Overweight people eat too much

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by S.A.M., Jun 10, 2006.

?

Do you believe that overweight people eat too much?

Poll closed Jun 15, 2006.

  1. Yes, what do they expect when they are forever stuffing themselves?

    11 vote(s)
    52.4%

  2. No, its not always true

    10 vote(s)
    47.6%
Page 2 of 4
  1. alexb123

    alexb123 The Amish web page is fast! Valued Senior Member

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    It is a well proven fact that over-weight people underestimate how much food they eat and over-estimate how much active they are.

    It is very rare that anything apart from the food intake to energy burnt lead to being fat. But over weight people use this excuse to make their distorted view of excercise/food intake a more realistic excuse.
     
    alexb123, Jun 10, 2006
    #21

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  3. S.A.M.

    S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    So why do they eat more?

    So all people who eat more than they require become overweight?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
    S.A.M., Jun 10, 2006
    #22

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  5. alexb123

    alexb123 The Amish web page is fast! Valued Senior Member

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    I think we eat more because we can. Food has in the past been scarce and it paid to stock up.
     
    alexb123, Jun 10, 2006
    #23

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  7. D'ster

    D'ster Registered Senior Member

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    Well, how smart is it to let yourself become overweight?

    Fact:
    People with lower IQ's on the average are more overweight on the average.
     
    D'ster, Jun 10, 2006
    #24
  8. S.A.M.

    S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    When 66.5% of the total population of a country is overweight with 30% obese, your claim of IQ as a risk factor is rather astonishing, don't you think? Especially if you cosider that these figures are almost double ( ~46 % and 15% ) of what they were in 1980.

    Fact : Obesity has doubled in the US in the last 25 years.

    And if you look at the distribution by state, it is certainly not average
    http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/index.htm
     
    S.A.M., Jun 10, 2006
    #25
  9. D'ster

    D'ster Registered Senior Member

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    Last edited: Jun 10, 2006
    D'ster, Jun 10, 2006
    #26
  10. firecross

    firecross Scientist Registered Senior Member

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    Intelligence is dropping rapidly in the US. Most people today can't even form coherent thoughts or pay attention for more than a second or two.

    The educational system has declined rapidly in just a generation and now kids are graduating who can't read or write. Expect more fat people as humanity devolves into retarded whining blobs.
     
    firecross, Jun 10, 2006
    #27
  11. S.A.M.

    S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Well I'm seriously biased since I'm working on metabolism in obesity.

    Obesity is currently an epidemic which is gobbling up a large chunk of national dollars. The estimated obesity-related costs alone in 2002 were $26 billion in medical costs and $45 billion for national costs. This is significant because it is half of the total medical costs

    The very rapid increase in the last 25 years is ominous, it means the epidemic is out of control and the failure of interventions (dietary and exercise) means that we are basically at a stand still as to what can be done next.

    Unfortunately, there are so many physical, metabolic, psychological and social factors which control food habits that it is difficult to have one intervention that can be applied to all. The main reason why people find it difficult to lose weight
    (apart from the lazy stupid ones you know) are their failure to lose weight or to keep it off. It does not help that they feel guilty about being overweight or are ridiculed and scorned. Its important to recognize that changes in diet, physical activity, the type and variety of food available, the choices that people make, informed or otherwise, when selecting a diet, are not accompanied by simultaneous changes in your genetics and metabolism. It is also difficult to predict the effect of an intervention ( dieting=weight loss) on people because in people with a tendency to gain weight, it may be accompanied by a resistance to weight loss and short of cutting off the stomach ( a popular form of weight loss) or stapling it, there are very few measures that are 100% effective.

    Most people have no idea of the extreme measures that seriously overweight people are willing to go to to keep off the weight. I've worked as a clinical nutritionist and seen the horrors following liposuction where allergic reactions set in; the adverse effects of weight loss pills eg diuretics leading to irregular heart beats and death. It is not a simple equation, that's all I'm saying. I'm not from the US and I was surprised at the intensity of negative feelings towards the overweight. Its a disease like any other and needs to be treated as such.

