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I like horse meat!

is it better than kangaroo meat?

omnimirage, i apology in advance, but i'm going to re-order your criticisms to make it more coherent.

And the hypothesis that increased prosperity has led to obesity is based on the fact that it's easier for people in conditions of prosperity to achieve their necessary minimum of calories. It also has nothing to do with malnutrition.
He's using these examples of famine (which he specifically defines as malnutrition) to suggest that these explanations are wrong, when malnutrition has nothing to do with either of them.

it seems to me Taubes understands what's meant by increased prosperity.

verbatim from the video:
So we have this observation of an obesity epidemic, and we want to explain it by our hypothesis which is that we take in more calories than we expend. And the way it's been done over the years is the idea of "increased prosperity." This is how Marion Nestle, New York University nutritionist, wrote in Science. As we get richer, more food becomes available. We have less reason to become physically active. Food's on every street corner. You don't have to work to get it, and so we get fatter and fatter. Kelly Brownell, a Yale University psychologist, coined the term "toxic environment," which is an environment that promotes overeating and sedentary behavior instead of physical activity. As Kelly put it, "cheese curls, french fries, and fast food joints are as much a part of our environment as trees and clouds." Mothers keep their kids home from school, we sit in front of computer screens all day long, and video games and television. So, a lot of reasons to eat too much, not enough reason to burn it off.

The hypothesis:

Increased prosperity
Overeating (Energy in > Energy out) --> Obesity and the obesity epidemic

so with that introduction, Taubes simply asks if this is true. but a scientific statement (which "increased prosperity" is, no argument there) can never be proven through confirmation. a theory only remains valid until there are observations that do not support the hypothesis. this is a key concept called falsifiability. in order to test the hypothesis fully, we need to look for observations that do not support the hypothesis.

if "increased prosperity" is what causes obesity, then he asks whether the reverse environment of poverty prevents obesity. thus his reason to look at poor populations.

Simiarly, he's using terms like "famine" (which applies to malnutrition as well as calorie restriction) very loosely. Famine doesn't imply anything - the energy in vs energy out idea is about physics and biology, and it's about the energy content of food. Malnutrition has nothing to do with it.

famine is simply scarcity of food. it implies there's not enough calories available for people to be in good health. if so, it should be hard to eat too much and become obese. this logic doesn't seem to contradict the conventional theories, so i don't understand the objection.

He doesn't understand either of the viewpoints he's criticizing at even a basic level, he conflates the two of them (pretty egregious since one is a physiological mechanistic explanation and the other is a sociological hypothesis), and the research he cites is not relevant to the issue.

the calories theory states that eating too much causes obesity. the increased prosperity theory states that it's too easy to get food, thus we eat too much.

these two theories complement each other. one explains "how" we get fat (we eat too much). the other explains "why" we eat too much (we eat too much because food is abundant). he hasn't said anything controversial imo. so again, i don't understand your objection.

And his data aren't consistent with his claims either. For example, he cites in one study they were eating nothing but bread and coffee - but bread is a calorie-dense food! That *supports* the calorie-centric explanations!

He cites in another case that people were making as little as $9 a week (this was around 1950 if I recall). I can feed myself 3,000 calories a day on $9 a week even today, and in the 1950s $9 a week was worth considerably more.

no caloric intake is given for either of these studies. Taubes is using these and other poor populations like it to falsify the increased prosperity hypothesis, not the calories hypothesis. he's simply saying that if increased prosperity is what causes obesity, then poverty should not cause obesity as well. again, no caloric data is given for any of these populations.

all of the following studies are in the same set.

Sioux Reservation, 1928
dirt poor. living on bread and coffee. obesity and malnutrition in the same population.

"Distinctly fat"
women 40%
men 25%
children 10%

"Extremely thin"
women 20%
men 25%
children 25%

Fat Louisa and the Pima Indians in Poverty, 1902
there's been 30 years of famine in the tribe, but 2 anthropologists note high levels of obesity in the older population.

African-Americans, Charleston SC, 1959
30% of women obese
18% of men obese
family incomes, $9-53/week, converted to 2011 dollars, < $400/week.

i can see your point that $400/week is still enough to overeat. but i'm assuming the $400 is the maximum. the range was 9-53.

according to this conversion chart, $9.00 in 1959 had the same buying power as $68.26 in 2011.

but still, many poor people today can still afford to eat McDonald's everyday. but this was 1959; McDonald's only began aggressive expansion in the 1960's, and i'm not sure if it qualified as cheap food back then. but i agree with you, this data isn't really convincing.

