IBM Granted Your-Paychecks-Are-What-You-Eat Patent

theodp writes "On IBM's Smarter Planet, at least as envisioned in Big Blue's recently-granted patent for 'providing consumers with incentives for healthy eating habits', the FDA will team up with employers and insurers to determine your final paycheck based upon what you eat. IBM explains that whether a given food item is considered healthy may vary based on a number of factors, including 'individual health histories, family health histories, food intake, exercise routines, medications, and other health related factors', and may even be time dependent ('incentives are greater for consumption of a particular food item during a designated lunch time and less for consumption of the particular food item during other periods of time'). Before being issued, IBM's patent request languished for ten years and was only granted after a Patent Examiner's rejection was overturned on appeal. IBM CEO Sam Palmisano has been a cheerleader for pay-for-monitored-healthy-eating on a national level, which seems to be neatly aligned with the goals of his fellow CEOs on the Business Rountable, who told President Obama in 2009, 'It's very important that we don't have a government [healthcare] plan competing with a private plan and finding out that our employees or the citizens in general could go to a plan that doesn't have the same incentives and requirements and behavioral characteristics to make sure that they do the right things long term'."

Comments

How do you determine healthy food?

[InterestingFella]

In my opinion, the official food guide pyramids are unhealthy in many countries. They consist mostly of fast carbs. Those aren't that good to you, but I understand that they were good choice before, especially in countries with long winters.

You know what rice, pasta, noodles, potatoes, grain, pizza and similar have in common? They have, historically, been food of low class people. They were what even the people with not so much money could get. While good food like meat, fish and similar are still pricier than the foods with fast carbs, they are generally available to everyone thanks to increase in our technological knowledge and means of mass producing food.

This is why I find it mind blowing that the official food guide pyramids still promote fast carbs so much. They should not be your main source of energy. They are needed, but not at the amounts people eat them today. The ratio should be more like 33%/33%/33%, or even have more fat and protein than carbs. Pizza isn't bad because it contains fat, it's bad because it contains mixture of high amount of fast carbs and fat, and generally not that much vitamins. If people lowered the amount of carbs they take then they would be both more healthier and more lean.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[thomasw_lrd]

Red meat and chicken is pretty affordable, but fish is not. And let's face it, red meat isn't really good for you either. Too much fat. At least according to studies.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I lost 60 pounds in 6 months on the "Eat correctly, not so much fast carbs you moron" diet.

Basically, I eliminated the refined sugars (HFCS is one of the fastest carbs in the universe) and then removing the other low end ones like rice, pasta, bread, noodles, potato, corn, wheat, most fruits. The hardest thing to cut was wheat gluten; they put that shit in everything!

So what do I eat now? Like you said, mostly fish and fowl, with some red meat in there. I also eat liver on a monthly basis for the super-dense protein.

" If people lowered the amount of carbs they take then they would be both more healthier and more lean."

However, if "everybody" did that, then we wouldn't have nearly enough food. Note the percentage of your diet that the pyramid says should be cheap-carbs and then look at the percentage of US food that comes from wheat and corn.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Joce640k]

I find it mind blowing that the official food guide pyramids still promote fast carbs so much.

The official pyramids aren't based on what's good for you, they were produced after the second world war when some foods were plentiful and others were scarce. The idea was to get people to eat what was most available.

There's also reason to believe that certain agricultural representatives had an 'influence' in what's in them.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[na1led]

This question shouldn't be what food groups you should eat, but what exactly is in the foods you eat! Most foods on the market are contaminated with chemicals, antibiotics, hormone drugs, pesticides, artificial flavors, GMOs, etc. etc.. The only way to be healthy is to eat organic, and that's becoming increasingly difficult to do these days.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[elsurexiste]

I can't remember who said "Everyone has an opinion. But we are interested in knowledge.". It surely applies here. ;)

Why is pizza bad? Is it bad at all? I don't know. I sure have an idea that it is less healthy than other options, but I'll be honest and say that I really don't know. That's why people study Nutrition at Uni. I do know that the food pyramid takes into account that fats, even though you must consume them or risk malnutrition, you should eat very little of them, especially if you are sedentary, because you won't burn the huge amount of calories you would ingest.

Trust these people, they studied all those years so you don't have to! ;)

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, because fat isn't at all a vital nutrient. /rolleyes

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[geminidomino]

Organic, huh?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[elrous0]

The short answer is whatever happens to be trendy at the time. One year, carbs will be all the rage. The next, they'll be bad.

Remember, your paycheck reflects how well you obey, citizen!

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[hedwards]

Red meat isn't that fatty, provided you get yourself a decent cut. And that there is a large part of the problem it really depends what cut your talking about and how it was prepared. It makes a substantial difference whether your hamburger patty used hamburger or the healthier ground beef as in the US there's a fat content requirement at work.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[hedwards]

Pizza isn't inherently bad. It's a bit high on protein, but other than that it's perfectly fine and easily included in a balanced diet. Cheese, tomato, oregano, crust, those are all things that fit well in a well balanced diet. Where you start to get in trouble is with the toppings, pepperoni, sausage and such.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[elrous0]

You can lose weight on almost any diet that restricts calories in some way. Not to downplay your weight loss, but people have been losing weight on every sort of diet imaginable for decades. The trick is *keeping* it off, of course.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[InterestingFella]

I do know that the food pyramid takes into account that fats, even though you must consume them or risk malnutrition, you should eat very little of them, especially if you are sedentary, because you won't burn the huge amount of calories you would ingest.

Actually, fats are easy to burn and they burn more healthier too (slowly, but you feel full for much longer). The problem is when you mix lots of fat with lots of carbs. Fats can't burn before your body has burned fast carbs. At the same time, fast carbs make you want more food sooner than fat does. In the end you still have some fat left that would had got time to burn if it wasn't for the carbs. This is also why pizza is bad. Not because it contains fat, but because it contains high amount of both carbs and fat.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

"high on protein", "pepperoni, sausage and such."

Hm. I wonder what your diet is?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[hedwards]

My personal favorite diet is getting enough sleep and drinking some tea. Took off 30# like that and it's never come back. Plus, I have plenty of excuses to go to bed early and get plenty of sleep.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[elrous0]

Thanks, but I'd rather have the chemical preservatives than to take my chances with all the nasty bacteria and parasites that come with spoiled food. And I'd rather have the pesticides, engineered crops, etc. than to deal with the starvation that would result if every farmer suddenly decided to go organic.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you live in or near a city, it's not at all difficult to eat organic food. Heck, even SuperTargets and Super Walmarts carry organic products. If you eat out in restaurants a lot, then yes, it is very difficult. However, it's not at all difficult. You will pay more, but that's the nature of the game.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[hedwards]

That right there is one of the problems. It's one thing to give a bonus for employees that take care of themselves in general and quite another to pay for specific methods of doing it.

As much as I do think that businesses should encourage healthy eating and clean living, I really don't think this sort of direct approach is really appropriate. If they want to help their workers they ought to be nudging them towards it. Making it as convenient as possible to access healthy snacks, subsidizing exercise programs and possibly encouraging people to use the stairs.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Tharsman]

My wife is a diabetes researcher. She tells me all the carbs we eat (in the way we consume them in the United States) are, indeed, killing us. Ironically, I asked her if there are any studies on this, and she says there are not (that she knows off, it's not easy to get a grant to "prove" eating bread is unhealthy) but it’s visible in other non-focused studies and existing knowledge of how the body treats sugars.

Your daily carb intake should consist of fruit and vegetables, not breads or pastas.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[khundeck]

I barely want to point this out, but, what's "affordable" has a lot to do with where you geographically live.

    Fishing == rivers, oceans (ie. coasts, islands,..)
    Red Meat / Chicken == land (ie. farms, mountain herds, ..)

What's missing in our 'food equation' is self-production and high-valued local produce. Whatever is good/sustainable for your region is what you should consider consuming. Reliance on cheap/subsidized imported food just won't add-up long-term.

KPH

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then eat your food before it spoils? And let those who can't afford to eat better food eat the cheap stuff. There will always be a market for it.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Rolgar]

Market economics. Cut off the subsidies for wheat and corn. All of that land would probably be just fine as pasture land for cattle, sheep, and I know of a local place (Kansas) that sells free range pork. The unfortunate thing is that machinery and subsidies have substantially driven up the price of land making it difficult to make payments when the prices are bid by farmers are going to plant row crops.

As prices go up with demand, more farmers will switch to growing those foods. It wouldn't be instant, but a switch could be done.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[mcgrew]

As noted in TFS (TFA is firewalled off here), "whether a given food item is considered healthy may vary based on a number of factors, including 'individual health histories, family health histories, food intake, exercise routines, medications, and other health related factors".

The guidelines say we're eating too much salt and we're all going to die of heart disease and high blood pressure, but there's no heart disease at all in my family, and my own blood pressure has always measured either normal or low -- and I eat a LOT of salt.

It annoys the hell out of me. I'm genetically thin, and everything is low fat, low calorie, diet. Damn it, I'm too thin, not too fat. One size does not fit all!

My grandmother was born in 1903, back in the day they cooked with lard and butter and ate eggs and bacon every morning. Her doctor told her that if she didn't get her cholesterol down she was going to die. Well, the doctor died. So she got a new doctor who told her the same thing, then he died, too. Five doctors later she finally did die -- she fell down and broke her hip in 2003.

If you want to diet and exersize, more power to you. But keep your goddamned nanny state micromanagement out of my kitchen. I'm going to die from something, it might as well be eating unhealthy foods and having fun.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed]

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you do even moderate exercise, it is not possible to eat enough with fruits and vegetables as your sole carbohydrate source without gorging on fats, which is among things, uncomfortable. Targeting (whole) grains as problematic for people with somewhat healthy lifestyles is just unrealistic.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[jellomizer]

Really the problem is with peoples life style and diets don't match.

The office worker who doesn't do too much activity should have more veggies and less protean and carbs.
The guys who are doing physical labor will need more carbs and protean (they need the quick energy after the meal, and they are doing a lot of work that damages the body so protean helps them heal up stronger).
Then you have people with different body needs. Some people tend to need more of a nutrients then others.
For example. I tried to go vegetarian in college a few times, the college had a good selection of vegetarian meals a lot of them were tasty. However after a few weeks I wasn't feeling good at all from this. I needed more protean (Increasing Tofu, nuts and beans helped some but not enough) Then a decided to add eggs and chicken and Fish I started to feel better. My body isn't well suited for being vegetarian. Other peoples are, they don't like the taste of meat or they are not really much into it, and their bodies function fine with needing less protean. So they thrive of being a vegetarian, that is all fine and good.
But to the point I really don't want big brother or big corporation telling me what I should and shouldn't eat, and suffer financial consequences for my choice.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see someone isn't aware that they recently reworked the FDA Food Guide Pyramid

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[hideouspenguinboy]

Can you prove you didn't just make that up? Because I'm pretty sure you did.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[PopeRatzo]

There's also reason to believe that certain agricultural representatives had an 'influence' in what's in them.

Speaking of which, I think I saw that congress has let the ethanol subsidy die. That would be a good thing.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[brusk]

That's true only to a limited extent. If it takes more inputs to produce a kg of food locally than it does to produce it further away and transport it, the latter may still be the better choice. I live in a temperate region with cold winters. Fruit such as apples and berries grows well here, but it all ripens at the same time (summer and fall), so it makes sense to preserve it (drying, freezing, canning, jams, not to mention wine, etc.). In a warmer climate, the same fruits can be produced year-round. So it makes sense for those regions to ship fresh fruit to my area when it's not in season here, and my area to ship preserved fruit to them. That's actually the most economical and energy-efficient use of resource.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[AdamnSelene]

Not to be glib, but [citation needed]. At least in the US, the food advice handed out by the USDA is generally considered to be accurate to the current information available to scientists. Everything I've personally seen contradicting it has been merely bare assertions without citation or data, or else points to a study done by a clearly biased group or individual. If you've got something substantive, I'd love to see it, as this is a special interest of mine.

Nope, the USDA recommendations are subject to an intense amount of lobbying by the large food companies. Anyone who thinks that government scientists are free to speak their minds hasn't worked in government, and unfortunately their scientific research is largely ignored or reshaped by economic and political forces when it comes time to make policy recommendations (see Reagan, R., under whose administration ketchup was famously considered a vegetable in school lunches).

If you really want to eat healthy, and wanted to eat what the science tells you is best, you might start with the research by Dr T. Colin Campbell and Dr Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. who did large-scale studies of the effects of eating processed crap vs. whole foods. See for example their books The China Study and PlanEat for citations, if you want to understand the evidence and know what to eat.

For the history of this, I recommend the anthropologist Sid Mintz who wrote Sweetness and Power, a history of sugar. In it he traces the shift in the British diet from healthy, farm-based foods to sugar-based foods and shows how that shift in diet was inextricable from the growth of cities and factories during the Industrial Revolution. In other words, he shows how the political economy of sugar has led to our present sugar and carb based diet. Unlike Campbell and Esselstyn, Mintz won't tell you what to eat, but he will tell you why everyone wants to sell you processed crap masquerading as food.

The upshot, however, is simple. Eat no-to-little processed, sugar, dairy and high-carb foods; eat only a little meat and some fish; eat a lot of protein-rich legumes, nuts, vegetables and whole grains. Drink mostly water; avoid sugary soft drinks, fruit cocktails and even too much juice. And cook for yourself; restaurants suck (from a healthy eating perspective).

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Karmashock]

Human civilization was built on carbs.

Wheat.
Rice.
Potatoes.
Maize.

Huge portions of the planet would starve to death without it. And if we tried to shift just the first world over to it, costs would inflate so high that you probably couldn't afford to eat that way either. Even in the first world, the majority of our calories come from carbs. We simply couldn't feed billions of people on anything else.

Carbs are cheap. We can produce them in bulk at low cost. They can be stored in some cases for years very easily. Carbs feed the world and have fed the world for thousands of years.

It isn't carbs that makes people fat. It's the lack of exercise. Just move every so often. Take up a sport. Something. And then you can eat mash potatoes every night and chase it with gravy. Just burn some calories.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[rodrigoandrade]

Like I always say, it's an "economic food piramyd." There's just no way in hell that eating more carbs (bread, pasta) than protein (fish, meat) is the ideal diet for people.

Thing is, producing bread is cheaper than producing meat, and the economy would collapse if demand for high protein food suddenly went up, way above that of unhealthy carbs. Remeber we ALREADY have a serious food distribution problem in the world, ever since we learned to use food to speculate in the commodities markets.

Which brings me to another point. How the fuck are people supposed to eat healthy food on a low salary?? They seriously expect people to eat better food earning minimum wage???

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[brusk]

Actually the first official food pyramid was in the 1970s, and the USDA no longer uses that model, having replaced it this year with MyPlate. Yes, there are still major problems with it, and it represents an imperfect compromise between the more abstract idea of getting certain nutrients and the more concrete idea of eating certain foods, but if more Americans followed it they would certainly be healthier.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[brusk]

The problems with much American pizza are (a) too much cheese and (b) the amount of oil used in the dough.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[DriedClexler]

What advice are you talking about? When I click the link, I just see an overcluttered website. I tried to find out what I should be eating, so I clicked the "dieters" link, but after three clicks I still can't find advice. The closest I got was (a few clicks from) a daily food plan, which doesn't tell me what the carbs/fat/protein breakdown ideal is, and a few vague double-pie charts.

I want to know what advice you're talking about so I can know what it is I'm agreeing or disagreeing with.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.jacn.org/content/21/4/298.full -- concludes that the increasingly carbohydrate-rich diet that is becoming common due to our concepts of healthy eating pushing us towards high-carbohydrate food (particularly processed grains, e.g. white bread) is leading to an increased risk of obesity and type II diabetes.

The USDA advice is good, but doesn't go far enough. It recommends half of all grain consumption should be whole grain, leaving a typical adult male consuming about 70g of processed grain per day. This is probably too high. Changing the suggestion to 3/4 whole grain would probably be better.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[schitso]

Bacon, eggs, and butter sound a lot healthier to me than low-fat, vegetable oil, and engineered.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

If people lowered the amount of carbs they take then they would be both more healthier and more lean.

Except for us diabetics, who would be rather deader, not healthier.

When I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, I had to increase my carb intake to lower my blood sugar.

Just another example of how sweeping generalizations, so beloved of governments and zealots, don't work as expected/promised in the real world.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[ChaoticCoyote]

I live surrounded on three sides by ocean.

Fish is hideously expensive, as compared to chiecken, beef, and pork.

Same thign for fresh fruit -- I live in a state (Florida) that produces lots of fruit, but the stores have incredibly high prices.

I know people on Food stamps (a large percentage of the U.S.population now, btw) -- and they can't AFFORD to eat healthy. There's a reason poor people are fat -- bad diet, because good food is too expensive.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[DigiShaman]

My personal take on this. I think the primary reason we constantly see trendy diets is two-fold. For the most part, they all work in their own unique way. Second, people can't stay away from sucrose and HFCS. For some it's an addition while for others it's simply too inconvenience to avoid them. Sugars, that's your #1 enemy right there! That stuff is everywhere. My advice is super simple. Drop the sugars first. Your body will go through withdrawal believe it or not. After a few weeks of no sugar, continue with your diet by eating fewer calories than you burn. While exercise is important for cardiovascular health and to raise the metabolism, it is -not- required. Recommended sure, but again, exercise is not required. So for those that are obese, losing weight is not all that complicated assuming you don't have other health and hormonal complications that's keeping the weight on.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[eno2001]

This is 1.5 hours long, but this man speaks the truth: sugar (fast carbs) is poison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

The rest of this is addressed to anyone interested enough to read it:

I can also attest to the massive changes in my health after eliminating simple carbs and going for complex carbs (meaning more fiber as well) in my diet in 2003. Weight loss wasn't even a goal as I didn't even think I was near the upper end of "healthy" for my size at the time (6' and 185 lbs. at that time. I have been consistently 155 since developing a new relationship with food). The changes I made were to combat reflux. That worked. No purple pill or surgery for me and the reflux is gone.

A lot of the illnesses in western culture are clearly linked to the western diet (read Michael Pollan's book An Eater's Manifesto). The western diet is far too focused on simple/fast carbs. I believe this is largely a self feeding addiction (I believed that long before seeing the video linked above but it's nice to have a doctor confirm this). The hardest part of changing how you eat is making it to the point where your sense of taste very literally changes.

Believe it or not, if you eat the standard American diet, it's likely that your taste buds lack much sensitivity. I would not have believed it if I didn't experience it myself. Eating all of those heavily processed foods with artificial flavors that beat the hell out of your taste buds is akin to staring at a bright light for hours and then going into a darkened gallery with the most beautiful art... that you cannot see until your eyes readjust. Same thing with food. Processed and artificially flavored food is like the bright light. You aren't really tasting real food when you encounter it. That's why many of the healthier choices "lack flavor" or even "taste bad". Try going for a month without eating anything but fruits, vegetables, and high quality cuts of meat and poultry, but being heavy on the vegetables. Also avoid all sugared drinks. Just drink water or tea. I guarantee that you'll open up a whole new world of flavors and what you used to think tasted great, will be too intense.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Joce640k]

Most foods on the market are contaminated with chemicals

Um, all food is made of 100% chemicals.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Joce640k]

Why is pizza bad? Is it bad at all?

Pizza eaten in moderation? Nothing wrong with it.

Pizza every day? Regularly doing all-you-can-eat pizza until your guts are bursting? Not so much.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[bigdavex]

Being high in protein (certainly to the extent that pizza is) is not a problem.

Taking the fiber out of the grain is a problem. Excessive fat is a problem.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[bigdavex]

The short answer is whatever happens to be trendy at the time. One year, carbs will be all the rage. The next, they'll be bad.

I've been frustrated by mixed messages, too. On the other hand, the thing that the mothers and experts have been saying for decades is to eat more vegetables. And Americans don't do it, because they don't want to, not because they are ill-informed.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Capt James McCarthy]

"sugar (fast carbs) is poison."

Shouldn't that be processed sugar?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can also attest to the massive changes in my health after eliminating simple carbs and going for complex carbs "

I learned this in a nutrition class. I probably learned this in grade school too. No one denies that complex carbs are generally better than simple carbs and sugar. I don't believe the consensus denies this either.

Also, wheat bread is better for you than white bread. News at 11.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[sabs]

Because Americans don't know how to cook vegetables. Most americans veggies taste bad, and not tasty. People are raised with their mothers having done horrid things to vegetables, and now they won't eat them.

Add to that, that Veggies are EXPENSIVE, and you get a double edged sword.

You want to improve dietary health in america, bring back Home Ec in school. Teach everyone how to cook, at least the staples. But if all you eat are canned veggies, you're going to hate veggies.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[FooAtWFU]

Can't afford healthy food, hmm? Let's see. Lentils can be had for something like $2.50 a pound. The good kind of lentils. Organic. Red kidney beans can be had for even less. Oatmeal for breakfast costs mere cents. You still need some more leafy green stuff and the like, sure, but if you can afford chicken or beef, you can afford lentils instead.

I suspect cost alone is not why people are opting for the highly-refined-flour based "fast carbs".

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[michelcolman]

Yes, that's precisely why this IBM patent is so bad imho. People will be forced to eat what other people, often very badly informed, consider to be healthy while it may actually be bad for you to eat that stuff. Most companies using such a system would immediately start giving penalties for fat and calories because everyone "knows" that they are bad. O, and anything containing cholesterol, obviously. Never mind recent scientific discoveries changing things from the "good" to the "bad" column or vice versa all the time, they'll take decades to trickle down to the idiot who gets to decide what you should eat today.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Type44Q]

How do you determine healthy food?

With a rigid and illogical bureaucratic system that doesn't that basic take basic anthropological and sociological observations into consideration, how else?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[cvtan]

The organic farmers I've talked to claim they lose 30% of their produce to insects and disease. Honestly, I don't know how anyone can stay in business with losses like that.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[cvtan]

Organic alcohol is my favorite: http://www.imakenews.com/gaultbmw/e_article002241575.cfm?x=b11,0,w

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[elsurexiste]

Beautiful reply!

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Mabhatter]

Now if we can just determine corporate tax rates based on how well companies take care of their matural resources. It's not like corporations shop around for countries that dont enforce OSHA and EPA guidelines as strictly as Europe does? I always get a kick that the first thing all theseCEOs of large companies want is to take away free market choice from employees so the Company can do what's best for them.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[drinkypoo]

That's not true. The FDA and USDA have been carbohydrates' champions as long as they've done anything. They will always push carbs because carbs are what make the big profit and government is run by corporations.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Move somewhere that doesn't produce every food required to sustain a healthy lifestyle (see: dead center Saskatchewan Prairies) and try to live without preservatives. "Eat it fresh" fails because the food rots before it even makes it to the supermarket.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you watch the video, he makes the point that it is the particular metabolic processing of fructose.

He notes that unprocessed sugar in the form of fruit is less harmful since the gut bacteria get a crack at it first (and of course it is released more slowly)

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why do you think that fat is bad for you?

There is no well-done, randomized controlled trial that says fat or saturated fat is bad for your health.

Do some research. And read the studies themselves! Too many studies have agendas and play games, like calling a diet "low carb" if 40% of the calories come from carbohydrates, as opposed to the "high carb" diet having 48% calories from carbohydrates.

You can start here, where a doctor in Sweden has collected the 12 or so studies that are of the highest quality, which means randomized controlled trials that aren't trying to play games:

http://www.dietdoctor.com/science

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[na1led]

I'm not a farmer, but I would think Hydroponics farms should solve the problems of insects and disease and still be organic.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I married my wife, who spent her childhood in Uzbekistan during the Soviet Union, I was at first shocked by her tendency to leave a pot of soup, remains of a roast chicken, or platter of pasta on the counter overnight, then start picking at it the next morning. surely, I thought, this practice is unsafe and dangerous. She looked at me like I was fucking nuts. Indeed, it's been a decade now and we have never had a problem with food spoilage. Ther ARE certain foods that even my wife will treat carefully, but I have come to realize that we Americans have been instilled with a strange fear of the germs which are lurking everywhere just waiting to kill us.

Above all, it makes very little sense to adulterate my food with preservative chemicals which, as far as I can tell, are protecting be from no actual problem.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

dude.

The average internal combustion engine loses well north of 60% of the energy poured into it. By your reasoning those things will never be practical.

Cost of doing business != loss.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[houstonbofh]

I see someone isn't aware that they recently reworked the FDA Food Guide Pyramid

Apparently, neither have you. It now directs to http://www.choosemyplate.gov/ and after several minutes I can not figure out what the heck it is recommending!

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[arkane1234]

Healthy != poverty food.

Sure, lentils, red beans, and oatmeal are healthy... but it's not something you want to survive on because it's healthy.
There's a not so fine line between healthy and redundantly boring.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

You hit the nail on the head. The most popular foods that are advertised often are high on carbs and heavily processed. I also changed my diet to deal with reflux, as it sucks waking up at 2:00 AM with acid in your mouth, and waiting for Tums or Zantac to work. Of course, Zantac kills the acid, but less acid in the stomach means more chance for germs to get past and get one sick.

We can see the parent's point with salt. Try going without heavily salted foods for a bit, and it will make a big difference.

The best thing one can do is to start eating lower on the food chain and avoiding processed food. If you can afford it, replace hamburgers with sirloin. This way, instead of eating the meat from 1000+ cows all ground together, it is just one animal, and the fat is lower. Or, when it comes to fish, try eating salmon since it is lower on the food chain.

Of course, there is going completely vegetarian as an option, but I've found getting rid of ground up meat and pork a significant diet improvement. Well, except for that strip of bacon or two.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, any sugar or syrup.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[na1led]

If you live a busy life, organics can be difficult to find. At work I can't just run to the grocery store and whip up some organic meal in the kitchen. Normally we try to prepare foods at home to take to work, but both my wife and I work full time, and we have two kids, so finding time to do all this is difficult. What we need are fast food restuaranst willing to sell organic ready to eat meals. Also, Walmart carries a very limited selection of organic foods, and even then it's not 100% organic. We are all poisoning ourselves because of over population!

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[houstonbofh]

The first time my Salvadorian Finance did that, I freaked out too... But oddly enough, we didn't die. I also found out that store bought eggs will last about two weeks in the fridge, but locally raised eggs will last about a month on the counter. That really scares me!

