Highly Palatable Processed Foods

Regular readers will know that I am not anti-technology and do not subscribe to the appeal to nature fallacy.

Processing food is not an inherently bad thing. All humans eat processed food. Even hunter-gatherers.

Cooking, grinding, soaking, and fermenting are used by all populations on earth. There is not, and never has been a group of humans that lived solely on raw, unprocessed food.

There is pretty compelling evidence that it was learning to process food that enabled our pre-human ancestors to evolve larger brains and become human. By increasing the digestibility and bioavailability of calories and nutrients, our species was able to devote less time and resources to chewing and digesting food, and use it instead for cognitive ruminations.

Why is it then that modern food processing techniques seem to be leading to larger bellies rather than larger brains?

One possible reason could lie in the motivations behind the processing.

Billions of dollars, pounds and euros have been spent by food companies on R&D in order to try and sell more food. Teams of scientists have been working for decades refining techniques and recipes to produce food that we just can’t get enough of.

Lots of money plus top scientists achieved the Manhattan project, the moon landing and multiple covid19 vaccines in record time. Should it be a great surprise that they can also get people to consume more food?

I have a more detailed post on what makes modern processed foods so rewarding here, and for a really in-depth look I’d recommend Stephan Guyanet’s book The Hungry Brain. To briefly summarise, however, scientists have identified 10 factors that contribute to a food’s palatability:

• Energy Density
• Fat
• Sugar
• Starch
• Salt
• Free Glutamate (meaty flavour, i.e. MSG)
• Absence of Bitterness
• Mouthfeel (i.e. crunchy, chewy, etc)
• Smell
• Uniformity/Consistency of production

Careful manipulation of the first 9 factors produce foods that really light up all our pleasure sensors. Uniformity/Consistency of production means that each time you eat a twinkie, the experience is exactly the same, reinforcing the reward pathways in your brain.

Because of this deeply ingrained reward pathway, when you’re bored or stressed there arises a desire to eat a twinkie in order to trigger that sensation of pleasure and reward for some temporary mental alleviation. This happens regardless of whether you are actually hungry or not.

This doesn’t happen with “normally” palatable foods. No one gets stressed and reaches for the raw kale. Foods that don’t tick all the boxes will satisfy you and be really enjoyable if you’re actually hungry, but do nothing for you if it’s some other itch you’re trying to scratch.

It’s not as simple as whole food vs processed either. No one binges on pure sugar or guzzles vegetable oil from the bottle, even though they’re as processed and refined as you can get. To really press your buttons it has to combine all of the factors. That’s why you’ll typically find salt in sweet foods and sugar in savoury dishes if you read the ingredients label.

This wasn’t some evil plan intended to make everyone fat, rather it was just Moloch in action. Food companies wanted to sell more of their products. There was probably an expectation that it would be a zero-sum game – the winners would get more market share at the expense of the losers. Turns out this wasn’t the case and we’ve ended up eating more of everything! Win-win for the food giants, not so much for humanity.

Oh, and not so great for your pets either. The same techniques have been applied to Felix and Fido’s food too with the same results.

Problems: There are some niggling questions regarding this theory.

On the individual level, highly palatable processed foods are certainly a driver of obesity.

People gain weight when they overeat calories. People overeat calories when they eat highly palatable processed foods even though they’re not hungry.

Pizzas, fried potatoes, pastries, cakes, ice cream, chocolate, cookies are the types of foods that drive obesity. No one raids the fridge at midnight for broccoli and sardines.

Whether it’s paleo, vegan, Atkins, keto or low fat, all diets work by restricting or eliminating these foods.

All of these diets tend to ultimately fail because you’re not allowed to eat pizzas, fried potatoes, pastries, cakes, ice cream, chocolate, cookies, and people like eating pizzas, fried potatoes, pastries, cakes, ice cream, chocolate, cookies.

But pizzas, fried potatoes, pastries, cakes, ice cream, chocolate, cookies are nothing new.

One possible explanation is that all these billions of R&D have resulted in modern versions that are more irresistible than ever, but I’m not convinced by this.

Perhaps I’m just a food snob, but in my opinion, if you compare the modern, mass-produced supermarket versions of pizzas, fried potatoes, pastries, cakes, ice cream, chocolate, cookies to their traditional counterparts, they are poor imitations.

When I do have a treat I’m going to go for homemade Italian gelato not Ben & Jerry’s, or real butter French croissants, not some hydrogenated supermarket fake.

If the traditional versions are every bit, if not more delicious and rewarding as the new ones, and they’ve been around for hundreds of years, can highly palatable processed foods really explain rising rates of obesity?

Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

Soft drinks and sugar-laden coffees and milkshakes provide large amounts of empty calories with little to no satiating effect.

Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) or sugary drinks are leading sources of added sugars in the American diet. Frequently drinking sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with weight gain/obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney diseases, non-alcoholic liver disease, tooth decay and cavities, and gout, a type of arthritis.1-4 Limiting the amount of SSB intake can help individuals maintain a healthy weight and have a healthy diet.

https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/data-statistics/sugar-sweetened-beverages-intake.html

As with highly palatable processed foods, consumption of SSBs certainly explain obesity on an individual level, and cutting out SSBs is a highly effective strategy for weight loss.

Problems: Again, as with highly palatable processed foods the puzzling question is what drove the increased consumption? Coca-cola was invented in 1896, what took it so long to catch on?

(NB Before anyone can say “Good Calories, Bad Calories” please read this thorough debunking of the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model)

Cheap & Easy

Throughout most of human history, calories have been costly. Either in terms of money and/or in terms of the time and labour required to produce, gather, and prepare food. Hunger and starvation were much more common than obesity.

Modern food processing techniques, combined with industrial farming, transportation, storage and processing changed all this, making calories plentiful, cheap and easily accessible.

I noted in part i that obesity is not a modern disease, it’s been around for millennia. Previously, however, it was a disease of the rich and powerful. Kings, noblemen, the bourgoisie. Henry VIII is one such famous example:

Henry’s earlier set of armour indicates a weight of around 82 to 91 kilograms (180 to 200 pounds), with a waist measurement of 86 to 91 centimetres (34 to 36 inches). But his very last set of armour showed a waist measurement of a massive 147 to 152 centimetres (58 to 60 inches), meaning the infamous king would have weighed approximately 136 to 145 kilograms (300 to 320 pounds).

History Answers

Now it’s possible of course that Henry had some kind of genetic condition, or there was some environmental contaminant that drove his fat gain. But as he was normal weight when he was younger, and pollution wasn’t such an issue in the 16th Century, both are unlikely. There are numerous historical examples of Kings, Emperors, Sultans, or rich and powerful individuals being fat, so it seems that there’s a trend. Why might this be?

Because money and effort were no object.

Henry could afford all the food he desired and had servants to prepare and serve it for him.

We can still see these patterns in the developing world. Check out this graph of childhood obesity in India:

Note that there is a zero rate of obesity in the lower class. I don’t think that anyone is going to argue that this could be because there’s zero environmental contamination in the poorest areas of India.

In the rich modern western world, we can all eat like a king. Calories are cheap, abundant, and available at close to zero effort.

It’s not that in the past, only kings and rich folk were greedy with poor self-control, and that over time more and more of the population lost their moral fibre and willpower, rather the constraints that prevented us from overeating were removed.

Even if I had no conscious craving for cookies, if someone were to put a plate of them in front of me, I would no doubt end up eating them. Maybe I’d resist them for a while, but eventually, I’d cave.

On the flip side, sometimes I do get cravings for cookies, but if I have to go to the shop, buy the ingredients, come home, then bake the cookies, I’m probably not going to eat cookies.

Even if I was really desperate to eat cookies, if the ingredients cost £50 and the process of gathering and preparing the ingredients took several hours, I definitely wouldn’t be eating cookies.

Marketing

Engineering foods to be more palatable and rewarding aren’t the only tools available to the food companies to increase their sales.

Food, beverage and restaurant companies spend almost $14 billion per year on advertising in the United States^[1]. More than 80% of this advertising promotes fast food, sugary drinks, candy, and unhealthy snacks, dwarfing the entire $1 billion budget for all chronic disease prevention and health promotion at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

https://uconnruddcenter.org/research/food-marketing/

The food companies can’t literally come and place a plate of cookies in front of you, but perhaps getting an image of them in front of your eyes is the next best thing.

It’s not just advertising either. Product placement, packaging, branding, rituals… Not satanic rituals in Bohemian Grove but rituals like the twist lick dunk of an Oreo.

Problems: There is actually a debate as to whether advertising actually works or not (At least traditional forms such as TV and newspaper ads).

Whether the budgets are justified and actually result in increased profits is surprisingly unclear. That ads, and media in general, can create desires that we might not otherwise have however seems very plausible.

Anecdotal, but when watching the series Madmen, I drank considerably more whiskey than normal. Under normal circumstances I drink whiskey only very occasionally, I more or less forget that it’s there most of the time. Seeing Don and Roger enjoy a tipple however would suddenly ignite the desire in me to do the same.

Culture

People used to know how to cook. Families would eat meals together around the dining room table. Eating out was an occasional treat, as were snacks and treats.

In the 60s people might have been smoking at their desks, but they weren’t constantly grazing on snacks and high-calorie drinks.

Also, portion sizes have become much larger over time.

If you went back in time and served someone from the 60s a modern fast food restaurant meal, they’d probably be horrified. Or maybe overjoyed? In any case, they’d be shocked and probably think it was meant for two to share.

How much these changes in culture have been driven by the marketing efforts of the food companies, compared to how much the products and services of the food companies have been shaped by our desires is an interesting question.

Given the choice between the two meals above, most people are going to pick the restaurant that offers the larger meal. Thus fast-food chains have entered into some kind of bizarre arms race, where meals just keep getting bigger and bigger.

(You may ask, “why didn’t they keep the portion sizes the same but compete on price?” This is again due to the reduced cost of calories. When you buy a meal in a restaurant, most of the cost comes from the rent, utilities and labour, the actual ingredients are a tiny fraction.)

Reduced disincentives

Being obese in the 21st Century sucks much less than ever before in history, both from a psychological and physiological perspective.

Psychological: It is much more socially acceptable to be overweight or obese. If everyone around you is overweight, there’s less social pressure to stay slim. It’s also easier to avoid taking personal responsibility.

In the 80s, it really sucked to be the fat kid in school. You would be bullied relentlessly. Things didn’t get much better as an adult. If you were fat it was because you were lazy and greedy.

Bullying and fat-shaming are still a problem, but you’re no longer alone. Being obese is not your fault, you were born into an obesogenic environment, there’s no known cause or cure, diets don’t work. You’re the victim here. And being a victim is also more socially acceptable!

Physiological: When you’re overweight or obese, all forms of physical activity become extremely arduous. In part i I posted this image which shows the correlation between obesity and commuting by car.

