Public The big fat lie: Britons eat 50% more than they say

arewenearlythereyet said:
Yes working hours in manual jobs is what I had in mind. This has significantly reduced over the last few decades as the so called developed counties shift occupations to more service based jobs. The longer working hours in desk based sedentary jobs is actually on the increase and this makes the chances of obesity higher since there is less opportunity to burn calories via exercise or being less sedentary outside of work time.
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I'm interesting in this one because I thought exercise burns remarkably few calories. But I think the brain is one of the organs that uses the highest number of calories. Given what the brain does it is remarkably efficient. But then maybe sedentary jobs don't really involve much thinking?

I also wonder if things like better heating make a difference.
 
Adrian said:
I'm interesting in this one because I thought exercise burns remarkably few calories. But I think the brain is one of the organs that uses the highest number of calories. Given what the brain does it is remarkably efficient. But then maybe sedentary jobs don't really involve much thinking?

I also wonder if things like better heating make a difference.
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I think reading the various studies its around 100-150kcal per day that we no longer use from using our muscles as much. I'm not sure about whether anyone's done any correlation between thinking and calories burned, but I would imagine that most of the energy used is more background maintenance just to keep it going and the differences between types of brain activity is fairly subtle, but I don't know? I've always thought of the brain as spending a lot of its energy on just being there and available for all the various tasks it has to perform. I guess you could look at energy expenditure in sleep vs awake?

I seem to recall that shivering uses up some energy??

Sorry that's not very informative, but I'm coming towards the end of my simulated work day and Im getting looks from Mrs Sloth :cautious:
 
Adrian said:
I'm interesting in this one because I thought exercise burns remarkably few calories.
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This is an interesting point. I think exercise, as in doing a gym workout, doesn't use that much more than say a couple of hours of rigorous housework.

But I suppose if you were in a job on your feet & moving about all day then you'll have a fairly steady calorie burn throughout the day.

Also ,presumably, if you are constantly on the move, you may increase your % muscle which, in turn, will burn more calories even at rest. So even asleep you will burn slightly more calories.
 
Mij said:
@Adrian Years ago while visiting family in England (in December), I would eat and drink a lot less before bedtime because my nanny's loo was located outside. I didn't want to make the trip out there.
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I have a solution for you, put your fridge outside - unless of course you have an outside loo and thats the only place you can store it, cos as they say don't .... where you eat.
 
I've been listening to an audiobook called "The Obesity Code" by Jason Fung. He makes the case that weight increase is all about hormones, especially insulin. He talks about how calorie restriction can backfire, like with the Biggest Loser effect.

I don't think it is a straight calories in/calories out equation, especially with ME/CFS. Some of us are gainers, others are losers...it would be "nice" if we understood what is happening with our endocrine system.
 
I enjoy UK detective books, and all the detectives eat a lot of bacon sandwiches. In the U.S., the most common bacon sandwich is the BLT: bacon, lettuce, and tomato. In recent years, the rude-sounding BLAT has become popular: BLT plus avocado. What do you guys put on bacon sandwiches?

If I were to judge from these detective books, I'd guess that the solving of murder cases in the UK requires copious amounts of bacon sandwiches, tea, and beer. Actually, all that sounds pretty good.
 
Diwi9 said:
I've been listening to an audiobook called "The Obesity Code" by Jason Fung. He makes the case that weight increase is all about hormones, especially insulin. He talks about how calorie restriction can backfire, like with the Biggest Loser effect.

I don't think it is a straight calories in/calories out equation, especially with ME/CFS. Some of us are gainers, others are losers...it would be "nice" if we understood what is happening with our endocrine system.
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Insulin resistance is increasingly being linked to many other conditions - it is linked to inflammation. All calories are not equal hence the daft calorie in calorie out paradigm.
Tellingly you can be obese, and if the leptin / grehlin feedback is broken, no matter how little you eat , a proportion will always get shunted to fat storage.
Robert Lustig/ Gary Taubes have some videos on this
 
