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Interesting usage of the term "efficient". Looking at an organism, one would presumably say that the organism that burns fewer calories is more efficient. A mor

Interesting usage of the term "efficient". Looking at an organism, one would presumably say that the organism that burns fewer calories is more efficient. A more efficient car burns less fuel, for example. But this article uses "efficient" to mean "efficient at burning more calories". "To measure people's calorie-burning efficiency, Dr. Indelicato took resting metabolic rate (RMR)--the amount of calories a person needs to burn at rest per day in order to maintain their body weight—and divided it by weight. The result is the metabolic factor (MF), which shows how many calories a person burns per pound of their body weight. The higher the MF, the faster the metabolism." I'm not saying it's wrong - I'm just saying that we live in a strange time when our bodies haven't evolved to cope with excess calories in our diet.

autoexec 4y ago
Evolution takes time. We'll get there eventually if we don't kill ourselves off first. I'm increasingly thinking genetic engineering might not be so bad after all. Between our swiftly changing diet, lifestyle, and environment we may not have the luxury of doing things the traditional way. If we were able to do things like make sure our next generation was born with the ability to filter PFAS and microplastics from their blood they could at least drink the water on our planet without poisoning themselves.
- carlmr 4y ago
  >I'm increasingly thinking genetic engineering might not be so bad after all. Until you genetically engineer all humans to waste calories, crops start failing due to climate change and soil depletion, and humanity dies because of this. Efficiency might not be good now, but looking at the longer timeline, I don't think we should reasonably assume that the abundance will last. Actually with how things are going right now, I would assume abundance to end in my lifetime.
carlmr 4y ago
>I'm not saying it's wrong I am saying it's wrong. Efficiency has a very clear definition in science. Any paper abusing this is unscientific and should have never been published. We have a few words that are very specific in science. We should not muddle our ability to think about problems by using unclear language.
- matthewmacleod 4y ago
  Well, it’s not wrong. Efficiency is really just a measure of how much work it takes to achieve some result. If your unit of work is “exercise” and your end result is “burning calories”, then clearly a body which takes more exercise to burn the same number of calories is less efficient at achieving that result!
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
mytailorisrich 4y ago
Why should our bodies evolve to become less efficient and thus to lower our survival capabilities? I think the evolution at play here is not there. It's in self-control and being to maintain a healthy diet in the face of abundance. Indeed, those who can't do that and, for instance, become obese lower their survival rates because of the negative consequences. However this does not seem to affect reproduction rates (or does it?), which is key for evolution.
- esarbe 4y ago
  There's just no reason for any animal to evolve the necessary "self-control" to not eat available food. This situation - abundance of food - almost never comes up "in nature" and when it comes up, it's a good opportunity to stuff your face.
esarbe 4y ago
It's of course a complete inversion of how 'efficient' is used in other contexts. Obese people are much more efficient in how they use the consumed calories and it's only our "obsession" with being slim that makes the scientists involved use such a twisted interpretation. For almost every creature in almost every possible context, being obese is an objectively good thing. Being obese means being successful in gathering resources, being successful in avoiding unnecessary effort and struggle. Being obese is the mark of a good mate. It's only with our usage of the game engine exploits of "cooperation" and "tool use" that we've gotten into a situation where our culture (and bodies) is completely unable to cope with the massive amount of energy we have available. It's a strange place to find itself for any species.
karmakaze 4y ago
How surprising is this? Think of a thin person and a large one of the same height. Consider they're both sitting normally dressed at room temperature. The body will dissipate heat over its surface area. Surface area is proportional to linear measure squared, volume to linear measure cubed. But given constant height, surface area varies with linear measure, and volume to linear measure squared. So a quadrupling of volume/weight results in a doubling of surface area. Now if maintaining body temperature above room temperature is a significant expenditure of energy, it would be expected that larger people are more energy efficient and thus less 'efficient' at burning calories per unit weight.

autoexec 4y ago

Evolution takes time. We'll get there eventually if we don't kill ourselves off first. I'm increasingly thinking genetic engineering might not be so bad after all. Between our swiftly changing diet, lifestyle, and environment we may not have the luxury of doing things the traditional way. If we were able to do things like make sure our next generation was born with the ability to filter PFAS and microplastics from their blood they could at least drink the water on our planet without poisoning themselves.

carlmr 4y ago
>I'm increasingly thinking genetic engineering might not be so bad after all. Until you genetically engineer all humans to waste calories, crops start failing due to climate change and soil depletion, and humanity dies because of this. Efficiency might not be good now, but looking at the longer timeline, I don't think we should reasonably assume that the abundance will last. Actually with how things are going right now, I would assume abundance to end in my lifetime.

carlmr 4y ago

>I'm not saying it's wrong I am saying it's wrong. Efficiency has a very clear definition in science. Any paper abusing this is unscientific and should have never been published. We have a few words that are very specific in science. We should not muddle our ability to think about problems by using unclear language.

matthewmacleod 4y ago
Well, it’s not wrong. Efficiency is really just a measure of how much work it takes to achieve some result. If your unit of work is “exercise” and your end result is “burning calories”, then clearly a body which takes more exercise to burn the same number of calories is less efficient at achieving that result!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

mytailorisrich 4y ago

Why should our bodies evolve to become less efficient and thus to lower our survival capabilities? I think the evolution at play here is not there. It's in self-control and being to maintain a healthy diet in the face of abundance. Indeed, those who can't do that and, for instance, become obese lower their survival rates because of the negative consequences. However this does not seem to affect reproduction rates (or does it?), which is key for evolution.

esarbe 4y ago
There's just no reason for any animal to evolve the necessary "self-control" to not eat available food. This situation - abundance of food - almost never comes up "in nature" and when it comes up, it's a good opportunity to stuff your face.

esarbe 4y ago

It's of course a complete inversion of how 'efficient' is used in other contexts. Obese people are much more efficient in how they use the consumed calories and it's only our "obsession" with being slim that makes the scientists involved use such a twisted interpretation. For almost every creature in almost every possible context, being obese is an objectively good thing. Being obese means being successful in gathering resources, being successful in avoiding unnecessary effort and struggle. Being obese is the mark of a good mate. It's only with our usage of the game engine exploits of "cooperation" and "tool use" that we've gotten into a situation where our culture (and bodies) is completely unable to cope with the massive amount of energy we have available. It's a strange place to find itself for any species.

karmakaze 4y ago

How surprising is this? Think of a thin person and a large one of the same height. Consider they're both sitting normally dressed at room temperature. The body will dissipate heat over its surface area. Surface area is proportional to linear measure squared, volume to linear measure cubed. But given constant height, surface area varies with linear measure, and volume to linear measure squared. So a quadrupling of volume/weight results in a doubling of surface area. Now if maintaining body temperature above room temperature is a significant expenditure of energy, it would be expected that larger people are more energy efficient and thus less 'efficient' at burning calories per unit weight.