Talk: Obesity

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The United States is historically remarkable for being the first nation with obese poor people. This was in bad jokes and deleted nonsense, but it actually makes a good point. --Ed Poor

I've added information about poverty correlations in the social causes section. Adhib 01:22, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

We should probably mention the recent US court case(s) against MacD's. -- Tarquin

See also "McLibel" case

I've added material about the policy/litigation issues at bottom of the controversies section. Adhib 01:22, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Americans have the highest obesity rate in the world -- This may be true, but I'd like to see some documentation for it. -- Zoe

Not true. Obesity rates on some Pacific Islands run at up to 85% in the over-40 bracket. Adhib 11:27, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Obesity also plagues middle eastern countries, with 35 per cent of Egyptians considered obese, a greater proportion than the population in the USA at 20 per cent." -- http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20000917/world.htm#6 However, I can't find any sources to confirm this. -- General Wesc

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From the article:

The BMI was created in the 19th Century by the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet, and remained largely intact until June 1998 when the BMI was revised downward. This had the effect of changing one's status from "ideal" weight to "overweight" in one day.

What does this mean? Does it mean that the numerical definition of the BMI was changed, or that the thresholds for "overweight" were changed? As is, this statement is vague and confusing. -- The Anome 09:04, 4 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Clarified this claim, but I suggest any further material is referred to the BMI article itself. Adhib 11:27, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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User:Curious wrote:

obesity is rare in the wild because they eat the body controlled way. the trouble with dogs and cats and horses is the diet mentality has the owners feeding the animals only a certain amount, usually located on the bag or in books, and only once a day for dogs and twice for horses.

so when hunger strikes the dog or cat they have to wait on the owner to feed them which can be hours, so for hours the animals is hungry the body is burning up fat and muscle for fuel until food comes in. and when they do finally get to eat it is not enough to replace the muscles or to saitiate the animal.

so what does the animal do? Beg. so the owner gives them the parts of the food they themselves don't want and poof a fat animal. they are only putting on fat because they are going hungry to often or the food quality is poor and they are not given enough on a consistent basis.

This is famine survival, we may not think of animals as enduring famines afterall they are being fed at least once a day. but it is a famine nontheless, as far as the body is concerned.

But if the owners would give them a high quality food on a constant basis, higher meat than vegie, give them some fat several times a week they would cure their obesity. it wouldn't happen overnight but it can be done without being cruel to the animal by making it go hungry all the time just for the sake of vanity (thinness doens't necessarily equate with good health, it just looks better) putting animals on diets or giving them less than they want is cruel.

and:

Studies show that exercise while dieting doesn't preserve muscles. muscles are needed for a higher metabolism. Diets also are associated with increased mortality because of this muscle cannabalism, which the heart is a muscle and it weakens it. Just read that in a metabolism article earlier today.

Adipose 101 stated too that diets do not lower setpoints, and that setpoint determines the amount of fat stored. I also learned through personal experience that the land of plenty is not the reason for obesity. animals in the wild generally have a land of plenty and are not obese, though they do gain fat in the fall for winter survival.

humans who live in a land of plenty do not generally take advantage of it because of the diet mentality or if they do, they eat too much junk, which to the body of a famine sensitive individual is considered a nutrtient famine. the body doesn't know that food is plentiful if you don't eat enough of it on a consistent basis reaching satiation.

just as much as many are overeating, they are also undereating. Jean Antenello, RN,who runs the naturally thin clinic in saint paul minnesota, states that "the famine feast cycle" is the reason for obesity. Just as we are trying not to eat, there are times the body makes us eat until the setpoint is reached. this setpoint is raised or lowered based on how we train our bodies.

if we eat enough and listen carefully to the body's cues and signals or relearn them if we have damaged them, we can eventually get the setpoint to lower. This is a slow process.

How does one know if they are on the right track and eating enough?

Basically you start to crave healthier fares, you lose interest in food over time, you have other interests that start to dominate, you find you leave food on your plate because you are satiated, you find junk food revolting most of the time and you find you don't think about food all the time if that is what you were doing before eating on the body demand basis. You find that exercise doesn't have to be forced but you get antzy, (personal experience) you feel like a motor in your body has reved up on high idle (well it does for me anyway).

you get hotter, you don't have cold hands or feet, your not hungry all the time anymore once your body has reached the setpoint and has plataued. you start to eat less without trying, you are not even aware of the weight loss until you try on your clothes and they feel like they have stretched and start to hang on you. you don't need willpower not to overeat at a party if you are eating enough other times.

