Not so sure. Have you landed in Tulsa or Atlanta lately?
It is like landing on another planet, the land whales are scary!
But I believe your stats are correct, I just don't see the results.

The effect is welcome, and you may be right about the cause, but I'd have to point out that it is much cheaper to stay home and cook. If you can't afford fast food, you shop for the basics - rice, oatmeal, ground beef, potatoes, chicken, etc - and you cook it yourself. Whether this leads to obesity depends on how you cook it, how much you eat, and how much exercise you get.

As far as the "poor" who smoke, drink, and eat fast food all the time I'd just say this: they aren't poor, not by a longshot.

Ray Kurzweil says

http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_on_how_technology_will_transform_u...

About halfway through Kurzweil mentions gene technologies that are proven in Mice. Mouse eats like a teenager and remains healthy.

I think you meant to say saturated fats as opposed to unsaturated fats in your post. Unsaturated fats are the healthy ones; saturated fats are those found in junk food.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fat/NU00262

Hey hey Ugo,

A couple of things.

I think you mean saturated instead of unsaturated in food rich in unsaturated fats and sugar

A fun/scary animated map of obesity in the USA from 1986 to 2008.

I think the connection between the great fattening and the economy is real but over simplified. There are several economic trends that bode poorly for nutrition. I readily concede that stagnant real wages and increased inequality reduce real income which puts pressure on the grocery budget. And having both parents work to maintain purchasing power makes it more difficult to routinely prepare meals from scratch.

But that is only part of the story. Modern Americans spend less of their income on food than they ever have not because of increased income but because of cheaper food, cheap in every sense of the word. The poor only started packing on the pounds in recent times when MSG, high fructose corn syrup, and mechanically separated partially defatted partially hydrogenated meat product began to appear everywhere in inexpensive, ready to eat, ascetically pleasing packages.

On a lighter note, I find it terribly amusing that the average American's oil content started to increase when America's oil production started to fall, and plateaued along with global production.

Looking at things from an exchange rate point of view, poor people in America are much richer than, say, poor people in Thailand.

Yet how is it that poor people in Thailand are not outrageously fat? The food supply at the low end is not corporate, that's how. Junk/manufactured food here is more expensive than "real food", and the number of low-overhead food cart vendors keeps the price of mom & pop provided food quite low, while competition keeps quality high. I'm also guessing that people at the lower end can run a food cart to make a living and 100% of the profits stay with the family.

By comparison, the US food supply is very corporate - especially when it comes to prepared foods and quick service eating. Corporate food is also "engineered" - taste and profit (but not nutritionally) maximized. It tastes good, but provides little in the way of benefits to the body. And also in the US, the poor get to work for low wages at the quick service restaurants, with the profits going to management and shareholders. The rich get richer, the poor survive, and the population receives bad nutrition from engineered food.

A mcdonalds hamburger here costs about 100 baht - $3. How does this compete with a typical food vendor meal, with fresh ingredients prepared on the spot, sold for about 30 baht? Poorly, that's how, especially for the lower income people. In Thailand, they buy their food from local entrepreneurs, and the competition is great enough so that bad tasting food vendors do not last long at all. Now that's a market economy I can get behind.

Summary: don't blame poverty for obesity, blame the corporate food supply. Consider for a moment - if an enemy country or terrorist organization deliberately set out to debilitate the people of America and succeeded to the degree that we have done to ourselves, our retribution would be swift and sure. Yet because American companies profit, what action do we take? Expanding research into diet medicines, and exhortations to get more exercise.

One wonders where this will all end up. Peak fat indeed.

Murder By Sweet?

This is an area I happen to have recent experience in, having gone from 175 pounds down to 127 (with an all time adult low of 124 pounds in the last 90 days)

Why did I do it, and how? I am using myself as the primary example, but I have had multiple co-workers going through the same thing...and with similiar results.

The reason? Fear of diabetes. The method causing the weight drop? A large reduction of sugar and high fractose corn syrup intake.

It sounds so simple doesn't it? The upper limit of calorie intake is NOT income. Calories can be increased on a very small sum of money by using sugar and corn sweeteners as a high density fix for surprisingly little money. The upper limit on calorie intake is sugar (and to a lesser extent starches) intake, until the "peak" is reached, i.e., failing health, Type 2 diabetics, and finally illness and death.

