The Uneasy Truth About Traveling While Fat

[KyleSchuant]

Japan has 2,900 McDonalds restaurants. They also have 1,140 KFC joints.

The shit food is available to them. They just eat less of it than we do in Australia and the US, and they walk around more.

You can get fat on Japanese food, look at those sumo monsters. But most of the people don't eat those large volumes.

[Philbert]

As I understand the argument, some people are genetically predisposed to be addicted to these terrible processed foods. It is overeating of those foods that is causing the obesity epidemic. A better comparison is the US population from the 1970's or 80's. Almost genetically identical to today's population but obesity in the population was not significant. One main difference is the introduction of these processed foods. That is my understanding of the argument.

It is not my argument and I'm probably not presenting it correctly. So to all the genetic deniers...FOOK U!

Agreed, the scientific position is that some have a greater genetic susceptibility to overeating in the modern environment. Put another way, many non-obese individuals have the same nutritional knowledge and motivation to eat an appropriate amount as obese individuals, but we (the non-obese) have "better" genetics. So I have to recognize that many obese individual would have to work both harder and smarter than I do at keeping nutrition in check to have a normal body weight. Despite that, since gene change is not yet safe enough for widespread use, the genetically disadvantaged, whether in appetite or muscle gain, can either work harder and smarter, take drugs, or die weak/fat and unhealthy. On a related note, I recently read an article reporting on a paper describing long term follow up of "metabolically healthy obese" individuals. The finding was that metabolically healthy obesity was a temporary state akin to walking around with a blood pressure of 200/120 but never having had an MI or stroke.

[aurelius]

You can get fat on Japanese food, look at those sumo monsters. But most of the people don't eat those large volumes.

Quibble. Sumo wrestlers are very healthy and carry very little adipose tissue. Their workouts and diets are extreme. Just not a good example to bring up when discussing the general population and obesity.

I am in agreement that diet and an active lifestyle is the solution to obesity. I am pointing out that it is not a simple matter of 'willpower' that separates the healthy and non-healthy people. It is a complex issue and genetics is a major factor. I bring up alcohol again, or really any drug; most people can recreationally use drugs. And never become addicts. It can be a once a year thing or at parties or Friday night. Some people use a drug once and are hooked for life. Because some people are genetically predisposed to be drug addicts. Take the US. Native Americans were introduced to alcohol very recently from an evolutionary scale. They are genetically predisposed to be alcoholics versus the general US population. Alcoholism is a very real problem on reservations across the country.

[mbasic]

Quibble. Sumo wrestlers are very healthy and carry very little adipose tissue. Their workouts and diets are extreme. Just not a good example to bring up when discussing the general population and obesity.

googling it: Sumo wrestlers average age of death is 65, this is really bad compared to an average Japanese male. Even by american standards, that is a really early age of death.

The negative health effects of the sumo lifestyle can become apparent later in life. Sumo wrestlers have a life expectancy of 65, which is 10 years shorter than that of the average Japanese male,[36] as the diet and sport take a toll on the wrestler's body. Those having a higher body mass are at greater risk of death.[37][38] Many develop type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure, and they are prone to heart attacks due to the enormous amount of body mass and fat that they accumulate. The excessive intake of alcohol can lead to liver problems and the stress on their joints due to their excess weight can cause arthritis.[36] The repeated blows to the head sumo wrestlers take can also cause long-term cognitive issues, similar to those seen in boxers.[39][40] In the 21st century the standards of weight gain became less strict to try and increase the health of the wrestlers.[36][41][39]

Whats ESPECIALLY bad doing the math here: is I'm sure these sumo-lardo's competitive phase of their "sports careers" are done around age 45 .... AT LEAST! So either they either:

1-stay fat as fuck until they die (can't reverse things),

OR,

2- say if they lost the weight, and ate normal for then on, that metabolic damage they did to their bodies during ages 14-35 was so severe they couldn't reverse it.

I'm guessing 1.

