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wildcard06 said:
If you don't think America has an eating disorder, check out the NHANES II study that showed American kids obesity has doubled in the Last ten years.
If you don't believe that, go to your local Wal-Mart and take a look around.
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One of the reasons for this is the silly asertion, made first in the late seventies, that he reason for poor health and obesity was not sugar and heavy starches, as thoguht for centuries before, but fat. This lead to the 'low fat' craze.
Now, you might not know it, but fat satiates. That means it fills you up. Add to this the fact that in order to make a low fat food more appealing you have to add sugar (if it isn't appealing it doesn't sell), and you have an increase the the average calorie count for americans of . . . some stupid number.
So we're getting fat.
True, higher fat intake menas more colesterol and a greater risk of heart desease. But if you drop your fat intake down to near nothing, while increaseing your sugar and other carbohydrate intake (as Americans have done), you are going to, on average, get fat. Once you're fat you have an even
higher risk of heart desease than you would have if you had stayed on the high-fat diet to begin with.
Not only this but obesity has special risks in children. If a person is obese durring puberty things turn out decidedly different. in addition to changing the way their body retains fat for the rest of their lives, more fat means more estrogen. This means obese girls have an accellerated puberty which increases their risk of ovarian and cervical cancer (though it usually leaves them more fertal (except in cases of morbid levels of obesity). Obese boys, on the other hand, have a retarded (slowed) puberty and will have softer jawlines, less body hair, less height, less testosterone, and more pectoral fat (man-boobs) for the rest of their lives. In cases of morbid obesity in males durring puberty their voices may not even change.
If that doesn't scar you this should. There is a sort of ban on studies involving the causes for different sizes in the most distinguishable male feature, so it's hard to find raw data on that. But a lady friend once told me that she only goes after tall skinny guys (who I noticed happened to have strong jawlines as well) because it invariably indicated the presence of certain other qualities. I've asked around a good deal since then (some people are very open, like the SCA for example), and have gotten nothing but confirmation. It's just anecdotal, but still should emphacize the risks of childhood obesity.
Declaring that people need to go on low-calorie, low-fat diets is great. The only problem is the third word in that sentance. If you realistically want people to stick to such a diet you must make it satisfy them, which will be very difficult.
Me, I'm overweight. I was obease, but I've been on somethign close to the atkins diet for about a year. I lost forty-five pound (~20kg) before I recently got sick and dropped out of ketosis (a differnt metabolic state) because I was eating things that got me healthy faster and put bacteria back in my stomach (anti-biotics).
Of course, if I come off this diet I will gain back much of the weight I've lost, but I don't plan on doing that. The most I will do, when I get back under the BMI that says I'm 'overweight', is bring back some fruits, some of the richer vegatables I've been avoiding (not potatoes, not ever again), and perhaps true-whole-grain breads now and then.
No sugar, no refined-grain breads, no pasta (there is 'Atkins friendly' pasta, but it is mostly dietary fiber so you shouldn't eat to much of it). I can live with that.
Quote:
Gandalf Parker said:
Actually, the fact that this conversation is happening at all means that you guys dont know what MSG is. Its a food additive that the FDA approved to add to foods because it had "no harmful side effects" other than making people want to eat more of the product. Now its in everything in the US, especially snack foods and fast food. Do a google search on MSG obesity FDA
Scarey reading
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I don't know, man. Around here you can't even buy MSG anymore. I know, because I used to keep the stuff around. They used to sell it as 'seasoned salt' in the spice isle. What you now find with the same lable is a mix of spices consisting mostly of pakrika.
I seriously doubt it's still in anything.