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Also the metabolic syndrome/obesity epidemic. 40% of US adults have obesity. By 2030 about half of US adults will, and in 29 states more than half of adults wil

Also the metabolic syndrome/obesity epidemic. 40% of US adults have obesity. By 2030 about half of US adults will, and in 29 states more than half of adults will be obese. We see obesity becoming increasingly normalized. People feel powerless to stop it and that we should just accept it. It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us. That's part of it, but I wonder if microplastics or some kind of gut biome disruption is playing a role as well.

bhouston 3y ago
Obesity is caused in part by environmental toxins, probably to different extents in different people: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/19/environmental-toxins-are-worsening-obesity-pandemic-say-scientists https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/19/environm... https://www.webmd.com/obesity/what-to-know-obesogens https://www.webmd.com/obesity/what-to-know-obesogens These so called "obesogens" just increase the propensity towards obesity and depending on exposure and your sensitivity to then, you can overcome them or not via exercise and dieting and other means.
- saberience 3y ago
  Obesity is caused by eating too much. If you don’t eat then you won’t gain weight, there is no subverting the laws of thermodynamics. It sounds callous but if you go to Africa or visit a prisoner of war camp you won’t find many fat people and so blaming chemicals in America for so many fat people doesn’t make much sense to me.
  - gizmo 3y ago
    True in the technical sense, but it doesn’t address the mystery that in the 40s, 50s, 60s people in rich countries had access to plenty of food, ate lots of calories, and yet obesity was very rare.
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      Nicotine suppresses appetite.
      - voakbasda 3y ago
        Trite, but accurate. I gained 50 lbs within 6 months after I quit smoking, when I had been skinny for decades prior. There is no doubt in my mind that the (justifiable) demonization of smoking in recent decades contributed to the obesity crisis.
    - flextheruler 3y ago
      That’s no mystery. The amount of calories the average person expends has decreased as we’ve become more sedentary. In the 40s, 50s, and 60s most people did manual labor and even office jobs were not as sedentary since you couldn’t just sit at a computer. Here’s another simple overlooked example, grocery shopping, before the rise of superstores you’d go into town and visit 4 different stores. The butcher, the hardware store, the grocer, the pharmacist etc. now it’s all in one big store all next to each other. Here’s another example lawn mowing. Back then most people had manual lawnmowers. Here’s another example the moving of goods. Go look up a picture of the manual labor involved in being a stevedore back then versus now and that’ll give you an idea of how much less physical exertion is needed these days even in jobs that are still considered manual labor. Overall I think solely blaming plastic for obesity is an oversimplification and assuredly wrong, although it could have some affect there are a lot of other things going on. Declines in fertility and IQ are most likely due to obesity so it’s a big issue.
      - flextheruler 3y ago
        To add onto this it seems there’s a causation of low iq with obesity but not vice versa. I also just had this thought about declining levels of fertility in humans. If it’s being caused by external factors like plastic or any pollution we’d expect to see similar effects in all other mammals especially ones close to human populations. I wasn’t able to find any studies backing this up with just a cursory search, but it is likely the easiest way to add or detract from the plastic hypothesis. I do know that not all but most studies comparing fertility between decades found that when controlling for obesity the differences were not statistically significant between time periods.
  - networkchad 3y ago
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  - ethbr1 3y ago
    Obesity is caused by eating too much of the wrong thing. Which happens to be the cheap thing in industrialized mass produced Western food chains. Cheap in terms of dollars and personal time. So obesity is really an economic problem. We should come down like a ton of bricks on fast food and require they offer healthier options at low prices, subsidized by taxes on their unhealthier options.
    - flir 3y ago
      Or more simply, you could not subsidize the cheap unhealthy options at source (eg corn subsidies). But until very recently, I would absolutely have still chosen the unhealthy option. I'm not sure how much impact 20% on a bag of Doritos is really going to have.
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        Not sure you're going to shift US corn subsidies without changing the electoral system. ;) To me, substitutability is key. If you tax unhealthy food, but unhealthy food is the only option (from physical, financial, and time perspectives), people just pay more to eat unhealthy food. If you tax unhealthy food, but also require healthier and low-cost options at the same establishment, then people begin to have options. I.e. do I want a $10 Big Mac or a $3 grilled chicken sandwich? Even getting the Big Mac less often would be a net win. And I call bullshit if McDonald's tries the "But it's impossible to run healthy food through our supply chain..." argument.
        flir 3y ago
        I'm saying I would have picked the unhealthy option. I know this, because I spent decades doing it when I certainly wasn't hurting for money. Maybe on a population level it would work, and I'm just atypical. Can we look at sin taxes on cigarettes and draw any conclusions?
        ethbr1 3y ago
        Apparently the relationship between income and obesity is complex enough to vary by race and gender. Which is to say, not tightly coupled. (CDC studies) Cigarettes are a great example of missing substitutability. If you smoke, and the price of cigarettes increases, what options do you have? My version of an anti-smoking campaign would have drastically boosted the price of cigarettes and used to tax to decrease the price of nicotine patches or gum. If there aren't alternatives at the point of sale, there aren't alternatives.
  - SirMaster 3y ago
    But not eating slows down your metabolism, and then you will eventually find yourself at a point where you are tired all the time because you are not consuming enough calories to have a high enough metabolism and energy level, and yet you are still slowly gaining weight because you are too tired to do anything to burn it off.
    - flexagoon 3y ago
