8 ms·

A Chemical Hunger – Part III: Environmental Contaminants

44 points by danieka 5y ago

JabavuAdams 5y ago
I just ate 4 Oreos I didn't need because this discussion is starting to stress me out. I'm going to stop responding, but I wanted to be on record as having said these things. Thanks for the information and perspectives.
jaqalopes 5y ago
I have never found scientific writing as gripping as I have found this series. My mouth just hangs agape as I scroll and the implications hit me.
ncmncm 5y ago
I feel like this will someday be exhibit A for a presentation on "Correlation is not causation". I am blaming sucrose being added to literally everything.
- thatcat 5y ago
  high fructose corn syrup was developed in 50's and fits the timescale he is talking about, but it could be a number of things. The altitude maps are interesting because it presents the hypothesis that less oxygen could be preventing the negative effects of some compound on metabolism.
- FredJames 5y ago
  What do you think of the lack of correlation between sucrose and obesity that the authors' site? I think it was in one of their previous articles in this series.
JabavuAdams 5y ago
This is nonsense.
- elcomet 5y ago
  Could you develop your thoughts ? I found it pretty convincing
briefcomment 5y ago
The section on Altitude and Watershed quality is really interesting.
- JabavuAdams 5y ago
  It's bad science. They did not do any work to rule out other factors that are correlated to altitude but that are not the watershed. Off the top of my head: lower oxygen levels leading to greater cardio-vascular fitness; affluence - in the US I would not be surprised if richer people live in the mountains, while poorer people live on the rivers like Mississippi; activity level -- more active people go to the mountains to do their mountain sports and so on. If you have thing X that you think might be partially caused by A, B, C, D you need to rule out B, C, D, before you say that A causes X. Otherwise we're back to 5G causing covid because if you draw a map of cell towers, it lines up with a map of hard-hit covid areas. For a concrete example, I'm reading a theoretical neuroscience paper on dimensionality. The authors found an interesting relationship, but they spend a lot of paper on showing that 3 or 4 different known things are not the cause of this interesting effect. They do this by measuring the extent to which the other known effects explain away the effect. When all that is done and a significant effect is still left, then they conclude that they've found something new and real. Humans are wired/encultured to find narratives more interesting than facts. So the watershed thing is a well-written narrative that makes it convincing but does nothing to establish the truth of the matter. While there are many many factors affecting obesity, I am still convinced that the most significant factor is that people are basically delusional about how much they actually need to eat and how much energy is actually in various foods. I could be wrong, but I've seen no rigorously done science that convinces me otherwise yet. I remember what it was like in the '80s. People just ate a lot less at every meal -- our portions have become ridiculous. If you work with immigrants (e.g. Russians). Look at some trim people and see how much they bring for lunch. One small sandwich, an apple, maybe a small salad. That's it. Pretty much any store or restaurant-bought meal here is going to be much more calorific than that. The whole "low-quality" foods thing strikes me as new-age marketing. There may be something there, but again I believe the overriding factor is that most people don't understand how little they need to eat when they're driving and sitting all day. EDIT> Also, in the '80s it was basically a luxury to eat out. You weren't going to go to Starbucks and have a cake in a cup for $5 EDIT2> I've watched smart people struggle with weight-loss and overeating my whole life. The excuses and delusions would not be surprising coming from a heroin addict. When I was 210 pounds after being 190 in university, I looked fat to myself. When I was 230 pounds after being 245, I looked slim to myself. This tells me that I, and the other people I have observed cannot be objective about food and weight. So I am very skeptical of non-rigorous opinions or popular-press opinions on the matter. I over-eat when I feel sad about having eaten too much -- that's literally crazy, and I've observed this craziness in everyone else I know who is fat! Food is such a social thing that we have person after person enabling and affirming our own bad habits. Grandma hopefully would never offer you a hit of heroin if you told her you were trying to get sober, but she'll totally offer you a big piece of pie if you tell her you want to lose some weight. Other people around the table will tell you "It's okay -- just this one time," and if you strenuously object you're being rude. We are delusional about food. EDIT3> In summary, we are extremely biased to find any reason other than we eat too much, and the quality of a lot of the writing and even science in this area is pretty low and compromised by financial motives.
fithisux 5y ago
Very serious research .
errantmind 5y ago
