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Letter in Telegraph today

Givine the power of the food industry to even influence the World Health Organisation. Plus the inability of Jamie Oliver (despite his best efforts) to change even school dinners in this country

Do we really expect the government to allow proper cooking in schools? Especially as some of the new school being built dont even have a school kitchen any more.

I think its something which will have to happen in our home, I'm afraid.

When my son did cookery 2 years ago (year9) he came home and we discussed what he had made, the ingredient used, and how to change them to better ingredients. And he ended up being allowed to give a talk on hydrogenated and transfats and why we should avoid them, in his class. His teacher was astonished and impressed. Apparently she didnt know about the dangers of them.

If teachers dont know, how can they teach the children

sorry, I am rambling, I have a cold, and am going back on my settee to watch tennis.
 


Get better soon Lucy.

You make so valid points, especially about school lunches being left to outside catering as schools have no kitchens. My daughters who are now very dietary aware, thanks to me being diagnosed with diabetes, struggle to find healthy foods. Drinks are even more of a problem with mainly soda's and extraordinarily high sugar fruit drinks being the main things on offer. They do, tea, coffee and hot chocolate as well, but bottled water, or more healthy alternatives are very thin on the ground. One daughter bought a bottle of water to find it was fruit flavoured and has astronomical amounts of sugar in it, When asked why the head simple said they offer students a choice, including healthy alternatives. I pushed him further, and was advised to speak to the LEA. Shifting the blame, when I believe head teachers have control over what their canteens sell. Kids really are growing up knowing no better, and with diabetes set to soar, and also the terrifying prospect that our children could be the first generation who do not outlive their parents.
 
lucylocket61 said:
If teachers dont know, how can they teach the children
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Good point although I suspect if HE was brought back into mainstream schooling then teachers specialising in this subject will be trained and brought back, my HE teachers taught nothing else but HE when I was in Secondary Education.
 

QED
 

Did you read the article? He ate a rubbish diet but fewer calories than usual and lost weight and body fat. As I said earlier it is not what you eat that matters, it is how much. Excess calories lead to excess weight.

"His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food.

The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months."
 

Yes, of course I've read the article.

In your "QED" statement you were saying that people got fat because of the quality of food they are eating (junk food etc).

Now you seem to be saying that it's due to the quantity.

Which is it?
 
I've done a bit of "wilful gorging" in my time, and I bet I'm not the only one on this forum to have done so.

Two of the other aspects of it are "comfort eating" and "self-destructive eating". Who hasn't ever reached for a portion of the "wrong" food to cheer themselves up a bit?

Less common, possibly, is the "nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I think I'll go and eat worms" - (lots of them, made of spaghetti and covered in tomato sauce and cheese) - aspect of eating that I call "the impulse to self-destruction". "I'm fat and ugly, I deserve to be fat and ugly, so I'll eat too much" - how many of us are familiar with that feeling?

I certainly have been familiar with it over the years, and now I'm Type 2 - I've succeeded! Slow suicide.

No, I really don't believe that I've brought it on myself. But over the years I have over-eaten on what was thought, at the time, to be a very good healthy diet! To the extent that I was putting on weight while walking 25 miles a week with various dogs! Now I've realised that I never have been able to tolerate much carbohydrate, and there I was eating far too much - for me.

Our relationship with food is not just physical, it's psychological too. In some cases, obesity is just as much an illness as anorexia or bulimia, and should be treated as such.

Much more complex than "calories in = <calories out".

Viv 8)
 

The QED referred to the bolded text "Since I stopped eating so much I have lost weight - go figure
" which refers to the quantity.
 
Amen to that Viv.

My relationship with food is psychological, always has been.

I shall now await someone to come along and tell me it's all my fault and I should have exercised more self control.

One last thing (not your post Viv!) re the willful gorging. Yes, I know it's rare but some people really cannot help gorging, it can have a physical cause and there is nothing they can do about it.

Just had to get that one in. :wink:
 
viviennem said:
I've done a bit of "wilful gorging" in my time, and I bet I'm not the only one on this forum to have done so.
Click to expand...

That's just the point Viv - we all have, but why have we done that? Our bodies have evolved to be brilliant self preservation machines; how is it happening that we appear to be able to eat ourselves to death?

I think the point is, and it may be a bit esoteric, that this hunger is not a product of moral derangement but it is caused by the types of food we are eating (starchy carbs and so on).

The hunger itself is not denied, nor the consequences, but the issue is why do we still feel hungry when we are surrounded by food?

There must be a wide variety of insulin sensitivity and leptin responses out there; I have a very skinny, lazy friend who hasn't done any exercise since he was 16 who is and always has been as thin as rake (what a swine eh?). I think he must be very sensitive to insulin. But there is surely other things going on as well.

