I don't think there's anything wrong in reminding people that eating the entire bag of chips isn't the right thing to do.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
Shaming people and reminding people are two totally different things.
Do we have an obesity problem in this country? Yep. Is shaming people the way to get rid of it? Absolutely not.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
Oh, sure. That will work WONDERS. Wonder why no one thought of reminding someone that they shouldn't eat a whole bag of chips. Thank goodness we have the answer, now.
Posted by stilesbn (Member # 11809) on :
quote:Originally posted by Geraine: Shaming people and reminding people are two totally different things.
Do we have an obesity problem in this country? Yep. Is shaming people the way to get rid of it? Absolutely not.
While I agree with you, often times there is little to no difference between reminding and shaming. Especially when it comes to obesity. Bringing any attention to someones weight, even indirectly, is shameful in our culture.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Goodness, this makes perfect sense. There's already a dearth of shame among the obese about their own health and body image, and the amount of shame decreases the more obese they are. Therefore this makes perfect sense and isn't at all a justification for some people to do what they wanted to be doing already.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Has nobody head that depression can lead to over eating?
Posted by stilesbn (Member # 11809) on :
You know, thinking about this more, in some instances shaming people does work and it does it very effectively. Perhaps only where there is a lack of shame and the cost of change is much lower (like in the linked example of driving)?
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
I apologize, but this conversation reminded me of this:
If a guy smokes two packs a day, he's an idiot who deserves to be ridiculed. If he single handedly makes McDonald stockholders wealthy though, he's just a poor soul who needs our understanding.
Gotcha.
Posted by Tittles (Member # 12939) on :
Not to mention that there are actually pro-fat groups out there. Only reasonable to have a little pushback.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I'm pretty sure the "pro-fat" groups are the pushback against an entire society that shames and ostracizes fat people.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
As someone who used to be fat but managed to lose the weight when I was 17, I am totally pro-ostracism. I actually think the problem is that we aren't doing it well enough. We have to make people recognize that it's their fault, for the most part at least, and that it *is* bad.
Strider, that picture just made my day. (Not really, but I chuckled heartily.)
Posted by Tittles (Member # 12939) on :
Exactly, Jon. Nobody had a problem with ostracizing and shaming smokers, and those campaigns have made people healthier.
Although it'd probably be better to focus more on the shame and less on the ostracism. Probably makes it harder for someone to put the effort in to lose weight if their only friends are Ben and Jerry.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
So your basic position is that sure, we shame, ridicule, and ostracise fatties, but do we do it enough? Not a bit! Clearly, if fatsoes were forced to wear little turd-shaped patches of brown cloth on their clothes, so that goodthinkers could recognise them for the shitbags they are without having to endure the stress of actually looking at, ugh, fat, then pretty shortly they would all go on diets and the problem would be solved. But really, why stop there? We know how to make people thin, indeed skeletal: [strike]Concentration[/strike] Health camps! Just ship them off to eastern Kansas for a healthy summer of 1000-calorie diets and hard physical labour! It's a proven technique, in fact the concept is more than half a century old. Why hasn't our government taken this simple step towards a thin population?
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: Strider, that picture just made my day. (Not really, but I chuckled heartily.)
Glad you got a kick out of it.
I should also note, my posting of the picture is not an endorsement of either side of this debate.
Posted by Tittles (Member # 12939) on :
Again, it's similar to smoking. Society has to pick up the tab for lung cancer and COPD, and we took steps to lower those cases. The exploding obesity in this country is going to reap it's own crop of heart disease, diabetes, and choking to death on deep-fried Snickers bars. The public stance that obesity is unhealthy and undesirable, serves everyone. It helps those shamed into losing the weight, and it helps taxpayers in general.
And strawmen aside, a summer of hard physical labor on a 1000 calorie diet would do a lot of people good.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I say we start with the chronically stupid. Thanks for volunteering, tittles...
BTW, your smoking influences my health. Your fat doesn't.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Although it'd probably be better to focus more on the shame and less on the ostracism.
I am sincerely curious how you'd expect to achieve that, as ostracism is to my mind a necessary function of shaming.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
OK, clearly I'm not being clear. I didn't say we're not ostracizing fat people enough. I said we're not doing it WELL enough. We probably too it far too much, but we don't do it in the right ways so as to be effective. We just act like ***holes instead of concerned and morally disgusted beings. (I do think it's unethical for various reasons.)
Posted by LargeTuna (Member # 10512) on :
I'm going to counter with the opinion that we should be nicer to fat people. And people in general.
What I'm saying is that I like it when people are nice to each other.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
I agree, just in a paternalistic sort of way.
Edit: Not *just* paternalistic, mind you, I think that it is a serious waste of resources and makes the world worse as a result. The willingly obese are acting in an unethical fashion, and should be severely chastised for it. I am being nice by trying to improve their character.
I realize this is a touchy subject for some, but as someone who has been through it, I guess I just feel willing to be harsh. Yes, self control is hard, but sometimes things aren't easy.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
I feel like, although there's a bit of competition with the UK, the US is probably the most "pro-fat" country I've visited. So I'm curious about the idea that the US is particularly harsh on overweight people.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
You haven't "been through it," Jon. You were a fat kid for a few years.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: So I'm curious about the idea that the US is particularly harsh on overweight people.
Is that an idea that's been promoted here? It's possible, but if so I must have skimmed past it.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Search and highlight "our culture" or "we're" or "an entire society." I guess it could be possible that people are using inclusive definitions that cover the entire world, but usually on Hatrack, I usually read references as pertaining to the US or occasionally, the West.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Funny thing about overweight people...a person who is overweight because of medical conditions looks EXACTLY like one who is overweight for other reasons.
It's really not any of your business. Be disgusted if you want. I personally am disgusted by haughty, pompous, self-righteous morons...and regardless of if YOU are one, talking about this idiotic idea of shaming people due to their weight makes you SOUND like one.
Funny, how that parallels...
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: You haven't "been through it," Jon. You were a fat kid for a few years.
I weighed 289 pounds and was 5'10, from when I was 12 to 17-18. (Gained a few inches and lost over a hundred pounds since then). I wasn't just "the fat kid". I was morbidly obese.
Edit: I'm not trying to be a self-righteous asshole: I'm trying to be a selfish one. Food shortages are imminent, and there is massive environmental damage being done.
[ January 30, 2013, 11:42 PM: Message edited by: JonHecht ]
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tittles: And strawmen aside, a summer of hard physical labor on a 1000 calorie diet would do a lot of people good.
Indeed! Work will make them free from the chains of their awful, awful bodies!
Here's another idea: Math textbooks, clearly, are not doing enough to encourage the ideas of fitness and discipline. Perhaps we could write some problems along these lines?
quote:Treating heart attacks caused by the fat deposits in the veins of people with no goddam willpower costs society $100 billion per year. How many single-family homes, at $150000 each, could have been built instead for this money?
quote:Jenny guzzles two pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream every night. If the ice cream is 1000 calories per pint, and African children typically have a diet of 1500 calories daily, how many children is this fat pig selfishly starving to death by hogging all the dairy products for herself, assuming that 2000 calories is enough to maintain a healthy body weight?
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: I'm not trying to be a self-righteous asshole: I'm trying to be a selfish one.
No, you're being self-righteous...
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: Food shortages are imminent, and there is massive environmental damage being done.
Because you believe in this alarmism, you think it justifies that self-righteousness.
This is a common trend across many fields and many people.
If you convince yourself that there is some major, imminent, existential threat, then that makes it much easier to morally justify coercing/shaming/etc. people into doing whatever you think is needed.
It doesn't, though.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Because you believe in this alarmism, you think it justifies that self-righteousness.
Yes,Iamcrazy. Why bash gas guzzlers but condone this?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
The problem with a campaign of moral disgust is just how very, very few people are actually in a position of such moral authority as to be entitled to it.
Clearly some people, like the OP, are aside from interest in trolling the board interested in a justification for mockery. There's nothing quite like culturally sanctioned 'I'm better than you' to make one feel a height that they aren't entitled to, so it's not surprising he would be interested in it.
I'm quite a bit more surprised to hear this sort of talk from you, though, JH. I mean, it worked for you when you were 17...so it's a good idea? Somewhere there's an adult who was found locked in a cage by some social worker when they were a child who nonetheless managed to be a decent, contributing member of society later.
The problem with what must be called out as a profoundly stupid idea that shame and ostracism are effective tools for combating obesity is that they don't address the causes, and they don't deal with the real problem of what, exactly, you do when this shaming and ostracism leads someone to be a shut-in as 21st century society makes if not easy then considerably less difficult?
You're not going to find very many people who after being raised with good nutrition and exercise...hmm, values?...and examples in their childhood simply pivot to obesity and morbid obesity in adulthood. Geeze-it only takes a few moments of consideration to see how absurd this idea is. If people could be shamed skinny, why on Earth are there so many obese children?
Even if we accept another stupix, unsubstantiated notion-that society is somehow ambiguous on shaming obesity-it doesn't deal with the fact that it certainly hasn't been. The obesity in America today springs out of generations where shaming and ridicule *were* very common tools to handle obesity, and yet somehow it had steadily risen.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Because you believe in this alarmism, you think it justifies that self-righteousness.
Yes,Iamcrazy. Why bash gas guzzlers but condone this?
Woah, woah, woah... why would I bash gas guzzlers? Gas guzzlers provide a service!
But anyway, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with your links, man.
Food is scarce in an aboriginal community? Okay, sure, sounds plausble. They could probably use some more industrialization. That's tragic.
A paper by Paul "Mass Famine by the 1970s" Erlich, who's made more failed predictions about imminent collapse than anyone since Nostradamus? He's an idiot, and an alarmist. I'm not impressed.
And a public health company wants to frame the obesity discussion as overconsumption to better manipulate people? ... Right, that's the whole topic that you've brought up here. That's what you're doing. But that doesn't explain why it's a good thing to do.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
You're right. I've been too reactionary, and I don't think shaming is really the right way to go about this. I'd like to blame having a high fever, but that's not really why I posted the things that I did. I'm frustrated. I'm genuinely frustrated that people aren't taking a very serious problem seriously enough. That people are tolerating what I take to be morally dubious (at best) behavior makes me want to lash out. I guess this is how people who are pro-life feel. They believe that a constant stream of babies are being killed.
I don't believe I've made a post as inflammatory as this in a very long time, so that may go to show my particular concern about this issue. I didn't mean to offend anyone, but I'm sick of keeping my views about this to myself because it's not acceptable in polite company. Shaming probably isn't the right way to go about it, but the degree of tolerance for this sort of culture (the fact that people are willing to watch, never mind *enjoy*, Honey Boo Boo baffles me) is not right either. We need to find a middle ground.
I tried to get this across, but again clearly didn't do so well. I don't want us to insult the obese. I want it to be clear that they are reprobates, however, and that cumulatively devastating harm is not only being done to themselves (I don't care) but others as well (I care very much).
Edit: As for the aboriginal link, that was a mislink and has since been corrected.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
There is not now, nor has there ever been, anywhere that suffered a food shortage because of obesity. These wastes of food you're decrying? The food wouldn't have been produced if societies hadn't been built up around generating enormous surpluses of food and then wasting quite a bit of it (which is actually pretty interesting, considering for how much of our history food shortages have actually been a problem).
You need to rethink some of your fundamental assumptions, because to describe food shortages like this points to some profound ignorance.
Anyway, who exactly is condemning gas guzzlers? In the United States? Are you kidding me? Where did you hear that this is happening? Did someone complaining about someone driving a Hummer indicate a nationwide intifada against excessive fossil fuel consumption?
quote:I weighed 289 pounds and was 5'10, from when I was 12 to 17-18. (Gained a few inches and lost over a hundred pounds since then). I wasn't just "the fat kid". I was morbidly obese.
Here's the disconnect: do you imagine that the shaming and ostracism you describe as having been done to you was somehow unique to your own personal experience? I mean, surely you realize that whatever happened to you in junior and high school was almost certainly happening all over the country to children at that age, all the time.
Yet here we are, a nation with a serious health problem on our hands. See the flaw in your reasoning?
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
If one were to ask me what the worst problems are in the US today, obesity would surely make my top three. I think its a terrible trend that is just going to get worse.
But still, this doesn't seem (to me) to be the right kind of approach. Surely cultural changes are our best bet in the near term, but this one I can't see doing much good.
Honestly, I don't think much is going to help until medical science comes to the rescue. Some wonder pill that suppresses appetite without unbearable side-effects, or one that increases your resting metabolism. Perhaps a combo of drugs that does both.
Maybe even a genetic engineering approach that gives people the fantastic metabolism we all want (and which some of us had as teens). Of course, if food does get scarce for the western world, a slow metabolism becomes a good thing again. Perhaps a few genetic modifications that make nutrient rich foods taste amazing and calorie rich foods taste bad?
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
The reason I stopped being obese wasn't because of shaming, as I have acknowledged. A large part of it was because I recognized that what I was doing was immoral. The overconsumption leads to unnecessary use of medical and environmental resources (certain trace minerals in popular fertilizers *are* non-renewable). Many studies (they're easy enough to find, since you don't like the ones I choose) indicate that environment plays a significant role in whether someone will be obese, so let's change the environment.
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: I guess this is how people who are pro-life feel. They believe that a constant stream of babies are being killed.
Jon, I just wanted to pop back in to say I think this is an admirable bit of self-awareness. This is exactly what I was trying to get at.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:I tried to get this across, but again clearly didn't do so well. I don't want us to insult the obese. I want it to be clear that they are reprobates, however, and that cumulatively devastating harm is not only being done to themselves (I don't care) but others as well (I care very much).
I'm still not sure why obesity gets this...extra intensity? I mean, you feel (correctly) that it is one of the most serious problems facing our country. I absolutely agree. What would you say is the next most serious problem, in either direction? And does the scorn you feel for those people measure up proportionally to the scorn you feel for this?
Here's the thing: obesity is a very serious problem that we as a society are being appallingly negligent about actually addressing. But it is also nearly unique among...hmm, problems caused by perzonal decisions? Personal health problems? What have yoh...in that it is visible at once to anyone, expert or layperson, who puts eyes on a member of that group.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
"What would you say is the next most serious problem, in either direction? And does the scorn you feel for those people measure up proportionally to the scorn you feel for this?"
1) The environment (broadly construed) is the most important issue, of which I consider this a subproblem.
2) Yes.
"I'm still not sure why obesity gets this...extra intensity?" It doesn't. Most people on this website already are intense about the environment, so there's no need for me to add on to it. I'm not actually being that much more intense than many people on here are about that. I'm just in a minority here, so I seem more intense.
"A 2004 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that for every ten pounds gained by the average American, airlines burned 350 million more gallons of fuel to carry the additional weight. That fuel spewed an estimated 3.8 million extra tons of carbon dioxide into the air."
"Jon, I just wanted to pop back in to say I think this is an admirable bit of self-awareness. This is exactly what I was trying to get at."
Then I'll keep it up. If I were you, operating from your beliefs and valuation system, I'd think I were a judging ****, too.
Edit: In terms of intensity, the same goes for other issues on this forum. I don't need to tell you all that torture, NDAA, SOPA, and racism are bad.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tittles: And strawmen aside, a summer of hard physical labor on a 1000 calorie diet would do a lot of people good.
Would you care to volunteer to show us how long a person can survive death from malnutrition and organ failure doing hard labor on a thousand calories a day?