      > not eating slows down your metabolism Starvation mode is a myth. Well, kinda. You do enter "starvation mode" where your metabolism significantly slows down, but only if you're actually starving. Simply eating in a caloric deficit will not do anything to your metabolism. The beginning of this article talks about that in great detail: https://physiqonomics.com/eating-too-much/ https://physiqonomics.com/eating-too-much/
      - SirMaster 3y ago
        I thought there have been studies finding that simply eating less doesn't necessarily work for some people because of metabolism. Maybe they have a thyroid issue too. And that the amount you would have to limit yourself to with a completely sedentary life (like many people have) and still be in a caloric deficit is just not sustainable for people and would make you feel absolutely miserable and also unlikely to get enough vitamins and minerals and cause other health problems. because let's be honest, telling people to eat less is not going to stop them from eating junk, just less junk. "Just eating less" I don't think is really enough for most cases. You need to also be active and exercise along with, and even better, be eating the right balance of macros. I would say you need to do maybe 2 of the 3 to lose or maintain weight, and doing all 3 will certainly allow you to lose weight. But doing just 1 is unlikely to see results.
        flexagoon 3y ago
        > "Just eating less" I don't think is really enough for most cases. You need to also be active and exercise along with, and even better, be eating the right balance of macros. To lose weight, you need to eat in a caloric deficit, that's it. Excercising just burns extra calories which allows you to eat more while staying in a deficit. And macros / less junk food are, of course, important for health, but if we're speaking strictly about weight loss, no, it doesn't matter. FWIW, you can eat only a Big Mac and 3 Snickers bars every day, and you'll still lose weight, because that's about ~1800 kcal, which is a deficit for most people. > the amount you would have to limit yourself to with a completely sedentary life (like many people have) and still be in a caloric deficit is just not sustainable for people and would make you feel absolutely miserable and also unlikely to get enough vitamins and minerals and cause other health problems. That depends on what you eat really, there are a lot of foods that don't have a lot of calories while still being very nourishing, and many of them are just normal foods, not some special "fitness stuff" --- The article I linked in my above comment is actually a great explanation of why "just eating less" is enough for most people, I highly recommend you read it if you haven't already.
  - flir 3y ago
    In an environment awash with cheap calories, some people get obese and some don't. That's something worth investigating. (I personally think it's more about natural mental variation than subtle chemical poisoning, but that's probably just my bias talking).
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      Also the big elephant in the room is most people are hardly active. Your body is designed to forage for miles a day. Who even bothers simulating that? We walk to the fridge and from grocery store to parked car at most. Its so much easier to maintain good health if you are active.
      - joquarky 3y ago
        I wonder how much better it would be if we had developed more for walking than for cars.
        kjkjadksj 3y ago
        It doesnt matter how we developed. My city developed for walking first. I can and do walk to places like 10 mins to the grocery store. The problem is for most people, if they have an easier choice than physically moving they take it. So they would rather drive two minutes than walk 10. Its also evident whenever I see an escalator. The escalator will be full of able bodied people while the stairs along side it that take as long to get up as standing still on the escalator are empty, because people chose the option that involves the least effort every chance they get. Never mind getting a little bit of leg exercise on the stairs. At work I routinely see healthy people take the elevator 1 floor instead of the stairwell right next to the elevator. We have to be taught the value of exercise and being physically active because most people don’t default to that.
  - wickedsight 3y ago
    Your argument is that forcing people to go without food causes them to lose weight, which is impossible to deny. You argument says nothing about what causes people to gain weight, however. Just look up 'hormonal weight gain' to see that it isn't just about eating less. Then look at research into the influence of chemicals/micro plastics on those hormones. Yes, all calories have to go in through the mouth. How those calories are processed, however, is influenced by a great many factors.
    - Shocka1 3y ago
      The comment started with "Obesity is caused by eating too much." At the core, this is very much the objective truth. If it so happens that someone processes cake or calories differently than others, they need to eat less cake and take in less calories. The pervasive obsession with avoiding this truth is concerning and has had a detrimental effect on society. How many of us know someone who passed away from COVID due to this kind of unhealthiness? Primary Care Physicians and health professionals out there need to step it up and be truthful with people. I can acknowledge the extreme cases where this may not be possible, but 9/10 times we can take ownership of our lives whatever the situation, clean our diets and get out there and exercise.
    - tarsinge 3y ago
      I visited the US a few years ago and I was shocked how much calories were packed in random foods. Some desserts/cakes alone were above 1000kcal. Basically in the US I had to be very careful and calorie counting and I got the impression if you eat randomly you'll end up with a very high calorie intake (typically above 3000 per day), whereas this is usually less true in Europe (but it's getting less true every year) and you might end up just a bit overweight instead of obese by eating randomly.
    - joquarky 3y ago
