Is the Obesity Epidemic fact or fiction?

wilkie2006

fishy fishy wrote: »

and what about the likes of muesli and most cereals - they have more sugar in them than sweets half the time.

Yea, add them to the list so. I think that anything that promotes obesity should be taxed heavily.

Ms.M

If you stuck a "how fat are ya" poll on this OP, you might find out!
I'd say some people who consider themselves "overweight" are in fact obese however.

Colmustard

According to the wireless in a study conducted in one of those places that waste billions on pointless studies, men under stress prefer the big women.

They got a bunch of lads gave them stressful tests and then asked them to rate a selection of women. They selected the larger types.

There you go, "YAH See" on the Serengeti when our ancients were been pursued by a sabre toothed tiger, we could trip the woman up and the sabre tooth would have a wholesome BBW while we got away.

Dravokivich

wilkie2006 wrote: »

Yea, add them to the list so. I think that anything that promotes obesity should be taxed heavily.

They all tend to say something such as "recommended along with a healthy diet/living."

The products don't promote obesity and the sales/marketing people are often quite open to promote healthy lifestyles as an addition.

The problem there is with the rate of consumption of those products. It has to come down to pushing personal responsibility.

I don't want to pay out an extra levy on a bottle of Dr Pepper when I go to the cinema because some other person can't diet properly.

Sea Filly

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Muesli and most cereals are alos unhealthy

Oatey homemade muesli with little sugar added would be.

Sappa

dirtyden wrote: »

Sappa wrote: »

They have hard data to prove this targeting secondary schools not primary schools,should have made that clear sorry.
He couldn't believe the level of fitness when tested at a speed beep test.
Kids were dropping out after 20 beeps where the analysis from 10 yrs previously showed 60 odd being the worst performance,
Body fat bmi was taken consistently from 4 schools and the data is showing a huge jump in fat %.
I think it is down to a number of factors,ready availability of fast food,junk,extra money,clever marketing,over indulgence and lack of exercise or encouragement by the parents.

I should have read your post more thoroughly too, apologies! I guess it is hard to argue with numbers. Do you mind me asking where the school was? I would imagine depending on school or area large differences might also be seen. I am from a rural town where GAA is religion and every kid plays. I would imagine factors like that would also be key in the general fitness and activity levels of kids.

I would imagine general fitness may have dropped in some areas as past times for kids have in some cases become more sedentary. We spent school holidays outside, but we did not have games consoles apart form the C64 (and you still had to go out and play 2 hrs football while the game was loading). And also junk food is everywhere now. Sad to say, i can remember when a bag of chips was a real treat (although our local italian chipper back then was legendary).

I was in the exact as you,schools were split between Limerick city and county,couldn't tell ya where as I am not from Limerick but it was all over Limerick from what I remember him telling me.

jan shyr

Yea, add them to the list so. I think that anything that promotes obesity should be taxed heavily.

Obesity comes from high consumption of energy. Non-obese people shouldn't be paying any form of tax just because they like to enjoy the food that you are proposing to be taxed.

Dravokivich

jan shyr wrote: »

Obesity comes from high consumption of energy. Non-obese people shouldn't be paying any form of tax just because they like to enjoy the food that you are proposing to be taxed.

Tax by inches on the waistband of clothing?

djan

Dravokivich wrote: »

Tax by inches on the waistband of clothing?

Something along those lines yes, to tax all unhealthy foods is stupid. Why should I pay extra for a eg. Mars bar just because somebody else is fat.

Ray Palmer

There is a correlation between education and obesity. This in turn has an effect on wealth. So poorer people are fatter.

Strangely this means people who do physical labour are getting fatter. People who do non manual work are staying healthier.

The thing that is really noticeable is the kids are certainly getting fatter. The other thing you see is middle aged woman who got bigger over a long period have daughters in late teens early 20s the same size and larger. It is more noticeable as they go shopping together. This has to do with being acceptable in their social circle. The mother accepts themselves and passes on the acceptability.

There should be a level of public scorn as there is with smoking.

In saying that I have seen big people hide away as other people watch what the eat. A bit sad.