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
If you're taking the right vitamins and making sure you're getting plenty of green, leafy vegetables and protein, you could survive a summer just fine. There are people who have fasted for longer than that, with vitamins. I often eat 1300-1500 calories/day when cutting. (and usually around 4000-5000 when bulking...) Honestly, though, it's not about the calories but about where they're getting those calories. It's hard to get fat off of grilled chicken, salad, oatmeal, cottage cheese, and fresh fruit, for example.
Anyway, I belong to an organization where shaming is not only expected, but encouraged. I remember in boot camp, for example, one of the overweight recruits being forced to stand in front of the chow hall as every recruit walked past him, point to himself, and say "this recruit is fat" over and over again for about 45 minutes, because he tried to sneak a cookie. They install a pretty strong negative reaction to any level of fat - and it does work. I've never been over 12% body fat in my life, and I'm still constantly self conscious about my weight.
It's also illegal to be fat in the Marine Corps, and if you fail a weigh in/taping, you're punished by being non-recommended for promotion, you automatically get poor proficiency marks, and are forced to work out for an extra hour to hour and a half a day with a platoon of other fat people (called BCP) until you're in shape. If you fail to bring your weight under control in 6 months, you get discharged under other-than-honorable conditions.
You sure don't see too many fat Marines.
Applying this philosophy to society as a whole is a pretty terrible idea.
On the other hand, I think our (American) society doesn't take obesity near seriously enough. The general consensus I see is "if you're fat, it's just the way you are, you can't help it." Look at European countries where obesity rates are below 10%... those people are genetically the same as us, yet far fewer of them have "disorders" that make them fat. I don't think shaming or disrespecting people is the answer, but I'm all for advocacy... specifically telling our populous that weight is something you can personally control, and that it largely has to do with diet, exercise, and self control. There are people with genuine thyroid problems - and there are also treatments for those diseases.
But overall, when I see someone who's fat, I think "they must already be pretty miserable, is it really my business to make them feel worse about themselves?" I think about all the things I do for physical recreation - hiking, mountain climbing, playing football, running on the beach, snorkeling, dancing, skating, camping, biking... and think about people who have been obese since they were 6 or 7 years old and will *never* know what it's like to be physically fit, and how good it feels to, say, run up a mountain trail for an hour and stand at the peak, pouring sweat, lungs burning, with a tingling ecstasy spreading through every muscle in your body, and it makes me incredibly sad. Why should I lord it over them that I didn't have parents that force fed me McDonalds and KFC and giant drums of coke as a kid?
That's another thing - I can't help but look at an obese little kid and feel like they're being abused. It's something that will hurt them and severely limit their ability to enjoy life, not to mention greatly reduce their lifespan and cause numerous health problems. I think feeding kids fast food should be viewed as similar to giving kids alcohol or tobacco - it has similar deleterious effects.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
I believe that agricultural subsidies and the influence of the agriculture lobby on federal agencies are both significant causes of obesity in America.
For a long time, we were told by the USDA to eat mostly bread and pasta. And at the same time, corn sugar is incredibly cheap and in almost everything. Drinking a half gallon or more of sugary liquid every day is pretty normal and quite affordable. (Including subsidized milk.)
Sure, it "has to do with diet, exercise, and self control". But it also has to do with beliefs about what one should eat, involuntary cycles of appetite and mood that are tied to many difficult to control factors and that have to be broken or escaped, and what the culture and economy around us encourage. And it's not as simple as directly encouraging people to improve their diet and exercise - factors such as the work we do, the places we live, and the way we organize our schedules are probably more significant than whether there's a lot of strong PR for whole grains and leafy green vegetables.
That small subsets of society with rigid structure and harsh methods of compliance enforcement (Marines) can use shame successfully doesn't surprise me. After all, they can just kick you out if it doesn't work. Whoever is left is who it worked on (not to mention various up front filters that keep obese people out).
Posted by Swampjedi (Member # 7374) on :
Terrible idea. I spent 15 years obese, peaking at 315lb in college. Want to know when I was the fattest? When I hated myself the most, and was drowning in shame. Being fat was shameful, which usually ended up with me being fatter.
Climbing out of the fat pit is hard enough without people throwing stuff at you. Unlike with other addictions, you can't just go cold turkey on eating.
How many people are truly proud of being fat? I don't know, but the cable news would have us believe it's widespread. Outrage sells!
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I think Dogbreath's analysis is pretty darn solid. I would add one thing to his remarks, though. That would be that in societies where shaming is more...official?...it's also coupled to a lot more direct central control over the individual's day-to-day life.
What I mean is, it wouldn't be reasonable to say that shaming is the reason you don't see many obese Marines (not that I think that was the sum of what you were getting at, Dogbreath). It's a big part of the reason, but I think there should probably be two other primary reasons: one, a very large degree of central control over the individual and two, ejection from the group of those who prove impossible (in the boundaries of the rules) to correct.
quote:On the other hand, I think our (American) society doesn't take obesity near seriously enough. The general consensus I see is "if you're fat, it's just the way you are, you can't help it." Look at European countries where obesity rates are below 10%... those people are genetically the same as us, yet far fewer of them have "disorders" that make them fat. I don't think shaming or disrespecting people is the answer, but I'm all for advocacy... specifically telling our populous that weight is something you can personally control, and that it largely has to do with diet, exercise, and self control. There are people with genuine thyroid problems - and there are also treatments for those diseases.
I do think it would be useful to look at societies with similar standards of living but lower obesity rates and see what might explain the difference.
quote:That's another thing - I can't help but look at an obese little kid and feel like they're being abused. It's something that will hurt them and severely limit their ability to enjoy life, not to mention greatly reduce their lifespan and cause numerous health problems. I think feeding kids fast food should be viewed as similar to giving kids alcohol or tobacco - it has similar deleterious effects.
Now, *this* would be an area where I think something like shaming or at least strong social disapproval would begin to be more useful. But then we get into questions of things such as food deserts, a term few people have ever even heard of much less considered.
Posted by NobleHunter (Member # 12043) on :
quote:I think about all the things I do for physical recreation - hiking, mountain climbing, playing football, running on the beach, snorkeling, dancing, skating, camping, biking...
Because I'm overweight and out-of-shape, all that stuff hurts. And it hurts way before any pay-off. Then it hurts the next day and the day after, and the day after. Even if I don't injure myself in the process. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but any worthwhile exertion screws my equilibrium for days.
So I passively choose to remain sedentary. I don't like it; it's aggravating and frustrating; and I can't do everything I want to do. But the barriers to changing it seem insurmountable and life (for a little while) goes on.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
quote:Originally posted by Swampjedi: Unlike with other addictions, you can't just go cold turkey on eating.
This was probably the hardest part of it for me. What I realized, though, is that it is possible to go cold turkey on unhealthy foods, and that goes a long way. It's not easy. In fact, it's incredibly difficult. But some degree of "cold turkey" is possible. It also requires learning to cook for yourself, if you don't already do it. Completely eliminating pre-fab foods, and not using much sugar, fat, or white starches in cooking, makes a massive difference.
quote:Originally posted by NobleHunter: You know what all that list says to me?
Again, I'm quite sympathetic to this. It's really difficult to exercise when you're significantly overweight. It freaking hurts all your joints and leaves you constantly sore. I found that I had to lose a lot of weight through intense diet first, before I was able to exercise (I still don't exercise as much as I probably should, to be honest). Thankfully, it is possible to lose a lot of weight through diet--at least enough to get you to the point that exercise no longer hurts.
Posted by ambyr (Member # 7616) on :
An interesting article about one (of the many) reasons people end up at fast food places.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Thanks for the link ambyr, that's really interesting.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
I am tired of the hate on fast food restaurants. I know I consume more calories at most sit down restaurants, especially the chain ones, and the healthy options at fast food places are a lot cheaper than elsewhere.
Skip the cheese, skip any size but a small fry.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
quote:Originally posted by NobleHunter:
quote:I think about all the things I do for physical recreation - hiking, mountain climbing, playing football, running on the beach, snorkeling, dancing, skating, camping, biking...
Because I'm overweight and out-of-shape, all that stuff hurts. And it hurts way before any pay-off. Then it hurts the next day and the day after, and the day after. Even if I don't injure myself in the process. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but any worthwhile exertion screws my equilibrium for days.
So I passively choose to remain sedentary. I don't like it; it's aggravating and frustrating; and I can't do everything I want to do. But the barriers to changing it seem insurmountable and life (for a little while) goes on.
You have to not take it too hard, too fast. That's the secret. I'm doing couch to 5k (okay, I just finished week 1), but the instructions say, even if you can do more, DON'T. Because you aren't used to the exercise, you will be dead the next day and then you will just give up. The key to distance running is to run as SLOW as possible so you can sustain the fact that you are running. Also stretching. And proper shoes.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stephan: I am tired of the hate on fast food restaurants. I know I consume more calories at most sit down restaurants, especially the chain ones, and the healthy options at fast food places are a lot cheaper than elsewhere.
Skip the cheese, skip any size but a small fry.
Yep. I, too, eat way fewer calories at fast food joints. The worst, to me, are not the chain sit-down restaurants, it's the very nice, unique sit-down restaurants. They tend to be pretty calorie dense.
I think most people underestimate how many calories are in non-fast food, so for anyone who cares about calories at all, fast food is actually probably safer than a nice restaurant.
Edit: Ambyr, thanks for the link. I didn't know McDonald's had free wifi in most locations. How cool! Good for them.
Posted by stilesbn (Member # 11809) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I didn't know McDonald's had free wifi in most locations. How cool! Good for them.
They have it all over the world too. It was a lifesaver in when we were in France and were trying to get in contact with some friends over Facebook after our initial plans fell through. We just walked to the nearest McDonald's.
Posted by Dogbreath (Member # 11879) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stephan: I am tired of the hate on fast food restaurants. I know I consume more calories at most sit down restaurants, especially the chain ones, and the healthy options at fast food places are a lot cheaper than elsewhere.
Skip the cheese, skip any size but a small fry.
I should clarify - I mean fried foods, grease soaked burgers, huge oil drums of coke. McDonalds, for example, actually has a lot of pretty healthy options. I get the grilled chicken club there, the oatmeal and fruit is good too, and their side salads (which I've taken to eating instead of fries) are tasty as well, even with the lowfat dressing. The price for said healthy options is comparable to the price for the big macs, quarter pounders, angus burgers, etc, but is much, much better for you. I actually had a fried with an incredibly demanding job (he could only really eat fast food because he had no time to make food) who developed "the McDonalds diet" and lost 25 pound on it.
The problem is, these people either willingly or unknowingly choose the extremely unhealthy options instead. Perhaps it's not understanding nutrition?
As far as sit down restaurants go: how many people eat at sit down restaurants once or twice a day? For me it's once every week, max. They're too pricy and take too long for me to eat out every night.
As far as running: definitely shoes! I always had knee and foot pain until I did some research and found the right pair of shoes. Work on your form, too - try going slow and focus on always pushing up on the ball of your foot instead of heel-toeing, for example. And focus on pushing forward instead of up - it saves a lot of wear and tear on your knees. Eventually it'll become your natural running form.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
Oh, it's willingly. I almost NEVER go to Mickey D's. Because, ew. But if I go, I'm getting the good stuff. What I try to do is get fries OR a burger. Not both, because then I'll feel like garbage after, because of the grease. But if I'm there, I'm there for the junk dammit. Do you know what a burger joint SMELLS like from the outside. Om nom nom.
Also, their apples are terrible. No skin, chemically taste. I wanted to get a happy meal with both sides (apples go really good with fries you know). I've had old apples that were less nasty.
The no time excuse is bull. If you have time to go to Micky Day's, you have time to go the grocery store. Grocery stores usually sell sandwiches, sushi and prepared foods at the deli section among other things you can shove in your face as soon as you pay the cashier and find a fork (or not-- sushi's a finger food). A lot of grocery stores have buffets with chicken wings and salad ingredients that go beyond the basics.
Also, there are lots of super lazy things you can buy that require no cooking, but are pretty healthy. Hummus. Baby carrots and Pita bread to dip in it. Berries Yogurt (buy a qt container and eat out of it until it's done). Dry cereal. Seeds/nuts (or trail mix).
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
The fattest guy I know mostly eats "healthy" foods like the ones that are being described here.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I tend to think the no-time, coupled with a poor understanding of nutrition beyond maybe 'calories are bad', with a side helping of 'cooking is hard' together go a lot further than people realize. Not just 'cooking is hard' but 'I can't cook', for many people.
I mean, I know as a skill to learn it will be easier for some people than others, absolutely. And some people will be able to take to experimentation and quickly learning a new recipe or technique quite easily while for others it will be a time-consuming or even difficult process. But for most Americans, in my experience, the food we like as an everyday affair, there's almost none of it that is actually difficult or very time consuming to cook if one simply approaches it as a new thing to do without letting any headgames get in on it.
But realistically, if someone is brought up all their formative years, setting aside all this stuff about being really critical of them for it, how *likely* is it that they will radically shift away from the eating habits they were raised with?
For example, in my family both my mother and father and three out of my four grandparents were somewhere on the scale of good or even really outstanding cooks, over a wide array of foods and techniques, too. But...knowledgeable about nutrition or much interested in pre-planning meals, even in very general ways? Ranging from not so much to not at all. Which is reflected well on all levels in my sister and I.
But I don't think I've seen very many morbidly obese people who had parents who were diligent and skillful about those things, though truth is it's hard to tell.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
I think people overestimate how important it is to cook your own meals. If you like cooking, great, go for it.
But it's not necessary for your health, it's not magically way more cost-effective, and it's definitely not a necessary step in order to keep from being fat.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
"But realistically, if someone is brought up all their formative years, setting aside all this stuff about being really critical of them for it, how *likely* is it that they will radically shift away from the eating habits they were raised with?"
My girlfriend's mother has been eating junk food all her life. She'd have at least one soda every day, usually two. She'd regularly consume chips, cookies, bacon, etc.
Her cholesterol was high and she's overweight, so at the suggestion of my girlfriend she decided to try being vegan, or at least vegetarian, for health reasons. She's not 100 percent, but she's managed to completely cut out soda (not that it isn't vegan), chips (same), obviously bacon, and for the most part cookies. She switched her breakfast from eggs and a bagel with cream cheese every day to steel cut oatmeal with fruit and nuts.
She initially lodged all the usual complains about time, money, and effort, but we just gave her the right recipes and forced her to try them out. She's been successfully doing this for two months and feels much healthier. She's excited to go back to the doctor to get her cholesterol checked again.
Posted by umberhulk (Member # 11788) on :
Exercise is immoral because it makes you hungrier.
I'm all for health and fitness, and I think it has a great impact of your quality of life and whatever, but obesity has nothing to do with character.
It has as much to do with what you eat as it does with how much you eat. And exercise, body type, metabolism, health issues that can make it hard to exercise (asthma). Wow, they're eating a lot of the cheapest and most plentiful food ingredient in the world, and they're given them because companies want their money.
Posted by stilesbn (Member # 11809) on :
quote:Originally posted by umberhulk: Exercise is immoral because it makes you hungrier.
Well I've never heard exercise being called immoral. I'm actually somewhat surprised at some of the negative views regarding exercise. No wonder we have a problem with obesity.
Posted by umberhulk (Member # 11788) on :
quote:Originally posted by theamazeeaz:
quote:Originally posted by NobleHunter:
quote:I think about all the things I do for physical recreation - hiking, mountain climbing, playing football, running on the beach, snorkeling, dancing, skating, camping, biking...
Because I'm overweight and out-of-shape, all that stuff hurts. And it hurts way before any pay-off. Then it hurts the next day and the day after, and the day after. Even if I don't injure myself in the process. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but any worthwhile exertion screws my equilibrium for days.
