4 ms·

We've had a carb rich diet since the neolithic revolution. The obesity epidemics started after WW2. I don't think that they are related.

by pygy_ 8y ago

close04 8y ago
Also physical activity for most people took a nosedive in the past decades. Work has mostly shifted to static jobs and that shifts the balance of any diet.
ionised 8y ago
The carbs we get now in modern processed foods are not the same carbs we've been used to for millenia.
- pygy_ 8y ago
  Now we're getting somewhere...
  - jahn716 8y ago
    But clearly not frequently enough, hence the obesity...
- navaati 8y ago
  Please tell me more ? At which level ? Genuinely interested :) !
  - pygy_ 8y ago
    For one, the amount of refined sugar in our diet exploded recently. More generally, even if the molecular building blocks didn't change, the way food is prepared industrially and marketed makes us more likely to eat too much of it.
    - DanielleMolloy 8y ago
      A lot of our modern economy seems to be relying on human predisposition to addictions. Think sugar / carbs, alcohol, tobacco, certain games, news and social media and their recommendation engines. All exploiting similar neural pathways.
      - pygy_ 8y ago
        Yup. The free market as the end to all means relies on several incorrect assumptions: 1) humans are not rational agents that always pursue their best interest 2) local optimization (what the market does) doesn't always lead to a global optimum 3) oftentimes the interest of investors and consumers diverge and the former have far more power (information asymmetry).
  - mrob 8y ago
    In the country I live in, white flour must legally be mixed with iron. In natural foods, iron is bounds to proteins like hemoglobin or ferritin. Legally mandated iron is just "iron", which means whatever's cheapest, i.e. metallic iron powder. This is known to be poorly absorbed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15864409 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15864409 So what happens to the non-absorbed portion? I have read speculation that it could affect intestinal bacteria. Intestinal bacteria are poorly understood, but widely believed to affect human health. What happens when you start feeding them evolutionarily novel nutrients? I'm not claiming that it has any measurable effect, good or bad, but from a precautionary principle viewpoint it seems to me a bad idea.
  - ip26 8y ago
    Carbohydrates used to come from fruits (with fiber), vegetables (in small amounts & with fiber), and starchy vegetables (starches are complex & slow to digest). Today, carbohydrates are consumed in simpler forms and refined to be more concentrated. In the former case, they digest slowly. In the latter case, they digest quickly. The practical implications of this are immediately obvious if you have ever heard of glycemic index and glycemic load, but in short, fast digestion & large quantities results in a big spike in blood sugar which is hard on your body & leads to diabetes. Also important is that the original forms of carbohydrates came with all kinds of other nutrients. A sweet potato includes vitamin A, vitamin C, manganese, copper, pantothenic acid, vitamin B6, potassium, niacin, vitamin B1, vitamin B2 and phosphorus. Sugar on the other hand is the quintessential "empty calorie", carrying no vitamins, minerals, only calories.
otabdeveloper1 8y ago
> We've had a carb rich diet since the neolithic revolution. This isn't true. The modern diet gets 90% (asspulled number, sorry) of its energy from sugar, white flour and potatoes. None of these three really existed in any measurable quantities three hundred years ago. Sugar especially is something only very modern people started to eat in huge quantities.
- everdev 8y ago
  I'm not sure potatoes are the problem. The problem is carbs give you short term energy. It's great and healthy if you're doing manual labor, playing sports, lifting weights, etc. or otherwise burning that caloric intake. If you're watching TV and eating carbs your energy boost is wasted and can get stored as fat. And sugar as far as far as I'm aware is never healthy but can have less of a health impact in very small doses.
- ip26 8y ago
  Yeah, I begin to wonder if we need to be a little more specific when talking about this, e.g. not just "carbs" but "simple carbs" and "complex carbs", or "refined" & "unrefined". We've dealt with this once before with saturated & unsaturated fats, vs trans fats.
  - otabdeveloper1 8y ago
    Carbs are carbs. The biggest problem is that you won't feel full or know when to stop if you're eating just carbs. You need fats or fibers to stop eating, hence "unrefined".
- pygy_ 8y ago
  Bread was the staple food for most of that period. GP was contrasting modern and paleo diet. It would be wiser to contrast 1918 with 2018 (and I agree with you that refined sugar and starch are most likely involved in the current mess).
  - otabdeveloper1 8y ago
logfromblammo 8y ago
Government dietary recommendations became politicized in 1980, and increasingly separated from both nutrition science and comprehensibility to the public with each 5-year revision. In 1967, the bacterium used to produce the enzyme that turns corn syrup into high-fructose corn syrup was perfected, and HFCS became available in industry. In 1983, it was confirmed as GRAS status, and started replacing sucrose sugar in foods. The food-industry had already been replacing fats with sugars as a result of popularized science suggesting that higher-fat diets were a causative factor for heart disease. Purchasing power for below-median wage-earners has stagnated since the 1970s. Lower income levels correlate with higher obesity. Climate-controlled buildings are now the norm. More efficient heaters and coolers make it cheaper to be in a 20 degree C environment year round. Clement climate correlates geographically with higher obesity. Canine Distemper Virus has been shown (Lyons, 1982) to cause permanently-elevated levels of obesity in mice. Since then, other infectious diseases have been found to promote obesity in animals: RAV-7, Borna, Scrapie, SMAM-1, Ad-36, Ad-5, Ad-37. Gut parasites produced symptoms similar to metabolic syndrome in dragonflies. Obese humans have been found to have a 3 times higher incidence of evidence of past infection by adenovirus Ad-36 than the non-obese (30% vs. 11%). If twin studies, where one twin had been infected by Ad-36, and the other not, the exposed twin was fatter. Across all studies, evidence of past infection by Ad-36 always correlated with a fatter subject, with causative significance. It even works with viruses originating in nonhuman animals, that do not otherwise cause visible symptoms. A sick bird could make you fat, without ever making you sneeze. Analyses of digestive tract microbiotic factors have discovered causative significance for obesity in some factors. Experimental fecal transplants have resulted in changes in the recipient's weight and body composition. Studies of epigenetic DNA methylation, sibling genetics, and maternal weight suggest that children of obese mothers may have greater predisposition to obesity, creating an intergenerational feedback loop. Fat mothers make fat daughters make fat granddaughters. This could be experimentally verified by cloning/twinning a female animal embryo, applying different environmental factors to produce breeding animals of different obesity levels, and implanting each with a second set of clone embryos. The second set of clones would then be kept under identical environmental conditions. Unfortunately, cloning processes themselves introduce epigenetic regulations and deregulations that ultimately result in obesity. Cloned mice get fatter when they get older. It seems as though older mothers bear children that grow fatter as adults. Children of moms over 30 have higher body fat percentages than children of moms under 25, by about 2.7 percentage points. Both low-birthweight and high-birthweight babies correlate to greater adult obesity, and older mothers are less likely to have middle-birthweight babies. Sleep deprivation correlates with higher obesity. In short: change in foods composition \\\ wage stagnation \\\ literal adenovirus epidemics \\\ change in gut microbiota \\\ OBESITY intergenerational epigenetics /// (complex cause) delay in child-rearing ages /// chronic sleep deprivation /// other factors??? ///

