Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
That's from Michael Pollan, author of several books on food/nutrition.
I think he beautifully wraps it up in a nutshell. Eat how he says and most all of us would avoid obesity and many diseases. It's the way I try to eat. Works for me so far.
What do you think? Isn't it beautifully simple?
If GOD made it, it's good.
If MAN made it, it's NOT good.
Foods made in kitchens with ingredients that would have been found in Grandma's pantry are good. Food made in factories out of chemicals is not.
Ignore the "Nutrition Facts" and read only the ingredient labels. Stop counting calories, carbs, and fat grams.
Eat only "whole" foods or those with natural ingredients.
Don't blame high fructose corn syrup--you don't have to USE it when you cook. Don't have a bottle of it in your house, just don't use it. That is a dumb excuse.
Sometimes, very rarely, obesity is genetic. When I was a kid there would always be ONE fat kid in the class. The parents might be slim but the kid would be fat and the kid would eat no more than any other kid. But it would only be ONE kid.
Now I see these fat kids more than I see normal kids. Fat, puffy faces, fat arms that look like the skin is stretched, walking knock-kneed to hold up the extra weight. All of this is unhealthy and will just lead to more problems later on.
I'm almost positive that HFCS is only an industrial product; it's not something you can buy in store. You can buy Karo corn syrup, but that's a different type of corn syrup the HFCS.
Quote:
Originally Posted by in_newengland
Don't blame high fructose corn syrup--you don't have to USE it when you cook. Don't have a bottle of it in your house, just don't use it. That is a dumb excuse.
i've heard this baloney about high fructose corn syrup being so evil many times. Nope, it's not the problem. The problem is much more r/t your #1 and it goes back to the old standby: Calories in, calories out. Even if a person consumes a lot of hfcs, it doesn't matter if the person exercises a lot and burns the same amount of calories he/she consumes (if a normal weight) or burns a greater number of calories then he/she consumes (if overweight). Sure, eating healthy helps because it allows a person to eat more food on fewer calories. But obesity isn't caused by a single ingredient in the american diet (not even carbs!)
Foods made in kitchens with ingredients that would have been found in Grandma's pantry are good. Food made in factories out of chemicals is not.
Ignore the "Nutrition Facts" and read only the ingredient labels. Stop counting calories, carbs, and fat grams.
Eat only "whole" foods or those with natural ingredients.
Sleep 8 hours a night.
Yes! Absolutely.
When asked what constitutes a "Whole Food" versus a processed food, nutrition experts have said,
"If comes in a package, it's processed," and
"if it has an ingredient list with words you cannot pronnounce, it's processed" and
"You cannot go wrong with single ingredient foods, such as 'spinach', 'beans', 'sweet potatoes,' 'whole grain flours,' etc."
and, "if your grandparents (or great grandparents, depending on your age) never ate it, chances are good the food's processed."
The excuse there's no time to cook or don't know how to cook is bogus.
What could be simpler than this meal often had at our house???:
1/4 pound ground turkey patty, cooked in the same pan and at the same time as some chopped broccoli, yellow crookneck squash or carrot slices (add a bit of oil oil to veggies). Have some fresh fruit for dessert. Easy peasey..and healthy and not expensive.
Or do the same thing with a salmon pattymade from canned salmon. Or a chickpea patty (mash up a can of garbanzo beans and add some spices, saute). Alternate cooked veggies with a fresh green salad...add some apple and blue cheese crumbles to make it fancy...
When addressing the issue of why American are fatter than people from many other countries many aspects related to weight loss management play a role: huge portion sizes, little exercise, too much sugary foods, no mindful eating, stress. It is also important to consider the lack in the American Diet of many of the main ingredients of The Mediterranean Diet: lots of fruit and vegetables, healthy olive oil, fish, nuts and legumes.
But to me there is another factor still more important: the food manufacturing industry.
American families don’t cook too much, and therefore they use much more precooked or highly manufactured meals and eat out at convenient restaurants. Both types of foods are full of what is called the “addiction factor”: salt, sugar and fats, that make people addicted to that food and therefore coming back to get more (in fact the brain receptors are the same as the ones for drugs like heroine). After eating that addictive food, people not only end eating too much but also the ingredients in the manufactured of food are the worst for weight management. Not only those ingredients are very fattening but also interfere with the hormones and other metabolic factors involved in managing a healthy weight. Also, the fats used are not healthy ones (like olive oil, coconut oil, butter) but trans fats, which make a big impact in the visceral fat accumulation and interfere with the weight management metabolic systems. HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) is another of those nasty ingredients.
