From: caf@omen.UUCP (Chuck Forsberg)
Subject: Re: Adiposity 101
Organization: Omen Technology INC, Portland Rain Forest
Date: Fri, 01 Jan 1993 03:58:00 GMT

In article <-wrr!tr@lynx.unm.edu> bhjelle@carina.unm.edu () writes:
>In article <17939@pitt.UUCP> geb@cs.pitt.edu (Gordon Banks) writes:
>>In article <1992Dec23.105556.8340@omen.UUCP> caf@omen.UUCP (Chuck Forsberg) writes:
>>
>>>Steve, you (and others) seem convinced I am excluding relevant,
>>>high quality obesity research from Adiposity 101 that doesn't
>>>"tell me what I want to hear".  Could you be specific?  Please
>>>discuss specific papers, we've had enough vague generalizations.
>>
>>Every time I mention one you say "oh, I knew about it, but
>>it is pure crap" or something like that.  I'm sure you do
>>know about them.  You just find any paper you don't agree
>>with to be crap.
>>-- 
>With that lead-in, I can't resist being the first to mention
>the article in the latest New England Journal that shows that
>obese people who profess to be eating <1200 Cal/day diets
>in fact eat far more than they report, enough to account
>for their inability to lose weight. They also exercise some
>50% less than reported.
>
>Chuck, would you like to declare this article flawed now, or
>read it first?  :-)

I don't think that issue will appear in the Med School lib for
several days yet.  In the meantime all I've seen are some press
reports, and they leave something to be desired.

There was mention of a 40% underreporting in the "control
group".  The nature of this "control group" is not clear, but it
reminds me of papers I've seen indicating the obese underreport
their intake about the same as others do.

If the actual intake was 2080 kcal/d instead of 1200, that still
would be within the range of 2765 +- 252 calories per day for a
group of women with BMI of 18.96 +- 0.52 and 1425 +- 194
calories for a group of women with BMI of 23.12 +- 0.96.  But
then it may be necessary to increase those other figures by 40
per cent to make them comparable.

The networks I heard rather dramatized this story.  One of the
wire service press reports included a number of comments from
other researchers:

   In an editorial accompanying the study, Drs.  Elliot Danforth
   Jr.  and Ethan Sims of the University of Vermont in
   Burlington warned against misinterpretingthe results.  The
   findings should not be taken to mean "that obesity is simply
   the result of gluttony and sloth and that obese people fool
   themselves and others about their eating and physicial
   activity," they said.  The pair speculated that unusually low
   metabolic rates may still play a role in many cases of
   obesity, perhaps as a way of stabilizing energy consumption
   to prevent even more weight gain.  "Diet resistance does not
   explain why obesity occurs, but it may be one reason that,
   despite their best efforts, some obese people regain weight
   they have fought hard to lose by dieting," they said.

Maybe someone could fax me the NEJM article and editorial. (503-621-3735)

-- 
Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX          ...!tektronix!reed!omen!caf 
Author of YMODEM, ZMODEM, Professional-YAM, ZCOMM, and DSZ
  Omen Technology Inc    "The High Reliability Software"
17505-V NW Sauvie IS RD   Portland OR 97231   503-621-3406
Xref: sparky sci.med:23083 alt.psychoactives:1685