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As I said,what's healthy changes every year. I have read potatoes aren't good,not matter how you cook them.
Too much starch,and carbs.
People that say this are referring to potato chips, or eating baked potatoes with a ton of fatty toppings. They're nutrient-dense foods, you shouldn't exclude them.
Lots of interesting posts and opinions on this thread, but we're getting off the original point. This woman DOES cook, the show didn't say she eats fast food. Her claim is that someone needs to teach her how to cook healthier. While I buy this to some extent, old habits are hard to break, I don't think she couldn't possibly cook differently, IF she had enough motivation to do so. And, IMHO, having a 300 pound 12 year old daughter should be enough motivation. Therefore, she shouldn't be surprised if she's labeled lazy, ignorant, whatever.
Laziness....that depends on what you do for a living and how many hours you work. I'm in a white collar job so when I come home I have no excuse. But I know plenty of blue collar people who work really hard for a living and when they arrive home late in the evening, the last thing they want to do is take 2 hours to prepare, eat and clean up. That doesn't make them lazy. Why don't you work one of those jobs and then come home and say you are lazy for not wanting to cook a meal.
I hear what you are saying and I do have sympathy for people who work those long hours and get home late at night, but it's still an excuse. They could take time on their day off and prepare meals in advance, keep meals in the freezer and throw one in the fridge to thaw before work or throw a salad together - that doesn't take hardly any time. Add a hard boiled egg or a pack of tuna to it for some protein. There ARE options if people want to eat healthier they CAN make it happen despite their circumstances. And with obesity out of control these are going to be the people with diabetes, heart disease, and a host of other health problems related to eating junk for years and years. I just can't think of any excuse for not making your health a priority. And if you want to eat junk that's fine, but don't act like you didn't know better or didn't have the time. Take responsibility for your bad decisions.
Potatoes are a staple of every strong man's diet. If you're a guy and you're trying to get built, you can't avoid potatoes.
Protein is the building block for getting 'built'. There's nothing that potatoes provide you that you cannot get elsewhere. Carbs have been shown to have less satiability per calorie versus both fat and protein. The problem nowadays is that things like corn subsidies mean sugar is cheaper per calorie than any other macronutrient. This corresponds with us filling ourselves with more and more calories that fill us up less and less. This is why extremely cheap meal plans which are based primarily on the widely available calories of rice, beans, and more carbs are really not sustainable for most of the population. Healthy is a relative term per person. What is healthy for you is what enables you to be a healthy person. This changes from person to person, but generally speaking, eating moderate amounts of fat with high nutrient foods (leafy veggies) and lots of protein, all in the appropriate cumulative calorie amount. Unfortunately this is more expensive and time intensive than a lot of people can afford.
Not to mention there is much to be said about the fact that effort and stress management are finite resources. Those who are under more stress are less likely to be able to resist comforting themselves with worse types of food, or lapse into not cooking for themselves.
Considering the decline in cooking in American society in recent years, and the demise of cooking from scratch, we would be well served to add in a basic cooking class to middle and high school curriculum.
Great read, highly recommended. But one of the comments that stuck out for me, was around how "traditional" ethnic foods shifted once they became "Americanized." She discussed her own russian heritage, and how her grandmother made borscht. In Russia, it was made with fresh roasted beets and broth. In the US, it was made with canned beets and lots of cream. Another example was thai peanut sauce. In Thailand it is made with freshly roasted peanuts and spices. Here in the US, many Thai places swapped it with skippy or jiffy. There are examples like this for every culture.
You don't have to look very far to see how many formerly healthy foods have been messed up by over-processing.
Anyway back to that book. It is really interesting, in the format of a travelogue and anthropology book almost. Each section takes a different region of the world, where a certain type of disease risk is low, and tells you how to replicate the recipes at home (and gives you a plan of attack.). Most importantly, all of the recipes are easily duplicated by shopping at a regular grocery store. There is a chapter about purchasing the ingredients at a typical grocery store or even a Walmart.
I am on a diet, and usually order "vegetarian", because I don't like meat. So...I am browsing "Jimmy Johns" website with the calories listed for each sandwich, I eat there quite often...a turkey Sammy has almost half the calories of my normal, "veggie"?!???!!!! WTH? wait a minute....I am eating "healthy"! Oh....the "veggie" has avocado and double cheese. 54...grams of FAT! The turkey? 21 grams of FAT!!!
I just watched a very interesting episode of Our America with Lisa Ling last night, and the topic was obese kids.
I got a little ticked off at the one point when the mother of a 300lb 12-year-old girl was talking about all the extremely fattening greasy stuff she cooks, because that's how her own mother taught her. She was deep-frying everything, and her idea of "fruit" was canned fruit in heavy syrup. Lisa asked her if she could cook anything healthful and the lady said something like "No, someone has to teach me. I never learned."
Someone has to TEACH YOU? Really?
I honestly think that in this day & age, everyone in our country...everyone in the civilized world, knows what foods are fattening and which are not, knows which are healthy, and has at least a ballpark idea of healthy portion sizes.
This woman may have learned from her mother to cook fattening food, but she never watched any TV show that talked about healthful fooods? She never saw a healthy cookbook? She had a big huge TV, so I'm sure at some point, some small bit of nutrition knowledge would have trickled in. I see messages about healthy foods every single day in the short time I have my TV on. Even if she couldn't afford cook books (the show profiled poorer families) there are libraries, used books, and TONS of free resources. I can't even imagine the immense number of free government-created resources on nutrition that we've all paid for and are still paying for.
This lady is cooking and eating in an unhealthful way BY CHOICE, not due to any lack of knowledge.
I don't eat the most healthy diet all the time, but I certainly know what is and isn't fattening, and what is and isn't healthy. When I eat fattening stuff, it's by choice. An informed choice. I can't blame it on ignorance.
It just really annoyed me when this woman abdicated all responsibility and said SOMEONE ELSE must teach her. Even the 12 year old girl was trying to tell her mom how canned fruit doesn't really count as fresh fruit.
To me, it's like smoking. This isn't 1955...by now everyone knows that smoking causes lung disease. People have the freedom to choose to smoke, but it's a choice, an informed choice. Lots of people eat really unhealthful, fattening foods, but it's always by choice if the person is an adult with at least an 80 IQ.
I just wish that all of us, those who eat 100% perfectly healthy diets, those in the middle like me, and those who eat crappy diets, could all just agree that what we buy and eat is our conscious choice and not claim ignorance. How much more "education" can we pay for? Mrs. Obama, Dr. Oz, and Richard Simmons could have all gone in-person to this woman's house and spent a full week teaching her about food, and she STILL would choose crappy food.
I just ticks me off when I hear people say "oh the poor just need more education about food" or "it's the person's culture...they don't know any better." It's insulting.
People like this aren't watching television shows that improve their mind. They are watching garbage. You are correct, they don't WANT to change. They are not bright and they don't care because they figure that when they old and sick, that somebody (ostensibly the government) is going to take care of them. They are monumentally selfish and stupid and lazy.
That having been said, I don't eat very well, but I know better. LOL
20yrsinBranson
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