--Kaiser--

Sea Filly wrote: »

Oatey homemade muesli with little sugar added would be.

Nope. All grains are unhealthy

Rhyme

I don't get this usage of the term 'epidemic'. It's not like you can catch the fat.

Gummy Panda

Rhyme wrote: »

I don't get this usage of the term 'epidemic'. It's not like you can catch the fat.

Sounds scary so media use it.

jan shyr

Tax by inches on the waistband of clothing?

And how do you propose to do this? There are several methods to measure either fat or whether the person is within normal mass range (BMI). This would become excessively complicated even if you try to even consider to implement it into reality. First this is breach of privacy, secondly you will have to perform this measurement for millions of people and it will have to be done not just once but regularly (2 years, 5 years, pick a number). Then there are certain conditions that increase the fat mass in people, will they be exception.

Sea Filly

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Nope. All grains are unhealthy

In your opinion.

hooradiation

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Nope. All grains are unhealthy

ಠ_ಠ

Fool, hush.

--Kaiser--

Sea Filly wrote: »

In your opinion.

Fact. You can keep your stupid winky face

seamus

Angeles wrote: »

People blame food all the time, "too much sugar in this and that"
The real problem is our level of activity.

Not really. Activity is part of the jigsaw, but it's not the primary part. Someone can exercise and exercise and get very fit but not lose an ounce of weight if they continue overeating. Weight control is 95% diet, 5% exercise.

Our General physical and mental activity is highly reduced because of advancements in entertainment and in the amount of ways we reduce the effort in simply getting from A to B.
Compare that to 80 years ago, the food more or less is the same. Infact in many cases now, healthier, we just simple don't move as much.
*typed while sitting motionless in a comfy chair in an office looking at a computer screen*

The only thing I disagree on here is that the food isn't "more or less the same".

Do a search for a documentary (BBC I think), called something like "The men who made us fat". It's a bit of glib title, but it's basically about changes in processed food which arrived into the world in 1960's and 1970's. It was discovered that food could be made tastier and cheaper by loading it with various sugars, salts and fats, effectively starting a processed food revolution.
80 years ago, the majority of people's foods were locally produced with only a small amount of processing. Imported foods were expensive and anything high in sugar or fat was often a luxury food when compared to fruit and vegatables which were grown locally.
There was a bit of a "perfect storm" then as food processing in the US converged with cheaper and faster ways of exporting foods, with the net result now that a shocking volume of our food is entirely processed, because it's easier.

Now, there may be a little bit of rosy spectacles on that, but by and large you didn't have people chowing down on meals made with Uncle Ben's every night, finished off with a Mars Bar for dessert. You had spuds, bacon and some cabbage for your dinner, and a cup of tea after. You might get some ice cream after your Sunday dinner and maybe a mars bar once a week if you'd been lucky to save up your few pennies.

In principle I have no issue with levying additional taxes on foods which promote obesity, but the issue is that no matter where you draw the line you will include foods which aren't inherently unhealthy or which are aimed at niche groups rather than the population as a whole.
Perhaps a better idea may be to widen the list of foods which are less likely to contribute to obesity and put zero tax on them.

Rhyme

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Sounds scary so media use it.

"I just rubbed my face in some dirt and gained three stone."

Dravokivich

jan shyr wrote: »

And how do you propose to do this? There are several methods to measure either fat or whether the person is within normal mass range (BMI). This would become excessively complicated even if you try to even consider to implement it into reality. First this is breach of privacy, secondly you will have to perform this measurement for millions of people and it will have to be done not just once but regularly (2 years, 5 years, pick a number). Then there are certain conditions that increase the fat mass in people, will they be exception.

Trouser length / waist length ?

IE:

Short trousers + Big waist = Fatty Tax

Sea Filly

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Fact. You can keep your stupid winky face

One paper. Fab. There are also papers on the benefits of oats. Cherry-picking, much? Also, why so defensive?

The quotes at the start of that paper are interesting too, they don't seem to advocate completely excluding grains from your diet.

