this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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So all I'm saying it's not just energy conservation. Human body is not a machine where input=output. Some of the food you eat is excreted unprocessed and your metabolism can just slow down. So if you're just using 5% more energy per day your body can speed up digestion a bit and get more colaries out of the same food or it can slow down more during the night and you will get a better sleep. There's a limit to it of course but your body will deal with 5% change without using it's energy stores.
I hear you, but scientists specifically study how metabolism adapts, for example the study you quote. And, as far as I see so far, they find that the adaptation just does not work like you think it does. You may choose to insist on your intuition despite empirical evidence against it. But I hope you realise this can lead to your expectations, based on this intuition, clashing with reality.
How does it work then? As I understand it depriving body of calories causes it to be more efficient with the calories it gets. What I'm missing? Maybe what you are still missing is that this effect will change depending on amount of calories we're talking about? I doubt there are studies measuring the effect of 100 calories deficit because it would be negligible. Of course if we get into real diet/moderate exercise the effects will change. Is this why you think the effect is different overall?
Sorry for the long silence. The adaptation works in reaction to large persistent changes, not small 100 restriction as you are proposing. This also makes sense intuitively, large changes cause reaction while "slow and steady" achieves long term goals.
There are, apparently, discussions referencing just the 100 reduction effect:
https://www.prima.co.uk/diet-and-health/diet-plans/news/a40499/100-calories-weight-loss-study/
They refer to actual research I could not yet access due to paywalls. I will try to find it.
No problem, we're all busy here.
Maybe you're right, maybe the metabolism changes will not kick in with 100 calories reduction.
Stil, even if all this is true (I mean, no need to get into the paywalled details) we're taking 4kg over 3 years which in many cases will be totally insignificant. Many people will not start eating more because they lost 4kg. But even if they will then, as this article says, eating 100 calories more doesn't require actually eating 'more' food, just a different one. Get a potato instead of a salad, get different type of bread, or a normal butter instead of 'diet' one. Figuring out if those changes are carbon negative or positive would be incredible difficult as they would depend on the specific products you're changing, where do you buy it and so on but my bet is they will be close to 0. I still think it would take way more than that to offset the carbon footprint of a Rumba.
I think 4kg over 3years is a huge difference for many people. Not for morbidly obese maybe. Anyway, here it matters that difference exists.
There are many ways to make this difference in energy balance, by changing the kind of food eaten, while keeping the same intake volume, by changing the intake volume, or by adding an additional activity, like brooming.
Reducing intake by 100kcal by changing volume while maintaining composition is always going to be carbon wasteful. Do we agree on this?
There are many advisable ways to reduce the carbon effect. By changing the kind of food eaten, for sure. But also, but replacing manual brooming with less carbon-consuming process. One way does not cancel the other, does it?
By the way, we should be clear that instead of brooming one should not go for a run on something. Conversely, replacing some of the health-motivated physical activity with brooming is not a bad idea at all, that's a large part of the reason I still do it. Still, both sport and manual brooming are somehow wasteful.
Yes but I think it will be difficult to calculate and will still depend on the exact thing you're eating. I think at this point you're focusing on psychics while ignoring all the practical aspects of the issue.
Yes, we can agree that brooming daily for years while eating exactly the same things will over many years result in reduced weight which for some individuals might be problematic and result in increase of the volume of food consumed and increased carbon footprint.
Is the increase in carbon footprint greater than the energy used by roomba? Depends on the energy source and food source. It's possible that in some specific scenarios the extra food consumed will have bigger carbon footprint than energy used by roomba. Is it greater than the carbon footprint of manufacturing a roomba? Definitely not.
Your arguments are getting so specific that soon we will conclude that any physical activity is bad for the environment and we should just lay down as much as possible and avoid any excess movements.
Ok, so I've checked. If you want to get 100 kcal from food, for beef it would be 4kg of CO2, for chicken 400g of CO2, rice 400g of CO2. potatoes 50g of CO2.
To charge a Roomba in US you need 800g of CO2, in Spain 400g, in France 160g, in Australia 1kg, in Poland 1.2kg.
So as you see, it really depends on what you eat and where you live. In extreme cases yes, just don't move and let robots do everything, it will produce less CO2. If you live in Poland, broom your apartment, eat one potato more and you're saving shitload of CO2.
Carbon footprint of a roomba is around 400kg of CO2. Again, in extreme cases it's possible to offset that during it's lifetime.In some cases you're not offsetting it at all or it will take more than roomba will last. In other cases you're just adding to it.