Maybe it's not food that's making us fat?

7-06-2006 @6:35AM tim said... If you take in more energy than you burn up you will put on weight. Conservation of energy. You cannae change the laws of physics Jim. I really hope that my home, the UK, doesn't get as fat as the US. I can't stand the sight of fat children. Something just comes over me and I want to punch them.
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7-06-2006 @7:09AM laughingrat said... I sure hope you aren't working towards body shape being some kind of moral issue. Because that is the crazy talk that perpetuates the hatred of fat people and leads to the epidemic of eating disorders our society also has right now, and I am sure you would not want to do something like that.

Now on a more practical front: actually, loss of sleep affects weight directly, and not just in the sense that while we're awake we could be eating. In fact, I would also add stress--the stress caused by a constant bombardment of stimulation, such as our silence-phobic, media-obsesses society provides--to a list of direct causes of obesity. Why? Because being under constant stress produces extra cortisol. Cortisol in small amounts is a physical buffer against stress, but in large amounts it actually harms the body. One of the ways it does so is by slowing the metabolism significantly and causing weight gain. No doubt this had use for our primitive ancestors who lived very much on a subsistence diet, but not so much for rich Westerners like you and me.

Chronic lack of sleep is also a stressor and also causes the release of cortisol.

The trouble with media coverage of scientific studies is that it reduces months or even years of research, and the painstakingly-written reports of that research, into a couple of nonsensical soundbites that the mass-media audience neither understands nor considers deeply. I would suspect that there's more to this particular fat research than meets the eye.
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7-06-2006 @7:14AM Hawk said... God forbid there's more to being fat than simply being a slob and eating too much. Oh no, that'd be awful! Fatty McFatFat's fat is his own fat fault only! La la la la can't hear any other explanation.

Sorry. Devil's advocate.
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7-06-2006 @7:34AM Henko said... Why not "fat people mate other fat people". How often does one see couples, or whole families, all of whom are obese. Birds of a feather flock together, don't they? Is it mean-spirited, or simply realistic, to say that obese individuals are not likely bed-partners with "leaner ones".
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7-06-2006 @7:50AM Jenny P said... And how about "fat people mate with other fat people" and collectively teach their children two people's worth of bad eating and exercising habits?

Besides, the whole point of the article was to come up with alternatives, to see what might be out there. They did not deny that the primary cause was taking in more calories than putting out...they were just looking at possibilities for where people may have been unconsciously expending (or not taking in) calories in the past that they aren't now.
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7-06-2006 @8:02AM robin said... Gee, I hate to think that doctors are wrong about sleep apnea and weight gain, as I hate to not trust the medical community. Why slap a fat child? Maybe that anger would be used more appropriately towards the prejudiced, uneducated parents that raised the author of this article and some of the rest of you.
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7-06-2006 @8:31AM Linda said... Before you are so quick to dismiss this scientific journal's suggestions regarding increasingly fat Americans you should consider the valid points made. They also sort of stretched on a few of their comments.
1. Not enough sleep disrupts endocrine cycles and decreases the production of a hormone, leptin, involved in obesity. While hanging out at 2 am, eating Twinkies might make you fat you don't have to be eating anything to disrupt metabolism.
2. Not sure about the sweating issue--it actually requires MORE energy to maintain our nice warm bodies in the cold!
3. Not smoking is a no-brainer although usually this just means a person eats when they would rather have a cigarette.
4. Many modern medications have weight gain as a side effect, due to metabolic disruptions, appetite disruptions, effects on activity, etc.
5. Sorry folks--middle-aged and people and Latinos DO tend to be more plump and they are a growing proportion of the population.
6. Having children later in life? What does this have to do with anything? Anybody looked at the Hollywood 40-something Mommies lately? Or maybe this crosses with point 5. Not fair--two points on one issue!
7. I must agree with one of the comments asking what 'hearty' means. An 'eat, drink and be merry' attitude?? Huh???
8. You have to give them the mating/genetic selection issue. Whatever genetic factors that make people fat are going to tend to make the offspring fatter yet. This is not engraved in granite, but tends to be true of most genetic factors.
9. Whoa--here comes the old 'estrogen in animal feed' issue. I sure wish they would stop that.
10. This is valid but why has it changed with time? Stress and other factors have always affected developing babies. This one is tedious.

But then, maybe we are mostly sitting on our rumps in front of our computers and TVs when we ought to be out sowing our fields and such. We have grown very physically lazy and obsessed with our pleasures. I think I need a Twinkie.

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7-06-2006 @9:31AM Alicat said... Normally I enjoy your content at Slashfood, but I have to say, you come off extremely self righteous and completely turn me off with this article. It doesn't appear that they were insinuating that these were lame excuses for fat people to cling to, to shift the blame of being fat. Rather, to provide answers, which seem to be completely valid, as to why obesity happens.