      >How those calories are processed, however, is influenced by a great many factors. I feel compelled to assume that we can't possibly be extracting every calorie from certain types of food. Caloriometers work differently from human digestive systems.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    The tunnel-vision on this subject is truly astounding. I can't think of any subject that is treated in the same way. Say that someone was failing at university because they have no motivation. And they have no motivation because they have depression. Then a vocal minority would always butt in with the following truism: - Failing university courses is caused by not studying enough. There is no subverting the fact that you need to study the material in order to not fail the course. This is of course a completely useless advice/truism. Now say that someone overeats because they have depression. Or because of some pathology caused by microplastics. Or let's just say that there is a possibility that a different environment (no microplastics) would lead to them not overeating. Do you still want to derail this conversation with irrelevant “thermodynamics” truisms?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      As someone who struggled with depression at university, I'd say that's the only useful advice. "I am failing because I am not studying enough." Granted, I could introspect on what was preventing me from studying, leverage additional college resources, align to my learning styles, etc. But until I accepted the above as an honest objective truth, and a path to change, I wasn't able to be successful.
      - avgcorrection 3y ago
        As someone who had the same: it's not useful advice. At all. In the slightest.
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      How about we stop trying to come up with any reason but the objective one for the cause of the problem?
      - therealdrag0 3y ago
        It’s not looking for a reason besides the objective one, it’s trying to find the reasons behind the objective one. Many commenters like to slight of hand their possibly objective comments about calories as making their comments about moral or will-power failings just as objective, when it’s not a transitive property.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - zhynn 3y ago
    I'll just leave this here, it's a fascinating bit of citizen science: http://achemicalhunger.com/ http://achemicalhunger.com/
  - dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
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    - dang 3y ago
      We've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - saberience 3y ago
      God bless you sir/madam, but I’m not wrong. There may be some people with “glandular” issues causing them somehow to eat too much but I don’t think I’m saying something controversial when stating that americas obesity crisis is mostly just to do with lazy sedentary people who like eating and watching tv more than eating healthily and doing exercise. Blaming micro plastics, hormonal imbalances blah blah etc is a waste of time, and won’t result in any benefit to anyone. Most people just need to hear the hard and brutal truth, you’re going to die young because you’re fat and you’re fat because you’re lazy and can’t handle some small amount of effort to abstain or go for a walk.
- SunlightEdge 3y ago
  The prevalence of sugar in so many foods can't help. Personally I avoid "sugary" food and drinks like the plague. I also don't snack and do regular exercise and sometimes don't eat dinner. I'm at a healthy weight in my 40s. How many adults that are obese have a healthy relationship with food and do regular exercise / fast? Obese children I have sympathy for, I'm uncertain how I feel about obese adults. I don't know if their metabolism is ultra slow, or they are just not taking care of themselves. Its complicated...
  - dhfjfhfh 3y ago
    What about obese adults that used to be obese children? Regardless of the cause of the obesity epidemic, it should be addressed compassionately and efficaciously. What makes that difficult (at least in the US) is that the most efficacious treatments aren't aligned with how the healthcare system works. Maybe you won't blame being fat on diet and exercise, but there's almost certainly a diet and excercise plan that will make you lose weight. First-line treatment should be, - Walk/jog 30 min, 3x per week. Pace for a mildly elevated heart rate. - Eliminate super sweet foods from regular diet. No more than 3x per week. This could be VERY hard for sugar-addicted folks, so start small and work up. - Fast occasionally. Intermittent is great, but longer is even better. - Take a multivitamin. The end goal is to replace your sweet craving with a fat craving and be ok feeling hungry for periods of time.
  - drewcoo 3y ago
    Sugar was common in foods for many generations. High fructose corn syrup is relatively new. So are many sugar substitutes.
  - geysersam 3y ago
    > Obese children I have sympathy for, I'm uncertain how I feel about obese adults Why would you not have sympathy for someone suffering? Even if it's theoretically their own doing most people don't want to be obese.
- gruez 3y ago
  >These so called "obesogens" just increase the propensity towards obesity and depending on exposure and your sensitivity to then, you can overcome them or not via exercise and dieting and other means. If it's environmental pollutants, shouldn't lab or wild animals be getting fatter as well? Yet they're not: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-getting-contaminated-by-the-wrong-obesity-ideas-1#It_s_not_clear_that_lab_animals__or__wild_animals_have_been_getting_fatter https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-get...
lebuffon 3y ago
Alternative explanation (call me crazy) :-) A US comedian once commented that when he went to Europe 20 years ago, he noticed that people only ate three meals a day. What a concept!
- screye 3y ago
  I don't know about you, but loads of people around me eat only 2 meals a day and still struggle with being overweight. (Not obese tho). The number of meals is a very small part of the entire diet and lifestyle matrix.
  - confidantlake 3y ago
    They may only eat 2 meals a day but they likely snack too. If you only eat 2 meals a day and do not eat between meals you are most likely going to be a normal weight.
- jacobwilliamroy 3y ago
  You really shouldn't listen to comedians. They're only trying to make you laugh, not inform you. Yes even George Carlin.
oarfish 3y ago
> It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us. Well sure, obesity is a result of a lot of factors, some genetic, but a lot of it is the food environment surrounding people. The lack of easy access to healthy foods or education on how to buy and prepare them, plus economic pressures all play into this.
- bhouston 3y ago
  > a lot of it is the food environment surrounding people Yup. It is hard to pull all the factors apart because they contribute to each other. If you are obese, I understand it screws up your hormones which makes it easier to stay obese. Also if you have exposure to chemicals which cause you to have a tendency towards being obese you are more likely to seek out a bad food environment - e.g. crave McDonald's fries, etc. So you sort of just need to work on each factor and over time, it will change. For many, we already have significantly accumulations of forever chemicals or microplastics so it may take a generation to truly fix.
