Not eating cookies at all is what 2-3 year olds should be doing. Certainly, HFCS was not in the food supply in the UK in the 1960s onwards, child dental caries was plenty high…and continued into adulthood.
A best seller in the early 1970s was a book called Pure, White, and Deadly by John Yudkin…making a case for the dangers of sugar beyond what dentists had been informing the general public for decades (or more, for all I know) It was required reading in one of our psychology of behaviour change courses. Not pathophysiology of disease, mind, as the science as presented was very lightweight (it was basically a documentation of Yudkins unpublished work from the 60s)
Anyway, for a pop read it.was quite persuasive but I do recall our lecturer pointing out that for all the facts presented (yes, impact on heart disease etc was implied), the relationship between sugar consumption and caries was well enough understood and that hadn’t curbed the general public’s consumption any so adding more culprits to the rap sheet of sugar’s evils was unlikely to make an impact on its own.
Lest anyone’s knee-jerk is to dismiss oral health as not quite so important as …“whatever is your beef with sugar” (and you know you do) here’s a better read than all the Gish Galloping and charts Google throws your way…
One of many fun reads on the history of dentistry but, among all the giggles and chortles contained, it does demonstrate how scary a disease dental caries…and almost inevitable associated infections could be. Certainly one had less of a chance against head and neck abscesses than, probably ASCVD, T2D etc in Days of Yore.
Sugar consumption being replaced by artificial (and sometimes natural) sweeteners, not always with beneficial results. Washington Post has a story today that’s interesting; here’s a “guest link” which should open it for you:
I have lost the same 10 pounds about 10 times now. I can behave for a month or two, but then I’ll eat enough in a week or two to reverse everything. But since my daughter was four years old, I’ve gained about a pound a year. That makes me way overweight. So staying the same weight for five years now is about as successful as I’ve been, so far.
I’d amend that to obviously. Individual personal accounts notwithstanding and for reasons other than the obvious (well, at least to me) … energy restriction and accountability when the opposite has been a longstanding habit.
One very obvious culprit is ADIPOCYTES. It wasn’t that long ago that fat cells were imagined to be inert storage units for excess energy rather than the metabolically active entities that they are…and, additionally, that they were laid down in childhood and adolescence (periods of high growth) and then were somewhat fixed. Can’t remember when I got woke to the fallacy of this belief but I remember when those reports of leptin identification hit the journals it seemed to precipitate a whole lot more.
Anyways, about this time it also crossed my radar screen that fat cells weren’t just laid down during childhood and adolescence but could, in fact, multiply somewhat on demand through adulthood. More in some folk than others…and for anyone pondering how genes could’ve altered in a short space of time (maybe they didn’t but experts in the field became aware that “what they know just ain’t so”)… apparently under genetic influence. For some folk who overeat, that excess energy leads to hypertrophy of the fat cells (stuffing them full) rather than stimulating production of new cells…hyperplasia. This has an indirect impact on the ease of self regulation when the decision to drop the lard rears its head in that adipocytes function at their best when they’re filled just right. Overstuff them and they start to pump out those inflammatory cytokines etc that have a harmful effect over the long haul. Empty them out…as happens during periods of energy restriction and they pump out hormones etc screaming FEED ME! Obviously of evolutionary value in days of feast or famine, not so valuable right now.
Of course, that begs the question is it better to be genetically determined towards hypertrophy (making it theoretically easier to lose excess body fat but more likely to suffer the adverse effects) or hyperplasia where you have lots and lots of adipocytes begging to be restocked after they’ve been emptied a bit.
Bodes very badly for the kids who’re now part of the obesity epidemic…joining childhood dental caries as a gift that keeps on giving
Years ago, I had one patient who was like this. Really good at losing weight…but even better at regaining it so she settled on what she could hack and, according to her “all her numbers were good” so she chose comfort over the misery of trying to keep a healthy bodyweight.
Thing is, she was somewhere north of 300lbs. I know this because my chair wouldn’t operate as the weight limit was 300lbs. When ordering equipment and planning my build out in the early 1990s, I wanted slimline chairs for functionality…not exactly runty at 5’6" but the bigger heavier duty ones (with a higher weight tolerance) were made for men, I’m sure. Never imagined that 300lbs would be a problem.
Thing is, her “numbers” apparently were OK as her only meds were a low dose diuretic for blood pressure (I double checked with her PCP because it seemed unlikely) But there you.go, one of those situations where weight management was hard…but without the obvious consequences. The sort of “what you know that just ain’t so”.situation that rears its head quite frequently when you deal with the general public.
Well, from reading the WaPo article, it already has been. Many times over. A good many of those hyperlinks contained are to WaPo articles in a similar vein and written by the same author(s)
This is some really tough psychology that all dieters face regardless of their allotted calorie count. Noom tackles the psychology.
I have been off Noom for 1.5 years now. The psychology for me is falling into place for now. I have struggled with the psychology for about 1.5 years.
I wont explain Noom to you. If you choose to try it I have no business explaining any of it. You get to open the book (app really) unspoiled for yourself.
