This presentation is quite an informative read and realistically
reflects on the current connections between FDA and Food and Drug producers.
It also shakes somewhat the concepts of what a normal diet is.
Only confirms me that to avoid the processed food and eat like my grand mother
cooked for me in a full but balanced way is not a problem, even when this
includes full fat milk, full fat cheese, potatoes fried in bacon grease etc
and rather fruits and vegetables then sugar loaded treats.
I never understood why a nation can be so much addicted to sweet tasting white
flour bread since this bread has the worst glycine index. Sweet stuff makes you
from childhood like it more no matter if it is good or not.
After watching all five videos I can conclude the following.
Sugar is not evil. Sugar, as a molecule, does not know the difference between right or wrong, and thus cannot wilfully inflict harm upon others. From this we can also conclude that sugar is not good either.
This simply reinforces that a normal diet is more then logical
and all those fat free sugar free crap can be ignored.
One just needs to know how your body really works and understand
that too much sugar will cause serious problems.
Same like with alcohol.
This also reinforces that you need to take what the FDA says or drug
companies with a grain of salt and not believe everything.
Most of the time I saw in most ads on TV about the new cholesterol drug
or what ever rather an attempt to make money then rather to educate people
about how to prevent for example getting diabetes.
Better make money then helping people - kinda sad.
Why is there sugar in bacon, why is there sugar in liver sausage.
Point is that foods in the US have a much higher sugar content and while not
only getting used to it, you will crave it since you grow up with it.
But instead of forcing the food industry to take out what we do not need
because in a mass effect it impacts society heavily we rather say everybody
should eat what they want.
Fact is your money for health insurance and tax also covers those expenses
of people who need extra medical help because they could not control them self, or did not
know better what not to eat.
Anyway this movie posting was not meant to start a rant
but more to show how sugar can effect a body and why for example people who are overweight
need to eat.
It is kinda dramatic because you mess up your body without knowing it.
I cut out carbs, sugar, grains, and pretty much doubled my animal fat intake, and dropped 2 belt sizes without exercise. People think eating fat = you get fat, but its the insulin response to sugar that is the culprit. Matter of fact, they used to, and still may, use insulin to help people with eating disorders put on weight.
There was a pretty-sobering commercial that aired about a year ago, which featured people pouring out rather massive amounts of sugar. And, as it turns out, the amounts of sugar that were represented in those commercials was … accurate.
The bugaboo …is “high-fructose corn syrup.” A single can of soda, for example, is equivalent to about eighteen teaspoons of raw sugar.
Nature, as we all should know, is not a particularly “sweet” place, except at harvest-time when the sugar cane is in, or when you manage to raid a beehive. But our society is so chock-full of sugar that our pancreatic systems are … overwhelmed. Pushed well-beyond their design limits. Exhausted.
Wanna feel better? (Much better?) Cut out the soft-drinks… completely. Stop eating the foods that list high-fructose corn syrup anywhere in their list of ingredients … which will re-introduce you to those sections of your local grocery store which don’t require refrigeration.
I used to quaff six or seven sodas a day without thinking about it. I have not consumed a single can of soft-drinks in twenty-five years. They are utterly repulsive to me now.
I’ve been “clean” for about 2 years now - all I drink is water (and I’m very proud of that - it’s something that requires discipline).
For food, however, things are a little more complicated: as you implied, one has to read the labels, and understand the ingredients in order to make healthy choices.
Also, healthier food usually requires more elaborate preparation, and in a world where people are used to just popping something into the microwave, that required effort is yet another road-block to “healthier living through better diet”.
There is actually a very neat book by Michael Pollan, called “Food Rules” where the “rules” of healthy eating are condensed into: “Eat real food, mostly plants, not too much.”.
Sounds simple, but it’s quite difficult to follow: most people don’t have the time to read the labels, let alone spend additional time to prepare good meals.
Like those above, I’ve cut out soft drinks and stuck to water (occasionally smoothies if I can be arsed to make them) for over 3 years now. Don’t miss coke, and can’t stand the foul stuff. Now if only I could give up the copious amounts of coffee I drink…
Agreed, food is a lot harder. I do my best to cook from scratch, and mainly vegetarian over the last year. As Social said: the main issue is time, so I end up grabbing something quick and not so good from the shop on the way to work.
Though, I think eating well is made even harder by companies miss-marketing ‘healthy’ options misleading people into thinking it’s good for you. Like labels that say “Now less than 2% fat and reduced salt!” without mentioning the stupid amount of sugars, MSG, additives etc. Not to mention the number of dumb diets that mis-educate people about what to eat. Don’t know about the rest of the world, but in the UK there’s no end of women’s weekly magazines each with absurd diets and ideals of health.
Reading this thread and all, are you all seriously considering that we should almost always blame the food and those who make it for causing obesity rather than the countless people who lost the concept of active living, exercise, and moderation, for a sedentary lifestyle on couches and eating gallons of said food?
Part of it could be helped by way of cities offering more sidewalks and a better means of biking around town. Should we sue Microsoft because we lost important data on Windows due to errant key bashing that led to user error? The whole “blame the industry” thing seems to be very popular these days as people shift from the idea that they are responsible for what they do in their own life.
