Refined sugar, animal products, artificial sweeteners, the microbiome, pollutants, protein,
obese animals, addiction, infection, behaviour modification and mind-alteration - our overweight
and obesity epidemic is a lot more complex than just calories in vs. calories out.
Keep watching to find out how!
It is obvious that our global overweight and obesity epidemic has been brought about by
problems with our diet.
But besides the obvious issue of over-eating, there have been multiple syngergistic mechanisms
studied and described by which our diet causes weight gain and prevents weight loss, such
that if one contemplates them all together it is little wonder why so few people successfuly
lose weight and keep it off, and also allows one to appreciate just how tough it is for
people trying to lose weight by conventional means of calorie-counting, If It Fits Your Macros, portion
control and so on.
This is independent of the complex psychology of body image and weight loss, which I am
not going to discuss in this video as I am not a psychologist and would not feel qualified
to comment on.
One hugely detrimental component of the modern diet is refined sugar.
Consumption of refined sugar has skyrocketed since the 19th century, and brings with it
a myriad of diet-related pathology, not least of which is weight gain and obesity.
When we consume refined sugar it is absorbed into the blood stream at an extremely rapid
rate and a rate that our physiology did not evolve to deal with.
As a result, a massive release of insulin occurs to try and get the situation under
control and to get the blood sugar level back down.
Unfortunately, because the amount of insulin released is disproportionate to the blood
sugar level, a few hours after a meal our blood sugar actually drops below where it
started.
And falling blood sugar is one of our primary hunger stimuli - causing more eating and more
weight gain.
This is one of the mechanisms by which refined sugar and its resultant supraphysiological
rate of ingestion and absorption far above anything that would be seen with a naturally-occuring
food undermines the body's ability to regulate intake of free sugar, and how the brain appears
to be unable to detect and compensate for the extra calories it provides - especially
it seems with sugar-sweetened beverages.
So how do we combat this?
Refined sugar is now well-characterised as a problem in our diet, and this thankfully
has disseminated enough to become common public knowledge.
As a result, there is a huge market force for an alternative, one of the consequences of which
is the advent of artificially-sweetened foods and non-nutritive sweeteners.
Unfortunately, various sweeteners have been implicated in a diverse range of serious health
consequences including cancer and depression, but as it pertains to body weight they all
share one common problem - the use of artificial sweeteners has been consistently correlated
with weight GAIN, instead of weight loss.
While this paradoxical correlation might be explained perhaps by people that are already
overweight tending to favour artificial sweeteners over sugar in an example of reverse causation,
other hypotheses to explain this paradox have been proposed.
There is the obvious "now I can eat anything" mentality that leads to overindulgence if
for example a diet beverage is consumed with a meal.
Also, because non-nutritive sweeteners are non-nutritive and hence provide no calories,
despite the sweet taste perceived by the brain the intestine does not provide the corresponding
satiety signals or the expected rise in blood glucose to tell the brain it's time to stop
eating.
Additionally, unlike giving up sugar and sweeteners altogether, using artificial sweeteners maintains
the craving for sweet foods and we may still choose sugar-sweetened foods over healthy
alternatives due to these cravings, even if some of the time we are faithfully using the artificial
sweeteners.
Additionally, some sweeteners work by being unabsorbable.
They do contain calories, but these calories are not usable by the body because the sweetener
is not absorbed through the intestinal wall, and that is how they provide sweetness without
the calories.
However, the sweetener itself is still a usable fuel source for metabolism, and because it
is not absorbed, it accumulates to a high concentration in our intestine where
it can feed bacteria.
These dysbiotic bacteria are implicated in a range of adverse health consequences, including
impaired blood sugar control and weight gain.
A recently-discovered potential mechanism by which these dysbiotic bacteria cause weight
gain is by enhancing carbohydrate absorption and availability in the intestine.
In fact, the standard Western diet in general favours the growth of these dybiotic, obesity-causing bacteria.
Meat-eaters have been shown to posess more of these bacteria that can more easily extract
calories from food and make them available for absorption compared with vegetarians,
adding to one's daily caloric excess and hence gain more weight without even eating a single
extra bite.
Additionally, these obesity-associated bacteria can interfere with our endocrine system, predisposing
towards weight gain by inhibiting the breakdown of fat and through other mechanisms.
They can even control our eating behaviour by altering brain activity and preference
or cravings for unhealthy foods!
The obesity-causing effect of these dysbiotic bacteria is so powerful that just having contact
with an obese person can potentially result in transfer of some of the bacteria and may
predispose towards weight gain in another person.
And on top of all of this, certain pollutants found in cigarette smoke, air pollution and
meat have obesogenic properties that further disrupt our endocrine system to favour fat
accumulation, in addition to the weight-gaining effects of hormones in meat and dairy products.
The fattening effect of meat and these so-called obesogenic chemicals is so powerful it even
appears to predispose a mother's children to obesity before they are even born if her
own diet was rich in animal protein, primarily meat, an effect independent of how much they
ate or exercised.
This situation is then compounded by feeding cow's milk infant formula to babies and thence
the consumption of dairy throughout life, both of which are strong risk factors for
obesity - a finding which is not surprising given that cow's milk is specifically crafted
by nature to promote the growth of a calf at an extremely rapid rate.
Even the animals themselves have become obese over time through selection, use of growth-promoting
hormones and antibiotics and intensive farming.
This has resulted in even the animal products commonly thought of as being less-fattening
playing a major role in our obesity epidemic, especially chicken, which though traditionally
seen as a low-fat food now provides 2-3 times more calories from fat than from protein.
And as if that weren't enough, infection with certain viruses that are thought to have mutated
from chicken-borne viruses is associated with increased BMI.
These viruses have been so well-studied that the mechanisms by which they cause weight
gain have even been described in-vitro, and like obesity-causing bacteria, are transmissible
from person-to-person.
An important final common pathway for the fattening effect of the standard Western diet is the highly-addictive,
hyperpalatible nature of processed foods and animal products.
Salty, fatty, energy-rich foods and especially sugar are now known to produce neurobiological
and behavioural responses analogous to addictive drugs, overriding homeostasis mechanisms and
leading to overeating and weight gain which is very hard to control.
And very simply, habitual consumption of these intense flavours desensitises our palate,
so we continuously require intensely sugary, fatty foods to satisfy our taste buds.
In summary, refined sugar, artificial sweeteners, animal products and the obesity-permissive
intestinal microbiome their consumption promotes, in addition to obesity-causing pollutants,
protein and hormones AND the condition of the very animals themselves that we eat, promotes
a vicious circle of addiction and obesity that is actually infectious.
When you put all of these things together, it's no wonder why so many people find it so hard
to lose weight.
And remember, just like any element of nutrition, these factors all contribute a relative risk
- each individual factor might only raise the risk of weight gain slightly.
But if all these factors combine, the risk approaches 7 out of 10 - the current rate
of overweight and obesity in the US.
And the perfect way to combine all these factors and maximise your chance of getting fat is
to eat the standard Western diet.
But this is good news!
If all of these factors are combined in one unhealthy eating pattern, we can eliminate
them all in one fell swoop by changing our diet!
But it's even better than that...stay tuned for part 2 when I'll be discussing how a whole
foods, plant-based diet can actually ACTIVELY help us lose weight AND keep it off, as well
as just displacing all these unhealthy foods.
Thanks for watching, if you have any questions or comments leave them in the comment section
below and I'll get back to you.
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