Anti-obesity campaigns…
…don’t work, because we seem to be getting fatter.
But never fear:
The definition of obesity is set by federal health professionals. Their calculations are controversial, in part, because the rate of premature death is lower among Americans in the “overweight” category than among those who fit into the “normal” weight category.
So, should we be encouraging weight gain? If so, I’ll do my bit:
That is more than just you bit, neo. My calorie scanner puts that cone at just over 1,600 calories (not counting the wafer cone.) Take 5 and call me in the morning from your Rascal.
I’ve been reading and commenting on this blog for several years. Although I frequent many blogs, including some on the Left, this blog has been my favorite. Why? Well, beside the content that that is topical and insightful, Neo is also an exceptional writer in the technical sense of the word. Her style is clear and easily understood, even when the topic covered is complex and may not be amenable to easy understanding. Contrary to the many bloggers who specialize in quick, brief posts, a characteristic of this blog is that the reader will find in-depth articles here — articles that require time-consuming research.
And she has done this day in and day out. This is not easy to do and requires a high level of dedication.
Now, the reason I write this is to urge readers to use the Amazon gadget in the sidebar whenever an Amazon purchase is intended. I frequently buy through Amazon and have a tendency to forget about Neo’s Amazon gadget in the heat of the purchase. Lately, I’ve been trying to do better. It doesn’t cost the user anything and will give a bit of encouragement to her for all her hard work.
I’m still trying to figure out how to tell if a death is premature. George Burns the comedian smoked all his life and died at age 100. Was his death premature, mature or postmature? How do you tell?
Odd difference in death rates is probably an artifact of reporting.
When my father played end for UConn, 39-43, he was supposedly the fastest end in the league. 6;1 1/2″, 185. Under the current regs, he’s overweight.
When I got out of OCS in 69, I was a lean, mean, killing machine, could have whipped a tiger with one hand. Overworked, underfed. 6’2″, 205, run all day. Under current regs, overweight.
So, imo, the increased death rate among “normals” is because the new feds’ tables–designed to gin up yet another crisis demanding yet another government intrusion–include people with eating or metabolic disorders leading to an early death.
All BS.
The substantially over-sized have it over normals in that they are less active, less likely to sustain activity, less likely to get hit by a bus while making like couch-potatoes. So if it’s not just fewer calories that are a danger, it’s activity, read exercise.
Is this how vindication feels?
An interesting writer on obesity that I recently discovered. I just ordered the book advertised on his home page, “Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It,” (through Amazon which led me to post my previous comment).
http://www.garytaubes.com
Although I do not have a weight problem I am interested in nutrition and Taubes has some interesting things to say about nutrition. I want to read the book and get deeper into his thinking.
I’ve read elsewhere that the obesity problem(if there is one) correlates closely with the rise in the use of corn sugar in our food products. Sugar is not just sugar — there are differences in the way our bodies process the different types.
I love ice cream(who doesn’t?) and allow myself an occasional indulgence. My favorite is mint chocolate chip.
When my father played end for UConn, 39-43, he was supposedly the fastest end in the league. 6;1 1/2″, 185. Under the current regs, he’s overweight.
The obesity scales don’t work well for athletes or folks who are into weight training because muscle weighs more than fat. Obesity scales are for doctors and other professionals. The rest of us can trust our eyeballs. If you are fat you look like you are fat.
grackle
Right, about looking fat or not.
Problem is, according to the tables my father and I are/were overweight, which means that we added two counters to the number of obese in this society requiring some kind of government program.
And, we might be mandated to eat our broccoli. (Question asked by SCOTUS as an extension of the mandate in Obamacare.)
Remember, under Obamacare and Obama’s vision of society, what we think, what is true for our individual situation, is irrelevant. He Knows What’s Best for us and we will by God (or Obama) do it if we know what’s good for us.
You may find it interesting to research the changes in weight categories over the last 70 or so years. There are a lot of politics in government weight and fitness classifications.