A year and a half ago, I was getting 80% plus of my calories per day from one principle source: Iced tea with cane suger. There are 770 calories in a cup of sugar. In the sunny summer south it is very easy to drink between a 1 and 1 1/2 gallons of tea per day, with up to over two cups of sugar total. That's right, 1540 calories of sugar per day in tea alone. I have known people who took in more per day. In the above example, a person is getting all the calories they need before they take in the first bite of food per day! Astounding, but I lived this way for years. If any starches, sugar in foods, or saturated fats were taken in at all it was very easy to exceed 2000 calories per day with almost no nutritional value taken in!

The inevitable result was a gradual climb in blood sugar levels and weight, until my doctor said "That's it, another few months to a year like this and you will be shooting yourself in the gut with an insulin needle for the rest of your life." That gets your attention!

The question was, how to stop it: Going with Parato's law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
("80 percent of results come from 20 percent of your effort") I decided to work on what I knew to be my biggest sugar source first, sugar in iced tea and some in purchased soft drinks by way of high fructose corn sweetener. The results were ASTOUNDING. My weight and blood sugar began to drop, and there was a huge nutritional hole in my diet I could enjoy filling, with fish, vegetables, whole grain cereal and low calorie whole grain bread and reasonable meats such as chicken, turkey, sea food and even some low fat beef. My nutrition improved, my weight continued to drop, my blood sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure dropped, and I barely missed it. In fact I was hungry for and eating nutritious foods I had not been hungry for in years!

But how? Didn't I miss the sugar in drinks terribly? I still love to drink beverages, but now I drink them with artificial sweetener of no calories, and to me the miracle natural sweetener is Stevia plant based sweetener (often sold in the U.S. under the Truvia brand name, and no, I have no relationship with the company and never have had).

The Japanese have allowed NO artificial sweeteners since the 1960's but have used Stevia plant based sweetener since 1971. To this day the only side effect demonstrated in some cases is a slight lowering of blood pressure! There have been over 200 studies done, and none have demonstrated ill effects from Stevia, including one that tried very hard to find danger, and financed by Cargill and Coca Cola. To repeat, almost 40 years of real world experience in Japan and no problems detected yet.

Knowing the horrific effect of excess sugar intake as we now do, it would take a replacement of real and immediate danger to be as bad as sugar for America's health. I am not prone to easily accepting a complete lack of concern for the health of customers on the part of America's major food and sugar companies, but in this case it is hard to find an alternative: The ONLY relatively sensible explanation for the long fight against Stevia based sweetener and other artificial sweeteners seems to be the lobbying power of the sugar and corn sweetener industy.

At least a half dozen people I know have began to work a similiar plan (reduction of sugar, most often by way of reducing sugar intake by way of switching to artificial or Stevia based drinks first) and the results have been similiar. One female friend who was injecting herself daily with insulin has lost 45 pounds and the weight and blood sugar is now dropping fast...Another who just began to switch to diet drinks and artificial sweetener (The normal progression..."Eck! I hate diet drinks...hey, after a week or two, I don't notice they are diet drinks!") and her weight is already dropping to the tune of 8 pounds every two weeks...

The Sweet South...the tea belt

It is interesting to me that many people never bother to notice (or seem to try to avoid noticing) the post WWII trend...as the sunbelt (to call it the "iced tea" belt would be as accurate), the land of sugar cane, sorghum and honey...as the sunbelt expanded the fat did too...look at a chart of obesity by state...note the "core" obesity belt, with greater than 25% plus obesity, the land where a glass of sweet tea is served in restaurants and the back porches of houses even before the visitor asks for it:
http://diabetesmapsandgraphs.com/images/obesity-epidemic2004-msn-small.JPG

Watch the sunbelt grow (no pun intended) and spread (again, no pun...)
http://www.medbio.info/Horn/Time%205/art-cu01.fig01.gif

Last exhibit, the states with the highest percentage of adult obesity, notice the 2, only 2 states over 30% plus obese population (Missippi and Alabama) with 4 border states exceeding 29% obesity (Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and the one other southern state, South Carolina. The former deep south states that somewhat break the pattern are Georgia and Florida, and this can probably be explained by the number of people in those states who simply haven't been there that long (given the transiant population of Florida and Atlanta) The first time I viewed charts like this I was absolutely astounded. Why didn't the Diabetes associations, the heart associations, point this out, the issue of sugar intake was so obvious! I now know there are other forces at work...

