Time Magazine and the Path Foundation Agree: "Everyone is Fatter then you Think!

Americans May Be Fatter Then We Think

What kind of study is this and financed by who?

In a study published in the journal PLoS One, lead author Dr. Eric Braverman, president of the nonprofit Path Foundation in New York City, which supports brain research, says that our current measure of obesity — body mass index, or BMI — significantly underestimates the number of people, especially women, who are obese.

Braverman and his co-author, Dr. Nirav Shah, New York State’s Commissioner of Health, studied 1,400 men and women, comparing their BMI measurement to their percentage of body fat, as measured by a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan. While BMI is a simple ratio of a person’s height and weight, the DEXA scan — which is normally used to measure bone density — can distinguish between bone, fat and muscle mass.

What is the Path Foundation?

It seems if they were interested in real brain research, they would study the influence of hormones, chemicals and satiety rather then a study like this which could be picked up and used by the Industrial Diet Complex to tell the fat people, there are far more of you then we thought!

I went to the Path Foundations page of things they are involved with and interested in studying...

I think you will find this list very interesting.....

Our findings will make a major contribution to the restructuring of American health care to brain-based medicine by:


• Affirming that brain’s cognitive energy is directly related to the number of brain cells firing, and exponentially related to the brain’s processing speed.


• Confirming that adequate hydration and preservation of brain cells sustains cognitive energy with age by keeping the mind fast and powerful.


• Linking dementia and obesity to hormonal imbalances in the brain.


• Establishing a biomarker for obesity management


• Proving the impact of the hormone PTH on osteoporosis and dementia prevention while emphasizing the critical importance of maintaining low levels of PTH for longevity.


• Improving parity of men and women in the work force with awareness and early correctionof the rising levels of hormones FSH and LH from age twenty-two onwards.


• Highlighting menopause as a main cause of dementia in women.

I bolded and increased the font of some of these I find worrying....


Is it just me or is there a "brave new world" kind of edge to this "science"?

Don't get me wrong, I agree with them about the BMI being inaccurate, but notice even that was in the cause of saying too many are too fat.

How come no research on the effects of all the chemicals and toxins on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis?

Biomarkers for the obese? Would the be given at birth to see who will be fat?

Well I find it all disturbing, even the part about menopause causing dementia. Old age and dementia do go together. Just strange.

They have studied 'hypometabolism in the brain".  Hey remember that article where it connected dementia and obesity from acouple years ago? This was some different researchers, but this story reminded me of it.

Is it just me but does some of this the research seem pointed in a certain biased way? Not all reseach, some are doing decent work, but I am thinking some "brave new world" thoughts about how such research will disenfranchise the obese more and more ["future dementia" victims, their brains are "deficient"] without really offering HELP OR ANSWERS.

I do not mind scientists studying neurology to figure out how people's bodies work, even I believe that fat people's bodies work differently. However why the focus on this sort of study?

Just some things I am thinking about

PS. Later I was on another blog Living~400lbs and saw some discussion of this. There one of the commenters wrote about Dr. Eric Braverman's book.

I find myself sighing yet again, I do think some changes to eating can help, but here we have the false message of "hyper-control" that such types think everyone has. Would this guy even believe a 500lb woman buys Veganaise and uses tumeric in her food on purpose?

Even scarier is Dr. Braverman's page, where testimonies of some of women who are only 150-160lbs consider themselves desperately obese.