The Animals are Also Getting Fat
marginalrevolution.com
marginalrevolution.com
Is there some subconscious need to make fat people's fatness a character flaw? I'm trying to understand the intransigence against considering what looks like a great area for research. I'm wondering if this is a case of cognitive dissonance. The reductionist calories in/calories out approach seems disingenuous to me. If large portions of the population began breathing 10% more over a long period, I wouldn't assume they were greedy-breathers, I'd look for a medical cause.
This is an intriguing finding. Particularly that animals on controlled diets are gaining weight. (even if the control is simply what is available). Forgetting the reductionist view, hunger is a drive, and depends on a self-regulating system. If something is interrupting the equilibrium in animals, either type of food, type of calories, environment (not necessarily the global environment, it could be local, like room temperature or something else), or foreign agents, isn't that pretty interesting, especially if it is happening to animals on controlled diets with exceedingly similar environments?
As someone that was fat my whole life, then lost over 50bs to visual abs, I noticed that people aren't fat or skinny, they have fat or they don't. In other words rather than describing someone as fat, its more accurate to describe them as having a lot of fat.
There are broadly two possibilities:
1. Some unknown phenomenon is defying everything we know about physics. Matter and energy are being created, apparently from nothing. Or perhaps transmutation is occurring without emitting lethal doses of gamma and X-ray radiation.
2. There has been uncontrolled variance due to faulty or incomplete record keeping, unobserved changes in activity, genetic drift affecting the appetite and activity of the population, changes in environment affecting the appetite and activity of the population (eg cage size change, lighting changes, temperature changes), unannounced changes in food supply composition (the food is a commercial product) etc etc et bloody cetera.
In human subjects, when placed in controlled situations, weight loss or gain very closely aligns to the simplest model of calories in - calories out, modulo fluctuations in water weight and personal variations in digestion and activity.
Furthermore, when zoomed out to a population level, BMI tracks calories consumed per capita very closely[1]. The increase in wealthy country population obesity reflects that food is cheaper, easier to get and more calorically dense that at any time in history[2].
Calories in/out is reductionist. But it's all you need to control weight.
[1] http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/calories-st...
You have entirely missed the point if you are arguing about physics when discussing this. It is like stating tornadoes occur because the wind moves faster.
When one has data a theory doesn't explain, you hypothesize, and re-test. That's science. Regardless of whether you have convenient correlations like your 1 and 2, you don't assume those correlations are causation and stop researching. What you don't do is dismiss the outlying data and call it a day.
In science you don't get to declare any old thing you like and then everyone else has to immediately agree to test it. Everyone else is free to propose other hypotheses that fit the facts and it is generally accepted that the simplest hypothesis consistent with the evidence is more likely to be correct.
The concept of a viral or epigenetic effect on either the efficiency of digestion or the efficiency of metabolism is worth investigating. However it would require a complicated mechanism to explain how and why it happened simultaneously across a mix of populations. Another explanation, given that all these populations are in contact with the human food supply, is that the human food supply has changed to be more calorifically dense. And, of course, it may be some combination of the above.
A simple way to examine the mystery would be to look at animal populations in other countries. If the wild animal populations of places where people are starving to death are becoming obese, there might be something to it.
No, that's not the point at all. Whether something is causing a greater appetite is the point.
This hypothesis could be tested in one way by looking to see if whatever is happening decreases as you get to the tropics. If so its strengthened, if not it doesn't necessarily say one way or another.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/bra...
Another half test is to wait and see if we don't have an ice age, that would be evidence against it, but not absolute if e.g. the global warming crowd is partly correct.
The explanation about animals having access to more food does not work. In the wild, if there is more food, you will simply get more rats. Wild animal populations tend to rise to match their food supply without giving much opportunity for animals to get fat.
Unfortunately, the sugar explanation does not quite explain the lab rat observations. It is possible that the lab rat food has been augmented by sugar without the scientists noticing. AFAIK lab rats tend to be fed commercial food mix that is purchased from various suppliers.
The other explanation fits the lab rat results much better but it is much scarier. It is possible that due to GM crops and/or cattle food supplements we may have released some new hormone in the food supply and/or the water that makes us and animals fat.
"...and proper listing of all the ingredients in the product in order from most to least, based on weight."
As to the control mice: my hunch would be that 'let the control animals eat at will' has changed over time. Maybe the diameter of sugar water tubes has increased slightly?
Certainly, our notion of what constitutes overweight has changed. If you look at photos of kids in the 1950s, almost all of them look extremely skinny. We may project that on lab animals, and size the 'eat at will' containers accordingly ("hm, the control mice get too fat. Let's make it a tiny bit harder for them too get their food")
Also, chances are that lab animals live at better controlled temperatures. Possibly, they used to eat less in hot summers because the temperature in their cages was higher in summer?
Of course, that's speculation, but it is the simplest explanation I can think of.
I know the research facilities there were the target of severe budget cuts several years ago. It's a shame, because this is an example of where other, unrelated research would benefit from the basic research of an environment mostly untouched by humans.
Though it is certainly not necessary that there be a single explanation for all of these population level increases nor even a single explanation for each individual population, it is intriguing to consider whether there are any factors that could conceivably account for weight increases in all of these populations.
In other words, just more fuel for speculation about some alien contaminant, a pathogen or pollutant, that we can blame for the obesity epidemic. We have all the explanations for human obesity that we could possibly need, but we continue to wish for some cause that does not operate through our behavior.
Why? Increased productivity of farming. Have you ever seen a modern farm? They are just as impressive as any modern sky scraper or any other engineering accomplishment, probably more so for logical reasons. Once you throw in the logistical side, even more. The technology being used for traveling salesman problem is fascinating and cutting edge.
In fact, it's well known that there is plenty of food for everyone on Earth, but the logistics aren't quite up to snuff.. The result is lots of wasted food. Logistics is not a popular science for career-minded scientists to get into, because the costs need to stay low, thus they aren't making a lot of money. But they are well funded and working with the same type of stuff you'd see in the Oil Industry. They're supporting an entire society with their contributions. This is part of the reason I hate Monsanto so much, but that topic is for another thread.
Humans get all the food they need, so they stop forging, same for our pets, so they stop hunting. So do the rats, so they stop competing. Etc, etc, cascading down to many species.
Control mice are typically allowed to feed at will from a controlled diet that has not varied much over the decades, making obvious explanations less plausible.
I propose that the increased population and access to food is accelerating the evolution of intestinal flora, causing it to become more efficient at digesting, sometimes even exceeding the hosts capacity leading to obesity, leaky gut syndrome and IBS.
The only idea I have to solve this problem is to froze some mice embryos and defrost some of them in 20 years and compare (and some of them in 50 and 100 years).
And yes, the time period is not long enough for evolution in rats, but it is more than long enough for natural selection to have a marked influence.