Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Losing a few kilograms in weight almost halves people's risk of developing Type 2 diabetes -- according to a large scale research study led by the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and the University of East Anglia.
A new study published in the international journal JAMA Internal Medicine shows how providing support to help people with prediabetes make small changes to their lifestyle, diet and physical activity can almost halve the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
The findings come from the Norfolk Diabetes Prevention Study (NDPS) -- the largest diabetes prevention research study in the world in the last 30 years. The NDPS clinical trial ran over eight years and involved more than 1,000 people with prediabetes at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
The study found that support to make modest lifestyle changes, including losing two to three kilograms of weight and increased physical activity over two years, reduced the risk of Type 2 diabetes by 40 to 47 per cent for those categorised as having prediabetes.
There are about eight million people with prediabetes in the UK and 4.5 million have already developed Type 2 diabetes.
Journal Reference:
Michael Sampson, Allan Clark, Max Bachmann, et al. Lifestyle Intervention to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes in People With Impaired Fasting Glucose and/or Nondiabetic Hyperglycemia, JAMA Internal Medicine (DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.5938)
(Score: 1, Troll) by crafoo on Tuesday November 17 2020, @12:26PM (37 children)
No amount of explaining long-term consequences to fatties will be effective. They don't care. The short-term pleasure far outweighs their mental concept of their future selves
My theory is that fatties looked at their options and made their decision. They might want to be healthy AND eat whatever they want whenever, but given the exclusive choice, they choose to be fatties.
Now, a lefty authoritarian communist will say, "put them in fat camps!" That is most people here. I love freedom though, so they can do what they want. I'm even willing to pay a bit higher communist-healthcare premiums to support their unhealthy choices. People are allowed to make unhealthy choices. It's not their fault, directly, that I am responsible for paying for them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by unauthorized on Tuesday November 17 2020, @01:28PM (29 children)
That's odd, I've never heard a lefty authoritarian call for putting people in fat camps. In fact, a large portion of lefty authoritarian leaders would belong in one. None can accuse Dear Leader, Chairman Mao or Comrade Stalin of being underfed.
As an evil leftist myself, I believe that the obesity epidemic is largely due to unhealthy eating habits propagated by unethical corporations stuffing their food with all kinds of fattening addictive crap in order to get their consumers hooked on those and I'd rather regulate the industry and at very least force them to properly label their unhealthy food, so that at least the next generation can avoid being hooked to McCrack. There are always addictive personality types who'll do it anyway, but I do strongly believe that overwhelmingly people with unhealthy eating habits are the product of poorly informed choices during their childhood and teens.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:08PM (1 child)
The United States is the 12th most obese country. The most overweight country is Nauru, followed by the Cook Islands and Palau. Then the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu. How many McDonald's franchises do you think they all have put together?
(Score: 3, Informative) by nostyle on Tuesday November 17 2020, @05:33PM
There is some evidence that Pacific Islanders [cnn.com] struggle with a genetic [gizmodo.com] adaptation [nih.gov] which promotes obesity [wikipedia.org]. So it is likely not entirely a dietary [who.int] thing.
Iz [youtube.com] what it is.
--
Some of the nicest people you will ever meet though (in my experience).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:11PM (2 children)
Got to agree with the corporate SOB's. Salt and sugar are both far cheaper than real foods, in almost all cases. Substituting 40 tons of salt and/or sugar each and every week in the production of $product translates into real profit. And, oh yeah, corn syrup, which by some accounts is even less healthy than regular sugar.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by legont on Tuesday November 17 2020, @03:37PM (1 child)
Also, fat and stupid don't revolt.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @04:30PM
They do if they're wearing thongs.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:12PM (15 children)
Relying on science instead to get evidence to support a conclusion about who is responsible for the obesity epidemic would be the proper scientific approach. Science is most accurate approach to finding testable truths about the world. You say corporations instead of individuals are responsible, but you don't cite any evidence to support your statement, so it seems to be based only on your personal beliefs.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:15PM (1 child)
Who's funding the research?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:16PM
Which research?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:27PM (4 children)
Nutrition science told my generation 9-11 servings of carbohydrates a day were part of a balanced diet. Because that's what the grain lobby paid for.