AAAaannddd .... The "carry very little adipose tissue" statement seems insane to me.



I'd say most NFL lineman are much "leaner" than sumo wrestlers ... have to be!!! by the nature of what they do, how the train, etc. ....
and those NFL guys still carry a ton of excessive adipose tissue.

[mbasic]

Japan has 2,900 McDonalds restaurants. They also have 1,140 KFC joints.

The shit food is available to them. They just eat less of it than we do in Australia and the US, and they walk around more.

You can get fat on Japanese food, look at those sumo monsters. But most of the people don't eat those large volumes.

I think this is the most it^. Physical activity.
Visited Lisbon Spain recently, if you ate out at a restaurant all three daily meals (mucho calories), just as long as you walked door to door, you would not get fat. JFC that place (hilly).

In america its the utter lack of any physical activity, coupled with a hyper-palatable food and an "eating-culture thing" in society.
I don't buy the the genetic predisposition to addict-eating hypothesis. That might exist, but my hunch is its exceedingly rare, (think those 700# people of talk shows), and a very small part of the problem.

[aurelius]

stuff about former sumo wrestlers

If a 300+ pound athlete that through their teens, 20's and 30's who ate relatively healthy (but a shit ton) and engaged in the level of activity required to compete at the professional level retires and stops following the nutrition and training regimen; then over 20 years will simply become obese and suffer those consequences. No argument there.

Basically, I don't think life expectancy stats are convincing for the small population we are discussing. Too many after retirement lifestyle factors over too long of a period. What would be more convincing to me is a comparison of those athletes and their health outcomes during their period of activity in their professional sport to the outcomes of obese people of the same age range. Yes? And also a comparison of life expectancy that tracked those that maintained their professional competition weight and those that lost weight to be 'normal' size. That would also be more informative. My reading of obesity is high levels of visceral fat is the main problem. And they have done studies with CT scans that show active Sumo wrestlers carry very little visceral fat. Same as NFL linemen. Or any heavyweight strength athlete. Unless you can provide information to the contrary: active Sumo wrestlers, NFL linemen, and so on are not walking around with Type II diabetes and other obesity related health issues.

I read an article regarding NFL linemen. The ones with issues in retirement they stopped working out but still ate similar quantity of foods. That is the hardest habit to break. And often of poorer quality. Linemen that were able to reduce their overall size/weight (eat properly) did not see the same negative health outcomes. I believe Mark Schelerth did an ESPN segment on it and discussed why he really focused on establishing healthy habits and losing his playing weight after retirement. Which he stated was hard because he'd eaten something like 5000+ calories a day since he was teenager.

To concede a point: maintaining the level of activity into your 50's, 60', 70's, and so on required to be healthy at that weight is probably not feasible for anyone. And I believe being leaner is one of the 'secret ingredients' to longevity.

[KyleSchuant]

I am pointing out that it is not a simple matter of 'willpower' that separates the healthy and non-healthy people. It is a complex issue and genetics is a major factor.

I think it was earlier in this thread I mentioned the importance of environment. Your environment does not determine you, but it certainly influences you. There was that example at I think the Google company cafes, where first up in the line they had the fridge with soft drinks - you could get water, but you had to ask the guy behind the counter for it. They reversed that, and what do you know the soft drink consumption went down and water consumption went up. And I saw a neat little infographic today on IG about how highlighted items on a menu are ordered more often, how when waitresses give out free mints they get larger tips, and how buffet menus put starchy food at the front so people fill up on those, which are cheaper for the restaurant.

You look at this across a whole society and you see how things like city design are really big influencers on people's behaviour. In the US this century I've been to both Seattle and Wichita Falls. Seattle had lots of walking pavements and cycle tracks and public transport and shops selling fresh food. Wichita Falls had few walking pavements - you'd have to be walking across people's front lawns, and it's Texas so they might shoot you - and it had literally zero public transport, and it just had supermarkets with heavily overpriced fresh fruit and vegies occupying a tiny fraction of the place, the rest packaged crap. Guess which place had more fatties?

