Big & Beautiful Thread of Sizeisms

[Geeheeb]

This is not the first time I've heard this rat study cited. I'm still missing the connection here. Because rats are getting fatter in some studies and people don't know why then it's not people's diets that make them fat. Ok.

It looks environmental to me, especially based on the multigenerational effects of environment on obesity outlined in that article. Mice didn't evolve in cages, and humans didn't evolve eating industrial foods.

[Zap Rowsdower]

Study: Americans Enjoy Watching TV, Eating

WASHINGTON—According to a new study published Monday by the Pew Research Center, Americans enjoy watching television and eating. “Our research indicates that residents of the United States take great pleasure in watching television, often for many hours at once, and enjoy eating food in large quantities, preferably several or more times per day,” lead author Dr. Richard Cowell said of the study, which follows an earlier report that concluded the nation greatly prefers sitting to standing. “Our findings also suggest Americans enjoy watching television and eating at the same time.” According to the study, Americans do not enjoy being hungry or having no TV.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/study- ... ing,33630/

[takeasneededforpain]

This is not the first time I've heard this rat study cited. I'm still missing the connection here. Because rats are getting fatter in some studies and people don't know why then it's not people's diets that make them fat. Ok.

It looks environmental to me, especially based on the multigenerational effects of environment on obesity outlined in that article. Mice didn't evolve in cages, and humans didn't evolve eating industrial foods.

Bingo. And "industrial foods" is sort of a misnomer. It should be "pasteurized processed food-like product".

They also test the effect of exogeneous cholesterol ingestion on rabbits. Essentially, they feed animals with next to no capacity for digesting meat and cholesterol products excess cholesterol and then arrive at the rather obvious conclusion that it increases their serum cholesterol.

There are lots of other studies done in which the parameters are either poorly defined (what constitutes a high-fat or high-carb diet? I several studies I've seen, they've defined them as one or the other with only a 15% difference in macronutrient ratios) or they use industrial food products in the high-fat, and (what would pass for) raw vegan in the high-carb, and pass the data off as "authoritative".

It's MADDENING when you read the methodology, and realize it's literally garbage in, garbage out. Their input data is less than worthless, so the conclusion is even less valid than that (half of less than worthless?).

[Zap Rowsdower]

Chuck Klosterman

I just had to look this guy up and it turns out he's been doing an advice column for NYT? I want to play chicken with all this horseshit, scoring points every time I find a deep contradiction like "An Illegal Marriage That Benefits Society? It’s a loveless transaction. Unless it isn’t."

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/ ... index.html

Chuck Klosterman Corners Guy At Party Wearing Dio Shirt

NEW YORK—Author Chuck Klosterman reportedly cornered a guy who was wearing a Dio shirt at a party Thursday evening and dominated an exhaustive discussion on the metal band, addressing the group’s fantasy themes, deconstructing lyrics, and expounding a variety of related and semi-related topics.

According to several eyewitness accounts, Klosterman encountered the party guest in a black T-shirt emblazoned with the Dio logo at approximately 9:30 p.m., walked directly over to the man, and immediately launched into a treatise on how the band’s 1983 debut release Holy Diver represented the purest manifestation of heavy metal music, “or, at least, our collective idea of what heavy metal music means.”

“Hey, man, it’s interesting that you’re wearing that,” Klosterman was overheard saying as he darted toward the man. “When Dio put out Holy Diver it really filled a void left by the band’s contemporaries Motörhead and Judas Priest, and yet there’s a sly sense of almost half-parody coursing through the record, too, where it’s almost saying ‘This is a record that knows what you expect of it, and is willing to both satisfy and subvert those expectations.’”

“And yet, with its expert power riffs and and its sense, lyrically, of overcoming Stygian forces, it also completely rocks, and thus sort of fulfills its raison d'être,” added the 42-year-old author.

Klosterman, who reportedly never introduced himself or asked for the man’s name, reflected on the “winking aggression” of Ronnie James Dio’s lyrics, which he acknowledged were emblematic of an escapist realm that reflected the needs and desires of a largely working-class fan base.

