Refined sugar is generally not good, and certainly whole food sources of carbs are much more beneficial than simple sugars - however, sugar is not nearly as much of a demon as popular health influencers make it out to be. Importantly, it also needs to be kept in mind that the "standard american diet" (sad) or standard western diet is one that's high in animal products, fat (particularly saturated fat), refined carbs; while being low in whole fruits, vegetables, and fiber and phytonutrients in general.
Walter Kempers rice diet is worth learning about. It was a terrible diet - patients could basically only eat white rice, sugar, and fruit. But despite being an absurdly high sugar and high carb diet, a lot of patients saw dramatic improvements in their health, particularly when it came to things like obesity and type 2 diabetes reversal.
Well, thank you for your reasonable response. Have you seen Parks and Rec though? Because your response kind of sounds like it's continuing the joke...
Lol. The funny thing is they are kind of technically right. All refined sugars have some harmful effects like blood sugar spikes and inflammation, but corn syrup only has a slightly higher ratio of fructose to glucose as table sugar does. In small, irregular doses it's fine to consume. And for athletes it can even be beneficial since refined carbs can replenish glycogen stores rapidly.
Heads up for other confused readers, that subheading…
“According to new research, skipping breakfast or excessive screen time are risk factors for developing obesity…”
Is egregiously cut out of context, I am guessing by the publishing site. In context, that quote is meant to hilight the wide variety of risk factors for obesity, not to suggest that those are the most common or significant.
I wish there was a way to reach out to correct this error but I couldn’t find one.
Interesting that we've made progress on world hunger to the extent that 1 in 5 kids is now overfed, I swear when i grew up we were told child hunger was ubiquitous in the majority of the world's population
Obesity affects ∼20% of U.S. youth, with severe obesity (body mass index [BMI] ≥120th of the 95th percentile and/or ≥35 kg/m2) at record high prevalence.
Oops this source only counted obesity and not overweight as the original post does. It’s actually ~33%; you were correct.
Sometimes it works the other way. We cannot get our teenage daughter to eat anything but junk food half the time and yet she's far thinner than either of us were as teenagers. Neither of us can understand it.
You can be thin eating any type of food. It’s generally just far easier to over-consume junk food, but if she’s not eating too much it won’t inherently lead to weight gain
As a teen I would out eat, in physical quantity, any 2 full grown adults and not gain weight, I was 5'11" @ 125lbs by 16. I could eat several plates of whatever was in front of me, at that time my parents made food, not prepackaged processed crap. Into my 20s I'd sit down and empty a tub of ice cream, not one of them tiny ben & jerrys containers. No weight gain until I hit 28 doing a physical job and went up to 180 lbs of muscle, now I'm 150 ish and can still eat what I want when I want, tho normally I eat to live not live to eat. Calories-in-calories-out, like BMI, is only a part of the whole picture with so many unseen things affecting it, like medicines. And no, being skinny was not an easy ride.
It is most definitely not an easy ride. I have had complete stranger come up to me in the street and lecture me about being thin. I wasn't even underweight. I was normal for my height. Happened recently and I'm way heavier than I used to be and people STILL do it.
I assure you that it’s just a matter of your perception. Every study ever performed reveals people have a notoriously bad internal concept of the quantity of their intake, frequently being off by more than double. The problem is even further exacerbated when trying to estimate someone else’s intake
Could be something she does is burning energy and you haven't figured out what.
I used to wonder why I never gained weight despite eating twice what other people did...I never thought to factor in being extremely active because it was normal for me. I didn't think brutal martial arts classes or 5k runs counted as being 'active'. I thought it was normal.
Granted I wasn't underweight and didn't need to gain but I really wanted to look like Zarya from Overwatch
Western capitalists are dominant globally. They enjoyed a multi decade head start. Yes, all capitalists are bad but western capitalists have been the most destructive.
China is authoritarian capitalism with communism for their under classes. They are the worlds 2nd largest economy. Their capitalist practices are just as, if not more reckless than Americas. Just because they dress it up different doesn’t mean they aren’t capitalists. They have the 2nd most billionaires in the world. So sick of everyone acting like evil begins and ends with the West because they live there and don’t get exposed to other news enough. The whole world is fucked, it’s not just “the west.”
Nobody is denying how destructive capitalism is as a whole but only a very dishonest person would deny that it was western capitalists who pushed their diseased way of being onto the rest of the world and not the reverse. The Chinese and Indians are not doing anything that western corporations have not spent the past several hundred years doing.
It really wasn't a "choice". Western capitalist interests have spent the past seven decades trying to bully the rest of the world into falling in line with their nefarious aims. And last I checked KFC, McDonald's, Burger King, Dominos' Pizza, Pizza Hut, Kelloggs, et al. were all western interests. I see them in every country I go to, they are a large part of the reason for the global obesity crisis. Last I checked none of them are known for selling traditional Vietnamese, Kenyan or Mongolian cuisine.