During the Clinton administration they changed the break points dramatically increasing the number of obese people in the country. Then declared that we had a public health problem because of the obesity figures.
without Judeo christian ethos/ethics…
How can you stop indulgent selfish intolerant people who think they are the epitome of self control, sharing, and tolerating thanks to a socially engineered position of un-backed self confidence and supremacy for copying thoughts which they claim is original?
just asking…
Besides, they are working hard to make the feminist idea of removing kids from all families (and soviet idea) a reality…
which do you want, the quotes from the people defining goals, or the actual articles suggesting the parts piecemeal?
Right, about looking fat or not. Problem is, according to the tables my father and I are/were overweight, which means that we added two counters to the number of obese in this society requiring some kind of government program.
So true. Never let a manufactured crisis go to waste. I think that’s why sharia seems to be so appealing to the Left. Every aspect of existence is tightly controlled by the religion, which is the definition of a totalitarian government. I’m with Geert Wilders on this:
I view Islam not as a religion, but as a dangerous, totalitarian ideology — equal to communism and fascism.
http://tinyurl.com/3hp4kg4
The Nanny State is the natural precursor to the Totalitarian State. Thus the Great Obesity Panic of 2011.
In my case, at 5’10”, at 170 lbs I would be borderline overweight. I’ve been at 170. I’m scrawny at 170. I need to be heavier.
I’ve read elsewhere that the obesity problem(if there is one) correlates closely with the rise in the use of corn sugar in our food products.
Wikipedia suggests to me that there isn’t a huge difference between the sugars – once cane and beet sugar is broken down by the body, the mixture is similar to a corn sugar blend. And honey is essentially the same as corn sugar, as honey may be illegally extended by adding corn sugar and the only way to tell is by searching for the enzymes used in the corn sugar processing.
But I’m neither a chemist or a nutritionist, so I may be overlooking something important. Tho I did find it interesting that some people are sucrose intolerant.
Shoot. Forgot to add that I’m of the opinion that the obesity problem stems from the government’s food pyramid: too many carbs, and not nearly enough protein.
I’ve eased myself into a lower-carb, higher protein diet, and I’m losing weight and feeling good. I’m getting better sleep, too. I’d lose more weight more quickly if I stopped eating bread and drinking booze.
On the other hand, if those are my worst vices, that’s not so bad… 😉
How ridiculous it all is. (BTW, grackle, I love mint chocolate chip, too – my favorite!)
A person can be overfat without being overweight. I won’t ever be overweight, but my body composition definitely has changed with age. I weigh the same as I did 25 years ago, but then I was 16% body fat, which is low for a female, and now I am probably at least 28 – 30%.
One quick way to tell if you are overfat – stand in front of a mirror sans clothing and jump up and down. You’ll know right away, believe me!
A bit more reminiscence:
I was commissioned out of Infantry OCS Dec 9,69. I had a three-week leave. I visited my friends, all of whom were home for Christmas, either from college or the service. Their parents had been through WW II one way or another. Every time I visited somebody’s home, mom would look at me, tell me I looked thin and should have another piece of whatever Christmas goody was around. Dad would fix me another double of the good stuff.
Despite this 30-day nutritional debauch, I got to jump school, the fearsome mankiller, on Dec 30, and found it a joke.
And the bastards have the nerve to consider me–before all my fun–overweight.
Nope. It’s a scam.
and the volk will exercise every day, and do so before work en masse..
we are about to relive the worst ideas of pyongyang, and romania..
i guess they will try to get academic volk to run farms… hey… didnt they jsut get gay guys to be farmers on a show?
remember, you force your pets to exercise…
CHINA
msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/z_Personal/Cahill/ChinaExercise.hlarge.jpg
Imperial Japan
ejmas.com/jalt/fascism/Massexercises1937.jpg
Pyongyan (mass games)
http://www.koryogroup.com/photos/massgames/p70-6.gif
AMA Journal suggests government take custody of obese children
jama.ama-assn.org/content/306/2/206.short
all scientific socialist regimes use medicine as a weapon of control of the people… but why would people opposing such stuff care to read about it, learn about it, and get to know it and work out solutions against it?
thats silly when we can just sit around, make up stuff, and just watch it all happen (while saying we hope that all the others siting around makiing up stuff and enjoying the same spectator sport, will stop looking at them sitting aroud and stop saying the same thing, and so on.. )
beijing
latimesphoto.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/la-0623-pin009.jpg
and you have to love this one:
“It’s time to reclaim mass exercise and mass dancing from totalitariasm.”
north korea…
cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0a2BbLCacW9HX/610x.jpg
CZECH REPUBLIC – CIRCA 1920
sechtl-vosecek.ucw.cz/cml/desky/deska2353.jpg
Even the scape goats had to exercise
(but given food was rationed, what is the outcome?)