Trust the science, guys.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @03:10PM (2 children)
It is. Your vegetables are in this category mate. If you substitute them with bread, then your total intake of carbs should be no more than 10 slices of bread and nothing else. Good luck getting fat on that. Of course then you forget that sugar is also a carbohydrate? That your supersized coke has 15 servings alone?
Science doesn't fix stupid.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @03:21PM
Carbohydrates was a separate category from both vegetables and sugars. I guess you're not old enough to remember the food pyramid, huh champ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2020, @01:48AM
In America 1 serving is actually about 4 servings. So year, 9-11 servings on paper turns into 36-44 servings on the plate.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:39AM
That's about 1 kilogram of vegetables. I'd puke before I could eat that much in a day.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:44PM (3 children)
I can only cite you evidence for what lead me to my conclusions, such as establishing the link between use of fattening food additives and obesity [nih.gov], but science cannot tell you whose fault it is. Responsibility is the domain of philosophy and ethics, science deals only with objective measurable facts.
No, I say that specific food corporations are the primary culprit. I did not mean to imply corporations are singularly responsible, apologies if my wording wasn't clear.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:53PM (2 children)
Your study shows correlation but not causation. There are many confounding factors, socioeconomic status probably being a big one (I have not done the study, I am just guessing).
Alas, I can't actually read the paper because it is paywalled.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Tuesday November 17 2020, @03:46PM (1 child)
It's available on Sci-Hub [sci-hub.tf]. It is a quantitative analysis study as you suspect and socioeconomic factors have been accounted for. My biggest issue with this study is the relatively small sample size, however I couldn't find one with a larger pool that dealt with children specifically.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday November 17 2020, @05:29PM
Thanks for that. I couldn't see in the paper - they talk about "fraction of food that is ultra-processed" but I didn't see anywhere absolute calorie intake. I.e. does the study say "processed foods are bad for you" or does it say "people who eat processed foods generally eat too much anyway".
I am always suspicious of social science papers like this where they do all sorts of corrections without saying how big the corrections are - e.g. if the uncorrected data shows no result and the corrected data shows a more significant result, then one might be suspicious.
I'm also suspicious of a paper which doesn't have any plots e.g. the distribution of BMI is not exposed. Could be a tail pulling all of the data.
Nb: I completely believe that people who eat crap tend to be obese, just sceptical of this sort of paper as a general rule, and sceptical of quoting "scientific method" when really these sorts of things are jolly hard to untangle what is really going on.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @03:30PM (3 children)
You might dive into the history of advertising. They coined the term "social engineering" long before hackers came on the scene. Probably their first really big success, was the introduction of breakfast cereals into the American diet. While advertising isn't exactly a science, the history is there to learn from. It has successfully manipulated our entire society, repeatedly. And, remember, advertising exists for the purpose of increasing corporate profits. Draw your own conclusions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2020, @01:51AM (1 child)
WTF are you talking about? Breakfast cereal is sugary snack just like every other meal consumed by average Americans. If it wasn't Cheerios and chocolate milk it would be Cheetos and Orange Drink.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 18 2020, @03:16AM
History. 'Muricans didn't eat much breakfast cereal until - ohhh - this page says 1894.
https://www.kelloggs.com/en_US/who-we-are/our-history.html [kelloggs.com]
Even then, it wasn't sugary, it was just "corn flakes". Frosted Flakes came much later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 27 2020, @07:11AM
I am getting old. I now have oats for breakfast. With some honey.
Maybe cocopops on the weekend sometimes.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:39PM (2 children)
Bu, bu, but . . . we are supposed to be a "pro-business" country!
(clue: doing what is good for the population is doing what is good for business, in the long view. I remember making that argument about two decades ago talking about braking Microsoft)
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @03:05PM (1 child)
All businesses are selfish and willing to risk damaging people's health for profit. Unless they're pharmaceutical companies manufacturing vaccines.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @03:34PM
Seriously? Have you entirely missed the opioid crisis? Or, maybe you would like to look into thalidomide. Even AFTER it was pretty well proven that the drug was horribly dangerous, new companies were applying for (and getting) licenses to sell the drug in new markets, where the news media had not covered the dangers of the drug.
