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Gaining On the US: Most Europeans To Be Overweight By 2030
An anonymous reader writes "Welcome to the club, Euro friends. A World Health Organization analysis concludes that within 15 years a majority of Europeans will be obese or severely overweight. In almost all countries the proportion of overweight and obesity in males was projected to increase – to reach 75% in UK, 80% in Czech Republic, Spain and Poland, and 90% in Ireland, the highest level calculated. Women fare a little better. In reviewing the results, the lead researcher said: "Our study presents a worrying picture of rising obesity across Europe. Policies to reverse this trend are urgently needed.""
"If you can't eat 'em - join 'em"
As people live longer on average, the average symptoms change. Eventually, all these older fat people will get cancer. Nothing new here.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Me, 2+ sugars in tea 4 times a day, biscuits, ice cream cake sweets.
I'm 5'11 and 142pounds / 64kg
It's not just sugar. I cycle. How many overweight people do you know that cycle regularly?
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It's not becoming more socialist, the Lisbon treaty demands our gov'ts sell all govt property, everything is supposed to be run by corp's - that's EU law!.
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> How many overweight people do you know that cycle regularly?
I only know logrotate, you insensitive clod.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
The formula for BMI is weight(kg) / heigth(m) * height(m). This formula only has two terms for height, but in reality I'm a 3d person. What I mean with this is that it is easier for a short person to be "normal weigth" in BMI. As people on average get taller and taller more and more people are going to be overweight. On the other hand many of my male friends are lifting weights and they are all "overweight" while clearly they are not fat.
So, while the problem is probably real and severe, I'd like to see a better way of measuring this stuff.
I cannot think of a skinny person I work with who does not have a sugar-free diet. And I work in an industry where we work really really strange hours, over really really bad time-zone changes.
It isn't that easy. I'm a skinny person that eat sugar products fairly frequently (I actually actively avoid the sugar free alternatives that use other sweeteners), and know many others like me.
There was a significant research report published recently that concluded that the main factor driving the obesity growth is the nutrition mix of processed food. It contains too little proteins and too much fat, carbs and crap (because it is cheaper), and your body/mind eats to much of it to get enough proteins. I believe the secondary factor in terms of contribution to obesity was reduction in physical activity.
Consider this:
http://www.pcrm.org/images/gm/autumn2007/pyramid.jpg
Present economic policies in western countries actively encourage companies, fast food chains and restaurants to make unhealthy food products. Since these companies want to sell their products, they will also push unhealthy eating habits in advertising, movies and TV-series and so on. There is basically a huge economic incentive to push people to eat an unhealthy diet, and thus you get strongly financed opposition to the type of changes that would address the issue, such as serving more fruit and veg in school, limiting the calorie content of fast food and so on...
My son has a BMI of 14, coming from 12; going to 30 would be a real improvement. In the statistics 18 (healthy) is more morbid than 36 (morbid obesity), but thin is a good business model.
People like Gok Wan that make people take pride in how awful their bodies look is partially to blame for this epidemic.
People are no longer ashamed to be fat larding morons wobbling around the streets.
Fat-shaming NEEDS to be a thing. Despite what those childish tumblr-tards say. You shouldn't be happy you are fat. You shouldn't at all. It is an abnormality. The human body hasn't evolved to deal with it. And it shouldn't evolve to deal with it. It shouldn't even be happening.
And while I have mentioned this, these people only make it accepting. It is the bad fast-foods, the premade foods and ready-meal generation that are corrupted.
THESE need to change more than anything. All these companies can put as much spin on it as possible, "oh, our meals are only meant to be one-offs every so often", or whatever other bullshit they can come up with, they are partly responsible for this.
Quite frankly, I say make people pay double for healthcare if they become obese through circumstances out of their own hands. (illnesses, genetics, and some medications like the steroidal types)
And if they haven't fixed it by 10 years, make it official and roll it out across the countries. There is no reason to be fat unless you have severe illness, genetics or medications. No reason at all. (NHS UK included. I am from UK and I would be for those changes. Screw equality, these people aren't equal any more, equality was based on averages, they are well outside the range of these averages!)
Even WHEN eating all these fattening foods, you can still exercise it off completely.
More physical classes in school should also be a thing. Hell, go experimental, have classes on foot if possible. Teach people while walking around the school, a forest, a school garden, whatever. There are various classes that could be taught on foot. They don't even need to be long classes either, they can be spaced out in amongst other classes, 15-30 minute classes on foot, standing about, writing on a notepad (with backing to make it sturdy), gets them used to being outside, standing while doing other things instead of sitting down to do things.
Seriously, fund it. If that doesn't breed an active generation, I don't know what will.
Nothing beats relaxing after exercising. Relaxing all the time? It is sickening. I don't know how people can be a semi-permanent couch potato day-in day-out.
I cannot think of a skinny person I work with who does not have a sugar-free diet. And I work in an industry where we work really really strange hours, over really really bad time-zone changes.
People have been eating sugar for a long time, something else has changed to cause so much obesity. Crap ready made food in increasing portion sizes, non-sugar sweeteners (including high fructose corn syrup) and lack of exercise.
If you cycle, then I suggest doing your BMI maths to find out how obse you are, BMI FUCKING SUCKS! Muscle is heavier than fat, bmi is your weight in relation to you high. therefore if you have a maximum about of muscle then you come in at Obse on this stupid fucking scale.
Fuck all fat on me, mostly skinny build, have some nice leg muscles, no real arm or back muscles, no fat gut, im 183cms and 95KGs..
Overweight to the point that if I put on more weight i'm Obese!
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http://www.heartfoundation.org...
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You think they didn't have sugar, fatty foods and exercising decades ago? However, only a small percentage of people in the 70s and 80s were overweight. In today's age, if you aren't fat, there's still a chance your face seems swollen. Barring some health conscious people, actors, models and athletes, almost everyone seem swollen/fat somewhere. Therefore, I think the modern processed foods sold in stores and restaurants is the culprit. These foods might contain chemicals (perhaps some preservative) that fatten people as a side effect.