--Kaiser--

Sea Filly wrote: »

One paper. Fab. There are also papers on the benefits of oats. Cherry-picking, much? Also, why so defensive?

The quotes at the start of that paper are interesting too, they don't seem to advocate completely excluding grains from your diet.

One peer reviewed and vigourously referenced paper, yes. If you have refutals of its claims I'd be eager to hear them

dark crystal

Obsessing about the food you eat can be just as unhealthy in my opinion. There's a place for most food in anyone's diet, it's all about balance.

I'd hate to live in a world where you were afraid to eat white bread or grains or chocolate. People have become far too paranoid about food these days.

A healthy balance of diet and exercise would see most people right - years ago, people ate hearty dinners, with butter, spuds, desserts etc. but exercised a lot more and snacked less and there wasn't half the amount of weight issues there are now.

jan shyr

One thing that annoys me is when my overweight friends say that I eat unhealthy. Well, I am not the one who is fat.

Sea Filly

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

One peer reviewed and vigourously referenced paper, yes. If you have refutals of its claims I'd be eager to hear them

This isn't the nutrition forum, and I'm not the one who got all defensive. That paper mentions frequently "excessive grain consumption". That to me doesn't say cut them out entirely.

Oh, and from a scientific perspective, a paper being peer-reviewed doesn't excempt it from criticism.

Jarren

True, you can eat junk food and be skinnny,you can eat healthy food and be fat.

Some people don't realise that size portions do matter .

IZEVAL

Real or not, Irish women's noses will be smugly in the air. Be they 50kg or 500kg.

Wibbs

syklops wrote: »

If you wacth TV Shows from the 80's there was the one fat kid in the class. Go into a school now and its more like 50-50.

Looking at my school pics from the early 80's there are a couple of chubby faced kids just before puberty kicks off, but that's about it(fast forward to 6th year and they've leaned up). We had one "fatty" in the year. He didn't get slagged either funny enough, because he was a very sound bloke. However compared to some today that guy wasn't particularly fat at all. A woman mate of mine a couple of years younger than me had her school pics and exactly the same story. One girl was the "fatty" and again looking at her now if she was more than a size 16 I'd be surprised. Her rounded face made her look bigger.

Comparing those pics to some of my mates with early teenaged kids and their school pics, while it's not 50% or any of that, there are definitely more heavy ones and they're heavier overall with it.

Fishooks12 wrote: »

That post is brimming with hyperbole

NOt really. Study after study has shown about the worst thing you can do for health and longevity is add more sugar. In the US in the early 70's as part of their "war against cancer" and heart disease studies were showing sugar(refined sucrose and especially fructose) were absolute disasters for health. Fructuos in particular is damn near dangerous. There is more than a suspicion the strong sugar producing lobby in the US killed the wider dissemination of this. Add in the enormously powerful corn producers who produce most of the fructose(corn syrup) and uphill climb time.

Sea Filly wrote: »

No, believe me, sugar consumption has a HUGE amount to do with weight gain. Most of us eat far too much of it.

+1000. While people are busy believing the BS of avoid fat, their waistlines and overall health are going south because of highly sweetened "fat free" foods. It's not just weight gain. Sugar rich diets hit the whole body. People with higher blood sugar age more rapidly, look older and have more damaged bodies prone to more illnesses, regardless of weight(skinny people can become type 2 diabetics too).

Smoking is clearly a dangerous activity, but when you consider that drinking just one sweetened mineral/soda a day increases your risk of coming down with type 2 diabetes by a quarter, that can of coke aint looking so good. Just like smoking diabetes impacts many of the bodies systems. It may even impact more.

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Nope. All grains are unhealthy

Well... I'd somewhat agree. We've been only eating farmed grains for around 10,000 years and our bodies and genes had to catch up. Particularly with regard to an ability to process gluten. Cavemen would have been coeliacs. So we have adapted, or most of us have, many are coeliacs. I personally avoid grains like the very plague with the exception of the rare bit of porridge.

BraziliaNZ

Isn't porridge good for you in lots of ways? I eat it most mornings and I'm in good nick

Shryke

dark crystal wrote: »

Obsessing about the food you eat can be just as unhealthy in my opinion. There's a place for most food in anyone's diet, it's all about balance.