I can only hope that your post was a joke.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday November 17 2020, @04:22PM (2 children)
"As an evil leftist myself, I believe that the obesity epidemic is largely due to unhealthy eating habits propagated by unethical corporations stuffing their food with all kinds of fattening addictive crap in order to get their consumers hooked on those and I'd rather regulate the industry and at very least force them to properly label their unhealthy food, so that at least the next generation can avoid being hooked to McCrack."
Personally, I'd rather grown adults regulate their own behaviour in all aspects of their life, especially given that nutritional information is readily available and printed on basically every product, or at the very, very, very minimum is one Google search away.
You can lead a horse to water, and all that.
Blaming the corporations for people making an informed, yet ironically deliberately ignorant, choice is a bit unfair. Not a huge amount, but a bit.
Now if they were lying about the nutritional information, or lobbied against ever displaying it on a product, or whatever, then you'd have a case.
But it's like blaming the modern tobacco industry for grown adults buying a packet that quite literally tells them it's going to kill them. Sure, the tobacco industry are far from the best historical example because they did lots of far nastier things, but if a grown man walks into a shop, buys a product they know is killing them, reads the warnings that tell him it's killing him, had to obey the laws that were written so he doesn't kill anyone else when buying and smoking them, and still does it then it's not really solely on the company in question.
And there is no way on this Earth that eating even the unhealthiest of food is anywhere near as unhealthy, as addictive or as dangerous a single act as smoking a packet of cigarattes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @09:35PM
So you opt for the very least regulation of making food producers correctly label their food. Sweet! Do you think we should let employees decide whether it is OK to follow their boss's order and dump toxic sludge into rivers? Or should the government punish such businesses?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 27 2020, @07:14AM
Not around here. Damn smokers outside coffee shops, at bus stops, on the street. It's like they want others to get cancer.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:52AM (1 child)
Think of it as survival of the fittest, in a perverse sort of way. Foods with lots of salt and sugar taste good, people buy foods that taste good. Consequently, companies that make low sugar, low salt foods can't sell much of their foods and go extinct. It's consumers preferring tasty foods, not evil companies, that make junk food prevalent.
By law, the significant nutritional elements of all packaged foods are printed on the package, as is a list of ingredients. Your implication that this is not already being done is dishonest.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Wednesday November 18 2020, @08:53PM
I have implied no such thing. What I'm asking is for clear and obvious labeling of addictive fattening processed food, not some barely legible small font print of the nutritional value and ingredients that 99% of the people will gloss over.
Bullshit. If I deliberately engineer a highly addictive product and deliberately try to obscure it's addictive nature as far as the governments of the world will let me get away with, then I'm absolutely at fault here. Attempting to subvert people's will by exploiting the psychological and biological flaws of the human condition is morally wrong. It's not okay to manipulate people in order to acquire consent which you wouldn't have gained, had all the circumstances been made clear in advance and decisions taken on clear head.
(Score: 2) by tizan on Tuesday November 17 2020, @03:18PM
Cool you have an opinion and every body falls in that box you just described....that is how life is ...your judgement is the correct one
all these fat people don't care...
Now if you were not a fake individualist...you may have said each individual may have a different problem..if they get help to tackle their individual issue we may solve this problem...
but no the world is communist vs capitalist ...that is all to see.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @08:24PM (3 children)
Once the Bidenreich begins, and the red states revolt by not sending out anymore food to the blue areas, we're all going to be losing quite a bit of weight.
I'd bet the fatties will enjoy watching the skinny people starve first. Assuming they can fight off those who turn cannibal.
