Monday 2 November 2015

The cause of America's rising obesity rate is irrelevant. The cure for it is what's important.

NuSi go home. You're drunk.
From http://dietdatabase.com/causes-of-obesity/

On a blog comments section somewhere, a argument discussion took place about what caused America's rising obesity rate. Some people have a hypothesis that there's one main cause. Reductionism of an extremely complex problem down to one main factor is utter stupidity. Here's a rough list, in no particular order:-
Excessive Carbohydrates (Gary Taubes)
Excessive Refined Sugar (John Yudkin, Robert Lustig, Gary Taubes)
Excessive Refined Fructose (Robert Lustig)
Excessive Wheat/Gluten Grains (William Davis)
Excessive Fat (Dean Ornish, Cardwell Esseltyn etc)
Excessive Saturated Fat (Dean Ornish, Cardwell Esseltyn etc)
Excessive Animal Protein (Garth Davis)
Mineral Imbalances (Jane Karlsson, "Duck Dodgers")
The Government (Richard Nikoley)
Dietary Guidelines (Nina Teicholz, Aseem Malhotra, Tim Noakes etc)
Insufficient protein (Ignatius Brady)

It's not Refined Sugar. Sorry John Yudkin, Robert Lustig, Gary Taubes. See below...
Refined Sugar intake (kcal/capita/day) is higher in France than in the USA, but in France there's a lower obesity rate. ∴ Hypothesis disproved*.

*As the Refined Sugar intake data may be unreliable (it's also associational data), the hypothesis is not necessarily disproved. If only there's an interventional study (which proves causation) which results in lower weight on a higher sugar/fructose intake. There is! See The effect of two energy-restricted diets, a low-fructose diet versus a moderate natural fructose diet, on weight loss and metabolic syndrome parameters: a randomized controlled trial. ∴ Hypothesis disproved.

I asked Duck Dodgers what he wanted to happen. He said:-
"My feeling is that if people recognize that enriched foods are the antithesis of whole foods, then the demand for enriched/refined foods may diminish, forcing the industry to change."

I want people to eschew over-refined food products for produce, too. So all of the arguing about what caused America's rising obesity rate was a complete waste of time. This gave me an idea. I decided to run my idea past someone who deals with obese people with T2DM and who just happened to be in the U.K, attending the Health Unplugged Conference, I PM'ed Dr. Jeffrey Gerber on Facebook, inviting him to meet me at Cafe Class in Woking (a location roughly half-way between my home and London).

So this happened...
Ivor Cummins came, too!

Suffice it to say, the afternoon was a blast!

Cont'd on Public Service Announcement: Calling all Low-carb, Low-fat and Veg*n advocates.

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