“Far too few Americans,” declares the center’s Web site, “remember that the Founding Fathers, authors of modern liberty, greatly enjoyed their food and drink. … Now it seems that food liberty - just one of the many important areas of personal choice fought for by the original American patriots - is constantly under attack.”
STAY THE COURSE!
Because clearly, eating a steady diet of potato chips is right enshrined within the constitution. Sure, people should be allowed to pig out if that’s what they want to do. But there still should be public education about health so that people can make their own informed choices.
Interesting, I didn’t know the obesity jump started around 1980. What the hell happened then?
Video games.
Shit, that’s a good one. Hmm.
I wasn’t being entirely serious. It was more of a riff on those groups who claim video games are responsible for all the ills in modern society.
I believe the increasing levels of obesity are due to: an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, at home and at work, and; the large amount of processed foods in a typical diet.
High Fructose Corn Syrup was introduced as a sweetener to replace sugar in the mid-to-late 1970s and started taking off in the 1980s. It’s a much cheaper ingredient (largely due to tariffs on imported sugar and farm subsidies to the growers of corn). It’s now in almost every sweetened food product in the USA (which is almost everything).
There’s a lot of controversy about whether it’s actually bad for you or not. (Enough that there are food-industry-sponsored research firms / web sites / etc to spread propaganda about why it is not bad). For my own part, I feel much healthier after severely cutting my intake of HFCS – though this came at the same time as I got more serious about physical exercise, too.
Europe uses a lot of processed foods too, but also tends to use actual sugar rather than other sweeteners like HFCS. It would be interesting to see an obesity comparison between somehow “similar” cities in the USA and, say, Germany or Spain.
Europe’s having obesity problems too. I remembered seeing this article not too long ago, which summarizes the state of things there as compared to the U.S.
Whether or not corn syrup is bad for you or not (and I think that the evidence points to it being not the best thing in the world), sugar tastes a lot better. If you have a Beverages and More in your area, go buy a six pack each of mexican Coke and american Coke. Mexican Coke is made with cane sugar, and you can taste the difference (the aftertaste is more like table sugar, and less like sweet slime).
Reaganism!
Oh, no, what Jon said. He’s right.
I think the problem is restaurant portion size sliding upwards and bringing the stomach-sizes of plate-cleaners with it. Fast food restaurants have given out increasing amounts of french fries over the last twenty years in particular.
I never heard of this “high fructose corn syrup” you people are talking about but it sure sounds scary. Unless it has more calories than regular sugar it shouldn’t affect obesity, though.
I think portion sizes are an issue, too. But at the same time I don’t think big portion sizes by themselves would be so bad if the actual food weren’t inherently uhealthy.
I spent about 6 weeks in South Korea, a country that is also starting to have obesity issues (but not as badly as the USA). It’s tradition in Korea to have these dinners that are huge, and you’re just not expected to eat all the food. If you’re at a restaurant, the rest probably gets fed to dogs or something. That’s been a constant for a long time, but Korea started seeing obesity in the mid-to-late 1990s (perhaps as the amount of processing done to food has increased, or who knows).
A while back Geryk pretty much beat me silly on corn syrup; it’s no different than an equivalent amount of sugar.
I’ve heard that argued, but I don’t really believe it. One of the main arguments is “it has the same amount of fructose as sugar”, which is not strictly true, as there are grades of HFCS that are 85%+ fructose. Also… there’s more to the substance than just fructose/glucose.
I know more than one doctor who stays away from the stuff…
I think the rise in obesity in America comes in part from basic laziness (we’re pretty spoiled) to the high amount of stress in our competitive culture.
As I’ve gotten older and my activities have changed from working and playing in physical jobs to, as it was said, sedinary high stress marathon jobs.
For a while I was fatty, about 50 pounds over my ideal weight (250) my lifestyle continued to be as it is now until I realized exactly how much energy I seemed to lose and that I couldn’t do what I used to in terms of strength and physicality (from a play with children point of view).
That’s when I decided to go back to my previous physical activity through the gym and redevelop my cardio and energy levels, 2 years back.
