Why Are We So Fat?

Great Debates
121

This is where I think you’re wrong. I think the exact same kids are out playing games in the street today, and it’s just us bookworm types who spend all our time inside with the playstation.

I live in a family apartment complex in deep suburbia. When the weather’s good, the streets are filled with kids playing. This idea that somehow, kids who would normally be active outdoors can be satisfied with staying inside and playing video games is ludicrous. They’re active kids. They want to play outside.

When I was a kid, people thought television and Nintendo and arcades were going to turn us all into little video zombies who never saw the light of day. And you know what? It was BS, just the latest parental panic. When my parents were little, they thought it was Howdy Doody and comic books that were going to drag the next generation into rampant indolence.

FWIW, my parents never bought junk food for us, ever. My mother was somewhat of a health nut (especially in the 70’s) and I grew up eating whole wheat bread, hearty soups, plenty of fruits and veggies, and all manner of good stuff. Still wound up a fattie all my life.

No, I don’t think portion sizes have gotten bigger. I think they’ve stayed around the same, more or less. There’s a few more sizes of Big Gulp and a few more big chocolate bars, I guess. But mostly, it’s about the same.

Ah, now we get at the root of things.

Accepting for now that there has been a sharp increase in obesity over the last 25 to 30 years, what might have caused it? The foods haven’t gotten any tastier, AFAIK. Advertising has not somehow become more effective. We haven’t become mindless consumer zombies in the last 30 years. So what?

In my OP, I wasn’t really tackling the idea of an obesity crisis, more like the question of where the drives that make someone a fattie come from, and why hadn’t they been selected out by evolution, etc etc.

But if we’re truly fatter now, why? Well, for one, all the baby boomers getting older and fatter and slowing down. No sinister cabal of supersized fries, Big Gulps of Mountain Dew, and Twitter needed. It’s as natural and predictable as spring turning into summer.

It could also be partly due to food additives. I haven’t read a whole lot about high fructose corn syrup, but what little I have read is disturbing and fascinating. it really is vastly different from cane sugar.

So if an obesity epidemic exists, there’s no need to blame “kids these days” and how they are living.

122

[Moderator Hat ON]

MichaelJohnBertrand, personal insults are NOT allowed in Great Debates. Please familarize yourself with the rules of this form and do not do this again. This is an official warning.
[Moderator Hat OFF]

123

[Moderator Hat ON]

Also, Seven, don’t say

Everyone, let’s NOT make this personal.

[Moderator Hat OFF]

124

Portion sizes have changed. A quick search turns up all kinds of results. Here is one interesting article I found. You might also try taking the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s portion distortion quiz.

125

But you conclude this through speculation and “gut feelings” but no data. You look out the window and see kids playing outside. But for some reason it means nothing to you that videogames, computers, and all the other home entertainment devices that keep kids stationary are billion-dollar industries.

And I guess slashed recess and PE program are also myths, huh? These things are just figments conjured to make fat people feel bad, regardless of the statistics. Okay.

Provide a cite for this please. Going off of what you remember is not compelling in GD. Back in 1984, a regular hamburger at McDonald’s seemed a lot to me…but that’s because I was only 7!

How do you explain the climb in childhood obesity? Is that a myth? Has the CDC just made that up to make fat folks feel bad?

So then you agree that diet does have something to do with it. Ingesting more calories through greater intake of foodstuffs such as high fructose corn syrup…an ingredient especially common in snack foods and carbonated drinks…leads to obesity. Especially when combined with sedentary behavior (which our culture is increasingly promoting regardless of your denials) and more generous portion sizes. Not. Rocket. Science.

All of this is common sense.

126

Remember those little 25 cent bags of chips? I used to buy a bag on the way home from school every day. Those things don’t even exist anymore, having been replaced by the regular small bag, then by the Big Grab, and most recently by those bags that are essentially a half of a family sized bag.

