Over-Eating, Not the Cause of Obesity By Mrs Vera West

Common-sense, bless it, would suggest that over-eating causes obesity, for after all, if more energy by way of food is put into the human body, then it will be stored as fat for a rainy day, or more accurately, when food supplies are low. But, a recently published paper shows that this model is simplistic, because while being right about the thermodynamic fundamentals, socially the causes of obesity lie in low quality foods based around processed carbohydrates, such as sugar. In other words, it is the nutrient quality of foods which is the key. One could eat many sweets, but less so steamed vegetables.

https://news.sky.com/story/overeating-not-the-primary-cause-of-obesity-claim-scientists-12406990?utm_source=gnaa

“Overeating is not in fact the primary cause of obesity, according to a new perspective on weight gain published by scientists.

Obesity affects more than 40% of American adults, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 28% of adults in England, according to the Health Survey for England 2019.

This places a significant proportion of the population at greater risk of heart disease, stroke, type two diabetes, and certain types of cancer - and obesity is more likely to affect people living in deprived areas.

NHS data suggests that more than 11,000 hospital admissions over 2018-19 were directly attributable to obesity - and admissions where obesity was a factor were around two and half times more likely in the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived areas.

A new paper explaining the causes has been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, claiming there are fundamental flaws in the energy balance model, and tying obesity to the consumption of low-quality food and processed carbohydrates.

The authors argue that an alternate model, the carbohydrate-insulin model, better explains obesity and points the way to more effective and long-lasting weight management strategies.

Lead author Dr David Ludwig, an endocrinologist at Boston Children's Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School, says that the energy balance model doesn't explain the biological causes of weight gain.”