Obesity: unknown cause and no known cure.

[Dom]

In a low carb diet, all carbs are the same because they convert to glucose, which is a no-no. And now I am done repeating myself. Your observations are cool for you, but irrelevant on a low carb diet. Case closed.

If you want to keep writing that a Twinkie is the same value as a bowl of broccoli (both seem to be the same "carbs" to you),  because they both turn into glucose eventually, that is up to you.  I don't agree.  But all discussions can come to an end.

But I'm still right.  

IT DEPENDS ON THE DIET YOU WANT TO PURSUE!!!!! NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND ON LOW CARB WASTES THEIR CARBS ON HALF A TWINKIE, AND LOW CARB IS NO REFINED SUGAR EVER TO START WITH. YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT A DIET YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING OF.

[Inkubus]

Is it time for health warnings on food packaging? Like the warnings that you get on cigarette packs or alcohol labels?

Maybe an advertising campaign might do a bit of good.

It could go something like this...

"Instead of ordering food online, take a stroll to the takeaway. At least you'll burn a bit of the fat off on the way."

Instead of peeling off a monopoly sticker and winning a free burger maybe McDonald's could offer something more appropriate?

Obviously this isn't all about takeaways and the apparent convenience of them but it plays a massive part in developed countries.

Or like prescription med commercials, at least ion the states. Half of them seem to be about stating every single thing bad that can happen. I actually think this has been a good thing, and doesn't annoy me to listen to. Food commercials could learn from this.

The marketing arseholes have greatly condensed it: 'Ask your doctor if Valium (or whatever) is right for you'?
 
Straight out of the gate with the disclaimer, "ask your doctor", knowing nicely the punters will pester the life out of the doctor to proscribe the stuff.

[Thethingaboutitis]

Or like prescription med commercials, at least ion the states. Half of them seem to be about stating every single thing bad that can happen. I actually think this has been a good thing, and doesn't annoy me to listen to. Food commercials could learn from this.

The marketing arseholes have greatly condensed it: 'Ask your doctor if Valium (or whatever) is right for you'?
 
Straight out of the gate with the disclaimer, "ask your doctor", knowing nicely the punters will pester the life out of the doctor to proscribe the stuff.

My money is on not getting a straight answer.

[Aractus]

I am not an outlier. There are thousands of people with a low carb lifestyle who can say the same. Plus they can say they reversed type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Low carb is a sustainable diet, provides all your body needs, and the fact that it allows consumption of fat keeps people sated, not ever hungry.

Ah, not entirely correct. The physiology of how your body processes food has changed from its natural birth state, and that's really the key point.

The delusions of the Paleo Diet proponents would agree with what you've said there because it agrees with their strongly-held beliefs, but if you look at living hunter-gather societies today that don't suffer from obesity or from type-2 diabetes what you find is that their man staples of the diet are carbs. This was covered in the obesity conference, and here's the relevant presentation in case you'd like to take a look:


Herman's relevant article in Scientific American is here (full text).

This is the data that the Paleo Diet people don't take into account - they look at their idealised “historical diet” of hunter-gatherers but ignore the fact that hunter-gatherer societies still exist today and you can study their diets from living people instead of conjecturing about societies 20,000+ years in the past. Fruit, honey, they eat very little amounts of nuts or other plant foods that take a lot of extra work (natural foods are much smaller than artificial/domesticated foods and that goes for both plants and for meat). They get a lot of kilojoules from fructose, they don't moderate how much they eat, and they're fine. Most of their protein comes from meat/animal foods. So basically, if your body was in its original natural state from birth you could live in a hunter-gather society with a diet high in carbs and in fructose, and never get fat or type-2 diabetes. The fact that you've found the long-term stable diet for yourself is a low-carb diet speaks to the reality that there has been some form of physiological change between birth and now. We know about leptin resistance, but we still don't know the precise mechanism behind it and why it's irreversible. There's the also the issue of generalisability of low-carb diets for obesity treatment - that is, how many people is it really suitable for? And can we identify why and provide proper screening before suggesting such a diet as a long-term treatment?

