Conquer Club

But if our genes didn’t change significantly in the last century, why, then, are children getting bigger? No one knows for sure. One likely explanation, however, is the evolutionary mismatch between our genes and our surroundings. Children who end up with obesity were always at the highest genetic risk for that outcome, even if it wasn’t certain to develop, but now, Farooqi says, “the environment is likely unmasking their genetic susceptibility.” The most substantial transformation in their surroundings has been to the food they eat, which in the past was different in its composition and far more limited. Leibel refers to “a revolution in human environments” and notes that our genes haven’t changed “fast enough to accommodate something that’s really an invention of the past 75 years.” The amount of readily accessible food has expanded immensely, making it easier than ever to eat — open a phone app, say, or go to a drive-through. Plenty of Americans can consume as much as they want, whenever they want.

Today nearly 70 percent of what children eat is ultraprocessed food, which the NOVA classification system, a commonly used framework, defines as having been formulated from “ingredients mostly of exclusive industrial use, typically created by series of industrial techniques and processes” — which makes them extremely flavorful. These foodstuffs include things our great-grandparents would not have consumed: packaged chips, energy drinks, ready-to-heat-and-eat meals. They are thought to be an important driver of the childhood-obesity epidemic, in part because they seem to make us eat more. Kevin Hall, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, found that even when meals are matched for calories, carbohydrates, protein, fat, sugar, salt and fiber, study participants who are instructed to eat freely will still, without realizing it, consume an average of 500 calories more a day if the food is ultraprocessed.

“Any kid is going to choose an ultraprocessed food,” says Marion Nestle, an emerita professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at N.Y.U. and the author of “Food Politics.” Nestle traces the deregulation of food marketing to the Reagan presidency and the shareholder-value movement. “After 1980, kids were fair game,” she told me. Corporations began aggressively marketing their products to children, potential lifetime customers who are easily influenced. Ultraprocessed foods appeal to parents too: They’re cheap, last for years in pantries and freezers and require little preparation. “All food companies are trying to sell products,” Nestle says. “That’s the system, and if the system makes kids fat, well, too bad. Collateral damage.”

Over the past few decades, the variety of food items in some supermarkets has risen to more than 40,000 from 7,000. These “modern industrial products should not be recognized as foods at all,” says David Ludwig, a pediatrics professor at Harvard and co-director of Boston Children’s Hospital’s obesity-prevention center. “It’s up to parents and all of us to fight back and not to normalize these.” The A.A.P. urges doctors to “demand more of our government” to modify the food being sold to children. But Barry Popkin, a nutrition professor at the University of North Carolina who has worked with countries on their food policies, remains skeptical that similar regulations could be enacted soon in the United States, like Colombia’s tax on ultraprocessed foods or Chile’s restrictions on them in schools and on advertising. “We need our F.D.A. to be bold,” Popkin says. “We need a food czar who’s tough, not these namby-pamby bureaucrats that don’t really want to ruffle any feathers.”

Votanic wrote:I for one, look forward to the coming transiton from 'carbon-based' to 'silicon-based' with hopeful optimism and yes, even a sense of relief.

Face it, human beings are waay over-rated.

The ability to survive in extreme environments with regard to temperature, pressure, unavailability of oxygen, water, etc. is good reason enough, especially as Earth shifts out of 'bio-friendly' parameters.

But what really intrigues me is the coming end of emotions, ego, and sex. Instead, the new machine entities, will constantly self-modify and re-program for optimal function.
Any incombatibilities or competition between alternate systems will be rectified through logical analysis and orderly system changes and recombinations, if necessary.

I know what you're thinking, but no, I am not a bot myself, nor a paid schill of 'Big A.I.'. When the death-drones come, I'll be sliced up by lasers along with the rest of you,...(lol) but I jest.

No, I'm just another fallible human being such as yourselves (or not?), who recognizes that the 'gig' is up.

Frankly, it is time overdue for the well-worn phrase 'Life, as we know it' to take on new and radically different meanings.

Pack Rat wrote:

Votanic wrote:I for one, look forward to the coming transiton from 'carbon-based' to 'silicon-based' with hopeful optimism and yes, even a sense of relief.

Face it, human beings are waay over-rated.

The ability to survive in extreme environments with regard to temperature, pressure, unavailability of oxygen, water, etc. is good reason enough, especially as Earth shifts out of 'bio-friendly' parameters.