(Score: 2) by tizan on Wednesday November 18 2020, @01:41AM (2 children)
you must be suffering from red blue color blindness
Here are the states with the highest rates of obesity:
Mississippi
West Virginia
Arkansas
Tennessee
Kentucky
South Carolina
Louisiana
Oklahoma
Alabama
Michigan
Do you see the correlation ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2020, @01:54AM
Obesity is racist?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 29 2020, @09:42PM
It's where poor people live?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:10AM
> I love freedom though, so they can do what they want.
It's OK, you can admit here that you really prefer fat gals, it's a common preference (with a variety of made-up reasons on tap).
(Score: 3, Informative) by pdfernhout on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:05PM
https://www.healthpromoting.com/the-pleasure-trap [healthpromoting.com]
"Dr. Douglas Lisle, who has spent the last two decades researching and studying this evolutionary syndrome, explains that all of us inherit innate incentives from our ancient ancestors that he terms The Motivational Triad: the pursuit of pleasure, the avoidance of pain, and the conservation of energy. Unfortunately, in present day America's convenience-centric, excess-oriented culture, where fast food, recreational drugs, and sedentary shopping have become the norm, these basic instincts that once successfully insured the survival and reproduction of man many millennia ago, no longer serve us well. In fact, it's our unknowing enslavement to this internal, biological force embedded in the collective memory of our species that is undermining our health and happiness today."
And as one example of a new way to eat where taste buds adapt:
https://www.drfuhrman.com/get-started/quick-start [drfuhrman.com]
"Emphasizes eating high-nutrient, whole plant foods that supply abundant amounts of micronutrients. Eating this healthful diet unleashes the body’s tremendous ability to heal, achieve optimal weight and slow the aging process. ... The key to optimizing your health and achieving an ideal body weight is to eat food with a high proportion of nutrients to calories."
And why: https://web.archive.org/web/20150430050047/ttp://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx [archive.org]
"Scientific evidence suggests that the re-sensitization of taste nerves takes between 30 and 90 days of consistent exposure to less stimulating foods. This means that for several weeks, most people attempting this change will experience a reduction in eating pleasure. This is why modern foods present such a devastating trap—as most of our citizens are, in effect, “addicted” to artificially high levels of food stimulation! The 30-to-90-day process of taste re-calibration requires more motivation—and more self-discipline—than most people are ever willing to muster. Tragically, most people are totally unaware that they are only a few weeks of discipline away from being able to comfortably maintain healthful dietary habits—and to keep away from the products that can result in the destruction of their health. Instead, most people think that if they were to eat more healthfully, they would be condemned to a life of greatly reduced gustatory pleasure—thinking that the process of Phase IV will last forever. In our new book, The Pleasure Trap, we explain this extraordinarily deceptive and problematic situation – and how to master this hidden force that undermines health and happiness."
Healthier eating can even help protect against COVID-19 (and why people have essentially transferred what should be fear of junk food to fear of covid-19):
https://www.drfuhrman.com/elearning/blog/183/coronavirus-and-the-flu-five-ways-to-protect-yourself [drfuhrman.com]
"In this short video, I discuss how to keep yourself and your family safe – and why eating a high-nutrient Nutritarian diet is really the best way to boost your immunity and keep yourself safe from disease."
And "The Acceleration of Addictiveness":
http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html [paulgraham.com]
"Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly."
And also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli [wikipedia.org]
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose is a book by Deirdre Barrett published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2010. Barrett is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. The book argues that human instincts for food, sex, and territorial protection evolved for life on the savannah 10,000 years ago, not for today's densely populated technological world. Our instincts have not had time to adapt to the rapid changes of modern life. The book takes its title from Nikolaas Tinbergen's concept in animal ethology of the supernormal stimulus, the phenomena by which insects, birds, and fish in his experiments could be lured by a dummy object which exaggerated one or more characteristic of the natural stimulus object such as giant brilliant blue plaster eggs which birds preferred to sit on in preference to their own. Barrett extends the concept to humans and outlines how supernormal stimuli are a driving force behind today’s most pressing problems, including modern warfare, obesity and other fitness problems, while also explaining the appeal of television, video games, and pornography as social outlets."