So I passively choose to remain sedentary. I don't like it; it's aggravating and frustrating; and I can't do everything I want to do. But the barriers to changing it seem insurmountable and life (for a little while) goes on.
You have to not take it too hard, too fast. That's the secret. I'm doing couch to 5k (okay, I just finished week 1), but the instructions say, even if you can do more, DON'T. Because you aren't used to the exercise, you will be dead the next day and then you will just give up. The key to distance running is to run as SLOW as possible so you can sustain the fact that you are running. Also stretching. And proper shoes.
Also, the best exercise, with the least ammount of pain or chance of injury is swimming. Burns the lungs, works the entire body, heartrate, definitely makes you tired and stiff, but there won't be much blunt force being exerted on your body.
Posted by umberhulk (Member # 11788) on :
quote:Originally posted by stilesbn:
quote:Originally posted by umberhulk: Exercise is immoral because it makes you hungrier.
Well I've never heard exercise being called immoral. I'm actually somewhat surprised at some of the negative views regarding exercise. No wonder we have a problem with obesity.
We spend so much money on torn acls and broken bones man. I'm telling you its ****ed up. Can you believe those extreme sports???
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
"Exercise is immoral because it makes you hungrier."
A few of us in the department had a conversation about this last semester. We ended up agreeing that exercising in excess is unethical for this reason. So body builders, for example. Still not sure about it, but maybe.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Yeah when I read Umberhulk's post I thought it was a sarcastic dig at Jon's "being fat is immoral because of the environment" thing.
I guess he was serious though? Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
I'm still not sure whether he's being sarcastic (I assumed he was), but I've so far mostly agreed with him. So, um, yeah. How about them Broncos?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: "Exercise is immoral because it makes you hungrier."
A few of us in the department had a conversation about this last semester. We ended up agreeing that exercising in excess is unethical for this reason. So body builders, for example. Still not sure about it, but maybe.
In the same vein, anorexia is no less disgusting or unsafe than obesity.
Common sense is needed regarding these matters, as it usually is in most areas of life.
the things that keep me on the straight and narrow regarding diet are:
1. cravings for unhealthy foods are largely a result of socialization. Why should I show loyalty to a society that has sickened me? No thanks, I'll just eat a diet that works instead. Society needs to change. Until then, I'll eat my way.
2. I look and feel a lot better when I eat correctly. I recover from injuries faster, have more energy, have healthier joints, etc.. It's really nice to be able to DO things when I want to, instead of being too out-of-shape, tired, sore, or whatever.
3. It's an interesting experiment, to see exactly what particular foods will do for my health, negative or positive. Of course, this involves the occasional eating of less-than-perfect foods sometimes. However, I attend enough social occasions that I can use those as my opportunities to experiment.
4. I fear the degenerative diseases that come with aging, especially the heart disease and strokes that run in my family. I've already had a few minor strokes, and I don't want to have any big ones.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: But I don't think I've seen very many morbidly obese people who had parents who were diligent and skillful about those things, though truth is it's hard to tell.
You need to get out more.
I use some pre-prepped ingredients, but cook (or have my kids cook) every night. My parents did the same. I use brown rice and quinoa, low-fat meats (and not much of them), tofu, and all sorts of "healthy" things. We rarely eat out, and even more rarely eat fast-food-type stuff. My kids are all healthy weights.
I am not, and essentially have never been as an adult. (I was until I hit puberty, which I understand is a common pattern for those descended of good Russian peasant stock. Well, my great-grands did all come from Russia, but I'm not sure about the peasant part. ) Without going into much detail about my health in what is not only essentially a public place, but as of late a very hostile one, I also think the distinction that several have made between people who are overweight for medical reasons and those who are not is utter crap.
First of all, to a large degree metabolism is inborn. It changes as we age, and we can successfully adjust it to a slight degree. But for many people -- skinny or fat -- their body has less to do with any choices they have made, and more to do with simple genetics. Studies have shown that in families with high incidence of type 2 diabetes, even the non-diabetic members have stronger physiological cravings for carbs and sugar than the average population, as well as a higher tendency to store such calories as fat.
But setting that aside, for most people who have long-term weight issues, the reason why they originally gained the weight becomes almost immaterial. The weight itself triggers or worsens medical issues that make getting any weight off that much harder. (PCOS, pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, etc.) And the body resists quick weight loss, which is almost always followed by regaining all the weight lost and then some.
And for our new troll, who'd like to send me to a labor camp for the summer, I have only this to say: I assume you'll be providing the lost income from the two jobs I work, and taking care of my three teenagers?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: But I don't think I've seen very many morbidly obese people who had parents who were diligent and skillful about those things, though truth is it's hard to tell.
You need to get out more.
I use some pre-prepped ingredients, but cook (or have my kids cook) every night. My parents did the same. I use brown rice and quinoa, low-fat meats (and not much of them), tofu, and all sorts of "healthy" things. We rarely eat out, and even more rarely eat fast-food-type stuff. My kids are all healthy weights.
I am not, and essentially have never been as an adult. (I was until I hit puberty, which I understand is a common pattern for those descended of good Russian peasant stock. Well, my great-grands did all come from Russia, but I'm not sure about the peasant part. ) Without going into much detail about my health in what is not only essentially a public place, but as of late a very hostile one, I also think the distinction that several have made between people who are overweight for medical reasons and those who are not is utter crap.
First of all, to a large degree metabolism is inborn. It changes as we age, and we can successfully adjust it to a slight degree. But for many people -- skinny or fat -- their body has less to do with any choices they have made, and more to do with simple genetics. Studies have shown that in families with high incidence of type 2 diabetes, even the non-diabetic members have stronger physiological cravings for carbs and sugar than the average population, as well as a higher tendency to store such calories as fat.
But setting that aside, for most people who have long-term weight issues, the reason why they originally gained the weight becomes almost immaterial. The weight itself triggers or worsens medical issues that make getting any weight off that much harder. (PCOS, pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, etc.) And the body resists quick weight loss, which is almost always followed by regaining all the weight lost and then some.
Your standard for "healthy eating" is so far away from a species-appropriate diet for humans that it's impossible to have a discussion on the matter.
Just because your culture gives you a pass on a particular food, serving size, or preparation method does not mean that you are meeting any kind of objective standard of healthy eating.
I know it's difficult for some people to lose weight, especially women approaching middle age who've had several children. However, weight isn't really the issue here. Some people really are just much beefier than others, and there's only so much that can be done. HOWEVER....
such people are really more rare than SOME people like to assume.
The fact is, my grandparents are all of healthy/normal weight. Many of their children have weight problems. I myself tend to gain weight easily when eating something along the lines of a "normal" (whatever that means) American diet. However, eating the way I currently do, and you know what it is, I actually struggle to keep weight ON. The only kind of weight I can really even gain is muscle weight, from working out. However, that's entirely dependent on what I choose to eat.
Posted by umberhulk (Member # 11788) on :
Yes, the first line was sarcastic, and the Broncos lost.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
In the interest of perhaps averting thread meltdown, I'd just like to clarify that I wasn't suggesting it was impossible or even necessarily very unlikely for anyone to drift away, either in gaining or losing, from their childhood examples. Just that I thought that perhaps that was one of the more relevant factors.
Now, that said, I also agree that we seem to be learning a lot about how our bodies react to just about everything they ingest or are exposed to every year, so I wholeheartedly agree with you there. I also think public perception of obesity as some sort of deep, shameful moral flaw will probably begin to fade quickly once there is some sort of treatment for it that is effective for groups (that is, this medication or regimen or combination is prescribed and then the success rate for random obese patients is, once they've been given it, high), as opposed to murky discussions of willpower.
Because I don't think I've met many people at all who, if their health or moral failings were as visible as obesity, wouldn't look pretty dinged up.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I tend to think the no-time, coupled with a poor understanding of nutrition beyond maybe 'calories are bad', with a side helping of 'cooking is hard' together go a lot further than people realize. Not just 'cooking is hard' but 'I can't cook', for many people.
I mean, I know as a skill to learn it will be easier for some people than others, absolutely. And some people will be able to take to experimentation and quickly learning a new recipe or technique quite easily while for others it will be a time-consuming or even difficult process. But for most Americans, in my experience, the food we like as an everyday affair, there's almost none of it that is actually difficult or very time consuming to cook if one simply approaches it as a new thing to do without letting any headgames get in on it.
But realistically, if someone is brought up all their formative years, setting aside all this stuff about being really critical of them for it, how *likely* is it that they will radically shift away from the eating habits they were raised with?
For example, in my family both my mother and father and three out of my four grandparents were somewhere on the scale of good or even really outstanding cooks, over a wide array of foods and techniques, too. But...knowledgeable about nutrition or much interested in pre-planning meals, even in very general ways? Ranging from not so much to not at all. Which is reflected well on all levels in my sister and I.
But I don't think I've seen very many morbidly obese people who had parents who were diligent and skillful about those things, though truth is it's hard to tell.
I think you're raising some fairly valid points. Socialization is definitely the primary factor in both food preference and food choice.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Is steven still into that raw butter oil diet that gives his skeleton a healthy sheen?
Jon, I feel like you've upped the demands of morality rather too far. My views on this sort of issue are pretty close to those of my grad school buddy Mark Budolfson:
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Is steven still into that raw butter oil diet that gives his skeleton a healthy sheen?
Jon, I feel like you've upped the demands of morality rather too far. My views on this sort of issue are pretty close to those of my grad school buddy Mark Budolfson:
The fact is, collective self-defeat notwithstanding, plenty of cultures eat relatively healthy diets, even today. Not perfectly healthy by Raw Paleolithic diet standards, but still pretty good.
Grains/starches, and the refining thereof, are the biggest problem with societal-level bad eating. (I include liquors refined from grains in this) Overcooking and excessive numbers of ingredients are a second/smaller problem.
And yes, I'm still a raw foodist, or at least around 98% raw. What of it? I look 8-10 years younger than my age, have plenty of energy, recover quickly, etc. etc.. None of that was true when I ate a junkier diet. Granted, I take my dietary purity to extremes that don't really have much immediate bearing on my health, but SOMEbody's got to do the experimenting. Certainly we have more than enough people in the "eat crap and feel crappy" control group.
And you know what? Somebody really DOES have to do the experimenting. There are a number of useful bits of dietary knowledge that simply cannot be found from looking at peer-reviewed studies, because those areas are not well-explored yet. The only other options are anthropological studies of traditional diets, and aggregated anecdotal data from nutrition message boards and other such sources.
For instance, I've corresponded with a dentist who has studied the link between dental plaque formation and vitamin D. I knew that vitamin D reduced my dental plaque years ago, and even posted about it here. He only recently finished his study and presented his paper. My "useless" anecdotal data preceded his study by years. My message board posts (on my nutrition forum) were the only reasonable way, other than personal experimentation, that someone could have run across that information.
As well, I find that clams (but not oysters) tend to strengthen and heal my fingernails and toenails. I have no idea what in them does that, but it definitely works for me. (I suspect it involves a trace mineral that influences sulfur metabolism) I can strip the inner coating off ethernet cables with my thumbnail now, but no WAY can I do that if I'm not eating clams regularly.
What peer-reviewed study can you find that in? What if you just had weak and/or fungus-damaged nails, and wanted to heal them? I, or someone doing the same kind of dietary experimentation as me, would be the only source for that information.
Posted by umberhulk (Member # 11788) on :
I don't think it's unethical because if three million obese people suddenly say they're never eating McDonalds again, they don't take three million pounds of big macs and send them to the people that need them. When demand decreases they decrease production and supply. They never extract, purify, or combine the nourishing raw materials from the environment; those raw materials, or the chemical matter needed to make them, just stay sparsed and intermingled among the rest of the non-nourishing raw materials, bacteria, and chemical compounds, and they're never gathered up until there's money to be made. They don't steal them from the hands of starving children. They're eating habits have negligible consequence.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
I only have time right now to skim over the paper, but I'm not inclined to disagree. Well... I agree that "morality and all other interesting forms of normativity are sometimes dramatically directly collectively self-defeating" but not with the implication "that many influential normative theories are either false", just that they "at least don’t have the consequences that their adherents take them to have."
I deny that ought implies can and happen to think that it's perfectly OK to have contradictory moral demands. Not just as a result of this, however, I think that there are innumerable moral demands that we have that we do not meet. It sucks, yeah, but that's just the way it is. Most of the demands stem from just extending the idea harming others, directly or indirectly, is immoral.
I'm not prepared to defend this view, he says sketchily.
Edit: Umberhulk, we're using up non-renewable resources (I specifically mentioned phosphorus earlier) and I think that we have duties to future generations.
Edit2: There's a reason I don't talk about my views on ethics often. I come off very harsh. I usually end up just saying I'm a moral skeptic, since I am when push comes to shove. And it gets me off the hook easier.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by umberhulk: I don't think it's unethical because if three million obese people suddenly say they're never eating McDonalds again, they don't take three million pounds of big macs and send them to the people that need them. When demand decreases they decrease production and supply. They never extract, purify, or combine the nourishing raw materials from the environment; those raw materials, or the chemical matter needed to make them, just stay sparsed and intermingled among the rest of the non-nourishing raw materials, bacteria, and chemical compounds, and they're never gathered up until there's money to be made. They don't steal them from the hands of starving children. They're eating habits have no negligible consequence.
Reduced demand equals reduced cost. Food, especially dried/dry foods like grains, coffee, nuts, etc. are a worldwide commodity. Remember how the ethanol and biodiesel push a few years ago drove up worldwide grain prices? Yep. Not that I care, I'm just pointing that out.
Posted by Anthonie (Member # 884) on :
Keeping up on this thread, I've mostly been agreeing with the viewpoint that genetics is the largest factor controlling obesity. But then something dawned on me that threw that theory into a tailspin.
If genes are the largest determinant for weight, then we would expect to see similar proportions of obesity among most cross-sections of the the population. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
I have spent most of my life around academia. Honestly, I cannot think of a single morbidly obese or very obese professor here at USU (as well as other schools I have visited). Literally, there is not a single obese professor among the entire faculty of 30 or so in our department. There are a couple of plump professors that would qualify as overweight, but not obese.
Does anyone know many obese professors? Am I just sheltered? Maybe there really are a lot more obese professors out there and I just haven't been lucky enough to meet them? ...or is it possible that certain professions tend to correlate with lower weight?
And, perhaps there are other professions with highly different rates of obesity than the general population (excluding image-based work like models, movie stars, etc)?
Maybe genetics don't contribute to as much to obesity as we think?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: Your standard for "healthy eating" is so far away from a species-appropriate diet for humans that it's impossible to have a discussion on the matter.
Just because your culture gives you a pass on a particular food, serving size, or preparation method does not mean that you are meeting any kind of objective standard of healthy eating.
You actually have no idea what my standards are are for healthy eating. Certainly not as regards serving sizes or preparation methods -- none of which I mentioned here, nor recall ever having discussed with you or in your presence. As for the reference to my "culture", I'm not even sure what you mean by that. Are you trying to insult Jews, academics, or maybe Jewish academics? Americans of Russian descent?
Rakeesh, if you used less hyperbole, it would be easier to discuss such issues as educating parents regarding kid nutrition (which I do happen to think is important). When you insist on using hyperbole, it comes across as "if you can't blame the fat guy, blame his parents".
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Anthonie: Does anyone know many obese professors?
Point of clarification: how many is "many"?