And of course I just recently mentioned Japan and the US/Australia as contrasting. I don't believe Japanese people have greater willpower than us gaijin, they just have a different environment - and culture.

That explains it on a population level. But the individual is different. In this, health is like wealth: not everyone can be wealthy, but anyone can be wealthy, it's just that some people get a good start and some get a really shitty start. So I think we can be reasonable about things, and say: this genetics stuff is just a tiny part of it all, environment is much bigger, and all this influences an individual but does not determine them.

Thoreau said that he knew of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of a person to elevate their life by a conscious endeavour. I don't think he had turning down the upsize option at McDs in mind when he said that, but still, here we are. It's something we all believe in, really, or we wouldn't be fucking around with all this "I lift things up and I put them down."

[ChasingCurls69]

I think a big part of "genetics" is the food environment stuff already mentioned, and the vast expanse of differences in satiety and hunger signaling between normal BMI active person and 700lbs "food addict." Trying to raw doge dieting without making things as easy as possible, and picking food options that get your satiety and hunger to match what it takes to lose weight long term, is like posting frogs to get an Italian milf gf.

[KyleSchuant]

I think this is the most it^. Physical activity.

As a trainer and more-or-less active person I'd like to think so, but it's diet as well. And not just how much people eat, but what they eat.

In one study, obese people were given the same amount of calories to eat, but one ate their normal stuff, and the others ate more beans. The latter lost more weight - and more importantly, had changes in blood pressure, cholesterol and so on that the normal diet people didn't. In other words, eating (say) 1,500kCal a day of McDs may make you a "healthy" bodyweight, but you still won't be healthy. And you can be a bit chubby and still be healthy. Health and size are not pure calories in vs calories out.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20499072/

In this video, a Japanese woman goes over what she eats in a day. Her total calories for the day are 2,050kCal. That's not a great amount, but you'll notice she's pretty small. In other videos you can see she has about 45' of light-moderate physical activity daily, doing 15' of yoga while rice is cooking in the morning, and taking her children on foot or by bike to childcare/kinder. But she's eating all food she's prepared herself from fresh ingredients.



So I think it's physical activity, how much you eat, and what you eat. Obviously a lot of this is down to personal decision, but these personal decisions will be influenced by your environment, family and so on.

And then you look too at people's social circles, and people with strong family ties, plenty of friends, and a solid place in the community have better physical and mental health and live longer than their lonely counterparts.

This is why my recommendations to people are things like: eat 3 cups of vegies a day, go for a walk every day, talk to a friend or family member every day.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

As far as Japan is concerned, I think one important factor is that while you can theoretically go to Mcdonald's (and people go there every now and then), there are restaurant chains that offer affordable, much healthier food that tastes great. For instance places like "Sukiya" where you can get gyudon (a bowl of rice with beef on top) for 500 yen (about 3 USD), or a teishoku (soup + rice + salmon + natto) for 600 yen (about 4 EUR). At this rate why would you eat unhealthy crap ? And even if burgers and fries are your thing, you can find burger places that serve smaller (i.e. designed for normal humans) portions like Mos Burger. I mean even at 4am if you happend to be hungry and awake for whatever reason and you can't cook (we're not judging), you can probably go to a convenience store and buy a healthy-ish meal.

On top of that, traditional japanese eating habits (more veggies, more soups, more fish, smaller portions etc) tends to be healthier than americans, but that's besides the point.

[hector]

As far as Japan is concerned, I think one important factor is that while you can theoretically go to Mcdonald's (and people go there every now and then), there are restaurant chains that offer affordable, much healthier food that tastes great. For instance places like "Sukiya" where you can get gyudon (a bowl of rice with beef on top) for 500 yen (about 3 USD), or a teishoku (soup + rice + salmon + natto) for 600 yen (about 4 EUR). At this rate why would you eat unhealthy crap ? And even if burgers and fries are your thing, you can find burger places that serve smaller (i.e. designed for normal humans) portions like Mos Burger. I mean even at 4am if you happend to be hungry and awake for whatever reason and you can't cook (we're not judging), you can probably go to a convenience store and buy a healthy-ish meal.