The simplistic explanation is that commuting to work causes obesity as you burn fewer calories in the car than you would cycling or walking to work, which in turn leads to excess calories being stored as fat. This theory has been largely debunked, however, as the body regulates energy intake in response to need via hunger. If you exercise more, you’ll get hungrier and eat more calories to compensate and vice versa.

Most experts agree that if there is a causal link, it most likely runs the other way. Being obese causes you to take the car, as walking to work carrying an additional 50kg sucks.

Is this still oversimplifying things though? What if driving to work wasn’t an option? What would happen then?

While cars, escalators, lifts, mobility scooters and all the other labour saving devices may not cause obesity, might they on some level enable it?

Better Medical Care

We are getting much better at managing the diseases caused by chronic overeating.

Obesity is just one of numerous possible symptoms that years of excess calorie consumption can result in.

Diabetes, Heart Disease and Cancer have been the leading causes of death since the 1960s. But in the 1960s people were dropping like flies.

Environmental Contaminants

Some studies have found correlations found between environmental contamination such as air pollution and microplastics and obesity, others have failed: Systematic Review of Effects of Environmental Contaminants on Obesity.

It’s not impossible, and there are some vaguely plausible mechanisms.

A few things make me doubt this hypothesis, however:

• Inconsistent results – Sometimes pollution is correlated, others no
• High risk of confounders
• People (and pets) can and do lose weight through change of diet
• Distribution of obesity in the developing world
• Absence of obesity in indigenous tribes

By the latter, I’m referring to the fact that (as per the graph of Indian school children above) in the developing world, obesity is more prevalent in the richer classes than the poor. It seems very unlikely that the richest receive the most exposure, the poorest the least.

SMTM notes that indigenous tribes that follow a wide variety of traditional diets are free from obesity. A recent study by Helsinky & McGill Universities found that Indigenous Peoples around the globe are disproportionately affected by pollution.

This is not to say that environmental pollution isn’t a problem or that we shouldn’t do anything about it. Air pollution alone is thought to be responsible for over 4 million deaths per year globally. From the aforementioned study on indigenous people:

There are mounting cases worldwide in Indigenous Peoples, of a range of ill health outcomes that are linked to pollution, such as certain cancers, respiratory diseases, high rates of miscarriage, kidney diseases, etc.

McGill & Helsinki University

Pollution is definitely making us sick, killing people, and destroying the environment. It’s just probably not making us fat.

Chemicals in Processed Foods

In addition to environmental contaminants, SMTM believes that chemicals in processed foods are driving the obesity epidemic.

There have been fears about chemicals such as BPAs, phthalates, herbicides and pesticides in our food for many years now, and people have been searching very very hard for links between obesity and other illnesses.

In the article they link to a paper that makes a good summary of the current research:

What Are We Putting in Our Food That Is Making Us Fat? Food Additives, Contaminants, and Other Putative Contributors to Obesity – Amber L. Simmons et al.

The word “putative” is an interesting choice. Speculative would have been more appropriate, as any actual evidence is still lacking.

SMTM writes:

Despite this interest, all the claims have been quite mild, identifying environmental contaminants as possibly being one of many factors contributing in some small way to the obesity epidemic. In contrast, we propose that the obesity epidemic is entirely driven by environmental contaminants. The entire difference in obesity between 1980 and today is attributable to one or more contaminants that we are exposed to in our food, water, and living spaces.

(Their emphasis)

The claims are mild because most scientists are reluctant to make bold claims when they don’t have any evidence to support it, particularly when, as we’ve seen, there are many other factors that could well be contributing to the obesity epidemic in very large and meaningful ways.

They then go on to list their damning evidence:

The difference in obesity rates between countries, as well as the differences between states or provinces within a country, is also the result of differences in contamination. Some of it will be genetic, but some of it is because some places are more contaminated than others.

Or it could be differences in wealth, education, politics and culture. We often hear of the “French Paradox”. Why is it the French aren’t as fat as the British or Americans, even though they love cheese and croissants?

My guess is that anyone who is puzzled by this supposed paradox has never spent time in France. The French still know how to cook, they sit down and eat meals of real food together, they drink espressos not buckets of sugary warm milk, they eat human-sized portions. These habits are starting to change, and obesity rates are rising, but there are still enough good habits left to account for the differences.

Some of the strongest evidence for this comes from immigration. When they arrive in a new country, immigrants usually have lower obesity rates than their native counterparts do, but over time they become about as obese as the natives are. Looking at the trends, it appears that much of the effect of the contaminants occurs in the first year of exposure, though it takes 10-15 years before immigrants have obesity rates similar to the rates in the host country.

Or because they increase their personal wealth and can afford to adopt the local diet of highly palatable processed foods.

During the Cuban economic crisis known as the “Special Period”, obesity rates plummeted, from 14% obese to 7% obese.

SMTM attributes this change to a reduction in the consumption of chemicals in imported foods. But other explanations could simply be that they no longer had access to highly palatable processed foods, nor had the money to afford excess calories. The main sources of calories were white rice and sugar. Not healthy foods, but nor are they highly palatable.

One surprising fact is that the most obese countries in the world by BMI are all tiny island nations in the south or central Pacific — Nauru, Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu, Palau, the Cook Islands, and others… To begin with, there are some reasons to suspect that this is largely an artefact. These islands all have very small populations and are genetically homogeneous, so it’s possible that much of the difference is genetic… In addition, Polynesian countries import most of their food and eat a lot of highly processed, canned meat (famously spam), which may be more contaminated than average.

There are countless cases of indigenous tribes that had perfect health and bodyweight until western foods were introduced, at which point they rapidly became obese at much higher rates than industrialised societies. The latter as we have had 50-100+ years to adapt to processed foods physically and culturally.

This is simply more evidence that it is highly palatable processed foods that are driving obesity rather than environmental contaminants. If the latter were the case, we’d see trends of obesity rising with increased environmental contamination in the absence of a change of diet. But this has (to my knowledge) never been the case. As SMTM notes, there have been no cases of obesity found in tribes eating traditional diets that are free from processed foods despite there being higher rates of environmental contamination.

The main point of agreement between myself and SMTM is that Highly Palatable Processed Foods are a major factor in the obesity epidemic.

This does of course still leave room for the possibility that it is the chemicals in the processed foods which are driving obesity. It could be that these chemicals have an effect on appetite regulation, or it could be that it is the chemicals that increase the palatability of the food.

I’m not sympathetic to these ideas though because:

• People have been getting fat eating highly palatable processed foods for 100s, if not 1000s of years, long before the discovery and inclusion of any of these chemicals in food.
• Anecdotally, I gain a few kg each time I stay at my mum’s house through eating the highly palatable home baked goods she makes. She cooks everyting from scratch usually with organic ingredients, and to my knowlege doesn’t add any BPAs or phalates.

As with environmental contaminants, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be concerned about possible negative health effects from ingesting all of these chemicals with unknown effects. They are classed as GRAS – Generally Recognised As Safe, but this doesn’t mean they’ve been proven to be safe, just that there’s no evidence of harm as yet. Innocent until proven guilty.

All that said, in a way, I do think that these chemicals are a factor, as they are used as part of the industrial processes that help make the foods so cheap and accessible. Perhaps banning the use of these chemicals could indirectly have an effect by increasing the cost of highly palatable processed foods?

Conclusion

On the individual level, obesity is no mystery.

People gain weight when they consistently overconsume calories by eating highly palatable processed foods and drinking sugary drinks absent of true hunger. (Well, the lucky ones do).

The solution to this problem is to restrict calories to create an energy deficit until a healthy weight is achieved, then keep calories at maintenance levels to avoid regaining the weight. Any diet will do, as they all really work by the same mechanism – eliminating or restricting the consumption of highly palatable processed foods and sugary drinks.

While the solution may be simple, it is far from easy. The body resists change. The longer someone has been at a higher body weight, the harder it will fight to keep those extra fat stores – ramping up appetite, reducing metabolism, reducing the desire to move and expend calories. But with patience and perseverance, it can be done.

But pizzas, fried potatoes, pastries, cakes, ice cream, chocolate, cookies and the like have been making people fat for centuries. The mystery is why so many more people today struggle with weight control than they did just 50 years ago, what’s changed?

Though it’s not impossible that some kind of environmental contaminant in the air, water or food is playing havoc with our appetite regulation, I have yet to see any compelling evidence.

It also doesn’t explain why cutting out highly palatable processed foods and sugary drinks and instead eating a diet of whole foods enables people to control their weight simply by eating to satiety without counting calories.

I personally think that the more likely answer to the mystery is that it is economic and cultural changes that have made eating large quantities of processed foods and drinks cheap, easy, more accessible and more acceptable to more people than ever before.

Over the same time span, we have seen a massive reduction in the rates of smoking. Why is this? Is it due to a mystery chemical in the environment? Changes to the cigarettes? People magically found the willpower to quit en masse? No, it was economic and cultural changes, but this time in the opposite direction.

Cigarettes are more expensive, harder to buy, advertising has been banned, where you can smoke is restricted, there have been huge educational campaigns, and smokers have become social pariahs.

Whether we’ll be able to achieve similar results in reversing the obesity trend remains to be seen. Getting people to eat fewer highly palatable processed foods is the answer, but how we go about this when people clearly don’t want to stop eating highly palatable processed foods is going to be difficult!

The post Is the obesity epidemic a mystery? Part 2 appeared first on Live Now, Thrive Later.

Calories Do Count and Diets Do Work

One of the supposed unexplainable mysteries is the fact that “Diets Don’t Work”.

This is not exactly true though. Whether it’s paleo, vegan, keto, South Beach, low fat, cabbage soup, or simply counting calories, people can and do lose weight if they stick to any kind of dietary restriction.

Indeed, in the article the author notes:

Most diets lead to weight loss of around 5-20 lbs, with minimal differences between them. Now, 20 lbs isn’t nothing, but it’s also not much compared to the overall size of the obesity epidemic. And even if someone does lose 20 lbs, in general they will gain most of it back within a year.

Yes, most people tend to gain all the weight back, but this is not because the diets stop working, but because the people stop following the diets.

In part ii of the series, the author calls into question the calories in vs calories out theory.

It’s not that calories don’t matter at all. People who are on a starvation diet of 400 calories per day will lose weight, and as we will see in this section, people who eat hundreds of calories more than they need will usually gain weight. The problem is that this ignores how the body accounts for the calories coming in and going out. If you don’t eat enough, your body finds ways to burn fewer calories. If you eat too much, your body doesn’t store all of the excess as fat, and compensates by making you less hungry later on.

So far, so good. Can’t argue with any of that. Neither losing weight nor gaining weight are easy. The body is excellent at homeostasis. Changing your weight in either direction requires a long and sustained calorie imbalance.

The author notes that while it’s hard to get reliable figures, most research indicates that on average people (in the US) now consume 300-400 additional calories per day than they did in the 1970s.

