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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

#101

Post by ams6110 »

beaumartinez wrote: post #49
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.…

Anecdotally, my experience is that exercise has very little to do with it. It's almost all diet. I switched to a paleolithic style diet just after Christmas. I did not cut out any meals, or reduce portions, and I did NOT start exercising (I work at a desk and drive to work, my exercise is virtually none). I lost about 40 lbs in about 3 months.

I say paleolithic "style" diet because I'm not being super strict about it. The main thing I did was totally cut grains and refined sugar out of my diet. I eat fresh meats (mostly beef), eggs, fresh vegetables and low sugar fruits (berries, mostly) and some nuts. I cut dairy as well, except for heavy cream in my coffee and butter which I use for cooking (I also use ghee). I try to avoid seed oils though I do use a olive oil for salad dressing.

I admit I miss good fresh bread but I can't argue with the results.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#102

Post by jerf »

frankus wrote: post #85

If you're interested in this sort of thing, I can't recommend Gary Taubes' book Good Calories Bad Calories highly enough. If you're not so interested, he wrote a TL;DR version called Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It. He also has a blog: http://www.garytaubes.com/blog/

I actually recommend them in reverse order. Good Calories, Bad Calories is information dense and the consequent fact that essentially nobody has actually read it and everyone is working off of third-hand summaries of summaries, even the people here on HN, is plainly obvious every time the topic turns to that book. Start with "Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It" and back up to GCBC if you still want more history and a list of citations longer than your arm (and slightly older science).

Also, I would adjust some expectations. The common "science" understanding seems to be that it's Gary Taubes, crazed whacko, against nutritionists, bearer of the holy and uncontested Peer Review. In fact it's Gary Taubes advocating that we take mainstream 21st century endocrinology seriously, with its actual biochemistry and explanation for the behavior of fat accumulation in the body in general, beyond mere obesity, and discard a scientifically unsupported nutrition philosophy unchanged since the 1960s that can not explain the matter of fat accumulation except in terms so broad and vague (and, ultimately, wrong) that I can't hardly even understand why it is still taken seriously when there's another branch of science that utterly subsumes it. This juxtaposition becomes much more clear and refined in his second book, though it is technically pretty much all there in GCBC if you go looking for it.

That is, not "nut vs. science", it's "science vs. science", and yeah, I make no bones about which science I think explains a hell of a lot more than the other.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#103

Post by radioactive21 »

I think it would be more accurate to say "Western life style" is making the world sick. Meaning work all the time, mostly sitting down, and have no time to exercise or prepare a healthy meal. This leads to eating fast food and high preservatives foods that last a long time but aren't really healthy.

You could eat healthy but still not be healthy without a proper life style change. Meaning exercise, lowering stress and other harmful habits.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#104

Post by Tichy »

3am wrote: post #53
SMrF wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not saying it's easy, discipline is as tough as you just described. I run every other day for at least 30 minutes, and I try to eat healthy. I have weighed more, and i have weighed less. Not morbidly obese, but my doctor would prefer I dropped 20. I have found stress is a factor.

I hope that if you eat the right things, it isn't a matter of discipline. As Taubes writes in his book, you can eat carbs indefinitely, but eating arbitrary amounts of fat and proteine is much harder - at some point the body says no.

Carbs are supposedly "habit forming", they make you crave more carbs sooner.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#105

Post by ams6110 »

simonsarris wrote: post #13
deveren wrote: post #2

Good question and answer at the end of the article. Fat is not what's making Americans fat. It's the prevalence of carbohydrates in our diets, and overeating of the same. I was in KY last week interviewing my great aunt who is 108 years old. Do you think she never ate bacon, beef, etc? Haha, their diets would be today's poster child for meatlovers. They didn't eat too much sugar, or carbs, but more importantly they n…

When my friends ask about nutrition, explaining fat is the very first thing I try to do. Eating fat does not necessarily make you fat, nor is it in itself a bad at all. Many fats are among the best things for your brain and heart. At the same time, fat-free foods can quite easily be bullshit. A pound of sugar is fat-free, after all, but has an insane calorific value. (110 per oz) Sugar is 100% total carbs. A ounce of…

Fat also satiates the appetite. You tend to not overeat when you eat fatty food. Starches and sugars do not, you want more.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#106

Post by mike_organon »

gjm11 wrote: post #9
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.

The track record for making any choices based on a rational weighing of available information is not too encouraging.

There is evidence that people have followed the advice of the "experts" in the past 4 decades: eat low fat, more carbs, industrial oils and margarine. The big problem is the experts were irrational and wrong.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#107

Post by mooftard »

ams6110 wrote: post #101
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.…

Anecdotally, my experience is that exercise has very little to do with it. It's almost all diet. I switched to a paleolithic style diet just after Christmas. I did not cut out any meals, or reduce portions, and I did NOT start exercising (I work at a desk and drive to work, my exercise is virtually none). I lost about 40 lbs in about 3 months. I say paleolithic "style" diet because I'm not being super strict about it…

What about lentils and beans? Are those in or out?

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#108

Post by ams6110 »

kgo wrote: post #48
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…

The problem is that when the "low fat" fad started, a lot of the the fat in processed food was replaced by sugar. Read ingredient labels... there's sugar or corn syrup in almost ALL low-fat/fat-free foods. So not only were you not getting the fat that would have worked to satiate your appetite, you were getting sugar on top of the carbs.

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#109

Post by yummyfajitas »

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…

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 him to be dishonest in that instance.

http://crazybear.posterous.com/how-1-graph-reveals-what-3000...

Re: How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick

#110

Post by tcskeptic »

jerf wrote: post #102
frankus wrote: post #85

If you're interested in this sort of thing, I can't recommend Gary Taubes' book Good Calories Bad Calories highly enough. If you're not so interested, he wrote a TL;DR version called Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It. He also has a blog: http://www.garytaubes.com/blog/

I actually recommend them in reverse order. Good Calories, Bad Calories is information dense and the consequent fact that essentially nobody has actually read it and everyone is working off of third-hand summaries of summaries, even the people here on HN, is plainly obvious every time the topic turns to that book. Start with "Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It" and back up to GCBC if you still want more history a…

Actually I think it really is a case of "scienceyness" vs. science.
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