Eat As Much As You Want….Just Exercise More: Modern Pseudoscience in Action
Just Exercise More?
What if I told you that it isn’t really food and people’s eating habits that are contributing to our worldwide obesity epidemic?
What if I told you that the junk food so many people live on doesn’t really contribute to today’s crisis in which more than 2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese, and 17% of kids aged 2 to 19 are obese? Or, that sugar has no role to play in the problem even though Americans now eat between 40 and 90 times the amount of sugar our grandparents did?
What if I told you instead, that eating more sugar and foods high in calories could actually help you have more energy to exercise and lose weight?
Would that be the green light for you to dig into desserts, reach for sugared drinks rather than water, and tuck away a lot of calorie-dense snacks for a quick boost?
These are just a sample of the apparently scientific messages out there. One non-profit group called the Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN) is is pushing the argument that it’s actually not the food we eat that’s our problem, but our lack of physical activity.
GEBN has positioned this simple message as the core concept it is offering schools in the guise of nutritional curricula and by speakers it offers to educate nutritionists and dietitians. It’s a message also being pushed relentlessly across media outlets and through lobbying efforts.
Why would someone push potentially dangerous and counter-intuitive messaging, much less teach it to kids in schools?
Better Profits Through Funding Science?
The GEBN’s mission is to promote the “science of energy balance to achieve healthier living.” It does this by producing supposedly “objective” scientific research that supports the notion that it’s energy imbalance—most notably, lack of exercise, not dietary intake—that constitutes the chief culprit in obesity, “The cause of the problem [obesity] is that too many people are in positive energy balance (consuming more calories than are expended) on too many days.”
GEBN’s vice president says, “Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, ‘Oh they’re eating too much, eating too much, eating too much’ — blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks and so on. And there’s really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause.”
A cynical person might accuse the GEBN of enacting the same playbook used by Big Tobacco by which they fund and evangelize a pseudo-scientific enterprise that calls into question well-established science that challenges their business interests.
Really?
A Conflict of Interest?
When government agencies take money from big business, academics refer to those agencies as being “captured.”
When people choose to work defending interests in which they have a personal stake, they are considered to have a real, perceived, or potential “conflict of interest.”
But what about companies that fund institutions with the intention to support research that helps the company’s bottom line? What if the scientists’ salaries at those institutions are funded directly from the company’s research dollars and without that funding they won’t have jobs?
A recent Wall Street Journal article revealed that, much of the funding for the GEBN comes from companies that produce sugary drinks and/or fast foods.
Should we be concerned about the influence such funding may exert? Can scientific research funded by commercial interests really be free of bias?
The answer? Technically, yes. Theoretically, the source of the funding does not necessarily affect the results of research. But this is only in theory. In the world of human endeavor and corporate influence—direct or indirect, real or perceived—there’s often a big mismatch between theory and what really happens.
So, should we be concerned about the source of GEBN’s funding and the results of the research supported by that funding?
You bet! But why?
Objective and peer-reviewed studies disagree with the conclusions of the GEBN. While there is certainly a relationship between obesity and exercise and diet, exercise ends up being less important than a smart diet in combating obesity. As Professor of Family Medicine at University of Ottawa and obesity expert, Yoni Freedhoff, MD, says, “balance” is a misnomer because while exercise is indeed one of the most important things a person can do to protect their health, most experts posit that what we eat (energy-in) is responsible for 70-80 percent of what we end up weighing, and exercise (energy-out), only 20-30 percent. We simply can’t outrun our forks.
A study done specifically to analyze the effect of industry funding on research about sugary drinks suggests that funding impacts research results: “commonly consumed beverages funded entirely by industry were approximately four to eight times more likely to be favorable to the financial interests of the sponsors than articles without industry-related funding.”
Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, is especially blunt: “The Global Energy Balance Network is nothing but a front group for Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola’s agenda here is very clear: Get these researchers to confuse the science and deflect attention from dietary intake.”
Most importantly, this is not a casual debate without consequences. As the Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee found,
…about half of all American adults—117 million individuals—have one or more preventable, chronic diseases, and about two-thirds of U.S. adults—nearly 155 million individuals—are overweight or obese.
Poor dietary patterns, overconsumption of calories, and physical inactivity directly contribute to these disorders… Positive changes in individual diet and physical activity behaviors, and in the environmental contexts and systems that affect them, could substantially improve health outcomes.
In other words, this discussion affects virtually every American family. Playing fast and loose with science to boost the bottom line could have catastrophic effects on the majority of Americans’ health and well-being.
And it is not just the GEBN. Other fast-food interests and drink manufacturers are also pushing the same energy-balance arguments through altruistic-appearing organizations, such as the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation and Together Counts. Curiously, all the photos on the homepages of these sites feature people of all ages engaged in sports, but not a single whole grain, fruit, or vegetable…and certainly no one drinking a simple glass of water or biting into a juicy, crunchy apple!
America is not the place and 2015 is not the time for playing fast and loose with science in the service of profitability when the stakes are this high.
What can you do? 3 simple steps:
1. Get the facts from credible sources and stay current.
By facts, this means both what and how: what are the facts and how are those facts derived? Here is just a sample of resources you may find useful:
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity
Harvard School of Public Health, Nutrition Source
Stanford University Prevention Research Center
Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future
Center for Science in the Public Interest
2. Face the facts
Kiss wishful thinking goodbye. Unfortunately, getting and staying healthy isn’t as easy as eating chips and drinking soda while sitting in front of a brightly flickering screen. But as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Achieving and maintaining a healthy weight is really pretty simple, but not so easy, particularly in the face of relentless, omnipresent advertising and promotion.
There is no magic diet, 2-minute-a-week exercise, or easy way to health. You gotta pay. But consider the rewards of being able to live a healthy, vibrant life versus the cost of sedentary living eating junk food.
3. Take action
Use science-based strategies to support sustainable change.Achieving health and wellness is not just a matter of diet and exercise. IWE defines 10 dimensions of wellness, each of which contributes to your overall well-being. Consider all the factors that affect, influence, and empower you. Also recognize where you’re at in the self-change process. If you’re overweight, it took a long time to get there. Maybe you aren’t ready to give up all the “goodies” that packed on the pounds. But you may be ready to do something else that increases your confidence and sense of competency to make change. Sometimes, any change will do…because it gives you some momentum. Go for mini-successes, even if it’s to read up on some of the ideas coming from credible sources. Start with where you’re at and celebrate progress.
Arm yourself with strategies and tools that have the backing of rigorous scientific testing over time. And, get support. Support can come from family, friends, colleagues; or, community-based programs and support groups. Wellness coaching can also help because it shines the light on your own strengths, skills, and resources, and helps you use them to reach your goals.
Finally, if you still have a question about energy balance, here’s an interesting article that pertains to the “energy balance” theory. Just ask the hunter-gatherer Hadza tribe what keeps them trim and fit.
