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(Please forgive the scattered reply. I'm tired and I've mostly pieced this together from other discussions I've had on this topic.) I firmly believe that the p

(Please forgive the scattered reply. I'm tired and I've mostly pieced this together from other discussions I've had on this topic.) I firmly believe that the problem stems from a mass unspoken refusal to address obesity as a symptom of food addiction. Food addiction is among the hardest to kick because humans not only need food to survive, but also need glucose (and/or ketone bodies) in order to have sufficient mental energy to have self-control. Furthermore, nearly every social event in the US is tied to the consumption of food and cheap unhealthy food can be found almost anywhere.

inglor_cz 6y ago
I am just watching the British "Supersize Vs Superskinny" series. The heavy articipants have serious addiction problem, obviously. The question is whether some foods are inherently addictive, at least for some people who are more predisposed to food addiction. There are some obvious commonalities in the diets of the superfatties: pretty much every one of them consumes a lot of pizza, fries, soft drinks and various fat-and-salty snacks. "Normal" cooked meals that were the staple of nutrition before the advent of fast food are almost absent from their diets.
- acuozzo 6y ago
  I'm sure some foods are inherently addictive, but I hesitate to put the blame on specific foods because I gained most of my weight from eating sushi rice… a pot at a time. My experience suggests to me that food addiction is primarily psychological in nature and is often the result of a history of "experience coupling" (examples to follow) and a genuine misunderstanding of what feeling "full" truly feels like. Most obese people I know have no idea when they've eaten enough food and often don't stop eating until they're in pain. I'm not sure if this problem is physical, but as a formerly-obese person I can state with confidence that I still don't quite know when I've eaten enough. There is no feeling of "full" for me; just pain vs. no pain. "Experience coupling" examples… * Feeling the need to eat popcorn while watching a movie * Feeling the need to eat peanuts, hot dogs, and beer at a baseball game * Feeling the need to meet with friends at restaurants, coffee shops, etc. * Feeling the need to eat cereal by the fistful when trying to work through a tough algorithm (<-- personal anecdote) * Feeling the need to snack on road-trips
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    "have no idea when they've eaten enough food and often don't stop eating until they're in pain" Our hunger / satiety feelings are driven hormonally by hormones called ghrelin and leptin. Ideally, those two take care of a perfect equilibrium. If something messes this self-balancing mechanism up, feelings of hunger and satiety may no longer respond to actual caloric intake - a recipe for a slow-motion disaster.
    - johnyzee 6y ago
      Worth noting that satiety (to a large degree controlled by leptin) is triggered much more by fat than by other macro nutrients. So white rice, and all other carbs, are worse on that axis too - high in calories but not very filling, thus promoting overeating. The decades of war on fat have contributed to people indulging in these foods.
      - hoka-one-one 6y ago
        Why do you think this? I've never seen a satiety index that scores butter over white rice.
        dota_fanatic 6y ago
        You can resolve this for yourself experimentally. Or just look at the math (pulled from google's nutrition facts): Eat two cups of cooked white rice, ~412 calories, 316 g. A day later with the same starting conditions, eat 316 g of butter, or ~2,265 calories. I bet you're going to feel way more full after eating the same "amount" of butter vs rice. As for 500 calories of rice vs 500 calories of butter, hopefully someone else can chime in with references, but again, do the experiment for yourself: how soon after eating an entire meal of rice vs butter do you find yourself getting hungry? This is complicated by what kind of macro ratios a given person's gut is used to, but generally, I find myself ready for more after the rice much sooner.
        hoka-one-one 6y ago
- curryst 6y ago
