I believe future research will show that GMO’s share a not insignificant part of the blame for obesity and the increasing incidence of celiac disease and irritable bowel. I used to think GMO’s were a no never mind until I read and considered the concept that our bodies and gut bacteria evolved over thousands of years to effectively process the foods we eat. Given how little we know about individual body chemistry/food processing, it makes sense to hypothesize that our bodies have not caught up with how to properly process the huge increase in GMO items in our current diet over the last 50 years.
I have an obesity cure; it's called a "Fork."
Special features of the Fork (Patent and Trademark pending):
(1) Very inexpensive;
(2) Easy to use;
(3) Fun for all ages;
(4) Neither batteries nor prescriptions required;
(5) Results guaranteed.
3
Gut bacteria may have some small role to play in obesity, but no pill (of poop or anything else) is going to solve a problem that's largely driven by our society's disordered relationship with food. Far too often we use food as a reward or a punishment. Finish your green beans so you can have dessert. Be good so you don't miss snack time. Even as adults our one break in the workday is associated with eating lunch. And in the media we fetishize food with retouched images of juicy burgers topped with glistening tomato wedges being seductively devoured by bikini models (thanks Carl Jr's).
The reality is that food is fuel, and it should be neither a reward nor a punishment anymore than sleep or water. Sweets and salty/fatty foods drive self-reinforcing cravings that ruin ordinary foods for our taste buds so that fruit no longer tastes sweet enough and lean protein is no longer savory enough. Avoiding these foods isn't about punishing yourself anymore than you're "punishing" yourself by not drinking antifreeze.
When you cut out the bad stuff and replace it with healthy unprocessed foods including fruits, veggies, lean proteins and complex grains like quinoa and wild rice, you will eventually stop craving chips and ice cream and candy and you are not actually perpetually hungry either. You will feel better, get sick less often, and likely look better and feel more confident about your appearance too.
10
@Jon P
I feel lucky that I actually like exercise. Also, I enjoy heavy metal, driving my car, and sex, as much as I enjoy eating. I even enjoy running, as much as I enjoy eating. For me, a good run is often a treat. I don't think most people feel that way. I get a little high, after a run. I guess that's a touch of runner's high.
@Jon P
If people had any sense, they'd stop pushing quinoa.
Speaking as a person who loves beets -- quinoa tastes like dirt ...
The amount of people willing to try "poop pills" to lost weight shows how desperate people are.
In the meantime, I agree with many other comments: we need to eat differently, not necessarily "less"; we need to incorporate more activity into our daily lives; we need a national policy that encourages children to adopt better eating habits early.
But, after all that, excess calories are still the main driver of excess body weight.
1
The microbiome has evolved right along with us (and every other creature with an alimentary canal) coping with the huge changes in the human diet as we moved from hunter-gatherer to agriculture. The "western diet" clearly is a step too far for our adaptive capacities. Studies of the biome and epigenetics are opening new windows into how our amazing bodies work, and I am generally optimistic the the curse of obesity will be overcome in the next few decades.
3
What do you wanna bet that you need a healthy gut microbiome AND to eat enough vegetable fiber to support it?
If this helps people who diet and diet but don't loose weight, that would be extremely beneficial, but it probably won't fix the problem for people who live off of soda and white bread.
2
There’s been research proving this for years. A calorie is not the same for everyone. Some people have digestive systems that get every bit of energy out of a calorie, some don’t.
When science was overruled by politics in the 1980’s and went the way of Covert Bailey’s Fit or Fat book, I followed and gained 100 pounds.
It took me 15 years to finally figure it out and lose 200 pounds through Dr. Atkins. Blood pressure down, triglycerides down, cholesterol down.
It was a long arduous road but worth it. I still get angry when I look at products that say low fat because they increase the sugar.
Balance diets low in sugar and high in healthy fats and proteins are more beneficial then calories in-calories out math.
However, the high fructose companies are still getting rich.
9
You are what you eat. It is well known that a plant-based, whole food diet increases the growth of beneficial bacteria that cultivates a healthy and diverse microbiome which reduces inflammation and cardiovascular disease risk. It is also know to strengthen our immune system. One can only assume that it also lends itself to weight loss. It's also something that ANYONE can do without the need for fecal transplants or capsules.
6
Dr. Ken Berry is a practicing physician who once advised his patients to “move more and eat less.” This was advice he learned in medical school and followed. It caused him to slowly became obese. He decided he could no longer in good faith ask his patients to do what was not working for him. He is now in excellent health and spreads the word on You Tube and other social media platforms on how he achieved this. He is trying to pay forward what he has learned. He is sincere, humble and very entertaining. Many of his videos are with his wife, a nurse. They both are delightful. It’s free advice worth looking into.
2
Is it food desserts — or deserts? If people in America wanted fruit and vegetables instead of cupcakes and Doritos, surely some enterprising company would jump into make sure that’s just what they got in an arch-capitalist economy like the United States. It must be lack of demand for healthy food that’s the main problem.
2
@Richard Janssen Mmmh, I wonder. The human body is conditioned to love and crave sweet things. You can get the body into a smiliar state as addiction easily. Desserts and other sweet things are easy to transport, spoil very slowly, easy to store and very cheap to produce. Vegetables and fruit on the other hand spoil quickly, have high transport and storing costs (cooling) and are even seasonal. They have a lower profit margin overall. So in the end you send fruits and vegetables simply with a higher price per calorie... and that leads to food deserts in poor areas. Because vegetables are inherently more expensive.
5
@maron Cruciform vegetables hold up quite well, as do carrots, green beans, parsnips, beets, etc. None of these things are intrinsically expensive, at least in Germany, where a few euros buys more stuff at the market than I can comfortably carry. If called upon by popular demand, the US food industry could surely put a cauliflower into the pot of even the poorest American. But people have to want cauliflower.
4
@maron
Absolutely not true on many levels.
The human body is not conditioned to love and crave sweets. Mine never was.
And also, where is a demand there is a supply, as Richard said.
I work in far side of Brooklyn populated by immigrants from East and Asia and there is opulence of stores, even impromptu street stands that offer dirt-cheap produce. Apples were for 79c/lb yesterday, a bunch of kale $1.99 last time I checked, all in a beautiful, air conditioned store! To haul all this green stuff through New York is not cost free to producers but they do it because there is a demand there for it.
I'm not looking for another, better paid job mainy because of convenience of having access to fresh plant food :-) I calculated it is better to earn less and spend less on groceries than earn more and leave more in a smelly Keyfood in the city.
5
Overweight issues and answers for controling them, are not a 'one size fits all'( pun intended) subject. Diet & exercise and the lack of good eating habits are not the universal cause. Nor are exersizeing and diet regimens the universal answer or 'cure'. At 6'1" I had been 175 lbs. with a 35" waistline for most of the first 50 years of my adult life, until I got a life threatening cronic disease and then colorectal cancer. My daily medication notes as a side effect possible "belly fat weight gain" so I upped my exersizeing and modified my diet to try and avoid it. Worked fine for 10 years, until my chemo and radiation...I ballooned up to 227 lbs which, after finishing my cancer treatments and redoubling all my exersizeing and diet regimens, I can't get to go below 212 lbs and a 40" waistline...for the last 10 years. The idea that chemo & radiation 'killed off' more than my cancer cells and has upset my gut biosphere makes a lot of sense to me. So all you diet/ exersize gurus just might not have all the answers. Think about that when you use your broad brush to criticize any and all overweight people.
10
A person can have the best, most efficient "microbiomes" in the history of the universe but if they insist on eating fast food every day and washing it down with Frappucinnos and sugared sodas they will become obese, I guarantee it.
This is not a mystery in any way, even though the medical community is trying it's best to make it into one.
50 years ago, virtually nobody was even fat, much less "obese". Now it's commonplace.
There is no doubt that research like this is directly related to obesity being "elevated" to a "disease", as if it's something you simply get like "cancer".
It's not.
There is no "cure" in 95% of these cases, because it is not a "disease".
Take responsibility for what you put into your body and stop making excuses and looking for miracle "cures".
5
@JayK That's an over simplification. Some obese people have a disease that makes them obese through sideeffects of medication or else. Sure, probably not most, but you never know when you stand in front of a person.
And the rest of the obese people... I have wondered, how is it that more and more people are becoming overweight, seemingly unable to control it? Has our will truly changed so much from 50 years ago? Or was it how much we move? Or has simply our food changed? Because 50 years ago apparently people achieved with low effort what we now fail to reach - a healthy body weight.
It is good that we research that issue.
Obesity is not cancer, but it can and often does kill. We shouldn't forget that.
7
@maron
Some obesity does have root causes in hormonal and/or metabolic disturbances or imbalances.
That is why I used 95% instead of 100% in my comment.
But looking for "silver bullets" in the form of a hail mary intervention like "microbiome research" for the 95% who simply overeat is the height of absurdity.
It is the sheer availability and overabundance of garbage, high carb fast food everywhere we go and our frantic lifestyles that has caused this obesity explosion during the last two generations.
A lot of people eat this stuff everyday and are unable or unwilling to make the connection. And if they do, in many cases it's too late because they've become addicted to it, just like alcohol or drugs.
And they are being aided and abetted by another "woke" group, the so called "body positivity warriors", who will make any excuse and tell any lie in order to justify that being obese isn't "unhealthy".
Like every other area of our lives these days, people prefer excuses to solutions, even when those solutions are right in front of their eyes.
2
You clearly do not understand how these medical interventions work.
They are not “miracle” pulls that allow people to eat whatever they want and still lose weight. They support efforts to address weight thru diet by correcting improperly functioning bodily systems.
Why do you feel it’s necessary for people to continue to struggle with this condition when it has become abundantly clear that the solution is far from simple?
1
Last night, I had pizza, for the first time in ages. It's such garbage. My body didn't even seem to recognize it as food. I was still hungry. So, I had garbanzo beans, quinoa, and arugula. My body liked that. Tonight, I'll have sushi. Do people really live on pizza? It's not food.
2
It sounds very promising. There is so much we don't know. But also, for anyone who wishes to be slim without dieting, and who can but hasn't yet tried the following method, I suggest not reducing calories but eating natural, home cooked meals that are naturally high in fiber (at least thirty grams a day), with adequate protein and fat, moderate in carbs, and low in sugars/juice/salt. (All of which is good for your gut health.) Never eat past the point of fullness, stop eating/drinking at least two hours before bed, get a full night's rest, and be as active as you can be.
4
Well, maybe. As we've seen in so many other instances, some involving human physiology and many more not, that when we undertake to fiddle with biological systems of which we have only a very partial understanding, we can set in train all sorts of unintended and often unhappy consequences. The raft of 'new era' anti-depressant medication unleashed about 20 years ago are a case in point. They are in the first instance generally only marginally effective and, in the second instance, might induce long-term neuro-physiologic harm. The dams on the Columbia River, which are in the process of exterminating many once-large populations of native salmon and steelhead, provide an example from another realm of the biome. The underlying lesson seems to beware the silver-bullet solution to complex problems.
3
I formerly worked for a company that did basic research on probiotics and also sold them. There were a couple of points that the scientists in that area would mention in presentations. One was that there were more cells in our gut microbiome than in the rest of our bodies. Another was that around 30% of the biochemicals found in our blood are derived from the gut microbiome. It seems a bit unfathomable that if these numbers are anywhere near accurate, that the gut microbiome is not extremely important. The research in this area is actually quite recent so it will be very interesting to see what is learned in the next few decades.
6
So we have evolved all the years just to be a vessel for gut microorganisms. Explains a lot.
8
Since moving from more conventional American diet heavy in meat, cheese, seafood and processed food to a whole-food plant-based diet a couple of years ago, I have lost nearly 20 pounds without trying, and I wasn't that heavy to begin with. The reason, I think? WFPB is chock-full of exactly the kind of fiber which the good bacteria feast on, and maybe that's one of the things that contributed to my weight loss, aside from perhaps absorbing fewer calories due to said fiber. I think they may be onto something, but in the meantime, until they have that magic probiotic pill, try WFPB.
4
Fitness has to be a passion. Activity has to be a passion. It can't just be fit in, during the day.
I see little kids climbing everything in their path. They zip around on scooters. They run up and down the street. That's how we all were, as kids.
2
@averyt And yet there are fat children everywhere. As recently as the 80's, that wasn't the case.
1
I’m intrigued by this research. I had to take an aggressive round of antibiotics after surgery, and developed C.Diff. It took 2 rounds of 2 different antibiotics to fix that. I gained about 50 pounds in the following 6 months, despite often being too nauseous to eat. I returned to my previous (and healthy) diet and exercise regime soon after, but it took me 10 years to lose that weight.
I think research will eventually show that hormone regulation is critical to weight management, and our gut biome is important in that regulation process.
