The 'Obesity Epidemic'

It's not only down to 'eating the wrong foods'. It's quantity and the ability to burn it off.

I live alone and my diet is pretty dreadful really. When I get in after a late shift, it's a microwave meal. But because I only eat one meal a day when I'm not working, and when I am I move about a lot, my weight is stable. But I am fighting the temptation to boredom-eat all day and I go out running to remove myself from temptation as much as anything. So, yes, corn syrup and palm oil and all those things will help you gain weight and a bad diet is not great. But you still have to eat more than you use in order to gain weight. This is why the disabled, the housebound and the depressed gain weight so easily - because it's far easier to eat more than you need when you don't, or can't, exercise.
 
catseye said:
It's not only down to 'eating the wrong foods'. It's quantity and the ability to burn it off.

I live alone and my diet is pretty dreadful really. When I get in after a late shift, it's a microwave meal. But because I only eat one meal a day when I'm not working, and when I am I move about a lot, my weight is stable. But I am fighting the temptation to boredom-eat all day and I go out running to remove myself from temptation as much as anything. So, yes, corn syrup and palm oil and all those things will help you gain weight and a bad diet is not great. But you still have to eat more than you use in order to gain weight. This is why the disabled, the housebound and the depressed gain weight so easily - because it's far easier to eat more than you need when you don't, or can't, exercise.
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I've got sudden cravings for chips (fries) recently, which I've hardly eaten since schooldays.
 
I find it much easier to exercise the willpower in advance in the shops or when buying online than when I'm hungry and searching cupboards; if I resist buying bad food, then I don't have to resist eating it, which is hard when, like last night, I come home at 11 p.m., having not had anything since breakfast time and ready to consume the first things I find in the fridge.

One of the absolute best foods I've found for ticking all boxes: filling, tasty, sweet, cheap and healthy are sweet potatoes, particularly 'chestnut' sweet potatos (I only know the name in Korean).

You steam them in their skins and then eat them warm or cool. They're super-sticky and moorish, as filling as regular potatos, and they'll last days without even the need for refrigeration.

Lots of people take them hiking in this part of the world as they manage to deliver an immediate sugar hit and a secondary slow release of energy over a few hours.
 
Good advice that's been around for ages is "Never do a food shop when you're hungry!"

I love sweet potatoes. They have the added benefit that if your dog has an upset stomach, a bit of sweet potato - mixed in their food or even if they chomp on it cooked - 'firms' them up.
 
Stormkhan said:
Good advice that's been around for ages is "Never do a food shop when you're hungry!"

I love sweet potatoes. They have the added benefit that if your dog has an upset stomach, a bit of sweet potato - mixed in their food or even if they chomp on it cooked - 'firms' them up.
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This is why working in a shop is so awful. I can wander around at the end of a shift, when I'm starving, and buy what I feel like eating. It takes quite a lot of willpower to turn down reduced price cream cake when you've been standing for seven hours and you would eat your own knees if you could reach.

But, like Yith, I try not to have a stocked up 'treat' cupboard. I don't buy packs of biscuits or anything either, it stops that 'nomnomnom' moment when you just want sugar.
 
Origins of epidemic go back decades earlier than previously thought.

Over the past 50 years, worldwide obesity rates have tripled, creating a public health crisis so widespread and damaging that it is sometimes referred to as an epidemic. Most accounts put the roots of the problem firmly in the modern age. But could it have been brewing since before World War II?

That’s one provocative conclusion of a study published today in Science Advances that purports to push the obesity epidemic’s origin back to as early as the 1930s. Historical measurements from hundreds of thousands of Danish youth show that in the decades before the problem was officially recognized, the heaviest members of society were already getting steadily bigger.

The findings raise questions about the accepted narrative of the obesity epidemic, says Lindsey Haynes-Maslow, an obesity expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who was not involved in the study. “This paper is an opportunity … to say maybe we’ve been looking at this wrong, maybe we should go back to the beginning—or, when was the beginning?” she says.

Most epidemiologists trace that beginning to the 1970s, when health officials first observed an uptick in the prevalence of obesity—defined as a body mass index (BMI) above 30—in many Western nations. The crisis is usually blamed on the increased postwar availability of cheap, highly processed, and calorie-rich foods, as well as increasingly sedentary lifestyles and growing portion sizes.