If the U.S. will confront the propaganda of the sugar and corn sweetener industry (particularly in the south) the gains we could make on defeating obesity and reducing serious health problems such as diabetes and the whole assortment of related ailments could be huge. We could possibly even end obesity as a major blight on American health.

Now sit back on the porch there and let my gurl fix ya' a big glass of sweet tea...it's gonna' be a long hot summer!

RC

Nice post Ugo, but you went right past the real explanation in your own post, and then posited one not supported by the stats. You stated:

The obesity epidemics started in the 1970s, when the US economy underwent what was termed "the great u-turn" by Bluestone and Harrison, who published a book with that title in 1982. The great u-turn led to an increase in the income inequality in the US, which is lasting to this day. In other words, the poor started becoming poorer and their diet started to worsen.

Indeed, income inequality is one of the best correlated things to obesity. (And violence, teenage pregnancy,mental health and drug use, and many other social ills.) It turns out that it's not about absolute wealth, but relative wealth within societies. Here in NZ, we have half the spending power on average of the average American, but because we have income inequalities approaching those of the US and the UK, we have similar levels of these social ills, but correlated to our level of inequality. (We're working hard to catch up with the US in inequality)

I recommend a read of The Spirit Level: Why more equal societies almost always do better, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, released late in 2009. It covers all the science which correlates some of our worse societal ills to one factor - relative inequality.

Some of the slides from the book can be viewed here. I recommend slide 7!

The Spirit Level - slides from The Equality TrustView more presentations from The Equality Trust.

When peak oil forces greater localization and as a result greater equality, we can expect a significant decrease in these social ills, without the expense of additional health and welfare and law and order expenditure. Likewise, we could choose policies that promote equality even before peak oil bites hard, and all be happier and healthier while reducing our deficits.

There are two sides to the weight problem - calories in and calories burned.

In the UK obesity is still increasing, although well behind US levels. Yet we are eating fewer calories than we did 30 or 40 years ago. We are simply not burning them off through activity, primarily walking. We drive almost as much as you do, our levels of regular exercise have fallen sharply.

I commute by bicycle, 8 mile round trip. As long as I limit my sugar intake to rational levels, my BMI remains at 25 without any attempt to diet.
Over Christmas I stopped cycling and ate lots of sugar. I put on 7 pounds.

I have a suspicion (currently unproved) that growth hormones fed to American cattle (and perhaps chickens and pigs) contributes to the obesity problem. The hormones wind up in milk as well as the meat, so even toddlers are getting a dose.

Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone
http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/bgh.htm

American Beef: Why is it Banned in Europe?
http://www.preventcancer.com/consumers/general/hormones_meat.htm

Artificial Hormones
http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/hormones/

It’s surprising how few people mentioned exercise, or lack thereof.

Until modern times people got more than enough exercise in the form of physical work. Until the late 1800’s the work week was 60 hours. A canal digger was expected to move 18 tons of earth in a 12 to 14 hour day. Equally physical work was done by miners and railroad workers. This amount of work would required perhaps 1000 to 1500 extra calories per day. That is one of the reasons for hunger in past times. But few of these people were obese.

My personal experience confirms this. As a management employee of a manufacturing company I had to work strike duty, 14 consecutive 12 hour days, alternating with a week off. My jobs were not particularly strenuous, but did involve me standing most of the time and walking and bending over at frequent intervals. We had an on site cafeteria and I ate four full size healthy meals each day. After the first two weeks I lost 11 pounds. My metabolism stayed high on my off weeks and I was constantly hungry, my body attempting to regain lost weight.

In the United States, people get fat because they cannot afford to eat what they want.

I can't agree with this, Ugo. The problem is better described as "people get fat because they do not know how to choose and prepare food that is good for them." Look, there is much good, inexpensive food to be had in the typical American supermarket -- dried beans, rice, pasta, whole grain flour, corn meal -- it is just that it tends to get lost amongst the Frozen Pizza Crisps, the Little Debbie Snack Cakes, the sour-cream potato chip dip and the "Co-Cola." And of course, the lentils and rice don't give you the same buzz that Little Debbie Cakes do.

