A recent subject/tread that has surfaced is a MD telling his patient she is obese and needs to do something about it and she reported him. http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/..._23special2.htm Then we have a lazy thread.

I have a theory, a connection between evolution and obesity let me throw out a theory I have. I have discussed this with some people that are in the nutrition area and they say no one has proposed such a concept before that they are aware of.

I am tying evolution and obesity together.

My theory is that evolutionary means is not being given a chance at the fast pace that humans have modified their world. That humans are now overweight in a greater percentage because of the fact that we are not allowing time to evolve us into a being that can accommodate our new diet.

When I travel in Europe I have always noticed that in France they have a lot of fat foods, like Butter and so on. In Holland they eat a ton of cheese and chocolate and dairy. In Germany a ton of sausage and beer, in Italy depending on the region tons of pasta. Any one of these diets is not what is considered an ideal diet for what we consider a proper diet. All of these cultures have been eating a regional food for thousands of years. I theorize that their body has evolved to work for them. That is why they in general do not have weight/obesity problems like the US.

What we have here is a combination of many different races and also a different food type here in the USA. We have combined many races so a Greek Italian body is not only confused by the fact for instance it does not know which is ideal, pasta or grape leaves. It needs thousands of years to evolve. But also confused because the food available is not either of those.

Now for my anecdotal/observed evidence that I believe supports this,
Many ethnic immigrants like Chinese who come here in the first generation do not change their normal ethnic diet and they live the same way as the rest yet they do not get obese. It appears their future generations change their diet and start the cycle.

I hosted a group of Irish college students for a couple weeks a year or so ago. They were all friends from Ireland and all lived in different parts of the USA for that summer and at the end stayed at my place. All of the girls except one could not believe how much weight they gained when that had never happened in Ireland, they gained up to 10 lbs. Except for one. She would not deviate from what she ate in Ireland, she ate chicken and potatoes every day for dinner and ate her normal food during the day. They all drank like college students and said that is how they drank at home.

If you look at the developed nations that have the obesity problems, US, Canada, and Australia. (Jenny Craig got her start in Australia) All nations that are new.

Then in poorer countries this should not be a problem because they are poor, too poor to have excess food. But in Mexico obesity is a serious problem, even though it has a average income very low (so no or little McDonalds, and not as many TVs). So they also have a obesity problem and they are also a newer nation. Again this to me again supports my theory, they are a somewhat homogenous culture but eating what is available and plentiful in their new lands, not what they had as a culture eaten for several thousand years.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/20/7/16502640.pdf


http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/050706/d050706a.htm

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/11/...l?from=storyrhs



So is my theory better than the others? Can you cite examples to prove or disprove this theory that our normal evolutionary process is being cheated which is causing obesity?

There are certainly differences in body types (tall, small, curvy, fat, thin) that often follw racial lines. But I think the rest of your theory falls flat. If you've spent much time in Europe, you'll notice that their portion sizes are much smaller than ours...and their food is generally healthier as well. In Italy they certainly eat a lot of pasta, but not "tons" of it every day. They eat it in relatively small portions...about a fifth the size of a single meal at the Cheesecake Factory. The populations are much more active and walk and/or bike everywhere as well.

Keep in mind, there is a large difference between visiting these places and actually living there. When you visit, you treat yourself to everything and it seems like the natives eat that way every day. When you livr in a region you eat like a native, and I don't know many Americans who moved to Europe and didn't lose weight. I weighed 10 pounds less when I lived over there. The lifestyle is simply healthier (no airconditioning in the summer helps, too). I have French friends with thin children which started to pack on the pounds after several months of eating the school lunches. This had never been a problem with the much healthier lunches in the schools of France.

Immigrants living in America get fat

Inventor, I think Mrs. Pigpen is fundamentally correct in what she stated above. The difference between the obesity patterns of populations is more a matter of portion size, food balance in meals, and life style than in genetic differences. After all, there is more genetic variation within the population of a single small village than between any two randomly selected people from different parts of the world. This conclusion is also supported by our own historical example. When we lived on farms or worked at mainly manual labor and ate meals with a reasonable protein, carbohydrate, and fat balance we had very little obesity. Now, with a different diet and life style, we do!

You're theory also suffers from a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works. Not only are long periods of time required, but some selective mechanism has to be operating to favor the survival of individuals with the new characteristic over those without it. There are some examples of food adaptation in variations of the human genome, but not many. The most obvious one is the adaptation to tolerate lactose by European and others whose ancestors have relied on cows' milk as an important food source for more than 10,000 years. Presumably, babies that were lactose intolerant had a reduced chance of survival resulting in fewer and fewer individuals that didn't have the ability to tolerate lactose with each generation.

Obesity probably is related to evolution but in a much different way. Human and even prehuman hominids lived in an environmental of fluctuating food supply. Those who could store food in the form of fat in plentiful times had a better chance of surviving lean times by partially living off their stored fat. Consequently, we evolved with the tendency to store fat when our food intake exceeded our energy expenditure. What was a survival advantage for relatively short lived populations has become a longevity disadvantage to populations that live into their 60s, 70s, and beyond.

Looks like Ted beat me too it.

I remember my trip to Europe, I went to 3 cities and was there for over a week. I saw A McDonalds and A pizza hut the whole time. Plus as soon as you get off a train or bus, there are a line of bikes to rent instead of taxis. European lifestyle is a lot more active then Americans.

Their are some traits from our caveman days that lead us to "be fat" but I don't think that these traits should "evolve" as they're for our own protection. For instance, back when we were hunters, you really didn't know when you were going to get your next meal. Even today, after a few hours of not eating, your body will go into "starvation mode" and start storing and conserving fat. This is the logic behind eatting 5-6 small meals a day, if you eat only 3 meals a day your body starts to go into starvation mode and will store most of your next meal as fat. The problem compounds itself when your next meal is a double cheeseburger from Wendy's.

Another trait is storing water. Most people don't drink enough water a day and all the coke and coffee, (both diuretics) we consume isn't helping at all. Our bodies are smart however, and the water is stored in your body because it's not getting enough so it saves what it can. If you really need to drop about 1-3lbs in about 3 days, drink about 1/2 a gallon a day. Not only is it good for you, you'll dispose of all that water your body has been storing. Also, your liver metabolizes fat and if you're over working by flooding it with sugars and chemicals from soft drinks your liver (and kidneys kick in) has to work on dealing with the junk instead of metabolizing fat.

So if our bodies were to due away with those traits that are making us fat due to our lifestyle, I don't think I'd call it "evolution" I call it screwing ourselves.

To me Mrs Pigpens Northwestern University supports exactly what I am hypothesizing.

My point there is no agreement with the conventional arguments that fits all. I think my theory does a better job than the rest of the theories out there.

As far as examples of going to Europe and different lifestyle note that if you have ever been to the orient like Japan, HK, Thailand, S.Korea they are not very or as active or about the same as the USA. Also they in Europe are not that active in the winter or similar to the USA, they have a similar lifestyle in the winter of stay inside from the cold. Again this is anecdotal from my many trips to Europe including in the winter.

Try to rent a bike in Tokyo or HK… you have a mass transit stop every 500 yards it seems. Yet none of these have hit our new nations growth of obesity. Plus in some of those nations it is just too hot to do anything outdoors.