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what your wife meant by "all the carbs we eat are, indeed, killing us".
That statement is weird and bogus. The glucose metabolism in our provides a way for breaking down carbs and synthesizing the biomolecules your body needs.
In the long term there is no difference between an ATP molecule (which is used to transport energy through the metabolism) "produced" by the glucose metabolism and the, for example, by Beta-Oxidation through fatty acids.

Although it is important to align your food intake to your metabolic needs (which are very different if you are going on a bike trip that day or just sitting in the office).

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, having been rail thin half my life I can relate. But my family's metabolism slows way down after a while. My relatives are coal miners and factory workers who smoked, cooked in butter and bacon fat, drank, and so on and so on.

The only ones who don't die before 90 only do so because they get killed in accidents.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, ALL sugar... or even more broadly...

ALL FOOD CONTRIBUTES TO YOUR EVENTUAL DEATH

Have a nice day

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[na1led]

Most of the chemicals you find a junk food are not fit for consumption, or it's just another bi-product of corn.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Beardo the Bearded]

250# fifteen years ago.

165# now.

I cut out a lot of junk food and started biking to work.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Beardo the Bearded]

You've killed the "bad" germs by cooking. (Salmonella, E. Coli, etc). The spoilage germs can't live in your stomach (too acidic). You can eat spoiled food no problem.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[arkane1234]

Ummm yes... yes the research has been done, lots.
Saturated fats is best kept to a minimum... not to be completely avoided, but at least try.
Mediterranean diet style is the best example of it - and no, I did not just ringing off a fad diet name, I was talking about a region. Olive oil is wonderful stuff for that, not to mention goes wonderful for the complexion :)
Numbers are not playing games any more than eating differently is "playing games". By that idea, that swedish doctor is playing games by saying to eat different.
Regulation of carbohydrate and protein in your diet while holding fats at a 15-30% range is the basics. Since every persons metabolism is different, sometimes it's trial and error... however, most of the time regulating your protein amount a little higher temporarily while lowering your carbs (all in cycles, to keep your body in flux) is the key.
I did it for 4 years when I was working out, before my accident. I do back you up that fat is a necessary product of the body, just not abuse of it with saturated fats along with keeping (mono)unsaturated fats below 30% of your diet and more towards 15-20%.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Beardo the Bearded]

I'm reading An Apple a Day right now, so I'm getting a kick out of your reply.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first time my Salvadorian Finance did that, I freaked out too... But oddly enough, we didn't die. I also found out that store bought eggs will last about two weeks in the fridge, but locally raised eggs will last about a month on the counter. That really scares me!

My relatives are/were egg farmers. Eggs are collected on the farm and remain in cold storage for up to 6 weeks (at least that's what was the case years ago). Then they are picked up and all eggs on the same batch are stamped with the same 'best before' date no matter how long they were sitting on the farm. Locally raised eggs probably sit around a lot less time before making it to your counter.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[arkane1234]

Dude.. I don't know whether this was meant as a "+1 funny" or what...
Fruits & vegetables are the antithesis of fats... and have nothing to do with whole grains.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[nattt]

Since when was good saturated fat in meat bad for you?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[arkane1234]

No, that's what you were taught.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's absurd how difficult it is to get away from high fructose corn syrup. It's in fruit juices, ketchp, hell, they even stick it in breads these days. But I do try to avoid it when my budget allows. (Healthier food is guaranteed to be more expensive and (for example) sometimes I just can't pay four dollars for a decent loaf of bread.)

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[arkane1234]

THANK you!
Someone who understands there are different carbohydrates!
fast carbs = simple carbs... complex carbs are the main diet. Sadly enough, in todays world if it's has a decent dose of complex carbs it's artificially inflated price-wise or is oatmeal...

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is AC, but I must inject anyway.

I have eaten as you have described. An ascetic lifestyle for some time where potatoes were the cheapest foodstuff available with protein supplemented by red beans. Oatmeal and friends were common though I could not justify the cost of fresh spinach.

Two things became readily apparent:
1. I was full yet still hungry as those foods have relatively low caloric density.
2. The pure fiscal way to do get needed nutrients would have been to spend 20% of my food budget on McDonald's cheeseburgers.

Those cheap fast food staples saves me cooking expense and provides fat, protein, and flavor in a price point that isn't available at the local grocery store.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[arkane1234]

reminds me of when I grew up, and I'd watch my mom open a can of peas or a mix of veggies and she'd plop it into water and boil it... as she was cooking a frozen salisbury steak tray. Variations of that were replacing salisbury steak tray with frozen lasagna tray, or get all wild and crazy... order pizza.
The veggies were because "dad likes his fiber".

I think the 'baby boomer' generation and the impending hippy generation kinda sent the whole food idea helter-skelter. I'm laughed at by most family members because I like things like sushi, roasted asparagus, soy milk, & buffalo burgers. Odd.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[arkane1234]

low-fat != engineered.
engineered == engineered.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have worked at two pizza chains, neither used ANY oil in the dough. The oil is from ordering more than one meat ingredient, flavored crusts witch are little more than butter, and yes the excessive cheese.

Believe it or not the people I have worked with enjoy their pizza with a fraction of cheese, more tomato, and no more than two toppings. When people that don't even have to pay prefer less, there is a clear problem.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your theory is that statistics prove that many people who eat unhealthy foods and don't exercise end up with health problems....that the rest of society pays for either through taxes or increased health insurance premiums, as well as lack of overall productivity in terms of reduced GDP, which means that there are fewer tax payers to shoulder the burder for the 50% of the population that is on public roles.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Kenja]

Which food pyramid? The real one, which consists of mostly grains and legumes, or the one made by the dairy council that has milk at the top?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Joe Snipe]

Fats and Protein aren't bad for you. That's 90% of your bodies makeup, how could it be bad? What part of your body is sugar and carbs?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[DigiShaman]

Healthier food is more expensive because of supply and demand. Subconsciously, people eat what tastes better and gives the best satisfaction. Sugar is addictive because your body knows how much energy it contains and thus craves it. So we keep buying sugary foods, big agro keeps producing sugars, and thus we end up with more food that uses the stuff. It's a vicious circle. Everyone wants to point to some evil conspiracy plot. Sorry to disappoint, but again, our market driven supply and demand of sugar is almost purely at the subconscious level. It's insidiously frustrating!

While I was visiting China, almost all foods bought and sold had -zero- sugars except for the natural fructose found in fruits. Even those were rare in an average diet. There is nothing exotic about an Asian diet. It only seems that way because again, hardly any sugars to be found except when they import western food products such as processed bread, soft drinks, and other artificial crap. Even Chinese junk food or their equivalent rarely has any processed sugar. But they're loaded with MSGs unfortunately (artificial flavor enhancers). But at least they're the lesser of the evils. About the real problem with purchasing leafy greens from China is all the chemicals and pesticides they use. It borderlines on criminal really due to the extreme toxicity in the PPM used.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[nattt]

But there's nothing wrong with saturated fat? Where are you getting "low fat" from?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[nattt]

Well, yes it is excessive carbs that make you fat. And wheat is indeed killing us.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Feyshtey]

Not to be too harsh, but your problem is not a lack in availability of healthy meals. It's an ability to prioritize your life.

One trip to a store that carries everything you need for the week takes 2 hours. Maybe.
You cant spend a half hour every night making lunches for the next day?
You cant spend an hour or two hours on one weekend preparing meats that can be quickly reheated throughout the rest of the week? Salads or fruit dishes that can be prepacked into tupperware containers in serving sizes?


Overpopulation has absolutely nothing to do with your ability to find the time to do these things if you feel they are paramount for your family.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

The toppings you listed (pepperoni and sausage) are notoriously high in fat - especially saturated fats. While eating some fat with simple carbs lowers the glycemic impact of the food (and thus insolin production), fat is just too calorie rich to eat it more than sparingly. Lean protein also positively affects the glycemic index while providing more nutritional value with fewer calories.

I like my pizza with Canadian bacon, bell peppers, onions, pineapple, and tomato. Fresh baby spinach gets added after the pie is cooked. Broccoli or steam cabbage makes a great side dish.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed a tendency of the lower classes to put ketchup on everything. You will also notice that the people who do this also refuse to drink water, instead opting for a constant stream of Mt Dew. I have stopped eating "lunches" at work and have noticed a big difference in my health. Instead of trouncing out to Taco Bell, McDonalds, etc with everyone else I sit at my desk and eat fruit and oatmeal and drink water. After eating fast food all I ever wanted to do was sleep, and after that wore off, eat again. My co-workers are constantly sick and if I do catch an infection it is whipped within one day--while they languish and fight with it for a week or two.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[voidphoenix]

And let's face it, red meat isn't really good for you either. Too much fat. At least according to studies.

Citation needed.

I'm not just being snarky. Try this: Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease.

TLDR: Eating lots of saturated fat DOESN'T INCREASE RISK of coronary heart disease, stroke or cardiovascular disease.

Read Good Calories, Bad Calories or the newer one, Why We Get Fat for a good treatment of the science behind nutrition and health. For something more directly discussing what to eat, Protein Power is pretty good. It includes sections discussing the science of the diet and why it works.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[datavirtue]

Meat is not profitable. You will notice that processed food companies sell carbs at the same price or more than meat. Simple math.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I will back you up. When I as 22, I wanted to lose some weight. I had also begun experiencing acid reflux. It had gotten to the point that my food choices were determined by how much reflux I would have. I moved to the Atkins diet after doing 100s of hours of research into how it worked because it was controversial. In Atkins, you eat meats and veggies and no carbs or fruit. Not only did I lose the weight I wanted, but my acid reflux was cured. I later moved off the Atkins diet but kept away from processed foods (now I ate bread & milk) and my acid reflux stayed away. It was only when I brought in crackers and other processed foods (foods in a box: crackers, triskets, chips, etc) that my acid reflux came back.

My cholesterol on "no diet": 210
My cholesterol on "Atkins": 185 (How's that for Atkins being "bad for you"? Incidentally, "Good Calories Bad Calories" by Taubes explores the connection)

10 years later I am still acid reflux free and still avoiding processed foods. My blood pressure is "great"..

You don't have to do Atkins, admittedly in the research I've done since, it is overly stringent, but any Glycemic Index diet (i.e. South Beach) will work the same. Atkins just has the simplest rules to follow so that's the easiest to start with for a n00b.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

The old pryramid was secretly encouraging eating of subsidized foods. Grains and Dairy being the base, is highly suspicious as peleo era man did not have access to such a diet. The caveman was not going around sucking the tits of cows or plucking large fields of grain by hand, adding yeast, and baking them over a fire.

The new smart plate system isn't that much better either. They scaled down the grain, but still maintain the dairy. Don't they realize that large part of the non-European decent are lactose intolerant to some degree? Are they promoting we also buy antacids for every meal? And they upped the percentage of meat in the diet, which sort of falls in line with a larger livestock industry of today compared wit back then.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[nattt]

Salt is not bad for you, indeed studies have shown that those that consume the least salt have higher mortality.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why this got modded insightful. It's actually the exact opposite.

When you approach it from a thermodynamic perspective, yes it is correct. However the organic chemistry is not simple at all. You have a metabolism that is set up in such a way that you are biased to create fat. You have a physiology based around minimum expenditure of energy. You can in theory, eat less calories in exactly the wrong way and end up digesting your own muscle, which makes fat loss harder. and thus packing on more weight. So so much for the simple advice of "eat less".

You have to understand the relationship between insulin and glucagon. These chemicals are the inverse of each other. Insulin takes blood sugar and stores it as fat. Glucagon takes fat and converts it to blood sugar. Insulin works in minute (60s) timescales, Glucagon takes hours and reacts much more slowly. This sets up the weight gain bias. This is also why glycemic index diets work the best. They make sure your insulin does not get activated, and allows the glucagon to come up to burn fat. Also, as insulin comes up glucagon drops off (no point in storing to fat the same time you are pulling from fat, though this does go on at a trace level all the time just to keep the mechanisms working).

So you see if you drink sugar water even though it is less calories, you'll get fat. You'll also get much more hungry as 15 minutes after the drink your insulin has stored all your blood sugar as fat and there are no more calories coming in and your glucagon level is nil. This then makes you want to consume more food, more calories.

So please don't say that calorie restriction is the problem. On Atkins you can eat 3500 calories a day and still lose weight, because you can't get most of those 3500 calories into your blood stream to be stored.

I recommend reading "Good Calories Bad Calories" by Taubes

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't afford healthy food, hmm? Let's see. Lentils can be had for something like $2.50 a pound. The good kind of lentils. Organic. Red kidney beans can be had for even less. Oatmeal for breakfast costs mere cents. You still need some more leafy green stuff and the like, sure, but if you can afford chicken or beef, you can afford lentils instead.

I suspect cost alone is not why people are opting for the highly-refined-flour based "fast carbs".

You do realize that lentils and beans are not a complete protein, right? To do an ounce to ounce comparison you need to factor in the cost of whole grains. Price of lentils + brown rice > price of chicken.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is good saturated fat? There's two different kinds of unsaturated fat as far as I know and people consider the poly better than the mono. No idea why.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[NotSanguine]

The only way to be healthy is to eat organic, and that's becoming increasingly difficult to do these days.

Not so. It's actually very easy to eat organic. I suggest you have a nice big glass of an organic beverage. That way we can give you a Darwin award and move on.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[kheldan]

What make you think that YOU are any better or more entitled than anyone else to determine what someone should or should not be eating?

I am an endurance athlete; I race bikes. If I ate 33% across the board of fat, carbs, and protein, I would fail on the bike from a lack of energy from carbs. I have to eat closer to 25%/50%/25% in the off-season and 15%/60%/25% during race season to stay healthy and be successful.

This is a STUPID idea. In the end, you CANNOT force people to eat what they don't want to eat, and and CANNOT force people to NOT eat things they want to eat. This is the stupidest idea I've ever heard of, even stupider than the "alternative calendar" story from yesterday. Want people to stop being fat-as-fatass? How about we outlaw HFCS for starters, then get after the fast-food industry for providing cheap, shitty food in huge quantities that is designed to be addictive in the first place, encouraging people to stuff their faces and become morbidly obese? How about we teach people how to cook instead of making processed foods cheap and attractive?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[LordLimecat]

Sleep, dietary fiber, lots of water, etc all can help with weight loss.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I changed my diet completely about a year ago. I do eat lentils, red beans, black beans, tofu, kale, spinach, green leaf lettuce, whole grains, soy cheese, tempeh, seitan, TVP, and so on.

I'm here to tell you that it's not cheap to keep a diet like that going when you have multiple mouths to feed. It also takes considerable preparation time in the kitchen, which is where I suspect most people really start to give up.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[NotSanguine]

Organic alcohol is my favorite: http://www.imakenews.com/gaultbmw/e_article002241575.cfm?x=b11,0,w

Uh, all alcohols are organic...

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[MHolmesIV]

In the late part of the second world war, the US did a study on partial starvation. The study probably couldn't be repeated nowadays due to ethical concerns, but it gave a lot of interesting data. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment

Among the conclusions from the study was the confirmation that prolonged semi-starvation produces significant increases in depression, hysteria and hypochondriasis as measured using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) (a standardized test administered during the experimental period). Indeed, most of the subjects experienced periods of severe emotional distress and depression. There were extreme reactions to the psychological effects during the experiment including self-mutilation (one subject amputated three fingers of his hand with an axe, though the subject was unsure if he had done so intentionally or accidentally). Participants exhibited a preoccupation with food, both during the starvation period and the rehabilitation phase

Basically, it's very difficult to make diets work. If you want to lose weight, you need to increase your calorie burning, and keep your calorie consumption at reasonable levels. Restricted calorie diets will just make you food-focused, and as soon as you stop, you'll return to your genetically predisposed weight.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[NotSanguine]

If you live a busy life, organics can be difficult to find. At work I can't just run to the grocery store and whip up some organic meal in the kitchen. Normally we try to prepare foods at home to take to work, but both my wife and I work full time, and we have two kids, so finding time to do all this is difficult. What we need are fast food restuaranst willing to sell organic ready to eat meals. Also, Walmart carries a very limited selection of organic foods, and even then it's not 100% organic. We are all poisoning ourselves because of over population!

What passes for organic in the US isn't what you think it is. Here is the USDA's definition. Note that unless a product has the USDA certified seal, it doesn't necessarily meet the requirements set out in the link even if the label says "organic." Which wouldn't even be a lie necessarily, since any compound that has carbon in it is, by definition, organic.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

6 feet tall and 155 pounds is sickly.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Bucky24]

I also found out that store bought eggs will last about two weeks in the fridge, but locally raised eggs will last about a month on the counter. That really scares me!

I'd think that's because the store-bought eggs probably traveled in a truck across the country from wherever they were grown to the distribution plant, then out to the store. Most of that time without refrigeration. So they also last a month, just when they get to you they've already used up a lot of that time in transit.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Bucky24]

What part of your body is sugar and carbs?

What part of your automobile engine is gasoline?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Bucky24]

And since I know someone is gonna reply to this post saying "None, because I have an electric car"...

s/gasoline/whatever the hell your engine runs on/

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[na1led]

You must not have any kids, because you make it sound all too easy. It takes my wife the whole day to do her shopping, especially when you have a 2 year old, and you have to travel 40 min. one way. I'm sure we could make our time a little more efficient but my point was that "It's difficult to eat organic these days". It's more expensive, and it takes more time to prepare. If we were farmers this would be no problem. There is nothing I hate most, is seeing retired people with no kids, who have their homes all neat and landscaped, eating only healthy food, and wonder why we don't live like them!

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Bucky24]

Want people to stop being fat-as-fatass? How about we outlaw HFCS for starters, then get after the fast-food industry for providing cheap, shitty food in huge quantities that is designed to be addictive in the first place, encouraging people to stuff their faces and become morbidly obese? How about we teach people how to cook instead of making processed foods cheap and attractive?

Maybe we should just take away the people's right to buy their own food. Someone is overweight? They get a diet designed to make them lose weight, and are forced to eat only that. Too skinny? Your diet changes so that you gain weight. Maybe you work in a job that's more physical, so you get a different diet then someone who sits in a cubicle all day.

Note: I don't actually believe that this is a good idea, but as long as we're discussing regulation.... Might as well go all the way, right?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Karmashock]

Excessive carbs is just another way of saying excessive food. There's nothing wrong with the carbs. The problem is that we're taking in more calories then we're using... and thus getting fat.

You could do the same thing with meat or liver or eggs or whatever. It would be a trick to do with celery or radishes but you could probably do it with fruit.

That said, we're not really eating that much more then we did a 100 years ago and our weight has gone up. All that's changed is that we sit on our asses all day.

Claiming its anything else is just the addict talking. Carbs are a scapegoat. They're just calories. Fuel.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Korin43]

I lost 60 pounds in 6 months on the "Eat correctly, not so much fast carbs you moron" diet.

Basically, I eliminated the refined sugars (HFCS is one of the fastest carbs in the universe) and then removing the other low end ones like rice, pasta, bread, noodles, potato, corn, wheat, most fruits. The hardest thing to cut was wheat gluten; they put that shit in everything!

Uh, you do know that gluten is protein right?

So what do I eat now? Like you said, mostly fish and fowl, with some red meat in there. I also eat liver on a monthly basis for the super-dense protein.

" If people lowered the amount of carbs they take then they would be both more healthier and more lean."

However, if "everybody" did that, then we wouldn't have nearly enough food. Note the percentage of your diet that the pyramid says should be cheap-carbs and then look at the percentage of US food that comes from wheat and corn.

So you're on the dying of a heart attack diet now?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[phantomfive]

This is why I find it mind blowing that the official food guide pyramids still promote fast carbs so much. They should not be your main source of energy. They are needed, but not at the amounts people eat them today. The ratio should be more like 33%/33%/33%, or even have more fat and protein than carbs.

You seem to be promoting the paleolithic diet. Unfortunately the scientific evidence supporting it is dubious. "According to S. Jay Olshansky and Bruce Carnes, 'there is neither convincing evidence nor scientific logic to support the claim that adherence to a Paleolithic diet provides a longevity benefit." Also, "In hunter-gatherer societies where demographic data is available, the elderly are present, but they tend to have high mortality rates and rarely survive past the age of 80." So you can expect to not live past 80 on that diet.

Also, who cares if historically a certain food has been low class? Rich Romans were poisoning themselves with lead, rich Europeans were lusting after highly refined white bread. It's not like rich people, poor people, people living int he wild, or people from history somehow knew more about nutrition than we do.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Korin43]

Hydroponic farming usually involves growing plants in chemicals (plants have to get nutrients somewhere).

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed.

YOU WILL DIE.

One day.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[lgw]

No. Sugar is bad. Not just "processed". Not just HFCS. Not just "chemicals". It's not the case that "all natural" sugar is good. What a bunch of crap.

Carbs that metabolize quickly are bad for you, unless you're on an intense excercise program (e.g., marathon training). All the legitimate diet advice in the world comes down to two points:

• Eat low on the Glycemic Index
• Don't overeat (eat because you're hungry, not for entertainment when you're bored).

Nutritionists have reversed themselves every 10 years since I've been alive on everything else, but the glycemic index is a useful and consistent guide.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm always amused at how my girlfriend will insist on things going in the refrigerator for the same reason. Hell, even the restaurant I work in leaves a decent amount of food quite open for the duration of the time we're open for easy access, and it really is not an issue (even flies with health code laws). Just look at most sub-shops... And then, further, look at the farms where your food is grown...you don't think there's a decent amount of "exposure" going on there? Potatoes grow IN THE DIRT. Chickens are filthy animals. People just really don't give much credit to their body's ability to handle a bit of bacteria...

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[fahrbot-bot]

HFCS is one of the fastest carbs in the universe.

More to the point is that glucose and fructose are metabolized differently. Sucrose (table sugar) is composed of fructose and glucose. Glucose can be metabolized anywhere in the body, but fructose is primarily (only?) metabolized by the liver and is not regulated by insulin. HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup) has a higher proportion of fructose to glucose than sucrose (which is 50/50).

All three dietary monosaccharides are transported into the liver by the GLUT 2 transporter. Fructose and galactose are phosphorylated in the liver by fructokinase (Km= 0.5 mM) and galactokinase (Km = 0.8 mM). By contrast, glucose tends to pass through the liver (Km of hepatic glucokinase = 10 mM) and can be metabolised anywhere in the body. Uptake of fructose by the liver is not regulated by insulin. However, insulin is capable of increasing the abundance and functional activity of GLUT5 in skeletal muscle cells.

However...

Fructose is often recommended for diabetics because it does not trigger the production of insulin by pancreatic cells, probably because cells have low levels of GLUT5. Fructose has a very low glycemic index of 19 ± 2, compared with 100 for glucose and 68 ± 5 for sucrose. Fructose is also seventy-three percent sweeter than sucrose (see relative sweetness) at room temperature, so diabetics can use less of it. Studies show that fructose consumed before a meal may even lessen the glycemic response of the meal.

In any case, limiting one's intake of simple sugars and especially HFCS is probably a good idea. Let your body work for the calories by breaking down more complex foods.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

"While good food like meat, fish and similar "

In what way are those "good" foods?

What makes you think that human beings are supposed to eat animals and fish?

We are incapable of catching animals or fish with just our bodies, we are incapable of killing them with our teeth, we have no claws, our jaws don't open wide enough to break their spines, our 'canine' teeth are too small to do that, etc.etc. We get food poisoning from meat and fish and shellfish if they aren't cooked. We suffer from more disease (cancer, heart attacks, etc.) the more eat we consume, etc.etc.

Next you'll be telling me it's natural to drink the milk from a cow.

In other words - the ONLY reason you aren't a vegan is because almost everybody else isn't a vegan too. You haven't thought any of this through.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[phantomfive]

I can also attest to the massive changes in my health after eliminating simple carbs and going for complex carbs (meaning more fiber as well) in my diet in 2003. Weight loss wasn't even a goal as I didn't even think I was near the upper end of "healthy" for my size at the time

Have you considered that this may be a result of calorie reduction? Even if you eliminated one can of Coke from your diet a day, that's still 140 calories you got rid of every day.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[phantomfive]

Your daily carb intake should consist of fruit and vegetables, not breads or pastas.

In other words, instead of complex carbohydrates, we should eat fructose? That doesn't sound strange to you?

Have you actually tried this? I have, but it's really hard to stay on this diet. At first you feel great, but then your body gets tired of all the fructose you are feeding it.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[fahrbot-bot]

The guidelines say we're eating too much salt and we're all going to die of heart disease and high blood pressure, but there's no heart disease at all in my family, and my own blood pressure has always measured either normal or low -- and I eat a LOT of salt.

According to my doctor, who also teaches at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS), sodium is only really a problem for those individuals who are biologically disposed to have a problem with it. Otherwise, unless the intake is severely excessive and/or fluid (water) intake is severely low, it's not a problem. Your body will excrete any excess sodium. Apparently, your body doesn't (presently) have a problem with sodium. That may not always be case should you develop some illness, etc... In any case, however, less is probably better.

To add to the confusion, here are two (seemingly) contradictory articles:

• Sodium-Saturated Diet Is a Threat for All
• Less Salt Isn’t Always Better for the Heart

Note: I am not a doctor, you mileage may vary,void where prohibited by law, blah, blah, blah...

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[nattt]

Well, yes there is because they're uniquely addictive, and encourage over-eating. While it's hard to over-eat on just high fat and protein - you feel full quickly and don't get those "snacking" urges between meals, you do with carbs, especially wheat. For a person with a healthy metabolism that hasn't been damaged, indeed you can consume a fair number of carbs. The problem is that so many of us no longer have such a metabolism due to the vast over-consumption of carbs (fructose is probably one of the main gotchas, along with wheat). Our bodies now react rather differently to carb intake.

"we're taking in more calories then we're using... and thus getting fat" - to say that helps not at all. What we need to know is "why" - why are our bodies that normally self-regulate so well, getting our energy consumption so wrong. Address that issue, and you'll get to the bottom of things quickly.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be fructose, that's poison. Which makes up about half of sucrose (normal sugar) and is, obviously, found in high fructose corn syrup.

Short summary: fructose is metabolised by the liver, roughly the same as alcohol. It is slowly killing you. A low fat diet is often a very high carb diet, which is just as bad.