  > The question is whether some foods are inherently addictive, at least for some people who are more predisposed to food addiction. In some sense, yes, because to get to extremely high weights, you need to consume extremely high amounts of food. Your stomach will grow, but I would imagine a person would struggle to eat enough carrots to weigh 500 pounds. Quick napkin math says some obese people eat 6700 calories a day. 50 calories is ~12 baby carrots. That's ~1608 baby carrots per day. If my math is right, that's about 67 one pound bags of baby carrots per day. Carrots are probably an extreme example, but I think the point stands that to get that overweight on healthy food, both the volume of the food and the time required to eat it become astonishing. I don't even know if we can metabolize carrots fast enough to eat that many in a day without rupturing some part of your stomach. > "Normal" cooked meals that were the staple of nutrition before the advent of fast food are almost absent from their diets. I think this is a big part of it. Calorie dense food has always been around. The problem was that it was often difficult and/or expensive to make. How long would it take you to replicate a Big Mac combo meal, and how much would it cost? It takes a while, especially given grocery shopping, and it's probably not much cheaper. Likewise, I can go to the grocery store and buy a whole cheesecake for like $10. Honestly, I think the best way to tackle it is not to outright ban the foods, but just add an excise tax. If we added a 10% tax to soft drinks, fries and pizza, it probably wouldn't make a huge difference to the average citizen's spending. It would be a 10% increase in your food budget if that's all you eat though. If you want to go crazy, add a program that lets you earn that back by doing healthy things, like riding a bike. We should probably do that anyways. If we want to reduce the amount of driving people do, paying them walk/bike places instead of driving isn't a bad system either.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    >Honestly, I think the best way to tackle it is not to outright ban the foods, but just add an excise tax. If we added a 10% tax to soft drinks, fries and pizza, it probably wouldn't make a huge difference to the average citizen's spending. It would be a 10% increase in your food budget if that's all you eat though. If you want to go crazy, add a program that lets you earn that back by doing healthy things, like riding a bike. We should probably do that anyways. If we want to reduce the amount of driving people do, paying them walk/bike places instead of driving isn't a bad system either. The behavioral epidemic is defined by being irrational and not in the self-interest of the sufferers. How would a slight change in food prices lead to any change in behavior?
- kennethh 6y ago
  The article "The opioid effects of gluten exorphins: asymptomatic celiac disease" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025969/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025969/ Gluten can be degraded into several morphine-like substances, named gluten exorphins. These compounds have proven opioid effects and could mask the deleterious effects of gluten protein on gastrointestinal lining and function. Here we describe a putative mechanism, explaining how gluten could “mask” its own toxicity by exorphins that are produced through gluten protein digestion. No wonder it is addictive when you can get a morphine like effect when eating it. Most fast food contains wheat and vegetable oils (and not the ones that are good for you like Olive Oil). Nobody can stay slim with these food as they usually contain close zero in nutrition value except for energy.
thatfrenchguy 6y ago
> I firmly believe that the problem stems from a mass unspoken refusal to address obesity as a symptom of food addiction. Meh, it's also easy in the United States to be stuck in a lifestyle where you can't walk anywhere.
- thebigman433 6y ago
  Having people be more active would help, but exercise is almost never enough to overcome bad eating habits.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  I walk a lot, exercise a lot, but whether I have a (small) belly or not, is almost fully determined by my eating habits. Not to mention that there is a vicious cycle at work. Once you are heavy enough, physical movement becomes very unpleasant, especially in hotter climate (American Deep South, Mexico). But even though the US really leads the heavy charge, other countries are catching up. I believe we (Central Europe) are like 25 years behind you, but following. And there are sidewalks everywhere here.
- andrei_says_ 6y ago
  The human body is incredibly efficient. Obesity is roughly 90% diet and 10% lack of exercise. Sugar puts the body into “convert and store all this excess energy into fat, right now, because we might starve later! overdrive” and most foods in the US are packed with sugar. Of course the sugar and processed food industries fight tooth and nail to reframe the conversation and somehow obfuscate the above.
thettiguy 6y ago
Cheap food might be the biggest issue you sort of glossed over. Cheap because the US government heavily subsidizes wheat and corn. So we have chips, sugar, sugary stuff galore ... it’s cheap. One could argue it starts there.