Though the man reportedly thought the conversation had concluded after 45 minutes, Klosterman moved closer, blocked him from leaving with his body, and started to talk at length about Dio’s bassists Jimmy Bain, Teddy Cook, Jeff Pilson, Larry Dennison, and Rudy Sarzo, and how the band’s shifting lineup “only further emphasized what remained constant” about the group.

“Now, of course it’s easy to recognize Jimmy Bain’s influence on Holy Diver, The Last In Line, Sacred Heart, Dream Evil, Magica, and Killing The Dragons, even as he’s being subsumed into a concept that is, if we’re being honest, larger than his own skill set,” Klosterman said to the man who appeared to desperately search the room for help. “But Jeff Pilson, who came from Dokken, may have had an even more significant impact on the band’s sound while recording Strange Highways, Angry Machines, and Master Of The Moon, in that I think you can actually hear him actively fighting against the group’s core identity in a way that creates tension.”

“It’s also interesting that Rudy Sarzo has a Black Sabbath connection since he had previously played in Ozzy Osbourne’s solo act,” added Klosterman. “In a way, he has the most impressive metal pedigree of all the bassists, if you also consider his work with Quiet Riot and Whitesnake.”

The man, who did not speak one word during the entire exchange, reportedly purchased the Dio shirt at a thrift shop.

Sources confirmed that Klosterman continued to invade the personal space of the man who tried to look away but was unable to escape the columnist’s ceaseless monologue, which swiftly hit on subjects such as the symbolic elements of Dio’s stage show, the significance, and “narrative continuity,” of recruiting former members of the groups Black Sabbath, Rainbow, and Sweet Savage, an obscure Canadian teen television drama, a road trip he took in the summer of 1995, and the inherent comic dualism of the Dio logo, which is Italian for “God” and spells out the word “devil” when viewed upside down.

“Perhaps what’s most intriguing is how the band’s persona and mythos essentially depicts a rock god, whether or not that distinction was earned,” Klosterman reportedly told the man who nodded, then tried to walk away, but was followed by the essayist. “Part of the reason I find the group so fascinating is that Dio’s career was peaking at roughly the same time as Sylvester Stallone’s, who had just co-written and starred in the smash-hit First Blood. I don’t believe that it would be arbitrary to include Arnold Schwarzenegger in this discussion, considering he had just achieved worldwide fame with his role in the film Conan The Barbarian. It’s interesting; all of those artists were sort of toying with, or rebranding in a sense, our own popular sense of machismo. It’s also probably worth mentioning that the animated series He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe had gone into syndication during this period as well. And in that sense, the muscular riffs and bravado of Dio’s brand of fantasy-infused metal are sort of right in step with the zeitgeist of the early 1980s, during which we saw our cultural heroes striking full masculine poses in the shadow of the Cold War. We must ask ourselves: What was the affection for the action hero—be it in cinema, television, or music—at the time? Why did we long for the archetype, and why, to a certain extent, do we still long for that archetype? How is “macho,” as a cultural signifier, being defined? How is it being confined? These larger-than-life and over-the-top heroes were boarding on cartoonish. And in that vein, Dio does verge on parody. But is it genuinely a knowing parody? Oh, man, I’m going to go grab a fresh drink. Let’s continue this conversation in a minute.”

Eyewitnesses told reporters that the man promptly fled the party, pushing several guests out of his way while frantically attempting to exit the apartment.

[Necrometer]

Did you guys see this one?
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3016112/why- ... re-obesity

Of course the POP-science headlines - essentially "BMI is useless! - will be well-received by the obese while this chart will be disregarded, or will be minimized to "see!?!?!? that skinny guy is almost as unhealthy as the fat fatty, which doesn't describe me - I'm a fit fatty like the one on the left, who is the only one walking, you'll notice"


Cute how the summaries spin a study with an abstract like this:

The Health Risk of Obesity—Better Metrics Imperative
Rexford S. Ahima, Mitchell A. Lazar

Obesity has increased worldwide; is a major risk factor for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, sleep apnea, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, osteoarthritis, and other ailments; and has been associated with disability, mortality, and enormous health costs (1, 2). Despite these clear adverse consequences of obesity, some studies have suggested that obesity as defined by body mass index (BMI) improves survival under certain conditions (3–8). Here, we discuss the controversies surrounding the “obesity-mortality paradox” and offer potential mechanisms to explain the effects of obesity on health.

