Is the Obesity Epidemic fact or fiction?

--Kaiser-- · 09-08-2012 02:36PM

Sea Filly wrote: »

Oatey homemade muesli with little sugar added would be.

Nope. All grains are unhealthy

Rhyme · 09-08-2012 02:37PM

I don't get this usage of the term 'epidemic'. It's not like you can catch the fat.

Gummy Panda · 09-08-2012 02:40PM

Rhyme wrote: »

I don't get this usage of the term 'epidemic'. It's not like you can catch the fat.

Sounds scary so media use it.

jan shyr · 09-08-2012 02:43PM

Tax by inches on the waistband of clothing?

And how do you propose to do this? There are several methods to measure either fat or whether the person is within normal mass range (BMI). This would become excessively complicated even if you try to even consider to implement it into reality. First this is breach of privacy, secondly you will have to perform this measurement for millions of people and it will have to be done not just once but regularly (2 years, 5 years, pick a number). Then there are certain conditions that increase the fat mass in people, will they be exception.

Sea Filly · 09-08-2012 02:47PM

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Nope. All grains are unhealthy

In your opinion.

hooradiation · 09-08-2012 02:50PM

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Nope. All grains are unhealthy

ಠ_ಠ

Fool, hush.

--Kaiser-- · 09-08-2012 02:51PM

Sea Filly wrote: »

In your opinion.

Fact. You can keep your stupid winky face

seamus · 09-08-2012 02:51PM

Angeles wrote: »

People blame food all the time, "too much sugar in this and that"
The real problem is our level of activity.

Not really. Activity is part of the jigsaw, but it's not the primary part. Someone can exercise and exercise and get very fit but not lose an ounce of weight if they continue overeating. Weight control is 95% diet, 5% exercise.

Our General physical and mental activity is highly reduced because of advancements in entertainment and in the amount of ways we reduce the effort in simply getting from A to B.
Compare that to 80 years ago, the food more or less is the same. Infact in many cases now, healthier, we just simple don't move as much.
*typed while sitting motionless in a comfy chair in an office looking at a computer screen*

The only thing I disagree on here is that the food isn't "more or less the same".

Do a search for a documentary (BBC I think), called something like "The men who made us fat". It's a bit of glib title, but it's basically about changes in processed food which arrived into the world in 1960's and 1970's. It was discovered that food could be made tastier and cheaper by loading it with various sugars, salts and fats, effectively starting a processed food revolution.
80 years ago, the majority of people's foods were locally produced with only a small amount of processing. Imported foods were expensive and anything high in sugar or fat was often a luxury food when compared to fruit and vegatables which were grown locally.
There was a bit of a "perfect storm" then as food processing in the US converged with cheaper and faster ways of exporting foods, with the net result now that a shocking volume of our food is entirely processed, because it's easier.

Now, there may be a little bit of rosy spectacles on that, but by and large you didn't have people chowing down on meals made with Uncle Ben's every night, finished off with a Mars Bar for dessert. You had spuds, bacon and some cabbage for your dinner, and a cup of tea after. You might get some ice cream after your Sunday dinner and maybe a mars bar once a week if you'd been lucky to save up your few pennies.

In principle I have no issue with levying additional taxes on foods which promote obesity, but the issue is that no matter where you draw the line you will include foods which aren't inherently unhealthy or which are aimed at niche groups rather than the population as a whole.
Perhaps a better idea may be to widen the list of foods which are less likely to contribute to obesity and put zero tax on them.

Rhyme · 09-08-2012 02:51PM

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Sounds scary so media use it.

"I just rubbed my face in some dirt and gained three stone."

Dravokivich · 09-08-2012 02:56PM

jan shyr wrote: »

And how do you propose to do this? There are several methods to measure either fat or whether the person is within normal mass range (BMI). This would become excessively complicated even if you try to even consider to implement it into reality. First this is breach of privacy, secondly you will have to perform this measurement for millions of people and it will have to be done not just once but regularly (2 years, 5 years, pick a number). Then there are certain conditions that increase the fat mass in people, will they be exception.

Trouser length / waist length ?

IE:

Short trousers + Big waist = Fatty Tax

Sea Filly · 09-08-2012 02:57PM

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Fact. You can keep your stupid winky face

One paper. Fab. There are also papers on the benefits of oats. Cherry-picking, much? Also, why so defensive?

The quotes at the start of that paper are interesting too, they don't seem to advocate completely excluding grains from your diet.

--Kaiser-- · 09-08-2012 03:02PM

Sea Filly wrote: »

One paper. Fab. There are also papers on the benefits of oats. Cherry-picking, much? Also, why so defensive?

The quotes at the start of that paper are interesting too, they don't seem to advocate completely excluding grains from your diet.

One peer reviewed and vigourously referenced paper, yes. If you have refutals of its claims I'd be eager to hear them

dark crystal · 09-08-2012 03:03PM

Obsessing about the food you eat can be just as unhealthy in my opinion. There's a place for most food in anyone's diet, it's all about balance.

I'd hate to live in a world where you were afraid to eat white bread or grains or chocolate. People have become far too paranoid about food these days.