A friend who is very nutrition-conscious claims that the microbes in your gut are selected to digest certain types of food and that they are capable of sending signals to their host (you) to seek out the foods that they prefer. I'm not sure where she got this, but it doesn't sound particularly far-fetched to me. If this is the case, then there would appear to be an addiction factor here that would require some intervention in order to correct. But if one can choose to give up cigarettes, they can choose to give up the Little Debbies.

For the past several years, my wife and I have grown a large garden and stored the excess for eating throughout the winter -- potatoes, onions, rutabagas, squash, frozen chard, beans, broccoli, etc. We put up literally hundreds of pounds of good food which we then supplement with lentils, cheese, milk, butter, eggs, a small amount of meat, flour, corn-meal, etc. The only "prepared" food that we eat is pasta (we could make pasta from scratch, certainly, but pasta tends to be our "get something together in a hurry" meal) and a few condiments -- ketchup, mustard and salad dressings (could easily substitute vinegar and oil). As our eating habits have changed, I have come to view most of what I see in the big-box markets as useless.

It is a fallacy to think that eating well is too expensive. I would counter that buying and eating prepared foods is what is costly -- both to your wallet and to your health.

The claim that those graphs show the increase has stopped is even more ludicrous then the denialist claim that the planet is now cooling. Out of six curves, the only one that isn't obviously increasing is the one for black women. The NYtimes needs to hire reporters than can actually do junior high level math!

Nothing like the question of obesity to get all kinds of hare-brained ideas displayed. My wife is definitely obese, and my adult daughter is overweight. I'm perhaps borderline overweight, but I still wear the same size pants I did forty years ago.

In principle, we eat much the same meals. But in practice, we don't. I simply eat less than my wife or daughter. They both drink carbonated drinks a lot (my wife regular Coke, my daughter diet Dr. Pepper). I usually drink unsweetened tea. Their snack of choice is a chocolate-chip cookie or a brownie (or more often, several of them). My snack of choice is an orange, an apple, or some other fruit. I eat anything put in front of me. They both are quite fussy about what they eat.

I think the big difference is how we lived when we were children. I grew up in a rural location, largely dependent on home-grown fruit and vegetables, with home cooked meals, and did a lot of walking and running. There was no TV and no air conditioning. My wife grew up in an inner-suburban location, with a very limited diet consisting principally of hamburgers, and very few home-cooked meals. They had television but no air conditioning. Our daughter grew up in a suburban area with minimal time spent outdoors because we had both TV and air conditioning.

Just from observing my own family, I think the solution to obesity is simple: eat less, get some exercise, and cultivate a taste for the unsweetened. But I can't convince my wife and daughter to try it.

So, if about 35% of adult males in the US are defined today as obese, there is no obvious physical limit that would prevent this number from going higher. Why not 50%? Or 75%?

Not really true. I see obvious limiters. As marijuana has become more socially acceptable over the years, more people smoke it. But that does not mean that eventually everyone will be a stoner. There are saturation points... maybe the number of new people eating fast food has peaked and the health nuts just aren't biting. Maybe the maximum number of people easily susceptible to obesity are already fat (not everyone puts on weight the same).

I'm with everyone else: junk food. We probably are just reaching a saturation point. I don't see oil affecting the junk food supply for a long time.

Ugo writes:

There have been several studies [...] showing that poor people tend to optimize their diet in terms of the ratio of calories to dollars. In other words, they try to buy the cheapest food that can provide them with the same number of calories. Unfortunately, it turns out that this cheap food is what we call "junk food"; food rich in saturated fats and sugar. This is the kind of food that makes you obese.

[italics mine]
Ugo, you've written a very informative article but I'm afraid your claim that food rich in saturated fats "is the kind of food that makes you obese" has no scientific foundation.
See Health: The Myth of the Low-fat Diet ; For Years, We've Been Advised to Eat a Low-fat Diet in Order to Help Prevent Heart Attacks And Promote Weight Loss. But, Says Jerome Burne, the Latest Research Suggests That Such a Diet May Actually Do More Harm Than Good
at:
http://www.mindbodyhealth.com/lowfatdietmyth.htm

Jerome writes:

A low-fat diet may be actively harmful. In the late Eighties, David Jacobs, from the University of Minnesota, did a study in Japan on the effects of cholesterol and, interestingly, found a link between low blood cholesterol levels and an increase in non-heart disease related deaths. He reported to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which hosted the American Heart Association conference in 1990. At that conference the results of 19 studies from around the world on the links between cholesterol levels and disease were pooled. Taubes writes: "The data were consistent. When investigators tracked all deaths instead of just heart disease, the cholesterol curves were U-shaped for men (both high and low increased the risk) and flat for women." He adds: "As for women, if anything, the higher their cholesterol the longer they lived."

