Obesity: It's officially a disease (allergy, enzymes, low carb, workout)
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Actually, nut consumption is a bit paradoxical. Those that consume the most nuts have lower BMIs and over-eating nuts seems to produce much less weight gain than the excess calories would predict:
Most people recognize that fast food is bad for them, but they usually have no idea what it means to eat healthfully. As for portion sizes, I really haven't seen good information on this...its usually just the same story about what McDonalds use to serve. People usually ate at home back then, so looking at restaurant food doesn't tell you much. But its not like Americans 40~50 years ago were beaming with health, many of today's big diseases (heart disease, etc) were big diseases back then as well. Yet these same diseases are rare in other societies. So there is something fundamentally wrong, something that goes back before today's obesity problems, with the modern western diet. Today's obesity problem just seem like the culmination of decades of poor dietary practices......
In 1950 when Mcdonalds opened the only size hamburger was the small single burger we have now and the small French fries were the only size fries. The soda was 7 ounces compared to 32 ounce you can get now.
My statement about nuts is that people in general feel if it is healthy they can consume unlimited amounts. This is similar with granola, salads, etc. Many people gain weight or don't lose because they are still taking in too many calories
Butter is no more processed than, say, cooked brown rice. What does it mean to be a whole food? Something edible that has not been altered from its natural package? If that is notion, then we're talking about some sort of raw food diet. No major organization is recommending raw food diets, nor are they recommending people avoid "processed foods". But this is just my point, "whole foods" is vague and everyone seems to have a different idea of what that means. Furthermore, as I mentioned, there are plenty of whole foods that are known to negatively impact health. There are also processed foods that are just fine, for example whole grain breads, pastas, etc. How is "eat whole foods" a meaningful health message? "Eat whole foods" is more a marketing theme....to get you into Whole Foods.
It is via aseptic processing, then the separation of dense fat content. It's not in it's natural state. Anyhow, I said generally avoid, not entirely. The idea is that a predominantly whole food diet, or at least foods that are whole when purchased, will result in enough restriction of processed high sugar/fat food products that some not so great whole food choices will have less negative health impact. Here is how I believe it's a meaningful health message, at least for healthy whole food choices. This is the type of message I often see.
You're speaking as if most people understand how to eat healthy and are simply eating junk food because they lack some sort of personal drive to do better for themselves, but I don't see that at all. Instead I see people that want to be healthier, want to lose weight, etc....but are systematically misinformed and don't know how to achieve it.
If lack of drive was the real issue here, the weight-loss industry wouldn't be a $20 billion dollar industry. People really want to lose weight......they just don't know how and no industry really has an incentive to help them.
I think it is exactly the opposite. It isn't lack of information. In general, people if quizzed, would know what is healthy vs unhealthy, high calories vs. low calories, etc. For example, The lowest functioning overweight person with a fifth grade education would know a package of french fries is significantly higher calorie than a same sized package of carrot sticks.
Also I think "If lack of drive was the real issue here, the weight-loss industry wouldn't be a $20 billion dollar industry" should read the opposite. "If lack of drive wasn't the real issue here..." as the weight loss industry is trying to sell the easiest ways to lose weight - for those who don't have the drive. The weight loss industry isn't trying to inform or educated people - it is trying to sell overweight people methods to lose weight as easy (and as fast) as possible. If people had the drive, they wouldn't need the weight loss industry.
It is via aseptic processing, then the separation of dense fat content. It's not in it's natural state. Anyhow, I said generally avoid, not entirely. The idea is that a predominantly whole food diet, or at least foods that are whole when purchased, will result in enough restriction of processed high sugar/fat food products that some not so great whole food choices will have less negative health impact. Here is how I believe it's a meaningful health message, at least for healthy whole food choices. This is the type of message I often see.
I didn't say butter was in its "natural state", I said that its no more processed than cooked brown rice.
Regardless, I'm fully aware of how health professionals conceive of whole foods, my claim is that "eat whole foods" isn't an effective message and is instead more a marketing theme. The average person really doesn't have the right idea when they hear "whole food", they think a "whole foods" diet is one of fruit and salad...or something of that nature. Yet, if they tried a fruit and salad diet they'd like feel poorly within a few days. Or, something that is popular right now, blending up a much of vegetables with some protein and having a "green smoothie". Any health message, will get hijacked by the food industry.... I mean...we have a entire chain of stores that primarily sales processed foods that has capitalized on the phrase "whole foods".
I don't find the article you pointed to particularly meaningful, it doesn't give one a real idea what it would mean to eat a whole foods based diet. It just talks about the benefits of whole foods.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaniellaG
In 1950 when Mcdonalds opened the only size hamburger was the small single burger we have now and the small French fries were the only size fries. The soda was 7 ounces compared to 32 ounce you can get now.
My statement about nuts is that people in general feel if it is healthy they can consume unlimited amounts. This is similar with granola, salads, etc. Many people gain weight or don't lose because they are still taking in too many calories
I really have no idea what McDonalds served when they first started, but by the time the 60's came around they were serving big macs and many other familiar menu items. But you can't use a single restaurant to determine the dietary habits of American society.