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Jewish_Children_in_Nazi_Germany_Exercise_Class.jpg
SOCIAL ENGINEERING IS ANTITHETICAL TO SELF DETERMINATION…
so we were not liberated, a state we were already in, we were subjugated, a state we would not enter unless it was ‘liberating”…
just think of all the young women who are a prisoner of their own minds, ideas, pc thinking, false advice, and all that..
a prison in the mind…
‘elevated dogma into a prison of the mind’;
The Road to Democracy in South Africa: 1960-1970
The Suckers/The Herd
Highly sociable.
Non-argumentative.
Avoid conflict.
Compliant.
Good company.
Empathic.
Feminine.
Cooperative.
Agreeable.
Consensual.
Obsessed with friendship and peer group status.
Appearance orientated.
Fashion conscious.
Want to be loved.
Guided by group think.
Little individuality.
Anxious.
Need approval of peer group.
but the person who pretends to respect them and lvoe them and do things for them. ahs an army of marxs (not marxists)…
and our policies make a maximum number of them.
almost as if someone was taking the social sciences, and were using them to create the ends in the population that favor them irregardless of the damage it causes to the cattle..
and this is the kind of FALSE mindset…
it can only be had if one is ignorant of the actuality..
theaggie.org/article/debtors-prison-of-the-mind-pt-3
so i guess she knows nothing of Ribbentrop
knows nothing of the breaking of peace treaties to the baltics, yalta, kruschev we will bury you, and tons and tons of things… including taking over the camps exterminating jews after FDR signed them over to stalin… and so on. never read George Kennan either i guess.
of course, if no one learns what it is, how it works, the history of it, how does one expect to correct such revisionism and prevent the happy adoptio of all the wonderful things that those evil western people just wouldnt let others have. (like cannibalism due to starvation)
note that it was feminism and sexual revolution that changed all this… after all, mom and dad working had no time to see waht crap they are poring into the heads of the kids… and now 40 years later THIS is what the women have wrought (remember they said they were making a communist government from the start, just no one believes them at their word. no one believed hitler and his mein kampf either..
here are some sentence excerpts…
so in a world where medicin and capitalism raised the average age from 25… to 75… we are afraid of a better world..
she continues… (dont you love the influence of womens studies. that teach that soviet comunism was and is the only thing to liberate women from being women)
do realize you have a free person believing they are already in a totalitarian state..
so may i ask… what will they think when they ACTUALLY try one on?
oh..
and just so we know where this idea of taking children away comes from
“In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them” — Dr. Mary Jo Bane, feminist and assistant professor of education at Welleslry College and associate director of the school’s Center for Research on Woman
“No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” — Interview with Simone de Beauvoir, “Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma,” Saturday Review, June 14, 1975, p.18
“It takes a village to raise a child.” — Hillary Clinton
“Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the Women’s Movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.” — Sheila Cronan, “Marriage,” in Koedt, Levine, and Rapone, eds., Radical Feminism, p. 219.
“How will the family unit be destroyed? … the demand alone will throw the whole ideology of the family into question, so that women can begin establishing a community of work with each other and we can fight collectively. Women will feel freer to leave their husbands and become economically independent, either through a job or welfare.” — From Female Liberation by Roxanne Dunbar
“The institution [of marriage] consistently proves itself unsatisfactory–even rotten…. The family is…directly connected to–is even the cause of–the ills of the larger society.” — Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Morrow, 1970), p. 254.
