It amazes me that this article still pushes the agenda that "fat makes us fat." If there's one thing that hasn't proven out at all, it's that fat makes us fat!
The problem with "low-fat" processed food in particular is that the fat is often replaced with sugar to add taste, but sugars and other high-carb grains are more problematic than fat consumption. Hence skyrocketing obesity.
Eating a low-carb diet and easing off grains (particularly "white" grains) and sugars will help you lose weight. From the article I linked above: "On the very low-carbohydrate diet, Dr. Ludwig’s subjects expended 300 more calories a day than they did on the low-fat diet and 150 calories more than on the low-glycemic-index diet. As Dr. Ludwig explained, when the subjects were eating low-fat diets, they’d have to add an hour of moderate-intensity physical activity each day to expend as much energy as they would effortlessly on the very-low-carb diet. And this while consuming the same amount of calories."
I can also speak from personal experience: I went gluten-free after being diagnosed with gluten intolerance in 2009. In three weeks, I effortlessly shed 12 pounds--12 pounds that had refused to come off previously no matter how much exercise I was doing or how religiously I tracked my caloric intake. I wasn't doing gluten-free to lose weight; I got dragged into it by a diagnosis, so this was a wholly unexpected yet awesome side benefit.
I've since noticed that if I slide back into eating too many carbs and sugars (even gluten-free ones), I start to gain weight again, and I feel groggy and disoriented. As a side effect of this diet^Wlifestyle change, I've also completely been able to drop caffeine consumption--something I never expected. Put simply, I didn't feel like I had been hit by a train when I woke up. Caffeine and energy drink consumption has spiked right along with "low-fat", high-carb diets. Something to consider.
Once 30% of your total caloric intake is in the form of fat calories, genetics comes into play. Apparently, and for reasons no one yet understands, there is a gene marker APOC3 [0] and other apolipoproteins like it [1] [2] that will cause your body to no longer break down all consumed fats, and leading to part of that fat to be "absorbed" instead. However, this only affects around 5% of the population, for the other 95% your "calorie is a calorie" approach is correct, be it fat, carb, or protein.
It amazes me that this article still pushes the agenda that "fat makes us fat." If there's one thing that hasn't proven out at all, it's that fat makes us fat!
Overeating makes us fat. Caloric surplus makes us fat. It's pretty trivial to consume a caloric surplus eating lots of fatty foods. In that sense: fat makes us fat and it's silly to try denying it. It doesn't mean a low-fat diet will make you lose weight, it just means that high-fat diets are going to make you fat.
Insulin does not regulate fat storage, leptin does. Obesity is a complex state and there are no simple answers. A diet that may be best for weight loss in one individual may not be the same diet that is best for another. This seems particularly likely if one of the two individuals is not obese.
The problem with "low-fat" processed food in particular is that the fat is often replaced with sugar to add taste, but sugars and other high-carb grains are more problematic than fat consumption.
They aren't more problematic. Aside from the relationship to cholesterol levels, they are the same problem.
The problems are:
1. High caloric density.
2. *Vanishing* caloric density-- foods that prevent satiation.
3. Addictive flavors and sensations that cause cravings.
Calorie surplus makes you gain weight, and unless you're building muscle it's going to be fat. All Ludwig's experiments suggest (as reported by Taubes, with lazy citation[1]) is that obese people who have just lost 10-15% of their weight tend to have a higher daily metabolism without conscious addition of physical exercise on a low-carb diet, compared to a low-fat diet or a low-GI diet. This in turn suggests it might be easier to maintain calorie balance on a low-carb diet than a low-fat diet (for formerly obese people who have just dieted to lose 10-15% of their body weight).
postcript:
I would also add that lifestyle changes are a factor as well as diet. Addictive foods are more dangerous to someone who has a snacking/forager mentality than someone who plans and eats fixed meals every day.
Your point is great, but could you elaborate on how you read the article as pushing, "fat makes you fat"?
