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Fat Logic

Emily's Cat said:
Hmm. Do you believe that a person can eat say, 5000 calories a day in nothing but protein and gain weight?
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That's a special case as the body has limited capacity for burning protein for energy (strictly speaking, a limited capacity for excreting the nitrogen content of protein). A pure protein diet would lead to death by starvation, no matter what the theoretical calorie content.
 
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GlennB said:
Around $4 per day per person, long-term? Easy, though many might find it dull unless they're making an effort with herbs and spices and preparation.

This is usually the point where someone says "but a small jar of paprika is $2!" and someone else says "you just buy it once and it last months" and the reply is "how can you afford to stock your larder with such things *and* eat when you only have $4 per day" then we get "but in reality nobody hands you $4 each day for groceries, there are times when you get paid and have a stash of money" and so on.
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Too true. It's a good thing we don't have the same standards for other stuff we have for food. I am perfectly free to buy the cheapest socks that fulfill my need not to have naked feet.
 
marplots said:
Too true. It's a good thing we don't have the same standards for other stuff we have for food. I am perfectly free to buy the cheapest socks that fulfill my need not to have naked feet.
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Luxury! Eee, when I were a lad we had none o' these namby-pamby socks [insert endless standard jokes here] :)
 
GlennB said:
Luxury! Eee, when I were a lad we had none o' these namby-pamby socks [insert endless standard jokes here] :)
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While the term "third world" is not PC, and even "developing nation" frowned upon as denigrating, one can still get the idea across by saying, "largely sockless."
 
On the subject of Gary Taubes, the following thread had some pertinent comments by Blutoski on the subject. Following the link also gets you to other posts by Blutoski on the subject, which are also worth reading.

blutoski said:
I also just located an old review by another person whose competence in this subject matter I regard as quite strong: Dr. Yoni Freedhoff.

[Book review: Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat]
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Very good review.. I think he really hits home in the 2nd paragraph:

Furthermore, I also agree that carbohydrates, more specifically the refined highly processed ones, contribute dramatically to both obesity and chronic disease and their reduction may well have a role to play in most folks' weight management efforts, and that a myopic view of dietary fat as causal to chronic disease and obesity has likely in and of itself, by means of a consequent dietary shift to carbohydrates, contributed dramatically to the rise in the societal prevalence of chronic disease and obesity.
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mike3 said:
So can you get, say, 2500 calories/day on less than $120 per month per single individual? If so, how?
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Start with (bulk, dried) beans and rice. Food prices vary from place to place, but where I live you could get that many calories from beans and rice for under $30/month. You might be able to get that many calories for closer to $20/month by making very simplistic homemade bread.

It's possible to get that many calories with that much money. But there are a lot of other relevant factors, such as nutrition, taste, preparation time/difficulty and so on.
 
Homemade bread is very time consuming and only saves money if the baker is already unemployed. Same with dried beans, but less so. Home cooking is very time consuming. I have a food issue that requires me to avoid pretty much anything processed in mass production equipment and its freaking me out how many hours a week I'll need to spend for the rest of my life.
 
Jrrarglblarg said:
Homemade bread is very time consuming and only saves money if the baker is already unemployed. Same with dried beans, but less so. Home cooking is very time consuming. I have a food issue that requires me to avoid pretty much anything processed in mass production equipment and its freaking me out how many hours a week I'll need to spend for the rest of my life.
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I would suggest you look into getting an electric pressure cooker. I cook dried beans and rice all the time and it takes me almost no time/effort. There are also machines for bread that can make things pretty easy (tho' not as easy as rice and beans in an EPC).
 
marplots said:
Add oatmeal with sugar. On the time-saving front, a microwave oven is good, not just for initial prep, but for reheating left-overs.
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Or pasta. It's very easy to cook and costs me about a dollar per 1600 calories.
 
There seems to be a great deal of energy being spent in this thread attempting to show that people can lose weight if they just eat less and move more. I'm certainly not going to argue against that, as it is most obviously true.

