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This is nonsense. Obesity doesn’t cause health issues because of crash diets - the link between obesity and several bad health outcomes (insulin resistance/diab

This is nonsense. Obesity doesn’t cause health issues because of crash diets - the link between obesity and several bad health outcomes (insulin resistance/diabetes, hypertension, joint damage, to name a few) is extremely well established, and has nothing to do with diet and everything to do with the accumulation of superhuman levels of fat relative to the conditions in which humans evolved. You’re right that there is some controversy about where exactly the line for “overweight” should be, but there’s no question that when you get into the obese category (41% of Americans) it is extremely bad for your health, irrespective of what diet you’re on - humans simply aren’t designed to handle the amount of fat we now routinely accumulate.

checkyoursudo 4y ago
> humans simply aren’t designed to handle the amount of fat we now routinely accumulate. Maybe so, but like with all other evolution, presumably we'll either adapt or die? Maybe fat accumulation via material prosperity is the Great Filter.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jagraff 4y ago
  Yes, over the long term (tens of thousands of years?) evolution will probably come up with adaptations to material abundance assuming it lasts. Cold comfort to the people that suffer from it today though. Evolution can't do anything to help anyone who is alive today.
pessimizer 4y ago
The link between many health issues and constant failed, and increasingly desperate attempts to lose weight is also extremely well established. Why do you dismiss the connection as if it were nothing in order to frame fatness as moral failure and disease as punishment? > as nothing to do with diet and everything to do with the accumulation of superhuman levels of fat relative to the conditions in which humans evolved This is a religious belief. Evolution doesn't visit judgement on human behavor, and any number of things that we do now that we didn't do in the Stone Age fail to have negative health consequences. Some might even be good for you, judging by the comparative lifespans of prehistoric humans and modern ones. Look, if you care about people losing weight instead of wallowing in the cruelty and definitely something that looks like jealousy (e.g. that happy feeling some people get when they hear that people who have sex caught a venereal disease) - if you really care, then the health consequences of crash diets would concern you. The consequences of repeated failures to lose weight would concern you. None of this would be dismissed if your concern were health instead of moral superiority. Sorry for the accusatory tone. To preempt, I'm 6', 175lb.. edit: > Or how lumping the overweight and obese groups together is a great example of lying with statistics by gerrymandering the BMI quantiles This is the fucking worst because it's conscious dishonesty. It's intentional deception.
- jagraff 4y ago
  I said nothing about the link between crash diets and health issues in my post. I only addressed this point in the OP: > there's some evidence that the health risks associated with increased BMI are partially an artifact of weight loss diets which is misleading at best - there is a huge amount of evidence that fat accumulation directly leads to health issues. I am not moralizing in any way, I don't see anything in my original comment which indicated I'm passing moral judgement at all. I am simply stating that the health consequences of obesity are well known, and the causal direction is clear - obesity itself causes health problems. Again, I'm not passing judgement here - in fact I find the common refrain "eat less, move more" to be an extreme oversimplification of the problem, and I'm well aware that diet change is neither easy nor sufficient to solve the obesity problem. I'm just pushing back on the idea that crash diets are what cause the primary health issues associated with obesity - it's simply not true, and there's a mountain of evidence to back that up.
  - mumblemumble 4y ago
    You have set up a false dichotomy. Why do you ignore that word "partially" in the sentence you quoted? When someone proposes a partial cause, then pointing out the existence of other causes does absolutely nothing to challenge the premise that there might be multiple contributing factors. This is not a particularly controversial idea among health researchers. I've been casually following obesity research for decades now, and one of the big themes I've seen is one of scientists being frustrated at their inability to get journalists and popularizers to give a proper accounting of the level of nuance in the knowledge we have. Your use of the phrase "the causal direction" implies that your knowledge is informed by these same popular sources that perennially frustrate the research community, because a proper accounting of the science does not permit the use of a definite pronoun in such a statement.
    - jagraff 4y ago
      Because the magnitude of the effects isn't the same. The evidence is very clear - obesity _causes_ several negative health conditions. To suggest that crash dieting somehow reduces the relevance of those conditions is to deliberately mislead. Some links: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC380258/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC380258/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33882682/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33882682/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5038894/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5038894/ I would love to see any research you're aware of that would show evidence that crash diets cause significant health issues (I don't doubt that there are some diets that cause weight loss while being bad for health in other ways) but to suggest that the side effects of those diets compare in magnitude to the side effects of obesity itself is extremely misleading. If you have any reputable sources that provide evidence to the contrary I would be happy to read them, but I think you're misleading people, deliberately or inadvertently.

