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Sadly, many parents neglect or even abuse their children. In an ideal world every child would have two loving parents who concern themselves in raising good, healthy, educated children who will become successful and productive citizens.
In the real world I wonder how many children get that, and how many get short changed.
Sadly, many parents neglect or even abuse their children. In an ideal world every child would have two loving parents who concern themselves in raising good, healthy, educated children who will become successful and productive citizens.
In the real world I wonder how many children get that, and how many get short changed.
When you see an overweight kid there is a really good chance the parents are overweight. At some point however people need to be responsible for themselves. Of course it is going to be harder for kids who have no idea what healthy food or a balanced meal is. But they have a choice as they become adults. They can remain in the dark and blame everything under the sun, or they can take responsibility.
We all know that losing weight is one of the hardest things to do, but blaming everyone and everything for the reason people get fat is not the answer. Personal responsibility has to be a part of the equation.
In the beginning, prehistoric humans found the only diet that sustained their lives was the "high fat" diet. Through perhaps 100s of thousands of years humans who ate as much fat as they could lived; the rest died. Note "Darwinian evolution." Those who didn't get fat during the summer starved in the winter when no food was available. This happened for thousands of generations. We are programmed to crave fat.
In my opinion, eating fat doesn't make you fat. Eating starches makes you fat. Sugar and HFCS are among the most easiest digested, go right into your blood stream, get stored as adipose fat. In evolutionary terms both sugar and HFCS are too recent to have any effect on human evolution.
I'm not willing to blame anybody for being fat. I see them as victims of poor education and poor examples, often their parents.
If you are poorly educated you can learn. If you have bad habits you can change them.
The only thing I can add is that you cannot achieve good physical fitness without physical exercise. Sit on a couch all day (or in an office chair) and you will be a couch potato. If you don't want this you will have to exert yourself.
I'm afraid Hound I have to disagree with you there. eating too much of anything - aka overconsuming - makes you fat. You're not on a fast track to fat storage by eating starches and sugar. Carbs are a good 55% of my intake, and some of the carbs are derived from sugar. I've actually lost weight eating such a diet. Truth is, when you reduce total calories (and even better burn calories) you lose weight. Too many calories will end up being stored as fat. Life is too short for me to eat things that I don't enjoy, namely a high fat diet. Too much fat makes me feel ill and it is not palatable. I'd rather be overweight than eat pemmican and other assorted high fat stuff just to lose weight. That's not balanced to me. We've come a long way from the hunter gatherer days and even the hunter/gatherers dig up edible tubers (aka starches) and consume sugary things (aka fruits). There are very few human societies (excepting Inuit, who need high fat for the cold climate) eat mostly fat. If anything, protein and fat are treats because it takes quite a bit of energy/skill to obtain both (unless plant sources, of course). Our society eats too much, including fat and protein. That's why we are obese, not because we are eating too many carbs.
When you see an overweight kid there is a really good chance the parents are overweight. At some point however people need to be responsible for themselves. Of course it is going to be harder for kids who have no idea what healthy food or a balanced meal is. But they have a choice as they become adults. They can remain in the dark and blame everything under the sun, or they can take responsibility.
We all know that losing weight is one of the hardest things to do, but blaming everyone and everything for the reason people get fat is not the answer. Personal responsibility has to be a part of the equation.
I have no argument. I had the best of education from my parents but it was only when I took the dietary input/output and my understanding of nutrition into my concept that I realized that my parents weren't the best source for nutritional guidance.
My father died of a heart attack at a young age (sub-60) and I think his death was a fluke (no heart history, healthy robust physical shape, evidently he succumbed from a blocked important coronary artery). I learned nothing from my father's death except that I should engage in a regular fitness program and should take aspirin daily, to "immunize" myself against platelet aggregation. I should probably get a heart scan.
My dad was always so active, he was a guy you couldn't keep down. He'd be out there working on my family's house at 11 p.m. when I heard my mother trying to get him to come to bed, for his early morning commute to his job.
This is a man who should have not died. He had no bad habits except social drinking (far less than I) and a hard Christian work ethic. He put this student (me) though our demanding college system. I have no idea why he died so young, except that for the last 30 years I have prided myself on a strenuous exercise program (except a few lapses which I have already discussed) and my daily aspirin program (which thank God I have zero aspirin reactions, I could eat it by the handful with no consequences). I have no idea if aspirin helps. I subscribe to the statistics: it appears to cause blood platelets to not clump, and thus avoids coronary heart vessel and brain strokes associated with blood circulation blockage.