I'm usually all about investigations like this but the repeated claims that obesity is, for sure, not caused by diet is a leap. Also, the claim "people ate worse in the past (bread and lard)" doesn't ring true and is unsubstantiated. My own opinion: we are seeing what happens when we combine an increasingly sedentary lifestyle with eating mass produced, low quality foods. Fruits and vegetables are becoming decreasingly nutritious. Animals (even organic) are force fed poor diets to slaughter them a few days earlier, whose fats contain high concentrations of these poor diets. There are lots of examples of food quality going down. I especially think the problem is related to a combination of excessive carb intake, and PUFAs (think vegetable / seed oils found in a huge portion and variety of foods). There is a growing body of research this is the case [1]. DYOR. 1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16184193/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16184193/
- danieka 5y ago
  Have you read https://fireinabottle.net/ https://fireinabottle.net/? Some other HNer posted it just a few days ago.
- pomian 5y ago
  What's wrong with bread and lard? For many old timers it was and still is a treat. Have you ever tried it? It's good! Many of those old timers lived over a hundred years!
  - sasaf5 5y ago
    I am pretty sure if you actually have bread and lard like in the old times it will make you less fat than modern industrialized food.
- FredJames 5y ago
  What do you think of the growing research on other obesogenics? and of populations that have had excessive carb intake for a long, long time? I think many things seem more probable than just carbs and PUFAs. I do agree the author's have taken some leaps. Leaps have to be taken as there is imperfect data to support any theory on the obesity epidemic, but I agree that leaps should be better acknowledged.
sasaf5 5y ago
> People’s diets were “worse” in the past — full of lard and bread — because diet doesn’t cause obesity. The ~1% of people who were obese in the past were people with one of the various medical conditions known to cause obesity, such as Prader-Willi Syndrome, hypothyroidism, or hypothalamic lesions. This is a very strong claim that is lacking a source. There are entire groups of people in history that were documented to be obese, especially in religion or sports.
- mattgibson 5y ago
  >There are entire groups of people in history that were documented to be obese, especially in religion or sports This is also a very strong claim that is lacking a source :)
  - sasaf5 5y ago
    Sure, my bad. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumo
- gtt 5y ago
  >This is a very strong claim that is lacking a source They are citing overfeeding experiments.
  - sasaf5 5y ago
    There's a stretch between "overeating experiments fail to sustain body weight" and "diet doesn't cause obesity". That kind of stretch is not even necessary for the main point of the article, so I think it is just decreasing its value. Also I cast doubt on those overeating experiments: wrestlers and powerlifters keep fat.
FredJames 5y ago
I would love to see an RCT on a ton of really common environmental contaminants at different dosages in the human diet. Of course this would be incredibly unethical and inefficient with respect to human welfare, but it would, I think, finally get people to believe that there are obesegenic compounds (and viruses) that need to be avoided for proper metabolic health. Phthalates, Adenovirus 36, bisphenols, certain pesticides and fungicides--which ones should we be investing in getting rid of?
- harpersealtako 5y ago
  if the author is correct that the cause of obesity is environmental contaminants, it would be very simple to test this. The author is using lab rat data (the cafeteria diet example) as a main point in their conclusion, so simply adding the chemicals in question to otherwise uncontaminated food and feeding it to lab rats should easily disprove or prove their point.
- gtt 5y ago
  I think currently is all of them, until we figure it all out. The costs of obesity overweight benefits of convenience of above mentioned things. (You can argue about adenoviruses -- I've got two shots of the adenovirus based vaccine).
mickaelP38 5y ago
I found the first two articles were interesting despite obvious flaws in the presented evidence. After reading the third one, it just looks like logical fallacy to me. For example, taken from the first article: > In the past, most people got slightly leaner as they got older. How can you claim that with so few data. From the same data I would conclude that obese people die at young age... I don't think we should exclude any possible cause but a global contaminant which is the only cause of obesity seems far fetched. Simple logic would suggest that our food is the main culprit. Personaly I would bet obesity is due to weakened gut microbiome (due to consumption of process foods), transmitted from mothers to their children. In other words, each generation consuming processed food gives birth to children more susceptible to obesity. It has actually been modeled with rats (cannot find the published link though).
- gtt 5y ago
  >>Simple logic would suggest that our food is the main culprit. Then, why does it happen in wild animals? They are not eating processed foods. Even if the food is main culprit, it leads to the question of what is exactly wrong with the food? p.s. we have enough data to understand overall historical trends and authors cite it: https://voxeu.org/article/100-years-us-obesity https://voxeu.org/article/100-years-us-obesity
  - mickaelP38 5y ago
    > Primates and rodents living in research colonies, feral rodents living in our cities, and domestic pets like dogs and cats are all steadily getting fatter and fatter. All are fed with human produced food. Also as someone noted our food (raw food) is decreasingly nutritious when it comes to micronutrients and vitamins.