And when under stress you such as depression or exciting event, instead of wanting to eat then, (which is the bodies chance to do make up eating since your willpower is low) you find food revolting. And for me by getting of this famine feast cycle mentioned it eases menstral pain consideralbly, and it eases bloating too at that time this i was not expecting.

You also heal faster too when you exercise or strain a tendon or muscle, whereas before eating the body controlled way I personally would take forever to heal a pulled muscle, sore muscle, strained back, tendon or whatever we are talking weeks not days like now. I also am building up strengh and stamina from exercise quicker with less effort then when I was still on the cycle. I don't get sick like I used to I was always getting colds in my sinus and getting chronic headaches and hurting all the time. not much of that anymore which surprised me.

The cure for obesity is the oppisite of what we have been led to believe. eat more, keep it mostly real foods, eat junk sparingly, exercise for fun, but not weight loss and live your life, stop waiting to live, you might be dead by the time you reach your weight loss goals if you do it the conventional way.

Bmi's are not accurate, they determine size but they dont' tell you what that size is. muscles bone etc besides fat. We all know how excess fat is harmful to a well fed body,well so does the body of a genetically strong survival instinctual individual. the body will kick in the fat burning mode (while still preserving muscles as opposed to dieting effects of burning muscles with fat) but only after a long time when it sees thorugh experience that you will feed it what it wants as much as it wants when it wants.

that is why the plataue of a naturally thin eater (tho still fat yet) can be long. the body in the plataue stage is waiting for that famine (dieting efforts) to come along, if it doesn't come along within it's time frame, not ours, it will make the changes needed to get rid of excess fat that is there for surviving famines and not for good health.

This I am experinceing and so are many others that I correspond with on the internet special message board.

This material is highly personalised, and the POVs are not well cited (Adipose 101 -- but taught by who?) I assume that this is based on somebody's theory of obesity, and could be worked into a good article on those ideas. I will talk to User talk:Curious (who is quite new) and see if I can get more details. -- Toby Bartels 04:31, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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Edits by User:4.229.171.100

I have reluctantly reverted a large addition by this anonymous user, rather than copyediting it. Although it generally conformed to the flow of the article, it was unwikified, written in the first person ("I think...") and full of statements which need POV-work (Weight Watchers is a 33 billion industry) and factual disentangling ("1% of all anti-obesity surgery works"). I urge the user to reintroduce his work in a way that does not make one think this is a school project copy/pasted into wikipedia. JFW | T@lk 23:20, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

NPOV

Just to clarify why I think more attention to NPOV writing is needed in this article: As far as I'm aware, there isn't a single study showing a obesity causes any disease (in humans, at least). This is simply because it is virtually impossible to cure obesity (or induce it) without changing exercise patterns, diet (this is not as trivial as it might sound), and probably quite a few other things. There are statistic correlations between obesity and adverse health effects, but those boil down to "Group A, which (in tendency) does not to get enough physical exercise, is poorer, does not to follow or ask for medical advice, and might suffer more from all sorts of mental disorders, has higher mortality than group B". Usually, this wouldn't be too much of a problem. For a life insurance company, obesity is a good indicator for reduced life expectancy. However, quite a few people jump to the conclusion that if only group A people ate less, that would increase their life expectancy to that of group B people. I consider that highly unlikely.

As for the 400,000 US deaths/year claim, could someone with access to the actual journal article fix it? The New Scientist reporter seems confused about whether the study concerned "poor diet and physical inactivity", "overweight or obesity", or just obesity. That a condition affecting about 30 per cent of the population would be the cause of 16.6 per cent of deaths seems rather unlikely to me.

At present, the quote seems to be at best irrelevant. It is unclear to me why we would want to quote an article which can't decide which of three conditions, affecting anywhere between 20 and 80 per cent of the US population, to blame for 400,000 deaths per year.

Prumpf 14:13, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'll chase the reference. The New Scientist is not a good source in general. It only reports what scientists have published in other journals. JFW | T@lk 15:55, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I've reworded the Mokdad reference. If you feel this is still too unclear, please make further edits.
I have finally removed the "viral origins" paragraph and merged it with "causes". This theory is in its juvenile stage, and I'm not even sure if this should be on Wikipedia. At any rate, I've found a nice reference to go with it... JFW | T@lk 17:49, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)