8
@Ann
Amen. Excellent points. Hormones and the microbiome are the key issues for researchers no doubt. As a person who has chosen a vegetarian/vegan diet for ethical reasons having to do with compassion for the furred and feathered (and finned--just taking a bit to get there), I would hope that studies would focus on the plant-based diet, as if it were adopted, untold suffering of animals and disease for humans could be prevented and many more people would have enough to eat (though with drought and political strife, that might still remain a mountainous climb admittedly). But the upside is certainly viable and attainable) hope those aren't synonyms).
Soon effective treatment yet? Darn! Waiting for more research
1
I really wish that the Times would stop taking comments on articles related to weight. Every time you post an article concerning weight and weight loss the comment section is flooded with holier-than-thou know it alls who just want to blame the overweight for their inability to lose those extra pounds. Please consider changing your policy.
12
Thank you so much! I have always thought the same thing and deliberately scroll the comments to see who is the 85 year old who runs 17 miles a day and weighs less than they did in high school. It’s a sure bet whenever the Times runs an article about weight or exercise!
Popular American sodas: 11 teaspoons of sugar per 12 ounce cans amounting to 43 grams of sugar. Wean yourselves off sodas! Fast food: poisonous fat; empty carbs. Read shopping food labels for serving size, grams of fat, sugars, amount of fiber, and salt. (Find kinder snacks!!!) More pulses; more brown rice; less meat. High fiber cereal topped with fresh fruits. If food labels have line after line of chemicals, skip those choices. Give it six weeks to change the palate - you won't go back to junk food! Fat tastes good on the tongue! So what!!!??? 'I hate CheesePoofs; no one needs CheesePoofs - (Thanks Cartman.) Give your heart and the body's ancillary systems a break! Establish a healthier diet in conjunction with exercise. America is the fattest country on Earth! Big Food is the 21st century equivalent of last century's Big Tobacco!!!! AWAKE!
4
@Rick
America is NOT the "fattest country on Earth," no matter how many exclamation points you put after that statement.
In fact, it's not even in the Top 10:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/obesity-rates-by-country
1
I'm curious why the capsule is consumed orally rather than anally. Wouldn't the stomach acid kill off some microbiota?
4
@s parson
Though this might be a question for Miss Manners, I'd venture it's just a bit more polite during brunch with relatives to ingest orally....though, depending on your relatives, the other avenue might be quite fine and wouldn't even make them flinch. If ever that were to happen to me, please tell me I'm adopted.
Americans have access to approximately 800-1000 kcal of excess total calories (after waste is removed) in the form of food relative to their basic requirements as defined by the WHO (See data from the USDA and the WHO's "food availability data").
The vast majority of these added and unnecessary calories come from starch and sugar (derived primarily from corn, less so from sugar cane and wheat) and from vegetable oils. Nearly all of the increase in calories in the American diet in the past 50 years comes from this small number of refined foods. There is a broad scientific consensus that none of these foods are required in order to sustain human life - the excess calories could simply be excised, without any direct harms to our nutrition.
To be sure, the microbes are happy to consume our waste from eating these foods. But they are not the cause, they are the symptom of the modern diet.
5
Over the course of my life, I have had several major surgeries resulting in long recuperation times. Each surgery came with a period of a sedentary life and subsequent weight gain. Each time it got harder and harder to lose the weight - and I had been a thin person previously. And then COVID. It's not just diet, per se, but life experiences, that put on weight. It is not trite to say that it's not what you're eating, but what's eating you. Let's not stigmatize those of us who are overweight (or obese) but find ways to help get to the core of the problems that cause poor diets.
10
I have never seen much talk about this:
What happens to gut bacteria when you eat produce laden with fungicide, disinfectants and chlroine. And what happens when you eat pre-packaged foods that have preservatives (like let's say sauces, pastes, cookies and what not). Together they add up to a vast percentage of our diets.
If chemicals have been added to foods to make it un-rottable and to prevent bacteria from growing in it, what does such food do to our guts?
Local produce is too expensive for a lot of people, myself included. What do we do?
https://siphidaho.org/env/pdf/Chlorination_of_fruits_and_veggies.PDF
4
Sure, let's try a gimmick before trying actual behavioral change.
2
@sheerette That's it right there. It's behavioural change that needs to occur first and foremost.
1
@sheerette This research is far from a gimmick. It has led to one of the most promising treatments of Clostridium difficile, which is a horrible side effect of antibiotics. It has given us to a dozen other diseases hints of possible treatment. It has shown us, that we do not really understand that part of our bodies yet, and we do not know what we do when we recommend behavioral changes because we do not really know what exactly we are changing. Sure, behavioral changes are necessary, but gimmick is a bit of a strong word for such great research.
2
@sheerette
I'm so sick to death of ignorant people who post nonsense like this.
Medical treatments for obesity DO NOT WORK unless they are combined with a reduced calorie diet.
Period.
What the medical treatments do is make it less difficult to comply with that diet.
If you are really concerned about obese people, obesity and the "cost" of it -- you should welcome ANYTHING that would help reduce its impact.
Get off your high horses, people.
Honestly, if I could take a pill that could finally really help me to lose weight then i’m all for it.
I have dieted and lost 30-40lbs 5 different times in my life. I have also had periods where i exercised fanatically and felt great. But it never lasts and by now, i’ve
1
By now, i’ve lost hope.
I would be so relieved if real help could come. Then i could finally move on from myself
9
@Ester Don't give up. Eat healthy, be happy, and enjoy your life as best you can. You deserve it.
6
@HHolmes I like your advice. In my experience, which of course may not apply to all, losing weight by cutting calories (or extreme exercise) is difficult to sustain -- in fact, I think the body may even revolt and gain weight in response. What has worked for me is not cutting calories but eating natural, home-cooked meals that are high in fiber, moderate in carbs, low in sugar (all forms), eating only when hungry, stopping eating two hours before bed, getting sleep and, of course, staying active. It's good for gut bacteria, and it should keep your blood sugar moderate. If everything is working as it should be, you will literally lose weight as you sleep.
2
Being fat is not a disease. Stop the bullying. If it's so bad, then why isn't the fat-freezing removal system covered by insurance and used to reduce the lower belly fat that supposedly causes diabetes?
3
Eat less, exercise more.
2
But also, eat less and exercise. Never going to get around this point. Personal responsibility will always be a huge part of dealing with obesity.
2
One of the major factors in slower metabolism is being over 60.
2
While modern medicine has just recently started to explore the significance of the mind-body connection, the ancient Indian science of Ayurveda has based its approach to wellness on this concept for thousands of years.
Rooted in the idea that the mind and body are inextricably linked, Ayurvedic principles hold that any disease is the result of some sort of imbalance in the body. This includes maintaining proper digestive health, which requires a diverse microbiome with plenty of good bacteria.
To improve your gut health and ensure a healthy gut microbiome, following the Ayurvedic diet can be beneficial and allow you to achieve a healthy gut. We’ll explore exactly what Ayurveda is, what the ayurvedic diet entails, and how to embody the ayurvedic lifestyle for good gut health.
Ayurveda translates to “knowledge of life,” meaning entire web of life is intricately interwoven. With a unique emphasis on total wellness, Ayurveda work to harmonize our internal and external worlds.
Our five senses serve as the portals between the internal and external realms, as the five great elements of ether, air, fire, water, and earth. Ayurveda groups these five elements into three basic types of energy Vata, Pitta, and Kapha to describe their combinations.
This ancient medicine offers the promise of a more harmonious future for the people and planet.
4
@N.G. Krishnan Ayurvedic "medicine" is primitive at best, and scientific or even factual. I have tried it. Save your Hindu ideas for Hindus. They're not welcome in Western Civilization, where we rely on science and fact.
2
@Ponk Of course you are entitled to your opinion but you cannot take away the fact that Ayurveda offers renewed access to our natural intelligence. As the original circadian medicine, Ayurveda holds the key to resolving disease creating a disconnect.
I notice that very often some overweight people refer to proportional size people as “ skinny”.
I do not want to say “ average” or “ normal”. Recently, comments in a NYT article about obesity, one person referred to a proportional size person as a “ waif”. So it works both ways. Obese people demeaning those who are not fat.
8
@Karen
Yes, of coarse, the shame of being called thin on the playground.
5
@Karen
I don't fall over when I stand up, so I'm "proportional."
Cry me a river about being "demeaned" because you are not fat ...
"Scientists have known for some time that the microbiomes of obese and lean people differ in striking ways."....Association is not the same as cause and effect. It is an interesting avenue for investigation but if I were betting I'd pick association.
2
Ok. let's go over it again for the umpteenth time imo, what history has taught us, re the headline.
The cure for obesity is to eat less. Period.
There are uncommon congenital cases or glandular cases or whatever you want to call them but the bottom line is if you want to lose weight you will, if not you won't.
It doesn't make you a better or worse person either way.
Ok let's hear from the intellectualizers, rationalizing buffs, cherry pickers, ax grinders, etc. etc.
I have heard all the excuses.
9
@Paul Thanks, Now I see. It's all so simple.
2
@Paul I disagree. This is not my experience, and I think it's this belief that leads to so much suffering for so many. Carbs, blood sugar and insulin (and sleep, fiber, exercise) regulate weight gain and loss. To put it another way, I have lost weight while eating more (and not increasing exercise).
2
@sheerette Thank you for your reply. As mentioned whether you are overweight or at weight it doesn't make you a better or worse person. It is a personal choice and if you really want to lose weight you will and if not you won't.
The Human Microbiome Project funded by the National Institutes of Health reports a study that showed that Christensenella minuta: a bacterium which is the most heritable member of the gut microbiota, influences host weight. "C. minuta is more likely to be present in leaner people, and adding C. minuta to the gut tracts of mice resulted in leaner mice. These findings suggest a potential use of C. minuta as a probiotic for weight control."
See https://commonfund.nih.gov/hmp/programhighlights
4
As with any article anywhere that discusses current research on obesity - cue the self-righteous haters. If you substitute skin color or disability or any other external marker, you would quickly see the hate as what it is - ugliness in your heart towards humans you deem as less than you.
23
The cure for exercise is not in the microbiome or anything like that. The cure for obesity is exercise. Plain and simple. If you want to not be obese. Just exercise. You can do so many exercises at home and you have no reason to say that you can't. It's that simple. Exercise.
4
@Pranav I disagree. I don't think you can exercise away 100 pounds while continuing to slam burgers, fries, and McFlurries every day for lunch followed by pasta for dinner.
9
@Pranav
Exercise--moving and using our bodies-- is essential for long term health.
But it is very, very easy to out-eat exercise.
5
@Pranav It's amazing how everyone seems to know the secret to ending "obesity." But they don't. And this study only added more mess, because it was so poorly conceived.
2
Why do some thin people see every article that is related to body weight as an invitation to preach about what has “worked for them” in the comments. Every thin person is not healthier than every fat person. I’m so over the way health is talked about in our society. It’s harming people in large bodies and making it harder for them to incorporate healthy habits into their lives that would improve their health REGARDLESS of if their weight changes or not.
26
The only cure for obesity is to consume fewer calories.
Unfortunately, this is most unpopular.
9
@sheerette
Yes, do not go to a drive-through at all.
2
@RP That's only 1/2 the battle. Every time we move our body through space we burn calories. Sitting in a drive through awaiting your 2000 calorie meal is not the way to weigh less.
3
Maybe the problem is we live in a culture where we promote a pill to solve obesity rather than hard work, exercise, and moderation (not dieting). Americans are always looking to make an excuse and for a quick fix. And for the people in the comments who say exercise doesn’t work, you’re not going hard enough. It’s simple math.
4
There is an excellent book about the biome topic that delves into many related topics and does a great job explaining what is actually inside us and how it is related to the world around us. The book is The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health. It is co-authored by David Montgomery and Anne Bikle. He is a geologist and she a biologist. The focus is on blending agriculture and medicine by changing the way food is grown and and how it affects overall health.
Fascinating reading from a factual standpoint and also a "good read" in that the writing is detailed but the book is hard to put down as it is so well written.
8
Jack,
Its complicated. But its important to point out that 95% of nutrients in our diet are absorbed in the first half of the small intestine (jejunum) and 99% of the bacteria in the gut are located more than 10 feet downstream in the colon. So if there is a connection between the quality of nutrition and the bacterial content of the gut, it is indirect, complex and not likely to be understood or improved by simple changes in bowel habits or bacterial content of stool. Dr. Kashyap nicely makes this point.
5
In the many articles I have read about the gut biome it has never been clear where in the intestine the majority of beneficial bacteria are located. I experienced ischemic bowel 10 years ago resulting in the removal of my colon. The small intestine is now the entirety of my gut. Do pre- and probiotics benefit me?