Also, big flaw in your theory: overweight people are less likely to be hired and promoted. So any field with more supply than demand is likely to have fewer overweight people than a field with more balance between the two. Academia, for instance, is highly competitive.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I'm trying and not successfully to see where I engaged in hyperbole. I mean, even the statement you (appeared to?) have the most issue with was qualified and ambiguous. When I said I didn't think I had seem very many, I meant just that, not as a statement of 'this almost never happens'-though that is the construction of a lot of hyperbole, so I can see why you'd read it that way.
Posted by Anthonie (Member # 884) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Anthonie: Does anyone know many obese professors?
Point of clarification: how many is "many"?
I guess "many" would be a proportion similar to rates of obesity in the U.S. Here in Utah I believe it's about 20%.
quote:Originally posted by rivka: Also, big flaw in your theory: overweight people are less likely to be hired and promoted. So any field with more supply than demand is likely to have fewer overweight people than a field with more balance between the two. Academia, for instance, is highly competitive.
Very good point. Maybe that explains why I can't think of a single obese professor I know at my university.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tittles: If a guy smokes two packs a day, he's an idiot who deserves to be ridiculed. If he single handedly makes McDonald stockholders wealthy though, he's just a poor soul who needs our understanding.
Gotcha.
Cute.
If a guy smokes two packs a day, he's an idiot that has a choice to do so.
Not everyone that is obese is overweight by choice. While there are those that overeat, there are many medical conditions that can lead to obesity.
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Is steven still into that raw butter oil diet that gives his skeleton a healthy sheen?
What was that called again, the whatever diet ideas that he was into?
Posted by Swampjedi (Member # 7374) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: Grains/starches, and the refining thereof, are the biggest problem with societal-level bad eating. (I include liquors refined from grains in this) Overcooking and excessive numbers of ingredients are a second/smaller problem.
I know that this has been true for me. My weight trends seem to be directly tied to how much refined grain I'm eating.
Posted by stilesbn (Member # 11809) on :
So, 66% of Americans are overweight. Everyone seems to be arguing that obese people are obese because of medical conditions or genetics and it's not because of anything that is under control. What percentage of people are obese due to medical conditions? How many would not have those medical conditions that make it hard to lose weight if they hadn't let themselves get obese?
I agree that shaming is not really helpful or moral, but it seems to me like everyone here is enabling. Giving excuses for why they or someone they know is fat. "It's not your fault there is nothing you can do about it".
I was always under the impression that the number of people with medical conditions that makes them obese was a minority. But apparently from what I see here that is not the case. Everyone who is overweight is overweight due to elements that are beyond their control?
Are we sure we're not enabling people here?
Posted by stilesbn (Member # 11809) on :
I used obese and overweight as synonyms which isn't highly accurate and possible confusing. My mistake. I looked up some stats and 36% of Americans are obese and 33% are overweight (but not obese). This is based on BMI which we know has its own problems associated with it.
In fact last year according to BMI I was overweight before I started exercising again and lost 15 lbs. I didn't look overweight at all though.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: And you know what? Somebody really DOES have to do the experimenting. There are a number of useful bits of dietary knowledge that simply cannot be found from looking at peer-reviewed studies, because those areas are not well-explored yet. The only other options are anthropological studies of traditional diets, and aggregated anecdotal data from nutrition message boards and other such sources.
I would say that there are many bits of dietary knowledge that no one knows yet, and would be extremely hard to study. Your one-man "controlled" studies certainly aren't going to result in knowledge.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
How on Earth do you read this thread and conclude that everyone is arguing it's genetic and outside individual control?
Posted by stilesbn (Member # 11809) on :
quote:Originally posted by Geraine:
quote:Originally posted by Tittles: If a guy smokes two packs a day, he's an idiot who deserves to be ridiculed. If he single handedly makes McDonald stockholders wealthy though, he's just a poor soul who needs our understanding.
Gotcha.
Cute.
If a guy smokes two packs a day, he's an idiot that has a choice to do so.
Not everyone that is obese is overweight by choice. While there are those that overeat, there are many medical conditions that can lead to obesity.
So an addicted smoker can just up and stop smoking no problem? I believe addiction qualifies as a medical condition too, and while it was his choice to start smoking I don't see why stopping smoking is any easier than losing weight.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: I only have time right now to skim over the paper, but I'm not inclined to disagree. Well... I agree that "morality and all other interesting forms of normativity are sometimes dramatically directly collectively self-defeating" but not with the implication "that many influential normative theories are either false", just that they "at least don’t have the consequences that their adherents take them to have."
I deny that ought implies can and happen to think that it's perfectly OK to have contradictory moral demands. Not just as a result of this, however, I think that there are innumerable moral demands that we have that we do not meet. It sucks, yeah, but that's just the way it is. Most of the demands stem from just extending the idea harming others, directly or indirectly, is immoral.
I'm not prepared to defend this view, he says sketchily.
I'm a little unclear about where you're coming from here. Do you think the individual in Budolfson's stampeding case is obligated to stop stampeding?
That seems analogous to the question of whether overweight people are morally obligated to lose weight. (If we assume you're right about the coming food shortages.)
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
I think that the person has conflicting duties, one to stop stampeding and one, from self-preservation, to not stop. This is fine. Well, it sucks, but it's fine. I think it just might be that we mean different things when we say 'ought'. I take it that many people believe that through conceptual analysis we see that if we have conflicting oughts, one or neither triumphs. I think that both hold, and at least one simply cannot be satisfied.
This may explain why I always feel guilty.
There's an interesting case from Joel Feinberg's Moral Limits of the Criminal Law trilogy, I think from the one on paternalism though I'm not sure, which I think runs parallel to Budolfson's case, but in the opposite direction.
I'm hoping that I remember this correctly, but I think he gives the example of a garrison being defended. If any soldier abandons the defense, nothing bad will happen to her comrades. The garrison will hold. Once a certain threshold of AWOLers is passed, the comrades will die and the garrison will fall. Feinberg argues from this that all the soldiers therefore have a duty to remain at their stations. I suspect there's a way to try to use this as a response to the stampeding case. If not, oh well. My point in bringing up the Feinberg case is just that a lot of what goes on in these group cases is determined by your starting point (whether an action is ongoing, just begun, not yet started, etc.), which is a matter of moral luck. As far as moral luck is concerned, I'm just going to say that it's really unfortunate when we are struck by bad moral luck, but you have to play with the cards you're dealt.
In conclusion: there are genuine moral dilemmas. This is really too bad. Even when there are no moral dilemmas in play, we are constantly failing to meet our moral obligations (there's a whole lit distinguishing obligations, duties, oughts, demands, etc. I'm not.). On the flip side, perhaps the reason I believe the second sentence of this paragraph is not because I am harsh, but because I am very optimistic about what humanity is capable of.
Edit: On second thought, there's probably no way to use Feinberg's example as a response to the stampede. The stampeding case is just really effective.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by steven: Your standard for "healthy eating" is so far away from a species-appropriate diet for humans that it's impossible to have a discussion on the matter.
Just because your culture gives you a pass on a particular food, serving size, or preparation method does not mean that you are meeting any kind of objective standard of healthy eating.
You actually have no idea what my standards are are for healthy eating. Certainly not as regards serving sizes or preparation methods -- none of which I mentioned here, nor recall ever having discussed with you or in your presence. As for the reference to my "culture", I'm not even sure what you mean by that. Are you trying to insult Jews, academics, or maybe Jewish academics? Americans of Russian descent?
As far as your culture goes, I was referring to American culture. There's nothing Jewish about quinoa.
Rivka, the very fact that you mention quinoa as some kind of healthy food is proof positive that you don't even understand good food choices. Quinoa is a filler food, has to be cooked to be edible, and is not a particularly species-appropriate food. Humans were meat, fruit, and (later on) fish/shellfish eaters, largely, prior to the Neolithic period. Throw a few nuts and tubers in there, and you have a rough approximation of a species-appropriate diet for humans.
As far as portion size, the fact that you haven't even criticized the increase in American portion sizes over the last 30 years says a lot.
As far as preparation methods...if you really want to go point-by-point on the pros and cons of raw versus various cooking methods, fine, we can. I'm not going down that path without an invitation, though.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Parkour:
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Is steven still into that raw butter oil diet that gives his skeleton a healthy sheen?
What was that called again, the whatever diet ideas that he was into?
He mentioned it earlier in the thread. He's into the raw food Paleolithic diet.
That's the Luddite diet based on the idea that the problem with food today is that it got mucked up with technology and science and progress and if we could just go back to nature then everything would be okay. Average lifespan of 30 ahoy!
I'm assuming Steven isn't doing the severely limited, malnutrition-prone starve-and-gorge diet most hunter gatherers actually lived, though. Just the modern hippy interpretation of the Paleolithic diet.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:Originally posted by steven: And you know what? Somebody really DOES have to do the experimenting. There are a number of useful bits of dietary knowledge that simply cannot be found from looking at peer-reviewed studies, because those areas are not well-explored yet. The only other options are anthropological studies of traditional diets, and aggregated anecdotal data from nutrition message boards and other such sources.
I would say that there are many bits of dietary knowledge that no one knows yet, and would be extremely hard to study. Your one-man "controlled" studies certainly aren't going to result in knowledge.
One-man? Hardly. Certainly I'm the only person I know of who claims that clams can sometimes strengthen nails, but I know several dozen people on my message board who experiment with diet constantly, and test each others' results to see if they are reproducible. We're not doing controlled double-blind studies, but if you need controlled double-blind studies to tell you to avoid junk food, then you've got bigger problems than I can help you solve. WAY bigger.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:As far as portion size, the fact that you haven't even criticized the increase in American portion sizes over the last 30 years says a lot.
I was not aware you could say a lot by not saying anything.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by Parkour:
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Is steven still into that raw butter oil diet that gives his skeleton a healthy sheen?
What was that called again, the whatever diet ideas that he was into?
He mentioned it earlier in the thread. He's into the raw food Paleolithic diet.
That's the Luddite diet based on the idea that the problem with food today is that it got mucked up with technology and science and progress and if we could just go back to nature then everything would be okay. Average lifespan of 30 ahoy!
I'm assuming Steven isn't doing the severely limited, malnutrition-prone starve-and-gorge diet most hunter gatherers actually lived, though. Just the modern hippy interpretation of the Paleolithic diet.
You're quite wrong. I've practiced intermittent fasting for many years. I try to confine all my eating to between noon and 6 pm, and have often, for months at a time, been able to confine all of it to between noon and 3 pm.
And if you call Raw Paleo dieters "hippies" again, I'm going to fall out of my tree laughing at you. Most raw paleo folks are big libertarians, many of them love to hunt, and nearly all of them are rabidly pro-gun. I'm actually the closest thing to a "hippie" that we have among the moderators on my board, and I'm an outlier. I'm actually the lone anti-gun voice on my forum, and I usually just shut up and let them bash Obama and worship Ron Paul to their hearts' content.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:As far as portion size, the fact that you haven't even criticized the increase in American portion sizes over the last 30 years says a lot.
I was not aware you could say a lot by not saying anything.
Rivka and I are both old enough to remember the rather sudden increase in portion size in restaurants in the mid-80s. You're not. It was very noticeable, though.
But you're right, I was reaching a bit there.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
On third thought, I want to say that obesity conjoined with food shortages is more analogous to the garrison threshold case than to the stampeding case. Sure, if one or two people change their habits, it's not a big deal, but there is a threshold. Here the resulting duty is for people to change their habits.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by Parkour:
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Is steven still into that raw butter oil diet that gives his skeleton a healthy sheen?
What was that called again, the whatever diet ideas that he was into?
He mentioned it earlier in the thread. He's into the raw food Paleolithic diet.
That's the Luddite diet based on the idea that the problem with food today is that it got mucked up with technology and science and progress and if we could just go back to nature then everything would be okay. Average lifespan of 30 ahoy!
I'm assuming Steven isn't doing the severely limited, malnutrition-prone starve-and-gorge diet most hunter gatherers actually lived, though. Just the modern hippy interpretation of the Paleolithic diet.
You're quite wrong. I've practiced intermittent fasting for many years. I try to confine all my eating to between noon and 6 pm, and have often, for months at a time, been able to confine all of it to between noon and 3 pm.
And if you call Raw Paleo dieters "hippies" again, I'm going to fall out of my tree laughing at you. Most raw paleo folks are big libertarians, many of them love to hunt, and nearly all of them are rabidly pro-gun. I'm actually the closest thing to a "hippie" that we have among the moderators on my board, and I'm an outlier. I'm actually the lone anti-gun voice on my forum, and I usually just shut up and let them bash Obama and worship Ron Paul to their hearts' content.
Yeah there are lots of Ron Paul worshipping, whackadoodle libertarian hippies. I know one very well. Into natural medicine and homeopathy and she's not quite doing the raw food thing but she's close. She convinced herself she had a gluten intolerance, too. Shrug.
Being a hippy isn't really mutually exclusive with beig a libertarian. Only major difference is a communist hippy wants to make you be a hippy too, whereas a libertarian hippy will just scoff and look down his nose at you for not being one.
Still silly, though. Also looks like I stand corrected, Steven does starve and gorge! Just like a hunter gatherer.
I assume you also restrict your diet to one region, since globalization of food sources is also a result of evil technological progress. Which region of the world did you decide to pretend you're in?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: One-man? Hardly. Certainly I'm the only person I know of who claims that clams can sometimes strengthen nails, but I know several dozen people on my message board who experiment with diet constantly, and test each others' results to see if they are reproducible. We're not doing controlled double-blind studies, but if you need controlled double-blind studies to tell you to avoid junk food, then you've got bigger problems than I can help you solve. WAY bigger.
I don't need them to tell me to avoid junk food. I do need them to tell me to seek out clams as a means of strengthening my nails.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Yeah there are lots of Ron Paul worshipping, whackadoodle libertarian hippies. I know one very well. Into natural medicine and homeopathy and she's not quite doing the raw food thing but she's close. She convinced herself she had a gluten intolerance, too. Shrug.
Being a hippy isn't really mutually exclusive with beig a libertarian. Only major difference is a communist hippy wants to make you be a hippy too, whereas a libertarian hippy will just scoff and look down his nose at you for not being one.
Still silly, though. Also looks like I stand corrected, Steven does starve and gorge! Just like a hunter gatherer.
I assume you also restrict your diet to one region, since globalization of food sources is also a result of evil technological progress. Which region of the world did you decide to pretend you're in?
I agree that there's no clear line between the more nature-loving libertarians and the more nature-loving hippies, but I still think you were painting with a broad brush. I also think you don't really understand the movement or the kinds of people in it. Close to half of the people on my forum were seriously ill and desperately seeking a cure when they found Raw Paleo. Some of that group do happen to be libertarians anyway, but most are just regular folk.
As far as restricting my diet to a specific region, I don't. I'm in it for health reasons, not some kind of locavore puritanical reasons. Most of what I eat is wild-caught seafood, high-quality (high-Brix) fruit, and a little raw grassfed cream, some nuts, and a little honey. When I can get good-quality never-frozen grassfed meat or wild game, I eat that.
I do prefer to get my fruit directly from the tree/vine when I can, though. Sometimes I notice that I get a health boost from fresh-off-the-tree fruit that doesn't happen with grocery-store fruit. It's hit or miss, though. I think a lot depends on soil quality.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:You're quite wrong. I've practiced intermittent fasting for many years. I try to confine all my eating to between noon and 6 pm, and have often, for months at a time, been able to confine all of it to between noon and 3 pm.