44 points by danieka 5y ago

I just ate 4 Oreos I didn't need because this discussion is starting to stress me out. I'm going to stop responding, but I wanted to be on record as having said these things. Thanks for the information and perspectives.

jaqalopes 5y ago

I have never found scientific writing as gripping as I have found this series. My mouth just hangs agape as I scroll and the implications hit me.

ncmncm 5y ago

I feel like this will someday be exhibit A for a presentation on "Correlation is not causation". I am blaming sucrose being added to literally everything.

thatcat 5y ago
high fructose corn syrup was developed in 50's and fits the timescale he is talking about, but it could be a number of things. The altitude maps are interesting because it presents the hypothesis that less oxygen could be preventing the negative effects of some compound on metabolism.
FredJames 5y ago
What do you think of the lack of correlation between sucrose and obesity that the authors' site? I think it was in one of their previous articles in this series.

JabavuAdams 5y ago

This is nonsense.

elcomet 5y ago
Could you develop your thoughts ? I found it pretty convincing

briefcomment 5y ago

The section on Altitude and Watershed quality is really interesting.

JabavuAdams 5y ago
It's bad science. They did not do any work to rule out other factors that are correlated to altitude but that are not the watershed. Off the top of my head: lower oxygen levels leading to greater cardio-vascular fitness; affluence - in the US I would not be surprised if richer people live in the mountains, while poorer people live on the rivers like Mississippi; activity level -- more active people go to the mountains to do their mountain sports and so on. If you have thing X that you think might be partially caused by A, B, C, D you need to rule out B, C, D, before you say that A causes X. Otherwise we're back to 5G causing covid because if you draw a map of cell towers, it lines up with a map of hard-hit covid areas. For a concrete example, I'm reading a theoretical neuroscience paper on dimensionality. The authors found an interesting relationship, but they spend a lot of paper on showing that 3 or 4 different known things are not the cause of this interesting effect. They do this by measuring the extent to which the other known effects explain away the effect. When all that is done and a significant effect is still left, then they conclude that they've found something new and real. Humans are wired/encultured to find narratives more interesting than facts. So the watershed thing is a well-written narrative that makes it convincing but does nothing to establish the truth of the matter. While there are many many factors affecting obesity, I am still convinced that the most significant factor is that people are basically delusional about how much they actually need to eat and how much energy is actually in various foods. I could be wrong, but I've seen no rigorously done science that convinces me otherwise yet. I remember what it was like in the '80s. People just ate a lot less at every meal -- our portions have become ridiculous. If you work with immigrants (e.g. Russians). Look at some trim people and see how much they bring for lunch. One small sandwich, an apple, maybe a small salad. That's it. Pretty much any store or restaurant-bought meal here is going to be much more calorific than that. The whole "low-quality" foods thing strikes me as new-age marketing. There may be something there, but again I believe the overriding factor is that most people don't understand how little they need to eat when they're driving and sitting all day. EDIT> Also, in the '80s it was basically a luxury to eat out. You weren't going to go to Starbucks and have a cake in a cup for $5 EDIT2> I've watched smart people struggle with weight-loss and overeating my whole life. The excuses and delusions would not be surprising coming from a heroin addict. When I was 210 pounds after being 190 in university, I looked fat to myself. When I was 230 pounds after being 245, I looked slim to myself. This tells me that I, and the other people I have observed cannot be objective about food and weight. So I am very skeptical of non-rigorous opinions or popular-press opinions on the matter. I over-eat when I feel sad about having eaten too much -- that's literally crazy, and I've observed this craziness in everyone else I know who is fat! Food is such a social thing that we have person after person enabling and affirming our own bad habits. Grandma hopefully would never offer you a hit of heroin if you told her you were trying to get sober, but she'll totally offer you a big piece of pie if you tell her you want to lose some weight. Other people around the table will tell you "It's okay -- just this one time," and if you strenuously object you're being rude. We are delusional about food. EDIT3> In summary, we are extremely biased to find any reason other than we eat too much, and the quality of a lot of the writing and even science in this area is pretty low and compromised by financial motives.

fithisux 5y ago

Very serious research .