1
Doctors, in general, tend to shy away from nutrition as a cause of many of the diseases in our modern society, but examination of what passes for 'food' these days, would be a good place to start. Processed foods, which most of us cannot avoid, are in many cases so far from their original source, that they have become unrecognizable as 'foods' and are "food products". If you want to find out what's causing obesity and other chronic diseases, look no further than the modern food industry. And consider return or trying for the first time, foods that are less or not processed at all, and stop feeding these diseases.
18
My daughter had recurring ear infections as an infant and toddler. By the time she was 8 it was obvious she was gaining weight, even though I controlled the natural foods, no meat diet. At that point I suspected something was wrong with her metabolism. She was extremely athletic, winning awards and athlete of the year in her senior year of college. Still, at 40, she struggles with her weight. She said she would consider a feral implant.
5
@RoJohn If she received antibiotics consequent to her repeated ear infections it is likely that she suffered the same fate as our cattle, which are raised and grown on a diet that includes antibiotics which “protects” them from disease but which also causes them to grown bigger than animals that don’t get the antibiotic and to gain more weight.
4
@RoJohn work with a doctor who does functional medicine. at min, check her B12 and D vs Japanese standards (US are set for survive, not thrive) then use 23andme to look at genetic variations. Avoid folic acid supplemented grains in the meantime.
1
Being thin is not a virtue.
There are so many comments published here that reflect biased attitudes about heavier people that have been disproved in scientific literature. What underlies these attitudes is a desire to cast thin people as somehow superior.
I have always been thin but have not always had healthy habits.
37
@Feminist Academic Not a virtue but, if one does not smoke or consume alcohol, maintaining a low body weight can be a deterrent against many forms of cancer, heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
8
Neither is being fat. Remember when The fat community shamed Adele for losing weight?
6
@Feminist Academic Unfortunately this is always how the comments section looks in NYT health articles. I hope that NYT changes the way they report on topics like these to address more of the nuance of weight and health and the most recent literature about the harm of anti-fat bias. Their reporting rarely touches on these topics
9
Yes, perish the thought that taking a pill will cure obesity. People MUST deprive themselves of food and engage in a punishing exercise program as the only way to lose weight and keep it off. Mustn't make it too easy on the weak-willed gluttons, no matter what the science says.
19
And then you bring it down to 1400 calories but don’t lose a pound a week. This has also been proven over and over. Hormones control weight regardless of what you do.
25
Wow! I don’t know statistics but I have known obese people who walk miles each day and have full time jobs. They are not sitting around on sofas. And yes, I do know obese people who sit around and eat. Lumping all of these people together shows inherent bias towards obese people no matter what the situation.
23
@PL Yes, indeed. Science is so wrong. It says that if you consume 2600 calories a day and metabolize 2000, you gain about a pound a week. Week after week. Proven over and over.
Yet, it must be something else. We should be able to eat as much as we want and sit on the couch all day!
6
The organisms that grow in our gut are those that thrive on what we feed them. Starting with a fecal capsule donated by lean individuals is a start but unless you continue to feed them the healthy diet in which they will thrive, they will die. Why not a healthy diet to maintain a healthy microbiome.
13
I've struggled with severe food cravings my whole life, and the only reason it didn't destroy me or kill me or leave me in poverty was pure luck. And fasting has helped me tremendously. It's uncomfortable at first but once you get used to it, it is so FREEING not to have to wonder what I am going to stuff into my face every few hours. It's best not to eat after 7pm although I often will eat up until 9pm or 10pm and then I will fast until 5pm the next day, leaving me a window of only about 3-4 hours to eat a reasonalbly healthy meal after having a few drinks (just trying to tell the whole truth here, I'm still an addict. And alcohol can cause insomnia a very bad thing.) If I have low blood sugar I will have a snack, a handful of raw saltless nuts, but living with an actual hunger pain is not so bad. I take some MCT oil and flaxseed oil in the morning to coat my stomach and have soy milk with my coffee. I prefer cream but try to be as vegan as possible because I feel for the Animals. I am now so slim (not skinny) that I can't let myself lose more weight and that has never happened to me before! (I'm 56) and to my knowledge in perfect health. Blood pressure, resting pulse etc. are excellent. The real tragedy is that there is so much more to life than eating
14
The Hadza people of Tanzania have a gut microbiome diversity that is one of the richest on the planet and about 40 per cent higher than the average American and about 30 per cent higher than the average Brit. The average Hadza person eats around 600 species of plants and animals in a year and has huge seasonal variation. They have virtually none of the common Western diseases such as obesity, allergies, heart disease and cancer. In contrast, most Westerners have fewer than 50 species in their diet and are facing an epidemic of illness and obesity. -Copied from a Website
11
@K.Newton ..."They have virtually none of the common Western diseases such as obesity, allergies, heart disease and cancer."....The life expectancy of a Hadza is 33. Most of them don't live long enough to experience heart disease and cancer.
7
The mind boggles reading all the judgemental comments here, oh my! Obviously obesity, human health and nutrition are multifactorial. Every scientific inquiry into any part of this human issue is welcome, including microbiome factors. I can't imagine a soil scientist, for example, that would dismiss research on various effects on soil microbiomes. In such a scenario, changing landscapes and environmental factors, these scientists would look at the whole picture. Soil health is exquisitely tied to the microbiota and not Calvinistic judgements. Living things, even humans, are tied to this big picture.
20
I was 20 pounds or so overweight in middle age but now everyone says I look great. I eat as much as I want and don't keep track. I eat a lot of home made healthy food and also chocolate, cookies, ice cream, cake, pie and wine. My usual breakfast is multigrain bread toast with almond butter and tomatoes. Then I usually exercise for 90 minutes. I find that I am either hungry or not hungry. I'll be eating something and suddenly feel like I can't eat another bite. I've always been a big produce and fiber eater. I never get heartburn or any other digestive pain. The only difference is the exercise program. I was a big walker before but now I do aerobic exercise in the pool and try to do it fast.
13
Isn't this wildly ironic! Doctors and researchers are loath to speak about food and diet but will explore the effects of taking a pill with another persons excrement. Go Big Food Industry! You've won! We truly don't even know how to feed ourselves.
And for those that believe obesity like heart disease and diabetes needs to be "studied" please look at studies done on the health and eating habits of "original populations" around the globe. These "diseases" were virtually unheard of. What do/did they eat? Potatoes, corn, rice, vegetables, beans, some fruit and nuts and little meat or fish. No big mystery.
6
Classic case of missing cause and effect. Microbiome is not the root cause. Even if you transplant several strains one needs to consume loads of poop everyday to maintain the colonies.
But feed the biome with proper diet and exercise they’ll remain forever giving the benefits.
We always look for an easy pill to solve our problems!
6
The difference between lean and not so lean is diet, exercise and genetics. Not a poop pill.
7
Learn how to cook. Reduce your sugar intake (including alcohol and pasta). Eat more greens. Take a brisk walk each morning.
Instead of "poop pills" eat good kimchi.
11
As a doctor,I find this article hard to digest. Even if we hypothesized that a change in the microbiome is linked to obesity, there is absolutely no mention of what may have caused it in the first place. What about the unhealthy diets that obese people consume? What about processed foods, sugars, etc.? In typical short sighted American disease-care approach , we would rather give poop capsules to someone instead of addressing the root cause, while at the same time some profit from their obesity “cure”.
10
@Daniel B- As a doctor, do you object to helping people turn their lives around?
If a person broke his leg skiing, would you object to setting the bone so he could heal and get on with his life? Or would you just throw up your hands and say, well, he decided to ski and so brought it on himself?
I don't think any one is thinking of microbiome replacement as a "get out of obesity free" card. It's just a kick start to working on a new healthier biome. Like setting a broken bone.
22
@Daniel B - If their diet kills off their gut bacteria, then merely going back to healthy eating isn't going to solve the problem. We need to at least do the basic science about the myriad of bacteria in our guts.
I know that when I took anti-malarial antibiotics I messed up my gut bacteria and needed to eat natural yogurt for a couple months to fix it. I had to stop taking the antibiotics and then restore the gut bacteria.
Anyway, it seems to me that it is legitimate science to fix the continuation of the problem with exercise and proper diet but also simultaneously restore the damaged gut flora.
But we won't know that there is a problem with the gut bacteria if we don't study it. Basic science. Not a bad thing.
7
@Daniel B Hey doc, maybe it’s caused by the overuse of antibiotics for so many years. I’m 71, and when I was growing up, no matter what I had I was given a shot of penicillin. I wonder how wonderful that was for my gut biome
11
At last this may be a reason why I've always been UNDER weight. As this article says, I've always been able to eat anything I want in any quantity and still hover at about 98 lb (5' tall). However, I'm very sure that I don't want anybody's "poop" pills. Can you please just find out what probiotics I need to take to gain some weight?
1
Want to see the pathetic physical condition of Americans? Just visit any midwestern or southern Wal-Mart.
14
Farm animals have guts. People have intestines.
@jenny- You're right. Some people are indeed gutless.
8
Why does no one ever mention the link between long term psychiatric drugs and obesity?
8
More attention needs to be devoted to the role of antibiotics in the food supply leading to the decimation of the gut microbiome. Even if consumers avoid meats, poultry, and seafood raised with antibiotics, organic vegetables are fertilized with manure from animals fed a high antibiotic diet. (If you can't safely eat organic vegetables, what can you eat?) The result is an American population that is vastly overweight and suffering devastating health consequences because of it. A recent article in the Atlantic said an American today eating the same diet as an American in 1980 would be ten pounds heavier due to the antibiotics and pesticides in the US diet. We need to demand healthy food from the FDA. US regulators only serve big agriculture, not the health of the American people. Much attention is devoted to healthcare, but little to the problem of obesity that gives rise to a huge percentage of healthcare problems given its relation to cancer, Alzheimer's, arthritis, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Even "poop pills" will be of little help if the antibiotics present in food kill off the implanted microbes. Enough!
11
@Karen H These interesting points, and probably somewhat valid, but the sorry state of American's diets is primary because people eat too many calories (on average, about 500 kcal a day more than 40 years ago), too much junk food, and too few fruits and vegetables. And they get too little exercise.
1
The money into this research can be better spent. For every million dollar spent on this scientific crockery, sugar-free drinks can be curbed and community gardens cultivated. Please, let's get real.
As a physician, I have seen numerous reductionist and chemical based way to solve all of life's problems. Many actually believe every patient's problem has a chemical fix. As a recent NYT writer explained, when pills to 'fix' the chemical imbalance in her depression did not help her, where does she go for help? The medicine community shunned her. Why do we spend more money on pills to 'fix' attention issues than to engender positive parenting and less screen time? Why do I get more medical training on how to prescribe a smoking cessation pill than on impactful public health methods to curb smoking? Do we just treat kids with lead poisoning or clean aging water pipes?
Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with a few physicians using this fecal pill for some patients. But obesity is a complex biosocial issue. Please, if this 'fecal pill' is modestly successful, let's not build a monolithic, parochial narrative about it to divest $ from public health where impactful investments should be made to curb obesity.
We are too far down obesity epidemic to look under microscopes. Rather, the solution is in our food policy, building healthy communities to live, grow food, cook, and eat in, less Costco and more community markets.
12
How bout clean up diet first & see if that effects gut health. Can’t have healthy gut putting abundance of sugar & chemicals in it.
3
Something has happened, and nobody seems to know why. A recent NYTimes article about Woodstock pointed out that nobody in the huge crowds 50 years ago was fat-- and then laid out the statistics that the median weight of all men since then has increased 14% and the median weight of women 20%. Huge numbers.
All photos of crowds 50 and more years ago, concerts, political rallies, etc., show no fat people. Not few-- none.
You can now find on YouTube film clips from 100, 75, 50 years ago-- Harlem, San Francisco, London, Los Angeles, St. Petersburg-- deliberatel filmed 'street scenes' from around the country and around the world. Two things jump out, no matter the scene, no matter the city, no matter the country: everybody is well-dressed, including laborers, and nobody-- nobody-- is fat.
So scientists, please explain.
38
Don’t forget, nobody formally exercised or went to the gym.
6
@Longue Carabine Food, especially, unhealthy food has never been more abundant nor more affordable than in these modern times. People decades ago were more physically active as well. Getting up to change the channel on one's tv burned a few calories. Zero calories are burned by "clicking."
4
Look at what French school children get for lunch. A big wedge of cheese and an apple. They can only serve catsup once a month because 1 tablespoon blows through their limits on processed sugar. The industrial waste our kids get actually costs more.