Short remedy: don't eat so bloody much sugar (of any variety), be moderate with all carbohydrates. Eat plenty of fiber.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Yaddoshi]

Just by reading through the comments here makes it clear that everybody has their own opinion as to what is healthy.

Do you really want to let someone else mandate for you what healthy food is, based on the variety of responses?

Seems to me only a few people would benefit, and most would suffer under this proposal.

In America, it seems like few citizens want to take responsibility for their own health, so I wouldn't be very surprised if this should someday come to pass.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Joce640k]

That doesn't change the fact that the food pyramid most people have been looking at all their lives isn't based on real science.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Joce640k]

Germs may be OK-ish but watch out for molds. Molds can leave nasty toxins behind.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

this. and oxygen.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I once lost ten pounds by eating nothing but cheeseburgers. Fast food cheeseburgers.

Calories in calories out == weight loss.

You can eat as 'healthy' as you want. If you graze on uninteresting (eg, not filled with over 9000 calories due to bacon and dressing and cheese and meat) salad like a cow, you will be the size of a cow. You might end up with lower cholesterol levels though. :p

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Karmashock]

no mystery. In "nature" we exercise.

Anyway, your complaint isn't useful. We can't change our diets without killing off at least half the human population of this planet. Carbs are the basis of human civilization. The last time human diets weren't that way we were nomads following the great herds not unlike wolf packs.

I'm not saying that isn't healthy. I'm saying it's logistically and economically impractical.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you prove you didn't just make that up? Because I'm pretty sure you did.

An apple, for example, provides about 100 calories. Lettuce provides about 8 calories a cup. You'd have to eat 25 apples or 300 cups of lettuce to eat 2500 calories a day, which is a low estimate for most active people. This is an unreasonable/impossible eating feat. The calories need to come from somewhere. If it's not carbs, it's gonna be fat or, I should have added, protein. Again, I suggest that for a moderately active person, eating fruits and vegetables as your primary energy source is not practical/possible. You try it. Report back.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Runaway1956]

Your math is awful. Just terrible. Price of 1 lb lentils + price of 1 lb brown rice \ number of portions is much price of chicken \ number of portions.

Try it out. Go to your local grocer, buy your rice and lentils, or beans and rice. Cook up a whole pound of each, and see how many portions you get out of them. Now, spend the same money on chicken, and see how many portions you get. Do the same for beef. Even ground beef is much more expensive than the chicken, per portion.

Granted, I too will rationalize the purchase of some beef, or some chicken, if I'm put on a welfare subsistence diet. But, at least I'll be perfectly well aware that I am squandering money on the meat!

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Tharsman]

Why should that sound strange? Didn’t our body evolve to feed on animal meat and foraged fruits and vegetables? And these were hunter ages, where energy was required in higher amounts than in the harvesting ages. Evolutionarily speaking, harvesting grain has been a very tiny chunk of our lifetimes.

There was a time I would had found it strange, since I truthfully believed fats were evil and meats were the main cause of cancer, that we should be all vegans eating breads, beans, pastas and vegetables. After a lot of lectures from people that know better, I no longer believe this way.

Have you actually tried this? I have, but it's really hard to stay on this diet. At first you feel great, but then your body gets tired of all the fructose you are feeding it.

I am doing it right now. I started trying it about 3 weeks ago. I took a long time to be fully willing to try it, though. I love my rice and beans, and a big bowl of Alfredo Pasta.

I not only don’t feel tired, but I feel I have a lot more energy than before (may be the fact that today I am carrying 15 pounds less than I was carrying when I started too...) I used to feel dizzy if I stood up suddenly after a long period of idleness. This no longer happens.

I also walk a mile every day. Half a mile in the morning, half a mile in the afternoon. Have no choice as I park that distance away from work.

Note that I am not JUST feeding on fruits and veggies. I am also feeding on a lot of meats (beef, white meat, fish.) I balance my meals, between fruits, vegetables and meats. Never I end up eating just pure meat dinners, always accompany them with some vegetables, usually a combination of carrots, broccoli and cauliflower. Either steamed or grilled. For breakfasts it’s usually eggs with cheese, onions, peppers and maybe bacon or sausage.

I hear some people go this way but go extremist, only eating meats. Or hate vegetables so they only eat meats and fruit. The vegetables are important.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's true if costs are factored in with the real long term effect of what they imply, let's say dismantling cost of an EOL nuclear powerplant. Food costs are completely biased, also because, at least in Europe, they are produced by 3rd world low wage slave workers.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[StikyPad]

It's amazing that on a site like Slashdot, when it comes to anything else, peer reviewed publishing of scientific study is the gold standard. But when it comes to food, nutrition, or exercise, it's all conspiracy, self-published videos/books, and Whole Foods organic new-age mantras.

Observing what another culture eats ("The China 'Study'"), and their corresponding rates of various diseases (which is what the summary seems to loosely claim) without considering or eliminating other variables is all but useless. It's like saying elevators make people because they're empty when the doors close, and then more people come out the next time the doors open. It's certainly a reasonable hypothesis based on available evidence, but closer inspection is warranted before, e.g., installing an elevator because you want more people in your club.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, can you read?

I was responding the comment:

"Your daily carb intake should consist of fruit and vegetables, not breads or pastas."

Which if fucking ridiculous, because fruits and vegetables provide ultimately negligible calories in amounts reasonable to consume. If fruits and vegetables are all the carbs you're gonna get (very little), then I'm suggesting you will have to make up the difference with other energy sources, namely fat, and I should have added, protein.

Look up the caloric values for almost any fruit or vegetable. Unless you're dieting or spending your entire day eating (like a cow), you cannot live on just fruits and vegetables.

My argument is for moderation. Eat "healthy" options from all the food groups as needed to meet your daily caloric needs, and I believe (and I think the USDA agrees), you'll be fine.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Maxo-Texas]

Red meat from range fed cattle has much healthier meat and fat. It's like the difference between wild caught salmon (very nutricious) and farm raised salmon (very low in nutrition).

Consuming red meat of either kind with moderate amounts wine cleanses the arteries of the fat. Red wine has more anti-oxidants.

Red meat studies are based on farm raised cattle which are fed antibiotics and also have a higher level of estrogen like pesticides along with other chemicals.

OTH, range fed cattle is bloody expensive. Your organic dollars are better spent on the "dirty dozen" vegetables if you have limited cash.

Google turned up this data:
http://www.eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm

Notable comments:
Research shows that lean beef actually lowers your "bad" LDL cholesterol levels.[2]

Healthy fat (Omega 3) levels drop continuously in the feedlot down to zero after 200 days.

Vitamin E. In addition to being higher in omega-3s and CLA, meat from grassfed animals is also higher in vitamin E.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

"(see Reagan, R., under whose administration ketchup was famously considered a vegetable in school lunches)."

Or the USDA in 2011 when they wanted to reclassify the amount of tomato sauce that could be considered a vegetable so pizza sauce could continue (continue!) to be considered a vegetable in school lunches.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, man... I was really getting excited about the RFID scanners I get to implant in my neck and ass. It'd be so cool to spam my twitter with a stream of everything that I'm eating and crapping. I get to play a new game called eat-wut-da-gov-says! Woo Hoo! And, I get bonus points IRL! Frickin' Awesome!

Holy, Sh!t... are they serious? So, not only do they get to screw me when I'm not looking... but I also get a date-rape wine and dine as well.
Oligarchs wont be happy until they are able to tweak our lives like a giant game of Sim City/Sims. Sadder still, is that the faster we can tie our food to the almighty dollar... in a way that is intrinsically designed to control your behavior... the faster that the blind insanity that is the monetized system will ultimately destroy us all.

Yeah, I really want some asshole who runs company X to decide that I need their product Y more than their competitor's Z... and then my paycheck gets molested into acquiescence. Great plan. This might work in a resource based economy, but not in a reality where corporations are zombie-blob-vampires who are only self-interested and short sighted... (Not in our current reality of corporate personhood.)

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Tharsman]

Try going for a month without eating anything but fruits, vegetables, and high quality cuts of meat and poultry, but being heavy on the vegetables.

Don’t forget home cooked meats. But yes, I did this and it’s amazing. Fruit, that I always found bland, is now deliciously sweet. The other day my wife bought a bag of dried fruit, and once I put it in my mouth I almost spit it out. It was a huge sugar overload. Once I read the bag it turns out the dried fruit have been added loads of sugars, not to mention additional "natural flavoring" and artificial coloring.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Maxo-Texas]

When I shifted my 2000kcal diet to low carbs, I lost 15 pounds. Same calories. Same exercise level. I just cut out bread potatoes and sugar. The benefits of low carb diets for losing weight goes back to at least th 1920's.

Also, gluten is really bad for a lot of people ( miserable at the list- early death is on the list). Wheat gluten is particularly bad.

Otherwise, I agree with what you are saying.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I sign up for a study involving me eatting pizza every day? Sounds like a great diet. (I'd be happy anyway)

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[StikyPad]

It *is* unsafe and dangerous. You can probably cross the street without looking or listening and manage to not get hit by a car, but that doesn't mean it's a good practice.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Tharsman]

If you do even moderate exercise, it is not possible to eat enough with fruits and vegetables as your sole carbohydrate source without gorging on fats, which is among things, uncomfortable.

You are supposed to also eat meats (fish, white meat, beef, etc.) Hardly gorging on fats, it's not like you go buy beef, cut off the fat, then fry and eat said fat.

Targeting (whole) grains as problematic for people with somewhat healthy lifestyles is just unrealistic.

This just does not make sense. "somewhat healthy?" So if they are not "hospital sick" you should not worry about the diet? I guess most of America agrees with you...

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Belial6]

I can't prove Tharsman's assertion, BUT either the current food government food recommendations are completely backwards, or I am and X-Man. Yes, as in one of these mutant superheros. It must be something in the environment that mutated me because I know many other superhero X-Men. When I eat the by the the current 'scientifically accepted healthy diet', I pack on fat. If I get lots of exercise while eating that way, I pack on lots of muscle AND lots of fat. Irrelevant of the amount of exercise, I am always tired and feel like crap.

When I eat a high fat high protein diet, I shed body fat, and build muscle. No extra exercise necessary. If I exercise while eating lots of fat and protien, I pack on even more muscle, and shed about the same amount of fat. The whole time I have lots of energy and feel great.

No matter what I eat, when I don't exercise at all, my lean body mass (determined via hydrostatic weighing) is only 10 to 15lbs below the total weight that the government/health/insurance industries declare to be 'over weight'. This means that for me to become a 'normal' weight, I have to get down below ~3% body fat. That is the MAXIMUM body fat I can have to be considered 'normal' weight. If I get the recommended amount of exercise, my lean body mass exceeds the maximum weight for 'normal' weight. So, avoid being considered 'overweight', I would literally need to amputate body parts. A leg might do it, but I could amputate both legs, because then I would be 'overweight' again.

So, as I said. Tharsman MIGHT be wrong. But if he is, I would have to accept that I am some kind of comic book super hero, and that seems just a tad unlikely.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[zildgulf]

You would think weight loss would seem to be a Thermodynamics problem, eat less calories than you burn. But when you consider the effect of Insulin, hunger, and the fact that each person has a different metabolism, at different times, in different circumstances.

For instance you would think if you burned 2000 calories a day that a diet of 800 calories a day would make you continually burn off weight you might be right, in the short term. So why do some people that are overweight and have been on a continual 1000 calorie-a-day diet tend to stay overweight and do not lose anymore weight? It is called "Starvation Mode". This is when the body starts using the calories it gets more efficiently. It was a needed survival technique to prevent starvation in the Dark Ages. Not such a good technique today.

Also some diets that radically restrict calories tend to make people hungry. I mean REALLY hungry. A sick kind of hunger. Hungry enough that they can't think of anything but hunger. Their body is screaming EAT EAT EAT EAT!!!!!! If weight loss was solely a thermodynamics problem why would their hunger center act like a total drama queen when many of these people have enough stored energy to run multiple marathons? Why are they still really really hungry when they have more than enough stored energy for days, weeks, months or years? If I am 30 lbs overweight it should be easy for me not eat any food for the next 40 days. Why is it my body give me headaches and low blood sugar when I skip a meal or two or three?

The problem of weight loss is not Thermodynamic, it is mostly Biological! Many people, especially non overweight people, don't get this.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does somewhat healthy translate into "not hospital sick"? Read things the way you want. I'm thinking more along the lines of exercises three days a week. I'm disgusted by the fat-bodies. You should be able to run a mile easily. That being said, the rest of us should not eat strange unilateral diets because some self-discipline lacking people with poor genetics are fat. I added in my other responses that I should have considered protein as well. But with negligible carb calories, you'll have to eat very large portions of meat if you're not also going to eat a fair bit of fat. It's a simple equation.

4 * grams of protein + 4 * grams of carbohydrate + 9 * grams of fat = total calories

If you don't want to lose weight, and you reduce one component, the others have to go up. Explain to me how this doesn't make sense.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[fahlesr1]

I know people on Food stamps (a large percentage of the U.S.population now, btw) -- and they can't AFFORD to eat healthy. There's a reason poor people are fat -- bad diet, because good food is too expensive.

I'm going to call BS on that claim. When I worked in a food store while going through college I saw people come in and buy basics with their wic food stamps and then buy energy drinks and other crap with their PA food stamp card. This wasn't a rare occurrence, it tended to happen several times every night I worked.

Perhaps that is a PA specific problem, but I doubt it. Human nature is such that if you are being given other people's money with no restrictions on how you spend it you'll make poor decisions. The wic food stamps I didn't have a problem with, they specified things like "2 jars peanut butter" or "2 loaves of bread" but those debit cards were abused like nothing else. In the case of these people, they could have used those cards to eat healthy, instead they bought energy drinks.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Joce640k]

So...don't eat junk.

OTOH there's absolutely no need to spend double on 'organic'/'bio', foods. The difference between them and the other stuff is mostly marketing. 'Organic' and 'bio' are just meaningless weasel words put there to put the price up. Notice they're not claiming it's 'more healthy' on the packets - that would be illegal, because there's zero evidence for it.

The single best thing you can do to improve your diet is cook for yourself and see what goes in there. Basic foods are really easy to prepare, they don't really take much time, it's way cheaper and you'll end up eating a lot more variety. Some of my favorite recipes (the ones I get asked to make most) have only four ingredients in them and take ten about minutes to make. I can make a pizza and be eating it before the pizza delivery guy arrives, and it'll be nicer, too.

The only real trick is to have some ingredients in the cupboards when you get home. Always have loads of rice, pasta, flour, fried tomato, garlic, olive oil, etc., in the house then buy extras when you do the weekly shop. e.g. What will you throw in the rice this week? Sausages, bacon and fried tomato or broccoli, cashew nuts and soy sauce? Frozen vegetables are good to have, too. get a cheap steamer for cooking them - ten minutes of steam will cook almost anything if it's chopped up in little pieces.

Also: Don't bother with cookbooks. They mostly complicate things by needing weird ingredients that you never heard of. The trick is just to look around the store for ideas. Experiment. Grab stuff you like the taste of and mix it up with other stuff. Think about things you've eaten in the past then try to reproduce them.

I'm starting to sound like Jamie Oliver now...but it's just because it's so stupidly simple to cook. Makes me want to grab people and shake them when I see them buying "instant microwave food" crap that tastes like greasy cardboard (and usually takes them as long to prepare as real food!), especially when they've got children in tow.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[pclminion]

Mold spores barely start to germinate after 12 hours, much less grow to a mass of cells large enough to harm anyone. Germs and molds obviously can and do infect food stored at room temperature. The question is, can a harmful colony form on previously COOKED food in the span of a 12 hour period? I suggest that for most foods in most homes, the answer is no. If you're getting Monofreakium bloodydeathii colonies on your food at home I suggest burning your house down as it is harboring a deadly pathogen.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Belial6]

Actually, from a thermodynamic perspective, it would only apply to those without an anus.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Belial6]

Not everyone is like you, and has no anus. You are suggesting that 100% of energy contained in the food you eat gets converted to energy or fat right? Did you have your anus surgically removed? Or were you born without it?

Yes, I am being snide, but pointing out the fallacy in the calories consumed - calories burned argument without being snide always leads to the person just making more absurd statements.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

My father is an anthropologist. After hearing from him, and reading many books afterward, I'm a firm believer that Homo sapien sapiens have evolved to consume mostly animal fat and protein. The dead give away (according to dear old Dad) is in the dentition.

He mentioned other things like musculature, bipedalism, and specifically our livers. Essentially he believes we evolved to be lazy hunters, hence the bipedalism and musculature. He pointed out how our digestive system breaks fat down into the essential fatty acids and glycerol. The fatty acids can penetrate the blood/brain barrier, and glycerol is metabolized into glucose by the liver.

Compare that to the digestion and metabolizing of grains: Grains get broken down into glucose and fructose. It happens fast, so your blood sugar goes up, which triggers your body's response to store the rest as fat. This can cause diabetic issues.

I'd like to point out that every cell in your body can use glucose. Your body has no use for fructose. Your liver metabolizes fructose into worse shit than it does with alcohol. IMHO the USA has an epidemic health issues due to the FDA and USDA promoting high-carb, low fat diets. It makes you dumber because grains lack the essential fatty acids (which again, your brain can use, and they cross the blood/brain barrier), and it makes you fatter because of the speed at which it increases your blood sugar/fat storage.

Finally, look at the people that are taking statin medicines, and omega-3 supplements. High-carb dieters, or Asian-Americans. Mostly people that eat noodles, bread, and whole grains for the majority of their meals.

CAPTCHA: truths

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[AdamnSelene]

It's amazing that on a site like Slashdot, when it comes to anything else, peer reviewed publishing of scientific study is the gold standard. But when it comes to food, nutrition, or exercise, it's all conspiracy, self-published videos/books, and Whole Foods organic new-age mantras.

Observing what another culture eats ("The China 'Study'"), and their corresponding rates of various diseases (which is what the summary seems to loosely claim) without considering or eliminating other variables is all but useless. It's like saying elevators make people because they're empty when the doors close, and then more people come out the next time the doors open. It's certainly a reasonable hypothesis based on available evidence, but closer inspection is warranted before, e.g., installing an elevator because you want more people in your club.

I'm not sure where you got "self-published" and "new-age mantras" from. I think a 30-year long medical study, multiple publications in nutrition, epidemiology and other medical journals and a collaboration between Cornell University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences qualifies as peer reviewed science. The same goes for a Johns Hopkins anthropologist's life work researching the sugar trade and its consequences.

Now I would readily agree that no study is without its flaws. Similarly, no model of scientific inquiry is without its flaws. One of the troubles with almost all medical studies of nutrition is that isolating a variable is quite difficult. Having been a research scientist at the Salk Institute, I can tell you from firsthand experience that the idealized model of science we have from billiard ball physics, in which isolating the variable is paramount, doesn't really work well for studies at this physical scale of research. Human organisms and human nutrition are complex systems; complex stochastic methods are probably the best methods to study something as nebulous as human health at an organismic (or cultural) level.

In the end, however, I'd concede the result is usually of the variety that science has shown that "eating your vegetables" is good for you. And eating too much sugar is bad for you. In other words, common-sensical. Don't know about yours but my mother's advice about eating right was the same, and she was no new-ager.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I eat broccoli every single day, at first it tasted bad, now I really like it. Something similar happened the first time I ate plain chocolate, and it seems it happens with beer and coffee too( I can't stand their flavors but it seems if you force yourself into it you get to like it).

I really loved something similar to Mexican burritos, but I got very ill with one of them that carried a virus(it was wrong handled when it was done), now if I see them I don't like them anymore in fact I hate them.

So it seems you train your taste with time.

Industrial food is like porn is to sex, it looks like sex but is devoid of what makes sex really great for you(like connection and love with your partner). Industrial food tastes like real food because of the flavors, but it is devoid of what really feeds you(mainly because it is not economical to carry and store it, things like fiber, vitamins and proteins can not be frozen without damage).

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[schitso]

Yes, because cars are unimaginably intricate organic machines created by millenia of evolution. Apples and lugnuts.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[hedwards]

Since always. You don't really need that much fat in your diet. "Good" fat is just as laden with calories as "bad" fat is. Sure you need some fat in order to ensure that you're getting enough of vitamins A, D, E and K, but it would take a lot of very serious effort to be deficient in fat in your diet.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a typical thing in Europe, most people leave food and butter on the counter overnight and finish it off for lunch the next day. Now i grew up in the bush in Australia and if we left anything on the counter for more than about 20 minutes it would be covered in ants, and if we left it for any longer it would be gone!

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[hedwards]

They're not bad for you in moderation, but you only need enough protein to repair and replace the cells that die off and the amount of fat you need is also fairly minor. Sugar and carbs are what your body burns for fuel and ultimately your body has to burn the fat or the protein when there isn't sufficient carbs in the diet to do the job.

Converting sugars over to the specific glucose that the body desires is relatively efficient, unfortunately the same is not the case for protein and particularly in hot climates tends to require a lot of hydration to work properly.

Also, protein and fat contain little to no dietary fiber and as a result your pipes don't get the cleaning that they otherwise would get. Not to mention the lack of vitamins and minerals that are typically found in carb rich foods.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's the opposite, rich people are more unhealthy, as they eat more high Cholesterol food, especially seafood

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[alcourt]

You mean you don't like this menu?

Sunday: Home made chicken and onion barbecue folded calzone
Monday: Onion focacia.
Tuesday: Pineapple and ham on lightly risen pizza dough with light sauce.
Wednesday: Chicago style deep dish onion, green pepper and tomato pizza casserole
Thursday: Sausage and onion yogurt bread roll-up
Friday: Apple bread topped with cooked apples and cinnamon (a la "dessert pizza")
Saturday: Spinach and beef ravioli (because I ran out of pizza variations, and this at least uses many ingredients of pizza)

Store bought pizza has too much fat. Home made pizza doesn't need much at all. The main place I use fat on the above pizza like dishes I've made is either inherent in the meat, or if I'm putting a sauce directly onto uncooked dough to prevent it from soaking in too much.

Literally, the only one I have not made is combining apple bread (which I have made) with an apple/cinnamon topping (which I have made).

Pizza's main problem I've seen is that it has more calories in it than one expects by size and time to eat, so you eat a lot more food than you realize before you are full. This is also the case with many other dishes, including those popular at fast food joints.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[alcourt]

I'm told that a very small number of diet sources actually have resources for people who need to gain weight. Real dietitians are used to weight gain diets. The challenge I gave the dietitian was for me to gain weight and not disturb my wife's diet as she was losing weight. (The answer was an attempt to get me to toss in more nuts on my salad and switch me to home made vinegar and oil salad dressing.) I didn't gain, but I stopped losing, which was held to be a partial victory.

It makes an amusing case at my job. One coworker has a medical condition requiring very regular meals. I'm supposed to never forget to eat (which I do regularly already, and instead of grabbing a candy bar or chips like a normal person, I simply wait until the next regularly scheduled meal.) Yet work doesn't actually offer a break from the endless meetings to actually eat lunch. Rarely do I have less than three days a week where I have solid meetings from well before to well after traditional lunch times.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because glucose != sucrose
1 fructose = 1 glucose + 1 sucrose

The metabolic pathways for processing glucose and sucrose are completely different.
Glucose is to us pure energy--we metabolise it easily and naturally.
Sucrose (and thus fructose) is poison to us. We metabolize it in our liver--it's nearly the identical pathway as ethanol. The pathway causes several side-effects, one of which is a disruption of the hormone feedback loop for satiety--meaning when we eat fructose or other carbs which break down to sucrose we will nearly always overeat. Anther significant side-effect is the insulin response--signalling our cells to take up fat for storage. Drinking an hfcs beverage is essentially liquid fat...

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[tragedy]

The problem here is that you think that $2.50 per pound is affordable for someone poor.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you like to know more?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I lost 60 pounds in 4 months on the "Eat less, but whatever the fuck you want" diet.

My "diet" consisted of eating fast food, ice cream, chocolate, etc, only less of it.

Yes, I did get people asking me what I did. Yes, hardly anyone believed me.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meta-analyses prove nothing. Their only use is to suggest something for further study. They are way overhyped everywhere. And please don't suggest reading a book. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of mutually contradictory diet books there. Telling someone to read a book that espouses your preferred viewpoint is completely unconvincing.

I don't know what the true effect of saturated fats is on health, but wikipedia has a good summary of studies. Although questions remain, there does appear to be significant evidence of the harm of excess saturated fat consumption. Since some studies don't find a link, we will probably discover at some point discover that there other factors that interact with saturated fat intake that make it either harmful or harmless.

I would say it's too soon to jump to the conclusion that saturated fat is harmless, especially with the zeal that you exhibit in your post.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

My friend's grandmother was told to reduce her cholesterol and she died of a heart attack before her doctor died. Your anecdote tells me that my friend must have been lying.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't that clever? using an alternate definition of the word the original poster used in order to prove him wrong.

Definition:
any substance used in or resulting from a reaction involving changes to atoms or molecules, especially one derived artificially for practical use

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Rynd]

Any suggestions on fairly simple to make, tasty veggie dishes? Thanks.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

You really need to read "Eat to Live" by Dr. Joel Furhman, your information is a bit off.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[TapeCutter]

I'm a firm believer that Homo sapien sapiens have evolved to consume mostly animal fat and protein.

While I agree, I think the "mostly" part is taking it too far. I'm not sure where I read it but before the advent of agriculture humans got ~85% of their food from gathering and ~15% from hunting, a similar ratio can be seen in wild chimpanzee's in the modern world*. A little over ten thousand years ago we became super-predators and learnt to domesticate our prey, meat consumption increased considerably simply because to most people who still have teeth a steak sandwich is much tastier than a dandelion sandwich.

However ten thousand years is not long enough to do a lot of evolving of the digestive system ( although lactose tolerance may be one example). We had already evolved to be omnivores long before we were human and the advantage of being an omnivore such as a pig or a human is not individual health but rather a population that can survive radical changes in diet and therefore take advantage of a wide variety of environments.

In other words the "natural human diet" is stuffing whatever you find edible into your face.