The issue that we've had in the past is that diets have been prescribed for obese people that we now know were ineffective, unsuitable, or simply based on assumptions about human physiology that applies to people of normal weight not obese people. That's the issue at hand - don't get me wrong here, it great that you have a long-term treatment solution that works for you, but the evidence that it would be best for everyone in the same starting situation is weak at best.

Funny that, since the low fat high carb diet is being pushed, we have such an outbreak of obesity...  And read your labels. Everything has sugar in it, from baby food to deli meats to ketchup. You think you control your sugar intake? Try again. They take the fat out and replace it with sugar - the single most harmful thing you can eat. Gotta get some flavor from somewhere I suppose.

It isn't just sugar, it's also highly-processed grains such as is in white bread vs wholegrain foods.

They all become glucose and on a low carb diet that sabotages everything. They are good and fine on the diet of anyone who is not trying to save their life by eating low carb. Stop trying to sabotage the diet that can save lots of lives. On that diet, everything that ends up glucose is ruining the effect of the diet. Get that in your head.

If I may interject here, there's really these competing interests that we need to consider:

1. Is prevention of obesity in the first place the goal?
2. Is effective treatment of people already obese the goal?
3. Is a cure to reverse obesity the goal?

The follow-up question to this is: do with take into account quality of life? Maybe it's best to let people become obese and then simply develop treatments to reverse all of the adverse effects that it brings such as the risk of type-2 diabetes, the risk of CVD, and the pregnancy risks and increased infertility. Is a cure worth it if someone has to live with terrible side-effects if they could instead have treatment that addresses the negative effects? Again I'm not suggesting to provide the answer, but it's a discussion that needs to be had - we're not looking at how to prevent hyperopia or myopia because we're happy with the treatments we have... obesity could be the same in the future with better treatment options.

Now on the question of prevention, I think the key issue here is in childhood obesity. I think that's where we should be focusing preventative efforts on, because children don't have an informed choice about their bodies and about their risks. We also know that increased childhood obesity leads to an increase of eating disorders, even among those of a healthy weight. Eating disorders are much harder and more expensive to treat compared to obesity, and they're being developed in children as young as 10 years of age - sometimes even younger.

The other point I would make is that adults who are not obese can perform body weight maintenance quite easily and readily. Not enough is said about this, but at the same time - most people don't have the nutritional literacy to really know how to go about it without resorting to getting incorrect information from the diet industry.

Is it time for health warnings on food packaging? Like the warnings that you get on cigarette packs or alcohol labels?

No it isn't, and that kind of thinking is what's holding back progress. So-called “unhealthy foods” are perfectly fine in moderation - it's only when there's too much of them in a person's diet that they become a problem. As an example - you can have a can of Coke every week and it won't make any difference to your weight, but on the other hand if you drink 2x 2L bottles of Coke every day then it most likely will have an effect. Same thing with white bread vs wholemeal bread - you can still go and have a Kebab or a Hamburger provided to you on white bread, it doesn't matter, what matters is if your staple at home is white bread or wholemeal. The problem is that most bread in Australia that people buy for home consumption is white bread and not wholemeal. Same with rice. People buy white rice and not brown rice. The basic staples of the diet is what matters, and the so-called “unhealthy foods” are not in and of themselves unhealthy. This is covered in a discussion in the conference - what do you mean by “unhealthy”? If someone needs to put on weight, wouldn't weight-promoting foods be healthy for them? Do you mean poor in nutrient content - would that make celery “unhealthy”? Are you going to label red meat as unhealthy and expect everyone to each chicken and fish instead? We're already labelling fat-reduced dairy as if it's a healthier choice than full-fat dairy, and there's no evidence behind that labelling other than on the kilojoule content which we know doesn't make any difference unless it's added kilojoules (e.g. flavoured milk, flavoured yoghurt, etc).