5
no. this is not how any of this works. talk about putting the cart before the horse.
bacteria in our guts, and the composition of that bacteria, is influenced by what we eat. If you eat a bunch of simple starches and sugars, you will change your gut microbiome from one that is healthy, to one that promotes inflammation, obesity, and other related diseases. simple starches and sugars will also raise your blood sugar, which will raise your insulin levels in turn, and will cause you to further over eat. leptin is the hormone produced by the body that tells the brain when you are full. insulin is a leptin antagonist. when you eat junk food, your blood sugar goes up, your brain can't see the leptin your body is producing (because of the insulin binding to leptin receptors), and you're constantly hungry for more junk food! the best thing anyone can do for themselves is to not eat starch's or sugars. at all. do this, and you will lose the weight, lose the joint problems, lose the metabolic syndrome, and have a much better quality of, and longer life.
8
Millions of Americans are not getting drugs and other treatments that would do them some good.
Millions of Americans are taking drugs and undergoing treatments that they don’t need, which are doing them no good or actual harm.
Millions of Americans are not taking the drugs prescribed for them and end up throwing them away.
Thousand of Americans are suiciding themselves in the belief that their lives are hopeless.
Countless millions of dollars are being wasted on expensive, unnecessary medical advertising.
Countless millions of dollars are being wasted on bogus health cures and treatments.
Millions of Americans don’t exercise enough, are overweight, smoke, take illegal drugs and drink too much alcohol
Spend time, effort and money on these things instead of a worthless wall and a bloated military, and we will have the beginnings of a rational health care system.
7
The approach is wrong and what is needed is dirt bacteria and earthen nutrition. A diet of nuts, grubs, berries and frogs would do it.
2
Yummy!!!!
Obesity in America is tragically similar to guns in America. Americans can't escape the deluge of deadly weapons just as they can't escape the ubiquity of readily available processed foods. Freedom? Ha! That's a laugh. A tragic one at that.
5
I continue to be amazed by the number of amateur endocrinologists who read the Times. Where do they find the time?
16
If doctors were taught human evolution we wouldn't be doing nonsensical medical research to find magic bullet (drug) cures for environmental diseases.
Humans are physiologically and genetically almost identical to chimpanzees. Chimps diets consist almost entirely of fruit, leaves and seeds. This diet has 1/10th the fat and 10x the fibre of a typical Western diet. A wild chimp diet is also (with 10-100x higher in most vitamins and minerals than a Western diet.
Ape-like diets consisting entirely of fruit, vegetables and nuts have been tested on humans with excellent results. They substantially reduce cholesterol, cause significant weight loss and a significant improvement in mood within a few weeks.
'Human Guinea Pigs Eat "Ape Diet" for 12 Days, Experience Remarkable Health Improvements.'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6248975.stm
'Effect of a very-high-fiber vegetable, fruit, and nut diet on serum lipids and colonic function.'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11288049
"The Western Lowland Gorilla Diet Has Implications for the Health of Humans and Other Hominoids"
https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/127/10/2000/4722347
6
the many ways we fool ourselves.
3
What nonsense. If you eat less and healthier you will lose weight. I’m so tired of researchers looking for an excuse as to why people are obese. People are obese because they eat garbage and get no exercise whatsoever.
I bet if you place these obese folks on a diet of 1500 calories per day high protein and low carb the pounds will fall away.
All you ever hear from obese people is “I’m sticking to my diet but I’m just not losing weight.”
Hogwash. If you cut calories you cut the fat. End of story.
5
@N
If you cut calories, it works in the short run, but eventually the body increases hunger and decreases metabolic rate to compensate. This is a well-known finding going back to the 1940s. Recommend a read of Gary Taubes.
Your moralizing aside, telling people to "just eat less" is the single _least effective_ method, demonstrated over and over again throughout a century of obesity research.
You gave away the game when you wrote "high protein". If it's just about calories, then protein is irrelevant. But if types and qualities of foods have specific effects that feed back on appetite and fat storage, then we have already moved past a simple "calories" system.
12
@The Pooch
Absolutely right. Those contestants on "The Biggest Loser" all gained their weight back, plus some. If not all, most. Metabolisms adjust to keep your baseline. Much has to do with genetics and hormones. The person who mentioned all the antibiotics even in the soil in which organic produce is grown has a valid point too. If one reads the histories of Dow, Monsanto, etc., one will see how psychopathic these entities are--truly evil. We are merely fodder, unfortunately.
A) I'm sick of the word "gut". Pigs and cows have "guts". Deer have "guts". People have intestines.
B) There is a cure for obesity. Obesity is a behavior and self control problem. The cure is to eat less.
4
Once again, we hear about research that brings hopes for a "silver bullet" answer to a complex problem, but as Dr. Yu reminds us, that is unlikely.
I've been doing a lot of personal research on the brain-gut connection, microbiome, health, and well-being. What I've learned is that genes are affected by lifestyle (diet, exercise, stress, mental health and well-being, media we consume, and with whom we choose to spend our time); and our lifestyle is often dictated by financial circumstances, modern conveniences, education, family situation, what neighborhood we live in, where we go to school.
Science can spend the next 100 years trying to gather data in hopes that it will be able to manipulate our biological systems to make us "healthy." But until there is a holistic approach that looks at the complex sources of our health issues, our communities will continue to struggle with chronic illnesses, the pharmaceutical industry will continue to grow, big-agra will continue to produce cheap food to feed the military-industrial complex, medical care will treat the resulting symptoms to no avail, and people will remain in the dark about what is making them sick - polluted food, polluted environment, and a capitalist society that "sells" happiness through junk nobody needs as greed feeds the rich and starves the poor.
5
Early life metabolic programming leading to “thrifty baby syndrome” appears to have some effect. How much this is due to the microbiome is unclear. So far most studies are observational and carried out in an attempt to ‘prove’ a link. The huge placebo effect that often accompanies these studies (or the lack of a control group) is worrying.
I would exclude all rodent studies - all they tell you about is rodents. Studies that look at stable isotope measurements might be interesting. As might some better prebiotic investigations but until we have rigorous experiments with enough participants, it is better to just exclude all these bits of partial data.
1
There are so many parameters of the biome we don’t know; to start with:
- how does our genome impact the biome?
- which specific combination of diet, exercise and genome promotes which particular strain(s) of biome
- which particular lifestyle choices impact which particular strain. There was a report about runner’s biome few months ago
- how does stress impact biome?
- how does the environment impact the biome?
A more sustainable “cure” can be developed only if we understand the parameters of the biome.
1
A recent visit to Florida made me aware of the difficulty in eating out in the US compared to Europe. I do not consider myself in any way a fussy eater but I honestly could only find one or two restaurants where I found the food served palatable. The problem for me was the over salty and way too fatty (i.e. covered in sauces or lathered in bland cheese) menu offerings. It is impossible to taste the actual meat or vegetable ingredients in the dish, maybe that is the idea. Good fresh produce requires minimal alteration to make it taste good.
16
@Eli
You are exactly right. There are a growing number of "farm to table" restaurants in the States, but they are often more expensive and less accessible. I've even been to vegan restaurants that serve "junk food" to bring in the American consumer who wants chili fries and other fried food.
Popular American food culture leaves a lot to be desired.
7
I am 63 and borderline type 2 diabetic, my mother was a full blown type 2 diabetic and passed away at 61 in 1983.
I always dreaded becoming like my mother because I saw how she suffered, fearing that’s what the future held.
But the big difference between my mother and I was she was unwilling to change anything in order to be healthier. Having to give up cheesecake and other foods which she considered having, “the good life” was deprivation and did no exercise, not even walk a block. She’d hop in the car instead.
Since I’m making a conscious effort, my dietician is thrilled with my blood glucose levels because 1) I watch everything I eat and 2) I’m willing to exercise. Just a 1 mile brisk walk 2 hours after a meal is enough to lower your blood glucose levels to manageable levels. Your can totally manage type 2 diabetes.
Also buffering any carbs with a protein (i.e. nuts) manages your blood glucose levels. Something I don’t think they knew much about almost 40 years ago.
If one doesn’t want to make a conscious effort to make healthy choices, one cannot expect miracles. Again, there is no magic bullet.
23
@SW
Would you try the pills to alter your gut biome?
1
@Ron A
Absolutely not! Yuck!
1
Even with an abnormal metabolism, the answer to obesity is still to eat less. People with out-of-whack metabolisms just have to eat less food than most people. It's a Quixotian questo to try to find a "cure" for obesity that doesn't involve eating fewer calories.
9
Prescription drugs also cause weight gain, some of it extreme.
12
In his show 'Real Time' one week ago, Bill Maher went on a 5-minute long rant about obesity, blaming overweight individuals for a host of societal problems, and suggesting that the solution was simple: just stop eating.
And yet, studies repeatedly show that well over 90% of people who lose weight can't keep it off, generally bouncing back to their original weight within a year or two. With such a high failure rate - even with the virtually non-stop onslaught of judgement coming from the likes of Maher - it's quite obvious that the issue is complex beyond simple answers and fat-shaming.
Interestingly, on this week's show, Maher welcomed the significantly overweight Michael Moore with the words, "You're looking great!" I suppose it just wouldn't have been polite to suggest that the obese Moore should just eat less.
23
@jrsherrard
It appears that Maher ascribes to the dictum, “You can’t be too rich or too thin.”
2
We do need to eat less and eat more wisely. That said, there’s no need to be rude about it. Just because someone treats themself badly nutrition wise does not make them a bad person. Michael Moore is a good guy and his eating disorder is his problem. We should all wishing well.
6
Michael Moore has lost A LOT of weight, though.
6
If it works, the next step should be artificial propagation of those microbes in order to eliminate the ick factor.
3
Fasting works. Not ‘dieting’. FASTING.
Dieting will result in your body lowering its BMR to match the lowered amounts of glucose made available to it as a result of the reduced amounts of food intake. This eventually cancels out the effects of the reduction in calories and leads to lethargy and the regaining of previous weight loss.
Fasting, on the other hand, does not lower the BMR but leaves it untouched (presumably) so that the organism has enough vigor to go find (or hunt) some food, and, instead, begins burning the abundant emergency energy stores known as body fat as its primary fuel source—again, as opposed to attempting to continue to run on reduced amounts of available glucose (i.e., food) by lowering its BMR . . . WHILE PRESERVING THE FAT.
That, anyway, is theory.
I am nothing remotely close to any sort of medical researcher and have no scientific expertise whatsoever. I just know from direct experience—it works.
15
@Qev I have done this and it works. I wasn't trying to lose weight, I was trying to improve mental function through better eating and ketosis. The weight came off anyway even though I was already relatively slim.
The microbiome is likely a big part of the puzzle as it is under assault from our generally poor diet, prescription medications, and toxins such as glyphosate.
5
You are correct.
2
I don’t know if there will ever be a silver bullet for obesity - not with the industrial junk food complex forcing non-food down people’s throats, but it seems like there’s a lot of potential ben fit in understanding how the microbiome works.
21
In the beginning there was survival - high fat and sugars provided what you needed. If those food stuffs appealed, you had a better chance. Now in the days of over plenty, a taste for those is counter productive, but evolution works slowly and medical intervention props up the preference traits.
8
The original work came from Segal lab at Weizmann and was published a few years ago in a minor journal called nature. It suggested that one way to avoid the jojo effect was to take antibiotics at the end of a diet.
3
@Dragotin Krapuszinsky Your comment suggests that the Segal study at Weisman concluded that one way to reduce is to take antibiotics. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of destroying the microbiome as antibiotics tend to do, the Segal-Arinav study found ways to work with the subject's existing microbiome to improve food choices and lose weight. That's why it is called a "personalizied" diet. The study found that by testing your own microbiome and comparing your dietary choices to a database, it is possible to determine which foods are best for you to eat, given your own particular biome, to lose weight. At no point did they suggest that antibiotics would improve weight loss, in fact just the opposite. A description of the study along with findings can be found in the book, "The Personalized Diet: The Pioneering Program to Lose Weight and Prevent Disease"
1
Having followed this literature for a few years, what has struck me is how little has come from it. Sure, we need to continue some more, and hope springs eternal, but as for microbiome cures for obesity, I am not holding my breath. This is overhyped.
5
The increase in the average body weight of individuals seems to correspond with the discovery and overuse of antibiotics. I must concede it also corresponds with the increase of wealth and hence less people going hungry, but the increase in body weight of animals closely associated with people has also increased. The overuse of antibiotics has lead to an environment in which they are present in many areas beyond their intended target, and hence ingested by animals.
9
Food "insecurity" is to blame to some extent. In poor neighborhoods the only stores selling any fruit or vegetable are the 7-11 type stores. Besides, the grocery stores are too far and since most residents there do not have their own transportation( and public transport is sketchy at best) they have to make do with fast foods, sodas and other unhealthy options. Stress ( due to having a job and also due to not having a job) plays a big role in obesity. The chronically high cortisol level causes increased fat deposition outside ( in the belly) as well as inside ( liver etc) . Stress reduction by Yoga and meditation may help but when there is no time to cook how can one expect to find time for those.What we eat, how we eat( mindfully or not) and how much we eat are also contributory . Diet and exercise are too broad as suggestions. There are many factors causing obesity today,
18
You have to move and get enough healthy greens in your diet.