They then go on to describe a number of studies and anecdotes where people gain weight while on a high-calorie diet, then lose the weight again when they go back to a normal diet:

The great-grandaddy of these studies is the Vermont prison experiment, published in 1971. Researchers recruited inmates from the Vermont State Prison, all at a healthy weight, and assigned some of them to eat enormous amounts of food every day for a little over three months. How big were these meals? The original paper doesn’t say, but later reports state that some of the prisoners were eating 10,000 calories per day.

On this olympian diet, the prisoners did gain considerable weight, on average 35.7 lbs (16.2 kg). But following the overfeeding section of the study, the prisoners all rapidly lost weight without any additional effort, and after 10 weeks, all of them returned to within a couple pounds of their original weight. One prisoner actually ended up about 5 lbs (2.3 kg) lighter than before the experiment began!

Inspired by this, in 1972, George Bray decided to conduct a similar experiment on himself. He was interested in conducting overfeeding studies, and reasoned that if he was going to inflict this on others, he should be willing to undergo the procedure himself. First he tried to double each of his meals, but found that he wasn’t able to gain any weight — he simply couldn’t fit two sandwiches in his stomach at every sitting.

He switched to energy-dense foods, especially milkshakes and ice cream, and started eating an estimated 10,000 calories per day. Soon he began to put on weight, and gained about 22 lbs (10 kg) over 10 weeks. He decided this was enough and returned to his normal diet. Six weeks later, he was back at his original weight, without any particular effort.

In both cases, you’ll notice that even when eating truly stupendous amounts of food, it actually takes more time to gain weight than it does to lose it. Many similar studies have been conducted and all of them find basically the same thing — check out this recent review article of 25 studies for more detail.

Overfeeding in controlled environments does make people gain weight. But they don’t gain enough weight to explain the obesity epidemic. If you eat 10,000 calories per day, you might be able to gain 20 or 30 pounds, but most Americans aren’t eating 10,000 calories per day.

The logical conclusion to these studies, however, is that over-consuming calories clearly does lead to weight gain.

This is simply the other side of the same coin to the fact that people lose weight when they’re on a low-calorie diet, then gain it back when they return to a high-calorie diet.

Again, really nothing surprising or mysterious here – if you consistently overeat calories you will most likely gain weight, and if you consistently undereat calories and you will most definitely lose weight.

Do you have to consume 10,000 calories a day to become obese? I’d agree that seems like quite a lot.

We don’t have data on the exact numbers of calories consumed by the prisoners, but 10,000 was certainly not their average daily calorie consumption, rather an upper limit. Perhaps it was just one prisoner on one day. We don’t have the numbers unfortunately. Here is the methodology from the study:

Subjects. All subjects were inmates of the Vermont State Prison who volunteered for the study. They were selected so as to exclude those with a history or family history of diabetes mellitus, obesity, or other metabolic and nutritional disorders. The seven volunteers ranged in age from 20 to 30 yr and in normal body weight from 61 to 84 kg, as indicated in Table I.

All subjects followed normal prison routine during the entire period of the study, except that they ate meals together as a group in a dining room set aside for the purpose and during the period of weight gain they reduced their physical activity. The caloric content and composition of their diet was estimated from standard dietary tables. The quantity of food ingested by each individual at each meal was carefully recorded. During an initial 6 wk study period sufficient calories were provided to maintain constant body weight (base line weight).

In five of the seven subjects this initial period was followed by a 3-4 month period of high
caloric intake to produce weight gain. After desired or maximum obtainable weight was reached, each of these five subjects ingested sufficient numbers of calories to maintain
constant weight during the second study period (peak weight), which was of 10 wk duration. The final phase of the study began after a period in which caloric restriction and increased activity induced loss of weight to original levels. During the final study period sufficient calories were provided to maintain constant normal body weight (reduced base line). The body weight of the two control subjects was maintained at a constant level throughout all three study periods. Determination of total body fat, adipose cell size, and adipose cell number was made on each patient during each of these study periods.

Experimental Obesity in Man: Cellular
Character of the Adipose Tissue (PDF)
LESTER B. SALANS, EDWARD S. HORTON, and ETHAN A. H. SIMS

Wow, shocking results, what a crazy mystery this all is! Oh, wait, no…

When the participants stopped exercising and started overeating they gained weight. All of them.

When they then followed a program of diet and exercise they lost all of the weight again. All of them.

OK, there were only 5 participants in the study, but the results are highly unsurprising and I fail to see how they could be interpreted as contradicting the calories in vs calories out theory, or indicating that diets and exercise don’t work.

Overfeeding in controlled environments does make people gain weight. But they don’t gain enough weight to explain the obesity epidemic. If you eat 10,000 calories per day, you might be able to gain 20 or 30 pounds, but most Americans aren’t eating 10,000 calories per day.

Even if the participants were eating 10,000 calories per day (which they almost certainly weren’t), this doesn’t prove that weight gain is only possible under such circumstances. On average, the participants gained around 14kg over a 3 month period. That’s a crazy amount of weight (just over 2 stone or 30lbs) in a very short period of time. Yes, the obesity epidemic may have happened rapidly on the timescale of the human species, but it didn’t happen in just 3 months.

Adults tend to gain weight progressively through middle age. Although the average weight gain is 0.5 to 1 kg per year, this modest accumulation of weight can lead to obesity over time.

Strategies to Prevent Weight Gain Among Adults
Susan Hutfless et al

The Problem with Averages

I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man

Michel de Montaigne

I also consider myself an average man, except in my energy intake and expenditure.

As noted in the article, the figures for average calorie consumption are pretty speculative. It is however generally accepted that calorie consumption has increased. As noted before, the best estimates range between a 300-400 average daily increase since the 70s (Though others say up to 700). The author seems to think this isn’t very much, and indeed compared to 10,000 calories per day it sounds rather trifling.

But an average increase of 400 calories doesn’t mean that these calories are evenly distributed.

Not everyone is overconsuming calories. Most people at a healthy BMI will be consuming the same or fewer calories than someone in the 70s (presuming most will have similar or lower energy expenditure due to more sedentary lives in general). This means that for the average to increase by 3-400, those that are overconsuming calories must be doing so by more than the average.

I.e. if there were two people with an average daily consumption of 2400kCal and one is consuming 2000kCal, the other must be consuming 2800kCal.

The same is true for energy expenditure. Again, the data is sketchy.

The general consensus is that activity levels have decreased, but then there are some conflicting reports that gym use and exercise uptake are higher than ever.

In the article the author states:

People are exercising more today than they were 10 or even 20 years ago. Contrary to stereotypes, more than 50% of Americans meet the HHS guidelines for aerobic exercise. But obesity is still on the rise.

These figures come from the National Health Interview Survey (pdf) and look highly dubious. The results can be seen on page 42. There are large ratchet-like increases between 2008-2009, then again between 2016-2017. This looks to me more like some kind of effect from the way the data was collected or processed, rather than real increases in leisure activity time.

Even if the data is correct, it still leaves us with almost half of the population getting less than the minimum recommended level of exercise, which is itself pretty low. It also doesn’t account for changes in physical activity in the workplace or NEPA which have also almost certainly decreased since the 70s.

I’m still failing to find any shocking or mysterious results in any of this data.

It’s all perfectly consistent with the theory that people are eating more calories and doing less physical activity.

What has changed?

Now, to be fair to the article, there is something going on.

On the individual level, obesity is not a mystery, it is very simple.

People gain weight when they consistently consume more calories than they burn.

This process can be reversed by consistently restricting calories to create an energy deficit.

The puzzle is why are more and more people overconsuming calories and becoming overweight and obese than ever before in history?

According to part iii:

Based on the evidence, we’re looking for a factor that:

1. Changed over the last hundred years
2. With a major shift around 1980
3. And whatever it is, there is more of it every year
4. It doesn’t affect people living nonindustrialized lives, regardless of diet
5. But it does affect lab animals, wild animals, and animals living in zoos
6. It has something to do with palatable human snackfoods, unrelated to nutritional value
7. It differs in its intensity by altitude for some reason
8. And it appears to have nothing to do with our diets

Environmental contamination by artificial, human-synthesized compounds fits this picture very well, and no other account does.

Really? No other account? Hmm.

Before looking into other possible accounts in part 2, let’s address the errors and contradictions in the above points.

1 & 2: Something changed in the last hundred years with a major shift around 1980?

This is based on the data from this graph:

The problem with looking at rates of obesity, rather than say BMI, is that the classification of obesity is an arbitrary cut off of 30. Here’s a graph that simply plots average BMI over time from 1975-2016:

1980 starts to look a little less significant.

Unfortunately, we don’t have very reliable data to see exactly when this trend started. What we do know is that overweight and obesity are not a new phenomenon. There were overweight and obese people in the 19th century, 18th century, all the way back to as far as 30,000 years ago. There are theories that the trend actually started as far back the end of the 19th Century.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not an obesity epidemic denier. There are most certainly more overweight and obese people now than ever before in history. What isn’t clear is exactly when this trend started.

3. Whatever it is there’s more of it every year?

Rates of obesity have been steadily increasing since good records began. I think it’s a mistake to look for “A factor”. I think it’s very unlikely that there’s a single “It” to be discovered.

Here’s just one possible “it factor” that’s been increasing every year that could plausibly be connected, but there are many many others – Highly palatable processed food, car ownership, hours of TV watched and video games played, etc.

And why does there have to be more of it? Could something be decreasing that’s driving the rate of obesity up? Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that falling rates of smoking are driving the obesity epidemic. Take this more as both a “correlation does not imply causation” reminder, and also that many factors are likely involved. Does anyone think that smoking rates decreased due to one single factor of which there was more/less of every year?

4. It doesn’t affect people living nonindustrialized lives, regardless of diet

Here the author is referring to the fact that traditional hunter-gatherer societies do not suffer from overweight or obesity, despite eating a very wide range of diets – some high in fat, some high in sugar, some nearly all meat, some nearly all vegan. I’ve written before about the problems with the Paleo diet science so won’t go too in-depth with the many issues here.

What should be noted, however, is that what all of their diets have in common is an absence of highly palatable processed foods and that when these foods are introduced traditional peoples rapidly begin to gain weight and become overweight and obese. It is not, therefore “regardless of diet”.

5. It does affect lab animals, wild animals, and animals living in zoos

Lab animals and wild animals are becoming more obese because they are exposed to the same environmental contaminants that we are. 

There is no evidence for this. Researchers were actually struggling to get lab rats to overeat and get fat until someone tried adding highly palatable processed foods from the lab cafeteria to the standard chow.

Examples of these foods include cakes, sweet biscuits, and high-fat savory snacks (such as processed meats, cheese and chips). It reliably promotes hyperphagia and rapid weight gain in rodents. The key features of the model are the provision of a variety of highly palatable foods, designed to simulate the modern food environment.

