[Excelsior]

Good news for the Fatgirl Jihad-the enemy is no longer multiplying (much).

At least this shows us that there is a natural limit to the whale population-it is possible that most of those predisposed to obesity have already become obese, and there's just not much fertile ground left for increase in most developed countries. The epidemic is obviously not over and (especially as western populations continue to age and become much older than they've ever been) it looks as though landwhales will continue to lumber among us for some time.

That being said, I think we can safely say that we've already hit rock bottom. Things are not very good, but they are also not likely to get much worse.

Obesity Rates Stall, But No Decline

Quote:

After two decades of steady increases, obesity rates in adults and children in the United States have remained largely unchanged during the past 12 years, a finding that suggests national efforts at promoting healthful eating and exercise are having little effect on the overweight.

...“We’re by no means through the epidemic,’’ said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the childhood obesity program at Children’s Hospital in Boston. “Children will be entering adulthood heavier than they’ve ever been at any time in human history. Even without further increases in prevalence, the impact of the epidemic will continue to mount for many years to come.’’

This trend is global, too.

Quote:

...Although different data collection methods make it difficult to compare obesity rates around the world, a number of studies in other countries have suggested that the prevalence of obesity is growing more slowly or has hit a plateau. Data from England show that for men the prevalence of obesity was 22.2 percent in 2005 and 22.1 percent in 2009; comparable figures for women were 23 percent and 23.9 percent. Studies in Sweden, Switzerland and Spain have also suggested a leveling off of obesity rates.

[Cincinnatus]

Time to break out all the stops and ensure mass shaming of fatties continues.

Gonna be a tough fight when big pharmaceutical and agricultural conglomerates are in cahoots with one another, though. May have to purchase a few shares each of Merck, Pfizer, ConAgra, etc. in case the fight against fatties doesn't work.

[Deluge]

Look at the bright side, scientists predict that within 200-300 years humans will have evolved away the ability to put huge amounts of fat like that. Remember, it is NATURAL for humans to eat more then they should in a day. For the vast majority of our existence tomorrow's meal was not guaranteed, so we over ate. Evolution is still catching up to the miracles of modern technology.

FYI: Human evolution has been accelerating more rapidly than ever in the last 10,000 years since the dawn of the Agricultural Revolution.

I wonder how long it will take for Approach Anxiety to go the way of the dinosaurs too.

[Roosh]

Best news I've heard all year.

[kosko]

I wonder how economic factors tie into this? You are forced to it worse quality food when times are tough but you indeed do eat less of it. If the typical American always eats crap then they would be eating less dur to economic reasons.

[Tuthmosis]

This is just a temporary stalling. The obesity epidemic is just winded going up the stairs. It'll catch its breath and keep climbing.

[Samseau]

(02-05-2012 12:47 PM)Tuthmosis Wrote:  

This is just a temporary stalling. The obesity epidemic is just winded going up the stairs. It'll catch its breath and keep climbing.

Nah. Every trend has its top. Fatness won't get any higher because the existing fatties have mass die-offs.

[lurker123123]

this study says that obesity is the same now as it was in the year 2000 (stalling for 12 years). is that really the case?

[tenderman100]

I actually believe we are at the cusp of conquering obesity.

It all revolves around the ability to forestall insulin resistance, increasing the ability to metabolize sugar and carbohydrates, and generally good functioning at the cellular level.

In the next 20-25 years, drugs will be available to mimic caloric deprivation, enhance insulin sensitivity, and generally keep the mitochondria perking away.

It's just a matter a time before fatness becomes a historical phenomena.

[babelfish669]

And what about all of the side effects of those drugs? For something that could be solved as simply as not eating shit and getting a little bit of exercise everyday...

May be the obesity epidemic is peaking out because some fixed % of people are just smart enough not to let themselves go no matter how many McDonalds and Starbucks there are in their neighborhood?