TedN5 as far as evolution working we just do not know for sure for instance here is an example of another observation that shows these creatures evolved to a degree by not being able to interbreed in less than 30 years.
talking origins
Thus to summarize the original worm was not capable of breeding with the later generations which is a dramatic change.


developing nations reject obesity plan


Korea vs USA


Here is what the sugar biased industry is claiming.
sugar daddy


Arab nation sugar consumption
Here is a chart for Arab sugar consumption, one country up to 133 lbs per year per capita. Morocco 84.26 lbs. I do not know as a fact but the Arab nations do not appear to be obese and they do not seem to be into significant daily exercise (seems to hot there, pure speculation, have never been to an arab nation)

As far as the soft drink and caffeine goes, caffeine is popular in Europe .
coffee


US per capita consumption of Coffee has decreased from 1993-1999
coffee in selected nations

Those are some very, very good observations. I suppose that the people in those countries that you mentioned have evolved or the fact that they eat those things every day may contribute to some kind of immunity. I mean, an alcoholic has built up such a resistance to alcohol that they can sometimes drink unhuman amounts. I've heard of some guy police in Russia found who had a .8, not .08, .8 blood alcohol content, and he was living. So if a person eats pasta every day, they probably won't get fat. If they double their pasta intake, of course they will get heavier if they aren't exercising very hard. Plus, pasta, beer, sausage, etc. are all basically natural foods. Pasta is wheat, and has been eaten for a very, very long time. Beer is from barley, and has been drank for thousands of years. Sausage is meat, humans have eaten meat since they have existed. Then, you have McDonalds, who do some crazy stuff with their fries, they have the super-ultra processed hamburger so that it becomes gray, and then they have good deals so people have an incentive to eat even more. Plus, all the stuff supposedly tastes good, even though it doesn't look good. Plus, food can be addicting. Humans can possibly even be addicted to tanning. Cool. So I really don't know what is causing people to become fat, but I know that people are responsible for it.

I'm not sure how. It sounds as though you are hypothesizing that people indigenous to areas with low obesity rates are thinner due to inherent biological differences. My link showed that those same people come to America and get fat over time, too.


I lived in South Korea for a year, and worked within the communities and many households. I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that their meals were healthier and their portions MUCH smaller than your average American family eats. Their carbohydrates consisted almost entirely of rice, vegetables, and fresh fruit. They basically ate no sweets at all by comparison to Americans. Per activity levels, few Koreans in my neighborhood even owned a car. They usually use the bus stations (as did I at the time) to go long distances, and anything within a mile or two they just walk to (not much parking available). In fact, I used a washing board much of the time to wash my clothes when I lived there, since otherwise I'd have to lug them to the base and wait an hour for a machine. There is a lot of physically intensive work by comparison to our lifestyle.

Edited to add: I taught in the American school system for a short time (6th grade). Most of the children were fat, and ate candy and junk for snacks. I taught in the Korean school system for a year, and the children ate pressed, dried squid for snacks. It was extremely rare to see a Korean child with candy or anything sweet or junky.

inventor


How many generations of Rat Worms lived in the period from 1964 to 1992? If I assume a Rat Worm lives 2 weeks, this period would represent 784 generations. In human generations that's about 15,680 years. Living in a lab without predators would select for much different traits than living in the wild so a powerful selection mechanism was operatings. The fact that the Woods Hole worms were bred from only 6 individuals is also significant. This in itself was a selection of only part of the gene pool for Rat Worms. It's still impresive that speciation occurred this quickly but I don't see any relevance to human evolution over a period of 4 or 5 generations with no selection mechanism operating.

They supports exactly what I am saying, in my original post I said, Now for my anecdotal/observed evidence that I believe supports this,
“Many ethnic immigrants like Chinese who come here in the first generation do not change their normal ethnic diet and they live the same way as the rest yet they do not get obese. It appears their future generations change their diet and start the cycle.” So my hypothesis is supported and more that the human gets accumulated to the diet not the environment. So by keeping to their ethnic diet they do not change and have a obese tendency. Keep in mind, Obviously there are lots of exceptions, NOT all Americans are obese.



As far as your time there, which is more than I spent, I have been to Korea a few times. My friends contacts there all own washing machines and I would like to point out to those who may take your comments out of statistical context Korea has a very high standard of living, you would swear they have ALL the comforts of toys identical to us. In some respects technologically they are ahead, in like cell phones. Now with that said, my contacts are all in the Seoul area. Possibly you were in more of a remote area like being in the mountains of West Virginia where the economy was not quite as technologically advanced, i.e. only own three TVs per home instead of 5.
Seoul is South Korea's capital - the 4th largest urban center in the world
korea infoI do not know where you were living and teaching. But I posted in my other post a citation that specifically contradicts what you observed. I have eaten with Koreans there as well as in the US in Korean restaurants and I will say when I walk out I am too full, kind of like going to a US Chinese restaurant, I always have food to take home. But I do not think the restaurant taking home food has a good correlation. But I did cite a reference on Korea where the calorie intake by Americans and Koreans where it showed both eat about 2000kcal diets but the differences was carbs vs. total. Where the Koreans eat more carbs proportional. So again I think this is what their body has evolved to in their region.

As far as your example of taking buses I do not see that as a energy burning exercise. I think you would agree that argument just does not work.

The walking long distances to bus stops is good, but in countries like Mexico where obesity is a problem and it is a developing nation where they do not as a whole own washing machines and walk potentially longer distances for buses it could or does shoot your developed nation of Korea argument out of the picture in my book.



I could not find the life of the ""Nereis acuminata" which I do not think is a rat worm, as you may have inferred. I think they were using the word "lab rat" as a generic artistic liberty. all references I could find were water related. So their breeding cycle could be longer than your number, I do not know and could not find it.

But a few things before you move to these estimates. First the human breeds or did and could at 14 years so do not look at human lifetime for your numbers, and since the average lifetime expectancy during the founding of our country was twenty something I heard the 14 is a good estimate to assume for most of mankind’s existence. I don't know when they found birth control for the masses. I was under the impression you had 6-10 kids so a few survived. Second this was for an entire change of species, I am not looking for the time it takes for the human not to be able to breed, mine is a change such that their digestive systems or natural selection changes the digestive efficiency so to speak of the species.

I think I understand what you are saying now. This could be viewed two different ways. One, your theory that indigenous people are accustomed to their food and therefore don't become obese when eating even vast quantities because they have evolved to eat that food. Or, indigenous people don't get as fat as Americans because their food is healthier, they are more active, they eat smaller portions, or some combination of those three.

This question could probably be answered easily enough by observing immigrants living in other countries. Do Europeans who live and work in Hong Kong, for example, get fat? Do Asians working in Europe get fat? Do Germans who move to Italy become obese, or vice/versa? Do Americans who move to Asia or Europe become even more obese? It's a very small world these days and immigrants live all over the globe, yet I haven't heard of this phenomenon.

Also bare in mind that evolution is designed to permit populations to survive efficiently, so I'm not sure why this process would lead to the ability to eat without gaining weight in the first place. Gaining weight leads to survivability during a famine. If anything such evolution would have the opposite effect, the local food would provide more energy punch per food unit.


