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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

#121

Post by SkyMarshal »

johnny22 wrote: post #6
gcheong wrote: post #4

Do you think we'll ever get to a point where people make food choices and limit their intake based mainly on a rational weighing of available information? I like to think we will but so far the track record is not too encouraging.

or we just make healthy food taste better.

>or we just make healthy food taste better.

The very easy way to do that is cut processed sugars and carbs out of your diet for a few months, healthy foods will start tasting better, and you'll never be able to go back without getting sick.

I did that and the result is that Egg McMuffins - my old favorite - make me feel bloated, Girl Scout Cookies make me sick, and Wendy's burgers smell like cow manure.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#122

Post by AJ007 »

Tichy wrote: post #97
narrator wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have any of you guys ever seen pictures of the Woodstock festival in the 60s? Everyone is skinny. It's something besides "The western diet" and meat-eating that's causing obesity to increase. A lot of diet news these days has the appearance of vegetarian activism with a severe case of confirmation bias, in that any study that remotely hints that meat eating is bad for health gets front page coverage. The exercise iss…

Or maybe there was a lot less industrial food around in the 60ies? Seems McDonalds only started to grow in the early 60ies, and frozen pizza didn't take off till the 90ies according to this: "through the 1980s, frozen pizza occupied an increasingly tight niche. Sales growth averaged a sluggish one percent a year, even with innovations such as French-bread and microwaveable pizzas." http://www.americanheritage.com/art…

People are radically underestimating just how much these high glycemic index calories, on demand, are contributing to the obesity explosion.

Whether you stop in for lunch at McDonalds or Subway, you are probably tossing back at least 1,200 calories. Stop at Starbucks and add dairy to your drink and you've got may be another 300-400 calories that aren't going to fill your stomach up. On top of all of this, certain demographic segments are consuming large volumes or alcohol 2+ times a week. The average person should be consuming under 2,000 calories a day, not in an afternoon.

Once you do gain that extra weight thanks to a careless few months of eating (may be in college, may be at your first real job), its a lot easier to add to those pounds than drop.

I suspect that its not just the proliferation of on demand food that is causing the problem, but in the disinformation coming from the US government regarding healthy diet. People that want to eat healthy have no idea what they are doing. Decades of hysterical news stories about how XYZ is an amazing superfood and ABC is terrible and will kill you have just left a confused population that doesn't know what is good or bad for themselves.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#123

Post by richcollins »

jerf wrote: post #99
beaumartinez wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

"Regarding obesity, exercise is far more important than diet." When Gary Taubes surveyed the literature to find the evidence that exercise is useful for losing weight, what he found is that the scientific literature itself proves this statement is either not true or even slightly false. There aren't any studies where exercise has lead to persistent, significant (which I would define as taking someone from clinically…

Diet is way more important than exercise for removing body fat. The insulin response causes the body to store fat. You can burn it off by exercising but if you're having a strong insulin response to the foods that you're eating, the unbearable hunger that you'll face will cause you to overcompensate for the exercise by eating even more.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#124

Post by dasil003 »

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 the inability to digest anything that hasn't been heavily machine processed to an extreme glycemic index? Granted, we required cooking of food to support the energy requirements of our large brains, but that's pretty much just a fire and a slab of meat. Is it really a good evolutionary path to depend on a whole industrial complex of food procesing machinery that is a big natural disaster away from being completely broken down?

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#125

Post by commanda »

OstiaAntica wrote: post #78
seanalltogether wrote: post #24

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

You jest but many Europeans have already evolved greater capacity to digest milk and alcohol than other races with less exposure.

Or maybe Europeans consume milk and alcohol because they can easily digest it?

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#126

Post by noarchy »

jerf wrote: post #111
yummyfajitas wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is evidence that exercise on it's own works for weight loss. https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.duke.car... You can find lots more in sports medicine textbooks. Plenty of studies have varied exercise and diet in order to fine tune muscle gain vs fat loss for various purposes (mostly related to weight class). I would not trust Gary Taubes in general. I've only had one exposure to him, but I found…

With all due respect, that perfectly fits the theories that Taubes is advocating. "High intensity" exercise over six months manages to drop only 3.5 kilograms on average (and add 1.4 kg in muscle). That is not terribly significant by any definition, let alone the one I gave, and based on my (other) reading it seems likely that actually happened fairly early in the study and everyone has plateaued by the end. I droppe…

My own personal experience always causes me to shrug, in reaction to the carbo-phobia that seems so rampant, of late. I put in several hundred kilometres per week on my bicycle during the warmer months. I eat a massive amount of carbs, including some with the dreaded "high glycemic index" that's so chic to discuss. I've never been healthier (great numbers for my weight, blood pressure, etc). But again, my personal anecdote does not constitute a scientific study.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#127

Post by zach »

jerf wrote: post #99
beaumartinez wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

"Regarding obesity, exercise is far more important than diet." When Gary Taubes surveyed the literature to find the evidence that exercise is useful for losing weight, what he found is that the scientific literature itself proves this statement is either not true or even slightly false. There aren't any studies where exercise has lead to persistent, significant (which I would define as taking someone from clinically…

There is also a very popular article in Time this week on this subject, "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin":

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857-4,00....

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#128

Post by demallien »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #94
houk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

healthy good DOES taste better. you've just been raised on rubbish so therefor you think that is how all food should taste. I was the same. I hated peas, carrots, sweet potato, that sort of thing. A few years ago I was at a friends place and she grew all her own produce. It was the first time I had ever tasted fresh vegetables. Oh wow. If (in Australia) the major super markets that advertise "We're the fresh food peo…

If a salad contains any dressing, it's not a salad anymore, it's a dish. The only exception I allow is vinegar + olive oil. That's pretty yummy salad dressing (especially with balsamic vinegar), and pretty healthy.

Ummm, vinegar + oil is pretty much the composition of every dressing out there, sometimes with a small amount of emulsifier, such as mustard (vinaigrette) or egg yolk (mayonnaise). Is it the fact that you use olive oil that OS important? Or the fact that without an emulsifier the dressing is much thinner, and hence ends up on the plate, not the salad, so you eat less?

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#129

Post by warrenwilkinson »

houk wrote: post #20
johnny22 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or we just make healthy food taste better.

healthy good DOES taste better. you've just been raised on rubbish so therefor you think that is how all food should taste. I was the same. I hated peas, carrots, sweet potato, that sort of thing. A few years ago I was at a friends place and she grew all her own produce. It was the first time I had ever tasted fresh vegetables. Oh wow. If (in Australia) the major super markets that advertise "We're the fresh food peo…

When I was in Switzerland, I lived mostly on home made Greek salads (Tomatos, Cucumbers, Onions, Olive Oil and Feta Cheese -- eaten 4x a week for about a year). They were delicious.

I made one when I got back to Canada, but the flavor was gone. I haven't made another one in over 4 years.

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