I read it much more as saying that large food companies have developed deep expertise in tuning the quantity of sugar, salt, fat, and texture to make their products bypass our body's natural mechanisms for feeling full.
I think if you're reading this through some kind of paleo/non-paleo lens, then you're missing the point of the article.
You are wrong. Too much energy dense food makes you fat.
Fat will make you fat if you overeat (because the fatty acid molecules from your food will be stored in your fat cells). It's not as easy as "more carbs" = obesity epidemic. There are many more factors, most important being inactivity and overconsumption of food.
The carbohydrate hypothesis is very clearly Bullshit:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.de/2011/08/carbohydrate-hy...
When people go on a low carb diet they:
a. restrict their food intake by restricing their choices (less processed foods if you exclude a massiv part of "
b. increase protein intake (protein has a higher thermic effect than any other macronutrient and drastically cuts down total kcal consumption in ad lib feeding trials by reducing appetite)
You can do something similar with a low fat diet (on which another part of the population will feel better - skewed towards more active and leaner people).
Low carb (whatever that means - not clearly defined) isn't a better choice for your health than a mixed diet with a high(er) protein intake. If it works for you: great.
But that doesn't mean calories don't count and carbohydrates/insulin cause obesity. Nor that it works for everyone.
I have the feeling that you misunderstood the article. It doesn't say that fat makes you fat, instead, it displays the lack of ethics and morality in the food industry when it comes to the obesity problem caused by overconsumption of processed food.
Due to additional sugars, salts, fats, clever advertising and more, they managed to make people eat more of their processed and unhealthy food then necessary, thus causing a diabetes and obesity epedemic (not necessarily because of the contents of the junk food, but because of the amount of it being eaten).
I never understood this article as a cricicism of fat - that word doesn't even appear to often. Instead, it diligently describes the amount of money invested into making people eat more of this stuff even though more of it is not healthy for them. Moralics and ethics aside:
“How can we drive more ounces into more bodies more often?”
While you're right that fat in and of itself does not lead to weight gain, it's the combination with sugar that absolutely, 100% leads to weight gain. Sugar and other high glycemic index foods (eg white bread) causes an insulin spike and puts your body into an anabolic, "building" state in which it will assimilate whatever it has lying around. Usually, if you're eating something with high amounts of sugar, it will also have high amounts of fat (ice cream, cookies, etc). Thus you will have a large amount of fatty acids lying around which your body will go ahead and form into droplets to be stored in adipose tissue. That's how you build fat.
However, if you are in a state of muscular stress, such as after weight lifting, and you eat a ton of glucose - notice I said glucose, not sugar, which contains fructose - and you combine this with a moderate amount of protein and little to no fat, you'll have a bunch of amino acids floating around and this insulin spike will cause your muscles to soak up all that protein and become bigger/stronger/both depending on the type of weightlifting you did with no spillover into adipose fat tissue.
It's this very simple metabolic process that people don't get. Everyone gets all worked up on pointing the finger at fat or sugar or whatever, but this is the "secret".
Btw, for anyone looking to lose weight or put on muscle in a healthy way, check out intermittent fasting, specifically the leangains plan.
'Carbohydrate' is a fine chemical term, but it is not a useful nutritional category. A plate of steamed vegetables and a can of Coke both contain carbohydrate, but they are at opposite poles in nutritional terms. The most useful nutritional term is 'junk food', and the most useful advice for most people is, instead of trying to fine tune the amount of this or that chemical substance, just stop eating/drinking junk food of any kind.
> 12 pounds that had refused to come off previously no matter how much exercise I was doing or how religiously I tracked my caloric intake
This, aside from other potentially valid points you may make, is utter nonsense. The concept of "stubborn weight" simply doesn't make sense.
Your comment as a whole reeks of the pseudoscience that plagues the nutrition field and makes it incredibly difficult to determine fact from fiction when trying to get healthy.
Taubes actually started the mainstream reexamination of fat over 10 years ago with his New York Times Magazine article "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?":
The key point is that it is only very specific varieties of fat that matter for heart disease. It goes in to much more detail than his opinion piece for those looking for more info.