Indeed, the very concept of 'junk food' is controversial. I think basically it means 'food that dumb people eat a lot of'. There is certainly nothing intrinsically unhealthy about it. Disastrous for the environment, perhaps. But environmental health and human health are not necessarily two sides of the same coin.

Personally I prefer slow food myself.

Provided it arrives promptly on the table, of course.

Using Gail's list as a starting point, and adding other hypotheses we have identified so far, which one would be likely to peak?

--Not enough Omega 3 fatty acids in the diet, compared to Omega 6 fatty acids (I don't think this has peaked)
--Depletion from the soil of some minerals we really need in our diet, so our food is deficient in these (Not peaked)
--Not enough fiber in our food, so we tend to feel hungry (Not peaked)
--Ridiculous portions at restaurants (This may well have peaked with the recession/depression)
--Children and adults drinking huge amounts of fruit juice and sodas. Even the "diet" soda are bad (Not peaked, that I know of)
--School that allow junk food to be sold to children (May possibly be peaking now, but 2 years ago?)
--Bovine Growth Hormone (Not peaked, though I have heard people say they are eating less meat)
--Endocrine disruptors in our environment (Definitely not peaked; pesticide levels are rising fast)
--Less exercise (Not peaked; good point about homeless people being less fat; they also do not have any income, miss meals, can't overeat)
--More TV (Not peaked)
--Genetically modified food (NOT peaked at all)
--HFCS/corn subsidies (Still there)
--Two working parents making it harder to cook anything from scratch (this might have peaked given the unemployment)
--Depression (not peaked)

There's more, but this is a start. The possibly causes of obesity which seem to be peaking include:
--Two working parents making it harder to cook anything from scratch (this might have peaked given the unemployment)
--Ridiculous portions at restaurants (This may well have peaked with the recession/depression)

Now, assuming the breakdown by gender/race is useful, why would Mexicans not be affected by the above? Their rate of obesity is continuing on a ruinous trajectory. True, their overall rate still has a way to go to catch up. This means some factors possibly related to the previous rise of obesity could be giving way to others, which are now peaking? And factor determining one race's obesity trends are different for another race/gender?

Here's another conclusion from the JAMA article:

Because relatively little is know about the causes of the trends previously observed, it is difficult to predict the future trends in obesity.

Let me then answer Ugo Bardi's question about how the comparison with obesity "peaking" can inform our "peak oil" interest: We understand almost nothing about obesity trends, and almost everything about oil depletion trends.

Since we have many trend analysts here that are very savvy about looking at charts, I just want to point out that I don't see enough data to make a conclusion either way.

My other point is that the term "peak" gets overloaded too much. I always treat a peak in depletion sense it as something that one can at least formally try to prove. For one, it has to be a peak for all time, so a transient doesn't count.

Some easy facts:

It takes 7,500 unused calories to gain 1 kg mass. The number of days during which these calories are saved are not relevant. You can gain mass as low as 10 grams a day.

For every kg of body mass a person needs 30 to 50 calories depending on nature and amount of work. An athlete would need 50, a farmer who use no machines need 45, a digger 45 and an office worker 30 if he do no work outs.

Oil is pure fats. It contains 9000 calories per kg. Orange has the least number of calories per kg, only 40.

If you are eating organic food with average work out then its real hard to get weight. If you are eating chemical food with work out then its likely to gain weight. If you are eating chemical food without any work out then very soon you would be obese.

What an obese person should do? First of all he/she has to understand that in order to lose weight he/she have to eat less than his/her body need, only then the body would be forced to burn some of the body fats everyday to get energy. Remember that when less food is available the body use it very wisely, when more food is available the body waste it. So when you are trying to loose weight you should keep in mind that it takes twice as much time and effort to loose weight than to gain weight. Also remember that the first effect of loosing weight is not on body, its on face, so don't get alarmed when people tell you you are looking pale, its the way it works, don't stop eating less at this point.

