4 ms·

Is this really a mystery? People eat more energy wise and move less. As to why people eat more, it's probably due to higher energy density food, advertising (e

Is this really a mystery? People eat more energy wise and move less. As to why people eat more, it's probably due to higher energy density food, advertising (especially to children) and lost norms about eating (e.g. sugary stuff is not "proper food"). As to why we move less is less manual labor, more sedentary entertainment and increased use of vehicles. The obesity discussion seems to somehow deliberately try to avoid the obvious.

cinntaile 2y ago
Why do you think none of the thousands of researchers within nutritional scientists have considered your explanation? That to me seems extremely unlikely.
- jampekka 2y ago
  Many do and have a similar view. Maybe restating the obvious just doesn't make the news (or bring in grants)? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1724823/pdf/v038p00360.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1724823/pdf/v03...
  - hgomersall 2y ago
    Nutritional science has come on a little in the last 21 years. Do you have anything more recent?
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  "probably"
thucydides 2y ago
"Is this really a mystery?" They address your question on the first page. Please read a few sentences of the article, or hey, even the entire article, before trying to refute it. A brief sample, though their whole argument is more complex: "People in the 1800s did have diets that were very different from ours. But by conventional wisdom, their diets were worse, not better. They ate more bread and almost four times more butter than we do today. They also consumed more cream, milk, and lard. Our great-grandparents (and the French) were able to maintain these weights eﬀortlessly. They weren’t all on weird starvation diets or crazy fasting routines. And while they probably exercised more on average than we do, the minor diﬀerence in exercise isn’t enough to explain the enormous diﬀerence in weight. Many of them were farmers or laborers, of course, but plenty of people in 1900 had cushy desk jobs, and those people weren’t obese either."
- jampekka 2y ago
  They consumed less calories. As to from what diet those come from doesn't matter that much. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-supply https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...
  - thucydides 2y ago
    Let's assume this graph is correct. Why did humans 100 years ago consume fewer calories? The body is a complex system with many homeostatic mechanisms. We stop eating when we're full (generally). What has adjusted that homeostatic thermostat upward? Why did obesity increase linearly for half a century and then suddenly increase exponentially starting in 1980? Why are wild animals and laboratory animals also more obese than 100 years ago?
    - jampekka 2y ago
      > As to why people eat more, it's probably due to higher energy density food, advertising (especially to children) and lost norms about eating (e.g. sugary stuff is not "proper food"). Animals, wild and lab, are probably affected by human food production.
    - jdietrich 2y ago
      >Why did humans 100 years ago consume fewer calories? Because they couldn't afford to eat more. In 1900, the average American household spent 43% of their income on food. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-america-spends-money-100-years-in-the-life-of-the-family-budget/255475/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-ame...
      - thucydides 2y ago
        Guatemala (arbitrary choice) spent 35% of their income on food in 2016, but 66% were overweight or obese. I don't know what's causing obesity, but it doesn't seem to be income, given everyone worldwide exploded into fatness around 1980. And I'm not satisfied with flimsy hypotheses, such as a historically unprecedented worldwide diminution in human "willpower." https://opendataforafrica.org/atlas/Guatemala/topics/Food-Security/Expenditures-Spent-on-Food/Expenditure-on-food-per-capita?lang=es https://opendataforafrica.org/atlas/Guatemala/topics/Food-Se... https://data.worldobesity.org/country/guatemala-85/#data_trends https://data.worldobesity.org/country/guatemala-85/#data_tre...
jajko 2y ago
I am going to be brutally honest here - I see it as some form of personal 'character' weakness, very common these days, haven't lived for that long to judge previous generations so harshly. To the gist - its supremely easier to be or move into position of weakness and victim, look for external blame, while staying very deep in comfort zone, aka fix my shit as long as I don't have to change anything in my life, I'll even throw a lot of money on it. Massive resistance to change that's not convenient nor pleasant at first sight. People throwing tons of money on diet fads, experiencing jojo effects, depressed about their self-image and feeling helpless, binging in anxiety attacks. Yet nobody taking gym ownership, personal trainer, throwing out all that chocolate and other junky food, amking any self-improvement plan that 5 year old can put together and sticking with it. And of course almost everybody moves much less, but gist of the issue is food, quantity and quality. It doesn't have to be about junk food per se, same is with parents basically giving up on raising kids and leaving screens and ad companies to do the work. Then complaining how young suck and are horrible and have no respect etc. While they themselves are glued to phones every day, addicted to the core, half laughing about it while scrolling further. Telling them to put it down for a day, spend time with them and kids (if they are still little, not much point pushing teenagers suddenly against their well-trodden addictive habits). Comfort zone is death of one's 'fighting' spirit, I mean in fighting-as-hard-as-possible-for-best-life-possible. No good stuff comes without some form of a fight, at least it didn't in my life. It just doesn't happen in that damned zone, not with social media showing folks what they could have been if they tried. I don't mean some artificial celebrities faking / pretending how everything is glorious, I mean your schoolmates or childhood friends who were not spectacular in any way, yet rewind 10-20 years and there is abyss in how their vs yours life looks like. I've 'lost' quite a few close people to such envy exactly because I was nobody special in any way yet somehow made it way further than most, from environment which expected very little from me. One way would be 100% quiet about everything good in my life or fake complain about everything, thats how many successful or rich folks live. I refuse to go over the board with that just to keep such, at the end subpar relationships. Rather accept people change, and one of benefits of non-family relationships is that you can finish them and create better ones as you change if it feels like the opposite is a mistake. I am currently in the process of losing my best childhood friend in same way too, not the greatest experience but unfortunately at this point unavoidable one. /end a bit off topic rant

cinntaile 2y ago

Why do you think none of the thousands of researchers within nutritional scientists have considered your explanation? That to me seems extremely unlikely.