It didn't bother me, though. Most of the article is about attitudes about healthy food in the processed foods industry, and about how that industry is trying to get you to eat more. One or two little mentions about how fat is bad detract very little from the story. It'll take a while to root out 50 years of erronous dietary advice and conventional wisdom.
I think we all share the frustration of research being unable to give us conclusive answers about what works and what doesn't. Seems like good portions of nutritional studies over the past 100 years were either misinterpreted or even influenced by interested parties. We, the consumers, are paying the price.
It's so funny how, over the past couple of years, good-tasting food is now a "conspiracy".
When a Michelin chef meticulously constructs a dish to give you pleasure, he's a creative genius whose dedication to his art is applauded.
But when the people behind Snickers do it to give you pleasure, they're nefarious conspirators trying to manipulate you and keep you addicted.
Yes, people who make food are trying to make it taste better, minimize their own costs, and keep you coming back. Why is this suddenly considered "news"?
(I mean, the article is plenty interesting, it's just the sensationalism of calling it "food engineering", "addiction", etc. that bothers me.)
I do occasionally enjoy pointing out to people that the soda/pop/cola they've bought is a drink designed to disappear. The water is carbonated, so that you do not savour the drink but immediately try to gulp it down. There is phosphoric acid and a surprising amount of sodium, which both make you salivate, so that you briefly feel that you're refreshed -- and then your saliva is depleted so that your mouth goes dry. The other ingredients -- sugar, flavorings, and caffeine -- are essentially the same mixture which makes coffee so popular. The huge difference from coffee is that cola's design allows you to not merely sip at it as part of your morning routine, but gulp it down while you're not even paying attention, then reach thirstily for... presumably another cola.
Exactly. Whenever I see an ad for cola with some variant of 'delicious and refreshing' I feel 'Well, why don't you just drink water? Sure its not delicious but certainly refreshing'. One thing that genuinely does refresh is lemonade; I wonder why that hasn't caught up though.
Thank you, I actually never researched this.
It is different than drinking green tea, where i juggle it inside my mouth, play around with taste then swallow it :)
... "As a culture, we’ve become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing. ..."
Why aren't parents more responsible for their children's health?
As a parent myself, I know how damn hard it is for kids to eat anything consistently, especially "healthy" foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. And our kids have snacks in moderation.
It seems to me that if parents were more "responsible", which is a horribly generalized term, then the food executives wouldn't have private meetings to discuss how to deal with obesity - their products would have adapted to the healthy market.
Parenting is hard. Being a "responsible" parent is harder. Tough shit.
I've not found it difficult to get my kids (2 teenage daughters) to consistently eat healthy foods. Hell, we can't keep fresh fruits and vegetables in the house. A one pound bag of baby carrots lasts about a week, one pound bunch of bananas: about 3 days, a pint of blue berries: About an hour (blue berries never last long at our house). The list goes on, but that's not the point.
I don't think it's really a responsibility thing. I don't know any parent that _want_ their kids eating junk, but fresh fruit and vegetables are actually quite expensive and far more difficult to keep than your average junk snack. That's the hard part: justifying the higher cost and spoilage when you're just barely making the bills.
Most of my childhood was spent right at the government assistance threshold. During the down times, our health increased, and our dit included more fresh fruit and vegetables. During the times above that line, with no assistance, the high cost of fresh produce meant meant that it wasn't around.
So, to answer your question, "Why aren't parents more responsible for their children's health?" Because they can't afford to be. Though there are many factors that contribute to the obesity problem, claiming it's poor parental responsibility is a useless over-simplification.
Btw, I've been parenting for 18 years now. When is it supposed to get hard?
Because they spend 50% of their waking hours in school where it is impossible to monitor exactly what they're eating. Parents do take responsibility for what their kids eat at home. The alarm comes from schools marketing unhealthful food to them when we can't be there to ensure they make good choices.
