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Monbiot: increase in obesity due to food industry
Replies
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I read that, too. I was going to start a thread on it, thanks for saving me the trouble.
The article claims we're eating and drinking almost 400 fewer calories per day. It says more if them are from sugar, which prevents our appetite inhibitors from working, so we eat more. But we just went over how we eat less.
How did this make it past an editor??13 -
He’s taking self-reported data as evidence that average calorie intake has fallen since the 70’s, but ignores evidence from the same source that suggests fat/carbs/sugar consumption has also fallen (or at least hasn’t changed significantly).
Classic cherry-picking to fit his bias.
Like most of his writing, this is clickbait for the ever-so-concerned middle class “liberals” who want to control what (generally other) people eat.
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NorthCascades wrote: »I read that, too. I was going to start a thread on it, thanks for saving me the trouble.
The article claims we're eating and drinking almost 400 fewer calories per day. It says more if them are from sugar, which prevents our appetite inhibitors from working, so we eat more. But we just went over how we eat less.
How did this make it past an editor??
What's an editor?
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NorthCascades wrote: »I read that, too. I was going to start a thread on it, thanks for saving me the trouble.
The article claims we're eating and drinking almost 400 fewer calories per day. It says more if them are from sugar, which prevents our appetite inhibitors from working, so we eat more. But we just went over how we eat less.
How did this make it past an editor??
What's an editor?
Optional, apparently.7 -
I get it but at the same times, even when I was 250 pounds I knew that I was making bad food choices. Even before I knew about calories my body would tell me what felt good and bad to eat.
I love to eat dessert, sweets, bread, fried things, pasta, etc it taste amazing. But after i'm done eating (The usually massive portion from restaurant, store bought etc...) I feel sleepy, stuffed, I have a hard time diggesting, etc.
And when I make my own food,like a fruit crumble instead of a fried donnuts for dessert, tomato based pasta instead of creamed based, etc. I don't struggle as much to digest it all. And when I make just regulare meat-potatoe-veggie meal, it's just easy. Easy to make, to eat, to digest...
Humans know instinctivelly what we can eat, what's easier to digest, what makes you feel the most energetic... we just choose to ignore it often.9 -
[quote="mariluny;c-42480619"Humans know instinctivelly what we can eat, what's easier to digest, what makes you feel the most energetic... we just choose to ignore it often.[/quote]
I think you're right, but I also think very many people have forgotten how to listen to the cues their bodies give them. Take hunger, for example. Most people don't even know anymore, what real hunger feels like. We get cravings and confuse them with hunger, and so we overeat. It takes the knowledge of what is happening and the will to truly deal with what your body might be telling you to change that. Stuffing your pie-hole is soooo much easier and more satifiying short-term.
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livingleanlivingclean wrote: »I'm sure I've seen a gadget which enables placing a filling in something, I think it was part of my icing set, a very long nozzle, then you can choose your own lower calorie filling. (I've not seen it for years, giggle)
I use an apple corer to pull a chunk out of cupcakes, then fill it and cover in icing. Or bake stuff into the centre (caramel, chocolate spread or jam... Mmm)
Baking a little cube of cream cheese in the center works swell, too.4 -
jdubois5351 wrote: »Take hunger, for example. Most people don't even know anymore, what real hunger feels like. We get cravings and confuse them with hunger, and so we overeat.
It is never good to generalize. (see what I did there) but this is true for me. When I have been counting my calories and logging in MFP it took months of eating very carefully and losing extra weight before I got to a place where being a couple hours late on eating, or not getting a sufficient amount of calories in a meal, I began to experience hunger. Being 60 lbs overweight, I don't think I really have experience hunger in a couple of years. On the one hand, it is good to be me (evolutionarily speaking) on the other hand there are consequences of this access and abundance. 400 kcal everyday for every is pretty sweet for survival, but not for thriving.
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This was a good read.
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NorthCascades wrote: »I read that, too. I was going to start a thread on it, thanks for saving me the trouble.
The article claims we're eating and drinking almost 400 fewer calories per day. It says more if them are from sugar, which prevents our appetite inhibitors from working, so we eat more. But we just went over how we eat less.
How did this make it past an editor??
What's an editor?