    Since this is a biology and genetics forum, I as hoping to get some feedback as to the source of these negative feelings.
     
    S.A.M., Jun 10, 2006
    #28
  12. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Perspective--and I'm just elaborating on what someone said earlier.

    Throughout most of the history of Homo sapiens, food was not abundant. If we found it, we ate it. If there was really a lot because we managed to kill a mammoth, we'd finally store some, but that technology was primitive and we couldn't keep it for very long. Essentially life was a contest between starvation and survival.

    An animal that evolves under those conditions has no instinct to eat less food than is presented to it, and we are no exception.

    Fast forward to the age of agriculture. Finally we have a more or less steady supply of food, but guess what else happened? Our family size increased. Infant mortality was less in permanent farming settlements than in hunter-gatherer tribes. Also, the nomads from the surrounding areas kept migrating into our villages, stretching our supplies to the limit of what the surrounding land could harvest. (If you want to talk about immigration being a threat, this ought to be a sobering reference standard for how easy we have it today. Ever hear the Minutevermin shout, "The Mexicans are going to eat up all our food!"?) So there was still no reason to eat less than was available. You might put weight on but surely hard times would hit before long and you'd need that stored fat.

    Fast forward to the age of civilization. Anybody who had access to enough food to actually become permanently fat must be really successful! Either a member of the royal family or else a skillful merchant. There was no onus placed on being fat. People died young (by our standards) of lots of nasty diseases and environmental conditions, so hardly anybody had the chance to identify the health problems we now associate with obesity. As recently as the Renaissance, as shown in the portraits in our museums, plump people were regarded as normal and even beautiful.

    Eventually heart disease, joint failure, and all that other stuff came to be recognized. But this was only in the last few decades, an eyeblink in the history of our species and our civilization. Even in the 1950s people were expected to carry around substantially more weight than the "ideal" we're bludgeoned with today. Marilyn Monroe, whom I personally remember as the most beautiful woman who ever walked the earth, would be considered overweight now. These skin-and-bones, surgically-reduced wraiths who parade across our TV screens would have been thought of as Auschwitz survivors and anybody who saw one would have grabbed her, dragged her into their kitchen, and started feeding her fried chicken and milk shakes in a desperate attempt to keep her from expiring on the spot.

    So this is what we're facing. Tens of thousands of years of human developement, during which obesity was unknown but starvation was common. A few centuries during which obesity became familiar but was not known to be a health risk and was evidence of success. A span of about three generations during which obesity became common and health risks were identified. Ultimately, a decade or two during which the media found a new cause and the "tyranny of svelteness" set a standard that is associated with ugliness and bulimia.

    E.g., we call overweight a "disease." That is pathologically incorrect yet the term is widely accepted. Overweight is a syndrome, a condition resulting from varied and complex causes. Telling fat people they're sick is not going to endear us to fat people and they will simply tune us out or possibly just sit on us and squash us until we shut up or die from not having enough cushioning fat to survive the pressure.

    An "illness" perhaps, like "mental illness," another term that doesn't make friends everywhere it goes, but not a disease.

    Just a couple of decades ago we Americans were a people who walked a little, did some physical work around the house, ran errands, played with our kids, did some gardening, and in general just about barely engaged in enough physical activity to keep ourselves on the margin of healthiness. Now we have the internet, cell phones, and satellite TV. Our average work week has stretched from Henry Ford's sacred forty hours to fifty. (I did a paper on this, trust my stats.) Our children are raised by nannies, we spend two or three hours a day in a car seat, and our meetings at work are held by phone or NetMeeting so we don't even get to walk to a conference room. Due to real estate price inflation we live in smaller and smaller quarters so there's nothing to clean, no garden, no pets, and the walk to the bathroom is about five feet. We all pay to belong to gyms, but we never find the time to go there.

    But we still have the same instincts programmed into our brains as our hunter-gatherer ancestors, who had to eat 3,000 calories a day to survive their exhausting life. To say that fat people eat too much may be true but it's a mean and useless truth. Fat people eat what every cell in their bodies tell them to eat. The people who have reprogrammed themselves to be satisfied with a 1,200 or 1,500 calorie daily intake--those are the strange ones, they're the ones that are going against nature.