inglor_cz 6y ago

I am just watching the British "Supersize Vs Superskinny" series. The heavy articipants have serious addiction problem, obviously. The question is whether some foods are inherently addictive, at least for some people who are more predisposed to food addiction. There are some obvious commonalities in the diets of the superfatties: pretty much every one of them consumes a lot of pizza, fries, soft drinks and various fat-and-salty snacks. "Normal" cooked meals that were the staple of nutrition before the advent of fast food are almost absent from their diets.

acuozzo 6y ago
I'm sure some foods are inherently addictive, but I hesitate to put the blame on specific foods because I gained most of my weight from eating sushi rice… a pot at a time. My experience suggests to me that food addiction is primarily psychological in nature and is often the result of a history of "experience coupling" (examples to follow) and a genuine misunderstanding of what feeling "full" truly feels like. Most obese people I know have no idea when they've eaten enough food and often don't stop eating until they're in pain. I'm not sure if this problem is physical, but as a formerly-obese person I can state with confidence that I still don't quite know when I've eaten enough. There is no feeling of "full" for me; just pain vs. no pain. "Experience coupling" examples… * Feeling the need to eat popcorn while watching a movie * Feeling the need to eat peanuts, hot dogs, and beer at a baseball game * Feeling the need to meet with friends at restaurants, coffee shops, etc. * Feeling the need to eat cereal by the fistful when trying to work through a tough algorithm (<-- personal anecdote) * Feeling the need to snack on road-trips
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  "have no idea when they've eaten enough food and often don't stop eating until they're in pain" Our hunger / satiety feelings are driven hormonally by hormones called ghrelin and leptin. Ideally, those two take care of a perfect equilibrium. If something messes this self-balancing mechanism up, feelings of hunger and satiety may no longer respond to actual caloric intake - a recipe for a slow-motion disaster.
  - johnyzee 6y ago
    Worth noting that satiety (to a large degree controlled by leptin) is triggered much more by fat than by other macro nutrients. So white rice, and all other carbs, are worse on that axis too - high in calories but not very filling, thus promoting overeating. The decades of war on fat have contributed to people indulging in these foods.
    - hoka-one-one 6y ago
      Why do you think this? I've never seen a satiety index that scores butter over white rice.
      - dota_fanatic 6y ago
        You can resolve this for yourself experimentally. Or just look at the math (pulled from google's nutrition facts): Eat two cups of cooked white rice, ~412 calories, 316 g. A day later with the same starting conditions, eat 316 g of butter, or ~2,265 calories. I bet you're going to feel way more full after eating the same "amount" of butter vs rice. As for 500 calories of rice vs 500 calories of butter, hopefully someone else can chime in with references, but again, do the experiment for yourself: how soon after eating an entire meal of rice vs butter do you find yourself getting hungry? This is complicated by what kind of macro ratios a given person's gut is used to, but generally, I find myself ready for more after the rice much sooner.
        hoka-one-one 6y ago
curryst 6y ago
> The question is whether some foods are inherently addictive, at least for some people who are more predisposed to food addiction. In some sense, yes, because to get to extremely high weights, you need to consume extremely high amounts of food. Your stomach will grow, but I would imagine a person would struggle to eat enough carrots to weigh 500 pounds. Quick napkin math says some obese people eat 6700 calories a day. 50 calories is ~12 baby carrots. That's ~1608 baby carrots per day. If my math is right, that's about 67 one pound bags of baby carrots per day. Carrots are probably an extreme example, but I think the point stands that to get that overweight on healthy food, both the volume of the food and the time required to eat it become astonishing. I don't even know if we can metabolize carrots fast enough to eat that many in a day without rupturing some part of your stomach. > "Normal" cooked meals that were the staple of nutrition before the advent of fast food are almost absent from their diets. I think this is a big part of it. Calorie dense food has always been around. The problem was that it was often difficult and/or expensive to make. How long would it take you to replicate a Big Mac combo meal, and how much would it cost? It takes a while, especially given grocery shopping, and it's probably not much cheaper. Likewise, I can go to the grocery store and buy a whole cheesecake for like $10. Honestly, I think the best way to tackle it is not to outright ban the foods, but just add an excise tax. If we added a 10% tax to soft drinks, fries and pizza, it probably wouldn't make a huge difference to the average citizen's spending. It would be a 10% increase in your food budget if that's all you eat though. If you want to go crazy, add a program that lets you earn that back by doing healthy things, like riding a bike. We should probably do that anyways. If we want to reduce the amount of driving people do, paying them walk/bike places instead of driving isn't a bad system either.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  >Honestly, I think the best way to tackle it is not to outright ban the foods, but just add an excise tax. If we added a 10% tax to soft drinks, fries and pizza, it probably wouldn't make a huge difference to the average citizen's spending. It would be a 10% increase in your food budget if that's all you eat though. If you want to go crazy, add a program that lets you earn that back by doing healthy things, like riding a bike. We should probably do that anyways. If we want to reduce the amount of driving people do, paying them walk/bike places instead of driving isn't a bad system either. The behavioral epidemic is defined by being irrational and not in the self-interest of the sufferers. How would a slight change in food prices lead to any change in behavior?
kennethh 6y ago
The article "The opioid effects of gluten exorphins: asymptomatic celiac disease" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025969/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025969/ Gluten can be degraded into several morphine-like substances, named gluten exorphins. These compounds have proven opioid effects and could mask the deleterious effects of gluten protein on gastrointestinal lining and function. Here we describe a putative mechanism, explaining how gluten could “mask” its own toxicity by exorphins that are produced through gluten protein digestion. No wonder it is addictive when you can get a morphine like effect when eating it. Most fast food contains wheat and vegetable oils (and not the ones that are good for you like Olive Oil). Nobody can stay slim with these food as they usually contain close zero in nutrition value except for energy.

thatfrenchguy 6y ago

> I firmly believe that the problem stems from a mass unspoken refusal to address obesity as a symptom of food addiction. Meh, it's also easy in the United States to be stuck in a lifestyle where you can't walk anywhere.

thebigman433 6y ago
Having people be more active would help, but exercise is almost never enough to overcome bad eating habits.
inglor_cz 6y ago
I walk a lot, exercise a lot, but whether I have a (small) belly or not, is almost fully determined by my eating habits. Not to mention that there is a vicious cycle at work. Once you are heavy enough, physical movement becomes very unpleasant, especially in hotter climate (American Deep South, Mexico). But even though the US really leads the heavy charge, other countries are catching up. I believe we (Central Europe) are like 25 years behind you, but following. And there are sidewalks everywhere here.
andrei_says_ 6y ago
The human body is incredibly efficient. Obesity is roughly 90% diet and 10% lack of exercise. Sugar puts the body into “convert and store all this excess energy into fat, right now, because we might starve later! overdrive” and most foods in the US are packed with sugar. Of course the sugar and processed food industries fight tooth and nail to reframe the conversation and somehow obfuscate the above.

thettiguy 6y ago

Cheap food might be the biggest issue you sort of glossed over. Cheap because the US government heavily subsidizes wheat and corn. So we have chips, sugar, sugary stuff galore ... it’s cheap. One could argue it starts there.