- seoulmetro 3y ago
  >The lack of easy access to healthy foods or education on how to buy and prepare them, plus economic pressures all play into this. This doesn't exist anywhere in the world. You either have easy access to healthy food or no access to food at all. Healthy food is so much cheaper, more abundant and easier to source in all situations than processed junk. The idea that people don't know how to eat healthy or can't afford to is a convenient lie.
hardware2win 3y ago
>It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us. Cars?
- drewcoo 3y ago
  The switch from leaded to unleaded gas would roughly coincide. Interesting!
- justinator 3y ago
  Also the move from labor jobs to most everything ycombinator seeds.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
> It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us. That's part of it, but I wonder if microplastics or some kind of gut biome disruption is playing a role as well. Based on what many people have in their shopping carts and the sugar water many people are constantly chugging, I see no reason to think anything other than excess calories is the cause. And lack of exercise as an exacerbating factor.
- aziaziazi 3y ago
  Maybe fat as well ? Not the one in walnuts and linen seeds but the pork, diaries and coconut. Not an expert at all, just wondering in what extend we should avoid them comparing to sugar.
  - HyprMusic 3y ago
    Fat by itself is very satiating, you'd struggle to rack up the calories eating purely fat unless you were really trying. However too much sugar without fibre will spike your blood sugar levels which triggers an insulin response, causing your body to effectively store any glucose in your bloodstream into muscle and fat cells[0]. The end result is you're hungry again and able to eat more calories. Combine that with a high fat diet and you have a recipe for obesity. When I used to weight train, during my cuts (weight loss phases), I had much more success with a high fat/low carb diet than I ever did calorie counting (which naturally makes you avoid fat since they have a higher calorie density). [0] Not an expert but this is my layman's understanding after reading lots of books on the subject.
  - BirAdam 3y ago
    I was in the metabolic syndrome and obese group, and I have some thyroid problems (likely due to growing up near a uranium enrichment facility). I could diet and exercise and still gain weight that was largely visceral fat, and especially fat in my liver. I was in the beginning stages of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Under my doctor's supervision, I went on the keto diet. I eat high fat foods and meats, and I lost about 50 lbs in 2 months. My weight stabilized over the following months within a healthy range. Additionally, chronic pain, concentration, and energy levels all improved. Most of this is due to the weight loss, but not all of it. Sugar can cause inflammation in high quantities, and it can also cause an increase in blood pressure. Sugars are also metabolized by cancer cells while ketones are not, which would explain the rise in cancer rates as sugar consumption has increased across the planet. My liver function improved, cholesterol levels improved, blood sugar stabilized, and insulin resistance went down. I personally believe that there is some kind of difference among humans in how we digest things that goes beyond the microbiome. Some people can eat high amounts of carbohydrates and sugars without negative consequences beyond tooth decay. Other people cannot eat any sugar without incurring weight gain and cognitive problems.
lumost 3y ago
Big thing you would expect if it’s due to general plastic/pollution prevalence is obesity in pets/wild animals.
- bhouston 3y ago
  here is a study on the negative effects on aquatic life: "In aquatic invertebrates, microplastics cause a decline in feeding behavior and fertility, slow down larval growth and development, increase oxygen consumption, and stimulate the production of reactive oxygen species. In fish, the microplastics may cause structural damage to the intestine, liver, gills, and brain, while affecting metabolic balance, behavior, and fertility; the degree of these harmful effects depends on the particle sizes and doses, as well as the exposure parameters" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9205308/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9205308/
- rthomas6 3y ago
  We see that. Pets and wild animals that live around humans are also increasingly obese. From a quick search: https://www.livescience.com/10277-obesity-rise-animals.html https://www.livescience.com/10277-obesity-rise-animals.html
mc32 3y ago
This the one area the administration should go after instead of alcohol or whatever else they think they’re doing. By addressing obesity, making it uncool, taxing the living daylights out of sugary additives, etc they would save more lives than the lives combined in all their other feel-good, virtue signaling efforts[1]they sound nice and all but in thd end this effort would actually save a many more lives. [1]gas stoves and ranges, overhead fans, etc. and of course when they released a trial balloon they accused people of conspiracy theory thinking -but here we are. Meanwhile sweeteners and fillers are everywhere.
- gettodachoppa 3y ago
  Do you see an administration going after obesity the way they did tobacco? (negative ads, advertising bans, etc) Unlike smoking, half the class is already fat. NGOs and media would frame it as a psychological harm to those children, fat-shaming, or who knows what else. It would be a political landmine.
  - mc32 3y ago
    Unfortunately, I don't. They seem to baby obesity, including the media where obese people like Lizzo and others are celebrated for being unapologetically fat. I understand bulimia is an issue too and we don't want kids especially to think they need to be waifs, but now this sentiment pendulum has swung way too far to the other side and they accommodate obesity in every which way. The only fat people the media seem okay to chastise are Trump and I think maybe Chris Christie & very few others? No, this should be confronted as _the_ health threat of the next 20 - 30 years. It's more consequential than anything else, Health-wise, productivity-wise, medical costs, quality of life --All these shoppers in their electric 4-wheeled scooters. It's insane that this is not a declared crisis.
relwin 3y ago
These folks suspect lithium in our water causes obesity. They also support several citizen-science diet experiments: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/
fnord77 3y ago
the rise in obesity correlates to the rise of HFCS in food and also the "war on fats" in diets around the 80s
Aerbil313 3y ago
That's because of sugar. Watch the Sugar: The Bitter Truth video on youtube.