And also "Therapeutic Lifestyle Change (TLC)"
https://tlc.ku.edu/ [ku.edu]
"We were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially-isolated, fast-food-laden, frenetic pace of modern life. (Stephen Ilardi, PhD) ... Across the industrialized modern world, clinical depression has reached epidemic proportions, despite a staggering increase in the use of antidepressant medication. In fact, depression is now the single leading cause of work-related disability for adults under 50. However, there is strong evidence that depression can be both prevented and treated through a set of straightforward changes in lifestyle. Our research has demonstrated that TLC is an effective treatment for depression, with over 70% of patients experiencing a favorable response, as measured by symptom reduction of at least 50%."
See also the movie "Fat Sick and Nearly Dead" and its sequel.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3701804/ [imdb.com]
"Joe Cross examines how to make healthy habits last. Joe meets with experts who present realistic solutions to make long-term sustainable improvements to eating behaviors and overall health. "
And as examples of how communities (besides the Amish) can resist:
https://www.bluezones.com/blue-zones-results-albert-lea-mn/ [bluezones.com]
"This Midwestern city, supported by Blue Zones, climbs out of economic crisis with projected lifespans increased by nearly 3 years and economic value by the millions. Suffering in the face of the 2008 economic downturn, Albert Lea, Minnesota, was determined to transform its situation. Its leaders eagerly teamed up with Blue Zones in 2009, making Albert Lea the first Blue Zones Pilot Project, applying principles from areas around the world where people lived longer, healthier lives. Pleased with the results of the nine month pilot, Albert Lea has continued on as a Blue Zones Project community addressing built environment, tobacco policy, citizen engagement, and bringing back the downtown."
There are solutions. It is just that different people and more people would profit by such solutions than currently is the case -- as such solutions would make it harder to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few people profiting from all the disease and unhappiness in the world...
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:15PM (18 children)
What the hell is a "kilogram?"
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:28PM (6 children)
A unit of mass used in the real world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:40PM (5 children)
FTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @03:05PM (4 children)
1000 grams
1/1000 tonnes
about 1000 cubic cm of water. That is 10cm x 10cm x 10cm cube of water
as you can see, a lot of 0s and 1s only. Magic SI system, used by everyone in the world.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @04:20PM (3 children)
European water, or African water?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday November 17 2020, @04:52PM (2 children)
Sounds like too small of a puddle for a water buffalo. Must be some European puddle.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2020, @04:17AM (1 child)
Oh, it's French, no doubt about that. They like to think they run everything.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 18 2020, @02:50PM
Curious. The rest of us like to think they run from everything.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 17 2020, @02:43PM (1 child)
Kill-o-gram is a brand of gramicide used to kill pest units of measure that would halve* us put KM on and KM/h on our rode signs.
*technically 1.60934
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @04:28PM
Rhode sines? Next they'll be expecting us to describe our measures with Greek letters, I suppose? Goddamn Greeks and their bootlicking Latin lackies.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday November 17 2020, @04:16PM (4 children)
Sensible numbers.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @04:22PM (3 children)
Bigot. What about irrational numbers? Imaginary numbers? Don't they count too?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @04:52PM (2 children)
no. Cantor proved that irrational numbers are uncountable.
I'll leave you to imagine how that translates to imaginary numbers.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @06:31PM (1 child)
If imaginary numbers are uncountable, how is it Biden is winning? ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @09:38PM
"Cantor proved that irrational numbers are uncountable.
I'll leave you to imagine how that translates to imaginary numbers."
In less exciting news, a Trumper has once again proven that cults are stupid.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday November 17 2020, @04:50PM (1 child)
1000 of those food gram things.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @06:38PM
My food gram always wanted to make me eat coleslaw with raisins in it. Who puts raisins in coleslaw? 1000 of those? No thanks.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday November 17 2020, @05:58PM
35.27396 ounces, or 2.204623 lbs, or 0.001102311 tons. I accept cash or cheques.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2020, @01:58AM
> What is a kilogram?
It's an average portion of waffles (excl. the syrup, chocolate chips and whip cream).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17 2020, @08:26PM
A few Kilograms of prevention is worth a ton of cure?