If you are around my age (mid-thirties), or older, you can remember when the high-carbohydrate, low fat diets were peddled. They didn't work because Americans have no concept of moderation. They'd eat an entire bag of Snackwells cookies at one sitting because they were fat free. The low fat, high carb diet was conceptualized based on the Asian diet. It works if you practice it like an Asian. Rice, vegetables, and lean fish. Use it consistently and I guarantee you'll be thin.

I don't know what else to say here. I have lived in Asia, and I've lived in Italy. I've been to Seoul at least 30 times. Yes, it is a modern city but most of South Korea isn't quite like Seoul. I can tell absolutely you that they eat smaller portions than we do, in my experience. They don't even sell cans of soda the size of ours at vending machines in Korea. The cans are about half the size. Here, we have big gulps. We simply don't know moderation like much of the rest of the world. An authentic Korean restaurant serves about 20 different versions of roots and grass, along with some rice and fish. It is a much healthier diet, and the portions are smaller. Likewise, in Europe the portions are smaller and they all lead more active lifestyles. When is the last time you saw an old lady or man riding a bike to the store in the rain with an umbrella in America? I don't think I ever have. It's a very common scene in Italy.

I think you are figuring out what I am saying, sorry English/writing is not my friend. I think what you may be missing/not connecting is Australia and Mexico are two similar nations with obesity issues. Not just the USA and they both have obesity problems. I am not trying to say if evolution is the reason why all three nations overeat or not, or efficiently process their food. Just that it is a theory that does fit better than any other theories.

As you point out a good study with seeing a European moving from one country to another, but it has kinda been done by the one you cited Northwestern the new residence do not gain become obese to extremes if they stay on their normal diet. To do a study more as you suggest would be very good if we knew they did truly change their eating to the new location. But is also misses my larger part to the theory, that by being “mutts” so to speak, our bodies really are out of whack. If I am Greek and Italian which food do I eat the grape leaf olive diet or the pasta diet.

For your soda /sugar example I cited the sugar consumption (which I assume includes soda) of societies and with your analysis the arabs and many other societies kick our butts. And would be one of the ones most likely to be obese, but they are not.

When I was in Italy, the people I was visiting were all very thin, they drive cars everywhere they were going, they did not work out and man could they pack the pesto away. I had never seen people eat so much and so fast and so many courses. This was the Genoa region and winter. I don’t think I saw a non-fat item in the menus… Man did I feel like a fish out of water, Gore-Tex down jacket and they were all in their leather and fancy coats, standard for business culture there.

And you point of evolution is designed to to permit populations to survive is a very good point. But we are surviving and population is growing. Also gaining weight during famine/stress may be what is happening now that you point it out. I think you put your finger on the trigger…. The change in food could be triggering the mechanism to store weight because the evolutionary thing could be the trigger is change of diet means famine to the body. Do you buy that?

Evolution is going on all the time. There is no trigger for it. Evolution is constant change in living things over generations. Some individuals are more likely to reproduce. Those individuals are the ones who will contribute most to the next generation.

Evolution is not where an individual is exposed to a stress and their body adapts to the change.

Evolution does not occur when ones diet changes. It is possible that some individuals are better suited to handle a dramatic diet change and therefore more likely to survive and reproduce.

I do not think evolution fits in the context of the situation you are describing.

What I did is a search evolution and trigger. Boy this one is spot on being published Sept 16 2005.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=30680
Stressed cells trigger DNA repair missteps and speed evolution
16 Sep 2005




Here is another source that there is an envirnmental trigger for evolution in humans.
evolution trigger


another unique one pointed to the food we eat.

food we eat evolution
The Evolution Explosion: How Humans Cause Rapid Evolutionary Change (Hardcover)
by Stephen R. Palumbi "



food causes evolution
Evolution's Youth Movement
Fossil children may harbor clues to humanity's origins

Bruce Bower

Anthropologists

I wouldn't dismiss a possible association between the age of a culture and obesity, but the question is is that association necessitated by the age of the culture alone, or is the association itself also a cultural one. I don't doubt that you are on to something in identifying the likenesses of young, or new, cultures with obesity, compared to older cultures, but I doubt it's an evolution issue. I mean I doubt that the obesity is tied to something necessitated by peoples biological maladaptation. I'm sure that given the same time as other cultures have had to exist, that if the newer cultures kept up their bad eating habits for a thousand years, they'd still be fat.

Your transfer student example only shows that when other people start eating like americans, they start getting fat. So that's an eating habit issue. It may appear that it's the type of food they are eating and not the amount ( as in caloric content ) but I think there have been many a fad diet that was based upon the same observation of how other cultures eat. I think Susan Summers had one. The failures of those are somewhat of a test of your theory.

It's not food types that make people fat. There are basic nutritional principles applicable to humanity as such, regardless of culture: consume more energy (calories) than you exert and you will gain weight - regardless of ethnic background. Exert more than you consume, you'll lose weight (stored calories, aka "fat").

I do think it's an interesting issue however, because very possibly something is going on here with newer cultures and obesity. I think it's likely a valid observation. So why do people in newer cultures either consume so many more calories, or do so much less work, or both. Could be economic forces at work. Could be advertising?

Maybe people in newer cultures are also less mature, lacking a signifigant heritage to draw from for personal everyday wisdom. Newer cultures have less everyday "know how". So they may be much easier to manipulate into self-destructive habits when prompted by the makers of the stuff they consume too much of.

Maybe the age of cultures has something to do with the maturity-level of the people, and so the better or worse decision making of them. Like I said, every day know how. I honestly don't know. I'm just throwing that out there as an alternative explanation.

It's just that eating wisely, like anything else, is really a matter of "know how". Older cultures just may have more ingrained know how when it comes to how they eat. They've been around longer. I mean America is a good example of a culture that's really stupid about how fat works, which is why the fad diet industry is so huge.

It's plain ignorance. People in America will blame their obesity on everything under the sun before they'll admit their diet contains too many calories. Practically every fad diet out there, if not all of them, tell people they don't have to do the one thing they actually do, which is to monitor their caloric intake. How many times have you heard diet commercials repeat those magic words "you don't have to count calories".

The simplest truth in the world, that if you keep adding more to something than you are taking away then that something will accumulate, is lost on the general American population. They just don't believe that that's how their bodies work.

Maybe it's because it's a young culture, and ignorance seems to always be associated with youth. Maybe it applies to cultures as with anything else: the younger something is, the more prone it is to making mistakes. Those other countries that don't have such obesity problems, likely don't have as much bolemia either.

Examples of ignorance causing fat:

*Blaming it on "genes". I hear this all the time at work, family, television... This is ignorance talking, or just unawareness and irrationality, because it stands to reason that if one's body stored the calories it needed to survive, then one would not survive. So genes can't cause obesity. The body will not store fat it needs - period. That's the whole reason it does store fat - for it's needs. If it stored it when it needed it, then you'd die. When people use this excuse what they are saying is that their bodies are biologically suicidal.

They're saying that their bodies are unecessarily storing fat, so energy requirements aren't being met. Blaming it on "genes" means that there is an energy requirement the body is ignoring and storing the energy in spite of it. So how do they continue to live? So they blame self-destruction on self-destructive biology. As if that's not something a self-destructive mentality would think of.

