Island Life: The Prime Minister will see you now
324 Responses
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Well, not at someone like Giovanni's level of meta. ;)
You called?
Last thing you'd ask a scientist about, frankly.
Woah there, Sacha. What's relativity - from Galileo onwards - if not a reflection on context? Bacon himself was pretty aware that the language in which an experiment is couched can shape its outcomes, and wrote that while men believe they can govern words, "words react on that understanding". And besides the fact that she's herself a scientist, Haraway's splendid essay on the idea of the 'modest witness; in early modern scientific discourse credits Robert Boyle et al. with a pretty sophisticated understanding of these issues.
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The words not only 'shape/'react''/make context'/'couch'-
they *are* all these things...our tongues are so imperfect: written down, they are lost ten times over-
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Fair enough, Giovanni. But your use of the word "discourse" gives you away, meta-grasshopper.
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our tongues are so imperfect: written down, they are lost ten times over
Beautiful.
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The words not only 'shape/'react''/make context'/'couch'-they *are* all these things...
You're a novelist, yes, thank you. If I wrote that, somebody would shout "postmodern! unclean!" and I'd never hear the end of it.
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And I love Diplomatic Immunity. Bite me, science.
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Lovingly, of course.
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Ben, treating obesity (metabolic syndrome) is just not that simple. And as both Danielle and I have tried to tell you, you can eat a fairly small amount of food and still have quite a bit of adipose tissue. You can actually be quite slim and have quite a lot of adipose tissue. Size is not the issue.
And so it goes, all the medical diagnoses that all fail to explain how people are beating the 3rd law of thermodynamics, and creating stored energy (fat) out of nothing.
I'm not trying to 'treat obesity'. I'm just saying what, at the most basic level, is causing it.
If it were as simple as a matter of "will power" or "eating less" then that would solve everything and there would be a lot less illness in the world.
Yup. But you want to make it an illness, and deny that humans can have willpower and eat better and less. Which is totally and utterly, patently false. It can be done.
There are quite possibly some people who can't do it. But there are also people who can. I know this for an absolutely stark fact because it happened to me, personally. I don't need to hear reams of evidence telling me that when I was fat I had some kind of funky mental illness, any more than people who sink piss need to hear it, or anyone who does anything that anyone else disapproves of, for that matter. Sometimes human beings exercise choices. The only question is: Will they?
After all of the analysis you can do, after every way in which you can deny all these people any say in what goes into their own mouth, I can bet you for absolutely certain what you have done, if you actually succeed in ever 'helping' any fat people. It will have been cutting the intake through the standard orifice for the ingestion of food, and perhaps also improving the nature of it, and adding some exercise into the routine. The course of treatment can be written in one sentence. It will be identical to what it has always been. The only question will be how it was that you managed to get them to do that. You will no doubt see it as something you did to them, rather than something they did for themselves. That seems to be where you and I differ.
I'm sure it's much harder for some people. Obviously so. The desire to eat outweighs the desire to not be fat. Why this is the case is most likely very different for each person. I don't attach any moral judgment to it whatsoever. If people seriously aren't bitter on being fat, then that's great for them, they get to enjoy eating whatever they like. I don't care, like I say, I have great friends in exactly this situation. What I do care about is the part where I have to hear that they're bitter on being fat, and someone needs to help them, but not by advising that they change their diet and doing a bit more exercise. That's just trying to have your cake, and eat it too, and then blame it on someone else.
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@Ben
I'm not trying to 'treat obesity'. I'm just saying what, at the most basic level, is causing it.
I agree with you there Ben.Also hormone imbalance can and do come into play, and medications can create havoc there but yes, personally when the meds stopped (after tests for PCOS and numerous other stuff)and I changed my diet and with more energy =more exercise, I lost kilos.
But you want to make it an illness, and deny that humans can have willpower and eat better and less.