Excellent point. Unfortunately.2 -
NorthCascades wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »I read that, too. I was going to start a thread on it, thanks for saving me the trouble.
The article claims we're eating and drinking almost 400 fewer calories per day. It says more if them are from sugar, which prevents our appetite inhibitors from working, so we eat more. But we just went over how we eat less.
How did this make it past an editor??
What's an editor?
Excellent point. Unfortunately.
In 2000 I wrote an piece on the dangers of trusting information without sourcing or editing. I used the example of Pierre Salinger in regards to his investigation of TWA flight 800. This respected journalist fell prey to the lure of conspiratorial theories and lost a career because of righteous zeal. I hope that someone saves me from the same fate and hope I have the wisdom to listen to them at that time.7 -
Zeal is a hard thing to get over. It just feels so good.
This forum has changed my mind about some health and diet related things, for what it's worth. I was raised by hippies, and brought up with the idea that certain foods were "good" and others were "bad." It's a hard thing to shake. Really doesn't help to have respected newspapers running stories about how it isn't eating too many calories that makes you fat, it's evil sugar, sprung on an unwitting public by ruthless corporate henchmen. But a story like that just lines up with so many things that people feel zealous about. So all this talking we do, some good comes out of it.
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Sugar being problematic is nothing new. Barbra Cartland was recorded in 1968 saying the very same thing, even quoting Prof Judkin. it may seem more logical in the minds of regular people for fats to be stored as fat more easily, when the white stuff has to go through additional bodily processing to present it for storage.
its not necessarily any food being bad, its too much, for that one person which means its best taken at a reduced level.11 -
NorthCascades wrote: »Zeal is a hard thing to get over. It just feels so good.
This forum has changed my mind about some health and diet related things, for what it's worth. I was raised by hippies, and brought up with the idea that certain foods were "good" and others were "bad." It's a hard thing to shake. Really doesn't help to have respected newspapers running stories about how it isn't eating too many calories that makes you fat, it's evil sugar, sprung on an unwitting public by ruthless corporate henchmen. But a story like that just lines up with so many things that people feel zealous about. So all this talking we do, some good comes out of it.
I note one key error many make - this being the natural state of man. Ours is war. Peace is abnormal and takes tremendous effort. This is only achieved through discussion.
We stop talking, we revert to our primal selves...and we all lose.
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Obviously you are eating too much if you have become obese. I get what the video is getting at, but if you aren't eating too much, you won't become overweight.2
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George Monbiot looks at the increase in obesity in the last four decades and concludes that it isn't that people are eating more, have less activity, or lack willpower. He puts the blame on the food industry. Article has lots of interesting links, including one on the use of subliminal scents to manipulate us.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/15/age-of-obesity-shaming-overweight-people
Possible, but I have to note one experience with subliminal messages that were piped into a now-defunct "department store" back in the early 80s left me with an incredible urge to SHOPLIFT. I was in my early 20's or some such, and really had a strong urge to walk off with stuff that really did not interest me. I rather freaked out, and left the place as fast as I could, without even purchasing the item I'd gone in to get. Not long later I heard about subliminal messages being embedded into the "muzak"... since I loathed the "muzak", the message apparently got reversed in my mind to : STEAL, Baby, STEAL. TAKE!!!
So.. I am curious about subliminal scents. Some few years before that, I waited for the bus back to college campus outside a bakery. If the weather outside was inclement, I and others waited inside. I learned early and quickly that the aromas were wonderful, but that I just wasn't quite so interested in the actual taste. I was satiated there on aroma alone, no need to buy and eat. (The owners of the establishment probably hated me...)10 -
cmriverside wrote: »So eat less processed food. Ta Da :drinker:
Shocker that a company would manipulate its products to make them more palatable, more delicious, so more people would buy them and that company would make more money.
Sales and Marketing 101.
Yes, this worked well for the tobacco industry too. I think back to my mother bringing home margarine because it is so much better for us. I guess I am for companies having freedom to adjust food to make it better tasting and profitable. I also see the people that are possibly lured in to a way of eating that can greatly diminish their health. I just can't seem to reconcile to two points.8 -
No. The rise in obesity coincides with the government subsidising grains then faking a study to justify pushing more grains in one's diet.10
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