But what really intrigues me is the coming end of emotions, ego, and sex. Instead, the new machine entities, will constantly self-modify and re-program for optimal function.
Any incombatibilities or competition between alternate systems will be rectified through logical analysis and orderly system changes and recombinations, if necessary.

I know what you're thinking, but no, I am not a bot myself, nor a paid schill of 'Big A.I.'. When the death-drones come, I'll be sliced up by lasers along with the rest of you,...(lol) but I jest.

No, I'm just another fallible human being such as yourselves (or not?), who recognizes that the 'gig' is up.

Frankly, it is time overdue for the well-worn phrase 'Life, as we know it' to take on new and radically different meanings.

Evolution of humans to become super computers is unavoidable.

KoolBak wrote::lol: Yeah, Yosh....some of us don't run our lives based on that particular fiction. We manage to raise well adjusted, trim, healthy, happy kids with plain old love, dedication, hard work and family values. Works to keep a marriage solid for 37 years too! Ok....Canadian Whisky is also a tool....

On the actual point (food / crap people raising kids), it is shocking to see what is "normal" out there.

Very, very proud to be in the minority.

Lonous wrote:You can easily look up dozens of billionaires and prominent talking heads, all speaking about the need to reduce population.
It comes as zero surprise that the powers that be want young people to live unhealthy lifestyles and to die sooner than later.

jimboston wrote:

Lonous wrote:You can easily look up dozens of billionaires and prominent talking heads, all speaking about the need to reduce population.
It comes as zero surprise that the powers that be want young people to live unhealthy lifestyles and to die sooner than later.

That’s a dumb theory… cause that isn’t how it plays out.

Fat unhealthy people may die yo her than healthy peeps… but they live long enough to consume MORE overall than healthy people. Not just food… primarily not food; but they cost us more through the burden they put on the healthcare system.

jimboston wrote:Eat less… exercise.

Yeah there is more temptation. Temptation is just that… no one is forcing kids to eat, no one is forcing parents to allow kids to eat junk. No one is forcing parents to make bad decisions at the grocery store. Yes… healthy food options are sometimes more expensive; but it’s still cheaper to cook at home and there are still plenty of of healthy choices that are reasonably priced.

Dukasaur wrote:

jimboston wrote:Eat less… exercise.

Yeah there is more temptation. Temptation is just that… no one is forcing kids to eat, no one is forcing parents to allow kids to eat junk. No one is forcing parents to make bad decisions at the grocery store. Yes… healthy food options are sometimes more expensive; but it’s still cheaper to cook at home and there are still plenty of of healthy choices that are reasonably priced.

Several problems with that.

First, it requires a fair bit of knowledge to know what is healthy. The school system does a piss-poor job of teaching nutrition, and most people get their information from YouTube. Some of it is very good, some of it is full of lies.

Dukasaur wrote:I think many people try to cook healthy, but have no idea what that really entails, and are easily misled by the corporate propaganda.

Dukasaur wrote:Second, eating is very much a social act. If all your friends at school are going to Taco Bell, you're not going to sit in the parking lot eating your homemade frittata Florentine. It may be very, very good, but it's not going to feel better than hanging out with your friends and eating what they eat.

Dukasaur wrote:Third is the time factor. Bottom line, is it takes time to make good food. I actually am a really good cook, and I'm nutritionally very literate, but bottom line is, when I come home after a 12-hour shift, I just don't have the fucking time or energy. I work an average of 11 hours a day, my wife works an average of 13 hours a day. Between the two of us, we cooked twice this week. The rest of our meals were delivery or take-out.

Dukasaur wrote:Even the nature of the take-out has suffered. It used to be, if I didn't make myself a lunch, I would go to the grocery store, get some pickled herring and a bucket of cole slaw. Reasonably healthy lunch, as far as pre-fab food goes. But this week, I was so far behind schedule at work, I didn't even risk taking the 15 minutes to go through the supermarket. I got my lunch at the A&W drive through which is literally next door to the supermarket I usually go to, just to save a few minutes.

jimboston wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:

jimboston wrote:Eat less… exercise.

Yeah there is more temptation. Temptation is just that… no one is forcing kids to eat, no one is forcing parents to allow kids to eat junk. No one is forcing parents to make bad decisions at the grocery store. Yes… healthy food options are sometimes more expensive; but it’s still cheaper to cook at home and there are still plenty of of healthy choices that are reasonably priced.