On top of that, traditional japanese eating habits (more veggies, more soups, more fish, smaller portions etc) tends to be healthier than americans, but that's besides the point.

Can confirm.
When I was in Japan my sleep schedule was all kinds of f’d up. Around 1am I’d go out every night to eat and there were multiple, small noodle shops open where I could get these awesome soup noodle bowls with beef and vegetables and an egg broken on top. Was cheaper than going to McDonalds here.

[mikeylikey]

There is another way the genetic angle makes sense aside from (or in addition to) addiction to tasty foods.

It is intuitive that if processed food is high in calories and low in <hand wave> "nutrients", a person might be hungry because even though they have enough calories their body is still missing a lot <again, hand wave> "Nutrients". Vitamins, amino acids, other stuff. I am nota dietitian. Genetics would seem to apply here in a couple of ways;

1) Maybe there is a lot of variance in individuals' ability to synthesize amino acids and shit from non-ideal sources. My understanding is that most of the vitamins and amino acids and compounds that your body ends up actually using in its cells are synthesized from similar but different dietary raw materials, rather than directly using the compounds in the food itself. So maybe some people are genetically predisposed to being able to do a better job of this with poorer inputs than others. Similar to how some dudes can eat vegan and do bro machine workouts and still get a lot bigger than they have any right to be. They are obviously better at making muscle with sub optimal inputs. If you are better at making amino acids and all that stuff out of cheeseburgers, you might not feel a need to eat so much, and vice versa.

2) You would expect there to also be genetic differences in how strongly a nutrient deficiency corresponds to a drive to keep eating in the first place.

None of the above has to be mutually exclusive with a dopamine/addiction sort of cycle with salty/sweet/fatty junk food obviously. Like, Cheetos obviously are addicting, but man, cake is pretty good too and they had cake in the 60s' before everyone got fat. And sodas too. And yeah the sodas got bigger but like, chicken/egg.

[alek]

There is another way the genetic angle makes sense aside from (or in addition to) addiction to tasty foods.

It is intuitive that if processed food is high in calories and low in <hand wave> "nutrients", a person might be hungry because even though they have enough calories their body is still missing a lot <again, hand wave> "Nutrients". Vitamins, amino acids, other stuff. I am nota dietitian. Genetics would seem to apply here in a couple of ways;

1) Maybe there is a lot of variance in individuals' ability to synthesize amino acids and shit from non-ideal sources. My understanding is that most of the vitamins and amino acids and compounds that your body ends up actually using in its cells are synthesized from similar but different dietary raw materials, rather than directly using the compounds in the food itself. So maybe some people are genetically predisposed to being able to do a better job of this with poorer inputs than others. Similar to how some dudes can eat vegan and do bro machine workouts and still get a lot bigger than they have any right to be. They are obviously better at making muscle with sub optimal inputs. If you are better at making amino acids and all that stuff out of cheeseburgers, you might not feel a need to eat so much, and vice versa.

2) You would expect there to also be genetic differences in how strongly a nutrient deficiency corresponds to a drive to keep eating in the first place.

None of the above has to be mutually exclusive with a dopamine/addiction sort of cycle with salty/sweet/fatty junk food obviously. Like, Cheetos obviously are addicting, but man, cake is pretty good too and they had cake in the 60s' before everyone got fat. And sodas too. And yeah the sodas got bigger but like, chicken/egg.

I mean, maybe. The only genetic argument that really makes sense to me is that if two obese people make a baby, then that baby is likely going to be obese and stay obese, and they in turn are likely to have/make obese babies. In general, do two obese people make skinny babies that stay that way into adulthood, who then have skinny babies of their own?

