(briefly) RaDVaC and SMTM, two things we should be doing

If you are completely unfamiliar with the actual science on obesity you probably think that's dumb because obesity is caused by high-palatability foods.  Read the first page linked if you'd prefer to know why that's obviously wrong.

I admit to being, at present, persuaded by the high-palatability hypothesis, which I roughly translate into the following thesis: "The general rise in obesity is primarily explained by the rise of highly processed, addicting foods, which raises our natural set point, tricking our bodies into eating more calories than we 'need' before feeling full."

I read the posts you linked (you referred to this one, right?), and I'm not convinced by them, but I'm open to people explaining why they think I'm still wrong.

First I'll summarize the article briefly, and then respond to each point.

My brief summary

The series begins by outlining 8 mysteries:

1. Obesity has gotten a lot worse over time
2. Obesity abruptly got worse some time in the 1970s
3. There's good evidence that we're not winning the war against obesity
4. Hunter-gatherers don't become obese
5. Lab animals and wild animals have also become obese over time
6. People and animals gain a lot of weight when exposed to palatable foods
7. People at higher altitudes seem to get obese at a lower frequency
8. Diets are not effective at reducing obesity, for nearly everyone

The series continues by arguing that CICO (as in calories in, calories out) cannot explain the current crisis, and cites an array of evidence that tries to argue against that model. Given the inadequacy of CICO as a model for weight gain, then, the reason for the current obesity crisis must be due to environmental contaminants, which neatly fit each of the 8 mysteries.

My interpretation of the mysteries

In my opinion, assuming the high-palatability hypothesis, very few of the mysteries are actually "mysteries" in the sense of being surprising.

For example, we can explain mystery 1 by saying that high-palatability foods have become more common over time (duh). We can explain 3 because very few people are effectively targeted by anti-obesity campaigns, and it's intractable to simply ban high-palatability food (which is probably the only solution that would actually work on a large scale, short of advanced technology). We can explain 4 by pointing out that hunter-gatherers don't eat high-palatability food. We can explain 6 for obvious reasons. We can explain 8 by pointing out that people don't have unlimited willpower, and thus, don't rigidly adhere to a dieting plan when given abundant choices to "cheat" and eat high-palatability food (which is highly addictive).

That leaves mysteries 2, 5 and 7, which I do think call out for more explanation. However,

• Mystery 2 is practically equally mysterious under both the environmental contaminant hypothesis, and the high-palatability hypothesis, since by the author's admission, they have little idea about what chemicals were abruptly introduced into the environment starting in the 1970s. At the same time, I found their argument that foods were palatable before the 1970s to be weak. 
  
  Sure, you can name a few palatable foods from before the 1970s (Oreos, Doritos, Twinkies, Coca-Cola), but I don't find it particularly unlikely that the absolute number and variety of high-palatability foods has increased greatly since the 1970s, given the immense pressure for food corporations to hyper-optimize their food for consumption.
• Mystery 5 is only a real mystery if indeed animals under controlled conditions are getting fatter over time. The author presents two sources for this claim. 
  
  Source one states in its abstract, "We examined samples collectively consisting of over 20 000 animals from 24 populations (12 divided separately into males and females) of animals representing eight species living with or around humans in industrialized societies." The palatability hypothesis can elegantly explain what's going on here. Animals who live near cities are exposed to human trash, and humans throw a lot of high-palatability food away. Animals eat the trash and get addicted to it, raising their set point, causing them to overconsume calories. Animals that live with humans get fed human-produced food.
  
  Source two is about horses, and I lack a coherent explanation for the details. But, this is mostly because I don't know how common it is for horses to eat hyper-palatable food, as I have very little experience with common horse-feeding practices. 
  
  Overall I wasn't able to find compelling evidence that animals in controlled conditions , that don't eat high-palatability foods, are experiencing increasing rates of obesity. (Though, of course, I might have missed this evidence in the sources). [Edit: it looks like I was mistaken and the first source includes laboratory rats and mice in the study.]

As far as I can tell, the most surprising mystery is 7. The author presents impressive evidence regarding altitude anorexia, and studies that looked into alternative factors (including carbon dioxide and oxygen). 

