I’m not saying research like the Lancet article in question (very respectable, from the Mayo clinic) is the final answer. All I am saying is that there is a lot of evidence similar to the Lancet article out there and that some people (very very often funded directly or indirectly by drug companies) simply reject or ignore all evidence suggesting that obesity is not necessarily the most dire threat faced by humanity. This really distorts the science and I think leads to making Sandy look like she is further out on a limb than she really is. OFten what she is pointing out is simply the complete lack of evidence for some tendentious statement.

I’d like to speak up in support of Sandy Swzarc’s blog, which is often excellent and very insightful about the problems of some of the scientific articles that garner a lot of headlines and also about the merits of some studies that get ignored because they don’t quite suppport the prevailing orthodoxies.

I used to think Sandy was a real skeptic. I still think she is for anything other than topics of obesity and cholesterol, where her position is always–and I do mean always–to defend the position that fat isn’t a problem in the diet and that obesity is just ducky (more or less). See:

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/10/attacking_consensus_a_sure_sig.php

http://scienceblogs.com/bushwells/2008/05/children_eating_disorders_and.php

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/12/obesity_crankery_a_growing_pro.php

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/10/obesity_primary_vs_secondary_p.php

Ms. Szwarc is also listed as an expert for the Competitive Enterprise Institute; so her defense of the food industry at every opportunity is, sadly, not surprising:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sandy_Szwarc

She’s also been known to take a “what, me worry?” attitude to mercury in fish and claiming that Mad Cow disease is no threat to humans. Basically, I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that she’s a food industry apologist.

Obesity and weight regulation are complex topics, and people quite readily turn to personal experiences and beliefs instead of science. In a science-based blog, it’s kind of striking. The National Weight Control Registry is a small number of people and almost completely based on self-report, so it’s wise to be careful about using it to draw sweeping conclusions.

That’s ever-so-slightly misleading. The NWCR tracks lots of people, and on average they have lost 66 pounds and kept it off for more than 5 years. Your phrasing makes it sound like they ONLY track people who’ve lost at least 66 pounds for more than 5 years. Pedantic? Yes. Can I help myself? No.

I also think your “most of them get their exercise by walking” slightly understates the facts. You make it sound like it’s not a big deal. I would argue that actually, exercising for an hour every day *is* a big deal, whether it’s walking or otherwise. It’s a significant commitment (certainly in my lifestyle), and is very hard to maintain. Perhaps it doesn’t make you “monomaniacal and completely obsessed”, but I don’t think it warrants the way you downplay it here.

I especially loved her assessment of the study that showed 1 hour of walking a day was needed to keep off weight. Not surprisingly, she begged to differ, and proceded to show that there was no appreciable difference.

Somehow it escaped her that losing 10% of your weight when you have a BMI of 32, while impressive, still leaves you with a long way to go to get healthy.

Calories in always equal calories out. But all isocaloric diets aren’t necessarily equally effective for weight loss.

Some sources of calories are more satiating. If your diet is based on highly satiating foods, you may spontaneously take in less energy and feel less hungry.

I think there’s pretty good laboratory evidence that high-fiber carbs and lean proteins are especially satiating. How that plays out in the real world over the long term is much less clear.

Who, me? I was thinking of Andersonville.

Actually, Andersonville was a military prison used to house prisoners of war, not a concentration camp. A subtle, but real difference.

Sorry, couldn’t resist being pedantic. I’ll stop. For now.

“She conceded she had done that, admitted it was wrong and agreed not to do it again,” said Thomas Shapley, spokesman for the Department of Social and Health Services.

Instead, the abuse worsened over the next three years, and when police were called again Aug. 13, the girl, now 14, looked pale, weighed 48 pounds and looked half her age. This time, she and her brother, 12, were removed from the home and placed into foster care.”

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

The principle is simple; it’s only the execution that is difficult.

My daughter adopted a labrador retriever that was overweight at 125 pounds; she fed him measured amounts of food as prescribed by the vet, and a year later he was a healthy 75#. And has stayed there on a maintenance diet. There is no way this kind of program wouldn’t work for any human if we could control human intake as easily as we can control a dog’s food.

The thermodynamics are absolutely clear – matter and energy cannot vanish or be poofed into existence; the balance sheet must balance.

As far as I can tell, her argument isn’t against matter or energy vanishing but very particularly that it can “be poofed into existence:” that one can expend more calories than the diet includes and still gain girth.

The importance of the distinction is that it takes all of the arguments about efficiency and so on totally off the table. Unless one presumes an “efficiency” of greater than 100%, there’s simply no way to reach her objective: an excuse for bulking up while still following diet and exercise programs.

And let’s face it: an excuse really is what she’s after.

She abuses science sometimes to make her point. As you point out, her post could have been quite reasonable if she had not tortured thermodynamics in the way that she did. All the thermodynamics argument did, IMHO, is actually to weaken her article. If she had just said that “energy out” means metabolism plus activity and that metabolism is the major contributor to that, there would have been nothing much to argue about. But, nooooo. She had to add the thermodynamics handwave and claim that the “complex system” of metabolism made the application of the first law of thermodynamics so very, very complicated, and make a big deal of the difference between an open and closed system that had no relevance to the argument she was trying to make, all in an effort, it appears to argue weight loss is impossible through diet and exercise alone. I exaggerate, but not by much.

A bit of Ms. Szwarc’s attitude is captured here:

Szwarc’s written works have also included a series of articles published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington D.C. libertarian think tank. Her articles, published between March 2004 and January 2006, sought to convey reassuring messages on mercury in fish and from power plant emissions.”Fishy Advice: Why We Need not Fear Methylmercury in Fish”, was the headline of one. “The fear factor: Benefits of sale, healthful fish lost in sea of methylmercury concerns” was the headline on another.[6]

She has written several article mitigating the effects of mercury toxicity on humans,[7][8][9] disputing the scientific research which has shown that methyl mercury harms consumers of fish and that mercury spills in schools are harmful to children. She has argued that United States’ Environmental Protection Agency moves to curb mercury emissions were excessive.[10]

She has also written to argue against legislation restricting or banning phthalates, asserting that the chemical poses no threat to the health of infants.[11], and genetically modified organisms as a danger to future agriculture.[12] On her former website, swfoodie.com, she has also published articles, including one claiming contracting mad cow disease is essentially no threat to humans.[13]

In a review of a book on biotechnology by Henry I. Miller and Greg Conko, Szwarc railed against what she described as the “‘absolute safety at all costs’ perspective that’s been skillfully fueled by scares and misinformation from special interests. As a result, foods and technological developments that can and are bettering our lives and can save lives, are being maligned, feared and resisted far out of proportion to their potential risks. The result of overly-cautious, inaccurate tenets is regulatory policies rife with blunders and inconsistencies that hurt consumers, most of all the poor and disadvantaged. We not only deny ourselves better choices, as well as perfectly safe foods, we deny them to others who may more desperately need them”.[12]

“Virtually every food and health fear today fits this description: the “obesity crisis,” pesticides in fruits and vegetables, mercury in fish, mad cow from beef, hormones in milk, “bad” fats in snacks, refined sugars in treats, arsenic in water, and the countless other unfounded scares bombarding us. But understanding how fears take hold, what’s behind them, and what they’re doing to us, is the first step towards helping ourselves,” she continued.[12]

She’s also cited approvingly by The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics, has said that “far more young people are dying from anorexia than any are from being fat,” and has been known to use abuse Godwin’s Law in comparing public health officials and scientists who warn of the health problems due to obesity to Josef Goebbels. Overall, she takes the science showing that weight loss can be very difficult due to metabolic issues and gussies it up to try to argue that weight loss is impossible with diet and exercise alone, and–oh, by the way–go right ahead and eat that extra donut. Or two. No problem.

I tend to look at Ms. Szwarc as a cleverer, less obvious version of Steve Milloy or Michael Fumento. To her, everything showing a problem from industry (particularly the food industry) is “junk science,” as is any study showing a correlation of health problems with diet or obesity. No health scare (not even mad cow disease or pesticides) is legitimate, nor is any study showing the rise of the number of obese people. In fact, I seem to have recalled her arguing in some cases that obesity can be more healthy.