Let’s consider, though, why humans can become fat. The body stores energy in the form of fat for later conversion to sugars in the event of insufficient sugars to keep the body functioning.
You know that mammals cannot convert fat to sugar no matter what, right? (OK, there’s some limited evidence that glyoxylate cycle enzymes might be present in mammals, but even if they are active, what doesn’t seem terribly likely, the primary way to utilize fatty acids is definitely beta oxidation, which burns them for ATP).
To me this suggests that outright starvation is, evolutionarily speaking, a far greater threat than lack of access to particular essential comestibles.
There’s an argument that pre-agricultural food had a lot higher micronutrient to calorie ratio, so micronutrients were unlikely to be lacking even on very restricted diet. Modern food is supposedly selected for high calorie content.
Historically being thin was not attractive, especially for women, as evidenced by human art that has long shown women with at least some significant fat stores as the most attractive.
As far as I can tell most art shows women of healthy weight as attractive, very rarely overweight or obese kind.
Probably nothing, although it’s a worthy goal to push the elimination of weight as a status signal because even a partial success would result in a lot less suffering for billions of people.
Why would we want to eliminate a status signal that’s so easy to manipulate for smart people?
In the mean time, at least LW readers can eliminate from themselves false beliefs that anything but extreme obesity, or extreme skinniness, has anything more than a marginal health effect.
Metabolic syndrome seems real enough. Even if being moderately overweight wasn’t a health risk, it seems likely that someone moderately overweight is much more likely to become morbidly obese than someone with healthy weight. And far more people suffer from obesity-related diseases now than ever—so even if it’s mostly the extreme cases, if anti-fat interventions can get them to just moderately overweight it’s obviously worth it.
You know that mammals cannot convert fat to sugar no matter what, right? (OK, there’s some limited evidence that glyoxylate cycle enzymes might be present in mammals, but even if they are active, what doesn’t seem terribly likely, the primary way to utilize fatty acids is definitely beta oxidation, which burns them for ATP).
I was unaware of this. I am woefully ignorant of many aspects of biochemistry, so this was described as I recall the process being described. If fat isn’t converted back to sugars, I think it doesn’t affect the argument too much because the point is still to convert fat into energy later.
As far as I can tell most art shows women of healthy weight as attractive, very rarely overweight or obese kind.
I can’t find a handy reference, but I recall (from art history class) that women who were at least slightly overweight have long been portrayed as the ideal in art around the world. It may be necessary to consider that what’s considered a healthy weight today may have looked slightly overweight (indicating good access to quality food, a signal of status) to artists in the past.
Why would we want to eliminate a status signal that’s so easy to manipulate for smart people?
Because it’s not easy to manipulate no matter how smart you are. If someone were so smart as to figure out a successful, lasting intervention, they’d be rich from selling the diet to the rest of us. Taking a page from Robin Hanson, there’s a benefit to this similar to that of taxing the tall.
Because it’s not easy to manipulate no matter how smart you are.
Fat is trivial to manipulate. I lost 27kg (BMI 30 to 22) without any effort with ECA (with non-junk diet and a light amounts of exercise, nothing unusual), it’s stable for many years now. Just ask any bodybuilders for advice—they know how to do it, or read pubmed about ECA. The difficult part is not believing the popular culture’s completely ineffective methods, once you do that losing your fat is trivial matter.
While that may work for you, things like ECA have significant side effects for many people, especially those who have already developed weight-related illnesses, and there are some people for whom they don’t work. Given the effectiveness of the pharmaceutical industry in marketing medications, even non-prescription ones, the strong desires of millions of people to lose weight, and the length of time ECA products have been available, it seems unlikely that they are really as effective as you claim.
That’s a ridiculously strong version of efficient (medical) market hypothesis. As I said, ECA is semi-legal in States, and its marketing for weight loss is not allowed by FDA. Also, as a non-patented drug, medical industry has absolutely zero incentive to advertise it.
As far as anecdotes go, so far one person on lesswrong tried ECA, and got back to me saying it didn’t work. Turned out it was very low dosage ECA and on doubling it there were instant effects.
If you have weight problems, just go ahead, try it, and then tell me it didn’t work. That will be unlikely.
You know that mammals cannot convert fat to sugar no matter what, right? (OK, there’s some limited evidence that glyoxylate cycle enzymes might be present in mammals, but even if they are active, what doesn’t seem terribly likely, the primary way to utilize fatty acids is definitely beta oxidation, which burns them for ATP).
There’s an argument that pre-agricultural food had a lot higher micronutrient to calorie ratio, so micronutrients were unlikely to be lacking even on very restricted diet. Modern food is supposedly selected for high calorie content.
As far as I can tell most art shows women of healthy weight as attractive, very rarely overweight or obese kind.
Why would we want to eliminate a status signal that’s so easy to manipulate for smart people?
Metabolic syndrome seems real enough. Even if being moderately overweight wasn’t a health risk, it seems likely that someone moderately overweight is much more likely to become morbidly obese than someone with healthy weight. And far more people suffer from obesity-related diseases now than ever—so even if it’s mostly the extreme cases, if anti-fat interventions can get them to just moderately overweight it’s obviously worth it.
I was unaware of this. I am woefully ignorant of many aspects of biochemistry, so this was described as I recall the process being described. If fat isn’t converted back to sugars, I think it doesn’t affect the argument too much because the point is still to convert fat into energy later.
I can’t find a handy reference, but I recall (from art history class) that women who were at least slightly overweight have long been portrayed as the ideal in art around the world. It may be necessary to consider that what’s considered a healthy weight today may have looked slightly overweight (indicating good access to quality food, a signal of status) to artists in the past.
Because it’s not easy to manipulate no matter how smart you are. If someone were so smart as to figure out a successful, lasting intervention, they’d be rich from selling the diet to the rest of us. Taking a page from Robin Hanson, there’s a benefit to this similar to that of taxing the tall.
Fat is trivial to manipulate. I lost 27kg (BMI 30 to 22) without any effort with ECA (with non-junk diet and a light amounts of exercise, nothing unusual), it’s stable for many years now. Just ask any bodybuilders for advice—they know how to do it, or read pubmed about ECA. The difficult part is not believing the popular culture’s completely ineffective methods, once you do that losing your fat is trivial matter.
While that may work for you, things like ECA have significant side effects for many people, especially those who have already developed weight-related illnesses, and there are some people for whom they don’t work. Given the effectiveness of the pharmaceutical industry in marketing medications, even non-prescription ones, the strong desires of millions of people to lose weight, and the length of time ECA products have been available, it seems unlikely that they are really as effective as you claim.
That’s a ridiculously strong version of efficient (medical) market hypothesis. As I said, ECA is semi-legal in States, and its marketing for weight loss is not allowed by FDA. Also, as a non-patented drug, medical industry has absolutely zero incentive to advertise it.
As far as anecdotes go, so far one person on lesswrong tried ECA, and got back to me saying it didn’t work. Turned out it was very low dosage ECA and on doubling it there were instant effects.
If you have weight problems, just go ahead, try it, and then tell me it didn’t work. That will be unlikely.