People Are Actually Believing This Hoax!

[LisaL]

science.slashdot.org/story/12/12/22/2130210/specific-gut-bacteria-may-account-for-much-obesity www.piercepioneer.com/woman-turns-obese-receiving-fecal-transplant-obese-daughter/37625 www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2010/07/gut-reaction-are-intestinal-bacteria-making-us-fat - This one outright says the idea that you will lose weight if you burn more calories than you consume is not correct. Because screw the laws of thermodynamics, scientists need made up studies to try and make obese people feel better and that certainly won't contribute to MORE obesity. How do these GENUISES explain why people in famine, the holocaust etc weren't fat?

 

Moreover, why are most dieticians slim?

Edited May 29, 2015 by CraigD
Added links

[CraigD]

I don't think these 3 articles, or the journal paper and other news articles the reference (ie journalist Sharon Begley’s 7/5/10 Newsweek article “How Intestinal Bacteria May Make You Fat”), are hoaxes.

Rather, they suggest that differences in organisms that inhabit different people’s guts play a role in whether those people are obese or not.

Begley’s article and the MinnPost article that quotes it state,

“while the basic math [body mass change = calories in - calories out] is right, the meaning of “calories in” isn’t what we’ve been taught”

Though Begley takes liberties in assuming she know what her readers have been taught, the idea that different people gain different amounts of food energy from identical meals isn’t nonsense. Certainly, a person with a disease that prevent them from digesting food well get less than a normal person gets from the same meal.

Though the causes of digestive disease – or variability among non-diseased people – are difficult to discover, it’s not difficult to precisely measure the “calories in” of a given meal series of meals for a given person. Measure the energy of the person’s meals in a bomb calorimeter. Measure the energy in the person feces the same way. The difference in these measurements is the “calories in” energy the person gained from the meals.

You can measure the “calories out” energy by enclosing the person in a practically perfectly insulated room and measure the heat increase in it. This is called a “direct” “whole room calorimeter”. Other kinds of whole room calorimeters don’t directly measure heat, but indirectly measure related quantities such as oxygen and CO₂ input and output.

You can then confirm that body mass change = food energy in – feces energy out by measuring the person’s before and after mass, being careful that the mass due to hydration is the same before and after. In principle, if you surgically removed the new fat, muscle, and other tissues of a person who gained mass and measured it in the calorimeter, the equation would balance precisely.

This has actually been done (except for the surgical part – standard energy/mass values for fat and muscle were used), but only rarely, to validate basic physiological theory. The results, which I was taught in decades ago in physiology class, indicated that there was little difference in people’s the (energy in - energy out)/(energy in) “dietary efficiency”.

If researchers like the ones mentioned in these articles are right in their speculation, however, there may be significant differences in peoples dietary efficiency, due to significant differences in their gut microorganisms. Or differences in these gut microorganisms may change peoples perception of when they are hungry or full, leading them to eat more or less and/or higher or lower energy density foods.

While people who haven’t had much difficulty maintaining a body mass they like might find research like this irrelevant, from a public health point of view, such people are irrelevant, because they rarely become obese and pose a healthcare burden. Research that can discover a safe dietary supplement or drug therapy that effectively reduces obesity would be beneficial.

It could also make a company owning such drugs or supplements a lot of money.

Unfortunately, a drugs of supplements that only claim to, but don’t actually reduce obesity, can make their vendors a lot of money, too. Willfully doing this is hoaxing.