* Although wild chimps are skilled ambush hunters they are yet to learn how to steal meat from a pride of lions and do not have the anatomy for persistence hunting.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[TapeCutter]

Damm, I've got mod points but I've already posted. Reading the comments to this story has been like wandering around the stalls at a spiritual festival.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Khashishi]

It's not healthy to just eat lentils and oatmeal. It's good to include some fruits, nuts, and greens, and these are pretty expensive except for bananas.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Carnildo]

For instance you would think if you burned 2000 calories a day that a diet of 800 calories a day would make you continually burn off weight you might be right, in the short term. So why do some people that are overweight and have been on a continual 1000 calorie-a-day diet tend to stay overweight and do not lose anymore weight? It is called "Starvation Mode". This is when the body starts using the calories it gets more efficiently.

It's not so much using the calories "efficiently" as it is using them "conservatively": "starvation mode" sees the immune system depressed, damage repair restricted to the minimum needed for survival (eg. bleeding is stopped, but wounds take a very long time to heal), the reproductive system shut down, and so on. Any calorie expenditure not needed for immediate survival is deferred.

A side effect of this is that once you start eating enough once again, you'll see massive weight gain: your body doesn't come out of starvation mode immediately, and instead diverts the extra calories into building up your fat reserves. Going from an 800 calorie a day diet to a 2000 calorie a day diet can result in gaining three pounds a week or more.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Karmashock]

fat is calories. If you're building up fat it means you have excess calories.

It's possible that your body simply converts carbs into fat more efficiently then it does with meat. Thus a 1:1 ratio on your nutrition chart would not be a 1:1 ratio in your body. If you took your carb heavy diet and reduced the calories by whatever your weight gain was at the time. Then you should level out.

You can't get fat if you're not taking in excess calories. I exclude odd and very rare medical conditions.

Beyond that, while I'm hearing everything you're saying. The point is that your diet is a luxury that we cannot afford. If we tried to feed any reasonable percentage of the planet that way... we'd fail and people would starve.

Carbs feed human civilization. Much of the arab spring in the middle east was caused by increasing bread prices. These people are paying bottom dollar for grain, flour, and rice... and a 50 percent increase in costs meant people were going hungry. If we shifted them to your diet... they'd all die.

Carbs are what people are going to eat. If we want to find a solution we have to find a way to make people healthy on carbs.

Look at rice or pasta. I can buy enough to last me for a whole week on a few dollars and that's with US price inflation. It also keeps for years. I can buy a bag of rice or a bundle of pasta, throw it in the pantry, forget about it for months, and then come back to it and it's just as good as ever. You can't do that with these other energy sources. They cost more and they're all very perishable.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Damnshock]

What I really cannot understand is why people DO NOT EXERCICE!!!

We do need carbs just as much as we need to exercice. If you don't do the former, you'll need to lower your carbs ingest.

And now that we are at it (not related to your comment) Why is everybody against pasta? And that's pasta alone, not dressings or whatever. Make sure you'll have time to burn those carbs (eat them in the breakfast or lunch) and it's a perfectly healthy food.

Regards

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[f()rK()_Bomb]

Actually depends where you live. No product I buy in Ireland has any hcfs in it. There is a quota limit for how much hfcs you can produce a year in europe and its a small fraction of the real sugar produce.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were extreme reactions to the psychological effects during the experiment including self-mutilation (one subject amputated three fingers of his hand with an axe, though the subject was unsure if he had done so intentionally or accidentally).

Ah, Wikipedia. They say "though" as if the question of its being intentional or accidental would mean more than the fact that he couldn't tell in the first place.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[mcgrew]

Bacon, eggs, butter, and lard are all high in cholesterol, which is what her doctors were warning her about.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Maxo-Texas]

Agreed.

If we could make nutritional carbs which at a low cost that would solve the food problem. Rice and pasta are not nutritional so you need something else.

A lot of people will die / be unhealthy on any gluten based carb (wheat, maize, barley, to some extent oats). They are not adapted to gluten.

The current methods for raising carbs are artificial and as oil becomes more expensive will be unsustainable.

A lot of this talk is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titantic but I guess we keep trying until the plane hits the ground.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Karmashock]

Sigh... Egypt was based on Wheat.

China was based on Rice.

The Maya and Aztec were based on Maize.

Without these crops it simply wouldn't have happened. You can't have such dense population clusters without staple crops that can be stockpiled safely for months or years.

Whatever your ideal diet is... that's great. When you go to Whole Foods or whatever buy that and be happy. I wish no ill to you at all. However, the rest of humanity and civilization at large is not doing that. The economics and logistics don't work. In fact, you don't want us to do it. Because if we did you wouldn't be able to do it either.

So give it a rest. As to gluttons... some people are allergic to water. Literally. That's terrible and our hearts go out to them. But if we were all allergic to water we'd have died out as a species. Likewise, if we all had that reaction to rice and wheat the Pyramids never would have been built and we wouldn't be sitting here arguing about this over the internet.

We'd still be roaming the plains following the herds like our ancestors ten thousand years ago.

Grasp what I'm saying here. Eat all the wheat germ and farmer's market you want. I'm not against it. But we can't all go down that path. Civilization would shut down and billions would starve.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Firethorn]

Personally, I find that 40% protein, 30% carbs, 30% fat is doing wonders for me shedding weight.

I'm not particularly avoiding any foods, but my 'allowance' of fast sugars is so low that I'm avoiding such 'empty calories'. I don't drink soda, or even fruit juice - I eat the fruit instead, so I get the fiber to feel full.
Morning - Bowl of cereal and skim milk, and an orange.
Lunch - ~300 cal 'steamer', it's cold out, I want a hot meal, and only have a microwave available at work. Doesn't hurt that they're like $2.40 each, so it's cheaper than fast food.
Dinner - all sorts of stuff, just portion control.
Exercise - AT LEAST 500cals of workout/day.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Firethorn]

I have to echo this, though I started as definitly obese - 188 for 5'7". My goal, right now, is 155, the top end of 'healthy' for my height. I can readjust once I actually get down there.

How am I doing it? My breakfast is with a healthy cereal(Special K 'red berry', that has the dried strawberries in it), lunch is a 'cafe steamer' - ~300 calories, and dinner is home cooked(large menu). I'm avoiding processed sugars, and even avoiding fruit juices in favor of eating the fruit. I try to exercise a minimum of 500 cals a day.

Sometimes I have a protein shake, but that's because between the calorie restrictions and the workouts, I have trouble getting enough protein.

It's been a month and a half, and I'm down 16 pounds. That includes christmas break when I stopped logging, and couldn't exercise(gym was closed, and running outside here is a masochist's game) and slapped a pound back on. Ah well - pick up and keep going. Just had a new low today.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Tharsman]

Explain to me how this doesn't make sense.

"Somewhat healthy" does not make sense and does not fit the description you give. "Somewhat healthy" is like saying "barely acceptably healthy", it's what a doctor would say if he told you he won’t be sending you to the hospital but you need to fix things. It can also apply to anyone that’s extremely sick, but "somewhat healthy enough" to go to work.

What you describe in your example, unless you are skimming on some cancer, is just plain out healthy, not "somewhat healthy."

As for calorie count, I won’t get into it because this thread is full of posts with good information on it already, dig the tree. But not all calories are equal, they are not all just counted, your body is not a calculator. Some nutrients may be ignored by your digestive system if unneeded or over-provided; others will be immediately processed no matter how much you grouch on them.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Joe Snipe]

And you believe that? Millions of years of evolution, yet our bodies require the carbs we only learned to refine out of grain in the last ten thousand years? You are incorrect about the lack of vitamins and minerals in fats and proteins, but nonetheless adequate vegetable servings would easily make up for the lack of whatever is you think is only in grains.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Firethorn]

Depends on how you count 'processed'. If you watch the whole youtube video, one of the things he hits on being bad is fruit juice. Why? The processing removes the pulp - the fiber and complex carbs. It takes something like 5 apples to make a glass of juice. People will drink a glass of apple juice like it's nothing, while they'd be feeling rather full if they ate 5 apples.

I've tried it with oranges as well - a single orange leaves me satisfied. The volume of OJ you get from an orange, or the slightly higher volume with the same calories as an intact orange is very unsatisfying.

Look at the obesity epidemic and many of the diets that work the best - Atkins, Japanese, Caveman, heck, even Greek. The old traditional diets were extremely lean in simple sugars. Avoid those and you'll become full faster, stay full longer, and with minimal additional exercise you'll lose weight.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Firethorn]

I'm losing weight by keeping a food log to restrict my calories - I'm allowed 1200 a day, plus exercise. If I burn 500 cals, my limit increases to 1700.

I find that if I allow simple sugars in any major amounts, that I'm too hungry to stick to it. Heck, keeping proper nutrition at 1200 is tough at times, and I'm still hungry - but if I work out it acts as a hunger suppressant or something, and I'm satisfied with ~1500 calories, and am losing weight even faster. I'm also avoiding caffeine, so diet drinks are also mostly out.

As a result, I've eliminated things like soda and fruit juice, and even bread, rice, and noodles are 'restricted'. I eat LOTS of chicken for the protein. I generally have 1 orange and 1 apple a day as snacks.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Joe Snipe]

I don't know, what part of your engine eats itself when your gasoline runs dry? When was the last time you had your blood changed (every three thousand miles!)?
I mean really? Comparing pressured explosions to the human body? A hydrogen exchange is a little closer and it's still way off.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Maxo-Texas]

Based on....

Carbs are not enough.

You are dealing with exponential growth. The economics and logistics won't work regardless of what you do.

If the 1st world were to withdraw food aid, allow your local farmers to grow crops profitably, allow the population to stabilize at a supportable level, that would be a start.

There are some terrible implications to that statement so it's not going to happen.

End result- a massive die off in the next 50 years regardless of what we do. Nothing will prevent it. It's not just food- it's also water- increasingly brittle systems, a larger population of humans to breed more virulent diseases, insects resistant to genetically engineered crops, more expensive petroleum so pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers all become more expensive.

Any kind of world war will disrupt food delivery. Areas that are not self sufficient will suffer famine and disease very quickly.

It's not just the 3rd world, etc. It's the 1st world as well.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Firethorn]

I disagree. Certainly there are chemicals you don't want in foods, there are trace chemicals that can lead to bad reactions.

HOWEVER, from studies way back when, humans can live perfectly healthy on 100% artificial food, if it's carefully balanced. It's not tasty, but it's not harmful. In some cases, organic is actually more dangerous than conventional. In some cases, it has fewer nutrients. In any case, it's actually easier to eat organic today, at least you have the option - I don't ever remember seeing 'organic' as a teen, I can get all sorts of organic stuff today. It's a new issue.

Concentrating on eating organic before you fix your diet plan is like pulling your back seat out of your car to save gas mileage by reducing weight before learning to not ride the brake all the time when driving. Well, it's not that bad - because eating organic will tend to fix the overconsumption of sugar problem; heck, with the typical prices it'll fix the overconsumption problem period. But it's not affordable by everyone. There are options that are affordable, but 'organic' isn't it.

Fix the diet, and you can bring somebody down from 185 to 155, with all the attendant lifespan/quality of life gains. Going all organic might get you 153, and gains are within the margin of error.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Firethorn]

Your store bought eggs will last a LOT longer in the fridge than 2 weeks. The date stamped is for utter paranoia.

I still remember Europe - where they didn't bother to refridgerate the eggs at all.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Karmashock]

Well it is predictable that this would end with you fantasizing about billions of people starving to death as if there were a good thing.

Anyway, that's why no one is seriously going to listen to you or anyone like you. I say this with no hostility or rancor. It's just that your ideas are abhorrent to anyone that knows what they really mean. I think if you were forced to confront the consequences of your ideas... to see the starving children and so forth... you'd perhaps be forced to be flexible. But hopefully that never happens for their sake.

We're going to do our best to feed the world as best as can in the most sustainable manner practical at that time.

It is our hope that we can use a combination of GM crops and new farming technologies to increase crop yields ahead of population growth. So far we've succeeded in feeding the world. There will be new challenges in the future but it would be unreasonable to expect them to be solved all at once. We have time and we can use it.

Worst case, there might be hunger in the third world. But that is better then the alternative of there being outright starvation.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Tharsman]

I'm disgusted by the fat-bodies. You should be able to run a mile easily.

Additional thing I forgot to mention earlier:

Being athletic or thin does not make you immune to Type-2 Diabetes or Pre-Diabetes. Diabetes is not about fat, it’s about blood sugar levels, and thanks to the American diet, even athletes with near zero body fat are being diagnosed with diabetes.

Read this article, not for me but for your own good:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24716880/ns/health-diabetes/t/even-thin-person-can-get-diabetes/

It may be worth your time to learn how diabetes works, and how it can destroy your later life. If you actually have your diets consists mostly of complex carbs like breads and pastas and avoid meats and fats, I also highly recommend you have a quick blood sugar test.

Diabetes is killing America faster than Aids and Cancer. We really have to stop it, and we stop it by lowering, or preferably eliminating, our complex carb intake.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Maxo-Texas]

If I say, "The sky is blue" am I fantasizing that the sky being blue is a good thing?

No.

I'm saying "the bridge is out and the train will go over the cliff". You are talking about what we are going to feed people in the Dining car. That's all well and good, but it won't matter in the big picture.

And it's against the direction of correcting the problem-- stopping population growth and then rolling it back.

Your ideas on carbs are incomplete. People are very unhealthy on a carb only diet. If you reach a point where only carbs are the option, then people are going to be dying of wierd diseases or be so unhealthy that all you can do is warehouse them because they won't be capable of doing much beyound existing.

You must give them some oils, some vegetables and (usually) some meat. Not large quantities but some- because it's cheaper than vitamins.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Maxo-Texas]

Look- do some research on historical population predictions.

They are lower- in some cases by as much as 250 million people lower- than actual population numbers.

We are in this fantasy land that population is going to top out at 12 billion by 2100. More likely it will be closer to 12.5 billion. Systems started breaking down on a global scale back in the 70's when the population was under 4 billion.

In every 1st world country there are sections of the population growing higher than the replacement rate. Those populations (with their pro birth values) will come to dominate the culture in a very short period.

If you invent something to make people not want kids- then people with those values will die out and people who are immune will not. Just picture big screen TV's and personal freedom from raising kids as "penicillin" or "insect resistant grain" and think of 7 billion humans as a bacteria or insect colony.

The only path which might put it off a bit longer would be fusion and directly manufacturing food. Real land needs time to recover and replenish. It can't support the population densities we have now. We are destroying topsoil that took a long time to create. Arable land in the world drops every year.
http://one-simple-idea.com/Environment1.htm

"At the current rate of loss of 38,610 square miles per year of arable land, and even if the population didn't grow any larger, ALL arable land could be lost in only 310 years (12 million square miles / 38,610 square miles per year)!"

This is all a side topic to your point on carbs. I disagree carbs alone are nutritious enough to keep people healthy.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Karmashock]

I never said carbs alone are healthy. You're going from suggesting we kill off billions of people to using cheap strawmen arguments.

*sigh*

Anyway... you understand. You won't admit that you understand but you understand. That's enough.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is only one solution to the problem of being a Fat Bastard (that's the official terminology BTW) which is the Daily Telegraph Diet:

EAT LESS

MOVE MORE

That is all.

Now shut up and stop arguing children!

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe. Risk is a spectrum. There is non-zero risk of all kinds of terrible things happening to you, but you don't take measures to prevent most of them. They are just too unlikely. Ten years of eating last night's leftovers off the counter top with no problems sounds like a level of risk I could tolerate. Even if you do get sick one time, do you really think it'll kill you when that happens?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Ol Olsoc]

Can't afford healthy food, hmm? Let's see. Lentils can be had for something like $2.50 a pound.

Lentils are in the class of food I would stock up on for starvation food. Because I wouldn't eat them unless I was starving. What's with that anyhow? I've tried lentils on several different occasions, and they taste like encapsulated wallpaper paste. Who decided they were food?

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only people who ate balanced diets had a good chance of living to old age.

The poor who ate nothing but carbs in those civilizations died young.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Ol Olsoc]

It's not healthy to just eat lentils and oatmeal. It's good to include some fruits, nuts, and greens, and these are pretty expensive except for bananas.

And despite what vegans think, it's also healthy to have some meat in the diet.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[eno2001]

Sorry, but you're wrong: http://www.webmd.com/diet/calc-bmi-plus

My BMI hovers between 20 and 21. That is actually incredibly healthy.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[phantomfive]

Well, I'm not going to tell you not to do it if it's working! Maybe I'll try it out again sometime, eating more vegetables. Just don't be afraid to change again later if you stop feeling so good.

One thing to keep in consideration.......sometimes people who've been on low-fat diets for a long time, get kind of fat-starved. That is, some people consume less than 20% of their calories in fat for many years, and then, suddenly when they start eating more fat, they feel really good. Finally their body is getting what they need.

Evolutionarily speaking, harvesting grain has been a very tiny chunk of our lifetimes.

Maybe, but my understanding is that most hunter/gathering types eat mainly wild plants, and some meat. It's apparently not very easy to catch animals.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Tharsman]

One thing to keep in consideration.......sometimes people who've been on low-fat diets for a long time, get kind of fat-starved. That is, some people consume less than 20% of their calories in fat for many years, and then, suddenly when they start eating more fat, they feel really good. Finally their body is getting what they need.

I have never, ever, been able to do a low fat diet so that would not be my case. I have attempted low calorie diets, but never low fat ones (despite thinking they were bad for me at one point.)

Evolutionarily speaking, harvesting grain has been a very tiny chunk of our lifetimes.

Maybe, but my understanding is that most hunter/gathering types eat mainly wild plants, and some meat. It's apparently not very easy to catch animals.

Things are a bit more complex than that. We were hunters, and our primary food goal was meat. But, crazy as it may sound, we didn't eat every day, nor multiple times a day. The ability of the human body to accumulate body fat allowed for small groups to eat, gain some fat weight, and survive on it a day or two if hunt failed.

I seen documentaries of some of the few hunter/gatherer tribes left in the world, and how they still survive just doing this. It's not hard for them to hunt down prey and have food, as long as the tribes remain small. Their hunts involve mostly stamina "battles" more than just pure hunt. They will, in groups, keep an antelope running in circles for long enough, until it's body overheats and goes into a state of shock, not able to run any further. Human sweat mechanics keep the human hunters active without overheating, and once this point is reached, spears are launched and dinner the dinner carried back to the tribe.

If anything, you may argue that such a society may be in more of a handicap today than back then, since human expansion has slowly made it harder for them to find viable hunting grounds or even a place to live while preserving these traditions. Back in the day, most humans lived in similar, perhaps smaller tribes without worries of cities and governments destroying their jungles.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can harp on language if you want. I've defined my terms at this point. Not all calories being equal is a separate issue. I was discussing simple energy requirements, and provided the above information to backup my point, which you suggested didn't make sense. I'm aware nutrition involves more than just calorie counts. My original post can be summed up by saying if you don't eat carbohydrates, you will have to eat more fat and protein (added in recognition of original error). I don't see how you can disagree with this argument.

As for second, more personally directed post, I eat a balance diet which includes complex carbohydrates, "healthy" as far we know fats and various sources of protein. I could not do away with the carbohydrates and maintain my current level of activity.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, skinny people can get diabetes, but they are far less likely to. Diabetes has been directly connected to obesity in most studies. The macro-nutrients are each processed differently, but roughly, obesity is the result of over consumption relative to energy output. The anecdotal correlation that I make is the high popularity of foods that are very energy dense--soda, oreos, McDonalds, etc, and that taste good enough (in a way that I find nasty) to eat far beyond the point of hunger.

"We really have to stop it, and we stop it by lowering, or preferably eliminating, our complex carb intake."

This statement is strong enough that it'd be good to provide a meaningful citation. Among other things, this statement doesn't make sense historically. People have been eating complex carbohydrates as the staple of their diet since the advent of farming. Diabetes has become an issue only recently. Every study connects being fat with getting diabetes. I'm not saying it's the only way, but it is the primary risk factor (along with genetics).

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Anonymous Coward]

I should add, you're vastly oversimplifying the physiology involved if you believe carbohydrates alone affect insulin sensitivity. One article that discusses this fact:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15297079

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Feyshtey]

I have two kids, one 14 and one 7. In addition to working my full time career (greater than 40 hours a week with a 40minute commute one-way), we own a business associated with animals that my wife runs and I spend between 2-6 hours/day helping with (weekends much more, usually around 10). At home we have horses, goats, and chickens that all must be cared for daily (at least twice daily for the horses). Both boys play competitive travel sports and have 3-5 practices and a game per week with a minimum of 40 minute commute, and "local" games as far as 3 hours away. They are in different tiers of the league, so they have different schedules. My wife also plays in a friday night sports league. We both do volunteer work. We also care for my mother in law who lives with us.

Needless to say, I have little patience for people who "don't have time" for something as simple as buying and preparing food.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[Maxo-Texas]

And you don't understand at all.

And it doesn't matter either way.

Peace out.

Re:How do you determine healthy food?

[infinitelink]

Maybe they should be called a necessary evil, or were (depends on the person under consideration). Those fast carbs are perfect for extremely impoverished people to get some basic sustenance: those who count dollars and cents closely; I have had room mates who, and myself have actually counted the cost per calorie to be able to purchase sufficient food for a duration with the income had. One trick, however, is that one who must consume a lot of simple carbohydrates should probably being doing a lot of physical work as well: or mental work to burn off the sugars from the blood (though such might lead to needing more of this type of food). In other words, physical laborers and college students. On which note, I found apples cheaper than coffee and often more effective to stay awake during long study nights, probably the combination and ratio of carbohydrates and/to liquid content.

Awesome!!

[Capt James McCarthy]

I only eat the newest vegetable! Pizza! Give me a bonus for being a healthy eater!

Re:Awesome!!

[RicktheBrick]

A bonus! You should be required to pay more for both your retirement and health plan. People like you on average will live longer thus receiving more income from their pensions. As for your health insurance, a person who dies of a massive heart attack in their 60's is going to be cheaper than people like you who will live into their late 80's. Even if the only thing you do is an annual physicals with all the test that go with such as stress tests for the heart. As for smokers even if they require $250,000 for a lung operation it will be cheaper than someone who collects their pension for another 20 years. I am sure that IBM is trying to keep their highly prized engineers alive till at least their retirement age. After that they will probably not care one way or the other as I am sure that their pension will not require healthy eating to get it.

Re:Awesome!!

[Bucky24]

Eh, I almost hate to have to say it but..

WHOOOSH

I knew it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok.. it's gonna be real unpopular to say. And fairly ugly... But it's the truth.

The nazis would be proud of what america has become. And what we're turning into.
We came up with ways to dehumanize people they never even dreamed of. :(

Re:I knew it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you're totally right. A private company filing a patent for a really shitty idea about forcing their employees to eat healthy is exactly the same as the government sponsored extermination of 11 million people. I can't imagine why you think that would be an unpopular thing to say.

Re:I knew it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone be unhappy with a true statement? What right does someone have to say what I can and cannot eat because I pay them to pay my medical bills? I find this in the same regard as the fireman who have to sign a contract saying they won't smoke, or the seatbelt laws that you pay 200-300 dollars in fines for not wearing a seatbelt. My personal life is somewhere other people have no business being.. I don't remove the toys from your kids happy meals, I don't walk up behind you and tell you that a slap battle with your kid is child abuse.. so kindly don't do it to me.

Re:I knew it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would?

Didn't the US import most of them from us after WWII and gave them new jobs in the security industry/secret agencies and elsewhere?

Re:I knew it.

[Opportunist]

Actually, it reminded me more of something that really happened in the former East European countries.

Every time something went low in stock, suddenly the whole propaganda apparatus was afloat with reasons why eating or using this product would be bad for you. Coffee? Yuck, increases your blood pressure and pushes you into your grave. Meat? Unhealthy to the max, it's a killer. Butter? Well, use it sparingly and eat a lot more bread.

I kid you not when I tell you the first thing that came in mind is something like this. Now add things like declaring ketchup a vegetable to save money on kids' cafeteria food and some other ludicrous ideas and you end up with something not much different from what we could watch in the eastern European countries not that long ago.

Re:I knew it.

[Penguinisto]

Here's something for you to consider:

At work, my health insurance plan charges me $70/month more for a literal tobacco surcharge. Personally, I find that I won't see the effects until long after I stop carrying their insurance, but that's their rule. Ostensibly, it has a good motive - to get their customers to quit smoking, or to pay for any additional incurred health care costs associated with smoking (to their credit, they provide everything to quit for free - nicotine patches, gum, Chantix, whatever). OTOH, even with that surcharge, I still pay far less than I would with other plans, and I do have options aplenty (even using the VA if I had no other choice).

I don't see how that would be an instance of government running my life.

Re:I knew it.

[GreenTech11]

Speaking as a citizen of a country with universal health care, there is a very good argument for governments enforcing seat belt use here. In the event of a crash, a seat belt significantly reduces the risk of serious injury, and hence the cost to the tax payer to provide medical care. This is true even in the case of privately insured individuals, as most of the major trauma centres are government run, and the insurance companies pay only part of the cost

Even in a country such as the US, without free universal health care, there is still a strong economic argument for enforcing seatbelt use. If as a result of a serious crash, you suffer long term injury or death, then there will be a decrease in your productivity (especially in the latter case). Therefore, a decrease in production, and reduced tax levels, hurting both the individual, and the capacity of the government to provide services. While I'm not familiar with the US social security system, I suspect an accident resulting in permanent disability would also provide added costs in that fashion.

Re:I knew it.

[tverbeek]

The Nazis also did other evil things, in addition to the attempted extermination of the Jews. In fact, several nations declared war on them before they knew that the German state was doing that. The mindset that you have to go out and commit genocide before your actions qualify as "dehumanizing" sets the bar for that rather dangerously high.

Re:I knew it.

[lexsird]

Welcome to modern fascism, where have you been? It's been gradually leading to this for decades, now it's kicking into high gear. I wish they had done this when I was younger. I am too old for the "rampaging rebel" scene. But don't worry, about the time we are ready to revolt again, they will have another handy "terrorist" attack, take whatever freedoms we have left away and send us to another fucked in the head war.

IMHO, hell doesn't burn hot enough for these fuckers delving into our personal lives, but I insist we send them there anyway.

Re:I knew it.

[cyber-vandal]

As long as you meet the full cost of cleaning your stupid self off the road I don't give a shit whether you wear a seatbelt or not. If you're not prepared to do that then I am quite happy for you to be charged some money towards defraying the cost of your stupidity.