So maybe once you're obese, you pass it on somehow to your kids. Otherwise, I'm not sure how a genetic component could work.

I also don't buy the whole, "highly palatable food" claim that's going around lately. Donuts weren't invented 20 years ago, and neither were snickers bars and ice cream. That stuff has been around for a long time, and people could eat an entire diet consisting of nutrient deficient, highly caloric dense food for a lot longer than those 20 years.

I think it's a lot more accepted for people to eat themselves to obesity, and that leads to more acceptance of it, and the cycle continues until we're living the live action remake of Wall-E.

[5hout]

I mean, maybe. The only genetic argument that really makes sense to me is that if two obese people make a baby, then that baby is likely going to be obese and stay obese, and they in turn are likely to have/make obese babies. In general, do two obese people make skinny babies that stay that way into adulthood, who then have skinny babies of their own?

So maybe once you're obese, you pass it on somehow to your kids. Otherwise, I'm not sure how a genetic component could work.

A train, especially a trait like obesity, is highly polygenetic. It could be controlled by (hundreds) or more sets of genes where each set increases or decreases the likelihood of you being obese when exposed to certain stimulus (say) .1%. Two fat people (one person who is highly likely to be fat unless actually in a peasant situation, one person who is probably likely to be fat in a modern western context) have a kid. Because polygenicity is hard AF it could be that certain gene sets turn off other gene expression and they have a kid that's not at all likely to be fat, but carries a bunch of (turned off) genes for fatness probability. That kid goes off and breeds with another kid with a similar bunch of fatness genes that aren't expressed and they have 4 kids. Maybe 3 of their kids have a high fat% chance, one wins the lottery and not only doesn't have a high fat% chance, but various things weren't passed along and the kid actually passes along a high skinny% chance to their kids.

The real miracle of genetics is that there are any traits at all controlled by 1 gene or mostly controlled by 1 gene such the mendelian genetics works. This is the rare exception and most things aren't like this. Even worse you have epigenetics and RNA signaling meaning you might have all the genes but weird stuff means they won't be expressed.

The better model for genetics is to think about most genes increases the odds of some outcome, given some circumstance, by a small %.

I can't remember the protein right now, but there's one where if you have 2 copies you efficiently produce some needed protein. Most people have 2 copies and are fine. Some people have 1 copy (identical set of codes, you need 2 copies for your body to "work right") and produce like 40%. Some people have 0 copies (two 1 copy people breeding) and these people die (iirc shortly after birth). (I think you can test for this now?).

Now consider it might be hundreds of sets of genes tweaking various roleplayinggame like #s that add up to fat% chance. You could probably breed fat or skinny people in a lab in 10 generations, but without better records it's going to be really hard to do the machine learning and figure out fat% for some specific set of gene/environment combinations.

This is a pure hypothetical, but for example: Being cold has a increased hunger drive effect. Say this is controlled by 5 gene sequences. Depending on your ancestry you might have 3,125 permutations of those genes. You live in a warm place without access to a chilled swimming pool, this polygenetic trait is never meaningfully expressed or selected for/against. Your kid rolls an epically terrible combination of these 5 gene sequences meaning they have INSANE hunger drive after getting sufficiently cold. They move to a cold place, suddenly they gain 30 lbs. Genes + environment changed their fat% chance massively.

[alek]

I mean, maybe. The only genetic argument that really makes sense to me is that if two obese people make a baby, then that baby is likely going to be obese and stay obese, and they in turn are likely to have/make obese babies. In general, do two obese people make skinny babies that stay that way into adulthood, who then have skinny babies of their own?

So maybe once you're obese, you pass it on somehow to your kids. Otherwise, I'm not sure how a genetic component could work.

