Site is a link aggregation of a series of blog posts that cite various studies about the mystery of why the obesity rate is increasing, and why the rate of increase is itself accelerating. Authors make a compelling argument that normal homeostatic processes (the theorized lipostat specifically) tend to keep people within a certain BMI range. Authors argue that environmental contamination is breaking the lipostat, driving obesity rates upwards, and faster where there's more contamination.
Interesting read and a great reason to switch to :vegan-v: with a focus on not buying anything wrapped in plastic.
I mean it is 100% true I'll agree with you, but I will say that I really really dislike the takes from 90% of the people who just spout that out, because they refuse to ever look at obesity trends and wonder "hmm, why are some countries so different than others?" and then instead just blame entirely on individual fault. And at the end of the day when the system continually fails, yeah you're going to have to on the individual level work to fight against that but it's certainly true that not everyone can, and no one should have to do that.
I think the biggest reason here to me is that the average American diet is exactly what you would expect from a nation that absurdly rich, it's all processed junk where they can pull out all the bad parts of food like sugar and leave everything good behind. People want to do things like eat by intuition, our bodies and our lives are meant to do exactly that. But food companies spend billions of dollars figuring out exactly how to thrwart human intuition. It's not really possible to eat food as store/restaurant marketing suggests and not get fat, because those foods simply contain too much energy in them without ever being satiating.
One big issue of this appears to be fiber. Long ago if you wanted to get out the sugar inside the plant, you had to eat the plant. You have to get the fiber and the vitamins and all the other stuff inside of the plant that might not be super super tasty like the sugar, but there was no other way. For example only 5% of Americans eat the recommended daily amount of fiber simply because most food on offer has little and people are going to eat the food on offer because duh, of course they will. You never feel full because you never eat the things our body expects from natural foods so you want more, so you buy more. It's a great thing for all the processed food companies and restaurants after all.
As we've seen with the study now part of it also seems to be that disruptions to the natural chemical balance of our bodies leads to feeling more hungry and unsatisfied as well.
Definitely, I completely agree. It shouldn't be necessary to count calories because we shouldn't be pressured by the society we live in to so severely overeat. Personally, I don't count calories, but that's only because I now understand enough about nutrition to eyeball it. And not only was I never taught any of this stuff about nutrition before, what I was taught about nutrition growing up was complete bullshit made up by :porky-happy: to sell me more food and hopefully also fad diet bullshit.
However, "nutrition is just magic that is impossible to understand and im somehow gonna store extra fat despite consuming fewer calories than I burn" is a sentiment I absolutely cannot stand.
Oh yeah for sure, that comes off as magical thinking to me. Part of it does come from realistic problems though, food education in most industrialized countries is incredibly corrupt and compromised. There are lots of people who simply don't realize how many calories are in something like salad dressing or the beer they drink, so even when they try to track they don't record it properly.
I've lost maybe about 100 to 110 lb over the past two years, and that's something that I noticed of myself and the difference between all my failed attempts before vs now. I didn't realize that bowl of cereal should probably have the milk counted, that getting the large fast food meal everyday was eating the equivalent of like 170 strawberries or 10-12 bananas in a single serving. I can't even eat three bananas without feeling done! Those are very satiating fruits. And yet for the meal I'd just jot down like 500-800 instead and move on and despite them actually being a thousand+ calories I would be ready to eat in just a few hours.
So I think a lot of people really do try to lose weight, and they tried to follow the calorie in carry out method and it failed. It's not really because the principles of burning off more energy than you consume are wrong, but because so much of society is built up against being able to this properly. You aren't educated for it, and all the pressures and marketing and everything else imaginable work against you. And when you fail, it's easy to just throw it off and say it doesn't work, much harder to confront the systemic flaws and your own misunderstandings after all. I don't blame people who do it honestly, there's extreme amounts of money making sure we never see it.
I have a reprint of the Settlement cookbook from 1910. In it, they have nutritional needs that calculate out to about 3500 calories for an adult man (who was probably lifting 100 pound sacks in a factory.) fiber was seen as non-nutritious and generally a negative. In the early 20th century if you got 3500 calories from whole grains and vegetables, you’d spend half the day in an outhouse and get cholera
You don't get cholera from vegetables like that. But yeah, the calorie amounts of factory workers was much higher than today's sedentary non heavy weight lifting workers. It's actually part of why the "But you might have to work some in mines and doing heavy work!" argument against communes and the like are bad because in the best world everyone would be doing like 10-20 hours of physical labor anyway. But instead of doing it at the gym on a treadmill or lifting weights, it can be used for production and helping others
Hard physical labor can be fun when you aren't being managed by an idiot, you're in safe conditions, and you get enough to est and drink before and during. I honestly find doing labor easier than exercising because it has a clear goal I can reach instead of the vague prospect of a stronger me.
That's not how you get cholera