Palatable Western-style Cafeteria Diet as a Reliable Method for Modeling Diet-induced Obesity in Rodents

Wild animals get fat when they scavenge leftover highly palatable processed foods.

How about zoo animals? Zoo animal obesity is not something I’ve ever researched, but a quick google brings up more unsurprising results – yes folks, it’s diet and exercise again!

He missed pet cats and dogs from this list, which are also getting overweight and obese. It must be all the video games they play nowadays! When I was a kid the dogs and cats used to play outside. Or maybe something to do with the highly palatable processed foods we feed them?

6. It has something to do with palatable human snack foods, unrelated to nutritional value

As you may have gathered by now, I am sympathetic to the idea that it has something to do with highly palatable processed foods.

I’d disagree with the “unrelated to nutritional value” part though. An important part of making food highly palatable is high nutrient density.

I don’t think this is the only factor, but it certainly appears to play a highly significant role.

7. It differs in its intensity by altitude for some reason

The inverse relationship between altitude and obesity prevalence is certainly interesting and warrants further research.

The author however goes onto state categorically that this relationship is causal and that:

Obesity is less common at high altitudes because of the watershed.

Er, really? Their evidence for this is that obesity rates are higher in states where the groundwater has covered more distance, and therefore collected more contaminating chemicals.

There are always a few confusing outliers, of course. Why are Maine, North Dakota, and Alabama so obese? In China, why are Xinjiang and Heilongjian provinces so obese? The answer is that watersheds play a role in the distribution of contaminants, but are not the whole story.

Damn those confusing outliers. But don’t let contradictory evidence get in the way of a good theory!

This map of minimum wage rates also corresponds pretty well however as does this one which shows percentage of population that commute by car, and a map of population density:

This last map shows the same-sex marriage laws. Yes, there are some confusing outliers in this one…

Needless to say, I’m not convinced by the contaminated groundwater theory just yet, I’d want to see some supporting evidence first.

8. It appears to have nothing to do with our diets

Finally, no diet will reliably help because obesity isn’t caused by a bad diet and can’t be cured by a good one.

Except, that it clearly has everything to do with our diets. As we’ve seen above people gain weight from overconsuming calories, and sticking to any number of different diets will result in weight loss.

The only mystery is why are more and more people now consistently overconsuming calories than ever before?

In part 2 I’m going to further explore the possible role of highly palatable processed foods as a major driving force behind the obesity epidemic, then look at a number of other factors that could well also be significant contributors.

The post Is the obesity epidemic a mystery? Part 1 appeared first on Live Now, Thrive Later.

Did you know that individuals infected with the parasite toxoplasmosis gondii may be almost twice as likely to show entrepreneurial tendencies than the general population?

According to a study published in the Royal Society:

Students infected with the parasite were 1.4× more likely to major in business and 1.7× more likely to have an emphasis in “management and entrepreneurship“

Among professionals attending entrepreneurship events, T. gondii-positive individuals were 1.8× more likely to have started their own business compared with other attendees.

Johnson et al 2018

Everything you never wanted to know about parasites

parasite
/ˈparəsʌɪt/

1. an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other’s expense.

Oxford Dictionary

I’m sure that we’re all familiar with parasites in general – horrible little creatures that live on or in us in order to get a free ride.

Intestinal worms, fleas, lice and mites etc, yuck!

Most parasites are actually fairly innocuous – They may cause some minor discomfort, but usually it’s not in their interest to kill their host. This is not always the case however, with a fair number of parasites eating their hosts alive from the inside out before emerging as adults to lay their eggs in the next!

The weird and wonderful world of behaviour-altering parasites

As if parasites weren’t creepy enough as it is, things get really freaky when we enter the world of behaviour-altering parasites.

Toxoplasmosis gondii is a parasite that breeds in cats and spreads its eggs via their faeces.

These eggs infect other animals which become carriers. Unless this animal is a cat, however, the T. Gondii can’t sexually reproduce.

So what’s a lonely parasite going to do? Take over your mind and make you into a suicidal zombie slave of course! At least it will if you’re a rat.

When rats become infected with T. Gondii, the parasites travel to their brain where they form cysts. These cysts change the way in which the amygdala functions, the part of the brain responsible for fear.

Normally when rats smell cat urine they get scared and run away. Rats infected with toxoplasmosis however don’t exhibit this reaction. On the contrary, they become attracted to cat urine.

This change in behaviour makes the rats much more likely to get predated by a cat. Once safely in the belly of kitty, the toxoplasmosis gondii can get their jiggy on and sexually reproduce.

The best laid plans of rats and entrepreneurs

That toxoplasmosis can affect the behaviour of rats is certain. The big question that remains is whether this tiny parasite could also affect human behaviour?

Rats lose their fear of cats – could a toxoplasma infection also make humans less risk averse?

Could it be this reduction in risk aversion that makes infected humans more likely to exhibit an entrepreneurial streak?

To further explore this hypothesis, they surveyed the participants of the study an various topics, and found that the T. Gondii infected individuals exhibited much lower levels of “fear of failure”.

Before you go and lick a cat poo

Hold your horses Elon Musk wannabes – don’t go kicking down the door of your local cat lady just yet! A few things to bear in mind:

1. The link between toxoplasmosis and entrepreneurship is only correlational
   There’s no evidence (yet) that toxoplasmosis “causes” a reduction in risk aversion. It could be that people that are already less risk-averse are more likely to get infected by parasites – More likely to eat undercooked meat, more likely not to wash hands thoroughly before eating, more likely to have travelled to less developed countries.
   
2. Toxoplasmosis may have other less favourable effects
   Human carriers of the toxoplasmosis parasite have been shown to carry a much higher risk of being involved in a car accident – up to 2.6x more likely! Again, this could be correlation rather than causation. Another study however has indicated impaired reaction times in a computer-simulated test.
   
3. Reduced risk aversion alone doesn’t make an effective entrepreneur
   The study only looked at people’s likelihood to found a startup or take a course – they did not measure any metrics of success. If the parasite does indeed actually cause you to be less risk-averse, it may also cause you to take unwise and unnecessary risks that lead your business to failure!

How to stay a parasite free and FounderFit

Overcoming fear of failure is an important step in becoming an effective entrepreneur. There are better ways to do this however than risking infection from a nasty parasite.

Whether you are a Founder or part of a StartUp, staying healthy is essential to ensure you can be effective and grow your business.

Good nutrition is an important part of this, which is why eating well is an essential part of the LNTL philosophy..

Another often overlooked aspect however is good food hygiene practices. An infection from a nasty parasite or food poisoning could have a severe impact on your health.

Here are the my top tips for avoiding food poisoning and parasite infections!

• Wash your hands thoroughly before eating
  Germs and parasites are passed easily from surface to surface – The handrail in the metro, the keyboard on your shared desk. If someone’s been using that keyboard to post fluffy cat pictures the t. gondii risk could be incredibly high…
  
• DO wash fruits and salad thoroughly before eating
  Foods eaten raw are particularly risky. Raw spinach leaves are one of the most common causes of food poisoning by E. Coli.
  
• DON’T wash raw meat
  If there are bacteria or parasites on the meat, washing them could spread them around the kitchen to later be transferred to raw fruit and vegetables washed in the same sink. For the same reason, you shouldn’t handle or chop raw veg after handling raw meat without a thorough washdown.
  
• DO ensure you cook meat properly
  Poultry and Pork are high risk. Ensure both are cooked all the way through to kill any parasites buried deep inside the muscle, mmm. (Use a meat thermometer). Beef and lamb can be left pink in the middle providing the outside is seared as this will kill any bacteria on the outside. This doesn’t apply for burgers though as the mincing can mix germs and parasites into the centre.
  
• Watch your water when travelling
  When travelling off the beaten track avoid drinking unfiltered water. A portable water filter is a travel essential. When in developing countries avoid raw foods, ice cubes, and carry antibacterial hand gel.

I hope you’ve found our little post on parasites and entrepreneurs interesting, and that it hasn’t put you off your lunch!

Any questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section.

The post Entrepreneur? You might be infected by a parasite! appeared first on Live Now, Thrive Later.

1. Diets don’t work.
2. There is no solid evidence that meditation has any tangible benefits.
3. It’s estimated that up to 90% of startups fail, most within the first couple of years, let alone become a unicorn.

So I guess we should all resign ourselves to being fat, stressed-out slaves to the 9 to 5?

Failure is an option…

There is some truth to the above statements.

Most diets do fail for most people, most of the time.
Most people that try meditation will give up, having seen no benefit.
Though the 90% figure seems exaggerated, it is true most businesses fail.

It’s unsurprising then that we see so many articles advocating for fat acceptance, that sceptics write off meditation as just another SCAM, and that the vast majority of people are scared to quit their day job and start a business.

Don’t be most people

Just because something doesn’t work for most people most of the time doesn’t mean that it won’t work for you. You should be wary of diet testimonials. But they do show that some people manage to lose weight and keep it off. Some diets do work for some people some of the time.

Most businesses might fail, but there are also lots of success stories out there.

Meditation is the odd one out. Despite what you might have read, there aren’t any proven success stories. Though as I’ve argued before, it could still be worth a try.

Keep rolling the dice

Success is all about going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

Quote attributed to Winston Churchill.

I have failed at diets. I have failed at business ventures. I have tried and failed to meditate numerous times.
But I tried again. And again. And again…

There is a stigma associated with the word failure in our society, to the extent that many of us develop a deep fear of it.
No one wants to be branded a failure.

But this is crazy! If you’re overweight, you try to lose weight and fail, are you any worse off than had you not tried in the first place?
Of course not, in fact, you’re better off because you most likely learned something in the process.

It may be a cliché, but the only way to truly fail is to never try at all or to give up at the first hurdle.

Iterate, Pivot or Persevere?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

Quote attributed to Albert Einstein

Well, maybe, maybe not. Doing exactly the same thing over and over again might be crazy. But what about trying again with some changes? Eric Reis popularised the concepts of “iterate or pivot” in his book The Lean Startup. Two options to consider when a plan isn’t working out as hoped:

• Iterate – A minor adaptation to the original plan.
• Pivot – A major change to the plan, but that builds on foundations that have been laid.

Unfortunately, there’s no golden rule to tell you which is the right course of action. The world is too complex, there are too many variables. But note that quitting is not one of the options.

If at first you don’t succeed…

Is trying the same thing repeatedly expecting different results actually crazy? Robert the Bruce (and the Spider) would disagree.

The world is constantly changing, and so are you. Take for example these 10 visionary startups that failed because they were ahead of their time. It can take a very long time for emerging trends and technologies to become mainstream.

When I first launched Green Pasture Farms, hardly anyone had heard of the paleo diet or grass-fed meat. On top of that, the concept of ordering food online was practically unheard of. The first few years were lots of hard work for little reward. Fortunately, I persisted. Eventually, the paleo diet gained renown, as did the benefits of pasture-raised meat.

