The authors take the view that obesogens account for 100% or nearly 100% of the rise in obesity, which is definitely a controversial view. However, they do an awesome job giving an overview of the arguments for obesogens.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba...
> People in the 1800s did have diets that were very different from ours. But by conventional wisdom, their diets were worse, not better. They ate more bread and almost four times more butter than we do today. They also consumed more cream, milk, and lard. This seems closely related to observations like the French Paradox — the French eat a lot of fatty cheese and butter, so why aren’t they fatter and sicker?
Lard doesn’t make you fat. If anything it fills you up so you eat less and gain less weight. A lot more of the prior generations were also laborers which this acknowledges but really underplays.
The section on why hunter gatherers aren’t obese is answered by the fact that they are hunting and gathering.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yuka-food-cosmetic-scanner/id1...
This is obvious to anyone who used to be more active, and gained weight after they started sitting at a desk all day for work.
Similarly, look at their article on obesity in different professions - it does not align with who does the most physical labor. Rather, certain professions with high levels of exposure to endocrine disruptions are the most obese on average.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/603894/burn-by-herm...
Basically measurements of calorie intake and burn rate indicate, that physical activity doesn't appreciably speed up metabolism.
You still should exercise to avoid chronic diseases, but you can't outrun a bad diet.
However, it is not really practical for most people to use exercises to burn calories. Rather diets are more important and more effective.
A google search indicates that: a) a pound of honey (~1500 calories) would account for a little over half of a man's daily required calories (Google says 2500, but presumably an active hunter-gatherer required more), and b) the average (wild) beehive creates ~50 pounds of honey per year.
For a single man to satisfy half of his caloric intake with honey, he'd have to consume ~7.3 beehives per year. A tribe of 100 would consume the production of ~700 wild beehives each year!
I cannot find their article on professions. I’d be very skeptical. In general being poor in America means a terrible diet is likely so that’s a huge part of the equation. It seems very unlikely that exposure to endocrine disrupters varies enough to explain the differences. People in poverty will have a huge variance in exposure but the obesity rates are high across the board.
Especially if you see something like… idk, factory workers being called high exposure having high obesity but lower obesity than something like a dmv clerk that’s totally sedentary but at worst median level exposure.
Some groups will get HUGELY more exposure to some chemicals. I’m not convinced at all they represent the fattest groups. Which is a strong counterpoint if one is trying to claim this is the strongest effect.
Also fwiw, the idea that healthcare support workers are supposed to represent the largest exposure to PFAS because they're handling garments is ridiculous. I doubt healthcare support workers are even in the top 10% of actual exposure levels.
And a lot of that is portion size and "added eating" between meals. I'd love to work out just how many calories the various soda companies ship a year.
Conversely, an obese person, or particularly a formerly obese person that has recently dieted, has pretty extreme cravings and withdrawal symptoms, even if they're eating a complete and healthy diet. Something is going wrong with the complicated dance of insulin, ghrelin, leptin, and various others. Something is driving obese people to eat enormous amounts of food and still feel hungry. Poor sleep, chemical exposure, change in nutrient content of easily available foods, are all potential culprits. Something far more interesting is going on than "they're eating more calories".
It compares in excessive detail some old and frankly hard to follow tables to the present day guideline of 2,500 calories and makes NO EFFORT to validate whether or not that's realistic.
It also tries to use pictures from baseball game showing thin people in the front row as evidence of... something. This is still what you see today. Rich people are significantly thinner on average in america. And even in obese heavy areas, you don't see a lot of obese people walking around. Because... they're not walking.
Here's an article citing an american average of 3,600 calories consumed per day, up a whopping 24% since 1961.
https://www.businessinsider.com/american-calorie-intake-last...
Here's another article citing CDC data suggesting a 22% rise in caloric consumption leading into the year 2000.
Because the issue is - in fact - the sugar, not the fat (https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/theres-no-sugar-coating-...).