*A similar example of American ignorance about fat are people who say their bodies gain weight because of a "slow metabolism". People will believe something like this, although it stands to reason that you only need the amount of calories your metabolism burns anyway. So their explanation still shows they are taking in more than what they need. They can still lose weight by consuming less calories than what their metabolism requires to keep them at their current weight.

*People think that a certain type of calories is the cause of their stored fat, and not the amount of their overall calories. The Atkins diet is the famous version of this one. The Susan Sommers diet was the opposite, I believe.

This is ignorance of the fact that regardless of what form your energy (calorie) consumption comes in, that it's still true if you don't consume enough calories than what your body needs, it must resort to it's stored resources, or stop functioning. In other words, however you shuffle "carb", fats and protein intake, you don't alter the rule that less energy in than energy out equals resource depletion, or fat loss.

*People beleive that the primary cause of their obesity is not doing enough, that exercise is the answer. Why? Because they are ignorant of the fact that motor activity only accounts for 20-25% of their entire energy expenditure. Their basal metabolism is the rest. So it's still their energy consumption which is the fundamental problem.

*People believe that when they feel hungry, they have to eat, because they are unaware that it's their own eating habits controlling their hunger. So they never allow their bodies to use the fat it has stored, but eat instead when they feel hungry. It's like they don't trust their bodies to turn to it's stored resources, as if that's not why it has them.

I just wanted to add something about sugar:

Sugar intake is not nessecarily a good measure of how fatty food is in a particular country. Sugar comes in many different forms, and under normal circumstances sugar is not converted to fat. However, sugar in liquid form, as in soda, has been shown to be extremely fattening, while sugar in some in root vegetables (which have a high procentage of sugar) is healthy because that sugar is processed in a different way. So two countries may have a similiar intake of sugar on paper, but one country is more obese, and there is nothing mysterious about it.

Also we cannot ignore fat. Junk food has a very high percentage of fat, and are usually taken in with a complement of sizeable soda drinks. That is a very unfortunate combination, and one that is very common in the USA and Europe (to a lesser degree). The obesity problem in Europe is growing, as junk food is getting more and more popular, but like others have said, it is somewhat helped by our more active lifestyle. Many people here uses their bikes to go somewhere everyday, and most people usually frown at the idea of taking their car if they are just going to visit somebody a mile or two away, even if they have two or three cars. I would say this has nothing to do with evolution.

Sure, some people in the world have a higher metabolism than others, and can eat tons of fatty foods without ever gaining a pound, even if they are sitting down all day, but those kind of people can be found every place on earth and it is medically testable. Some like me have a low metabolism, and sometimes I think the only reason why I am not obese or really fat is because I in some periods almost don't eat anything for weeks at a time (not that that is healthy I know).

EDIT: removed supposedly bad words.

I looked at your links, inventor.

Example one: Stressed cells trigger DNA repair missteps and speed evolution

This was the title of the article. Clearly a non scientist editor created the title. Within the article was information that as study has shown that starved cells tend to have more transcription errors. Mutation rates were higher for stressed cells. If there are more mutations then the likelihood of multiple identical mutations increases which increases the likelihood of there becoming part of a DNA code. This is where the quote from Dr Susan Rosenberg comes in: "This can speed evolution of complex protein machines."

Evolution of complex life is believed to happen most dramatically when there is stress in the environment. This is a study showing this is true at the single cell level and presents a mechanism promoting mutations to facilitate the occurence of evolution. I think the wording chosen by Dr. Rosenburg was poor as it leads to misinterpretation.

The others links where you use the word 'trigger' do not support your theory that evolution is triggered by what we eat. These articles list various triggers (stresses) which may have preceded evolutionary change.

It comes down to this logic: sometimes environmental changes will lead to profound evolutionary changes. This is not the same as: all environmental changes lead to evolutionary changes.

You have bastardized evolution. It does not mean what you are saying.

My guest student example is more than what you are saying. She did not gain weight even though her lifestyle changed and she was getting as little exercise as americans she adopted our way except for the food. IE she was not walking as much and so on, exactly as much as her friends who just changed their diet.

I will add a side anecdotal note here from my days that seem to be the same, I notice when we go off to college where we do much more walking than before and our diets change most college students seem (I have found several art that back this up) whom I believe to be more active tend to gain weight.

though some of the references say we are not as active as in high school I would have to disagree, I think in college we walked a heck of a lot more, specially freshman year where in many colleges the freshmen are not allowed cars.

http://www.annecollins.com/weight_health/c...weight-gain.htm
College and Weight Gain



http://press.creighton.edu/090205/news4.html


Most of these blame it on reduced exercise which I do not believe, increased food available, I can not vouch for this because I was in a frat from day one and we did not have all kinds of food available.

I would believe this fits the trigger of change of food as I have proposed. In Europe I would expect that there would not be this large (15 lbs) as americans weight gain because the food is still a regional food.

I would also propose the now increasing numbers of obesity in Europe to the number of people moving to different locations and changing their regional diet. If you in europe could give us numbers of lbs of weight gain by your college students it would be interesting to see, I did a quick search and nothing came up fast. But will guess it is not 15 pounds or 7 kilos.

Hopefully everyone here had a great turkeyday.... Now that the weather is nice, I did a 1.5 hour walk this morning and will be windsurfing for 1-2 hours today... tomorrow is bike ride and probably windsurfing.

Edited to reply to Gray Seal I did not say there were extensive writings on this theory, in fact there shouldn’t be, so I have to pick and choose thoughts from various authors which is what I did. This process is very similar to inventions and the inventing process.

I do not know how you are reading the following statement that I quoted from the same, but this is consistent with being a trigger to me, and also in a different direction supporting my conclusion that foods can be an evolutionary tool. strangely that the starvation restricts the evolutionary process is very interesting. And points that food is just another evolutionary trigger or accelerator. That is what I read into that statement, can you explain what you are reading into it.

Your statement of is well stated. You certainly write better than I, but what you are missing here is rate the dx/dt as we look at as Engineers as these studies bring up in essence. IE starvation has a slower evolutionary change over time as as opposed to no starvation.

Also in the last document the following statement I quoted is in the right direction. again this points out that even a change that is minor in diet there can be a unexpected outcome in that species. That food is ingrained on the evolution of humans. I believe this is very pointed to what I am saying. We do not know the rate or dx/dt that is a significant modification to as I think cause a dramatic consequence of the body of the human.

I am not saying this is the only trigger, just one that has not been looked at.
Just as can we say possibly cold can trigger the body to store food at a higher rate and slow down metabolism. there may be ethnicities that this is greater than others through evolution. ie do we adapt or evolve.

I've seen testimonies of people who go back to their ethnic diet and lose a lot of weight. For instance, a Hawain women went back to her native Hawaiin diet and started to lose weight.

I think the evidence is misleading however. I don't think it's a matter of evolving to adjust to a certain diet, I just think the diets in the countries named are just horrible diets....for anyone, any time. In other words, we couldn't evolve to be skinny on an all-McDonalds diet.

If you look at Europe, they're starting to get fatter now that fast food is becoming more popular. I was in Paris and saw kids eating McDonalds on a bridge.

The French diet is similar to Atkins, small portions of fat, low carb foods.

The problem with the American diet is an over-abundance of low-fiber, high calorie, high-fat, carbohydrate-rich, processed foods. That would make just about anyone fat.