But University of Copenhagen epidemiologist Thorkild Sørensen was skeptical of that story. Years of slowly increasing body size typically precede obesity, and might show up in historical data, he suspected. And Sørensen wasn’t convinced that the so-called obesogenic diet and lifestyle were the only factors at play. Historical data, he hoped, could reveal whether other, yet-unknown factors had contributed to the crisis.

A dearth of BMI data from before the 1970s typically makes historical studies of obesity a challenge. But Sørensen and his team knew of two Danish government data sets that could be useful. The first consisted of meticulous records of the weight and height of practically all primary-age schoolchildren in Copenhagen between the 1930s and ’80s. The second contained similar measurements of men, ages 18 to 26, who were conscripted by the Danish army between 1957 and 1984. The records were promisingly rich—but they were all on paper, which made it impossible to systematically search them for patterns. The process of digitizing the more than 2 million measurements from all 526,115 subjects took years of work, Sørensen says.

https://www.science.org/content/article/origins-obesity-epidemic-may-be-further-back-we-thought
 
Stormkhan said:
Good advice that's been around for ages is "Never do a food shop when you're hungry!"
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Or thirsty. I find it works out cheaper to open a bottle of juice or whatever to swig as I shop than resist the temptation and then find myself loading up the trolley with every variety of drink you can imagine.
 
Stormkhan said:
Good advice that's been around for ages is "Never do a food shop when you're hungry!"
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Very true but the opposite isn't exactly wise either. Going on a full stomache means I come back with very little food. Cheaper of course plus it means the store cupboards will get a bit of a sort out the following week so not altogether a bad thing.
 
Yithian said:
You steam them in their skins and then eat them warm or cool. They're super-sticky and moorish, as filling as regular potatos, and they'll last days without even the need for refrigeration.

Lots of people take them hiking in this part of the world as they manage to deliver an immediate sugar hit and a secondary slow release of energy over a few hours.
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I put them in my stews instead of normal potatoes. They definitely add a nice texture and flavour even though they break down a bit.

I think that a sedentary lifestyle does play a big part. In the 90’s I’d put on a pair of flat shoes and walk to work and at one or two places at lunchtime I’d walk into the town centre to shop and walk back. Unless it was dark or the weather was atrocious I’d happily walk most places and I was extremely slim and could still eat a small pudding after dinner or come home from where I worked at about 11 p.m. and eat toast and butter and I stayed the same weight for several years without trying. I ate what I wanted, which was generally quite healthy, but I didn’t diet, I just walked, and at one place of work was on my feet much of the time. Calories were just burnt off.

When we had people round to do the garden and build the garden office, all of them were just skin and sinew. You definitely need to move, if you can. Even my partner’s aunt who’s knees were so bad that the surgeon said he’d never seen anything as bad in all his years, has now had a knee replacement (waiting for the next) and is out of her chair and re-learning to walk and losing weight.
But of course so any office jobs are sedentary so then people have to make an effort in the free time and a lot are just too tired, because once you sit down it takes a lot of willpower to get up again.
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
I put them in my stews instead of normal potatoes. They definitely add a nice texture and flavour even though they break down a bit.

I think that a sedentary lifestyle does play a big part. In the 90’s I’d put on a pair of flat shoes and walk to work and at one or two places at lunchtime I’d walk into the town centre to shop and walk back. Unless it was dark or the weather was atrocious I’d happily walk most places and I was extremely slim and could still eat a small pudding after dinner or come home from where I worked at about 11 p.m. and eat toast and butter and I stayed the same weight for several years without trying. I ate what I wanted, which was generally quite healthy, but I didn’t diet, I just walked, and at one place of work was on my feet much of the time. Calories were just burnt off.

When we had people round to do the garden and build the garden office, all of them were just skin and sinew. You definitely need to move, if you can. Even my partner’s aunt who’s knees were so bad that the surgeon said he’d never seen anything as bad in all his years, has now had a knee replacement (waiting for the next) and is out of her chair and re-learning to walk and losing weight.
But of course so any office jobs are sedentary so then people have to make an effort in the free time and a lot are just too tired, because once you sit down it takes a lot of willpower to get up again.
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Yup, my job involves a lot of walking. Last week Techy and I walked a few miles around Manchester over a couple of days and he was worn out. I hadn't realised how much more used to walking I am.

