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As Obesity Rises, Remote Pacific Islands Plan to Abandon Junk Food

nytimes.com

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Re: As Obesity Rises, Remote Pacific Islands Plan to Abandon Junk Food

#131

Post by Retric »

iopq wrote: post #125
Retric wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bananas have ~100 calories each and act as a Diuretic makeing eating large numbers of them on a regular basis unpleasant. So, I am going to call BS. You can gain weight on a high fruit diet, but bananas are an unusual choice. Fruit juice on the other hand is much easier way to gain weight, but like most processed foods less heathy.

Dried fruit is very high in calories, for example. And it's not like you're only eating fruit. These people would eat a normal meal and then snack on fruits constantly. So if they didn't eat fruit they'd only be getting 2000 calories a day, but it's quite easy to eat 500 calories of dried dates or dried figs.

At that point you can just as easily blame the excessive meals vs snaking as the problem. Two glasses of milk per day * 40 years can be the difference between normal weight an obisity, but it's rare for people to blame milk.

Re: As Obesity Rises, Remote Pacific Islands Plan to Abandon Junk Food

#132

Post by pjc50 »

rdtsc wrote: post #117
pjc50 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people wonder why there's an anti-globalisation backlash.

Anti-globalization was always a hot topic for the left. Read Chomsky on NAFTA for example and free trade: https://chomsky.info/secrets03/ Here is Bernie Sanders being visibly upset at raising immigration levels and instituting "open borders" policy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0 I am kind of interested how the current liberals become pro-globalization all of the sudden. They went from organizing large a…

> liberals become pro-globalization all of the sudden. They went from organizing large anti-globalization riots

If you take everyone to the left of Reagan and put them all under one label of "liberal", then confusion understandably results. In particular, conflating Millian "liberals" with Marxist "socialists" with whoever happens to be running a street demo is a bad idea. The riots were specifically the work of the "black bloc", a small group of left-anarchists.

The general complaints of the (non-violent) protestors were to do with exactly this kind of thing - the use of a transnational process to override local environmental / labour law improvements for the profit of multinational companies.

The liberal (not socialist!) argument for free movement of people is partly the libertarian "why are you using force against a natural freedom" argument, and partly a pragmatic one that if capital now has free movement labour should as well.

A situation where capital can freely move to the most favourable jurisdiction but labour cannot is politically unsustainable.

(Yes, I left all this out of the original one-sentence snark.)

Re: As Obesity Rises, Remote Pacific Islands Plan to Abandon Junk Food

#133

Post by Drumlin »

rdtsc wrote: post #123
Drumlin wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you read 'The Technological Society' by Jacques Ellul. It's not an easy read, the sort of book where you take lots of notes and then learn from the notes: https://www.amazon.com/Technological-Society-Jacques-Ellul/d... Recent generations have been conditioned by society to accept globalisation - amongst other things. The book, which I only recently read myself, describes what has been happening for hundreds…

Thanks for the tip. I just ordered it. Heard of it before but never got to reading it.

Another source that you might find interesting is Mark Blyth - a lecturer from Brown Uni.

He looks at these topics from a long term economic viewpoint. He has a left wing academic perspective, which clouds his conclusions though. There are lots of lectures from him on YouTube.

Re: As Obesity Rises, Remote Pacific Islands Plan to Abandon Junk Food

#134

Post by metaphor »

rangibaby wrote: post #104
metaphor wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general, countries like that don't have unhealthy, locally-produced food. And the article agrees with that assertion. Patently false assertion. I'm ethnically a pacific islander who grew up on a small island in Micronesia and I can assure you that local island dishes are quite unhealthy.

Samoan traditional food isn't unhealthy. Fish and taro isn't going to make anyone fat in a hurry. About 15 years ago we would joke that Samoans only got fat when they came to New Zealand and discovered KFC.

> Fish and taro isn't going to make anyone fat in a hurry.

