A century of weight gain.

The Government actually uses the makers of junk food to sponsor the Change4Life programme. :lol: :lol:
http://www.gponline.com/News/article/93 ... onsorship/

If eating between meals and snacking is one of the problems, perhaps we should frown on people eating in the street or on public transport, my school rules in the 1960's forbade eating (in school uniform of course) in public. I still think it looks slovenly as does drinking from a can or bottle whilst wandering about.

Employers could ban people from eating and drinking at their desks too - food to be consumed only in the staff restaurant (if available) or coffee lounge during official breaks from the routine.
As someone who had to get sticky, crumb infested and unhygienic computer keyboards cleaned up after use IT departments would welcome this.
As with the smoking ban, this is possible.

There's no doubt there's a LINK between T2D and obesity. Unfortunately too many people, who should know better have forgotten the distinction between "LINK" and "CAUSE". Jenny Ruhl[diabetes 101] is certain that Obesity is a symptom of metabolic syndrome rather than a cause..
I was disappointed by the recent Horizon TV programme on the secrets of Fat. It concentrated on the hormonal reasons why obese people continue to eat and gain weight and said NOTHING about WHAT they ate, other than "Fatty sugary"
Certainly as far back as the 1970s and probably much further back, it was known that carbs cause weight gain. In livestock farming[ cattle etc, being mammals like us] Beasts for slaughter are fattened on grain NOT fats.****
As for MacDonalds. I've had a salad bowl lunch, whilst taking Grandchildren to places and found it excellent. Again if you leave out the bun or the fries, you will get a pretty good meal for the price. There's a reason MacDonald's is so popular. the food tastes good to many people. If it didn't they'd go out of business. I quite like it andd I have eaten Michelin starred food, which I liked less.
**** Just in case someone reminds me that cattle can eat grass and we can't, Remember the cattle use the presence of microbes in one of their 4 stomachs to digest cellulose. They can't do it with their own enzymes any more than we can.
Hana

Groovy - my kinda discussion!

Fat doesn't make you build fat - SUGAR does. When you eat carbohydrate foods, your own body converts that into SUGAR, uses what it needs, then STORES the rest for "future" use (if required - and if you don't top up those stores before they're used!)

It'll do this with fat/protein, too - but in no where near as significant quantities.

carbohdrate gets converted to sugar once you've eaten it. Therefor: CARBOHYDRATE = SUGAR.

Back OT - the original picture really hit home with me.

I suspect that the original fat man had an EXTREME case of carboyhdrate sensitivity/metabolic syndrome. The little carbs that he ate (that were available at the time), along with the fat/protein that was eaten as teh norm back then, put him that position.

The Policeman in the second photo, I suspect, had/has a much lesser degree of carbohydrate sensitivity/metabolic syndrome - but access to MUCH more sugar/carbohydrate rich foods.

Same result for both of 'em.

Hmmm. The thing is McDonalds did not become famous for their salad bowls did they? I would hazard a guess that this is a fairly recent introduction to the MaccyD's menu (within the last ten years maybe?), they became famous on the back of their burgers in a bun.
As for the popularity of them and others like them..well, it's not rocket science. Cheap, easy to get hold of and more or less instant and on practically every street corner. Teenagers don't have to stay in school to have their meals, they are allowed off premises. School dinners, packed lunches or burger in a bun with fries on the side..inevitable outcome.

I know that many will disagree with my opinions but that's all they are, opinions. I'm 2 years away from the big 50 and used to have to do home economics at school. Hated it mind you, but at least the info on how to make simple dishes was available to me, todays' pupils don't have that opportunity. We would all like to believe that everyone is interested in and wants the best nutrition for their child but that isn't always the case. If you have parents that have been raised on a diet of chips and eggs/pizza/sausages with good helpings of bread then that is the way they will raise their kids, especially those who are on a low income. Not saying it is the same for everybody but is is common.

I know I touched on this subject before but poor quality food is cheap. Yes, frozen veg isn't too bad but fresh food, meat, cheese and veggies and fruits are expensive stuff. So we have got the combination of a second or possibly third generation who wouldn't know how to "cook" a meal if they had to because they buy what is within their budget and possibly what they think is less effort to prepare.

I don't have the answers. I can see the thinking behind raising the price of these foods out of reach but wonder if this will really reach the people it needs to. Bringing back cookery lessons in school maybe a start, showing that simple meals can be made out of very little would help but when the kids get home, well..if the adults can't see the importance of a better diet than how can we expect the kids too?

