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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

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
[dead]
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
[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.

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

[dead]

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

[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.