It's easy to attribute dishes as healthy when just considering fish and taro, but this fails to acknowledge its traditional preparation with high amounts of coconut milk, salt, and sugar. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a nutritional facts label for any traditional dish? I can only speak anecdotally in that traditional Samoan dishes are not unlike Micronesia to the degree that Georgia Southern foods are clearly distinct from Alabama's flavor (that is to say they're not).

I think one of the biggest problems is the dependence of poorer remote islands in the Pacific on less perishable foods: think canned goods like Spanish sausage, Spam, sardines, Palm corned beef (from NZ), etc. or cheap frozen meats by the box, e.g. ribs, chicken, turkey legs, etc.

When I was growing up, my father would make the ocassional business trip to the FSM (specifically Palau). He'd bring boxes of frozen ribs and chicken with him and exchange for coolers of fresh lobster with his local contacts. Throw in a few cases of canned Budweiser and those business negotiations always turned out great. This might sound crazy to people who grew up in 1st-world countries, but it's a thing, and if you grew up on the islands as I did, then you know precisely what's up.

Re: As Obesity Rises, Remote Pacific Islands Plan to Abandon Junk Food

#135

Post by rdtsc »

pjc50 wrote: post #132
rdtsc wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-globalization was always a hot topic for the left. Read Chomsky on NAFTA for example and free trade: https://chomsky.info/secrets03/ Here is Bernie Sanders being visibly upset at raising immigration levels and instituting "open borders" policy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0 I am kind of interested how the current liberals become pro-globalization all of the sudden. They went from organizing large a…

> liberals become pro-globalization all of the sudden. They went from organizing large anti-globalization riots If you take everyone to the left of Reagan and put them all under one label of "liberal", then confusion understandably results. In particular, conflating Millian "liberals" with Marxist "socialists" with whoever happens to be running a street demo is a bad idea. The riots were specifically the work of the…

> The riots were specifically the work of the "black bloc", a small group of left-anarchists.

The riots was hyperbole, there were not the only ones advocating for anti-globalization. So was Bernie Sanders, Chomsky and many others. There were not tear gassed for it regularly but the ideology was there.

> A situation where capital can freely move to the most favourable jurisdiction but labour cannot is politically unsustainable.

The point was it was traditionally the Koch brothers and the like who advocated "globalization" not anyone calling themselves "the left". So it seems there was a reversal on the topic which I think is interesting.

You mention libertarianism, but that was usually closer aligned to conservatism than "leftism" so to speak.

> In particular, conflating Millian "liberals" with Marxist "socialists" with whoever happens to be running a street demo is a bad idea.

Yes that is the issue. I think both are referred to as "the left". And at some point it is worth pointing out the difference and seeing that from a traditional point there isn't much left left in "the left" (pun intended), which I think is interesting and was trying to find a more detailed analysis of it.

It seems to me there was split around the late 90s where the divisions are more like between "faux-liberalism + corporatism" (this includes Democrats like the Clintons and Obama), "faux-conservatism + corporatism" (Bushes), "conservatist populism" (Trump and company), "traditional left" (Sanders, Chomsky).

The "faux" bit is because the liberalism vs conservatism is a veneer used to attract whatever is deemed popular at the time. Latest Clinton campaign and Obama used identity politics and immigration to sell corporatism. Bush (junior mostly) used religion to sell "conservatism".

Also it is rather interesting that Trump capitalized on a traditional leftist position of anti-globalization (anti-NAFTA, pulling out of TPP, talk about workers etc). He probably saw a void there with Democrats abandoning that ideology and moved in opportunistically to capitalize on it.

Re: As Obesity Rises, Remote Pacific Islands Plan to Abandon Junk Food

#136

Post by M_Grey »

Zak wrote: post #81
noarchy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're willing to set the NAP aside for junk food, your bar for setting aside the NAP is likely pretty low. But my own perspective is that of a person who scrutinizes what I put in my body. I've never felt that I needed someone else to make that decision for me.

Under normal circumstances, I'm not. In a public health emergency, I might be.