jampekka 2y ago
Many do and have a similar view. Maybe restating the obvious just doesn't make the news (or bring in grants)? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1724823/pdf/v038p00360.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1724823/pdf/v03...
- hgomersall 2y ago
  Nutritional science has come on a little in the last 21 years. Do you have anything more recent?
amanaplanacanal 2y ago
"probably"

thucydides 2y ago

"Is this really a mystery?" They address your question on the first page. Please read a few sentences of the article, or hey, even the entire article, before trying to refute it. A brief sample, though their whole argument is more complex: "People in the 1800s did have diets that were very different from ours. But by conventional wisdom, their diets were worse, not better. They ate more bread and almost four times more butter than we do today. They also consumed more cream, milk, and lard. Our great-grandparents (and the French) were able to maintain these weights eﬀortlessly. They weren’t all on weird starvation diets or crazy fasting routines. And while they probably exercised more on average than we do, the minor diﬀerence in exercise isn’t enough to explain the enormous diﬀerence in weight. Many of them were farmers or laborers, of course, but plenty of people in 1900 had cushy desk jobs, and those people weren’t obese either."

jampekka 2y ago
They consumed less calories. As to from what diet those come from doesn't matter that much. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-supply https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...
- thucydides 2y ago
  Let's assume this graph is correct. Why did humans 100 years ago consume fewer calories? The body is a complex system with many homeostatic mechanisms. We stop eating when we're full (generally). What has adjusted that homeostatic thermostat upward? Why did obesity increase linearly for half a century and then suddenly increase exponentially starting in 1980? Why are wild animals and laboratory animals also more obese than 100 years ago?
  - jampekka 2y ago
    > As to why people eat more, it's probably due to higher energy density food, advertising (especially to children) and lost norms about eating (e.g. sugary stuff is not "proper food"). Animals, wild and lab, are probably affected by human food production.
  - jdietrich 2y ago
    >Why did humans 100 years ago consume fewer calories? Because they couldn't afford to eat more. In 1900, the average American household spent 43% of their income on food. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-america-spends-money-100-years-in-the-life-of-the-family-budget/255475/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-ame...
    - thucydides 2y ago
      Guatemala (arbitrary choice) spent 35% of their income on food in 2016, but 66% were overweight or obese. I don't know what's causing obesity, but it doesn't seem to be income, given everyone worldwide exploded into fatness around 1980. And I'm not satisfied with flimsy hypotheses, such as a historically unprecedented worldwide diminution in human "willpower." https://opendataforafrica.org/atlas/Guatemala/topics/Food-Security/Expenditures-Spent-on-Food/Expenditure-on-food-per-capita?lang=es https://opendataforafrica.org/atlas/Guatemala/topics/Food-Se... https://data.worldobesity.org/country/guatemala-85/#data_trends https://data.worldobesity.org/country/guatemala-85/#data_tre...

jajko 2y ago

I am going to be brutally honest here - I see it as some form of personal 'character' weakness, very common these days, haven't lived for that long to judge previous generations so harshly. To the gist - its supremely easier to be or move into position of weakness and victim, look for external blame, while staying very deep in comfort zone, aka fix my shit as long as I don't have to change anything in my life, I'll even throw a lot of money on it. Massive resistance to change that's not convenient nor pleasant at first sight. People throwing tons of money on diet fads, experiencing jojo effects, depressed about their self-image and feeling helpless, binging in anxiety attacks. Yet nobody taking gym ownership, personal trainer, throwing out all that chocolate and other junky food, amking any self-improvement plan that 5 year old can put together and sticking with it. And of course almost everybody moves much less, but gist of the issue is food, quantity and quality. It doesn't have to be about junk food per se, same is with parents basically giving up on raising kids and leaving screens and ad companies to do the work. Then complaining how young suck and are horrible and have no respect etc. While they themselves are glued to phones every day, addicted to the core, half laughing about it while scrolling further. Telling them to put it down for a day, spend time with them and kids (if they are still little, not much point pushing teenagers suddenly against their well-trodden addictive habits). Comfort zone is death of one's 'fighting' spirit, I mean in fighting-as-hard-as-possible-for-best-life-possible. No good stuff comes without some form of a fight, at least it didn't in my life. It just doesn't happen in that damned zone, not with social media showing folks what they could have been if they tried. I don't mean some artificial celebrities faking / pretending how everything is glorious, I mean your schoolmates or childhood friends who were not spectacular in any way, yet rewind 10-20 years and there is abyss in how their vs yours life looks like. I've 'lost' quite a few close people to such envy exactly because I was nobody special in any way yet somehow made it way further than most, from environment which expected very little from me. One way would be 100% quiet about everything good in my life or fake complain about everything, thats how many successful or rich folks live. I refuse to go over the board with that just to keep such, at the end subpar relationships. Rather accept people change, and one of benefits of non-family relationships is that you can finish them and create better ones as you change if it feels like the opposite is a mistake. I am currently in the process of losing my best childhood friend in same way too, not the greatest experience but unfortunately at this point unavoidable one. /end a bit off topic rant