Why do we get fat

Chapter 4 Why Are You So Fat? (1)
Imagine that you are serving as a juror.The defendant is accused of a heinous crime, and the prosecutor has evidence that the defendant committed the crime. The evidence is clear. You should vote to convict the defendant.You are told that this criminal must go to jail because he is an enemy of society.

The defendant's lawyer strongly argued that the evidence was not conclusive.The defendant had an alibi - although that alibi was not airtight.Part of the fingerprints left at the crime scene did not match those of the accused.In addition, he believes that the forensic evidence provided by the police - such as DNA and hair samples - has been improperly handled.Defense attorneys say the case is not as clear-cut as the prosecutor would have you believe.He believed that if you had a reasonable doubt, you should and must acquit him.You are told that by putting an innocent person in prison, you are not only doing the defendant a gross injustice, but will allow the real criminal to go free or even come back.

In the jury room, what you have to do is to judge the prosecution's prosecution and the defense's counterclaim based on evidence alone.When the interrogation begins, your inclinations don't matter.It doesn't matter whether you think the defendant looks menacing or you think he's harmless.What matters is the evidence, and whether it is convincing.

While the justice system is committed to avoiding wrongful convictions, we understand that in criminal trials, innocent people are often convicted of crimes they did not commit.The most common problem with dry judicial presentations is that the most "obvious" suspects are usually wrongly convicted.It seems right to convict them, but the evidence that exonerates them is often easily overlooked.Complicated issues are put aside.After a conviction, no one will actively seek evidence to prove the suspect's innocence.

It's cute to think that science and scientists don't make mistakes like this, but mistakes like this happen all the time.This is human nature.The scientific method should be used to prevent false judgments from being accepted; however, the scientific method often leads people astray, and even affects the inferences about natural truths and cosmic puzzles.

Common sense can be an effective indicator of judgment, but as Voltaire pointed out in his "Dictionary of Philosophy", what science tells us is often at odds with common sense.For example, the sun does not revolve around the earth, although it appears to be so.

What separates religion from science and law is that trust alone solves nothing.People should be encouraged to question whether the evidence really proves the "truths" we're told to believe, or the "truths" we've been brought up to believe?Should we be allowed to question whether what we hear is the whole of the evidence, or just a small part of it?If what we believe cannot be supported by evidence, then we should change it, not continue to believe it blindly.

On the topic of weight loss, it's all too easy to find evidence that disproves the assertion that we gain weight because we eat more calories than we expend—in other words, because we eat too much.

In scientific research, skepticism about evidence is the basic thinking of research development.However, many in the fields of nutrition and public health research feel that such reviews are counterproductive because they undermine the efforts of authorities to promote behaviors they believe are good for our health, whether rightly or not. effort.

But our health and our weight are what really matter, so let's see where this evidence leads us.

Imagine we're on a jury, trying to decide whether "overeating, consuming more calories than you expend," is responsible for its "crime"—contributing to obesity and being overweight.

Since the mid-20s, when researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that obesity was on the rise, authorities have blamed it on a lifestyle of "eating more and moving less," and compared these two factors with modern relative prosperity of the society.

As New York University nutritionist Marion Nestle wrote in Science in 2003, the "economic boom" preached by the diet and entertainment industries has contributed to the obesity problem. "They convert good incomes into the market for energy-dense, low-nutrient foods. The auto industry, television, and the Internet are driving sedentary lifestyles. Obesity is good news for these industries."

Yale psychologist Kelly Brownell coined the term "toxic environment" to describe the same concept.Those living in toxic environments like the Love Canal and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, where the groundwater and soil are heavily poisoned by chemicals and radioactive substances, are suffering from cancer rates, Brownell said. increase, and the rest live in a toxic environment that encourages "eat more and move less," and obesity follows. “Cheeseburgers, french fries and the ubiquitous super-sized fast food joints that were not common before, as well as soft drinks, candy, chips and cheese rolls, are now as ubiquitous as trees, grass and clouds,” he said. "Few students walk or cycle to school, and there are few physical education classes; computers, video games and television keep children indoors, and parents are reluctant to let their children go out to play freely. "

In other words, experts tell us: too much money, eating too much, and food that is too readily available, with too many excuses for being sedentary or the need to exercise too little—leads to the exacerbation of obesity.

