Over the past few decades, obesity rates in the United States have skyrocketed. While there are many factors that contribute to this trend, one major factor is the American medical society’s overemphasis on calorie intake and their neglect of the feedback system of the human body. This has led to a misguided belief that all calories are created equal and that weight loss is simply a matter of eating fewer calories.
The human body is a complex system that includes a feedback mechanism that regulates appetite and energy expenditure. When we consume food, our body responds by releasing hormones that signal the brain to stop eating and to burn calories for energy. However, the American medical society has largely ignored this feedback system and has focused solely on calorie intake as the key determinant of weight gain and loss.
One example of this is the belief that drinking ice tea is better than hot tea because it contains fewer calories. Both Dr. Dean Edell, the American physician and broadcaster, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the American television personality and a surgeon, calculated accurately the calories in ice tea and hot tea, while forgot the factor that, if you drink ice tea or any other iced beverage regularly and frequently, your body will send signals to your brain to eat more and even worse, to conserve more energy as fat and build insulation with fat tissues. That is why zero-cal beverages and NY mayor Bloomberg’s effort would not help to cut the fat for anyone. Instead, if mayor Bloomberg had mandated all beverages to contain glucose, the effect would be very different, because human brain can only operate on glucose as fuel, not other sugars. If brain is satisfied with energy supply, it will tell your gut to stop eat or drink.