It wasn’t just the world that changed though. Over the years I learned huge amounts about marketing, sales, web design, psychology, productivity, motivation, stress management and much more. Every iteration of the business also involved an iteration to myself. In fact, I think all the biggest and most important changes I’ve made have been to myself.

Purely anecdotal, but I think meditation, introspection and philosophy were a crucial part of my successes.

Perhaps you’ve tried and failed a diet once, maybe even twice or three times. But you’re no longer the person you were back then, nor is the world around you the same.

Maybe you had additional stresses back then? Or now you’re more motivated and/or have better support? New healthier restaurants have opened in your area? There are better options available in the supermarket?

Again, there are no simple rules or guidelines to tell you to persist, iterate or pivot. But just because something failed in the past, doesn’t mean it’s doomed to fail forever. Keep trying.

The post Dieting, Meditation and Unicorns appeared first on Live Now, Thrive Later.

The podcast is focused on my work with Green Pasture Farms, and why I’m an advocate for eating high welfare meat.

We touch on various topics, including but not limited to:

• How meat gets onto our plates
• The benefits of organic meat
• Grass fed v grass finished meat
• 5 tips for what to look out for when purchasing meat

You can listen to the podcast and/or read the transcript here:

Episode 90 – Why should Dads Eat Higher Welfare Meat with Simon Whyatt from Green Pasture Farms

In other news, I know it’s been a long time since my last post, sorry! It’s been a bit of a crazy year, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.

Between increased demand, supply chain issues and delivery network chaos, Green Pasture Farms has been keeping me pretty busy. I also launched a new web design business woosimon.com aimed at helping physical businesses get online quickly and cost-effectively.

I’ve got a couple of new posts underway though, and aim to get back to regular posts as of next week. In the meantime, checkout the podcast!

The post Interview on the Fitter Healthier Dad Podcast appeared first on Live Now, Thrive Later.

You have no doubt seen the news that there is a correlation between blood serum levels of Vitamin D, and susceptibility to Covid-19¹.

Though results have been somewhat mixed depending upon the study, overall it has been found that between 70-80% of people with severe cases are deficient in Vitamin D, significantly more than the population average^{2, 3}.

Based on studies like these, there have been calls for widespread supplementation of Vitamin D. It could be a very low hanging fruit if the correlation proves to be causative – so should we all be shovelling down handfuls of Vitamin D capsules like smarties nut and seeds just to be on the safeside?

Don’t (Fully) Believe (All) the Hype

The first thing to be totally clear about, is that at the time of writing this post, there is zero hard evidence that taking Vitamin D supplements to protect against the coronavirus will either reduce your risk of catching it, nor reduce the diseases severity if you do.

While Vitamin D deficiency is correlated with increased risk from Covid, it is also correlated with obesity, poor diet, lack of exercise and an unhealthy diet. These are all also independently correlated with worse outcomes from Covid19 (and any other illness for that matter).

That said, there are plausible mechanisms by which Vitamin D could reduce the severity of, and speed recovery from respiratory infections¹, so it’s not impossible that it is the vitamin deficiency itself that is the (or a significant) underlying factor.

Vitamin D Deficiency is Never Good

Something I think is very important in these strange times, is to try and avoid being myopic and only focusing on what we can do to reduce risk from Covid-19.

Regardless of whether Vitamin D levels turn out to be a significant factor in susceptibility to, and severity of, coronavirus infections, you should be concerned with avoiding deficiency.

Vitamin D deficiency has a whole host of known horrible consequences, including increased risk cardiovascular disease, cancer and cognitive impairment⁴. So ensuring you’re not deficient is definitely a good idea, whether the connection with covid turns out to be true or not.

Before you guzzle down the entire pot…

Remember, more is not necessarily better, in fact you can have too much of a good thing!

Excess levels of Vitamin D inhibit its beneficial effects and can even lead to hypercalcemia, a condition in which too much calcium builds up in the blood, potentially forming deposits in the arteries or soft tissues⁵.

But how do you know what your Vitamin D levels are?

The only way to know for sure is to take a test. This would either require going to a doctor (though perhaps not the preferred destination at the moment, particularly if you think you’re high risk from the virus!), or ordering a Vitamin D home test kit.

Whether it’s worth you doing a test or not really depends upon the likelihood that you’re deficient.

Risk factors include:

• Darker skin
• Living at higher latitudes
• Little exposure to natural sunlight
• Poor diet / Vegan diet

If you fall into two or more of these categories, it’s definitely worth doing a test, particularly if you often feel tired or low in energy, a typical symptom of Vitamin D deficiency.

I’ve got low levels, so should I be taking Vitamin D supplements to protect against the Coronavirus

Any regular readers to this blog will know that in general I think that supplements suck, and don’t recommend their use.

I stand by this viewpoint for most people, most of the time.

A good diet and healthy lifestyle will generally provide you with all the necessary nutrients you need.

That said, it’s important not to be dogmatic about things, and realise that perhaps in some cases, supplementation might be a wise option.

For example, if you’re 1 dark skinned, 2 live in the Northern hemisphere, 3 work indoors all day, 4 it’s winter, and 5 you don’t eat fish, meat or dairy, it’s going to be pretty much impossible for you to increase and maintain your serum Vitamin D levels without supplementation.

What was that about sleeping in a car?

The latter hypothetical is pretty extreme, most people are only going to hit 3 or 4 at the most out of the 5, and so I think Vitamin D supplements should be used as a temporary stopgap solution, not a permanent fix.

My analogy would be that taking Vitamin D supplements for your health is like sleeping in your car if you find yourself homeless.

Sleeping in your car is considerably better than sleeping in the street.

Well, that’s anecdotal I know, but I’m sure if they were to do a study on it people that slept in their cars would have better outcomes than those that slept in the street.

Studies show that sleeping in your car is 95%:

• Warmer
• Drier
• Comfier
• Safer

Wow, that’s amazing, we should all be sleeping in our cars!

Well no, you’re actually much better off sleeping in a house, providing you have the option. Had the study compared sleeping in a house, to sleeping in a car, the car wouldn’t have looked quite so peachy.

In the same way, avoiding Vitamin D deficiency via supplementation is certainly much better than doing nothing, but it’s better longterm to optimise your diet and lifestyle by eating real foods and spending time in the sun without sunscreen. This way not only do you avoid the risk overdoing the Vitamin D, but you also ensure you get all the other nutrients your body needs, and the additional benefits of sun exposure.

The post Taking Vitamin D Supplements to Protect Against the Coronavirus Is Like Sleeping in Your Car appeared first on Live Now, Thrive Later.

So the big question of the day is de what do we do about Covid-19?

The consensus winning out at the moment is to flatten the curve at any cost.

This is to be achieved by “social distancing”, the extent and severity of which varies considerably from country to country, but the effect of which in all cases is likely to be a global recession the like of which has never been seen before.

There is considerable opposition to this approach however, from those who argue that the consequences of mass unemployment and a crippling recession could be as bad if not worse than the disease itself.

Could a more targeted response, focused on protecting the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions, while allowing the young and healthy to get on with life and keep civilisation spinning, allow us to “surf the curve” while avoiding the total destruction of the world economy?

I very much want to believe the second option is possible. It sounds plausible, but is that just because it is a much more convenient solution for me, being (relatively) young, fit and healthy?

More Social Distancing = Less Deaths from Covid19

I think that this is a fairly uncontroversial statement.

More Social Distancing = Less Deaths in 2020

Probably also true? I’d imagine that in addition to the reduction in deaths from the coronavirus, social distancing will also reduce deaths from other infectious diseases, plus traffic accidents, work and sporting accidents, drink related accidents, and violent crimes. There’s also a study that claims that the lockdown in China may have saved up to 77,000 lives through reduced air pollution. (It’s estimated that 1.6 million die in China every year due to air pollution).

More Social Distancing = Less Deaths

This statement on the other hand is clearly false.

We still haven’t solved mortality, therefore it’s pretty much guaranteed that everyone alive now is going to die at some point. Hopefully neither you nor I in 2020 from the virus or anything else, but around 60 million people will kick the proverbial bucket before the clock strikes midnight on the 31st December, the vast majority from non Covid19 related causes.

This is where (at least for me) things get horribly complicated, and I really don’t know what to think.

Social distancing = Less QUALYs?

We see the daily figures for how many have died from the virus, and it’s horrifying.

At the time of writing this post, the current number of confirmed deaths from the virus was just over 16000 50,000 100,000+ and rising.

That is terrible. That’s lots of parents, relatives, friends, lovers, and children who are gone forever.

My heart goes out to anyone who’s lost someone they love to the virus.

This number, however, doesn’t give me enough information.

#OLDLIVESMATTER

Now, let me be very clear I am most certainly not saying “Let the pensioners die“.

Did Dominic Cummings say this? Who knows. Maybe he did, maybe he was actually saying something along the lines of what I’m about to thrash out here. Please bare with me to the end before leaping to any rash judgements or putting angry comments based on what you think I’m saying without carefully reading to the end.

We have established that, as yet, we can’t make people immortal. What we can try and do is maximise their lifespan, even better, their healthspan.

Rather than looking at “deaths” it’s more useful to look at QALYs – Quality adjusted life years.

The Italian National Health Institute pegged the median age of death from COVID-19 in Italy at 80.5. This is consistent with early data from the United States.

The average 80-year old in the United States has a life expectancy of about 9 years, suggesting that on average, a death averted will “buy” 9 extra years of life. In QALY-estimations, this number needs to be adjusted for the “quality of the years”. In Italy, 99% of deaths had an underlying pathology that needs to be incorporated in QALY adjustments. If we use diabetes as a reasonable proxy for the many chronic diseases, we would adjust the 9 years down to 7.8 years or QALYs. In other words: the average loss per person of quality-adjusted life years is 7.8.

Econlib

My neighbour José is 80. He is awesome. Everyday he walks around 3km from his residential home, up a huge hill across a rocky path to his allotment. His allotment is on a steep terrace. He’s fitter than most people 20 years younger than him. Maybe than some 20 year olds! I would be absolutely gutted if anything happened to José, and would happily self isolate and throw my businesses under the bus to buy him an extra 7.8 years or less.

But I’m not sure it’s that simple.

There is a very strong correlation between life expectancy and GDP.

As always, correlation does not imply causation, but there’s fairly strong evidence that over the long-term, increased wealth produces better health – better nutrition, better medical care, better education, etc.

(NB Over the short-term it’s more complicated).

Well, actually, over the long-term it’s more complicated too.

I’m sure any anti-capitalists out there are jumping up and down pointing at Cuba.

They’ve got a very respectable average life expectancy of just under 80 years old, with a GDP of under $10,000.

When it comes to health and longevity, a capitalist liberal democracy is a bit like digging a hole to use a ladder… Cheap alcohol, fast food, cars, there are many fruits of the system that reduce life expectancy. (Whether it’s possible or desirable to remove these whilst keeping the gains is for another discussion).

