My primary claim was that we already understand the main proximate cause of the obesity pandemic. It has something to do with people maintaining calorie a calorie surplus—the difference between our calorie intake and our energy expenditure.
If I understand your reply correctly, you are essentially saying, “vegetable oils likely cause our bodies to retain extra calories than they otherwise would.” A reasonable conjecture, but let me offer another.
Assume that our bodies do not retain more or fewer calories depending on what we eat. Instead, our calorie surplus is measured reasonably well by the number on the nutrition label. Then, naturally, the problem is simply that we’re eating too much.
Of course, this theory leaves a lot to be explained, such as why we’re eating so much in the first place. However, we also have a simple answer for that: modern processed food generally tastes good, gets people hooked, and causes us to have more frequent and more intense food cravings. As far as Occam is concerned, I don’t see why we need much more than this theory.
That’s certainly fair enough! I really don’t think that I have any qualms with your logic, my reason for posting and exploring this is partially that maintaining a calorie surplus didn’t seem to be a very satisfactory answer, analogous in your argument to saying we know the proximate cause of climate change because more energy is coming in than out—and that opinion was shared by a lot of other people here. In particular, the mysteries of the Peery paper were definitely getting some discussion going.
I’d refer you to the comments on this post—I think a lot of others said it better than I why we at least think this merits more discussion.
Sounds like both of you think: something in modern food is causing our weight set point to go up.
You think it’s the taste, he thinks it’s some novel chemical.
I say ‘weight set point to go up’ rather than ‘we eat too much’, because I think you both agree that after a successful diet, weight goes quickly back up to where it was, rather than slowly like it would do if we just carried on eating too much.
My primary claim was that we already understand the main proximate cause of the obesity pandemic. It has something to do with people maintaining calorie a calorie surplus—the difference between our calorie intake and our energy expenditure.
If I understand your reply correctly, you are essentially saying, “vegetable oils likely cause our bodies to retain extra calories than they otherwise would.” A reasonable conjecture, but let me offer another.
Assume that our bodies do not retain more or fewer calories depending on what we eat. Instead, our calorie surplus is measured reasonably well by the number on the nutrition label. Then, naturally, the problem is simply that we’re eating too much.
Of course, this theory leaves a lot to be explained, such as why we’re eating so much in the first place. However, we also have a simple answer for that: modern processed food generally tastes good, gets people hooked, and causes us to have more frequent and more intense food cravings. As far as Occam is concerned, I don’t see why we need much more than this theory.
That’s certainly fair enough! I really don’t think that I have any qualms with your logic, my reason for posting and exploring this is partially that maintaining a calorie surplus didn’t seem to be a very satisfactory answer, analogous in your argument to saying we know the proximate cause of climate change because more energy is coming in than out—and that opinion was shared by a lot of other people here. In particular, the mysteries of the Peery paper were definitely getting some discussion going.
I’d refer you to the comments on this post—I think a lot of others said it better than I why we at least think this merits more discussion.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fD8jXHvLJrEdSLQrE/obesity-epidemic-explained-in-0-9-subway-cookies
Sounds like both of you think: something in modern food is causing our weight set point to go up.
You think it’s the taste, he thinks it’s some novel chemical.
I say ‘weight set point to go up’ rather than ‘we eat too much’, because I think you both agree that after a successful diet, weight goes quickly back up to where it was, rather than slowly like it would do if we just carried on eating too much.
Is this fair?