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Comment by thras | Hacker News Reader

"Weight management is about calories consumed versus calories expended."

Yeah. That's about as useful as saying that alcoholism is caused by over-drinking.

There are all sorts of diseases and conditions that cause obesity, and we know for a fact that the primary cause is not eating too much (eating too much or too little is the effect): menopause-induced weight gain, drug-induced weight-gain, cancer-induced weight loss.

The idea that the recent (post-1970) epidemic of obesity might have something to do with the massive amounts of refined carbohydrates we began consuming (in response to low-fat hysteria) is not a bizarre one. Sugar is a brand-new element to the human diet and now we're eating 100 pounds per year per capita.

And with your last statement, you aren't seriously denying the primacy of growth hormone in childhood growth, are you? Because otherwise, your argument about mass triggers is rather tangential.

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Weight gain is primarily induced by over-eating. That's fact.

- Most post-menopausal women are not obese. Indeed, most do not gain much weight post-menopause. - Drugs, by and large, do not result in weight gain. A few drugs do, but only a few. - Cancer weight loss is a product of the body not being able to digest enough food for the body to use for maintenance, usually because nausea induces vomiting before the food is fully digested. - As for the sugar: the problem boils down to (again) overeating caused by the taste of sugar stimulating a desire to eat more (sugary) food. In the end, overeating is still the problem. - Finally, as for human growth hormore: the effects of premature puberty have been documented in cultures where growth hormone is not present in the cows such as in India and China (among the portions of the population wealthy enough to over-eat). Thus, it is clear that growth hormone has a negligible, or at best minor, effect on obesity.

You are not reading what I write. Human growth hormone is why humans grow vertically. I never said it has any effect on obesity. To grow vertically, you need to eat. But the cause of that vertical growth is not the eating. Eating is the effect. HGH is the cause of vertical growth in all humans. Saying anything else is bizarre.

If we can explain vertical growth as a hormonal effect, and overeating as the result, than there is no a priori reason that a similar explanation is impossible for horizontal growth. In fact there is great evidence for exactly that explanation.

Your other objections were equally tangential. You seem determined to discuss tangents rather than the central points. And what evidence do you have for your sugar hypothesis? Sugar is no different from other nutrients, hmm? So glucose and insulin aren't related to FFA uptake by the fat cells. And glycogen from insulin isn't a necessary molecule for that process? I'm curious as to what research has caused you to declare all the textbooks wrong. It must be compelling.

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