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How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

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Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#41

Post by run4yourlives »

aantix wrote: post #10

Am I the only one that felt like he was holding the Afghanistan people up as a model of health because they lack fat? Their life expectancy is a mere ~44 years ( http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le... ). Neighboring Pakistan is 66 years ( http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le... ).

The perpetual use of military hardware might have something to do with life expectancy in these countries however. I think your counter point to the argument is valid, but you support it with a stat that is completely without context in this discussion.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#42

Post by yummyfajitas »

city41 wrote: post #7
johnny22 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or we just make healthy food taste better.

The other factor is cost. Healthy food costs more, often significantly more.

Healthy food costs more per calorie. But most people with unhealthy food habits are fat, and therefore eat more calories than they need. Clearly they are not optimizing for cost.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#43

Post by run4yourlives »

jmatt wrote: post #39
shasta wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be more interesting to limit the comparison to those who die of causes other than, say, gunshot wounds. It would also be interesting to see a comparison of health, rather than just length of life.

According to the WHO information it appears that deaths due to intentional injuries are relatively low in comparison to most other forms of disease and illness in Afghanistan: http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/estimate... Even when looking at Males 15-59. Though it should be noted these numbers are from 2004. Additionally, I really have no sense of how accurate these numbers are.

War, especially when it lasts for a generation, causes a lot more than gun shot wounds.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#44

Post by Retric »

shasta wrote: post #17
aantix wrote: post #10

Am I the only one that felt like he was holding the Afghanistan people up as a model of health because they lack fat? Their life expectancy is a mere ~44 years ( http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le... ). Neighboring Pakistan is 66 years ( http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le... ).

It would be more interesting to limit the comparison to those who die of causes other than, say, gunshot wounds. It would also be interesting to see a comparison of health, rather than just length of life.

The real issue is child morbidity. There are plenty of old people in most poor countries but if 10+% of the population dies before age 5 the average life expectancy get's far shorter.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#45

Post by baggachipz »

martythemaniak wrote: post #15
johnny22 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or we just make healthy food taste better.

I think we need to make it cheaper (via subsidizing fresh produce instead of the corn and cattle industry) relative to processed food and the rest will take care of itself. Funny thing is, people will scream "social engineering" if you say this, yet they're perfectly content to ignore the current social engineering.

This, times 1000. The only reason it's so cheap to eat at McDonald's is because of subsidies given to industrial beef, corn, and soy.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#46

Post by run4yourlives »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #14
mikecarlucci wrote: post #3

It's scary that KFC and processed food is now equated with "Western diet." Michael Pollan says it best: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

The article is mostly about Inuits. Their traditional diet was pretty much 100% meat and was healthy. So maybe Michael Pollan's advice has to be reduced to "Eat food. Not too much."

The Inuit also traditionally live in the Arctic wearing Caribou and seal skin pelts. They are the hardest m-f'ers I've ever seen, and I can guarantee that a large part of their "health" is due to the tremendous amounts of energy used by the body just to stay alive.

Eat like an Inuit and live in Florida and you'll probably resemble something more like a manatee than a man.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#47

Post by SMrF »

3am wrote: post #37
viggity wrote: post #30

I've been overweight my entire life, and honestly, I blame the Surgeon General in the 1980s for telling my mom that feeding me low fat foods (which end up being high carb foods) will make me skinny. Everyone believed this cargo cult "science" and it has had a devastating impact for hundreds of millions of people.

I'm overweight and I blame myself for eating too much and not getting enough exercise.

There is some possibility that you eat too much because you are fat. It goes something like this, (details are surely wrong, but just so you get the idea. Google gary taubes for more info):

1. Your body is expecting a certain amount of calories at any point during the day which is either being pumped into your bloodstream from your fat or food in your gut.

2. Your fat doesn't work right, (probably because you eat too many carbs), and doesn't release enough calories, so you get hungry.

3. You keep over eating until you have enough volume of fat so that even though your fat doesn't work as well at releasing calories into your bloodstream, you make up for it by just having more.

4. Voila, you have reached homeostasis. Your body conspires to keep you at this weight. You are either hungry and thin or full and fat.

As for exercise, well, I can only offer up a personal anecdote. I lost 50 pounds. At first by starving myself with a calorie deficit and now I've figured out how to keep the weight off with the food I eat. (I no longer calorie count -- hooray).

During this period of weight loss I attempted to increase the amount I exercised to speed the process along. It didn't work. The only thing that moved the scale was either counting calories or eating a low carb diet, (paleo to be exact). If I had it to do over I'd just start with changing the things I eat, although because of years of calorie counting I'm now very aware of what I put in my mouth -- a good habit to have.

Edit: I do actually believe exercise can help you lose weight. I am currently training to race bikes. I go for very long rides (3-4 hours twice a week) to train my body to burn fat. This is critical for endurance sports. But I don't think it's realistic to ask everyone to become an endurance athlete.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#48

Post by kgo »

viggity wrote: post #30

I've been overweight my entire life, and honestly, I blame the Surgeon General in the 1980s for telling my mom that feeding me low fat foods (which end up being high carb foods) will make me skinny. Everyone believed this cargo cult "science" and it has had a devastating impact for hundreds of millions of people.

I'm asking this sincerely, but don't people from traditionally healthy Asian countries eat a hell of a lot of rice? That's my first thought every time someone mentions how bad carbs are. But I have trouble finding any non-antecdotal data.

I want to believe the obesity problem is more of a portion control thing, for example, when McDonald's opened, did a normal adult actually eat a hamburger and small fries for lunch instead of a big mac and large fries? But once again, I always have trouble finding any real data to verify my hypothesis.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#49

Post by beaumartinez »

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #23

Misleading title, it is not "western diet" what is bad for health, it is fast food, and sugar sweety food what is. What Americans were eating 70-50-30 years ago was healthy and "western". It has been people eating industrial foods instead of someone making the food what has changed. I use to look at obese people shopping cart and I see a lot of Coca Cola, pizza, industrial bread, industrial buns,cookies, chocolate,no…

So, then, what is the "Western diet" if it isn't what the Western people eat? (I see your point, though; it's been changing over time, and you're right: it is getting more and more processed and less balanced {and dare I say "healthy"}).

Regarding obesity, exercise is far more important than diet. You can eat all kinds of, well, crap, and if you exercise, you'll still be physically fit and probably even look healthy. It's when the calorie ratio skews in favour of calories in that you start to put on weight―and in some cases its dramatically in favour of calories in.

Unfortunately people are even more adverse to exercise as they are to changing their own diets.

Most damaging in my opinion is how this affects children, not only due to its health risks: being obese as a child is often a social death sentence, and that has all kinds of repercussions.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#50

Post by igrekel »

seanalltogether wrote: post #24

And the flip side of the coin. "How western diets are driving the next stage of evolution in humans"

You mean that people able to resist or live longer under such a diet will survive and that we will evolve to support such a died? If so, you are probably wrong.

It is not about survival it is about the ability to pass down genes. If the diet's problems appear later in life, it will not have a direct impact. It may have an indirect impact.

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