bhouston 3y ago

Obesity is caused in part by environmental toxins, probably to different extents in different people: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/19/environmental-toxins-are-worsening-obesity-pandemic-say-scientists https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/19/environm... https://www.webmd.com/obesity/what-to-know-obesogens https://www.webmd.com/obesity/what-to-know-obesogens These so called "obesogens" just increase the propensity towards obesity and depending on exposure and your sensitivity to then, you can overcome them or not via exercise and dieting and other means.

saberience 3y ago
Obesity is caused by eating too much. If you don’t eat then you won’t gain weight, there is no subverting the laws of thermodynamics. It sounds callous but if you go to Africa or visit a prisoner of war camp you won’t find many fat people and so blaming chemicals in America for so many fat people doesn’t make much sense to me.
- gizmo 3y ago
  True in the technical sense, but it doesn’t address the mystery that in the 40s, 50s, 60s people in rich countries had access to plenty of food, ate lots of calories, and yet obesity was very rare.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Nicotine suppresses appetite.
    - voakbasda 3y ago
      Trite, but accurate. I gained 50 lbs within 6 months after I quit smoking, when I had been skinny for decades prior. There is no doubt in my mind that the (justifiable) demonization of smoking in recent decades contributed to the obesity crisis.
  - flextheruler 3y ago
    That’s no mystery. The amount of calories the average person expends has decreased as we’ve become more sedentary. In the 40s, 50s, and 60s most people did manual labor and even office jobs were not as sedentary since you couldn’t just sit at a computer. Here’s another simple overlooked example, grocery shopping, before the rise of superstores you’d go into town and visit 4 different stores. The butcher, the hardware store, the grocer, the pharmacist etc. now it’s all in one big store all next to each other. Here’s another example lawn mowing. Back then most people had manual lawnmowers. Here’s another example the moving of goods. Go look up a picture of the manual labor involved in being a stevedore back then versus now and that’ll give you an idea of how much less physical exertion is needed these days even in jobs that are still considered manual labor. Overall I think solely blaming plastic for obesity is an oversimplification and assuredly wrong, although it could have some affect there are a lot of other things going on. Declines in fertility and IQ are most likely due to obesity so it’s a big issue.
    - flextheruler 3y ago
      To add onto this it seems there’s a causation of low iq with obesity but not vice versa. I also just had this thought about declining levels of fertility in humans. If it’s being caused by external factors like plastic or any pollution we’d expect to see similar effects in all other mammals especially ones close to human populations. I wasn’t able to find any studies backing this up with just a cursory search, but it is likely the easiest way to add or detract from the plastic hypothesis. I do know that not all but most studies comparing fertility between decades found that when controlling for obesity the differences were not statistically significant between time periods.
- networkchad 3y ago
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- ethbr1 3y ago
  Obesity is caused by eating too much of the wrong thing. Which happens to be the cheap thing in industrialized mass produced Western food chains. Cheap in terms of dollars and personal time. So obesity is really an economic problem. We should come down like a ton of bricks on fast food and require they offer healthier options at low prices, subsidized by taxes on their unhealthier options.
  - flir 3y ago
    Or more simply, you could not subsidize the cheap unhealthy options at source (eg corn subsidies). But until very recently, I would absolutely have still chosen the unhealthy option. I'm not sure how much impact 20% on a bag of Doritos is really going to have.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      Not sure you're going to shift US corn subsidies without changing the electoral system. ;) To me, substitutability is key. If you tax unhealthy food, but unhealthy food is the only option (from physical, financial, and time perspectives), people just pay more to eat unhealthy food. If you tax unhealthy food, but also require healthier and low-cost options at the same establishment, then people begin to have options. I.e. do I want a $10 Big Mac or a $3 grilled chicken sandwich? Even getting the Big Mac less often would be a net win. And I call bullshit if McDonald's tries the "But it's impossible to run healthy food through our supply chain..." argument.
      - flir 3y ago
        I'm saying I would have picked the unhealthy option. I know this, because I spent decades doing it when I certainly wasn't hurting for money. Maybe on a population level it would work, and I'm just atypical. Can we look at sin taxes on cigarettes and draw any conclusions?
        ethbr1 3y ago
        Apparently the relationship between income and obesity is complex enough to vary by race and gender. Which is to say, not tightly coupled. (CDC studies) Cigarettes are a great example of missing substitutability. If you smoke, and the price of cigarettes increases, what options do you have? My version of an anti-smoking campaign would have drastically boosted the price of cigarettes and used to tax to decrease the price of nicotine patches or gum. If there aren't alternatives at the point of sale, there aren't alternatives.
- SirMaster 3y ago
  But not eating slows down your metabolism, and then you will eventually find yourself at a point where you are tired all the time because you are not consuming enough calories to have a high enough metabolism and energy level, and yet you are still slowly gaining weight because you are too tired to do anything to burn it off.
  - flexagoon 3y ago
    > not eating slows down your metabolism Starvation mode is a myth. Well, kinda. You do enter "starvation mode" where your metabolism significantly slows down, but only if you're actually starving. Simply eating in a caloric deficit will not do anything to your metabolism. The beginning of this article talks about that in great detail: https://physiqonomics.com/eating-too-much/ https://physiqonomics.com/eating-too-much/
    - SirMaster 3y ago
      I thought there have been studies finding that simply eating less doesn't necessarily work for some people because of metabolism. Maybe they have a thyroid issue too. And that the amount you would have to limit yourself to with a completely sedentary life (like many people have) and still be in a caloric deficit is just not sustainable for people and would make you feel absolutely miserable and also unlikely to get enough vitamins and minerals and cause other health problems. because let's be honest, telling people to eat less is not going to stop them from eating junk, just less junk. "Just eating less" I don't think is really enough for most cases. You need to also be active and exercise along with, and even better, be eating the right balance of macros. I would say you need to do maybe 2 of the 3 to lose or maintain weight, and doing all 3 will certainly allow you to lose weight. But doing just 1 is unlikely to see results.
      - flexagoon 3y ago
        > "Just eating less" I don't think is really enough for most cases. You need to also be active and exercise along with, and even better, be eating the right balance of macros. To lose weight, you need to eat in a caloric deficit, that's it. Excercising just burns extra calories which allows you to eat more while staying in a deficit. And macros / less junk food are, of course, important for health, but if we're speaking strictly about weight loss, no, it doesn't matter. FWIW, you can eat only a Big Mac and 3 Snickers bars every day, and you'll still lose weight, because that's about ~1800 kcal, which is a deficit for most people. > the amount you would have to limit yourself to with a completely sedentary life (like many people have) and still be in a caloric deficit is just not sustainable for people and would make you feel absolutely miserable and also unlikely to get enough vitamins and minerals and cause other health problems. That depends on what you eat really, there are a lot of foods that don't have a lot of calories while still being very nourishing, and many of them are just normal foods, not some special "fitness stuff" --- The article I linked in my above comment is actually a great explanation of why "just eating less" is enough for most people, I highly recommend you read it if you haven't already.
- flir 3y ago
  In an environment awash with cheap calories, some people get obese and some don't. That's something worth investigating. (I personally think it's more about natural mental variation than subtle chemical poisoning, but that's probably just my bias talking).
