Comments on: Net Utility Cost of Obesity: Would You Become Obese for $4K?

By: awfulconcoction

awfulconcoction — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:21:33 +0000

I think your initial insight is probably correct. The problem of what to eat is not new and has been with humans as long as we have existed. What is new to the equation is the industrial food chain – we are eating things that didn’t exist even 20 years ago. I’m not sure comparisons over time make sense.

By: Reedo

Reedo — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:16:41 +0000

I don’t know about glycemic load, but my suspicion is that food has changed in the degree by which the calories “feel” empty. There’s more calories more unit of food, yet the extraneous calories don’t make it any more filling. Thus, people consume around the same amount but take in substantially more calories over time, or they even must consume more calorie-boosted food in order to be sated. The relative weight-loss success of the various strategies for tweaking someone’s perception of being full (the extreme being surgery) seems to support this.

By: Will Stewart

Will Stewart — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:55:14 +0000

An interesting aspect of a recent UK (‘Foresight’) study was the observation that in fact calorie intake has not changed much as obesity has increased. This led most commentators to blame a sedentary lifestyle, which may be partly correct. But we use energy in other ways – notably to keep warm. The rise in obesity seems in the UK to match that of central heating. It would be interesting to know how this works in the US (N v S for example).