However, something I'm not seeing addressed much here is that there is a $160 Billion industry spending approximately $5 Billion/year to convince Americans that they should eat MORE fast food. Counter to the $116 Million spent advertising fruits and vegetables. Every one hour of television, (on most channels) contains 21 minutes of ads offering enticing fast food and crap food, Don't you want tacos right now? How about these crackers? Doesn't a pizza sound good? Crunchy crunchy chips! Our fried chicken is the best! Oooooohhh Ice cream!! $5 Foot longs! And the calorie content of these fast food meals has gone up year by year. Burgers are bigger, the size of the fries gets larger, the pizzas get heavier each year with more toppings and more cheese. (Some of which is due to help and encouragement from our own US Dept of Agriculture: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/us/07fat.html )

Add to that the proliferation of frozen ready meals available at the average grocery. Not only can you get PF Changs entrees, or TGIF loaded potato skins, or name brand pizzas in the freezer aisle, the deli now is filled with cooked and ready to eat meals, almost all of which are designed from a seller's point of view, meaning full of hidden fat, salt and sugar, which people gobble up, that are certainly not “healthy alternatives”, even though it's easy to think that they might be better for you. All of these options get extra end space, extra advertising, and better placement in the store in order to make sure people notice them, because there's bigger money in advertising and more profit for the grocers in selling them vs regular old raw meat, fruit and vegetables. Even good old milk is doing its best to make us all just a smidge fatter by offering all sorts of sweetened and flavored products.

I don't think too many people would argue that the better funded campaign usually wins in this country. As I said above, there's almost Five Billion Dollars being spent advertising fast food. Not counting the chips, crackers, sweets and snack food industry, which are all pushing their own version of high calorie low nutrition snacking.

The question is, How does one counter this campaign? Are we really expecting the 70% of our population that is overweight to just individually choose to ignore this constant barrage of messaging and suddenly choose healthy eating? And succeed? Can someone provide an example of any time Billions of dollars were spent on any kind of messaging campaign, but the majority of Americans ignored it or chose against it?

Again, fast food is a $160Billion industry. The entire weight loss industry, including diet books, diet drugs, and weight loss surgeries is $20Billion.

Where and how is this Eat Less Move More message to compete with that?

I'd also like to add that we are working longer hours and have less free time, and that constant budget cuts and higher testing requirements in our schools are making more and more schools reduce PE and recess time, as well as eliminate some after school sports.

Numbers above taken from here:
https://www.franchisehelp.com/industry-reports/fast-food-industry-report/
http://www.fastfoodmarketing.org/
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/100-million-dieters-20-billion-weight-loss-industry/story?id=16297197
 
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Jrrarglblarg said:
Homemade bread is very time consuming and only saves money if the baker is already unemployed. Same with dried beans, but less so. Home cooking is very time consuming. I have a food issue that requires me to avoid pretty much anything processed in mass production equipment and its freaking me out how many hours a week I'll need to spend for the rest of my life.
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I got Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day several years ago, and it totally changed the way I bake. I wholeheartedly recommend their books, if you are interested in baking your own bread, but don't want to spend hours a day at it:

http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/
 
As a person essentially allergic to processed food I'm here to report that it's very difficult to avoid them without starving to death. Processed foods are mummified with sugar, corn syrup, fats both saturated and not, salt in absurd quantities and flavor enhancers such as MSG, yeast products and the things I'm sensitive to, garlic and onion.

What this means is we, eaters of modern packaged processed foods, have
1) become accustomed to having access to easily prepared foods loaded with things our bodies need much less of than we get;
2) become accustomed (and/or oblivious) to the level of flavor saturation in packaged foods.

Eating "right" is actually a lot of work and doesn't provide the level of yum of eating "wrong."


{edit to add} the word "mummified" above was not my intended word, but I'll leave it. I was aiming for YUM ified but the word got autocorrected.
 
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