The repeated statement that calories in/calories out is the only answer must be nonsense or as it's been said over and over; no one would be fat; who wants to be fat for goodness sake especially immersed in our Western culture?

Best

Dillinger
 
Much more complex than "calories in = <calories out".
Click to expand...
At one level I do believe it is about calories in and out, people who starve lose weight, people who eat less than they need lose weightt BUT the things that cause us to eat too much for our individual needs are hugely complex.
How about this diagram?
I don't expect they've included everything :lol:

http://www.shiftn.com/obesity/Full-Map.html
 
Phoenix, the kitten's been at the knitting again! :lol: :lol:

Ladybird64, you are quite right - some people don't have a "stop eating" mechanism and in extreme cases all the food has to be locked up or it will be eaten. That really is an illness!

I don't have that - almost the opposite. I am almost never hungry! Today I have had my 2-egg omelette for breakfast and a 'normal' bowl of home-made soup for lunch. Not a single hunger-pang at present, and it's over 5 hours since I last ate. Usually I eat according to routine - 3 meals a day is 'normal', right?

My mind is roaming over the contents of the fridge at the moment - I'm having pork stir-fry for supper, and a bit of my mind is trying to decide whether to have a bit of cheese just now as a snack - but I'm not hungry.

This has been the case for a very long time. Sadly, my "routine" portions used to be over-large. Now they're not. Is that the Metformin?

Viv 8)
 
jopar said:
[mod edit: message deleted]
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Well, no. I know you are not prepared to listen to the views, opinions or statements by people here who are attempting to over throw that view of obesity but for the 2057th time; the point is that obesity is ALWAYS traditionally portrayed in the way you see it; i.e. a failure of will, or some moral issue. It's just that many of the posters here are providing an alternative view to that.

I don't know what size you are around the waist but I'm betting by your statement above that you are not struggling with your weight, is that because every day of your life you carefully balance your calorie consumption exactly to that days calorie expenditure (which you've worked out exactly in advance)? And to maintain your weight you never make a mistake (not even 1 calorie out - after all it'll add up won't it?) and therefore can be so proudly dismissive of people with a weight problem? Or are you just the same weight you've always been?

No one wants to be fat - everyone wants to look like movie stars, but we are asking why is it so difficult to do that? And why suddenly since about 1980 have the obesity levels shot up; according to you it's because on 1st January 1980 people throughout the western world woke up, groggy from their New Years drinks and said 'sod it, I'm going to have few pies and be done with it' and they've never looked back...

I hope you are not intending to be so rude to many of our forum friends, and I equally hope that if you think about it for a moment you will see that you have been. But I somehow doubt you will.

Dillinger
 
[quote="smccThe QED referred to the bolded text "Since I stopped eating so much I have lost weight - go figure
" which refers to the quantity.[/quote]

So you've proved the first law of thermodynamics? Brilliant!

What next? Gravity?
 
Jopar siad:

At the end of the day, it's the individual who made the choice!
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I quite agree with that, with one caveat

We are not being told the whole story by the food industry on what goes into our food and how it affects us. The labelling in imprecise and misleading. The 'healthy eating' information is wrong...........shall i stop there?

Its like the tobacco industry in the 50's and 60's.

People were told that smoking was harmless. Some medical experts even said that it was beneficial for weight loss and nerves. So people chose to smoke or continue smoking.

Now, were those people to blame for getting lung cancer and other illnesses because of their choice?

or was it the fault of industry and health experts for giving them the wrong information to base their choice on?
 

I agree, how can anyone make an informed choice when we are fed the wrong information by the government and by the NHS?

High-carb/Low-fat/Healthy-wholegrains and veggie-oil is the perfect prescription for obesity.
 
High-carb/Low-fat/Healthy-wholegrains and veggie-oil is the perfect prescription for obesity.
Click to expand...
unless you happen to be from Okinawa
http://fanaticcook.blogspot.fr/2010/07/ ... sweet.html (general but you can follow up the references)

I live in a long lived area with lots of neighbours in their 90s, a few over a hundred (there are only 800 in the commune .The statistics confirm it is one of the most long lived areas in the world.
I've found this (would love to access the full data),
http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/1961 ... 0BF7D7BB06
it rings true from what I see , My next door neighbour still has the 5 meals a day: petit dejeuner when he gets up ,souper at 10am, dejeuner at midi,diner at 7pm, and something to eat before bed. The paper says 55% carb,13% protein, 32% fat. Subjectively I would suggest the amount of fish (previously only fresh water and salted cod) and fruit has increased and the reliance on chestnuts (and chestnut oil) decreased ,though you still see a lot of people gathering chestnuts in the autumn . I would suggest they still eat over 50% of their calories from carbohydrates.
 
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