We've had a carb rich diet since the neolithic revolution. The obesity epidemics started after WW2. I don't think that they are related.

by pygy_ 8y ago

We've had a carb rich diet since the neolithic revolution. The obesity epidemics started after WW2. I don't think that they are related.

close04 8y ago

Also physical activity for most people took a nosedive in the past decades. Work has mostly shifted to static jobs and that shifts the balance of any diet.

ionised 8y ago

The carbs we get now in modern processed foods are not the same carbs we've been used to for millenia.

pygy_ 8y ago
Now we're getting somewhere...
- jahn716 8y ago
  But clearly not frequently enough, hence the obesity...
navaati 8y ago
Please tell me more ? At which level ? Genuinely interested :) !
- pygy_ 8y ago
  For one, the amount of refined sugar in our diet exploded recently. More generally, even if the molecular building blocks didn't change, the way food is prepared industrially and marketed makes us more likely to eat too much of it.
  - DanielleMolloy 8y ago
    A lot of our modern economy seems to be relying on human predisposition to addictions. Think sugar / carbs, alcohol, tobacco, certain games, news and social media and their recommendation engines. All exploiting similar neural pathways.
    - pygy_ 8y ago
      Yup. The free market as the end to all means relies on several incorrect assumptions: 1) humans are not rational agents that always pursue their best interest 2) local optimization (what the market does) doesn't always lead to a global optimum 3) oftentimes the interest of investors and consumers diverge and the former have far more power (information asymmetry).
- mrob 8y ago
  In the country I live in, white flour must legally be mixed with iron. In natural foods, iron is bounds to proteins like hemoglobin or ferritin. Legally mandated iron is just "iron", which means whatever's cheapest, i.e. metallic iron powder. This is known to be poorly absorbed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15864409 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15864409 So what happens to the non-absorbed portion? I have read speculation that it could affect intestinal bacteria. Intestinal bacteria are poorly understood, but widely believed to affect human health. What happens when you start feeding them evolutionarily novel nutrients? I'm not claiming that it has any measurable effect, good or bad, but from a precautionary principle viewpoint it seems to me a bad idea.
- ip26 8y ago
  Carbohydrates used to come from fruits (with fiber), vegetables (in small amounts & with fiber), and starchy vegetables (starches are complex & slow to digest). Today, carbohydrates are consumed in simpler forms and refined to be more concentrated. In the former case, they digest slowly. In the latter case, they digest quickly. The practical implications of this are immediately obvious if you have ever heard of glycemic index and glycemic load, but in short, fast digestion & large quantities results in a big spike in blood sugar which is hard on your body & leads to diabetes. Also important is that the original forms of carbohydrates came with all kinds of other nutrients. A sweet potato includes vitamin A, vitamin C, manganese, copper, pantothenic acid, vitamin B6, potassium, niacin, vitamin B1, vitamin B2 and phosphorus. Sugar on the other hand is the quintessential "empty calorie", carrying no vitamins, minerals, only calories.