Look closely again at the graph, and you’ll note that the scale along the bottom is not linear.

GDP of €1000 very roughly correlates with life expectancy of around 60. 10x this to €10,000 to get close to 80. The other end of the graph is £100,000 another 10x.

Getting over the 80 year threshold is expensive – it accounts for a huge proportion of healthcare spending.

We can certainly avoid the deaths of many octogenarians in 2020 via social distancing measures, but can we really count on this equating to 7.8 QALYs each, if we totally destroy the economy in the process?

I’m also not sure I’m convinced by this figure of 7.8. On average an Italian that makes it to 80, will live to see 90, but as 99% of those that died had a pre existing medical condition, perhaps adjusting the QALYs down from 9 to 7.8 may not be enough?

What if the vast majority of virus deaths are all clustered at the lower extreme of the average, those who would have died within the year anyway had they not caught the disease?

Indeed, as more data comes in since I began writing this post, this hypothesis looks ever more accurate, and that it is very possible that many, if not most of the victims of Covid19 may have died anyway within the next 12 months.

It is crucially important that the NHS is not overwhelmed, but if COVID deaths can be kept in the order of say 20,000 by stringent suppression measures, as is now being suggested, there may end up being a minimal impact on overall mortality for 2020 (although background mortality could increase due to pressures on the health services and the side-effects of isolation).

David Spiegelhalter

The Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM) reduced their best-guess estimate of the Mortality rate from 0.51% down to 0.1–0.26%.

Among other things, they think some people who have been classified as dying of COVID-19 didn’t actually die of the disease but rather of serious existing conditions, and they just happened to have COVID-19 when they died.

Rob Wilbin 80,000 Hours

Is it possible that the worst recession of the century could in fact result in a greater reduction in life expectancy? That by saving lives in 2020, we actually have a net loss in QUALYs in the long-term?

Do we save grandma this year, only to lose her next year along with grandpa too, while losing the business and the house while we’re at it?

(It should also be noted that the cost of lockdown is not purely economic – It could result in severe psychological trauma, particularly for those living alone, or in difficult domestic situations).

What’s a QALY Worth?

How do you put a value on a human life?

One answer would be to say that you can’t – every human life is priceless, there should be no budget constraints.

But in the real world, we have budget constraints.

In the UK, the NHS typically uses an upper benchmark figure of £30,000 per QALY (€36,000) in order to decide whether a treatment should be approved or not.

How much will it cost per QALY to “flatten the curve”?

We calculated the cost per QALY gained from the current approach to be somewhere between approximately $75,000 and $650,000. We did this by dividing the planned stimulus package by the QALYs gain we estimated. This is somewhere between reasonably cost effective and clearly not a wise investment if we used the conventional standard cut-off point of $100,000 per life year gained. If the total investment was $4 trillion, the cost per QALY gained would rise to a range of $300,000 to $2.5 million per QALY gained — an expenditure far out of line from other healthcare investments.

Economic Cost of Flattening the Curve

Now these calculations are presuming that 7.8 QALYs will be saved per coronavirus death prevented, which as highlighted above, could very well be massively overestimated.

They also use the amount of government stimulation as the cost, but again, surely this is underestimating the cost? Shouldn’t the true cost be the total losses made to the economy, not the amount the government spends to try and keep it on life support?

Regardless of how you cut it, each QALY is going to cost a lot.

It should also be noted that the figures of £30,000 / $100,000 deemed as “cost effective” are for interventions that have been proven to work.

A major objective of “flattening the curve” is to make time to increase the capacity to hospitalise and ventilate critical patients. Sounds reasonable?

But again, as time progresses, the evidence is beginning to mount that neither are particularly effective treatments, with multiple studies showing that 80-90% of patients that are hospitalized go on to die anyway.

If we are extremely generous, and presume that 20% would certainly have died had they not been hospitalised and ventilated, and will all go onto live an additional 7.8 QALYs, we’re now looking at a minimum figure of €500,000 per QALY. More realistically, we’re looking at €Millions though.

In contrast, givewell.org calculate that by investing in the Against Malaria Foundation you can save lives for the average cost of around £1000 per QALY.

Testing Times

Without doubt, we need to start wide scale testing ASAP.

In an ideal world, only those with the virus need be kept in quarantine, the rest of us should be able to get on with our lives, and not suffer the economic and mental harm caused by long-term confinement.

The problem of course is that testing everyone on a regular basis would be extremely expensive and logistically very difficult.

One of the best solutions I have seen so far to get things moving again would be group testing:

There is now a 15-minute coronavirus test. What we need to do is group-household test each day. The method is simple. A testing mobile, manned by military personnel, would come to your street early each morning. The members of your household and maybe another 9 (the best number is yet to be determined) would be invited to provide a swab sample. All the swabs of all the households would be collectively used to test if any of the swabs was positive. Fifteen minutes later your group of households would either be cleared to go to work and frequent stores, restaurants, and other establishments for the day or not. If you’re cleared, you’d get a green bracelet that would automatically change to red after 24 hours. Those with green bracelets would be returned to normal society. If your group of households tested positive, subgroup testing would be done, on the spot, until it was discovered which of your group’s 10 households was infected and which weren’t. Those households that were infected (had one or more infected members) would need to go into quarantine.

Laurence Kotlikoff – Forbes

The main alternative is track and trace – identifying cases from symptoms early, testing to confirm, then tracing all the infected person’s contacts during the previous two weeks using mobile phone GPS data and testing them.

The latter was the method used with great success in countries such as South Korea and Singapore.

South Koreans’ cellphones vibrate with emergency alerts whenever new cases are discovered in their districts. Websites and smartphone apps detail hour-by-hour, sometimes minute-by-minute, timelines of infected people’s travel — which buses they took, when and where they got on and off, even whether they were wearing masks.
People who believe they may have crossed paths with a patient are urged to report to testing centers.

South Koreans have broadly accepted the loss of privacy as a necessary trade-off.

Max Fisher NYTimes

There are of course privacy fears with this method, which are certainly not unfounded.

If we consent to sharing this data now “temporarily” is it possible, or even likely, that this loss of privacy will become permanent?

I certainly think that privacy and surveillance are important issues that we should be concerned about. I highly recommend reading Data and Goliath for a deep exploration of this topic.

I think realistically though, that we relinquished our privacy some time ago, and continue to do so as long as we continue to choose to carry smartphones 24 hours a day.

The data is being generated. I don’t think granting temporary permission to use it to combat the virus greatly increases the risk of the same data being used nefariously in the future. This doesn’t mean to say we shouldn’t be worrying about this, nor that the data isn’t being used nefariously already. I just don’t believe there’s a downside to using the data for good, if it’s already being collected.

Of course, these two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps weekly group testing combined with track and trace would be a good solution.

Hammer Time?

This strategy of brute force lockdown followed by targeted quarantining via extensive testing and tracking has been nicknamed “The Hammer and The Dance”, and certainly seems to be be the most prudent solution.

The question still remains however, how brutal the “hammering” has to be until we can start “dancing”, particularly if it’s going to be a long time until we have wide scale testing capability.

The utilitarian response would appear, at least in part, to be stop attempting to hospitalise and ventilate the extremely ill that will die anyway.

Put this money and resources to more effective use, and don’t expose essential health workers to unnecessary risk. (Who have many more QALYs ahead of them, with which they could in turn save many more QALYs of others)

With the pressure on the health system eased in this way, could lockdown restrictions start to be gradually eased?

Open up all shops, not just food and pharmacies, allow bars and restaurants to reopen but at greatly reduced capacity and with extreme levels of hygiene?

Limit the percentage of people allowed out each day? Peru and Panama have done this by allowing only men out certain days, women the others. Perhaps it could be done by issuing all citizens a different coloured wrist band – Green = Mon + Thu, Blue = Tue + Fri, Red = Wed + Sat…

Keep the elderly and at risk as cocooned as possible, but let the majority of the population begin to be productive again?

The problem of course is that “cocooning” the at risk is extremely difficult, if not impossible, as they inevitably have to be cared for by young people. The more we relax the lockdown, the more risk there is of passing the virus to the carers, who in turn pass it to those in their care.

I should point out that I do not class myself as a utilitarian due issues such as the repugnant conclusion, cluelessness and the difficulty of measuring “utility”.

I do however believe that trying to prevent as many early deaths as possible AKA maximise QALYs is a goal worth pursuing (though not at any cost).

I’m just not convinced that total lockdown is definitely the way to achieve this goal.

Let me make it clear again that I am most certainly not saying that we should just throw all the old and infirm people under the bus, that their lives don’t matter, nor that we should save the economy in order to maintain our luxurious lives.

The ultimate goal is to “save lives”, I.e. maximise QALYs. If collapsing the economy will achieve this, I’m fully behind it. My fear how ever, is that a severe recession will not just result in a decrease in standard of living, but also ultimately in more lost QALYs.

While we certainly shouldn’t throw old people under the bus, we should also perhaps be wary of driving a full bus of a cliff to avoid old people in the road.

But Covid19 also kills young people!

While the virus mainly affects older people, with children and younger adults thankfully a tiny percentage of the fatalities, a tiny percentage of a huge number is still a big number.

If we relax social distancing by any degree, even while avoiding the collapse of the health system, we will inevitably have more young people and children die from Covid19.

If you’re young, fit and healthy, it’s not unrealistic to say that self isolation has near zero personal benefit – You’re at extremely low risk from serious harm from the disease. If (or when) you catch it, chances are it’ll be like a bad cold or mild flu.

You will, however, most likely suffer pretty severe consequences from the lockdown, economically and perhaps psychologically.

If we don’t all suffer these consequences, however, innocent young people and children will die avoidable deaths.

It sounds a bit like some kind of horrific moral dilemma from the Brothers Karamazov or the Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, but this is basically the choice we are facing.

Now, most people’s initial reaction is simply, well stay at home, duh!

Afterall, home quarantine for a few months isn’t that bad, especially in today’s digitally connected age with free video conferencing, pretty much all the music ever created and all the books ever written available on demand and much of it for free, not to mention TV streaming, social media, etc.

And what’s the worst that can happen with the recession? If everyone loses their jobs, surely it can’t be that bad? They can’t evict everyone who can’t pay their rent, nor let everyone starve, can they? It’s not going to be pleasant, but it’s not so bad we’re willing to sacrifice innocent children to save the economy are we?

Sounds reasonable.

But if this is the case, when does the quarantine end?

Here’s a thought experiment…

X months down the line finally a cure has been found, and a vaccine manufactured and distributed. Coronavirus is no longer a threat. We can finally leave our houses without the risk of spreading the disease and causing unnecessary deaths from coronavirus.

But while we’ve been in self isolation there’s also been a dramatic drop in deaths from flu and other contagious diseases (usually around 10m per year), also a huge drop in deaths from road traffic accidents (usually around 1.25m per year), air pollution (usually around 4.6m per year), industrial accidents (?), etc.