By establishing why, (via scientific study)a better understanding can help society to overcome what is now considered a major health cost. A healthier society lives longer but does not cost more( which is the elixir that would help all the world) I'm backing away here cos I know the work that is being done helps many but I believe you are right too :)
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It will have been cutting the intake through the standard orifice for the ingestion of food, and perhaps also improving the nature of it, and adding some exercise into the routine.
If you're going to take up what I (and others) said on my side of the argument (fat is much more complex than just eating less, exercise, nature of food, individual circumstances affect it), abandoning your original argument ("The simple fact is that fat comes from eating food. Period. It really is that simple. And yes, denying that is lying.") then the argument becomes a lot less fun. But, on the plus side, we win, you agree with us!
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What I don't understand is why no one ever uses the converse (inverse? I really have to look the difference up one day) example of one person to 'prove' things. I'm sure we all have that one slender friend who eats like a horse, doesn't exercise particularly strictly, and never gains a pound. I've known someone for a over a decade who regularly eats six slices of toast for breakfast. Never stops eating throughout the day, and not just broccoli either. Thin as a rail. Unlike Ben, I do not think of my friends 'hey, she's sneakily doing four hours a day on the treadmill and puking it up later! That's how she stays so thin!' Instead, I think 'well, that's apparently just what her body does with food. Lucky her'. Because, you know, *people are different*. And stuff.
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Sofie, glad to see you found a way. As you say, it's healthier and it costs less.
Kyle, I thoroughly understand that you can make it a lot more complicated than that. For sure, that makes for a better argument than the straw man position that medical science has discovered a way for humans to survive on sunshine and fresh air alone, so long as they have obesity genes. You really just have to lose the assumption that people can control what they put in their mouth, and then yes, the problem of obesity becomes very difficult and tricky and will require endless research and discussion before we can come to full and informed opinion on how it is that science can control that for us. But even when that's all done and told, and the amazing research breakthroughs come back, guess what the course of treatment will be (aside from the drugs and the gene therapy and the hypnotherapy, and group counseling, and endless dietary training, and amazing new exercise discoveries)? It's still going to be that we should "eat a balanced diet in appropriate quantities, and exercise".
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Danielle, the third law of thermodynamics doesn't say that a system can't bleed more energy than it takes in, no matter how much energy that is. It's only about the impossibility of it gaining energy without any being put in.
For sure, some people burn energy faster than others, or perhaps don't even absorb it. Like you say, lucky them. At least lucky them, when there's a lot of food to eat. When there isn't, it could be highly disadvantageous to be like that.
I really don't know if there might be some people who could actually eat basically anything at all, in enormous quantities, all the richest things, and still lose weight. I can't see any reason for that to be impossible. What's impossible is the converse (you got it right), that you can eat nothing at all, and yet still maintain weight (and continue to live and move).
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What's impossible is the converse (you got it right), that you can eat nothing at all, and yet still maintain weight (and continue to live and move).
But... no one here has ever argued that.
I find it mega-weird that you're all 'sure, that's totally happening' about my thin friend eating like a horse and maintaining her weight, yet you're also all 'nah, that couldn't possibly be happening' about a fat person not eating much (not 'nothing', just 'not very much') and staying fat. Does not compute.
(Also, it's not as if I disagree with your main point about healthy food and exercise. But, you know, *no one* disagrees with that point. It's a no-brainer.)
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It's still going to be that we should "eat a balanced diet in appropriate quantities, and exercise".
Which I'll again point out wasn't at all what you said in the first place, which was along the lines of "recession would be good because people might eat less and that would be good for them (because they'd be less fat).
In actual fact, "eat a balanced diet in appropriate quantities, and exercise" sounds remarkably like what I said in response to your claim.
I don't mind you changing what you're saying, just claiming the points for the win is all.
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But... no one here has ever argued that.