otabdeveloper1 8y ago

> We've had a carb rich diet since the neolithic revolution. This isn't true. The modern diet gets 90% (asspulled number, sorry) of its energy from sugar, white flour and potatoes. None of these three really existed in any measurable quantities three hundred years ago. Sugar especially is something only very modern people started to eat in huge quantities.

everdev 8y ago
I'm not sure potatoes are the problem. The problem is carbs give you short term energy. It's great and healthy if you're doing manual labor, playing sports, lifting weights, etc. or otherwise burning that caloric intake. If you're watching TV and eating carbs your energy boost is wasted and can get stored as fat. And sugar as far as far as I'm aware is never healthy but can have less of a health impact in very small doses.
ip26 8y ago
Yeah, I begin to wonder if we need to be a little more specific when talking about this, e.g. not just "carbs" but "simple carbs" and "complex carbs", or "refined" & "unrefined". We've dealt with this once before with saturated & unsaturated fats, vs trans fats.
- otabdeveloper1 8y ago
  Carbs are carbs. The biggest problem is that you won't feel full or know when to stop if you're eating just carbs. You need fats or fibers to stop eating, hence "unrefined".
pygy_ 8y ago
Bread was the staple food for most of that period. GP was contrasting modern and paleo diet. It would be wiser to contrast 1918 with 2018 (and I agree with you that refined sugar and starch are most likely involved in the current mess).
- otabdeveloper1 8y ago

logfromblammo 8y ago

Government dietary recommendations became politicized in 1980, and increasingly separated from both nutrition science and comprehensibility to the public with each 5-year revision. In 1967, the bacterium used to produce the enzyme that turns corn syrup into high-fructose corn syrup was perfected, and HFCS became available in industry. In 1983, it was confirmed as GRAS status, and started replacing sucrose sugar in foods. The food-industry had already been replacing fats with sugars as a result of popularized science suggesting that higher-fat diets were a causative factor for heart disease. Purchasing power for below-median wage-earners has stagnated since the 1970s. Lower income levels correlate with higher obesity. Climate-controlled buildings are now the norm. More efficient heaters and coolers make it cheaper to be in a 20 degree C environment year round. Clement climate correlates geographically with higher obesity. Canine Distemper Virus has been shown (Lyons, 1982) to cause permanently-elevated levels of obesity in mice. Since then, other infectious diseases have been found to promote obesity in animals: RAV-7, Borna, Scrapie, SMAM-1, Ad-36, Ad-5, Ad-37. Gut parasites produced symptoms similar to metabolic syndrome in dragonflies. Obese humans have been found to have a 3 times higher incidence of evidence of past infection by adenovirus Ad-36 than the non-obese (30% vs. 11%). If twin studies, where one twin had been infected by Ad-36, and the other not, the exposed twin was fatter. Across all studies, evidence of past infection by Ad-36 always correlated with a fatter subject, with causative significance. It even works with viruses originating in nonhuman animals, that do not otherwise cause visible symptoms. A sick bird could make you fat, without ever making you sneeze. Analyses of digestive tract microbiotic factors have discovered causative significance for obesity in some factors. Experimental fecal transplants have resulted in changes in the recipient's weight and body composition. Studies of epigenetic DNA methylation, sibling genetics, and maternal weight suggest that children of obese mothers may have greater predisposition to obesity, creating an intergenerational feedback loop. Fat mothers make fat daughters make fat granddaughters. This could be experimentally verified by cloning/twinning a female animal embryo, applying different environmental factors to produce breeding animals of different obesity levels, and implanting each with a second set of clone embryos. The second set of clones would then be kept under identical environmental conditions. Unfortunately, cloning processes themselves introduce epigenetic regulations and deregulations that ultimately result in obesity. Cloned mice get fatter when they get older. It seems as though older mothers bear children that grow fatter as adults. Children of moms over 30 have higher body fat percentages than children of moms under 25, by about 2.7 percentage points. Both low-birthweight and high-birthweight babies correlate to greater adult obesity, and older mothers are less likely to have middle-birthweight babies. Sleep deprivation correlates with higher obesity. In short: change in foods composition \\\ wage stagnation \\\ literal adenovirus epidemics \\\ change in gut microbiota \\\ OBESITY intergenerational epigenetics /// (complex cause) delay in child-rearing ages /// chronic sleep deprivation /// other factors??? ///