“All patriarchists exalt the home and family as sacred, demanding it remain inviolate from prying eyes. Men want privacy for their violations of women… All women learn in childhood that women as a sex are men’s prey.” — Marilyn French
“…No woman should have to deny herself any opportunities because of her special responsibilities to her children. … Families will be finally destroyed only when a revolutionary social and economic organization permits people’s needs for love and security to be met in ways that do not impose divisions of labor, or any external roles, at all.” — Functions of the Family, Linda Gordon, WOMEN: A Journal of Liberation, Fall, 1969
“Being a housewife is an illegitimate profession… The choice to serve and be protected and plan towards being a family-maker is a choice that shouldn’t be. The heart of radical feminism is to change that” — Vivian Gornick, feminist author, University of Illinois, “The Daily Illini,” April 25, 1981
“[W]omen, like men, should not have to bear children…. The destruction of the biological family, never envisioned by Freud, will allow the emergence of new women and men, different from any people who have previously existed.” — Alison Jaggar, Political Philosophies of Women’s Liberation: Feminism and Philosophy, (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co. 1977)
“Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism.” — Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, (First Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 10
“The care of children ..is infinitely better left to the best trained practitioners of both sexes who have chosen it as a vocation…[This] would further undermine family structure while contributing to the freedom of women.” — Kate Millet, Sexual Politics, 178-179
so now that moving women into industry to tax their labor for the collective didnt get them to totally abandon their children..
giving them bad advice, redisributing their wealth, removing he social limits of self control, and so on and on, didnt get them to do so.
but they did get the law to allow for children to be taken from parents easy… and to do so without having any punishment for it… (as the poor civil servant gets thrown under the bus)..
so now, we have and are using social science, to justify and get even the AMA to say.. hey.. lets take the kids from parents.
and the fact that no one sees that its policy from 1850.. applied in a socialist revolution of libration without telling them what they are making..
read here as a woman tries to shame feminist emasculated men to protect jewish women.. but most of those quotes above are from jewish women helping to make policy (or did we miss that they are professors, and advisors to presidents, and such?)
The Jews in the Basement
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/the_jews_in_the_basement.html
funny… after emasculatring the men, she is now complaining that they are not protecting the women.
why dont the women do it?
why would the men rescue the same women who kicked them out, and so on? the minute they save em, then what? its back to the same game? and how many young men are realizing that joining the cause of islam is a way to have a family?
sorry… the men dont like the idea of being shamed out of the family at the missiv eof those women above… then being shamed from doing anything about it, and letting them affirmative action everywhere to the detriment of that group she wants to stand up..
and she cant see that for them to stand up they would then be called oppressors of the other people she wants them to stand up to!
ie.. they cant.. the arguments put in place to emasculate them that succeeded, wont let them act, nor do they want to… they get nothing for it.
but its clear where this idea is coming from
its a crisis to move the people to accept the changes laid out by communists through feminism since those quotes were made and the peiople tauight those women that made them!
I blame Twiggy. Before she came along, it was expected that women would have boobs, a waist , and hips, but Twiggy made women think they should look like 7-year-old boys. Pretty soon you had to try to be the same or you couldn’t buy clothes that fit. People stopped eating normally, tried all sorts of diets, and lost their sense of being full. At around the same time, the fast food chains and frozen meals started to become popular. The vegies that formed part of the old-fashioned home-cooked meal disappeared, only to be replaced by salads dripping with fatty dressings. Then came all the FDA recommendations and the diet gurus. Who knows what kind of effect these things had on our metabolisms. I don’t trust any of the experts. I am sure not skinny, but I don’t want to spend half my like counting calories and carbs. I’d rather read Neo.
When are the experts going to start criticizing women who watch The View. That sems to be far more dangerous to brain health than a great looking ice cream cone.
The Twiggy phenomenon was probably what precipitated the anorexic/bulimic plague of the 1970’s and onward. The high fashion models needed to bewere slim, but they still looked like healthy women. (Remember Suzy Parker and her sister Dorian Leigh?) Movie stars from the early days pre-1970’s were trim, curvy, and sometimes even a little plump. Check out the Esther Williams movies. Cellulite everywhere. Now a movie star has to be thin, muscular, endowed (naturally or surgically), as well as pretty. No wonder modern girls give up good nutrition. Pass me the chips, please.
While I’m not a nutritionist, I am a chemist, and doubt the assertions made against high fructose corn syrup. After all, sucrose is half fructose (the other half being glucose). (I’m aware that fructose uptake is not regulated by insulin, the keystone of the assertion against fructose.)
Glancing at Taubes’s website (and just the title of his books) makes me suspect that he is the nutritional equivalent of young Deepak Chopra, i.e., a BS artist.
