Scientists Confirm the World Now Has over 1B Obese People | Hacker News Reader

Scientists Confirm the World Now Has over 1B Obese People

sciencealert.com

30 points_justinfunk28 comments

Humans are now so prosperous that we are dying of having too much food. A fate our ancestors could have only dreamed of.

That's one possible cause. It could also be that our diets have changed to make us more prone to obesity, perhaps people consume more processed foods than before. The article alludes to this when it says eating badly is a major cause of obesity.

I don't think there is enough information quite yet to jump to the positive conclusion of greater abundance causing obesity.

Sort of splitting semantic hairs, no? Can’t become obese without eating at a caloric surplus, whether your diet is fresh veg or high fructose corn syrup.

While consuming more than you burn will lead to weight gain regardless of what you eat, I think modern foods are more likely to cause this because of the addictiveness of their high sugar levels, and also the fact that each item contains a LOT of calories… it would be much harder to get fat binge-eating celery than it would be for Doritos.

There is less than 1g of sugar in a serving of Doritos

"serving"

What size is a "serving", and how does it compare to what people actually in practice eat?

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"Drowned?" It was the stillsuit manufacturer's daughter.

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This is fantastic for me - the fatter everyone else is, the more attractive I become by simply being not-fat and eating vegetables. Classic win-lose.

"Some company hired me to stand next to you so you look better in comparison."

Tangent; if there was a nuclear war and subsequent global famine, would the obesity epidemic turn out to be a blessing, allowing more people to survive the initial winter?

No, since they would be easy prey for the skinny cannibals

That still means more skinny cannibals can survive though doesn’t it?

The question would be whether we'd be able to digest the fat of these obese people without the mechanisms of our bodies turning it into something usable.

That would be the ultimate keto diet!

Isn’t fat easily separated from muscle (for cooking purposes)

Some fats which are bad for you are wrapped around internal organs. Subcutaneous fat is easy to separate though.

God I love this website

The extra fat supply might last you what, a couple months tops? Nuclear winter and famine would probably last years.

Obese isn't a term defined by some quantitative health break-point, or empirical health outcomes, it's an arbitrary threshold established by the guy that invented BMI at a conspicuously nice round number. The term is practically useless for anything more substantial than shame, scare-mongering, and the denial of health care, but insurance companies and the beauty, clothing, wellness, fitness, and dietary industry derive vast amounts of profit from its proliferation, and people to whom it doesn't apply derive some comfort and a sense of superiority from it, and so it remains in common use in spite of, rather than according to, best medical practices.

"Honey, You are fat, lets go to the gym." vs. "Honey, You have an Obesity issue, lets go to the gym."

The former resulted in yelling and crying. The latter got us to the gym, so I found "Obese" to be a useful word.

Can’t outrun a bad diet. Obesity starts and ends in the kitchen, not the gym.

General advice, true for most people. But for some people, the only way they reliably lose weight is through increased exercise.

Anyone who says that hasn't tried hard enough. You can absolutely outrun your fork. You just have to run a lot further than you think. There are no fat people who run 50 miles a week.

that might destroy your knees though. Might be better to go with cycling.

Yeah, talk to NFL linemen. They force feed themselves, and one of the things they love about retirement is no longer having to do that.

If you burn 2,000-4,000 calories a day (or more!) like an elite distance runner or swimmer, you can outrun your fork.

e.g.: https://olympics.com/en/news/michael-phelps-10000-calories-d...

It's a little crazy that you're being downvoted. Cutting weight is 1000% easier in the kitchen than in the gym.

What's easier, saying 'no' to a coke, or talking yourself into the 1.5 mile run that's required to burn those calories?

The study is somewhat weak in using BMI; mass alone doesn't tell you much about health. I'm near the upper end of the 'normal' BMI band but that's because I work out a lot (after years of being underweight). BMI can't distinguish between muscle and fat.

On the other hand, most people are not that athletic so it's not surprising that BMI gets used as a measure of obesity because (I guess) 90% of people who are very heavy are more fat than muscular. I don't know of an easy way to measure that though, besides the labor-intensive ones of measuring the size of individual people's fat rolls, counting skin folds, or measuring body volume by displacement and deriving density.

For all that BMI is arbitrary, arguing about it doesn't alter the fact that a lot of people are obviously obese. It'd be great if people who object to the use of BMI would propose a more useful measure that's reasonably easy to compile, for both individuals and professionals.

BTW this is the original study vs the press release: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

You can measure body fat percentage using electricity. I believe it works on the differing resistivity of muscle/bone/fat, but I could be wrong.

Higher end scales often have a sensor integrated. Takes like 2 seconds to get a reading.

I think those sensors being cheap-ish is new. I would expect to see a migration over to body fat percent instead of BMI over the next decade or two as people replace their scales.

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