Also the physiology of obese people is distinctly different. Let's play devil's advocate for a moment and agree with Dom that every morbidly obese person needs to eat a low-carb high protein diet for life as treatment for their obesity to 1. lower blood pressure, 2. reduce risk of type-2 diabetes, and 3. lower body fat overtime. People of normal weight can eat high-carb, low-protein diets and they're fine, and lots of people do. So when you're talking about weight-promoting foods, what happens with obesity is that more foods will fall into that category of being weight-promoting whereas for people of a healthy weight they aren't.

And then for children things are different again. For example, low-fat dairy is never recommended for children (anyone under 18) and yet fat-reduced milk is labelled as 5-star and full-far is labelled as 3½ star. So the food labelling we have is highly misleading and entirely unhelpful.

[Thethingaboutitis]

@Aractus
In answer to the first part of your reply..

I could smoke one cigarette a week and it wouldn't have the same effect as me smoking 40 a day. You could drink one glass of wine a week and it wouldn't have the same effect as you drinking 2 bottles a day.

Health warnings are clearly visible on the packaging in both cases.
It's obvious stuff but people still need it to be spelled out for them.

[Aractus]

@Aractus
In answer to the first part of your reply..

I could smoke one cigarette a week and it wouldn't have the same effect as me smoking 40 a day. You could drink one glass of wine a week and it wouldn't have the same effect as you drinking 2 bottles a day.

Health warnings are clearly visible on the packaging in both cases.
It's obvious stuff but people still need it to be spelled out for them.

And as I said I disagree on the fundamental level that there are “unhealthy foods”. Yes I would prefer that everyone buys wholemeal bread and brown rice as I do, but it doesn't make white rice and white bread “junk” or “unhealthy” and eating them as an occasional part of the diet should not pose any problem.

[Thethingaboutitis]

@Aractus
In answer to the first part of your reply..

I could smoke one cigarette a week and it wouldn't have the same effect as me smoking 40 a day. You could drink one glass of wine a week and it wouldn't have the same effect as you drinking 2 bottles a day.

Health warnings are clearly visible on the packaging in both cases.
It's obvious stuff but people still need it to be spelled out for them.

And as I said I disagree on the fundamental level that there are “unhealthy foods”. Yes I would prefer that everyone buys wholemeal bread and brown rice as I do, but it doesn't make white rice and white bread “junk” or “unhealthy” and eating them as an occasional part of the diet should not pose any problem.

What about trans fats that are found in high concentrations in ready meals?

Healthy?

Your blanket statement that there are no unhealthy foods is a nonsense.

A short answer please.

[Dom]

And as I said I disagree on the fundamental level that there are “unhealthy foods”. Yes I would prefer that everyone buys wholemeal bread and brown rice as I do, but it doesn't make white rice and white bread “junk” or “unhealthy” and eating them as an occasional part of the diet should not pose any problem.

What about trans fats that are found in high concentrations in ready meals?

Healthy?

Your blanket statement that there are no unhealthy foods is a nonsense.

A short answer please.

Transfats are bad news.

[Thethingaboutitis]

What about trans fats that are found in high concentrations in ready meals?

Healthy?

Your blanket statement that there are no unhealthy foods is a nonsense.

A short answer please.

Transfats are bad news.

Transfats bad.

Slightly shorter.

[Bucky Ball]

Ah yes.
Yet another subject the amazing A-rats-ass is an expert on.
Is there any end to his talent ?

[Chas]

Or like prescription med commercials, at least ion the states. Half of them seem to be about stating every single thing bad that can happen. I actually think this has been a good thing, and doesn't annoy me to listen to. Food commercials could learn from this.

The marketing arseholes have greatly condensed it: 'Ask your doctor if Valium (or whatever) is right for you'?
 
Straight out of the gate with the disclaimer, "ask your doctor", knowing nicely the punters will pester the life out of the doctor to proscribe the stuff.

I think you mean prescribe.

[Chas]

I am not an outlier. There are thousands of people with a low carb lifestyle who can say the same. Plus they can say they reversed type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Low carb is a sustainable diet, provides all your body needs, and the fact that it allows consumption of fat keeps people sated, not ever hungry.

It works for those who are now afflicted with obesity, but it's a change in life style, and one has to shake all kinds of things the medical community, drug companies, and big food have drummed into us for a couple of decades. 

Funny that, since the low fat high carb diet is being pushed, we have such an outbreak of obesity...  And read your labels. Everything has sugar in it, from baby food to deli meats to ketchup. You think you control your sugar intake? Try again. They take the fat out and replace it with sugar - the single most harmful thing you can eat. Gotta get some flavor from somewhere I suppose.

If you don't stop defining all carbs as the same thing, I'm going to keep harping on the differences.  Twinkies and broccoli are both "carbs" but there are differences.  

Yes, Twinkies taste good.

[Dānu]

[Cavebear]

If you don't stop defining all carbs as the same thing, I'm going to keep harping on the differences.  Twinkies and broccoli are both "carbs" but there are differences.  

Yes, Twinkies taste good.

Don't boil the broccoli to death. "Cook til crisp". And then either sprinkle it with parmesan cheese or some soy sauce.

[Aractus]

What about trans fats that are found in high concentrations in ready meals?

Healthy?

Your blanket statement that there are no unhealthy foods is a nonsense.

A short answer please.

What do you mean by “unhealthy”? Unhealthy for whom, and in what context? As an occasional part of the diet, as a daily staple - as what?

You can live on nothing but bananas for years if you really want to, that doesn't make it a “healthy” choice. Most hunter-gatherer diets will be deficient in at least some micronutrients and usually involves eating high meat or heavily salted preserved meat neither of which is a particularly healthy choice.

For someone that has low-blood cholesterol (specifically low LDL), eating more trans fats will raise their cholesterol level to a healthy amount. Remove those foods and you limit your options in how to raise cholesterol.

You're the one who compared so-called “unhealthy” foods to smoking, and you want a short answer? The short answer is that every cigarette does you damage, but not every potato chip does, not every ready-made-meal high in trans fat does, not every donut does, not every bar of chocolate does, and not every delicious can of Coca Cola does either. People can eat as much “junk food” as they like and in moderation it's fine, that's why it has its own food group in the Food Pyramids.

That blunt approach to labelling foods as “healthy” or “unhealthy” has not worked for the past 50 years to improve health through diet. Nor has it helped to improve nutrition literacy. It's not helpful. A can of Coke isn't a packet of cigarettes, it's fine in moderation. People have very strongly held beliefs about food and nutrition, it forms part of our world-views and having them challenged is something that most people are not comfortable with. The messages in the past have been both counterproductive and dead wrong in terms of science - to the point that people still believe myths that were perpetrated by health authorities 30-40 years ago about fat and cholesterol, and yes “bad foods”. Yes too much trans fats can lead to high blood cholesterol, but note: “too much”. You can also give yourself Vitamin A toxicity if you try hard enough does that make it “bad”? There's lots of adverse effects a person CAN achieve through diet if they try.

There are many things that prove this to be the case. The number of people that take junk multivitamins. People that follow fad diets, which are often extreme. The decreasing rate of breastfeeding in the developed world. There are those in the body-positive movement that see obesity as perfectly normal. Many people won't hear reason, and reason alone doesn't help anyway because the science is counter-intuitive and people tend not to believe things that are counter-intuitive to them. Food is, after all, deeply personal to people. It's also communal. So it's cultural, forms part of people's identity either as an individual, as a family, as a society or as a culture, and religious or spiritual convictions also play a role. There is also competing world-views that people are swayed by as well: the carbon-footprint of foods and/or the ecological impact and/or perceived cruelty towards animals.

If you ask someone that follows a strict Paleo Diet what an “unhealthy” food is they will give you an answer, then ask the same question to someone that follows a strict Vegan diet and they will give you a totally different answer. You're demonising snack foods and occasional foods unnecessarily, nutrition is not a moral issue and the approach you're suggesting will never solve the obesity crisis.

At the end of the day, labelling foods as “good” and “bad” has been tried before, and it didn't work to fix the crisis - so let's draw a line under that and move on.