I'm skinny. Everyone comments on it. At 35 you can put your fingers around the widest parts of arms without difficulty.
I basically live on sugar. I drink Coca-Cola endlessly (do not drink hot drinks, tend to have sugar in them when I do). I pig out on high-fat, high-sugar food and lived off fast food for many years. I eat sweets like a child and have to curb my appetite for sweets only because I work in a school and they are banned there for the kdis themselves (so I have to hide them, etc.). I also don't really exercise. At all. Ever. Never been to a gym in my life.
Yes, I have a "health" problem that's going to catch up with me in the end. Until then, I enjoy my food. And sweets. And crisps. And everything I feel like eating.
And people in work keep asking how I stay so skinny. How I have so much energy. I'm still the guy work colleagues ask to move heavy cabinets etc. when they need moving.
Blanket rules curb the average, but it does not mean there's an instant 1:1 relationship with every person's metabolism and diet. I'm sure my cholesterol and blood sugar are off the scale at points in the day. But my health, generally speaking, is pretty damn good.
I've been to doctors about 3-4 times in the last TEN YEARS. Once to have a toenail removed. Once to be diagnosed with swine flu (but had 5% of the symptoms of everyone else who had it, I just needed it confirmed as I work in schools and had to be certified off-work - I've probably had less than 5 sick days in the last five years). Three times to register with new doctors (so not medically-related, just administration). Who all take my BP, quiz me, and then never mention a thing about my health - probably because I look thin.
I live in a country with free healthcare, so I'm certainly not self-medicating here - in fact I don't medicate... people know I'm really bad if I ask for a paracetamol as I just don't take ANYTHING generally speaking (not some hippy-drive, just don't take pills for things unnecessarily and the rare headache I have will go in the same amount of time, pills or not).
The problem is not the general availability of high-sugar, high-fat foods. The problem is that humans are NOT all the same and BMI, in particular, is a REALLY bad measure (technically I'm underweight so advice would be to eat more of the bad stuff....). The focus on a metric rather than the person is part of the modern medical degeneration of personal contact. "I don't care who you are, you're over this number, eat less."
I trust doctors implicitly. I consult them when required. I regard them as qualified experts in their field who don't need me bothering them for a sniffle but will trust my life to them any time. However, I also have not been to doctors in years, and also have had to go with friends to doctors and tell THEM what the problem is (and then had it confirmed by GP, consultant specialist, etc.).
Health != skinny. Health != fat. Health != a number. It's a statistic and thus, as a mathematician, almost certainly a lie chosen to suit the intended outcome.
Don't ban sugar, or tax it. Start with a health system that has time for patients and to listen, and go from there. People are adults who can make their own choices and who can understand the consequences in seconds if they want to. Regulating sugar - of all things - is the ultimate nanny-state.
That means we won't have anything to tease them about.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Spicy! Write a fictional novel around that theme, I'll read it.
But it's a strong hint.
Right. It couldn't possibly be that you have to be smarter to actually be admitted as a math major, could it? And even if it did, that wouldn't be causation, I suppose?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I have lost 2 stone / 28 lb / 13kgs over the last 18 months after I scrapped my car and started cycling to work (7 miles each way). I have no interest in going to the gym - no time for that - and I'm not particularly bothered about sport. If I had kept my car I would inevitably drive whenever I was going to be late for work, which would be all the time. So what worked for me was to leave myself no option other than to do exercise every day.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Yeah but in the 70's and 80's foods were not nearly as laden with sugar, and the portion sizes were different -- and people ate at home more often. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to reason out that human beings do not need a 54 ounce soda. And the availability of drinks in such quantities coincide quite nicely with the rises in obesity.
I was born in 1982 -- growing up, 16 ounces was the standard size for a bottle of soda. then it was 20, and now it's moving on up to a liter. Prior to the early 80's soda sizes were even smaller.
I'm singling out soda because it kind of serves as a yardstick that other portion sizes can be compared to -- which, are out of control. Gigantic, out of control portion sizes at restaurants and fast food places that we frequent more than ever before.. serving a menu comprised mainly out of simple, refined, processed to hell carbohydrates. Oh and we're gulping down pure sugar by the gallon.
This shouldn't be a fucking mystery.
Congratulations, I'm sure nobody has noticed that before.
I mean, It's entirely impossible that people don't scale up like, say, solid bronze statues would. Furthermore it'd be ludicrous to suggest that the formula wasn't an empirically derived approximation but was just made up by someone who wasn't as math-smart as you.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I don't have a sugar free diet by any stretch. I do have an innate loathing of excessive amounts of sugar and eat candy sparingly but it isn't by conscious choice.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Everywhere I go nowadays when I see a younger couple it's a normal sized man with an overweight woman. It's like normal sized women don't even exist any more and this is the best they can do....
I have a theory about this. "normal" sized women are in such high demand. They are usually attracted to the men with the biggest wallets. Leaving the rest of us to fight over their rejects...
That lifestyle will catch up with you, you are likely aging you heart and increasing your risk of cancer. (pot kettle black here). IMO to be healthy just excercise (get a bike) and eat plenty of fruit+veg+fibre and when buying foods pick the ones with lower sat-fats.
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I'm such a person. Probably thats why im obese not morbidly obese (but I'm creeping up to it). I cycle to work every day i ride for fun maybe not large distances for fun but usualy no less than 30km and not more than 100km. I'm quite not that slow also but ... in hilly terrain my weight brings me down ... both figuratively and literaly ;] ). I sometimes eat large amouts of food almost no sweets and no soft drinks either. But I dont eat regularly i rarely eat breakfasts and i stay up lat (or cycle late at night) . And i cycle for pure joy it gives me .. not to loose weight and... i dont realy loose weight. My weight jumps up and down at times +-5KG in a year and slowely the average is rising. so yeah i regularly cycle. And yes i'm obese. I know few people as fat as me and sure most of the dont eat right and sit all day but there are also quite active people that cycle or hike (unimaginable distances) and still are quite fat ... it';s not as simple issue as you may think.
240 lb. is the NEW thin...
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
You think they didn't have sugar, fatty foods and exercising decades ago?
