5 ms·

Diseases of civilization are a function of congregation, not eating grains. Obesity is the result of a caloric surplus. Cavemen didn't have that luxury.

by tjogin 14y ago

kbenson 14y ago
> Cavemen didn't have that luxury. Do we know that? I thought there was some research indicating the hunter-gatherer societies actually had to devote rather little (comparative) time to gathering sustenance.[1] Is there some research I should be aware of that refutes this, or at least asserts more information as to a likelihood one way or the other? [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
- tjogin 14y ago
  If they were obese it's because they had a caloric surplus (I doubt it). The laws of thermodynamics applied then, as they do now.
  - radio4fan 14y ago
    If the body digested everything with 100% efficiency and didn't produce waste, and also treated all 'calories' equally, then I'd agree that thermodynamics tells us everything we need to know. But even people coming from the complete opposite end of the argument to the paleo crowd ("Eat more whole grains!") agree that the amount of heat produced by a substance when it's burnt in a calorimeter doesn't tell the full story about its potential for causing obesity.
    - tjogin 14y ago
      Yes, fans of either reductionist fad diet of the day are all ignorant.
      - regularfry 14y ago
        Or not. I can be a fan of a reductionist diet without buying the party line on the mechanism by which it works.
  - kbenson 14y ago
    I thought it was rather obvious I was looking for justification as to why you thought cavemen didn't have the luxury of caloric surplus. You already made it clear that you more than doubt they they had that luxury, you definitively said they did not. Again, the question is why?
    - tjogin 14y ago
      I have no idea how cavemen lived, and it doesn't interest me all that much either, but my guess is that they weren't as sedentary and they weren't as proficient in the art of preserving food. Overall, it should have been quite difficult for most of them to create a caloric surplus, day after day. What I do know is that bodymass is lost and gained with deficits and surpluses of calories. Transient spikes in insulin and stuff like that are irrelevant. This is well established in nutritional science.
      - cromulent 14y ago
        There's quite a lot of research with gut bacteria now and the association with obesity. It's not as simple as caloric intake, it is also the balance of the gut bacteria. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17183312 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17183312
  - Selfcommit 14y ago
    Your assumption about the laws of thermodynamics predicates that the "Energy out" part of the equation is not somehow effected by the type of "Energy in" (Adding wet sticks to a fire will not produce as much released energy as adding dry sticks or gasoline soaked sticks) The general argument about carbs or any food with high glycemic response is that these foods are like adding "wet sticks" to the fire. There's considerable science and anicdote to support this. If you're interested (And not simply not throwing around pithy sound bytes about physics) check out: Why we get fat (And what to do about it) By Gary Taubes (http://garytaubes.com/ http://garytaubes.com/) For some very compelling anicdotal evidence (That also supports some concepts of Paleo) check out http://www.reddit.com/r/keto http://www.reddit.com/r/keto
    - tjogin 14y ago
      Taubes has been refuted so many times it's astonishing that anyone still cites him. Compelling anecdotal evidence is an oxymoron, especially when the scientific evidence to the contrary is so strong.
      - Selfcommit 14y ago
        I've seen some work contradicting him, but would be interested in seeing something refuting him. Your phrase "Compelling anecdotal evidence is an oxymoron" seems strange. If 5 people told me they saw my wallet outside, I'd be compelled to check, by anecdote, if I'd dropped it on my way in. Please show me your science.
    - dalke 14y ago
      Your metaphor of adding wet sticks to a fire is flawed, from a thermodynamics argument. Assuming that the fire is large enough, it will dry out the wet sticks through evaporation/boiling, and the wood's total contribution to the heat ("energy out") will be unchanged. Now, of course for the people sitting around the fire, some of the heat that would be warming them up or used for cooking is instead used to force a phase change in the water, so it won't be as much "useful" heat, but that meaning of utility - which I believe is the one you want - is outside of thermodynamics. For what it's worth, "for some very compelling anecdotal evidence" of the thermodynamic approach, see The Hacker's Diet at http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ , which uses the "Rubber Bag" model. Unlike the garytaubes.com web site, the entire book and supporting materials are available for free download. The basic premise is the thermodynamic "if you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight; if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight." (See also 'Food and fact' where "The rubber bag view of the body and considering only the calorie content of food is obviously oversimplified." and some of the complications are mentioned.) I believe you are making a different argument, which is that you can't always measure the caloric impact of foods. Under the Hacker Diet, that makes little difference. It uses a feedback system based on weight trends rather than specific calorie counting. There's no need to know that oak combustion produces about 15MJ/kg and boiling water from room temperature takes about 3MJ/kg, because it only looks at 'is there enough heat'?
radio4fan 14y ago
> Obesity is the result of a caloric surplus. Cavemen didn't have that luxury. No obese cavemen? How about a cavewoman? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf
- SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
  The Venus of Willendorf Is widely regarded to represent an exceptional, ideal image not a typical person. People who are short of food idealise a food surplus.
  - radio4fan 14y ago
    An alternative view, according to the wiki page: > The nickname, urging a comparison to the classical image of "Venus," is now controversial. According to Christopher Witcombe, "the ironic identification of these figurines as 'Venus' pleasantly satisfied certain assumptions at the time about the primitive, about women, and about taste." Catherine McCoid and LeRoy McDermott hypothesize that the figurines may have been created as self-portraits. But let's face it, the evidence must be scant either way.
Tichy 14y ago
Still, if people from traditional societies enter the western world they tend to be afflicted even worse from civilization diseases (obesity, diabetes, strokes, heart attacks...). I think part of the problem is that our foods are engineered to trick the regulation of our food intake. Jared Diamond describes how New Guineans empty whole bottles of salt on their food, because they are much more "optimized" for craving salt. So the energy in/energy out thing might hold, but it is just part of the problem. The real problem is how to regulate food intake appropriately. Actually Dimaond also describes traditional people overeating to the extreme when they have meat on rare occasions (some kind of meat festival). So of course abundance of food is part of the problem - if those people had meat all the time, perhaps they would overeat immediately. But so we could still learn about sane frequencies of food intake from traditional societies.
Evgeny 14y ago
Obesity is the result of a caloric surplus. Cavemen didn't have that luxury. Obesity epidemic is a very recent phenomenon. Are you arguing that there were no societies that had caloric surplus up until late in the XX century? Or would you say that American Samoa with obesity levels of 70% [1] somehow have the luxury of having calorie surplus, while people of Switzerland (8.2% obesity) are struggling to get enough food? Speaking about Paleo diet in particular, why don't those guys gorge themselves into obesity [2]? The Kitavan people have been under greater study for their remarkable health characteristics. The people show no indication of coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, congestive heart failure, acne, low or high blood pressure, or obesity. There is also almost no indication of cancer. The Kitavans have abundant food supply and are not threatened by malnutrition or famine. [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2228rank.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... [2] http://wiki.whebsite.com/kitava http://wiki.whebsite.com/kitava
- tjogin 14y ago
  > Are you arguing that there were no societies that had caloric surplus up until late in the XX century? No, only that a caloric surplus is necessary to gain weight. Matter cannot be created from nothing, a surplus of energy is required to perform all the bodily functions and to also build body mass. A people can have an abundance of food and still not get obese, if they simply don't eat too much of it, relative to their caloric expenditure.