As for overeating, when you eat healthful foods you really don't need to think about portion sizes and whether your overeating or not. The human body, like the body of any animal, will naturally maintain energy balance. But, and just like other animals, if you start to feed humans diets they aren't well adapted to eat you short circuit all the mechanisms that have kept human ancestors lean for millions of years.
I think it is exactly the opposite. It isn't lack of information. In general, people if quizzed, would know what is healthy vs unhealthy, high calories vs. low calories, etc. For example, The lowest functioning overweight person with a fifth grade education would know a package of french fries is significantly higher calorie than a same sized package of carrot sticks.
Yes, most people would know that french fries are more calories than carrot sticks...but that doesn't mean they know what a healthy dietary pattern would look like. Its the overall dietary pattern that most people don't get. So great, people know that french fries are bad....but where are they going to get their calories from? Not carrots..... A healthful eating pattern isn't intuitive and it looks a lot different than how most people eat....
I have watched many people lose weight over the years, and their efforts are always sabotaged by their ignorance of nutrition.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles
"If lack of drive wasn't the real issue here..." as the weight loss industry is trying to sell the easiest ways to lose weight - for those who don't have the drive.
The weight loss industry isn't trying to sale a single product, within the weight loss industry you have all sorts of products. Some are trying to sale "lose weight quick" products, yet you have more legitimate programs that try to help people change their eating behavior. Though I think weight watchers is flawed, I don't think its selling people a "easiest ways to lose weight" product.
Regardless, most overweight people make numerous attempts to lose weight so its difficult to imagine that the issue is a lack of drive...instead of a lack of good nutritional information.
Regardless, most overweight people make numerous attempts to lose weight so its difficult to imagine that the issue is a lack of drive...instead of a lack of good nutritional information.
Again, I think exactly the opposite. Even though people learn about healthy eating and read about it and realize what the right thing to do is, they continue to try and fail and try and fail not due to lack of knowledge but rather the inability to maintain the willpower (drive, strength, discipline whatever you want to call it) necessary for success.
Put it this way, some overweight people may continue to be overweight because they are naive but most overweight people who continue to be overweight failed because they didn't have the strength or will power or whatever to overcome their desire to overeat. It wasn't a cognitive "mistake" on their part. It was the extra piece of pizza or the second service of ice cream or the grazing of chips and snacks all afternoon that packed on the pounds.
Take a thousand overweight people and give them a PhD in Nutrition and 950 will still be overweight.
Take a thousand overweight people and give them more willpower and 50 will still be overweight.
Will power really has very little to do with it. People don't overeat in terms of mass, they overeat in terms of calories. They overeat in terms of calories because they eat foods that are calorically dense, and as such, they consume too many calories before their brain sends the signal to stop eating.
No one gets fat because they helped themselves to too much asparagus. They get fat because they ate french friesinstead of asparagus, and as a result, it took them more calories to get full.
1 cup of apple juice has 113 calories. One cup of apple has 65. The apple juice also has no fiber to make you feel full or to slow down its digestion. The apple makes you feel more full, and for longer, for a given amount of calories, resulting in a lower caloric intake for someone eating the whole fruit as opposed to just drinking the juice.
It's not about will power, it's about the body's regulation of energy balance being thrown out of whack by poor dietary choices. Humans do not need to feel hungry all the time to maintain a good body composition.
Even though people learn about healthy eating and read about it and realize what the right thing to do is, they continue to try and fail and try and fail not due to lack of knowledge but rather the inability to maintain the willpower
Sorry, I don't see people learning about nutrition. What most people known about "healthy eating" comes from industry marketing, not nutritional science. How many people have read a book on nutrition? I reckon a small number. Also, if you look at BMI in relation to socioeconomic class you see huge differences, the least educated cohorts are the most overweight.
Blaming it on "willpower" doesn't make much sense, did America suddenly lose its willpower over the last few decades? On the other hand, we do know that the food landscape has changed dramatically over the years.
But the food industry does create addictive foods, they use the latest psychological and nutritional research to craft foods that elicit addictive responses. Healthy foods don't elicit the same response and it takes a good deal of time for your tastes to "reset" around healthful foods, that is why the dietary half measures like portion control, etc don't work well. So long as you're still actively consuming bad foods, the adjustment towards a healthful diet is very difficult.
Regardless, there is no single cause of American's obesity problem.....but Americans are profoundly ignorant of what constitutes a healthy eating pattern and that plays a role in the nations obesity problems.
No one gets fat because they helped themselves to too much asparagus. They get fat because they ate french friesinstead of asparagus, and as a result, it took them more calories to get full.
So people have approximately the same desire to eat asparagus as they do french fries? And, lack of will power isn't the reason the majority of people choose french fries over asparagus? It's just a coincidence they chose the asparagus?
Will power really has very little to do with it. People don't overeat in terms of mass, they overeat in terms of calories. They overeat in terms of calories because they eat foods that are calorically dense, and as such, they consume too many calories before their brain sends the signal to stop eating.
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Yes, but why are they eating such caloric dense foods? Its well known that the combination of fat, sugar and salt elicits a drug like response in the brain......and these foods are everywhere. Its like trying to overcome alcoholism when someone is offering you free beer at every corner....
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