They did, but now it is in every thing you eat. Because we love the taste of fat and sugar.
Instead of a special occasion of the day when you eat sugar, it is eaten routinely. That is what is new.
For instance, replacing a piece of bread with a thin layer of bread and jam in the morning with a muffin (so essentially eating cake for breakfast).
Drinks also have vast amounts of sugar in them. A typical Starbucks coffee contains tons of fat and sugar to make it tastier, whereas black coffee does not.
Animals are getting fatter too though. link, link paper
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
In the USA I've seen people who must use motorized chairs to move about, not because they are handicapped or paralyzed in any way, but merely because they are morbidly obese. I've not seen that in any other country so far.
Consuming sugar doesn't bother me. What does bother me is consuming all the preservatives in out food, and all the unnatural sweeteners that are included. Although I am not a scientist, I wonder if high fructose corn syrup, calorie free sweeteners, and to a lesser extend, regular corn syrup, are far worse for us than the FDA understands yet. Also, try going 2 weeks without any sugar except for naturally occurring sugars in fruits and the like... you'll get your actual sense of sweetness back. I can no longer drink sugary soda (I usually drink seltzer, and occasionally I drink coke watered down with seltzer to 1/5 the concentration). I can't eat milk chocolate or most candy. They all taste disgustingly sweet to me.
The amount of sugar and other carbs in our current diet is way higher than it was. Also, we stopped using fat as our energy source since some studies suggested (falsely) that fat was the cause of cardiac diseases and obesity. Those studies have since been proven wrong and the new consensus is that our current high carbs intake is responsible for the enormous amount of obese people and diabetes type II patients.
A human can live healthy with 0 carbs intake for an entire year, providing they use fat to substitute for energy intake. A human will die within 6 months if they have 0 fat intake, regardless of what they use to substitute that.
The whole "omega fat" and cholesterol story is way more complicated and correlation and causation between fats, omega fats, cholesterol (various sorts of it) and cardiac disease is currently highly debated. Much research is finding that previous research is wrong and new things are being found every few months. Several papers that have been proven by independent re-trials seem to point out that the whole omega fat theory holds no statistical advantage and there are indications that it may actually be contra productive, but those results are too inconclusive.
We used to have natural fats, natural carbs and way less carbs in our diet 70 years ago, compared to now. High fructose corn syrup didn't exist yet the way it does now and breakfast wasn't sugar frosted. We didn't limit our fat intake "because it's bad for your heart and you'll get fat" the way we do now and yes, we did often exercise more than we do now. Our whole culture has moved to prepared food instead of home cooking and our taste buds made us buy the food with the "richer" taste. We don't look on the labels to see what's in it, we just want it to taste good and end our appetite. That lead to a totally different diet currently, which leads to obesity.
To make it more difficult, carbs and especially sugar are actually addictive and our modern stomach fauna will produce chemical substances to make our brain feel good if we eat carbs. We have to go through actual withdrawal symptoms if we don't have our trice daily fix of carbs (feeling faint and woozy) and we get a reward "after dinner dip" if we eat.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Got news for you. Of the bread and cake, the cake is probably better to eat and higher in protein, since you need gluten to keep the bubbly texture and cake also contains egg. Our bodies are so well attuned to processing wheat, that bread causes a faster sugar high than Coca Cola, because the Coke is sweetened with fructose.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
As a society becomes more technologically advanced there is less and less actual physical work being done by most of its citizens.
Couple that with more readily available food ( both good and bad kinds ), and a general lack of personal control, being overweight makes logical sense in many parts of today's world.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you doubt my sincerity, one of the bicyclers helped campaign for bicycle tracks in our town, and advertise it to tourists.
Next is our guns. That's always how it happens. But they will never take our stupidity. Nope, We have ALGOR. hahaha yes ALGOR! Bwahahahaha. Bwahahahahaaaaaaaaahaaaahaaa.
"Our bodies are so well attuned to processing wheat, that bread causes a faster sugar high than Coca Cola"...
Does that apply to brown wheat or just white flour products?
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Closing cities to all automobile traffic. This is it.
Commuting becomes very fast as bicycles do not need traffic lights.
There are cargo bicycles too for supplying shops. Strangely people will eat less as they move more. Anyone who was on a long distance cycling tour could not to fail to notice it. People overeat due to to an anxiety. And regular physical activity reduces anxiety dramatically.
As a by-product we get that there will be no bad areas in a city due to traffic noise and pollution.
I only ever cycle, I do fitness 3-4 times a week. I'm still quite a bit overweight. And I fucking hate people like you who thinks it all comes down to getting some exercise. Having muscle will help metabolism, however, it is a big fucking mistake to think that hitting the gym will lower your weight, in fact quite the opposite happens for most overweight people.
Hitting the gym with the object of losing weight will be very detrimental to your efforts, 1. you will gain weight from the additional muscle. 2. raising your activity will increase your need for calories and if not kept in check, will just have you eat more.
Now what happens to us fatties at this point is, we realize that all that effort in the gym hasn't helped us, so we stop going there, but the calorie intake doesn't go down, causing even more weight gain...
If we as a society want to get rid of this epidemic, we can't just go around telling people to move more, it doesn't help, we need people to eat proper food, we need to have the amount of added sugar to daily food removed. And we need to make it easier for people combatting their weight - restrict advertisements on candy/cake/cookies, just like with smoking. Require supermarkets to move the unhealthy food away from cash registers and by law require a "healthy" path through the market, a path which allows you to buy the daily groceries, without having to fight your inner need for candy, and trust me it's a daily battle and it doesn't get easier.
I've dropped almost 30kgs over the last 18 months, and it's still a fucking struggle; one advertisement can send you on a binge eating candy spree like you wouldn't believe it.
I suspect that you are in the "lucky bacteria club." Your stomach bacteria manage to break down sugar at a sufficient rate. Most people are not so adapted and hence sugar acts pretty muck like a toxin to them.