I have not succumbed yet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by riaelise
I'm afraid Hound I have to disagree with you there. eating too much of anything - aka overconsuming - makes you fat. You're not on a fast track to fat storage by eating starches and sugar. Carbs are a good 55% of my intake, and some of the carbs are derived from sugar. I've actually lost weight eating such a diet. Truth is, when you reduce total calories (and even better burn calories) you lose weight. Too many calories will end up being stored as fat. Life is too short for me to eat things that I don't enjoy, namely a high fat diet. Too much fat makes me feel ill and it is not palatable. I'd rather be overweight than eat pemmican and other assorted high fat stuff just to lose weight. That's not balanced to me. We've come a long way from the hunter gatherer days and even the hunter/gatherers dig up edible tubers (aka starches) and consume sugary things (aka fruits). There are very few human societies (excepting Inuit, who need high fat for the cold climate) eat mostly fat. If anything, protein and fat are treats because it takes quite a bit of energy/skill to obtain both (unless plant sources, of course). Our society eats too much, including fat and protein. That's why we are obese, not because we are eating too many carbs.
I never meant to advocate anything but a healthy, balanced diet, composed of foods from carbohydrates, proteins and fats. I am on such a diet myself, and find it is working well for me.
I'll admit I should reduce alcohol consumption. I am one out of many Americans who over-consume alcohol. (But not hugely, see the FDA statistics.) I reduce my other food consumption to keep within my caloric goals. Not a good plan, I'll admit. I am working on that.
It is strange that so many odd diets actually work. The all carb diet. The all protein diet. The {brand name} diet. The question is: can you stick to this diet for the rest of your life?
My own plan is to adjust my diet to what is commonly accepted as healthful, and reduce my alcohol consumption to FDA guidelines.
Meanwhile I have adopted a strenuous physical regimen at my local physical fitness gym which I am a member of.
Damn lost most the week on a business trip. Tomorrow I will resume, and will be hurting. Physical fitness (1+ hour exercise) does not come without pain. Your choice: exercise now and live longer, or skip it and live shorter. Actually I'm amazed that once I pass 30 minutes on the treadmill that I actually enjoy the rest of the exercises!
I would like to adapt the old fisherman's saying, and modify it:
"Time spent in physical conditioning AKA gym workouts do not subtract from your total time remaining."
Rather I would like to suggest that every hour spent in gym training adds 3-4 or more hours to your life expectancy. And even better, I feel so damned good after a 80-90 minute gym workout! Yeah my muscles hurt but they hurt so good!
I'm not willing to blame anybody for being fat. I see them as victims of poor education and poor examples, often their parents.
People over-eat and under-exercise for all sorts of reasons, including psychological reasons. They know that eating too much and getting no exercise is bad for them. They have life problems leading them to feel that their lives are empty or meaningless, and then skip the exercise and eat and drink too much. This is likely related to release of dopamine, the "feel good" neurotransmitter, which makes them feel better, making up in part for their miserable lives.
This process can be addictive. It's simply taking the easy way out. This particularly applies to food, alcohol, and drug abuse, attempts to self-medicate life problems instead of solving them. In fact it may be just trying to fix the problems but using the wrong means. It may not be education at all.
Re chubby kids -- I read the school lunch menus published in our newspaper and I cringe. Lots of pizza, mac n cheese, Chicken McNugget kinds of food (what the heck is a :chicken finger, anyhow? Chickens don;t have fingers, do they??) and precious little whole foods or unprocessed foods. Fresh fruits or vegetables? Nope!
And I don't buy the argument that kids won't eat wholesome food -- we're training the to eat junky foods. Lots of salt, sugar, bad fats...
Have you seen any of those stories contrasting, in photos, our average school lunches with those of other countries? Ours are disgustingly unwholesome compared to any other nation's.
Sure, we're fat -- and we're training and raising fat kids, too. Seems to me every time I go to the grocery store, the "snack" food aisles are larger.
And why drink soft drinks at all? Rot your teeth, give you lots of empty calories and zero nutrition. But plenty of sugar, acids, and chemicals.
Grrr.
Okay, my rant's over.
It doesn't seem rocket science to see why we're fat and growing fatter.
I raised 4 daughters and we cooked every night. We would cook square meals and we made a point to have at least on thing on the plate someone would eat. When they are really small they complained a lot, but as they grow their taste buds adjusted and more often than not they would eat more things on the plate. As a result they hated the school lunches, (which were garbage), and really started hate whenever we were tired and ordered a pizza or some other take out food. They wanted our cooking!
The one who hated veggies the most is now a vegetarian, and the rest are omnivores who want healthy foods.