EDIT: I now think that oxygen is the leading culprit for altitude anorexia, even though the author says it isn't. Their evidence against the oxygen hypothesis is the following: one study found a small effect, and another study was methodologically flawed. Putting aside the second study, the effect found in the first study was not small at all in my opinion; in fact, it found that people who exercised in a low oxygen environment lost about 60% more weight than those who didn't! Scott Alexander has written about this and finds the oxygen hypothesis plausible. 

Yet, all things considered, I still don't think that enough alternative hypotheses have been explored to say that mystery 7 is anywhere near conclusive. It's well-known that obesity rates vary by demographic groups, and that there are genetic confounders involved, and demographic groups are also not evenly distributed between high and low altitudes.

In poorer nations, such as China, it seems highly plausible to me that altitude correlates strongly with access to supermarkets and fast-food restaurants that carry lots of high-palatability foods. Urban centers are generally clustered in low-altitude areas, along coasts and alongside rivers. If people in urban areas are exposed to more high-palatability foods, as opposed to more traditional dishes, then it seems obvious that you'll find a correlation between altitude and obesity. The contamination hypothesis is not needed to explain this fact.

My take on CICO

Given that I don't find any of the mysteries very surprising (with the possible exception of 7), I don't see why the contamination hypothesis falls out as a parsimonious explanation of the data. Admittedly, however, my main disagreement probably boils down to the section on the plausibility of CICO.

Being honest, I found many of the parts of the CICO post to be riddled with misleading statements, sometimes simply confusing CICO with the idea that diets and attempts-to-increase-willpower work (which I emphatically do not believe), or strawmanning CICO into a generic position that absolutely nothing other than calories and exercise matter, or that an excess 3500 calories precisely and linearly adds 1 pound of fat to your body. 

Obviously other factors, including genetics, matter. Obviously diets do not work on a large scale. And obviously the formula is not as easy as "eating an extra 3500 calories always means you gain an extra pound, even extrapolated to people eating 10,000 calories a day." None of these facts are strongly inconsistent with the high-palatability hypothesis as the dominant explanation of the data. In my opinion, these are quibbles, not knock-down arguments.

And, in any case, the author admits,

Sure, consumption in the US went from 2,025 calories per day in 1970 to 2,481 calories per day in 2010, a difference of 456 calories.

That's a lot! As someone who has very carefully controlled my eating before, I saw first-hand how eating a 500 calorie deficit made me lose weight, and conversely, how eating a 500 surplus made me gain weight. The author seems quick to handwave this fact away, as if a few hundred calories can't add up over time. Their interlude responding to objections on this point also seems handwavey to me, and doesn't give any evidence inconsistent with the high-palatability hypothesis.

Conclusion

Given a biologically plausible mechanism, its consistency with practically all the "mysteries", common sense, and general scientific wisdom (from what I gather), it seems highly likely to me that the high-palatability hypothesis is correct. This, in my opinion, diminishes the case that money should be spent investigating alternative hypotheses (though the value of being proven wrong might be so high that it's worth it anyway).

(Actual reality advisement, do not read if you'd rather not live in actual reality:  Things really worth doing, thus in AGI alignment, are hard to come by; MIRI is bottlenecked more on ideas worth pursuing and people who can pursue them, than on funding, at this point.  I think that under these conditions it does make sense for EA to ever spend money on anything else.  Furthermore, EA does in fact seem bound and determined to spend money on anything else.  I therefore think it's fine for this post to pretend like anything else matters; much of EA with lots of available funding does assume that premise, so why not derive valid conclusions from that hypothetical and go ask where to pick up lots of QALYs cheap.)

Well, this has inspired me to finally make an account for LessWrong commenting! 

As someone very familiar with the "science on obesity", I do not find SMTM remotely persuasive. https://basedprof.substack.com/p/smtm-mysteries canvasses the reasons why in detail, for those who are going to look at the link in the above article and be inclined to trust it. SMTM repeatedly misrepresent not just scientific consensus, but also literally the articles which they cite. There are multiple examples of it in the "Mysteries" post, but this isn't even the worst offender. 

If you do not believe that EA should be in the business of giving money to proven liars, shown to be rather specifically lying about the thesis which they would be given money to study, you should not give a cent to them, and you should point out that others should (not) do the same.

For those who don't want to read my (admittedly ranty) post about them (the reasons for said rantiness are, well, the consistent lying), here are three such lies/misrepresentations (two from the above, another from the second post in the series).  As an aside, I'm not merely asserting that they are often wrong (though that would also, by extension, and in addition, be true). 
 

