Obese Epidemic: Political, Economic and Scientific

[Aractus]

Oh and another thing I was thinking about today is juice. The Doc says not to have any juice or other drinks containing sugar - however I think that if you want to teach your children that Juice is for meal times, it's not a bad idea - and including juice in the lunchbox is also not a bad idea if it's balanced. In year 11-12 there was a kid who used to bring in his drink each day in a jar, and I think that's a really great way to give kids juice in a lunch box because then you can decide how much you want them to have, you're also in control of the size, and you can water it down as well if you want to (when I was a kid apple juice was always given to us with 50% water in it), plus of course you don't have to buy juice-boxes.

[KichigaiNeko]

Have you watched the Catalyst program on cholesterol yet Daniel?

Just finally caught up with the program and from what I can make of it we have been sold a box of myths. Starting from the 1950's.

I agree in part Sven, that a brisk walk is very beneficial, however, not everyone can take said walk ever day of the year. What do you do in Sweden's winter to replace this exercise? I do lean towards the study (I think it has been posted above) that "discovered" people who are just active, gardening, walking to a friends house or the market for food, actually having to make their meals from scratch (try making your bread by hand-awesome upper body work out!), eating in moderation (to 80% full) and just enjoying life laughter and friends is a remarkable recipe for a healthy life. The longevity issue is down to your genetic make-up (barring wars, injury, and famine)

[Aractus]

Have you watched the Catalyst program on cholesterol yet Daniel?

No I haven't, but 1. here's a link to it so that the other forum members can also view it and 2. I am aware as you know that blood cholesterol is not directly determined by the amount of cholesterol in the diet, however it can be affected (for the better or the worse) by diet. And 3. I did however watch the "Men Who Made Us Thin" videos, and here's another one in the same style:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAQr77QMJiw

But a bit more to do with science then "men who made us thin". The problem with that series is the extremes they take - so for instance they do attack Weight Watchers, which is one of the best commercial weightloss systems available, on the basis that it "doesn't work" long-term for very many people. They also mentioned a study done in the 50's (did I get that right?) where men were restricted to 1500 calories a day for 6 months - in a windowless basement environment where they were also forced to exercise the amount that the researches wanted - that study would have absolutely no credibility for making any conclusions on the effect of restrictive diets, and I'm surprised they brought it up. I mean it's just silly - if you deprive people of being in the general community, if you isolate them in a basement, and if you force them to exercise too much, etc, all of that is going to have an effect on their mental health, and to then make any claims that it's got anything to do with eating 1500 calories a day, you'd have to have a control group - which they didn't have. Yet that study is what they use to "prove" that diets "can't work".

All in all I wasn't overly impressed in that series, since they take such extremes. While the 16% figure is lower than I would have expected, as I already said, by the same logic you'd have to say nicotine patches are "snake oil". To compare Weight Watchers to Kevin Trudeau is ludicrous - Trudeau has been gaoled, sentenced to 10 years due to his diet con, WW has a healthy approach and educates the participants on nutrition so that even those who leave the program and saw absolutely no weight loss have nevertheless been educated on nutrition. You can't call education a con, that's ridiculous. There are many diets out there that are actually very dangerous - you know this Kichi, even a vegan diet can be dangerous for some people. You could say it's not good value, that may have some merit, but you have to compare it to other systems available to make a conclusion like that and WW generally ranks fairly well against others (link).

Now that I cut through all that bullshit I'll let you know about what I did find positive in that series. They did talk about the science of exercise and that people who work out at the gym, while their workouts do burn calories, are not usually burning "extra calories" and thus it's good for fitness but may not be helpful for weight-loss. Although, and here's the thing I don't think they acknowledged, building muscle is great for burning extra calories. They also talked about a virus that can cause people to get overweight, which I also found interesting.

Also, you can burn extra calories, as they mentioned, if you're prepared to exercise for 90 minutes 5-6 times a week.

In the video I posted above, at 30mins in they give children plates of chocolate-covered snacks after they already had a meal and found that they behaved consistent with a gene that predetermines whether you "want" to eat while you're already full. This reinforces current recommendation for healthy eating for people that want to loose weight: don't keep snacks in the home, or at your workplace, keep fresh fruit instead and when you feel like snacking just have fresh fruit.

They also found that extra calories affects different people differently - some people gain weight faster than others will.