errantmind 5y ago

I'm usually all about investigations like this but the repeated claims that obesity is, for sure, not caused by diet is a leap. Also, the claim "people ate worse in the past (bread and lard)" doesn't ring true and is unsubstantiated. My own opinion: we are seeing what happens when we combine an increasingly sedentary lifestyle with eating mass produced, low quality foods. Fruits and vegetables are becoming decreasingly nutritious. Animals (even organic) are force fed poor diets to slaughter them a few days earlier, whose fats contain high concentrations of these poor diets. There are lots of examples of food quality going down. I especially think the problem is related to a combination of excessive carb intake, and PUFAs (think vegetable / seed oils found in a huge portion and variety of foods). There is a growing body of research this is the case [1]. DYOR. 1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16184193/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16184193/

danieka 5y ago
Have you read https://fireinabottle.net/ https://fireinabottle.net/? Some other HNer posted it just a few days ago.
pomian 5y ago
What's wrong with bread and lard? For many old timers it was and still is a treat. Have you ever tried it? It's good! Many of those old timers lived over a hundred years!
- sasaf5 5y ago
  I am pretty sure if you actually have bread and lard like in the old times it will make you less fat than modern industrialized food.
FredJames 5y ago
What do you think of the growing research on other obesogenics? and of populations that have had excessive carb intake for a long, long time? I think many things seem more probable than just carbs and PUFAs. I do agree the author's have taken some leaps. Leaps have to be taken as there is imperfect data to support any theory on the obesity epidemic, but I agree that leaps should be better acknowledged.

sasaf5 5y ago

> People’s diets were “worse” in the past — full of lard and bread — because diet doesn’t cause obesity. The ~1% of people who were obese in the past were people with one of the various medical conditions known to cause obesity, such as Prader-Willi Syndrome, hypothyroidism, or hypothalamic lesions. This is a very strong claim that is lacking a source. There are entire groups of people in history that were documented to be obese, especially in religion or sports.

mattgibson 5y ago
>There are entire groups of people in history that were documented to be obese, especially in religion or sports This is also a very strong claim that is lacking a source :)
- sasaf5 5y ago
  Sure, my bad. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumo
gtt 5y ago
>This is a very strong claim that is lacking a source They are citing overfeeding experiments.
- sasaf5 5y ago
  There's a stretch between "overeating experiments fail to sustain body weight" and "diet doesn't cause obesity". That kind of stretch is not even necessary for the main point of the article, so I think it is just decreasing its value. Also I cast doubt on those overeating experiments: wrestlers and powerlifters keep fat.

FredJames 5y ago

I would love to see an RCT on a ton of really common environmental contaminants at different dosages in the human diet. Of course this would be incredibly unethical and inefficient with respect to human welfare, but it would, I think, finally get people to believe that there are obesegenic compounds (and viruses) that need to be avoided for proper metabolic health. Phthalates, Adenovirus 36, bisphenols, certain pesticides and fungicides--which ones should we be investing in getting rid of?

harpersealtako 5y ago
if the author is correct that the cause of obesity is environmental contaminants, it would be very simple to test this. The author is using lab rat data (the cafeteria diet example) as a main point in their conclusion, so simply adding the chemicals in question to otherwise uncontaminated food and feeding it to lab rats should easily disprove or prove their point.
gtt 5y ago
I think currently is all of them, until we figure it all out. The costs of obesity overweight benefits of convenience of above mentioned things. (You can argue about adenoviruses -- I've got two shots of the adenovirus based vaccine).

mickaelP38 5y ago

I found the first two articles were interesting despite obvious flaws in the presented evidence. After reading the third one, it just looks like logical fallacy to me. For example, taken from the first article: > In the past, most people got slightly leaner as they got older. How can you claim that with so few data. From the same data I would conclude that obese people die at young age... I don't think we should exclude any possible cause but a global contaminant which is the only cause of obesity seems far fetched. Simple logic would suggest that our food is the main culprit. Personaly I would bet obesity is due to weakened gut microbiome (due to consumption of process foods), transmitted from mothers to their children. In other words, each generation consuming processed food gives birth to children more susceptible to obesity. It has actually been modeled with rats (cannot find the published link though).

gtt 5y ago
>>Simple logic would suggest that our food is the main culprit. Then, why does it happen in wild animals? They are not eating processed foods. Even if the food is main culprit, it leads to the question of what is exactly wrong with the food? p.s. we have enough data to understand overall historical trends and authors cite it: https://voxeu.org/article/100-years-us-obesity https://voxeu.org/article/100-years-us-obesity
- mickaelP38 5y ago
  > Primates and rodents living in research colonies, feral rodents living in our cities, and domestic pets like dogs and cats are all steadily getting fatter and fatter. All are fed with human produced food. Also as someone noted our food (raw food) is decreasingly nutritious when it comes to micronutrients and vitamins.