Zulus, Durban South Africa, 1960
40% of women obese
women in 40's average 175 lbs

according to Tabues, in America today, adult women average 160 lbs. by any conventional measure, Zulus in the 1960's weren't more prosperous or living in a more toxic environment than Americans today, but there was still obesity.

in conclusion, the observations do not fit the increased prosperity hypothesis (except for African-Americans in Charleston). that's all Taubes is trying to point out.

In one of the studies he cites that 30% of the women are obese and that the per capita caloric intake for the population (of women) is 2,000, which was no higher than the FDA recommended caloric intake for the average person at the time. You should have the math to recognize why that's pure mumbo-jumbo. The two biggest problems are first, he's talking about 30% of women who are obese (ie a minority of the population). And he's claiming that they aren't eating too many calories based on teh per capita (that means *average*) caloric intake. You can't say anything about population outliers (this minority of women who are obese) based on the population average data (the per capita caloric intake for the women).

Trinidad, 1961-1963
A third of women over 25 are obese

Obesity is a "potentially serious medical problem in women"

Per capita daily diet is less than 2000 calories (21% fat)
"Fewer calories than recommended by FAO."

verbatim from the video:
a MIT nutritionist goes down to Trinidad to figure out what's going on. She studies the diets of the obese women and compares it to the diets of the lean women in Trinidad and concludes that the per capita daily diet was less than 2000 calories a day, 21% fat. Fewer calories than were recommended at the time by the Food and Agricultural Organization for a healthy diet.

i see where the confusion can be. but i think the 2000 caloric intake data is only for the obese women.

this is verbatim from the book, Why We Get Fat:
1961-63: Trinidad, West Indies
A team of nutritionists from the United States reports that malnutrition is a serious medical problem on the island, but so is obesity. Nearly a third of the women older than twenty-five are obese. The average caloric intake among these women is estimated at fewer than two thousand calories a day, less than the minimum recommended at the time by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as necessary for a healthy diet.

no mention of comparing to the thin women. the MIT nutritionist was presumably just looking at the obese women.

And second, he claims that this calorie intake isn't very high because it's no higher than the FDA recommended allowance at the time. So wrong and deceptive. Because first, this was the FDA allowance across *all people*. Technically, the FDA recommended 1500 calories for the average woman and 2500 calories for the average man. 2000 as the calories for the average *person*. Problem? This study was a study on women and *only women*. You can't use FDA statistics on men *and* woman, and use that as a basis to evaluate a study that looks at *only* women. He should be using the FEMALE allowance, 1500 calories, if he wants to evaluate the data on a female population. Of course, the 2,000 calorie average intake is 500 calories higher than the FDA recommendation for females - the women in the study were overeating. But even then, the FDA makes it very clear that its recommendations are *average* guidelines, and that some people may need considerably more or considerably fewer calories.bThe *average* woman has maintenance at about 1500 calories, but some women have maintenance at lower values, sometimes as low as 800. The FDA has never claimed otherwise - you can't point at a case of a woman eating a caloric intake approved for the average woman, see that she got obese, and conclude that the average intake is off or irrelevant. You can't apply an *average* rating to a *specific* subpopulation (which may not have average requirements).

according to this article by Marion Nestle (proponent of the increased prosperity hypothesis), "2,000 calories is only enough to sustain children and postmenopausal women--but it's on nutrition labels everywhere."

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/08/why-does-the-fda-recommend-2-000-calories-per-day/243092/

the actual caloric requirements for the average woman or man is above 2350 calories according to her.

Despite the observable fact that 2,350 calories per day is below the average requirements for either men or women obtained from doubly labeled water experiments, most of the people who responded to the comments judged the proposed benchmark too high. Nutrition educators worried that it would encourage overconsumption, be irrelevant to women who consume fewer calories, and permit overstatement of acceptable levels of "eat less" nutrients such as saturated fat and sodium. Instead, they proposed 2,000 calories

i can't comment on variability of individuals. i guess you can argue that these obese Trinidad women had an actual caloric requirement of less than 2,000. but based on the recommendations and what Nestle says (who i assume is a top expert in the calories theory), we can only take away that they were undereating, or at the very least, eating correctly.

So you're asking what are people's conclusions on a moralistic issue? A hindu would say a cow, a western a dog, a vegetarian all animals. Do you see how following what other people think is going to make you one confused guy? Instead ask why they come to the conclusion and think for yourself about it; "at any point you guys view a animal as too special to eat and if so, why?"

I agree completely, I eat anything because I know that is the natural thing to do, it's what all other animals do. I asked the question as to stimulate a topic of thought, not out of actual curiosity as to if I should/shouldn't or if it was right/wrong.