Jesus, you're going to get diabetes.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:Originally posted by steven: One-man? Hardly. Certainly I'm the only person I know of who claims that clams can sometimes strengthen nails, but I know several dozen people on my message board who experiment with diet constantly, and test each others' results to see if they are reproducible. We're not doing controlled double-blind studies, but if you need controlled double-blind studies to tell you to avoid junk food, then you've got bigger problems than I can help you solve. WAY bigger.
I don't need them to tell me to avoid junk food. I do need them to tell me to seek out clams as a means of strengthening my nails.
Then you simply won't be strengthening your nails with clams, then. Noone is going to do a study on that.
But seriously, if you had weak nails, would you really not eat a dozen clams a day for a few days to see if it worked for you? It's not like it takes months. I have honestly seen results after eating 5 dozen small clams in one day.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
So the clams go straight to the nails in a matter of days?
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:As far as portion size, the fact that you haven't even criticized the increase in American portion sizes over the last 30 years says a lot.
I was not aware you could say a lot by not saying anything.
Rivka and I are both old enough to remember the rather sudden increase in portion size in restaurants in the mid-80s. You're not. It was very noticeable, though.
But you're right, I was reaching a bit there.
Do you even know how old I am? Also, it hardly matters what the heck changes in portion sizes happened in what time frame, I grew up in another country, and in Asia I am positive portion sizes are much smaller than they are in the US, and have been a very long time.
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
For BMI, my brother who has very low body fat, is a fireman and works out regularly and has an extremely contrpulled diet(at his birthday party, we got strawberries not cake which adobe of the sugary fruits was a treat for him) is by BMI obese. I was working with a personal trainer and he figured out my ideal weight based on percent body fat and it would be still overweight (Which made me feel better because when I was young and active in sports I could never get below that weight). So, BMI listings of overweight seem a bit off to me.
One problem I see in the whole raw food diet is it doesn't factor in evolution. For example, lactose tolerance is something humans evolve recently. But it is now something that is part of us so why shouldn't we drink it? I think grain tolerance also has evolved. We evolve to fit our environment.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by scholarette:
One problem I see in the whole raw food diet is it doesn't factor in evolution. For example, lactose tolerance is something humans evolve recently. But it is now something that is part of us so why shouldn't we drink it? I think grain tolerance also has evolved. We evolve to fit our environment.
Most humans are not, in fact, lactose-tolerant. East Asians, Native Americans, and most Africans (except for the Masai and a few other groups) have no history of dairy consumption. Even among Europeans lactose tolerance is not universal. I'm about 95% European by ancestry, but I can't get away with drinking fresh milk or cream. I can eat cheese, sour cream, etc., though.
As far as grains go, there are plenty of human groups that either
1. have never eaten grains, or not in large amounts (like the Inuit, Australian Aborigines, Pacific islanders, etc.)
2. only started eating grains very recently, evolutionarily-speaking, like the Native Americans of North America
Celiac disease is quite common, that's not in question. If we were anything LIKE fully adapted to grains, there'd be basically no such thing as celiac disease. That's obvious.
I think a case can be made for rice, since it is far more digestible than most grains, especially wheat. However, I think people are generally better off making grains, even rice, a fairly small portion of their total calories.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Originally posted by steven:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:As far as portion size, the fact that you haven't even criticized the increase in American portion sizes over the last 30 years says a lot.
I was not aware you could say a lot by not saying anything.
Rivka and I are both old enough to remember the rather sudden increase in portion size in restaurants in the mid-80s. You're not. It was very noticeable, though.
But you're right, I was reaching a bit there.
Do you even know how old I am? Also, it hardly matters what the heck changes in portion sizes happened in what time frame, I grew up in another country, and in Asia I am positive portion sizes are much smaller than they are in the US, and have been a very long time.
I know where you grew up. I didn't mention it because you're not even old enough to easily remember eating out in the US prior to the mid-80s, even if you had lived here.
As far as portion size goes, people have gotten a LOT fatter in the US in the last 25 years, and that change in restaurant portion size has a great deal to do with it. It deserves mention.
Posted by Anthonie (Member # 884) on :
I was overweight once, perhaps obese (around 210 for my 5'11" frame), due to a medical "condition". Actually, due to a *medicine*. I went on an an antidepressant, and presto! I gained 65 pounds in eight months. I had never been overweight before. Then I went off the meds, and presto, back to 145 within less than six months.
A good friend of mine started an anti-psychotic drug that he will take for life. He went from around 150 to 270 pounds.
A lot of folks in the U.S. take antidepressants and other meds. I wonder what portion of the U.S. could be overweight due to side effects of medication?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:
Celiac disease is quite common, that's not in question. If we were anything LIKE fully adapted to grains, there'd be basically no such thing as celiac disease. That's obvious.
Would there be nut allergies if we were fully adapted to eating nuts?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Anthonie: I was overweight once, perhaps obese (around 210 for my 5'11" frame), due to a medical "condition". Actually, due to a *medicine*. I went on an an antidepressant, and presto! I gained 65 pounds in eight months. I had never been overweight before. Then I went off the meds, and presto, back to 145 within less than six months.
A good friend of mine started an anti-psychotic drug that he will take for life. He went from around 150 to 270 pounds.
A lot of folks in the U.S. take antidepressants and other meds. I wonder what portion of the U.S. could be overweight due to side effects of medication?
That's not a bad point. It's not a universal side effect, but I definitely have heard a number of friends mention it, and I know it shows up in studies.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote:
Celiac disease is quite common, that's not in question. If we were anything LIKE fully adapted to grains, there'd be basically no such thing as celiac disease. That's obvious.
Would there be nut allergies if we were fully adapted to eating nuts?
I personally don't recommend nuts to most people. I certainly don't eat them more than once a week, on average, and probably less than that, and usually just a handful at a time.
I know of a lot of vegans who definitely have some health issues from eating large amounts of nut butters. They're not all that digestible.
As far as being perfectly adapted to a food, there's no one food that every human can eat without problems. Red meat comes the closest, but not even that is 100%. A great deal of choosing a good diet, especially in the beginning, involves experimentation.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
If the goal is to get thin (not get healthy, get thin) then the raw food diet makes tons of sense.
For example, it makes you very, very aware of what you are eating. This reduces unintentional overeating. This is one of the main benefits of any particularly stupid and bizarre diet.
Raw food also has the advantage of being generally worse and harder to digest, so you burn more calories processing it than you normally would. For actual hunter gatherers, living on the edge of famine, this was a huge drawback.
But for people living in luxury caused by progress (and then spitting on that progress, and blaming progress for all their ills) it's a huge upside. It essentially makes all of your food a little bit more like celery.
The invention of fire was a great boon to actual hunter-gatherers. Fire functioned as a sort of exterior stomach, predigesting the food somewhat so that it could be more easily eaten and processed.
So yeah, I have no trouble believing people get thin on this diet. That's not unique. People can get thin on any diet.
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
My genetic history is lactose tolerant and I don't have celiac disease. So why shouldn't I eat what I have evolved to eat? Lactose tolerance actually evolved independently in several groups. It was a huge boon to mankind, granting an immediate evolutionary advantage. So, just because not all mankind has this advantage, why shouldn't I make use of it?
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I'm Swedish, Irish, Scottish, Welch and Russian...all of which is basically viking. I have a huge tolerance for milk, I can drink it 24/7 and never have a single problem. Love the stuff. (of course I don't for the sugar and fat content)
Thanks for settling cows so long ago ancestors, you rock!
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: If the goal is to get thin (not get healthy, get thin) then the raw food diet makes tons of sense.
For example, it makes you very, very aware of what you are eating. This reduces unintentional overeating. This is one of the main benefits of any particularly stupid and bizarre diet.
Raw food also has the advantage of being generally worse and harder to digest, so you burn more calories processing it than you normally would. For actual hunter gatherers, living on the edge of famine, this was a huge drawback.
But for people living in luxury caused by progress (and then spitting on that progress, and blaming progress for all their ills) it's a huge upside. It essentially makes all of your food a little bit more like celery.
The invention of fire was a great boon to actual hunter-gatherers. Fire functioned as a sort of exterior stomach, predigesting the food somewhat so that it could be more easily eaten and processed.
So yeah, I have no trouble believing people get thin on this diet. That's not unique. People can get thin on any diet.
Cooking also produces advanced glycatino end-products and heterocyclic amines. Those don't serve any nutritional purpose, I guarantee you that.
Heavier cooking also damages water-soluble vitamins like vitamins C and B-complex. That also serves no nutritional purpose.
Finally, cooking reduces the digestibility of meat protein. Many bodybuilders have noted this, and Arnold Schwarzenegger has even pointed out that he had to eat a lot more meat while in the Austrian army to maintain his bulk, because they cooked it heavily.
But if you prefer your junk food, by all means, eat the shit. I didn't start the thread, don't much care what people eat, and that's that. At least you know there are other options available, and that's about all I can ask for.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by scholarette: My genetic history is lactose tolerant and I don't have celiac disease. So why shouldn't I eat what I have evolved to eat? Lactose tolerance actually evolved independently in several groups. It was a huge boon to mankind, granting an immediate evolutionary advantage. So, just because not all mankind has this advantage, why shouldn't I make use of it?
If you'd like to subsist on nothing but white bread and Velveeta for the rest of your life, that's your prerogative.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Wow steven, that is unwarrantedly hostile. scholarette is simply asking questions and making reasonable statements. If you would like to answer them, then by all means, but this kind of snappy, assumptive answer is nothing but fighting I can't imagine you will get anything but appropriate hostility in return.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Wow steven, that is unwarrantedly hostile. scholarette is simply asking questions and making reasonable statements. If you would like to answer them, then by all means, but this kind of snappy, assumptive answer is nothing but fighting I can't imagine you will get anything but appropriate hostility in return.
You misunderstand. I don't expect people to follow a specific diet. On the contrary, I encourage people to eat exactly the diet they like. However, I do offer alternatives, should they find themselves in a pickle, health-wise.
As far as hostility goes, I meet mostly hostility, avoidance, and/or laughter when I discuss nutrition, whether online or in real life. That's not something you'd understand, but believe me, being a raw foodist in the US today is like being a Buddhist in Spain in the 1500s. That's OK, I accept it. Socialization and addiction together are a powerful force. I don't expect open arms.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
The funny thing is, I actually think it's an interesting topic on several levels (nutritional, anthropological, industrial), but man, Steven, it seems that even in only mildly contentious, relatively short conversations it's not long before you start being a major schmuck about the matter. Which results in two conflicting desires-the desire to discuss something interesting, and the desire to avoid navigating an aggravating, obnoxious conversation partner.
Maybe consider hitting a reset button?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: Rivka and I are both old enough to remember the rather sudden increase in portion size in restaurants in the mid-80s.
Speak for yourself, bub.
I didn't go to restaurants enough when I was 10 to notice anything about portion sizes. Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: The funny thing is, I actually think it's an interesting topic on several levels (nutritional, anthropological, industrial), but man, Steven, it seems that even in only mildly contentious, relatively short conversations it's not long before you start being a major schmuck about the matter. Which results in two conflicting desires-the desire to discuss something interesting, and the desire to avoid navigating an aggravating, obnoxious conversation partner.
Maybe consider hitting a reset button?
I'm not about to set some kind of standard of civility, only to have some jerk with a score to settle from the LAST time we went through this (TomD, Scopatz, Primal Curve, etc.) come strolling and trolling in. I would need assurances that such would not happen...and nobody's even controlling Dan Frank or Destineer.
Wrong or not, I'm not about to forgive and forget. Not without assurances, and you can't offer those. Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by steven: Rivka and I are both old enough to remember the rather sudden increase in portion size in restaurants in the mid-80s.
Speak for yourself, bub.
I didn't go to restaurants enough when I was 10 to notice anything about portion sizes.
Fair enough. I remember complaints (from when I was about 7 or 8) from parental units about small portion sizes in restaurants. I went about 4 years, ages 11 to 14, too busy to go to non-fast-food restaurants. I remember being shocked by the large portion sizes when I started going back to non-fast-food places.
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: I'm about 95% European by ancestry, but I can't get away with drinking fresh milk or cream.
Even unpasturized milk? My wife is lactose intolerant, but we've found that she can digest raw milk without any trouble at all. I was pretty surprised by that, honestly.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Steven, who are you even kidding by imagining *yourself* in a position to decide about forgiving and forgetting? How's about climbing down off that cross you nailed yourself to and just moseying about with the rest of us?
You put yourself in the position of being ridiculed for unusual beliefs by your method of expressing them and your entry to the community. Or you could continue to play the victim, which is almost certainly what you'll do anyway.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jake:
quote:Originally posted by steven: I'm about 95% European by ancestry, but I can't get away with drinking fresh milk or cream.
Even unpasturized milk? My wife is lactose intolerant, but we've found that she can digest raw milk without any trouble at all. I was pretty surprised by that, honestly.
It's hit or miss. If it's at room temp, and I sip it slowly, maybe it's OK. Otherwise, ish.
I've seen all kinds of reactions to raw dairy, everything from "it healed me miraculously!" to "it made my teeth almost fall out!". Even grassfed raw dairy, thoroughly fermented, causes problems for a few people.
I don't think it's just lactose intolerance for some of those folks. Either way, though, it's something that each individual has to test out themselves.
I personally do pretty well on raw grassfed sour cream. If I eat too much, it can cause a little acid reflux, but that's about it. Cheese (I think it's because of the extremely high calcium to magnesium ratio) causes me joint problems, as well as constipation, so I go easy on cheese, and I take a magnesium pill when I eat it.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Steven, who are you even kidding by imagining *yourself* in a position to decide about forgiving and forgetting? How's about climbing down off that cross you nailed yourself to and just moseying about with the rest of us?
You put yourself in the position of being ridiculed for unusual beliefs by your method of expressing them and your entry to the community. Or you could continue to play the victim, which is almost certainly what you'll do anyway.
So Destineer gets to make cracks about butter oil, while I'm supposed to take the high road? Not to be a 3-year-old, but...he started it. And you've not said a word to him. In fact, no one has. That's OK, but don't expect me to treat everyone like they're valued customers.
It's like this. Imagine you work in a store, and an entire busload of people walk in at the same time. A few are openly rude, some are polite, and most are just average. However, they're all wanting your help and attention NOW. Throw a couple of rude hecklers in there, who just want to make your day harder, and...yeah, some frustration may show.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: I would need assurances that such would not happen...and nobody's even controlling Dan Frank or Destineer.
Why would we need controlling? Because we're criticizing your terrible diet? I don't think either of us are being hostile, man. You've absolutely got the right to eat whatever you want to eat. I'm not trying to stop you.
You're confusing criticism with hostility.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
I am old enough to remember, and Steven has a point about portion size changes.
When McDonalds introduced the quarter-pounder they named it that to emphasize that it was a whole 4 oz of meat, which was considerably bigger than a standard hamburger. A regular sized soft drink was 8oz.
A standard dinner plate has also increased in size in the last 20 years, and there's been plenty of research that shows people eat more off of larger plates, so even cooking at home doesn't escape portion distortion.
I suspect that increased portion size has more to do with the epidemic of obesity in America than what people are eating. Occasional fast food, if it's a 3 oz hamburger, 2 oz of fries, and 8 oz of soda is not a big deal. If it's a half-pound burger, 5.5 oz fries, and 32 oz of soda (refillable!) then, yeah, it's a problem.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by dkw: I suspect that increased portion size has more to do with the epidemic of obesity in America than what people are eating. Occasional fast food, if it's a 3 oz hamburger, 2 oz of fries, and 8 oz of soda is not a big deal. If it's a half-pound burger, 5.5 oz fries, and 32 oz of soda (refillable!) then, yeah, it's a problem.