(1) "their [our grandparents/great grandparents and older] diets were worse, not better. They ate more bread and almost four times more butter than we do today. They also consumed more cream, milk, and lard." - and the linked article once more: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/91/5/1530S/4597478
I suppose this is not "strictly" a lie in the same way that "When did you stop beating your wife?" is not strictly an unreasonable question to ask. But it's deeply misleading, and SMTM must know it is misleading if they actually read the article they use as evidence. That very article cites a massive increase in consumption of other fats, and carbohydrates- so even if our ancestors ate more butter and bread, they were still consuming far fewer calories. This, in fact, is what the article concludes: "The increase in childhood obesity mainly reflects increased energy intake". 

(2) "A Tanzanian hunter-gatherer society called the Hadza get about 15 percent of their calories from honey. Combined with all the sugar they get from eating fruit, they end up eating about the same amount of sugar as Americans do. Despite this, the Hadza do not exhibit obesity."
They provide literally no evidence for the proposition that the Hadza eat as much sugar as Americans do, their citations certainly do not demonstrate this.  And as I cite in my response ( https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0040503 :

“Western diets are certainly more sugar-rich and energy-dense than more “traditional” diets and wild foods [4], [8], [9], many hunter-gatherers seasonally consume a large portion of their daily calories as honey” which, ok sure, “a lot of daily calories as honey”, but look at the “western diets are more sugar rich and energy dense” bit.

They move from a claim about percentage of energy intake for individuals to an entirely unwarranted claim about overall energy intake between two different cultures. This section is actually way worse, but feel free to read my post for more. 

(3) "“This model seems to exist mostly to make lean people feel smug,” writes Stephen Guyenet, “since it attributes their leanness entirely to wise voluntary decisions and a strong character. I think at this point, few people in the research world believe the CICO model.”" 

This is a "lie by equivocation". Guyenet is a respectable scientist, who works on hunger signalling.  When he talks about "CICO", he means "the model by which people just eat more as a purely voluntary thing and gain weight". And he is totally right that no-one thinks weight-gain is purely voluntary. Even the "hyper palatable food" people don't think that. But that isn't what SMTM mean by CICO. Here is what SMTM say: 

"A popular theory of obesity is that it’s simply a question of calories in versus calories out (CICO). You eat a certain number of calories every day, and you expend some number of calories based on your metabolic needs and physical activity. If you eat more calories than you expend, you store the excess as fat and gain weight, and if you expend more than you eat, you burn fat and lose weight. This perspective assumes that the body stores every extra calorie you eat as body fat, and that it doesn’t have any tools for using more or less energy as the need arises. But this isn’t the case. Your body has the ability to regulate things like its temperature, and it has similar tools to regulate body fatness. When we look closely, it turns out that “calories in, calories out” doesn’t match the actual facts of consumption and weight gain." 

So SMTM are misrepresenting what a hunger scientist means to gain a little bit more epistemic credibility for their take. He is talking about what drives hunger, which leads to increased energy intake. They're talking about mechanisms for bodily fat regulation. 

Jacob Lagerros got excited about RaDVaC early and came to the Lightcone team a few months ago saying we should arrange funding for them. I believe talks have occurred between relevant parties though I'm not certain of exactly where things ended up.

Summary: I suspect funding has been provided, mostly want to give credit to those who noticed early and worked to make it happen.

There's an easier study I'd like to do before the lithium experiment: compare water contamination to obesity rates. I have two decent but not amazing datasets to do this (the water one tracks 18 contaminants but not lithium by zip code, the weight one tracks % obese not BMI by county) and a statistician who will analyze the results if I get the data in a single spreadsheet. I expect there are APIs to do that fairly easily but haven't had time to dig into it myself. If someone gets the 18 contaminants plus % obese in a single spreadsheet, and fixes the issues with county vs. zipcode aggregation, I can get this analysis done fairly quickly. Bonus points if you find better DBs than I do (I wish it was BMI by zipcode, not % obese by county) or incorporate additional data, like income, age, well water usage, and density. 

I've discussed this with SMTM previously, they agree it's worth doing although are less excited than me because the water quality database doesn't include lithium. So additional bonus points if someone finds a database of lithium concentration in drinking water by county.

I'd happily pay $100 + credit on the eventual blog post for the spreadsheet combining the two DBs listed, and am open to negotiation on larger amounts if it's more difficult than I think it is or additional features are included.

