Reducing the Fat
Being a kid is funny. You accept the things told to you by people who are older. You do things because you’re told that it’s good to do them, and you fear certain things because you’re told they’re bad for you. Some of what you’re told is common sense. Some of it’s based in urban myth. Some of it’s downright bizarre.
When I was a kid, I was hanging out at the house of a school friend. I don’t remember how we got on the subject, but he said to me, “You know how sumo wrestlers get so fat?” “No,” I responded.” He revealed, “They eat and then they go right to sleep. They’re not doing anything physical, so the food all gets stored as fat.” On another occasion, I heard his dad caution him against eating right before bed, so that his body wouldn’t be digesting while he slept.
It seemed reasonable enough, especially for a kid. The theory was that eating right before going to sleep will make you fat. Undergoing the digestive process without engaging in fat-burning activities was the proposed physical mechanism. There was an endorsement from an authority figure—my friend’s father, in this case. It was so airtight, so utterly convincing, that I believed it for years.
In fact, I never stopped believing it, never even considered that it might be wrong, until somewhat recently. I was reading an article published by the British Medical Journal, which had done an inquiry into the subject. The findings were quite surprising: this very plausible-sounding morsel of conventional wisdom has no basis in fact. There is no empirical evidence to support that eating right before going to sleep will make you any fatter than eating at any other time.
So, if there’s nothing factual to back it up, how did it become so entrenched as an urban myth? In our modern world, with so much information available at our fingertips, it seems shocking that such misinformation could endure to this day. The answer is simple. It’s one thing to have the information. It’s quite another to interpret the information correctly.
The BMJ arrived at its conclusion by examining various scientific studies that did, in fact, show a correlation between obesity and eating right before bed. But, as the old adage goes, correlation does not imply causation. What we have evidence of is a link between eating at night and obesity. The evidence does not demonstrate a causal connection. A causal connection that has been demonstrated, again and again, is that eating more tends to cause obesity. People who eat more at night likely eat more in general, hence the connection.
(As near as I can figure, the journalists who originally covered those studies probably did what journalists usually do. They eschewed the straight truth and went for the sensational angle: “DOES EATING AT NIGHT CAUSE OBESITY? MAYBE, SAYS NEW STUDY.” You know how it is.)
We sometimes hold things to be true without really thinking about them. For adults, the usefulness of a belief is often more immediately important than its truth. For kids, utility and truth both take a backseat to the say-so of adults. Natural selection has favored these heuristic processes, because it’s safer to not eat the colorful berries at all than to systematically test which ones are poisonous and which ones aren’t. It’s better to stay away from beehives altogether, rather than hit them with a stick to see how long it’ll take to piss off the bees. It’s better not to throw rocks at the bear at all, rather than… you see the point.
Critical thinking is obviously not a top priority when you’ve got nothing but a loincloth and a spear to keep you alive. However, in modern life, we rarely run into bears, and the people who are stupid enough to piss off the bees can always run inside and slam the screen door. Couple that with the complexities of an increasingly globalized society, plus the ever-expanding scope of our knowledge of the universe around us, and you see the rising importance of rationality and reason. Eating at night is a relatively harmless example, but what of other beliefs? The bullshit we take for granted can be eventually embarrassing in hindsight, but also directly harmful to our well being.
The article from the BMJ can be found here. Incidentally, it also nukes the myth that sugar makes kids hyperactive. Screwy, ain’t it?