Re:I knew it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a citizen of a country with universal health care, there is a very good argument for governments enforcing seat belt use here. In the event of a crash, a seat belt significantly reduces the risk of serious injury, and hence the cost to the tax payer to provide medical care. This is true even in the case of privately insured individuals, as most of the major trauma centres are government run, and the insurance companies pay only part of the cost

And in a country without universal health care, there is another very good argument for governments enforcing seat belt use here. In the event of a crash, a seat belt significantly reduces the risk of losing control of the vehicle. If I get T-boned even at a leisurely 5-10mph in a parking lot (let alone by a red-light runner), and I'm wearing my seat belt, I'll remain in my seat, with my hands behind the wheel and my feet near the pedals. If my body is knocked out of my seat because I'm not wearing my seat belt, either (a) the car is completely out of control, or (b) in a driver's-side impact, my hands remain gripped on the wheel, turning it 60-90 degrees as my ass (and legs, which would be useful for hitting the brakes) are tossed into the passenger compartment. The car veers wildly, likely directly into oncoming traffic.

I don't care if the OP dies in a traffic accident. But his right not to wear a seat belt ends when it endangers motorists not involved in the crash.

Re:I knew it.

[Jiro]

"Since the government meddles in our health care, it's okay for the government to meddle in our lives in other ways because it increases the cost of the health care" is an argument against government health care, not an argument for the government meddling in our lives in other ways.

For seat belts most sane people should wear a seat belt because there's little down side, but its bad as a precedent; it's being extended to other things right here.

Re:I knew it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, I think they'd protest our relationship with Israel.

Seriously though, this is kind of crossing a line. I mean, I'm all for people living more responsibly (especially if we're all going to be paying for each others' bad decisions) but just how much oversight should there be? I mean, it's one thing if you eat like "Super-Size Me" but there are plenty of people who just don't have the time, money or resources to eat an ideal diet. Ever wonder how the stereotype about cops and doughnuts came to be? Doughnut shops were the only food places open at all hours (and even now, most 24 hour places don't exactly sell health food). But, then again, if I chugged butter for the rest of my life, why should everyone here have to pay for my bypass surgeries?

I don't know, this whole thing just screams "slippery slope."

Re:I knew it.

[Anonymous Coward]

We all have frustrations in our lives where we have to deal with things after we've become part of the consequence of someone else's stupid decisions, be it having to pick up the pieces from production servers that are not backed up, users who blithely browse to whatever website their inner butterfly takes them, yet become mad at you, Mr IT guy, when their computer becomes unusable due to all the BHOs, etc., that they've inadvertently installed, or paying higher insurance rates when 16-25 because of all the other stupid 16-25 year olds who frakkin' cannot drive (oddly enough, I'm going to guess the group that is the focus of most of your wrath changes along with your age...).

Sometimes we *DO* need laws to protect us from our own collective stupidity or willful ignorance. And those laws will be inconsistent, seemingly illogical at times, etc.

Firemen signing a contract saying they won't smoke is as much PR for the job as anything, no different than the Pepsi delivery driver getting fired for getting caught drinking a Coke on the job. I have no problem with that. Nor do I have a problem with hospital campuses being pretty strictly non-smoking.

Yes, your personal life is in theory no one else's business, but the very act of living does make parts of it other peoples' business. You can't put that toothpaste back into the tube.

What is ominous about it is it seems to be a patent that harkens back 50-100 years ago, when corporate types seemed to have a manifest need to dictate how people (employees, customers, everyone else) lived. Just look at CW Post, or the dude who invented graham crackers, Kellog, et al. Or company towns (some were good, some were...evil).
Or that many of the old corporatists had no problem with various aspects of eugenics. You know, lots of things we associate now with fascism - the state and society exist to further the needs and goals of the (chosen) corporations. This patent, if implemented, would be a big step in that direction.

Re:I knew it.

[sjames]

The funny thing about it is that smokers tend to cost insurance less over a lifetime. Once their health declines, they tend to move right on to death rather than lingering for years with increasingly intensive and expensive care.

They are charging you a $70 sin surcharge because they can get away with it.

Re:I knew it.

[Dracophile]

Just on seatbelts... in an accident, if you're not wearing a seatbelt then you're a missile in my car. Quite possibly on a ballistic trajectory that intersects with my windscreen or my head. You wear a seatbelt or you get out of my car. And if you're driving, you're still a missile in an accident if you don't wear a seatbelt, and still as likely to be a missile on a ballistic trajectory that intersects your windscreen or my head. Wear a damned seatbelt.

More patent abusrdity

[Digambaranath]

This is yet another case showing that you can get a patent for absolutely anything.

Re:More patent abusrdity

[Theaetetus]

This is yet another case showing that you can get a patent for absolutely anything.

Well, yeah. As the Supreme Court said, patent eligible subject matter includes anything under the sun that is made by man. Is this new? Yes. Is any company currently doing this? No. Is this something that, in this land of epic obesity and man vs. food shows, we would find not just not obvious, but unthinkable? Yes.

So what's the problem?

Re:More patent abusrdity

[Anonymous Coward]

This is yet another case showing that you can get a patent for absolutely anything.

Not if you don't want to be sued. I own the patent on getting the patent on absolutely anything.

Re:More patent abusrdity

[geminidomino]

So what's the problem?

Where's the invention?

Re:More patent abusrdity

[Theaetetus]

So what's the problem?

Where's the invention?

From GP post:

Is this new? Yes. Is any company currently doing this? No. Is this something that, in this land of epic obesity and man vs. food shows, we would find not just not obvious, but unthinkable? Yes.

Sounds like an invention to me.

Re:More patent abusrdity

[geminidomino]

Then you have a very loose definition.

Even if I did except that it was "new" (I don't. Bribing/threatening the livelihood -- depending on how they go about it -- of someone to get them to let you dictate their behavior is certainly not new, and has been obvious for a few millennia now. Whether or not anyone is doing it is hardly the same thing. No one else is making buggy whips, either), there's no invention here. At best, it's another bullshit "business method" patent, albeit with much more disturbing connotations.

Re:More patent abusrdity

[Theaetetus]

Then you have a very loose definition.

Even if I did except that it was "new" (I don't. Bribing/threatening the livelihood -- depending on how they go about it -- of someone to get them to let you dictate their behavior is certainly not new, and has been obvious for a few millennia now.

Sure, the idea of "bribing someone to let you dictate their behavior" is certainly not new. They didn't patent that idea. They patented a very specific implementation that is new.

Whether or not anyone is doing it is hardly the same thing. No one else is making buggy whips, either), there's no invention here.

True enough - a correction: no one is doing it and no one has ever done it. If no one ever had made buggy whips, then yeah, the first buggy whip is an invention. By definition.

At best, it's another bullshit "business method" patent, albeit with much more disturbing connotations.

Great, then you agree it's a patentable business method. Glad we're on the same page.

Re:More patent abusrdity

[geminidomino]

Except we're not. The fact that business methods can be patented is the absurdity in question. I will point out my use of the qualifying term "bullshit business method patent," in which 'business method' is another adjective. Removing it, it becomes the shortened but equally valid "bullshit patent," which it is.

Re:More patent abusrdity

[Theaetetus]

The fact that business methods can be patented is the absurdity in question.

What's absurd about them? Methods are patentable, and there's nothing in 35 USC 101 that says "Methods (except those in used in business) are patentable." In fact, Congress has expressly stated that business methods are patentable, and the Supreme Court affirmed that in Bilski v. Kappos. So... where's the absurdity?

really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't trust business people in general...and the government has lost it's mind. The more I just look the more I see an increasingly overbearing system of demands. So what if people are unhealthy? Didn't the US government just now finish a 10 year war of sending people to get shot at? Are there seat belts on any school bus you ever been on...besides the drivers seat belt. Pay for being skinny is another road to hell figuratively speaking. I see what they want but in turn will make things WAY worse. The people who came up with this are shallow, disgusting individuals who have some sort of domination complex in where they decide what society will look like. I like the fact people are different...skinny people are worthless in the winter.

Re:really?

[hedwards]

Not really, whether you care to admit it or not, fat people get sick more frequently and end up spending more days off work. They're more likely to have diabetes, sleep apnea, depression and other illnesses as a result of packing more weight than is healthy. The health effects of being obese are well documented.

The main question is how do you decide who is and isn't obese. I always get crap during phone appointments for my weight, but with my body frame size, I can't get down to the weight they want without starving. And even the time I was starving, in a very literal way, I still didn't quite get there.

Personally, I find it incredibly troubling that advocates for the obese keep suggesting that there's some validity to making that decision. They definitely have a point that being obese doesn't make one a bad person, but it's just plain disgusting to enable the obese by validating all manner of absurd rationalization.

Anybody that's capable of keeping up with the maintenance plan that's often required to get weight reduction surgery shouldn't have been obese in the first place. Because it's not a particularly special diet and it's not less difficult that the diet that would have prevented it in the first place.

Re:really?

[rock_climbing_guy]

Well, examining your poo isn't that far out, considering that the government already encourages our employers to have our pee examined. No, it isn't that far out at all.

Capcha: feverish

Re:really?

[Culture20]

skinny people are worthless in the winter.

Tell that to practically every scandinavian I've ever met.

Re:really?

[Anonymous Coward]

We - the west - appear to be on a steady march towards what I perceive as slavery.
This is merely one of the ways in wich all citizens will be monitored and controlled.
Personally, I'm a person with a great need for independence (I guess I was just raised that way) probably moreso than the average citizen and I have found that the government's control over my life is now becoming so intolerable that I have decided to leave the west.
I have now secured permanent residence rights and a way to earn a decent living, in a country in Africa where I feel more free than anywhere in the west.
Me and my family are now making the final preparations for our move and we should be able to leave in about 12 months time.
For the people who remain; Enjoy your daily dose of Soylent green .. I hear it's tasty !

Re:really?

[squidflakes]

The funny bit here is that the large insurance companies went to the large employers like IBM and got them on the bandwagon against a competing government sponsored, privately administered and managed health care product. Why? Because the government would do it cheaper and not require all of the lifestyle non-sense.

The irony, or the thing we now accept as irony, even though that isn't the actual definition of the word.

Re:really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The way to implement this is to mine the data from your grocery store discount card to see what you're buying.

Re:really?

[squidflakes]

Africa? Cool! Say hello to the hard eyed men toting AK-47s who have been slaughtering their own with machetes and raping little girls to get rid of their genital scorching STDs. I hear it is a real Libertarian wonderland over here. No government control, few if any taxes. Yep, a man can really keep all that he earns over there in Africa.

Re:really?

[Bodhammer]

"'Smith!' screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith W.! Yes, YOU! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! THAT'S better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.'

A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and--one could not say gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency--bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.

'THERE, comrades! THAT'S how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again. I'm thirty-nine and I've had four children. Now look.' She bent over again. 'You see MY knees aren't bent. You can all do it if you want to,' she added as she straightened herself up. 'Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what THEY have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade, that's MUCH better,' she added encouragingly as Winston, with a violent lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent, for the first time in several years."



George Orwell, "1984", chapter 3

Re:really?

[ACE209]

You are aware that Africa is a pretty big continent and that it probably is not like that everywhere over there?
I guess he might be smart enough not to pick Somalia as his first choice for immigration.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Scary

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Hey IBM! How about you stick to making computers and software, and I'll decide what I want to eat, okay?

IBM's Patent Submissions Process

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a quick reminder that IBM's patent process is focused on numbers, specifically being #1 year after year (because now it would be news if we weren't #1).

Also, in order to advance in IBM you have to participate in patenting, and IBM pays $$$ per patent, so it's the only real bonus system at IBM.

Even more important, IBM has dozens (if not hundreds) of independent patent review boards, each focusing on a specific, narrow area of expertise. Some are very rigorous, some are very lax. That's just the nature of the business.

Don't assume that every IBM patent you see is tied to a product plan or even a gleam in some executive's eye (as would be the case at a smaller firm).

So...

[Bruce McBruce]

In essence, they just patented a concept of deciding that thin employees get paid more and fat employees get paid less, and indeed judging their personal lives? Sounds like they're cornering the supermodel engineer market.

Re:So...

[Joce640k]

You could pay based on how close a person eats to his calorie target (eg. 2400 calories/day), bonus multiplier if it's got lots of variety in it.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone patented the model of payscale being dependant on choice of radio station? The CFO would get to have little recording devices installed in all car radios and judge employee worth by what they listen to during their drives. Even better if the employee has one of those satellite radio systems, so many options to devalue an employee with that system.

Re:So...

[lazycam]

I think the point of this patent is that they can observe your food consumption habits. While I am a thin man, I know people with better eating habits who still nevertheless struggle with their weight. The point of the patent is to discriminate between individuals who good eating habits vs. individuals poor eating habits.

Re:So...

[bigdavex]

The way it works everywhere else is that fat people get paid more in the form of health care benefits.

How will the system work?

[Confused]

Does anyone have some link how the system is supposed to work?

It's all nice and fine to have the back-end sorted out, but what about the data gathering about what people really eat? Do the propose to have everyone implanted with an oesophageal monitor to detect evil burgers or chocolate input?

Re:How will the system work?

[Kazymyr]

They are probably talking about tracking your purchases probably based on some personally identifiable information (credit cards, store reward cards etc). And assume you eat what you purchase.

Re:How will the system work?

[lmcgeoch]

From the chart it looks like they don't take into account there is this crazy thing called a "Backyard Garden" Granted you have to buy seeds but some vegetables will come up year after year without buying new seeds. Also how can they track how much produce the garden will produce depends on weather and how well you tend to the garden.

Re:How will the system work?

[Anonymous Coward]

That one is easy. You just need to fill out form 32B-6 and subsidize the cost of a certified IBM gardener to elicit nutrients from your yard. Fortunately the cost you pay to subsidize the gardener outweighs any health bonuses you'd be entitled to from said vegetables.

Re:How will the system work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is your name Chauncey Gardiner? You do sound like him ... :-)

Re:How will the system work?

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFS:

'incentives are greater for consumption of a particular food item during a designated lunch time and less for consumption of the particular food item during other periods of time'

I'm not aware of any studies conclusively showing that "lunch" is best consumed at noon instead of 11:00 or 1:00 or whenever, so this part of it seems questionable at best.

But more to the point, I think they've patented a system of no value compared to obvious alternatives. It would be far easier, and almost certainly cheaper, to require and fund an annual wellness exam for each employee, with the exam results used for the same purpose as the patented system. That approach would be far less intrusive, would reward outcomes instead of attempting to analyze minutiae, and could account for non-diet risks such as smoking. Combine that with offering benefits like exercise facilities, smoking cessation programs, and diet counseling, and you've got a straightforward implementation.

Whether the whole idea is good or bad is a different matter.

- T

Twisted America

[Anonymous Coward]

America is so twisted today, that it can only fail.
As a country, and as a concept.

obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Pollute the heck out of everything so that nothing is healthy to eat
2. Reduce peoples pay for unhealthy eating
3. Is this step really needed?
4. Profit!

Just Wait.

[Anonymous Coward]

First it will be "incentives".
Then it will be "mandatory".

I'm sure many of you work in companies in the US that have instituted "Healthy Choice" programs, forced upon them by their insurance providers, correct?

Re:Just Wait.

[cyber-vandal]

Hooray for private sector medical insurance! The UK government is trying to get these clowns involved in our system because the US healthcare system is allegedly so much better than ours.

Stop Using Stress as a Policy Tool

[florescent_beige]

It is consistent with recent history that U.S. leadership believes they are entitled to mandate people's behaviour. If they really wanted to make people's lives better they would re-think their belief that fear and greed are the only two dimensions of human motivation. Fear being the problem at hand.

Fear of unemployment, fear of China, fear of Islam, fear of the black man, fear of Mexicans, fear of government, fear of the competition, fear of young people, fear of old people, fear of liberals, fear of bombs, fear of crowds, fear of complacency, fear of men wearing fezzes, fear of sexuality, fear of strange.

People eat comfort food because it makes them feel better. Americans feel bad. Maybe American leadership could make it a priority to help their citizens to have happy lives and stop it with the forcing people to do that they say.

Re:Stop Using Stress as a Policy Tool

[locallyunscene]

This is the guise fascism takes in America; outsourcing the abrogation of rights to private industries as an end run around the constitution.

Re:Stop Using Stress as a Policy Tool

[HideyoshiJP]

I completely agree. It would seem employers seem to be taking that stance as well. The healthcare organization I work at is implementing a new smoker policy they've copied from one of our competitors. Being a healthcare facility, I can understand a non-smoking policy at work. I even feel it's reasonable to charge smokers different insurance rates. The problem, however, is that they're looking to stop hiring smokers, period. Their reasoning is the healthcare costs and time lost to smoke breaks. In an ironic twist, non-smokers can waste just as much time as smokers by posting on Slashdot. Many people raised concerns over a slippery slope leading to the employer dictating what fat people can eat. I thought that was a stretch, but clearly I was wrong.

Re:Stop Using Stress as a Policy Tool

[Jiro]

The OP mentions the FDA. The FDA is not private industry; the whole plan won't work without the government's hand in it.

Re:Stop Using Stress as a Policy Tool

[squidflakes]

The plan works just fine without government intervention. All the FDA is doing is providing guidelines, as they are chartered. In the end, it will be IBM that is forcing their employees to have a certain lifestyle they find acceptable. It will be IBM withholding money from the paycheck because you had a couple of Snickers bars last month. It will be IBM management hauling you in to their offices, looking you up and down with a disapproving look and telling you that while you're a great worker you're a disgusting fat shit and they are tired of spending that extra nickel every year that the health insurance demands because your body doesn't fit the numbers on the chart.

So no, the government really isn't the boogie man in this particular instance.

Re:Stop Using Stress as a Policy Tool

[swb]

Very insightful. You probably don't need to read it, but there's a fascinating (if somewhat dated book) by Barbara Ehrenreich called "Fear of Falling" and it largely outlines how society is structured to let people "into" the middle class with some ease but then basically makes them walk a tightrope forever to "stay" middle class.

Re:Stop Using Stress as a Policy Tool

[Anonymous Coward]

All those fears are due to an individual's ignorance, much of which is defined from social experience opposed to anything the gov't can do much about. It's the individual's responsibility to remedy their cowardice, not the gov't, and if you eat food to comfort yourself in respect to all those fears listed, I don't mind you paying some sort of price, seeing as how I'm represented in one of those fears...

Re:Stop Using Stress as a Policy Tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Fear of unemployment, fear of China, fear of Islam, fear of the black man, fear of Mexicans, fear of government, fear of the competition, fear of young people, fear of old people, fear of liberals, fear of bombs, fear of crowds, fear of complacency, fear of men wearing fezzes, fear of sexuality, fear of strange.

Nice selective fears. How about

Fear of Christians. Fear of guns. Fear of corporations. Fear of climate change. Fear of conservatives. Fear of Israel.

Don't bother elaborating about how you don't fear these things. We don't fear the things on your bullshit list either.

Re:Stop Using Stress as a Policy Tool

[Jiro]

Even then, this only happens because there are tax incentives to have your employer buy insurance for you instead of for the employer to pay the consumer an equal amount and for the consumer to buy the insurance on a competitive market.

Wow, creepy.

[Feyshtey]

This whole concept just makes my skin crawl. Start with the thought that this cant really be implimented unless someone (IBM? FDA?) knows exactly what you eat at any given moment, and it just gets more and more twilight zone from there.

Re:Wow, creepy.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Soylent Green patent, everybody applaud the IBM Corporation and our government.

Re:Wow, creepy.

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea is that you go on a diet tubby!

Re:Wow, creepy.

[Feyshtey]

So how long will it be before we're paid a bonus for watching educational TV rather than reruns of HeeHaw? Who gets the patent for paying people a bonus for taking their kid to soccer practice instead of to a movie? When do I get my check for trimming my hedges with right angles instead of sphere-shaped?

*Insert creepy Mr. Rogers CG animation* Lets file a patent together boys and girls. Wont that be fun? Today we're going to pay people a bonus to turn that frown upside down, smile, and create a better world for you and me!

Re:Wow, creepy.

[kheldan]

Fuck them if they tried. Start paying for all your groceries with cash instead of using a debit or credit card. Eat your lunch at work in your car, where they can't audit what you're eating. This is by far the stupidest idea I've ever heard of, it's not practical and not enforceable and it's about as un-American as anything can get. George Orwell, if he could, would rise from the dead just to tell us "I told you so, but you didn't listen!". NO ONE will go along with this.

Re:Wow, creepy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bonus? HAH. No, more likely you will be nickle and dimed to death for every little behavior deemed less than ideal. The only way to make sure you get your full pay is to be a good little obedient drone, and even then they'll find a way to impose fines if your good behavior cuts into their bottom line

really?

[Denogh]

...the FDA will team up with employers and insurers to determine your final paycheck based upon what you eat.

I admit that government has a role to play in a civilised society, but is this it? And will enforcement be based upon eating in a workplace cafeteria? Will they be examining poo to be sure the employee is on the straight-and-narrow and therefore deserving of his paycheck?

Patent for belief systems?

[zerosomething]

Really we can patent food restrictions based on particular beliefs about what's "right" for you to eat? Seriously? Not to mention the the whole food Nazi aspect of this, ooh wait that's a belief system too and I think the patent is still active. Someone should sue for patent infringement!!!

Re:Patent for belief systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. Just about anything can be patented nowadays including obvious simple analysis of data. It kills me when countries look at the number of patents, and try to directly apply that to "innovation". For over 100 years, patents should have been done away with. They may have made sense in the 18th century, but now they are just innovation cancer.

No seat belt for you...No insurance for injuries..

[deck]

I am fine if you don't wear your seat belt and maybe the law shouldn't be that way. But please don't ask to have your injuries caused by not wearing it covered. The auto insurance company I am with does just that. If you don't wear a seat belt then they pay a small percentage of the medical and don't cover anything that is obviously a result of not wearing the seat belt (like being ejected from the vehicle and bouncing down the road). It is a business proposition between my insurance company and myself. To keep my rates lower, I wear a seat belt. And if the law should state something, it should be that insurance companies and individuals are not liable for injuries incurred because a seat belt is not worn.

Appeal decision (and key to finding prior art)

[Theaetetus]

Claim 1:

1. A method for encouraging healthy habits by an individual, said method comprising the steps of:
tracking, using at least one computer system communicatively connected to a network, an actual purchase of a particular consumable item from a vendor by an individual for potential consumption;
determining, at said at least one computer system, a plurality of separate health index values each associated with a separate one of a plurality of health index components for consumption of said particular consumable item;
selecting, at said at least one computer system, a monetary electronic incentive for said individual based on said plurality of separate health index values matching at least one health index value requirement specified in a database of electronic incentives specified for said individual according to at least one factor from among food intake by said individual based on at least one of an ordered meal and a recipe for a meal previously reported to said at least one computer system and exercise performed by said individual previously detected by said at least one computer system; and
automatically transferring said monetary electronic incentive via said network from said at least one computer system to an account provider system which stores said monetary electronic incentive in an electronic account for said individual.

From the appeal decision:

Thus, the claim limitation requires in part determining with at least one computer system a plurality of health index values associated with health index components for a particular item in some manner. Here, Humble provides a generic disclosure of a UPC code being scanned to identify a particular product and generating a coupon or a promotional message for a related item for the purchaser (FF2, FF3) but does not specifically disclose a health index value for a consumable item as claimed (FF4). Official Notice been taken and stated that it is known to associate a health index value as required by the FDA for packaged foods that are sold. However, there is no articulated reasoning with rational underpinnings presented for why the scanned UPC codes from Humble would somehow determine the health index values required by the FDA for that product or as to why such a modification would have been obvious without impermissible hindsight. That is, there has been provided no articulated reasoning with rational underpinnings as to why the scanned UPC codes would in some manner determine the FDA information on calories, fat and sugar content associated with the item or have been modified to do so without impermissible hindsight. In KSR Int'l Co. v. Telejlex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) the Court at 418 noted that "[R]ejections on obviousness grounds cannot be sustained by mere conclusory statements; instead, there must be some articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness".

That's the missing limitation in the prior art, so if you can find that, it can be combined with Humble to show obviousness. The problem is that the Examiner couldn't find it, but instead tried to rely on "Official Notice" - which is where the Examiner says "I have no evidence, but I know it to be true." That only rarely works. Patents are quasi-judicial decisions, and our system requires factual evidence for conclusions, not just suppositions and gut feelings.

But, if you can find that missing evidence, then you can make a good case.

Obligatory healthy food

[fleeped]

Here you go. Probably low on carbs, so all good :)

My company does this to a mild degree

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't put in vending machines. Claim is that the food is unhealthy. (I glanced around a few cubes... people munching Doritos and such... because that is what is readily available on the way in to our massive office park.)

I retorted to put in a vending machine without sodas, just water and juice, maybe tea. For food, get one of those machines with the doors that you can get a sandwich or an apple. Peanuts. Hell anything that was once actually alive.

My God, don't I realize the preservatives which are put on such foods? Pesticides!?!?

OK then, I said, I will just continue to bring in my lunch... and on days I forget it I will drive a mile to go get a hot dog.

Sedentary work conditions

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it take into account that I'm stuck in a chair in a damned cubicle all day for no good reason because they won't let me work from home?

You guys are paranoid

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM has been doing this with their health benefits for years. Healthy Living Rebate. It's actually a good thing because you get rewarded with a bonus/incentive of some extra cash. Also, IBM wants to ensure it gets a chunk of change from every company who uses this method. NBD to me.

Obligatory XKCD

[hedwards]

http://xkcd.com/984/

Eat Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay folks. This is a great money making opportunity for you and me. Here what we do. Learn to cook and operate underground kitchens where we make and sell hamburgers, pizza, you name it so people can buy and eat it without it being metered. So now we know there are people who think there's money to be made by watching everything we buy, including food, linking that to our bodies response and controlling what we buy as a result. Its the free market path to North Korean style starvation. But it also creates a great stage for some good old fashioned American fun. Can you picture cops raiding Eat Easies, people being arrested for making hamburgers, road blocks with dogs sniffing for pizza, people with good livers selling their ability to buy good food, while the rest of us are forced to buy crap? Because you can believe it won't be veggies and good food, it will be corporate meal plans with various chains of processed food. This is a real nightmare and comedy just waiting to happen.

