Obesity and Twin Psychology

“Nature versus nurture,” otherwise known as “heredity versus environment,” is a conversation starter in almost any field of knowledge. But no matter where someone stands with respect to the relative importance of those two factors, almost anyone would agree that identical twins are clones.

This is, incidentally, also the assumption on which specially bred laboratory animals are sold. They are supposed to all start out the same, so the researchers can eliminate the constants and focus on the variants, and recognize causes and effects. The ability to take that sameness for granted is vital to the whole enterprise.

Xand and Chris van Tulleken are identical twins, born and raised in Britain, and both doctors, so how did it get to where they were 42 years old and Xand outweighed Chris by 30 pounds? As previously mentioned, Xand had moved to the United States for educational purposes, and an unplanned pregnancy brought unexpected responsibility. He told The Atlantic that eating is his go-to stress response:

I remember eating almost continuously. So it was stress, and the food environment in America is different. Portions are bigger, and the ingredients are different as well.

These twins shared the same genetic material and were brought up in the same home environment. It would seem reasonable to expect both to be stress eaters (or neither), but Chris says that is not so:

The collision of genes and environment is terribly complicated… My response to stress is just entirely stopping eating.

The history of which twin was heavier at which life stages, and why, is a bit confusing. At some point, they set some kind of record by having the biggest weight difference recorded by a King’s College longitudinal study of twins, and that was 30 pounds. Another anecdote brings up questions. Chris says,

Once, Xand was in Sudan, eating a junky diet and probably gaining weight in basically the hottest place on Earth. I went to the Arctic for three months and lost four stone.

Four stone is 56 pounds, which is a lot to lose, whether intentionally or inadvertently. If Chris is the brother who does not stress-eat, where had so much weight come from? At any rate, it is no doubt possible to trace every wrinkle of their unusual situation, because the Drs. van Tulleken tell the world about it in hopes that others might be helped.

On the physical side, the twins have “all the major known genetic risk factors for obesity.” But that is the least of the problems. Chris confesses that they enable each other in binge behavior. (If we were all honest with ourselves, it would be evident that far too many relationships are based on that paradigm.) Apparently, the brothers have always encouraged each other to be disordered and transgressive.

There are philosophical differences and a whole lot of head trips and complicated psychological sibling rivalry nuttiness. This is interesting because it shows that relationships are complicated and varied, and some solutions don’t work for everybody.

The origin story of their podcast is that Chris wanted to start it to encourage Xand to face up to his overeating tendency, but a therapist “made Chris realize that Xand wasn’t the only one who had a problem,” wrote journalist Helen Lewis. The various media projects give the two doctors plenty of scope to air their personal differences, recognize their various blind spots, and work on their control issues. A quotation from Xand relates how his brother stopped nagging, and instead…

[…] Chris spent thousands of pounds on [making] a podcast to change the way I eat, got therapists and scientists from all over the world, and has completely changed what’s in my fridge. All in a way that I feel I took charge of it. Maybe you just have to be clever about the way you manipulate your family.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “‘The Revelation Was That I Was the Problem’,” TheAtlantic.com, 08/07/21
Image by PitchVision/CC BY-ND 2.0

The Stuff We Eat

Xand van Tulleken and Chris van Tulleken are twin doctors who produce a podcast and numerous videos about their various excursions into the field of obesity prevention. Based on “very robust data,” their sentiments are definitely against ultra-processed food, but what exactly is that? Journalist Helen Lewis pinned them down.

Dr. Chris suggests that one tip-off is the presence on the ingredients list of substances not normally found in a home kitchen. If you don’t usually have a beaker of sodium nitrite in the cabinet, don’t accept it in a packaged food item. And those are small, relatively tame words. To address other, more complicated words, there is a slogan in the conscious eating community: “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it.”

Dr. Xand goes into details:

These kinds of foods are lying to you. If you get a pack of instant noodles, it smells and tastes like meaty, nourishing broth. Your brain is expecting amino acids and proteins. But what goes into your bloodstream is sugar and salt. And you don’t feel satisfied.

