4 ms·
That meta-analysis only looked at animals living among humans. Is there any evidence of wild animals living far from humans getting fat as well? If the latter
by pygy_ 8y ago
That meta-analysis only looked at animals living among humans.
Is there any evidence of wild animals living far from humans getting fat as well?
If the latter are not affected, it would be reasonable to think that the former are fat because they are exposed to human junk food.
Junk food itself is a natural consequence of a food sector that has to grow in order to please its investors. Sell as much food as possible to whoever will buy it.
It can't shove food down people's mouth, but it can produce food that's deceptively tasty and manipulate our instincts.
- sedachv 8y agoOne of the studies in the meta-analysis was about rats in agricultural areas ("From 1948 to 1986, male rats trapped in the rural area gained 4.5 per cent in body weight, while females gained 5.2 per cent, and the increases in the odds of obesity were, respectively, 19 and 26 per cent"). They are not eating junk food. There is a paper from 2010 about obesity in marmots: https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/news.2010.366.html https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/news.2010.366.h...
- pygy_ 8y agoI'm still unconvinced. "Feral rats. Our sample consisted of 6115 (2886 males, 3229 females) wild Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) that were captured in the central alleys of high-density residential neighbourhoods using single-capture live traps, while rural rat populations were sampled from parklands and agricultural areas in areas surrounding the city [12,13], between the years 1948 and 2006." I can't cross-check the methodological validity since neither articles are available online (the second one appears to be, but if you follow the links you end up with a n unrelated 1975 article on beach voles :-). No info is given on the distance between the traps and human habitations. Also, no idea on how comparable the sample from 1949 is with the one from 1989. They were not written by the same authors, and the 1989 authors don't cite the 1949 paper (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=14847560867138216588&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1484756086713821658...). Had they compared rodent populations from places that the obesity epidemics has yet to reach (read: poor countries), it would be more convincing. For marmots, the proposed hypothesis was that the longer summers let them eat more food and shortens the hibernation period during which they usually lose weight. If you want to know whether atmospheric CO2 has an impact on rodent weight, you can devise a controlled experiment where they live in, and are fed with plants grown in controlled atmospheres. No idea if such a study has been performed.
- sedachv 8y agoIt just occurred to me that even for domestic animals, the "fast food" hypothesis cannot be true. There is now an obesity epidemic among horses: https://www.paulickreport.com/horse-care-category/obesity-epidemic-in-equines-worldwide/ https://www.paulickreport.com/horse-care-category/obesity-ep... No one is feeding their horses human junk food.
- pygy_ 8y agoNo, but the perverse market forces that gave us human junk food also apply to pet food.
- pas 8y agoThere's a study - unless I'm misremembering - about controlled diet groups getting bigger, which should't happen. But the articles are vague (all Allison related) and no concrete study pops out on Google :/