Chow on chow, Parkinson's Law, two ways of doing something, and love.

Another mixed bag of subjects. First, here is Mr Carson C. Chow.

From A Mathematical Challenge to Obesity

According to Mr. Chow, Americans are getting increasingly fat because they're eating increasingly large amounts of "chow", because there's increasingly large amounts of it being produced. That's classic Parkinson's law (consumption expands to absorb the available supply).

According to Armi Legge, over-fat people need to . . . . Eat Less (& Move More).

There are two ways to "Eat Less".

1) Measure everything that goes into your mouth, calculate the calories in it and stick to an average daily calorie limit. Weigh yourself daily and adjust your intake to achieve a certain rate of rolling-averaged weight loss i.e. you consciously create a caloric deficit.

2) Tweak your diet until you find one that you can live with, that results in your belt and/or clothes getting looser i.e. you unconsciously create a caloric deficit. If you can't unconsciously create a caloric deficit, there will have to be some conscious restriction.

1) suits athletes & body-builders, as they are highly-motivated people who have a specific target in mind, whether it be athletic performance or a specific body-fat percentage/muscle mass/appearance.

2) suits the general public, as they aren't generally highly-motivated and won't tolerate hunger pangs.

Unfortunately, "Move More" has to be done consciously. Unconscious "Move More" i.e. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) a.k.a. Spontaneous Physical Activity (SPA) is genetically-determined.

Finally, I read Stretching out. I've been spending too much time on a blog full of fallacies & hate and it's been making me tetchy. I've now disengaged from that blog permanently. Breathe in. Breathe out. That's better!

Continued on Completing the trine: vive la différence!

We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.

If you don't recognise the words in the title, here's the classic song from which they came.


An increasing number of people are becoming like birds in gilded cages. See The perfect crime.
"What's fascinating is this: the marketing is so powerful that some of the people being hurt actually are eager for it to continue. This creates a cultural feedback loop, where some aspire to have these respected marketing jobs, to do more marketing of similar items. It creates a society where the owners and leaders of these companies are celebrated as risk-taking, brave businesspeople, not as the modern robber barons that they've become."

Did I ever mention?...

Marketing Food to Children: Anna Lappe at TEDxManhattan 2013.

As per title.

We have free will, huh?

Testing hypotheses - a rant.

My brain just exploded! On Why conventional view of obesity / FR is wrong, ItsTheWoo wrote "...there is not a doubt in my mind obesity is entirely 100% an illness, a disorder... "

According to ItsTheWoo's hypothesis, the increasing incidence of obesity all around the world since 1970 is 100% caused by the increasing incidence of illness all around the world since 1970. Seriously, WTF?

According to Nigeepoo's hypothesis, the increasing incidence of obesity all around the world since 1970 is significantly caused by the increasing influence of Crap-in-a-Bag/Box/Bottle (CIAB) manufacturers on the population by cunning marketing and on the Government by bribery lobbying since 1970.

The former results in increasing consumption of CIAB and the latter results in increasing subsidies on the raw materials used for manufacturing CIAB, making CIAB cheaper (also more profitable) than natural foods, thus increasing consumption of CIAB. See Why are Twinkies cheaper than carrots?

There are other factors causing increased obesity e.g. increasing numbers of towns/cities which discourage walking. See also Determinants of the Variability in Human Body-fat Percentage.

Highly-engineered and highly-calorific CIAB encourages subconscious over-eating via Food Reward. The hyper-secretion of insulin (compensatory hyperinsulinaemia) caused by the subconscious over-eating of CIAB causes subconscious under-moving by inducing drowsiness and lethargy, sometimes followed by the munchies if blood glucose goes too low. Insulin is just a hormone that is secreted for the storage of stuff and a reduction in the burning of stuff. Don't blame insulin for doing its job. If you have zero insulin (e.g. untreated type 1 diabetes), your body stops storing stuff and starts burning stuff uncontrollably. Before the invention of insulin injections, people with type 1 diabetes usually died within 2 years.

Subconscious over-eating is good for the profits of CIAB manufacturers. An increasing number of dyslipidaemic/hypertensive/depressed/diabetic/demented/w.h.y. people is good for the profits of health-care providers and drug manufacturers. These organisations currently make huge profits, so it's not going to be easy to change anything that will reduce them.

I deleted the last part of my rant as it was a bit too ranty, but I'm reinstating it in a toned-down form as I've mentioned it in the comments.

ItsTheWoo continually conflates subconscious over-eating and under-moving with conscious over-eating and under-moving (gluttony and sloth). The vast majority of over-fat people become over-fat due to subconsciously over-eating and under-moving. A tiny minority of over-fat people are gluttonous and slothful.

Telling people to consciously Eat Less, Move More doesn't work. This doesn't mean that Eat Less, Move More doesn't work. It means that Eat Less, Move More has to be done subconsciously. This is where low-carb/paleo/real food diets come into their own.

Rant over.

Child obesity 'time bomb'

...is today's headline on Nursing Times. Not only do calorie-dense, nutrient-poor junk-foods make children fatter than they should be, they may also turn them into junk-food junkies.

See The Science of Food Addiction , How Junk Foods Hijack the Brain , I'm a secret lemonade drinker... and Dopamine and Obesity: The Food Addiction?

It's currently illegal to advertise cigarettes & alcohol to and/or sell them to children. Would it help to tackle the child obesity problem by making it illegal to advertise sweets, chocolate, crisps, cakes, biscuits, sugary drinks & take-away foods to and/or sell them to children?