Re:Eat Easy

[squidflakes]

That's the part about this that really bothers me. In keeping with the finest in large corporate traditions the foods that will earn you the most Healthy Living points will be those you purchase from the company, who now has an interest in providing you with the highest volume at the lowest cost.

That ain't veggis and fruits either.

healthcare based on stuff like BMI is junk science

[Joe_Dragon]

BMI and other factors are not a good fit for all.

Prior Art?

[Esion Modnar]

Meaning, of course, that guy with the "Will Work For Food" sign.

individual health histories = pre existing conditi

[Joe_Dragon]

pre existing conditions is what we don't need any more so what next they can't hire some based on there health even if they need them / want them. So they make them a contractor with no benefits at all even the non health ones?

poor workplace environment leads to poor eating

[Joe_Dragon]

poor workplace environment leads to poor eating.

If you are pushing people to work long hours then they don't have the time to cook good food and end up eating alot of fast food.

Working lunches / working though lunches does not promote good eating habits.

Re:poor workplace environment leads to poor eating

[Jiro]

This should be modded up.

Companies like to put the burden on employees. Never on themselves. Not having lots of mandatory overtime is sure to increase the health of the employees, but *that* is one method of health-promotion they will never use. Instead they want to work the employees more and then take away their overtime pay on the grounds that the employees don't eat healthy (which was caused by the long working hours).

Irony Bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked a combined total of 8 years at IBM as a contractor over the course of my career. The cafeteria in their 500 building in Research Triangle Park is infamously bad. Notorious, even. Their idea of saying they have healthy foods is having a salad bar. Most of the food served at IBM is below the quality of what I remember eating in a public school cafeteria as a kid, and that was pretty bad. The overwhelming majority of what they sell there is low grade cheeseburgers & fries, pizza, fried chicken, and sub sandwiches.

Over the course of time, I've seen the quality of the food go down, the healthy choices reduced, and the quality (and headcount) of the cafeteria staff continue to shrink.

I did complain once about the guy who operated the grill, who sneezed into his gloved hands and then continued serving food without changing his gloves. This guy hates vegetarians, as evidenced by the abuse he dishes out on the veggie burgers. Sure, they are on the menu. But I defy you to eat one. It's served in a consistency not unlike dried codfish, before you soak it in lye to make lutefisk. Anyway, complaints go nowhere. The slob still works there. He still makes unhealthy food, badly, and uncleanly.

If IBM wants to be taken seriously on being interested in the health of its workers, it needs to loosen up the purse strings a bit and get a vendor into their campus cafeterias that will provide healthy food options (and make it *harder* to buy unhealthy food there!)

Re:Irony Bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

If IBM wants to be taken seriously on being interested in the health of its workers, it needs to loosen up the purse strings a bit and get a vendor into their campus cafeterias that will provide healthy food options (and make it *harder* to buy unhealthy food there!)

I've visited another IBM location. Once a week one of the 2-3 daily hot options will be vegetarian. All of the others, every other day of the week are meat-based. Vegetarians are generally limited to a total of 3 options: salad (sigh), a cheese sandwich, or a veggie burger. Ordering the latter I was surprised to have the cook take a burger out of the freezer and proceed to dunk it in the deep-fryer for cooking. I gathered this was their way of cooking from frozen, some attempt to avoid the issues found in cooking meat burgers directly from frozen, but mistakenly applied to veggie burgers. Needless to say, this kind of defeated any attempt at healthy eating.

Still, and while I'd like to blame the management for the impoverished and flawed choices, the blame likely falls mostly on the employees. That one veggie option per week is almost completely shunned, while the lineups for beef in any form always end up extending outside the cafeteria. People say they want healthy choices, but they won't actually step outside their comfort zone. I suspect any attempt at forcing healthy choices in the cafeteria would just result in people complaining that the cafeteria doesn't give them what they want and then eating in restaurants outside the company.

Re:Irony Bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

I've visited another IBM location. Once a week one of the 2-3 daily hot options will be vegetarian. All of the others, every other day of the week are meat-based. Vegetarians are generally limited to a total of 3 options: salad (sigh), a cheese sandwich, or a veggie burger.

And many vegetarians would rule out the cheese sandwich (was it made with an animal rennet or enzyme? If so, an animal died to make that cheese...)

Ordering the latter I was surprised to have the cook take a burger out of the freezer and proceed to dunk it in the deep-fryer for cooking. I gathered this was their way of cooking from frozen, some attempt to avoid the issues found in cooking meat burgers directly from frozen, but mistakenly applied to veggie burgers. Needless to say, this kind of defeated any attempt at healthy eating.[snip] That one veggie option per week is almost completely shunned [...]

Um yeah, no wonder. I'm a vegetarian and I would sooner starve than put that in my body.

People say they want healthy choices, but they won't actually step outside their comfort zone.

Honestly, I think if they were presented with really appetizing healthy options, people would switch. I weighed 340 pounds, went vegetarian in September of this year, and since then I've dropped 50 pounds (and still going). I'm not exercising at all. I'm not starving. I'm eating very well, in fact. My blood chemistry has improved. My physician is monitoring my progress and (short of the lack of exercise, as he likes to point out) he's thrilled with the changes I've made.

I am enjoying the food that I'm eating now better than the food I ate six months ago (when I ate whatever I wanted, usually involving meat).

One of my secrets is eating regularly at the Whole Foods near my current workplace. The hot bar has given me a chance to try new things with a low risk. If I see something really crazy and different, I can get one or two bites of it on my plate and if I don't like it I'm not out much. My favorite foods now are things I didn't even know how to pronounce in some cases just a few short months ago. French fries have given way to quinoa. Sausage is out, baked falafel is in. And then there's the wonderful world of squash... I've also been eating a lot of Indian food (the Hindus have had a long time to get a mainstream vegetarian diet nailed down). Today? Brown rice vegetarian sushi. They even have a vegan pizza made with a really tasty vegetable-based (daiya) cheese.

And I usually spend less on lunch at Whole Foods than a lunch at the IBM cafeteria would cost.

IBM needs to consult with Whole Foods and figure out how to fix their very broken campus cafeterias. Or maybe get the current vendor out and work something out to get a vendor like Whole Foods to manage the cafeterias.

I don't work at IBM in RTP anymore, but when I did, I pretty regularly either skipped lunch or ate off-campus. A couple of years back, they actually even got rid of the water coolers, forcing you to pay for drinks. Soft drinks were cheaper than water. Eating off-campus was always such a pain, since the parking spots are placed so far from the desks. Getting back into the gate if you're on a motorcycle is a real trip, too, let me tell you (not safe to badge in on a motorcycle). RTP is kind of a strange place, where most of the food options involve a bit of travel even once you're off-campus.

healthcare tied to jobs is bad for non health stuf

[Joe_Dragon]

NON job based plans let people take jobs based on the job and not what healthcare plan they have.

What if you some stuck in a crap job with a good and they have to trun down a other job that is better career wise do to the other place not have a health plan.

Some places use and abuse contractors as they don't have to pay for health plans.

health plans suck up funds and some times lead to places dumping people who get sick, get pregnant and so on just so they don't have to pay for it.

Work != Labor

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

My brother is over 50 and a baggage handler for a major airline. On his feet, lifting, walking, on the move continuously several hours a day. He's had no flab ... until this year. I saw him in November with a bulge around the middle. He had put on 30 pounds. "What happened?" "Desk job." Employers wake up! You are not the innocent victim of the obesity epidemic, you are a primary contributor. Every job description must include some activity other than "sit in chair, click mouse, press keys, answer telephone." Put labor back in work and your employees will get more work done and cost less in the long run.

Re:Work != Labor

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it an employer's job (no pun intended) to make sure we exercise? Get healthcare out of the employer's hands and then we can begin to solve the rest of the problems.

Re:Work != Labor

[HideyoshiJP]

I remember my transition from a labor job to a desk job. I miss physical work.

Re:Work != Labor

[brusk]

That's incredibly dumb. Why would you require, say, a highly-skilled programmer to spend X hours a week moving boxes? As an employer, you would be paying a huge premium for a probably incompetent laborer (not to mention the risk that he/she would suffer an injury), and there might not be any physical labor to do on the site where he/she works. If you want that employee to be in shape, provide a gym or discounted gym membership. And in cases like your brother's, it would make sense for the airline to provide counseling about diet and exercise for employees who move from physical to sedentary tasks.

Re:Work != Labor

[digitalaudiorock]

I hear a lot of this sort of thing regarding desk jobs lately, but to me the answer is simple: Regardless of what job you have you simply must work out, and while you don't have to work out an insane amount, you must work out on a regular weekly schedule and stick to it...period.

I'm a programmer and have NO activity during work. However for the last (almost) 20 years I've made sure to do 20 minutes of very strenuous aerobics twice a week, and two days of extensive weight lifting (on day of leg/abs stuff and one day of upper body weights). Except on the very rare occasion that I'm seriously ill, I never miss that schedule. Guess what, at 58 I have about 9.5% body fat...I can press more than my weight comfortably and do like 85 push-ups, and in general, pretty much feel like a 25 year old.

Sure, more activity at work will help keep weight off, just like walking helps keep weight off. However neither one gives you a real cardiovascular workout or any real substitute for weight resistant exercise. Don't get me started on the whole walking thing...the recent trend where everyone tells you to do a lot of walking in my view is not helping. The main excuse given for not exercising is time, and walking time-wise is the worst bang for the buck you can get, and at best may help you shed a little weight.

There just is no replacement for real exercise.

Re:Work != Labor

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

Why is it an employer's job (no pun intended) to make sure we exercise?

Why is it an employers' right to pass along healthcare costs of employees that they require to be sedentary 40+ hours a week?

But that line of reasoning is pretty flabby (pun intended) on either side of the argument. Let's raise awareness that fitness is a system problem: (Caloried consumed - Calories burned) / ~3500 = 1 pound of body weight gained or lost. If you want to reduce healthcare costs, one part of the solution will be to redesign work to include motion.

Re:Work != Labor

[digitalaudiorock]

...typo there...that was intended to say aerobics three times a week.

PKD

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't Philip K Dick have a story about bootleg butter and bacon?

Insanity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, a patent for basing pay on what you eat?

So a productive fat person gets paid less than a non-productive skinny person. In addition to tracking my time for big blue, I'm expected to track my breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Holy cow. What nannism!

Soylent Blue is also people

[gelfling]

IBM leads the world in nutrition micromanagement in order to pay its employers less?

Re:healthcare based on stuff like BMI is junk scie

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah sure

Although other anthropometric measures (eg, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio) could well add extra information to BMI, and BMI to them, BMI is in itself a strong predictor of overall mortality both above and below the apparent optimum of about 225—25 kg/m^2.

from http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60318-4/fulltext

In Capitalist America...

[tverbeek]

What's most remarkable about this is that people who would wail and howl about the government directing you what to eat and when, apparently think that it would be appropriate for the corporations most people depend upon for employment to do so.

Apple Patent comes next!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep you heard it hear first! Apple gets Patent. They added the words "on a touch screen" and now they own it forever!

A BMI patent?

[findoutmoretoday]

Next they change the name from IBM to BMI. 

Re:A BMI patent?

[superwiz]

Brilliant!

You Are What You Eat

[ks*nut]

I know that I am borrowing information from some of the documentaries that I have watched about the U.S. food industry, but here goes... The American food industry is tailored to the fast-food industry. They are their largest consumer. The corn industry is the most powerful lobby in Washington, they generally get what they want. Your beef comes from cows that were raised mainly on feed that mainly consists of corn products. They don't eat grass, a diet of grass would cleanse their digestive systems of many of the human pathogens (e coli) that end up in our food. High fructose CORN syrup is the main sweetener used in processed food. I work at a job that requires basically sitting at a computer for ten hours a day and I get a half-hour lunch break. I walk for half an hour at lunch every day and eat lunch during one of my other breaks. And I don't eat meat any more and I don't drink soft drinks. Americans are killing themselves and they have their food and health care industries to blame for it. IBM's patent smacks of Big-Brotherism; education would be the key to healthier living. People need to eat healthier and get more exercise. Yes, I am un-American.

Could be good, could be bad

[neorush]

I'm praying that if this is adopted is firmly based in research instead of what seems correct / what lobbyists can get in there (e.g. the diary industry). Incentives for behavioral change is a fantastic idea because it is the behavior that must change in an American diet. The one thing I read that makes me nervous is the family history thing, we like to put a lot of weight on this idea, my dad had a heart attack so I'm screwed. But it turns out your risk of premature death in the U.S. is 70% lifestyle (what I eat, and how much exercise I do), 10% lack of medical treatment (no insurance), 10% environmental (to close to a coal plant), and only 10% heredity. If you are overweight, you can blame 1 out of every 10lbs on your parents. And as another note, there are lots of posts here about limiting carbs and fat, it is just limiting calories at the end of the day that matters for being a healthy weight. For weight loss / weight maintenance people can't figure out good vs bad carbs (peas have a lot of carbs, but they are complex carbs) and fat. Research shows us people can watch caloric intake if given lots of controlled practice (e.g. time to change their behaviors), but any more variables than that and they give up and have thoughts like "I'm gaining weight because I've had to much fat lately", when it should be "I'm gaining weight because I've had to many calories lately."

Re:No seat belt for you...No insurance for injurie

[brusk]

But the public still pays a cost, since the ambulance is still going to take you to the hospital and the ER is still going to treat you if you don't wear your seat belt. And you might need to be buried in a pauper's grave. If you can't pay for those expenses, they fall on the whole community.

Most of you are missing the point.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really scary, but what is most frightening is that only a few slashdotters have realized it. Why are you talking about patent details, how will they enforce it, and how the system is supposed to work. Are you so concerned with SOPA that you missed how this is the same violation of your rights but 10 times more insidious? The real question is why do you think that it is OK to have this horrendous violation of our rights imposed on us by business and government and why do they even feel comfortable to discuss this.

You do realize that the CEO’s and politicians; democrats and republicans alike will build a loophole in for themselves. They will be living in their ivory towers eating the best foods while we are all forced to eat soy. But I guess it will all be OK as long as we can stop SOPA and still download our pirated movies and music, a slashdotter has to have his priorities.

Next patent CEO pay correlated with performance

[billrp]

They will next try to patent CEO pay directly correlated with a company's performance, since there's no prior art here.

I'm filing "insurance-payout-for-driver-state"

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost of accident: $2000
Seatbelt not worn, deduct $500
Dirty windshield, deduct $500
Dirty eyeglasses, deduct $250
Radio playing, deduct $250
Tuned to talk radio, deduct $250
Hands on wheel in non-optimal position, deduct $250
Past your normal bedtime, deduct $250

Kindly remit your check to the insurance company, along with your next premium to avoid late fees.

And all THINK signs will be changed to THIN

[theodp]

:-)

Simplest and best way to do this

[gurps_npc]

Is to have a company cafeteria that gives away the healthy food free and charges you normal prices for the junk food.

No need to adjust the paycheck - that is just stupid. You end up giving 1/3 to 1/2 the benefit to the government via taxes, and have to institute a complex tracking system.

HIPPA violation?

[vlm]

Isn't this a huge HIPPA violation?

I personally don't care. However, I'll tell all you /.ers that my son is horribly allergic to gluten protein in wheat, soy proteins, and casein proteins. Yes he had a Very rough time as a little kid but as a seemingly last ditch effort the gastroenterologist, or whatever the F he's called, ordered some blood tests and basically told us he'd never seen a kid with that high of allergen antibody levels, and more or less never feed him wheat, soy, or milk products again and he'll probably live. Actually after cutting that out of his diet, he thrived, not just "survived". This was a last ditch effort because the medical industrial complex makes money selling anti-steroidal drugs and exploratory surgery and endless consultations, not making money by just telling people "don't eat the stuff you're allergic to anymore, mmm kay?" To say I'm pissed off about the whole situation is an understatement. To misquote someone, I wish the medical industrial complex had but one neck, so I could throttle it.

Interestingly enough, when we cut out the bad stuff, the health of my wife and I improved measurably and dramatically, blood tests for cholesterol and our weight and other stuff. I later find out we're eating what is trendily called a "paleo-diet" or whatever, but aside from all the bookselling and Oprah interviews it just boils down to, if your ancestors ate it 10Kyrs ago, you should eat the closest equivalent. Lots of baked fish, meat and veggie stir frys (without soy sauce) lots of salads, which if you know what you're doing are extremely tasty, etc. The grill gets a good workout. Kabobs. BBQ chicken on a salad. That kind of food. Not so much bread and pasta and pretty much anything that comes out of a freezer box ready to be heated up.

Anyway the point is I really don't need some idiotic B-school dropout HR drone arguing with me, about how I should be paid less, because my son isn't eating enough whole wheat and tofu with a big glass of milk, and I'm not interested in sending endless medical records to HR, and endless permission slips, and just the whole bureaucratic nightmare. And if I buy food at a farmers market I'm somehow to be treated as an enemy of the state. Or I have to attend "food confession" where the "dietary priest" either hears my dining sins or grabs my fun parts, can't remember which.

Re:HIPPA violation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally, yes, it would be a _massive_ HIPPA violation. My mother emailed me asking the same question when her employer -- a Hospital, no less -- started "encouraging" people to participate in their little Wellness program. All sorts of screwy implications with HR drones poring over awkward "metrics" of shit that is none of their goddamned business, but the trick is, there's no HIPPA violation if you voluntarily hand the information over yourself. If they suddenly decided they wanted to run through your medical charts on their own or your doctor just had an inkling your manager might want to know about you latest STD panel, instant lawsuit. If you hand the information over yourself in exchange for a free smoothie and fifty bucks off your gym membership, not so much.

People need to see through the feel-good group-think of this crap and absolutely say HELL no to these workplace healthfaire charades. It is a blatant end-run around hard-fought federal privacy law.

Re:HIPPA violation?

[Patent Lover]

Basically what you did was introduce him to the perfectly natural Paleo diet, which myself and many others have only recently discovered. I'm never following another food pyramid or other similar rubbish again.

Re:HIPPA violation?

[vlm]

there's no HIPPA violation if you voluntarily hand the information over yourself.

So ... voluntary = do it or your fired, or do it or you get no medical insurance anymore, or do it or your health insurance premium bites an extra $400/month out of your check? Thats the part I'm a bit unclear on. I thought the IBM business process patent was something like "drop your docs" or we withdraw all your net income?

Fitness Center

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for a while over at a major bank in Europe (contractor, not a "blue badge") at their Head Offices; for "real employees" they had a big fitness center in the basement and employees could use this on paid time (of course limits applied). But that would be a great idea; work out with zero negative impact on your personal life.

Just wait for the retroactive purchase search

[michaelmalak]

Just as DejaNews (now Google Groups) resurrected decades of past UseNet postings, look for your future health insurance claims to be denied based upon your credit card purchases since 1995.

Recreating Feudal System

[Anonymous Coward]

The corporate class is hell bent on recreating a feudal system where they have the "God Given Right" to control the proletariate in any and every way imaginable "For Their Own Good". See the lives of the average 19th century industrial revolution worker for the results.

Coming up next: The Work House and Debtors prisons. Hell, we already have the lobbyist driven prison for profit system incarcerating more of our population than any other country in the world.

what this will really be used for

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, worker, but you didn't eat healthy according to our patented process, that's why we had to slash your wages. See, it's that we care, not that we're exploiting you.

Should Government micromanage our health?

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone thinks that the government(-industrial complex) is better at managing my health than me then you're insane. If the government managed our health as well as they manage everything else we'll all be in bad health.

Re:Should Government micromanage our health?

[arkane1234]

Be a good citizen, do as your told.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, or the few.

I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

I just checked the weekly print add for a local grocery.

Chicken -- $1.88/lb for skinless and boneless breasts. Broccoli -- $1.12/lb Bread -- $0.98/loaf

That's a relatively healthy meal for 3 people for $4. How would you eat worse food for that amount?

The problem is not the cost. It's the lazy people that cant be bothered to actually cook, and use fast food as the convenient scapegoat.

Re:I call bullshit.

[ChaoticCoyote]

You can't buy fast food with food stamps.

And I was talking fish and fruit. Chicken is packed with hormones; red meat is fatty and has other "bad" elements". If we're suppoed to be eating fish and fruit, that isn't evenly vaguely cheap.

Re:I call bullshit.

[arkane1234]

Is cooking that brief period between work and sleep where you grab whats in front of you and masticate it before the sleep phase?

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

Seriously?

Ok, if your idea of healthy is that every meal must be prepared from hormone free, free range alaskan salmon that were tucked in and sung a bedtime song every night, served with kiwi grown from wild hormone free hand-picked elk droppings, I guess I just cant argue with you.

Re:I call bullshit.

[GospelHead821]

The problem is as much one of time and education as of finances. I am studying nutrition and know a lot of recipes that allow me to both to stretch my grocery budget and eat healthful foods. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't have time to cook good food nor do they really understand how plentiful their options are. That ignorance leads people into the "fast food trap," I think. At least it tastes pretty good. Better than eating beans and rice all the time, right? Except with the right seasonings - which you can stretch out for months - beans and rice are pretty darned tasty.

I watched a news report on the affordability of healthful foods and the woman was complaining that she could get two cheeseburgers for $1.50 or buy a bunch of broccoli for $1.50. The news report didn't elaborate though and nobody explained to the poor woman that the two cheeseburgers are one poor meal while the broccoli could be stretched for several meals and mixed with other foods that would make for more nutritious eating for about the same amount of money per meal.

Or similarly, there's a charity called Feed My Starving Children that buys (admittedly in bulk) dehydrated vegetables, rice, chicken-flavoured nutrient powder, and soy protein then blends them together for essentially complete nutrition for 24 cents per serving. I'm not suggesting that anybody eat nothing but reconstituted rations but if it's possible to do that for 24 cents, certainly there must be ways for people in industrialized countries to prepare nutritious foods for $1.00 or $2.00 per serving.

Re:I call bullshit.

[phantomfive]

I would mod you up if I could.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Zeromous]

Where do you pay Broccoli -- $1.12/lb?

It's 2 heads for 5$ cheapest where I am.
Bread is double that, for the unhealthy fortified bread. That's store brand bread btw.
Chicken skin and bone intact: 2-3.99 /lb Bonesless you have to be kidding me? That's like 4.99-6.99 a lb

This was 2 years ago..... the latest data I could find. Food and meat prices have jumped over 50% from that time:

http://www3.agr.gc.ca/apps/aimis-simia/rp/index-eng.cfm?report_format_type_code=11&action=gR&signature=35B31A62666C5EB5E8F3901657969FB1&pdctc=&r=17&pTpl=1&btnDownload=View

Re:I call bullshit.

[LordLimecat]

You can buy TV dinners and easy food like eggs, sweets, coke, etc. Theyre all cheap and a terrible diet to live on.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

You'd have to bargain hunt to feed 3 people cokes and tv dinners for $4. Again, we're back to people being lazy, not that there's no ability to obtain cheap healthy food.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

I dont know what to tell you. That's the prices in yesterdays paper.
$4.99/lb for peeled shrimp.
$5.99/lb for alaskan salmon.
$4.99 for ground bison.
1lb bag of tossed salad @ 2 for $5
$6.99/lb for T-Bone
local dairy milk $1.69/gal
$0.69/lb Roma tomatoes

And I live in a place with relatively high cost of living. A 20 year old, 2000sqf 3 bedroom house is $180-220k.

Re:I call bullshit.

[jimbolauski]

Most people on food stamps are working an have a household income in the rage of 20-30k, fast food is a frequently purchased by people at that income level. My sister in law is on food stamps and takes her 4 kids to McDonalds 2 or 3 times a week, she could be using that money to buy healthier food to prepare at home but chooses not to because she is lazy. Cost is not the determining factor when most people like her make food decisions, her reasoning is why waste an hour preparing a meal when a meal the same price takes no time at all.

Re:I call bullshit.

[vux984]

Cost is not the determining factor when most people like her make food decisions, her reasoning is why waste an hour preparing a meal when a meal the same price takes no time at all.

Most of the working poor don't have a lot of leisure time. They work at either physically demanding jobs, or mind numblingly boring ones and either way get home completely drained. They often have long commutes on crowded busses.

Its not "laziness" to decide not to spend a large fraction of what little leisure time they have each day preparing a meal.

Its rational self interest. She's choosing to give herself a break from the kitchen and increase the time she can relax and get other things done, while providing her kids a treat she can afford that they all enjoy. That's not "laziness"... that's how people derive pleasure out of being alive.

I often see a poor person called out as "lazy" whenever they choose to do anything but work to better themselves. They can work a full day at a menial job, commute for 3-4hrs a day on top of that, and live on 5-6 hrs of sleep... but if they watch a couple hours of TV and go to mcdonalids instead of grocery shopping (which takes a good chunk of time -- and fresh healthy food doesn't keep all that well either increasing the amount of time spent shopping.) and cooking and they sleep in on the weekends instead of collecting cans for deposits and growing a garden then they are "lazy".

Its bullshit. Even if you are on food stamps. Even if you are homeless. There is nothing wrong with taking time out to smell the roses and enjoy the life you have instead of constantly trying to work towards a better life.

That doesn't make you "lazy", that makes you "human".

Re:I call bullshit.

[jimbolauski]

Most of the poor live near where they work, my sister in law is not exception living a mere 3 minutes walking time from her job as a hostess. McDonalds is not a treat it is a way of life for them. I am not saying for one second that the poor should devote all their free time to bettering them selves but when most work less then 40 hours they should have time to spend a few hours a week making food for their children. If they don't think it is a priority to put healthy food into their children's bellies then why should we? Why should the government take more of my hard earned income to better another persons life that has no desire to better it themselves?

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

Let's examine this nightmare reasoning you have engaged in, shall we?

People who are poor are working incredibly long hours which leaves them little leisure time. To combat this lack of leisure time, said victim will spend more money in order to eat less healthy food, which provides less energy. The additional cost of the unhealthy food requires more hours of work to compensate.

The resulting situation is a person that is less healthy and with less energy who is less able to work long hours, working more hours to sustain the lower health and energy, but somehow has more leisure time despite the longer working hours.

This you have dubbed "rational self interest".

Re:I call bullshit.