We are talking, of course, about the usual suspects: packaged sweets, cookies, pastries, cakes, and snacks. Oh, and prepared meals. And, of course, sugar-sweetened beverages, especially the ones imbued with exciting fizziness. An explainer from DigisMak.com talks about the time and money spent to achieve “hyper-palatability”:

That is, companies refine the synergy between the different components of food, such as fat, salt, sugar, and carbohydrates, to ensure that they be as delicious as possible. The most worrying diagnosis? High consumption of ultra-processed foods is causing a disturbing rise in obesity in children.

None of this is exactly news, and that is the frustrating part. Though we all know it, not much seems to be done about it. Every now and then, along comes a person (or a matched pair of them) who sees the urgency. Lewis gave both brothers room to express the full scope of their concerns, and some interesting details came up. For one thing, in the van Tulleken family, like many others, weight discussions could lead to “a toxic brew of shame, resentment, and frustration.”

Dr. Xand has issued two warnings that are useful everywhere and always: “If you structure your family around the idea that one person has a problem and one person doesn’t, you’re going to be missing what a family is,” and, “It’s very hard to lose weight without changing your life.”

To Dr. Chris, this is, sadly, one of the situations where less is more, and parents might just have to give up and let go. “Love your family and leave them alone.”

The range widens

Of course, the existence of ultra-processed foods is not the only problem confronted by present-day people. The two began to see that mental issues were involved, with Xand being more likely to solve problems by eating. Also, the world now favors the idea that food can act in place of drugs. The brothers started a podcast, called “A Thorough Examination: Addicted to Food,” and brought in medical and psychological professionals to help them figure out “how two people with the same genes and upbringing can have such different approaches to food.”

They traced history back to where their paths through life had diverged, so they no longer shared the identical factors of environment and parenting. Dr. Xand moved to the U.S. to complete his degree in public health and at the same time, he and his partner were dealing with an unplanned pregnancy… “And my response to any kind of stress is to eat.”

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “‘The Revelation Was That I Was the Problem’,” TheAtlantic.com, 08/07/21
Source: “Here’s what happens after a month of eating only ultra-processed,” DigisMak.com, 05/24/21
Image by Benson Kua/CC BY-SA 2.0

The Monotrophic Diet

If someone voluntarily eats the same food all the time, they’re on a monotrophic diet. According to some people, this is a category of fad diet and ought to be shunned. According to others, it is the ultimate in self-care wisdom. A person might do this for several days, several weeks, or possibly forever. Supposedly, in parts of the world, religious devotees subsist for decades on daily bowls of rice.

In the largest philosophical sense, what a person eats, or declines to eat, should represent the ultimate expression of freedom. “My body, my choice,” indeed! Yet somehow, people’s eating habits have become public property. The concept of intentionally eating only one food is, at the very least, a played-out caricature of eccentric and/or genius humans, a trope that belongs in a cartoon or a funny movie.

But seriously

More dangerously, limiting oneself to a lone food can be deemed pathological. It can constitute evidence of the intent to self-harm, and next thing you know, everybody winds up in a courtroom. Additionally, the preference for a monotrophic diet may be characterized as detrimental to society as a whole. Things happen that make authorities feel comfortable about claiming the right to control people’s eating habits.

Is monotrophism, in and of itself, harmful? Well, yes. Whether the favorite is salty chips or conscientious energy bars, sticking to one food is pretty much considered intrinsically problematic. There is another angle to argue about. Is someone who elects to choose from an entire food group, a legit monotroph? Meat, veggies, fruits, or legumes — each group offers a pretty wide spectrum of eating choices. In the mono sweepstakes, should they even count?

Another school of thought holds that it all depends on what the single chosen substance is. Potatoes, for instance, are a very popular solo menu item. Other faves include apples, bananas, milk, watermelon, cabbage, and grapefruits.

Why go monotrophic?

Some people adopt a mindset that prefers a less complicated life. Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs shared the habit of owning multiple sets of identical clothes, so they would not waste a second of precious brainpower in thinking about what to wear. A similar philosophy can apply to eating. Usually, the monotrophic dieter seeks to lose weight, so the whole idea is to reduce the total caloric intake, and boredom can help with that.

The proponents of radically uncomplicated eating always mention the “no fuss, no muss” aspect. If you are eating two boiled potatoes, three times a day, routine settles in quickly. There is no need to compute nutrients, keep track of calories, or measure portion sizes. You know what you’re getting.