A healthy balance of diet and exercise would see most people right - years ago, people ate hearty dinners, with butter, spuds, desserts etc. but exercised a lot more and snacked less and there wasn't half the amount of weight issues there are now.

jan shyr · 09-08-2012 03:05PM

One thing that annoys me is when my overweight friends say that I eat unhealthy. Well, I am not the one who is fat.

Sea Filly · 09-08-2012 03:09PM

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

One peer reviewed and vigourously referenced paper, yes. If you have refutals of its claims I'd be eager to hear them

This isn't the nutrition forum, and I'm not the one who got all defensive. That paper mentions frequently "excessive grain consumption". That to me doesn't say cut them out entirely.

Oh, and from a scientific perspective, a paper being peer-reviewed doesn't excempt it from criticism.

Jarren · 09-08-2012 03:10PM

True, you can eat junk food and be skinnny,you can eat healthy food and be fat.

Some people don't realise that size portions do matter .

IZEVAL · 09-08-2012 03:10PM

Real or not, Irish women's noses will be smugly in the air. Be they 50kg or 500kg.

Wibbs · 09-08-2012 03:11PM

syklops wrote: »

If you wacth TV Shows from the 80's there was the one fat kid in the class. Go into a school now and its more like 50-50.

Looking at my school pics from the early 80's there are a couple of chubby faced kids just before puberty kicks off, but that's about it(fast forward to 6th year and they've leaned up). We had one "fatty" in the year. He didn't get slagged either funny enough, because he was a very sound bloke. However compared to some today that guy wasn't particularly fat at all. A woman mate of mine a couple of years younger than me had her school pics and exactly the same story. One girl was the "fatty" and again looking at her now if she was more than a size 16 I'd be surprised. Her rounded face made her look bigger.

Comparing those pics to some of my mates with early teenaged kids and their school pics, while it's not 50% or any of that, there are definitely more heavy ones and they're heavier overall with it.

Fishooks12 wrote: »

That post is brimming with hyperbole

NOt really. Study after study has shown about the worst thing you can do for health and longevity is add more sugar. In the US in the early 70's as part of their "war against cancer" and heart disease studies were showing sugar(refined sucrose and especially fructose) were absolute disasters for health. Fructuos in particular is damn near dangerous. There is more than a suspicion the strong sugar producing lobby in the US killed the wider dissemination of this. Add in the enormously powerful corn producers who produce most of the fructose(corn syrup) and uphill climb time.

Sea Filly wrote: »

No, believe me, sugar consumption has a HUGE amount to do with weight gain. Most of us eat far too much of it.

+1000. While people are busy believing the BS of avoid fat, their waistlines and overall health are going south because of highly sweetened "fat free" foods. It's not just weight gain. Sugar rich diets hit the whole body. People with higher blood sugar age more rapidly, look older and have more damaged bodies prone to more illnesses, regardless of weight(skinny people can become type 2 diabetics too).

Smoking is clearly a dangerous activity, but when you consider that drinking just one sweetened mineral/soda a day increases your risk of coming down with type 2 diabetes by a quarter, that can of coke aint looking so good. Just like smoking diabetes impacts many of the bodies systems. It may even impact more.

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Nope. All grains are unhealthy

Well... I'd somewhat agree. We've been only eating farmed grains for around 10,000 years and our bodies and genes had to catch up. Particularly with regard to an ability to process gluten. Cavemen would have been coeliacs. So we have adapted, or most of us have, many are coeliacs. I personally avoid grains like the very plague with the exception of the rare bit of porridge.

BraziliaNZ · 09-08-2012 03:13PM

Isn't porridge good for you in lots of ways? I eat it most mornings and I'm in good nick

Shryke · 09-08-2012 03:13PM

dark crystal wrote: »

Obsessing about the food you eat can be just as unhealthy in my opinion. There's a place for most food in anyone's diet, it's all about balance.

I'd hate to live in a world where you were afraid to eat white bread or grains or chocolate. People have become far too paranoid about food these days.

A healthy balance of diet and exercise would see most people right - years ago, people ate hearty dinners, with butter, spuds, desserts etc. but exercised a lot more and snacked less and there wasn't half the amount of weight issues there are now.

Plenty of people have gluten intolerance without knowing it. Others have IBS or are lactose intolerant. Some people are allergic to the hormones put into chicken. It's not clean cut.

Edit: Pretty much spot on Wibbs. I'll add that spelt bread can seemingly be handled by a fair few Coeliacs. Spelt wheat was a bronze age crop in Europe so it goes back quite a bit.

--Kaiser-- · 09-08-2012 03:14PM

Wibbs wrote: »

Well... I'd somewhat agree. We've been only eating farmed grains for around 10,000 years and our bodies and genes had to catch up. Particularly with regard to an ability to process gluten. Cavemen would have been coeliacs. So we have adapted, or most of us have, many are coeliacs. I personally avoid grains like the very plague with the exception of the rare bit of porridge.