“Why We Get Fat” has (to me) more than a whiff of providing the obese with an excuse, a la Kevin Trudeau’s repeated refrain, “It ain’t your fault!” Yeah it is.
So I’m pretty skeptical.
I’ve read elsewhere that the obesity problem(if there is one) correlates closely with the rise in the use of corn sugar in our food products.
The stronger correlation is probably with sitting on our asses a lot more than people used to.
Consistent with my nom de net, I think that the obesity problem comes simply from overeating and underexercising.
Want to lose weight? Eat less, exercise more.
That’ll be $24.95. I’ll eat (?) the shipping and handling costs.
Not that we don’t know this, but….
You get fat by eating more than you need and the excess is stored against a rainy day. You get thin by eating less than you need and going into the fat reserves.
Eating less than you need sets up all kinds of messages from the body that you really need to eat. Cannibalizing the fat stores doesn’t satisfy. It’s like an alcoholic. Always wanting it. Always fighting it.
From the Amazon blurb:
If the USDA dietary guidelines–recommending that highly caloric grains and carbohydrates comprise 45 to 65 percent of daily caloric intake–are so healthy, why, he asks, has obesity among Americans been on the upswing? Why has this same diet, endorsed by the American Heart Association, not managed to reduce the incidence of heart disease? And, finally, he asks why mainstream health experts continue to promote the notably unscientific notion of “calories in/calories out” as the single focus of weight management?
Now my antennae are twitching uncontrollably. To answer the questions posed above, obesity is on the upswing because people – even kids – sit on their butts all the time.
The incidence of heart disease has not declined because the population is ageing. (Cancer alarmists also please note.)
“Calories in/calories out” is “notably unscientific?” Whoa, easy, antennae. That’s basic thermodynamics. These folks have heard of gluconeogenesis, right? (In the presence of a carbohydrate-deficient diet, the metabolism can degrade proteins into glucose, which is (IIRC) the only fuel that the brain can use.)
The very fact that Taubes is being distinguished from “mainstream” health experts is troubling. Not to say that the consensus can’t be wrong, but the totality of circumstances militates against Taubes, methinks.
My zeroth order take (without having performed detailed review, and hence subject to revision or rejection): BS artist.
If obesity is merely a matter of eating too much and exercising too little, then why does the reverse (calorie-restricted dieting) fail over 95% of the time, and why has the proportion of gluttonous, lazy people suddenly increased over the last two or three decades? And why, indeed, are there more lazy, greedy babies? (The rate of “obesity” in infants has skyrocketed.)
If obesity is merely a matter of eating too much and exercising too little, then why does the reverse (calorie-restricted dieting) fail over 95% of the time,
Dieting fails because people fall off the diet, obviously. It’s hard to change one’s habits fundamentally, and all too easy to fall back into old habits, i.e., the ones that led to obesity in the first place.
Every gym rat knows that gyms are packed for the first two weeks of January. After that, things settle back down to normal. Why do you suppose that is?
…why has the proportion of gluttonous, lazy people suddenly increased over the last two or three decades?
You mean back in the pre-video game era? And back when people did stuff, instead of watching others do stuff? Gee, I can’t imagine.
Seriously, because it’s easier to be gluttonous and lazy now, and more importantly, more socially acceptable. Thirty years ago the obese could confidently look forward to disapprobation, whether spoken or not. Back then, overweight people were “fat,” and received no sympathy. Now they’re characterized as “big,” “plus-sized,” or by some other euphemism, and accommodations made for them. Result? More of them. Surprised? I’m not.
(Note also that historically obesity has been “in” before; late Victorians took it as a sign of prosperity, and therefore a sign of God’s favor.)
Look at a completely unrelated phenomenon: illegitimacy. Forty years ago, illegitimacy was streng verboten. It happened, but was very much frowned upon. Today, in the post-Murphy Brown era, it’s chic. Hollywood starlets drop illegitimate babies as fashion accessories. Maybe fructose causes bastardy too.
Bottom line: it’s not any mystical change in the food supply, or the phases of the moon, or even global warming. It’s a change in lifestyle and culture. Fat people eat too much, and exercise too little. It’s that simple. Think there are fat Marines? Think again.
