A CHEMICAL HUNGER
achemicalhunger.com
The study of obesity is the study of mysteries.

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.

  • StewartCopelandsDad [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I encountered this in January, through the rationalist sphere. My thoughts on it then:

    This author points out that evidence for watershed contaminants is mostly just maps of where people are poor. Apparently this lipostat thing is "academic consensus" which I did not know.

    Some people think the obesity epidemic is caused by vegetable oils. I think these people are cranks because
    (a) this resembles the troubled "fat bad" "sugar bad" etc macro theories
    (b) causal mechanism equally unclear vs environmental contamination
    (c) vegans like myself eat lots of vegetable oil and are less fat than avg. IMO definitely something wrong with western pattern diet tho

    I think it's neat food for thought, but I favor economic-driven diet variation as primary factor. There are probably a number of causes.

    Edit: it is also true that poor areas are most polluted, e.g. https://www.propublica.org/series/sacrifice-zones. Anecdotally, my friends share body shape with their parents even when they don't share hometowns. That could be epigenetic effects of pollution on parents, or wealth- and culture-driven diets. Many possible explanations and since everything is correlated it's hard to rule anything out. I would like to read about obesity in AES.