So, does anybody ever care that in the 30s, in the US, there was a thing called The Great Depression and therefor people may have been malnourished/underweight? And if we are considering people to be overweight when we are comparing fully fed humans to starving humans, that might be a bad thing? Just me?
Taubes has been screaming the "Carbs Are Bad!" nonsense for years. IIRC he's a big proponent of the idea that insulin causes obesity, which is, as always, putting the cart before the mythical horse. While insulin resistance, and a higher than normal amount of serum insulin, can promote weight gain, insulin resistance itself is not actually caused by weight gain itself. There's a correlation, but so far the only hard link (that I'm aware of) has been between a specific lipid that, when reduced by exercise, can reduce insulin resistance.
One of the warrior cries of the fatphobe pseudoscientists is the idea that "we're fatter now so obviously we're currently doing something bad." This ignores a growing problem of socio-economic imbalances, chemical poisonings (such as the BPA found in the baby bottles many of us were given as a child; BPA is a known hormone disrupter) and other environmental factors, and, as you mention, foolishly encouraged behaviors like weight cycling. Plus, genetics, which is always a big factor, no pun intended.
As part of this, the fatphobe pseudoscientists insist that "you can't change genes in just one generation!" Epigeneticists strongly disagree. I can't find the graphic I have somewhere but basically, it shows a mess of mice all fed the same food in the same amounts. They split the mice in half and for one half they flip a gene that promotes weight gain. The children of that gene-flipped half are far more likely to gain weight eating the same as the children of the non-gene-flipped half.
Another contributing factor to changing body sizes (especially in Americans) that no one mentions is the change in our food. Not enough research has been done - or if it has , the results aren't publicized - on the effects of the introduction of massive amounts of stray addi-
tives into our food products. People consume far more packaged and prepared foods today than
they did 50-plus years ago, and those additives/chemicals can, over time, change the way that
bodies process and metabolize the foods they take in. I would guess - and I'm no scientist, just
trying to look at this from a logical standpoint - that each body reacts differently to those stray
items in food. They likely cause SOME bodies to grow larger while others don't. Like the diet
industry, the food industry wants us to keep buying its products without looking too closely at
the labels & contents and the side effects those contents might produce.
So, does anybody ever care that in the 30s, in the US, there was a thing called The Great Depression and therefor people may have been malnourished/underweight? And if we are considering people to be overweight when we are comparing fully fed humans to starving humans, that might be a bad thing? Just me?
Taubes has been screaming the "Carbs Are Bad!" nonsense for years. IIRC he's a big proponent of the idea that insulin causes obesity, which is, as always, putting the cart before the mythical horse. While insulin resistance, and a higher than normal amount of serum insulin, can promote weight gain, insulin resistance itself is not actually caused by weight gain itself. There's a correlation, but so far the only hard link (that I'm aware of) has been between a specific lipid that, when reduced by exercise, can reduce insulin resistance.
One of the warrior cries of the fatphobe pseudoscientists is the idea that "we're fatter now so obviously we're currently doing something bad." This ignores a growing problem of socio-economic imbalances, chemical poisonings (such as the BPA found in the baby bottles many of us were given as a child; BPA is a known hormone disrupter) and other environmental factors, and, as you mention, foolishly encouraged behaviors like weight cycling. Plus, genetics, which is always a big factor, no pun intended.
As part of this, the fatphobe pseudoscientists insist that "you can't change genes in just one generation!" Epigeneticists strongly disagree. I can't find the graphic I have somewhere but basically, it shows a mess of mice all fed the same food in the same amounts. They split the mice in half and for one half they flip a gene that promotes weight gain. The children of that gene-flipped half are far more likely to gain weight eating the same as the children of the non-gene-flipped half.
Another contributing factor to changing body sizes (especially in Americans) that no one mentions is the change in our food. Not enough research has been done - or if it has , the results aren't publicized - on the effects of the introduction of massive amounts of stray addi-
tives into our food products. People consume far more packaged and prepared foods today than
they did 50-plus years ago, and those additives/chemicals can, over time, change the way that
bodies process and metabolize the foods they take in. I would guess - and I'm no scientist, just
trying to look at this from a logical standpoint - that each body reacts differently to those stray
items in food. They likely cause SOME bodies to grow larger while others don't. Like the diet
industry, the food industry wants us to keep buying its products without looking too closely at
the labels & contents and the side effects those contents might produce.