And do you not want to know why?

Judging by emoticon used, probably not, but why do you not want to know?

Yes i would like to know why

Ok....

http://www.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.html

And do you not want to know why?

Judging by emoticon used, probably not, but why do you not want to know?

Yes i would like to know why

Ok....

http://www.archaeolo.../gladiator.html

Bit of a change...eating to get fat. With good reason of course.

'To keep their bones strong, historical accounts say, they downed vile brews of charred wood or bone ash, both of which are rich in calcium.'

It's a financial issue. Crap food is cheap - good food is more expensive. Protein is more expensive than carbs.

Financial issue/social issue, what's the difference? Most people can't afford to spend twice their daily earnings on organic vegetables.

Its an interesting thing this. I see more obesity in urban areas than rural. Availability and ease of fast food I suppose.

Plenty of poverty rurally here in the UK too.

In most countries, many of the country people get a lot of the food off the land.... and it is mainly vegetable. If they are farming, they also get quite a lot of exercise. Hence the lower incidence of obesity in rural areas... and what there is is probably caused by disease rather than eating the wrong foods.

Apples or bananas are OK for a snack, but most people are not going to live on them. It is a lot more work and more expensive to prepare healthy meals and especially for a family.

Maybe, but you DO NOT need to be part of the "elite". For middle class families it is no problem at all to eat healthy.

Apples or bananas are OK for a snack, but most people are not going to live on them. It is a lot more work and more expensive to prepare healthy meals and especially for a family.

Maybe, but you DO NOT need to be part of the "elite". For middle class families it is no problem at all to eat healthy.

Its just part of your lifestyle. Most fat people, if they are honest, spend long periods doing no activity at all besides watching TV or other sedentary habits. I don't think the time issue has much validity. Cost, yes, that does have a part to play.

People? Like babies. Fat babies become fat children become fat adults. Those babies. No will power!

Fat babies are fat babies because of a poor diet fed to them by their carers. There is no correlation between being a fat baby and a fat adult, a baby will be fat because of its food intake ( to be read in context, obviously a fat baby may grow into a fat adult, but will only be over weight in the first place because of diet). I guess someone can find a link to a baby that is over weight because of a medical condition, if you can I bet it is an extreme case and in very rare circumstances.

Is being over weight a condition that cannot be cured through good diet and exercise, yes in a certain amount of cases.

Eating proper food and exercise is necessary, but most importantly it is education, educate the carers of children of proper dietary control.

If their is a condition that you cannot control your eating habits, then try and control it through other means, if this is not achievable, then you are destined for surgery, advances in medicine or health problems.

I do not belittle or demean the problem but more can be done by the individual and what went before, education is the key in a lot of cases.

There has been a case recently where a young teenager had to have walls removed to get her medical attention, she had been known to drink condensed milk, this is education, if you don't drink condensed milk and just substitute it with milk, you would be better off.

I suggest, respectfully, there is a correlation between the increase in over weight and obese adults and the proliferation of fast food outlets in easy reach of a bus and an increase in disposable income.

Also, the preparation of at least healthier food is cheaper than the purchase at a fast food outlet. A low fat mince, mushrooms, a pepper and chilli and garlic, Oyster & Soy Sauce and Sunflower oil is cheaper and less time consuming than fast food.

Those of us in a battle with the bulge, I wish us luck.

There was an excellent article on additives in fast food suppressing normal dietary activity.

In yesterday's Independent.

Perhaps someone could locate and post a link as I'm unable to via my phone.

Thanks.

There was an excellent article on additives in fast food suppressing normal dietary activity.

In yesterday's Independent.

Perhaps someone could locate and post a link as I'm unable to via my phone.

Thanks.

Is this it?

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/the-deadly-legacy-of-americas-fields-of-gold-7834226.html?origin=internalSearch

In the 1970s, Nixon's Agriculture Secretary, Earl Butz, realised that farmers were harvesting more corn than they knew what to do with thanks to more efficient, industrialised methods. His answer was to champion increased production and use of high-fructose corn syrup, which has undergone enzymatic processing to convert some glucose into fructose. The fructose-rich sweetener – now nicknamed "devil's candy" in the US – was cheaper and sweeter than sugar. By the 1980s, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), called glucose-fructose syrup in the UK, was the favourite substitute for sugar worldwide, finds a new BBC series, The Men Who Made Us Fat, starting this week.

There was an excellent article on additives in fast food suppressing normal dietary activity.

In yesterday's Independent.

Perhaps someone could locate and post a link as I'm unable to via my phone.

Thanks.

Looking for it, but found this first :

http://www.independe...ld-7834226.html

Corn syrup is blamed for the rise in obesity and related diseases

And another snippet:

But isn't obesity a "disease"?