I have some knowledge of wieght loss now- I have lost 65 pounds so far- here is a before and after pic-

Before:



After:



The doctor says I am not genetically predisposed to obesity- rather quite the opposite- I am a natural athlete and body builder- going from 30% body fat to 18% body fat in less than six months!

My wieght gain was 100% due to change in lifestyle due to the birth of my children- they happened to be more important at the time than working out and eating right-

so, as soon as I started working out and eating right- and, BTW- my wife lost 60 pounds as well- going from a size 16 to a size 4 in the same six months-

So I definately feel there is a lifestyle component, big time, probably more than genetics in most cases IMHO

If you have seen those testimonies of people going back to the ethnic diet losing weight, please link us to them when you see them again.

OK you want to blame McDonalds for fat but do you know in Mexico where obesity is prevalent in a developing nation there are not a lot of McDonalds. Again note that in my earlier post I hit is is a great example of a country that is not wealthy yet has obesity problems which again supports my change of diet not keeping up with evolution theory.

Now I have thought of another very good example. I am a windsurfer so in general all the people I know are not obese. But even in this group of individuals I know about 30-40 windsurfer families from Quebec. I probably know about 200 windsurfer families from the US and 50 more from the rest of Canada. I will say the families I know from Quebec are the thinnest I know as a group. If you know any they still eat a diet that is very French. IE they did not change their diet as they came to the new world even though they also have McDonalds all over their area.

This is about as perfect of an example to support this theory there is. Canada has obesity problems like the US but not as bad YET. in Quebec they do not have the same rate as the rest of Canada. To support this see the following links where Quebec has the lowest knee replacement rate in Canada, and as it states obese are two times as likely to have hip or knee replacements. The other links show that Quebec for other dates was very low even though the other providences around Quebec were significantly higher.

psl group

statcan site


gov website



BTW this is not a one size fits all theory.......

Firstly, let me apologise in advance, I don't want to dump on your interesting theory, or seem overly harsh, but the reality is your theory simply doesn't make any sense. The problem is primarily your lack of understanding of the mechanisms of evolution. Primary, but far from the only problem.


Firstly, special evolutionary change of the type you are talking about takes tens of thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands. Fast food has existed for about 70 years, barely two generations.

Secondly, evolution does not work that way. There is no reason for people to 'evolve' to be thinner. Unless there is a period of serious demographic stress in which the obese are somehow disadvantaged, there will be no evolutionary change along this line. Evolution is progressive change by luck shaped by events and situations, nothing more. There is no reason at all why we would 'evolve' to be thinner in a modern age unless there was a critical demographic stress advantaging the 'thin' over a long period of time.


Thirdly, (and critically) your 'travels' across Europe failed to notice that, while yes many cultures have local food which is fatty, there are a plethora of other factors involved. Firstly, portions in Europe tend to be substantially smaller, the gorging culture does not exist. Secondly, fast food, while almost as common in some westen nations as in the US, do not have the same consumption and sales figures.

For example, according to the FDA, Americans consume on average 48 gallons of carbonated soft drinks per year per capita. Western Europeans on the other hand consume 12.7 gallons per year per capita, almost a quarter as much.

Americans consume 246 pounds of meat per year per capita, while the EC consumes 170 pounds per year per capita.

Worse still, Americans excercise les per capita than their European counterparts. Back before Arnold became governor of California, he was campaigning for Bush Sr. to get Americans to increase weekly excercise to at least European standards. These are the simple and practical and observable reasons for American obesity, not some 'evolutionary problem'. Even the sites YOU quoted in your last post (statistics Canada) goes on to disprove your theory:





There are a hundred of these facts out there, and they all point to the same thing, that the 'regional types' of food one eats are nearly irrelevant, what matters is the quantities and proportions, as well as the amount of excersise. So your thesis has little to no validity on this score, and that is even before we consider the problems of your understanding of evolutionary mechanisms.


But there are more problems. Fourthly, your thesis assumes that these 'regional diets' have remained static for long periods of time, but this is not the case. Diets change ALL the time, and even if evolution worked as you think it does, and even if evolution worked faster than you think it does, there is NO way it could keep up with the rapidly changing diets of regions.

For example, you cite your 'irish friend' who ate chicken and potatoes every day. Well, potatoes have only existed in Ireland for about 400 years. Similarily, poultry and meat was very uncommon except among the very rich at the time. In fact the traditional Irish foods from 1600s bear little or no resemblance to those eaten today. If you go back another 600 years, the diet is again different, now it is mussels and shellfish supplimented by barley porridge. Apples were the only fruit available in the entire country.

The same can be said about any nation. In China, while rice has remained a staple for centuries, nothing else has, changing again and again as tastes (usually caused by invasions), agricultural capacity and ability, and food availability change. Diets change so rapidly that even if evolution worked that way you though it did, and even if it worked a hundred times faster than it currently does, there is still no way it could keep up.


So I apologise for being harsh, but your theory utterly fails on a whole series of levels, conceptual, practical and logical.

Yes harsh but let me throw things back right back at ya if you don't mind, a bit less harshly,

I will not spend too much time because some things I posted in this thread already address things that you may not have understood like for example, your soda drink example. I assume you are commenting/inferring on the calorie- sugar aspect. This was from my post 5 if you want the links.


Here is what the sugar biased industry is claiming.
sugar daddy



I said in post 5
Arab nation sugar consumption
Here is a chart for Arab sugar consumption, one country up to 133 lbs per year per capita. Morocco 84.26 lbs. I do not know as a fact but the Arab nations do not appear to be obese and they do not seem to be into significant daily exercise (seems to hot there, pure speculation, have never been to an arab nation)


so back to your post.
Also in post 5 of mine I hit the worm changes that are remarkable for that kind of change so quickly, this was a complete change where they could not even mate, not the same league what so ever as food efficiency digestion.

Then as a trigger mechanism (changes in food pattern could put the human in a winter storage mode) you did not site one example what so ever do dispute this. Again the trigger mechanism may be built in and have been in the humans and other critters for 100s of thousands of years.

You didn't address my examples with Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand all that have similar problems as the USA.

BTW I am very aware of the normal theories of quote unquote of your Arnold stories. I am not in favor of doing steroids. Second to that, since you list you are from Canada, you completely blew by this one.... please explain my Quebec example (where they eat have stuck to their French diet) and why their neighboring providences are like americans and they are not. Can we assume they have similar living patterns work hours, exercise and so on. So why are they healthier and their neighbors are not. This is a perfect example and would like your feedback on this point.

Let us go through this peacemeal, I think you will find that the problems I identified, primarily your basic misunderstanding of evolution, still hold.


Firstly: Yes, refined sugar consumption in the Middle East is high. So? Look at trends, not isolated examples. A quick search of the web will show that the United States consumes far more fast food on average, far more soft drinks on average, far more meat on average, far fewer servings of fruit on average, and larger portions on average. I have shown a few examples of this, but there are countless more all over the web and in relevant texts. Diet and excersise are the primary components of obesity, the worsening of the former and the lessening of the latter. This is hardly new information, and has been known for quite some time.


Secondly: You never adressed the basic issue of this simply not being how evolution works. For this theory to have any validity at all, you need to present us with some reason WHY people would 'evolve' to be thinner, what demographic crisis compelled this change, and how it came about. Evolution, no matter what some religious fnatics say, is not directed, it has no targets, it needs a combination of chance and circumstance to occur. Why would people evolve to be thinner?


