I've been watching BBC2's The Men Who Made Us Fat

I watched Part 1 of The Men Who Made Us Fat on BBC2 last week. I must say it's a refreshing change to have some evidence-supported information about important causes of the dramatic rise in the incidence and severity of obesity and obesity-related ill-health instead of the usual incorrect propaganda.

In Part 1 it was explained how sugar is a major contributor to obesity and how since the second world war the USA's food industry has been ladling sugar, sugar and more sugar, into its processed junk food products, be they sweet or savoury. And another even more-dangerously obesogenic sugar, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is also added to their food junk and their ghastly soft drinks. This corn product use is massively profitable for America's corn farmers and massively damaging to the health and weight of American citizens. - Especially when it is coupled with the ill-conceived (blame Ancel Keys) misinformation that low-fat food is a good way to lose weight (it isn't and it doesn't work) and that low fat intake is good for our health (it isn't).

So those of us who were paying attention learned that although America purports to be a democracy and proclaims, "Government of the people, by the people, for the people," these days it's more like, "Government of the people, by the farm industry's political stooges, for the farm industry's profits, and to Hell with the well-being of the 'American people'".

On Thursday night I watched Part 2, in which it was explained that not content with changing America's food to obesogenic mass-manufactured highly-addictive crap, Big Business perverted civilised eating to a fast feeding process, with fast food outlets serving food fast to customers, who ate it fast (it didn't take too much chewing), sloshing it down with over-sweetened soft drinks, having queued for 'counter-service', so much speedier than table service. And furthermore, they increased portion sizes to ludicrous levels. - I found the gargantuan size of the drinks especially horrifying! 

Well America's citizens are now mostly pretty huge - well huge, certainly, but not so pretty... And they are so big that they almost look like another species. - And what does the food industry suggest as a remedy for this gross obesity problem caused in large part by the food industry itself? - Well, blame it on the victims of course! Like rapists used to do. - The victims need to eat less fat and take more exercise! (NOT)

But it is not lack of exercise that causes obesity, so taking more exercise does not and will not reduce obesity. Obesity causes inactivity, not the other way round, as I explain in my Mensa article. And as Professor Terry Wilkin of the Peninsula College of Medicine & Dentistry. explained in Thursday's programme. 

Professor Wilkin led a pioneering study into childhood weight gain and found that children do not gain weight because of inactivity and do not lose weight by taking exercise. The study had been commissioned by the government of the time, but the findings were unwelcome, so they were buried and funding stopped, and successive governments, few among them scientists, chose to heed the falsehoods of the food industry, i.e. cut down on fat, especially saturated fat, and take more exercise! - Oh dear! - Do you think it's too much like America's plight? - Government of the people, by Big Business interests, for the profits of the Food Industry and its mates? - What do you reckon? - We've got the Dept of Health being advised about how to tackle obesity by the food and drinks businesses who promote obesity. - Looks like we're gonna be getting more and more obese with all this crap food and crap advice, doesn't it?

And when are they going to get on to SALT? and anti-depressants? and other prescription drugs that cause weight gain?

The Warping of Wisdom: Evidence or Opinion?

There seems to be a view these days that one person's opinion is as good as another's, regardless of whether the opinion is an informed opinion or an uninformed opinion. This may well not do too much harm in itself, but the boundaries have become smudged and too many people now confuse opinion with facts that are well supported by evidence. My especial concern is in the matter of whether more exercise reduces obesity in people in general and in overweight children in particular.

