Diet, Nutrition and SupplementationPost here for supplement reviews or nutritional advice. If you're trying to get "ripped abz" THIS is where you should be.
This article has it all, including some actual reasons for the obesity epidemic, but neverless, it shifts the blame toward evolution... Nice.
From all that I've read about evolution, it takes longer than a mere generation or two to show any significant genetic changes. However, this is just the implied message of the article; that it's not really your fault. You were bred this way, you energy conserving machine, you!
The article does go into a little bit about how our bodies have evolved to conserve energy, just in case we need the energy later. However, cheap and calorically dense foods have surplanted the better choices in our pantries and now we just store too much energy that we never need later. It's like retiring with millions at age 95.
"Research into obesity should be given top priority to have any hope of combating the global pandemic."
-- Arne Vernon, president of the International Association for the Study of Obesity
Do we need to research why a fish dies when it's pond dries up? It can't breathe! What a fish uses gills for was investigated hundreds of years ago. Put more water in the pond and move on.
"We know this is not about gluttony -- it is the interaction of heredity and environment."
-- Kate Steinbeck, co-chair of the 10th International Congress on Obesity, in Sydney
Perhaps, but food was cheap and (and there was plenty of crap (so fossil records indicate)) in the 50s and 60s. Not so many fat people, then. What else has changed? Somehow, my Grandpa stopped eating after two Moonpies.
Perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, this is the first time that we've had to face the dilemma of too much food, too many calories, a sedentary lifestyle, and a general lack of responsibility for one's self.
How much more study on the physical causes of responsibility do we need? Or, do we take a better look at the possible causes? Laziness, lack of self control, and a refusal to blame one's self for a problem?
The studies into individual physical interactions between molecules are done, at least as far as how fat gets stored. But, what's causing this malaise that simply allows us to continue doing this damage to our bodies without much care for the consequences? Is it cultural, nutritional, or environmental. I have my own ranking, but the former sentence is pretty much the order that I'd guess. Do they work, hand in hand, each making things worse? I'd guess "yes." A vicious circle.
Quote:
[Arne] Vernon said millions of obese people were being discriminated against and stigmatized, and often denied access to medical services.
Now, isn't this part of evolution, once again? If you're on the evolutionary side of things, wasn't it in early man's best interest to shun members of the group that ate more than their fair share of the grub(s)? Evolution then, evolution now. If you believe in that sort of thing...
By the way, if someone stumbles across the Religious Right's counter to this, shoot it my way. God designed us, but he also gave us free will, so their side might be equally entertaining!
Actually, it is evolution's fault. People have chosen to sit on their fat ass and eat donuts all day and evolution hasn't caught up to this lifestyle and it's making us fat! Damn evolution!! Oh well, guess we have no choice but to keep stuffing our faces and wait for evolution to catch up, there's nothing we can do really.
Short of, you know, eating right and exercising, but why fight nature?
__________________
I do not workout. I TRAIN.
I do not eat. I FEED.
I do not sleep. I RECHARGE.
My greatest fear in this life is the fear of being ordinary.
It's because we've embraced the homosexicals and their lifestyle... That's why God sent down this plague of french fries and Cheetohs to make us all obese!
Wow, this really seems to be the new trend. Finding "causes" for obesity aside from the obvious fact that people are obese because they stuff their faces with crap all day and don't get any exercise. It's viruses and bacteria... it's the consequences of evolution.... blah blah blah.
I am of the opinion we need to be reluctant to use fat and fault as cause and effect. I am aware that it took me three decades to arrive at a plan that put obesity behind me (Lost Dog, that is figurative, not literal). Again my friends who still fight obesity do not strike me as blame-worthy. I think that what I read and have learned on this site would be useful, but not all people are able to use heavy duty exercise as one of their tools in fighting obesity. Once that fat has been gained it seems to have all sorts of ways of hanging on (that is literal, damn it). The entire fast food industry (which my obese friends eschew, both literally and figuratively) bears a great responsibility for obesity in the US, going on to the whole world. Rob
It took me 35 years of being fat before I made my lifestyle change.
I agree that it's hard, once you're fat, to get thin. But, it takes time to get fat and it takes time to get thin again. Even without heavy duty exercise, they can get thin. It takes eating less that we do, perhaps, but it's still doable.
Fast food places aren't blameless, but it's hardly their fault. Walk the aisles of a grocery store and view all the varying degrees of food products that are part of the problem. But, in the end, it's the people who buy them and eat them that are causing their own problems.
But, you have to look at why someone would continue to buy something (and eat it) if it's that bad for you. Is kidding yourself enough to set your conscience free?
Viscious circle. Parents give their kids crap (and too much of it). They develop bad habits that are definately hard to break. They grown up fat, have their own kids. Repeat.
This is a societal issue that keeps us from combatting our urges to eat all that energy and store it for a need that will, likely, never come.
going places other than the states really gives a little perspective on serving sizes. you order a soda in a resteraunt and it's 200ml...that's like a cup of soda. you pay roughly $2 for it and you don't get a refill. Go to a 711 and get $2 worth of soda. throwing caution to the wind and getting a fountian drink you can get about a gallon of coke for $2 . the list goes on w\ that sort of thing.
if you get bored, google serving sizes and search around a little bit. a quick pdf that came up for me was a family size bottle of coke in the 1950's was 26oz. A standard single serve "I want a coke" bottle of coke today is 16oz.
I have a very difficult time having sympathy for someone that's grossly overweight. Some people genuinly have a hard time. Everyone is deserving of support. But 99% of being of a respectible weight is eating DECENT, not good, decent and excersises a little bit. You don't have to bust nuts but getting off the sofa for an hour a day and taking a walk, playing in the park, whatever, being physically active for 1hr of the day. Do whatever you want (or have to do) for the other 23.
G, when I went to Germany, my sister and I went to McD's. They did have a large fry, but it was smaller than a medium, here. The large coke was 20oz, a far cry from the 32 to 44 oz sizes that you'd get at one in the US. Most people were eating the cheeseburgers and hamburgers, not the Big Macs, too.
yeah, the fast food is a little more robust than the sitdowns. but as a comparison I brought my german buddy on base on the way to a course and got him a "King Sized" whopper meal. I thought his eyes were going to bug out of his head when he seen the drink . it was like a 5min debate on getting him to get a re-fill on the way out the door too. it's just like you say...the gluttons probibly eat less than the avg person here. when my wife was in the hospital supper was two pieces of bread, two pieces of cheese, some carrot salad, and a glass of hot tea. and I walk in finishing up my (last) slize of pizza She still gives me shit about that.
IMO at some point we lost the "treat" idea. Eating a candy bar or getting an ice cream, or 90% of the things that we REALLY shouldn't be splurging on, hell even soda...are no longer something special. We're not loading up the family to go in town and stopping at the soda fountain. Mabey having ONE moon pie for desert at lunch and no other time ever, ever, ever, ever. Ahh well. time for a feeding.
Once again, it's not your fault that you're fat
. the list goes on w\ that sort of thing.
. it was like a 5min debate on getting him to get a re-fill on the way out the door too. it's just like you say...the gluttons probibly eat less than the avg person here. when my wife was in the hospital supper was two pieces of bread, two pieces of cheese, some carrot salad, and a glass of hot tea. and I walk in finishing up my (last) slize of pizza 
She still gives me shit about that.
Linear Mode
