>How does focusing on a species that lives in national parks in an unindustrialized part of the world negate the notion that environmental impacts other than process food which are endemic to modern, industrial life have an influence on weight gain?

I never said it does.

>Your proposed "control" fails to differentiate between diet and non-diet influences by removing both from the equation. It's essentially irrelevant to the thesis at hand.

That's not the thesis it was meant to be a control FOR.

Actually - this discussion WAS precise about which specific processing the GP thought was bad. He may even be right, I have consistently refrained from expressing an opinion on whether he was right or not because I don't have the data to form one - but your critique is invalid, he gave a specific example.

I actually do have one on Orange Juice for you though - there is a very good reason to avoid purchased orange juice - it is much more concentrated, many dienticians believe it's TOO concentrated and advise against ever having more juice than you can squeeze from ONE fruit per day.

>There's an implication that a big factory manufacturing is utterly unable to make something healthy and nutritious, even if they got rid of the nutrition sucking machine and stopped putting in additives.

Incapable ? Nope. Completely without incentive ? Definitely. There will always be more profit in taking shortcuts and cutting corners.

>My local McD's is full of them, I swear!

True, but we were talking about them as consumers not ingredients :P

>I'm pretty sure feral rats are wild animals, though they do feed off of human food. Of course, if you want to eliminate any species that eats human food, you're also going to reduce or eliminate almost all the other potential influences listed in the article -- regulated indoor temperature, excessive light exposure, exposure to industrial chemicals, exposure to the Ad-36 virus or to M. smithii, etc.

Or... you could, you know, look at these animals in their natural habits rather than the ones who live in Human habitats. The African wildcat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_wildcat shows no sign of obesity in national parks.

[citation needed]
Citation: I live in Africa, I see these animals (in the wild) every day of my life. The wild ones are not fat.

>Not for nothing but do you really think lab feed isn't pretty well standardized. I mean, do you really think professional biologists just don't care what the aminals on whom their results depend are eating? Do they also take them home and let them run around on the carpet and feed them cheetos and let them watch TV?

No I don't, that's sort of the point. But on the other hand - labs actually hardly ever raise their own animals. They buy them in bulk from companies that specialise in breeding animals for lab work. Do you really believe these profit seeking corporations have never cut corners on the feed considering it would be virtually impossible to prove ?
I also never said food was the ONLY thing they had in common with humans, I merely said that contrary to the GP - these animals DO have that in common with us.

Who knows - they could be buying the exact same product under the exact same brand and that product could have had a radical change in it's composition without anybody ever really having noticed.

>Ugg. "Processed and manufacturered" are too damn vague to be useful in any way. WHAT part of the processing and manufacturing is causing this problem? And how do you know it's the problem, and not modern plastic containers, or pesticides used on crops, or any of a million other things that have changed that might be the root cause of our current epidemic?

Again - like I said in my own post: I don't know that. I specifically ADMITTED I don't have the answer.
I wasn't TRYING to give an ANSWER. I even said outright I didn't know if the OP was right or not.
I just pointed out that the given reason for DISMISSING the OP's argument was bloody stupid and it was.
That doesn't mean I agree with the OP's argument - I don't consider myself knowledgeable enough on the topic to either agree or not agree.

But I can still call out a bloody stupid argument when I see one.

All good points but I deliberately didn't address those because I don't know the answers.
I just think dismissing "processed food" on the basis that animals don't eat it when the article is specifically about LAB animals who DO eat processed food is silly.

becomes corrupted after entering politics.
In other news: fire is hot and water is wet.

>And, as we all know, marmosets are among the greatest consumers of manufactured foods.

These are laboratory marmosets which are, if anything, fed MORE on manufactured foods than even pet marmosets (since nobody gives a lab animal treats).
These are all animals that eat foods made in large scale commercial operations and poured out of a tin or cardboard box.

There is NO evidence of an obesity rise in WILD stocks of ANY of these animals.
What do humans and lab animals have in common ? Diets filled with processed and manufactured foods.

Now I am not saying that this is the cause or even that the GP is right- I am saying your reason for claiming he is wrong is outright idiotic.

This was a response to the mentions about libertarianism and slavery in that conversation. That I also mentioned suicide in it was an example of how small the difference between "employed" and "enslaved" has become for many people - when suicide is actually more attractive than resignation.

As for my position on the main topic:
Personally - I don't believe suicide should be illegal per se - but then I also believe that providing those who attempted it with appropriate psychiatric care is a valid burden on society (or if you are so inclined: a sensible investment as many of them could go back to being productive members of society with the right depression treatment) and currently the laws against it is the means by which this is achieved.
I think it could be achieved better but I would hesitate to scrap the current laws until this "better" version is already in place because we ARE talking about people dying in the meantime.

Actually a great many American libertarians while claiming to hate slavery and indeed claiming their entire philosophy is built on preventing it- fully support indentured servitude, because apparently if you are truly free you should be free to be allowed to become a slave.

Which is why they oppose any and all regulation or worker-protection laws... you know the only difference BETWEEN most jobs and indentured servitude.

Us more leftist anarchist look at this and wonder how anybody can fail to see that a job you cannot AFFORD to resign from because the only alternative is to starve is no DIFFERENT from slavery on ANY practical level - and that this IS indentured servitude.
Indeed... this explains why Foxxcon's workers chose to commit suicide in such numbers that the company put safety nets around the buildings. This didn't solve ANY problems - the workers still hated their jobs so much that they would rather die and still chose a quick death by falling over a slow death by starving (aka - quitting their jobs) - they just couldn't do it on company premisses anymore...
Now in a world where business still had any shred of humanity left... if your company was having workers KILL themselves rather than work for you anymore (and genuinely felt that "better" work simply couldn't exist for them) - you would improve your working conditions - EVEN IF that meant making less money yourself.

>There's no technical reason why something like this can't be done. There's lots of other reasons, though.

You mean like the fact that "submerged floating" is an oxymoron ?

>So in your opinion terrorists get a pass on murdering civilians because they have a justifiable grievance?

Where do you draw the line between terrorist and freedom fighter ? As it happened the ANC won in South Africa and did so with the full support of the entire international community including the USA.

Are you not a freedom fighter rather than a terrorist if what you are fighting against is a brutal regime that denies you any human rights whatsoever and have removed any and all legal forms of protest ?

Do I agree with targeting civilians ? No - but the reality is America has killed more civilians in Iraq (and that's just the accidental ones) than the ANC in their entire 30 year campaign.

I would argue that the form their armed struggle took actually prevented their revolt from turning into a full-scale civil war, which would have killed far more people (including many more civilian collateral casualties) - and probably have made it impossible to reach the peaceful negotiated settlement we ultimately did.
Was it a good thing ? No. Was it justified ? Maybe. Was it the least harmful among a lot of bad choices ? Yes.

If you were referring only to the "share intelligence" bit - then yes, I know. I am sure I didn't intend THAT line to be speculative.
If you mean the whole idea - if you have proof that they do I would not be surprised but I haven't seen any conclusive claims to this effect. But then, i'm neither American nor British - I live in a small country in Africa. I cannot be expected to read EVERY American headline.