It's a disconnect that's not unique to the families NG interviewed. Take the Pima native Americans in 1905, where the women, who were quite physically active, basically treated like beasts of burden, had a distressingly high obesity rate, though these families were given a limited ration from the government, mostly white flour and sugar, and not more than 2000 calories per person per day. You can find the same trend in 1928 with Sioux on a South Dakota Crow Creek Reservation--very high levels of obesity in coincidence with extreme poverty. In the early 1960s, MIT nutritionists calculated that Trinidadians were getting no more than 2000 calories per day, yet they were seeing an extreme obesity problem among the females.
Your (calories in = calories stored + calories used) basis for judging other human beings fails because these are not independent variables. Metabolic rate is not constant. If you feed your body few calories, your metabolism adjusts so as to use fewer calories and store more. If you skip some meals, your metabolism is receiving a signal that it had better use the absolute minimum and store the rest to be used in future food crises.
A high-carbohydrate meal causes insulin to be released, and insulin causes sugars in the bloodstream to be stored as fat. And then your blood sugar is low, and you're hungry again. Have you ever noticed the intense hunger that follows an hour or two after a carb binge?
Fat cells that are stimulated to grow (by insulin) scream loud for their share of the energy, just as a growing child's appetite is caused by hormonal messaging for growth and not the other way around. Fat cells scream loud, ensuring that they get their needs met even if the rest of you is weak, tired, and resorting to stealing energy from muscle, the brain, and other tissues. Also, preservatives, additives, and high-sodium foods can cause a person to retain water, which can add to weight independent of caloric intake.
In an older discussion on this issue, travisp shared this article:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154
>Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance
>The results of our study challenge the notion that a calorie is a calorie from a metabolic perspective. During isocaloric feeding following weight loss, REE was 67 kcal/d higher with the very low-carbohydrate diet compared with the low-fat diet. TEE differed by approximately 300 kcal/d between these 2 diets, an effect corresponding with the amount of energy typically expended in 1 hour of moderate-intensity physical activity
>In conclusion, our study demonstrates that commonly consumed diets can affect metabolism and components of the metabolic syndrome in markedly different ways during weight-loss maintenance, independent of energy content. The low-fat diet produced changes in energy expenditure and serum leptin42- 44 that would predict weight regain. In addition, this conventionally recommended diet had unfavorable effects on most of the metabolic syndrome components studied herein. In contrast, the very low-carbohydrate diet had the most beneficial effects on energy expenditure and several metabolic syndrome components, but this restrictive regimen may increase cortisol excretion and CRP.
If you consider yourself a scientifically-minded, follow-the-research type, it's time to re-evaluate your (calories in = calories stored + calories used) hypothesis.
The disconnect is the difference between being hungry and actual starvation. We are so rich that most of our poorest can still get fat on the food they can acquire. The worst of our problems is no longer starvation, but bad nutrition. (to an extent, starvation still must exist somewhere but it is very much less common)
Starvation will always get more sympathy, and the dismissal of this is inappropriate.
Starvation is extremely tragic, and no one's dismissing that.
We do have a different problem here in America, but it's not simply that poor people are fat because they're just eating too many calories.
I've offered physiological explanations for the observed phenomenon that people can be obese on low-calorie diets.
It's troubling that America's "poor fat" are misled by the universal and government-touted notion that low fat is healthy and that carbs are a necessary nutrient.
I've done calculations for some of my favorite foods, and found that no-sugar peanut butter, olive oil, mayo w/o canola or soy, no-nitrate bacon ends, roasted sunflower seeds, canned coconut cream, grass-fed butter, almond flour, and sour cream are all nutritious foods that are less than $.50 per 200 calories. These foods are satisfying, non-fattening, and make veggies taste great. But the poor aren't going to buy them because they've been told by the government to have 11 servings of carbs and to minimize fat intake. It's a problem that could be addressed.
Nutrition research is a mess and yes there does seem to be connections between types of food, insulin spikes and how likely calories will be stored as fat - but to gain weight you still need a calorie surplus.
I'd suspect the 'poor fat' is because of consuming a large amount of calories from unhealthy food combined with nearly zero exercise.
I referred to a JAMA article and you retort with CNN?
My point is that metabolism is quite adaptable, as it has had to be over thousands of years, and if blood sugar levels are not steady (i.e. bad food and/or skipped meals), it is able to minimize energy use to ENSURE there's a calorie surplus, so that some can be stored away.
You seem invested in maintaining your right to judge poor people's choices.
Wasn't meant to discount what you wrote, and obviously the paper you linked carries a lot more weight. There are just issues with self reporting and calorie consumption, plus I just have a hard time believing that someone on an actual low calorie diet can be extremely overweight, but this may just be my own bias. I don't have much outside of personal anecdotes.
Nutrition is complex and from what I've read (and what you linked) there is large variation among types of calories, but I haven't read anything suggesting this is more important than the number of calories themselves. My impression is that it does have an impact, but the volume of calories consumed is the determining factor.
Your (calories in = calories stored + calories used) basis for judging other human beings fails because these are not independent variables. Metabolic rate is not constant. If you feed your body few calories, your metabolism adjusts so as to use fewer calories and store more. If you skip some meals, your metabolism is receiving a signal that it had better use the absolute minimum and store the rest to be used in future food crises.
A high-carbohydrate meal causes insulin to be released, and insulin causes sugars in the bloodstream to be stored as fat. And then your blood sugar is low, and you're hungry again. Have you ever noticed the intense hunger that follows an hour or two after a carb binge?
Fat cells that are stimulated to grow (by insulin) scream loud for their share of the energy, just as a growing child's appetite is caused by hormonal messaging for growth and not the other way around. Fat cells scream loud, ensuring that they get their needs met even if the rest of you is weak, tired, and resorting to stealing energy from muscle, the brain, and other tissues. Also, preservatives, additives, and high-sodium foods can cause a person to retain water, which can add to weight independent of caloric intake.
In an older discussion on this issue, travisp shared this article: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154 >Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance >The results of our study challenge the notion that a calorie is a calorie from a metabolic perspective. During isocaloric feeding following weight loss, REE was 67 kcal/d higher with the very low-carbohydrate diet compared with the low-fat diet. TEE differed by approximately 300 kcal/d between these 2 diets, an effect corresponding with the amount of energy typically expended in 1 hour of moderate-intensity physical activity >In conclusion, our study demonstrates that commonly consumed diets can affect metabolism and components of the metabolic syndrome in markedly different ways during weight-loss maintenance, independent of energy content. The low-fat diet produced changes in energy expenditure and serum leptin42- 44 that would predict weight regain. In addition, this conventionally recommended diet had unfavorable effects on most of the metabolic syndrome components studied herein. In contrast, the very low-carbohydrate diet had the most beneficial effects on energy expenditure and several metabolic syndrome components, but this restrictive regimen may increase cortisol excretion and CRP.
If you consider yourself a scientifically-minded, follow-the-research type, it's time to re-evaluate your (calories in = calories stored + calories used) hypothesis.