It seems that every new expert has a fresh and innovative method to accomplish the task of losing weight.  Their promise is, if you do it their way, you will take the weight off and keep it off.

None of the experts seem to have an answer as to why we as a country have become so overweight.  Maybe the answer is not quite as complex as everyone seems to think.  There is a book called "Hiding In Plain Sight".  This book is based on the premise that when someone or something is in its natural surroundings, if people see it, they immediately tend to discount it.

Could it be our problem with obesity has been hiding in plain sight?  What has drastically changed in the last generation?  It takes thousands of years for our genetic DNA to evolve, so basically, we are still the same people we were 50-100 years ago.

The Change In Produce Food Production

In the last 100 years, the major change in our civilization has been the change of our agrarian society into our industrialized culture.  Farmers that had once produced their own food have moved to the cities and now work in the factories.  The food and livestock production has changed from the small farm to the gigantic Agribusiness.

Farming processes were changed to enhance efficiency.   In the 1930s an acre of corn yielded 50 bushels an acre.  Crop rotation to maintain the quality of the soil was considered absolutely necessary.  Since the 1960s, corn yields of over 200 bushels per acre are now not that uncommon.  These fantastic increases have been achieved at the expense of the minerals and other nutrients in the soil.  Just because you have purchased an organic farm product, grown without the use of pesticides or chemical fertilizer, you are not guaranteed that the item has been produced in soil whose nutrients and minerals have not been depleted.

Your body will have natural cravings for some of these individual nutrients as well as some of the minerals.  It is quite conceivable that an individual might consume substantially more calories to satisfy these urges

As you will see in the following information, the change in livestock production has some other very major ramifications.

The Change In The Livestock Production

The same types of changes that occurred in produce production have occurred in livestock production.  These changes have been even more serious concerning obesity.

Previously, livestock was produced by allowing the animals to graze on free range.  Today they are produced in the feed lot, being fed corn and other byproducts.  The change in the beef quality is nothing short of amazing.

These animals were meant to graze.  When cattle are grain fed, their intestinal tracts become far more acidic, which favors the growth of pathogenic E. coli bacteria. The E coli contained in the slaughtered meat have been generated in this highly acidic environment and as such can now survive in the human gastro intestinal tract. This is responsible for the heightened prevalence of E. coli 0157:H7 illness.   These acid resistant bacteria can kills people who eat an undercooked hamburger.

In addition to the higher prevalence of E coli, this unnatural feeding causes the animal's health to deteriorate.  In order to keep the animals healthy the livestock production uses 70% of all antibiotics that are used world wide.  To increase the rate of weight gain in livestock production, six basic hormones are used.  Three are naturally occurring—Oestradiol, Progesterone and Testosterone—and three are synthetic—Zeranol, Trenbolone, and Melengestrol.

Despite the amount of scientific concern, the United States and Canada continue to allow growth promoting hormones in cattle. Since 1988 the European Union, has prohibited the importation of hormone-treated beef, and as such has banned beef imports from the United States.

When you now consume these hormones, they change the body's hormone balance and are likely to cause weight gain.  The long term effects of the synthetic hormones have yet to be determined. The bacteria that are consumed are those for which the antibiotics were initially prescribed and have made the appropriate change in their DNA to now be antibiotic resistant.  The antibiotics that might be ingested make a drastic change in your intestinal tract interfering with the natural balance between the good and bad bacteria.

You may have been reading about the epidemic of inflammatory illnesses.  Rheumatoid arthritis, shoulder tendinitis or bursitis, gouty arthritis, and polymyalgia rheumatica have all been increasing in recent years.  The change from the livestock grazing to being produced in a feed lot has changed the Omeg-3 content of the meat as well as the CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid).  Both of these beneficial ingredients have been reduced to 20-30% of their previous levels.  This change in Omega-6 to Omega-3 from a healthy 5:1 ratio to an unhealthy inflammatory level of 30:1 ratio could well be the reason for the present increase in inflammatory illness problems, while the reduction of CLA has been linked to obesity.

Summary

1) The absents of nutrients and minerals in our present produce production interferes with our body's appetite control mechanism possibly causing overeating.

2)  CLA has been shown to change the proportion of lean body weight to fat gain.  If you lose 50#s and regain the weight, while having adequate amounts of CLA, 75% of your regained weight will be lean tissue.  If you have inadequate amounts of CLA, only 50% of the regained pounds will be in lean body weight.  A yoyo type of weight loss and regain will not only leave you at the same weight, but your body will have deteriorated in regard to your body composition.

3)  Any change in your body's hormonal system will likely have ramifications in the stabilization of your body weight.

4)  Any residual ingestion of antibiotics will have major impacts on your intestinal tract and your digestion system.  The disturbance of your good bacteria in regard to the bad bacteria could manifest itself as acid reflex or worst yet non-absorption of the required nutrient.  As is the case in the newest method of weight loss, good health must begin in the colon.