    Another problem is dieting. It appears that people who have never dieted have a higher maintenance diet than those who have. Our bodies regard any decrease in food intake as evidence of a famine, and they become more efficient at getting by on what's available. After a couple of famines--and what dieter hasn't dieted ten or twenty times?--the body wises up and says hmmm I'd better store up as much fat as I can because the food supply around here is really unreliable. I suppose this model is controversial but it certainly matches my observations of dieters vs. non-dieters.

    We can tell people to exercise more but the one thing we can't do is lighten up their other responsibilities so they have the time and energy for it. These are people who don't get home until they're children are asleep, so they're not going to stop at the "health" club on the way.

    Americans have enough on their minds. Telling them they have a "disease" and that they have to cut back on life's one remaining pleasure, eating, is pointless. They're not going to pay attention.

    And no, I'm not overweight. I'm cursed with a nearly debilitating level of nervous tension that burns off about 1,500 calories a day over and above my maintenance diet. I've never yet met a fat person who would trade places with me.
     
    Last edited: Jun 11, 2006
    Fraggle Rocker, Jun 11, 2006
    #29
  13. S.A.M.

    S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, and the likelihood of starvationn was greater, so that those people whose metabolism was geared to store as much as possible ( rather than lose it as heat or in futile cycles which dissipate energy in the body) were more likely to survive.
    BTW, did mammoths ever co-exist with humans? ( I don't know, I was under the impression that they were in completely different time periods)

    And agriculture had the added advantage of providing food at regular intervals, so that food insecurity was decreased.

    Plus there were a lot of skirmishes over land through war, invasions, etc. so surviaval was limited by factors other than food

    Quite right, in fact, this is still true in many parts of the world. Being overweight is considered a sign of plenty

    Yes and the NHS started getting concerned with the problem only in the 80s when they realised that about 15% of the population was obese and that this group is statistically more likely to suffer from heart disease which was then the number one killer in the US ( still is, I think), directly contributing to increased national medical costs.

    And claiming they have lower IQs, lack self-control or are lazy will?

    It is a disease, if a defect in your metabolism ( due to whatever reason) changes the functioning of the cells in your body in such a way that it affects the normal functioning of your cells, and cannot be compltely reversed. Uncontrolled fat deposition is a symptom of obesity just as uncontrolled cell proliferation is a symptom of cancer ( for example). We are born with a set number of fat cells which is genetically determined; they have a set threshold as to the amount of fat they can hold. These levels are monitored by specific hormones which act as sensors.

    In addition there are other sensors which monitor levels of other nutrients.

    e.g. Access to high fat high sugar containing foods, high in calorie but low in nutrients, create an imbalance in the nutrient sensors. e.g. the fat sensors say"you're done" but other nutrient sensors say " nope, not yet". Over time, since the other nutrient sensors are not satisfied, the body stops listening to the fat sensors and they no longer function. Fat cells fill up with more lipid than they can hold, there is a pressure to increase the number of fat cells, which is actually akin to saying, I'm starving and we need more fat cells cause the fat sensors are not saying you're done.

    Now, even if you exercise or diet, the fat in the fat cells will decrease, but the numbers will not go back to the original ( this is a survival mechanism or starvation memory, if you like). In addition, the fat sensors have no idea what is going on and though some of them may go back to normal, the reversal may not be complete, may not even happen, in fact. Its a phenomenon called resistance, which also occurs in diabetics where there is insulin resistance.


    This is related to what I said about fat cell numbers and is the reason why it is harer and harder to lose weight, the more you diet. Starvation only increases the tendency to store energy.

    Which is why diet and exercise interventions are largely unsuccessful.
    And they have to pay attention, because it is not going to go away.
    And saying its a disease does not create a stigma, and offers the possibility of a cure, as compared to saying you have a low IQ or you eat too much.
    And actually you are wrong here, most obese people are relieved that it is a disease, because it measn there will be either a pill or surgery to follow. The difficulty actually lies in convincing them that pills alone cannot make it go away. That is a major source of disappointment.