"Mystery is essential to the impostor. Above everything else, the charlatan
must avoid straightforward reasoning and simplicity of expression: too clear
and direct a light would quickly destroy the spell he exerts, through
eloquent ambiguity, over his victims. In all ages, the voice of the humbug
has exercised a peculiar fascination -- it is his chief weapon. But though
he has to speak and write continuously, his announcements are best couched
in indefinite phrases, opaque and susceptible of many interpretations, like
the words of Subtle, the alchemist in Ben Jonson's play of that name."
- Grete de Francesco

Great quote. But I couldn't help but note that this is exactly what the government does every single day. Sorry to derail!

are we now resorting to criticizing my social life instead of the facts? i'm starting to think we're no longer amicable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o

Was just making a joke bro- I enjoy your posts. I still don't buy the kudu vid though. This would never work in 99 percent of the world. On a wide open savannah I suppose under some circumstance you could run down a deer but that still seems like a stretch. Try running down a deer in the woods of Michigan- would never happen.

wow, my 2nd insult of the day. it must be my lucky day.

i'm also unoriginal and quote a lot.

"Mystery is essential to the impostor. Above everything else, the charlatan
must avoid straightforward reasoning and simplicity of expression: too clear
and direct a light would quickly destroy the spell he exerts, through
eloquent ambiguity, over his victims. In all ages, the voice of the humbug
has exercised a peculiar fascination -- it is his chief weapon. But though
he has to speak and write continuously, his announcements are best couched
in indefinite phrases, opaque and susceptible of many interpretations, like
the words of Subtle, the alchemist in Ben Jonson's play of that name."
- Grete de Francesco


and stop derailing the thread.

they way u view things is just very close minded. Its inside a box where nobody can get it. Tony robbins is la la land while he gets sick results and get praised by almost everybody in his field. I wonder if you even know what field he really is?

If you look @ his ted talk, its awesome on so many levels, but if you look at it from an 'science perspective' all you see is a 4 feet tall dude talking very positive. You think too much inside of the box.

I mean I think Tony Robbins falls somewhere in between the two extremes on where you guys are putting him. A decent amount of his content is somewhat weak or ineffective (ie. NLP, nutrition) although he says some good things that are quite simplistic and can be learnt from many sources, but what he does well is motivate... the dude is off the charts as a public speaker and I think that's where almost all his effectiveness/results come from.

I can see how a skeptical person would see him as a charlatan though, he does many things that are complete BS. For instance I went to one of his events and he talked about this fire walk we'd do (walking across hot coals) where the only way you can walk across it is if you believe and if you don't believe you're going to get burnt... literally said that our intentions effect physical reality. Now I can see how tricking people into believing this can be effective in getting results, they walk across the fire and don't get burnt then realize what they're thinking is very important... although for completely the wrong reasons, but to peddle this BS (there are many other examples in his work) can make it hard for some people to take him seriously. He was very motivating though, amazing in person in definitely impacted my life in a positive way, not really from any information/content he gave me but from inspiring/motivating me to do the things I knew I needed to do.

To say he's praised by everybody in his field is like a psychic getting praised in their field. Tt speaks nothing of the field, or the person, other than they're better than people who do similar things.

Oh and making blanket statements about TED talks because of one speaker seems... weird. They have no agenda, just allow people at the top of their fields to communicate their ideas with little restraint. They obviously don't endorse everything every speaker says, and they're in front of a very intelligent crowd that can sniff out BS very well, there's also quite a strict rule on not being able to advertise products so people can't as effectively use it as a marketing tool. In any case I don't see the problem with casting a wide net and allowing a lot of people to speak with a wide range of beliefs, substantiated or not, as too much is better than not enough. I'd much rather have people like Tony or Deepak speaking there than to risk potentially cutting out people that have important things to say because someone thinks it's la-la, if anything I think this makes TED as a forum far less suspect.

And Snappie stop being a douche

Edit: Btw Nawhead I think the link the person was trying to send to you was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc which is a pretty cool talk, although I seem to remember the argument/evidence being a little weak/sensationalist, but yeah check it out imo.

His field is being a motivational coach, a public speaker, as you say. And that is where he is praised.

And Snappie stop being a douche

you are right about this one. I just can't stand it if people talk about things they clearly dont have a real understanding about. Saying tony robbins is la la land is as stupid as saying that sugar is absolutely fantastic for your body.

Tony Robbins was great in Shawshank Redemption tho- I don't care what anyone says.

I mean I think Tony Robbins falls somewhere in between the two extremes on where you guys are putting him. A decent amount of his content is somewhat weak or ineffective (ie. NLP, nutrition) although he says some good things that are quite simplistic and can be learnt from many sources, but what he does well is motivate... the dude is off the charts as a public speaker and I think that's where almost all his effectiveness/results come from.