Amw66 said:
Insulin resistance is increasingly being linked to many other conditions - it is linked to inflammation. All calories are not equal hence the daft calorie in calorie out paradigm.
Tellingly you can be obese, and if the leptin / grehlin feedback is broken, no matter how little you eat , a proportion will always get shunted to fat storage.
Robert Lustig/ Gary Taubes have some videos on this
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I wonder what the context for this is though in terms of number of people affected? It seems unlikely that the majority of people overweight (one third of the population or of that order) has suddenly developed a metabolic problem over the last 20 odd years? I could well belive 1% or even 5% but this is a much bigger number than that
 
arewenearlythereyet said:
I wonder what the context for this is though in terms of number of people affected? It seems unlikely that the majority of people overweight (one third of the population or of that order) has suddenly developed a metabolic problem over the last 20 odd years? I could well belive 1% or even 5% but this is a much bigger number than that
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Look at how diet has changed . Correlation is not causation but past 40 years have seen wholesale change in food- proportion of macronutrients, processed food, portion size.

Even the nutrition in food ( winter wheat's nutritional composition is different to the standard wheat that came before with lower yields: 1970s chicken lower in fat higher in protein)

As a child spaghetti was something orange out of a heinz tin every now and again( my mum was excellent at reducing vegetables to the same colour and consistency). Food cooked from scratch.Showing my age here.

I have an 80s cookbook where pasta appears in some form in over half the recipes. Growth in specialist breads- ciabatta was an invention. Rise of pot noodle. Perfect storm.

The irony is that if healthy and you cut down processed carbs you don' t need to exercise much for weight- wellbeing, muscle tone etc, but not weight.
 
arewenearlythereyet said:
I wonder what the context for this is though in terms of number of people affected? It seems unlikely that the majority of people overweight (one third of the population or of that order) has suddenly developed a metabolic problem over the last 20 odd years? I could well belive 1% or even 5% but this is a much bigger number than that
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Sorry to quote myself, but I thought I would look up and try and find an answer to my question:

Number of people Obese in the UK:

"The UK currently ranks as the country with the highest level of obesity in Europe, with more than 1 in 4(28.1%) adults obese and nearly two out of three(63.4%) overweight"

"While the exact causes of diabetes are still not fully understood, it is known that factors up the risk of developing different types of diabetes mellitus.

For type 2 diabetes, this includes being overweight or obese (having a body mass index - BMI - of 30 or greater).

In fact, obesity is believed to account for 80-85% of the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, while recent research suggests that obese people are up to 80 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those with a BMI of less than 22."

Taken from

https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-and-obesity.html

so here is my fag packet maths using figures from the Office of National statistics

65.6 million people in the UK
53.2 million adults (81.1%)
14.9 million obese (28.1%)
33.5 million overweight (63.4%)

6% of adults had Type II diabetes in England (best figure I've found)
Of these 90% were overweight or obese
85% were obese


So 10% of Type II's have the condition for reasons other than being overweight or obese...More maths...

3.13 million people with type II (6%)
0.31 million people with type II not connected to being overweight or obese (10%)

so from this we can conclude that type II diabetes not related to being overweight or obese accounts for less than 0.6% of adults, the rest is linked to being overweight

If we are generous (but unrealistic) and allow all cases of overweight to be due to another predisposition to be overweight, even taking these people off we have a massive figure of 45.3 million adults (85% of the UK population) who don't have insulin resistance.

they must be big for a reason and I think the reasons discussed above are far more likely.
 
Amw66 said:
Even the nutrition in food ( winter wheat's nutritional composition is different to the standard wheat that came before with lower yields: 1970s chicken lower in fat higher in protein)
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I read somewhere that even the nutritional value of veg has declined considerably since the 30s. So to get the same value you would need to eat huge amounts more.
 
Amw66 said:
Look at how diet has changed . Correlation is not causation but past 40 years have seen wholesale change in food- proportion of macronutrients, processed food, portion size.

Even the nutrition in food ( winter wheat's nutritional composition is different to the standard wheat that came before with lower yields: 1970s chicken lower in fat higher in protein)

As a child spaghetti was something orange out of a heinz tin every now and again( my mum was excellent at reducing vegetables to the same colour and consistency). Food cooked from scratch.Showing my age here.

I have an 80s cookbook where pasta appears in some form in over half the recipes. Growth in specialist breads- ciabatta was an invention. Rise of pot noodle. Perfect storm.

The irony is that if healthy and you cut down processed carbs you don' t need to exercise much for weight- wellbeing, muscle tone etc, but not weight.
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I'm not sure But I think we may be saying the same thing?

I'm saying that its a combination of factors and not just down to one thing. Eating too many carbs is one of them.
 
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