That's quite the red herring. The same argument could be applied regarding children smoking cigarettes, but I presume* that you don't think that the doors should be thrown wide open to kid-focused tobacco advertising because parents should be "more responsible for their children's health".
You do realize that you're saying "tough shit" to the children too, right? You know, those whose outcomes are the whole point of these discussions? They're ultimately the ones who have to deal with the consequences the most, and for some reason dismissing their stake in this with "you should have thought about that before you decided to have irresponsible parents" doesn't seem to hold much water.
Note that I'm not making a point for or against regulation of advertising unhealthy foods to children, but dismissing the comparison to tobacco with "parents should be responsible" is beyond silly.
*If my assumption is wrong and you are actually in favor of completely allowing the advertisement of tobacco to kids, then never mind, disregard this comment.
Look's like I'm having humble pie for dinner tonight ... hopefully Swanson's.
Our poll used a unique design to get at what is actually happening in the life of a "target child" in each household. We supplemented their responses with more than 800 that came in when we asked parents, through NPR's Facebook page, to describe their own "crunch times."
The most striking finding is that U.S. parents "get it."
When we asked a parent or other principal caregiver in our poll how important it is that their child eats and exercises in a way to maintain a healthy weight, more than 9 in 10 said it was important — and most said it was "very important."
But all too often, there's a disconnect. Despite good intentions, it's not happening. [1]
None of this stops us restricting cigarettes to adults only and banning smoking in school, and it shouldn't stop us placing the same restrictions on junk food.
"The snack that Dunn was proposing to sell: carrots. Plain, fresh carrots. No added sugar. No creamy sauce or dips. No salt. Just baby carrots, washed, bagged, then sold into the deadly dull produce aisle."
Ha, I've actually been doing this since I was a teenager. It's really fantastic for managing junk food cravings, which arise not because I'm hungry, but because I just like to have something to chew on while I work (especially while programming). A one-pound bag lasts me about three hours and is more-or-less guilt-free.
I'm curious how many pounds per sq. inch carrots require to chew. The article pointed to 4 as the magic number.
I wonder if there's a way to engineer healthy food to taste better without actually adding any ingredients. Maybe through bio-engineering or the like. Or maybe injecting them with air or drilling out little holes.
People want to blame others for their problems. Whether it's junk food, drugs, joblessness, etc. The fact is you can't get fat if you don't consume the calories. Everyone I know who has restricted calories has lost weight.
I was 210, and lost 70 lbs by restricting my caloric intake (by eating vegan). I ate sugar during this time. I ate carbs.
Every single person I know who's overweight simply eats too much. They also are the first to tell you that its not as simple as eating too much. It is.
The human body has mechanisms for making you Hurt Real Bad when you don't have more calories coming in then going out. Maybe your ancestors had more reliable access to food resources and didn't have to develop these responses. The human population on this planet is incredibly varied. Good for you that you and the people in your social network do well following what you describe as a calorie-restricted diet.
The self-satisfied responses to your N=1 sample size study, just because it validates the commonly accepted nutritional orthodoxy is what makes me fear for the public policies that come out of this debate.
Over the past week or so I've seen a lot of food and diet related articles make the front page, and in the comments everyone is going on about how great their favorite diet is and how the science proves that it is the most effective way to lose weight. None of these people show any evidence however that their weight loss came from anything other than calories out > calories in. It's refreshing to see at least a few people like yourself who believe otherwise.
Out of all of the articles that I've read regarding weight loss, none seem to refute that: lowering calorie intake, and some moderate exercise will result in healthier body.
If you want to reach a certain aesthetic then that's fine, but as far as I know the "obesity problem" is more about a persons health and well being, not being aesthetically pleasing.
So we can sit here and point fingers at what diet is best or whether or not we should cut fats out of our diet, but at the end of the day the true issue is simply people do not have the will to exercise, and they either do not have funds or the will to eat a healthy amount of calories.