[...] they walk across the fire and don't get burnt then realize what they're thinking is very important... although for completely the wrong reasons, but to peddle this BS (there are many other examples in his work) can make it hard for some people to take him seriously. He was very motivating though, amazing in person in definitely impacted my life in a positive way, not really from any information/content he gave me but from inspiring/motivating me to do the things I knew I needed to do.

+1

i'm all for motivating oneself. belief is critical to forming habits. if you read my blog, you know how big i'm into this stuff.

but the way Robbins and others like him packages something very simple (and free) alongside a bunch of useless pseudoscientific nonsense then labels everything as if he invented and sells these overpriced seminars is what really irks me. it just reminds me of how churches/preachers sell to "religious consumers."

but there's no debating the dude's got charisma.

Tony Robbins was great in Shawshank Redemption tho- I don't care what anyone says.

Oh and making blanket statements about TED talks because of one speaker seems... weird. They have no agenda, just allow people at the top of their fields to communicate their ideas with little restraint.

They obviously don't endorse everything every speaker says, and they're in front of a very intelligent crowd that can sniff out BS very well, there's also quite a strict rule on not being able to advertise products so people can't as effectively use it as a marketing tool. In any case I don't see the problem with casting a wide net and allowing a lot of people to speak with a wide range of beliefs, substantiated or not, as too much is better than not enough. I'd much rather have people like Tony or Deepak speaking there than to risk potentially cutting out people that have important things to say because someone thinks it's la-la, if anything I think this makes TED as a forum far less suspect.

this is a really good point. i guess i try to differentiate between sites like Youtube that allows anybody to upload vs something like TED where i assume the speakers are invited, and as such, there's some kind of implicit endorsement in the message. but if it's just an open forum, i was mistaken.

Edit: Btw Nawhead I think the link the person was trying to send to you was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc which is a pretty cool talk, although I seem to remember the argument/evidence being a little weak/sensationalist, but yeah check it out imo.

i'm biased to believe Dr. Wahls' overall health was helped by her change to a paleo-like diet, but she was also doing some radical therapy at the same time. so to what extent the diet changes had any effect on her MS condition seems in question.

from http://www.uiowa.edu/be-remarkable/portfolio/people/wahls-t.html

In 2007, Wahls began eating greater amounts of foods known to support mitochondria. Her energy increased, and the progression of the disease slowed. At the same time, she read 212 research papers about electrical stimulation, which was being used to help athletes’ muscles heal and to improve quality of life for people with paralysis. She convinced her physical therapist to give it a shot, though he cautioned that it would be painful and may not help.

"I dialed it up to as much pain as I could take, because if I was going to fail, I didn’t want to look back and think I hadn’t gone as hard as I could," Wahls says. "He was right. It hurt, a lot. But it also released a lot of endorphins, and at the end I felt better than I had in years."

Wahls continued e-stim using a portable device at home and work, and began to exercise in small time increments. She also revamped her diet to see that every calorie would contribute to maximizing the brain’s building blocks. The "Wahls Diet" calls for nine cups of fruits and veggies per day: three of green leaves, three of sulfur-containing food, and three of bright colors.

Within a few months, she was walking between exam rooms at the hospital. She stopped taking her medications and continued to improve.


i'm trying not to dump every piece of evidence that supports my beliefs into one large pile and rubber stamp them. that would be lazy and dishonest. that's why i frown whenever i listen to her talk. and i have watched this talk before. just the thought of propagating spurious claims like these (and others ) is why i went on my general TED rant.

but the sensational connection which i do find compelling once going LCHF/Paleo is improvement in dental health:

http://hunter-gatherer.com/blog/white-mans-food-and-tooth-decay

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/obesity/obesity-in-ancient-egypt/

but the way Robbins and others like him packages something very simple (and free) alongside a bunch of useless pseudoscientific nonsense then labels everything as if he invented and sells these overpriced seminars is what really irks me. it just reminds me of how churches/preachers sell to "religious consumers."

I guess you haven't got any further then 'walking on fire' or trying something for a week to realise it didn't work. Most of his stuf really work well, if you really are comitted to it. Indeed, he didn't invent any of it (if you look closely its gestalt therapy, and all kind of therapy forms that all have its place in some situation), but that is what good entrepreneurs do man. Thats how they get rich.
They see something, and see how it can be better. Look at any entrepreneur and he does exactly that.

an honest and sobering article about the difficulty of weight loss in the New York Times.

and a letter to the editor in the form of a signed petition by Gary Taubes and Petter Attia, M.D.., in response.


it's not a conversation, yet, but it's still very good reading from both sides' perspectives.