8 ms·

Pesticides Could Be Making People Fat

53 points by jtdev 7y ago

lazyguy 7y ago
> killing the good bacteria in our gut microbiome can lead to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, decreased insulin sensitivity, type two diabetes, and metabolic syndrome Seems like that should be the main concern and thing to highlight in the title of the article. I am less worried about be slightly overweight then fatty liver disease.
- hammock 7y ago
  >nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, decreased insulin sensitivity, type two diabetes, and metabolic syndrome All of these ailments are typically comorbid with obesity, so saying "fat" is a shorthand way of getting at these things in a limited-space headline.
  - lazyguy 7y ago
    Right but you don't need to be fat to get any of them. They are just 'associated' with it. As in they are diseases that are more likely to impact fat people.
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      Is there any direct evidence of causation or is someone shooting the wind again? (There are ways to do it, but it's extremely hard and finicky math.)
- LinuxBender 7y ago
  It can also lead to under stimulation of the vagus nerve which in turn dampens the parasympathetic nervous system and causes and over-active sympathetic nervous system, which can raise heart rate and induce hyper-tention. This is the fun I am dealing with, in addition to metabolic syndrome. That scenario totally perplexed doctors. As I lost weight, my heart rate increased and BP went up. I had been using mastic gum to repair aspirin damage to my gut, but that was killing off good bacteria. I also worked a lot with round-up when I was a teen.
ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
Surely it's not my overall poor diet choices...
- reaperducer 7y ago
  This. I didn't get fat because Monsanto knocked my door and shoved cheeseburgers down my throat for 30 years. Nobody ever gained weight from not eating. /Has lost 130 pounds in the last year by simply not eating when I wasn't hungry, instead of eating when I'm bored or sad.
  - ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
    I remember speaking with someone who laughed at the idea that what eat has anything to do with our health. I was taken aback, but he's not alone in that.
  - sneakernets 7y ago
    I'll admit I'm only saying anecdotes, but I've met very, very few obese people who said they ate when "bored or sad". The friends I had who did gain weight, did during the fat-free craze of the late 80s and early 90s, when "guilt-free" candybars shot onto the market labelled as diet foods. It even has a name: the "SnackWell Effect". ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snackwell_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snackwell_effect
    - frogpelt 7y ago
      Be honest. Did you write that wiki article?
      - AstralStorm 7y ago
        He didn't. It's an old one and it's not an example of citation genesis either.
    - rootusrootus 7y ago
      Agreed. It is clearly more complicated than "worthless lazy person can't control themselves."
cestith 7y ago
I don't like that the article appears to conflate "GMO" with plants that have been genetically altered with genes from an entirely different kingdom of life specifically so they won't die when sprayed with glyphosate. Lots of genetic modifications in the lab are nothing more than a faster version of guided hybridization. Even in Roundup Ready corn and beans, I suspect it's the glyphosate itself that's a much bigger issue for human health than using bacterial genes in the plants to make them tolerate it.
- hinkley 7y ago
  I'm not against accelerated husbandry (although I do take to heart some warnings about selective breeding needing ethics too - see congenital defects in purebred dogs). Gene testing chestnut hybrids to cull the ones without the blight genes would be much safer than what they do now, which is test infect the plants. That's how you get a pathogen to adopt a new host. And that's my main complaint with transgenics, which perhaps we should use that word instead of GMO. We are not exhibiting an 'abundance of caution' in this work. We have major illnesses crossing over from birds and pigs all through our history. Some pretty bad ones in recent times. Moving genes between these species (which we are doing, to try to make more pig organs biocompatible with humans) could be very, very bad. Do we have a good model for what gene groups can increase the likelihood of viruses crossing between species? If this information exists they should be shouting it from the rooftops. But they aren't, which suggests that no such practices are being observed. If the next H1N1 turns into the Spanish Flu, 'I told you so' just isn't going to cover it.
  - cestith 7y ago
    The worst factor in the "Spanish" Flu was likely conditions in the battlefields of World War I rather than the pathogen itself. Hogs and chickens were kept close to troops so their mess could feed them under the tight land constraints of trench warfare, and those troops were cramped together, wet, cold, and undernourished. They then suddenly got redistributed into the general European population after hostilities ceased. But I digress. If someone wants to take a juicier tomato and a tomato with more flavor and combine them to make a hybrid tomato, I don't so much care about a genetically modified tomato that could have eventually been hybridized in the greenhouse. As things get further from that, I have more reservations and I think we should look a little closer. Across species is a little more concerning. Across families moreso still, and so on as we talk about bigger and bigger jumps. You make a good case about our own genetics specifically, too. Things that alter our DNA or the DNA of things we already share diseases with (other primates, horses, hogs, for example) should probably get more attention to possible risks and side effects.
5trokerac3 7y ago
consumes 5000kcal+ a day... "Must be them damn pesticides." Edit: I'm more interested in all the other ways jacking up your gut microbiome can negatively affect you, especially the potential links they're starting to find with autism[0]. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3564498/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3564498/