I'll let that one slide. Since it was all I said, right from the start, and you flamed me, I got the impression that you were disagreeing. But perhaps you were disagreeing with a position that is not mine. I think that's highly likely. Also perfectly understandable. You thought I was ripping on fatties. I was not. Sorry if I gave that impression.
Does not compute.
It does compute. Perfectly. A system like the human body can be as inefficient as hell. But it can only be so efficient. So it's perfectly possible to poo out everything you eat without absorbing one single calorie. That would be an extremely unfortunate problem to have. But it is not possible to eat less calories than your are burning, and maintain weight. It simply is not. I don't make any claims about how many calories that is, because there is a massive range of efficiency (clearly it's unbounded at the inefficient end), different for every person. But there is a break-even point. Always. Any less than that, and you lose weight. That does not mean if you go over it you gain weight, because the excess could simply be dumped.
(Also, it's not as if I disagree with your main point about healthy food and exercise. But, you know, *no one* disagrees with that point. It's a no-brainer.)
Excellent. Curiously, there does seem to be a massive industry around diet and exercise, which is utterly failing to deliver that message to a lot of people. So I'm not so sure it's quite the no-brainer you think. You even seem to be struggling with the converse case, and how that could possibly tally with this no-brainer of a message.
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Kyle
Which I'll again point out wasn't at all what you said in the first place, which was along the lines of "recession would be good because people might eat less and that would be good for them (because they'd be less fat).
If they're eating too much then I stand by that point. If you want to see it as standing against your point, then I put it to you that your point is not what you think it is.
You will also note, if you read further on, that I have already explained that I was kidding about the recession causing that. I really don't think food shortages of any kind are going to happen at all. There's just too much food. I was simply responding to the alarmist claim that it might happen by looking on the bright side. People who think that we shouldn't have a cycleway because some people might starve - that's the stupid context in which I was making my joke. No one is going to starve. We should be so lucky.
I do think a decent recession can bring about large shifts in thinking processes, though, and that might help with the 'obesity problem'. We live in a culture of consumption, and people losing some of that consumptive power are sure to find that it's a long, long way from the end of the world.
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I don't make any claims about how many calories that is, because there is a massive range of efficiency (clearly it's unbounded at the inefficient end), different for every person.
Um, so one solution *doesn't* fit everyone? Didn't you just change your mind about what your argument is again?
Anyway. So your argument *now* is that *some* fat people, rather than being duplicitous liars who eat heaps all the time, are actually so mightily efficient at storing every single calorie they eat, that each of them should be on some sort of set incredibly-limited-calorie diet for the rest of their entire lives so they can be thin. While anyone else who wins the genetic lottery can sit around eating deep-fried bon-bons and mocking the fatties for being worthless lazyasses.
You know, call me crazy, but I don't think that's going to work out so well for either group.
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If they're eating too much then I stand by that point.
Let me introduce you to the cucumber. 13 calories per cup.
If my diet consisted entirely of cucumbers, I would need to eat over 100 cups of cucumber in order to get my calorie count close to normal. If I was doing quite a bit of exercise, I'd need to eat in excess of 200 cups of cucumber. Per day.
So to go back to the basics, it's not how much you eat, its what you eat.
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You know, call me crazy, but I don't think that's going to work out so well for either group.
I'm a member of the second group, so I think I win over the first. But I try not to mock, and I like my bon-bons as god intended.
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I see the infomercial now. 'The Matthews Cucumber Diet: eat as many cups of cucumber as you can stand per day and watch the pounds drop off!'
You could make millions, Kyle.
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Um, so one solution *doesn't* fit everyone? Didn't you just change your mind about what your argument is again?
No, I think you've just seen your own straw man. Nothing about my argument is changing.
And yes, anyone who is fat will need to find their break even point to lose weight. For some people who output almost no energy at all and have incredibly efficient fat storage, that might be a tiny amount of food. But there's no two ways about it - they will either find that point, or they have to find a way to dump the excess energy. Or get fat. Those are the choices.