The real, true and time tested method of loosing weight is not eating less, its working out. Walk to work if you can. Never use lifts, always take stairs.

I have done experiments on myself with tight calculations. I have gained 4 kg weight in one ramazan while carefully planning my diet. At my job in 2006, 2007 I gained weight then loose it through working out. These days I walk about 2 kms a day. 2 or 3 times I gained and lost weight through planning and careful monitoring of diet.

About the link between obesity and fossil fuels, the point is not eating more. A farmer of india or china in 18th century was quiet rich given the rich soil and per capita abundance of land but he was not fat. The reason was hard work. Here is the link, fossil fuels enabled humans to use machines which resulted in less physical work done by humans. This is the main reason of obesity in 20th and 21st century. Once the fossil fuels peaked the use of machines peaked and so do the obesity.

Obesity is a bad thing in every way. It should be avoided.

Many many years ago I recall reading about a male and female couple that crash landed a light plane in the interior of Alaska. Both were obese. If memory serves it took them about 45 days to walk to civilization. They had plenty of water and survived the ordeal in good shape. Of course they lost weight, probably around 1 pound for each 3,500 calories expended during the long hike. There may well be some advantage to carrying extra weight when faced with the possibility of famine. Has natural selection conveyed a survival benefit on mild to moderate obesity?
--In the course Biochemistry taken at Baylor around 1953 I was taught the 0, 0, 4, 4, 7, 9 calorie/gm rules for water, insoluble fiber, carbohydrate, protein, alcohol and fat as well as niceties about protein sparing, vitamins, metabolic pathways such as the Krebs cycle and essential amino acids. Having specialized in Radiology I had no reason to kept up with this field other than for personal and family reasons. I claim no current expertise but suspect that much that has been published during the past 30 years is junk science. I expressed this opinion once or twice at TAE before the subject was squelched.

Let me be the first to discredit the bogus liberal Leftist "Peak Fat" theory being promulgated here.

First off, there is no "obesity problem". It only exists in the minds of dieticians and doctors who want more research money to combat a bogus obesity "epidemic" they've invented. The politicians also want to use it as an excuse to grab even more power and restrict our God-given FREEDOMS to consume mass quantities of junk food, all as part of their evil goal of a Marxist one-world government.

Extra body fat is good not bad. It serves many useful purposes: insulates us from cold, stockpiles calories in case of emergencies, cushions us during automobile accidents, and naturally discourages unwanted sexual advances from liberal pervert politicians like John Edwards and Barney Frank. And there's no real evidence of a correlation between consuming mass quantities of so-called "junk food" and being overweight. These "blame America" liberal food Nazis just want to discredit good old-fashioned American chow made by productive well meaning American companies, like Monsanto and Kraft, and force us all to eat effeminate European food, like arugula and quinoa.

Professor Gold has a theory about abiotic fat. He says we become fat, not because of alleged overeating, poor diet or laziness, but because of a naturally occurring process whereby vast amounts of abiotic fat dissolved in the earth's mantle are slowly leaching upwards and being aborbed through our skin. Over time, this ether-fat builds up into the luxurious robe of surplus calories that arrogant liberals disparage as "morbid obesity". This process occurs more rapidly and noticeably among Americans --especially Red State True Americans-- because we are GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE. He clearly favors us by providing an extra thick layer of protective nutrients.

For more information, I recommend reading Thomas Friedman's "The World is Fat", the late Julian Simon's "The Ultimate Cheeseburger", and the late Michael Chrichton's "State of Flab".

Physical activity probably also plays a role. People who switch from cars to public transport out of necessity, or those that need to walk longer distances for whatever reason, are likely to get more exercise than before.

I have no hard figures to back this up, but there were plenty of anecdotal stories: last winter, Ottawa, Canada was in the midst of a two-month long public transit strike. The surge in car-poolers left much traffic almost paralyzed; commuters to downtown, even those who only ever drove, found their commute times skyrocket. Many people walked if they had no other choice. Suddenly many residents found themselves walking two or more hours per day to get to their jobs. I'll comment on two things that happened.