A train, especially a trait like obesity, is highly polygenetic. It could be controlled by (hundreds) or more sets of genes where each set increases or decreases the likelihood of you being obese when exposed to certain stimulus (say) .1%. Two fat people (one person who is highly likely to be fat unless actually in a peasant situation, one person who is probably likely to be fat in a modern western context) have a kid. Because polygenicity is hard AF it could be that certain gene sets turn off other gene expression and they have a kid that's not at all likely to be fat, but carries a bunch of (turned off) genes for fatness probability. That kid goes off and breeds with another kid with a similar bunch of fatness genes that aren't expressed and they have 4 kids. Maybe 3 of their kids have a high fat% chance, one wins the lottery and not only doesn't have a high fat% chance, but various things weren't passed along and the kid actually passes along a high skinny% chance to their kids.

The real miracle of genetics is that there are any traits at all controlled by 1 gene or mostly controlled by 1 gene such the mendelian genetics works. This is the rare exception and most things aren't like this. Even worse you have epigenetics and RNA signaling meaning you might have all the genes but weird stuff means they won't be expressed.

The better model for genetics is to think about most genes increases the odds of some outcome, given some circumstance, by a small %.

I can't remember the protein right now, but there's one where if you have 2 copies you efficiently produce some needed protein. Most people have 2 copies and are fine. Some people have 1 copy (identical set of codes, you need 2 copies for your body to "work right") and produce like 40%. Some people have 0 copies (two 1 copy people breeding) and these people die (iirc shortly after birth). (I think you can test for this now?).

Now consider it might be hundreds of sets of genes tweaking various roleplayinggame like #s that add up to fat% chance. You could probably breed fat or skinny people in a lab in 10 generations, but without better records it's going to be really hard to do the machine learning and figure out fat% for some specific set of gene/environment combinations.

This is a pure hypothetical, but for example: Being cold has a increased hunger drive effect. Say this is controlled by 5 gene sequences. Depending on your ancestry you might have 3,125 permutations of those genes. You live in a warm place without access to a chilled swimming pool, this polygenetic trait is never meaningfully expressed or selected for/against. Your kid rolls an epically terrible combination of these 5 gene sequences meaning they have INSANE hunger drive after getting sufficiently cold. They move to a cold place, suddenly they gain 30 lbs. Genes + environment changed their fat% chance massively.

The real lesson here is that I shouldn’t post while hangry.

[mikeylikey]

I mean, maybe. The only genetic argument that really makes sense to me is that if two obese people make a baby, then that baby is likely going to be obese and stay obese, and they in turn are likely to have/make obese babies. In general, do two obese people make skinny babies that stay that way into adulthood, who then have skinny babies of their own?

So maybe once you're obese, you pass it on somehow to your kids. Otherwise, I'm not sure how a genetic component could work.

I don't know much about genetics but I do know that genotype =/= phenotype a la blue eyes and red hair and stuff. So I don't think there is a lot of information to be gotten from the observation that kids don't always present like their parents.

I also don't buy the whole, "highly palatable food" claim that's going around lately. Donuts weren't invented 20 years ago, and neither were snickers bars and ice cream. That stuff has been around for a long time, and people could eat an entire diet consisting of nutrient deficient, highly caloric dense food for a lot longer than those 20 years.

^I find this observation very compelling^. But, one hole I see, is that "back then" (this topic defies putting exact dates on things) if you wanted donuts you had to go to the donut store and purchase and eat them around other people. They didn't have boxes of crispy creme in the grocery store.

Come to think of it, every grocery store I can remember shopping at literally has had the bakery & donuts and cakes directly adjoining the produce section. It's almost like they're trying to make it hard to be good.

[5hout]

I mean, maybe. The only genetic argument that really makes sense to me is that if two obese people make a baby, then that baby is likely going to be obese and stay obese, and they in turn are likely to have/make obese babies. In general, do two obese people make skinny babies that stay that way into adulthood, who then have skinny babies of their own?

So maybe once you're obese, you pass it on somehow to your kids. Otherwise, I'm not sure how a genetic component could work.

[Wall of text]

The real lesson here is that I shouldn’t post while hangry.