I'd hate to live in a world where you were afraid to eat white bread or grains or chocolate. People have become far too paranoid about food these days.

A healthy balance of diet and exercise would see most people right - years ago, people ate hearty dinners, with butter, spuds, desserts etc. but exercised a lot more and snacked less and there wasn't half the amount of weight issues there are now.

Plenty of people have gluten intolerance without knowing it. Others have IBS or are lactose intolerant. Some people are allergic to the hormones put into chicken. It's not clean cut.

Edit: Pretty much spot on Wibbs. I'll add that spelt bread can seemingly be handled by a fair few Coeliacs. Spelt wheat was a bronze age crop in Europe so it goes back quite a bit.

--Kaiser--

Wibbs wrote: »

Well... I'd somewhat agree. We've been only eating farmed grains for around 10,000 years and our bodies and genes had to catch up. Particularly with regard to an ability to process gluten. Cavemen would have been coeliacs. So we have adapted, or most of us have, many are coeliacs. I personally avoid grains like the very plague with the exception of the rare bit of porridge.

Well there's more bad things in grains that gluten. There's wheat germ agluteins, lectins, phytates.....the fact that our body has no defense for any of these would suggets that we are not adapated to grains. At best they displace healthier food in your diet

Wibbs

seamus wrote: »

Not really. Activity is part of the jigsaw, but it's not the primary part. Someone can exercise and exercise and get very fit but not lose an ounce of weight if they continue overeating. Weight control is 95% diet, 5% exercise.

+1 A recent long term look into hunter gatherer types found that portion size is what kept them slim, not exercise. Indeed contrary to popular hunter gatherers generally spend less time finding food and exercising than the farmers that replaced them.

I've seen it for myself back in the day and with mates who are mad exercise types. When I used to cycle in a club, the touring folks who could put huge miles under their saddles varied a lot in weight. There were a couple of pretty big people. While they exercised like demons on paper, they also ate a lot more. Even Tour de France professionals eat very disciplined diets and eat less than you might imagine considering the near unbelievable workload. Yea they can go through 5000 calories a stage, but considering most normal enough sized people can munch through 3000 calories a day while driving a desk you can see the problem and the latter for the most part aren't balancing their diet to within an inch of their lives like pro cyclists.

Micky Dolenz

IZEVAL wrote: »

Real or not, Irish women's noses will be smugly in the air. Be they 50kg or 500kg.

Mod

We'll cut to the chase here, banned for this and other comments.

dark crystal

Shryke wrote: »

Plenty of people have gluten intolerance without knowing it. Others have IBS or are lactose intolerant. Some people are allergic to the hormones put into chicken. It's not clean cut.

Go back 20 years and all these allergies and intolerances seemed far less prevelant.

Not claiming to be a nutritional expert at all, but I don't remember people being so intolerant to food years ago. Perhaps we're living in an age where more preservatives are used than before, I don't know. I just think it's sad to see so many people deny themselves basic foodstuffs like bread, cheese, milk and grains nowadays when there seemed little harm (and indeed great benefit) in eating them before.

swimming in a sea

wilkie2006 wrote: »

I absolutely agree that a tax should be levied on all fast-food, sweets, etc. However, the revenue it generates shouldn't go towards the national debt - it needs to be spent on subsidising healthier foods and teaching people how to cook properly.

has it been proven that tax on cigs has worked?

I'd have a feeling any fat-tax would just go into a black hole of government purse like the carbon tax. Healthy food would not be subsidised as for teaching people to cook, there is a cooking program on every 30mins on TV.

dirtyden

BraziliaNZ wrote: »

Isn't porridge good for you in lots of ways? I eat it most mornings and I'm in good nick

Glad to hear your in such good nick

--Kaiser--

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Nope. All grains are unhealthy

Absolute bull there is any amount of information out there of how healthy it is to start the day with grains, you couldn't be eating anything better than a bowl of porridge, weetabix or multigrain muesli etc in the morning. Gives you loads of energy and fills you up.

