The ingenuity gap of the obesity epidemic

[7Wannabe5]

jacob said: Curious! I haven't tried telling a guy that he's short and seeing what reaction this gets.

I was once asked out by a man who had clearly stated in his dating profile that he preferred petite women. I responded that I was not petite. He responded with something like "but you appear to be attractive by any standard", so I agreed to meet him. Of course, turned out I had at least 2 inches and 20 lbs on him. It was a bit awkward, so I smiled and said "As you can see, I am not petite." and he responded "Baby, I would climb you like a tree." Almost worked for him.- lol So, based on my experience beyond just this anecdote, the answer to your question would be it would vary. A lot of smaller guys learn to occupy space with their stance.

[jacob]

Ahh ... the stances of the five animal styles of Kung Fu!

The Tiger! ... The Monkey! ... The Dragon! ... The Bureaucrat! ...

[Ego]

Here's an ingenious idea from Michelle Obama.

http://www.gomerblog.com/2015/02/buffet-restaurants/

[7Wannabe5]

lol- Almost believed it, until the part about "over 325 regardless of BMI."

[El Duderino]

I'm all for a very high level of freedom, but too many people push the actual cost of their actions on to others. Go ahead and eat a lot of sugar. Though, you should pay higher taxes (placed on the sugar) and higher health insurance (based on negative health factors caused by the sugar).

This is my biggest problem with a universal healthcare system. People have different levels of caring for themselves, both in what they eat and the activities they engage in, and are thus more or less susceptible to needing healthcare, according to those preferences. Having a flat rate for everybody doesn't make sense to me.

As another, somewhat related issue, there have been news reports lately in the UK about the National Health Service (NHS) passing out e-cigs to people trying to quit smoking. I suppose it started when they began passing out patches and nicotine gum and while I'm not opposed to giving hard drug addicts methadone, it seems like there needs to be a better option than handing out these crutches. I've seen people on e-cigs use them effectively and I've seen them fail as well, main difference being the person's real desire to quit.

Saving weight seems to be the same, with the added option of being able to work it off through burning calories as well as controlling intake.

[GandK]

This is my biggest problem with a universal healthcare system. People have different levels of caring for themselves, both in what they eat and the activities they engage in, and are thus more or less susceptible to needing healthcare, according to those preferences. Having a flat rate for everybody doesn't make sense to me.

We had a discussion on here not long ago about corporations and the way they're beginning to monitor the health of their employees. I forget what the name of that thread was... does anyone remember?

[El Duderino]

If corporations supersede governments, which is already happening on many levels, then perhaps the corporations (e.g. health insurance companies) should probably keep tabs on some stuff so they can provide the most accurate rates. More data for their actuarial tables like number of frappuccinos per week, workout intensity/duration/frequency, and preference for danger sports like heli-ski, ultramarathons, and bull riding. There are ways that situation could go wrong, but things are already unbalanced under the current systems.

[7Wannabe5]

Point. Just add "Don't spend" to the lyric below for me. I mean, how does it even make any sense to use the phrase "man-candy" if you don't like candy? -lol. Caffeine #3. I had a friend/co-worker who was so attractive she actually dated one of the world's most eligible bachelors for a while (after jumping him at a book signing), and as far as I could tell she lived on salad, vodka and lemon drops. Straight-up sugar-fiend does not equal overweight was the point I was trying to make.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o41A91X5pns

[Ego]

Obesity related cognitive decline and epigenetic dysregulation

http://conceptualrevolutions.com/2016/0 ... cs-memory/

In other words, obesity will continue to spiral out of control because the cognitive abilities needed to deal with obesity are damaged by obesity and that damage is passed to offspring.

But there is hope. Humanity might experience a mass starvation event that will fix the methylation problem.

[Chad]

@Ego

That seems a bit of a stretch. We seem to be just now finding out what real nutrition is and developing a diet accordingly. Before we, the US and most developed countries, went from an agrarian with a closer to nutritious diet to an urban industrial existence that slowly had the real food diet destroyed over a 100-150 years. This seems more cultural/socioeconomic.

[Ego]

@Chad, we've known for a long time that obesity is correlated with cognitive decline. What's new in this study is that the obesity related cognitive decline has shown (for rats at least) an epigenetic component which can be passed to offspring. Tinkering with the regulation of gene expression in the brain is a pretty big deal.

