I came across this series of posts on the root causes of Obesity by Slime Mold Time Mold, a delightfully weird pseudonym for the team behind the posts. The posts are long, well researched, and, despite the weighty content (haha), quite fun to read.
The blog series is not complete, and I am fascinated to see what comes next.
The writers start with the observation that we have seen a startling increase in obesity rates from 1980 to the present day as seen in the animation below from Our World in Data.
As of 1980, around 11% of the population of the Americas was obese. In 2016, this went up to a staggering 28%. What has caused this?
The team at Slime Mold Time Mold (SMTM) reviews research and data spanning the last 150 years. From studies done on the BMI of Civil War veterans to looking at rates of obesity in Macaques – they cover an incredibly wide range of material. Their thesis is that 1980 was an inflection point – after 1980 we see soaring rates of obesity across the industrialized world.
Strangely, this increase does not seem to be driven by a big change in the total number of calories consumed or in the way that we live our lives. Indeed, the diets in the early 20th century were more calorific and unhealthy than present-day diets.
Just think of all the big dinners on Downton Abbey.
We eat fewer carbs today than we did a hundred years ago. While the research does show an increase in the total number of calories consumed, the data does not support the increase in obesity rates being driven by an increase in calorific consumption.
SMTM’s thesis is that environmental contamination is an important driver of the increase in obesity rates since 1980.
They look at a number of different culprits – Lithium, a group of chemicals called PFAs as well as the presence of antibiotics in livestock.
If indeed environmental contamination is a primary driver of the obesity crisis, we are looking at a public health scandal that will be bigger than smoking or lead in gasoline. The jury is still out, but SMTM’s work seems to point to a strong correlation.
It also makes me think, again, that we are very poor at thinking through the second-order consequences of our actions. I think we are tinkerers by nature and are biased to action. This has helped us make a lot of progress in a short time – but we are also continuously fixing (or abandoning) things that we have broken along the way.
Environmental contamination and obesity are just another of a variety of different examples of “progress” messing things up. Maybe the research will identify a smoking gun and the problem will be regulated away.
We are strikingly poor at figuring out how complex systems operate and how they may trigger feedback loops. Global warming, disinformation on social media, and many other modern ailments can be tracked to us not being able to think through the consequences of our actions.
So what is the solution? One way is a monastic retreat to the wilderness. But when even remote Alaska is contaminated with PFAS chemicals, retreat does not seem to be a viable option. Maybe we need to push regulatory bodies for stricter enforcement of laws and punitive measures for those who do not comply. But the revolving door between big government and big chem does not fill me with confidence that this is an avenue that holds much hope.
The one, teeny-tiny, ray of hope comes from us being able to deploy massive computational power to model and simulate the world a little better. Perhaps we could get better at figuring out how complex systems interact and that might help towards a more thoughtful and considered approach to change?
One can live in hope. Until then, I wait for my next SMTM fix.
Footnote
The work by SMTM is worth reading (and following) in full. It is a great example of just some “random people on the Internet” using open data to think through and attempt to answer difficult questions.
Reading SMTM reminded me of the early, pre-social media engagement-driven, Internet. I remember stumbling upon blogs such Naked Capitalism (Still going strong), The Epicurean Dealmaker (RIP), and Slate Star Codex (also RIP) and enjoying reading about topics that were outside my areas of work or of study.
The death of Google Reader and the rise of Social Media has made the Internet a much less surprising place.