Diseases of civilization are a function of congregation, not eating grains. Obesity is the result of a caloric surplus. Cavemen didn't have that luxury.

by tjogin 14y ago

Diseases of civilization are a function of congregation, not eating grains. Obesity is the result of a caloric surplus. Cavemen didn't have that luxury.

kbenson 14y ago

> Cavemen didn't have that luxury. Do we know that? I thought there was some research indicating the hunter-gatherer societies actually had to devote rather little (comparative) time to gathering sustenance.[1] Is there some research I should be aware of that refutes this, or at least asserts more information as to a likelihood one way or the other? [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society

tjogin 14y ago
If they were obese it's because they had a caloric surplus (I doubt it). The laws of thermodynamics applied then, as they do now.
- radio4fan 14y ago
  If the body digested everything with 100% efficiency and didn't produce waste, and also treated all 'calories' equally, then I'd agree that thermodynamics tells us everything we need to know. But even people coming from the complete opposite end of the argument to the paleo crowd ("Eat more whole grains!") agree that the amount of heat produced by a substance when it's burnt in a calorimeter doesn't tell the full story about its potential for causing obesity.
  - tjogin 14y ago
    Yes, fans of either reductionist fad diet of the day are all ignorant.
    - regularfry 14y ago
      Or not. I can be a fan of a reductionist diet without buying the party line on the mechanism by which it works.
- kbenson 14y ago
  I thought it was rather obvious I was looking for justification as to why you thought cavemen didn't have the luxury of caloric surplus. You already made it clear that you more than doubt they they had that luxury, you definitively said they did not. Again, the question is why?
  - tjogin 14y ago
    I have no idea how cavemen lived, and it doesn't interest me all that much either, but my guess is that they weren't as sedentary and they weren't as proficient in the art of preserving food. Overall, it should have been quite difficult for most of them to create a caloric surplus, day after day. What I do know is that bodymass is lost and gained with deficits and surpluses of calories. Transient spikes in insulin and stuff like that are irrelevant. This is well established in nutritional science.
    - cromulent 14y ago
      There's quite a lot of research with gut bacteria now and the association with obesity. It's not as simple as caloric intake, it is also the balance of the gut bacteria. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17183312 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17183312
- Selfcommit 14y ago
  Your assumption about the laws of thermodynamics predicates that the "Energy out" part of the equation is not somehow effected by the type of "Energy in" (Adding wet sticks to a fire will not produce as much released energy as adding dry sticks or gasoline soaked sticks) The general argument about carbs or any food with high glycemic response is that these foods are like adding "wet sticks" to the fire. There's considerable science and anicdote to support this. If you're interested (And not simply not throwing around pithy sound bytes about physics) check out: Why we get fat (And what to do about it) By Gary Taubes (http://garytaubes.com/ http://garytaubes.com/) For some very compelling anicdotal evidence (That also supports some concepts of Paleo) check out http://www.reddit.com/r/keto http://www.reddit.com/r/keto
  - tjogin 14y ago
    Taubes has been refuted so many times it's astonishing that anyone still cites him. Compelling anecdotal evidence is an oxymoron, especially when the scientific evidence to the contrary is so strong.
    - Selfcommit 14y ago
      I've seen some work contradicting him, but would be interested in seeing something refuting him. Your phrase "Compelling anecdotal evidence is an oxymoron" seems strange. If 5 people told me they saw my wallet outside, I'd be compelled to check, by anecdote, if I'd dropped it on my way in. Please show me your science.
  - dalke 14y ago
