[Osx-nutters] *Big* government

[Patrick Coskren]

On Aug 28, 2007, at 11:03 PM, Arden wrote:

> The poorer you are in the USA, the more likely you are consuming
> incredible amounts of processed foods which contain high-fructose
> corn syrup. I think the government should be involved also. Limiting
> this product in school lunches and maybe funding studies examining
> the average diet and the deleterious effects of which.

Or at least reducing the corn subsidies which make this stuff cheaper  
than real sugar, which at least your body knows how to process.

As for the other points people have raised, yes, there's absolutely a  
basic thermodynamic caloric equation where if the calories you burn  
are greater than the calories you process into your body, you'll lose  
weight.  However, there are a couple of complicating factors.  A lot  
of them boil down to the exquisite precision the body uses to  
maintain body weight.  An average individual whose weight is constant  
over a year (modulo day-to-day fluctuations) must keep his daily  
calorie intake regulated to within something like 10 calories (~3600  
calories to a pound of fat, 365 days in a year).  The best  
description I've heard was someone who pointed out that this means  
you're regulating intake to within a potato chip or two each day.   
Since almost nobody actually consciously regulates to this degree,  
that means your body's doing it.  Anyway, bearing that context in  
mind, some of the complicating factors:

* The number of calories you take in is not necessarily the amount  
you metabolize.  Food can pass through your gut unused, and out the  
other end.  Your body regulates this.

* Appetite is not a constant, and there's plenty of reason to believe  
there's feedback involved.   So some foods stimulate appetite when  
you eat them, others decrease it.  The insulin/glucagon hormone  
system is a big part of this, and it's complicated and incompletely  
understood.

* Activity level is not a constant, and there's plenty of reason to  
believe your body regulates this, by making you restless, or even  
just fidgety.  Being fidgety, for example, burns a measurable number  
of calories, and there's every reason to believe your body turns the  
subconscious activity level up or down when it needs to fine tune the  
calorie input/output balance.  After all, it does the same thing by  
making you shiver when it needs to maintain the heat balance.

* This is where things like high-fructose corn syrup and artificial  
sweeteners are likely to be a problem.  High-fructose corn syrup, for  
instance, is so sweet that it can spike your blood sugar up, then  
crash it down, causing an increase in appetite: if your diet is high  
in it, this causes a feedback loop that causes you to then eat more  
things that contain HFCS, etc.  This remains controversial, because  
after all fruits contain plenty of fructose.  But on the other hand,  
they tend to deliver it with lots of fiber (slowing gastric  
processing), and still not in doses as high as many HFCS products.

* Artificial sweeteners can have a different effect: your body (at  
least potentially, this remains controversial too) detects the  
sweetness and assumes there's sugar coming in; insulin is released,  
but there's no actual sugar added to your bloodstream, so your blood  
sugar drops below where it should, and your appetite increases.  Yes,  
the idea here is that sugar-free drinks may cause you to eat more.

So the point is that there may be more to the "diet" side of the  
"diet and exercise" equation than is currently understood.  Given two  
people, if one happens to eat foods with higher amounts of HCFS  
(probably unconsciously... start reading labels, that stuff's  
*everywhere*) or diet soda, he might wind up increasing his  
appetite.  Perhaps it'll even be subtle, just a little more appetite,  
the equivalent of a couple of extra potato chips, and whammo, it adds  
up to a few pounds by the end of the year, and again year after year.

Now, that's just a theory, and there's evidence for and against.   
I'll note that I'm rather sympathetic, because I'm very likely  
prediabetic, so I probably have some issues with my insulin/glucagon  
balance already.  I've noticed that if I eat something sugary in the  
morning (for example, a bowl of raisin bran from Post or Kellogg's...  
loaded with HFCS), I crash in midafternoon: very sleepy, hard to  
focus, and I'm sure I'm burning fewer calories.  If I'm more careful  
(organic bran cereal, no HFCS), I power through the day, maybe a  
little midafternoon blip (that's normal for other reasons), but not  
very serious, and I'm probably burning more.  (Exercise helps, too,  
with smoothing this process, in addition to the obvious direct  
benefits of burning calories).

No, like I said, I'm probably more physiologically sensitive to this  
than most, but I have little problem believing that HFCS and diet  
sodas can be a problem making it harder for people to maintain body  
weight.  It's no accident, smug moralizing about lazy people aside,  
that America's obesity problem tracks pretty well with the rise of  
industrial foodstuffs, particularly HFCS and diet sodas.

As for govt intervention, I think the primary thing that absolutely  
should be done is to stop subsidizing corn to the point where it's so  
artificially cheap that (via HFCS) it's used in everything.  As a  
possible second step, it would probably be appropriate to discourage  
its use, either through prominent labeling requirements or even  
through an outright ban, but I wouldn't support that too strongly  
until more evidence comes in.

Anyway, I'm not saying this is the whole story (societal effects play  
a role, and there are definitely things happening there that  
encourage obesity).  But I think it's an important part of it that  
some people are too glib about.

-Patrick
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