I haven’t changed my eating habits, and because of my stress levels now, tend to eat smaller meals than I did when I was younger. And I’m just a few pounds above what I consider in good physical fitness and I have all the energy I need and more do to what I want (dancing, running, wrestling around with kids, taking them hiking, fishing, etc) and don’t worry about my diet one bit (outside of what normally I don’t like). The most potent fact I have of this is I am not developing the normal ‘aches and pains’ of being older that my weightier friends have. And while I maintain that we have all done something younger stupid or sportswise that we don’t have equitable physical scars (my knee gave out on me in college) and ‘tender areas’ when we overstress them.
I freely admit this is a biased feeling, but as I see my friends going through the exact same process I did (a few years younger, or older) and their thoughts and habits (eating based on the new “atkins” or “south jersey parisite” :) or whatever they decide is right diet), having no energy, can’t take a punch in the arm, etc. And the ones who have the discipline and support can lose the weight while the ones who are not, have various problems adjusting to it and are generally much more negative.
Side Note: I would like to say my story isn’t common of today’s kids (at least a significant portion) are mostly fatter, earlier because I see kids nowadays don’t like going outside like we used to and all the really killer physical things you can do as a kid (exploring, riding your bike down the dirt roads or by the dock, sports, racing, smear the queer, boxing, all that) their parents don’t have enough time to do with them due to working a million hours. So as parents we are more likely to hold their children indoors due to parental time (not having enough to keep constant attention on the kids) that the possibility of one of yours getting drowned in a canal or molested/abducted are alot more real than they used to be.
Further reading on high fructose corn syrup:
It makes cola taste crappy. So I’m against it anyway.
Basically it seems to boil down to this: Sucrose breaks down into fructose and glucose, and in the process triggers the production of insulin in the pancreas, among other biochemical reactions. High fructose corn syrup may contain the same amount of fructose and glucose, but by sidestepping the breakdown stage, it does not trigger the body’s normal reactions to them. This seems to be where the problems would occur, but not enough research has been done to see what the long term effects are.
Given that it’s already known that HFCS sidesteps these body processes, it would probably be a good idea to avoid HFCS whenever possible.
Yeah I think its the HFCS too. I know plenty of people from Europe and they pretty much have the same poor eating habits as I do. I find it hard to believe that its just that Americans are lazy and eat more unhealthy food. The stuff I’ve seen them eat while over there was just as fried and portions were as big as anything over here. Which I why I think its the HFCS.
When I first learned about HFCS a few years ago I went into a 7/11 to try and find a good drink without it. As i’m one of those people that used to drink soda all the time. To my surprise nearly every drink used HFCS instead of real glucose cane sugar. I think only water, some of the 100% pure fruit juice type stuff, and I think Gatorade (not sure off hand about that though). Everything else, all the flavoured Teas, such as Snapple, Arizona Green Tea, etc. Had Fructose as the first or second ingrediant.
It would make sense why you don’t hear about it much on the news as Coke/Pepsi + plus all their subsidiaries are some of the biggest advertisers.
Yeah I think its the HFCS too. I know plenty of people from Europe and they pretty much have the same poor eating habits as I do. I find it hard to believe that its just that Americans are lazy and eat more unhealthy food. The stuff I’ve seen them eat while over there was just as fried and portions were as big as anything over here. Which I why I think its the HFCS.
When I first learned about HFCS a few years ago I went into a 7/11 to try and find a good drink without it. As i’m one of those people that used to drink soda all the time. To my surprise nearly every drink used HFCS instead of real glucose cane sugar. I think only water, some of the 100% pure fruit juice type stuff, and I think Gatorade (not sure off hand about that though). Everything else, all the flavoured Teas, such as Snapple, Arizona Green Tea, etc. Had Fructose as the first or second ingrediant.
It would make sense why you don’t hear about it much on the news as Coke/Pepsi + plus all their subsidiaries are some of the biggest advertisers.[/quote]
Nantucket Nectars makes a very good Half & Half Tea/Lemonade drink that is sweetened with cane juice. It seems to be in very few stores around here.