- sp332 7y ago
  I don't know if you read the article, but it's more complicated than how many calories you eat. This abstract shows some of the complexity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26967715 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26967715
  - wang_li 7y ago
    > but it's more complicated than how many calories you eat. It is and it isn't. It's how many calories your body is able to metabolize. Usually those two numbers are similar, but the only way you're going to not get fat from putting 5000 kcal a day into your pie hole is if you have significant medical issues with your digestive system. Also, it's odd that you'd say "it's not about calories" and link to an publication that literally has "in chronic over nutrition" in it's title.
    - sp332 7y ago
      And it sends with "a new class of food and drink that is low- or no-cost to the consumer, convenient, savory, calorically dense, yet weakly satiating". Only one of those things is about calories. Edit: we're not talking about people actually eating 5,000 calories per day. 5trokerac3 made that up in order to blame fat people for being fat.
      - wang_li 7y ago
        Yet, weirdly enough, if a food item had all of those qualities except being calorically dense it wouldn't make people fat. Everyone one of those factors are things that lead to over eating, when paired with calorically dense you end up with the chronic over nutrition mentioned in the title.
driverdan 7y ago
It lost me at the opening sentence. > It’s banned in several countries around the world, it’s a probable carcinogen, and it can cause severe kidney and liver damage, as well as birth defects, brain abnormalities, and mental illnesses. This is terribly skewed, unscientific writing. Next time consult someone who knows about the science behind glyphosate before writing about it.
- asimpletune 7y ago
  I don’t know anything about this subject. What is the correct way to understand it?
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Pretty much what the article says.
  - driverdan 7y ago
    Glyphosate is the safest and most effective herbicide to date. Countries banning it has nothing to do with the science behind it. The WHO classified it as a probable carcinogen based on a single flawed study. The rest of the claims are not backed by research.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - thatcat 7y ago
      So why are countries banning it then?
      - krageon 7y ago
        If it isn't because the science supports it, why is that important? Countries do weird things for the wrong reasons all the time. The Swedish government says the sale and consumption of MSG is "unwise" because it "might be bad", even though there is absolutely no scientific support for it. I'm sure you could find many, many examples of similar problems in practice and it does not take a whole lot of thinking to realise it might impact other areas as well.
manjana 7y ago
1. The only thing making you fat is excess calories - it cannot be any other way. 2. The article does in no way say that pesticides "might make you fat" - that is also pure non-sense, read (1) again if you didn't get the point. The article mentions it increases risk factors for obesity. (risk factors for obesity could be thought to be increased hunger). 3. This isn't entirely new knowledge. The gut microbiome has been in the spotlight for a while now. I first heard of this 3 or 4 years ago
- paulmd 7y ago
  Why can't it be any other way? Gut biome and other factors clearly play a large role in how much energy you absorb from the food you eat - the human body isn't a blast calorimeter where all food is converted to fat with 100% efficiency.
  - manjana 7y ago
    I'm making a strict logical point. You cannot make adipose tissue out of thin air, you need to be in a caloric surplus for that to happend is the point I want to get across. Saying "pesticides make you fat" is wrong, it is not a direct cause of the buildup of fat. I'm not trying to troll or anything, but just let us not contribute to any more ignorance on nutrition.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Saying "pesticides make you fat" is wrong, It may be, but your argument doesn't support that. > it is not a direct cause of the buildup of fat. Indirect causes are still causes, and often the more important causes in terms of practical decision making. “My stabbing him didn't kill him, his brain tissue being oxygen deprived killed him” may often be true if you limit concern to the most immediate direct cause, but we tend to look beyond that in assigning responsibility for good reason.
    - paulmd 7y ago
      Yes, if calories in > calories out then you will gain weight. There are significant factors which affect both how many calories your body will take in, as well as how many it burns out, even if two people have identical activity levels. So while that "calories in vs calories out" statement is true, it's also trite. Faster metabolisms or better metabolic efficiency can lead to lower weight gain than another person might experience for a given level of activity. It is useful advice on an individual scale - you yourself cannot directly affect your metabolism or your gut biome at the present time so the only thing you can really affect is exercise and caloric intake. It is not predictive between persons in the sense that two people on identical diets and exercise regimes will experience identical amounts of weight change. Fecal transplants are an interesting wildcard - the idea is to kill off your own gut microbiome as much as possible and then replace it with someone else's. In some case studies, this has had significant efficacy in weight loss. My understanding is these fauna have significant effects in "pre-processing" this food as well as consuming some of the energy for themselves, so yes, microbiome can directly affect weight gain/loss.
trimbo 7y ago
...and no link to the research?
- ScottFree 7y ago
  ... the research that almost certainly hasn't been reproduced even once?