Silly: spoonfeeding junk-food CEOs facts about obesity, in the vain hope they'll take their share of responsibility. What, did anybody imagine they didn't know they sell the food equivalent of crack to our kids? They're not idiots; they make money doing this, and are responsible to shareholders.
I think they find plenty of other things to think about, and they are so removed from the consequences of their actions that they can easily avoid the truth. They just keep those graphs moving up and to the right, mouth some platitudes about "an appropriate part of a balanced diet", and keep cashing those paychecks.
People can avoid thinking about human costs when they are stepping over bums on the street. I have no doubt that they can do it from the 33rd floor of an office building.
Responsible to their shareholders to avoid the deluge of lawsuits that will come; it will be like tobacco, you can see the tide turning. That was their chance to change course.
Where is any mention of the disastrous consequences of the USDA "food pyramid" which has been drummed into children at school for decades, perfectly tracking the obesity "epidemic", and which promotes an obesity-causing high-carb, low fat diet.
"
small but crucial move: the industry should use the expertise of scientists — its own and others — to gain a deeper understanding of what was driving Americans to overeat.
"
LMAO, they probably employ dozens of scientists trying to figure how to get people to eat more. Could the speaker have been any more clueless? He would have been better off pushing some solution that had been user tested not to hurt sales. E.g. use Stevia instead of sugar, cost goes up 5%, but sales rise to match as you capture some dieters you wouldn't otherwise or something. Instead he told them to research getting people to want less of their product.
Yes, they sit around in smoke-filled rooms scheming about how to make kids fatter and fatter. They in fact would like nothing better than if all children died of diabetes before they reach puberty.
They do like we all do. Try to develop a product, test it, refine it, in order to sell more of it. One of the common mantras here is that its good to do A/B testing to get better conversion. But when General Mills does it, it's somehow evil?
If restrict the tone of dicussion to calories, fat, carbs and proteins, it is just not going to work out.
If something has been learned in the last 10 years is that whole foods matter and that you cannot reduce them to their macronutrient profile.
Two foods with identical profile yield totally different results.I recommend to read Willet book on eat, drink and be healthy.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eat-drink-and-be-healthy-wal...
Doing the slow carb diet for over a year now. Lost over 50lbs. With the 1 day to cheat rule, I definitely ended up eating more candy, sweets, cake, chocolate, etc. than I would have at any other point in my life. Crazy as it seems, I developed a sweet tooth while on this diet! But it just goes to show, a calorie isn't a calorie because our body has functions and reacts differently at different times.
[+] [-] ericabiz|13 years ago|reply
The NY Times has even run other articles saying as much: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/what-really... (by Gary Taubes, whose book "Why We Get Fat" is a must-read.)
The problem with "low-fat" processed food in particular is that the fat is often replaced with sugar to add taste, but sugars and other high-carb grains are more problematic than fat consumption. Hence skyrocketing obesity.
Eating a low-carb diet and easing off grains (particularly "white" grains) and sugars will help you lose weight. From the article I linked above: "On the very low-carbohydrate diet, Dr. Ludwig’s subjects expended 300 more calories a day than they did on the low-fat diet and 150 calories more than on the low-glycemic-index diet. As Dr. Ludwig explained, when the subjects were eating low-fat diets, they’d have to add an hour of moderate-intensity physical activity each day to expend as much energy as they would effortlessly on the very-low-carb diet. And this while consuming the same amount of calories."
I can also speak from personal experience: I went gluten-free after being diagnosed with gluten intolerance in 2009. In three weeks, I effortlessly shed 12 pounds--12 pounds that had refused to come off previously no matter how much exercise I was doing or how religiously I tracked my caloric intake. I wasn't doing gluten-free to lose weight; I got dragged into it by a diagnosis, so this was a wholly unexpected yet awesome side benefit.
I've since noticed that if I slide back into eating too many carbs and sugars (even gluten-free ones), I start to gain weight again, and I feel groggy and disoriented. As a side effect of this diet^Wlifestyle change, I've also completely been able to drop caffeine consumption--something I never expected. Put simply, I didn't feel like I had been hit by a train when I woke up. Caffeine and energy drink consumption has spiked right along with "low-fat", high-carb diets. Something to consider.