Now if this were 10,000 years ago, you would have died off as humans seem to have mutated a long time ago to have a large brain and subsist on less food than it would take an animal with a normal metabolism. Pound for pound, humans are one of the weakest mammals -- and I believe the trade off was just for this reason. We are also the 2nd coolest Mammal temperature wise.
It has been show over and over that a little "Nanny state" regulation can do a lot to improve health in the general population. If someone can eat glass at a carnival, we don't just "allow glass" in food do we? If someone has a thick scull, we don't just say; "everyone has to wear seat belts but you get a pass."
I don't want the state to tell me what to do -- but corporations that might impact the health of the population? If it's a good idea -- we should try it. Letting people "just be" doesn't seem to a great society. Yes; education is ideal and awareness -- but we've ceded a lot of that to corporations with profit motives and we've lowered taxes so now we can't afford to "hope that everyone is just smart" -- that's not the USA anymore.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
http://www.readpt.com/wp-conte...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Interestingly, I'm the first to mention alcohol in this discussion.
A courtesy message about "the diabetus":
When someone says "you have the diabetes" -- that's a reference to the pronunciation of Wilford Brimley and his stern message on the topic;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So the person was being cute -- not ignorant.
And it isn't an issue for people to give an ID (Internet Diagnosis) -- it's an issue if people accept it and start boiling their shorts in garlic and whacking their head with a large Halibut because someone on the internet told them to.
IANAID (I Am Not An Internet Doctor)
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
It's not limited to that. I'm 6'0" and my best sustainable weight was 220 lbs. And I cycle. At the time I was that weight I was cycling daily -- using my bike to commute to work and going for longer rides on the weekend. I reached 195 lbs once, for a short period, but that was by adding jogging to the cycling. There are numerous other factors involved here.
I think eating a lot of fruit helps, another easy thing I do is use brown pasta, brown rice and mostly brown bread when I cook.
One food to steer clear of is chocolate ice creams and chocolate, so high in fat and sugar. Whilst cake is not good, some cake is much lower in fat. When I gave up smoking I gained 3 stone and decided to diet, but I was lazy so I just counted sat-fats intake - and it worked!
I'm thinking of replacing sugar in tea with sweeteners but am put off by potential side effects.
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Yes I oversimplified, diet is of course important. The food industry has a lot to answer for, so much food is made with adulterated flour and rice, pizzas really don't need to be made with white flour, brown rice tastes fine to me, whole grain pasta is almost identical to the bleached stuff. Bleaching food and removing the nutrients may not have seemed like a bad idea in the 19th century but we really should know better now.
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Why, are you telling me you wouldn't enjoy the sight of obese, pathetic, fatso tubs o' lard huffing and puffing in the middle of a battlefield, their faces shattered open by high-velocity bullets? Their sweaty misshapen bodies blown to bits by bomblets? Hear them whine "I don't wanna die" and "mommy help me" while they're shoved out into the merciless meatgrinder? Watch them burn like screaming, flailing human candles when set on fire by WP rounds, their body fat melting and feeding the flame in glorious human combustion? And what about APCs filled to half capacity because the lardos occupy twice the size a healthy soldier does? What happens when they're struck by a HEAT warhead and set on fire? They scramble for the exit, only to have it blocked because them fatsos can't get through the door and they burn to death, screaming like pigs as the air fills with the sizzling noise of cooking bacon. Hmmm, the delicious human grease dripping into the bloody mud! I can't for the life of me understand how you wouldn't appreciate the awesomeness of the spectacle!
OMG! People are (insert adjective, adverbs, nouns as appropriate)! We must do something! Somebody make a policy, quick!
The role of government is not to be Mom or Nanny. Will the government next send a message to their TV's 'You have reached your maxium TV dose for today, go outside and play now. The TV is off until tomorrow!"
one advertisement can send you on a binge eating candy spree like you wouldn't believe it.
It sounds like you're in serious need of a psychologist. That's a personal, mental problem, not a societal problem.
I don't respond to AC's.
There's a whole other potential issue that's being reviewed: Our heavy use of antibiotics. We've changed our gut flora through antibiotic use. It's not entirely clear how that's affecting humans. The studies are showing a similar effect on animals -- you feed one group of animals antibiotics and another group gets the same feed but no antibiotics and guess which group ends up weighing more.
There's another point to be made as well: There are no absolutes. It's not food only, or processed sugar, or antibiotics, or genetics or exercise. It's combinations and interactions of all of the above. That's why some people, such as yourself, stay trim, while others, like myself, tend to put on weight if I look at carbohydrates from across the room.
I only ever took antibiotics briefly in my teens for whooping cough so it could indeed be a factor. Genetics seems to be a big factor with me.
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How old are you? Specifically, are you still in your twenties? I'm late thirties, ~178 cm and 73 kg, which I maintain by cycling and limiting sugar and snacking. Cycling alone is not sufficient to control my weight. To really not have to watch what I eat, I'd have to be doing professional-cyclist levels of it (i.e. many hours each day, and >500 kilometres / week).
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Snacking is what's new. 5 isles of the supermarket and most convenience stores are all about snacks. You can eat 3 fairly significant meals a day for 2000ish calories. However a typical "lunch" deal (Sandwich-600, Soda-200 and Chocolate Bar/Muffin/Cake-300) could easily be half of that.
Theres a whole industry and part of the economy that relies on this eating between meals. It's high calorie and doesn't tend satisfy actual hunger for very long.
I sometimes feel that exercise is overplayed in these discussions as people tend to over-compensate for the exercise with eating. There is nothing wrong with being fit, it has separate health benefits, but it rarely makes a difference in weight loss. The now and then difference is that kids in earlier generations would have been expected to walk/cycle to school independently from a young age (8+ - up to 6 miles a day was typical) This does make a difference, particularly when the playstation is 20 steps from the fridge.
Jason
I grew up in the 70s and early 80s in western europe. We had sweets and sugar, but there wasn't the abundance of sweets then as there is today - is my vague memory. Least, I remember getting sweets being special, and not getting many of them when I did.
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Yeah, portions have increased. It's especially noticeable when you compare plate sizes. I did this last time I was at my mother's: We compared the old plates she still had from the 70s, to the more modern plates we use today. The modern ones are much bigger. The old dinner plates, you'd use them for lunch or cakes or appetisers today.