    Your metaphor of adding wet sticks to a fire is flawed, from a thermodynamics argument. Assuming that the fire is large enough, it will dry out the wet sticks through evaporation/boiling, and the wood's total contribution to the heat ("energy out") will be unchanged. Now, of course for the people sitting around the fire, some of the heat that would be warming them up or used for cooking is instead used to force a phase change in the water, so it won't be as much "useful" heat, but that meaning of utility - which I believe is the one you want - is outside of thermodynamics. For what it's worth, "for some very compelling anecdotal evidence" of the thermodynamic approach, see The Hacker's Diet at http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ , which uses the "Rubber Bag" model. Unlike the garytaubes.com web site, the entire book and supporting materials are available for free download. The basic premise is the thermodynamic "if you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight; if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight." (See also 'Food and fact' where "The rubber bag view of the body and considering only the calorie content of food is obviously oversimplified." and some of the complications are mentioned.) I believe you are making a different argument, which is that you can't always measure the caloric impact of foods. Under the Hacker Diet, that makes little difference. It uses a feedback system based on weight trends rather than specific calorie counting. There's no need to know that oak combustion produces about 15MJ/kg and boiling water from room temperature takes about 3MJ/kg, because it only looks at 'is there enough heat'?

radio4fan 14y ago

> Obesity is the result of a caloric surplus. Cavemen didn't have that luxury. No obese cavemen? How about a cavewoman? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf

SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
The Venus of Willendorf Is widely regarded to represent an exceptional, ideal image not a typical person. People who are short of food idealise a food surplus.
- radio4fan 14y ago
  An alternative view, according to the wiki page: > The nickname, urging a comparison to the classical image of "Venus," is now controversial. According to Christopher Witcombe, "the ironic identification of these figurines as 'Venus' pleasantly satisfied certain assumptions at the time about the primitive, about women, and about taste." Catherine McCoid and LeRoy McDermott hypothesize that the figurines may have been created as self-portraits. But let's face it, the evidence must be scant either way.

Tichy 14y ago

Still, if people from traditional societies enter the western world they tend to be afflicted even worse from civilization diseases (obesity, diabetes, strokes, heart attacks...). I think part of the problem is that our foods are engineered to trick the regulation of our food intake. Jared Diamond describes how New Guineans empty whole bottles of salt on their food, because they are much more "optimized" for craving salt. So the energy in/energy out thing might hold, but it is just part of the problem. The real problem is how to regulate food intake appropriately. Actually Dimaond also describes traditional people overeating to the extreme when they have meat on rare occasions (some kind of meat festival). So of course abundance of food is part of the problem - if those people had meat all the time, perhaps they would overeat immediately. But so we could still learn about sane frequencies of food intake from traditional societies.

Evgeny 14y ago

Obesity is the result of a caloric surplus. Cavemen didn't have that luxury. Obesity epidemic is a very recent phenomenon. Are you arguing that there were no societies that had caloric surplus up until late in the XX century? Or would you say that American Samoa with obesity levels of 70% [1] somehow have the luxury of having calorie surplus, while people of Switzerland (8.2% obesity) are struggling to get enough food? Speaking about Paleo diet in particular, why don't those guys gorge themselves into obesity [2]? The Kitavan people have been under greater study for their remarkable health characteristics. The people show no indication of coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, congestive heart failure, acne, low or high blood pressure, or obesity. There is also almost no indication of cancer. The Kitavans have abundant food supply and are not threatened by malnutrition or famine. [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2228rank.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... [2] http://wiki.whebsite.com/kitava http://wiki.whebsite.com/kitava

tjogin 14y ago
> Are you arguing that there were no societies that had caloric surplus up until late in the XX century? No, only that a caloric surplus is necessary to gain weight. Matter cannot be created from nothing, a surplus of energy is required to perform all the bodily functions and to also build body mass. A people can have an abundance of food and still not get obese, if they simply don't eat too much of it, relative to their caloric expenditure.