[+] [-] ComputerGuru|13 years ago|reply
Once 30% of your total caloric intake is in the form of fat calories, genetics comes into play. Apparently, and for reasons no one yet understands, there is a gene marker APOC3 [0] and other apolipoproteins like it [1] [2] that will cause your body to no longer break down all consumed fats, and leading to part of that fat to be "absorbed" instead. However, this only affects around 5% of the population, for the other 95% your "calorie is a calorie" approach is correct, be it fat, carb, or protein.
0: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/health/research/12heart.ht...
1: http://jn.nutrition.org/content/134/10/2517.full
2: https://www.23andme.com/health/familial-hypercholesterolemia...
[+] [-] Goladus|13 years ago|reply
Overeating makes us fat. Caloric surplus makes us fat. It's pretty trivial to consume a caloric surplus eating lots of fatty foods. In that sense: fat makes us fat and it's silly to try denying it. It doesn't mean a low-fat diet will make you lose weight, it just means that high-fat diets are going to make you fat.
Excellent refutation of Taubes hypothesis:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-h...
Insulin does not regulate fat storage, leptin does. Obesity is a complex state and there are no simple answers. A diet that may be best for weight loss in one individual may not be the same diet that is best for another. This seems particularly likely if one of the two individuals is not obese.
The problem with "low-fat" processed food in particular is that the fat is often replaced with sugar to add taste, but sugars and other high-carb grains are more problematic than fat consumption.
They aren't more problematic. Aside from the relationship to cholesterol levels, they are the same problem.
The problems are:
Calorie surplus makes you gain weight, and unless you're building muscle it's going to be fat. All Ludwig's experiments suggest (as reported by Taubes, with lazy citation[1]) is that obese people who have just lost 10-15% of their weight tend to have a higher daily metabolism without conscious addition of physical exercise on a low-carb diet, compared to a low-fat diet or a low-GI diet. This in turn suggests it might be easier to maintain calorie balance on a low-carb diet than a low-fat diet (for formerly obese people who have just dieted to lose 10-15% of their body weight).postcript:
I would also add that lifestyle changes are a factor as well as diet. Addictive foods are more dangerous to someone who has a snacking/forager mentality than someone who plans and eats fixed meals every day.
[1] This appears to be the study referenced in the NY Times article: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154
[+] [-] 3am|13 years ago|reply
I read it much more as saying that large food companies have developed deep expertise in tuning the quantity of sugar, salt, fat, and texture to make their products bypass our body's natural mechanisms for feeling full.
I think if you're reading this through some kind of paleo/non-paleo lens, then you're missing the point of the article.
[+] [-] MDS100|13 years ago|reply
When people go on a low carb diet they: a. restrict their food intake by restricing their choices (less processed foods if you exclude a massiv part of " b. increase protein intake (protein has a higher thermic effect than any other macronutrient and drastically cuts down total kcal consumption in ad lib feeding trials by reducing appetite)
You can do something similar with a low fat diet (on which another part of the population will feel better - skewed towards more active and leaner people).
Low carb (whatever that means - not clearly defined) isn't a better choice for your health than a mixed diet with a high(er) protein intake. If it works for you: great. But that doesn't mean calories don't count and carbohydrates/insulin cause obesity. Nor that it works for everyone.
[+] [-] terhechte|13 years ago|reply
I never understood this article as a cricicism of fat - that word doesn't even appear to often. Instead, it diligently describes the amount of money invested into making people eat more of this stuff even though more of it is not healthy for them. Moralics and ethics aside:
“How can we drive more ounces into more bodies more often?”
[+] [-] pvnick|13 years ago|reply
However, if you are in a state of muscular stress, such as after weight lifting, and you eat a ton of glucose - notice I said glucose, not sugar, which contains fructose - and you combine this with a moderate amount of protein and little to no fat, you'll have a bunch of amino acids floating around and this insulin spike will cause your muscles to soak up all that protein and become bigger/stronger/both depending on the type of weightlifting you did with no spillover into adipose fat tissue.