The World Health Organization uses the same logic to explain the worldwide epidemic of obesity, blaming rising incomes and urbanization. "People turn to jobs that require less physical activity, to jobs that don't require it; and more to passive forms of leisure." Obesity researchers are now using a quasi-scientific term to describe the situation precisely: They put our current The living environment is described as an "obesity gene" environment, which means that in this environment, even thin people can easily become fat.

In this environment, however, there is a thought-provoking counter-evidence.It's a well-documented fact: being fat and being poor are closely related, and having nothing to do with prosperity.This is certainly the case in women, and often in men as well.The poorer we are, the fatter we are likely to get.This was first revealed in The New Yorker magazine's survey of midtown Manhattan in the early 20s.Among obese women, the proportion of poor people is six times that of rich people; among obese men, this ratio is twice as high.Almost every study since then (whether it's in adults or children), including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has confirmed that the obesity epidemic exists.

In 1968, U.S. Senator George McGovern presided over a series of congressional hearings demonstrating how difficult it is for poor Americans with limited incomes to provide their families with nutritious meals.But McGowan later recalled that most of the impoverished witnesses were "seriously overweight."At that time, a senior senator said to McGowan at the hearing: "George, this is ridiculous. These people are not malnourished, they are overweight."

Could it be that the obesity epidemic is caused by economic prosperity, that the richer we get, the fatter we get?But obesity itself is clearly linked to poverty, and the poorer we are, the more likely we are to become obese.It's not impossible, and maybe the poor don't have to be in shape like the rich do because of peer pressure.Believe it or not, this has become one of the generally accepted explanations for the apparent paradox at the beginning of this paragraph.Another generally accepted explanation for the link between obesity and poverty is that obese women tend to marry lower-class people, congregating at the bottom of the social ladder, while thin women rise through marriage.A third explanation is that poor people don't have as much leisure time to exercise as rich people do, they don't have the money to go to health clubs, and they live in neighborhoods without parks and trails, so their kids don't have the opportunity to exercise and walk.These explanations may be correct, but they are full of imagination, and such contradictions require further exploration.

If we had the opportunity to search the literature, we would find that in most of the areas where obesity is afflicted, people experience little if any economic prosperity, but live in what Brownell calls a "toxic environment" middle.They don't have cheeseburgers, soft drinks, cheese rolls, supersized fast food restaurants, computers, TVs, sometimes books, or overly doting mothers who keep their children from running around.

Among these people there is no increase in income, no labor-saving machinery, no less physically demanding jobs, and no so-called more passive forms of leisure.Moreover, some people are poorer than we can imagine, down to nothing.According to the overeating hypothesis, these people should be extremely thin, but this is not the case.

Remember Hildebruch's confusion about fat kids at the height of the Great Depression?What she saw seems commonplace to us now.Let's take a look at the Pima, an Indian tribe living in Arizona, USA.Today, the Pima maintain the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the United States.Their plight is often cited as an example of what happens when traditional culture collides with the toxic environment of modern America.It is said that the Pima were once hard-working farmers and hunters, and now they are also sedentary wage earners, driving to the same fast food restaurants, eating the same fast food, watching the same TV shows like us; also like us Getting fat, becoming a diabetic, this kind of situation will only increase.According to the National Institutes of Health, after World War II, the people of the Pima became heavier as the typical American diet became common in the areas where the Pima lived.

However, you have to know that before World War II and even before World War I, when the Pima people's living environment was hardly polluted (at least not as it is described today), they already had weight problems. Between 1901 and 1905, two anthropologists conducted independent studies on the Pima people, both of whom evaluated the degree of obesity of the Pima people, especially in women.

