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What new or revised public policy/law would make it easier for people to maintain a healthy weight?

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Replies

  • cayenne_007
    cayenne_007 Posts: 671 Member
    The last thing we need is additional legislation - what's wrong with expecting people to take responsibility for themselves?

    It's trickier in some restaurants but if you will use some common sense, it's doable. When buying groceries at the store - read the labels (including serving size). The information is out there but you have to want it.
  • cayenne_007
    cayenne_007 Posts: 671 Member
    ceiswyn wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    ceiswyn wrote: »
    mcfly216 wrote: »
    ceiswyn wrote: »
    mcfly216 wrote: »
    Not a thing, we have enough laws and regulations as it is. Generally a restaurant is going to have a meal higher in calories than you can make at home. Humans managed thousands of years without being obese. No nuntrion labels, no macro counting they got by. If you can’t manage your weight (excluding medical reasons) that’s on you. One meal at a restaurant isn’t going to cause obesity.

    ...no convenience stores, no chocolate bars, no cake or cookies, no ice cream, no restaurants, no modern fruits, vegetables and grains, no fatty meats, no food without walking miles to hunt or gather...

    ...sorry, what was your point again?

    The point is no one is forcing you to purchase those items. A rational thinking person knows that if they eat fried chicken everyday they will gain weight. On top of that nearly all of the things you listed have nutrition info available to a majority of the world.

    Nobody is ‘forcing’ anyone to purchase those items, but humans evolved to deal with food scarcity, not abundance. As a result we have all sorts of inbuilt mechanisms to try to make sure we eat enough (eg hunger) but no similar drives to avoid overeating tasty high-calorie food. And you just can’t willpower 24/7.

    So once you’ve finished telling fat people that everything is their own fault, do you have anything to offer that’s actually helpful?

    Your firat phraae 'nobody is forcing anyone to purchase those items" is correct.

    IMO, the rest of the post regarding evolution, etc pretty much excuses for lack of personal eesponsibility.

    Not going to fix a problem if one does not admit one is there.

    Well, in that case nothing anyone can do is gonna change a thing. If it’s 100% personal responsibility, might as well just let fat people be fat and stop any kind of efforts to help ‘em.[/quote

    You can't help someone that isn't motivated to make a change - it has to be their idea. All the information is readily available but they have to do the work.

    I can't think of a single overweight friend that I have that doesn't know what they need to change to lose weight - it's just not important enough to them to stay consistent and do the work. One of my good friends is really heavy -she knows eating sugar and junk food doesn't help and yet she still does it because she enjoys it. I love her to pieces but there's nothing anyone else can do to help her - it's on her.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,950 Member
    hotel4dogs wrote: »
    Sorry if someone already said this, but it would be really helpful if manufacturers were obliged to use REALISTIC portion sizes in the nutrition information.
    One serving of ice cream, frozen yogurt, etc., is 1/2 cup. I actually measured it the other day, and it's downright laughable. It's just a few teaspoons full. I read somewhere, probably on MFP, that most people consume 4-5 servings of ice cream thinking that they're consuming one.
    Same thing with cereal, some serving sizes are 1/2 to 3/4 cup. I wouldn't have been overweight in the first place if 1/2 cup of cereal filled me up. Same source (MFP?) said most people consume 2-3 servings of cereal, thinking it's one.

    A few? By definition, a half cup is 24 teaspoons.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    I ate 1/2 cup (measured by the gram weight) regularly (as in 2-3 times a week) while I was losing weight (I'd still be doing it, but for some reason I've lost my sweet tooth lately, I'm sure I will again). I thought it was a quite reasonable serving.

    No one consumes 4-5 servings (2-2.5 cups) thinking they are eating a serving. A pint of ice cream is 4 servings if a serving is .25 cups (apparently it is or will be changed to 1/3 cup, but I still would usually eat a half cup). Even when I was fat and didn't count cals I wouldn't normally eat a pint. I'd eat about half a pint and look at the back sometimes and do the math (2xcals for a serving). Or sometimes I wouldn't. Sure, I did occasionally eat a pint, it was an indulgence, but I knew that was overeating, not a serving. To eat 5 servings would be more than a complete pint. So no, I reject the claim that a "reasonable" portion size would be a whole pint or a pint + 1/4 pint. That's not even a restaurant size, and everyone knows restaurant sizes are very often huge and unrealistic.

    Also, it's extremely easy to see what a defined size is -- why try to normalize enormous and excessive portions by defining them as a serving? Bad idea!
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,950 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    I ate 1/2 cup (measured by the gram weight) regularly (as in 2-3 times a week) while I was losing weight (I'd still be doing it, but for some reason I've lost my sweet tooth lately, I'm sure I will again). I thought it was a quite reasonable serving.