Make sure that nothing in your house has high fructose corn syrup, and get your meat from a butcher or make sure meat is free of antibiotics.
Only have fast food, or any restaurant like chii's etc where the food is not cooked from scratch and you have no idea what is in the salad dressing once a month or on a road trip when nothing else is around.
Whether you eat vegan, vegetarian, or meat it does not matter, what matters is that it is freshly prepared, by yourself or a decent restaurant.
Repeat after me carbs are for the active, the more active you are the more carbs you can have.
If you are inactive you don't need the carbs.
Yes unless you won the metabolic sweepstakes and have a high metabolism you are going to have to do at least 2 hrs a day of vigorous aerobic activity or a really intemse HIIT workout of 45 minutes to an hour to eat them and not gain weight.
just the musings of an older lady of 52 who's metabolism has slowed to a slug.
21
Lose the sugar, all processed carbs too - the brown and yellow gut fat simply disappears. Fast regularly for progressively longer periods, the body repairs the damage better than any physician or pharmaceutical. Heal thyself. Understand your natural healing process of ‘autophagy’.
27
I am at a loss as why the research doesn’t focus on diet and lifestyle to foster healthy bacteria. You would likely gain additional health benefits and save money. While I understand that a “pill” may reap profits for the researcher, why didn’t the author of this piece address this?
7
Remove sugar from diet, portion control.
19
Microbes thrive when the food they eat is plentiful and the environment they are in is to their liking. The reason you find certain microbes living in the guts of lean people is because the environment in the guts of those people is conducive for those microbes. The lean people are eating the types of foods those microbes thrive on, and their exercise and living habits make their guts an attractive place for those microbes. Take those microbes and put them in the guts of people who aren't eating the same foods and aren't exercising and don't have the living habits that make their guts hospitable to those microbes, and those microbes won't flourish in those guts.
15
Americans (and humans in general) love magic bullets, snake oil, and miracle cures.
What Americans (and humans in general) hate most is exercise and moderation.
Unless a person has a genetic disorder/related health condition or some kind of disability that prevents them from exercising, it’s just someone who doesn’t exercise or eat in moderation.
Is it hard work sometimes? Yup. Is that exactly why there are so many obese people? Also yup.
People don’t have to stop eating pizza. Just don’t eat an entire pizza in one sitting. People don’t have to climb Mount Everest to get exercise. Just go for a 2 mile walk 3 times a week, and do core/strength exercises for another 3 days per week with one rest day.
This ain’t rocket science.
22
@Austin Ouellette What a relief it must be to go through life so assured that you have it all figured out. Surely you’re aware that even though some obese people overeat, others who’ve committed themselves to healthy lifestyles for decades are still unable to lose weight. It’s interesting and valuable to pursue science that could help these people live better lives.
24
@Austin Ouellette
There are many factors. One is that 'food discipline' has vanished. In the '50s and '60s and before, the rule was "3 meals a day and a snack after school".
"No eating between meals; you'll spoil your appetite."
When dinner came, you were hungry; you couldn't assuage hunger before then.
Potato chips and all of that ilk was Summer picnic food only. Other than that, it was never even in the house.
17
My VA Dr told me that obesity and lipid panel numbers are a direct result of what you stick in your mouth. I gave that some thought and changed my eating habits to a healthy choice and ate less calories than I burned. Over 2 years, I gradually went from 225 lbs to 179 lbs. Still losing. Slow is the way I gained the lbs. No one is born obese, we eat ourselves to that status over a period of time. I no longer take any medication and I am 75 years old.
29
@GARRY
Exactamundo! Too simple for the scientists, the sociologists, the apologists, the psychologists, the journalists, and all the rest of the -ists….
1
Predictably, the comments here are full of people telling fat people that the answer is simple - change your lifestyle!
But our lifestyle is largely determined by our environment. Our culture encourages long work hours (Americans work way too much), long commutes (no public transit), surveillance parenting (what, you don't know everything about your kids' lives? Don't you realize that no one else is looking out for them?); poor regulation of the food industry (hello corn syrup); and no regulation of advertising (enjoy your daily arousal).
It is folly to expect people to live their whole lives in opposition to their environment. I have a hunting dog who needs daily vigorous exercise; he could get it by running up and down my hallway, although he'd have to dodge away from the table - but any onlooker would say, "Take that dog to the dog park!"
It's very hard, but not impossible, to push your body into a permanent state of semi-starvation (which is what is required: you must take in fewer calories than you expend, which your body interprets as a calamity). The real difficulty for me, as for many fat people, is about prioritizing that commitment over other people's feelings, over family time, over work demands and home chores (it's time consuming, maybe 2+ hours a day).
When over half of adults are fat or obese, we need to stop focussing so much on personal responsibility. Our culture is trying to kill us, so here's a thought - let's work on the culture.
35
@Madeleine Golden
I've always found our culture to be remarkable because of its diversity and, never so much offered, as with food. Maybe it's because I've lived in the NYC area my whole life but I have access to any type of food I could want, from the healthiest grain to the worst ice cream concoction. What I choose to eat is my personal preference not because that's all there is.
I've also noticed, in the last decade or so, a trend toward more healthy items in the supermarket and more health related businesses springing up, such as neighborhood gyms and bike shops. There are choices out there, many choices.
5
@Madeleine Golden
Never my fault, always somebody else's fault, especially 'society'.
So no problem...no fault, no problem! But the body is biological machine-- it doesn't care about fault, or intention, or good will and desire. It just uses what you put into it. Excuses and reasons, no matter how true, make no difference to it.
No, you're not at 'fault', fault has nothing to do with it. But only you can control. If you can't, nothing can; society surely won't.
You start to become free when you realize that nobody else cares, even if they say they do. And that's a good thing.
3
@Madeleine Golden I agree the environment is terrible, the quality of the food supply terrible, and regulation inadequate. Try eliminating (or nearly so) refined grains and sugar (all types, including juice and dried fruit -- but one or two servings of actual fruit is fine) and see what happens.
1
No one makes anyone overeat. But people do not like taking responsibility for their actions. We live in a victimhood society.
This is the decision of modern life: excess.
Very unpopular but true, and the obesity epidemic continues to increase.
16
@R. R.
"No one makes anyone overeat. But people do not like taking responsibility for their actions."
The food industry has spent billions researching ways to produce food addictions and to perpetrate the myths that "a calorie is a calorie".
We are now blaming drug companies for using false claims to promote opioid addiction. When are we going to hold the food industry accountable for their role in the obesity epidemic?
4
@Elizabeth
No one puts food into your mouth or anyone else's mouth.
Eating is a voluntary action,
Making the food industry accountable is equivalent to making the entire society accountable for individual decisions, including politics, spending, trends, ETC.
Yes, you can argue we are passive and lack the capacity for self-control. And so am I!
2
@R. R.
"No one puts water into your mouth or anyone else's mouth. Drinking is a voluntary action."
"No one puts air into your lungs or anyone else's lungs. Breathing is a voluntary action."
See how stupid that sounds? Hunger is a fundamental physiological drive. Hunger always wins in the end. A much smarter strategy is to figure out which foods satisfy hunger with the fewest total calories.
3
Dr Elaine Yu: “But I don’t think we’re going to find some magic potion that will be able to cure obesity in the absence of any other intervention.” In other words, lifestyle changes are key.
I saw the Woodstock Documentary on PBS' American Experience and the Apollo 11 documentary, both with footage of numerous Americans in 1969. The key takeaway- Americans were overwhelmingly thin. Why? I am guessing less fast food as that has exploded in prevalence since then.
9
I noticed the same thing watching the same shows. When there’s that drastic a change in that short a time there’s got to be a culprit.
4
@Robin
I agree that there must be reasons, but fast food can only be part of it.
"Culturally' so to speak, there were innate disciplines against overeating. They may well have risen from scarcity, but they applied thereafter, too.
Looking back to a middle-class childhood in the '50s and '60s, I remember the 'mantras': three meals a day, plus a snack after school. "No eating between meals; you'll spoil your appetite". There was no junk food; chips at picnics in the Summer.
Somethings huge have changed. The old photos: not just fewer fat people-- nobody-- nobody-- was fat. It's gotten sort of shocking now....fat people everywhere you go, young and old.
5
Hint - everybody smoked.
3
As a layman, elderly with average IQ, the pertinent
phenomena/issues confound me, but why
not mention some hypotheses/ideas at least
of self-interest and perhaps constructive in
the better interest of others, perhaps.
1. Experts disagree with experts often.
2. Guessing is foolish, and I was diagnosed with diabetes 2. And yet I certainly do guess/intuit:
4. I cut out eating desserts and soft drinks.
5. But fruits with natural sugar I’ve been eating more. This I do w/o formal advice
6. Losing weight imho is seemingly the best thing
I have done in the past ten years.
7. Walking dog is good for me without doubt.
8. And I take meds for blood pressure and
to try to neutralize sugar with a prescribed med and
taking unprescribed cinnamon.
9. Nothing is perfect: each of us must decide for
self, and experiment somewhat.
In other words, one should read on one’s own, but
keep doctor appointments and lab visits.
5
Interesting article. I taught medical microbiology at university. When I retired over nine years ago, the gut microbiome and its link to obesity was just beginning to be mentioned in textbooks. The gut microbiome is complex and affected by diet, (especially sugar in the diet) as well as how you were born (your gut microbiome will be populated differently if you were delivered by caesarean section rather than vaginally), disease, and treatment of disease as well as a host of other factors. Your gut microbiome plays a role not only in metabolic disease, but has been linked to a role in depression as well as allergies - well, the list goes on and on.
The research into the link between the gut microbiome and obesity is in its infancy. This specific research is at least a starting point in beginning to understand how what you eat, your food cravings, insulin metabolism, and other factors influencing weight gain or loss might be influenced by your gut microbiome. A person's specific genetic inheritance cannot be discounted either. The issues are complex, to say the least.
Not only are you "what you eat", but now we might be beginning to understand what is influencing you to crave and eat that piece of cake and either gain weight or not. I am not overweight, but being overweight is not just a matter of a lack of willpower as we are beginning to find out.
31
@Diana
If 'genetic inheritance' is involved, how is it that huge diverse populations across the board 50 and more years ago show, by photography, that essentially nobody was fat? Have there been mutations since then?
5
@Longue Carabine
There is something called epi-genetics where we are learning that genes are not static. Twins born with the exact genetic makeup may have different genes activated or lay dormant depending on their personal experiences. Trauma is one such experience that has a huge effect on genetics. The toxins we are exposed to (air pollution, water, antibiotics in the meat we eat and milk we drink) also affect our genetics. The country has changed so much in the past 60 years - of course there are going to be genetic changes as our individual genes adapt to our ever-growing toxic environment.
8
@Longue Carabine
In a word , yes, there is evidence to suggest that genetic mutations have "sped up" in the last 50 years. The factors that have influenced those mutations are complex. One thing that has contributed to the mutations is a rapid growth in population. As Maria below stated there are a myriad of other factors that have influenced genetic mutations as well.
4
The strategy with the most leverage is to provide a food system for Americans that is optimized for personal and public health, instead of corporate health. The processed food industry is making extraordinary profits at the price of widespread disease .
35
It's a provocative concept that I've been aware of for a couple of years, and I would be willing to be a guinea pig of there was a local study. Unfortunately, the research will mature too late to benefit me (age 57).
1
A couple of thoughts. One, once you obtain "good" microbiota, you must take care of them by eating healthier (diet high in fruits and vegetables and low in trans fats). Second, ones goal should never be to lose weight but to eat healthier, obtain good biota, and take care of that biota. If you lose weight, great, if not still great as you will be living a healthier lifestyle at you body's genetic shape.
13
I was a very active healthy fit man when I got injured. I am still as active as I can be. I am now fat, probably morbidly so and it is 100% the fault of the doctors I saw. I followed recomendations and took their prescriptions and just kept deteriorating. It took me years to figure out that they were not actually treating the things I reported when I showed up in the office. They were "diagnosing" things they imagined about me and treating that instead. And there lay the problem that was driving me crazy thinking I was going crazy.
They removed me from the medical process and treated me like I was a dog, you know an animal who cannot communicate to humans. This is partly due to the fact that most doctors are human beings unfit for the job do to psychological issues and irrational ideas about their own self worth and a willingness to gaslight patients rather than face any of them and explain themselves. Also because of prejudice applied to me because of what I look like.
So yea, I guess if there is such a thing as congenital obesity caused by something genetic study it but I think most of the problem are the people who produce what is sold to us as food and the system imposed on us as our economy. For instance Kraft Singles IS NOT CHEESE of any kind and a lot of the other stuff we are sold as if it is real food is similarly chemicals in a lab being put through machinery in origin not from some organic natural origin. Kraft does make real cheese that is good.
