I heart Gary Taubes

Those of you who aren't interested in weight and it's cause or function can look away for now. From the last post a commenter had some things on their mind.

I'd first like to address certain misunderstandings that tend to come up in these matters. I am aware that there is and has been  genuine study of fat human beings-Dr. Stephen O'Rahilly, springs to mind though he doesn't call his studies 'obesity'.

It makes it easier to see the last say 20 years have marked a shift from that towards dominance from a specific point of view.

'Obesity' for the main of its existence has been an extremely marginal subject. Mostly an underfunded backwater. If you look closely, it hasn't really emerged from this inability to combine sustained funding and genuineness. The idiological hype is formed by a need to surmount that, clearly, the question for what (motive) and to what end/s?

The blame for ignoring anyone's resarch goes solely to the field itself. It has taught everyone including myself how to see these matters therefore it is responsible for anyone within its corps being overlooked due to honesty that seems like lies- familiar no? Those who are genuine can also blame the same for their own struggle in isolation, I'm sure.

The idea of blaming the monkeys for dancing when the organ grinder has turned the wheel seems a reversal of noblesse oblige.

But there ARE people out there doing the research and helping thousands recover from diabetes, obesity, heart disease, hypothyroidism...modern diseases.

Leaving aside 'obesity', none of these conditions are specific to fat people. If they were, as much 'progress would have been made with them as has been made with leaving aside 'obesity', none of these have anything specifically to do with being fat, suggested by the fact that if they had no more progress would have been made with them than 'obesity' and weight change. And we all know despite flummery, nothing has been achieved. Calories in/out was discovered aeon's ago would have stopped  the adipocalypse before it started.

As for recovery from diabetes, I am intrigued, it appears to be incurable. What I know about type 2 is microscopic, but I'd say if anyone's recovered from it, it's likely they didn't have it. Recovering from 'obesity'doesn't require any assistance. You just stop play acting a poor miserable 'obese' and that tends to do it, though there is no defined route as yet. 

I also don't quite get this general point that these are modern conditions, as far as I can tell, only stuff like HIV are new and even there we are talking appearance or even context. There is nothing new about these conditions, they dominate more and more because certain infectious diseases are in the process of being vanquished, leaving more bodies to go along the courses they would have gone along in previous generations had there been a absence of pathogenic.

And, yes, it is something in our modern environment switching on genes that have always been there, dormant. genetic predisposition + modern "toxic" environment = modern diseases and obesity. This is especially true when people are nutrient deficient over many generations due to poor diet in their family history. It's a complex subject but there are answers out there.

The switching on/off genes/traits defines human function in general over time, how we adapt to our environs. You could say the same about any seemingly increasing human trait from asthma to autism-which is not an illness of any kind (that's the point) to homosexuality for different reasons or things like depression etc., which is a sign of distress.

Weight gain/fatness again is something else. It simply is a matter of personal inclination whether to interpret it as a pathology. Even if it is for pathological reasons it does not make it a pathology in itself. weight often acts to stop something more threatening to current conditions from happening, fusing those together just misleads. As we can see, those who deal in that have achieved nothing of any real worth and come up against the same brick walls of their own making. Recently this was 'solved' by yet again lowering the standard of surely a candidates for the most worthless drugs ever.

That will last until the current tranche mash up some or other organs-as believe me they will.

As I said, it could just be physical evolution given the way modern societies have progressed. iow, given the conditions, inevitable. So we can find a way to alter/manipulate actual function or we can leave well alone and accept it. Probably both.

What we cannot continue with (I'm speaking rhetorically because clearly "we" can) is this suspension of consequence that keeps people seeking to pretend to resolve this by beating up fatz.