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private_messaging comments on Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 3: Did the US Government Give Us Absurd Advice About Sugar? - Less Wrong
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Actually, what's up with this fascination with hunters-gatherers and other such exotics? Look at the epidemiology of obesity . The difference is even more dramatic through the time (if you go back 30 years).
Sorry, this recent problem has absolutely nothing to do with dietary changes thousands years in the past (guess what, I just drank some liquid that would make any of those hunter gatherers puke and have a diarrhoea. I can drink this liquid because enough evolution has happened), and everything to do with changes in the past 30 years. Basically same foods, larger amounts, cultural changes (more acceptance of obesity perhaps).
I'm sure there isn't more acceptance of obesity.
Theories I consider more plausible: larger portions, more dieting (rebound effect, including in children and grandchildren of female dieters), higher proportion of simple carbs, prescription drugs which cause weight gain, changes in gut bacteria, less sleep.
I'd think at very least people accept themselves being overweight more when there are other people with that condition.
I agree with the theories except the rebound from dieting, while intuitively sensible, seems empirically dubious - there's been starvation events and/or significant under-eating events (world war 2 related for example), and they didn't seem to rebound like that. Changes in gut bacteria also seem like they should not be relevant. Can't comment on less sleep.
You're guessing.
As far as I can tell, there's more public hatred of fat people than there was forty or fifty years ago-- admittedly there's more public hatred in general.
Worries about being fat are being reported in young children. I don't have a timeline for that, but I don't think it used to be that bad.
As far as I can tell, there being more fat people doesn't lead to more acceptance if practically all of them are blaming themselves for being fat.
So far as rebound from dieting is concerned, you've got a point about starvation events. On the other hand, a lot of people do report gaining about twenty five pounds after each diet, so there may be something new involved.
Recent research is finding that gut bacteria affect how nutrients are absorbed.
It would be hard to measure how the attitudes changed. In general the more people have a condition, the less having that condition makes you stand out, the less does conformity drive you to avoid that condition. Furthermore it would seem to me that "self blame is bad" is a relatively recent idea, as well as blaming everything on metabolic disorders...
Not that those don't play a role. Obviously someone with low levels of certain thyroid hormones will have to ignore hunger more than someone with high levels.
Human digestion is already very efficient... potential gains due to some different bacteria should be insignificant (and would generally be a good thing, i.e. being able to live on less food is good).
Yeah, I dunno. There's definitely something wrong about discontinuity in response to a smoothly changing variable.
edit: an observation, traditionally we'd eat a lot of soups - e.g. borscht, etc. Those are low calorie foods that make you feel full. Now, if you go to a fast food place, or even in a restaurant, there's literally nothing which is low calorie but makes you feel full. Obviously, if you eat the volume of french fries equivalent to the volume of borscht, you're going to be over-eating. West also used to start eating with a soup.
Yes, but I've recently read some comment on some blog stating that in the US, even if you tell people you're on a diet, people will often pressure you into eating high-cal stuff “just this once” (IME the same applies to southern Italy, where there indeed are plenty of big people), whereas in Japan you'd be told “weren't you supposed to be on a diet?” and given stern looks by everyone.
So ISTM that in places like southern Italy (and I'd guess the US too, though I've never been there) “you should be thinner” is used much like belief as attire and not decompartmentalized, or else people are expecting you to achieve that by magic (or maybe by fasting whenever in private or something).
It's the first time I'm trying to lose weight and it's amazing how much energy other people are putting into making it take as much willpower as possible. "Just this once" indeed... For some reason people are also trying to convince me that high calorie foods actually don't contain many calories.
Fat people are also likely to be harassed if they're seen exercising. I think the simplest explanation is that people's beliefs are apt to be incoherent.
A map comparing regions of italy will not tell you much about how italy compares to other countries. A brief search:
http://gamapserver.who.int/mapLibrary/Files/Maps/Global_Obesity_BothSexes_2008.png
... shows that Italy seems to have less obesity than most Western nations.
Italy as a whole does (which is another piece of evidence not exactly supporting Taubes, BTW), but some regions in the south have rates of obesity comparable to that of Germany.
(I know, unfair comparison, if you could cherry-pick one region of Germany it'd probably have even more obesity, yadda yadda.)
(Anyway, unless you want to not be obese as a terminal value rather than because of the health effects, comparing the prevalences of CVDs would be more useful than comparing those of obesity. See also the French paradox, which does support Taubes.)
Exactly. Really, if you look at this map, the less obese regions almost invariably have lower fat/carbs ratio in their common cuisine. Especially the whole of Asia inclusive of Japan.
As of the success of Taubes's diet, this works too . The question which diet is the best for not making you want to over-eat or the easiest to stick with has very little to do with the question of which diet is the most healthy. And the answers to the former question are likely to have more to do with culture, sociology, and psychology, than with metabolism.
In particular, I'd expect the Twinkie diet to work wonders if the main reason you eat a lot is out of boredom or nervousness, rather than actual hunger.
Or simply because carbohydrates are generally more satiating than fats .
The thing about Taubes, is that he's writing for the mainstream audience - i.e. people who have no independent knowledge of the topic besides what Taubes chooses to tell them.
I'd be wary of generalizing results across genetically different populations, though -- for example, a diet with plenty of dairy and wine seems to be fine for Caucasians but I wouldn't recommend it to East Asians.
... am I trippin', or is Israel missing from that map? There's a scrap of color to the south and a dot near Tel Aviv.