. They are convinced. And they will entertain no opposing ideas.
- RIMR 11y ago
  Calories in / Calories out is still perfectly valid. It's just that the same portion of the same food might be considered a different number of "calories in" for different people. The "big-boned" or "genetically fat" arguments still reek of BS, but it's worth humoring the idea that we aren't 100% efficient machines that absorb the exact number of calories on the Nutrition Facts box, or burn the exact number of calories displayed on the Treadmill screen... There's a intelligent middle-ground between equally ridiculous ideas that we are "Healthy at Every Size" and that we are perfectly tuned biological machines.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    That's the problem with the so-called "calories in/calories out" crowd: they think all food has a specific energy value that varies by statistically-insignificant amounts from person to person. That people lose weight when they eat an energy deficiency and gain it when they eat an energy surplus is not in doubt. What some people refuse to do is evaluate whether the same foods have different energy values for different people, rather than one global value. I'm not saying they do, but the most ardent "calories in/calories out" fanatics refuse to even acknowledge the question.
    - RIMR 11y ago
      I think human discipline is the most important factor in maintaining a healthy weight, and I find instances of "fatlogic" to be aggravating, but I'm not going to pretend that the human body is so simple that the Law of Conservation of Energy can be perfectly applied to our digestive systems...
  - npsimons 11y ago
    Anyone who thinks the treadmill calorie numbers are correct is deluding themselves. As for calculating actual TDEE's, there are ways to do it (see https://www.reddit.com/r/leangains/comments/2rv09z/this_is_how_you_calculate_your_tdee/ https://www.reddit.com/r/leangains/comments/2rv09z/this_is_h...), and once you've determined your TDEE, calorie counting with something like MyFitnessPal makes it so you can know what you're really taking in.
MisterBastahrd 11y ago
It's pretty much that simple. Unless someone has some sort of lymphatic condition that causes them to retain fluids or an undiagnosed metabolic syndrome, you aren't gaining weight unless you are consuming more than you are expending. That isn't to say that two identical people with two different gut floras would necessarily gain or lose weight identically while eating the same diet, but I've yet to see any evidence that an otherwise healthy person eating maintenance level calories is going to blow up like a balloon simply because his gut flora is different. A person with a healthy gut flora might be able to consume more calories without gaining as much weight, and it's important to understand WHY that is, but the fact remains that if you don't consume any more than you expend, you aren't going to gain weight (previously mentioned caveats notwithstanding). That said, the western diet is horrible for you. Go to any fast food restaurant and the only fiber you'll get is in the lettuce on your burger.
- windexh8er 11y ago
  Fully agree on diet, but you should look at some of the data presented in the book. There is evidence - particularly the book talks about gut sterile mice and some of the studies showcasing weight gain scenarios vs non-sterile biome mice on an exact diet. While it's no silver bullet, dismissing the value of a healthy gut is not productive either. No evidence doesn't mean there isn't something worth pursuing. It's a relatively greenfield area of study at this point in time which is why it's interesting to watch it unfold.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > but I've yet to see any evidence that an otherwise healthy person eating maintenance level calories is going to blow up like a balloon simply because his gut flora is different. The whole point of the article here is that there is a line of research which has established, both in non-human models and human experiments, that "maintenance level calories" (especially when considering the content of food that enters the mouth, rather than what gets absorbed) are not a constant across different gut biomes. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/94/1/58.full http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/94/1/58.full http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Turnbaugh/publication/6617716_An_obesity-associated_gut_microbiome_with_increased_capacity_for_energy_harvest/links/00b7d51adf064f0dc0000000.pdf http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Turnbaugh/publicat... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3601187/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3601187/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3974587/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3974587/

xsmasher 11y ago

The question is, how MUCH of a difference does your digestive efficiency make. 5% ? 10% ? I doubt there are people getting twice as many calories out of a meal than the average person.

stray 11y ago
Another good question is whether the gut flora have any effect on the brain. And if so, how much?
- DanBC 11y ago
  http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v4/n10/full/tp201498a.html http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v4/n10/full/tp201498a.html
learc83 11y ago
5% more efficient with a 2,000 calorie diet is 100 calories per day. That's about 10 extra pounds worth of calories per year.

RIMR 11y ago

>What you put in your face is directly responsible for how fat you become. To be equally pedantic, it's not what you "put in your face", but how much. Microbes are a factor in weight gain and weight loss just like diet and exercise are also factors. There is no "one simple trick" to lose weight, there are a variety of factors that, if understood, can help us understand the safest, most efficient ways to maintain a healthy weight.

NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago

This is ideology, and not a very useful one either. Humans are just animals, and despite the illusion of will power and decisions and all that other junk, we eat as we do because 500,000 years ago our ancestors risked famine constantly. We're optimized against lack of calories, and not optimized for excess calories at all. What this means is that, for the vast majority of people, if you have it to put it in your face, you will, and while you can occasionally refuse this, you won't do so often enough to matter unless your a "fitness" fetishist (fit for what?).

MisterBastahrd 11y ago
The vast majority of people are not obese, yet they have 24/7 access to food. Seems like there's a disconnect in your reasoning there.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > The vast majority of people are not obese, Obesity rates in the US are pretty high. http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/Pages/overweight-obesity-statistics.aspx http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistic... > More than 2 in 3 adults are considered to be overweight or obese. > More than 1 in 3 adults are considered to be obese. > More than 1 in 20 adults are considered to have extreme obesity. > About one-third of children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are considered to be overweight or obese. > More than 1 in 6 children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are considered to be obese.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > The vast majority of people are not obese, yet they have 24/7 access to food. The vast majority of people in the world do not have access to bountiful food. In the US, where the vast majority do have such access, an absolute majority are at least overweight, and more than a third are obese.
  - MisterBastahrd 11y ago
    I'm speaking in the context of the Western world, because we aren't particularly interested in studies of the indigent. The US is overweight because of the quality and quantity of food they eat. And 66%? That's a vast majority.

vidarh 11y ago

The problem with that idea is that we know that we are exceedingly bad at regulating our food intake. And as long as we struggle with finding ways to reliably regulate our intake by adjusting how much and what we eat, if there are simple ways to regulate the calorie intake by reducing uptake from the stomach that will still potentially help a huge amount of people.