Obscurity on Obesity
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Obesity: exploring the causes, consequences and solutions
EDITORIAL
Open Access
Obscurity on Obesity Jack Winkler
Abstract Much research is underway on the links between diet and obesity. So too are long-running disputes among nutritionists on core questions about the relationship. This editorial reviews the state-of-play on four issues: what makes people fat, how to lose weight, how much do we eat, and what policies to adopt towards obesity. The practical consequence is that, at present, frontline health professionals will not find in nutrition science agreed, actionable solutions to assist overweight patients. But research and debate continues actively. Keywords: Obesity, Obesity policy, Weight gain, Weight loss, Diet surveys, Food intake, Nutrition education, Food taxes, Food regulation, Nutritional reformulation
Editorial More than half of humanity suffers some serious problem with diet. In the Food & Agriculture Organization’s latest count [1], some 850 million are hungry. At the other end of the scale, 1.4 billion are overweight or obese. Another 2 billion-plus suffer micronutrient deficiencies. Hunger has been part of the human condition from the beginning. So, too, in consequence, have shortages in some essential nutrients. But obesity, on a mass public health scale, is new. Nutrition science is also relatively new, effectively a 20th century creation. On the basics of what the human animal ought to eat, as expressed in dietary recommendations around the world, the experts are more or less agreed [2]. But on many specific issues there are long-running differences of view, often intense, even polemical, in character. Obesity is one area of conspicuous contention. In part, these disputes reflect the youth of the science, in part the practical difficulties of conducting controlled research, lasting many years, on the daily routines of large numbers of free-living subjects. The practical consequence is that the many nonnutritionists working on obesity have difficulty finding agreed, actionable conclusions from nutrition science on what to do about the problem. Hence, it is appropriate that BMC Medicine should devote a special collection of articles to the latest obesity research. But it is also appropriate to set new findings in Correspondence: [email protected] London Metropolitan University, London, UK
the context of on-going controversies. That is the purpose of this introduction. It considers four disputed questions relevant to obesity, intentionally phrased in pragmatic terms. (1) What makes us fat? (2) How do we lose weight? (3) How much do we eat? (4) What policies should we adopt on obesity? What Makes Us Fat? The orthodox position, for years, has been that people gain weight when they consume more calories than they expend in physical activity. Calories in exceed calories out. But, increasingly, many argue that all calories are not created equal. Some nutrients lead to greater weight gain than others. Calorie counts are not enough. The source of those calories counts too. Quality as well as qu
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