Comment by 462436347

1 year ago

The point is the added calories aren't coming from sugar, contrary to what everyone here thinks. And even if sugar did somehow magically make you fat regardless of calories, sugar consumption has actually gone down, yet the obesity and diabetes epidemics have only gotten worse.

But, body weight increase is going to correspond to the "area under the graph" (the integral) and NOT the current level (the instantaneous value).

Yes, it's nice that we're getting sugar consumption back down to 1970 levels so we don't keep adding more obese people to the cohort, but that doesn't help everybody who gained weight prior to 2020.

From 1995 to 2005, people ate roughly an extra 10 pounds relative to 1970 of bodyweight in sugar every single year. That's an extra 100 pounds in bodyweight over 10 years if you don't adjust something else. That's huge. Literally.

  • Obesity isn't something that stays around if you consume less calories over 20 years.

    • Actually, there is significant research that shows that childhood obesity is an excellent predictor of adulthood obesity. Because sugar drinks made it so easy to take in way too many calories for children and hence became overweight, we now have a big cohort of adults with weight problems.

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    • Once you become a young adult, from that point on the total number of fat cells is conserved. Even liposuction will not change that.

      This isn't completely hopeless, though. Fat cells "remember" the weight you are when they are created and fat cells turn over roughly 25% per year. However, it does mean that you need to hold your weight down for 3+ years for new fat cells to forget about the "fatter" you.

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