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I hate it when there are condoms in my food!
Watching what you eat is different to different people, I'm over 40, my doctor has recommended I keep the saturated fats down and eat lots of fibre. I have a sweet tooth but limit it by simply not buying too much junk, that way when I get a craving there's not much I can do about it. but I suspect some peoples cravings are much more than mine, I very rarely binge, I just don't feel like it. I also place fruit strategically so that it's 'centre stage' it helps me eat healthily.
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I'm not European, I'm American (but we're goddamn fat here so it's still relevant to this discussion). I'm almost 50 years old, consume anywhere from 2500 to 4000 calories a day (depending on the day), and I have 13% bodyfat. How? Speaking of cycling: I've been training and racing road races for the last 5 years, and burning off 1000kcal riding my bike is trivial to me. On the weekly 'long endurance ride' I may burn as much as 3000kcal. The upshot of this: Most people sit on their butts all day for their jobs, and go home at night complaining about 'being tired' and sit some more, in front of the TV, eating excessive amounts of dinner. What's worse is, according to my own non-scientific observations, most people eat too much fat and too much carbohydrate, and not enough protein. This observation is somewhat backed up by another news story (http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/04/29/0338249/you-are-what-youre-tricked-into-eating) that says the American food industry produces processed foods that mimick having protein in them, but are just full of fat and carbs instead, making the problem worse. My personal opinion is that substances like HFCS make the problem worse, because it's so concentrated, and that artificial sweeteners, ironically enough, also contribute to the problem because they encourage people to keep craving sweet things instead of changing their lifestyle/eating habits away from sweetened things. Also, again, in my personal opinion, artificial sweeteners are additionally causing harm to people's health in the long term that isn't being detected yet because it takes years and years for it to happen. Final note on artificial sweeteners: Like me, some people who ingest sucralose become ravenously hungry from it, which can't be a good thing (when it happened to me, I literally couldn't eat enough to make that 'artificial' hunger leave me alone. I can't be the only one that happened to!).
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Yeah, that's what I do too. When I'm at home I sometimes crave food, but I can control myself when shopping. So the trick is to buy only healthy and filling stuff. Unfortunately, my other half is the opposite - can't control herself in the shop, but has no problem not eating the junk once it's at home. ;)
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
I'm lazy, I like ready meals, what bugs me is the lack of healthy ready meals, they all lack enough veg, they typically use wheat or rice with the nutrients removed, they are low in fibre etc.
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You'll get the chocolate from my cold dead fingers...just cut the sugar content. 18-22% is plenty.
Do you want to live forever?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Wrong drug of choice for a skinny. Needs less blood in his alcohol system.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I see fat people cycling all of the time.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Where-abouts? out of curiosity.
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Yeah but in the 70's and 80's foods were not nearly as laden with sugar, and the portion sizes were different -- and people ate at home more often. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to reason out that human beings do not need a 54 ounce soda. And the availability of drinks in such quantities coincide quite nicely with the rises in obesity.
In the 90's the health kick began and it was determined, at the time, that weight gain and clogged arteries were tied to the amount of fat that we consumed. There was no distinction between fat types. So, the food industry reduced the total amount of fat in foods. However, this also affected the taste so they added sugar and, worse, high fructose corn syrup, to boost the taste. Current research indicates that eating fat actually results in a lower amount of weight gain as eating high fructose corn syrup or sugars.
Personally, I would rather have real sugar in my foods than high fructose corn syrup, but that's all that you can get in the US. I try to avoid it as much as possible. High Fructose corn syrup should be banned...
No. Just wrong on both points.
Cake flour is lower in protein (gluten) than bread flour. Cakes use baking powder to get the bubbly texture.
Bread has complex polysaccharide carbohydrates so it take time for these to be broken down to simple sugars. Coke, sugar, glucose, fructose and other simple sugars (5 and 6 carbon monosaccharides and disaccharides) go straight to your bloodstream and cause your pancreas to freak out with insulin response (and later rebound of low blood sugar).
Whole grains also slow the break down and absorption and are a good thing.
Don't eat simple sugars.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
California - Sierra Nevada and wine country
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Consuming sugar doesn't bother me. What does bother me is consuming all the preservatives in out food, and all the unnatural sweeteners that are included. Although I am not a scientist, I wonder if high fructose corn syrup, calorie free sweeteners, and to a lesser extend, regular corn syrup, are far worse for us than the FDA understands yet.
Also, try going 2 weeks without any sugar except for naturally occurring sugars in fruits and the like... you'll get your actual sense of sweetness back. I can no longer drink sugary soda (I usually drink seltzer, and occasionally I drink coke watered down with seltzer to 1/5 the concentration). I can't eat milk chocolate or most candy. They all taste disgustingly sweet to me.
I'm assuming that you are in the US since your ID is Vermonter... Chocolate bars in the US are chocolate in name only. It's candy. Chocolate should not be that sweet.
I'm originally from Canada and I prefer milk chocolate bars (i.e. Cadbury, Nestle) or good dark chocolate (Ganong - NB, Canada). There are specialty chocolates in the US, like Ghirardelli dark that is good. Anything above 72% cacoa is too tart for me, but 72% is a nice dark chocolate.
I usually bring back chocolate from Canada when I visit and my US co-workers can't believe the difference. I just ran out and they are begging me to go back and get more....
And we need to make it easier for people combatting their weight - restrict advertisements on candy/cake/cookies, just like with smoking. Require supermarkets to move the unhealthy food away from cash registers and by law require a "healthy" path through the market, a path which allows you to buy the daily groceries, without having to fight your inner need for candy, and trust me it's a daily battle and it doesn't get easier.
Can't tell if trolling ...
But just in case: you could become an adult, with impulse control. I'm definitely overweight, but the idea that it's anyone's fault but my own is laughable.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
In the 90s McDonalds (and every restaurant) started 'supersizing,' adding a ton of food for cheap. A single meal from a restaurant is typically twice what a standard American needs.
