Obesity crisis in Ireland Mod Note post 1

There was an experiment in a school district in the UK.

They removed the soft drinks and sweet machines from a few schools and replaced them with water fountains and left them in others.

After a year the kids in the schools with the soft drinks and sweets machines were on average something like half a stone heavier than the kids from the kids from the schools with water fountains at 9 years old and there was a linear progression up to 14 years old where it scaled year on year to about 1.5 stone difference between them.

1.5 stone bigger over 5 years is insane. If that progression kept on the majority end up clinically obese by early adulthood.

Ardillaun wrote: »

BMI is a quick and rough guide for average, not particularly athletic people. Any highly muscular person will get a misleading result.

The cause of our obesity epidemic seems to lie mainly on the intake side and there’s a fair bit of evidence accumulating that the biggest culprit there is sugar. For the first time in history, we can eat calorie dense food all day as we watch our screens. Personally, I think I have made a minor breakthrough with porridge. One bowl made with milk, banana and no added sugar (maple syrup is one of my many weaknesses) can last me until my evening veggies. I’m beginning to taste the sugar in bread, some salad dressing and all sorts of items now in the same way that salt in food become obvious when I stopped pouring it on.

Gotta say, I’ve always found porridge absolutely useless at keeping hunger at bay. I’d make it with full-fat milk, weight out a level of oats that would keep it with a good calorie range for my height in addition to the milk and 5g of maple syrup I’d add. I know you might say omit the 5g of syrup and add 5g of oats instead but I tried that and, nope, I’d still be ravenous by mid-morning. I’d basically need a lot of porridge to fill me, way above the calories I should be eating for breakfast. And I don’t really like porridge to boot. If it had filled me up though, I’d overlook that and eat it anyway. But because it didn’t really fill me, porridge was out.

You know what filled me? Just a bowl of full-fat Greek yoghurt and 5g maple. I’d want the 500g tub of yoghurt to last the week, so 100g full-fat yoghurt and 5g of maple syrup with a cup of tea. Then tea at tea-break around 11am with maybe a purple Snack or tea cake depending on how my meals were looking for the rest of the day, but I wouldn’t be ravenous by tea-break the way I was after eating porridge for breakfast.

I agree with you that sugar is the enemy in that it is so easy to eat way too much of it. But I found when I was losing weight, I could have small doses of it. For example, I kept away from anything marked low-fat and I’m an advocate for using full-fat dairy products (I make an exceptipn for low-fat milk because no crap is added to substitute the removed fat and some people genuinely prefer low-fat milk to full-fat) but because I was vigilant about sugar intake most of the time and carefully watched my portion sizes (my digital kitchen scales are my God), I didn’t feel guilty about putting my 5g of syrup in my yoghurt and having a spoon of sugar in my tea. It didn’t stop me losing weight at a sensible rate of 1-2 lbs a week.

If you are super lazy you can always get frozen already chopped onions in a bag from Tesco never used them myself but could be useful and for garlic you can get already crushed garlic in the herbs and spices section.

joeguevara wrote: »

Problem is I’d prefer all the issues that obesity brings instead of eating lentils regularly. Also a big issue is putting forward food that tastes revolting as a way of losing weight. People can’t keep it up and then regain more.

Better labeling of calories and preparation is key.

One thing that shows how people really are so oblivious about calorie content is a conversation I had with my dad. He was complaining that he was eating so healthily but hadn’t lost even a lb in three weeks. I knew something was up so next morning I joined him for breakfast. What he thought was ultra healthy (and it was) granola, yoghurt, blueberries, whole grain toast, large glass of orange juice and a grapefruit added up to some ridiculous amount of calories like 1400. When I said that that breakfast was equivalen to nearly 2/3s of his daily calorie allowance he wouldn’t believe me. He equated healthy food to near zero calories.

He still believed that fat was the evil that he had learned as a kid. When it was all explained and had a plan he found it easy to lose weight.

Yeah, my dad just does not get calories at all. He seems to think that healthy foods should contain basically no calories. I was telling him before that oily fish like mackerel and salmon are quite calorie-dense and he was shocked. He was like “I shouldn’t be eating those so!”. And I said “No, they are healthy and good for you, all you need to do is not eat a massive portion of them.” And he has also made statements like “Sure, potatoes have no calories!”. Erm, yes they do, father. He’ll eat a mound of potatoes but be proud that he didn’t put butter on them (he also has the drummed-into-him fear of fat). I’d rather much less spuds that I can add a bit of butter to, pops! And he thinks that dried fruits are no calories when they are actually quite calorie-dense per 100g. Just does not get calories at all.

And I totally agree re: lentils. They do nothing for me. It’s very easy to eat a sensible portion of rice, potato or pasta. There is this market for things like lentils and quinoa even though it’s as easy to overeat those as the more traditional carbs we eat here in Ireland. And the West’s lust for quinoa is pushing up the price of it in South American countries where it is the staple carbohydrate. Just don’t eat a mound of potatoes and pasta, people!

RHJ wrote: »

Whatever happened to the idea from a few years ago of putting Calories on restaurant menus?
I've only been to one restaurant (in Letterkenny in the shopping centre) that had them next to each food item. I thought it would be an excellent idea for those who watch their Calories.

Because you wouldn’t order half of what’s on the menu if you saw just how many calories were in it.

It looks like the idea of putting Calories on menus is back on the table; of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Dial Hard wrote: »

I'm marginally lower on the new one than the old one - 22.94 V 23.02.

And I plugged in the numbers for a few hypothetical scenarios for really tall and really short people and, honestly, there was very little difference between the new and old BMI calculators. That says to me that the advice to use the old, more widely use BMI calculator as a general guideline is still sound. My healthy weight range shifts downward only about 3 lbs at both ends using the new calculator.