Well there's more bad things in grains that gluten. There's wheat germ agluteins, lectins, phytates.....the fact that our body has no defense for any of these would suggets that we are not adapated to grains. At best they displace healthier food in your diet

Wibbs · 09-08-2012 03:22PM

seamus wrote: »

Not really. Activity is part of the jigsaw, but it's not the primary part. Someone can exercise and exercise and get very fit but not lose an ounce of weight if they continue overeating. Weight control is 95% diet, 5% exercise.

+1 A recent long term look into hunter gatherer types found that portion size is what kept them slim, not exercise. Indeed contrary to popular hunter gatherers generally spend less time finding food and exercising than the farmers that replaced them.

I've seen it for myself back in the day and with mates who are mad exercise types. When I used to cycle in a club, the touring folks who could put huge miles under their saddles varied a lot in weight. There were a couple of pretty big people. While they exercised like demons on paper, they also ate a lot more. Even Tour de France professionals eat very disciplined diets and eat less than you might imagine considering the near unbelievable workload. Yea they can go through 5000 calories a stage, but considering most normal enough sized people can munch through 3000 calories a day while driving a desk you can see the problem and the latter for the most part aren't balancing their diet to within an inch of their lives like pro cyclists.

Micky Dolenz · 09-08-2012 03:25PM

IZEVAL wrote: »

Real or not, Irish women's noses will be smugly in the air. Be they 50kg or 500kg.

Mod

We'll cut to the chase here, banned for this and other comments.

dark crystal · 09-08-2012 03:26PM

Shryke wrote: »

Plenty of people have gluten intolerance without knowing it. Others have IBS or are lactose intolerant. Some people are allergic to the hormones put into chicken. It's not clean cut.

Go back 20 years and all these allergies and intolerances seemed far less prevelant.

Not claiming to be a nutritional expert at all, but I don't remember people being so intolerant to food years ago. Perhaps we're living in an age where more preservatives are used than before, I don't know. I just think it's sad to see so many people deny themselves basic foodstuffs like bread, cheese, milk and grains nowadays when there seemed little harm (and indeed great benefit) in eating them before.

swimming in a sea · 09-08-2012 03:28PM

wilkie2006 wrote: »

I absolutely agree that a tax should be levied on all fast-food, sweets, etc. However, the revenue it generates shouldn't go towards the national debt - it needs to be spent on subsidising healthier foods and teaching people how to cook properly.

has it been proven that tax on cigs has worked?

I'd have a feeling any fat-tax would just go into a black hole of government purse like the carbon tax. Healthy food would not be subsidised as for teaching people to cook, there is a cooking program on every 30mins on TV.

dirtyden · 09-08-2012 03:28PM

BraziliaNZ wrote: »

Isn't porridge good for you in lots of ways? I eat it most mornings and I'm in good nick

Glad to hear your in such good nick

09-08-2012 03:32PM

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

Nope. All grains are unhealthy

Absolute bull there is any amount of information out there of how healthy it is to start the day with grains, you couldn't be eating anything better than a bowl of porridge, weetabix or multigrain muesli etc in the morning. Gives you loads of energy and fills you up.

If you do enough digging you will find a way to call anything unhealthy. Fruit sure that's full of sugar, Eggs: "sure they are full of fat", Dairy products: "Oh we were not designed to eat dairy" etc etc etc etc. Mostly nonsense taken out of context or ignoring large benefits which well outweigh small negatives.

Esoteric_ · 09-08-2012 03:36PM

From what I've seen even in the last, say, 6-7 years, there is definitely an increase in overweight people.

When I was in 6th year in school (2005-6), we had one morbidly obese person, one chubby person (me, I wasn't much overweight though) and the rest were either too thin (I'm talking size 0 and smaller) or healthy weights.

Fast forward a few years and my youngest sister is going into third year. About one third of her classmates are overweight or obese from what I've seen, although she's a skinny little thing herself. They don't do sports if they don't want to, and the really overweight ones sit out of PE because they're too self conscious to exercise. :rolleyes:

Also, the question about running marathons/5ks doesn't have an awful lot to do with weight really. I'm overweight (my BMI is 29.4) and I run 5ks easily, because I trained for them. That said, my BMI was over 40 a few years ago so I did lose a lot of weight initially when I started running, just not so much anymore. :pac:

jan shyr · 09-08-2012 03:37PM

+1000. While people are busy believing the BS of avoid fat, their waistlines and overall health are going south because of highly sweetened "fat free" foods. It's not just weight gain. Sugar rich diets hit the whole body. People with higher blood sugar age more rapidly, look older and have more damaged bodies prone to more illnesses, regardless of weight(skinny people can become type 2 diabetics too).

Wasn't fat-free or low-fat adopted by food companies to sell their product and people being too stupid to realise that fat-free doesn't mean its calorie status is low. Same with diet drinks like diet coke which is retarded considering normal drinks (not sports one) have little carbohydrates.

09-08-2012 03:41PM

jan shyr wrote: »

Wasn't fat-free or low-fat adopted by food companies to sell their product and people being too stupid to realise that fat-free doesn't mean its calorie status is low. Same with diet drinks like diet coke which is retarded considering normal drinks (not sports one) have little carbohydrates.

Carbs are quite high in normal soft drinks. A can of coke has nearly as many carbs are a 62g serving of rice.

Is the Obesity Epidemic fact or fiction?

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