Yeah, I agree completely. This is the main issue. Overeating in general.
But I also think it's sort of backwards to blame the increased portion size. Increased portion size in restaurants and on plates came about because people wanted bigger portions. That's the thing that I think sometimes gets lost. People wanted to eat more food, so they did. There's no clandestine portion size mafia that increased things against the will of the people. And there's no compulsion on people to eat the greater portion sizes.
Well. Correction: There's no compulsion on adults to eat the greater portion sizes. Children often do get coerced into doing just that, and I think that manipulation screws them up and is a big cause of people continuing to eat too much into adulthood. But as adults, we have the option to take responsibility for our lives and stop overeating. Large portion sizes or not.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
OK, I did use a sarcastic tone about the butter oil thing. But he literally does eat a raw diet because the tribes who ate it had nicely developed skeletons. He's cited this as one of his reasons many times. (I distinctly recall pointing out to him back in the day that his eating habits weren't going to do anything to his full-grown adult skeleton.)
There is very little truly rigorous nutrition science in the world, and the science that Steven cites to back up his diet is about as rigorous as young-earth creationism. If you like eating that stuff, eat it, but don't pretend you have scientific evidence that it's the right thing to eat. What you have is a bunch of probably placebo-induced anecdotes that, as some of your own points about food would suggest, wouldn't generalize to other people even if they were true in your case because different bodies tend to respond to the same food in different ways.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: I think that the person has conflicting duties, one to stop stampeding and one, from self-preservation, to not stop. This is fine. Well, it sucks, but it's fine. I think it just might be that we mean different things when we say 'ought'. I take it that many people believe that through conceptual analysis we see that if we have conflicting oughts, one or neither triumphs. I think that both hold, and at least one simply cannot be satisfied.
Huh. I think I prefer Budolfson's solution: you individually are not obligated to stop, but the crowd collectively is obligated to stop.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
The soldiers on the wall case is quite different, because in that case you can be at least somewhat confident that your fellow soldiers will stay on the wall.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
I think it's useful to point out the crucial differences between self directed and self evaluated experimentation with diet and controlled studies, but in fairness to steven he was suggesting that people should experiment on their own to find out what works for them.
On the other hand he implicitly rejected any such experiments that don't lead to similar conclusions, so...
I just ate a large packet of "fruit snacks" that were mainly corn syrup. I have not noticed any effects so far other than increased humility and an urge to listen to Beck.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: I just ate a large packet of "fruit snacks" that were mainly corn syrup.
Gah, don't even get me started on the BS myths around high fructose corn syrup.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: The soldiers on the wall case is quite different, because in that case you can be at least somewhat confident that your fellow soldiers will stay on the wall.
Here's where my quirky views make this work. I already deny ought implies can, which means I'm allowed to--and do--say that epistemic states don't play a role in duties.
As for collective obligations, they provide nice solutions, but to make them work you usually end up having to do some weird metaphysics that I'm not comfortable with. I know there are attempts to avoid a commitment to collective agency but I haven't been satisfied with what I've read from that lit.
Edit: I really need to figure out how to use commas. Or at least be consistent about it.
Edit2: I'm reading this again and now I'm wondering what you mean when you say "because in that case you can be at least somewhat confident that your fellow soldiers will stay on the wall." Are the AWOLers confident that the fellow soldiers will stay when they flee or when they remain? If it is when they flee, then this should act against Feinberg's initial conclusion. If it is when they stay, then why should their confidence be different in the fleeing scenario, and we're back to the previous case.
Edit3: I figured I should clarify that I think epistemic states matter for moral responsibility.
[ February 01, 2013, 05:16 PM: Message edited by: JonHecht ]
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by Parkour:
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Is steven still into that raw butter oil diet that gives his skeleton a healthy sheen?
What was that called again, the whatever diet ideas that he was into?
He mentioned it earlier in the thread. He's into the raw food Paleolithic diet.
No there was some guy in specific he is (was?) way into who made a bunch of bogus claims about diet.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Dr. Price
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Ah. Price is often cited by the raw-food folks and the Paleo folks, so I'll still stand by what I said. But yeah, I didn't specifically know he cited Price, he hasn't done that in this thread.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: OK, I did use a sarcastic tone about the butter oil thing. But he literally does eat a raw diet because the tribes who ate it had nicely developed skeletons. He's cited this as one of his reasons many times. (I distinctly recall pointing out to him back in the day that his eating habits weren't going to do anything to his full-grown adult skeleton.)
There is very little truly rigorous nutrition science in the world, and the science that Steven cites to back up his diet is about as rigorous as young-earth creationism. If you like eating that stuff, eat it, but don't pretend you have scientific evidence that it's the right thing to eat. What you have is a bunch of probably placebo-induced anecdotes that, as some of your own points about food would suggest, wouldn't generalize to other people even if they were true in your case because different bodies tend to respond to the same food in different ways.
I never said changing my diet would change my adult skeleton. that's not why I eat it. I eat it because it works really, really well for me.
And you're right, there's basically no rigorous science on nutrition. That's because the number of variables is so high, and the monetary profit to be gained from such science is zero. You can't patent or sell anything that you learn from such research, except maybe access to research papers, and research papers on nutrition won't make anyone wealthy.
Just because there's no rigorous science doesn't mean that you can't use current cultures, anthropological evidence, and some of the existing studies to rough out a basic approach to good diet. That's like saying that, because you don't have a perfect understanding of your spouse, that you shouldn't interact with them. You have to eat. Why not try to do it right?
But you'd rather use the lack of good studies as an excuse to derail the thread, rather than actually investigate the issue as thoroughly as it can be with the available evidence, wouldn't you? And why is that?
Yes, I'm accusing you of arguing in bad faith. Just to be clear. Yes, I'm questioning your motives. Just to be clear. Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by dkw: I suspect that increased portion size has more to do with the epidemic of obesity in America than what people are eating. Occasional fast food, if it's a 3 oz hamburger, 2 oz of fries, and 8 oz of soda is not a big deal. If it's a half-pound burger, 5.5 oz fries, and 32 oz of soda (refillable!) then, yeah, it's a problem.
Yeah, I agree completely. This is the main issue. Overeating in general.
But I also think it's sort of backwards to blame the increased portion size. Increased portion size in restaurants and on plates came about because people wanted bigger portions. That's the thing that I think sometimes gets lost. People wanted to eat more food, so they did. There's no clandestine portion size mafia that increased things against the will of the people. And there's no compulsion on people to eat the greater portion sizes.
Well. Correction: There's no compulsion on adults to eat the greater portion sizes. Children often do get coerced into doing just that, and I think that manipulation screws them up and is a big cause of people continuing to eat too much into adulthood. But as adults, we have the option to take responsibility for our lives and stop overeating. Large portion sizes or not.
Self-discipline plays a role, but I've found two things that really seem to help people avoid excessive overeating.
1. Eating food in as unprocessed/uncooked a state as possible. You have said that it automatically tastes worse, but that's not necessarily true. Try some wild strawberries sometime, or a ripe mamey sapote. They taste amazing raw. The reality is that, with an unprocessed, raw food, your body has a natural instinctive 'stop' that tells you when you've had enough. This stop is even apparent with cooked and processed foods sometimes, but it's not nearly as strong, usually.
2. Eating one food at a time. Like I said above, your body has an instinctive 'stop' that tells you when you've had enough. Mixing foods weakens this instinct. I personally usually just eat one food at a time, until I'm tired of it, then switch to the next food. I might eat 5 or 6 foods at one meal this way, and it definitely reduces the total amount that I eat.
For instance at lunch, I might have 4 or 5 large scallops, followed by 4 or 5 ounces of 1 type of fish, followed by 3 or 4 ounces of another type of fish, followed by an avocado. All of that's raw, with no condiments, except maybe a little salt sometimes, since my diet includes very little sodium.
Eating this way, one food at a time, is also better for digestion, in my experience. It doesn't matter much when you're mixing flesh foods, but for fruits it can help, for those of us with weaker digestion.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:But I also think it's sort of backwards to blame the increased portion size. Increased portion size in restaurants and on plates came about because people wanted bigger portions. That's the thing that I think sometimes gets lost. People wanted to eat more food, so they did. There's no clandestine portion size mafia that increased things against the will of the people. And there's no compulsion on people to eat the greater portion sizes.
This is certainly true, but it is also true that out in the real world beyond abstract respect for the sanctity of human choice, if you put a plate of food in front of a person they will simply eat more if the plate is larger and the portions *appear* to be about the same size, based on proportions.
What a big part of it comes down to, I think, is how accurate it is to label a choice made in ignorance and even a choice made ignorant of there *being* a choice truly, freely made? I believe you have mentioned working in restaurants before, yes? If so, set aside the (solid, worthwhile) argument that people should be knowledgeable about nutrition for a moment and in your experience consider how many actually were, and perhaps you'll see where I'm coming from in terms of choices made in ignorance.
Heck, compare the time spent teaching children in school about actual physical fitness and good nutrition to time spent mastering or adequately-ing the standardized test.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:The reality is that, with an unprocessed, raw food, your body has a natural instinctive 'stop' that tells you when you've had enough.
what institutes is this according to
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: People wanted to eat more food, so they did. There's no clandestine portion size mafia that increased things against the will of the people. And there's no compulsion on people to eat the greater portion sizes.
I suspect the vast majority of people didn't notice. It's not that they chose to eat more food, it's that they moved out of their parents house, bought a box of dinnerware at Target, and didn't notice "Hey, these plates are bigger than the ones I grew up eating on. I'd better adjust my idea of what a normal serving looks like when I'm dishing up my food."
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Steven, I'm not going to get into one of these Hatrack arguments about who's "arguing in bad/good faith." I'm glad to see that you're making way more sense about these issues than you did back in the day when you would just parrot that Price guy. Perhaps I shouldn't tar you with the same brush as your earlier self.
quote:But you'd rather use the lack of good studies as an excuse to derail the thread, rather than actually investigate the issue as thoroughly as it can be with the available evidence, wouldn't you? And why is that?
Some would say that if the available evidence is all pretty sucky, there's not much point investigating the issue, beyond figuring out what kinds of food we know everyone should avoid.
For my part, my only gripe about obesity in America is that I'm still on the market and I find overweight girls unattractive.
quote:Just because there's no rigorous science doesn't mean that you can't use current cultures, anthropological evidence, and some of the existing studies to rough out a basic approach to good diet.
If you think anthropological studies are the way to go, I'm surprised you don't just take the moral of the China Study and go vegan or semi-vegan. As studies like that go, it seems like about the most rigorous one there is.
Posted by Rawrain (Member # 12414) on :
I would agree with this entirely, but there's a problem with this shaming, and that there is people.
I can see many circumstance, some people really do need more shaming, others need less, but the personality of the person(s) in question is ever the most important part.
For some the shaming would provide a source of motivation to change ones ways in order to escape the shaming. - Like a drill sergeant-
And for the rest, I would say these are the people with low self-esteem, are more inclined to fall into a pit of despair that would result in them hurting/killing themselves and/or hurting/killing others.
- I would go on to say, if you're going to try this you should at least know the person well enough to know if they can handle a bit-o-shame, and remember that a person that weighs 100lbs more than you even if they're weaker do have a strength advantage over you (and most would acknowledge that) -Ex. I attempt to push a refrigerator, despite my strength being adequate enough to move it, no matter how hard I push it stays still. -Ex. So a 300lbs man leans against the fridge and it simply pushes away.
I face this one all the time trying to move a ~400lbs salad display case at work to clean behind it, despite being on wheels, I cannot gain enough traction even with slip resistant shoes to move it ~.~
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rawrain:
I can see many circumstance, some people really do need more shaming, others need less, but the personality of the person(s) in question is ever the most important part.
This was my thought. Human psychology is complex stuff.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
Heck, compare the time spent teaching children in school about actual physical fitness and good nutrition to time spent mastering or adequately-ing the standardized test.
Yep. In a society where people eat a good diet, it's no big deal. In our society, however, it's a huge deal....and we get it wrong. We talk about grains as the MOST important food, when in fact many people are gluten-sensitive, and grains, in general, are a major FATTENING food. Grains are used to fatten cows and pigs prior to slaughter.
Do we really want to feed ourselves a pre-slaughter diet?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Steven, I'm not going to get into one of these Hatrack arguments about who's "arguing in bad/good faith." I'm glad to see that you're making way more sense about these issues than you did back in the day when you would just parrot that Price guy. Perhaps I shouldn't tar you with the same brush as your earlier self.
quote:But you'd rather use the lack of good studies as an excuse to derail the thread, rather than actually investigate the issue as thoroughly as it can be with the available evidence, wouldn't you? And why is that?
Some would say that if the available evidence is all pretty sucky, there's not much point investigating the issue, beyond figuring out what kinds of food we know everyone should avoid.
For my part, my only gripe about obesity in America is that I'm still on the market and I find overweight girls unattractive.
quote:Just because there's no rigorous science doesn't mean that you can't use current cultures, anthropological evidence, and some of the existing studies to rough out a basic approach to good diet.
If you think anthropological studies are the way to go, I'm surprised you don't just take the moral of the China Study and go vegan or semi-vegan. As studies like that go, it seems like about the most rigorous one there is.
The China study is of a Neolithic society. Humans developed their eating habits and adaptations long prior to the Neolithic. There are still some Paleo human groups around, like the Inuit, who still eat their traditional diet in more remote areas.
Vegan diets don't include enough of the brain-healthy fats that come with high-quality animal products. Most traditional tribes prize specific animal products, especially certain fatty seafoods (like fish eggs and specific organs) for their health benefits.
Another reason seafoods are so healthy is because all the minerals wash into the ocean and build up over time, guaranteeing that the mineral content of the food, both trace minerals and macro-minerals, is sufficient. Many soils are of poor quality, and the animals living off the plants grown in those soils will not compare well with seafoods, in terms of their nutritional content.
Moderation is important, though.
My main problem with mostly-vegan diets is that people are usually eating grains to replace their animal foods.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:The reality is that, with an unprocessed, raw food, your body has a natural instinctive 'stop' that tells you when you've had enough.
what institutes is this according to
Try it yourself. Take some food that is fairly tasty in its raw form, and then try eating it raw versus eating it heavily cooked, with spices and condiments.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I've done that. As a dietary principle raw foodism has shown me how it is possible to cook my food less so that I can fart all the time and have less energy but has never induced a more appropriate "time to stop eating" effect in me and I have never, ever been shown credible data which supports this supposed reality.
If raw food advocates want to establish that this is a benefit of their diet, [citation needed]. The biggest red flag a supposed better diet can give me (so that I can promptly avoid it) is when its circles of ideological advocacy commonly make claims that are no more than the anecdote of tightly knit circles of the faithful.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:The China study is of a Neolithic society. Humans developed their eating habits and adaptations long prior to the Neolithic. There are still some Paleo human groups around, like the Inuit, who still eat their traditional diet in more remote areas.
Is this supposed to invalidate the CS in some way? Why should only older societies be studied?
quote:Try it yourself. Take some food that is fairly tasty in its raw form, and then try eating it raw versus eating it heavily cooked, with spices and condiments.
Isn't it very likely that the placebo effect can explain any positive results of such a one-person test?
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
I saw a BBC Horizon program on this. Its argument was that human brains had evolved because of the more intensive nutrients (along with better storage through the cooking and similar processes) made available to humans because of cooking.
I, like most people, eat a combination of raw and cooked (or otherwise processed) foods.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
"My main problem with mostly-vegan diets is that people are usually eating grains to replace their animal foods."