Now 20 years later we're having an obesity epidemic. I guess Europe is too.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm skinny. Everyone comments on it. At 35 you can put your fingers around the widest parts of arms without difficulty. I basically live on sugar. I drink Coca-Cola endlessly (do not drink hot drinks, tend to have sugar in them when I do). I pig out on high-fat, high-sugar food and lived off fast food for many years. I eat sweets like a child and have to curb my appetite for sweets only because I work in a school and they are banned there for the kdis themselves (so I have to hide them, etc.). I also don't really exercise. At all. Ever. Never been to a gym in my life.
I hate to be the one to tell you, but you're 'skinny-fat'. You're thin because you have no muscle anywhere on your body to speak of, because you probably don't eat enough protein to start with, too much carbs, and zero meaningful exercise to speak of.
Furthermore: Someone like you, making the statements I quoted above, should not at any time be giving unsuspecting, naive people any sort of advice on diet, exercise, or fitness, because you are the absolute poorest of examples. Don't believe me? Go get body composition analysis done. Wouldn't be surprised if your bodyfat percentage is something like 30-40%, and afterwards the doctor insists on consulting with you regarding your possibly being anorexic. Additionally with your 'lifestyle' you're at serious risk for diabetes because of the high simple-carbs intake. I also wouldn't be surprised if you develop digestive issues from overgrowth of certain intestinal flora from all that sugar, tooth decay from all the sugar and carbonation, and generally declining health as you start getting older because of all the above.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Coke is sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup. Not fructose. HFC is (typically) 55% fructose and 45% glucose. Cane sugar is made of Sucrose which is 50%/50% fructose/glucose.
Fructose is not the problem. Eating too much of any sugar will add calories.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
So, it's no "fucking mystery" why the two correlate. But it's not an explanation for why people are obese. Economically, restaurants and food producers have no interest in making portion sizes bigger unless customers demand it. People who are obese tend to have bigger appetites, so they demand bigger portion sizes and the market responds. They also crave sugar, so sugary drinks is what the market supplies in abundance.
Ultimately, the simple reality is that people make lifestyle choices that make them obese: they don't exercise and they eat fatty and sweet foods because they actually like them and the consequences are not that serious all things considered. People make the rational choice that enjoying good food in their 30's is worth losing a couple of years in their 70's. The only real problem is that they are forcing others to pay for their diabetes and heart disease treatments through socialized health care costs.
Good news then - there are no potential side effects from artificial sweeteners. Unless you intend to ingest them in *very* large quantities (but then the sugar would also be just as deadly).
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
A good rule of thumb is to find out what the most respected nutritionists agree on and do the opposite. My employer provides lunch, and labels the food according to the 'food pyramid' -- red for the worst stuff like red meats and sweetsand fried food and white flour or rice. Green for steamed vegetables and high fiber foods and the like, yellow in the middle and containing poultry and fatty vegetables. I only eat red and yellow, preferring red. It's tastiest of course. ~145lb, 5' 7". Cholesterol on the low end of normal. Portion control is important, but when you're eating tasty filling foods, it's easy. If I notice myself gaining, I can just cut down on the cookies. When you're trying to feed yourself on low macronutrient foods, portion control is ridiculously difficult; you need huge amounts to just stop the hunger.
That's correct - there is a difference between cycling at 130kw average power vs a 250kw average for mid level pro.
You should do a calorie count and see how much your burning and how much you're eating and see where the problem is. If you're coming out with burning more calories than you're eating you should go see a doctor and see what's going on.
Call me unconvinced:
http://www.webmd.com/food-reci...
It seems to me the the artificial sweetener industry has done a very good job of getting a lot of people to ignore all of the studies showing problems.
"animal studies showed that it caused cancer of the bladder, uterus, ovaries, skin, and other organs."
But hey, let's just forget about those studies??????????????
If I were to see a well made study done by someone not affiliated with the sweetener industry that showed no increase of ill effects amongst sweetener users as compared to non-sweetener users then I'd accept that. But I haven't seen that.
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Another object of research is caesarean births where the infant does not pass through the birth canal and misses picking up the flora present in the vagina which jump starts their gut flora. Between mothers being given way too many antibiotics, infants not getting inoculated with their mothers gut flora, infants and children being given too many antibiotics and the attempts to raise children in a sterile environment, people are very deficient in gut flora.
Antibiotics, while having saved more lives then most any other medical advance, are also causing many problems from unneeded and over usage. Not only do they wipe out our gut flora but the bacteria that they kill are evolving to make antibiotics useless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
BMI is used for screening.
Good idea, though I'd hedge a bit. The doctor has a real chance of finding a measurable problem. From there, there is a smaller, but real, chance that there is an effective treatment.
But the doctor ending up having no clue is the most likely outcome with this sort of thing.
My advice, don't try to see "a" doctor for this sort of problem. Plan to see 10 or 12 until you find one that has critical thinking, and bothers to try to figure your problem out.
Ugh. That seems like a lot of money just seeing doctors. :/
That's possible. It's also possible that everything he wrote is fiction. For example, "you can put your fingers around the widest parts of arms without difficulty.... I'm still the guy work colleagues ask to move heavy cabinets etc," does not compute.
The topic is fat europeans, so the money is probably not an issue. Last doctor's bill I had was 13 euro (for a busted knee). Of course, this is just the fee in one of the european countries. YMMV.
Good point. Still seems like a ton of effort. I guess if you do find a good doctor it will end well, one hopes.
Sure, this is the Internet, and it's full of trolls, and even as I wrote that I recognized a large possibility that it was just a stupid troll. But I'd prefer not to see misinformation spread around on this subject.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I beg to differ, i think it absolutely explains why obesity is increasing. What i'm not even remotely suggesting though is that restaurants / producers be censured in what they serve (after all McDonald's would serve broccoli if people wanted it.) It is consumer choice, and it is not anyone's business other than the person buying it. (even if it will kill them much sooner than otherwise.)