[Basil Ransom]

This raises my hopes:

Quote:

Societal Control of Sugar Essential to Ease Public Health Burden

Sugar should be controlled like alcohol and tobacco to protect public health, according to a team of UCSF researchers, who maintain in a new report that sugar is fueling a global obesity pandemic, contributing to 35 million deaths annually worldwide from non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Non-communicable diseases now pose a greater health burden worldwide than infectious diseases, according to the United Nations. In the United States, 75 percent of health care dollars are spent treating these diseases and their associated disabilities.

In the Feb. 2 issue of Nature, Robert Lustig, MD, Laura Schmidt, PhD, MSW, MPH, and Claire Brindis, DPH, colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), argue that sugar’s potential for abuse, coupled with its toxicity and pervasiveness in the Western diet, make it a primary culprit of this worldwide health crisis.

This partnership of scientists trained in endocrinology, sociology and public health took a new look at the accumulating scientific evidence on sugar. Such interdisciplinary liaisons underscore the power of academic health sciences institutions like UCSF.

Sugar, they argue, is far from just “empty calories” that make people fat. At the levels consumed by most Americans, sugar changes metabolism, raises blood pressure, critically alters the signaling of hormones and causes significant damage to the liver – the least understood of sugar’s damages. These health hazards largely mirror the effects of drinking too much alcohol, which they point out in their commentary is the distillation of sugar.

Worldwide consumption of sugar has tripled during the past 50 years and is viewed as a key cause of the obesity epidemic. But obesity, Lustig, Schmidt and Brindis argue, may just be a marker for the damage caused by the toxic effects of too much sugar. This would help explain why 40 percent of people with metabolic syndrome — the key metabolic changes that lead to diabetes, heart disease and cancer — are not clinically obese.

“As long as the public thinks that sugar is just ‘empty calories,’ we have no chance in solving this,” said Lustig, a professor of pediatrics, in the division of endocrinology at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and director of the Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health (WATCH) Program at UCSF.

“There are good calories and bad calories, just as there are good fats and bad fats, good amino acids and bad amino acids, good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates,” Lustig said. “But sugar is toxic beyond its calories.”

Limiting the consumption of sugar has challenges beyond educating people about its potential toxicity. “We recognize that there are cultural and celebratory aspects of sugar,” said Brindis, director of UCSF’s Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS). “Changing these patterns is very complicated.”

According to Brindis, effective interventions can’t rely solely on individual change, but instead on environmental and community-wide solutions, similar to what has occurred with alcohol and tobacco, that increase the likelihood of success.

The authors argue for society to shift away from high sugar consumption, the public must be better informed about the emerging science on sugar.

“There is an enormous gap between what we know from science and what we practice in reality,” said Schmidt, professor of health policy at UCSF’s IHPS and co-chair of UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s (CTSI) Community Engagement and Health Policy Program, which focuses on bridging academic research, health policy, and community practice to improve public health. In order to move the health needle, this issue needs to be recognized as a fundamental concern at the global level,” she said.

The paper was made possible with funding from UCSF’s CTSI, UCSF’s National Institutes of Health-funded program that helps accelerate clinical and translational research through interdisciplinary, interprofessional and transdisciplinary work.


Claire Brindis, DPH
Many of the interventions that have reduced alcohol and tobacco consumption can be models for addressing the sugar problem, such as levying special sales taxes, controlling access, and tightening licensing requirements on vending machines and snack bars that sell high sugar products in schools and workplaces.

“We’re not talking prohibition,” Schmidt said. “We’re not advocating a major imposition of the government into people’s lives. We’re talking about gentle ways to make sugar consumption slightly less convenient, thereby moving people away from the concentrated dose. What we want is to actually increase people’s choices by making foods that aren’t loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get.”

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. For more information, please visit http://www.ucsf.edu/.

I have no problem making it more expensive to eat shitty food to reduce obesity and related diseases. I'd love to see some place impose a serious sugar tax, like $0.01/gram (eg $0.39 for a can of Coke). The sky wouldn't fall, life would continue, and more countries would take up similar measures. It would require careful execution, however.

Although if this ever got serious, you might end up paying more for food even if you don't eat much sugar. For instance, restaurants have much higher profit margins on drinks. If people start ordering water instead of soda, they might have to raise the price of entrees, because they have to make up the loss of revenue/profit from drinks.