[savanik]

It's the lazy people that cant be bothered to actually cook, and use fast food as the convenient scapegoat.

It's not that they're lazy - it's that they can either spend that hour getting / keeping another part-time job, or they can spend it cooking. Working at a part-time job will pay their rent. Spending an hour cooking will not. Remember that $50 (minimum wage for 8 hours after taxes) is a BIG DEAL to these people.

Re:I call bullshit.

[vux984]

Wow.

So you claim your sister is lazy, has no desire to better herself, doesn't think eating healthy is important, and thus deliberately mal-nourishes her children.

That reeks of bullshit if you ask me.

But lets for a second assume its all true -- how do you propose we solve it? Oh, wait... you don't. In fact you vehemently are opposed to doing anything to solve it, even for your own sister.

And you think her priorities are out of whack?

Re:I call bullshit.

[alcourt]

Your chicken is very cheap. In this area, the going standard most of the year is $2.50/lb. (I say this as my wife records prices every week and tracks sales).

The real problem I've seen is so few people are taught how to cook real life meals, the kind of cooking that involves five minutes in the kitchen the day before. Putting meat in the fridge to thaw out for the next day. Putting on a crock pot to slow cook something so you come home to an almost completely prepared meal, or a key ingredient (like beans) ready to cook with. How to cook home meals in a microwave so that you are eating in fifteen minutes, not an hour.

Those that I know who I've met who got food stamps (my wife likes to try and volunteer and help such people regularly) didn't know how to cook. The notion that one could put beans and water in a crock pot and let it cook overnight, only to replace the water with a few vegetables the next morning and have a full dinner that night? Unheard of. The very basics of surprisingly cheap spices so that the person doesn't get so tired of the dish that they just go back to that bag of chips and soda because they taste better than the same unflavored meals they've had for months.

Food pantries here often offer seasonal vegetables, but the people getting them often have no idea how to use them. Acorn squash is a good example. I know to look up squash soup, or several other dishes, but the person who got them recently wasn't even sure that they were edible, nevermind how to prepare it.

Often, the poor have a very small place and thus may not have the right tools to prepare as good meals. The crock pot I mentioned above is something they have to decide if they even have space for.

Smaller families and the working single poor person will also have more problems convincing themselves to make the proper sides. It's just more enjoyable to cook for a few people than to only cook for oneself.

I'm not saying that it can't be done, but education would help a great deal. Making available more guides for how to prepare meals around a working schedule and the tools actually available to such a home would help. Too many "quick meals" are based on the dog food diet -- open three different cans, slop them in the bowl together.

Re:I call bullshit.

[vux984]

To combat this lack of leisure time, said victim will spend more money in order to eat less healthy food, which provides less energy.

No. McDonalds food has more than enough energy (calories). There is a heatlh cost, but not an energy deficit.

The additional cost of the unhealthy food requires more hours of work to compensate.

No. The premise was that the cost of the McDonalds meal was on par with a cooked meal.

But even if we accept your assumption that the meal costs more. The hours worked is relatively inelastic. They have merely allocated a portion of their disposable income to McDonalds, and now it won't buy books, or dental coverage, or a Christmas tree, or whatever.

This you have dubbed "rational self interest".

Yes.

Yes, it is entirely rational to decide to do things for short term enjoyment even if it carries a potential long term self-destructive component.

Lots of things I do are "bad for me". I rationally do them anyway, because I've decided spending my life living it is better than spending it preserving it.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

I'm fully aware of what that $50 is worth to them.

Use your own logic. They can spend an extra $3 - $10 per day on worse food, requiring them to earn and additional $21 - $70 per week (a 1-2 hour per day part time job...), or they can spend 7 hours a week at home with their families while cooking; a part time job, yes, but at least at home with family.

More work away from home to get worse food and be less healthy.
OR
More cooking healthy food at home and having a more healthy homelife.

I'm not really seeing how that's a tough choice.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

So maybe as a requirement of recieving food stamps people must attend smart shopping and cooking classes. Arm them with the tools that will allow them to be successful, and if they choose not to employ those tools....

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

No. McDonalds food has more than enough energy (calories). There is a heatlh cost, but not an energy deficit.

The kind of calories that exist in McDonald's food will provide a short burst of energy, but it has a higher concentration of fats that will not help with long term energy. This is aside from the fact that a general health decrease will result in a general energy decrease.

No. The premise was that the cost of the McDonalds meal was on par with a cooked meal.

Aboslutely false. I can spend a couple of hours a week preparing very healthy meals at less than half the cost of a McDonald's value meal. Unless you're suggesting that you're going to take a single item off of the dollar menu you cannot compete with home prepped food. And if you are talking about an item off the dollar menu, the caloric intake of that will not sustain an active adult for any appreciable amount of time.

The rest of your argument is just insane. You're suggesting that a person's time is better spent collecting enough cans to buy McDonald's than it is in spending that same time at home preparing a meal? HUH?!

Being rational by definition precludes being self-destructive. There is no logical, reasonable, responsible or sound course of action (IE rational) that a human being can engage in which brings themselves more harm than another available course. The one exception to this is if that course would instead ease the burden of another person, and I'd love to hear an argument that you buying McDonald's somehow increases the quality of life for someone else.

Re:I call bullshit.

[tragedy]

Sorry, you didn't complete your thought. What comes after the ellipses at the end of your post? Is it death?

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

... then they must accept that they will be not be eating healthy food, not enjoy the benefits of them, and will not see an increase in subsidies they recieve that allow them to continue to make worse and worse choices.

Re:I call bullshit.

[vux984]

The kind of calories that exist in McDonald's food.... ...You get fat. That's about as long term storage of calories as you can get.

Aboslutely false. I can spend a couple of hours a week preparing very healthy meals at less than half the cost of a McDonald's value meal.

It was the premise the poster I was responding to put into place. I don't disagree with you, and that's why I had no problem allowing your premise.

You're suggesting that a person's time is better spent collecting enough cans to buy McDonald's than it is in spending that same time at home preparing a meal?

I said no such thing.

Being rational by definition precludes being self-destructive.

No it doesn't. Being rational just means you have reasons for the course of actions you take.

Valuing the instant gratification of a mcdonalds meal over the long term health cumulative health effects is perfectly rational. Especially given you are guaranteed the instant gratification, while the distant future is anything but certain... including whether or not you'll even be there to see it.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Simon80]

Maybe your cost of living isn't actually relatively high after all.

Re:I call bullshit.

[tragedy]

But then wouldn't you consider the money spent on those shopping and cooking classes a waste as well? And would they be able to opt out? Perhaps by taking a test demonstrating that they already understand the material? And how would you ensure that these classes aren't just a patronizing insult to people whose situations leave them unable to take advantage of the shopping and cooking advice (for example people who pretty much just have time for working and sleeping but can't make ends meet).

Re:I call bullshit.

[TapeCutter]

I'm fully aware of what that $50 is worth to them.

Are you really? When you are dictating what the working poor should and shouldn't do, are you speaking from personal experience?

Re:I call bullshit.

[c6gunner]

Yah, because the best people to explain finances and nutrition to poor people are other poor people. Also, we need more creationists teaching biology, and alchemists teaching chemistry.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

lol a 3 bedroom house for 220k is not a high cost of living.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

The average slashdot population needs your info as much as the homeless people out there. Care to post some info?

Re:I call bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have numbers to support your suggestion that "most" poor people live near their jobs? The single anecdote of your sister in law doesn't make your argument all that strong.

Re:I call bullshit.

[bubblejet]

Cost of groceries and cost of housing don't always relate that way. Example: My friend and I both live around Boston, I live in a wealthy area near a university, while he lives a few miles away in a much poorer area. The closest grocery to me is an organic grocery, where milk is $4.50 a gallon, but I do most my shopping there because it's only a 10 minute walk. My friend's closest grocery is a discount store where milk is $2.50 a gallon, but it's a 30 minute walk each way and involves crossing a highway. So instead he buys most groceries at the bodega around the block, where milk is $5.50 a gallon, and there aren't any fresh vegetables or meat. This is especially true during the winter, when it majorly sucks for him to haul groceries around in the snow.

Re:I call bullshit.

[jimbolauski]

Wow.

So you claim your sister is lazy, has no desire to better herself, doesn't think eating healthy is important, and thus deliberately mal-nourishes her children.

That reeks of bullshit if you ask me.

But lets for a second assume its all true -- how do you propose we solve it? Oh, wait... you don't. In fact you vehemently are opposed to doing anything to solve it, even for your own sister.

And you think her priorities are out of whack?

My priorities are not out of whack, I'm just not arrogant enough to think helping people that don't want it will make a difference.

Re:I call bullshit.

[worker17]

For many diabetics, bread is poison.

Re:I call bullshit.

[thejynxed]

Some prices where I live:

Broccoli: $1.69/head
Shrimp: $7.99/lb
Hamburger: $2.39/lb
Salad: $1.99/bag for Iceberg $3+/bag for anything with actual taste or nutrients
Various Beef cuts: $1.79/lb up to $9.99/lb
Fresh Chicken cuts: $1.29/lb to $2.99/lb
Frozen Boneless/Skinless Chicken Breasts: 3lb bag $10
Tomatoes: $1.69/lb, Organic not even an option
Bananas: $.69/lb
Oranges: 3/$2
Fresh Fish: $4.99/lb for the cheapest farm-raised stuff up to $14/lb for some of the wild-caught
Frozen farm-raised Fish: Averages $7.99 per 2lb bag for things like Tilapia, $14.99 2lb bag for salmon.
Mushrooms: $2.99 per 12/oz package
Carrots: $2.99 per 1lb bag (Organic $3.99 for the same 1b)
Bread: $3.99/loaf is the average
Milk: $3.49 per half gallon of Organic 2% or $3.89 per gallon for "regular" 2%. The local dairies only sell to the grocery stores unless you want goat milk.
Eggs: $1.49/dozen. Free-range $3/dozen. From local farms: $2.50/dozen.
Gasoline: $3.53/gallon currently for 87 Octane (and all of that gasoline is produced and refined in this county - the owner of the refinery is actually quite gleeful at being able to charge us basically what he wants, since he lives in NYC and most of the stations in the entire county are either owned by him outright or sell his gasoline - he chased BP and another company out of town, Shell has a single station, and Exxon-Mobil, Texaco or Chevron didn't even get a foothold).

As far as home prices go, I've seem them go anywhere from $35k up to $2.6 million, depending upon size, condition and location. Homes in the Historic District tend to be on the higher end, as do those that come with any significant amount of land. Of course the homes in the Historic District are mostly Victorians and Colonials, and were suitably built during those actual timeframes. The few homes remaining from the times of the French and Indian Wars are mostly maintained as museums by the Historical Society or belong to law firms.

Furs, Timber, Oil and Natural Gas fueled any and all growth of wealth in this area, and you can definitely tell the old oil/timber families from the transplants or common workers as far as living conditions are concerned.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

Great points. Maybe we should give them nothing at all and let them sink or swim. We wouldnt want to insult anyone capable of making good nutritional choices by assuming that they cant also find a way to get by without a handout. And you certainly wouldnt want to waste money on people that clearly dont have a clue and never will.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

He killed himself because the voices in his head said so.

He clearly had a reason, and no one would claim that he was rational.

Being rational means that the reasons you have for doing things are the most logical and intelligent course of action. Being rational is very often at odds with what you want. I can try to convince you that because there are many nutritional things in cake (eggs, grains, dairy) that its perfectly ok to feed my child cake every night for dinner. I would have reasons for doing this (because there's nutritional content and he loves it), but child protective services would disagree and would be the rational party in that exchange.

A rational person recognizes that instant gratification should be secondary to long term health. It is irrational to live for this moment with no thought toward the consequences. That's what seperates us from most of the animal kingdom. We consider the ramifications and weigh the outcome to decide which course is in our best interests. Our best interests are never to endanger our future health unless there are mitigating circumstances (saving someone else, eating unhealthy food today only to stave off starvation because there's absolutely no other option, etc.). Instant gratification is never a mitigating circumstance. It is greed and entitlement overwhelming a more reasoned and rational approach.

Re:I call bullshit.

[GospelHead821]

That's a pretty tall order. I'm actually hoping to spin that very notion into a master's thesis - strategies for analyzing a grocery budget and maximizing nutritional value while minimizing cost. (And if possible, factoring in how appetizing the food is.) I can share a few general tips, though, that will apply for a variety of kinds of diets.

1. Use less salt; use more herbs and spices. While reducing sodium intake is probably beneficial for most westerners, that's actually just a side benefit of this advice. The reason for doing this is to broaden one's idea of what constitutes "flavourful" food. If you're accustomed to using cumin, cinnamon, paprika, black pepper, and ginger then you'll be comfortable with these flavours when you use them to enhance blander foods.

2. Eat less meat; eat more plants. A diet that mixes cereals with legumes can an adequate intake of all essential amino acids without consuming any meat. If your budget, your doctor, or your conscience demands that you eat less/no meat, you can still get sufficient protein. Using seasonings, as recommended above, will allow a relatively small number of plant ingredients take on a large number of flavour profiles. Rice or pasta with cinnamon and ginger is distinct from rice or pasta with cinnamon and cumin.
For example, I've been tinkering a lot with various substitutions for the spices and the chickpeas in Moroccan Spaghetti.

3. Cook foods properly. Another poster mentioned how, while growing up, "vegetables" meant the contents of a tin can warmed up on the stovetop. That will do in a pinch but it isn't very appetizing. Frozen is better than canned. Steamed is better than boiled. When in doubt, it's better to under-cook than over-cook (vegetables only; please don't eat undercooked chicken.) The food will be more appetizing and more nutritious. It's a little bit more expensive but the value of the resulting food is much higher. I know that time is at a premium but spending some of it practicing good cooking technique will often result in more nutritious, more satisfying meals.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

Actually, yes. At one point my mother and I lived in a KOA campground because she could afford nothing else. Shortly after I moved out on my own there was a period of over a year that I ate mostly raman noodles coated in butter and tomatoes.

I didnt eat at McDonald's because I COULDNT FUCKING AFFORD IT.

Re:I call bullshit.

[tragedy]

The problem as I see it is that your fundamental position is that you believe strongly in self-determination. You seem to be coming from a position where you believe that the world naturally gives people what they deserve based on the effort they put in and any form of social welfare is artificial intervention in that process. The real world is more complicated than that. As amazing as it may seem to you, people, even those with an impeccable work ethic, can end up in hopeless situations that they can't get out of without help.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Ol Olsoc]

Cost is not the determining factor when most people like her make food decisions, her reasoning is why waste an hour preparing a meal when a meal the same price takes no time at all.

She have some sort of transporter system that takes her to and from the restaurant or something? This 180 degree wrong reasoning is the thing that is fascinating. So many people think it takes no time to drive to the fast food joint, buy the food, then drive back. I guess all that money from credit cards is free too.....

Re:I call bullshit.

[Ol Olsoc]

Cost is not the determining factor when most people like her make food decisions, her reasoning is why waste an hour preparing a meal when a meal the same price takes no time at all.

Most of the working poor don't have a lot of leisure time. They work at either physically demanding jobs, or mind numblingly boring ones and either way get home completely drained. T

I grew up poor. I worked in a pizza shop, then as a lifeguard, then as an electronic technician. then I started college as an art major then I became a photographer, eventually I added computer support duties There were some layoffs on the way, Some of the work was mind numbing.

But all in all, I did okay. What you are describing, the concept of coming home from work too exhausted to do anything else, is not indicative of the job, it is a symptom of depression. When I was working at the more menial jobs, the after work activities were more important than ever. I confess that life guarding was no where near as boring as many of the jobs, but I was single then, and after work I had different dates almost every night. Dunno what it is about women and lifeguards.....

Oops...Do I have to turn in my slashdot creds now?

Re:I call bullshit.

[Ol Olsoc]

The problem is as much one of time and education as of finances. I am studying nutrition and know a lot of recipes that allow me to both to stretch my grocery budget and eat healthful foods. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't have time to cook good food nor do they really understand how plentiful their options are. That ignorance leads people into the "fast food trap," I think.

Perhaps - but how do you fix ignorance?

I watched a news report on the affordability of healthful foods and the woman was complaining that she could get two cheeseburgers for $1.50 or buy a bunch of broccoli for $1.50. The news report didn't elaborate though and nobody explained to the poor woman that the two cheeseburgers are one poor meal while the broccoli could be stretched for several meals and mixed with other foods that would make for more nutritious eating for about the same amount of money per meal

Okay, two chzbuggers for 1.50. Where exactly is it this person is buying cheeseburgers for 75 cents a piece? Perhaps on a loss leader special, once in a while, but she could do this every day? The statement is indicative of the ignorance you speak of. Or what we call making shit up.

.

Or similarly, there's a charity called Feed My Starving Children that buys (admittedly in bulk) dehydrated vegetables, rice, chicken-flavoured nutrient powder, and soy protein then blends them together for essentially complete nutrition for 24 cents per serving. I'm not suggesting that anybody eat nothing but reconstituted rations but if it's possible to do that for 24 cents, certainly there must be ways for people in industrialized countries to prepare nutritious foods for $1.00 or $2.00 per serving.

ALthouhg I don't have to be doing this, I'm cheap. There is a discount grocery store about 40 miles away from where I live that is extremely cheap. I figured out that if I buy a gallon of Olive oil there, it has paid for my gas to get to the store. So about once every two months we head to the store, and pick up the EVO and other stuff. These incredibly inexpensive options are available to everyone. We pick up items for friends who can't make it down there for one reason or another. I know a fair number of people who are pretty poor, but they head down once a month to stock up.

As much as it is tempting to attribute the problem to just ignorance, the combination of the mythical 75 cent hamburger argument excuses and the lack of these folks getting together and figuring out a way to eat decently on a modest income leads me to think that at some point, stupidity comes into play.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Ol Olsoc]

I'm fully aware of what that $50 is worth to them.

Are you really? When you are dictating what the working poor should and shouldn't do, are you speaking from personal experience?

Meh, the working poor can eat whatever they want. And perhaps their poor choices will help to keep them as working poor.

And make no mistake about it I am speaking from personal experience. I ate well yet frugally, and worked my way out of it. But if the working poor person wants to drive 15 miles each way to a fast food joint, then have at it. I suppose that they were too tired to cook, but not to tired to drive. I they didn't have enough money to buy good food, but they had gas money to drive the distance. Gas perhaps costs nothing for them.

Just spare us the bit about how there is no other choice. I was there. I was making minimum wage for a number of years. It was a bit difficult making ends meet, but I did it. I ate pretty well. I also learned that some people will have excuses because excuses are a lot easier than actually doing something. Those folks are still poor.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

Actually my arguments have had very little to do with whether or not someone can or should try to improve their lot in life. I've brought it up only in cases where people have essentially said, "who are you to speak for poor people" to demonstrate that I have been in the past "poor people", and I chose to change that.

This discussion, however, has been about how lower income people either dont have the time, or the knowledge, or the inclination to eat healthy foods. These same people are willing to spend a unnecessarily higher amount of subsidized income money on less healthy foods, or are unaware that they need not do so if they simply cook for themselves.

I actually made a reasonable suggestion, without any passage of judgement or attempt to reduce subsidized funding. Either your response was a half-assed attempt at baiting me, or a rather ignorant postion that we should not insult people we're giving money to in an attempt to help them be healthier and retain a greater portion of their subsidies for other uses. I would posit that most people who are underprivilidged are either uninterested in improving their situation, overwhelmed and dont believe that they can improve their position, or uneducated and dont believe it's possible to improve their position. In two of those three cases my suggestion might actually be a way to increase their quality of life, but you reject it because we might insult someone? Seriously? That' about as ridiculous as stating that it wouldnt be worth trying to educate them because if they are that poor they are obviously too stupid to understand the training anyway.

Re:I call bullshit.

[GospelHead821]

For the sake of full disclosure, I could also be misremembering the news report. It was a couple of years ago. The actual figure could have been $2.00 and she might have been comparing to some other vegetable. The essence of the report and my impression at the time stuck with me but the details are hazy.

Re:I call bullshit.

[TapeCutter]

Just spare us the bit about how there is no other choice. I was there.

Where did I say there was no other choice? If you read the context I was actually arguing against someone who wants to make choices for others and was asking if he had ever "walked a mile in their shoes". Unsurprisingly it turns out he hasn't, a year of eating noodles when he left home doesn't cut it in my book.

Re:I call bullshit.

[TapeCutter]

Alchemists are NOT chemists.
Creationists are NOT biologists.
Poor people ARE poor, not fucking stupid.

Re:I call bullshit.

[TapeCutter]

Ok, so you had one tough year after moving out of home, I spent the entire 1980's living like that while working a 60hr week to support a young family. You may have had poor parents, but you have yet to walk a mile in a poor adults shoes. Until you have done so, how about you stop telling them what to do?

Re:I call bullshit.

[tragedy]

Just to be clear, I'm not rejecting it, but I am arguing against making it mandatory. History is full of examples of the poor being subjected to all kinds of things "for their own good" in order to receive public aid. The Great Famine, in Ireland started because of potato blight, but the true horrors of the famine mostly came from politics. Some people had a thinly veiled extermination agenda (in some cases not veiled at all) and others genuinely wanted to help and thought that the way to do that was to drill a work ethic into those lazy good for nothing Irish in workhouses. The end results approached genocide.

Now, I'm not suggesting that's what you have in mind. I'm just saying that history should teach us that broad brush approaches to social problems can be disastrous, or at least a waste. For that matter, treating things as social problems when they may be more a case of people falling into the wrong part of the prosperity statistical curve may be a problem in and of itself.

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him to fish and he'll eat for the rest of his life. Sounds great. Try to teach a man who lives far from any bodies of water to fish while assuring him it will "correct" his poor lifestyle and you're just being insufferable and wasting your time and his.

Re:I call bullshit.

[c6gunner]

Poor people ARE poor, not fucking stupid.

Of course not. I'm sure they're all ex Mensa members with multiple degrees in physics, engineering, and economics.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

I'm not telling anyone what to do. I'm stating the simple fact that it's wasteful to the little money anyone has to buy more expensive food that's worse for them AND their families. I'm stating the indisputable reality that a family can and should reduce their spending, increase their health and be closer to one another by cooking meals together at home.

You can be as indignant as you want, but there is nothing but selfishness in spending more to eat worse and be around your family less.

Re:I call bullshit.

[Feyshtey]

I'm good with that, as soon as the taxes that pay for subsidies are also voluntary.

History has many demonstrated cases of people doing as little as possible and suckling at the teet of others. It's asinine to require those who are earning to fund those who are not, and require nothing at all from those who recieve the funding.

The stupidity of government is exactly what brings about both extremes to this scenario. Your stated examples of making people do very stupid things instead of or as a prerequisite for giving them funding is one end of the spectrum. The other end is making it easier to live off of subsidies than even attempting to get a job. Both ends are equally absurd.

Pizza is a vegetable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that congress voted in pizza as a vegetable in school lunches, so we should be all good here.

Re:Pizza is a vegetable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously though, if this catches on, you won't get paid more for eating healthy food, you'll get paid more for eating whatever Congress approves, which will be the food from whatever mega corp pays them the most.

Another money saving method.

[Tyr07]

I highly doubt this is a system to /reward/ those who eat healthy. I'm rather confident that employee's prior to this coming out will not find that their final paychecks are worth more if they eat healthy than they were previously.

In fact I'm sure it's the opposite thought. Mask the concept by promoting 'health' so everyone cheers it on. No one dares to say 'That plan sucks, let us be unhealthy'

What they're really doing is a strategic move based on the current health and obesity of America. They're cashing in on it. They figured out since most people are eating unhealthy, that can disguise a penalty system as a healthy concern program. If most of your employees are eating unhealthy, and you can base their final pay cheque on it, then in fact, you just found a way to pay most of your employees less money when they leave.

Cha-ching $$$. They save money, good PR for promoting public health, and no one will contest it.

Eventually I'm sure there will be a way to shape people's eating habbits to a specific companies 'healthy' food in some sort of "unoffical" understanding that is mutually beneficial in a finacial way.

while this

[nimbius]

personally doesnt affect me as im vegan and eat alot of generally nutritious healthy food, i do see a few problems with the idea.
1. say hello to the fast food and entertainment lobby. places that serve hot wings beer and pizza for lunch to unsuspecting or careless office workers will fight against your effort no matter how well intentioned. after all, they make money off the aforementioned 30 pounds of extra fat at the desk
2. its been my observation that most americans cant cook anything more than a microwave TV dinner or boil some macaroni. while the plan outlines steps to be taken to ensure in mr potters words, 'a thrifty working class' it doesnt seem to provide any education to the employee.

I cant say i hate the idea entirely though. the non-smokers clause on my health insurance is worthwhile and was done correctly as it provides free cessation classes and education. free gyms or discounted memberships at work are also a refreshing alternative to 'lets all go to the taco truck and eat until we puke.'

Weight Watchers?

[WillgasM]

So do employees have to track their intake with some weight-watcheresque point system? If so, do I get my points back if I purge afterward?

Entitlement?

[Feyshtey]

So your saying that poor people are fat and/or unhealthy because they get sick of eating inexpensive but boring healthy food? Well that certainly justifies a program that will pay you to eat it.

See, this is the entitlement bullshit that we're fighting. Hate to tell you this, but if it's a choice between my kid eating lentils and oatmeal or not eating, he's going to eat lentils and outmeal and like it. It's not your problem to make sure I have a sparkling variety in my diet. People seem to have no freaking clue what a hardshit actually is anymore, which is to be expected from a society that cant be allowed to play dodgeball because someone might get hit with a ball.

Re:Entitlement?

[biek]

People seem to have no freaking clue what a hardshit actually is anymore

With a poor diet they're bound to have a hardshit sooner or later

Re:Entitlement?

[Sentrion]

The primary purpose of the food pyramid is to justify the meager dollars the government provides for food stamps and similar food rationing programs for needy families. Most people that have ever relied on food stamps will tell you that you cannot use them to procure enough food to survive on. Cheap high-carb grains can carry a person through a crisis, but is deplorable for longer term survival, especially for developing children. But since it is not politically expedient to provide needy people with only enough food to leave them malnourished, the officials can point to the food pyramid to cover their ass. Fact is most needy families find creative ways to supplement their food rations, even resorting to eating weeds, like dandelions, and hunting and fishing "illegally" since they cannot afford a license. Fishing tackle is so commonly discarded that often times there is no need to buy any.