Several problems with that.

First, it requires a fair bit of knowledge to know what is healthy. The school system does a piss-poor job of teaching nutrition, and most people get their information from YouTube. Some of it is very good, some of it is full of lies.

Is this true? Yeah there might be some debate around the borders of what is “better”… but is there really any question about things that are obviously unhealthy?

Does anyone think eating a box of Ring Dings for dinner is healthy? Does anyone NOT know that fried food in quantity and for every meal is bad for you? I don’t buy this argument.

I’m not even talking about kids… I’m talking about their parents who should determine what the kids eat!

Fruit Corners Fruit Roll-Ups were heavily marketed on television in America throughout the early 1980s. Most spots featured the tag line "Fruit Corners Fruit Roll-Ups: Real fruit and fun, rolled up in one." Later spots featured children innovating in the "Fruit Roll-Up Fun Factory".

The overall marketing theme is that parents can feed their children "fun" processed foods that are based on real fruit.[2] Studies of American mothers have shown that the mothers are surprised at how sweet Fruit Roll-Ups are and how little fruit is present in them. For example, the strawberry flavor contains no strawberries, and the only ingredient derived from fruit is concentrated pear juice.[2]

Dukasaur wrote:First of all, I don't know what Little House on the Prairie you grew up in, but when I was in high school, we made a career out of not letting our parents find out where we were or what we were doing. If they didn't even know where we were, they sure as hell didn't know what we were eating, drinking, and smoking there.

Dukasaur wrote:But okay, let's say we're talking about younger kids who aren't in high school yet and are still under their parent's thumb.

Dukasaur wrote:Let's talk yoghurt. How many billions of dollars have been spent to teach the public that yoghurt is healthy? You're the same age as me -- I'm sure you remember the endless barrage of commercials when we were young teaching us that yoghurt is the reason Bulgarians live forever. (And yes, before you get out your little pick for nits, I'm aware that I'm exaggerating. Bulgarians only live 800 years or so.) And it's not even a lie... yoghurt in its natural state, unsweetened or lightly sweetened with a few little slices of strawberry, is pretty healthy. But corporate America takes something fundamentally healthy like yoghurt and turns it into a toxic sugar bomb. They put a little tiny cum shot of yoghurt into a plastic cup, pound in 50 megatonnes of refined sugar, and wrap it up with some wholesome-sounding label.

Here's the nutritional data for Yoplait's Harvest Peach: https://www.yoplait.com/products/original-single-serve-harvest-peach

What could be more wholesome than Harvest Peach! "Made with Real Fruit!" How could you argue with Real Fruit?!?!

But this tiny little cup harbors 28 fucking grams of carbohydrate, half of which is pure refined sugar! Most of the rest is "modified food starch" (basically a very-short-chain starch almost indistinguishable from refined sugar). This is a cup of death! Obesity and diabetes in such a lovely plastic wrapper! But go out and survey 100 mothers who pack this shit into their kids' lunch, and I guarantee at least 80% will argue that they're packing their kids a healthy lunch! "At least my kid likes yoghurt! Yoghurt is healthy!"

Have you seen "Fruit Roll Ups?" Basically the same toxic sludge that string licorice is made out of, except it's artificially flavoured and coloured to resemble fruits. With just a tiny squirt of real fruit juice so they can advertise that it's "Made with Real Fruit!"

Here's what wikipedia has to say on the subject:

Fruit Corners Fruit Roll-Ups were heavily marketed on television in America throughout the early 1980s. Most spots featured the tag line "Fruit Corners Fruit Roll-Ups: Real fruit and fun, rolled up in one." Later spots featured children innovating in the "Fruit Roll-Up Fun Factory".

The overall marketing theme is that parents can feed their children "fun" processed foods that are based on real fruit.[2] Studies of American mothers have shown that the mothers are surprised at how sweet Fruit Roll-Ups are and how little fruit is present in them. For example, the strawberry flavor contains no strawberries, and the only ingredient derived from fruit is concentrated pear juice.[2]

The overall marketing theme is that parents can feed their children "fun" processed foods that are based on real fruit.[2] Studies of American mothers have shown that the mothers are surprised at how sweet Fruit Roll-Ups are and how little fruit is present in them.[/b]

Until you actually jam someone's face into the ingredient list, most people will tell you these things are basically compressed fruit. Not one in a thousand will be able to list the ingredients without looking them up.

