Do These Chemicals Make Me Look Fat?

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/do-these-chemicals-make-me-look-fat-1381587037

Still, in “Canaries in the Coal Mine,” the scientists write that, more recently, the chimps studied were “living in highly controlled environments with nearly constant living conditions and diets,” so their continued fattening in stable circumstances was a surprise. The same goes for lab rats, which have been living and eating the same way for thirty years.

The potential causes of animal obesity are legion: ranging from increased rates of certain infections to stress from captivity. Antibiotics might increase obesity by killing off beneficial bacteria. “Some bacteria in our intestines are associated with weight gain,” Kemnitz said. “Others might provide a protective effect.”

But feral rats studied around Baltimore have gotten fatter, and they don’t suffer the stress of captivity, nor have they received antibiotics. Increasingly, scientists are turning their attention toward factors that humans and the wild and captive animals that live around them have in common: air, soil, and water, and the hormone-altering chemicals that pollute them.

[fitman]

1. I believe some food chemicals cause weight gain (HFC's)

but as a nation we are just eating too much..64 ounce Big Gulps..all you can eat buffets, too much processed foods and not enough exercise. No one eats at home anymore...

Went to a buffet style wedding last night....people piled up food 10 inches high on their plate..srs enough for 3 people...and yeah I noticed they were all FAT Fucks...and I can say that as a guy who was a former FAT fuck...I lost 103 lbs through diet and exercise and eating right I know what I am talking about..I stuffed my face to gain that weight.....no one else to blame but me. I caused my weight gain..

[Silent3]

2. I lost a lot of weight too (85 lbs) the same way, but I don't want to be too quick...

...to assume that what has worked for me applies to everyone else.

I certainly know I exercise more than I can reasonably expect most people to make time for in their daily lives. Having the extra time in my day that a very short commute (only six low-traffic miles each way) provides, plus a gym at work that I can use during work hours, gives me an enormous advantage few people can hope to enjoy. It's fairly common for me to get home at night having cancelled out all or nearly all of the calories of food I've eaten with calories of exercise that I've done. Sometimes I even end up with a calorie deficit before dinner. For the past few months I've been having to eat 1700-2300 calories during the evening alone to maintain my current 178 lbs (I'm 6' tall) because I've been doing 1000-1500 calories of exercise per day 6 out of 7 days a week.

While this is all working out well for me, I can't be all that certain that I'm not having to work harder to keep the weight off than perhaps I might otherwise have to work under different circumstances of environment and food supply. I could certainly eat less (something more inline with what I was eating while losing weight) and exercise less (500 calories a day would still be a goodly amount of exercise) but I'm enjoying the muscle tone and stamina that I'm building up now, not to mention the freedom to eat a lot of healthy snacks and the occasional indulgent dessert.

Part of me is suspicious that a lot of people are merely looking for scapegoats for poor eating habits and a lack of exercise. It bothers me that some people talk about diet and exercise issues as if the laws of physics don't apply to human body, as if fat can just appear out of nowhere and maintain itself against all caloric intake/outflow realities.

On the other hand, I think there may well be something to the idea that something in our food supply, or elsewhere in the environment, could be making self-control harder, and/or could be changing basal metabolic rates such that much more effort and self control is needed than has been necessary in the past for the general public to maintain healthier weights.

(By the way, except for breakfast I hardly ever eat at home myself, but I've figured out how to eat out in a healthy way.)

[joshcryer]

3. How about the... abundance of food?

[Motown_Johnny]

4. Would rats in and around a city have more food now than 30 years ago?

I suppose it is possible. That might also be offset by increased rat population.

I guess it would need to be a population/food ratio change that increased the amount of food available to each individual rat.


It was also mentioned that the other animals were in stable environments. That would suggest that the abundance of food had not changed (nor the population).

[Berlum]

5. GMO food scraps with "zombie chemicals"?

Strange genetic chains + strange chemical inputs yield strange results.

Diabetic rat:

[Motown_Johnny]

6. I wonder if climate change could play a part.

The highly controlled environments with nearly constant living conditions might not be able to control for stress caused by extreme weather conditions. Feral rats would be experiencing the same stress (assuming climate change is causing stress).

Storing fat might be a physical reaction to the increased threat of drought or severe winters.

Just throwing it out there.. no idea.