One of the mysteries mentioned in the SMTM article was that the obesity epidemic began abruptly some time around 1980. The authors state,

This wasn’t a steady, gentle trend as food got better, or diets got worse. People had access to plenty of delicious, high-calorie foods back in 1965. Doritos were invented in 1966, Twinkies in 1930, Oreos in 1912, and Coca-Cola all the way back in 1886. So what changed in 1980?

This article argues (convincingly, in my opinion) that the obesity epidemic began much earlier, probably around the turn of the 20th century. If you track the evolution of BMI over time in different birth cohorts, you get a very continuous, smooth rise in obesity.

↑ comment by AppliedDivinityStudies (kohaku-none) · 2022-01-19T07:00:38.363Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Guyenet, who's palatability theory you seem to prefer, shares the same interpretation as SMTM. His chart from The Hungry Brain:
 

 

And his commentary:

In 1960, one out of seven US adults had obesity. By 2010, that number had increased to one out of three (see figure 2). The prevalence of extreme obesity increased even more remarkably over that time period, from one out of 111 to one out of 17. Ominously, the prevalence of obesity in children also increased nearly fivefold. Most of these changes occurred after 1978 and happened with dizzying speed. [emaphasis mine]

Replies from: matthew-barnett

↑ comment by Matthew Barnett (matthew-barnett) · 2022-01-23T04:22:38.310Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Note: I’ve partially retracted this comment as indicated by the ETA comments.

I don't think the quote from Guyenet's supports SMTM's argument. Guyenet is merely saying that the trend in extreme obesity has accelerated since 1978. This is consistent with my chart, showing a non-linear (but still quite smooth) line for the 90th percentile in BMI throughout the 20th century. 
 

SMTM says, "Another thing that many people are not aware of is just how abrupt this change was. Between 1890 and 1976, people got a little heavier. The average BMI went from about 23 to about 26. This corresponds with rates of obesity going from about 3% to about 10%. The rate of obesity in most developed countries was steady at around 10% until 1980, when it suddenly began to rise."

The median person did not merely get "a little heavier". I think SMTM is misinterpreting the data, and introducing a mystery where one does not really exist. From the chart I showed, the trend in BMIs among average people (say, between say the 20th and 80th percentiles) remained relatively stable over time. There's neither a hard jump at 1980 nor radical acceleration, though there is some slight acceleration if you squint (and it's not particularly centered around 1980) [ETA: OK I realized I was being unfair here given that the series stops at around 1986. I’d welcome if someone could find a longer data series. See edit on the other comment too.]. This is also true for the other birth cohorts in the article I cited.

We could do a similar exercise for all sorts of phenomena. Would we say that the Flynn effect began abruptly at some point in the 20th century, simply because a chart showing "percentage of people who are gifted" has a non-linear curve, and picks up speed, say, around 1950? Did economic growth begin abruptly because the percentage of people who are "rich" (defined by some arbitrary cutoff) picked up around 1970? 

The abrupt change in obesity is only a strong candidate for a mystery in the sense that it's not immediately clear why it happened. But once provided the data for BMI over time, it quickly becomes clear that this provides no compelling reason to abandon the palatability theory. [ETA: At least, I have yet to see any compelling reason why the uptick after can’t be explained by slowly rising BMI over the 20th century]

Replies from: Natália Mendonça

↑ comment by Natália (Natália Mendonça) · 2022-05-04T18:34:42.276Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

OK I realized I was being unfair here given that the series stops at around 1986. I’d welcome if someone could find a longer data series.

See this comment [LW(p) · GW(p)]. 

↑ comment by AppliedDivinityStudies (kohaku-none) · 2022-01-19T06:41:13.493Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Wait what? This isn't even a chart of the same thing.

1. It's a chart of data from 1880 to ~1980, whereas SMTM as looking specifically as the change in 1980
2. It's a charge of BMI, whereas the SMTM chart is looking at growth in extreme outcomes. Say you have a normal distribution with mean 24 and SD 2. Only 0.13% of the population will have BMI over 30. But as the mean BMI slowly increases, you see rapid growth in extreme outcomes. At mean BMI of 26, you're up to 2% over 30, at mean BMI 28 you're up to 16%. So the fact that BMI growth is smooth doesn't imply that obesity growth is smooth too.