53 points by jtdev 7y ago

> killing the good bacteria in our gut microbiome can lead to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, decreased insulin sensitivity, type two diabetes, and metabolic syndrome Seems like that should be the main concern and thing to highlight in the title of the article. I am less worried about be slightly overweight then fatty liver disease.

hammock 7y ago
>nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, decreased insulin sensitivity, type two diabetes, and metabolic syndrome All of these ailments are typically comorbid with obesity, so saying "fat" is a shorthand way of getting at these things in a limited-space headline.
- lazyguy 7y ago
  Right but you don't need to be fat to get any of them. They are just 'associated' with it. As in they are diseases that are more likely to impact fat people.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    Is there any direct evidence of causation or is someone shooting the wind again? (There are ways to do it, but it's extremely hard and finicky math.)
LinuxBender 7y ago
It can also lead to under stimulation of the vagus nerve which in turn dampens the parasympathetic nervous system and causes and over-active sympathetic nervous system, which can raise heart rate and induce hyper-tention. This is the fun I am dealing with, in addition to metabolic syndrome. That scenario totally perplexed doctors. As I lost weight, my heart rate increased and BP went up. I had been using mastic gum to repair aspirin damage to my gut, but that was killing off good bacteria. I also worked a lot with round-up when I was a teen.

ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago

Surely it's not my overall poor diet choices...

reaperducer 7y ago
This. I didn't get fat because Monsanto knocked my door and shoved cheeseburgers down my throat for 30 years. Nobody ever gained weight from not eating. /Has lost 130 pounds in the last year by simply not eating when I wasn't hungry, instead of eating when I'm bored or sad.
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y ago
  I remember speaking with someone who laughed at the idea that what eat has anything to do with our health. I was taken aback, but he's not alone in that.
- sneakernets 7y ago
  I'll admit I'm only saying anecdotes, but I've met very, very few obese people who said they ate when "bored or sad". The friends I had who did gain weight, did during the fat-free craze of the late 80s and early 90s, when "guilt-free" candybars shot onto the market labelled as diet foods. It even has a name: the "SnackWell Effect". ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snackwell_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snackwell_effect
  - frogpelt 7y ago
    Be honest. Did you write that wiki article?
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      He didn't. It's an old one and it's not an example of citation genesis either.
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    Agreed. It is clearly more complicated than "worthless lazy person can't control themselves."

cestith 7y ago

I don't like that the article appears to conflate "GMO" with plants that have been genetically altered with genes from an entirely different kingdom of life specifically so they won't die when sprayed with glyphosate. Lots of genetic modifications in the lab are nothing more than a faster version of guided hybridization. Even in Roundup Ready corn and beans, I suspect it's the glyphosate itself that's a much bigger issue for human health than using bacterial genes in the plants to make them tolerate it.

hinkley 7y ago
I'm not against accelerated husbandry (although I do take to heart some warnings about selective breeding needing ethics too - see congenital defects in purebred dogs). Gene testing chestnut hybrids to cull the ones without the blight genes would be much safer than what they do now, which is test infect the plants. That's how you get a pathogen to adopt a new host. And that's my main complaint with transgenics, which perhaps we should use that word instead of GMO. We are not exhibiting an 'abundance of caution' in this work. We have major illnesses crossing over from birds and pigs all through our history. Some pretty bad ones in recent times. Moving genes between these species (which we are doing, to try to make more pig organs biocompatible with humans) could be very, very bad. Do we have a good model for what gene groups can increase the likelihood of viruses crossing between species? If this information exists they should be shouting it from the rooftops. But they aren't, which suggests that no such practices are being observed. If the next H1N1 turns into the Spanish Flu, 'I told you so' just isn't going to cover it.
- cestith 7y ago
  The worst factor in the "Spanish" Flu was likely conditions in the battlefields of World War I rather than the pathogen itself. Hogs and chickens were kept close to troops so their mess could feed them under the tight land constraints of trench warfare, and those troops were cramped together, wet, cold, and undernourished. They then suddenly got redistributed into the general European population after hostilities ceased. But I digress. If someone wants to take a juicier tomato and a tomato with more flavor and combine them to make a hybrid tomato, I don't so much care about a genetically modified tomato that could have eventually been hybridized in the greenhouse. As things get further from that, I have more reservations and I think we should look a little closer. Across species is a little more concerning. Across families moreso still, and so on as we talk about bigger and bigger jumps. You make a good case about our own genetics specifically, too. Things that alter our DNA or the DNA of things we already share diseases with (other primates, horses, hogs, for example) should probably get more attention to possible risks and side effects.