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Also the big elephant in the room is most people are hardly active. Your body is designed to forage for miles a day. Who even bothers simulating that? We walk to the fridge and from grocery store to parked car at most. Its so much easier to maintain good health if you are active.
    - joquarky 3y ago
      I wonder how much better it would be if we had developed more for walking than for cars.
      - kjkjadksj 3y ago
        It doesnt matter how we developed. My city developed for walking first. I can and do walk to places like 10 mins to the grocery store. The problem is for most people, if they have an easier choice than physically moving they take it. So they would rather drive two minutes than walk 10. Its also evident whenever I see an escalator. The escalator will be full of able bodied people while the stairs along side it that take as long to get up as standing still on the escalator are empty, because people chose the option that involves the least effort every chance they get. Never mind getting a little bit of leg exercise on the stairs. At work I routinely see healthy people take the elevator 1 floor instead of the stairwell right next to the elevator. We have to be taught the value of exercise and being physically active because most people don’t default to that.
- wickedsight 3y ago
  Your argument is that forcing people to go without food causes them to lose weight, which is impossible to deny. You argument says nothing about what causes people to gain weight, however. Just look up 'hormonal weight gain' to see that it isn't just about eating less. Then look at research into the influence of chemicals/micro plastics on those hormones. Yes, all calories have to go in through the mouth. How those calories are processed, however, is influenced by a great many factors.
  - Shocka1 3y ago
    The comment started with "Obesity is caused by eating too much." At the core, this is very much the objective truth. If it so happens that someone processes cake or calories differently than others, they need to eat less cake and take in less calories. The pervasive obsession with avoiding this truth is concerning and has had a detrimental effect on society. How many of us know someone who passed away from COVID due to this kind of unhealthiness? Primary Care Physicians and health professionals out there need to step it up and be truthful with people. I can acknowledge the extreme cases where this may not be possible, but 9/10 times we can take ownership of our lives whatever the situation, clean our diets and get out there and exercise.
  - tarsinge 3y ago
    I visited the US a few years ago and I was shocked how much calories were packed in random foods. Some desserts/cakes alone were above 1000kcal. Basically in the US I had to be very careful and calorie counting and I got the impression if you eat randomly you'll end up with a very high calorie intake (typically above 3000 per day), whereas this is usually less true in Europe (but it's getting less true every year) and you might end up just a bit overweight instead of obese by eating randomly.
  - joquarky 3y ago
    >How those calories are processed, however, is influenced by a great many factors. I feel compelled to assume that we can't possibly be extracting every calorie from certain types of food. Caloriometers work differently from human digestive systems.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  The tunnel-vision on this subject is truly astounding. I can't think of any subject that is treated in the same way. Say that someone was failing at university because they have no motivation. And they have no motivation because they have depression. Then a vocal minority would always butt in with the following truism: - Failing university courses is caused by not studying enough. There is no subverting the fact that you need to study the material in order to not fail the course. This is of course a completely useless advice/truism. Now say that someone overeats because they have depression. Or because of some pathology caused by microplastics. Or let's just say that there is a possibility that a different environment (no microplastics) would lead to them not overeating. Do you still want to derail this conversation with irrelevant “thermodynamics” truisms?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    As someone who struggled with depression at university, I'd say that's the only useful advice. "I am failing because I am not studying enough." Granted, I could introspect on what was preventing me from studying, leverage additional college resources, align to my learning styles, etc. But until I accepted the above as an honest objective truth, and a path to change, I wasn't able to be successful.
    - avgcorrection 3y ago
      As someone who had the same: it's not useful advice. At all. In the slightest.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    How about we stop trying to come up with any reason but the objective one for the cause of the problem?
    - therealdrag0 3y ago
      It’s not looking for a reason besides the objective one, it’s trying to find the reasons behind the objective one. Many commenters like to slight of hand their possibly objective comments about calories as making their comments about moral or will-power failings just as objective, when it’s not a transitive property.
- deleted 3y ago
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- zhynn 3y ago
  I'll just leave this here, it's a fascinating bit of citizen science: http://achemicalhunger.com/ http://achemicalhunger.com/
- dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
  [dead]
  - dang 3y ago
    We've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - saberience 3y ago
    God bless you sir/madam, but I’m not wrong. There may be some people with “glandular” issues causing them somehow to eat too much but I don’t think I’m saying something controversial when stating that americas obesity crisis is mostly just to do with lazy sedentary people who like eating and watching tv more than eating healthily and doing exercise. Blaming micro plastics, hormonal imbalances blah blah etc is a waste of time, and won’t result in any benefit to anyone. Most people just need to hear the hard and brutal truth, you’re going to die young because you’re fat and you’re fat because you’re lazy and can’t handle some small amount of effort to abstain or go for a walk.
SunlightEdge 3y ago
The prevalence of sugar in so many foods can't help. Personally I avoid "sugary" food and drinks like the plague. I also don't snack and do regular exercise and sometimes don't eat dinner. I'm at a healthy weight in my 40s. How many adults that are obese have a healthy relationship with food and do regular exercise / fast? Obese children I have sympathy for, I'm uncertain how I feel about obese adults. I don't know if their metabolism is ultra slow, or they are just not taking care of themselves. Its complicated...
- dhfjfhfh 3y ago
  What about obese adults that used to be obese children? Regardless of the cause of the obesity epidemic, it should be addressed compassionately and efficaciously. What makes that difficult (at least in the US) is that the most efficacious treatments aren't aligned with how the healthcare system works. Maybe you won't blame being fat on diet and exercise, but there's almost certainly a diet and excercise plan that will make you lose weight. First-line treatment should be, - Walk/jog 30 min, 3x per week. Pace for a mildly elevated heart rate. - Eliminate super sweet foods from regular diet. No more than 3x per week. This could be VERY hard for sugar-addicted folks, so start small and work up. - Fast occasionally. Intermittent is great, but longer is even better. - Take a multivitamin. The end goal is to replace your sweet craving with a fat craving and be ok feeling hungry for periods of time.
- drewcoo 3y ago
  Sugar was common in foods for many generations. High fructose corn syrup is relatively new. So are many sugar substitutes.
- geysersam 3y ago
  > Obese children I have sympathy for, I'm uncertain how I feel about obese adults Why would you not have sympathy for someone suffering? Even if it's theoretically their own doing most people don't want to be obese.
gruez 3y ago
>These so called "obesogens" just increase the propensity towards obesity and depending on exposure and your sensitivity to then, you can overcome them or not via exercise and dieting and other means. If it's environmental pollutants, shouldn't lab or wild animals be getting fatter as well? Yet they're not: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-getting-contaminated-by-the-wrong-obesity-ideas-1#It_s_not_clear_that_lab_animals__or__wild_animals_have_been_getting_fatter https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-get...

