The American "Obesity Epidemic?"

[shemp]

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Ok, for me "cheapness" is not a factor. The point is healthy food. I'm not so sure that polysorbate 80 is an essential ingredient in my diet.

"but considering spoilage and storage." Duh? It's easy to make things on the weekend. And you have good stuff for the rest of the week.


jb

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Congratulations. I don't have any dressing in my fridge. I can't remember the last time I walked down a frozen food aisle. In fact, except for some canned fish, spices, and occasionally peanut butter, I don't spend time in any of the aisles. But thank you for the food preparation tip. I asked because I earlier posted a link to an article that described a lot of unhealthy food choices as economically rational-- more energy/$. So, if you were poor...

[Jetboy2]

Let's just say this....

My local poker room remodeled the room and got these super, extra-reinforced, massive chairs around the tables....

Go figure?

[Thremp]

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Ok, for me "cheapness" is not a factor. The point is healthy food. I'm not so sure that polysorbate 80 is an essential ingredient in my diet.

"but considering spoilage and storage." Duh? It's easy to make things on the weekend. And you have good stuff for the rest of the week.


jb

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Congratulations. I don't have any dressing in my fridge. I can't remember the last time I walked down a frozen food aisle. In fact, except for some canned fish, spices, and occasionally peanut butter, I don't spend time in any of the aisles. But thank you for the food preparation tip. I asked because I earlier posted a link to an article that described a lot of unhealthy food choices as economically rational-- more energy/$. So, if you were poor...

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You're big time missing out in the frozen food aisle. Frozen berries at A+++++.

[Blarg]

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shemp/Blarg,

That was exactly my point. The difference between my level of health care and a person living under a bridge are world's apart. Since somehow "Health" is tied into the title of the forum, I was trying to point out that many of the problems that other people in the world suffer from aren't realistic to ascribe to middle class America that cares. I mean if we just take type 2 diabetes cases that are controlled through diet/exercise etc and assume that it could've been prevented for an equally long period with proper diet/exercise etc (a very stretched example), you would see that there would be far less people with that problem. Same goes for the above amputation stats that I linked.

Most "preventative medicine" is really just basic easy things you can do to protect your health. Some of the simple things I saw listed were as mundane as lose weight and make sure to wear well fitting shoes. I don't think these are things that are out of the realm of ez consideration.

Also, on the topic of amputations being rare. To run some basic numbers. There's ~50k-100k people who lose some portion of their lower body each year ranging from a toe to the entire leg. There are 20mil diabetics in the US. This is ~.25-.5% of people afflicted requiring amputation. I'll discard repeat amputees since its a little extreme. If we take the 80% figure posited earlier. It should be 10k-20k people out a pool of 20 million that require amputation each year.

All,

What are your thoughts about the acceptance of fat people in society? Such as plus sized models etc? I find them disgusting. Fat people are gross. I think the efforts to make everyone feel good about "who they are" goes to an extreme in cases like this where people are just ick.

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You can be a diabetic for 50 or 80 years though. Your chance of being one of those .25 to .5% during any one year is small, but you might have a lot of years rolling those dice.

[Blarg]

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Here is an example:

"Ranch Dressing"

I offer 2 examples for "Ranch Dressing", one by Kraft and the other home-made. The original had decent ingredients; the modern (Kraft) version is an abomination.

Kraft version:
Water, Corn Syrup, Soybean oil, Vinegar, Egg Yolks, Modified Food Starch, Salt, Sugar; and now a bunch of stuff like monosodium glutamate, xanthan gum, potassium sorbate, calcium disodium edta, artificial color, polysorbate 60, spice, dried parsley, lemon juice concentrate, lactic acid, and let's not forget the natural flavor added to the end.

Here's the original Ranch Dressing:

- 1 clove garlic
- 2 or 3 pinches of kosher salt
- 3/4 cup buttermilk
- 2 Tbsp lime juice
- 1 Tbsp scallions or chives
- 1 Tbsp Italian parsley or Cilantro
- Black pepper to taste

See what I mean? The food manufacturers are creating fake food. And, those who eat the fake foods are getting fat.

Honestly, I'm not finding, monosodium glutamate, xanthan gum, potassium sorbate, or calcium disodium edta in my local grocery store.

Banned!

JetBoy

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Good point about the weird frankenfood that's put out there. Some of this stuff is derived from plastics and such ... just weird, weird stuff to be eating. When "it's biologically inert" is one of the strong points of something in our food, I'm not too thrilled with eating it.

[shemp]

Once a week I buy a "1/2 flat" of strawberries for $7-$8 at a farmer's market-- that's a lot of strawberries. They dump an extra basket or two on top because I'm a regular. In season I can swap out a couple baskets for blackberries, raspberries, etc. Blueberries slightly different deal. Next?

[Blarg]

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Jetboy: it would be interesting to know which dressing is cheaper (forgetting time), but considering spoilage and storage.

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Ok, for me "cheapness" is not a factor. The point is healthy food. I'm not so sure that polysorbate 80 is an essential ingredient in my diet.

"but considering spoilage and storage." Duh? It's easy to make things on the weekend. And you have good stuff for the rest of the week.


jb

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I'm tired of hearing excuses that cooking is too time-consuming, too. You can make things like chili and sphaghetti sauce and soups and stews and such that will last for months in your freezer, and lots of those dishes are essentially chop, dump in a pot, and stir every hour. Or not even that -- dump it all in a crockpot and come back 6 or 12 hours later. Any fool can do that, and eat an extremely healthy meal, and usually a very tasty one.

And cooking day by day is a snap too. It takes very little time to saute some meat and veggies, and if you bake it, you can basically stick it in a pan and forget about it until it's done, maybe flip something once halfway through. There's really nothing to it unless you get more elaborate -- but who says you have to?

The "I have no time" excuse especially sucks when it comes to kids. If you're not going to give your kid a good balanced meal pretty much every day, you should be sterilized.

[Blarg]

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Here is one thing I could never understand. They say how kids today are unhealthy and out of shape from playing video games, diet, etc.

But physical fitness test have been conducted for along time and there have not been any changes in the athletic ability of children. They can still run and jump and do the same number of pullups etc.

I dont know how this can be if people are really that much more out of shape and unhealthy.

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I remember reading that physical fitness tests for grade school kids started to decline since at least the 50's. I'm curious as to how and why what you read contradicts this.

For my part, anecdotally, I grew up doing a lot of running around outdoors, and so did most people I knew. And I got to almost all of those places on foot or on my bike -- a ride from mom was rare. I find it hard to believe that kids who often get driven everywhere and have the option of video games and unsupervised t.v. watching would get out anywhere near as much. There are only so many hours in the day.

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That's what they told me in one of my "teaching physical education to elementary school classes." The teacher that said this is sorta a big deal in the physical fitness community. He has his doctorate in physical education and takes getting kids to exercise really seriously.

He always would tell us that that the test never really changed over the years. I always thought that was really strange as well.

I have been out in a million schools over the past 4 years teaching/observing/student teacher etc. and I dont think kids are really that fat. I know there are alot of extreme examples but I dont see that many fat kids where I would think man all these kids are fat.

Alot of them dont like exercise as much as they should. They hate going to gym and having to do some exercise(even when it is mostly in the form of a game)

Parents on the other hand is a different story. Adults are all mostly fat obese. Especially where I am from in Eastern Kentucky which is one of the fattest areas in the whole country. I can even tell a difference between where I am from and Lexington, Ky(where I go to school)

I guess alot of the reason is people generally are not as educated and they dont make as much money.

I dont have any evidence or studies or anything. I could email him and ask where he got it and im sure he could tell me. Seems crazy to me also because kids just dont play outside as much anymore.


Maybe children before puberty just have some inherit abilities that is hard to change.

Adults is another

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You should see the mexican neighborhoods in L.A. that I've lived in. Almost everybody is fat, and obesity is so common as to seem like the norm. It's not quite as bad with the young, but a lot of the girls start popping out babies in their mid to late teens, and very rapidly go downhill from there. The "young" stage can be pretty short.

[Blarg]

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Once a week I buy a "1/2 flat" of strawberries for $7-$8 at a farmer's market-- that's a lot of strawberries. They dump an extra basket or two on top because I'm a regular. In season I can swap out a couple baskets for blackberries, raspberries, etc. Blueberries slightly different deal. Next?

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Nice, and lucky. The other berries are far more expensive than strawberries where I live.

[Thremp]

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Once a week I buy a "1/2 flat" of strawberries for $7-$8 at a farmer's market-- that's a lot of strawberries. They dump an extra basket or two on top because I'm a regular. In season I can swap out a couple baskets for blackberries, raspberries, etc. Blueberries slightly different deal. Next?

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Beat: Farmer's market.

I buy frozen berries because they are 1) affordable 2) easy to use. If you want to get/freeze your own there is no problem with that though.

Umm... Ice cream?