Let's talk about oatmeal. How many billions of dollars has Quaker spent teaching Americans that oatmeal lowers blood sugar and cholesterol? I'll bet you could wake up a wino sleeping on the street, ask him "what do oats do?" and he could recite "they lower blood sugar and cholesterol."

Again, just like with yoghurt, it's based on a truth. Oats in their natural form are mostly fiber, excellent roughage, and they are good for bulking up food, lowering its glycemic index. At least one of the soluble fibers is proven to lower cholesterol and in the long run will improve a variety of health markers.

But turn this healthy product over to the marketing assholes, and you have the oatmeal bar. Here's one: Go Pure Fruit and Oat Bars. Hey, it's says "Go Pure" right in the name! What could be more wholesome than that!

First ingredient on the ingredients list is sugar. A 28-gram bar contains 20 grams of carbohydrate, including a multitude of sugars and short-chain starches. Somewhere in there, I suppose, are some oats. Again, don't take my work for it. Go survey 100 mothers on your street, and ask them if oatmeal bars are a "wholesome snack". I guarantee a majority will say yes. Quaker Oats spends $40 million a year advertising this vile shit, and a good percentage of those ads are planting in your head the idea that these things are healthy. Over a lifetime, that's a lot of advertising clout.

Dukasaur wrote:Most people, I will reiterate, are not biochemically well educated. Our shitty educational system teaches very little real science, and it's not even mandatory after a certain point. Most people don't have a good way to separate the truth from the lies. A lifetime of being taught on TV that oatmeal is healthy, and you really only need to put the word "oat" in something to give it a veneer of good health. I'm surprised they're not selling Quaker State motor oil as a nutritional supplement. "Quaker State ... just one word different that Quaker Oats... it must be good for you!"

Dukasaur wrote:Yeah, you're very smart and everybody else is stupid. I get it.

Dukasaur wrote:You know, there's something I've learned investigating safety complaints at work: If one guy trips coming up the stairs, he's probably a klutz. If ten guys trip coming up the stairs, maybe there's something fundamentally wrong with how the stairs are designed.

If one American was fat, he was probably a gluttonous pig. If seventy percent of Americans are fat, maybe there's something fundamentally wrong with the system. Maybe.

jimboston wrote:You are missing the point.

The thread is not about diet in general and how Americans (and Europeans too for that matter) are generally too heavy.

(...)

Now, do we want to have a thread about the weight problem in America?

Sure. It’s really a different issue but we can talk about it.

jimboston wrote:Causes?
1) Ease of access to food in general.
We evolved in a food insecure world. Our bodies adapted to this. Now we have nearly unlimited access to food.
2) Food Preparation
Until very recently (let’s say last 60-75 or so years) even though we had good access to food we still often needed to do food preparation. Now we don’t even need to do that. Restaurants are more plentiful and prepackaged or prepared foods are available 24/7 in many places.
3) Processed Foods
Your main point. The types of foods we can consume are growing heavier in caloric intake; while not necessarily getting better in their nutritional value. Obvious culprits like refined sugar or high fructose corn syrup exist; and our brains generally send us signals that they love this shit! We evolved to gouge on sugars in the rare instances (i.e. when fruits were ripe) when we had access to these foods… so our brains still tell our bodies to “go for it”.
You add those “empty” calories to all the additives and chemicals we use to color, flavor, and preserve these foods? I don’t even pretend to know how these things can impact your body. Some are probably bad, especially in quantity. Some likely f*ck up how your body processes food. Studies are imperfect or not done… and even when a study shows something like fake sugar messes digestion people still use it.

4) Lack of Exercise / Sedentary Lifestyle
This is probably the biggest single fact IMHO… and it is the thing that has most radically changed within the last 30-50 years.

5) Screens
Yeah… screens are a big factor. They enable us to have sedentary jobs, they encourage us to ‘sit and watch’ instead of exercise. That’s obvious. That said… I watch TV while I walk in the treadmill. There are days I just won’t walk outside because it’s cold or rain or too dark. So screens in this case help by making my treadmill exercise more pleasant it encourages/enables me to walk more.