At 45 minutes in they claim that the body "always wants to return to its pre-determined weight" - well that claim is nonsense. I mean it has some validity, but to make such a black-and-white extreme claim is ludicrous. I posted the videos of David Elmore Smith - he weighed 650 lbs, and then he lost most of his weight and got down to 220 lbs or something. According to their claim he would balloon back to the same size because he still has every fat cell. Well he had surgery given to him (and this proves why excess skin removal surgery shouldn't be given to people until they've proven they can keep the weight off), and as such much of that extra fat was cut off him with the skin and gone forever. Yet he still returned to 600 lbs (before dieting and he's now at 400 lbs). According to their theory that should have been impossible because much of the extra fat is gone - forever - it was cut out of him. So his returning to 600 lbs proves it wasn't caused by him having those extra fat cells as per their theory.

[KichigaiNeko]

Thanks for finding the international link to the Catalyst programme.
(Apologies now for any typos as I'm on the iPad and autocorrect is a bitch!)

As for cholesterol... I did a small experiment on myself. I reduced my dietary intake to 1000 calories a day for a month. Essentially I only ate the evening meal that had little or no cholesterol, had about 4 cups of coffee and of course water to keep hydrated. The result? I managed to drop my serum cholesterol by only 0.1. So, from this I deduce that for my metabolism only a serum cholesterol level of around 6.0 is normal. Also, from the programme I took in that humans are so ready to "make things black and white and succum to dogma" hence my references to "religious" beliefs if it is perpetrated by someone "perceived" as an authority. Need I tell you that I will resist the use of statins UNLESS in the event of a heart attack or TIAs where they are of some benefit to the patient. I do find it disconcerting that once you reach your 50s suddenly your 6.0 cholesterol is an issue. (Yes my cholesterol has been at this level all my life) and YOU MUST GO ON STATINS, so as to avoid insurance issues for your doctor. This is not in the patients interest but in the insurance companies interest.

Overall, I would say that people have no understanding of their own bodies and really should get friendly with their General Medical Practioner at an early age.

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I doubt that impressing you was the main objective of "The People who make us thin" but more an expose on just what us humans will do to "be thin" at the behest of the Medical/ Insurance fraternity. At least that was my take home message that I got.

This "pre-determined weight" is a new concept for me though IF you think about it, it is not outside the realms of probability.

What has to be looked at is, what is happening to the environment. Face the facts that we are surrounded by fast food and urged to eat said food. Marketing is a wonderful psychological tool and is employed mercilessly. Next I would say, get to know your additives. Many of these actually assist in the blocking of nutrient uptake but are essential for the distribution of said product. Least of all are cheap and inexpensive to the manufacturers.

Currently we have issues here at Ishi to Hikari no Ie of sleep deprivation or quality of sleep. I am finding from our experiments, that this is another (although maybe minor) player in the efforts to maintain a reasonable weight and blood pathology.

Further, all calories are not the same to say calories derived from fruit or fruit juice are not the same as those derived from say a glass of soft-drink (soda) they may be in equal amounts but one has other nutrients and the other has none. I am thinking that we have so little understanding of just what constitutes nutrition, it is abysmal!

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In the end Daniel, I think it comes down to just what you LIKE to eat (be it omnivorous, vegetarian or what ever) a rudimentary understanding of nutrition, followed by an understanding of your genetic history (via familial history) of ailments.

Get the above understood and your "pre-determined weight and other metrics" can be managed.

[Aractus]

I doubt that impressing you was the main objective of "The People who make us thin" but more an expose on just what us humans will do to "be thin" at the behest of the Medical/ Insurance fraternity. At least that was my take home message that I got.

No perhaps not, however it took extremes and was not very balanced. It wasn't at all on the same level as "men who made us fat" which actually did have a chronicle of historically important changes in dietary attitudes.

Another interesting thing they did point out that I forgot to mention was how in the "western" countries we blame ourselves for the obesity crisis, but in Mexico and other areas newly introduced to takeaway they actually blame takeaways more.

This "pre-determined weight" is a new concept for me though IF you think about it, it is not outside the realms of probability.

I'm not saying there isn't any truth to it, I'm saying they've leapt to hard conclusions that are highly questionable.

In the end Daniel, I think it comes down to just what you LIKE to eat (be it omnivorous, vegetarian or what ever) a rudimentary understanding of nutrition, followed by an understanding of your genetic history (via familial history) of ailments.

No I think it's more down to how we like to eat, than what. And this is because we know that people who have a tendency to snack can cut their calories from snacking by replacing existing snacks (savoury or sweet) with fruit. Those kids that were given chocolate snacks to eat, if they'd been given plates of fruit instead - it wouldn't have mattered how big the plates were, they would have consumed less than the 350 or whatever it was calories that was in each plate of those chocolate snacks.

[KichigaiNeko]

But up again, it is down to the individual rather than what is consumed.

With hominids, every assumption is questionable don't you think?