There are few fat Marines. But there are a good many who would qualify as overweight.
The reason for the increase in officially recognized is partly–perhaps large partly–due to the ratcheting down of the BMI which is deemed acceptable.
That said, I ran into a guy who coached sixth-grade football. Said he had some kids show up who could not, literally could not, run fifty yards. Apparently, when they hit eleven, Dad snatches them out of the computer chair and tries to make them a jock.
Obesity to a progressive has to be scrutinised in the same way a 90 degree day is now really 104 and a breezy 30 degree day is actually 17.
So in people’s weight, you have to determine political affiliation and any improper leisure time activities to get to the core obesity figure which is surely more than just the sum of mass.
Glancing at Taubes’s website (and just the title of his books) makes me suspect that he is the nutritional equivalent of young Deepak Chopra, i.e., a BS artist.
I’m a natural skeptic myself. For instance, I agree with the commentor’s assessment of Chopra. BTW, a really good put-down of Chopra can be found on this YouTube offering, which is only a few seconds long:
http://tinyurl.com/3vcxnrp
The person on Chopra’s left, who seems to a religious person, finds it funny but the blonde on Chopra’s right not so much. Must have been a fellow New Age-er. Chopra himself has the stunned look of someone pompous who has just realized they have been kicked in the butt and that there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.
Another commentor, commenting on an Amazon blurb of a Gary Taubes book:
The incidence of heart disease has not declined because the population is aging. (Cancer alarmists also please note.)
I should think that a significant variable such as age would be controlled and accounted for by any typical analysis of heart disease and/or cancer incidence in a given population. It’s been my experience that researchers are usually careful about the obvious.
The commentor:
“Calories in/calories out” is “notably unscientific?” Whoa, easy, antennae. That’s basic thermodynamics. These folks have heard of gluconeogenesis, right? (In the presence of a carbohydrate-deficient diet, the metabolism can degrade proteins into glucose, which is (IIRC) the only fuel that the brain can use.)
It seems the commentor in the above quote would have us assume that the commentor knows what the consensus of scientific opinion is on what constitutes a diet that is deficient in carbohydrates. And has compared that opinion to Taubes’s opinion on the subject. Somehow I doubt that.
And there’s this from the Amazon blurb:
… the notably unscientific notion of “calories in/calories out” as the single focus of weight management …
Obviously Taubes believes that caloric intake does have a role to play but that caloric intake alone should perhaps not be the “single focus” of weight management. In other words, other factors should also be explored. Seems pretty reasonable to me. Scientific, even.
Furthermore, it should be noted that one of Taubes’s books is titled, “Good Calories, Bad Calories.” To me that fact strongly implies that Taubes has nothing against caloric intake per se, but the commentor strongly insinuates otherwise.
Rather than rely on my “antennae,” and a few sentences in the Amazon blurb I’m going to explore Taubes’s book and see what he has to say. The book I ordered is actually a condensation of the longer, more scholarly work, “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” that was published in 2007. I do a lot of reading but I did not relish adding a book of close to 700 pages to my load. The smaller book will suffice.
The commentor: The very fact that Taubes is being distinguished from “mainstream” health experts is troubling …
Then I guess we should all pay more heed to the “mainstream” media. Right?
And since global warming is firmly embedded in today’s “mainstream” science I suppose we should also take anthropological global warming for granted.
The history of science informs us that there has been a continuous stream of so-called “mainstream” beliefs that have had to be constantly amended or even done away with altogether. Phrenology was once considered “mainstream” science. These days it’s ridiculed, along with the scientists that practiced it.
To sum up, the fact that anything is considered “mainstream” doesn’t impress me very much. But that’s just me.
Taubes claims his observations are based on data gathered and analyzed from accepted research in the field. He is a respected, award-winning science journalist and possesses a good educational background. He has been employed by some prestigious institutions. I first stumbled across Taubes through an interview published on the internet. I found it interesting. I looked for and found other interviews. Below are links to a couple of those interviews. I believe they are adequate for the forming of a preliminary assessment.
http://tinyurl.com/zynrm
http://tinyurl.com/44vbvv9
The commentor: My zeroth order take (without having performed detailed review, and hence subject to revision or rejection): BS artist.
Perhaps Taubes is a flimflam artist, perhaps not. I’m no stranger to statistics and know a bit about research methodology. I intend to read the book and then look up any criticism of it to be found on the internet.
You’d think, wouldn’t you? But recall the study that concluded that drinkers tend to be more healthy (this was good news for me!). It later turned out that they’d neglected to take into account an obvious consideration: that many of the seriously ill in their sample did not — could not – drink for medical reasons, and that skewed their results. Oops. Can’t run a tab in intensive care, it seems.
You’re quite right to doubt that!
I’d define carbohydrate deficiency operationally as that condition in which metabolism begins to conduct gluconeogenesis, i.e., when the physiological mechanism kicks in to generate carbohydrates from proteins to avoid hypoglycemia. IIRC, gluconeogenesis doesn’t occur normally, because (again IIRC), it’s endergonic (costs more energy than it provides), but takes place because glucose is absolutely required (for, e.g., the brain). It’s a desperation move by the body, the physiological equivalent of going to a pawn shop.
So it’s nothing to do with scientific consensus re diet. If someone goes into ketosis, his diet is carbohydrate deficient, by definition.
No comment necessary.
Just like Deepak.
Bottom line: You may be right, Taubes may be wonderful. But I’d keep a weather eye out for the adverse conclusion.
Me earlier: I should think that a significant variable such as age would be controlled and accounted for by any typical analysis of heart disease and/or cancer incidence in a given population. It’s been my experience that researchers are usually careful about the obvious.
The commentor: You’d think, wouldn’t you? But recall the study that concluded … [etc., etc.]
Well, no, I don’t recall that study and since there is no link attending the commentor’s assertion we are left with no way to assess the validity of the comment for ourselves.
The commentor: I’d define carbohydrate deficiency operationally as that condition in which metabolism begins to conduct gluconeogenesis … IIRC … doesn’t occur normally, because … it’s endergonic … but takes place because glucose is required … It’s a desperation move by the body, the physiological equivalent of going to a pawn shop. So it’s nothing to do with scientific consensus re diet. If someone goes into ketosis, his diet is carbohydrate deficient, by definition.
If the scientific terminology that is thrown at us by the commentor, i.e., “gluconeogenesis, IIRC, ketosis, endergonic,” etc., has “nothing to do with scientific consensus re diet,” which was what I thought was one of the subjects of the discussion, what’s the commentor’s point with this blizzard of jargon? Is the commentor attempting to claim that a diet low in carbohydrates is ipso facto inimical to health? If so, I wish the commentor would plainly state his position and perhaps provide a link or two to back it up. As it is we are left scratching our heads and wondering just what point the commentor is trying to convey.
Me earlier: He is a respected, award-winning science journalist …
The commentor: No comment necessary.
Pardon me, but I think that if someone is quoted that a comment is definitely necessary.
Me earlier: … and possesses a good educational background. He has been employed by some prestigious institutions.
The commentor: Just like Deepak. Bottom line: You may be right, Taubes may be wonderful. But I’d keep a weather eye out for the adverse conclusion.
Here we have a coupling of hyperbole with a straw man. I’ve never stated that I consider Taubes as “wonderful,” or terrible, for that matter. Or that I would neglect to keep “a weather eye out for the adverse conclusion.” Quite the opposite.
I consider employment history and educational background as only a couple of factors that might be involved when trying to assess someone’s viewpoint. It goes without saying that some of the worst charlatans may indeed possess a fine educational background and/or an impressive job history, Obama being a prime example. Yet these items are information I would want to know, especially in the preliminary stages of an appraisal.
Here is another potential factor influencing metabolism and obesity:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/abs/nature05414.html
This is a very new research subject, so no conclusions can be drawn, but it seems plausible that gut bacteria may affect metabolism.
I find it interesting that no one ever mentions Overeaters Anonymous when they talk about compulsive overeating (hardcore).
It’s free; it’s based on the AA recovery model; it’s run by the members (no nannies or experts), and it works for people who can’t get a handle on the food thing any other way. My sister was comfortably free of her bulimia in OA for 28 years. Key word: comfortably. Not white-knuckling it.
Just putting it out there.