    And if the only pleasure left in your life is eating, how would you react to someone saying "eat less"?

    And finally, regardless of diet, environment and physical activity, there are ALWAYS individuals in EVERY society (even the Pima Indians) who simply WILL NOT GAIN WEIGHT. So, is there a difference in their metabolism or in their genes which enables them to regulate their energy balance more effectively. e.g. do they have greater muscle turnover when they eat more? Are their diets more varied? are their nutrient sensors less efficient? do they need less nutrients ( more conservative , less wasteful)? The answer is, I don't know.

    But there are individual differences in the responses to energy intake based on a variety of dietary and genetic factors ( e.g. adequate calcium appears to decrease the deposition of fat as compared to low calcium diets).

    So as you can see I agree with you with some reservations, except that there are too many unresolved questions to be able to reach any definite conclusions
     
    S.A.M., Jun 11, 2006
    #30
  14. draqon

    draqon Banned Banned

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    this fucking world, were everyone is not born the same, were everyone is not given a choice to decide, were life tends to kill slowly all hope to be "normal" as everyone else is around, the happy egoistical types that dont deserve the happiness they have.
     
    draqon, Jun 11, 2006
    #31
  15. S.A.M.

    S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    A little different response than I expected; but look at at it this way.

    The normal people are the ones you don't really know.
     
    S.A.M., Jun 11, 2006
    #32
  16. D'ster

    D'ster Registered Senior Member

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    676
    Obesity in Minority Populations
    Overweight and obesity in the U.S. occur at higher rates in racial / ethnic minority populations such as African American and Hispanic Americans, compared with White Americans. Asian-Americans have a relatively low prevalence for obesity. Women and persons of low socioeconomic status within minority populations appear to particularly be affected by overweight and obesity. Cultural factors that influence dietary and exercise behaviors are reported to play a major role in the development of excess weight in minority groups.

    Prevalence
    The prevalence of overweight (Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25 or more) and obesity (BMI of 30 or more) increased over the last decade across racial / ethnic groups, as shown in Table 1.
    Mexican American and black (non-Hispanic) adults in the U.S. are considerably more overweight and obese than white (non-Hispanic) adults.
    Read the AOA fact sheet,What is Obesity? for more information about BMI and
    to calculate BMI.

    The American Indian population also has high prevalence rates of overweight. Among the highest rates reported (overweight defined as BMI of > 27.8 for men and > 27.3 for women) are for American Indians in Arizona at 80 percent for women and 67 percent for men, according to researchers of the Strong Heart Study in 1995.
    Gender

    For women, the black (non-Hispanic) population has the highest prevalence of overweight (78 percent) and obesity (50.8 percent).
    For men, the Mexican American population has the highest prevalence of overweight (74.4 percent) and obesity (29.4 percent).
    Overweight, obesity and severe obesity (BMI of 40 or more) prevalence increased for men and women in various racial / ethnic groups in the U.S. over the last decade.

    Socioeconomic Status (SES)
    Overweight affects African American women and men across all SES levels.
    Minority women with low income appear to have the greatest likelihood of being overweight.
    Among Mexican American women, age 20 to 74, the rate of overweight is about 13 percent higher for women living below the poverty line versus above the poverty line.

    Health Disparities
    Many obesity-related diseases including diabetes, hypertension, cancer and heart disease are found in higher rates among various members of racial-ethnic minorities compared with whites.

    Diabetes
    Diabetes has been reported to occur at a rate of 16 to 26 percent in Hispanic Americans and black Americans, aged 45 to 74, compared with 12 percent in whites (non-Hispanic) of the same age.
    Higher BMI predicts the risk for type 2 diabetes in Pima Indians. Type 2 diabetes affects about half of the Pima people.
    Among 15 American Indian tribes studied in Oklahoma, 77 percent of adults screened for diabetes are reported to be obese.
    Among Mexican Americans, obesity and type 2 diabetes are both increasing, unlike other risk factors of cardiovascular disease including smoking and blood pressure, which are declining.

    Cancer
    Obesity appears to contribute to the higher risk of pancreatic cancer among black Americans than among whites, particularly for women.