There is that argument. I know a woman who caught it in the first year of her marriage and whose husband was most unsympathetic until he caught it in the second year, and now their kids have it and so, as a family, all they can do is sit around eating buns. Most tragic.

Yeah but to the total power of individual "will power" / libertarian radicals issues like the obesogenic environment represented by the pervasiveness of high fructose corn syrup in modern foods is irrelevant. But it is not!

Yeah but to the total power of individual "will power" / libertarian radicals issues like the obesogenic environment represented by the pervasiveness of high fructose corn syrup in modern foods is irrelevant. But it is not!

So watch what you eat - study the labels and avoid the bad stuff.

(It's called 'sensible diet')

And our Boris, in today's Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9323450/Hail-Mayor-Mike-and-the-paper-cups-that-will-not-runneth-over.html

Britain could learn valuable lessons from New York’s radical plans to tackle obesity, argues Boris Johnson

Yeah but to the total power of individual "will power" / libertarian radicals issues like the obesogenic environment represented by the pervasiveness of high fructose corn syrup in modern foods is irrelevant. But it is not!

So watch what you eat - study the labels and avoid the bad stuff.

(It's called 'sensible diet')

Such elitist advice doesn't help "Joe the Plumber" who's one paycheck from the streets doesn't live in the neighborhood with a "Whole Paycheck" supermarket even if he could afford to shop there, which he can't.

HB. the best food doesn't have labels. It's fresh vegetables (in season), fresh fruit, milk and eggs and fresh meat and fish.

But (having tried a few) I don't believe in a 'diet for all seasons'. Everyone is different, and has to work out what works best for him/herself. Small breakfast, main meal at midday, salad in the evening for me. Incidentally, one of the worst things you can do is to eat your main meal in the evening. Why? Because you don't work it off afterwards, so it tends to become fat.

HB. the best food doesn't have labels. It's fresh vegetables (in season), fresh fruit, milk and eggs and fresh meat and fish.

But (having tried a few) I don't believe in a 'diet for all seasons'. Everyone is different, and has to work out what works best for him/herself. Small breakfast, main meal at midday, salad in the evening for me. Incidentally, one of the worst things you can do is to eat your main meal in the evening. Why? Because you don't work it off afterwards, so it tends to become fat.

I agree..

except i do eat a main meal every evening....it is a salad.

Yeah but to the total power of individual "will power" / libertarian radicals issues like the obesogenic environment represented by the pervasiveness of high fructose corn syrup in modern foods is irrelevant. But it is not!

So watch what you eat - study the labels and avoid the bad stuff.

(It's called 'sensible diet')

Such elitist advice doesn't help "Joe the Plumber" who's one paycheck from the streets doesn't live in the neighborhood with a "Whole Paycheck" supermarket even if he could afford to shop there, which he can't.

Jingthing

You have responded to most posts but perhaps have missed my previous post on this thread, any reason? Or did you just miss it?

However, being curious, I checked out obesogenic environment, would you like to discuss or do you want to just ignore my reasoning, remember I do not tolerate racism, bigotry, bullying or other demeaning acts, so I am not in the profession of attacking those that some might feel they need to drop a thong, mankini or dress size. Although I will try and attempt to dismantle the one line dramatists on here, of which you are not one.

Again, obesity is VERY complex. I am not interested in talking at all to people who actually believe it is only a will power issue. Waste of time. Such views are simply provably ridiculous. Science knows differently. Also, yes it is a fact that fat children have a strong tendency to grow up to be fat adults. This broadcast suggests for many people the genetic tendency towards lifetime obesity begins IN THE WOMB.

http://www.abc.net.a...-adults/3691844

Again, obesity is VERY complex. I am not interested in talking at all to people who actually believe it is only a will power issue. Waste of time. Such views are simply provably ridiculous. Science knows differently. Also, yes it is a fact that fat children have a strong tendency to grow up to be fat adults. This broadcast suggests for many people the genetic tendency towards lifetime obesity begins IN THE WOMB.

http://www.abc.net.a...-adults/3691844

Hi Jingthing

OK you are not interested in talking to people who think it is a will power only battle, so does that mean you will talk to me, as I made it clear I did not think it was in certain people, however, others can help themselves more?

I also said babies, not children, although I think I could stretch the discussion to children, except in certain particular cases. Are you suggesting, with no particular health issues fat-overweight babies/children will grow into fat overweight adults?

As a country we're getting fatter with sixty percent of adults deemed to be overweight or obese.

We live in what the experts call an 'obesogenic environment'.

We know that fat children are at greater risk of becoming overweight adults but new research suggests the risk begins much earlier than expected, even from the moment of conception.

