• NY Times article ridicules those who claim obesity emanates from a lack of willpower

    Posted November 9, 2016: by Bill Sardi

    Written by the NY Times acclaimed health writer Gina Kolata, an article in the New York Times reports a recent survey reveals three-quarters of participants believe obesity results from lack of willpower and that diet and exercise are in order. [NY Times Nov 1, 2016]

    This opinion is ridiculed by obesity experts.  They claim the notion that laziness or lack of willpower is the cause of obesity “stigmatizes patients.”

    The “self-help route has not been successful for most,” said the article.  Kolata wrote that: “94 percent of the survey participants had tried to lose weight with diet or exercise, to no avail.”  One in four participants said they had attempted weight control diets 9-20 times with no long-term success.  That is not a lack of willpower said Kolata.

    In other words, obese people need to rely on health professionals and drugs and surgery to control their weight.  How self-serving.  The study was funded by The American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery.

    Mischaracterizing obesity as a disease, researchers said obesity is caused by interactions between environment and genetics and has little to do with sloth or gluttony.  The only long-term weight control approach reported to work is gastric banding surgery, they claim.

    No, obesity has to do with a medical profession that has misled Americans to think fat is bad, cholesterol is worse, and high sugar and carbohydrate diets are the answer.

    Most Americans can’t recall the era of the 1950-1975 when most Americans were lean without dieting or going to the gym or even reading diet books.  That was the era prior to high fructose corn syrup.  That was the era when butter was still on the dinner table.

    If obesity is genetic, why is it that a married couple tends to have the same body shape when they are not genetically related?

    Walk into a grocery store and examine the add sugar content of every product.  You will find sugar is added to bacon, peanut butter, sandwich meats, even frozen peas.

    The food purveyors soon learned if you sugarized the population and pushed carbohydrates that convert to sugar on consumers you fostered Candida yeast overgrowth that produces a sugar-craving individual.  [Childhood Obesity March 23, 2016; Scientific Reports Oct 12, 2015] Sugar can produce an addiction on par with any opoid drug.

    [Neuroscience Biobehavioral Reviews Jan 1, 2009]  This resulted in consumers eating more food to the delight of the food purveyors.  Disingenuously obesity surgeons treat Candida overgrowth AFTER they have performed surgery. [Obesity Surgery Dec 23, 2013]

    It took Nina Teicholz and her book THE BIG FAT SURPRISE: WHY BUTTER, MEAT AND CHEESE BELONG IN A HEALTH DIET and her criticism of a US Senate Committee that recommended low-fat diets 40 years ago that resulted in run-away heart disease and obesity.  Any reported decline in death rates and heart disease can be attributed to Americans backing away from tobacco, not low-fat diets.

    In an accompanying article, another NY Times health reporter Jane Brody asks: “So what should we do? Cut back on carbs and go back to eating lots of high-fat meats and dairy products?”  Brody’s answer is: “No, not if you value your health.” [NY Times Oct 31, 2016]  Brody quotes another so-called health expert who says butter is very high in saturated fat and raises cholesterol.

    But, but, butter and other cholesterol (eggs) only contributes to 20% of circulating cholesterol levels.  The liver produces 80% of cholesterol.  Sugar and carbohydrates (bread, rice, pasta, cereal) raise triglycerides and spawn a fatty liver condition.  Circulating cholesterol does not equate with fatty plaques in artery walls.  Those plaques may have to do with bile flow (bile being made from cholesterol).  Bile, secreted by the liver and stored and squirted into the stomach by the gall bladder to digest fats and oils, is the key to arterial health.

    A recent animal study showed when bile flow was encouraged therefore disposal of cholesterol (called cholesterol efflux), atherosclerotic plaque in arteries vanished.  Bile flow is controlled by bacteria in the gut (intestines).  The provision of a red wine molecule, resveratrol, favorably altered gut bacteria, facilitated disposal of bile (cholesterol) and resulted in abolishing arterial plaque. [MBio April 8, 2016]  Resveratrol also reduces the rate of production of cholesterol from the liver. [Journal Food Science Oct 13, 2016]

    Modern medicine attempts to reduce circulating cholesterol levels by the use of a liver toxin (statin drugs).  But while statin drugs do reduce circulating cholesterol levels they have never been shown to reduce the risk of mortal heart attacks, which are mostly caused by electrical storms in heart muscle.  As many have heart attacks with low cholesterol as high cholesterol.

    Over a decade ago Dr. Ron Rosedale stood alone in [DrRosedale.com] condemning added sugar and carbohydrate diets.  [Rosedale Diet- Amazon.com]  Though it was an overweight woman, Kat James, who first called attention to leptin, a hormone that controls whether we feel satisfied after eating, as the mechanism involved in modern obesity.  James’ diet plan instructs how to overcome the body’s insensitivity to leptin. [Kat James- Amazon.com]

    The shift from cholesterol to gut bacteria is underway in the control of obesity.   Fostering growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut (called the microbiome) with probiotics (like acidophilus and Bifidus) and prebiotics (like inulin and resveratrol) is a new approach to control food cravings. [Bioessays Oct 2014] Of note, preferences to consume sugary foods appears to be contagious.  The composition of bacteria in the gut appear to be similar among cohabiting family members.  The chance of becoming obese increases by 57% when a friend becomes obese.  Obesity is not socially contagious but rather via shared food preferences that alter the composition of gut bacteria. [Bioessays Oct 2014]

    Yes, in a sense, obesity is not due to a lack of self-control.  That was taken away when leptin sensitivity was altered by sugar/carbohydrate-rich foods, which comprise 80% of the foods in a grocery store today.  [Trends Endocrinology Metabolism Nov 1, 2011]

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