Thirdly, you also never addressed the issue of how it would be impossible to 'evolve' to adapt to a diet when that diet is changing all the time. You want me to address the Quebec example? My pleasure. Where on earth did you get the idea that Quebec has the same diet as France? It's not even close. The agriculture, produce, and traditions are entirely different. I grew up beside quebec, and lived two years in France, there is little to no similarity in their diets at all. You can't just assume huge things like this to help with some theory. Quebec is a perfect example of the alterations of diet that I have already addressed. Quebec is not even the thinnest provine in Canada, British Columbia is. And knee and hip replacements in Quebec is a silly way to measure relative obesity, when in fact all it does is measure relative value of the provinces health care systems.




Fourthly: We have already seen that evolution simply does not work how you think it does, AND that is impossible to 'adapt' to ever-changing circumstances, but EVEN IF it did, the time-frame you have provided makes no sense at all. You site one example of rapid evolutionary change in worms, but mis the point of your own example. Firstly, the generational span of lab worms is 4 months. Over 30 years thats 90 generations. Among humans that same generational time is almost 2300 years. Secondly, the worms were compelled to evolve because of extreme demographic stress, in other words they spent 30 years being used in toxicological experiments. Only those fortunate enough to survive would breed, thus compelling evolution and change., Speciation was in no way inevitable, but happened in this case. THAT is how evolution occurs. You have not shown any comparable mechanisms which affect human population. You have also not shown and consistent and overhwlming demographic advantage from being thin. You have also chosen to ignore the universally accepted and far more realistic diet and excersise factors in determining obesity. You have also not shown how any diet, anywhere on the planet, has remained unchanged, in fact has not changed entirely several times, over the last 2000 years.


But in case all that was not enough, I will give you ANOTHER huge problem with your theory.

I have already shown that diets change rapidly and dramatically over time, thus voiding any possibility of 'evolution' even if evolution worked that way.

But not only do diets change, so do people. For your theory to work:
-Evolution has to work entirely differently than it does in reality.
-Evolution has to work far faster than it does in reality.
-Diets need to have remained essentially static over thousands of years.

AND: Populations would have needed to remain essentially static over thousands of years. For a population to evolve in relation to its surrpundings, it needs to be exposed to them for extended periods of time, and forced into demograpgic stress related to the environment. So your theory that 'the French' have adapted to their population presupposes that 'the French' and 'The French diet' have remained static. Well I have already shown that the diet has not, but nor have the people.

Take the UK as an example. Inhabited by Roman settlers in 20 BC, invaded by picts and scots for hundreds of years. Occupied by the Angles and the Saxons, occupied in large part by the Danes. Occupied by the Normans. (all of this happened in less than 800 years) and so on. During each invasion the demography of the region changed entirely, (as did the diet).



So we have all these basic reasons why your theory simply does not work on any level, but the big question I think is, why are you looking so hard for a 'theory' to explain something that has already been explained and documented perfectly, to the satisfaction of the experts in the field? Obesity is a measure of diet and fitness, and in both those categories, the US lags way behind the rest of the first world. Why do you 'need' another explanation?



EDIT to add: Not that more problems with your theory are needed, but another one just occurred to me. Obesity in the US has not been developing for thousands of years, it is a very recent problem. In fact a whole slew of studies show a dramatic balooning of obesity (no pun intended) in just the last 20 years, less than 1 generation. Even if none of the other huge problems in your theory existed, this alone shows that it MUST be environmental as opposed to evolutionary.

First there is no question exercise will do wonders. That is not the debate. As an Engineer balanced energy equations are rudimentary to me. In Arab nations and where I have been in the orient I do not see them exercising to the level of some nations. But that is an anecdotal observation. In fact, I would like to see a nice chart on this.

Next I am not trying to explain every situation but a general rule for those whos bodies may not be adapting. Clearly all people are not obese. What is interesting I know many people who are very thin and do not work out and eat awful things and much. Again their bodies seem to deal just fine. Why? I don’t think there has been a good explanation to that.

Again you have not hit why other countries like Mexico a developing nation where they do not have money to buy tons of food; Australia, New Zeeland all have similar problems and they are all new world countries. Do not just focus in America. So your consumption needs to include these not just the USA to be significantly more beneficial to the understanding/debate.

Nice pun with the piecemeal.

I disagree with your assumptions, for a variety of reasons, please back with real facts I do like your opinion and follow your thoughts, but need facts to back it up covering the entire argument.

For instance you state the Quebec one, and do not give reasons why as I pointed out they are in the middle of providences that are all at the higher of Canada. (the BC one I read about that is why I set it as in the middle of other high rate areas which in science is a great example) You do not give an explanation for this, or state any facts, I posted links that show they are low for their area and one that linked hip knee surgery to obesity. I find it interesting you can not see the link when they stated it, not I. If you want to disagree with their findings behind a link between weight bearing injuries due to excess weight post a source. So did you miss the point entirely on that issue? Also on BC we can look at the days of nice weather and availability of outdoor things to do, would be my guess on why they are better than all Canada.. The Quebec example is a normalizing factor, in the middle of others with similar bad weather, similar work patterns, similar availability of all foods, similar government, so it should be their ethnicity as the factor making the difference.

Second the Quebecers I know and have eaten with do stick to a diet like in France, a lot of cheese and wine for one. Man do they enjoy their wine with that. I was asking you for some factual information when asking, but you did not provide it, I was thinking you would cite a study that said they exercise more, eat fewer calories or what ever, but you gave me no facts.

Your example of having different foods available in a new world is also a good point but not connected with facts to back it up. So my mother is first generation pure greek and boy can she cook greek food here. She was raised in the USA eating Greek food, I was not. she learned to cook other styles, my father was a different ethnic background so she cooked that also.

Also still missing the trigger mechanism that may be built into us.

Here is a quote from a document, note the bolded.
http://www.fitness.gov/activity/activity7/...ty/obesity.html


As far as how evolution specifically works, that is not the real subject, I doubt we know how all evolution works.

Yes there is. Some people have a faster metabolism than others. I should know, I am 6'5 inches, and for the first 20 years of my life I was rail thin despite eating like a horse. My metaboilism was so fast you could hear it whirring. It has nothing to do with my 'evolving' to meet a specific diet.



I focus on America because the problem of obesity is largest there, as is the consumption. But you want to talk about Australia, New Zealand and Canada as well? OK, what are the nations on the planet with the largest number of McDonalds per capita?

#1 United States 0.433 per 10,000 population
#2 New Zealand 0.369 per 10,000 population
#3 Canada 0.352 per 10,000 population
#4 Australia 0.349 per 10,000 population

Consumption of fast food and lamck of excersise are rampant in these countries, and as such they have begun to notice, same as in the US a very recent rise in obesity trends. Very recent, as I pointed out in the last post, as in in the last 20 years, not in the last 10,000, as would be necessary for it to have ANYTHING to do with evolution.


You disagree with my assumptions?
Which ones?
-That you clearly do not understand the mechanisms of evolution.
-That you do not understand the time scale of evolution
-That diets change dramatically in geographic regions all over the globe
-That populations change in set regions rapidly
-That Obesity has become a problem only within the last generation.