Replies from: Natália Mendonça, matthew-barnett

↑ comment by Natália (Natália Mendonça) · 2022-05-04T18:36:14.519Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

It's a chart of data from 1880 to ~1980, whereas SMTM as looking specifically as the change in 1980

The x-axis in Matthew's chart is each cohort's birth year, not the year their BMI was measured. Matthew's source says the chart includes BMI data from 1959 to 2006. 

It's a charge of BMI, whereas the SMTM chart is looking at growth in extreme outcomes. Say you have a normal distribution with mean 24 and SD 2. Only 0.13% of the population will have BMI over 30. But as the mean BMI slowly increases, you see rapid growth in extreme outcomes. At mean BMI of 26, you're up to 2% over 30, at mean BMI 28 you're up to 16%. So the fact that BMI growth is smooth doesn't imply that obesity growth is smooth too.

Note that it's a chart of several BMI percentiles, not only mean or median BMI, and it shows a smooth (though accelerating) growth in the highest percentiles of BMI. 

This chart of rate of change of BMI (from the same source) is instructive:

It seems that there was a mid-century slowdown in BMI growth starting with cohorts born during the Great Depression, which makes sense, and makes the 1980 acceleration seem more historically unusual than it actually is.

↑ comment by Matthew Barnett (matthew-barnett) · 2022-01-23T03:50:49.967Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

The BMI cutoff at 25 for overweight and 30 for obese is fairly arbitrary. People in different nations, and people in different time periods, have different standards. And we know that the effect of adiposity on lifespan and health is continuous with respect to body fat percentage, at levels higher than those characteristic of very lean bodies.

The phenomenon in need of explanation is why our wastelines got larger over time. Once we provide an explanation for that phenomenon, it's no mystery why there is a discontinuity in the obesity chart at 1980. That's merely an artifact of the arbitary cutoff. Overall I see no deep mystery that demands explanation above and beyond rising adiposity during the 20th century. Is it your position that we ought to be find the discontinuity at 1980 mysterious anyway?

ETA: I realize now I gave short shrift to your point about the data series ending around 1980. I actually think it’s ~1986 but it’s still hard to interpret the last six years. I’ll edit my other comment to reflect this oversight.

Totally agree! I stumbled upon the SMTM link 6 months ago or so and it was a big view-changer for me. I'd previously thought calories-in-calories-out was the main thing to be focusing on but, uh, yeah, I was super wrong.

I do think you're too critical of the high-palatability theory. The SMTM page finds the theory reasonable:
 

“Palatable human food is the most effective way to cause a normal rat to spontaneously overeat and become obese,” says neuroscientist Stephan Guyenet in The Hungry Brain, “and its fattening effect cannot be attributed solely to its fat or sugar content.”

Rodents eating diets that are only high in fat or only high in carbohydrates don’t gain nearly as much weight as rodents eating the cafeteria diet. And this isn’t limited to lab rats. Raccoons and monkeys quickly grow fat on human food as well.

We see a similar pattern of results in humans. With access to lots of calorie-dense, tasty foods, people reliably overeat and rapidly gain weight. But again, it’s not just the contents. For some reason, eating more fat or sugar by itself isn’t as fattening as the cafeteria diet. Why is “palatable human food” so much worse for your waistline than its fat and sugar alone would suggest?

So I wouldn't call the SMTM link evidence that obesity being partially caused by high-palatability foods is obviously wrong. The gluttony theory of, like, self-control being the main important thing, or calories-in-calories-out being the main thing, I do think is obviously wrong; but I personally see the high-palatability theory as very different than the gluttony theory.

Isn't lithium in water linked to lower depression rates and not really something you'd want to straightforwardly remove even if it turned out to be making people fat?  I guess you might win on net if it turned out you could cure about that much depression with lotsalightboxes and be rid of obesity in the bargain, but it's at least a little complicated.

My review mostly concerns the SMTM's A Chemical Hunger part of this review. RaDVaC was interesting if not particularly useful, but SMTM's series has been noted by many commenters to be a strange theory, possibly damaging, and there were, as of my last check, no response by SMTM to the various rebuttals.

It does not behoove rationalism to have members that do not respond to critical looks at their theories. They stand to do a lot of damage and cost a lot of lives if taken seriously.

For those who'd rather read that, the author of the obesity articles series summarized them in a twitter thread (Thread Reader). There's also discussion of it on LW [LW · GW] (though it took place before most of the articles were published) 

Having not apparently the energy to write this longly, I write it shortly instead, that it be written at all.