I am presuming the content of the actual broadcast will be more enlightening than the strap line, have you watched it? If so, and you consider it an OK research I will watch it too, you never know, I might agree with you.

So here goes for a discussion on OE.

Moss

It's audio. It's excellent. Everyone interested in this topic should listen to it.

HB. the best food doesn't have labels. It's fresh vegetables (in season), fresh fruit, milk and eggs and fresh meat and fish.

But (having tried a few) I don't believe in a 'diet for all seasons'. Everyone is different, and has to work out what works best for him/herself. Small breakfast, main meal at midday, salad in the evening for me. Incidentally, one of the worst things you can do is to eat your main meal in the evening. Why? Because you don't work it off afterwards, so it tends to become fat.

Totally agree with you - if you can buy fresh foods on a day=to=day basis and prepare them at home.

If you are working you often have to eat out, which means you should know what pre=prepared foods contain, and also how to know (roughly) what your daily intake is in all aspects, not just calories / fats / trans-fats / sodium and so on.

In Vietnam I was lucky enough to have a small local restaurant on my block which served a dozen diferent salads - so after I had persuaded them to keep the dressing off the salad and serve it in a small gravy boat, I had a good set of evening meals. Now that I am in Cambridge I find that the portions I am permitted to buy are liable to go off before I finish them - half a cabbage lasts me four days, a punnet of tomatoes at least three days. I also buy punnet of cherry tomatoes instead of sweets (candies) or biscuits (cookies). My daughter buys grapes instead - but she has kids, so they get some of the grapes for lunch.

These simple things, plus reasonable exercise, keep me bright and happy and just a few kilos over my fighting weight.

This broadcast suggests for many people the genetic tendency towards lifetime obesity begins IN THE WOMB.

"Suggesting" is very far from "proving".

Again, obesity is VERY complex. I am not interested in talking at all to people who actually believe it is only a will power issue. Waste of time. Such views are simply provably ridiculous. Science knows differently. Also, yes it is a fact that fat children have a strong tendency to grow up to be fat adults. This broadcast suggests for many people the genetic tendency towards lifetime obesity begins IN THE WOMB.

http://www.abc.net.a...-adults/3691844

Complex, agreed.

Only about willpower? Nobody on this thread thinks it is ONLY about willpower. That is one factor. Others are eating too much, eating the wrong foods, not taking enough exercise.

Science doesn't KNOW. It only suggests. I hope one day it will know, but it doesn't yet.

Apart from eating too much etc, nobody has yet given any plausible reason why clinical obesity rates should have shot up over the past fifty years. (The rare fat people I saw when I was young were undoubtedly ill; food was rationed.) The explanations suggested have been a 'fat brain' (JT), and a virus (UG). Hypotheses only.

Genetic tendency? Maybe. Still another hypothesis.

HB. the best food doesn't have labels. It's fresh vegetables (in season), fresh fruit, milk and eggs and fresh meat and fish.

But (having tried a few) I don't believe in a 'diet for all seasons'. Everyone is different, and has to work out what works best for him/herself. Small breakfast, main meal at midday, salad in the evening for me. Incidentally, one of the worst things you can do is to eat your main meal in the evening. Why? Because you don't work it off afterwards, so it tends to become fat.

Totally agree with you - if you can buy fresh foods on a day=to=day basis and prepare them at home.

If you are working you often have to eat out, which means you should know what pre=prepared foods contain, and also how to know (roughly) what your daily intake is in all aspects, not just calories / fats / trans-fats / sodium and so on.

In Vietnam I was lucky enough to have a small local restaurant on my block which served a dozen diferent salads - so after I had persuaded them to keep the dressing off the salad and serve it in a small gravy boat, I had a good set of evening meals. Now that I am in Cambridge I find that the portions I am permitted to buy are liable to go off before I finish them - half a cabbage lasts me four days, a punnet of tomatoes at least three days. I also buy punnet of cherry tomatoes instead of sweets (candies) or biscuits (cookies). My daughter buys grapes instead - but she has kids, so they get some of the grapes for lunch.

These simple things, plus reasonable exercise, keep me bright and happy and just a few kilos over my fighting weight.

Yes, it is never going to be easy for people working in full-time jobs to eat properly. We are so lucky in the Far East to have easy availability of fresh vegetables, cheap, and in whatever quantity we like. Not always the vegetables we want, but still..... I think my nickname in our local market is probably 'pak salad' (lettuce). And the chicken and pork sellers know me so well that they start preparing my meat when I appear on their horizon.

Only about willpower? Nobody on this thread thinks it is ONLY about willpower. That is one factor. Others are eating too much, eating the wrong foods, not taking enough exercise.