Zizzy, also the trouble is defining a "bad" food...how do we do that? The goalposts are changing constantly, look at the cholesterol debate. (Go on, you know you want to ). Only a few years ago, fried food was the devil. Bacon sausage and eggs, a coronary on a plate. Eggs were to be eaten extremely sparingly becaused they helped to send you to an early grave. Now? Wonderfood. Go to work, school, whatever on an eggy breakfast. How do we apply that to MaccyD's horrible breakfast things, the sausage, eggy and hash brown job. Ok, they stick it into a bread muffin but at least two of those ingredients, the egg and the sausage we endorse here!

Take aways of the Chinese and Indian varieties. Bad foods or not? Lots of oil, lots of sugar, lots of butter and cream..good? bad? how can we decide?

I'm not looking at this from the angle of a diabetic and what foods are better for us. ****, we could argue about that until the cows (with whatever they eat in their tummies) come home. I'm looking at what we can do to halt what has been started and what so many people are paying the price for.

I don't think we can do anything to stop it, it's too damned complex. And that is a very sad and worrying thought.

The lines are muddled, the whole topic is full of various shades of murky grey.

xyzzy said:

My personal views as listed in my earlier posts are very interventionist and amount to forcibly stopping the population buying bad foods by pricing them out of reach and by severely restricting advertising. The purpose of a policy like that is an attempt to force us back to how things were up to around 40 years ago when to me the balance was just about ok. To do this in my mind entails ending up having a ban on advertising similar to that on tobacco, a government campaign in the same style as drink driving campaigns, an anti bad food education campaign rather than just a pro "five a day one" and adopting a similar minimum price model that gets debated about alcohol.

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A ban on advertising of 'bad foods' would have little impact IMHO, education is the key by teaching kids from a very early age what is and isn't good for their health.

I personally don't have a problem with fast food outlets as long as people use them sparingly and not become reliant on them for their everyday dietary needs, my children along with my wife and I have always eaten healthy but we still treated the kids to a McDonald's when they were younger, has this damaged them and lead them to being regular clientele?.....simple answer is NO!

Going back 40 years things weren't much different to what they are now, we had more chip shops then we have today and greasy spoons were on every corner of most high streets, we don't want to controlled by a Nanny State and told what we can and cannot eat and what constitutes a healthy diet is always going to cause controversy amoung the population.

Spend a VAST (vulgar??? :wink amount on money re-evaluating ALL of the research that HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE, with a completely open mind (ie - not biased towards any preferred result). Carried out by people with no vested interests, who could look at all of the evidence objectively, and that would be happy to admit "hey - previous advice onthis issue was WRONG" and provide definitive answers to the questions that we ask so often:

Why do some fat people not get diabetes?
Why do some people with diabetes not get fat?
What causes weight gain?
What CAUSES high cholesterol?
Is high cholesterol linked to heart disease?
Do carbohydrates cause weight gain?
Does fat cause weight gain?
What role do hormones play in weight gain and the development of diabetes?
Which came first - chicken or egg? :wink:

I don't think anything is gonna happen. THEY'VE go too much to lose. I'm certain that the advice they've been giving out for donkey's years is completely wrong - and that advice has, unfortunately, been the cause of a great number of deaths. (Yeah - I said it...)

They never will admit that they were wrong all those years ago. If they do, what happpens to their credibility, and their ability to issue new CORRECT guidelines? Who'd believe them?

Far too much to lose.

There is revolution coming, though. :shh:

OR - maybe I'm cpompletely wrong, and they do realise that THEY were wrong, and they are SLOWLY rectifying that by very SLOWLY altering their advice. They are making miniscule steps towards what a lot of us believe to be true.

Not very good for those of us that need correct information NOW. But good news for the diabetics of 50 years time...

we may not like the idea of a Nanny State but at some point someone has to impose some sensible regime on a society

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Yeah, don't we just need diabetes police checking on and enforcing our carb intake. Those rebellious lo-carbers may just end up being sectioned under newly granted powers, or appearing before a Truth and Reconciliation Panel if they agree to recant their heresy (perhaps by eating a plate of mashed potato.)

Your new world order frightens me.

What we need are responsible scientists to establish good dietary guidelines (clue : the current ones aren't working, even for the MacDonalds et al avoiders.)
Then teach this in school (I marvel at my 8 yr old grandson's grasp of what he's been taught in school about food.
Food pyramid ? Should have gone out with the Egyptians.

Then ensure we keep up-to-date with developments in dietary understanding.

But all that does sound like a new world order. Don't expect it any time soon : (

Geoff
(off to report to my food probation officer.)

xyzzy said:

Also I use to enjoy all those wildly different greasy spoon cafes we use to have. Far better than the plain bland sameness of the major junk food outlets.

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Ate in many greasy spoon cafe myself in my youth..... but fast forward 20-40 years and we have huge global companies serving equally unhealthy food as those served in the greasy spoons of yesteryear :crazy: