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closeDecline in home cooked meals?
Posted by Robroy777 on 26 Feb 2013 at 20:31 GMT
Dear authors,
Might the decline in HM time simply indicate poorer food consumption due to a decline in home-cooking and family meals rather than sedentary behavior?
The decline in HM time might be driving obesity through driving out-of-home food consumption which are usually less healthy (e.g., fast food, processed snacks) than home-cooked foods.
If this is the main factor at work, then efforts should be made to promote home cooking and family dinners rather than simply encouraging more vigorous HM exercise habits like vacuuming and dusting around the house.
Thank you for your efforts and time.
RE: Decline in home cooked meals?
edwardarcher replied to Robroy777 on 27 Feb 2013 at 00:30 GMT
Thank you for your comments.
Socio-cultural evolution has led to the decrement in physical activity (PA). In other words, society has engineered PA out of our daily lives. As such, we need to allocate significantly more time to deliberate exercise to overcome that decrement. We are not, repeat """not""" advocating doing more housework.
PA is a main determinant of nutrient partitioning. For example, if you run a marathon the metabolic fate of the next few meals over the next few days is very different than if you watched the marathon on the sofa. Therefore, what you eat is much, much less important than how you spend your day (sedentary or active). Low PA and high sedentary behavior will cause you to be unhealthy and increase your body fat percentage whether or not you increase your weight or eat more healthfully.
To paraphrase the ancient physician Hippocrates, you cannot diet your way to health, you must exercise.
RE: RE: Decline in home cooked meals?
Robroy777 replied to edwardarcher on 27 Feb 2013 at 12:27 GMT
The data do suggest that obesity is a multi-factorial problem and that physical activity (PA) can promote improved nutrient partitioning relative to sedentary behavior, as you said.
However, I do not think the data support your claim that, "what you eat is much, much less important than how you spend your day (sedentary or active)."
I think the data show that PA, by itself, is a fairly poor therapeutic tool for obesity with minimal weight loss relative to simply eating a higher quality diet (more whole foods, less processed foods, less snacking). Maybe you are referring to exercise as a preventative tool or weight maintenance tool where it likely is more effective.
But to suggest that eating habit is a minor factor relative to PA is simply misreading the data. A 2009 meta-analysis by Wu et al found that diet + exercise only led to an average 1.14 kg greater weight loss than diet alone (though diet + exercise had greater long-term weight loss than diet alone).
A roughly 2.5 pound difference seems clinically meaningless. Therefore, exercise might help with weight maintenance long-term, but it is a fairly poor tool to reduce body fat (I am not speaking to obesity prevention with PA).
Therefore, shouldn't the recommendation from your study be: turn off the TV, cook more whole foods, and try and walk a little more? It appears that perhaps you focus too much on PA and not enough on eating habits.
References:
Wu T, Gao X, Chen M, van Dam RM. Long-term effectiveness of diet-plus-exercise interventions vs. diet-only interventions for weight loss: a meta-analysis. Obes Rev. 2009 May;10(3):313-23.
RE: RE: RE: Decline in home cooked meals?
edwardarcher replied to Robroy777 on 27 Feb 2013 at 20:35 GMT
Thanks for your reply.
You make a very important distinction between treatment and prevention.
Prevention begins with the intrauterine environment since the hand that rocks the cradle rules the health of the next generation. Importantly, as women became more sedentary (not out of laziness but because of the evolution of technology) their energy metabolism became less well regulated. When a woman is pregnant, the transient hyperglycemic/hypertriglyceridemic state from inactivity and long periods of sedentary behavior induces metabolic dysfunction in her offspring, predisposing them to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
In other words, inactivity in one generation predisposes obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease in the next. Inactivity disturbs all phases of energy metabolism: appetite, nutrient partitioning (i.e., what your body does with the food you eat) and body composition. In a pregnant woman, this dysfunctional energy metabolism affects the developing fetus's energy metabolic capacity permanently.
There is strong and growing evidence that offspring from inactive mothers are being born with a greater number of adipocytes (i.e, fat cells). This is due to maternal prenatal inactivity and the adipogenic (i.e., fat producing) nature of sedentary behavior (for example: 1 out of 5 pregnant women report spending >4hrs per day watching TV!!!). A greater number of adipocytes induce increments in adipogenic nutrient partitioning in every post-prandial period (i.e., after each meal).
If we truly wish to impact obesity, we need to explain that inactivity and sedentary behavior are 2 of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse during pregnancy (alcohol and smoking being the other two); and the effect of these behaviors on the developing fetus is permanent.
With respect to the treatment of obesity, it is unequivocal that “diets” do not work in the long term. Hypo-caloric dieting results in the loss of lean body mass (muscle, bone, and organ mass) as well as a potentially permanent decrement in resting energy expenditure. Therefore your suggestion that exercise is an essential component is well-supported. (IOM suggests at least 1hr/day for weight maintenance and it takes ~1.5-2hrs of moderate activity for weight loss)
Thanks!