17
@magicisnotreal: Exactly. Fegan "cheese" isn't cheese (or real food) either.
@magicisnotreal: Exactly. Vegan "cheese" isn't cheese (or real food) either.
2
@magicisnotreal
So if it's '100%' the fault of the doctors, you're off the hook!
Fault has nothing to do with it. At the very least, allocating it won't take off a pound.
It's just biophysics. The body doesn't care about reasons.
1
This type of observational rather than theory driven research is fraught with the potential to assign associations as causal links. The microbiome is formed and altered by many factors including genetics, diet, medications and more. The alterations in intestinal flora could be a result rather than a cause. Changing the flora will certainly change gut metabolism and absorption and may be beneficial, but the central question should be why the microbiome is altered in the first place. Remember antibiotics were and in some cases still being used to increase weight gain in the meat industry. Why does this work? The drugs certainly alter gut microorganisms
10
@Wallace F Berman The article indicated that. Any half-decent researcher knows the difference between correlation and causality
As usual, researchers and doctors are milking microbiome research because any proposal pertaining to "obesity" generates grants from many foundations and agencies.
The biggest factor in and predictor of weight gain: dieting/weight cycling.
5
We all know what causes obesity. It’s been repeatedly proven in every known way throughout human history: diet.
Study after study says the our microbiomes are products of our environment and our diets. We already know that, if you change your diet, your microbiome will adapt and change.
So why all these studies searching for unicorns? Because we’d do anything, blame anyone, blame anything rather than take responsibility for our diets.
It’s wishful thinking at best but it’s sad to see science reduced to this.
28
@Greg An apple, today, has 1/10 of the nutrients as an apple from 1940. Pesticides, herbicides, hormones, antibiotics, preservatives, HFCS, GMOs, etc, have drastically altered the food we eat. You can try to eat organic, free-range, pastured, HFCS-free, non-GMO's, etc, etc, but these foods can still be difficult to find, and cost a small fortune. They do not get government subsidies, and never will.
Add to the above the fact that most of our food is processed with, and stored in, plastics, and the advice to "change your diet" is nearly meaningless.
27
@JP
Don't be so negative!!! You can change your diet, lose weight, lower your glucose, insulin resistance with change in diet. I did all that at age 74 so I know it is possible. LCHF and IF work!
12
I am not being facetious I really do want to know how you know fruits and vegetables are not as nutritious as they used to be. I haven’t heard this and don’t see the research pointing to this. Can you elucidate?? Thank you.
7
So we're medicalizing the risk behaviors leading to obesity. These risk behaviors are rooted in socioeconomic and political dysfunctions: economic uncertainty, lack of control over living and working conditions, and disempowering. When we have a power structure that treats everyone humanely, we'll have a low prevalence of obesity.
Our sleeplessness that our wretched social structure causes has also been linked to obesity through changes in metabolism and fat deposition. The medical industry now focuses on various reflections of our misery such as the microbial community in our guts. More money to Big Pharma without really helping public health and wellbeing.
11
Nailed it. Provide the social cultural structure for people to lead decent lives with access to decent food, etc and we wouldn’t have to medicalize (and criminalize, a separate discussion) conditions that are socially, culturally rooted.
9
@Rodrick Wallace American society is now more egalitarian than at any point in time and yet we're far more obese than ever before. Try again. Less than 60 years ago African Americans were largely unable to vote and women were largely not able to work outside the home but neither was morbidly obese.
A more just society is a worthy goal, but blaming inequality for the current explosion of obesity is a dubious proposition at best...
2
@Rodrick Wallace
Our 'power structures' of the past never treated everyone humanely.
Look on You Tube at the plethora of 'street scene' film clips from the past, including as much as a century ago. Everywhere; Tsarist St Petersburg, pre-WWI London, Harlem in the 1930s. Countless others. "Humane power structures"? Hardly. Everybody well-dressed, every single person thin. It's uncanny.
1
I would like to see a study of the microbiome and its relationship to mental health, especially with the increasing rates of suicide in young people. I definitely feel it's at least partly our diet and the lack of fiber needed by the microbiome. Also, glyphosate is an antibiotic and is on much of our food, and is used as a drying agent on grains, making harvest easier. Antibiotics wipe out gut bacteria, the good with the bad. But we don't have to wait for a study, just eat lots of vegetable, fruit, nuts, beans, etc. and, of course, get out and exercise, which also affects the brain. We all know this, now if we all just did it. I think it could change many of the problems the country now faces.
11
I get that some forms of obesity are genetic or environmental. But, it that the majority of cases? How does one distinguish between these cases and those who just put more calories in than spend burning them off?
6
@gratis
There is no distinction. Genetic or environmental factors are causing people to put in more calories than they burn. Nobody is getting obese for fun. It's a complicated combination of stress, shame spiraling, ubiquitous sugar, and metabolism built for scarcity.
9
@gratis
There is a fat gene that scientists have identified that makes some people prone to become obese. Still, these people don't have to become obese if they make other lifestyle choices.
@Rhys Smoker
And don't forget torpor and lassitude. I have personal experience of those.
1
When are the researchers going to look at fermentable fibers AND bacteria together. The bioactives are the short-chain fatty acids resulting from the fermentation. People need both the bacteria as well as the fermentable fibers or prebiotics to feed the bacteria to produce the bioactives. Feeding bacteria by itself will always be hit or miss until you combine the bacteria and the fermentable fibers like resistant starch.
11
The answer is now. I am a subject in a study of resistant starch. I’m in the 3rd week of an 8-week study. “Best” part is submitting a stool sample every 2 weeks...what we do for science!
12
What is so hard to understand here? It is painfully obvious that the high carbohydrate/low fat diet the US government started recommending decades ago, combined with the drive to add cheap sweeteners to pretty much everything, is making Americans unhealthy, obese, diabetic, and fostering cardiovascular disease.
The only questions in my mind are how deliberate this is and how much the producers of various life-long medications actually want it to change.
37
The idea that carbs are bad for you is a myth being propagated by people who want to sell the latest diet book. I’ve been lean all my life (and the same weight in my late sixties as I was at twenty-one, so weight gain as you age being inevitable is probably another myth) and eat lots of carbs and fat, just not the ones most people think of when they hear the word “carbs”.
There are likely multiple reasons why I tend not to gain weight. It’s probably a combination of genes, exercise and diet. Hating to cook helps too. After a (small cereal) bowl of egg noodles slathered in butter with a topping of Parmesan and veggies from the freezer for dinner those microbes in my gut seem content so that’s what I’ll keep feeding them.
14
@Brenda That's not necessarily true. No one is saying "Carbs" in general are bad for you. However, Western diets consume/contain high carb content.
I agree with J.D., Dr. Keyes philosophy(low fat) did not contain much science and included selective research. It was used by the food industry to create "food products". Obesity ballooned as a result of "low fat" diet. They replaced good fats with sugar.
10
@Brenda And if most adults were like you, and kept the same weight all their lives, this wouldn't even be a conversation. But today, at least half of adults in the US are overweight or obese. Something really is happening.
1
Fascinating article. I hope the studies reveal another useful variable in the epidemic of Americans who are overweight or obese. I hope that we learn the the gut bacteria desert can be repaired in individuals with weak or not properly functioning guts. Allowing some diseases and conditions to grow for most, is a long journey of small choices and neglect. The trip back must be understood to be of nearly the same amount of time with concentrated effort and consistency.
I worry that the variety of good wholesome food remains unavailable for many, the availability of time, place, and cost for recreation and working out is a hinderence to those who might, and that quality healthcare is still not present for all. Addressing the weight issue is a society wide imparitive and responsibility.
8
@Jon
Go to your nearest Walmart and count the amounts of good wholesome foodstuffs in the overloaded shopping carts of the crowds of obese families. Check out the prices for fruits and vegetables compared to junk. And then take a look at who's walking out there at sunrise and sunset. Realize the truth.
7
If you don't want something to become abundant, Tax It!
In many states food is not taxed, or taxed at a reduced rate.
I've noticed anecdotally that in countries with high taxes on food that the people are thinner. First, I wonder if this is true. Second, I wonder if anyone has done a simple economics experiment to compare the average weight in a high food taxed population to that of a low food taxed population.
3
Does it occur to you that if food is expensive, people might be more hungry? That they are thin not by “choice” but because they can’t afford to buy enough food to not be hungry all the time?
This is important research, but only part of a very complex issue. Is better to prevent, rather than treat, obesity? We do not understand all the reasons for weight gain. Does "junk food" in childhood change gut bacteria? If it is found to be related to ingestion of soda, for example, what actions will be taken? Traditional societies grew plants using manures from animals (and people, too). We know little about how plants grown in rich soils differs from factory farms. How does this difference affect the microbiome? We know too little about the effect of factory grown meat. Will a warming planet change our microbiome, too? There is the poorly researched issue of genetics. Are some morbidly obese individuals carriers of genes that alter their experience of fullness? When an obese person becomes depressed and takes medication, does that drug alter intestinal bacteria? Candidates talk about "health insurance" as if it were health care. No form of health insurance will prevent preventable disease, nor will insurance fund much needed research like this.
12
At a population level, I think stress is driving a good deal of obesity. Exercise is an upper middle class imperative: It does not come for those with multiple jobs; there is no time. Similarly, Lyft drivers generally don’t have time to make nutritious meals. It goes beyond that, of course, to the hypothalamic pituitary axis, where stress is expressed hormonally. I truly doubt this microbiome research will adequately address societal stress as a cause of obesity.
Adjusting the microbiome is no panacea for societal problems.
31
@Bert Gold
Photographs over the centuries show the poor looking just as slim as the rich, all over the U.S., all over the world. It's not a question of time or being able to make nutritious meals (an apple doesn't take all that much time to eat.) Social stress has been a part of life since we began life.
12
Look, you have to create your own microbiome by eating lots of organic fruits and veggies, little meat, no processed meats, little or no alcohol, and add saurkraut and sugar free yogurt for more good probiotics.
It's pretty easy, and has made me very, very healthy and active in my old age. I wish I could get everyone to eat like this. The easy way to start is with frozen organic dinners, piled high with more frozen organic kale, broccoli, etc. Ready in five minutes. Add organic salsa if you want stronger flavor.
13
@Martha
Frozen foods? Organic salsa? How about us slim folks (super strong and healthy in our 80's) who actually like food, like cooking, like a great wine with a fine dinner?
5
@Martha: YOU are one individual. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
Also, frozen organic dinners are just junk food with a fancy name and high price.
2
@Rea Tarr
Hey, I said "the easy way," to appeal to people who haven't time to cook...like students. And frozen food is not less nutritious than veggies you buy and keep in your fridge. No way are frozen organic dinners with lots of veggies "junk food"!
1
I have often wondered: does the prep for a colonoscopy eliminate one’s micro biome and cause subsequent metabolic problems?
24
@Bill Scurrah I hope someone answers your question with some actual research. I'm going to predict that no, the gut biome will stay about the same. I bet a lot of those bugs are clinging to the colon walls and I doubt they're eliminated during the prep. But that's just my guess on it.
1
I just recently had a colonoscopy and asked the doctor the same question about the microbiome in my gut. His response was that it will probably grow back to what it used to be because there are still bacteria in there, but there’s also a chance that it may never grow back to what it used to be. I guess that meant that he didn’t actually know but at least he was honest that it might not ever return to its former state. That doesn’t mean I’m going to avoid any future tests. Instead I will just try to eat healthy and make sure to include fiber and yogurt and fermented foods.
5
Good question, last week I fasted for almost five days before and after mine. Now I'm busy repopulating my gut with healthy gut flora.
Doxycycline, which is given to some people who get tick bites, absolutely nukes the gut, and requires repopulation as well.
2
Gut Barrier: Intestinal Mucosal Barrier. From the mouth to the anus, there is a mucosal barrier, which serves as the first line of defense against pathogens. The mucosal barrier also shows the body how to deal with food antigens, which may cause allergies and sensitivities.The mucosal barrier is also found in sinuses and genital defenses.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-professionals/digestive-diseases/news/food-sensitivities-may-affect-gut-barrier-function/mac-20429973
7
We are culturally deluding ourselves. We have no health-care. We have disease-care. Obesity requires proceeding on all possible research fronts. Lifestyle, microbiome, heavily taxing the sugar/salt/fat industrial complex.
We stuff down emotions with Twinkies. Unhappy? Eat. Angry? Eat. Bored? Eat.
Loneliness can never be satisfied with food, tho its impossible to call machine extruded calories food. Trillions with a "T" wasted on post 9/11 security, while education gets its ever exposed throat cut. The most powerful country human history has ever seen is filled with people who feel powerless to change. Who needs science fiction?
