Barry Popkin: Why the World Is Fat

Obesity is everyones problem

Sorry, I mispelled the site. noneforyou.net

Obesity is everyones problem

For all of us who have faced the spector of obesity and fought back, check out the book at noneroryou.net Adrian

Meat consumption and Greenhouse gasses

Thankyou Barry Popkin for calling attention to the fact that the lust for meat is adding to global warming. Too many people are afraid to say anything against the meat mafia...especially after seeing what happened with Oprah after she had people on her show exposing the filth and contamination that goes on in slaughter houses.

Rock on Barry!

Meat is an addiction

Yes it is. Animals are raized in factory farms in horrendous torturous conditions. Watch exerpts of "Earthlings" on youtube, if you don't know this already, or if you are in denial. This is just plain WRONG, no matter how one looks at it. And all because of the world's meat addiction.

I am a vegetarian. I am 54 years old, look 40, and have no illness, nor pain. My Doc says my collesterol level is the best she has ever seen (that surprised even me). Am not obsessive about what I eat, (and i do enjoy junk sometimes) but I do know what is healthy and what is not. It really isnt hard to figure out. The typical NA diet is disgusting.

The FDA should re-evaluate what it calls food, because 90% of what is sold in grocery stores is garbage.

popkin on danone board

HI I have never been ona boardof any company. However I was on the advisory council of the Danome Institute, which funded preschool and medical nutrition educaiton in the US during my period on th board's advisory council. This was a foundation and not the company.

barry popkin

The article summary makes sense to me

To me the summary points of the piece make a lot of sense - people and organizations tend to focus on just one thing according to their own self-interest.

As an Adult Diabetic whose lost 10% of his body weight and is now exercising very regularly, and strenuously, I apply the basic principle mentioned at the end - calories in calories out - that's fundamental and if you don't get your waistline to half your height then you're going to have health challenges especially diabetes.

BUT, I also eat a variety of fruit - because of the single minded focus on sugar and then that carried over to fructose people tend to avoid fruit like the plague because they fear fructose.

I also come in as obese on the BMI scale, which I monitor but I understand its flaws and don't worry about where it pegs me - I track the trend of the measurements in relation to other things that I am doing with food and exercise.

I also eat plenty of "fatty foods" in good solid whole fat "healthy" foods - what I call healthy foods at least - meat, milk, full cream yogurt, olive oil, etc etc. I rarely eat junk food, but I do eat lost of good fats.

I eat plenty of vegetables - mostly cooked as that aids digestion and releases things that are important - of course how they are cooked is important in order to not waste nutrients.

I have excellent good cholesterol to bad cholesterol ration, although my total cholesterol is above the optimum point - I don't panic about that I focus on the good cholesterol.

The point I am making is that while you DO have to change your lifestyle and attitude to improve your condition - be that weight and/or diabetes for example - you don't have to become some kind of food but if you have overall simple objectives to guide your choices.

http://www.diabetorati.com

First-hand observation

When I first started delivering mail in the late 1970's, the children on the route were always outside in the summer playing with their dogs, shooting hoops, riding bikes, etc. By the end of the 90's however, the yards were mostly empty. What was the next generation of kids doing? Some of them who ventured out to collect the mail were incredibly enthusiastic about ...their new video games and the high scores they'd spent hours each day achieving. Coincidence?

White Lotus

I don't know why our government feels it's necessary to have nutritional guidelines in the first place. First off, they are very politically motivated. We know that by lowering dairy intake and red meat we can lower heart disease and diabetes in this country, but the dairy farmers and cattle ranchers and their lobbyists won't hear of that.

No government in this history of the world has had dietary suggestions as detailed as ours. Yes, they have them in France, Spain, China, and other countries, but they followed suit after the U.S. came out with their guidelines. China, in it's thousands of years of history never before recommended Chinese people to drink X numbers of cups of water, eat X servings of fruits and vegetables each day and to eat X number of calories per day.

Third, even if you did come up with a set of guidelines that was not politically motivated a one size fits all approach doesn't work. People are different and we live different lifestyles. Michael Phelps eats way more calories than the average american because he burns way more calories per day than the average american. You expect Michael Phelps to follow the nutitional guidelines and eat 2-3 servings of fruit, 2-3 servings of meat, poultry, fish, and dried beans each day?

Nutrition is very complex. A person may consume what a nutritionist considers way too much cholesterol by eating lots of eggs, cheese, croissants and so forth, but if that person does a lot of exercise and burns those calories off, and eats smaller portions than the average person, it doesn't matter.

In the past there have been tribes that subsisted almost entirely on meat. That's right, no veggies. However, research showed that the meat they ate came from animals that subsisted entirely on eating vegetation. That was how they got their B-vitamins.

why change the size of clothes

Some people don't realize that they are getting bigger until they don't fit into their clothes. Therefore I say stop catering to the health esteem and make the public realize that they are unhealthy by not changing the size of clothes. personally it gets on my nerves when I shop for clothes.

Diet freedom

Have we been fooled? We have been taught for decades to avoid fat and eat lots of carbs (fruit, vegetables, whole grain bread). The result: endemic obesity. The problem is that this diet is based on very weak scientific evidence. Could it be that carbs increases the insulin level, which in turn helps the body to store energy as fat? There is enough evidence for this to make the health authorities in Sweden advise diabetics to eat less carbs.

I decided to try out low carb food, which means I didn't have bread, pasta or rice for lunch. To my amazement I didn't get the "post lunch coma", the drowziness at roughly 1.p.m, anymore. Then I tried out this crazy idea to cut the carbs to a minimum and adding large amounts of saturated fat. A couple of days later my pregnant-looking belly was gone. My stomach ailings as well. My weight is slowly decreasing each week. I eat bacon and eggs, whipped or sour cream, meat with fat on, salmon, olive oil and butter. No bread, pasta, rice, potatoes or cereals. The best part: I never get very hungry or craving. I'll check my cholesterol in a month or two. Many people who eat like I do experience lower cholesterol and all in all better health. I feel free, no longer a slave to my appetite. I get to eat lots of great food AND lose weight AND without restraining myself. Reading tip: "Good calories, bad calories" by Gary Taubes, Jimmy Moore's blog "http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/".