Just a comment on writing for understandability — compare Benjamin Franklin, writing in 1750:

I have already made this paper too long, for which I must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter.

Shorter is (almost always) better, please don't write things longly just for the sake of it!

Other types of causes I would like to see more groups working on and more people supporting are those that would help make human communities more robust against civilizational collapse (minus scenarios where we're all turned into paperclips, of course). Right now, billions of humans are utterly dependent on global economic infrastructure to supply food, water, energy, shelter, etc. If some event breaks down this infrastructure, billions could die, since not only do most people lack survival skills, but the local resources in most areas of high population density are not sufficient to provide enough for (even a small fraction of) everyone. Ideally, every local community, from small villages to sprawling metropolises, could become locally self-sustaining to the point where getting cut off from the global economy would lead to the loss of luxury items and foods rather than to mass starvation.

Things that come to mind include the Global Village Construction Set, an open-source set of 50 blueprints for technologies explicitly designed to require minimal material and manufacturing resources to construct but that could be used to rebuild civilization in the event of collapse.

Food production is also a big issue, of course, and efforts to provide year-round local produce using geothermally-regulated greenhouses or vertical farming could help immensely to minimize costs of both production and distribution for communities that use them at sufficient scale. (One limitation to hydroponics/aeroponics that currently outweighs their resource-efficiency is the fact that they tend to focus on just salad greens, which are the easiest to grow. Are there any groups working on genetically engineering fruit trees to produce fruit without the trees [LW · GW]?)

Mycelium is another group working on providing automation for community gardens, as well as more effective waste-handling and housing technologies.

I don't know how effective these projects, specifically, would prove to be if given enough funding, but I feel like they are reaching in the right direction. Local, resource-efficient sustainability technology seems like one of the most impactful areas to focus on for ensuring humanity's long-term survival, after things like AI alignment. An additional benefit of putting more effort into these sorts of projects is that they could also be applied to helping people who are struggling in "third world" countries today. And if you could get self-sufficiency technology good enough to work in deserts or on ice sheets, we could also apply it to supporting space colonies. Maybe Elon Musk could be convinced to invest more in this area.

I like the shortlyness of this post and think it perfectly suits the subject. For many purposes longlyness can be counterproductive.

Is there any reason we can't quickly test the lithium hypothesis by buying a bunch of random food and paying a lab to grind it up and figure out how much lithium is in it (use a mass spec?)? I assume this would cost thousands of dollars, but that's pretty cheap.

This would be bad news for the tourism industry in Banff. Below was taken on my honeymoon. 

To boot:

Not only did tourists soak in the spring water, they drank it, too. Bob Elliott, acting operations manager at Banff Upper Hot Springs, said, “Local bars sold bottled hot springs water as a tonic and cure for hangovers. Banff's mineral water was bottled and sold as ‚Lithia water' for a short time until the medical experts realized that one of the active ingredients found naturally in the hot springs, Lithium, was addictive. This ended the bottling and consumption, by drinking, of Banff's mineral springs.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2228356/

I’m looking at getting into grant writing; would that be something worth applying for grants (heh) for?

From what I have heard (I have not researched any of this very thoroughly), the palatability is not the problem directly but something very related is. It is not the case that someone would eat a lot, just because it is just so tasty. It is rather about that the composition of processed food is often very different from unprocessed food. And this affects how our body responds, like when we feel full. Eating some Froot Loops is very different from eating a mango.

This might not be the only, or even the main effect, but I would guess that it is a significant factor. Intuitively it seems much less likely to me that if you put somebody on a diet of vegetables, fresh fruit, legumes, and whole grains, that they would then become obese (probably also make it low sodium to decrease to normal levels palatability).

If you ever want an apple tree that bears fruit, you may need to at some point plant a seed

You're going to need to plant more than one.

Having not apparently the energy to write this longly, I write it shortly instead, that it be written at all.

It's nice to see a decent post that's short.

Having not apparently the energy to write this longly, I write it shortly instead, that it be written at all. - Eliezer [LW · GW]

This needs an acronym. HNATETWTLIWTSITIBWAA. Or alternatively HNATTTWTLIWTSITIBWAA. Or maybe HNATTTWL for short, because HNATTTWTLIWTSITIBWAA. Mh, this is optimal.