The pertinent thing was that people got a lot more physical exercise. There were lots of cute news stories of people losing weight and becoming fitter from the involuntary exercise/lifestyle shift.

The other thing that happened was the fury and the community spirit. The fury was directed to a combination of municipal politicians and transit union bosses (the exact combination depending in part on one's political leanings). The community spirit was also evident: people helping strangers, driving people places, helping elderly people get groceries, ensuring that everyone was taken care of.

Questions remain. Can a slow decline raise people's health to the point that health costs decline? Or are the expensive procedures of the day bound to increase regardless? And at what point does community spirit in the face of adversity turn to chaos? Are there factors that are able to predict how likely a community is to help each other vs. turn against each other?

I think the MSM bogymen for obesity are wrong. It's not economic. Even poor Americans have more money than most skinny Asians. The difference is stress. Americans are the ones sitting in hours of traffic, kids in day care or being whisked around, working harder, and having materialistic standards to keep up with. In short, they are running on a treadmill... and the treadmill never gets tired.

Stress hormones cause fat accumulation. Stress causes over eating and self medication. This is my theory.

Hi Ugo, happy new year,
I think you're missing an example of the 4th law of thermodynamics here.
Maximum entropy.
Whatever there is to be consumed will be consumed as quickly as possible.
I like this variation.

Natural selection will operate so as to increase the total mass of the organic system, and to increase the rate of circulation of matter through the system, and to increase the total energy flux through the system so long as there is present an unutilized residue of matter and available energy.
[Principle of Maximum Energy Flux] Lotka
[1922]

More here
http://www.humanthermodynamics.com/4th-law-variations.html

The graphs do not support your hypothesis. They show whites (the richest segment of the population) starting to lose weight, while blacks and hispanices (both poorer on the average) continue to gain. Note that there are simultaneous inflection points on the black and hispanic graphs, showing lower albeit still positive first derivatives.

I suggest instead that those who could afford to pay extra for good food but didn't know any better are starting to learn better and thus buying the good stuff and losing weight. I suggest further that it is only when blacks and hispanics lose weight and whites do not, while not having returned to healthy weights and thus stabilizing, that there is any credible evidence for your hypothesis.

Best hopes for math trumping ideology.

Frank

Cause and effect are all over the shop in the article.

Obesity is not caused by poverty. It may be related, but only in so far as poverty is also associated with poor education (or educated people that should know better).

Most people that smoke, or drink too much, or use drugs, or are obese - know full well that they are rolling the dice.

People in America are obese because they lack the discipline to:

• Cook cheap meals at home.
• Eat sensible portions.
• Exercise to even a modest extent.

Obesity does not happen overnight, it takes years of consistent negligence. Personally, I would tax the hell out of desert, soda and anything else with high fructose corn syrup.

I went from overweight to normal weight simply by switching to coffee sans any sweetener and from soda to water.

Obesity is a complex problem. When I was 17, I was 5'11" and 155lbs, quite fit as a mediocre tennis player. When I went to college, I lived in a dormitory, ate on a meal plan and my activity level went down despite walking a couple of miles each day on campus. My weight increased to 195 as I graduated from college. I was not a soda drinker or a fast food eater, although my portions were outsized. I went for buffets and was compulsive about my eating. I tried Weight Watchers and lost 50 lb at age 32, dropping from 248 to 198. What that weight loss required was weighing and measuring of ingredients, creating menus with little variation, physical activity 5 days/week. I was able to maintain the weight loss for 2 years. Eating well was easily derailed when work demands increased, physical injuries accrued, or emotional stress (break-up)increased. Eating well for me requires 1)plans for menus and shopping; 2) a clean and well organized kitchen; and 3) time for preparation, eating and clean-up. As someone who was depression prone, these activities would be some of the first I would drop during a depression episode. Eventually, at age 50, I reached 348lbs and was unable to exercise sufficiently to have an impact on weight due to risks of physical injury or illness (I would develop a fever if I worked out too hard). I could lose no more than 15lbs before regaining weight with a rebound. I took the step of having a gastric bypass after about 30 years of struggling with weight issues. I am now about 220lbs and have been stable for about a year. I would like to lose another 30lbs health's and appearance's sake, but am generally satisfied with the substantial weight loss and energy increase. I work out about 3x/week with moderate intensity weights, cardio and stretching, while playing racquetball weekly. My diet is composed of protein (lean meats, fish, beans, low-fat dairy), fruit, vegetables, and other carbs (whole grain, sweet potato) and small amounts of fat (butter, seeds and nuts, olive oil). Sometimes I make slow cooking stews, tostada with beans and low-fat cheese, open-faced sandwiches, omelettes, etc. My point is that it appears that some who gain an extra 20lbs are able to lose weight by making relatively small changes, and those who become obese may need to make very large changes with very little margin for error. Any change in how much I eat in carbs, for example, may be seen within a day on the scale. I may gain 5lbs without a huge change in consumption. Since the bypass, I am much more able to regulate my weight and lose that 5lbs with a few weeks. So far, I have been able to maintain my current weight with regular monitoring and menu planning.