lebuffon 3y ago

Alternative explanation (call me crazy) :-) A US comedian once commented that when he went to Europe 20 years ago, he noticed that people only ate three meals a day. What a concept!

screye 3y ago
I don't know about you, but loads of people around me eat only 2 meals a day and still struggle with being overweight. (Not obese tho). The number of meals is a very small part of the entire diet and lifestyle matrix.
- confidantlake 3y ago
  They may only eat 2 meals a day but they likely snack too. If you only eat 2 meals a day and do not eat between meals you are most likely going to be a normal weight.
jacobwilliamroy 3y ago
You really shouldn't listen to comedians. They're only trying to make you laugh, not inform you. Yes even George Carlin.

oarfish 3y ago

> It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us. Well sure, obesity is a result of a lot of factors, some genetic, but a lot of it is the food environment surrounding people. The lack of easy access to healthy foods or education on how to buy and prepare them, plus economic pressures all play into this.

bhouston 3y ago
> a lot of it is the food environment surrounding people Yup. It is hard to pull all the factors apart because they contribute to each other. If you are obese, I understand it screws up your hormones which makes it easier to stay obese. Also if you have exposure to chemicals which cause you to have a tendency towards being obese you are more likely to seek out a bad food environment - e.g. crave McDonald's fries, etc. So you sort of just need to work on each factor and over time, it will change. For many, we already have significantly accumulations of forever chemicals or microplastics so it may take a generation to truly fix.
seoulmetro 3y ago
>The lack of easy access to healthy foods or education on how to buy and prepare them, plus economic pressures all play into this. This doesn't exist anywhere in the world. You either have easy access to healthy food or no access to food at all. Healthy food is so much cheaper, more abundant and easier to source in all situations than processed junk. The idea that people don't know how to eat healthy or can't afford to is a convenient lie.