What I definitely disagree with is that exercise is some kind of panacea for reducing obesity *after it has occurred*. The math seriously works out to something akin to a 200 pound man needing to climb ~20 flights of stairs to burn the equivalent of a single piece of white bread. (90-100 calories?). That's a lot of stairs. And that's only assuming his appetite wouldn't increase to accommodate the increased output. (god i sound like gary taubes, i'll just shut up now.)
Though for what it's worth, people dying of heart disease or other obesity related illness at 50, while tragic are far cheaper than people dying at 85+.
Whole grains also slow the break down and absorption and are a good thing. Don't eat simple sugars.
I'm diabetic (type 2). While this is generally true, in practice I've found that wheat of any kind and rice of any kind will send my blood sugar up unless I keep my portion sizes very small. Nowadays I usually just avoid the both.
I live in the US. 6 feet, 145lbs, lift weights regularly, eat rice/beans/vegetables, no sugar. Roughly a third of my family regularly tells me I'm way too skinny and they're concerned about my health. They think I'm going to die of starvation. I've had quite a few women make comments about how I'm too skinny and not strong (one thought she could beat me arm wrestling). My favorite is when I'm with someone and a seriously in shape bicyclist passes by and they compare the bicyclist to a holocaust survivor.
We've entered a dark place when people start shaming fit people because they don't even know what a normal person should look like.
If you're unconvinced perhaps it's because you're the one ignoring the studies. Aspertame has been *extensively* studied after all the hoopla in the '90s.
European Health Commission report as one example:
http://ec.europa.eu/food/fs/sc...
500 studies have been evaluated on aspertame with non showing any clear danger. And you forget that these products have been around for a long while now. So epidemiological studies on the public at large can be done. So far no clear evidence of any increased risk.
Heck - from your own source: "According to the National Cancer Institute, there's no scientific evidence that any of the artificial sweeteners approved for use in the U.S. cause cancer."
But hey, lets just ignore the experts????????????? (is that enough question marks?)
Fear of something is not justification of the fear itself.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Also want to add - not all studies are conclusive. That "a" study shows a potential link does not mean there necessarily is a link. If the study wasn't properly randomized, blinded, had large drop-out rates, had a small sample group, was performed with human analogs rather than humans, (the list goes on) then there are a ton of ways the results can be misleading.
As I pointed out in my other reply - more and better studies have been done and so far there is no evidence that artificial sweeteners are bad.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
So, how does that work? You seem to claim that the increase in food portion sizes causes increases in obesity. If that's the case, then what caused food portion sizes to increase in the first place? And why have Europeans reached US levels of obesity of a few years ago at much smaller portion sizes?
And now apply that insight back to portion sizes. If large portion sizes caused overeating, then obese people would still be eating more calories than regular people, but they stop when they are somewhere around 20-50 pounds overweight, even though they could easily gain another 20 pounds every year simply by overeating only 10%. And even at US obesity rates, there are plenty of people who are not obese despite large portion sizes.
Sorry, I don't see any way in which the hypothesis "large portion sizes cause obesity" makes sense as an explanation of the obesity epidemic.
in my completely unscientific and laymen point of view, the overeating is caused by sugar/carbs.
proof? none. anecdote: sure.
you eat steak, it's filling. when you're 'full' you literally don't want another bite. then the waiter asks if you'd like desert. what do you suddenly have room for?
there's a few arguments out there about how insulin prevents the liberation of fat from fat cells, and how a high-carb diet can cause someone to be perpetually hungry while still consuming ample calories -- but dunno, it makes sense to me, on a laymen's level. i'm sure someone more educated (in the biochem sense) could explain it in better detail.
That's a good guess. And it also means that eating carbs causes both obesity and a preference for larger portion sizes, so portion size is an effect, not a cause.
And it's no mystery where that dietary preference for carbs came from either: recommendations from the US government and "health authorities". There was a "scientific consensus" a few decades ago that fat was bad and carbs were good. The whole thing has been supported through massive agricultural subsidies and tariffs ever since. It's not unlike more recent "scientific consensus" of what's good for us and the ensuing subsidies.
The upcoming Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) should prevent any regulations that could help fighting US food megacorporation practices from spreading the EU.
I do like dark chocolate, but it has to be at least 85% cocoa.
RLA of dirt is two pecks. In order to get a lifetime of two pecks it is recommended that every child eats a full peck of dirt. The remaining peck can be spread over the remaining lifetime.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... is an example why dirt can be good for you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I have NEVER seen an animal ordering in Starbucks.
Cardio is not meant to burn fat, it's meant to improve cardiovascular health. To burn fat you have to pump iron, build muscle. Like you said, cardio just isn't going to do it unless you spend 5 hours a day at it.
Anarobic exercise however will build your muscle mass, which will cause your body to burn more calories even when you're sleeping which can quickly add up. This is also why extreme diets are so horrible and cause people to balloon up after they quit their 2-6 month fast.
You're giving someone who is underweight advice on how to lose weight?
I guess that's why he's the one his coworkers ask to move the heavy filing cabinets and such. All that fat makes him strong.
Skinny != healthy he said so himself and a diet like his will shorten his life if he doesn't fix it.
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...Actually my advice was about healthy diet.
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"But hey, lets just ignore the experts?"
Why not, that's what most of the other experts have done!!!
I have found articles saying the sweetener industries own studies shrink organs and cause cancer in numerous organs.
I have found other studies saying that sweeteners can cause leukemia. I have also found studies that say that sweeteners can cause insulin problems, raise blood sugar level and increase the risk of obesity and diabetes.
I've looked for epidemiological studies and all I come up with is 1 study from 1985 that purely looks at bladder cancer and says that there is no increased risk, personally I would be suspicious of an epidemiological study that is so narrowly focused.
I'd love to use sweeteners to replace sugar and it may well be safer overall, but it does not look to me based on what I've read that sweeteners are safe and may in fact not be useful in a healthy diet due to the increased risk of diabetes and the fact that they can increase cravings for sweet foods.
So, I am not ignoring the experts, I have spent some time looking at the results of the search for "epidemiological study sweeteners" and what I find does not look good.
See:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/...
http://annonc.oxfordjournals.o...
http://www.mpwhi.com/consumpti...
