Social Experiment. Become Me. What I see, you see.
HFCS in basically everything + driving everywhere instead of walking + no time / money to work out or cook healthy food = obesity epidemic.
That my hypothesis anyway. Many other countries have one or more of these issues, but it seems like America is the only one that has the full combination.
... + driving everywhere instead of walking + ... = obesity epidemic
Great channel. Funnily enough, everyone I know that watches his videos is a car enthusiast.
I don’t hate cars, but the ones I tend to appreciate have less silicon in them than pixie dust.
It’s odd -- I love working with high-end IT stuff as my day job, but I hate computerized vehicles.
The reason we hate computerized vehicles is because the implementations are horrible compared to what we imagined when we were kids.
In theory, a computerized car should be amazing! In practice, it's an amalgamation of awful security, DRM bullshit and thoughtless UIs.
Same. I can only tolerate my car because they made a package without the tech, and it has physical buttons for the important stuff.
Working in computer science has made me a luddite. I love computers, but not when normal objects are computerized.
I can’t understand why certain things are considered in any way “better” than old tech.
Tachometers and speedometers, for example. These used to be plain rotating wires, hooked (respectively) up to the engine prior to the transmission, or to the driveshaft. Aside from the step-down gears (for the instrument cluster dials), that’s all what they were. So if your tach or sped no longer worked, you knew that in 99% of the cases it was a broken cable, and that’s invariably all that it was. You replaced that for a dollar or five, and you were on your way.
Now with electronics, the problem scope of a non-functional tach or sped has expanded to thousands of potential points of failure and potentially equally as much in costs in order to effectively repair.
This doesn’t sound “better” in any shape or form. It just sounds like more ka-ching for the auto companies, as well as a better way to monetize your behavioural use of the vehicle through its computerized Black Box that has an always-on cellular connection to the manufacturer’s mothership.
It's better for the manufacturer because it's cheap, sadly. A screen is way cheaper than dials these days. I don't know why luxury cars got them first though. Digital dashboards look cheap as fuck
What car do you own?
2015 Q50. It was the last year before a lot of tech stuff got rolled into the base package
I had a 2017-era car and I regret selling it a year ago.
Yeah that era was great because you got aux, Bluetooth, and a touch screen, but all the important stuff still had physical buttons and the car didn't come with internet by default
New Yorkers remain the lowest in obesity, who would have guessed that walking literally everywhere and burning the same amount as your resting rate leads to a recommended 2500 calorie diet making you not gain weight? What do you mean obesity is simply solved by just eating less and actually has not much to do with the foods in question? But my fitness magazines have to sell me their new juice only diet!
Spoiler, diets are hard (calorie restrictions, not fad trash). Humans have spent millions of years evolving in an environment where every meal could be the last for days. You are biologically wired to crave and eat everything in sight, even more so the rare and useful sugar and sodium. In high amounts, these lead to higher calorie intake, obviously these are overdosed consistently. But you are still fighting millions of years of evolution, with only ~150 years of dietary knowledge and the ability for any person of any class to eat at any time. You are programmed to fail.
Adding to the topic though, numerous studies and almost all data shows sugars, refined or not, do fuck all to the obesity cause. They are a byproduct of larger problems.
Just FYI the amount of calories burned by walking and exercise is absolutely minimal compared to your regular resting rate.
Which studies exactly? If you look closer I'm sure you'll find they contribute to poor regulation of various mechanisms related to weight
I don't think sugars are an issue because they magically create fat, I think they're an issue because they have a ton of calories and make us crave more food.
But other countries have sugar, so like you said, that walking sure helps a ton. I have a friend that likes to alternate between living in their home town, and New York. It's wild to see how much their weight changes every time they move back.
HFCS is just a scary word. HCFS is just a form of sucrose and believe it or not can containe slightly less or slightly more fructose than regular sucrose 50/50. HCFS 42 is 42% fructose (less than regular sugar) or 55% fructose, slightly more than regular sugar.
HCFS is only bad because it made sugar cheap, but it shouldn't to be blamed directly.
Agree. The core issue is why the fuck is there so much sweetener in literally everything that isn't in the vegetable aisle.
I was blaming hfcs because of the calorie count, not because of any natural grocers "real food" nonsense.
Johnson’s ultimate goal is to bring a drug that inhibits fructose metabolism to market. He’s working on formulating and testing one now, and hopes that his efforts will bear fruit in the next five years or so.
That's... not a good idea. Why don't we just focus on not having people eat trash food in the first place? That approach is like the They Feed Us Poison meme, but unironic.
Also, here's a related chart that recent had some HN discussion:
In other news, the fossil fuel industry may be contributing more than most to climate change
And some scientists suspect that the plastic patch in the ocean may be made out of plastics.
Hilariously stated - and I couldn't agree more. Plus, I much admire your username!
I think it's been known that fructose negatively impacts the liver, there must be some weird fructose metabolism pathway involved in a host of diseases.
Fructose is metabolised in the liver like alcohol, and the consequence is the same - fatty liver disease.
I make most of my own food. Fructose isn't my problem. Eating my emotions bc no support network and lots of family relying on me is my problem.
No shit. Has everyone forgotten that the sugar industry (and corn lobby) literally backed the crusade against fatty foods for decades based on their own findings?
• Hypotheses explain the rapid rise in obesity over recent decades.
• Energy balance: Weight gain due to consuming more calories.
• Carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis: Excess carbohydrate intake stimulates the insulin response.
• Effect of Protein: Eating insufficient protein causes constant hunger.
• New hypothesis: sugar, especially fructose, is to blame for obesity.
• Fructose suppresses mitochondrial function, causing hunger and thirst.
• In the long term, regular exposure to fructose can damage mitochondria.
• Corn syrup, honey and cane sugar are common sources of fructose.
• Fruits are still healthy, but they contain less fructose than juices or candies.
Excess carbohydrate intake stimulates the insulin response.
This. This right here is where the obesity epidemic comes from. People eat way, way more carbs than any time in history, and we wonder why everyone is fat. Carbs do not induce a satiation mechanism like fats, the opposite in fact. Yet it's fats that get demonized because of the shit science that came of the Seven Countries study.
I don't disagree, but bigthink.com? Not many names more sus than that.
Much better.
No. Still calories.
I constantly see people bickering about this online, but that's not at odds with CICO. Yes, the overarching limits is CICO, but most people don't track calories. Fructose makes you more hungry and so you eat more food, and therefore CICO means you gain weight. From the article:
When these cellular powerhouses are slowed, the cells get stuck in a low-energy state, triggering hunger and thirst
So you're correct, but it's an unhelpful response. Kind of like saying "No, the Earth still isn't flat" when people are trying to figure out exactly how round it is.
EDIT: To your other comment:
At no point is fructose a direct cause of obesity, a byproduct yes.
"direct cause" is the wrong way to look at this. Even if the mechanism by which it acts doesn't cause obesity itself, it can be a root cause if, without it, people wouldn't engage in behaviors that lead to obesity, i.e. overeating. The difference between "he died because he ran into a tree" vs "he died because he was texting and not paying attention".
The issue is more refined fats and sugars in general than any specific (anti)nutrients. Some of the healthiest people eat WFPB diets which often contain a fair amount of fruit, but they aren't drinking Coca Cola with every meal.