31
I couldn’t agree more. The only candidate for president to speak such truths was not on the debate stage Thursday night.
1
@emcoolj: speak for yourself.
I hate Twinkies, even as a KID I couldn't stand them.
I know a number of very fat people, and they do not constantly stuff Twinkies in their faces.
Also: taxing foods you disapprove is a kind of morality game -- like conservatives wanting to tax SEX or birth control! -- it won't end up with "everyone slender" but with a huge black market in "forbidden foods".
2
If this therapy is shown to be effective, I think it is likely that ongoing "fecal supplementation" will be necessary. But why not? I already pay good money for pills full of bacteria! And I don't think it is a silver bullet, just another small nudge to better health.
3
Some facts: First, "obesity" is poorly defined in both the clinical and research communities. It almost always depends on BMI (Body Mass Index). Statistically and scientifically, BMI is not designed to define obesity for individuals. Yet, many studies improperly do so. Second, this article properly shows that the science, although promising, is still equivocal regarding the relationship between the gut microbiome and metabolism. Third, metabolic abnormalities (obesity, diabetes, etc.) are complex and multifactorial. They are a spectrum i.e. there is no single cause; hence, no single cure through dietary/life style, fecal transplants, or pharmaceuticals. As the article suggests, considerable promise lies in "personalized medicine" that relies on diagnosing and treating individuals and/or cohorts based on their specific etiology. Sorry, but hope is misplaced for a miracle pill, whether it's a drug or someone else's poop.
10
Much of what Americans eat barely resembles food, and all of it is adulterated: 80% of packaged foods have added sugars to keep the addicted coming back. Coke famously contains salt to encourage consumption, and about 16 teaspoons of sugar in it to conceal the salt. Next to a table laden with fresh fruits and vegetables, the gloppy, greasy, glazed processed foods people eat, and worse, feed their children, is a vast beige wasteland. American schools ladle cheap slop out to children every day. Almost every other country offers their school children delectable, healthy meals which they eat, because they are fed real food at home. The gut microbiome is incredibly important, but we cannot expect it to cope with the tons of garbage people continue to eat.
164
@Kathy Is this really what people eat or is it what we are being told they eat? Coke isn’t a food; it’s supplementary. I that most Americans eat their regular meals at McDonalds. If they’re anything like their obese Canadian cousins, they’re just eating too much and going everywhere by car. By the time they realise they need to lose weight, they’ve put on so many pounds that they face a long, difficult struggle. Along with genetics and the tendencies for our metabolisms to adjust to weight loss and weight gain, our lifestyles contribute to the obesity problem.
I don’t know about other countries, but in Canada most schools don’t provide lunch. Children either go home for lunch or bring a meal prepared at home.
5
I have a slightly different concern.
I believe the micro-biome to be completely real and important
when doing a colonoscopy with a severe cleans. shouldn't something be done to preserve my personal micro-biome?
28
@rsercely, yes, I've wondered the same thing. Once it's stripped down, I'd love to have something equally agressive to build it right back up. It would be interesting to see if there's a trend toward digestive problems in the weeks after colonoscopy prep.
9
@rsercely
Some of the bacteria get flushed out but many/most are living on the walls of the GI tract.
A better question is what happens when you take antibiotics which are meant to kill bacteria somewhere else in your body, but must first transit the GI tract to be absorbed. Typically, even when you take antibiotics your system is able to restore the pre-existing populations of bacteria (I've always suspected the GI tract has some type of reservoir of bacteria that is not affected by antibiotics.)
But frequent use of antibiotics, or a seriously huge one-time dose can wipe out most or all of the GI bacteria. This leaves you vulnerable to colonization by harmful bugs like C. Diff which coat the GI tract, making it impossible for the "good" bacteria to establish themselves. Your system responds by trying to flush the C. Diff, may be unsuccessful, you've got massive diarrhea and dehydration, and a big problem. One reason to use caution when contemplating antibiotic use.
18
Take a probiotic, found in refrigerator of your local health food store.
I was overweight my whole life and stopped drinking alcohol. Miraculously my weight problem disappeared - as well as a number of other health issues, including insomnia.
Countless weight loss methods are pitched, all studiously avoiding the fact that consuming a toxic, flammable substance damages your body and mind. Even this newspaper has a Wine column dedicated to consumption of this harmful substance.
50
@Steve Slayton
Keep in mind, too, that not only do alcoholic drinks contain sugar, they also affect the drinker's blood sugar levels.
https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/alcohol-facts/health-effects-of-alcohol/effects-on-the-body/alcohol-and-sugar/
3
@Steve, I was overweight all of my life and then I stopped drinking alcohol and my weight problem got worse.
3
@Steve Slayton yes that's why the French are known for their staggering rates of obesity. I wonder why that "French women don't get fat" book was a bestseller?
2
I have just returned from a Norwegian cruise and I just could not believe the number of fat and seriously obese people on this ship.
Not just North Americans but also Europeans.
But looking at the size of their food helpings and the type of food they were eating it is not surprising that they look like they do.
Whilst medical science may try to offer a solution, in the end these people got the way they are through what they put in their mouths. They are literally “digging their graves with their teeth”.
In my opinion, in the future, the global fat/obesity problem will rank second to climate change and will result in huge medical costs, a poor quality of life and lower life expectancies.
With most governments in the pocket of the food industry it is unlikely this problem will be solved in the near future.
The solution lies with the next generation that hopefully will “wake up” to the fact the benefits of a good diet and excercise outweigh “stuffing your face”.
45
I've read a few books on this topic, so this article has me wondering. The new biome must be fed with fiber also known as prebiotics, which these volunteers eat little if any to keep the new biome alive. How could this experiment possibly work at all?
9
One can build up a good microbiome over many years or decades, and then take an antibiotic, which ruins it. Of course we have to take antibiotics when we need them, but we really, really should not take them when we do not -- for this and many other reasons. Yet people take them for almost anything, assuming incorrectly that there is no downside.
One of the main reason that animals in the torture-factory farms get so many antibiotics is that it makes them gain more weight with less feed, saving money for those who eat their corpses.
42
I think the scientists are complicating the obesity problem in the US, obesity has more to do with what the people eat, how much they eat and when they eat. Let’s all get back to 3 meals a day, no snacks, no sodas and their high sugar content, and less fast food. Everybody would lost weight without even trying! And by the way, the idea of free medical care for all US citizens is a farce as all the obese people would tax the system.
19
As someone who works out 6 days a week and lifts weights a high protein low carb diet and eating 5 meals a day is what works. During the week I eat no more than 2100 calories a day and allow myself one day a week where I can relax the rules and eat 2500-3000 calories.
Believe me I’m 44 and have the body of a 30 year old. It works.
2
Supports one wise physician’s observation that overweight/obese people are not obese because they overeat, but they overeat because they are obese.
17
That appears to be part of the case, if you read Always Hungry by Dr. David Ludwig.
9
"Their ideal candidates were people who said they could eat whatever they wanted and still remain skinny."
I've been fascinated for years by the people who totally accept and sympathize with people who can't gain weight, but totally vilify and blame those who can't lose it. And I'm seeing exactly that in many of the comments here.
My first husband and his mother were both in the first category. He was eating the exact same diet as far as produce, starches, fat and sugar as I was, in much larger portions, and remained stick thin. His mother had to go on 'diets' to try to gain weight since no medical reason could be found for her weight loss. Both remained skinny for their entire lives.
My daughter was raised mostly by them and is built exactly like I was before health problems limited my mobility - definitely overweight by BMI but very muscular.
There is obviously something going on other than (or at least in addition to) the standard 'it's all diet and exercise' theories.
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@Amoret It is all diet and exercise. Anything else is just food addict rationalization.
Food is for nutrition not profit.
3
@Amoret
Your story is pretty easily explained by the fact that men have higher resting metabolism than women.
@ScottB
If it is about addiction, then there is much more going on than simple calories and exercise.
Here's a hint: some foods are more satiating than others, independent of calories. Other foods are less satiating, or even stimulate more appetite.
The type and quality of foods matters.
5
While the emphasis is on weight loss, I wonder whether it might not be worthwhile running experiments on people who have lost weight/gained weight/lost weight -- at a point in time when their most recent diet has, once again, returned them to a normal weight. The greatest difficulty for people who are able to diet off excess weight is keeping it off. Perhaps the "correct" blend of gut flora introduced at the end of a successful weight loss program might aid in the mainentance phase that, all too often, proves to be a failure.
9
It is common to experience rapid and effortless weight loss during extended periods of time spent in the Mediterranean, without dieting, enjoying wonderful food. I believe this could be a microbiome issue. The food in a country like Greece or Italy is much closer to the land that produced it, and not riddled with hormones and antibiotics like the gunge in the USA. Obviously hormones and antibiotics could have a deleterious effect on gut bacteria!
There need to be studies about how people lose or gain weight simply by changing geographic location. I think these would reveal a lot.
31
I lost 30 pounds, without trying, when I lived in Peru for six months. Eventually I was told that my body could not get used to the local flora and fauna and I should go home if I wanted to stop having the runs constantly and losing weight. I was eating at home and using boiled water for everything.
8
@Artemisia The ban on hormones and antibiotics applies to the European Union, not just Italy and Greece. They also have much stricter controls on the use of pesticides. I wish we had those E.U. regulations here.
9
I agree. All of US wheat and some other grains are sprayed twice with Glyphosate (Roundup by Monsanto) in the growing cycle. We are being poisoned. I know numerous Americans who identify with being gluten intolerant who say they have no reactions to wheat when in France or Italy. We have no idea how what goes into the growing of our food is doing to our health.
5
The most important thing, from an immune perspective, about the microbiota is that it exists in the first place; it is a relatively stable community of good bacteria, which has maximized its growth based on existing nutrients, occupies the GI tract and resists attempts by harmful bacteria that get past the stomach to colonize the GI tract. Invaders are told to "keep moving" in no uncertain terms.
To be effective, you'd have to figure out how to "replace" the existing bacteria with the new "lean" ones or they'd suffer the same fate as other invading bugs. So diet obviously would need to be modified somehow.
4
American metabolic disorder deserves more study. I'm willing to bet that along with the other cited factors, the American habit of working overlong hours and skipping vacations has a significant role in establishing and maintaining metabolic disorder in spite of changes to diet and even exercise. Do we know the effect of the habituation of exhaustion on the microbiome? I've seen nothing on the subject from any source. Until we have this information, our understanding of the American microbiome is necessarily incomplete.
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@Pete Rogan
Main factors for poor overall health in the US include:
Poor Diet, which can easily be improved if a person chooses to.
Stress, which plays into all manner of chemical imbalances in the human body, and in the fast paced technology connected society.. is getting worse rather then better.
Lack of exercise, which is a growing issue with so many jobs being non-physical labor oriented now days. This too is easily corrected with a moderate and regular exercise program.
Environmental poisons, which is a continuing issue, and not one that the individual can do a lot about.. because they cannot control all aspects of their environment.
Imbalance between mental, emotional, and physical, which is a consequence of our rush rush sound bite society now days. The fact is, simple mediation and or energy exercises (like light forms of yoga) can address a lot of this imbalance... but of course people are simply too busy and pre-occupied in many cases to step back and pay quality time and attention to this.
All of the above are essentially lifestyle related and as such can be adjusted quite well by adjusting lifestyle.. rather then going to whatever current diet, diet pill, or exercise fad is being peddled by some grifter at any given point in time.
3
@Chuck You fail to mention poor sleep in either quantity or quality both of which decrease sensitivity to knowing when you’ve eaten enough and voilà poundage galore! Many, many factors as the article notes go into the determination of who gains inordinate weight and who doesn’t.
2
Look at the Twinkies, the doughnuts, the ice cream, the white bread, the cakes, the pies, the huge slabs of red meat in a really obese person's basket at the grocery. And exercise? What is that?
10
@Sarah99 You're making a vast generalization that is surely based on quite limited observations.
That's cruel. Generalizations lead to self-hate; self-hate does not promote dieting, exercise, or overcoming the problems below. Many people do overeat--but for many reasons:
*Once fat cells are in place, they clamor for calories. Eat less, and you're in agonizing hunger night and day.
*Gut bacteria likely play a role as well.
*Certain medications cause desperate hunger, and the few alternatives have similar side effects.
*It's now recognized that people with trauma histories (e.g., those who score high on the ACE screening) tend to self-sooth with unhealthy behaviors such as overeating.
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@Sarah99
Your scenario is true for some obese people. Others just absorb every calorie and eat relatively little - my mother was in the latter category. Eating became a nightmare.
29
I am obese and my grocery cart is always loaded with fresh fruit and vegetables, unrefined carbs, and lean meats. Often I’ll look over and see some slender person’s cart loaded up with Twinkies and Doritos. And yet they will never get the kind of looks I know I would get if I did the same thing. Instead they get lauded for being able to eat whatever they want and still stay thin.