Most of the Western products in China come in the old serving single serving sizes and the difference is readily noticeable when you buy a bag of M&Ms or whatever.

127

You need to read this book: Fat Land-How Americans became the Fattest People in the World

I believe that it will answer a lot of your questions. It has lots of data to support its premise, and it completely is at odds with your positions in this thread. There is clear evidence that portion sizes have changed, children are less active and the sugar substitutes have played a huge part in the fattening of this country. The genetic tie is miniscule compared to these other factors. Read the book then come back and discuss this.

128

On what basis do you make this claim? It is not a moral issue to be less than perfect. It’s not even a moral issue to fail to live until you’ve flipped social security and are draining it out instead of putting into it. It’s a choice, and that’s it.

Sure, it’s the heavy person’s fault they’re fat, the same way it’s the poor person’s fault they’re poor. (Hey, they could always rob a bank or something.) But the mere fact that you’re heavy is not a moral issue, and it’s not a moral failing. Or do you have some argument by which it is?

It’s one thing to recognize that persons who are fat bear a hand in their condition, sometimes a very large hand. It’s another to decide they’re immoral (or slovenly, or lazy, or stupid, or …). When you do that, it’s not them with the moral failing.

129

You’re acting like there’s only one portion size and we are all required to eat it. That’s not true. If your metabolism is slow, you need to eat fewer calories. If your metabolism is high, you need to eat more calories. If you have a sedentary life, you need to eat less. If you have an active life, you need to eat more. It’s not like we’re all given the same box lunch every day. If your body only needs a few calories, that means you may have to stop after 1 or 2 slices of pizza. If your needs a lot of calories, you may be able to eat 3-4 slices.

People think of a meal as being one serving. But what has happened is that those meals have become so much larger. A ham sandwich now means a 12" buttery sub roll stuffed with meat and cheese. We recently went on a road trip and I couldn’t find single 12 oz. can sodas sold in any of the gas stations. They only had 20 oz bottles. So now that’s the “normal” serving of soda.

The key is to use your willpower to manage your calories. I didn’t end up buying the 20 oz bottle because I knew I wouldn’t be able to just drink part of it. I recognize that I may not have the willpower to just drink half, but I do have the willpower to not buy it in the first place.

In addition, a lot of overweight people have terrible diet habits. I have an overweight friend and he’ll regularly order lunches like cheese enchiladas with an egg on top with fried potatoes. Maybe Michael Phelps can get away with eating like that, but that’s way too many calories for a cube worker.

If you think of your body like a car, you only need enough gas to cover how much you drive for your particular MPG. Imagine your car has an infinitely expandable rubber gas tank. If you’re only driving your car 3 miles a day, you don’t need to put 20 gallons in each day. Your gas tank would be huge. That’s just like your body. If you’re only burning 2000 calories a day, then that’s all you need to eat.

130

WHOO HOOO!

In 8 years of posting here I FINALLY get my very first Mod correction.

Thanks Gaudere

131

Ah, such contrition and penitence! :stuck_out_tongue:

132

OK, you’re all correct, I’ve followed some links and looked around and by gum, portion sizes have changed alright. Holy hannah, have they changed.

I guess 'cause I’ve always been a big fat fellah, I never noticed. Hmmm.

And yes, the slashed recesses and PE programs bother me, even though I always hated PE with a violent passion. Doesn’t mean I was right and I sure as hell wish I had be a lot less stubborn about it (and a lot of things) now. I was always a very, very stubborn kid, and it cost me a lot, in hindsight.

My point in the OP still stands, in terms of answering the question of “Why do so many people seem to lack something telling them to stop eating?”.

But now I have to think about why portion sizes have gotten bigger. My first thought is it must have been a sort of one-upmanship battle. “Buy ours, it’s a little bigger for the same price!” “Oh yeah, well now ours is EVEN BIGGER than theirs!”. And so on, and so on.