As for the people who are 'lucky' enough to have inefficient fat storage, yes, they can sit around eating heaps without getting fat. There's no point being bitter about that. I wouldn't care to say they are healthy in doing so. These people probably have the opposite problem, that they find it difficult to maintain weight without eating a lot. They could easily suffer from a lack of energy.
Kyle, I'm not sure what you're trying to prove.You haven't proved that it's not 'how many'. You've just shown how many, if it was cucumbers, for you. And it's a lot. Probably an impractical number. A cucumber-only diet would most likely be a very dangerous thing, and you would quickly starve (given consistent work output). Not to mention any other side-effects from lack of other nutrients.
On the flipside, you could probably eat only one extremely rich energy bar a day and survive indefinitely, even doing some work. Eat 10, and you're dumping the excess, or you're storing it in fat. But eat less, and you will get thinner. For certain. It IS about how much. That is actually the basic, and the sophistication is all about how to measure it.
And measuring it is easy. It doesn't require you to count calories, or understand anything at all about how the body turns food into energy, and at what rates. You just have to record the food that is put in, and weigh yourself. Then cut the food back until the weight begins to drop. It's scientific experimentation that everyone can do, and it's especially relevant because it's for yourself. You don't need to know how much food that would be for anyone else. That's of no relevance whatsoever. It's probably highly misleading, in fact.
To avoid the inevitable straw men, I'll note the following. This break-even point is not static. The experiment is continuous, throughout your life. If you care. And that's the big IF. If you don't, then you will never find the break even point, and you will be bewildered for your whole life how it is that you can never account for your weight. It will be a big mystery.
Furthermore, to short-cut the other straw man: Weight is not the whole story of health. I've never said that. But it is something that people are concerned about for reasons of health AND other reasons. If they seriously want to lose weight, then there's no two ways about the fact that they will have to find their break even point. Maybe that will come by changing the energy richness of the food they are eating. But EVEN IF IT DOES, they will STILL need to take account of the volume. Kyle's cucumber only diet would definitely need careful measurement, so that you would know exactly when you could stop forcing more cucumbers in and yet still maintain weight.
I've personally been in both camps. As a teenager I was dead skinny and could never gain weight. In my 20s, excess food converted into muscle and fat. Now in my 30s, with lowered exercise output, it goes mostly to fat. At this point, becoming concerned, the solution was really just as simple as cutting back the intake. I could try to raise the exercise output, but I will never get it back to the heights of my 20s, nor do I want to. I already had a well-balanced diet. It was just about the quantity.
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For some people who output almost no energy at all and have incredibly efficient fat storage, that might be a tiny amount of food.
Ben, I'm thrilled that you've come around on your 'fatties are duplicitous and eat too much crap' position. I'm willing to let everything else (and believe me, there's a lot of it) go just for that one point, because it was the thing that got me rarked up in the first place.
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Danielle, perhaps you are still mistaking me. I'm not letting anyone who is worried about how fat they are of the hook for being duplicitous about how much crap they eat. That's still the source of their fatness, and the cure is still eating less crap, which probably requires keeping honest records for quite a while. But I suggest that you have taken an extreme reading of that obvious point, adding a moral tone to it which was never there, and perhaps taking the word 'duplicitous' out of context to suggest 'outright liar', rather than 'doesn't know and doesn't care, and is totally wrong in their guesses'. Or even 'wouldn't even know where to start counting'.
There is also the question of averages. For sure, there are some people who can get fat off eating healthy food in the same quantities as people who are not fat, whilst doing the same amount of exercise. But I really don't see many people who are actually like that who are fat. Of the fat people I know, and I know a lot, they all eat a lot of crap. The sheer quantity makes the exercise almost irrelevant. I don't really see why I need to go to the academic literature to make this observation. It's blatantly obvious at every occasion I attend where eating is involved, that the fat people eat heaps more than the skinny people. I'd have to go to the academic literature to find the opposite.