The first was Frank Russell, a young Harvard anthropologist who published a groundbreaking study of the Pima in 1908.According to Russell, the obesity seen by many older Pimas stands in stark contrast to the common perception of "tall and stocky Indians."

The second was Ales Hrdricka, who began as a physician and later served as president of the Anthropology Section of the Smithsonian Institution.Herdlica had visited Pima in 1902 and 1905 to study the health and welfare of the native people in the area.Referring to the people living near the Pima and southern Utah, Herdlica said: "In every Indian tribe, men, women, and children, they are well-nourished. The only people who are really obese are those in the protected areas. Indians."

The reason this phenomenon is so remarkable is that at that time the Pima was being reduced from the wealthiest Native tribe in the United States to the poorest tribe.Whatever made the Pima obese, wealth and rising incomes certainly had nothing to do with it, and the opposite seemed to hit the heart of the obesity problem.

Until the 19s, the Pima were excellent hunters and farmers.There are a variety of sports in this area, and the Pima people are especially good at hunting wild animals with bows and arrows.They also eat fish and clams caught from the Gila River that flows through their territory. They use the water from the Gila River to irrigate their fields and grow corn, soybeans, wheat, melons, and figs. They also raise livestock and poultry.

In 1846, a group of U.S. soldiers passed by the Pima. John Griffin, the doctor accompanying the army, described the Pima as "vigorous" and "excellent in health", and noted that the Pima also had "extremely sufficient food", The food piled up like mountains in the warehouse.Griffin was not alone in saying this about the health and leanness of the Pima in the mid-nineteenth century.For example, John Bartlett, U.S. boundary commissioner, wrote in 19: "Pima women are slender, with full breasts and well-proportioned limbs; while the males are generally slender, with short limbs and narrow busts."

At the time, food was so plentiful for the Pima that three years later, when the California Gold Rush began, the U.S. government asked the Pima to provide food for the gold diggers.In the decade that followed, they did provide generously to the thousands of gold prospectors who made their way from the Santa Fe Trail through Pima territory to California.

With the rise of the California Gold Rush, the Pima people's wealthy resources were exhausted, and their happy life ended.Large numbers of Anglo-Americans and Mexicans began to settle in the area.Russell once commented that some of these newcomers were simply "models of despicable character" bred by the white race.The immigrants destroyed the local living environment to the brink of collapse and used the water from the Gila River to irrigate their own fields at the expense of the Pima people.

Until the 19s, the Pima lived through what they called the "Famine Years."Russell writes: "Inexplicably, the hunger, despair and deprivation caused by the famine did not overwhelm the tribe." They are growing all kinds of crops that can be grown, but now, they can only rely on government supplies to maintain their daily livelihood.

So why are they getting fat?Depending on the specific conditions at the time, weight should be lost during a famine, rather than gaining or staying the same.If the famine was a thing of the past because of too much government supplies, why did the Pima get fat because of the plentiful supplies at the time, and not because of the plentiful food they had before the famine?The answer may lie in the type of food being consumed, a matter of quality rather than quantity.Russell thought so too, writing: "It is evident that there are substances in their food which cause obesity."

Herdlika also believes that, given the precarious state of existence of the Pima, they should be relatively thin.Therefore, he said, "it is clear that food is only an indirect cause of obesity in Indians." This knowledge made him inclined to think that physical inactivity, at least relative inactivity, was the cause of obesity.In other words, given the hardships of pre-industrial agriculture, the Pima may have been more active than we are today, but they were more sedentary than they were in the past.Herdlica calls it "the transition from a life of manual labor to a state of laziness."But he couldn't explain why women were so often obese, even though those women did nearly all the drudgery in the village—harvesting crops, grinding grain, and even carrying the burdens themselves when there were no pack animals.Herdlika was also mystified by another local Indian tribe, the Pueblo, whose people "have a sedentary habit since ancient times," but they are not fat.

(End of this chapter)