    No one consumes 4-5 servings (2-2.5 cups) thinking they are eating a serving. A pint of ice cream is 4 servings if a serving is .25 cups (apparently it is or will be changed to 1/3 cup, but I still would usually eat a half cup). Even when I was fat and didn't count cals I wouldn't normally eat a pint. I'd eat about half a pint and look at the back sometimes and do the math (2xcals for a serving). Or sometimes I wouldn't. Sure, I did occasionally eat a pint, it was an indulgence, but I knew that was overeating, not a serving. To eat 5 servings would be more than a complete pint. So no, I reject the claim that a "reasonable" portion size would be a whole pint or a pint + 1/4 pint. That's not even a restaurant size, and everyone knows restaurant sizes are very often huge and unrealistic.

    Also, it's extremely easy to see what a defined size is -- why try to normalize enormous and excessive portions by defining them as a serving? Bad idea!

    A pint of ice cream is 8 servings if a serving is .25 cups. Did you mean .5 cup?
  • CipherZero
    CipherZero Posts: 1,418 Member
    Where do you draw the line? Mom & pop restaurants aren't required to post the calories & a lot of the edible cookie dough brands (looked at a few brands online that I had wanted to try) & I assume most mom & pop sweet treat makers don't list the calorie info online or at their bakery.

    I don’t buy the line of mom & pops places can’t list the calories. They know what’s going into what the make, otherwise they have no way operating at a profit of when to reorder product.

    A cheeseburger, chicken parm, and fritttas have an ingredient list, same as the food I make at home.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,023 Member
    edited July 2019
    CipherZero wrote: »
    Where do you draw the line? Mom & pop restaurants aren't required to post the calories & a lot of the edible cookie dough brands (looked at a few brands online that I had wanted to try) & I assume most mom & pop sweet treat makers don't list the calorie info online or at their bakery.

    I don’t buy the line of mom & pops places can’t list the calories. They know what’s going into what the make, otherwise they have no way operating at a profit of when to reorder product.

    A cheeseburger, chicken parm, and fritttas have an ingredient list, same as the food I make at home.

    The thing is, commercial restaurants that list calorie info aren't just putting a recipe into MFP and publishing that. The recipes are sent out to a lab to test. They hire someone to formulate their menus, ingredients, and determine which items can be called out as light or a healthy choice or whatever.

    If I'm an individual running a restaurant, I'm probably just barely getting by and struggling to find good help, pay them decently, and keep my business in the black. The last thing I need is to publish nutrition info that I have no training in but am assuming I'm figuring correctly, make a mistake, and have a customer question it or even try to sue me over deceptive info or something ridiculous like that.

    And food service is one of the roughest businesses to turn a profit in. If they are, it is usually slim profit margins with long hours and limited (if any) time off. And figuring how much product to keep on hand in order to have enough to feed whatever random number of people happen to come in, without wasting money on unused food you'll have to throw out, is difficult and often leads to substitutions and ingredient proportions changing on the fly. Small restaurants go out of business all the time.

    I've seen other people's diaries here. I wouldn't trust some random person who owns and runs a small burger joint to figure the calories correctly anyway.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    edited July 2019
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    I ate 1/2 cup (measured by the gram weight) regularly (as in 2-3 times a week) while I was losing weight (I'd still be doing it, but for some reason I've lost my sweet tooth lately, I'm sure I will again). I thought it was a quite reasonable serving.

    No one consumes 4-5 servings (2-2.5 cups) thinking they are eating a serving. A pint of ice cream is 4 servings if a serving is .25 cups (apparently it is or will be changed to 1/3 cup, but I still would usually eat a half cup). Even when I was fat and didn't count cals I wouldn't normally eat a pint. I'd eat about half a pint and look at the back sometimes and do the math (2xcals for a serving). Or sometimes I wouldn't. Sure, I did occasionally eat a pint, it was an indulgence, but I knew that was overeating, not a serving. To eat 5 servings would be more than a complete pint. So no, I reject the claim that a "reasonable" portion size would be a whole pint or a pint + 1/4 pint. That's not even a restaurant size, and everyone knows restaurant sizes are very often huge and unrealistic.

    Also, it's extremely easy to see what a defined size is -- why try to normalize enormous and excessive portions by defining them as a serving? Bad idea!

    A pint of ice cream is 8 servings if a serving is .25 cups. Did you mean .5 cup?

    Yeah, I did mean 1/2 cup (as I said at the beginning of the post), as that's the standard serving size. The proposed new one is 2/3 cup. My confusion or typo later in the post!