It turns out, our normal day to day lives result in lots of “preventable” deaths.

So do we have a moral responsibility to never leave the house again?

This is where the whole situation starts to make my brain hurt!

On the one hand you can say, no, this crisis is different – there’s an unprecedented number of deaths, the health systems are at breaking point we all have to do something or millions will die unnecessarily. Which is hard to argue with.

But millions of people die unnecessarily every year and we do nothing about it.

Look at the chart of life expectancies again. Look at all these countries with average life expectancies below 70, below 60, below 55! But all of a sudden we are willing to give up our freedom and privacy, and potentially destroy the economy, predominantly to prolong the lives of wealthy 80 year olds?

Utilitarianism vs Nationalism

Why is it that all of a sudden we’re willing* to make huge sacrifices in order to “save lives”, when millions of people, including millions of young people and children, die every year from deaths for which there are already tried and tested interventions with much cheaper price tags?

Part of the answer of course is that we value QALYs in our own country more than QALYs in another country.

The QALYs at risk in our own country could very well belong to a friend or relative.

There is also perhaps a more selfish element at work; that one day it may be our own QALYs at risk – you’ll never be a 5 year old African child, but one day you will be an 80 year old that needs looking after.

Another argument might be that we prioritise our own citizens as they’ve paid taxes all their lives, and so are owed preferential treatment.

But if this is the case, does this mean we should be granting access to treatments in short supply based upon lifetime tax contributions?

If you had £100,000 and you had the choice to spend it saving the life of an 80 year old compatriot, or three 5 year old compatriots, which would you choose?

The three 5 year olds seems the obvious answer, despite the fact they’ve never paid any tax.

So should it make a difference where the children live?

It’s unlikely you could save the lives of three 5 year old compatriots for £100,000, but it’s quite possible you could save the lives of three children in a developing country.

Now perhaps you might say that there is a difference, as the children saved at home will go on to pay taxes in their future QALYs, thus paying back the “investment”.

But what if the children move to another country? Or what if they survive but with a disability which makes them unable to work and dependent upon benefits for the rest of their lives?

If you don’t want to send the money abroad, you could open the borders and save their lives by letting them come and live here, where they would most likely be much more productive and be an economic gain.

Well, opening borders is a discussion for another, post coronavirus, age, but I make the above points to (hopefully) illustrate that you can’t value a life by how much tax they’ve paid, or are likely to pay, nor IMHO where they had the luck to be born.

Does the answer change if the 80 year old is a parent or partner? If the 80 year old is you? Should it change?

Commute the Commute

While on the one hand I believe that the current lockdown is too extreme, I also think that we should take this opportunity to reevaluate our pre-corona lives, and that certain aspects should never return to normal.

I hope that one positive to come from this whole situation is the realisation that a huge number of jobs can be done just as effectively from home, if not more so. This could:

• Massively reduce deaths from pollution and traffic accidents
• Give people considerably more free time each day
• Give people more time with their families
• Remove the stress of commuting
• Reduce the spread of infectious diseases (During commute and in office)
• Free up land for housing and other uses
• Help in the fight against climate change

I’m sure there are advantages to meeting with your colleagues once in a while, but this could be done sporadically in co-working spaces.

I’d also hope that this will be the end of needless international business travel. I have a friend who was flying from Barcelona to Paris on a weekly basis to attend 1 hour long meetings. Complete insanity!

The End of the High Street?

The high street has been in decline for some time, will this be the final nail in the coffin?

Could this also be a good thing?

Ordering online for home delivery seems to be more efficient in terms of time, and energy.

As with offices, shops don’t appear to be particularly necessary use of land.

Could those buildings be repurposed as housing, bars, restaurants, museums, galleries, hospitals..?

Re-evaluation

I also hope that this whole experience makes us reflect, on an individual and a societal level, just how interconnected the whole world is, how our actions can have far reaching effects, and that our safe comfortable lives are not guaranteed nor should be taken for granted.

The things we buy, the waste we produce, the energy we use, the journeys we make – what effects are they having on other people, the planet, and the future?

I don’t believe that “capitalism is bad”. On the contrary, I think we owe it our amazing, long, healthy, rich lives.

It’s certainly not without issues, however, and we need to keep working in order to maximise the benefits, whilst minimising the negatives.

We should also realise that we just dodged a bullet. Covid-19 may well be worse than the flu, but it’s relatively light weight as far as infectious diseases go.

It almost certainly has a mortality rate of less than 1%, probably far less. What if it had have had a mortality rate of 50%+ which is not unheard of in other infectious diseases?

It doesn’t bare thinking about… but unfortunately we need to think about these things, as as we have seen, simply hoping something will never happen is not an effective strategy.

The total lack of preparedness for a “mild” pandemic also indicates that we’d be woefully under prepared for the numerous other unlikely, but altogether too possible potential apocalypses that might be waiting around the corner.

*Perhaps “Willing” is the wrong word?

Earlier I wrote:

Why is it that all of a sudden we’re willing* to make huge sacrifices in order to “save lives”?

That statement of course would imply that we were self-isolating voluntarily.

Here in Spain, this is not the case. We were asked nicely at first to stay at home and socialise as little as possible, but then two days later a state of emergency was announced and “lockdown” implemented.

The vast majority of businesses were shut down with immediate effect, and we were all ordered to stay home. We are not even allowed to go outside for a walk, unless it is to your nearest shop to buy essential supplies (unless you have a dog).

I am not sure how I feel about this.

I was, and still am, more than happy to self-isolate, and voluntarily stopped my in person fitness classes and capoeira classes before the official lock down.

Though I may have my doubts about the extent and duration of the lockdown, these are just hypothesis, and I am happy to defer to expert opinion.

Many, many people, however, I am sure would happily carry on living their lives more or less as normal, were the police not stopping people in the street and threatening them with fines or arrest.

Is this right? Is it legal? Is it democratic?

The state of emergency is written into law, and it was instigated by a democratically elected government, so I suppose it is legal and democratic. Something about the whole situation leaves me deeply uneasy however.

Now, I am not an anarchist, and believe that a capable state is necessary in order to maintain individual liberty, but this is a chilling reminder that this liberty could be taken away at any moment.

Hungary and Poland were both accepted as liberal democracies and accepted into the EU. It was clear that history had a direction, and it ended in liberal democracy and personal freedom. The tanks would never roll down the streets again in Europe, authoritarianism was a thing of the past, just like deadly pandemics.

Today the streets are patrolled by armed police and soldiers, and we are all effectively under house arrest “for our own protection”. Perhaps it’s warranted this time…

The post Lockdowns, Longevity, Liberty & Long-Termism appeared first on Live Now, Thrive Later.

I eat my protein power porridge pretty much everyday! I do vary the ingredients a little from time to time, but generally I like to keep things simple.

Every decision takes some mental energy. If you’ve got things to do, it’s better to save that decision making energy for growing your business.

Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs famously had wardrobes full of exact copies of the same outfit – they didn’t want to waste precious neurons deciding what to wear each morning. For the same reason, many effective doers and thinkers have fixed morning routines – no unnecessary decisions necessary!

Why porridge?

Oats are a great source of slow release energy. They’ll keep feeding your brain and body a slow and steady supply of glucose throughout the morning, keeping your creative juices flowing, and fueling any workout you might have planned.

Porridge is also an amazing source of soluble fibre. This not only helps keep you feeling full, but has been associated with reduced risk of heart disease.

There are lots of different types of oat – Steel cut, milled, rolled (regular and quick) – They are all the same nutritionally, but will change the texture of the porridge. I like quick rolled oats personally (copos finos in Spanish).

Why the egg!?

The usual response when people here that I put an egg in my porridge is “What? Yuck!” – But believe me, it’s actually delicious, as well as nutritious.

Eggs are packed full of protein, and not just any protein, they contain all 9 of the essential amino acids in just the right quantities. They are also jam packed with vitamins, minerals and essential omega fatty acids. Everything necessary to grow a baby chicken! But you can eat it and use it to keep your entrepreneurial mind and muscle in tip top condition…

Go nuts every morning

Nuts and seeds are also powerhouses of nutrition, jam packed with the raw materials to sprout a new plant.

People that eat a handful of (raw, unseasoned) nuts and seeds on a daily basis live longer healthier lives, and have a lower risk of obesity.

Get fruity

Most of us have been conditioned to a sweet breakfast thanks to the mountains of sugar that get put into kid’s breakfast cereals.

After cutting out sugary drinks, cutting out breakfast cereals is one of the best things that you can do for your health.

Fruit is a great addition to a healthy breakfast, as it gives us this sweet sensation to which we’ve become accustomed, but with less sugar and more vitamins, minerals and fiber.

So without further ado, here is my go to breakfast:

Protein Power Porridge Recipe

So hopefully you like my Protein Power Porridge recipe! If you give it a go, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

The post Simon’s Protein Power Porridge Recipe appeared first on Live Now, Thrive Later.

[A “guiri” is more or less the Spanish equivalent of “gringo”, usually used to refer to tourists or expats from Northern Europe with pale skin and fair hair. Gamba means prawn. A “guiri gamba” is a normally pasty skinned tourist who has spent too much time in the strong Spanish sun and turned bright rid like a prawn!]

1. Both Exercise and Sun Exposure are Very Important for Health

We evolved as Hunter-Gatherers – highly active searching for food on a daily basis in the great outdoors. Our bodies still need this daily dose of movement and UV radiation to stay healthy.

2. Sola dosis facit venenum – The dose makes the poison

Though both are essential, you can have too much of a good thing.

Too much sun and you will get burned. Sunburn is not only painful and unsightly, but can also lead to cancerous sarcomas – Don’t be a lobster!

Too much exercise can lead to overtraining, resulting in an impaired immune system, fatigue, low mood and increased injury risk.

3. We are Antifragile

Antifragile was a term coined by Nassim Taleb to describe the way in which humans are able to adapt to repeated exposures to ever increasing stressors.

Hormesis refers to the manner in which a moderate dose of UV radiation not only helps the body produce Vitamin D, but also stimulates the production of melatonin, which makes the skin darker, and more resistant to burning. With more melatonin, the next time you go out in the Sun you can take more UV and for longer.

The process by which your body increases in strength and endurance in response to exercise is very similar – a moderate dose of exercise will produce adaptations in your body that will enable you to handle more next time.

4. How much hormesis can you handle?

In theory there is an optimum dose of exercise, and an optimum dose of UV that will produce the greatest adaptations in the shortest amount of time.

Who doesn’t want to get lean and tanned as fast as possible?

The problem is, it’s a very fine line and it’s hard to know exactly where that line is.

It’s therefore very easy to get yourself burned – Remember, don’t be a guiri gamba!

5. Genetics play a huge role in your tolerance

People that naturally have lots of melatonin (i.e. darker skin) can spend much more time in the Sun without burning than lighter skinned people.