I've been up since 3am and couldn't tell if the wall of text was coherent enough. So exhausted people talking to hangry people, certainly going to lead to quality content.

#ExodosOnlyJoke: Is this how Rip is going to write SS 4th edition? Answer: No, SS people are never hungry b/c they are DTP.

[alek]

I mean, maybe. The only genetic argument that really makes sense to me is that if two obese people make a baby, then that baby is likely going to be obese and stay obese, and they in turn are likely to have/make obese babies. In general, do two obese people make skinny babies that stay that way into adulthood, who then have skinny babies of their own?

So maybe once you're obese, you pass it on somehow to your kids. Otherwise, I'm not sure how a genetic component could work.

I don't know much about genetics but I do know that genotype =/= phenotype a la blue eyes and red hair and stuff. So I don't think there is a lot of information to be gotten from the observation that kids don't always present like their parents.

Yeah, that's probably true. I take it back; I take it back.

I also don't buy the whole, "highly palatable food" claim that's going around lately. Donuts weren't invented 20 years ago, and neither were snickers bars and ice cream. That stuff has been around for a long time, and people could eat an entire diet consisting of nutrient deficient, highly caloric dense food for a lot longer than those 20 years.

^I find this observation very compelling^. But, one hole I see, is that "back then" (this topic defies putting exact dates on things) if you wanted donuts you had to go to the donut store and purchase and eat them around other people. They didn't have boxes of crispy creme in the grocery store.

Come to think of it, every grocery store I can remember shopping at literally has had the bakery & donuts and cakes directly adjoining the produce section. It's almost like they're trying to make it hard to be good.

Or you could get all kinds of Little Debbie snack cakes and such at any gas station, at least where I grew up, plus all the soda you could carry.

[alek]

I mean, maybe. The only genetic argument that really makes sense to me is that if two obese people make a baby, then that baby is likely going to be obese and stay obese, and they in turn are likely to have/make obese babies. In general, do two obese people make skinny babies that stay that way into adulthood, who then have skinny babies of their own?

So maybe once you're obese, you pass it on somehow to your kids. Otherwise, I'm not sure how a genetic component could work.

[Wall of text]

The real lesson here is that I shouldn’t post while hangry.

I've been up since 3am and couldn't tell if the wall of text was coherent enough. So exhausted people talking to hangry people, certainly going to lead to quality content.

#ExodosOnlyJoke: Is this how Rip is going to write SS 4th edition? Answer: No, SS people are never hungry b/c they are DTP.

I mean, even after eating and taking my dog on a walk, I stand by this statement:

... and the cycle continues until we're living the live action remake of Wall-E.

I think it's one of the funniest things I've written on this forum.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

@alek I think that the "highly palatable food" (or rather the "highly processed food") argument is pretty convincing honestly.

The start of the obesity epidemic in the US is in the middle of the 70s and this is exactly when the consumption of highly processed foods became hugely popular probably because of:

- higher availability
- lower prices (farmers were subsidized by the USDA, commodities such as sugar became cheaper)
- increased popularity of eating out
- people stopped cooking at home (partly due to more women joining the workforce)

As you mentioned, donuts or pizzas or coca-cola were not invented yesterday (I think the first fast food restaurant in the US was created in the 20s), but how people consume them did change dramatically, with catastrophic effects.

As far as "transmitting" obesity to your kids, I'm pretty convinced that the simplest explanation is not "genetics" per se, but rather that children tend to copy the (unhealthy) eating habits of their parents. After all it's the parents who usually buy the food and cook it for their kids. Furthermore, the eating habits tend to stay constant in adulthood: if you grew up eating fast food for every meal with your parents, it's likely you'll keep doing the same as an adult, simply because this is what your taste buds have been educated to consider tasty food. I made a (semi-serious) joke about mac'n'cheese being disgusting, but i'm sure that if my parents made mac'n'cheese for me as a little boy I'd probably like it as an adult.