Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

>>It isn’t hard to imagine that people who are eating more themselves are giving more to their spoiled pets, or leaving sweeter, fattier garbage for street cats and rodents. But such results don’t explain why the weight gain is also occurring in species that human beings don’t pamper, such as animals in labs, whose diets are strictly controlled. In fact, lab animals’ lives are so precisely watched and measured that the researchers can rule out accidental human influence: records show those creatures gained weight over decades without any significant change in their diet or activities.

As the top commenter points out, this is incredibly misleading. Just because the macronutrient ratios of lab animals has remained the same does not say anything about the contents of what they are being fed. For example, egg protein is different than soy protein. If you switch from the former to the latter while keeping everything the same, you will notice a difference.

The fact of the matter is that the companies that are producing the foods that the lab animals eat are under the same market pressures as those producing food for humans: they try to do their best to minimize costs, even if it comes at the expense of the consumers' health. So it isn't at all surprising that lab animals have gotten fatter along with humans.

I think as a nation we need to stop chasing overly complicated explanations of the obesity phenomenon and apply Occam's Razor. A ton of people have been able to successfully lose weight by paying attention to what and how much they eat. Go to any bodybuilding forum on the Internet and look at before-and-after photos and read accounts of how the transformation was accomplished. It really, really isn't rocket science. If someone isn't able to lose weight when they eat less, it is much more likely that they are doing something wrong than that there are hidden factors that are preventing their weight loss. (I don't blame them because there is an insane amount of misinformation on the topic these days, partially thanks to "experts" who try to justify their research and employment by sowing doubt and muddying the waters.)

> A ton of people have been able to successfully lose weight by paying attention to what and how much they eat. Go to any bodybuilding forum on the Internet and look at before-and-after photos and read accounts of how the transformation was accomplished. It really, really isn't rocket science.

Survivorship bias. We have no sense of how many failed using the same methodology. The incentives to post results are biased heavily toward the successful end of the spectrum, for both internal and social incentives. More cognitive science, less rocket science.

> For example, egg protein is different than soy protein. If you switch from the former to the latter while keeping everything the same, you will notice a difference.

Do you have a citation for this? For what it's worth, I avoid soy products in general because of concerns about hormonal effects, but I'm not quite up on the state-of-the-art in terms of the research.

What's funny about the lab animals getting fatter is that the guy who figured out that BPA was an endocrine disruptor figured it out because they were having problems with test tubes. The test tubes activated endocrine sensitive cells and the test tube maker refused to tell him what they made the test tubes out of..

http://www.fastcompany.com/1139298/real-story-behind-bisphen...

90% of people tested have BPA in them.

There was a professor who lost weight on the twinkie diet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie#Twinkie_diet.

He just ate less calories than he needed.

He almost certainly felt very hungry and unhealthy during that short term experiment.

Hey I fully agree with your overall point. If you don't eat more than you need in calories, you won't gain weight. Simple as that.

I did have an objection regarding egg protein v.s. soy protein - perhaps you meant impurities etc. If you are feeding them protein, and protein only, you won't notice a difference. Proteins = amino acids. Egg protein is the same thing as soy protein, which is the same thing as "meat" protein.. All of life uses the same set of amino acids, which are made according to the blueprint in genes (i.e. DNA), using essentially the same genetic code. It's literally the same physical thing.

This is as uninformed as it is vigorously stated.

Different foods have different amino acid profiles, meaning that the amount of each amino acid varies, in some cases considerably, from food to food. Some amino acids the body can make itself; others can be gotten only from food. As ever, Wikipedia has a good starting point[0].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid

Note however that in practice it is very hard to construct a diet (evan a vegan diet) lacking in essential amino acids, unless you use an extreme monoculture such as.... Only corn.

For caloric purposes this makes no difference. Thus - again, soy protein = egg protein. Both will give you energy.

Even with fairly low levels of food consumption (i.e. not average american), as long as it is varied, we get all the essential amino acids. Please note that even people on pretty intense weight loss diets don't suffer from "essential amino acid depletion"

The bacteria in our gut can synthesize all the amino acids by the way, including essential ones, from pretty much any source of nutrients.

Yes, but with some nuances, each has differing amounts of the various amino acids. That said, soy stands up well to egg as a source of essential (and non-essential) aminos.

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