20
Calculate the calories consumed and the energy expended from an obese person and you'll find what everyone else knows: the obese consumer more calories -- a lot more. Walk by the line at an ice cream shop. This research does no service to the obese who already feel helpless at overcoming their obesity. The obese eat to self-medicate. Solve THAT problem.
19
Any discussion of gut microbiome is incomplete if it does not include the role food plays in the establishment and maintenance of healthy (or unhealthy) gut microbiome. There is an enormous amount of research indicating that a whole food plant based diet is far healthier than the standard American diet.
10
@Patsy But what is “the standard American diet”? We need something more specific than this phrase to define what we’re talking about. It’s a massive generalisation to say that most Americans follow the same diet. Does anyone you know follow this standard? A few? The majority?
I live outside the U.S. but the food culture here is similar. Lots of people are obese, but we also have a growing number of vegans. Diets also vary depending on what part of the country you’re talking about and whether you’re looking at urban or rural areas. I don’t think I could define a standard diet based on the people I know.
3
@Brenda
What you say is so true. You seem to know more than people who actually are citizens here. I'm constantly telling people not to blame others for their weight issues. Unless they're confined to an institution or a small child at home, they can choose what they eat. This country has many choices. And, even if they were forced to eat less than healthy stuff, they can always eat less. Nobody can make someone become obese.
As for the gut microbiome, I've never had a problem with it, regardless of my diet at any given time of my life. In fact, didn't even know it existed and still have small interest in it because no issues there. If people are like me, it won't make any difference to them.
Is it possible that the cocktail of chemicals we ingest every day, courtesy of our food industry, favors certain harmful strains and starves the beneficial ones? We also used to be bombarded by a much greater variety of germs when it came to our food; perhaps in the ensuing intestinal melee, the good guys won out.
37
OK, it's not a solution by itself. But there are lot of people trying very hard not to put on weight and not being too successful. If this helps a significant number of people be more successful at this, it would be a tremendous boon.
90
It's really rather simple is'n it. The government is poisoning us to increase profits for business. They took whole milk away from school children which gave them a 2nd income in selling the removed fat. They have totally destroyed wheat, a food that has fed the entire civilized world, and made it worthless. They have killed 300,000 with opioids. They have invented HFCS and refuse to look at its ability to change our brains to reduce our feelings of fullness. They forced aspartame on us by replacing the head of the FDA after 8 years of refusals.
And there is much more. Wikipedia has a whole page on the mistakes of the FDA.
It is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Food_and_Drug_Administration
Simply put they have been wrong so many times that they have no creditability.
Obesity is the response of our bodies to a huge variety of unhealthily foods and chemicals fostered on us by a profit seeking government.
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@Allan Absolutely it is Big Ag and the feds which continue to serve school kids junk for lunch and add tons of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides to our foods. It isn't any wonder we have messed up microbiomes? Look at the old movies, very few were overweight in the 50's and 60's before corn sweetener was added to every food in the US.
55
@Allan - it was the corporations - agri-business - that pushed all this.
You mistakenly blame government for corporate greed.
9
@Allan What, you don’t believe in “freedom” of food choice?! Indeed there is plenty to complain of but The Times comment section isn’t the place. Try writing your MOC or better yet working for the candidate running for office who supports your view and is willing to legislate for it. Or better yet: willing to limit the money they get from the food lobbyists.
When I first moved in the seventies to the United States from Europe I was appalled by the obesity afflicting Americans .
I soon noticed that fast food shops , stressful and competitive life style , ever present sodas machines , the high cost of fresh veggies and fruits, the low cost of high calories and low nutrition food ( for example any refined sugar and flour) , the sedentary life , the availability of oversize clothing stores , etc , were at the basis of this obesity problem .
This overweight problem has become a medical emergency with diabetes, high cholesterol, increased joint pathology requiring prosthetic devices ,increased depression, cancer and other related pathologies etc .
Obesity is not only a disease afflicting adults it has become an emergency in pediatrics .
We are looking for the magic pill , even inquiring about fecal transplant from skinny people , even though we know the answer lies right in front of us , eating the right food in moderation, moving and finding time to just relax .
I will never forget Michelle Obama , our unforgettable First Lady , who fought so hard to help Americans regain their health through healthy diets starting with children and school lunches .
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@inter nos
Let's not also forget Michelle Obama " let's move " campaign, inciting children to play and move, so "normal " when I was growing up...
Too much videogames and smart phones are ruining children's eyesight and interoersonal relations and favoring obesity .
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That Michelle Obama campaign was just as effective as Nancy Reagan’s just say no campaign was, in the war on drugs. Thanks Michelle!
6
@inter nos Yes, Michelle Obama, who had a private chef to prepare healthful meals for her family, and staff to tend her much-publicized garden.
14
As stated in the article the science of gut microbiome is in its infancy and much remains unknown, however reading the comments it would appear that the commenters see themselves as experts on the subject and draw conclusions that the real experts would never elucidate.
68
The discussion of gut microbiome is very intriguing. Like all have said, changing the diet is the treatment for faulty gut microbiomes. all this swallowing of poop is largely unnecessary.
A whole food plant based diet is the ultimate cure for all. and the science is mounting.
12
These responders mirror the rage in the medical community that occurred when Warren and Marshall published a report in the 1980s on use of combined antibiotic treatment to cure peptic ulcer disease. In 2005, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery.
In addition, in both the article and the letters, there is a fair amount of bashing of obese people, who must have done SOMETHING (or everything) wrong. We do not have a Nobel Prize for food quality. USDA, agriculture and food companies push food that increases their bottom lines, often distinctly unhealthy, rather than food that is good for human beings. Perhaps the letter writers who know what is wrong should devote their time and energy to making certain everyone can obtain and pay for and cook good ingredients (and know how to), rather than have to worry about stretching the $ to pay to have anything in their stomachs.
Research actually does not indicate that one's microbiome can be changed by changing one's diet. Not in animals, not in people. Perhaps you can increase this a little, decrease that, but not major change in type or variety of organisms. Probably the biggest effect is destruction (simplification) of the microbiome by antibiotics both in/on food and given to people as well as animals. And one has to be quite "wealthy" to "buy organic" which only decreases antibiotic intake (see: antibiotics in water, etc).
In short, a promising method is being met by firm incompetence.
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@meryl
Proper diet provides better quality and variety of food intake and said food is in fact in many cases a pre-biotic that sets up proper balance and conditions for gut diversity that is supportive of improved digestion, intake of nutrients, and hence colon health... and the colon is the single largest immune system in the human body.
Poor gut health is probably causative of much more in the way of chronic health problems then researchers or people are willing to admit to.
2
@meryl Some can afford organic by eating less. I remember running into a neighbour in a nearby organic food store who lived in public housing and who ate organic. We used to chat while walking our dogs. She also made sure her dog got good quality dog food. Neither were obese.
3
Everyone is looking for a miracle pill that will allow them to continue overeating, and all the wrong foods. The nutritionists have been saying for ages, eat healthy foods in moderation . You don't have to get up from the table saying I'm stuffed....if you feel that way after a meal of portion controlled foods, then you are eating too much. Push yourself away from the table. That is the miracle cure.
17
@Mk: is the the "miracle cure" for C Diff, also?
Because actual SCIENCE disagrees with you.
1
Obesity cure? I've never seen obesity in anyone whose diet consists of mostly fresh, well-grown fruits and vegetables. These are what promotes a healthy gut microbiome.
Most "health care professionals" are not taught to identify and eliminate the cause of health problems. Processed foods, animal fats have long been the root cause of health problems. We live in a gluttonous society.
The cure to obesity begins with proper nutrition education at a young age. Proper means studying a holistic curriculum that isn't funded by the same corporations with ties to the foods that cause these diseases in the first place.
Imagine that.
38
Anyone who has worked with microorganisms in a microbiology laboratory knows that the growth medium they are placed in determines which microbes grow and which do not. So in addition to having the "right" bacteria introduced into your gut, you must also have the right environment which is a function of the foods you eat and probably things like stress which is part of the important gut-brain connection.
Eat healthy, manage stress and chances are you won't need to ingest fecal material.
46
@A Goldstein; please re-read the article. The healthy slender donors were chosen because they could eat anything: “ Their ideal candidates were people who said they could eat whatever they wanted and still remain skinny.”
19
@Luk Brown Good point. But I’d question the choice of skinny people who ate whatever they wanted. For some people, eating whatever you want means eating mostly healthy food in small proportions.
3
No: “eating whatever you want” means, I think, that the complex signaling we call “appetite” tells you to stop eating before you take in calories that will be stored as fat. And it doesn’t signal you to start eating again unless you truly need calories to be used for current energy needs.
We don’t understand appetite very well. But we do know that most of us, given unlimited access to calorie dense foods, will use our appetite involuntarily to pack those on the hips against the possibility of famine. That choice, which we call “appetite” is harder to fight consciously for some of us than others. Don’t judge.
4
The microbiome is influenced by diet. Change the diet, change the microbiome.
Switching to a varied plant based whole food eating habit changes the microbiome to a healthier mix. Food is actually “prebiotics” which feeds the microbiome, or “probiotics.” A lot of the plant fiber that we can’t digest is used as a food source by bacteria, who in turn secrete short chain fatty acids such as butyrate which not only feed our intestinal wall cells but also act in other beneficial ways on us.
And most people eating plant based whole foods lose weight, go off drugs for lifestyle conditions and diseases (such as type 2 diabetes) and are overall healthier.
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@Dr. J
I agree with Dr. J. My wife and I went on a whole food plant based diet 3 years ago. No meat, eggs, fish, or dairy, no added oil, salt or sugar. The argument against carbs is false. Yes, refined carbs are bad but intact whole carbs is part of the solution, among the best grains include whole (hulled) barley and whole rye. Beans and legumes are excellent. Starches such as sweet potatoes are excellent. Eating lots of beans, greens, onions, mushrooms, vegetables and fruit is the way to go. You need to supplement with B12. This is not diet of limited food, it is a lifestyle of abundance. We eat whenever we are hungry and we eat huge portions.You will feel much healthier, and the weight will roll off, and you will never need to diet again. Dieting will not work, counting calories will not work. However following a whole food plant based diet of unprocessed food with no added sugar, salt or oil will make you lean, happy and healthy.
7
YES!! I have been very fat and somewhat fat my whole life. I weighed 215 at 10 years old and had two very skinny siblings. Losing weight has always been difficult and no matter how hard I exercised or how little I ate, my weight never changed much. Losing weight is not about eat less move more because I do all that.
Four months ago I started the Plant Paradox diet which is geared towards healing the gut, diversifying microbiome, and eliminating lectins all through a plant based approach. I have easily lost 20 pounds (and still losing), eliminated all joint pain, sleep deeply, and most amazingly have no hunger or food cravings. My goal is to heal my autoimmune disease. My body is a whole different shape. I believe treating just about anything in the future will involve healthy diversity of microbiome.
7
Obesity does not exist in countries experiencing famine eg Yemen, parts of Ethiopia. It is the over-consumption of food and / or the wrong types of food which causes obesity. There are some rare metabolic disorders which cause weight gain. But in general obesity should not be medicalised or labelled a disease which can be cured through medical interventions. The complications of obesity (diabetes etc) may be managed medically; but the precipitating factor, obesity, is not a disease.
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@JJ
Well said!
14
@JJ And you know this for a fact, exactly how? Because if you truly do know this, the world and certainly those suffering from obesity need your input and not just your opinion which may be based on nothing.
2
@JJ
It's not just other places, it's also other times right here in America. I have watched some documentaries recently about America in the 1950s and early 1960s. Almost everyone was slim. That was before factory farming completely took over animal agriculture.
5
Research has a role to play in seeking an obesity cure but equal attention needs to focus on other factors, such as the commercialization of unhealthy foods, and the determination of the food and beverage industry to defeat every initiative to reduce unhealthy ingredients in food and drink.
212
It’s hilarious to read all the comments here saying commercial interests are to blame for selling Americans what they demand. We definitely need another massive government agency to put a halt to this - let’s call it the Department of Overweight Assessment ... the DOA.
13
@Steve Slayton You have it exactly backwards. There's already a massive government agency that regulates unhealthy foods – it's called the USDA, and it spends billions of dollars every year subsidizing refined sugars and other unhealthy ingredients.
Through subsidies, tariffs, and artificial refinement restrictions, the US Sugar Program maintains an artificially low cost of sugar. Those savings (which we all pay for) are then passed on to candy manufacturers, fast food companies, and everyone else that profits from adding a dirt-cheap, highly addictive substance to their food products (which is why everything from salad dressings to steak sauce has sugar in it).
Part of the solution to making American food healthier actually requires LESS government. Four billion dollars less, at the very least.
4