I’m going to bury this a bit deeper in the comment chain because it’s no more indicative than Eliezer’s anecdote. But FWIW,
I am in the (very fortunate) minority who struggles to gain much weight, and has always been skinny. But when I have more tasty food around, especially if it’s prepared for me and just sitting there, I absolutely eat more, and manage to climb up from ~146 to ~148 or ~150 (pounds). It’s unimaginable that this effect isn’t true for me.
Yeah, that sounds right—with a non-broken metabolism, eating lots and lots of tasty food that’s just prepared and sitting there, to your heart’s content, should totally result in about 4 pounds of weight gain, all the way up to 150 pounds.
Do you have any empirical evidence for either of the following?
Farmers were historically wrong to think that free-feeding their animals would tend to fatten them up, OR they didn’t believe it has that effect.
Prior to the more recent novel contaminants, humans are an exception among animals in this general trend, that free-feeding tends to fatten animals up.
Actually I’d ask about the effect of free-feeding non-domesticated animals on ecologically realistic food, rather than free-feeding cows bred to gain weight using grains.
Why “ecologically realistic food”? And which types of realism are you going to pick?
Overfeeding and obesity are common problems in pets, which are mostly not bred to gain weight the way cows are.
My family has kept many kinds of animals. If you give bunny rabbits as much veggies as they want, a large fraction becomes obese. And guinea pigs too. And for their own favorite foods, tropical fish do too. Cats too.
In fact, I have never noticed a species that doesn’t end up with a substantial fraction with obesity, if you go out of your way to prepare the most-compelling food to them, and then give that in limitless amounts. Even lower-quality, not-as-compelling foods free-fed can cause some obesity. Do you even know of any animal species like this?!
If there is large variation in susceptibility (which there would be) to the ostensible environmental contaminant, there should be species that you can free-feed and they don’t get obesity.
I agree that most animals will become overweight if given unlimited tasty food. Two counter examples in my life were a cat and a hamster. Both only became overweight in old age—with unlimited food and many treats. Caveat—the hamster didn’t look fatter than normal hamsters, but maybe all hamsters are fat.
Just adding my own anecdote here, literally every time that I can recall overeating out of my own volition, it was because the food was tasty or otherwise satisfying. The connection between how tasty a food is, and how likely I am to overeat it, is such a strong connection that it might as well be treated as a law of nature.
Doesn’t sound obviously true for me? I obviously won’t overeat food if it’s disgusting, but I’d say I’m more likely to overeat rice cakes than chocolate, for example. A lot of milder foods feel easier for me to overload on.
That’s interesting. One caveat I should add is that I was referring to calorie overconsumption, as opposed to volume overconsumption. Rice is not very calorie dense, making it relatively easy to become full without eating many calories.
Yeah, I was thinking of calories too. I think I could eat way too many rice cakes, reliably, day in and day out. Whereas eating even one Hershey’s bar starts to approach the level where I’d feel sick from the amount of chocolate, and want less of it around me in the future.
How are we defining tasty foods? I’m sure if the entire world voted, chocolate would clearly be more in the “tasty food” category than rice cakes, but perhaps you really like how rice cakes taste?
I’m going to bury this a bit deeper in the comment chain because it’s no more indicative than Eliezer’s anecdote. But FWIW,
I am in the (very fortunate) minority who struggles to gain much weight, and has always been skinny. But when I have more tasty food around, especially if it’s prepared for me and just sitting there, I absolutely eat more, and manage to climb up from ~146 to ~148 or ~150 (pounds). It’s unimaginable that this effect isn’t true for me.
Yeah, that sounds right—with a non-broken metabolism, eating lots and lots of tasty food that’s just prepared and sitting there, to your heart’s content, should totally result in about 4 pounds of weight gain, all the way up to 150 pounds.
That’s how everybody’s metabolisms used to work.
Do you have any empirical evidence for either of the following?
Farmers were historically wrong to think that free-feeding their animals would tend to fatten them up, OR they didn’t believe it has that effect.
Prior to the more recent novel contaminants, humans are an exception among animals in this general trend, that free-feeding tends to fatten animals up.
Actually I’d ask about the effect of free-feeding non-domesticated animals on ecologically realistic food, rather than free-feeding cows bred to gain weight using grains.
Why “ecologically realistic food”? And which types of realism are you going to pick?
Overfeeding and obesity are common problems in pets, which are mostly not bred to gain weight the way cows are.
My family has kept many kinds of animals. If you give bunny rabbits as much veggies as they want, a large fraction becomes obese. And guinea pigs too. And for their own favorite foods, tropical fish do too. Cats too.
In fact, I have never noticed a species that doesn’t end up with a substantial fraction with obesity, if you go out of your way to prepare the most-compelling food to them, and then give that in limitless amounts. Even lower-quality, not-as-compelling foods free-fed can cause some obesity. Do you even know of any animal species like this?!
If there is large variation in susceptibility (which there would be) to the ostensible environmental contaminant, there should be species that you can free-feed and they don’t get obesity.
I agree that most animals will become overweight if given unlimited tasty food. Two counter examples in my life were a cat and a hamster. Both only became overweight in old age—with unlimited food and many treats. Caveat—the hamster didn’t look fatter than normal hamsters, but maybe all hamsters are fat.
Just adding my own anecdote here, literally every time that I can recall overeating out of my own volition, it was because the food was tasty or otherwise satisfying. The connection between how tasty a food is, and how likely I am to overeat it, is such a strong connection that it might as well be treated as a law of nature.
Doesn’t sound obviously true for me? I obviously won’t overeat food if it’s disgusting, but I’d say I’m more likely to overeat rice cakes than chocolate, for example. A lot of milder foods feel easier for me to overload on.
That’s interesting. One caveat I should add is that I was referring to calorie overconsumption, as opposed to volume overconsumption. Rice is not very calorie dense, making it relatively easy to become full without eating many calories.
Yeah, I was thinking of calories too. I think I could eat way too many rice cakes, reliably, day in and day out. Whereas eating even one Hershey’s bar starts to approach the level where I’d feel sick from the amount of chocolate, and want less of it around me in the future.
There’s more common foods everyone can agree are tasty and high calorie and easy to indulge on, such as spaghetti with meatballs
How are we defining tasty foods? I’m sure if the entire world voted, chocolate would clearly be more in the “tasty food” category than rice cakes, but perhaps you really like how rice cakes taste?