To support this idea, there is now evidence that overweight and obese rates among kids in the Mediterranean Countries (some of the healthiest and skinnier countries) are growing very fast, being now higher than among US kids. I think that this is a consequence of how the Mediterranean families are now eating in a much more similar way than the Americans than ever before.
Mediterranean families are now busier than ever. With the economy so bad, both partners in the families are working very hard and they don't have time anymore to shop for healthy groceries, cook and have meals together. They have more access now to very convenient manufactured meals and cheap restaurants which they are taking benefit of. That's why the percentage of overweight and obese kids is increasing so much, being even ahead of the US. They haven't realized about the problem yet, and educational campaigns haven't been launched.
I grew up in Spain and I live now in the US where I have developed a weight loss management method called 32 Mondays, basically to teach a practical way to go back to the basic points of nutrition and weight loss management. The drive to develop that method was precisely the differences I encountered between the Mediterranean Diet I grew up with and the American diet I experienced when I arrived to the US 7 years ago.
I have 3 blog posts that specifically talk about this topic that you might like:
Do You Want to Know Why Parisians Don’t Need a Weight Loss Management Method?
What is Palatability and What Does it Have to do with your Weight Loss Management Efforts?
What Happened With the Mediterranean Diet?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roscoe Conkling
There just doesn't seem to be a lot of shame about being fat in America these days.
About this specifically, I don't think is a matter of shame... I think that now the standards of what we consider an overweight or obese people have changed. People itself don't recognize it and others are used to see everybody big. It is only when they compare with people from skinnier countries that they see the difference. The same happens with the huge serving sizes, and the super sweet and super salty foods in the US comparing to the food in other countries.
1. I know of no other country where supermarkets provide motorized wheelchairs for customers too fat to shop.
2. I've never passed through an airport anywhere other than the USA and seen those super-wide wheelchairs at the landing gate for passengers too fat to walk. I see wheelchairs,obviously,but they're literally half the size of the US version.
3. Cops that are so fat they're unable to give chase to criminals. Seriously how can law enforcement people do their jobs properly when they're obese ?
4. Appetizers in US restaurants are the same size as main courses in European restaurants.
5. A size XL in a US clothing store would be same size as an XXL or XXL anywhere else in the world.
6. Schools in the UK,France and German have been prohibited from having vending machines providing soda,candy and chips for nearly a decade.
You forgot one thing Roscoe. NURSES and other healthcare workers that are supposed to be pictures of the health that they represent that are morbidly obese as well. I am NOT talking pregnant either. Have worked with more than just a few of them......
I went to an orthopedist for a bit of arthritis in my toe and had to sit in a chair that was almost double wide. For someone who is not obese it was uncomfortable. I could use one armrest or the other, not both and the chair was one of those up high examination chairs (like a dentist chair) so I wanted to use the armrests.
I know that's just a minor rant but it's getting pretty bad when places are catering to the obese and also when you think of why this was in the office of an orthopedist. I think it's due to the obese people wrecking their knees from carrying so much weight. Weak knees would usually be found in very elderly people who have simply worn out the cartiledge over the years, not their fault.
But now obesity is so commonplace in people of all ages that we have to have "fat" chairs too. There's no excuse except eating too much and too much of the wrong thing. Cook at home.
1. Lack of exercise combined with high indoor computer usage
2. High Fructose Corn Syrup is snuck into every other food in this country, foods that traditionally have no added sugars are now packed full of HFC in order to make people crave their foods and become addicted.
Typical American foods that are now filled with HF corn syrup, besides almost EVERYTHING:
Meats, dairy like sour cream based dips, breads, pastas, tea, pasta sauces and tomato marinara, soups, powdered seasoning mixes, all kinds of fake health foods that are labelled "low fat". They are even adding it in powdered form now. I cant even think of everything, it is pretty much IN everything and the list is 1 mile long.
I agree with you.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