If you do enough digging you will find a way to call anything unhealthy. Fruit sure that's full of sugar, Eggs: "sure they are full of fat", Dairy products: "Oh we were not designed to eat dairy" etc etc etc etc. Mostly nonsense taken out of context or ignoring large benefits which well outweigh small negatives.

Esoteric_

From what I've seen even in the last, say, 6-7 years, there is definitely an increase in overweight people.

When I was in 6th year in school (2005-6), we had one morbidly obese person, one chubby person (me, I wasn't much overweight though) and the rest were either too thin (I'm talking size 0 and smaller) or healthy weights.

Fast forward a few years and my youngest sister is going into third year. About one third of her classmates are overweight or obese from what I've seen, although she's a skinny little thing herself. They don't do sports if they don't want to, and the really overweight ones sit out of PE because they're too self conscious to exercise. :rolleyes:

Also, the question about running marathons/5ks doesn't have an awful lot to do with weight really. I'm overweight (my BMI is 29.4) and I run 5ks easily, because I trained for them. That said, my BMI was over 40 a few years ago so I did lose a lot of weight initially when I started running, just not so much anymore. :pac:

jan shyr

+1000. While people are busy believing the BS of avoid fat, their waistlines and overall health are going south because of highly sweetened "fat free" foods. It's not just weight gain. Sugar rich diets hit the whole body. People with higher blood sugar age more rapidly, look older and have more damaged bodies prone to more illnesses, regardless of weight(skinny people can become type 2 diabetics too).

Wasn't fat-free or low-fat adopted by food companies to sell their product and people being too stupid to realise that fat-free doesn't mean its calorie status is low. Same with diet drinks like diet coke which is retarded considering normal drinks (not sports one) have little carbohydrates.

jan shyr

jan shyr wrote: »

Wasn't fat-free or low-fat adopted by food companies to sell their product and people being too stupid to realise that fat-free doesn't mean its calorie status is low. Same with diet drinks like diet coke which is retarded considering normal drinks (not sports one) have little carbohydrates.

Carbs are quite high in normal soft drinks. A can of coke has nearly as many carbs are a 62g serving of rice.

PucaMama

djan wrote: »

Something along those lines yes, to tax all unhealthy foods is stupid. Why should I pay extra for a eg. Mars bar just because somebody else is fat.

and why should i pay more for clothes just because someone else says they are big?

foxyboxer

Uriah Bald Waterfall wrote: »

Absolute bull there is any amount of information out there of how healthy it is to start the day with grains, you couldn't be eating anything better than a bowl of porridge, weetabix or multigrain muesli etc in the morning. Gives you loads of energy and fills you up.

If you do enough digging you will find a way to call anything unhealthy. Fruit sure that's full of sugar, Eggs full of fat, Dairy products: "Oh we were not designed to eat dairy" etc etc etc etc. Mostly nonsense taken out of context or ignoring large benefits which well outweigh any negatives.

There's an old saying that goes "If God* didn't make it, then don't eat it"

It's a good thought process to have when eating food.

* Nature.

Shryke

dark crystal wrote: »

Go back 20 years and all these allergies and intolerances seemed far less prevelant.

Not claiming to be a nutritional expert at all, but I don't remember people being so intolerant to food years ago. Perhaps we're living in an age where more preservatives are used than before, I don't know. I just think it's sad to see so many people deny themselves basic foodstuffs like bread, cheese, milk and grains nowadays when there seemed little harm (and indeed great benefit) in eating them before.

Well you can't say that people were really on the ball about this kind of stuff either. There are plenty of people who suffer from these conditions and there always has been. There is estimated to be a very large amount of people with an undiagnosed intolerance to gluten. The effects can vary from subtle to extreme. The amount of people who refuse to believe that a common food like bread can have such negative effects doesn't help. I don't like to cry conspiracy but the grain industry and food industry in general has and does get away with murder.