We knew that a junk food diet slowly causes a diminished ability to create new memories. For instance, being obese in mid-life doubles the risk of developing dementia in old age. Now imagine a world where kids are starting life with the epigenetic factors of an obese adult. The protein-encoding of their neuronal growth spurts will be out of wack. The variety and complexity of the neurodegenerative diseases will be astounding.

Dementia at thirty? We are already beginning to see just that...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3932340/

[Chad]

@Ego

But, it is it dementia at thirty because of epigentics? Or, is it because the parents force the kids to eat a worse diet their entire lives because of socio/economic issues? They just don't know and can't afford a good diet. I know all my relatives are still stuck on the "fat is always bad" meme from the 80's, which takes a bad diet from the first half of the century and makes it worse by over compensating with really bad carbs (processed carbs).

[Ego]

@Ego

But, it is it dementia at thirty because of epigentics?

Remarkably, however, there is also an increasing list of monogenic ‘chromatin’ disorders defined by adult-onset neurological and neurodegenerative disease. Thus, some cases of hereditary sensory and autonomy neuropathy type 1 (HSAN1) (a rare neurodegenerative condition characterized by various neuropathies and early onset dementia in the 3rd or 4th decade) were linked to mutations in the protein coding sequence of the gene encoding DNA methyltransferase 1 (DNMT1) gene.

In other words, yes.

Edit to add... it just occurred to me that I spent Saturday night reading those two research papers. If I need evidence of my own pathetic-ness, there it is...

[Sclass]

edited to add: I agree that the tobacco industry is similar to the junk food industry, but you're arguing that this problem is an individual problem, right? If so, on an individual level, IMO they aren't as similar.)

I've spent the last few days tracing some sources of certificated shares I own. ( How did i get these shares?) Your comment reminded me of this. there is commonality between big tobacco and big processed food. (I think Kraft is one of the biggest).

https://seenprint.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/kraft.jpg

Edit-I own the shares but I avoid the products. Yuck, who eats this stuff anyway. Everyone I guess.

Chad-thank you for the scientific American article. Really interesting.

[7Wannabe5]

But, how do you reconcile this with the fact that mammalian breast milk is naturally sweet in direct correlation with intelligence of species? Also, the sort of obesity achieved by a breast-fed infant by age 2 or so, is directly correlated with a healthy weight and high IQ in adulthood. My DS27 is 6'3" and a natural ecto/meso like his father (broad shoulders, muscular, but borderline underweight, could make the big money as suit model) and goes about quoting ancient philosophers and statistics about world geography, but he was a total ball of chub as a baby. I remember a neighbor who had recently immigrated from Africa saying to me "Healthy baby, just like Mama." and becoming distressed about the fact that I obviously still hadn't taken off my pregnancy lbs. -lol My DD24 was similarly proportioned as a toddler, and now she is built sort of like Princess Di and received full academic scholarship to elite school.

Also, bi-polar disease is correlated with both high IQ and intense sugar cravings. Sugars and Omega fats can cross the brain barrier. My mother suffers from bi-polar 2, so my sisters and I are all at least mildly cyclothymic and high IQ, and you can not or should not leave the 4 of us alone in a room with a pot of coffee and a bowl of jelly beans, unless you wish to witness conversation conducted at a speed approaching gibberish. Of course, besides intense sugar cravings, the other well documented symptom of cyclothymia is hyper-sexuality (not to be confused with nymphomania) I used to think that mildly manic people crave sugar because it feeds the over-active brain and hormonal system, but it might be that the sugar slows down the brain and makes you more stupid and frigid, or less labile. Dunno. Seems to me that it is a very complex, not yet well understood matter.

[JamesR]

I guess the main ideas to solve this problem are:

1) Bring back home economics class, (or cooking class) and make it mandatory for grades 9 to 12.
2) Phys Ed probably should be mandatory also (for all years).

Any other suggestions in this thread that I missed?

[Ego]

I guess the main ideas to solve this problem are:

1) Bring back home economics class, (or cooking class) and make it mandatory for grades 9 to 12.
2) Phys Ed probably should be mandatory also (for all years).

Any other suggestions in this thread that I missed?