It was not easy, (sometimes I wished they wanted the school lunches), but it paid off.
We have grown into a lazy nation. Sure its tough when you work 2 jobs, but the generations before us especially the one that went through the depression had it a lot harder and they did not have fast food to fall back on.
We make a lot of excuses, most of them are B.S.
Re chubby kids -- I read the school lunch menus published in our newspaper and I cringe. Lots of pizza, mac n cheese, Chicken McNugget kinds of food (what the heck is a :chicken finger, anyhow? Chickens don;t have fingers, do they??) and precious little whole foods or unprocessed foods. Fresh fruits or vegetables? Nope!
And I don't buy the argument that kids won't eat wholesome food -- we're training the to eat junky foods. Lots of salt, sugar, bad fats...
Have you seen any of those stories contrasting, in photos, our average school lunches with those of other countries? Ours are disgustingly unwholesome compared to any other nation's.
Sure, we're fat -- and we're training and raising fat kids, too. Seems to me every time I go to the grocery store, the "snack" food aisles are larger.
And why drink soft drinks at all? Rot your teeth, give you lots of empty calories and zero nutrition. But plenty of sugar, acids, and chemicals.
Grrr.
Okay, my rant's over.
It doesn't seem rocket science to see why we're fat and growing fatter.
School lunches have been terrible since the 80s. That is when everything moved to frozen/reheatable food and they took the kitchens out of the schools. In the 90s they started to let fast food restaurants move in to replace the school powered cafeteria.
So this is not exactly new. When I was a kid, lunch was bad pizza, bad tacos, sloppy joes, chicken nuggets, overcooked or canned veggies (typically peas, corn, carrots, green beans), apples or canned fruits. Sides were chips, fries and milk. When I moved to the south, my school actually had a kitchen. But they only used it to cook stuff from scratch 2x a week. There was delicious fried chicken.
I was a picky eater, so I brought my lunch as soon as I was able. I grew up right at the time lunchables got introduced. My typical school lunch was a sandwich, carrot sticks, fruit, and some packaged junk food (fruit rollups, fruit snacks, chips or those cheese crackers) and a juice box! Or squeeze-it when I got to middle school. By high school I tried to bring leftovers. I didn't really like sandwiches.
We have made a lot of convenience foods for lunch - for kids and adults. But this has been going on for 30+ years that I can account for.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Luckyd609
I raised 4 daughters and we cooked every night. We would cook square meals and we made a point to have at least on thing on the plate someone would eat. When they are really small they complained a lot, but as they grow their taste buds adjusted and more often than not they would eat more things on the plate. As a result they hated the school lunches, (which were garbage), and really started hate whenever we were tired and ordered a pizza or some other take out food. They wanted our cooking!
The one who hated veggies the most is now a vegetarian, and the rest are omnivores who want healthy foods.
It was not easy, (sometimes I wished they wanted the school lunches), but it paid off.
We have grown into a lazy nation. Sure its tough when you work 2 jobs, but the generations before us especially the one that went through the depression had it a lot harder and they did not have fast food to fall back on.
We make a lot of excuses, most of them are B.S.
My mom cooked almost every night (she was a mostly stay at home mom). I was still a chubby kid. I was a somewhat picky eater. There were lots of veggies I didn't like. Now I realize because they were canned or because my mom overcooked them.
I hated school lunches because they were bad processed versions of things, but I still loved a good chicken tender or hamburger. And still do to this day.
FYI: actual chicken fingers are really just chicken tenders. These are the least processed choice of the fried chicken items. It should be just a slim strip of a chicken breast covered in batter. The nuggets are super processed and molded into shape. I like fingers or tenders, since they are basically all meat and are a real piece of chicken. Which is why I could never eat the nuggets. It was weird goo.
The problem is that we as a nation are not physically fit/active and this extends to the kids. I would never recommend a diet of pizza, etc etc but even consumption of those things can be somewhat mitigated by physical activity. We eat too much and move too little. Instead we are glued to our phones/ipads/videogames. My daughter is thin as a rail but not active, much to my chagrin (I try...sigh).
When you see an overweight kid there is a really good chance the parents are overweight. At some point however people need to be responsible for themselves. Of course it is going to be harder for kids who have no idea what healthy food or a balanced meal is. But they have a choice as they become adults. They can remain in the dark and blame everything under the sun, or they can take responsibility.
We all know that losing weight is one of the hardest things to do, but blaming everyone and everything for the reason people get fat is not the answer. Personal responsibility has to be a part of the equation.
Is it also more difficult from a physiological standpoint to lose weight when you have been overweight your entire life?
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