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.
they're saying that changes to diet don't reliably produce weight change in either direction over the long-term - the effects of diet are usually erased within a year or two, except in around 5% of cases. (they note one exception to this, which is veganism). like there have been studies done where they paid prisoners to gain as much weight as they could as fast as they could and people barely gained any weight and lost it as soon as the experiment was ended, faster than they'd put it on in the first place. that is, the body tries to maintain homeostasis and changes of more than about 10-20 pounds in either direction are extremely difficult. their hypothesis is that obesity is a chemical effect on the body - something breaks the homeostatic impulse and makes people's bodies believe they're starving even when they're extremely clearly not. we know this is a possibility because many drugs (especially psychiatric drugs) reliably induce significant weight gain or loss.