"Diet soda has been tied to higher risk for heart attacks, strokes, cancers, osteoporosis, tooth decay, and nervous system disorders."
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People don't realize that the next epidemic will be obesity. Its effects are dramatic and very harmful to health and it's only a matter of time before technology makes food sufficiently cheap for everyone.
My concern is that if he cuts out dense caloric food, he might get even skinnier than he already is, and that would, indeed, be unhealthy.
I recommend free public transportation
Casteism
The math seriously works out to something akin to a 200 pound man needing to climb ~20 flights of stairs to burn the equivalent of a single piece of white bread. (90-100 calories?). That's a lot of stairs. And that's only assuming his appetite wouldn't increase to accommodate the increased output
Actually exercise reduces food cravings. See this and this. I admit these don't sound like the last word, scientifically, but I have other arguments :
1. Personal experience - being an irregular exerciser, I know both states of mind. The exerciser me yields a lot less to temptations.
2. Comfort food : Lots of people eat because they are depressed. Exercise reduces depression.
3. That's a lot of stairs : The one who exercises knows that a LOT of exercise is required to burn a little extra food. He also knows the effort / pain/ willpower required to exercise that much. The one who doesn't exercise, doesn't know at least one of these. Since it is a lot of stairs to burn the extra bread, the exerciser is more likely to choose to not eat the extra bread.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
No no no and no.
Fat people are not going to lose weight by eating calories. Rice and pasta has very high amount of carbs per g.
I'm not advocating eating chocolate, but trust me, binge eating rice will not help you.
Also, if you absolutely must eat something sweet, ice cream is actually not a bad option. Pretty much any candy you pick will come in at 500kcal / 100g (+/-50kcal), most ice cream will come in around 250kcal/100g, just remember 100ml != 100g.
Another fun fact, sugarfree candy is usually just as bad as the regular stuff, look at the content description, the calorie table will almost always match the regular candy.
Really? The do tell why smoking commercials where banned?
Are all people suddenly mentally ill?
The feedback loop in your brain for stimulus like sugar is very well understood and it's almost impossible to fight; but hey good for you if you haven't been conditioned like about 90% of the young population.
Also props for not understanding anything about the current issue, stay ignorant, stay happy!
At what point did I blame society for the problem?
What I said was society needs to understand the problem and help the people who are in trouble, iff we wan't to fix this issue. Huge difference...
Also, you are really really ignorant, if you think it's a matter of impulse control. Sugar is extremely addictive - think Heroin like cravings. Those of us who grew up with lots of candy are battling an inner demon like you wouldn't believe; and having ignorant people like you telling us to just grow up is again a detrimental to the effort.
As long as you and the rest of society doesn't understand the problem, we as a society can't fix it.
Also, as I wrote, I've dropped 30kg, don't fucking tell me what impulse control is about, you have no idea what hell I've been through.
So yeah, fuck you, but thanks for playing.
I don't count calories but I do watch my saturated fat intake and 1 magnum chocolate ice cream is over 50% of a days saturated fat - some pizza's have less.
I think controlling appetite is the best way to control diet and the way to do that is to eat healthily including lots of fruit and veg.
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There are many factors in obesity.
1. The greatest is willpower. Pure, sheer wilpower. The willpower to eat less, the willpower to exercise.
2. Luck. I happen to have the luck to be able to sleep with a mostly empty stomach. It is surprising how much that helps. I also have the luck that I like biking and live in the Netherlands, where almost everybody bikes. Some people have the bad luck to have a body that gains easy and looses difficultly.
3. Food. I do not mean quantity, that's covered in 1. I mean types. There seems to be some indication that some types of food set the body to gain weight. How that works exactly is not yet known as far as I know. Apparently I don't eat much of them, or I compensate for it sufficiently.
4 and onwards are unknown to me. However, due to the complexity I expect them to be there.
I am 1m96 and weigh 95 kg. My ideal weight according to my doctor would be 88kg. I have dropped from 106kg in 6 months. That was easy, I halved my portion size and upped my bicycling distance significantly.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Consuming sugar doesn't bother me.
It does bother me. Sugar and high-glycemic carbs trigger hormonal changes which trigger overeating in both animals and humans.
What does bother me is consuming all the preservatives in out food, and all the unnatural sweeteners that are included.
Agreed.
I wonder if high fructose corn syrup, calorie free sweeteners, and to a lesser extend, regular corn syrup....
HFCS is uniquely nasty, even more than sugar and other high-glycemic carbs, because it is absorbed more rapidly, metabolized primarily in the liver (as is the fructose in table sugar, only more slowly), often is contaminated by toxic levels of heavy metals, and also is usually contaminated by enzymes used in its production, which have the lovely side effect of continuing to convert starches in the digestive tract into more fructose, and also damage the intestinal flora which are now known to be a vital part of the immune system.
The "calorie free sweeteners" are almost uniformly awful, although some are more awful than others. Pure stevia is the only one with a reasonable safety record, and even that is usually adulterated with much less safe substances such as maltodextrin, sugar alcohols (which trigger moderate to severe GI distress in many people), or silicon dioxide (sand - supposedly, generally regarded as safe, but known to cause lung cancer if aspirated).
try going 2 weeks without any sugar except for naturally occurring sugars in fruits and the like... you'll get your actual sense of sweetness back
Agreed. I've tried it and it absolutely does work, but, beyond just losing a lot of the "sweet tooth" which is really an addiction, one will generally feel much better as well, and one's appetite also will gradually return to normal (most of us who consume excess sugar do NOT have normal appetites, and never will, short of eliminating sugar and other toxic sweeteners from our diets.)
I would say most Americans' health would benefit more by greatly reducing sugar and HFCS, if not eliminating them outright, than by any other single lifestyle change. But in addition to this, I strongly suggest:
We do all these things, and, although I'm still overweight, I'm losing maybe 1-2 pounds a year, and none of us are hardly ever sick, even when exposed to other kids who are.
Nonaggression works!
It's entirely about taking control of your own life. Just stop. I did, and I don't have willpower for shit. Stop letting the meat control the mind: humans are supposed to work the other way round.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.