checkyoursudo 4y ago

> humans simply aren’t designed to handle the amount of fat we now routinely accumulate. Maybe so, but like with all other evolution, presumably we'll either adapt or die? Maybe fat accumulation via material prosperity is the Great Filter.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jagraff 4y ago
Yes, over the long term (tens of thousands of years?) evolution will probably come up with adaptations to material abundance assuming it lasts. Cold comfort to the people that suffer from it today though. Evolution can't do anything to help anyone who is alive today.

pessimizer 4y ago

The link between many health issues and constant failed, and increasingly desperate attempts to lose weight is also extremely well established. Why do you dismiss the connection as if it were nothing in order to frame fatness as moral failure and disease as punishment? > as nothing to do with diet and everything to do with the accumulation of superhuman levels of fat relative to the conditions in which humans evolved This is a religious belief. Evolution doesn't visit judgement on human behavor, and any number of things that we do now that we didn't do in the Stone Age fail to have negative health consequences. Some might even be good for you, judging by the comparative lifespans of prehistoric humans and modern ones. Look, if you care about people losing weight instead of wallowing in the cruelty and definitely something that looks like jealousy (e.g. that happy feeling some people get when they hear that people who have sex caught a venereal disease) - if you really care, then the health consequences of crash diets would concern you. The consequences of repeated failures to lose weight would concern you. None of this would be dismissed if your concern were health instead of moral superiority. Sorry for the accusatory tone. To preempt, I'm 6', 175lb.. edit: > Or how lumping the overweight and obese groups together is a great example of lying with statistics by gerrymandering the BMI quantiles This is the fucking worst because it's conscious dishonesty. It's intentional deception.

jagraff 4y ago
I said nothing about the link between crash diets and health issues in my post. I only addressed this point in the OP: > there's some evidence that the health risks associated with increased BMI are partially an artifact of weight loss diets which is misleading at best - there is a huge amount of evidence that fat accumulation directly leads to health issues. I am not moralizing in any way, I don't see anything in my original comment which indicated I'm passing moral judgement at all. I am simply stating that the health consequences of obesity are well known, and the causal direction is clear - obesity itself causes health problems. Again, I'm not passing judgement here - in fact I find the common refrain "eat less, move more" to be an extreme oversimplification of the problem, and I'm well aware that diet change is neither easy nor sufficient to solve the obesity problem. I'm just pushing back on the idea that crash diets are what cause the primary health issues associated with obesity - it's simply not true, and there's a mountain of evidence to back that up.
- mumblemumble 4y ago
  You have set up a false dichotomy. Why do you ignore that word "partially" in the sentence you quoted? When someone proposes a partial cause, then pointing out the existence of other causes does absolutely nothing to challenge the premise that there might be multiple contributing factors. This is not a particularly controversial idea among health researchers. I've been casually following obesity research for decades now, and one of the big themes I've seen is one of scientists being frustrated at their inability to get journalists and popularizers to give a proper accounting of the level of nuance in the knowledge we have. Your use of the phrase "the causal direction" implies that your knowledge is informed by these same popular sources that perennially frustrate the research community, because a proper accounting of the science does not permit the use of a definite pronoun in such a statement.
  - jagraff 4y ago
    Because the magnitude of the effects isn't the same. The evidence is very clear - obesity _causes_ several negative health conditions. To suggest that crash dieting somehow reduces the relevance of those conditions is to deliberately mislead. Some links: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC380258/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC380258/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33882682/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33882682/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5038894/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5038894/ I would love to see any research you're aware of that would show evidence that crash diets cause significant health issues (I don't doubt that there are some diets that cause weight loss while being bad for health in other ways) but to suggest that the side effects of those diets compare in magnitude to the side effects of obesity itself is extremely misleading. If you have any reputable sources that provide evidence to the contrary I would be happy to read them, but I think you're misleading people, deliberately or inadvertently.