He can cycle 40 miles with ease but walking is too much.
 
charliebrown said:
This time of year Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Coffee Latte is very popular.

The smallest 8 ozs. Is 400 calories.

I personally do not like Starbucks coffee, too much of a smoky flavor for me.
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Stormkhan said:
I drink neither from Starbucks, nor Costa.
Coffee snob I may be, but I'd rather go without than drinking the outpourings of either abomination.
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I'm not a purist like Stormkhan (my body accepts caffeine in many forms!) and I will drink Starbucks coffee, but I have to say that some of the seasonal/temporarily available drinks available in there (coffee and other beverages) are foul: tons of sugar which then has to be partly masked with utterly overpowering flavours—in many cases undrinkable for me.

I drink black instant coffee as fuel on a daily basis, Starbucks latté if there is nothing better around, and 'proper coffee' when I find decent independents. These three things are scarcely categorised under the same mental heading: the first is 'routine intake to wake up juice', the second a warm milkshake to keep me ambling along, and only the third is 'real coffee'.

I don't think most obese people got there owing to unhealthy coffee, mind you. It's probably no more than a minor piece of the puzzle.
 
The smallest Starbucks’ pumpkin spice coffee is $4.75 which I guess is 3.8 pounds, and yet in our area people are constantly lining up in the Starbucks drive through for their coffee.

I think the cheapest coffee is $2.95 or 2.4 pounds.

I don’t understand this because of price.

If you do this a couple times a day, this really adds up in money, but if one is dying for caffeine it’s their choice.
 
It's not the caffeine that drives sales, it's the 'exclusivity' or promotion.
If you offered such all year round, sales would drop.
 
I reckon that in Australia, we're pretty fortunate to have domestic coffee outlets that 'do' a pretty decent coffee, without recourse to starbucks, gloriajeans or Macca's.

Our average cake shop, bakers, cafe, or sandwich bar will supply us with a delightful beverage that will spring those leaden eylids quite open...!

I dunno, mayaybe I'm easily pleased.
 
Personally, given the choice between any chain or no coffee, I'd go without.
I love coffee, but I'm not that addicted.
I know that such places have their roots in the coffee houses of 'olde London Town' - or as many assert - but their sheer ubiquity turns me away. Like Wetherspoons selling real ale - the product might be acceptable but the business isn't. To me, anyhow.
 
Stormkhan said:
It's not the caffeine that drives sales, it's the 'exclusivity' or promotion.
If you offered such all year round, sales would drop.
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It's more that caffeine addicts can enjoy a special coffee as a treat on top of their usual fix. They wouldn't bother with a decaff version.
It's still about the caffeine.
 
catseye said:
I live alone and my diet is pretty dreadful really.
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This isn't rare. Lots of women living alone don't look after their diets. It's one of those things I've read that's stuck in my mind; that women don't think it's worth cooking 'only' for themselves. As if we don't deserve all that effort.

This doesn't hold in my kitchen. :)

As Techy and I have different work-patterns we often don't eat together, and when we do it's what I've cooked. Even pies from the shop with vegetables and gravy will do.

Mmmm, fresh vegetables. A big pan of them will keep in the fridge until next day, when I can just warm them up again without having to prepare anything. It's like the Dinner Fairies have been. :nods:

But even when I'm eating alone it's still a hot healthy meal every day, or a substantial salad in summer.

Gong to try the steamed sweet potatoes as suggested by @Yithian. Assumption here is that I give them a rinse and lob them whole in the steaming pan until they're soft, then stuff them down.

I normally either roast them as wedges, skin-on, or peel them to use in casseroles and soups. Going to start leaving the skins on for everything now.
 
escargot said:
Assumption here is that I give them a rinse and lob them whole in the steaming pan until they're soft, then stuff them down.
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We know the truth. You just pull them straight out of the ground and then stuff them down.
 
escargot said:
This isn't rare. Lots of women living alone don't look after their diets. It's one of those things I've read that's stuck in my mind; that women don't think it's worth cooking 'only' for themselves. As if we don't deserve all that effort.