    (Curious -- were you actually really confused given the post as a whole.)
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,950 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    I ate 1/2 cup (measured by the gram weight) regularly (as in 2-3 times a week) while I was losing weight (I'd still be doing it, but for some reason I've lost my sweet tooth lately, I'm sure I will again). I thought it was a quite reasonable serving.

    No one consumes 4-5 servings (2-2.5 cups) thinking they are eating a serving. A pint of ice cream is 4 servings if a serving is .25 cups (apparently it is or will be changed to 1/3 cup, but I still would usually eat a half cup). Even when I was fat and didn't count cals I wouldn't normally eat a pint. I'd eat about half a pint and look at the back sometimes and do the math (2xcals for a serving). Or sometimes I wouldn't. Sure, I did occasionally eat a pint, it was an indulgence, but I knew that was overeating, not a serving. To eat 5 servings would be more than a complete pint. So no, I reject the claim that a "reasonable" portion size would be a whole pint or a pint + 1/4 pint. That's not even a restaurant size, and everyone knows restaurant sizes are very often huge and unrealistic.

    Also, it's extremely easy to see what a defined size is -- why try to normalize enormous and excessive portions by defining them as a serving? Bad idea!

    A pint of ice cream is 8 servings if a serving is .25 cups. Did you mean .5 cup?

    Yeah, I did mean 1/2 cup (as I said at the beginning of the post), as that's the standard serving size. The proposed new one is 2/3 cup. My confusion or typo later in the post!

    (Curious -- were you actually really confused given the post as a whole.)

    I didn't know which number was the error, the 8 or the .25 (or perhaps the word pint or cups). I wouldn't characterize that as confusion on my part -- I knew there was an error, but I didn't know where it was, so I knew there was a failure in communication, and it wasn't on my end. I sought clarification. If it makes you feel better to call me confused, that's fine.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    edited July 2019
    Um, if you were actually confused (i.e., unsure as to my meaning) it was my fault, so not sure what "if it makes you feel better" is doing here. I did initially say .5. The .25 was a screw up on my part due to a serving being 1/4 of a pint.

    I am skeptical whether you were actually unclear as to my meaning and thus wondered if rather than clarification you were interested in a gotcha, but perhaps I am being uncharitable. Anyway, I hope it's now clear, and I've done my mea culpa.
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    ceiswyn wrote: »
    mcfly216 wrote: »
    Not a thing, we have enough laws and regulations as it is. Generally a restaurant is going to have a meal higher in calories than you can make at home. Humans managed thousands of years without being obese. No nuntrion labels, no macro counting they got by. If you can’t manage your weight (excluding medical reasons) that’s on you. One meal at a restaurant isn’t going to cause obesity.

    ...no convenience stores, no chocolate bars, no cake or cookies, no ice cream, no restaurants, no modern fruits, vegetables and grains, no fatty meats, no food without walking miles to hunt or gather...

    ...sorry, what was your point again?

    With the exception of convenience stores, all of those things have existed for centuries, at least.
  • ceiswyn
    ceiswyn Posts: 2,253 Member
    edited July 2019
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    ceiswyn wrote: »
    mcfly216 wrote: »
    Not a thing, we have enough laws and regulations as it is. Generally a restaurant is going to have a meal higher in calories than you can make at home. Humans managed thousands of years without being obese. No nuntrion labels, no macro counting they got by. If you can’t manage your weight (excluding medical reasons) that’s on you. One meal at a restaurant isn’t going to cause obesity.

    ...no convenience stores, no chocolate bars, no cake or cookies, no ice cream, no restaurants, no modern fruits, vegetables and grains, no fatty meats, no food without walking miles to hunt or gather...

    ...sorry, what was your point again?

    With the exception of convenience stores, all of those things have existed for centuries, at least.

    Centuries is not the same as 'thousands of years'. And even if chocolate bars and ice cream existed in the 1700s (did they really?) , I'm preeetty confident they were not widely available for everyday consumption by the masses...

    So here's a question. If you believe that the modern food-rich environment has nothing to do with obesity, what is your explanation for why obesity is a modern phenomenon?
  • rosebarnalice
    rosebarnalice Posts: 3,488 Member
    I think we have enough laws for the most part. As far as policy goes, I'd like to see communities develop infrastructure that promotes a healthy lifestyle.

    THIS. We need to design at the human scale not the automotive scale. We need to mandate parks, bike lanes, and sidewalks. We need to encourage cluster developments where housing is located near desirable destinations such as grocery stores and entertainment so that it is possible to walk or ride our bikes to those destinations.