Just because a diet is simple, doesn’t mean it’s healthy. — Rachel Link

Journalist Makayla Meixner says the restrictive mono plan is a form of disordered eating that promotes unhealthy, unsustainable habits, like meal-skipping. binge eating, and fasting. Consuming insufficient calories can also slow the whole metabolism, and that means burning fewer calories, which defeats the purpose. Studies suggest the slowdown may persist for years, even when the person returns to normal eating patterns.

Journalist Rachel Link notes that the mono diet may lead to feelings of tiredness, hunger, and weakness. In women, it might even cause bone loss and negatively affect fertility. Social situations can be as awkward for a mono eater as for a recovering alcoholic. “What, you’re not drinking?” and so on. Two plain boiled potatoes simply might not be on the menu. Link adds these words:

Although there are no specific guidelines regarding how long you should follow the diet, most use it to ramp up weight loss by following it for just 1 or 2 weeks at a time.

… not based on any evidence and can be overly restrictive…

… not backed by research and unhealthy, unsustainable, and likely to lead to nutritional deficiencies in the long term.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Potato Diet Review: Does It Work for Weight Loss?,” Healthline.com, 03/05/19
Source: “Mono Diet Review: Purpose, Benefits, and Side Effects,” Healthline.com, 10/01/20
Image by ruocaled/CC BY 2.0

Everything You Know About Potatoes Is Wrong, Continued

Should we eat potatoes at all? Is it ever okay to follow an all-potato diet? No doubt, experts will continue to wrangle over the essential truths of potatoes. Meanwhile, they will continue to issue caveats to intrepid consumers.

In his book Potato Hack, Tim Steele offered seven fundamental rules, either quoted or paraphrased here.

First, the only true and correct path is to eat nothing but plain, cooked potatoes for a period of at least three but not more than five days. Between two and five pounds of potatoes each day is good. That would amount to between 530 and 1,300 calories per diem.

This rule is very important: “Don’t eat any other foods, including condiments and toppings, such as ketchup, butter, sour cream, and cheese.” In other words, all caloric input should derive from the spuds. What you drink counts, too. Stick with “water, plain tea, or black coffee.” Take your prescription meds, but no dietary supplements. And what about energy expenditure? During the potato diet, regular moderate motion is better than bursts of heavy exercise.

Basically, there are a couple of possibilities. One might assiduously study the rules and abide by them. Or, one might dismiss the whole potato-diet concept as nonsense.

Alertness counts

In these waters, the explorer must navigate with care. Kelly Plowe, MS, RDN, is another advocate of potatoes in general, but with the awareness that mistakes can be made.

That writer re-emphasizes a point also made by Steele, that baked whole potatoes are highly susceptible to corruption by the addition of calorically dense toppings. In general, we should always endeavor to avoid fried potatoes, or fried anything, really. (But, since the advent of the air fryer as an obtainable appliance for the average cook, even that fact is no longer solid.)

If refined grains can be replaced by potatoes, the person consumes more fiber, which is good for weight loss. To maximize fiber, the potato skin should be eaten — after the potatoes are carefully washed with a brush, of course.

Science marches on

Plowe defends the potato as a respectable, nutrient-dense complex carbohydrate, and strives to correct the misinformation that has hurt its reputation in the weight-loss community. Potatoes, she says,

[…] have been vilified, and for no good reason. There’s no compelling evidence that, when prepared in a healthy way, potatoes hamper your weight-loss goals. And there are some studies that show the opposite.

Speaking of studies, last year, the Alliance for Potato Research & Education funded and published one, based on data derived from 30 women and men with high blood pressure. The APRE, a trade association, is “dedicated to advancing the scientific understanding of the role potatoes play in promoting the health of all people.”

The researchers’ curiosity centered around “the effect of increased dietary potassium from a whole food source.” Sodium retention comes into it too, and confusion. On a superficial reading, it seems like they defend and exonerate french fries of the fast-food genre, which are cooked in oil, by testing baked french fries, which are not.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Potato Diet Review: Does It Work for Weight Loss?,” Healthline.com, 03/05/19
Source: “Potatoes Can Help You Lose Weight — Unless You’re Making These 4 Mistakes,” LiveStrong.com, 03/21/20
Source: “Industry-funded studies of the week: One Potato, Two Potato,” FoodPolitics.com, 08/23/21
Image by Mike Mozart/CC BY 2.0