Indeed, one should accept responsibility for their life style choices. However, one can only make a choice with the information present. So companies providing false, misleading, hard-to-find information about their products are skewing the information the decision is based on.
The person who eats nothing but big macs and sits around is going to get fat, and it is mainly their fault for choosing to do so. However, if the big mac contained a big and clear label saying:
This burger contains well over the RDA of, well, everything! And if not consummed in moderation could cause obesity and future heart problems. This is not a substitute for a balanced meal, and is only really considered food due to a loose legal definition. On a side note, this burger has contributed to deforestation in the Amazon, resluting in global warming, animal and plant species extinction, interference in the Earth’s natural water recycling and reducing the Amzon’s indigenous population. Enjoy your meal and please use the bin on your way out.
Perhaps people would be able to make a more informed choice about what they eat, I know that the unhealthy-ness of MacD’s is well documented, it’s just an example.
A better example would be when I go to do some shopping and notice that WeightWatchers chicken kievs are being sold, packaged and marketed as the healthy alternative to regular kievs, they make a huge deal of the reduced fat content. So anyone walking by looking for a quick healthy option could easily grab that. What they fail to mention is the low grade processed meat, the high salt count, and other artifical flavourings used to compensate for the reduced fat. The reality is that it’s not the healthy option, they don’t tell you this so how is one to make in informed choice about eating healthly?
No one is arguing against individual responsibility - we are arguing against the total domination of the industry which makes it difficult to practice individual responsibility, by using intentionally deceptive marketing to render unhealthy food as healthy.
In fact, most of this thread is about people who are trying their best to make the right choices, in a system that was designed to subsidize the worst.
But, even though that’s horrible, it’s still not the most debilitating issue (as far as “personal freedom/choice” matters are concerned).
I mean there is something of an irony here: The ideology of “big business does what it wants - the individual chooses responsibly” resulted in an America where the former does just that, and where the latter has no time to think about the choices (which are fairly limited to begin with), because the work-hours are getting longer, and the pay remains flat (a steady trend since the mid 70s).
Without time to reflect, people are unable to make truly significant changes in their lives.
When you want something sweet, eat s-u-g-a-r. As in, “C12-H22-O11.” Absolutely no artificial sweeteners. Even Stevia. When your tongue tastes “something sweet,” your pancreas secretes insulin, and you need to be sure to give it a reasonable(!) amount of something that insulin can actually metabolize.)
Eat sweet-things in careful and deliberate moderation. Let your brain do its job.
Individual responsibility aside, food companies (in fact all business) should have the decency to act in a responsible way and produce wholesome food not s**t. The problem is that there’s no such thing as corporate responsibility or acountability. Hence why we’re paying with public cuts for the mistakes of a few bankers.
So in other words, if I get you right, despite what one may argue you still might just go the “blame the industry” route?
This assumes the majority of people are too stupid to discern between the types of advertising and know if the fast food business they’re going to will have food that may only be consumed in moderation and not say, on a daily basis, even after driving back and forth to eat such food for months without giving a second thought.
I would agree that there should be more information on the health facts of such food, but declaring war on the fast food industry (which might go as far as to ban fast food from certain areas) to protect the minority who make poor eating decisions at the expense of those who like having a burger now and then could be going too far, a tangent related to this might say that we should ban everything invented after 1900 because people have been known to do dumb things with just about every piece of tech, or just revert completely to a tribal lifestyle like in Avatar instead.
I would think a lot of people are smart enough to know that fast food items should be enjoyed only in moderation, we’re not lemmings, the majority of people are not dumb enough to have their decisions on what to eat made for them by the industry 365 days a year, people need to learn how to discern things and know how to make good eating choices.
On the actual subject of corporate responsibility though, while I’m in agreement that companies should be accountable for a certain level of things it shouldn’t be used in any way to completely remove or severely reduce the concept of personal accountability and responsibility altogether, the idea that the corporation is responsible should mainly be levied only if if there is virtually no way that it could be applied to the decision making, personal error, or naive thinking of the consumer. In other words the industry should not be solely blamed in the majority of cases and allegations.
Fast food is simply here to provide some pleasure food every now and then or you’re on a road trip or lunch break and you need something fast, most people don’t see them as the sole alternative to cooking, slower service restaraunts , and food markets.
Can we please stop posting in threads with controversial titles. I don’t like them because they usually are based on what the video calls “bad science” and really don’t make alot of sense. I mean, the content of this thread really doesn’t match its title (as I have shown in my first Post). If one were to start a thread on the effects of sugar on obesity, one should name it’s thread something along the lines of “sugar possibly the cause of obesity.” **With possibly in italics as the OP cannot say with certainty that sugar is the sole cause of obesity seeing how the OP has not conducted a study but only cites references (a single lecture nonetheless). It sort of pisses me off.
I will work this post out tomorrow when I am less drunk. I know it has shitloads of spelling erros and I know I shouldn’t be posting but I will fix this tomorrow. Have a good night (or day, if you’re in the US).
**or more correctly “An interesting lecture on the effects of etc.” as that is what the thread
No, it’s been known since the 1940’s that sugar has an effect on obesity, but they didn’t know the why until later when insulin was studied more. It’s biologically sound science.