It's this very simple metabolic process that people don't get. Everyone gets all worked up on pointing the finger at fat or sugar or whatever, but this is the "secret".
Btw, for anyone looking to lose weight or put on muscle in a healthy way, check out intermittent fasting, specifically the leangains plan.
Source: I'm a biochem major with a six pack
[+] [-] rwallace|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diminoten|13 years ago|reply
This, aside from other potentially valid points you may make, is utter nonsense. The concept of "stubborn weight" simply doesn't make sense.
Your comment as a whole reeks of the pseudoscience that plagues the nutrition field and makes it incredibly difficult to determine fact from fiction when trying to get healthy.
[+] [-] xefer|13 years ago|reply
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-...
The key point is that it is only very specific varieties of fat that matter for heart disease. It goes in to much more detail than his opinion piece for those looking for more info.
[+] [-] joedev|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stdbrouw|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akurilin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|13 years ago|reply
When a Michelin chef meticulously constructs a dish to give you pleasure, he's a creative genius whose dedication to his art is applauded.
But when the people behind Snickers do it to give you pleasure, they're nefarious conspirators trying to manipulate you and keep you addicted.
Yes, people who make food are trying to make it taste better, minimize their own costs, and keep you coming back. Why is this suddenly considered "news"?
(I mean, the article is plenty interesting, it's just the sensationalism of calling it "food engineering", "addiction", etc. that bothers me.)
[+] [-] drostie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pm90|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LatvjuAvs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 127001brewer|13 years ago|reply
Why aren't parents more responsible for their children's health?
As a parent myself, I know how damn hard it is for kids to eat anything consistently, especially "healthy" foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. And our kids have snacks in moderation.
It seems to me that if parents were more "responsible", which is a horribly generalized term, then the food executives wouldn't have private meetings to discuss how to deal with obesity - their products would have adapted to the healthy market.
Parenting is hard. Being a "responsible" parent is harder. Tough shit.
[+] [-] jmj42|13 years ago|reply
I don't think it's really a responsibility thing. I don't know any parent that _want_ their kids eating junk, but fresh fruit and vegetables are actually quite expensive and far more difficult to keep than your average junk snack. That's the hard part: justifying the higher cost and spoilage when you're just barely making the bills.
Most of my childhood was spent right at the government assistance threshold. During the down times, our health increased, and our dit included more fresh fruit and vegetables. During the times above that line, with no assistance, the high cost of fresh produce meant meant that it wasn't around.
So, to answer your question, "Why aren't parents more responsible for their children's health?" Because they can't afford to be. Though there are many factors that contribute to the obesity problem, claiming it's poor parental responsibility is a useless over-simplification.
Btw, I've been parenting for 18 years now. When is it supposed to get hard?
[+] [-] tptacek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wutbrodo|13 years ago|reply
You do realize that you're saying "tough shit" to the children too, right? You know, those whose outcomes are the whole point of these discussions? They're ultimately the ones who have to deal with the consequences the most, and for some reason dismissing their stake in this with "you should have thought about that before you decided to have irresponsible parents" doesn't seem to hold much water.
Note that I'm not making a point for or against regulation of advertising unhealthy foods to children, but dismissing the comparison to tobacco with "parents should be responsible" is beyond silly.
*If my assumption is wrong and you are actually in favor of completely allowing the advertisement of tobacco to kids, then never mind, disregard this comment.
[+] [-] 127001brewer|13 years ago|reply
Our poll used a unique design to get at what is actually happening in the life of a "target child" in each household. We supplemented their responses with more than 800 that came in when we asked parents, through NPR's Facebook page, to describe their own "crunch times."
The most striking finding is that U.S. parents "get it."
When we asked a parent or other principal caregiver in our poll how important it is that their child eats and exercises in a way to maintain a healthy weight, more than 9 in 10 said it was important — and most said it was "very important."