    Heart Disease
    Among African Americans, the high prevalence of obesity and obesity-related conditions such as hypertension and type 2 diabetes, are factors reported to contribute to their high death rate from coronary heart disease.
    In a study of older Hispanics, with an average age of 80, obesity was found to be a risk factor for developing coronary artery disease.

    Hypertension
    The high prevalence of obesity is reported to be a contributing factor to the high prevalence of hypertension in minority populations, especially among African Americans who have an earlier onset and run a more severe course of hypertension.

    Behavioral Risk Factors Diet & Exercise
    Cultural factors related to dietary choices, physical activity, and acceptance of excess weight among African Americans and other racial-ethnic groups, appear to play a role in interfering with weight loss efforts.
    Sedentary life style, which can contribute to the development of obesity, has been reported by 44 to 60 percent of Native American men and 40 to 65 percent of women.
    African Americans and whites report that they exercise less as they get older, however, African American women of all ages report participating in less regular exercise than white women.
    African American men, age 45 and older, report less regular exercise than white women.
    http://www.obesity.org/subs/fastfacts/Obesity_Minority_Pop.shtml

    Blacks and hispanics also have the lowest IQ levels.
     
    D'ster, Jun 11, 2006
    #33
  17. S.A.M.

    S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Let me see the logic you are proposing:

    Logic 101

    Major premise Mexicans are overweight
    Minor premise Mexicans have low IQ
    Conclusion Therefore overweight have low IQ

    This type of relationship is called a syllogism where the conclusion is derived from the major and minor premise.

    syllogism

    Your reasoning ignores the following premises:
    Some Mexicans are not overweight
    All overweight are not Mexicans
    Some Mexicans do not have a Low IQ
    All people with a low IQ are not Mexican

    This process of elimination of universal ( applicable to all) and particular (applicable to some) premises is called deductive reasoning. If some premises fail to establish a commonality in the relationship between the major and minor premise, that relationship is no longer valid.

    Now if you accept what I said above,

    here is some information where, in the case of one ethnic group, we were able to establish the causes of overweight.

    Pima Indians

    This was in 1991 - 15 years ago
    if you click on the link for similar articles in pubmed, you will find out how much research has been conducted on this one ethnic group alone. Unfortunately what little we know has not enabled us to help even the Pima Indians successfully and the differences between ethnic groups being so hard to locate and even pinpoint ( which one is the particular cause in (1)the group and (2)the individual) we truly do have a long way to go.

    Frankly,the people working on these studies and the ones providing the billions of dollars for the research have given a little more thought than you and I. I haven't taken a survey but I doubt that their IQ levels are as suspect.
     
    Last edited: Jun 11, 2006
    S.A.M., Jun 11, 2006
    #34
  18. S.A.M.

    S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    72,825
    S.A.M., Jun 11, 2006
    #35
  19. firecross

    firecross Scientist Registered Senior Member

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    Noting that the "big booty" is considered attractive in such communities, perhaps they have a more favorable outlook on obesity than white people who are critical of it.

    In any case, who are you to judge what is right?
     
    firecross, Jun 11, 2006
    #36
  20. S.A.M.

    S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    I'm sorry if I gave the impression of being judgemental; I was just surprised at the level of hostility towards overweight people is all. I have lived on 3 different continents in the last 10 years and I am sorry to say that some of the most intolerant people I have met have been in the US.
     
    S.A.M., Jun 11, 2006
    #37
  21. D'ster

    D'ster Registered Senior Member

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    676
    samcdkey,
    I did not say any of the things you wrote, please do not change my words.

    Let me keep it simple:

    On the AVERAGE hispanics and blacks have the highest obesity levels of any other groups of human on the planet earth.

    On the AVERAGE hispanics and blacks have the lowest IQ levels of any other groups of human on the planet earth.
     
    D'ster, Jun 11, 2006
    #38
  22. S.A.M.

    S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    You've polled all the blacks and hispanics on planet earth??
     
    S.A.M., Jun 11, 2006
    #39
  23. D'ster

    D'ster Registered Senior Member

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    676
    D'ster, Jun 12, 2006
    #40
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