Science doesn't KNOW. It only suggests. I hope one day it will know, but it doesn't yet.

Apart from eating too much etc, nobody has yet given any plausible reason why clinical obesity rates should have shot up over the past fifty years. (The rare fat people I saw when I was young were undoubtedly ill; food was rationed.) The explanations suggested have been a 'fat brain' (JT), and a virus (UG). Hypotheses only.

Genetic tendency? Maybe. Still another hypothesis.

I would suggest that one reason could be the 'growth hormones' fed to livestock in some countries.

I know that the EU banned such meat around thirty years ago, but were taken to task by the WTO. I do not know now what meat I eat, which worries me, so I eat far less.

In SEAsia it is common to see Australian and NZ meats sold. Are these hormone-enhanced? I don't know.

(I'm admitting to surprising ignorance here, aren't I?)

HB. the best food doesn't have labels. It's fresh vegetables (in season), fresh fruit, milk and eggs and fresh meat and fish.

But (having tried a few) I don't believe in a 'diet for all seasons'. Everyone is different, and has to work out what works best for him/herself. Small breakfast, main meal at midday, salad in the evening for me. Incidentally, one of the worst things you can do is to eat your main meal in the evening. Why? Because you don't work it off afterwards, so it tends to become fat.

Totally agree with you - if you can buy fresh foods on a day=to=day basis and prepare them at home.

If you are working you often have to eat out, which means you should know what pre=prepared foods contain, and also how to know (roughly) what your daily intake is in all aspects, not just calories / fats / trans-fats / sodium and so on.

In Vietnam I was lucky enough to have a small local restaurant on my block which served a dozen diferent salads - so after I had persuaded them to keep the dressing off the salad and serve it in a small gravy boat, I had a good set of evening meals. Now that I am in Cambridge I find that the portions I am permitted to buy are liable to go off before I finish them - half a cabbage lasts me four days, a punnet of tomatoes at least three days. I also buy punnet of cherry tomatoes instead of sweets (candies) or biscuits (cookies). My daughter buys grapes instead - but she has kids, so they get some of the grapes for lunch.

These simple things, plus reasonable exercise, keep me bright and happy and just a few kilos over my fighting weight.

Yes, it is never going to be easy for people working in full-time jobs to eat properly. We are so lucky in the Far East to have easy availability of fresh vegetables, cheap, and in whatever quantity we like. Not always the vegetables we want, but still..... I think my nickname in our local market is probably 'pak salad' (lettuce). And the chicken and pork sellers know me so well that they start preparing my meat when I appear on their horizon.

Or don't worry about it.

I reckon if it was not for the drink, I would be really quite healthy (given what people say about the damage drink does to you) and I certainly don't go out of my way to eat. Maybe the worst thing about my diet is owning a car...

SC

http://www.unce.unr.edu/publications/files/hn/2010/fs1011.pdf

I must admit, I found the argument a little lacking in any solid defence, excepting I live in a relative safe and abundant community.

tell me where you live and see where the down sides are:

Do you live in a 'hood that has cracked pavements, does it stop you from going another 50 meters to a fresh market store?

Is the place so unsafe you cannot catch a taxi to the local market?

A low crime area, or a high crime area?

Poor accessibility to fresh fruit and Veg?

Some information about the UK, please, somebody!

When I was a kid, we bought our vegetables from a greengrocer. Are there no longer any such people?

Fresh food markets are few and far between, I believe. I think I was told that Norwich had the last surviving one?

Some information about the UK, please, somebody!

When I was a kid, we bought our vegetables from a greengrocer. Are there no longer any such people?

Fresh food markets are few and far between, I believe. I think I was told that Norwich had the last surviving one?

Don't know about the big cities, but here in Cambridge we have a couple of farm shops, there is a daily street market in the town square and there are the inevitable supermarkets with fruit & veg areas.

No problems in availability, but as I live on my own I do not need much. Maybe when my wife and daughter join me next year from the Philippines things will be different, but I throw away half of what I buy, because minimum quantities offered for sale are around one week's eating, and are 'off' by four days old.

Thanks, HB. I didn't want to offer advice which was 50 years out of date! There used to be no minimum quantities, especially if you got to know your supplier.

Some information about the UK, please, somebody!

When I was a kid, we bought our vegetables from a greengrocer. Are there no longer any such people?

Fresh food markets are few and far between, I believe. I think I was told that Norwich had the last surviving one?

We still have a local Butcher, fruit and veg you can get at the local 'small supermarkets', but you have to go into town for the fresh fruit, whether it is fresher than the supermarket, I think it is, and that 10 mins away from home. Hardly difficult, supermarket or town and safe, not all people live in a safe environment.