6) Medications / Pills
I am thinking ADHD, Depression, Anxiety, and even Pain medication. I think this is also a very recent phenomena. I think these meds can be beneficial to individuals in very specific circumstances and when properly and regularly monitored. That said, IMHO they are all over prescribed and once prescribed they tend to continue being used past the point where they may be necessary.
7) Shame
Shame is good. We used to shame people when they “did bad things”. People had to go to the Welfare Office to get their check… now they get an EBT card and there is no shame so they are happy to be on Welfare their whole lives. I can find other examples where lack of community “shame” leads to negative behavior.
(...)
I’m not saying we should scream “fatty” at every kid who is overweight… but I do think we should stop letting people lie and pretend that being obese is “just who they are” and “completely out of their control”.

So in summary Duk.

Yes… I agree there are societal factors that make gaining weight easy. I agree there are conditions and circumstances that may make losing weight hard. I agree that processed food and the greed of food corporations is one of several factors.

jimboston wrote:At the end of the day you are a human being with self will. As such you can DECIDE to eat another Twinkie… or you can decide to go for a walk.

Dukasaur wrote:
Here's where I really have a problem:

jimboston wrote:At the end of the day you are a human being with self will. As such you can DECIDE to eat another Twinkie… or you can decide to go for a walk.

Yeah, you can make that decision. Once, twice, maybe a thousand times.

But a good outcome depends on making the right decision for an infinite number of times. And will power is not infinite. Eventually you will succumb to the pictures of doughnuts that stare at you every time you go for a coffee. Eventually you will get tired and skip the walk.

Studies prove that will power just can't hold out forever. If you're strong-willed, you will last longer, but as long as your environment hammers you with temptation at every juncture, you will give in eventually.

Dukasaur wrote:I'm a former smoker. I'm more than 14 years smoke-free, and I'm very happy with that, but I'm not slapping myself on the back and pretending it's because of my superhuman steel will.

Dukasaur wrote:If I still lived in the world of the 1960's, with an ashtray in every room of every house, with people smoking at work, in hospitals even, in theatres and churches and grocery stores, with cigarette ads in every magazine and on every TV show, I would have relapsed by now. My non-relapse success depends very much on the fact that nowadays there are few opportunities for relapse. When I pass someone smoking, that sweet smell still calls out to me. But I keep walking and in a couple seconds the temptation is (literally) left behind. But if I was in a movie theatre with someone continuously smoking beside me, would I hold out for two hours? Maybe. Maybe the first, second, third time. Maybe the hundredth time. But the day would come when I would be tired and depressed and that longing would be too much to bear...

Dukasaur wrote:So, yeah. I'm happy that I have not had even one cigarette for more than 14 years, but I don't pretend it's my iron will. Largely it's because moments of temptation are few, far apart, and brief. And it's public policy -- coercive public policy, that you hate -- which delivered to us this world where we don't have to be bombarded with temptation all day, every day.

Dukasaur wrote:With food, not so good. Periods of temptation are more frequent and longer in duration. Plus, food is more insidious because unlike cigarettes you can't pledge never to go near it ever again. At some point you will have to eat. If you're having four ribs, why not six? There's 20 on a rack, and the wife will only eat 3, so if you pledge to only eat 4, that leaves 13 ribs that you have to wrap up and put in the fridge before temptation gets the better of you. Or me, or whoever we're talking about.

Anyway, these things are tested in controlled experiments. Some people resist temptation better than others, but nobody is foolproof. Build a world where there's a cheeseburger literally on every corner, and people will succumb sooner or later.

I haven't said much about your point about exercise, but I will say a couple things.

One is that the world's healthiest populations don't, as a general rule, spend a lot of time seeking out exercise. They just live in a world where cars are few and walking is considered normal.

The second is about a comment I heard on the radio the other day, a talk show about a completely unrelated topic, which stopped me in my tracks. Don't even remember what the subject of the talk show was, but at one point the guest said, "we lived in a crappy neighbourhood back then, so I couldn't let my kids play outside." It was like a gut punch to me, because this wasn't some crazy person. It was a fairly normal, well-adjusted successful person, and she thought the rules of life were such that playing outside is something that we can only allow in nice neighbourhoods. It kind of blows my mind, but this is what our society had degenerated into, where people are so disconnected from their communities that they think normal social interactions are a dangerous thing (except in secure, sanitized gated suburbs.)