Sea Filly

BraziliaNZ wrote: »

Isn't porridge good for you in lots of ways? I eat it most mornings and I'm in good nick

The above-linked article says this in the conclusion:

Cereal grains obviously can be included in moderate amounts in the diets
of most people without any noticeable, deleterious health effects, and herein
lies their strength. When combined with a variety of both animal- and plantbased
foods, they provide a cheap and plentiful caloric source, capable of
sustaining and promoting human life. The ecologic, energetic efficiency
wrought by the widespread cultivation and domestication of cereal grains
allowed for the dramatic expansion of worldwide human populations, which
in turn, ultimately led to humanity’s enormous cultural and technological
accomplishments. The downside of cereal grain consumption is their ability
to disrupt health and well being in virtually all people when consumed in
excessive quantity. This information has only been empirically known since
the discovery of vitamins, minerals and certain antinutrients in the early part
of this century.

So yeah, your brekkie porridge is fine.

--Kaiser--

Uriah Bald Waterfall wrote: »

Absolute bull there is any amount of information out there of how healthy it is to start the day with grains, you couldn't be eating anything better than a bowl of porridge, weetabix or multigrain muesli etc in the morning. Gives you loads of energy and fills you up.

If you do enough digging you will find a way to call anything unhealthy. Fruit sure that's full of sugar, Eggs full of fat, Dairy products: "Oh we were not designed to eat dairy" etc etc etc etc. Mostly nonsense taken out of context or ignoring large benefits which well outweigh any negatives.

Christ, what idocy, especially the bit in bold. Obviously you didn't even glance at the paper I posted (it would require a modicum of intellect to peruse, something which you perhaps not posses) so I'll summarise some of the points:

Grains do not provide nutrients (either macro or micro) in the correct ratio to provide a staple of ones diet
They are low in essential fatty acids
They contain phytates which inhibit nutrient absorption (especially minerals and vitamin D)
They contain protease inhibitors which inhibit protein assimilation
The contain alpha-amalase inhibitors which inhibit carbohydrate assimilation
The contain lectins which are gut irritants (amongst other things)
Then there's the gluten issue, the possibilty that grain proteins enter the blood stream intact and mimic opiates annd other neurological chemicals.......

Wibbs

Shryke wrote: »

Plenty of people have gluten intolerance without knowing it. Others have IBS or are lactose intolerant. Some people are allergic to the hormones put into chicken. It's not clean cut.

Very much so and depends on the population you belong to. Different groups around the world adapted to different novel diets. Lactose intolerance is quite rare in Europe as we made use of cows milk as adults. On the other hand Lactose intolerance is near a given in India because they didn't. Many African populations are lactose intolerant, but some like the Massai aren't. Alcohol is another one, Europeans metabolise it about the best of all modern humans. Asians and especially folks like Native Americans and Australians are not so adapted. Gluten intolerance varies too. There are quite the number of these local adaptations that show up remarkably recently in our genetic history. They may also be lost quite quickly too. One theory out there that tries to explain why the Irish have more coeliacs compared to the European norm is that because we relied on the potato for a few centuries as a replacement "grain" the adaptation weakened. I wonder if folks of Arabic extraction have lost any of their ability to digest alcohol because of over a 1000 years of Islam stricture agin it?

As an aside, the above is why if I wasn't of Asian extraction I'd not touch soya products with someone else's bargepole. It's touted by loads as a healthy food, but it's a very novel food to Europeans. Asian populations have had over 2000 years to adapt to it, we've less than 20. Might be great for them, but really bad for us. That's above and beyond it's well dubious pseudo hormonal effects.

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Well there's more bad things in grains that gluten. There's wheat germ agluteins, lectins, phytates.....the fact that our body has no defense for any of these would suggets that we are not adapated to grains. At best they displace healthier food in your diet

On average, unless your heritage is outside the European population, you're at least somewhat adapted to it. The genes show this. A number of them are to do with grain consumption. HOwever as you say it may well be a replacement that won't kill ya, but isn't exactly good for you either.