This thread set me to planning tonite’s dinner. Made me hungry! ::

Deviled eggs, salad (something like rucola, olive oil lemon dressing)

lamb curry (I have ‘coupons’ for the meat, it will cost nothing), rice, spinach (fresh)

left over dried out bolo (a Portugese confection, something in between fruit cake and raisin bread - this was a Xmas gift, I would never buy it) cut in thin slices, interlaced into apples, in the oven.

Dessert as it is Saturday. Dessert only once a week.

Coffee. + Tiny glass of port or something for those who like that kind of thing.

Obviously this meal will be eaten at a proper table, with a 2-plate setting.

Drink: wine (Cotes du Rhone, special reserve, only 2 dollars a bottle at the wholesalers - cheaper than Coke) and water.

Will take an hour at least.

It is also very cheap.

One factor not mentioned so far are all the social conditions around eating.

When ppl eat 3 or 2 meals per day, together, prepared by a ‘cook’ and following ‘social rules’ for eating, and don’t eat anything in between, they will not become fat. They are not ‘gratifying’ themselves by eating whatever alone; social niceties and convention (or someone serving) see to portion control; the meal will be ‘balanced’ according to tradition, with a medley of foodstuffs, etc. They will enjoy the meal not only because of the food but the company, etc., thereby removing unique focus on the food.

It used to be the case that most people ate what someone else, thru tradition, or the group, decided they should eat, and not what they themselves chose to eat at any time of the day.

The culture of individual choice, or more generally ‘individualism’ as part of the ‘free market’ (segmenting it to scrabble for ‘profits’) is one of the main causes of obesity.

Naturally, this goes against the ‘capitalist’ mantra, and many will prefer to invoke individual responsibility, choice, poor parenting, horrible education, lack of common sense, individual greed, or just to blame the 'poor' for being 'dumb'...Then in the next breath turn to vilifying corporations for their lousy industrial food foisted on all. It is a contradiction that is quite painful, as there seems to be no general solution proposed.

Politics is evacuated. (As in the use of oil.)

Two comments:

1. For those "fast-crashers" among us, a little fat might not be the worst thing. It would be good to be fit (able to run and lift heavy things) but being thin may not be the best idea. There is a reason that our bodies store fat, after all.

2. I think that there is a false dichotomy here between healthy, home-cooked food and unhealthy, prepared foods. I don't think that this is the case. I have found that it is sometimes easier to be healthy with prepared foods. Cooking vegetables takes a lot of time, but many prepared foods have them already added, and just needing to be heated.

For example, check out Amy's frozen foods. They are vegetarian, and mostly organic, with lots of veggies. Also, Kashi makes some very healthy prepared foods. I find that when I cook, I tend to just have meat, or just one item. When I make these prepared foods, there is more variety of ingredients available. Again, you just have to be careful to read labels, and find what foods are really good for you.

Amy's:
http://www.amys.com/

Kashi:
http://www.kashi.com/

A lot of interesting comments, thanks everybody! Reading the discussion i got the feeling that there is a deep relation among resources, the economy, social inequality and many other factors; including body weight. Peak oil will not just change the world, it will change us, physically!

A lot of interesting comments, thanks everybody! Reading the discussion i got the feeling that there is a deep relation among resources, the economy, social inequality and many other factors; including body weight. Peak oil will not just change the world, it will change us, physically!

I am a believer that you get fat when you have money, because you can eat out without any worry. I used to joke with me friend who owns his own business because you could judge how well he was doing because of the weight he would carry. Interesting article

Matt
Talk of Liberty