This is not the first time I've heard this rat study cited. I'm still missing the connection here. Because rats are getting fatter in some studies and people don't know why then it's not people's diets that make them fat. Ok.

It looks environmental to me, especially based on the multigenerational effects of environment on obesity outlined in that article. Mice didn't evolve in cages, and humans didn't evolve eating industrial foods.

I actually emailed that professor about that study. If I remember right, the paper seems keen on it being all thanks to viral infection. Here's our exchange:

Your "Canaries in the coal mine" manuscript is intriguing and left me wondering about variations in lab animals' diets over the decades. The paper dismisses such variation as a likely important variable due to the "highly controlled diets, which have varied minimally over the last several decades". I wonder if there is some variability lurking in the standard chow; might increased processing have influenced the average weight? As the paper notes, a ubiquitous increase in the extent of food processing would also explain how feral rats gained weight on average, assuming their diet consists of refuse intended for humans.

Thanks for your interest in our work. Your idea is certainly conceivable, but the aspect of processing would need to be a subtle one, because the lab chow used a few decades ago was also processed.

I was not too satisfied with his answer; it's not like processing is all or nothing...

Geeheeb, what do you think is the mechanism of the multi-generational effect? Epigenetics? Inheritance of fat mitochondria? Chubby rodent culture?

[Zap Rowsdower]

Forgive me if I don't know how to science here, but for lab animals meant for testing, are their conditions suppose to mimic average conditions for humans, albeit on a proportional scale ? E.g. supposing the average caloric consumption of humans has increased leading to increased body mass, would appropriate lab testing desire a similar condition for the test subjects thereby increasing this tightly controlled diet?

I still like my "The Happening" invisible fat wind hypothesis.

[FVBTVS]

it was alright

[Necrometer]

would appropriate lab testing desire a similar condition for the test subjects thereby increasing this tightly controlled diet?

nah, I think the idea is "rats get 10 g rat kibble per day" and that's that

assuming the analysis was done correct (and I haven't seen it critiqued) I do think those findings are pretty mysterious

[takeasneededforpain]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... nst-cardio

Now, I realize that Scientific American isn't exactly peer-reviewed and scientific, but the studies referenced herein could be tracked down and checked for validity.

Of particular interest, from paragraph 5:

"Stampfer’s findings do not merely suggest that saturated fats are not so bad; they indicate that carbohydrates could be worse. A 1997 study he co-authored in the Journal of the American Medical Association evaluated 65,000 women and found that the quintile of women who ate the most easily digestible and readily absorbed carbohydrates—that is, those with the highest glycemic index—were 47 percent more likely to acquire type 2 diabetes than those in the quintile with the lowest average glycemic-index score. (The amount of fat the women ate did not affect diabetes risk.) And a 2007 Dutch study of 15,000 women published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that women who were overweight and in the quartile that consumed meals with the highest average glycemic load, a metric that incorporates portion size, were 79 percent more likely to develop coronary vascular disease than overweight women in the lowest quartile. These trends may be explained in part by the yo-yo effects that high glycemic-index carbohydrates have on blood glucose, which can stimulate fat production and inflammation, increase overall caloric intake and lower insulin sensitivity, says David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital Boston."

"Healthy fatties" should start weeping their tears of Oreo Creme now.
They're bullshitting no one but themselves.

[Necrometer]

I think SciAm tends not to spin things much.

Here's the study's abstract:

JAMA. 1997 Feb 12;277(6):472-7.
Dietary fiber, glycemic load, and risk of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus in women.
Salmerón J, Manson JE, Stampfer MJ, Colditz GA, Wing AL, Willett WC.
Source

Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass, USA.

OBJECTIVE:
To examine prospectively the relationship between glycemic diets, low fiber intake, and risk of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.

DESIGN:
Cohort study.