Equally, some people can handle much longer and harder workouts before they are at risk of overtraining.

Even taking your genetics into account, it’s still hard to put an exact figure on how much of a good thing you can handle due to varying external factors.

Sun time: Are there low ozone levels today? Are you at altitude? How’s the cloud cover? Is there a deceptive cool breeze?

Gym time: How did you sleep? How much stress are you under? How’s your diet been?

After a stressful week, a grueling workout might be just enough to tip you over the edge…

6. Genetics Play A Huge Role in Your Limits

If you are from a Northern latitude with very pale skin, even if you perfectly optimise your peak level of sun exposure everyday for the rest of your life, you will never get as dark as someone with a genetic heritage from close to the Equator.

Just as we all have different limits with regards to skin tone, we also have limits with regards to building muscle and increasing endurance.

Everyone can get stronger, fitter, and more athletic, but not everyone can build huge muscles, get super low body fat, or reach Olympic levels of performance.

7. Health vs Hollywood

The good news is that optimum health can be achieved a lot easier and faster than a “perfect body” – whatever that is.

A regular moderate dose of sun and exercise way below the borderline is sufficient to keep you fit and well, and maximise your chances of a long, active life.

A slim and lightly tanned body could well be much healthier than a sculpted bronzed one that’s spent too much time close to the edge of the danger zone.

8. The Tortoise and the Hare

Point 7 is not to say that you can’t or shan’t ever reach your genetic potential, only that you should be patient.

The classic beach holiday mistake is to overdo it on the first day and get an embarrassing bright red sunburn. Because of the sunburn, you can’t go back to the beach and end up going home as pasty white as when you arrived.

People make the same mistake in the gym – overtrain trying to get that six pack in six weeks, give up exhausted and demotivated, ending up back where they started.

The better solution is to remember that there is no rush. Take your time. Don’t try to optimise for rapid results, take the long view. It’s better to do a short, but effective exercise routine regularly, than going all out on a crazy workout but then not returning for a month.

Health first and foremost, don’t get burned, and with patience and perseverance you can gradually reach your genetic potential.

As they say here in Barcelona – Don’t be a Guiri Gamba!

The post Don’t Be A Lobster (In the Gym) appeared first on Live Now, Thrive Later.

I decided to create an infographic about simple actions the average person can take to help combat deforestation, as I couldn’t find anything already out there on the net.

Actually, there’s a bit more to it which you can read about in my rant below if you’re so inclined, but without further a do, here’s the image:

Some nuance – Saving the Rainforests is Complicated

I hope that I have done the topic some justice. This is obviously a complex issue (what isn’t) and complex issues sadly don’t lend themselves to snappy infographics and memes.

I’d therefore like to take the time to clarify some points and put all my cards on the table:

• Meat Reduction vs Veganism

First up, conflict of interest – I earn commission from the sale of grass fed beef in the UK via Green Pasture Farms.

I started this website to promote the consumption of ethical sustainable meat as it is something I believed in, and still do believe in.

I realise, however, that this makes me highly at risk of confirmation bias. Do I still believe it is the best option because it really is, or am I a victim of motivated reasoning? Please make your own decisions.

I’ve written extensively about my views on the benefits of grassfed beef, the ethics of meat eating, and pasture farming v reforestation before so won’t go into more details here.

What I will say is that while I believe some level of meat consumption is better for the planet than strict veganism, I have no idea what level of consumption this should be, and it would vary greatly depending upon your region.

Once per week, once per month, once per year? My solution would be to ban grain feeding, limit land use and let market forces the price and availability of meat. Does this result in £1000 steaks and only the rich eating meat? Possibly. That’s how it was for all of human history.

Do we solve inequality before or after averting an existential catastrophe? Answers on a postcard please…

• What the hell should we eat?

Good question. Undoubtedly, much industrial food production relies on deforestation, excessive use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers and monocroping. All bad.

That said, small scale organic farming has its downsides too – it’s less efficient, uses more land, more water, there’s more food wastage.

Shopping local might reduce carbon footprints, but the international trade of food is one of the major forces closing the gap in financial inequality between nations.

Basically, as I’ve talked about before, what to eat is really flipping complicated.

Start a veg patch. Don’t buy anything that you know comes from unethical megacorps. Try and do your research on everything else.

• Paper – Better than Plastic?

Is a kindle better than heap of paper books?

Can pamphlets and posters galvanise positive social change creating more good than harm?

Is paper packaging better than plastic?

Does paper from renewable well managed sources help make forest more financially viable?

Perhaps if we stopped using paper cups, the timberyard would go out of business and the land sold to a manufacturer of AK47s or cluster bombs.

Perhaps young rapidly growing forests sequester more carbon than old established ones.

Again, there’s no easy answer.

Probably some paper use is sustainable and perhaps can even be beneficial. Young forests however don’t have any where near the biodiversity of old ones.

• What Wood You Do?

Again, pretty much the same answer as for paper and meat.

There’s undoubtedly some level of optimum production/consumption, but where the hell is it?

And optimum for who, when and where? Does more wood use now help poorer workers get out of poverty now, thus leading to a wealthier, better educated next generation who can help save the planet without having to starve to do so?

Again, sorry, I’ve not idea.

• Effective Altruism

Another contentious question.

Many are undoubtedly a huge waste of time and money, either through well meaning ineptitude, unforeseen consequences, or downright fraud.

If you are going to give away your hard earned cash, or volunteer your time, try and make sure it’s got the best possible chance of actually doing some good (or at least not causing harm) by checking out the Effective Altruism Community and pages such as GiveWell.

As for deforestation specifically, if you want to donate money CoolEarth.org appears to have the best track record of value for money.

Planting trees is great. I’ve planted trees in my garden, and I’ve planted trees with a foundation in the wild.

Also consider however that if you have the capacity to earn £100 per hour, perhaps it would be better to do some overtime, and pay someone else to plant the trees on your behalf.

Everybody wins (providing you’re not earning the money working for Evil Corp).

Why did I create this infographic and write this post on deforestation?

I was motivated to write this post/create the infographic after seeing the following meme:

My initial response was rage.

I know without a shadow of a doubt that my friend who shared it means well. She cares about the rainforest, the planet and all its inhabitants.

She shared this meme because she wanted to do something, to take action even though it seems like an insurmountable problem.

So why did it make me angry? Because I honestly believe that it’s effect could actually have the opposite effect.

The slightly paranoid part of me even thinks it could have been created in a Russian Troll Farm at the behest of the Neoliberal Unfettered Free Market Capitalism Fanatics to lull the masses into inaction.

For non Spanish speakers, the meme says:

S.O.S Amazon
Worldwide Prayer for the Amazon and Mother Earth

Light your incense, say a mantra, do reiki, meditate or pray to whoever is your creed. Breath, Connect and Visualise the Flames Reduce.

Author unknown? Possibly Bolsonaro?

Now this is where I actually had to breath deeply and meditate, and possibly it did do some good.

I have to remember that my friend 100% believes that these actions can have an effect.

I am a skeptic. I think it’s highly unlikely. If there is an effect, it is so small that never in human history has it been demonstrated.

Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that there is harm from doing these actions.

My friend was quick to point out that none of these actions prevent you from also taking concrete steps to battle deforestation, as in the 5 I suggest in the infographic.

On one level I totally agree – it is totally theoretically possible to do all of the actions in both memes.

But I fear that the S.O.S meme does not effectively take into account human psychology. Or, conspiracy brain thinks perhaps they have and it is in fact produced by Machivalian rainforest exploiters.

Motivated Reasoning and Doing Just Enough

If you’ve seen the photos and read the statistics, you’d have to be a psychopath not to want to do something to combat what’s going on in Brazil and many other countries across the world.

But what to do, that is the question?

This meme gives some very easy solutions you can do right now from the comfort of your own home, a small sacrifice of time, but nothing more.

It might not have been much, but you’ve done something at least. Your conscience is appeased. Yes, perhaps there’s more you could do but you can look into that later….

Now of course not everyone will think like that. Some of the most motivated activists I know are ardent believers in the supernatural, spirituality, mother earth etc.

Who knows, perhaps they’re even correct.

There are a lot of people however who simply want to ease their conscience, and memes such as this help them do so, and thus make it less likely they’ll take an action, albeit small, that might actually have a measurable effect.

Try Not to Alienate Your Team Mates

A loaded sentence already.

Teams and tribalism are part of the problem.

It’s already a problem that we have “Us and Them” – The Neoliberals and the Environmentalists.

It’s my belief that memes such as this could also serve (either intentionally or unintentionally) to fracture “Team Environmentalists” into smaller, weaker factions.

I’m not anti-capitalist, I’m not anti-technology. We need to do more to unite all people who care about the planet, regardless of their beliefs and be able to have honest open discussions.

Ultimately we need to try and get everyone on the same page – A balance between markets and capitalism efficiently solving problems, but with better incentives, regulation and factoring in the true costs of public goods.

But how do we get on the same page?

Should I have added a 6th category encouraging people to hope and pray in addition to the other 5 steps? Saying yes these things are important too, but we need to use every resource at our disposition?

Am I really certain that my solutions are better than my friends? 100% certainty is never a wise nor effective strategy.

More Tinfoil Hat Thoughts

I’ve never created an infographic before – why bother when there are already a million out there made much more talented designers than I?

I searched and searched for a clear meme of graphic with simple, evidence based actionable steps that any normal citizen can take (i.e. the ones in the image), and couldn’t find any!

I find it hard to believe that I’m the first person to create such an image – none of the steps are rocket science of huge secrets. You can find articles with the information, but it’s all pretty dense, and there’s nothing I could find that’s highly shareable (an important factor in igniting social change).

Hey – sorry, I don’t go on social media, so possibly it’s rampacked with them, but my google searches brought up nothing?

Plenty on the consequences of inaction, but nothing with advice of how the people can help.

OK, there are some recommending signing petitions and donating to charity, but I think the former is even less useful than the latter.

So my question is are there already better memes out there I can share? If yes, where are they, and why can’t I find them?

Unintended Consequences

At the risk of getting all nihilist – my final thought is again on that of unintended consequences.

I don’t know who made the SOS meme, nor what their intentions were.

I’m pretty sure whatever they were though, they didn’t think it was going to trigger me to make this infographic (which I’ve never done before) nor go on a rant like this.

Again, the problem of the unpredictable consequences of our actions rears its ugly head.

What the hell are we supposed to do?

I do not believe that prayer or good vibes are going to save the planet.

But what if all my ideas are wrong too!

What if rapid changing patterns in consumption cause a catastrophic global economic crash, leading to a leap backwards into poverty, mas starvation, disease and the inevitable consequence, war?

I refer you to someone who’s spent a lot more time thinking about it than me.

I don’t have the answers, only more questions – though I do think it’s very important we try and think very hard about the possible impacts of our choices, intended or otherwise and try not to be angry or dismissive when someone believes in different solutions to you.

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