We are in the happy position of being able to check out research on this matter. Researchers from the University of Glasgow found no evidence that exercise either prevented obesity in children or promoted weight loss in children who were already overweight. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/oct/06/health.food where we read that the research was lead by John Reilly, a professor in paediatric energy metabolism at Glasgow University. His "team set out to establish whether greater physical activity would prevent children from becoming overweight. They recruited 545 children in their last year at 36 nursery schools. Half the schools instituted three extra half-hour sessions of physical play and activity every week, and parents were given information packs encouraging them to give their children more activity and less television. The other half had no extra activity or information. All the children were regularly weighed and measured and their body mass index (BMI - the relationship between weight and height used to check for obesity) was calculated, and there was no difference between the groups. "Despite rigorous implementation, we found no significant effect of the intervention on physical activity, sedentary behaviour or body mass index," wrote the researchers. The BMJ article about the research is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1647320/

Dr John Briffa is a UK medical doctor with a particular interest in nutrition and he also has an interest in weight loss for people who are overweight/obese. Here is one of his blog articles, entitled Does exercise promote weight loss? No. He examines the evidence and gives references to relevant scholarly studies. His conclusion is, "There are plenty of good reasons for taking regular exercise. Weight loss isn’t one of them."

There is evidence that obesity is 'set before age of five'. Professor Terry Wilkin, of the Peninsula Medical School, Plymouth, the lead researcher in this research, said, "When they reach the age of five the die seems to be cast, at least until the age of puberty. What is causing it is very difficult to know." He said there must be a factor now that was not there 25 years ago which is making today's children obese. And, given the young age, this is likely to be in a child's home rather than school environment and linked to upbringing rather than schooling. Rather than lack of physical exercise, he believes diet could be to blame. "

As obesity in childhood is an increasing problem, it is most important that advice about remedial measures be supported by evidence, rather than hallowed by tradition, authority and unsupported assumptions. The evidence is clear. The belief that exercising more 'must' bring about weight loss - while fervently and sincerely held by many people - is wrong. It is disturbing therefore to have Bupa, a health insurance company, suggest that exercise helps overweight children lose weight. And of course there is a preponderance of doctors and other health professionals who continue to claim that exercise helps reduce obesity despite the fact that this is incorrect. When authoritative people give flawed information and advice, they bear a heavy responsibility for the harm that results.

Childhood obesity is set before the age of five...

Obesity 'set before age of five'
article on the news pages of the BBC website

Extract:

"The EarlyBird Diabetes study of 233 children from birth to puberty is being published in the journal Pediatrics.

One in four children aged four to five in England are overweight, latest figures show.

Disease 'of our time'

At birth, the children in the study were of similar weight to babies 25 years ago, but had gained more fat by puberty compared with children of the same age in the 1980s.

The bulk of this excess weight was gained before the children were five.

Weight at five years bore little relation to birth weight, but closely predicted weight at nine years old."

"Lead researcher Professor Terry Wilkin, of the Peninsula Medical School, Plymouth, said: "When they reach the age of five the die seems to be cast, at least until the age of puberty.

"What is causing it is very difficult to know."

He said there must be a factor now that was not there 25 years ago which is making today's children obese."

There are more factors than one. Here are the main ones:

1) Children these days eat far more salt and salty food than formerly. Human breast milk is not high in salt/sodium, so breast-feeding a baby for as long as possible helps to protect the baby from becoming overweight. The younger the baby or child, the more harm salt causes. I expect that 25 years ago a lower proportion of mothers of young babies went to work, and so possibly breast-feeding was continued for longer than today.

2) The advice about reducing obesity is wrong. And people are bombarded by this wrong advice. - Obesity is not reduced by eating less food/fat/calories, because obesity is not caused by greed or 'over-eating'. Obesity is caused by fluid retention, caused in turn by sodium retention, and can only be reduced by reducing the fluid retention and that is done mainly by reducing salt/sodium intake and eating plenty of food that is rich in potassium. Fruit and vegetables contain a lot of potassium. Potassium displaces some of the sodium, and the water that always accompanies it, from the body.

3) Sodium retention depletes the body of essential minerals, mainly calcium, magnesium and potassium, and this mineral loss has many adverse consequences - fat retention and bone weakening being the main ones.

4) Dieting increases body weight because it increases fluid retention.

5) Exercise does not result in weight loss, no matter how many people insist that it does.

6) There are far too many pharmaceutical drugs prescribed and taken, and many of these cause or exacerbate fluid retention.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Children and Obesity

And see Sodium in foods and

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION