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A blow to the CICO theory of obesity: Pre-fertilization-origin preservation of brown fat-mediated energy expenditure in humans
I find this noteworthy for three reasons —
There’s possibly an easy and natural intervention for obesity. The Japanese neurotically dress for the weather, so how great will the effect be for those who accept the cold? “College woman walking to a party in winter wearing a short dress” was a joke when I went to school, but it was apparently pro-natal. Is it the fluctuation which is most significant? Does it need to be tied with the day-night cycle?
This is more evidence that humans are shockingly attuned to specific conditions they evolved in, which should be reverse-engineered to find more potentatial interventions for human flourishing. We are much more animal than we like to admit.
How many other “willpower problems” have less to do with willpower and more to do with 2nd and 3rd order effects which are hidden from us, or which compound invisibly? There are probably many more for obesity alone.
Which part of CICO do you think this is a blow to? There has always been some noise level of individual variability. This is inherent in basically all biology research. Sometimes, folks are able to probe a bit deeper into it, and we already have a variety of different ways to do so. Many of them are just too complicated to do most of the time for most people... and they're often usually relatively small effect sizes, anyway. Like, yes, can we slightly refine our estimate of one component of your CO if we take precise measurements of your individual organ sizes; is that a "blow" to CICO?
There are determinants unrelated to willpower and unrelated to personal lifestyle changes which cause obesity. This is one factor and there may be many others. Everyone who uses “CICO” in obesity discourse means that, by everyone attempting to modify one of these variables, we can sizably reduce waist sizes. What this study shows is that in two cohorts controlled for willpower, one will simply be fatter due to their parent’s cold exposure.
Unless willpower and lifestyle changes can be shown to significantly modulate obesity rates at a population-level, and in the long-term, in a way that isn’t merely survivorship bias or an outlier, then CICO is as useful, insightful, and interesting as saying “narcoleptics need to stay awake”, “insomniacs need to sleep”, and “a thirsty sailor adrift at sea must never drink salt water”. It acts as a brainworm that just derails actual discourse around obesity.
That is not what this study shows. I'm not even sure how you would "control for willpower".
This depends on what you're trying to do. For example, there are tons of athletes and bodybuilders who modulate their body weight through diet and lifestyle. Is this suddenly useless to them if some larger population behaves one way instead of another way?
This community loves Science (TM) and Rationalism (TM). Suppose you lived in a religious woo world, and everyone believed that the gods wanted you to eat raw meat and they determined whether or not you got sick. You discovered that, actually, the cooking process can improve digestion and kill pathogens. But you just couldn't convince other people to do it, for whatever reasons. Maybe there are folks out there claiming that it's just because they "lack willpower" to do it. Is your knowledge suddenly "useless" in the case where a bunch of people don't do it... but it would somehow magically become "useful" if a bunch of people started doing it?
You control for willpower by looking at a cohort conceived in colder months and comparing to a cohort conceived in warmer months. This is simple. As we know that the month of conception has no bearing on willpower, and the study did not find a correlation in regards to temperature of month at birth, which I suppose may somehow change one’s willpower (if you squint), the populations are controlled for willpower.
A minority successfully do this, only in the short-term, and only by significantly modifying their social identity. It comes at an impractical expenditure of willpower for the population-level. You can probably get someone to not eat for three days with the offer of $100,000; you can get a competitive wrestler to stop eating when it’s required for his social reputation; and a particularly vain bodybuilder can probably bulk and cut when he has made his appearance his entire social value. But this has no effect on the longterm rate of obesity or the general population, because not everyone can turn their entire social identity into weightlifting (neither is this desirable). In fact, even those selected for willpower and who practice willpower in regards to weight during their athletic career are not protected against obesity. Studies show that weight cycling athletes are either at the same level of obesity risk as other athletes, or even a worse level of obesity risk than the general population. We also know that the yearly Ramadan practice of willpower does not affect longterm obesity. If willpower were a longterm determinant, we would see (1) Ramadan practitioners become less obese, (2) weight-cycling athletes are particularly protected against obesity compared to other athletes. Yet we don’t find this.
You can find people who have terrible willpower in regards to substances, energy drinks, candy, and yet don’t gain weight. Then you can find people who exhibit amazing willpower in all facets of life, and yet are fat.
Can you though, with any significant frequency? I find a remarkable degree of correlation between being overweight and most negative traits/life outcomes, in others as well as in myself.
Probably some Berkson's paradox going on.
I could construct the argument:
"People smart enough to be in my social circles are more likely to be fat, but only because the ones that are both smart and fit are in higher status social circles."
But:
My guess is you and most other's here are high enough status that y'all tend not to associate with dumb/low conscientious/high time preference, fat people.
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The only examples I can think of are "strongfats", i.e. weightlifter musclebro types that are optimizing for mass as opposed to musculature. Outside of them it's hard to picture anyone else who might fit here, and even strongfats aren't nearly as fat as the median body positivity activist
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