Sure. That's worked out great for Cuba and countless others who have their elected leaders assassinated by Western powers but please tell me more about this supposed "choice"...
I can get behind the logic of more screen time probably meaning less physical activity. But someone needs to explain to me how eating less would ever lead to weight gain. Especially when your typical breakfast junk is just as unhealthy as snacking could ever be.
I know that if I skip a meal, I can get really hungry later. That or I start snacking on crap. So skipping a meal could potentially lead to weight gain because you end up eating more than if you didn't skip the meal.
I’m not sure exactly how it works tbh! But this was also one of the findings of the National Weight Control Registry when studying people who successfully lost weight and kept it off.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
Some more tidbits:
98% of Registry participants report that they modified their food intake in some way to lose weight.
94% increased their physical activity, with the most frequently reported form of activity being walking.
If I had to speculate, my guess is that having breakfast results in a better workout. And then a better workout makes you more likely to comply with your meal plan, which then results in better long term weight results
your body adjusts to fasting by increasing hunger hormones and sensitivity to them. This can lead to overconsuming food when its available.
additionally roads and traffic have also reduced effective social and play areas even as vehicles become more dangerous to pedestrians.
Its possible even that the evolutionary adaptation to cars is that low energy kids have less risk of injury/death while more high energy kids get hit by cars, possibly selecting for less active kids generation to generation (notably it may also be selecting for taller heights)
I'm interested in the idea of selection adaptation and motorised vehicles, however I think selective adaptation takes much much much longer than motorised vehicles have been with us so far. We're talking hundreds of years for selective adaptation to take affairs.
I could be wrong about that though.
The more likely adaptation reason currently is that we like over eating. Food used to be scarce, and when it was available you ate as much as you could or you died. The survivors of that scenario are the ones that made us, and as such we love eating lots when it's there.
I think our fascination with sweet foods makes sense from this perspective also. Our ancestors exposure to sweet foods were mostly fruit. Fruit would have improved their immune system significantly. Unfortunately we've since began mass producing sugar which doesn't offer the same benefits, but our bodies are still set up to love that sweet taste.
car accidents are one of the largest causes of death of people below the age of 35 in the US if I recall. This means its likely one of the largest selection factors for people at or below reproductive age.
i absolutely hate that this correct answer gets any downvotes.
so much anti-intellectualism on the internet, so much surface level “BuT CaLoRiEs iN CalOriEs OuT” combined with outright denial and doubt of empirical evidence.
humans are a mess. yes, sometimes skipping morning meals can have an effect on the rest of your day and you eat more later. why are we so quick to doubt that?
Yea i can absolutely see that. Though it's also understandable to doubt it because personally it just doesn't apply - which I think is largely because I don't changr my portion sizes, and I'm probably not the only one. I make food and eat all of it, and I usually eat 2 meals a day + sometimes breakfast. I've found that delaying food intake for as long as possible leads to me eating less overall and losing weight.
In my case, eating breakfast or not is more of a result of how much I ate the previous day.
Here you encounter the difference between personal anecdote and statistical averages in risk factors :)
Risk factors don’t mean you, personally are doing something wrong, risk factors just help identify patterns that inform action in health care where it is needed
General trends should only be applied by trained professionals, such as physicians or dietitians, who can do so with the necessary care and attention. Unless you are a doctor, you’re right that it’s hard! In fact you shouldn’t do it at all.
It is important for people to understand this concept, because it seems to be commonly overlooked. The average person should not create a diet or fitness plan based solely on data like what is discussed in this article. Rather, it is far more healthy to defer to professionals and their recommendations in the form of interpretation of that data for guidance rather than attempting to interpret this information on your own.
Edit: My apologies, it’s in the subtitle line cut out of context like this. I think this is the egregious fault of the publisher more than the author, probably some SEO BS, because again this was obviously not the intent of that sentence.
My browser’s reader mode cut out that subtitle line, hence my original comment:
Bad reading of the author’s intent and you ignore the immediately preceding sentence which provides context for your cherry picked quote:
The researchers identified great heterogeneity in the prevalence between countries and also diverse risk factors, from dietary to behavioral.
The intent of that paragraph is to highlight the diversity of risk factors, not to give the most prevalent ones.
When you ask a text to do something it didn’t ever even pretend to want to do, of course you are going to come away disappointed. Media literacy. < Publisher accountability.
Bad reading of the author’s intent and you ignore the immediately preceding sentence which provides context for your cherry picked quote
It is the subtitle in its entirety, as the author of the article intended. That sentence didn't grow legs and and walk all the way up to the top of the article by itself.
hot damn my apologies my reader view cut out the subtitle. somehow i doubt that was the author’s intent though. i would blame the publisher for this because that’s a really poor manipulation of the text.
