Experimental Fat Loss
This post explains some of the ways in which I think about obesity, and why I rely more on some types of evidence than others.
Black box analysis treats a system as an impenetrable mystery. It just looks at the inputs and outputs. I like this as a first step: let’s just establish the facts.
Diabetes has exploded world-wide since 1980, approximately quadrupling, growing in pretty much every region & country in the world:
The data is more sparse going further back in time, but it had actually already gotten way worse compared to 1900. Obesity is estimated to have been exceedingly rare in the 1800s, even among rich Westerners, as were diabetes (pretty much only Type 1 back then) and heart disease. The earliest data seems to be height & weight data from the Civil War, and obesity was at maybe 1% in military aged men.
Obesity, diabetes, heart disease: These are the “diseases of civilization.” Clearly, something about “civilization” is killing us. The question is just, which part?