Those who disagree with my long-term survival odds for needy families should look up the statistics for life expectancy of those living under the poverty level. Oddly enough, fatty portions of meat, like pork shoulder roast, combined with the high-carb starch foods are cheap, so those in poverty are more likely to suffer obesity. The canned vegetables available at food banks often have very few vitamins or minerals left by the time they are consumed. An unhealthy, unbalanced diet deficient in fresh vegetables, vitamins, and minerals leads the body to over compensate by over eating.

Re:Entitlement?

[Runaway1956]

How many people in America know how to cook lentils - or any dry bean? How many people know how to make them appetizing? Of those who do know how to cook, how many are actually willing to spend the time cooking?

My wife is actually a pretty good cook. So am I when I feel like it. Either one of us can cook up a mean pot of beans, or lentils. Much much better than anything you could possibly buy in a supermarket, in terms of taste, visual appeal, and nutrition.

How often do we cook a pot of beans? Me, maybe 4 times a year. She cooks them - ohhh - maybe every six weeks.

Beans aren't hard to cook, of course. But, a pot of beans takes a little bit of planning, and the cook has to be around the kitchen range while they are cooking.

Oh - it's split green peas, this year, for New Year day. Don't ask me why, she always makes black eyed peas for New Year. Maybe she grabbed the wrong bag in the store? Who knows. I like the split peas better anyway!

Re:Entitlement?

[Runaway1956]

You make a damned good argument for people to get off their asses, and get a job. Eating a welfare diet cuts your life expectancy? Who could have imagined such a thing?

Maybe you would like to talk some sense into one of my sons. Two sons have learned the value of having a work ethic, the third one thinks the world owes him a living. Go figure . . . .

Re:Entitlement?

[Sentrion]

Or, perhaps in an economy without jobs, we can reinstate the homestead program first introduced by Lincoln to claim unused and underdeveloped land so that these people can engage in subsistence farming - something that poor families living in crowded urban apartments are not allowed to do. As for "getting a job" there are plenty of families who work more than one job and still can't make ends meet. And these workers need a more nourishing diet to keep them healthy enough to work jobs that involve heavy lifting all day and exposure to the elements. Access to basic healthcare would go a long way for them as well, not to mention the longer term savings to government and private health plans when disease and chronic conditions can be treated in early stages.

Then there are the physically and mentally disabled and infirm elderly who have outlived their retirement savings. Nobody wants to hire them for anything even if they could do the work. For many elderly, one spouse living even short term in a nursing home will leave the healthier surviving spouse destitute. Medicare won't pay for nursing care, and medicaid won't help them until all of their life savings are just about gone. A retired veteran in his or her late 80's or 90's who worked hard his or her whole life, lived frugally, and saved for retirement shouldn't be forced to live on nothing but corn meal and pork fat. They followed the rules and played by book. They did exactly what their financial advisers told them. And they were told the capitalist system would work for them. Now their savings are depleted, and they can't even take out the equity they had been building in their homes for years. Think the 'system' is going to work for you? Look what has happened to them and ask yourself again.

Re:Entitlement?

[Feyshtey]

How many people know how to use a smart phone, but live on subsidized income? How many people can tell you how to hook up a plasma tv but havent turned their stovetop on in months? How many people have spent at least 1 hour per night participating in any activity with their child or family for a week straight?

You know if a family were to make creating dinner something that can be done together, they might not just get good at it, but could actually get to know each other in the process. It could actually be... fun. They could even apply that family activity to 100's of cheap meal bases and start creating their own recipes....

Nah, who am I kidding. Someone order a pizza.

Re:Entitlement?

[UncleTogie]

Then there are the physically and mentally disabled and infirm elderly who have outlived their retirement savings. Nobody wants to hire them for anything even if they could do the work.

I recently spoke with another deaf tech, and yes, it's a problem. Rather annoying to find people with a quarter of your experience hired over you just because you can't hear on a phone.

Re:Entitlement?

[Ol Olsoc]

How many people in America know how to cook lentils - or any dry bean? How many people know how to make them appetizing?

I dunno specifically, but maybe lentils is a bad choice. We have lots of excellent cuisine at my place. Just this last few weeks we had homemade Lima bean soup, with a butcher smoked and cured ham. As one of my hobbies, I cure and smoke various meat and cheese and nuts. We've taken to canning some veggies or blanching and freezing. And there is a network of people who are into this sort of thing, and we all trade off various foods with each other. Especially with the Eastern European folks and friends, this is serious socialization. But lentils aren't on my list at all. IMO they suck.

It has come to the point where I feel serious pity for the folks who don't do this. It's come to the point that the only reason I go out to restaurants is to socialize with friends. And time isn't an issue. I'd rather take an extra half hour preparing a good dinner than playing Farmville. The toughest part of my foodstyle is remembering you have to use moderation.

Citations here

[Anonymous Coward]

Just get the book "Good Calories Bad Calories" by Taubes. He's a researcher that breaks down not just what we know but HOW we came to "know" it. You'll find most of the mainstream knowledge is wrong and how we "came to know it" as scandalous. He has complete citations as well. Here's one to make a point:

At a medical conference, Ph D speaker was giving a talk about how the brain needs 45g of carbs a day to function. The paper was distributed and 45g was the specified in the paper. However in the Q/A session after, the author conceded that the brain runs just as well off keytone bodies, which is what your body generates when it isn't able to use carbs. However because this was in the discussion and not mentioned in the paper, the keytone body aspect is completely not represented anywhere. Since you can only reference what is in the paper, all papers referencing the paper gave traction to the 45g of carbs figure leaving the keytone body alternative completely without presence.

So, if I skip a meal...

[Dcnjoe60]

So, if I am overweight and skip a meal, do I get paid overtime? Shouldn't wages be tied to work done, not what you eat outside of work? If IBM or some other corporation's cafeteria or vending machines have non-healthy foods (who determines that, anyway?), can I sue for harassment? Finally, this applies to all employees, from the mailroom to the boardroom, right? So, I assume no more will the executives get their high fat meals and alcoholic beverages, or they, too, will be docked pay, right?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The Most Important Question Is:

[rotorbudd]

Where does cold beer fit into all this healthy eating discussion?

Punch them in the face and get paid?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can punch in the face over and over again anyone who implements this plan until they give me money for not punching them, right? Because its healthy to not be punched in the face and cheaper to pay me to not do so then to have insurance and co-payment after I knock their teeth out and break a eye socket.
I can be a real bitch if I dont get my chocolate at certain times of the month.

Future Food

[Brainman Khan]

Enjoy new and improved - Bachelor Chow (Government Approved)
Also enjoy Mom's Chilled Non-Dairy Substitute Gel (Government Approved)
Remember if it isn't Government Approved it affects our kickbacks and your paycheck
Now back to Everyone Loves HypnoToad and eat healthy (Government Approved Healthy)

Big Blue Brother

[kawabago]

Even a suggestion that the state should intervene in it's citizen's choice of food is wrong on so many levels IBM should be chastised just for suggesting it! If IBM or governments for that matter want their citizens to eat healthy foods then they should stop airing advertisements for over salted, under flavored high fat convenience foods. How often do you see ads for fresh fruit or fresh vegetables? You don't because farmers can't afford to advertise.

Re:No seat belt for you...No insurance for injurie

[sjames]

Well, OK, but you need to be aware of the full consequences. Do you like any sort of physical activity at all? Statistically speaking, 100% of sports injuries are fully preventable by not participating in sports, so I guess we just won't cover any of those any more. No bicycling (you could get hit by a car), no walks (same), most certainly no DIY home repairs (people hurt themselves all the time that way).

No matter who you are and what you do, there is SOMETHING you do frequently that others would like to ban to keep insurance costs down. If it's fair for your ban list to be implemented, it's fair for their ban lists to be implemented. I can just see that nirvana now! Every day on TV in the morning we'll receive our insurance approved activities list for the day. No need to think about it, when the whistle blows, move on to the next officially approved activity. Please be sure to consult an approved manual to make sure you're performing your activities in a fiscally responsible manner.

I remember quite a few pizza parties ...

[porky_pig_jr]

when I was working for IBM/Lotus division.

Now I know why my paycheck wasn't that great.

PPJ.

George Orwell Electricity Generator Patent

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody should make a patent in where they use George Orwell's rapid grave rolling into electricity that way this system will run on renewable energy. Gosh, why would anybody want their boss judging them and scrutinizing them if they go and grab a bag of chips to snack on while watching tv?

"PUT DOWN THE CHEETOS OR I'LL DOCK YOUR PAY!"

Gosh what a world. Somebody ought to make a patent for the process of evil and wickedness. That way every time some nightmarish anti-liberty literature, patent, or law comes in to the world they have to pay obnoxious royalties.

Viscious Cycle

[Anonymous Coward]

dock a workers paycheck for eating cheap crap food, until cheap crap food is all they can afford on their reduced paychecks....

Re:Big Blue Brother - no shit!

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I'm rather stunned by the uncritical thinking on this thread. Hello people - this is a CORPORATION telling YOU what to eat, and if you don't comply, they will RAT YOU OUT to your insurance provider. WTF!?!?!?! Wake Up People! This is a REALLY BAD IDEA.

I get paid for my work.

[Anonymous Coward]

I get paid for the work I do, not the lifestyle I choose to live. To even suggest that an employer should be able to base anything on what I eat or what I do in the privacy of my home is wrong in so many ways that I can't begin to list them all.

In Soviet Russia

[fartrader]

IBM makes you eat borscht!

Corporatist dystopia health care

[GameboyRMH]

Oh this sounds much better than socialized medicine! And my taxes will stay low, YAY!

Re:Corporatist dystopia health care

[jasen666]

Of course! Let the free market decide what we're allowed to eat! It's the democratic way. We'll never fall into that nazi-esque socialist trap where we get to eat what we want and the government provides free healthcare. That would be a terrible way to live. Terrible. I want my employer to monitor everything that goes into my mouth and pay me less if I eat too many Krispy Kremes Sunday morning. It's for my own good.

More monopolization

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's very important that we don't have a government [healthcare] plan competing with a private plan and finding out that our employees or the citizens in general could go to a plan that doesn't have the same incentives and requirements and behavioral characteristics to make sure that they do the right things long term."

So health providers can continue to gouge us on premiums and ensure there is no competition? Because one plan "knows what is right for us long term".

Would it be terrible to let the consumer decide?

Re:In Republican America

[bussdriver]

Free enterprise makes you eat their brand-name vegetables.
Only a marathon running health nut would get a full salary; that is, until they are middle aged and are let go for less costly younger employees.

Just what we don't need...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the 14 years I've had a job of some sort (from a 16-year-old part-time summer job to my current full-time professional job), my paycheck has always been mine. In exchange for doing my job per the employment contract, I get paid, and the money is mine, less taxes. If the employer wants to offer to match 8% for retirement, fine with me. A coworker who started the same day as me and has the same skill set will get paid the same as I do, and what we do with our paychecks is our own business.

This would turn that completely upside-down. Imagine the consequences:

- Just like couponing communities today, communities would pop up about how to best legally game the system to your advantage--namely, how to buy just the right amount of "approved" food, whether you need it or not, and thus maximize your paycheck minus your purchases of "approved" food.

- "Approved" food would be based not on nutritional value, but based on lobbying. Expect it to consist entirely of corn-based products, since the corn lobby seems to dictate quite a lot around here--see forced ethanol in gasoline and sugar price floors making HFCS the USA's sweetener of choice.

Screw willing

[rsilvergun]

let's try able. Try 6 12 hour shifts at a dead end restaurant or construction job and see how much cooking you do. Add in screaming kids (because you don't have ready access to healthcare) and season your misery to taste.

Off topic, but seriously, what the hell is with this (uniquely American) thing where we revel in the suffering of people that make poor life decisions while under heavy duress? We give the poor just enough support to live miserable lives and as soon as they start making any head way we pull the rug out from under them. WTF?

Re:Screw willing

[rsilvergun]

I mean birth control, not healthcare. Same thing really, but oh Well.

Re:Screw willing

[Sentrion]

It's called the welfare trap. Once you fall in you can never climb out. I think it's the inevitable result of our political system. If you're the member of the party that promotes welfare programs you have a built-in incentive to get as many potential voters into that system as possible. Once they are in those voters will rush to the polls to vote for the party that promotes the welfare programs. But the political incentive to help those in the system to get back on their feed is much weaker for the party that promotes the welfare programs.

On the other hand, you have a party that opposes the welfare programs because of the drag those programs have on those who support themselves. So the opposing party, knowing they cannot eliminate the welfare programs, negotiates with the other party to make the programs very difficult to qualify for and to strip down what those programs provide. The party that promotes welfare then hopes that those in the program stay there, creates incentives for those stuck into the system to have as many children as possible, thereby increasing the number of people in the system, and by making them continue to suffer while receiving spartan aid, they gain support from those who feel pity for the people in the system while at the same time gaining support from those living on the edge who hope the system will be available for them if they need it. Those who promote welfare also know that they have to keep costs low enough to prevent higher income taxpayers from being so overburdened that the system collapses onto itself. Both parties also depend on the higher income taxpayers for campaign contributions so there is strong incentive to keep them happy enough to tolerate the welfare programs.

So, clearly, the only piece of the puzzle missing is the program to help those stuck in the system to get back on their feet, but unfortunately financial success and self-righteous arrogance go hand in hand. So the people that should have the higher incentive to educate, heal, and rehabilitate those stuck in the welfare trap instead just have the "get off your ass and get a job" attitude, and then they go off on a tangent about how hard life was when they were growing up, but with hard work, determination, and risk taking, they were able to "make it." But such "make yourself rich" motivation talk sounds as silly as "I won the lottery. You can too." After all, many of our poor do work hard, are very determined, and did take risks. They just lost. It's the other end of the risk equation that nobody wants to talk about.

But heaven forbid someone who is getting food stamps has a color TV, or heaven forbid that a working class guy files for bankruptcy to keep a roof over his head, when, clearly, he should live in his car and work three jobs if that's what it takes to pay off his emergency room bill.

Re:Screw willing

[Feyshtey]

I have done 6 12 hour shifts in dead end jobs, including doing janitorial work and car washes in a body shop during the weekdays, while flipping pizzas and waiting tables in shitty restaurants and bars at night and on weekends. Did it for a decade. It sucked. So I decided I wasnt going to do it anymore. I slept an hour or two less a night to teach myself the basics of a menial trade using books I got for a couple bucks at a used bookstore, and got a slightly better job. Then I worked my ass off, took any training I could find, and listened to anyone that would teach me something and got a better job. And a better one. And a better one. I dont know how many interviews i got rejected in. Seriously it must be in the thousands. But I didnt quit. I'm a business owner now because I would settle for nothing less. That could be gone tomorrow, but I'm not about to slink into a corner and quit. I'd build it up again because I want to raise my son in some degree of comfort I never knew.

No one revels in the shitty situation other people are in, whether they put themselves there or not. But at some point it's up to those people to improve their lives or become complacent with being subsidized. The fact that I never quit trying should not require me to make sure they have braised beef and asparagus barbs in garlic butter instead of lentils and beans.

Re:Screw willing

[Runaway1956]

You've pretty much described the system we have. But, what's that saying? Never attribute to malice, that which can be chalked up to incompetence.

I think - mind you, this is just what I think - that sometime back in the early 1900's, welfare started off with genuine goodwill. At the time, no one realized how many people were living in poverty, so the welfare grew much larger, and much more rapidly than any of the kind hearted souls ever expected. Yeah, there were politics involved, but less so than you seem to describe.

After a few years of welfare programs, some of the political agenda started creeping in, but even then, it was more incompetence than some kind of a plan. Politicians and bean counters started tampering with the qualifications, and of course, they expanded the programs to ensure that no child was left to go hungry.

The one thing they missed, was the eugenics angle. And, that subject has come up often enough, and it's always shot down, explained away, and rejected primarily because the Nazis made such an abortion of it when they were in power.

Eugenics. The government should be saying, "Yeah, we can feed you, and put a roof over your head. But, you must understand, if you're not competent enough to do that for yourself, then we don't want you having more babies to burden us with. Consent to sterilization, then we'll start paying your bills for you."

That generational welfare extended family thing never would have happened, if we could only get hold of that eugenics idea.

Of course, I lay it out rather cut and dried. There needs to be a humanitarian side to that. Anyone can be down on their luck for a few months, or a couple of years. There needs to be a time limit thing in there. Six to twelve months with no obligations about sterilization. You get maybe another year after signing the agreement. If at the end of 2 or 2 1/2 years, you haven't been sterilized, then the welfare ends. If children are involved, the state takes the kids to a foster home, or whatever, where they can be fed.

Someone will snivel that it sounds harsh. Well - life is tough. And, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. The rest are claimed by Darwin and company.

Re:Screw willing

[seantide]

That's pathetic, honestly. My family went through all of that, quite a bit more hardship than that actually, and managed to cook and not be fat and they were almost universally poorer than most "poor" people today.

I've worked straight 16s before, for weeks, and I still cooked.

This just screams to me that people are spoiled and just don't want to learn to do anything for themselves. Reminds me of what my grandfather used to say: the cost of living has not gone up, just the cost of convenience.

Re:Screw willing

[seantide]

Bravo to you. Most people today are so damned lazy they couldn't survive 1-3 months of this. I wish I had mod points for you.

Re:Screw willing

[Ol Olsoc]

let's try able. Try 6 12 hour shifts at a dead end restaurant or construction job and see how much cooking you do. Add in screaming kids (because you don't have ready access to healthcare) and season your misery to taste.

I suspect you just don't like cooking or doing good food. I've eaten well the whole way from my early years to now. And I've worked a lot of hours, and early on some food service stints. Eating well doesn't even have to take that long to prepare the food. All depends on your outlook. I grew up poor, and ate better than a lot of rich people. Too many people these days don't know how to eat well. Too many confuse eating well with vegan lifestyle. That is not eating well.

Re:Screw willing

[Ol Olsoc]

No one revels in the shitty situation other people are in, whether they put themselves there or not. But at some point it's up to those people to improve their lives or become complacent with being subsidized. The fact that I never quit trying should not require me to make sure they have braised beef and asparagus barbs in garlic butter instead of lentils and beans.

We underestimate the power of some personal drive. While There are some almost insurmountable problems for people who really got the short end of the stick, most of us can work really hard and make something of ourselves. (do not anyone mistake that with "Everyone" can do that. Most people just won't)

Anyhow congrats on the personal drive. Now onto the real issue. Asparagus is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. All apologies to Ben Franklin, because the same goes for beer. But try some asparagus wrapped in foil with some butter on the barby. a bit of sea salt, and a decent dose of pepper. Doesn't get any better than that.

Those are specials, silly

[rsilvergun]

it's the weekly ad. That's what they're advertising to get you into the store. Price fluctuation are kinda hard to take when you get $100/mo to feed 2 adults and 2 kids.

Re:Those are specials, silly

[Feyshtey]

Holy shit. What was I thinking. I mean, we are talking about how to make a food budget go as far as possible. I don't know why I thought looking at sale prices that come out every week like clockwork might be relevent. There's very little chance that next week there will be meat and vegetables in there again...

I've got news for you

[rsilvergun]

these people are dirt poor in the richest country on earth. Their entire lives are a series of bad decisions. Maybe if instead of reveling in a kind of sick joy over their misery (Germans's call it schadenfreude I think) we would provide them a support structure to improve their lot (and not take it away at the first sign of improvement), they could get somewhere.

Oh, and nobody drinks energy drinks for their delicious refreshing taste. Those poor f#$kers are on their way to another fun filled 12 hour shift at their dead end service job after listing to their kid scream itself to sleep for 4 hours. Their not abusing, their self medicating...

Re:Big Blue Brother - no shit!

[Red_Chaos1]

That is pretty much my first thought seeing this. I'm rather appalled seeing all the other conversations going on that seem to be completely missing this little nugget of fact.

It's not my employers business what I eat. It's not my employers business what I do on my off time. It's not my employer's business what my credit score is. The only thing that is my employers business is that I am doing the work prescribed by my job description in the manner outlined upon hire. Not a god damn thing else.

Why do people keep rolling over and letting this shit happen?

U.S. patents

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my friends loudly accuses his wife, whenever he farts in public. Has anyone patented that yet?

Fails at the Start

[Ol Olsoc]

There are some serious flaws with this concept:

.

1. Most of one's longevity is based on one's genetics. My family tends toward the mid 90's. And they were from Eastern Europe descent and ate meatstuffs that would make vegans jump off cliffs

2. In combination with the genetic factor, way too many people have a pathological need to assign blame to the individual. "If only they didn't eat eggs, they wouldn't have died". Despite what some young folks think, no one gets out of here alive.

3. In concert with number 2, even if you did decrease the risk of dying of one disease, you have only increased the likelihood of dying of another. While it's easy enough to say "I'd rather have this than that - where does dementia come into play. From what I've experienced, a lot of people might just have that to look forward to. 4. Given that it is likely that dementia and Alzheimer's are becoming very likely endgames for many, the cost will be staggering. My mother died of a massive heart attack. My mother in law took ten years to pass away after Alzheimer's. Guess which one cost the healthcare system more? When the brain goes bad, other parts slowly shut down. So her last ten years was a progressive story of broken and failing parts.

5. If an employer can reduce your paycheck because of a (estimated) 10 percent effect upon your health, does it not follow that they can reduce it fro the 90 percent part that your genetics provides?

6. Lawsuits. What is "healthy" changes over time. A few years back, eggs were a product of the devil. Now not so much. Iron was once considered healthy for men. Vitamins were a good thing up until recently, now wisdom says only if you have an issue. Some people become prone to schizophrenia if they eat mostly carbs. So if a person has their pay reduced because they like eggs every morning, can they sue for reimbursement when they are found largely innocent? If iron supplements were imposed upon a person because "it's healthy", and they are damaged by hemochromatosis, do they have a lawsuit?

Pie in the sky stuff for what is likely to not effect longevity, remove personal freedom, and will only increase the end-of-life medical bills.

Make the powers-that-be eat it first

[Anonymous Coward]

This is great. will the rules be applied to our politicians as well? I think they are good candidates to test the efficiency of the plan, being public servants with free health care and all.

Smarter planet?

[Anonymous Coward]

In a smarter planet, do humans exist? According to iRobot, humans shouldn't.

Re:Smarter planet?

[ProgramErgoSum]

In a smarter planet only IBM and its patent mongers will exist ...

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM and the FDA are going to go through your garbage, and you are going to have to show ID at the groicery store so they can track what you buy. All so IBM executives can increase their salaries by saving money on your health care.

Re:healthcare based on stuff like BMI is junk scie

[ebvwfbw]

I used to think that too. Then I hit a BMI of 40 and went to a fat doctor. They showed me a graph of BMI and likelyhood of disease - like Cancer, Diabetes, etc. Up to 40, the graph was low where you could deny what was happening. Close to 0. Once you hit 40, it went towards 1 very fast (probability is between zero and 1). Almost a sure thing. In fact, you see old people, you see fat people. Not many old fat people as the fat doc put it.
I can also tell you that as my BMI came down to where they want it, my medication came down too. I expect to be off medication entirely soon. Same with others that I know that used to be fat. There seems to be something to that BMI. Probably a better indicator as a general measure than anything else I know of.
This is not to say that there isn't junk science out there in the weight industry. I battled weight for almost 25 years. There is a lot of just wrong information out there. Like exercise will lose weight. Sure, if you do it all day long every day for months. Work out on a treadmill and if you are very lucky, you'll lose 300 calories/hour. Expect more like 200/hour. Can of Coke? More than that. Candy bar? Again, more than that. 1 Lbs of fat is 3500 Calories by the way so divide 3500 by 300, even if it were 500 (one mean workout!) and quickly see what a load of crap exercise is for losing weight. Once you stop this exercise even if you were successful in the first place which is very questionable, it will come back. The fat is applied with super glue, or so it seems!
Here's to hoping that you'll never know what it is like to be fat, or a fat slob.
If you are reading this, are fat and wonder how in the world I lost my weight? I did it using the HCG diet. I know, it's a 500 calorie diet and that turns people off like a switch. With the drops I was able to do it and it was close to effortless. I wasn't hungry. No, really. It was a wish come true. Once on the diet, never cheat. It comes off around 1 Lb a day so don't screw it up. It isn't worth it. It really isn't. Simply plan your meals so there is no excuse for not following the diet. Once it's lost, follow the maintenance. You need to change your eating habits and the diet helps that way too. Soon you'll know exactly what you can have and where the line is. I'm to the point that I can predict by what I ate the day before where that scale will be and I'm right most of the time. I can even eat a half a box of girl scout cookies (thin mints) and lose weight. It's all a numbers game. I know a lot of people that have used HCG and it works. So naturally FDA wants to stop it. Recent article on that.
Otherwise, give up, be fat and live to be about 50. I have some friends that didn't even make 50 because of weight. One didn't even make 40.

Enforcement...

[Firethorn]

In California, there was, and perhaps still is, a company that drug tests it's employees for nicotine - and it's a firing offense. From my memory, it's been judged legal.

For what you're proposing, the solution is simple - simply stick you in the worst diet category. You have to provide documentation to get the bonus, not documentation to get a pay cut.

This will be taken over

[hoggoth]

Big Food corporations will get this slanted towards buying over processed crap in 4.. 3... 2... 1...

Food Politics?

[t_ban]

I hope this is not a sneaking attempt to force-feed us monopoly food. Like, you know, you get your full pay-cheque only if you eat this Monsanto-produced GM stuff. If you choose organic, we'll deduct 20%.

After all, this isn't Soviet Russia, where the govt. controls the megacorps!

- t.

So what's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

Say this continues for a decade with people jumping onboard early on. With minimum wage etc growing, and this in mind would it then not become a disinsentive to eat worse foods-outside the designated eating periods. As in have a sausage roll at 10am and suffer a 8% wage reduction for the day? Keeping in mind this is also meant to track what you eat outside of work...
That's a pretty tight grip. So what next? Sleeping patterns: watch a late movie and get penalised 12% of that days wage because it's unhealthy to get less than 7.89654 hours of sleep per night?

Imagine the implications of this control on a population when a persons paycheck can depend so much on it.

This is a scary slope people.