Someone I know has been teaching these classes in Spanish and English. Enlightening experience. Both the kids and their parents know EXACTLY what they should be doing and what they should avoid. They have access to FREE healthy foods. They know how to read labels. They understand why sugar is the devil and how sugar is in supposedly healthy juices. They know why whole grains are optimal and which products sneak in processed grains. In fact, they knew it all coming into the class.

1. They can't not eat the bad stuff.
2. Obesity is outward social proof of a willingness to sacrifice all for the family. It has become evidence of virtuous living.
3. There are no bike racks at the schools. They only know exercise as a chore rather than a pleasure.
4. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is a weird threat. There is something wrong with people who are fit.

[Jean]

I guess the main ideas to solve this problem are:

1) Bring back home economics class, (or cooking class) and make it mandatory for grades 9 to 12.
2) Phys Ed probably should be mandatory also (for all years).

Any other suggestions in this thread that I missed?

Home economics have alway been compulsory in school for one year (around 12yo) and phys ed for every year until the end of high school in switzerland.

https://www.oecd.org/switzerland/Obesit ... ERLAND.pdf

It probably helps.

[Toska2]

Have Phys Ed more educational and less "us vs them"?

I'm not advocating " everybody gets a trophy". I'm more "improving is the goal". Also in the long run, the best athletes are the ones who mitigrate getting hurt.

[jacob]

3. There are no bike racks at the schools. They only know exercise as a chore rather than a pleasure.

+1 for the last sentence.

The PhysEd classes during my time (1982-1991 or so) consisted almost exclusively of "playing" various team sports. We'd do basketball for a month. Then soccer. Then volleyball. Then floorball. And in December, the dreaded folk dancing! Then repeat the entire cycle. Younger grades would also play things like tag or dodgeball. In terms of exceptions, we spent a couple of months doing track and field in the 7th grade as in "here's a spear, here's how you throw it, lets do that five times, record the result, and then move onto the shot put".

There was practically nothing whatever in terms of conditioning exercises. There were no strength workouts. Warm up consisted of running in circles for 5 minutes. There was absolutely no plan whatsoever for getting people in better shape than they already were. You're not going to make a difference with 2x45 weekly minutes of light team sports.---I suspect that the teachers gravitated towards this solution because it was the easiest possible one. Give the kids a ball and just referee the game instead of building up training plans and keeping track of the performance of a wide range of students.

Real sports was always done outside of school. About 1/2 of the kids did that. Most played soccer. Handball was also popular. I was a swimmer. These activities had real programs completely with peaks and periodization cycles and sportsball activities taught real tactics (beyond running around randomly hogging the ball or showboating).

The "sports kids" considered PhysEd to be a complete waste of time. The "soft kids" considered it a chore where "icky sweating" was to be avoided. When we had the annual 5km run, the former group would finish in under half an hour. The latter group would walk all the way stopping to buy candy in the kiosk.

Nobody ever learned much of anything from PhysEd beyond simple facts like how to hit a volleyball or shoot a basketball.

The result for the sedentary group is that there's almost complete ignorance across the board---there has never been any "physical" education. They are physically illiterate. They are not only unaware of what physical exercise should feel like, they are unaware of their own limits because they never pushed them before. Contrast a former athlete with a lifetime couch potato who both want to get into shape. The ex-athlete has been there already once upon a time. They know what they're once capable of; they know what it took; they will have a good idea of how to get there again; they are able to push themselves. In contrast, the sedentary group will think that walking 2 miles in half an hour twice a week means that they are now exercising regularly. There's very little willpower in terms of doing an extra rep or an extra minute. Breathing hard is uncomfortable. And in 95%+ of attempts to get started result in failure.

Now, the approach for HomeEc was similar. Lets cook this meal, now lets cook that meal, ... but in contrast to PhysEd, I think the Dreyfus level 1-2 level of instruction was actually useful here. People did pick up enough cooking skills to follow a recipe later on. Also, in the case that all they ate at home was hot dogs and potato chips, HomeEc would have given them some idea of what real food looked like.

PhysEd should have been/be structured a lot more along the lines of an actual conditioning program (base building) if it is going to make a difference in terms of solving the obesity problem. Students need to have a physical/visceral idea of what being in a good shape feels like.