5 ms·

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 cal

by 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.

by 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.