If someone released smallpox in NYC, it would be reasonable to quarantine the state (at the very least). There would be no argument about the government taking action to prevent the spread of virtually any pathogen, even the more pedestrian like multiple drug resistant TB.

People loose sight of reality when they think pure choice is involved though. Food, smoking, drugs... a lot of things only make sense if you're particularly educated, have friends/family struggling with something, are particularly empathetic, or have experienced them.

Re: As Obesity Rises, Remote Pacific Islands Plan to Abandon Junk Food

#137

Post by metaphor »

finid wrote: post #107
metaphor wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general, countries like that don't have unhealthy, locally-produced food. And the article agrees with that assertion. Patently false assertion. I'm ethnically a pacific islander who grew up on a small island in Micronesia and I can assure you that local island dishes are quite unhealthy.

"Patently false assertion"? Just a couple of quotes from the article that my assertion is based on fact. Experts say the region’s health crisis is primarily driven by a decades-long shift from traditional diets based on root crops toward ones that are high in sugar, refined starch and processed foods. It is so wrong what is being done to exploit these nations by providing a food supply that is not, in the long term,…

To be sure, I specifically refute your claim that countries like that don't have unhealthy, locally-produced food.

As I've pointed out in a previous comment, when was the last time you saw a label of nutritional facts on any local dish anywhere in the Pacfic that allowed vetting of such a claim? When traditional preparation methods of natural foods are simply dismissed without consideration, it's easy to attribute these foods as anything but unhealthy. That's the misjudgement I see having personally grown up on a wee little-known island in the Pacific.

The quotes in the article point out the seriousness of the issue primarily driven by foreign food products high in sugar, refined starch and processed foods. I'm definitely in agreement with this claim, but it does not--indeed cannot--assert as fact that locally-produced foods are intrinsically healthy, and by that I specifically mean how they're traditional prepared.

Which begs the question: Was rigorous Western medicine on the scene prior to foreign influence that it was able to ascertain the health baseline of an indigenous population prior to its exploitation? If foreign dietary choices disappeared overnight, that doesn't necessarily mean that overall population health will realize some normalcy comparable to the rest of the 1st world. I believe there are deeply rooted cultural norms distinct to each island that have yet to be addressed.

Re: As Obesity Rises, Remote Pacific Islands Plan to Abandon Junk Food

#138

Post by rdtsc »

Drumlin wrote: post #133
rdtsc wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the tip. I just ordered it. Heard of it before but never got to reading it.

Another source that you might find interesting is Mark Blyth - a lecturer from Brown Uni. He looks at these topics from a long term economic viewpoint. He has a left wing academic perspective, which clouds his conclusions though. There are lots of lectures from him on YouTube.

Thank you. I looked him up and listened to a few of his videos on YouTube.

Re: As Obesity Rises, Remote Pacific Islands Plan to Abandon Junk Food

#139

Post by Mz »

Frondo wrote: post #124
Mz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under Obamacare, their increased health care costs also costs everyone (in part because Obamacare is the worst of all worlds -- it would be difficult to intentionally design something worse).

As someone who was uninsurable before Obamacare, no, it is not the worst of all worlds. The worst of all worlds is when an otherwise-healthy 37 year old can't buy insurance because he had his gallbladder out in his early 20s. Which is what we had before obamacare.

I worked in insurance for over five years. "Universal insurance" is the worst possible way to try to make sure all citizens have access to medical care. There are other proven systems that are vastly better.

Re: As Obesity Rises, Remote Pacific Islands Plan to Abandon Junk Food

#140

Post by sctb »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #52
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seat belts, air bags, crumple zones. Fire exists, wheelchair ramps, smoke alarms, fire rated building materials. Emission targets, waste control. Air traffic, RF spectrum, earth orbit satellites. Minimum wages, social security, health care, school. Defence, police, emergence services. We are not savages. In fact, it could be argued that the system we have is a result of having anarchy in our distant past. We rather l…

I'm sorry. My computer locked me out. I need to run 3 miles before I'm allowed to use it again.

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