Unfortunately, the world is filled with diet scams. For that reason, you are not asked to trust me, I will trust you. All of Why Diet and Exercise Fail is available online for free without registration. If you find this site valuable, please recommend it to others and link to it.

It is not a secret that what we refer to as fast food, processed food, or junk food can cause weight gain, or that a diet high in fruits and vegetables will cause weight loss. The question is why this occurs. This book debunks fad diets, examines current weight loss research, and implicates acidic flavorings and preservatives as the unrecognized causes of obesity.^1,2

Traditional explanations of weight gain are incorrect. The Eskimo and French have much higher levels of fat consumption than Americans. If all fats were the cause of obesity, the Eskimo and French would have higher rates of obesity and related diseases than Americans, but this is not the case.^3,4,5,6 Villagers in rural Thailand got 80% of their calories from white rice, a refined carbohydrate, and were free of obesity and chronic diseases. If carbohydrates were the cause of obesity, this would not be the case.^7,8,9,10 Agricultural workers in California are one of the most overweight groups in the state. The President’s Council on Physical Fitness found that exercise has a very small effect on weight loss. If exercise was a cure for obesity we would expect that exercise would have a more significant impact on weight loss.^11,12 In 1900, less than one percent of Americans were obese.¹³ Today, over one third of Americans are obese. Genes do not rapidly change enough to explain rising rates of obesity. People who go on a low calorie diet rapidly regain weight when the diet ends.¹⁴ By contrast, one large experiment showed that normal weight people who went on a high calorie diet to gain weight rapidly lost the weight after the experiment ended.¹⁵

Interestingly, researchers have discovered that weight loss and gain are about more than where the calories in food come from. It also appears that our emotions and health are involved, and that certain chemicals cause weight gain. Consider some of the connections discover by researchers. It does not surprise most people that regular soda consumption predicts weight gain, but most people are surprised to find that diet soda consumption is an even greater predictor of weight gain than regular soda. Consumption of both the chemicals in soda and prescription drugs appears to increase hunger. Weight gain is closely connected with our overall health. Sleep deprivation and stress can both cause weight gain by increasing hunger. Excess hunger appears to be part of the mechanism by which weight gain occurs. Overweight people have higher levels of hunger than normal weight people, this is know as the Hunger-Obesity Paradox. Being overweight does not correspond with a lower metabolic rate, but it is connected with a lowered ability to use stored fat. Excess inflammation, which causes insulin resistance and increased hunger, is the same culprit responsible for many chronic diseases.

Scientists are increasingly looking at the chemicals and nutrients in our food to explain weight gain and chronic disease. Caffeine can cause increases in stress, sleep disturbances, and even weight gain in diabetics. However, coffee and tea, which contain large amounts of caffeine, were present long before the modern era when obesity became common. Certain vitamins and minerals are destroyed by the same modern processing techniques that remove dietary fiber from foods. However the largest study even conducted on vitamins and chronic disease found no significant effect from supplements. It also appears that defatted dietary fiber has no effect on body weight. It has been proposed that omega-6 fats are unhealthy while omega-3 fats are healthy, and the switch towards omega-6 fats is responsible for obesity. However, there are also many healthful omega-6 fats and nations whose populations are thin despite high omega-6 fat consumption. Amino acids and enzymes, which come from proteins, are deficient in obesity and chronic disease. However, this appears to be caused by inflammation rather than insufficient protein consumption. It has also been suggested that the shift to a grain based diet is responsible for obesity. However, the thinnest and longest lived nation in the world, Japan, has a diet that gets 50% of its calories from white rice.

Our digestive system is closely connected with our immune system. This is not surprising because before the era of food sanitation, eating could easily lead to infection. The plant chemicals in many herbs and spices have an anti-inflammatory. This is why traditional plant based medicines were effective. These chemicals work by affecting bacteria in our digestive system. In preservative filled processed foods, herbs and spices have largely been replaced by artificial flavorings. Acidic chemicals added to our food supply to prevent spoilage or add flavor harm our digestive bacteria. This produces an inflammatory response, which causes increased hunger. Farmers use this mechanism to fatten livestock. This is how anti-biotic growth promoters and acidic animal feeds work. This is why health food tends to make us feel better, and junk food tends to make us feel worse. Weight loss can be rapidly achieved by avoiding acidic chemicals which kill gut flora and eating large amounts of fruits and vegetables. Avoiding weight gain at a national level is even easier than losing weight. We simply need to remove acidic flavorings and preservatives from our food supply. The cost of living without these chemicals is far less than the cost of obesity and chronic disease.

² Claire Heald. "Going ape." BBC News. 4/04/2009 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6248975.stm.

³ Gadsby, Patricia. "The Inuit Paradox." Discover Magazine. 4/04/2009 http://discovermagazine.com/2004/oct/inuit-paradox.

⁴ Dewailly, Eric. "n-3 Fatty acids and cardiovascular disease risk factors among the Inuit of Nunavik." American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 4/04/2009 http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/74/4/464.

⁵ Core Health Indicators." World Health Organization Statistical Information System. 3/31/2009 http://www.who.int/whosis/.

⁶ Spencer, Mimi. "Let them eat cake." Observer. 4/04/2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2004/nov/07/foodanddrink.features11.

⁸ Gershoff, Stanley N. "Amino acid fortification of rice studies in Thailand." The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 4/04/2009 http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/28/2/170.pdf.

⁹ Hans Diehl. "Western Diet Food Not Nutritious and High Calorie." Coronary Health Improvement Project. 6/04/2009 http://www.chiphealth.com/topics/diet-01-western-diet-changed.html.

¹⁰ "Agriculture FACT BOOK 98: Chapter 1-A." United States Department of Agriculture. 6/04/2009 http://www.usda.gov/news/pubs/fbook98/ch1a.htm.

¹¹ Rodriguez, Michael. "Health of Migrant Farmworkers in California." California Research Bureau. 3/31/2009 http://www.library.ca.gov/crb/03/05/03-005.pdf.

¹² Welk , Gregory J. and Steven N. Blair. "Physical Activity Protects against the Health Risks of Obesity." The President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports Research Digest. 3/31/2009 http://www.fitness.gov/digest_dec2000.htm

¹³Jeffry Weiss. "Why We Eat . . . . and why we keep eating." Medical & Advisory Board – Insulite Laboratories. 6/04/2009 http://www.insulitelabs.com/articles/Why-We-Eat.html.

¹⁴Burros, Marian. "Diet Formulas: Losing the Weight Is the Easy Part." New York Times. 4/11/2009 http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/06/garden/diet-formulas-losing-the-weight-is-the-easy-part.html.

¹⁵Kolata, Gina. "Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside." New York Times. 4/04/2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/health/08fat.html?_r=3&oref=slogin.