Each of these, on their own, without the others, is enough to demolish your theory. None of them you have bothered to address or mention. Add to that the aknowledged and accepted (and admitted by you) direct link between the rise of obesity and the rise in consumption and reduction of excersise.

The points you do harp on do nothing to address these critical flaws in your theory, though I suppose for the sake of completeness I should point out the errors in the points you have tried to make:

-Quebec: Of course they do not eat the same food as in France. You mention wine: French people drink 57 liters of wine per year per caita, while Quebec residents drink 14 liters per year per capita, not even close. Diet is not fixed by regional tradition, it is fixed by availability of foods. When Quebec was colonised by Francem, they made do with local foods and produce, as they had no access to French foods. Quebec culinary traditions come from the foundings of Quebec, and have little or nothing at ALL to do with French cuisine. Only in the last 50 years it it even POSSIBLE to get French cuisine in Quebec, as the kinds of foods the French eat would not grow in Canada, and so had to be imported. Quebec foods are Quebec foods, the linguistic heritage has no bearing on the current culinary habits.


But then again, what culinary heritage? Bread, cheese, pastry, wine? NONE of those were consumed by 99% of the French people 400 years ago, they were restricted to the very few wealthy elites. So even if evolution worked the way you wanted it to, and worked a lot faster than it does, how could people 'evolve' to a diet they were not eating?




This is a total non sequitor. Of course there are numerous factors which CAN give rise to obesity, which is why some few people are obese without eating a lot, because they have a predisposition. Just as some people are taller and some have green eyes.

None of that has anything to do with the dramatic increase in obesity in the lst 20 years. Evolution cannot possibly be a factor for a phenomenon which has occurred just in the last generation.





Of course it is the subject. You have proposed an evolutionary explanation for something without any understanding of how evolution works.

And we do know how the mechanisms of evolution work. Countless texts have been written on the subject and are taught to first and second year biology students everywhere. You may not, but that lack of knowledge is singular, not universal.

please post your links to your sources for me.

I wanted to see where McDonalds was on your list with Mexico. Did you forget Mexico??? And do some other checks. But now you are talking my language in science with data.. thanks. By the way your argument is the last 20 years, McDonalds in the USA has been there for 40 years. Also I believe Jenny Craig got her start in Australia about 20 years ago well before McDonalds even made it to every street corner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Craig

What is interesting they do not know why you could eat like that and not gain weight, again by your admission you were consuming way more calories than man is supose to and yet not gaining weight.

I still want to see that exercise by country chart/data. I did look but could not find one. Too general of words is the problem.

For this argument it is that evolution does make changes, not how does it specifically work. again you have also missed the trigger documentation.

and again you missed my point my mother ate greek food in the USA during her childhood almost exclusively. It does not have to come from Greece. The Quebec french people I have eaten with and know eat a French diet and I would like to see your source for the drinking of wine vs their neighboring providences. So once you post your links I will investigate.

edited to add: not that I am a fan of McDonalds, I eat there maybe 2 times a month, fast food maybe 3 times a month. But you have heard of this person haven't you.

Note what this director called her all McDonnalds diet.
mcdonalds

This is getting silly. I have shown you why your argument cannot hold water, not by one unassailable argument but by five, any one of which individually demonstrates the theory's impossibility. You have not made any attempt to address any of them, but pretending not to see the vast flaws in your theory does not make them go away.




I don't even know where you are going now. What does the existence of a diet plan have to do with anything?

Yes, McDonalds has existed since the 1940s, but its sales skyrocketed in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1973 its profits annually was just under a billion dollars. 25 years later its profits were $33 billion dollars annually. That increase coincides with the growth of other fast food chains in the same time period, and (co-incidentally) coincides with the growth of Obesity in the US, which almost all studies report to 'having become a problem in the last 20 years'

http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0883555.html

As for your 'wonders of an all McDonald diet' point, I ASSUME you know that this is in response to Morgan Spurlock's well-known film 'Super-Size me' where he ate McDonalds for a month, gained 25 pounds and suffered from innumerable health problems. I'm not sure if you are seriously trying to make the case that McDonalds is healthy food... in which case you really need to do some more reading...



Did you not read what I wrote? I know exactly why I was consuming calories and not gaining weight, because I had a very fast metabolism. Also, because I was a sports fanatic...



Look, unless you want to address the real and critical issues that scuttle your theory instantly, then the debate is a bit pointless, no? You asked people for their arguments, I gave you mine. All of them are simple, high-level and cripple your theory each on their own. You can keep arguing how Quebecois eat exactly the same as the French based on 'some quebec people you know', but firstly anecdotal evidence is pointless, and even if your spcific-case anecdote is true, Your Quebecois friends only eat-french style food now because of the transportation revolution of 50-60 years ago, before then it would have been IMPOSSIBLE for Quebecois to eat exectly the same as the French due to different climates and availability of foods.

You need to do some reading so you can gain at least a BASIC understanding of how evolution works, the time vast frame it works in. Not to mention some historical research on population movement and the constant and universal change in diet over history. You also need to address how 'evolution' can have ANY relevance to a phenomenon that is less than one generation old. Once you have made an effort to address any of those issues, we can chat again.

Otherwise, I leave you to your "theory".

You have not shown me anything of significant importance to the debate. I asked you to post your links to your other sources, you have not. Very difficult to analyze your selective data when you will not post your sources.

I have pointed out speaking of silly is what I think of your way you are attacking me not the debate. I hit your points and you seen to not understand how they attack your points, not you. that is why you can come back and ask, instead of being off topic in my book bordering on rude. For instance,, Speaking of did you not read what I wrote… yes I dd. As a example you somehow proposed and still do it is McDonalds and I showed you Jenny Craig started in Australia well before McDonnalds hit there hard. IE they had a problem BEFORE McDonalds. Thus shooting down also your only on the last 20 years statement. Also Mexico has a problem and they have very few McDonalds. I also included a McDonnalds story of a person losing weight on eating ONLY McDonalds trying to get you to get out of the McDonalds blame game.

As far as you eating a ton and working out, I know people who eat a ton and do not work out and are as thin as can be. That was the point from before and it seemed to elude you. Thus the human body is able to self regulate in even though high levels of food coming in they were not gaining weight. I think the example I gave with all the sugar intake in the Middle east shows that to. From what I know it is too hot and they seem to live a sedimentary lifestyle. You made a claim of US not working out as much as Europeans, and that may be true I bet other areas exercise less and looked for a chart which I am sure is out there but could not find it. As I said in Asia where I have been many times I do not see, so anecdotal tons of people exercising. But I was in areas at the times that make Florida in the summer seem cold.

Again in evolution I posted a species that changed to where they could not even breed in no time at all. I have not said the human can not breed have I which may take 10s of thousands of years. Just that it does not allow our food to burn in a effective manner and may actually trigger the body to go into a mode of evolutionary defense, gain weight. That time of a different diet ( I did not say or guess how much time it takes for the body to acclimate to a different diet, could be 100 years could be 200 years? ) is eventually accepted into the humans pattern.