Last night for dinner we had a curry tofu scramble with red cabbage and red onion (made delicious by caraway seed), with a small side of baked latkes topped with unsweetened applesauce.
Tonight we're having spaghetti squash with olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic.
The only people who end up making their vegan diet grain-based are those who don't know how to eat in the first place.
"Vegan diets don't include enough of the brain-healthy fats that come with high-quality animal products."
I get plenty in olive oil and flax seeds, thank you.
Edit: Occasionally we'll make something like pierogies as the main, but this is a once in a while thing, rather than a regular dish.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
One thing I really wish I knew about nutrition, but which I suspect no one knows, is the extent to which one can "get away" with eating a less ideal diet if one is not the type to gain weight and does well on blood tests.
In my case I mainly adapt my diet to the fact that I have fairly bad acid reflux. This leads me to eat a lot of carbs. But I'm skinnier than a rail, and cholesterol levels etc are very good.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote: I get plenty in olive oil and flax seeds, thank you.
My understanding is that only fish oil, and in particular not flax seeds, has had its effectiveness experimentally demonstrated as a healthy source of Omega-3s. So you're still taking a risk of sorts. The effectiveness of fish oil is proven, while flax's effectiveness is just conjecture.
Good to know. Looks like I'll have to order some EPA/DHA supplements. http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/omega3#veganDHA Edit (I do this often, don't I?): I'm not too worried about the cardiovascular effects, but the cognitive benefits would be nice.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
Good idea. My other piece of advice for vegans is, don't take calcium supplements or drink milk substitutes fortified with calcium carbonate. There's some reason to think that stuff will clog your arteries. Not scientifically that well established, but it's enough that I wouldn't risk it unless I had high osteoporosis risk or something.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: One thing I really wish I knew about nutrition, but which I suspect no one knows, is the extent to which one can "get away" with eating a less ideal diet if one is not the type to gain weight and does well on blood tests.
Well, there are comprehensive blood tests which will let you know if you're doing too much in the way of saturated fats, bad cholesterol, are taking in too much sugar or sodium to process healthy, and other tests which just otherwise let you know if you are setting yourself up for arteriosclerotic vascular disease. As far as has been shown, the healthiest possible diets aren't excluding of anything specific (i.e., no vegetarian, vegan, raw, anti-carb, no fast food, etc) but simply measure out what portion of your calories come bundled with fat, carbohydrate, protein, and fiber, and balance these against each other.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
Perhaps, but being vegan is a magic cure for cancer.
quote:The China study is of a Neolithic society. Humans developed their eating habits and adaptations long prior to the Neolithic. There are still some Paleo human groups around, like the Inuit, who still eat their traditional diet in more remote areas.
Is this supposed to invalidate the CS in some way? Why should only older societies be studied?
quote:Try it yourself. Take some food that is fairly tasty in its raw form, and then try eating it raw versus eating it heavily cooked, with spices and condiments.
Isn't it very likely that the placebo effect can explain any positive results of such a one-person test?
Neolithic societies, by definition, are not eating an ideal human diet. We've been eating grains in large amounts for less than 6 thousand years (and much less than that in many cases. The Middle East and East Asia are mostly the only places that have been eating large amounts of grains for around that long). That's not to say that all grains and all dairy are created equal. For that matter, not all cooking methods are equal, either. However, a diet extremely high in starches isn't necessarily a good fit for many people.
And no, the taste change isn't placebo effect. Like I said, try it.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I've done that. As a dietary principle raw foodism has shown me how it is possible to cook my food less so that I can fart all the time and have less energy but has never induced a more appropriate "time to stop eating" effect in me and I have never, ever been shown credible data which supports this supposed reality.
If raw food advocates want to establish that this is a benefit of their diet, [citation needed]. The biggest red flag a supposed better diet can give me (so that I can promptly avoid it) is when its circles of ideological advocacy commonly make claims that are no more than the anecdote of tightly knit circles of the faithful.
Common sense would tell you that raw (or at least not-heavily-cooked) food is going to be more easily-recognized by your body, as well as more compatible with your body chemistry. We are raw food. Raw meat, to be exact.
If you farted a lot and had no energy, you were probably eating a lot of raw veggies, right? They're hard to digest. I recommend meat, fish, and the drier fruits like banana and dates. Those are the easiest to digest. Fermented foods are easier to digest as well. I eat a good bit of fermented fruit and fish, myself.
I'll readily admit that raw food is sometimes not as easily-digested. However, if I have to make the choice between a little gas and having painful acid reflux (as an example--I'm prone to both gas and acid reflux), the choice is simple. Raw might make me fart, but some cooked foods cause actual acid damage to my esophagus.
Generally, though, if I avoid watery fruits, I don't have gas. I still eat them sometimes, though, because they have vitamin C, anthoxanthins, etc.. I'll gladly fart in exchange for some protection against cancer, etc..
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
It's behind a paywall. Can you summarize?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Good idea. My other piece of advice for vegans is, don't take calcium supplements or drink milk substitutes fortified with calcium carbonate. There's some reason to think that stuff will clog your arteries. Not scientifically that well established, but it's enough that I wouldn't risk it unless I had high osteoporosis risk or something.
Calcium is bad for your arteries. It's definitely been shown to be positively correlated with heart disease, in multiple studies.
Magnesium is the opposite. In fact, magnesium and calcium balance each other out in the body. This is why I generally supplement with magnesium when I eat cheese. Too much magnesium does have a laxative effect, though, unfortunately. There was a time when I was having a lot of trouble with loose stools, because I was supplementing with lots of magnesium but no calcium. It got a bit annoying.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: Good to know. Looks like I'll have to order some EPA/DHA supplements. http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/omega3#veganDHA Edit (I do this often, don't I?): I'm not too worried about the cardiovascular effects, but the cognitive benefits would be nice.
Dude, just eat a few ounces of fatty wild-caught fish once every week or two. I know too many vegans with serious, progressive cognitive issues to feel safe recommending veganism long-term. I don't know if it's the lack of B-12, the lack of high-quality animal fats, or what, but a lot of vegans have progressive brain deterioration. It's sad to watch.
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Neolithic societies, by definition, are not eating an ideal human diet. We've been eating grains in large amounts for less than 6 thousand years (and much less than that in many cases. The Middle East and East Asia are mostly the only places that have been eating large amounts of grains for around that long).
So by definition, the healthiest diet is the one we started out eating? Why is that a matter for definition rather than empirical scientific investigation?
One excellent point I've seen made by one of the China Study guys: evolution only selects for traits that increase your odds of reproducing, not your odds of living longer. So if 98% of people on Diet A die at 90 and 2% die young because Diet A's food is hard to find, while 99% of people on Diet B die at 50 and 1% die young, evolution will select Diet B over Diet A, even though Diet A is healthier.
(I should be clear, I don't buy the China Study. But that's only because I'm not convinced that anthropological studies are the best way to learn about nutrition. If I thought they were, I would believe the China Study.)
quote:And no, the taste change isn't placebo effect. Like I said, try it.
Trying something, by itself, is not a way to tell whether its benefits result from the placebo effect. Unless the benefits would be impossible without the stimulus. You can't tell subjectively whether it's placebo effect or not.
quote:Calcium is bad for your arteries. It's definitely been shown to be positively correlated with heart disease, in multiple studies.
Might not be causation, though. As with any bare correlation, there might be a common cause.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: Common sense would tell you that raw (or at least not-heavily-cooked) food is going to be more easily-recognized by your body, as well as more compatible with your body chemistry. We are raw food. Raw meat, to be exact.
This is, again, a classic example of a set of assertions that needs a citation. If it were true, you could demonstrate it in short order with data. A "common sense would tell you" is not going to fly.
Also to note: the idea that we ought to deduce that we "recognize our food" better if it is raw because we are raw food too is probably one of the weirdest I have heard in a long time, and it does not follow anything I know of in nutritional science. It also flies in the face of our understanding of current human evolution as one that has been, for millions of years, based off of the advantages that cooking our food gave us, so we can't say that we are somehow better biologically "attuned" to raw food. We've been a cooked food eater for pretty much the duration of our entire species, essentially.
Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
That's why I eat human, raw. Because my digestive system is raw human, it recognizes raw human instantly and it is way easier to digest. I'm feeling really healthy as I evade ever being found as a cannibal, though that may be the bath salts talking.
Seriously, I just came into the room and caught the package of designer drugs typing.
Seriously though, we evolved in manner that supports omnivorous but processed diets. Other omnivorous creatures can eat just about anything, some merely scrounge through one or the other if they are really that hungry. But humans are far more fragile than bears and raccoons, and smarter, and more adaptable to foreign environments, and totally mastered the whole thumb problem. Do you see? Raccoons don't cook their meat and they suck, we will cook stuff we already cooked just for fun and we rule. How's that for common sense?
Posted by Tittles (Member # 12939) on :
Steven - I think you almost have the keys down for a healthy life. Have you looked into homeopathy? I think it could complete your quest for a healthy and natural lifestyle.
Lots of interesting responses but the bottom line is the vast majority of fat people aren't fat because of a medical condition. They're fat because they eat more calories then they burn off. So it's either them not wanting to lose weight, or it's a willpower thing. Choosing to eat the whole bag of chips.
That doesn't mean that they need to be rounded up into exercise camps or anything. But they should at least be treated the same way as smokers.
Lastly here's a link to a short lecture on the subject from a British scientist.
m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=RXTq2_3LfXM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DRXTq2_3LfXM
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tittles: That doesn't mean that they need to be rounded up into exercise camps or anything. But they should at least be treated the same way as smokers.
I don't particularly think smokers should be treated the same way as smokers.
Posted by NobleHunter (Member # 12043) on :
quote:Steven - I think you almost have the keys down for a healthy life. Have you looked into homeopathy? I think it could complete your quest for a healthy and natural lifestyle.
I can't tell if you're mocking Steven or not...
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by NobleHunter:
quote:Steven - I think you almost have the keys down for a healthy life. Have you looked into homeopathy? I think it could complete your quest for a healthy and natural lifestyle.
I can't tell if you're mocking Steven or not...
He is.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
If this diet didn't work, I wouldn't eat it.
All the anthropological and biochemical evidence aside, that's why I stuck with this diet, instead of cooked vegan, high-raw vegan, low-fat raw vegan, fruitarian, modified Weston Price, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum. I find it so funny that it's usually the very people who are hugely obese, eat junk constantly, and have never experimented with diet who want to see 50,000 peer-reviewed double blind studies on the healthiness of eating an apple or a piece of sashimi. I don't have much of an answer for those people. I'm in such a different place with my diet that it is literally hard to communicate with them.
Think about it--if we were in Japan, none of you would think to question my eating of raw fish/meat. You would not only ACCEPT it without question, you would also be DOING it too. For that matter, the Japanese have a longer life span. What dietary credibility should sashimi-criticizing Americans have, when compared with the Japanese?
Let's extrapolate that a little farther. What if we had evolved on a planet where raw fruit, meat, and fish were (for whatever accidents of plant and animal evolution) still pretty much 100% of our diet, even into the age of modern technology? We wouldn't be having this argument. We'd all simply be eating raw Paleo.
That's my point. You people don't eat the way you do because of science. Even I don't. Our eating habits are some mixture of socialization, availability, etc., etc. Science is way down of the list of priorities when it comes to choosing our food, individually-speaking. I can at least claim that my diet is the most similar to our ancestors' diet, and that it appears not to be highly-correlated with the major (and most of the minor) degenerative diseases. Unlike the typical American diet, for instance. You know what I mean, Vern?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by NobleHunter:
quote:Steven - I think you almost have the keys down for a healthy life. Have you looked into homeopathy? I think it could complete your quest for a healthy and natural lifestyle.
I can't tell if you're mocking Steven or not...
He is.
Really? I was wondering that myself.
And for the record, I'm not interested in homeopathy. Anyone who wants to make further cracks along those lines, let me offer you a raw paleo meal. For free.
It's in my pants.
Posted by NobleHunter (Member # 12043) on :
quote:Think about it--if we were in Japan, none of you would think to question my eating of raw fish/meat. You would not only ACCEPT it without question, you would also be DOING it too. For that matter, the Japanese have a longer life span. What dietary credibility should sashimi-criticizing Americans have, when compared with the Japanese?
I'm not terribly familiar with day-to-day japanese cuisine, but sashimi doesn't seem to be the primary food. It was way easier to find noodle shops or McDonalds than sushi places. As far as I can tell the Japanese diet revolves around assorted noodles, seaweeds, and rice. Almost all of it was cooked or otherwise processed, not exactly raw food.
And I eat raw fish here, since I like to have sushi more often than I get to Japan.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
quote:Originally posted by NobleHunter:
quote:Steven - I think you almost have the keys down for a healthy life. Have you looked into homeopathy? I think it could complete your quest for a healthy and natural lifestyle.
I can't tell if you're mocking Steven or not...
He is.
Really? I was wondering that myself.
Maybe not, I guess? I don't know for sure. But homeopathy is such a joke that it's hard to imagine he meant it any other way.
quote:Originally posted by steven: And for the record, I'm not interested in homeopathy. Anyone who wants to make further cracks along those lines, let me offer you a raw paleo meal. For free.
It's in my pants.
Classy.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: Think about it--if we were in Japan, none of you would think to question my eating of raw fish/meat. You would not only ACCEPT it without question, you would also be DOING it too. For that matter, the Japanese have a longer life span. What dietary credibility should sashimi-criticizing Americans have, when compared with the Japanese?
What percentage of the Japanese diet is uncooked fish and meat versus cooked food?
Posted by Alexbrit (Member # 12945) on :
Its not so bad I agreed but weight increase may be one of its causes.I do like fast foods.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by steven: Think about it--if we were in Japan, none of you would think to question my eating of raw fish/meat. You would not only ACCEPT it without question, you would also be DOING it too. For that matter, the Japanese have a longer life span. What dietary credibility should sashimi-criticizing Americans have, when compared with the Japanese?
What percentage of the Japanese diet is uncooked fish and meat versus cooked food?
Sam we know Japanese folk all eat sushi constantly. Not gyoza, not yakisoba, not katsu don or katsu curry, not tempura sushi. It's all sashimi!
Ignore KFCs huge popularity there.
And don't let this picture tell you any different!
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Also they have mystical powers from their martial arts, and a samurai could totally beat a knight.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
Okay, raw fish doesn't make up a very large percentage of Japanese food. But you can't prove steven wrong by throwing up the examples of McDonald's and KFC. The longevity and health of the Japanese people has suffered in recent history from the increased consumption of Western fast food. So while steven can't argue that the Japanese live longer because they eat nothing but raw fish, we also can't argue that they live longer in spite of fried crap.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:The longevity and health of the Japanese people has suffered in recent history
This is an easily measureable fact which you could back up, if necessary, by pointing to readily available statistics.
quote:from the increased consumption of Western fast food.
This is opinion. It is not impossible to prove such a thing, but it requires a lot more than the observation that Western food consumption increased while longevity went down.
Please distinguish between the two types of assertion.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by PSI Teleport: So while steven can't argue that the Japanese live longer because they eat nothing but raw fish, we also can't argue that they live longer in spite of fried crap.
Their typical diet is on the whole healthier than the upper med western diets and most of it comes down to portion control and a (relative) lack of saturated fats. The overabundance of rice in the diet isn't particularly good, and they consume colossal amounts of sodium, but it's well better than what someone typically ends up eating in the food deserts of american urban and poor areas, especially in the south, which create modern-day dietary regimens that practically guarantee rising obesity and health risk.
