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First Signs of Obesity In Some Arctic Groups Have Been Linked To Instant Noodles (sciencealert.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from ScienceAlert: Researchers have noted the first signs of obesity in the native ethnic groups of the Yamalo-Nenets region -- an autonomous district that sits on the coast of the Arctic Ocean in Northwest Siberia. According to local experts, obesity has not previously existed in these indigenous populations, but the first cases are now being reported, and a marked change in diet -- including instant noodles and pasta -- appears to be responsible. The Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug has a population of just over 522,000 people, whose ancestors have survived the permafrost for millennia. The nomadic Nenets and Khanty peoples have been herding reindeer up and down the Yamal tundra -- a 700-km-long peninsula that stretches deep into the Arctic Ocean -- for 1,000 years, with diets heavily based on venison and fish. But that appears to be changing fast, as researchers note the increasing uptake of chemically processed foods, such as instant noodles and pasta, and the addition of sugar, pastry, and bread to their diets. According to Titovsky, these changes -- which have only been occurring over the past few years -- have seen the intake of venison and river fish cut by half.
Nowhere in the article does it mention how many of these villagers were on the constant edge of starvation prior to having access to a more varied diet. It does mention they do shorter foraging routes than they did 25 years ago, but doesn't mention how that would reasonably mean they would starve without outside sources of food. Oh, and then there's the nugget that they are BETTER at digesting carbs and sugars than Europeans, which leads them to eat significantly more..
This article is full of lies and half truths subby!
I don't think that fresh fish and venison are generally regarded to be bad-tasting foods.
Let's have a focus group of 5 years old and see if they prefer Doritos or fresh halibut.
lucm, indeed.
Noodles for nerds?
I'm quite certain there have been plenty of examples throughout history of brilliant late-night inspiration and breakthroughs, fueled by Nerds and Noodles.
Rumor has it Steve Jobs invented the iMac after snorting several lines of ramen seasoning packets...
https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Fat...
"Many of us have long been told that fat makes us fat, contributes to heart disease, and generally erodes our health. Now a growing body of research is debunking our fat-phobia, revealing the immense health and weight-loss benefits of a high-fat diet rich in eggs, nuts, oils, avocados, and other delicious super-foods."
Don't forget your veggies though!!! And there are many plant sources of protein and fat...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Let's have a focus group of 5 years old and see if they prefer Doritos or fresh halibut.
What culture were the 5-year-olds raised in? What foods were they exposed to? Seriously: food preferences and cultural preferences start developing at a much younger age.
Even foods "all kids love" may not really be so. My son hated sweets until he was 3 years old. HATED them. We gave him a piece of his first birthday cake, and he spit it out and literally scraped the remainder off of his tongue with his hands. We never tended to have sweets in the house, so he was never exposed to anything like that before. I think he had the same reaction I do now to regular Coke -- it's so sickeningly sweet that I'm repulsed by it. It's positively unnatural.
My kid instead barely experienced refined carbs probably for the first couple years of his life. I baked at home for him the only bread he consumed. We weren't trying to "hide" sweets from him -- in fact, we offered them to him quite a few times. Inevitably, he'd take a small bite of the cookie or whatever and then put it down. We didn't eat a lot of the stuff either, so it didn't matter to us. One thing his mother really likes though is ice cream, so she kept trying to introduce that, and he'd spit it out.
His favorite foods when he was 2 included things like sauted bitter greens and eating beans basically right out of a can. Oh yeah, and bacon. And just about any kind of meat. But sweets? Absolutely not. Any kind of "chip"? Once he was old enough, we offered, and he hated them. It wasn't until he was 6 or so that he actually started to be interested in things like potato chips, but Doritos would still be summarily rejected.
He simply grew up without a lot of processed foods in the house, so they were unfamiliar and weird to him -- often with extreme and bizarre flavors, so he rejected them.
So weren't we shocked when for his 3rd birthday party he requested cupcakes! Huh? The kid who for years rejected every sweet thing we offered for years? Turns out that unbeknownst to us, his new daycare facility (the first time he had been in regular daycare) served cupcakes to all the kids as a treat on every kid's birthday. So he came to associate cupcakes with celebration, and that was finally enough to overcome his revulsion of things that were too sweet. It was the ASSOCIATION of sweets that made them appealing, not the flavor by itself. (Note that he loved stuff like fruits since he was a baby... it was only the stuff that was a lot sweeter like candy and cookies and cakes that he rejected.)
I'm sure not all kids would be like this, even if they weren't exposed to as many processed foods at a young age. But keep in mind that it's NOT flavor alone that makes processed foods appealing -- it's what they do to your body. They are cheap easy calories, often packaged conveniently with little or no preparation, and they cause metabolic reactions that often lead to overeating (especially stuff like Doritos, which fool your body with flavors that mimic savory stuff but only provide cheap carbs and fats, which leads your body to say, almost literally, "Where's the beef?" and thus encourage more eating....).
If you don't get far enough with processed foods to experience those reactions, the taste alone may not be enough to hook you. Try spending a few months away from the "junk food aisles" and learn to cook things for yourself, and see how much you really miss. Sure, there are a few specific cravings I still may get for the junk food stuff, but mostly I now find the flavors less significantly appealing than "real food."
Yeah, then do the same with booze. Wow, how come nobody has thought of this before? We'll be so healthy!
Alcohol taxes reduce consumption and reduce incidents of drunk driving. There is no reason to believe that a "sugar tax" wouldn't also reduce consumption. Mexico has a "soda tax" and has seen a decline in soda consumption. A 10% tax resulted in a 6% decrease in consumption.
Well it's been around half a century of that diet now. Around 50 million people have tried it and we aren't hearing any complaints from them...Feel free to argue against those 50 million. Rant and rave! Your opinion is surely equal to theirs.
50 million people tried it, and 49.9 million people didn't stick with it. I'd say that pretty much sums up the "complaint" department. Of course, sticking with a diet loaded with saturated fat, salt and red meat will likely lead to heart disease, but hey, at least you'll be a skinny corpse.
If we've learned anything in the last 100 years, fad diets of any kind are a temporary measure at best. What actually works is a permanent lifestyle change, consisting of eating healthy and regular exercise. Arguments for fad diets are not supported when losing weight is simple math for the overwhelming majority of humans(consume less than you burn), and has stood the test of time.
I'm often amazed at the size of servings in the US. When I go out, I usually have 2 courses, either a starter and a main course, or a main course and dessert. But in the US I sometimes struggled to finish a damn starter. When I travel there I usually order a main course and that'll be more than enough for me.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...