But all too often, there's a disconnect. Despite good intentions, it's not happening. [1]
[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/02/25/172717996/how-cru...
[+] [-] rwallace|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] locopati|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kibwen|13 years ago|reply
Ha, I've actually been doing this since I was a teenager. It's really fantastic for managing junk food cravings, which arise not because I'm hungry, but because I just like to have something to chew on while I work (especially while programming). A one-pound bag lasts me about three hours and is more-or-less guilt-free.
[+] [-] logn|13 years ago|reply
I wonder if there's a way to engineer healthy food to taste better without actually adding any ingredients. Maybe through bio-engineering or the like. Or maybe injecting them with air or drilling out little holes.
[+] [-] rscale|13 years ago|reply
http://www.babycarrots.com
[+] [-] dreamdu5t|13 years ago|reply
I was 210, and lost 70 lbs by restricting my caloric intake (by eating vegan). I ate sugar during this time. I ate carbs.
Every single person I know who's overweight simply eats too much. They also are the first to tell you that its not as simple as eating too much. It is.
[+] [-] backprojection|13 years ago|reply
Sure, personal responsibility and all. That doesn't imply that a drug-pusher/dealer isn't an asshole.
[+] [-] omegaworks|13 years ago|reply
The self-satisfied responses to your N=1 sample size study, just because it validates the commonly accepted nutritional orthodoxy is what makes me fear for the public policies that come out of this debate.
[+] [-] da3da|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sumaso|13 years ago|reply
If you want to reach a certain aesthetic then that's fine, but as far as I know the "obesity problem" is more about a persons health and well being, not being aesthetically pleasing.
So we can sit here and point fingers at what diet is best or whether or not we should cut fats out of our diet, but at the end of the day the true issue is simply people do not have the will to exercise, and they either do not have funds or the will to eat a healthy amount of calories.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wpietri|13 years ago|reply
I think they find plenty of other things to think about, and they are so removed from the consequences of their actions that they can easily avoid the truth. They just keep those graphs moving up and to the right, mouth some platitudes about "an appropriate part of a balanced diet", and keep cashing those paychecks.
People can avoid thinking about human costs when they are stepping over bums on the street. I have no doubt that they can do it from the 33rd floor of an office building.
[+] [-] justincormack|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] networked|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angelocoppola|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acheron|13 years ago|reply
Seriously, this hand-wringing is ridiculous. Excellent article here: http://reason.com/archives/2013/02/25/frito-lay-wont-make-yo...
[+] [-] svachalek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lnanek2|13 years ago|reply
LMAO, they probably employ dozens of scientists trying to figure how to get people to eat more. Could the speaker have been any more clueless? He would have been better off pushing some solution that had been user tested not to hurt sales. E.g. use Stevia instead of sugar, cost goes up 5%, but sales rise to match as you capture some dieters you wouldn't otherwise or something. Instead he told them to research getting people to want less of their product.
[+] [-] ams6110|13 years ago|reply
They do like we all do. Try to develop a product, test it, refine it, in order to sell more of it. One of the common mantras here is that its good to do A/B testing to get better conversion. But when General Mills does it, it's somehow evil?
[+] [-] forgotAgain|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bostonvaulter2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] EA|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kkuduk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vevillas|13 years ago|reply
If something has been learned in the last 10 years is that whole foods matter and that you cannot reduce them to their macronutrient profile. Two foods with identical profile yield totally different results.I recommend to read Willet book on eat, drink and be healthy. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eat-drink-and-be-healthy-wal...
[+] [-] rickdale|13 years ago|reply
Doing the slow carb diet for over a year now. Lost over 50lbs. With the 1 day to cheat rule, I definitely ended up eating more candy, sweets, cake, chocolate, etc. than I would have at any other point in my life. Crazy as it seems, I developed a sweet tooth while on this diet! But it just goes to show, a calorie isn't a calorie because our body has functions and reacts differently at different times.
[+] [-] damian2000|13 years ago|reply