Fat makes you fat? Or not?

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
And why are we talking about Victorian slums? There were very few obese people in Britain in the 50s and 60s, for instance, when there was plenty of food to go around.

Historically, for the majority, food was expensive and exercise was a freebie that was thrown in with working to earn your crust. Now food - especially low quality food - is astonishingly cheap and exercise is a luxury we wear special clothes and pay for. We aren't really optimised for the change in that equation.
 

MikeG

Guru
Location
Suffolk
No argument there. The emotive "Victorian slums" thing, though, helps mask our agreement.
 
No argument there. The emotive "Victorian slums" thing, though, helps mask our agreement.
It's not emotive, or at least not intended to be. We tend to have ridiculously simplistic views about weight and health sometimes. It was mostly in response to
We were brought up eating whatever came and that included mutton, fat back bacon, pigs-'ead broth where the fat was in golden circles floating on top along with solid beef dripping in the chip pan that took ages to melt before you could fry chips. All sorts of fatty food, and it was GOOD. Plus, you never saw as many morbidly obese people about then as you do these days.

I don't think I've ever been thin and at my lightest points in the last 20 years I was probably still clinically obese. There have however been several points in those 20 years that I've been fat but pretty fit. Those times have pretty much all been when I was in a position to prioritise my well-being and give myself the luxury of time or when I was employed in role that involved large amounts of physical labour. I'm unsure myself to what extent that relates to the positive effect on mental health of those things.
 

The Jogger

Legendary Member
Location
Spain
Things move on, but the science doesn't change. It gets nuanced. Adjusted. Added to. Not chucked out with "proves your theory wrong" type statements (My theory? Really? I'm an architect).

So, let's
look at your link. I followed it from the journalistic report to the actual published science. It's always worth doing that. It doesn't make quite the same claims as the article, unsurprisingly. It also says this about its methodology:



So, twice a year they filled in a questionnaire.

Can you tell me what you were eating 6 months ago? How many times a week did you have chips? You see, right there is why you can't say "this study trumps that other one". It is perfectly valid to say "what can we learn from this?" and "what are the general trends (it was a huge study in terms of participants and time)?" and so on, but you absolutely cannot directly compare a study in which every single thing participants consumed was administered by the scientists, with a study asking you to fill in a lifestyle questionnaire every 6 months.

There will be a study somewhere, I am certain, comparing what people claim to have consumed with what they actually have consumed. If you find it, mentally use that as a correction factor for the results of this study.

I am perfectly happy to accept that calories in / calories out is crude. That there are subtleties at the margins. That not all calories are counted properly, and not all are digested in the same way. This is absolutely not the same as saying, as you did "it's just not correct" and "proves you wrong".

Now you're just being silly.

Did you read how the different types of food, effects the metabolism as in refined carbs how this can and does make people obese. You just need to look at all the low calorie, low sugar food that has been introduced to combat obesity and watch people getting fatter year on year. It's not as if we haven't seen a rise in gym membership, running , cycling etc, we have but we have also seen massive increases of obese people.
 

presta

Guru
Very old science - 1964, over 50 years old!
The human body hasn't changed in 50,000 years, let alone the last 50.
What people were consuming in 1964 bears no relation to what people are consuming today :laugh:.
...and as Mike Gs reference shows, dietary composition is irrelevant.
I hope this is a bit more informative for you
You need to learn how to be more discriminating in your choice of references. A quack chiropractor blogging on You Tube doesn't trump peer reviewed science published in an academic journal.
 

presta

Guru
About 10 years ago I developed a xanthelasma (lump of cholesterol under the skin in the corner of the eye). I put it down to the recent acquisition of a serious cheese sandwich habit, and sure enough, it disappeared within a year after I reduced my fat intake. Interestingly though, my fat intake was already below the recommended level before I reduced it, so god knows how high my cholesterol would be if I were to eat a 'high' fat diet.
 

MikeG

Guru
Location
Suffolk
Now you're just being silly.

Did you read how the different types of food, effects the metabolism as in refined carbs how this can and does make people obese. You just need to look at all the low calorie, low sugar food that has been introduced to combat obesity and watch people getting fatter year on year. It's not as if we haven't seen a rise in gym membership, running , cycling etc, we have but we have also seen massive increases of obese people.

Thanks. You've just made my point for me. Maybe you should re-read what I wrote.
 

MikeG

Guru
Location
Suffolk
I hope this is a bit more informative for you


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxwRxzKapH8


Yeah, it informs me a lot. Particularly about people who think that science is a Youtube thing, and that chiropractors are experts on diet. He also flat out lies in the first minute, which means you can completely disregard everything he says. Oh, and if you check him out using your favourite search engine, you'll find that he runs a business trying to help people to lose weight, (a field in which he has no qualifications) so he is not a disinterested third party as required of proper science. Finally, he may call himself doctor, but he wouldn't be regarded as such here, as he is a Doctor of Chiropractics. Here is what Chiropractors are trained in:

Chiropractic education trains students in chiropractic, a form of alternative medicine concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of mechanical disorders of the musculoskeletal system, especially the spine
From Wiki

So, if you are into alternative medicine (by definition, without an evidence base backing it up), you think that someone whose "expertise" is musculo-skeletal injuries is the first port of call for advise on weight disorders, and you think Youtube clips trump peer reviewed science, then I have a bridge to sell you.
 
Last edited:
The human body hasn't changed in 50,000 years, let alone the last 50.

Our understanding of it has though... As an example, my mum sat on the maternity ward rolling her own cigarettes. Her mum was of a generation who thought smoking could be actively good for you.
 

MikeG

Guru
Location
Suffolk
Here is a direct explanation of the apparent conflict between reported calorie consumption and weight gain. It's a piece of research which shows that individual and national calorie consumption is vastly under-stated:

The studies using Doubly Labelled Water, the gold standard for measuring energy expenditure, indicate that as a population we are consuming 30% to 50% more calories than the levels reported in official statistics (see Figure 1).

Think about that a second. It entirely explains the study quoted by The Jogger, above (I wish posts here had numbers!!).
 

MikeG

Guru
Location
Suffolk
They should do, put your phone or tablet in landscape :smile:

:smile::laugh:

My phone has a crinkly chord attached, probably too short for it to reach the landscape from where it is plugged into the wall socket. Tablets? Mercifully, I'm pill-free.

I'm at a PC.............and I've found the post numbers! It would be hard to make them more obscure if one tried. The post I was referring to was #47.
 

presta

Guru
[QUOTE 5011366, member: 10119"]Her mum was of a generation who thought smoking could be actively good for you.[/QUOTE]
That wasn't peer reviewed science, though.

Smoking is quite a good example actually, it was known that smoking causes lung cancer for about a decade before the famous research done by Richard Doll, but people didn't want to listen before Doll's work because the first research was done by the Nazis. People only listen when someone they like is telling them what they want to hear.
 
Top Bottom