5trokerac3 7y ago

consumes 5000kcal+ a day... "Must be them damn pesticides." Edit: I'm more interested in all the other ways jacking up your gut microbiome can negatively affect you, especially the potential links they're starting to find with autism[0]. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3564498/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3564498/

sp332 7y ago
I don't know if you read the article, but it's more complicated than how many calories you eat. This abstract shows some of the complexity: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26967715 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26967715
- wang_li 7y ago
  > but it's more complicated than how many calories you eat. It is and it isn't. It's how many calories your body is able to metabolize. Usually those two numbers are similar, but the only way you're going to not get fat from putting 5000 kcal a day into your pie hole is if you have significant medical issues with your digestive system. Also, it's odd that you'd say "it's not about calories" and link to an publication that literally has "in chronic over nutrition" in it's title.
  - sp332 7y ago
    And it sends with "a new class of food and drink that is low- or no-cost to the consumer, convenient, savory, calorically dense, yet weakly satiating". Only one of those things is about calories. Edit: we're not talking about people actually eating 5,000 calories per day. 5trokerac3 made that up in order to blame fat people for being fat.
    - wang_li 7y ago
      Yet, weirdly enough, if a food item had all of those qualities except being calorically dense it wouldn't make people fat. Everyone one of those factors are things that lead to over eating, when paired with calorically dense you end up with the chronic over nutrition mentioned in the title.

driverdan 7y ago

It lost me at the opening sentence. > It’s banned in several countries around the world, it’s a probable carcinogen, and it can cause severe kidney and liver damage, as well as birth defects, brain abnormalities, and mental illnesses. This is terribly skewed, unscientific writing. Next time consult someone who knows about the science behind glyphosate before writing about it.

asimpletune 7y ago
I don’t know anything about this subject. What is the correct way to understand it?
- coldtea 7y ago
  Pretty much what the article says.
- driverdan 7y ago
  Glyphosate is the safest and most effective herbicide to date. Countries banning it has nothing to do with the science behind it. The WHO classified it as a probable carcinogen based on a single flawed study. The rest of the claims are not backed by research.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - thatcat 7y ago
    So why are countries banning it then?
    - krageon 7y ago
      If it isn't because the science supports it, why is that important? Countries do weird things for the wrong reasons all the time. The Swedish government says the sale and consumption of MSG is "unwise" because it "might be bad", even though there is absolutely no scientific support for it. I'm sure you could find many, many examples of similar problems in practice and it does not take a whole lot of thinking to realise it might impact other areas as well.

manjana 7y ago

1. The only thing making you fat is excess calories - it cannot be any other way. 2. The article does in no way say that pesticides "might make you fat" - that is also pure non-sense, read (1) again if you didn't get the point. The article mentions it increases risk factors for obesity. (risk factors for obesity could be thought to be increased hunger). 3. This isn't entirely new knowledge. The gut microbiome has been in the spotlight for a while now. I first heard of this 3 or 4 years ago

paulmd 7y ago
Why can't it be any other way? Gut biome and other factors clearly play a large role in how much energy you absorb from the food you eat - the human body isn't a blast calorimeter where all food is converted to fat with 100% efficiency.
- manjana 7y ago
  I'm making a strict logical point. You cannot make adipose tissue out of thin air, you need to be in a caloric surplus for that to happend is the point I want to get across. Saying "pesticides make you fat" is wrong, it is not a direct cause of the buildup of fat. I'm not trying to troll or anything, but just let us not contribute to any more ignorance on nutrition.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Saying "pesticides make you fat" is wrong, It may be, but your argument doesn't support that. > it is not a direct cause of the buildup of fat. Indirect causes are still causes, and often the more important causes in terms of practical decision making. “My stabbing him didn't kill him, his brain tissue being oxygen deprived killed him” may often be true if you limit concern to the most immediate direct cause, but we tend to look beyond that in assigning responsibility for good reason.
  - paulmd 7y ago
    Yes, if calories in > calories out then you will gain weight. There are significant factors which affect both how many calories your body will take in, as well as how many it burns out, even if two people have identical activity levels. So while that "calories in vs calories out" statement is true, it's also trite. Faster metabolisms or better metabolic efficiency can lead to lower weight gain than another person might experience for a given level of activity. It is useful advice on an individual scale - you yourself cannot directly affect your metabolism or your gut biome at the present time so the only thing you can really affect is exercise and caloric intake. It is not predictive between persons in the sense that two people on identical diets and exercise regimes will experience identical amounts of weight change. Fecal transplants are an interesting wildcard - the idea is to kill off your own gut microbiome as much as possible and then replace it with someone else's. In some case studies, this has had significant efficacy in weight loss. My understanding is these fauna have significant effects in "pre-processing" this food as well as consuming some of the energy for themselves, so yes, microbiome can directly affect weight gain/loss.

trimbo 7y ago

...and no link to the research?

ScottFree 7y ago
... the research that almost certainly hasn't been reproduced even once?