133

Again I suggest you get that book. Part of it was that by making prices cheaper the fast food industry discovered that they could get you to buy more product and that is a major reason for the biggie sizes. You wouldn’t buy fries for example, but by bundling them they could get you to buy more, then by making them bigger and making it seem like you got a bargain you would buy even more. I loaned the book to a friend, so I am only paraphrasing the concept here. I really felt that book was quite enlightening into the reasons this country has weight related issues. If you come away from reading that book and feel your OP is still valid I would be very suprised.

134

Oh, and re : diet.

Mine isn’t as bad as you might think. The problem is that my lifestyle is pretty much as sedentary as you can get without quite being an “invalid”.

Why? A few factors. As noted, when you’re this obese, exercise hurts a lot. But I think lifestyle momentum (or in this case, lifestyle inertia) is a larger factor. Plus, due to health issues, I have very little energy.

I’m not excusing anything, I know perfectly well what I should be doing. But knowing what you should do, and doing it, are two different things. We all have things we should be doing, but don’t.

I just have something pretty big.

135

Well, I don’t know what any of those two word phrases that start with “moral” really mean, which is why I used the scare quotes throughout. I think that every single person is responsible for their lives. That’s it. Not much of a philosophy, but there you go. People make choices every day, and they are responsible for the choices they make.

136

Well, like I said, my OP is valid because it’s not tackling the obesity epidemic at all, really, except in passing. The real question was, basically, why are there people like me at all? Why didn’t evolution select out this kind of madness? The only answer that makes sense is, these tendencies were perfectly fine for most of our history as *homo sapiens sapiens. * Some of us eat like dogs, or more properly, wolves.

A wolf can eat 1/5 of its body weight in one sitting. Imagine eating a 30 pound steak, and you get the idea. This makes sense for the wolf, because they are pack hunters, and get their food in very large packages. They can’t store it and it takes a lot of energy to defend it, so they eat it.

Now imagine how fat your dog would be if he or she could eat whenever they wanted, as much as they wanted.

There ya go.

137

Well, just because we have something doesn’t mean that it’s necessary or helpful. Doesn’t it just mean that it wasn’t selected against? I mean, by that rationale, people who eat only when they’re hungry and then stop should have been selected against, and yet there are people who don’t eat that much as well.

138

True, but remember that these things work over large groups and over looooong periods of time. Natural selection doesn’t remove every possible maladaptation, or every lingering gene that might carry it. It’s also possible that the people of whom you speak have also inherited – or learned – more self control.

139

lose 5 to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back," said Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study. “We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people.”

“We asked what evidence is there that dieting works in the long term, and found that the evidence shows the opposite” Tomiyama said.
I love you guys. Imagine if I made a post here on SD claiming that absinence only education was a miracle cure for HIV and unwanted pregnancy. If people just used willpower to never have sex outside of marriage and to never have sex unless necesssary for pregnancy we could cure HIV, unwanted pregnancy, and every other STD. If only people would ignore 3.8 billion years of evolution and use will power to follow my advice.

Whenever anyone mentioned that the failure rate of my advice was 99% and that aside from a tiny, tiny minority nobody was able to follow it I would claim that instead of my advice being bad, it was because people were too slutty for their own good and weren’t trying hard enough. Then I claim that anyone who disagrees with me does so because they are a slut and are making excuses for themselves. Now Imagine I was the one calling people irrational who disagreed with me.

Its very frustrating to debate this subject as obesity is such a moral panic that you can’t have a level headed discussion.

140

I appreciate the studies. I’ve heard of the weight control registry, but the problem with those is that they are pre selected and not looking at the popluation as a whole. Dieting and exercise does work long term, but only for a very small minority. And we really don’t even know why it works for them. The NWCR has about 5000 members, and in america alone about 200 million have gone on diets at one time or another.

If we can figure out how to get people to lose weight and keep it off that is realistic and workable, great.