BBC Documentary: Why Are Thin People Not Fat?

Interesting documentary. Nothing mindblowing though.

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just watched the whole thing. lot’s of interesting stuff in there. thanks for posting.

It was interesting. But poorly done imo. The food they had them all eating wasn’t accounted for in anyway other than calorie content, which is quite absurd. For them to completely ignore or not represent the amount/ratio of P/F/C that they consumed is misleading at best.
They didn’t have them exercising at all, and enocouraged them to not take more than 5k steps in a day. This is a perfect recipe for creating an obese person.
At the end, they went on to say that your genes just determine what your bodyweight will be, b/c the subject’s weights went back down to where they previously were. NO SHIT!! They started eating and moving how they used to. Big fucking surprise here.
So like I said, while it was interesting, it was misleading and gives the impression to fatties that it’s there genes fault.

The whole concept of genetic medicine and looking for the cause of lifestyle diseases in the genome worries me. People have a difficult time in getting their heads around the fact that environment influences the expression of genes, in this case environment = exercise, nutrition, daily stressors etc.

To say that obesity is genetic is to ignore the fact that obesity is an expression of one possible set of genetic outcomes and that environmental changes can influence the expression of that genotype; something we should all be very familiar with. Next thing you know someone will be researching a novel gene therapy cure for obesity.

The video never claims that genetics are the cause of obesity. It simply states that those with the genetic advantage of easily storing fat are now at a disadvantage when they stuff their faces with food, which has become readily available over the last century. The conclusion I drew was that anyone can get fat if they eat more than they need to with varying degrees of ease.

[quote]atg410 wrote:
The whole concept of genetic medicine and looking for the cause of lifestyle diseases in the genome worries me. People have a difficult time in getting their heads around the fact that environment influences the expression of genes, in this case environment = exercise, nutrition, daily stressors etc.

To say that obesity is genetic is to ignore the fact that obesity is an expression of one possible set of genetic outcomes and that environmental changes can influence the expression of that genotype; something we should all be very familiar with. Next thing you know someone will be researching a novel gene therapy cure for obesity.[/quote]

Novel gene therapy = diet and exercise.

[quote]E99_Curt wrote:
The video never claims that genetics are the cause of obesity. It simply states that those with the genetic advantage of easily storing fat are now at a disadvantage when they stuff their faces with food, which has become readily available over the last century. The conclusion I drew was that anyone can get fat if they eat more than they need to with varying degrees of ease.[/quote]

I got the vibe that they were trying to make fat people feel like victims the way they presented the information. We’re all aware of the horrible hormonal cascade caused by that shit they were eating. If they wanted to do this better(and IMO, properly), they should have eat healthy food, there is nothing surprising that when you eat lots of chocolate bars, cakes, and other garbage that you are going to get fat. But what if you ate that much of whole “paleo” type foods? I don’t think the results would even be in the same ballpark.

well, these guys had incredibly ambitious caloric goals (double maintenance), plus they were skinny fools who didn’t generally like to eat. Plus they’re british. Really the only way they were going to get the calories down was to eat junk food.

Cutting the surplus in half and stretching the study out for twice as long would have been slightly more “realistic”, but more expensive and less entertaining.

God damn, you guys see the chinese guy? He only gained 2.4% BF and a total of 4.1KG.

So lets say he started at 130lbs, he gained around 5-6 lbs of muscle? Fuck him and his Insulin sensitivity.

Thanks for posting.

some good info here…

the most interesting to me was the asian kid who gained lbm not doing any weight training…

reminds me of the sumo wrestler study that dante talked about…how sumo wrestlers had more lbm than bodybuilders/powerlifters despite any weight training…

interesting…