hardware2win 3y ago

>It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us. Cars?

drewcoo 3y ago
The switch from leaded to unleaded gas would roughly coincide. Interesting!
justinator 3y ago
Also the move from labor jobs to most everything ycombinator seeds.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

> It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us. That's part of it, but I wonder if microplastics or some kind of gut biome disruption is playing a role as well. Based on what many people have in their shopping carts and the sugar water many people are constantly chugging, I see no reason to think anything other than excess calories is the cause. And lack of exercise as an exacerbating factor.

aziaziazi 3y ago
Maybe fat as well ? Not the one in walnuts and linen seeds but the pork, diaries and coconut. Not an expert at all, just wondering in what extend we should avoid them comparing to sugar.
- HyprMusic 3y ago
  Fat by itself is very satiating, you'd struggle to rack up the calories eating purely fat unless you were really trying. However too much sugar without fibre will spike your blood sugar levels which triggers an insulin response, causing your body to effectively store any glucose in your bloodstream into muscle and fat cells[0]. The end result is you're hungry again and able to eat more calories. Combine that with a high fat diet and you have a recipe for obesity. When I used to weight train, during my cuts (weight loss phases), I had much more success with a high fat/low carb diet than I ever did calorie counting (which naturally makes you avoid fat since they have a higher calorie density). [0] Not an expert but this is my layman's understanding after reading lots of books on the subject.
- BirAdam 3y ago
  I was in the metabolic syndrome and obese group, and I have some thyroid problems (likely due to growing up near a uranium enrichment facility). I could diet and exercise and still gain weight that was largely visceral fat, and especially fat in my liver. I was in the beginning stages of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Under my doctor's supervision, I went on the keto diet. I eat high fat foods and meats, and I lost about 50 lbs in 2 months. My weight stabilized over the following months within a healthy range. Additionally, chronic pain, concentration, and energy levels all improved. Most of this is due to the weight loss, but not all of it. Sugar can cause inflammation in high quantities, and it can also cause an increase in blood pressure. Sugars are also metabolized by cancer cells while ketones are not, which would explain the rise in cancer rates as sugar consumption has increased across the planet. My liver function improved, cholesterol levels improved, blood sugar stabilized, and insulin resistance went down. I personally believe that there is some kind of difference among humans in how we digest things that goes beyond the microbiome. Some people can eat high amounts of carbohydrates and sugars without negative consequences beyond tooth decay. Other people cannot eat any sugar without incurring weight gain and cognitive problems.

lumost 3y ago

Big thing you would expect if it’s due to general plastic/pollution prevalence is obesity in pets/wild animals.

bhouston 3y ago
here is a study on the negative effects on aquatic life: "In aquatic invertebrates, microplastics cause a decline in feeding behavior and fertility, slow down larval growth and development, increase oxygen consumption, and stimulate the production of reactive oxygen species. In fish, the microplastics may cause structural damage to the intestine, liver, gills, and brain, while affecting metabolic balance, behavior, and fertility; the degree of these harmful effects depends on the particle sizes and doses, as well as the exposure parameters" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9205308/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9205308/
rthomas6 3y ago
We see that. Pets and wild animals that live around humans are also increasingly obese. From a quick search: https://www.livescience.com/10277-obesity-rise-animals.html https://www.livescience.com/10277-obesity-rise-animals.html

mc32 3y ago

This the one area the administration should go after instead of alcohol or whatever else they think they’re doing. By addressing obesity, making it uncool, taxing the living daylights out of sugary additives, etc they would save more lives than the lives combined in all their other feel-good, virtue signaling efforts[1]they sound nice and all but in thd end this effort would actually save a many more lives. [1]gas stoves and ranges, overhead fans, etc. and of course when they released a trial balloon they accused people of conspiracy theory thinking -but here we are. Meanwhile sweeteners and fillers are everywhere.

gettodachoppa 3y ago
Do you see an administration going after obesity the way they did tobacco? (negative ads, advertising bans, etc) Unlike smoking, half the class is already fat. NGOs and media would frame it as a psychological harm to those children, fat-shaming, or who knows what else. It would be a political landmine.
- mc32 3y ago
  Unfortunately, I don't. They seem to baby obesity, including the media where obese people like Lizzo and others are celebrated for being unapologetically fat. I understand bulimia is an issue too and we don't want kids especially to think they need to be waifs, but now this sentiment pendulum has swung way too far to the other side and they accommodate obesity in every which way. The only fat people the media seem okay to chastise are Trump and I think maybe Chris Christie & very few others? No, this should be confronted as _the_ health threat of the next 20 - 30 years. It's more consequential than anything else, Health-wise, productivity-wise, medical costs, quality of life --All these shoppers in their electric 4-wheeled scooters. It's insane that this is not a declared crisis.

relwin 3y ago

These folks suspect lithium in our water causes obesity. They also support several citizen-science diet experiments: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/

fnord77 3y ago

the rise in obesity correlates to the rise of HFCS in food and also the "war on fats" in diets around the 80s

Aerbil313 3y ago

That's because of sugar. Watch the Sugar: The Bitter Truth video on youtube.