As far as Quebecers go they could be one of the best examples to understand. Being in science my entire life we look for examples like this. (Same with Mexico.) You seem to not get this point, they are in the middle of areas with significantly higher rates of obesity, and we can assume similar weather food availability and so on which is a great normalizing factor. As opposed to your mentioning BC which is lower. You have not found a source to answer why or to completely discredit my point for the Quebecers or Mexicans that in essence defeat your major arguments.

Again please post your links to that other post. So I can give you more of an answer.

Really.

I think you will find you are quite in error. You presented a theory. I have demonstrated that your theory does not work on at least five conceptual levels, none of which you make any attempt to address. Instead you ignore these gross conceptual flaws and ask essentially irrelevant questions about spicific issues already defeated at a conceptual level.

I have not attacked you, I have attacked this silly theory, in fact in my first post I even felt bad and apologised, as I was pointing out so MANY basic flaws in your understanding, I thought it might be embarassing for you.

Your arguments are not arguments in rebuttal to the basic conceptual fallacies, instead they range between irrelevant and confusing. For example: "Jenny Craig existed 30 years ago". So what? Firstly, what on earth does the start of a dietary organisation prove about anything? Secondly, even if this vast logical leap did have anything to do with the growth of obesity... Great! So Obesity has been a serious problem for 30 years as opposed to 20 years! How does that in ANY way help your point about evolution being responsible? How exactly have we 'evolved' in the past 30 years, barely over 1 generation?

The problem with your theory, apart from the fact that on many levels as I have shown, it makes no logical sense, is that there is no need for it. For a theory to exist, there needs to be a gap in understanding, a problem with existing theories which your new theory can fix.

But everyone, INCLUDING YOU, have accepted that the primary cause of the growth in obesity is a culture of consumption of unhealthy food, typified by fast food, and a lack of excersise. That is the standard, which even you have accepted. So what exactly does your new theory (if it worked, which it does not) add to the debate?


You refuse to aknowledge the catastrophic logical flaws in the theory, but also make vast logical leaps in your argumentation, and just blank out aruments that d not agree with it. For example:



You have made this point thrice. each time I have answered it, and each time you just repeat the point and reduse to even aknowledge the answer. There is NO MYSTERY HERE. Some people, myself included, have faster metabolisms, and can eat more without gaining weight. I repeat, this is NOT a mystery, this is NOT unexplained, this is ENTIREY understood.



Then you make this kind of argument. While admitting you had never been to an Arab country, you posit that 'its hot and people don't excersise'. And you base this on... what exactly?




Again, you keep repeating this, refusing to aknowledge the repeated answer. I apologise for saying this, but you clearly have NO understanding of the mechanisms of evolution whatsoever. You have not shown that 'organisms can change in no time' at all. You have shown that worms, when entirely isolated and exposed to brutal and extensive demographic stress over the period of about 90 generations, can evolve. Yes, you are correct. Now please explain what relevance at ALL this has to your theory. No isolation, no universal selective advantage of thinness, no extended period of demographic stress, no 90 generations (about 2250 years) exposed to the same conditions. NO relevance.


And after all that, you still refuse to aknowledge the basic fallacy of constant unchanging diet, which destroys the whole theory from the outset. Its obviously something you never thought of when developing your theory, as you used examples of potatoes for the Irish and psta for Italians, both of which you apprently did not know were modern additions to their diet.



Let me throw out one final point. You keep saying you are a scientist. Well the mark of a true scientists is the ability to see when their theories have no basis in reality, or have been disproven. In this case, you failed to set up a need for the new theory, in fact you even went so far as to accept the existing theory. You based your theory on evolutionary theory you clearly know nothing about, regarding diets and populations you clearly were unaware constantly shift and change over time. You invoked this all to explain an issue which has only existed for a handful of years, 20 or even 30 if you insist.


As I said, when you are willing to deal with these basic underlying conceptual flaws, then perhaps this discussion might be a bit more fruitful.

While I believe that the social behavior -- eating patterns can be considered social behavior -- may cause future evolutionary change, I do not believe that evolution is, necessarily, directly related to obesity today. There are those for whom obesity is a trait... they are predisposed to it. Perhaps a study of those families for whom obesity is a trait would help prove or disprove your theory. Simple observation of eating habits will not, however. Changing eating habits has an effect on weight... that is a simple truth... stress related eating, not drinking enough water, eating foods not normally eaten... these all have an effect on weight, but I wouldn't say they are a result of evolution as a species.

I do believe we are cheating evolution through avoiding the consequences of natural selection, but I don't think obesity is the result. But, then again... couldn't that ability to cheat be a part of the evolutionary process?

I found this interesting. It is not directly related to my hypothesis but what it does point out and support is what the underlying issue I am bringing up. That there is something not obvious going on that nations all over are having problems with obesity, and that it is not the conventional wisdom of net energy gain with lack of exercise is causing this. As I have pointed out Mexico who does not have McDonalds all over and many others that do not have had obesity problems that only have fitted my explanation. Now they have one because they obviously have concluded like I that the places and numbers of obesity are not fitting a clear cut pattern as some here seem to not see. I could back their theory to a degree with the virus, but the geographical examples I site would be more mixed.

What they found is viruses appear to have a correlation to obesity in chickens. These viruses from humans caused about 2-3 times as much body fat in chickens. The chickens were on the same diet as the others and the same conditions.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183209,00.html

I would have to say that your theory is false for two major reasons. First of all, if your theory is correct, then you are assuming that obesity is largely determined by your genetics. Genetics DOES play a role in determining one's propensity to being obese, but it is not the sole cause of obesity. Your lifestyle plays a huge role in whether you are obese or not. By attributing obesity to evolutionary problems, you are automatically assuming that your genes are the source of the problem, but we know that many other factors contribute to this problem.

The other major flaw to your theory is due to an inadequate understanding of how evolution actually works. First of all, it is important to remember that an individual cannot evolve. Populations evolve, from generation to generation. This process is very slow, and for evolution to occur, a selective pressure would have to be present. Those who are better able to survive under the pressure are more likely to reproduce and pass on this advantage. That's the basis of evolution. For example, let's say we are talking about a species of mouse that lives in an arctic environment. They come in two fur colors: white and black. The black mice are at a serious disadvantage because they are more easily spotted by predators in their white landscape. The white mice are better able to hide from predators, and therefore live long enough to reproduce and pass on their whit fur. Eventually, the black mice become extinct and you are left with white mice. No one mouse evolved in this scenario. Instead, the proportions of white to black mice changed as generations came and went. Eventually, the population of mice evolved to be made up of only white mice.

This also explains viral resistance to drugs, especially antibiotics. When you take an antibiotic, you kill all the bacteria that are NOT resistant to it; the ones that survive ARE resistant to the antibiotic. Since they are unaffected by the antibiotic, they are allowed to proliferate, producing many more offspring that are ALSO resistant to the antibiotic. Again, it is important to note that no single bacteria "evolved resistance" to the antibiotic. Instead the proportion of resistant bacteria to non-resistant bacteria changed until the population of bacteria evolved to be a totally resistant one.

Evolution does not, however, support your hypothesis. This is how your hypothesis would have to work IF it was true. We'll use Italy as an example, and assume they eat a lot of carbs (grossly over-generalized, I know, but bear with me). For evolution to work, those Italians who became fatter than their fellow Italians despite eating the same amount of food would have to die off or not be able to reproduce and pass on their "fat"