SETTING:
In 1986, a total of 65173 US women 40 to 65 years of age and free from diagnosed cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes completed a detailed dietary questionnaire from which we calculated usual intake of total and specific sources of dietary fiber, dietary glycemic index, and glycemic load.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE:
Non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.

RESULTS:
During 6 years of follow-up, 915 incident cases of diabetes were documented. The dietary glycemic index was positively associated with risk of diabetes after adjustment for age, body mass index, smoking, physical activity, family history of diabetes, alcohol and cereal fiber intake, and total energy intake. Comparing the highest with the lowest quintile, the relative risk (RR) of diabetes was 1.37 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.09-1.71, P trend=.005). The glycemic load (an indicator of a global dietary insulin demand) was also positively associated with diabetes (RR= 1.47; 95% CI, 1.16-1.86, P trend=.003). Cereal fiber intake was inversely associated with risk of diabetes when comparing the extreme quintiles (RR=0.72, 95% CI, 0.58-0.90, P trend=.001). The combination of a high glycemic load and a low cereal fiber intake further increased the risk of diabetes (RR=2.50, 95% CI, 1.14-5.51) when compared with a low glycemic load and high cereal fiber intake.

CONCLUSIONS:
Our results support the hypothesis that diets with a high glycemic load and a low cereal fiber content increase risk of diabetes in women. Further, they suggest that grains should be consumed in a minimally refined form to reduce the incidence of diabetes.

Basically a case against processed foods. But 1.4% isn't really knocking my socks off...

[copstache]

edit: fuck me, that's unnecessarily huge. sorry about that

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

here, just read it here http://imgur.com/gallery/t7wxOoe

fuck

[canon.docre]

would appropriate lab testing desire a similar condition for the test subjects thereby increasing this tightly controlled diet?

nah, I think the idea is "rats get 10 g rat kibble per day" and that's that

assuming the analysis was done correct (and I haven't seen it critiqued) I do think those findings are pretty mysterious

This is not really relevant but I adopted a rat that was being overfed shitty food, and and he was super obese and couldn't get around his cage very well. I switched him to INSANELY cheaper bulk food that is supposedly what is used for lab rats, this basically perfect mix of a bunch of crap and he goes mental for it. Like it literally costs me less than $2 to feed 3 adult rats for a month. Probably more like $1.50 or less. I feed him what I've approximated as the proper amount and within 6 months he's back to a normal weight and can actually hang upside down from his cage when he's feeling fiesty and wants attention.

How anyone doesn't realize that the key to a normal weight is not eating like a retard is beyond me. I exercise because it makes me feel good and let's me hike mountains without wanting to die and drum better and have more energy, not because I think it will make me weigh less. There is very little correlation between exercise and weight loss, other than they are both associated with a healthy lifestyle so people who exercise and enjoy it because its part of their lifestyle are much less likely to be fat.

[Cryptoplasty]

There is very little correlation between exercise and weight loss, other than they are both associated with a healthy lifestyle so people who exercise and enjoy it because its part of their lifestyle are much less likely to be fat.

So there is little correlation between exercise and weight loss, but also people who exercise are much less likely to be fat.

[Raw Ting]

There's very little correlation between HIV and unprotected sex, too

[riley-o]

I adopted a rat

You fucking sicken me.

[canon.docre]

I adopted a rat

You fucking sicken me.

Ok then man.

[canon.docre]

There is very little correlation between exercise and weight loss, other than they are both associated with a healthy lifestyle so people who exercise and enjoy it because its part of their lifestyle are much less likely to be fat.

So there is little correlation between exercise and weight loss, but also people who exercise are much less likely to be fat.

I used the wrong word

[Necrometer]

So what did you mean? I am still confused and sincerely curious.

[Cryptoplasty]

I hope there are several wrong words used in that post.

[elephants gerald]

I think that what he meant was that the correlation between exercise and weight loss doesn't imply a direct causal link

I think

[canon.docre]

I meant that working out doesn't make you lose very much weight.

[Raw Ting]

Yeth it doeth

[canon.docre]

Yeth it doeth

Not really.

[Zap Rowsdower]

He's right. Also, driving a car does not cause gasoline combustion.

[Gunther]

Yeth it doeth

Not really.