You say, "when I'm tired, my choices are stupider." Well, you must have been pretty tired when you wrote this.

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7-06-2006 @10:07AM Chrissy said... I think that this article is simply putting excuses forward. It is simply a case of eating less garbage food and more nutritious stuff, exercising more, and yes, maybe catching a few extra z's. But seriously, I bet some of the comments defending these are probably the ones who could stand to lose a few...
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7-06-2006 @11:34AM Jessica said... Just what we need, More excuses to eat more.
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7-06-2006 @12:19PM Alicat said... Way to go on being utterly tacky Chrissy.
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7-06-2006 @12:31PM Armaan said... My first reaction on reading this was to laugh, because the list does seem absurd, but after going through the comments here, and thinking about it for a whole two minutes, it's starting to make more sense. Yes, eating junk food and not exercising contribute to weight gain, but our bodies are incredibly complex machines, and there are likely other factors that contibute to being overweight. Why can't the things listed here not be some of them?
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7-06-2006 @1:39PM Korn said... She means "hardy," not "hearty," or as the cited article says, "Fat people have a better survival rate than skinny people."

I personally liked the bonus eight causes of obesity mentioned in the article, including pornography, Google, Xtreme sports, snowmobiles, and hospital food.
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7-06-2006 @1:48PM rainey said... The thing that's interesting to me is if obesity is a growing (no pun intended) problem and causes 1) pain to those afflicted and 2) outrage to those not ("I can't stand the sight of fat children. Something just comes over me and I want to punch them.), that we wouldn't want to know the whole, if complex, basis for it to better combat it. Let's face it: nobody's going to solve the problem with the "common knowledge" "solutions" that haven't worked for as many generations as any of us can remember.

Shooting down the findings of scientists who deal in hard information is a little like the Bush administration's approach to Global Warming. Is that the way we want to go?
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7-06-2006 @5:28PM kitchenmage said... Really now, Sarah, most of the list seems perfectly reasonable as contibuting factors towards weight gain/retention. For example, "Fat people mating with other fat people creates more fat people" is perfectly logical. If two teutonic blondes are likely to produce a tall(ish), pale(r), blonde kid because of their genetics, why do you disbelieve that two larger folks might produce larger kids? From my memory of your discussions of your genetic heritage, I'd bet that you are expecting certain things when it comes to the appearance of your children (if/when you have some) and would find it most odd if you gave birth to a child who bore no resemblance to you...well, one of those resemblances is overall body size. (duh) Add in metabolism, tendencies toward some diseases, etc. and I have no problem seeing how the genetics work here.

Did any of you nay-sayers go read the article? The bullet points have a bit of explanation with them (like the AC, Linda, wherein they say "...when people are hot, they sweat, which burns calories, and tend to eat less." It's not about staying warm, it's about staying cool.)

Chrissy, I was thinking the opposite: that the comments blowing off anything beyond 'eat less, exercise more' as the sole answer to body size were probably coming from people who were genetically and medically predisposed to thinness and young enough to think that the ability to scarf calories and burn it all off easily is a permanent thing...as opposed to a benefit of youth.

Tim, you're just a jerk for wanting to slap *children* whose looks you don't like. Even more so for saying it in public. Apparently some of the ugly american attitudes have made it over there already; when the obesity arrives, it'll be right at home. *(cha)grin*
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7-06-2006 @6:20PM jeremy kareken said... Could also be that we're aging... we're an older population than we used to be. That's *a* reason.
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7-06-2006 @10:15PM kaitlin said... I hate it when people think that "fat" people just sit around and dont make an effort to eat healthy and exercise. Its NOT that simple for alot of people and perhaps "fat" people are abundant in certain places for a reason. "fat" people can be just as healthy and live LONGER than skinny people. It is a BODY type that is definetely genetic and i hate the Fat phobia and this "Obesity Epidemic" farse in America. Just live your lives , be happy with your SELF and not necessarily yyour body type and live in MODERATION. My great aunt was overweight and she worked in the fields and exercised everyday on the farm and ate good, farm grown meals everyday .....she was a big , healthy woman who lived to be 98...
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7-10-2006 @2:03AM gee said... The whole "obesity epidemic" has gotten so utterly hysterical, it makes me want to get fat just to piss everyone off. Oh, except, according to Chrissy, I'm already fat. Woohoo! That was easy.

I'm so tired of all the reasons and the photos of poor fat people in unfortunate outfits with their heads cut off.

I come to this blog to read about the joys of eating well. If we all ate "well," we'd probably eat less. But anyway, I'd really love to see you leave inflammatory obsessive pop culture food paranoia to CNN. Let's eat and be happy!
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