It might be down to how they're processed and consumed too. Recently they discovered to great surprise that Neandertals ate grains. They found the residue of cooked grains between their teeth. Since we don't know if they made bowls then probably like neolithic modern humans they made a kind of cooked biscuit. Of course they would only do this in season, and not every day for life and the grains were wild and mixed with nuts and berries. Like a Neandertal health bar minus the four tablespoons of sugar.

seamus

foxyboxer wrote: »

There's an old saying that goes "If God* didn't make it, then don't eat it"

It's a good thought process to have when eating food.

* Nature.

What falls down there is that very little if any of the things which go into your food are "unnatural".

Far more expensive to produce chemicals in a lab than grow them in a field. Practically all of the "unhealthy" additives in our foods started out growing or walking in a field somewhere. It's the process that comes after that of filtering and condensing that causes the problems.
Beware of things labelled "natural". It doesn't mean that the food is in any way healthier for you, just that none of the ingredients were produced in a lab. They may well still have been processed to within an inch of their lives.

"Unhealthy" is such a horribly subjective word anyway. It's meaningless. If you were to examine what "unhealthy" means, then you're looking at things which are detrimental to your health. So cyanide, or hydrogen peroxide. I think we'd agree that they're pretty unhealthy to consume.

Calling grains "unhealthy" is meaningless since grains aren't in isolation detrimental to one's health. You can eat them without suffering any ill-effects, therefore they are not unhealthy. Same goes for sugar and fat and salts and ten million other things the media likes to call "unhealthy". Categorising specific foods into "healthy" and "unhealthy" can be unhealthy in itself as it may lead confused individuals to eat nutritionally insufficient diets.

Sea Filly

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Christ, what idocy, especially the bit in bold. Obviously you didn't even glance at the paper I posted (it would require a modicum of intellect to peruse, something which you perhaps not posses) so I'll summarise some of the points:

Your paper actually advocated eating moderate amounts of carbs, balancing the pros against the cons. Did you read it?

Also, what's with insulting people? If you're secure in your point of view, why do that?

foxyboxer

seamus wrote: »

What falls down there is that very little if any of the things which go into your food are "unnatural".

Far more expensive to produce chemicals in a lab than grow them in a field. Practically all of the "unhealthy" additives in our foods started out growing or walking in a field somewhere. It's the process that comes after that of filtering and condensing that causes the problems.
Beware of things labelled "natural". It doesn't mean that the food is in any way healthier for you, just that none of the ingredients were produced in a lab. They may well still have been processed to within an inch of their lives.

"Unhealthy" is such a horribly subjective word anyway. It's meaningless. If you were to examine what "unhealthy" means, then you're looking at things which are detrimental to your health. So cyanide, or hydrogen peroxide. I think we'd agree that they're pretty unhealthy to consume.

Calling grains "unhealthy" is meaningless since grains aren't in isolation detrimental to one's health. You can eat them without suffering any ill-effects, therefore they are not unhealthy. Same goes for sugar and fat and salts and ten million other things the media likes to call "unhealthy". Categorising specific foods into "healthy" and "unhealthy" can be unhealthy in itself as it may lead confused individuals to eat nutritionally insufficient diets.

http://deadhomersociety.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/margeonthelam3_thumb.png?w=512&h=384


Your body will function in spite of what you eat. Consistent consumption of a diet high in processed foods is detrimental in the long run. i.e. the old Western diseases.

Do a search on Dr Weston A. Price and his research. It's eye opening reading.

seamus

foxyboxer wrote: »

Your body will function in spite of what you eat. Consistent consumption of a diet high in processed foods is detrimental in the long run. i.e. the old Western diseases.

Key word there being "consistent".
Consistently consuming a diet high in alcohol is detrimental in the long run. But including alcohol in one's diet is not.

In fact, eating too much of any particular foodstuff (including water) can be detrimental in the long run.

Price's work, while quite groundbreaking for its time and contained some good pointers towards what we now know about nutrition, was also based on a number of flawed premises and had a number of wild and baseless theories, including the idea that more primitive people lived inherently healthier lives and that certain diseases like cancer were solely down to the western diet.

It has long since been superceded by modern research and is now unfortunately mainly used by fringe groups and conspiracy theorists as a reference for pop nutrition and fad diets.