So sure, I don't speak for ALL people. No one in their right mind ever does that. There are probably people with all kinds of actual illness that lead to the most bizarre outcomes consumption-wise. But I don't think that simply refusing to accurately account for how much you are eating and then not trying to cut it back, is an illness. It's normal. Everyone does it from time to time. Some people are more in need of changing that than others are.
The question is not 'how can fat people lose weight'? It's 'will they do what is necessary to lose weight'? The first question has an answer that has been obvious since time began. The second can only be answered by the individual.
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And so it goes, all the medical diagnoses that all fail to explain how people are beating the 3rd law of thermodynamics, and creating stored energy (fat) out of nothing.
Ben, Newtonion physics are meant to describe discrete physical objects, not biochemical processes within physiological systems - systems that can even be influenced by an individual's emotional state . These systems can be influenced by the health of their gums .
A person who eats precisely the same amount of food as their identical twin, and expends precisely the same amount of energy can gain a significant amount more weight, in significantly different areas of the body.
If this is possible for identical twins, think of the variation that can be seen between those who differ in age, sex, race or social status. You must get a handle on endocrine function before you hazard a guess at solving what the World Health Organisation and clinicians around the world regard as an emerging health crisis. And yes, this is a huge crisis even in the 3rd world.
To understand metabolic syndrome (obesity syndrome, and yes, it is classified if not as a disease, a pre-disease state) you need to grasp the physiological and biological mechanisms of obesity, the specific pathways that govern energy balance, fat tissue's roles in energy metabolism, the effects of inflammation, appetite and appetite suppression, and body fat distribution.
In every individual, levels of leptin, grehlin, preopiomelanomelacortin, adiponectin, insulin (sensitivity to insulin and pancreatic function) production of lipase, kinase, and general liver function, levels of cytokines and differences in androgens, oh hell I could go on for a long time and unless you're familiar with the basics of of biochemistry, clinical chemistry, physiology, epidemiology and a few other subject, it's not going to make any sense to you.
Even articles written for the layperson, suchas the following, refer to a number of biochemicals because without them discussion of obesity is meaningless.
by Len Kravitz, Ph.D.
The Growing Problem of Obesity"For years fat was viewed and described like a balloon that inflates when one eats more food and expends less calories, and deflates when there is greater physical activity and less food consumption. More recent research reveals that fat tissue (composed of adipocyte cells that specialize in fat storage) functions like other endocrine organs (glands that secrets hormones) in the body, sending signals to the brain which affect several intricate physiological mechanisms of energy expenditure regulation, insulin sensitivity, and fat and carbohydrate metabolism. A few key hormones of interest for energy metabolism regulation are leptin and adiponectin, while a host of other hormones are involved in immune reactions of the body.
"It is now known that fat tissue produces a number of immune system hormones such as tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interleukin-6, plasminogen activator inhibitor 1, angiotensin II and other cytokines. Cytokines, which are hormone-like proteins, function largely as inflammatory proteins, reacting to areas of infection or injury in the body. However, persons with excess fat appear to have an over-reaction of the release of these inflammatory proteins. It has been proposed that this is caused by the low oxygen content in the clusters of adipocytes, which are somewhat distant from the tissue vascular supply. This topic of inflammation is one of the most critical in obesity biology. Both obesity and diabetes are associated with chronic low-grade inflammation). As well, inflammation is now understood to be a key facet in heart disease. The release of these inflammatory proteins may inflame arterial plaque, causing the plaque to rupture, and thus leading to a heart attack or stroke "
Ben, you don't seem to understand that the physiology of obesity and you don't seem to be able to accept when you've been proved wrong.I'm not trying to 'treat obesity'. I'm just saying what, at the most basic level, is causing it.
Well, at the risk of hectoring you, you're wrong, still wrong when you insist you're right, and you're no less wrong by labouring your mistaken point.
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