" the part of the study that most surprised other experts was an experiment indicating that, with the right diet, it might be possible to change the bacteria in a fat person’s gut so that they promote leanness rather than obesity. "
Right. So back to the same common sense advice. It would seem wise to simply fix your diet first, maybe throw in a little exercise, and then see what happens. That is, before trying things like fecal transplants.
It's more complicated than that. First it's worth quoting the rest of that paragraph:
"The investigators discovered that given a chance, and in the presence of a low-fat diet, bacteria from a lean twin will take over the gut of a mouse that already had bacteria from a fat twin. The fat mouse then loses weight. But the opposite does not happen. No matter what the diet, bacteria from a fat mouse do not take over in a mouse that is thin."
Second, the context (described later in the article) is among co-habitating mice that eat each other's droppings, allowing their gut flora to commingle. When the mice were kept separate, the mice that had received gut flora from a fat human twin ended up 10-15% heavier even on the identical low-fat diet as the mice that received flora from a thin human.
(Aside, because it's personal: I have no trouble controlling my weight through diet and exercise. When I ate poorly and exercised little I was as heavy as 190 lbs. With exercise and being mindful about my diet I have no trouble maintaining 150 lbs. My wife, otoh, has struggled with her weight almost her entire life. To lose weight she has to weigh and track every ounce of food she consumes. It is a constant battle for her. Sadly, I see this dichotomy playing out in our son and daughter. My son will never struggle with his weight; I fear my daughter always may. And we eat well in this house. Real food, mostly plants, not too much.
So yeah, I think some people are thin almost no matter what they eat, some struggle with weight almost no matter what they do, and some are more in between. But a holier than thou attitude about being thin helps no one.)
It is clearly more complicated, but I don't see anything in your response that would indicate that one should not try fixing their diet as a first course of action.
I think js2 agrees diet and exercise is a good first course of action, but is responding to the subtle implication, intended or not, that diet and exercise are sufficient; that no further (more drastic) measures are needed. From his post he clearly agrees diet is the preferred course of action if it works on its own (as it does for him).
I was trying to imply that diet and exercise should be sufficient most of the time, but not always. That's why I said "and then see what happens".
Research is needed and more good research is always welcome but until we know how these things actually work, my bias is toward the simpler, more well understood options.
I think the problem with you being so glib about this is that the "common sense [...] diet and exercise" shtick has been treated as the last word. This pokes a major hole in that orthodoxy. And that orthodoxy is already pretty tattered.
That's important in this context because many people use the orthodox view as a club: if you're fat, then obviously you're a bad person, a lazy glutton who can't be bothered to take some simple actions.
Not only that, it completely overlooks the current obesity epidemic. If it was really such an open-shut case, we probably could've at least contained the problem by now.
If a theory depends on mass laziness and ineptitude from the same ingenious species that brought us all our modern innovations and wisdom, then something's not right. It's disingenuous to suggest that such behaviour should be so natural and prevalent amongst human beings; especially when it has only just exploded in the last few decades...
Why should we have contained the problem? It's not like coca cola and McDonalds are going out of business. The obesity epidemic correlates just fine with the notion that a poor diet leads to obesity. Diets are increasingly poor.
Correlation isn't necessarily causation and a group observation isn't necessarily applicable to individuals.
It frankly pisses me off when people tell me to stop drinking soda and eating fast food to lose the fat I have right now, and that going to the gym will fix it all. I don't drink much soda. I drink 95% water and unsweetened tea I make at home (jasmine or barley tea bag and one pitcher of water) and the other 5% being milk, juices and soda in that order - and this is a habit I've had for over half my life. Fast food and delivery is generally limited to 1x a week, and I may rely heavily on packaged foods (like trader joes frozen stuffs) but it's usually accompanied with a huge salad with only a little vinaigrette as dressing for a total of 1.5-2k calories a day most days. That's if I even eat much because I'm on Adderall _and_ Alli (the OTC version of xenical) quite literally pooping what little fat I'm eating. I have also gone to the gym anywhere from 2 to 7 times a week with workouts of all sorts, and at some point I even had a trainer looking after me for months as I spent 2-3 hours a day every day with him. And I. look. even. fatter. than. ever. even if I might be able to climb 10 flights of stairs without a sweat and I feel healthy - like how I'm on track to hit 100k steps (w/fitbit - 10k is about 5 miles) this week without much effort. The only thing that I can't do is getting out of my chair more often, and that's because I damaged a nerve after doing so a few months ago. For as long as that's lasted that hasn't done anything noticeable either.
A lot of my friends are in the same boat, and we're all sick of the same advice. There has got to be something in the equation that people are missing where fat is concerned. There are definitely people out there that eat junk food that need to stop, but not every overweight person is the same. The current advice being thrown out there and hammered into our heads isn't very helpful.
Since that doesn't work, you should try something different -
Seth Roberts' Shangri-La "diet" seems to work extremely well for about 80% of the people (and not at all for the remaining 20%). I quote "diet" because it involves ADDING 200-400 calories a day to your intake (albeit with some weird specific constraints).
It worked for me for a while, and then stopped. Other things worth trying are atkins style diets, Dave Asprey's BP diet (4500kcal/day, but with extreme attention to details) or even the Tim Ferriss advocated "slow carb" system.
It seems that no diet works for 100% of the people, and those that are not crackpot work for 80% but not more. I guess variance (biome or otherwise) is much larger than assumed - or there's a missing ingredient in diet that is being overlooked.
I think the idea would be that you could fast-track the process, with compounded benefits / amplifying the effects. I've not looked into this much, so not sure if that is a possibility.
This story really doesn't belong on HN, but I digress since it relates to a health issue I've seen a lot of software developers experience,
Making the assumption that the average obese person eat diets largely consisting of processed food (which though is not always high glycemic index is almost always accompanied by something which is), someone who is eating a diet of unprocessed foods should have a greater diversity in their gut bacteria.
One thing I have not seen mentioned is the use of anti-biotic medicine and gut bacteria. I now know of multiple friends who have undergone a regimen of heavy anti-biotic medicine, only to have digestive problems for anywhere from 6 months to well over a year and beyond.
I'm responding just to your first point that the story doesn't belong on HN.
From HN submission guidelines:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Right. So back to the same common sense advice. It would seem wise to simply fix your diet first, maybe throw in a little exercise, and then see what happens. That is, before trying things like fecal transplants.