This doesn't hold in my kitchen. :)
As Techy and I have different work-patterns we often don't eat together, and when we do it's what I've cooked. Even pies from the shop with vegetables and gravy will do.
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I guess it's not that I feel I don't deserve the effort, it's more finding the time to put the effort in. I do eat a lot of salads and veg though.
 
catseye said:
I guess it's not that I feel I don't deserve the effort, it's more finding the time to put the effort in. I do eat a lot of salads and veg though.
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The secret, as you'll know, is to start with the carrots because they take longest to cook. ;)
While they're steaming I can decide what else to chuck together.
Those packs of pre-cut veg are great for this.
 
escargot said:
Gong to try the steamed sweet potatoes as suggested by @Yithian. Assumption here is that I give them a rinse and lob them whole in the steaming pan until they're soft, then stuff them down.

I normally either roast them as wedges, skin-on, or peel them to use in casseroles and soups. Going to start leaving the skins on for everything now.
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We always buy this kind. 'Chestnut' sweet potatoes. Very starchy and sticky.

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I don't know how widely available they are outide East Asia—could be common or unheard of for all I know. Roasting them definitely an option, too. I like eating the skins, but Mrs Yith does not.
 
Yithian said:
We always buy this kind. 'Chestnut' sweet potatoes. Very starchy and sticky.

View attachment 69738View attachment 69739

I don't know how widely available they are outide East Asia—could be common or unheard of for all I know. Roasting them definitely an option, too. I like eating the skins, but Mrs Yith does not.
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Dunno if we can get those.
The purple ones're supposed to be extra-nutricious. I'd like to try those too have drawn a blank locally.
 
catseye said:
I think this is a big contributing factor to the overweight nature of health care professionals. Working shifts, which change endlessly and include nights, wreaks absolute havoc on the metabolic system and your ability to eat proper meals at proper times. When you are eating dinner at breakfast time, then going to bed and getting up to eat another big meal to get you through a long shift, it won't help. And it's well known that night shifts are ruinous to the health anyway. I see a lot of people who work night shifts in care homes, and they are loading up at the shop on energy drinks and chocolate, to get them through.

My late shifts (2-10pm) are bad enough. I end up eating at 11pm and going straight to bed, which I know isn't good for me. It also makes any kind of intermittent fasting very hard. So I can see how any job that involves shift work is going to make for more overweight employees.
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escargot said:
This isn't rare. Lots of women living alone don't look after their diets. It's one of those things I've read that's stuck in my mind; that women don't think it's worth cooking 'only' for themselves. As if we don't deserve all that effort.
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I can relate to that Scargy. When I first re met Mrs DT, I was shocked at how bad her diet was, and yes, she’d been living on her own for several years.

What does she do for food I used to wonder – and then I found out – almost bugger all was the answer. If she was hungry, she’d pop out and buy a can of soup. If she was really hungry, then a frozen ready meal. The cupboards were always bare, as was the fridge (apart from milk) and she didn’t own a freezer. Only the hob on the oven worked, it wasn’t a great situation but to be perfectly frank it seemed normal to her.
 
Dick Turpin said:
I can relate to that Scargy. When I first re met Mrs DT, I was shocked at how bad her diet was, and yes, she’d been living on her own for several years.

What does she do for food I used to wonder – and then I found out – almost bugger all was the answer. If she was hungry, she’d pop out and buy a can of soup. If she was really hungry, then a frozen ready meal. The cupboards were always bare, as was the fridge (apart from milk) and she didn’t own a freezer. Only the hob on the oven worked, it wasn’t a great situation but to be perfectly frank it seemed normal to her.
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We're all different! :)

Techy virtually lived on takeaways before I met him. He never cooked for himself.
To be fair he was commuting every day and didn't have much time.

I've always tried to eat healthily and fed my family that way when I cooked for them.

So as I've mentioned, when Techy started having ordinary British meals like bangers'n'mash and roast dinners that I cooked he was rather tickled. Nobody had ever done that for him before. Even his mother wasn't keen on slaving over the hot proverbial.

He's having pies at work today so I've just steamed some little spuds for a snack. ;)
 
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