On the whole, though, a singaporean or central mediterranean diet would be better, and would dispense with the unhealthy sodium qualities. None of the reasons why any of these diets (and the cultural factors that go into eating patterns and portion control, which are usually more important) are better measurably because they are, in greater portion, uncooked.
I mean, the primary staple is rice. How often is that consumed uncooked by the japanese? Does it somehow count as "uncooked" using some special bizarre raw foodie exemption?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
I thought the saturated fat thing was hotly contested these days (by Gary Taubes types).
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
KoM, you're right, and I have sources. Unfortunately they're all in Japanese so it wouldn't do me any good to link to them without translating the pertinent passages. If this discussion is still going on the next time I can get online, I'll try to do that. I'm in a hurry this morning.
But it's true that I can't yet directly show causation between the diet and shorter life span. Only diet and increased obesity.
Posted by Tittles (Member # 12939) on :
PSI, shhhhh.
Didn't you know? Being fat is like being black or gay. It's not a choice.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by PSI Teleport: KoM, you're right, and I have sources. Unfortunately they're all in Japanese so it wouldn't do me any good to link to them without translating the pertinent passages. If this discussion is still going on the next time I can get online, I'll try to do that. I'm in a hurry this morning.
Fair enough. Please do not go far out of your way or do a lot of work to translate the sources; I do not actually care that much about the subject, I merely wanted to point out an apparent case of bad statistical reasoning. Don't put yourself to a lot of trouble over snarking on my part. Posted by stilesbn (Member # 11809) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Originally posted by PSI Teleport: KoM, you're right, and I have sources. Unfortunately they're all in Japanese so it wouldn't do me any good to link to them without translating the pertinent passages. If this discussion is still going on the next time I can get online, I'll try to do that. I'm in a hurry this morning.
Fair enough. Please do not go far out of your way or do a lot of work to translate the sources; I do not actually care that much about the subject, I merely wanted to point out an apparent case of bad statistical reasoning. Don't put yourself to a lot of trouble over snarking on my part.
Also, the consensus on this forum is that it is not your responsibility to source any assertions you make. Unfortunately the thread where that was discussed got deleted.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: I thought the saturated fat thing was hotly contested these days (by Gary Taubes types).
I really seriously doubt, given how readily you can reduce various types of prevalence of cardiovascular incident and degenerative disease by switching up saturated fats with polyunsaturated, that research is going to show that saturated fats is not something that should have an upper limit for a healthy diet.
Probably what's going to happen is that continued diet and genetic study is going to show there is a wide variability in a person's safe limit of saturated fats based on their lineage. A real significant variability. Which means that dietary plans on saturated fat content will likely come down to family cardiovascular history. But, honestly, there's going to be a sane limit.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tittles: PSI, shhhhh.
Didn't you know? Being fat is like being black or gay. It's not a choice.
What if, due to technology or magic or whatever, being black or being gay was a choice?
Would that change how we treat people who fit those descriptors? Should it?
Posted by Tittles (Member # 12939) on :
Black, no. Gay in only a very small and unlikely set of circumstances. Like, say, a community is in dire need of genetically diverse children and for whatever reason, healthy adult numbers are vanishingly small. Think OSC's Homecoming series.
I'll throw out a mea culpa here. The reason morbidly obese people annoy me is because my disease manages to make an enemy out of food and of my own body. So when I see people who have the gift of a potentially healthy body and metabolism, almost effort free, and they just throw it away because cake tastes good? It gets my dander up a little.
And yeah, sure, that's entirely my cross to bear. But it doesn't change the fact that it'll probably be mine/our tax dollars paying for the heart disease treatment, or the disability payments that will go to people who ate so much and exercised so little that they literally can't stand up anymore.
Posted by Sylphiae (Member # 12944) on :
I wanted to address the OP's article, which I found absolutely appalling. I'm not an obesity apologist, but very little mention has been made of systematic factors that contribute towards weight gain.
Obese and overweight people are not universally lazy. The worldwide increase in the prevalence of obesity demonstrates this: in Britain 25% of all women are obese, in the Czech Republic 30% of men are obese, in Brazil 53% of adults are overweight. In China, 25% of all adults are overweight or obese.
Clearly all of these adults across cultures are too fat and lazy to do anything but keep eating chips and cake and soda.
It doesn't help that genetics do play a minor factor. Human beings are predisposed to maintaining their weight. A study by Proietto at the University of Melbourne demonstrates that after patients had lost 10% of their body weight through dieting, a year later they still had low levels of leptin (hormone that signals to the brain that you're full) and high levels of ghrelin (hormone that signals that you're hungry).
As countries across the world get wealthier, people have more money to spend on eating out. In America, portion sizes have gotten bigger. As countries get wealthier they also improve their infrastructure--if you're driving or riding on a bus to work, you're not walking as much as you used to. Urban sprawl may not be a unique American problem.
Food companies in particular are problematic. I'm not advocating that an obese person ought to sue McDonald's. But overconsumption of processed food has probably played a greater role in increasing rates of obesity than personal choice. Corn subsidies in America in particular are incredibly damaging to health. Pop might as well be liquid corn.
Then there's the availability of healthier food. Not everyone can afford quinoa in their budget, and some urban neighborhoods don't even have access to supermarkets. I'm from Chicago, and while Whole Foods are ubiquitous in suburbia, it's difficult to find sources of food other than McDonald's and corner stores in the poorer areas of the city.
What would actually help solve the obesity problem other than telling a significant portion of the world's population that their sloth is to blame? More education, equal access to healthy food, construction of infrastructure that is conducive to health such as parks, and perhaps a controversial approach: technology
IBM's Watson is currently being trained to treat cancer patients; I see no reason why a supercomputer tied to an app on our smartphones couldn't help people monitor their health, especially their weight. Patients see doctors only a few times a month or year, and that's not enough to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Obese people, when not under direct oversight, may slip up on diets or health regimens. Technology can help people stay healthy, lose weight, and prevent many of the diseases that plague the overweight.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by PSI Teleport: So while steven can't argue that the Japanese live longer because they eat nothing but raw fish, we also can't argue that they live longer in spite of fried crap.
Their typical diet is on the whole healthier than the upper med western diets and most of it comes down to portion control and a (relative) lack of saturated fats. The overabundance of rice in the diet isn't particularly good, and they consume colossal amounts of sodium, but it's well better than what someone typically ends up eating in the food deserts of american urban and poor areas, especially in the south, which create modern-day dietary regimens that practically guarantee rising obesity and health risk.
On the whole, though, a singaporean or central mediterranean diet would be better, and would dispense with the unhealthy sodium qualities. None of the reasons why any of these diets (and the cultural factors that go into eating patterns and portion control, which are usually more important) are better measurably because they are, in greater portion, uncooked.
I mean, the primary staple is rice. How often is that consumed uncooked by the japanese? Does it somehow count as "uncooked" using some special bizarre raw foodie exemption?
IIRC, I have criticized grains a number of times in this thread. As well, I have also mentioned rice as the least problematic of the grains. I actually occasionally eat a little rice with my sashimi, every few months, if I find I am still hungry after I finish all the sashimi I order at a particular restaurant. It's no big deal to me. I certainly don't notice any negative symptoms from it.
And you're right about the excess sodium in the Japanese diet.
Just to be clear, I think the Japanese would be a lot healthier if they replaced their noodles and rice with some raw fruit and some more sashimi. However, they are the only large, modern society that eats a fair amount of raw meat/fish, so they are the example I have to go with. There are plenty of rural traditional societies that eat lots of raw meat/fish, but studies of them are few, for various reasons.
See here...to act like cooking food is some kind of magic method of food-improving is, well, SILLY. Cooking has advantages and drawbacks, both. it generally makes animal protein less absorbable, but it makes most plant foods MORE absorbable, at least in some ways. However, it also creates heterocyclic amines (google it) and advanced glycation end-products (also google it). In addition, heavier cooking methods reduce the amount of water-soluble nutrients like the B-complex and C vitamins.
I don't want to jump on lighter cooking methods as somehow turning food from awesome to terrible, though. It's a sliding scale, despite what some raw foodists say/believe. The problem is probably slightly more with the excessive eating of refined grains and sugars. In addition, the feeding of livestock/poultry with these same grains in large amounts is a real problem. I avoid grainfed meats except on very rare occasions.
One of the main reasons I insist on raw versus lightly-cooked for my everyday diet is the extra aerobic capacity and general higher energy levels I have. My wife and I recently spent time in Costa Rica, and I convinced her to eat pretty much what I eat while there (ceviche and fruit, pretty much). She tends to eat a fair amount of cooked food when at home. She mentioned, without prompting, that she felt much lighter and more energetic after eating that way for about a week. As a contrast, I feel that way pretty much all the time. It's nice to have the energy to do all the things you want to do, instead of dragging around all the time.
\
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:However, they are the only large, modern society that eats a fair amount of raw meat/fish, so they are the example I have to go with.
And has there been literally any study done that shows that any of their longetivity is from the raw meat and fish consumption? Like, any data at all you could source for the claim you're effectively making?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:However, they are the only large, modern society that eats a fair amount of raw meat/fish, so they are the example I have to go with.
And has there been literally any study done that shows that any of their longetivity is from the raw meat and fish consumption? Like, any data at all you could source for the claim you're effectively making?
I'm not even sure that it actually IS from the raw meat/fish. I only know that
1. I generally feel better (lighter, more energetic) when I'm eating nearly or totally 100% raw (and that is VERY commonly reported from people trying a mostly or all-raw diet)
2. Cooking meat/fish makes the protein less absorbable
4. cooking reduces the amount of water-soluble nutrients in food
5. The Japanese people have the greatest longevity of any large population on earth
6.the Japanese eat quite a bit more raw fish/meat than any other developed nation. (if you disagree, please feel free to look up the derivation of the word sashimi).
Those things I know.
However, their longevity could also be explained (and almost certainly IS, at least partially) by their higher consumption of seafoods, which are, by definition, extremely rich in trace minerals and other minerals.
But let's be honest, Sam. You're asking for studies, but studies have little to do with what you actually have eaten throughout your life. Socialization and availability have played a much larger role. That's true for nearly every human who has ever eaten anything, including myself. I'm sure you agree.
Posted by just_me (Member # 3302) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: [QUOTE] 2. Cooking meat/fish makes the protein less absorbable
Can you provide some backup for your assertions? Do you "know" these things because they have been proven/demonstrated or because you just happen to believe them?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by just_me:
quote:Originally posted by steven: [QUOTE] 2. Cooking meat/fish makes the protein less absorbable
Can you provide some backup for your assertions? Do you "know" these things because they have been proven/demonstrated or because you just happen to believe them?
The water-soluble vitamins are most definitely damaged at the temperatures used in high-heat cooking. Of course, if cooking times are short, or high-enough temperatures are not reached, then there's not much actual loss. I can provide this (sorry, it's a long PDF) link:
Granted, that's not an actual link to a study, but Consumer Reports is usually pretty trustworthy on specific factual issues.
As far as protein in meat goes, here's a study done on nitrogen excretion and growth rates in rats. it's from 1933, but it looks fairly rigorous, given the usual poor state of nutritional science:
Oh, and that article you linked to is by Richard Wrangham, who thinks getting enough nutrition from raw meat would require 5 hours of chewing a day. ROFL
Seriously, he's just hilarious. There are plenty of omnivores in nature that are just fine on a combination of raw animal and plant foods. Proto-humans, as well as plenty of other primates, did just fine on a raw omnivorous diet. Wrangham is conflating raw vegans and raw omnivores. I'm not a raw vegan. I think veganism is foolish and dangerous.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
Here's a page with multiple links to studies (scroll to the bottom) on protein digestibility in raw versus cooked protein. The studies are on various different species of cats, but it's something, at least.
Steven, if you are going to start bring up the bogus Dr. Price crap again, I will link to the thread you made LAST time. I still have it saved, you know. Just like I said I would.
It's bunk. Poor science. And it's been proven that year after year, decade after decade, and time after time.
Let me know if you want me to post that thread again. Just keep talking about Price.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Steven, if you are going to start bring up the bogus Dr. Price crap again, I will link to the thread you made LAST time. I still have it saved, you know. Just like I said I would.
It's bunk. Poor science. And it's been proven that year after year, decade after decade, and time after time.
Let me know if you want me to post that thread again. Just keep talking about Price.
I didn't link to Dr. Price. There are other cat studies in the world, sir.
But feel free to link to it. I eat almost exactly the same diet then as I do now, minus most of the dairy, and I still look and feel quite a few years younger than my age. I keep eating this way because it works, not because I can prove it to your satisfaction, or anyone else's.
The fact that, nearly 8 years later, I'm still eating almost exactly the same diet, after fumbling through 6 or 8 different diets for the 6 years before that, says pretty powerfully that I've found something that really works, at least for me. I didn't settle on this diet because of ideology. My many failed attempts at making other diets work PRIOR to this one are evidence of that.
Seriously, dude. Can you say you still feel and look pretty much as good as you did in 2005? I mostly can. The lines on my face are a little deeper, and more of the baby fat on me is gone, and the hairline is a little farther back, and I have 10 or 12 white hairs now, but otherwise, I look the same. I also feel every bit as good as I did then. If this didn't work, I would change it. I have a long history of changing my diet when something doesn't work.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:However, they are the only large, modern society that eats a fair amount of raw meat/fish, so they are the example I have to go with.
And has there been literally any study done that shows that any of their longetivity is from the raw meat and fish consumption? Like, any data at all you could source for the claim you're effectively making?
I'm not even sure that it actually IS from the raw meat/fish. I only know that
1. I generally feel better (lighter, more energetic) when I'm eating nearly or totally 100% raw (and that is VERY commonly reported from people trying a mostly or all-raw diet)
2. Cooking meat/fish makes the protein less absorbable
4. cooking reduces the amount of water-soluble nutrients in food
5. The Japanese people have the greatest longevity of any large population on earth
6.the Japanese eat quite a bit more raw fish/meat than any other developed nation. (if you disagree, please feel free to look up the derivation of the word sashimi).
Those things I know.
Yeah, you know these points individually, but unless we have something showing that the points are linked, you still haven't made a case for raw foods that go beyond anecdote, which is susceptible to personal perceptive faultiness and bias, of which no human is immune.
quote:But let's be honest, Sam. You're asking for studies, but studies have little to do with what you actually have eaten throughout your life. Socialization and availability have played a much larger role. That's true for nearly every human who has ever eaten anything, including myself. I'm sure you agree.
Yes, and? "What I or you have typically eaten in our lives" is far different than "Proof that a certain diet is better for you" — I am asking for the latter and it does not in any way categorically require involvement in any way of the former.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
Sam, it looks like we're in agreement about the lack of thousands of peer-reviewed double-blind studies on the health benefits of raw versus cooked. They just don't exist, and I'd bet they never will.
I guess I'm not sure where you want to take the discussion right now. I can't read your mind. Keep in mind that I discuss and study these issues every day, and I have for over a decade. I'm scraping my brain, trying to remember exactly what motivated me to try raw, and trying to remember what my food attitudes were like back then, so I can better understand where you're coming from. I'm not coming up with much, though. I don't even remember what it's like to crave unhealthy foods. It's been years since I had those cravings, and memory fades. I can enjoy cooked foods, and even junky foods, but I don't think about them unless they're right in front of me.
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) Without going into much detail about my health in what is not only essentially a public place, but as of late a very hostile one, I also think the distinction that several have made between people who are overweight for medical reasons and those who are not is utter crap.![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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