Comments on: Why the surge in obesity?

By: Dafydd

Dafydd — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 09:38:07 +0000

Increased consumption has to be a part of the story.

there are likely also epigenetic effects.

But you have to reduce consumption to have any serious impact.

Tax on Restaurants. Tax on take away food. Tax on sugar. Tax on fat.

Help with the deficit too!

By: Cwolf88

Cwolf88 — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 00:15:38 +0000

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/scienc e/a-mathematical-challenge-to-obesity.ht ml?

By: z0rr0

z0rr0 — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 00:13:14 +0000

I am surprised that they did not attempt to correlate the “social emphasis on food” to the obesity numbers. I would venture to guess that it was in around 80′s when government mandated calorie counts started, the sale of cookbooks rose, the media attention to diet fads started building, and an entire society became focused on food.
Maybe if we go back to ignoring the issue, our appetites will diminish?

By: Cwolf88

Cwolf88 — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 17:51:56 +0000

The world is complex, with lots of variables shifting. Trying to isolate one variable among hundreds of variables is difficult.

Clearly, both sugar and HFCS intake has soared dramatically.

Taubes suggests that it’s basic dietary shifts. The USDA documents that the standard American diet is 69% processed carbs. This means more sugar and fewer nutrients. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/health /28zuger.html He also suggests a generational cascade effect; fat parents have fat babies who grow up to be fat parents, etc.

There are significant family and cultural changes. In terms of families: 34% of kids live in a single parent family. The share of children in one-parent families has nearly tripled since 1970, when the rate was 11 percent. Over the last two decades, the rate of nonmarital childbearing rose substantially—from 22 percent in 1985 to 39 percent in 2006. This statistic reflects a decline in the likelihood of marriage in every age group. Researchers report not only a rise in the divorce rate, but also an increase in the number of women who postpone marriage or never marry. The share of married-couple families where both parents worked was 58.5 percent in 2011. Most kids are bussed to school (90%). Students spend an average of an hour and a half in a school bus each day.

Centralized schools, decentralized communities, use of antibiotics, farm subsidy priorities, etc. all contribute. Even medical treatment changes the equation (use a pill to change the lab results but don’t change the behavior).

You do realize that BMI is not a direct BF measure? And that a BMI-to-DEXA comparison shows that BMI significantly underestimates obesity rates?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/37081820/Obesi ty-Will-All-Americans-Become-Overweight- or-Obese

http://www.scribd.com/doc/37488514/Obesi ty

http://www.scribd.com/doc/71740870/Chron ic-Dis-Trends

By: Whittier5

Whittier5 — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 17:20:55 +0000

The incredible recent surge of highly morbidly obese cannot come from simply “eating too much” and “exercising too little” of our former frames of reference. People would have to stay bed-ridden gobbling boxes of bon-bons and mashed potatoes to explain the phenomenon.

It has to be deriving from “something” we are eating that wasn’t there 30-40 years ago, e.g., High Fructose Corn Syrup – not accusing, just an example, that is faking some people’s bodies into hoarding calories and bulk in the belief that the body is ‘starving to death’.

@cpps90 wrote, “What gives this Ivy League pinhead the right to dictate to us?”

The professionals do not “dictate”, but inform. They have the “right” to the platform because they are the highly knowledgeable professionals in the field, not you.

By: royjohn

royjohn — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 17:09:18 +0000

I don’t have a quarrel with the data presented in this article and will accept the hypothesis that eating more is more important than exercising less in the overall Us obesity problem.

What I’d like to see is more analysis of what it is that we’re eating and where we’re eating it. I would contend that both processed food provided by big corporate food and food provided in the big corporate restaurant industry is long on satiety and short on nutrition and elements that would reduce obesity. Added sugars, salt and unhealthy fats dominate both prepared foods and chain restaurant food, because it’s cheaper and easier to provide. If we took out most all of the added sugars and overabundance of salt and saturated and Omega-6 fats and instead gave people the fiber, Omega-3 fats and nutrients they need, upping the glycemic index of meals, I think we’d start to see some changes.

This would have to start with better labeling, which is going to require better laws and regulations. Then a tax on junk foods or a tax structure that rewards producers of nutritious foods . . .

By: MizT

MizT — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:42:05 +0000

I would like to see this study paired up with the smoking cessation rates to see if they coincide. I guarantee you’ll have an “Aha” moment.

By: allen_osuno

allen_osuno — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:20:26 +0000

Turn on the television. Luscious looking food is flashed on the screen during commercial after commercial, from pizza, to Mexican food, to seafood, etc. Food ads are even more commonplace than the wash of pharmaceutical ads pushing every kind of unsafe drug there is. So, the big lobbyists have hijacked our airwaves as well as our governing bodies in Washington. Is it any wonder we are becoming obese? Food is about the only ‘comfort’ left to an increasingly powerless, impoverished and oppressed national population. The top corporates and filthy rich 1% has determined that we, as a people, are ‘cockroaches’ for them to step on as they please. We pay the bills they run up for us via joblessness,taxes,oppressive work conditions and low wages. Yet we are told we are to blame for all our own problems. It is never the politically and financially powerful who cause so much of our pain that are to blame, to hear the national media tell it. As Jesus Christ said, “woe to you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites: for you load men with burdens grievous to be borne, but you yourselves won’t touch them with one of your fingers.”

By: Montefuego

Montefuego — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:13:50 +0000

I would be very curious to see the rise in obesity charted against the decrease in SMOKING. My parents both gained weight when they quit smoking. I think that when people have excess energy or stress they need to do something. For decades, people smoked to relax, and release excess energy. That made them look cool and stay thin. Now, without that release, many eat too much. That is not cool, and makes them fat and unhealthy. I think to think about the body without psychological needs is the part of the problem here.
By the way, I personally do not smoke, and am not obese. I try to exercise to relax.

By: cpps90

cpps90 — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 20:42:30 +0000

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is a left-wing advocacy group for vegetarians, pure and simple. They started the movie popcorn hysteria. They have no credibility with true scientific minds.

CSPI devoted its mission to “nutrition” in 1977…about the time the obesity epidemic started.

I saw The Weight of the Nation, all four parts. Its “experts” are hardly the examples of healthy eating that their rhetoric advocates. One of them, Kelly Brownell of Yale University is extremely obese. What gives this Ivy League pinhead the right to dictate to us?