I had to know the ingredients.  Partially hydrogenated oil, natch.  That’s in every damned thing.  But sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.  The backlash has finally taken hold.  Not going to pick these up the next time I’m in the grocery store, though.

And the attitude toward obesity being the mark of laziness falls right in line with that American myth that anyone can raise their class level by simply pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.  If we can make ourselves believe that fat people and poor people made themselves that way through sheer lack of willpower we can pretend that it will never happen to us because we’re too smart and make better decisions.

I found an item at the bar made by Smuckers that was a waffle with the maple syrup baked into it, to spare you the burning of precious calories pouring your own syrup before consuming it, I guess.

The thing that bothers me the most about American food culture is how much of it is pure shit.  I don’t just mean unhealthy; I mean it tastes bad.  You just know those waffles are garbage and that the syrup has no relationship to real maple syrup; it’s maple-flavored, corn syrup goop.  And when eating real maple syrup, you (or at least I) have to stop at a certain point to avoid a sugar coma.  The goop can be consumed way past the point of satiety.  I’d feel a lot better about American gluttony if it seemed like people actually enjoy what they’re eating.

I think I read somewhere that in order for a relatively thin woman who don’t exercise and don’t gain weight get a minimum of 5 miles a day of incidental walking in.  Fidgeters tend to be less likely to gain weight, too.  The sheer amount of calories burned by just doing shit is nothing to sniff at, but much of our culture is really about getting away from that.

But sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

Surprising.  I bet it still tastes like shit.

kesh, I suspect that it’s shit on purpose.  It creates this emotional need for satisfaction, and so you keep eating, hoping to get there….and they keep profiting.  What is missing from this discussion is the importance of pleasure.  People don’t like to talk about it, preferring to be puritanical.  But I think one reason Americans have poor eating habits is a lot of food on offer gives insufficient pleasure.  It’s one reason I’m doing the CSA blogging, because I think an emphasis on food that provides pleasure—-which my cooking does for me—-is important.  You can’t may a pitch for healthy eating unless you center it on happy eating.

It also can’t be ignored that less healthy food is also less expesive. Fresh fruits and vegtables are more expensive than canned, and spoil quickly. Austin is very health-conscious and foodie-oriented…and the most expensive city in Texas. If you don’t make much and are working long hours to support your family, you don’t have money to buy the better foods nor the time to cook it. You certainly don’t have money for a gym membership or an extra hour at night to go running. So, there’s a class difference too.

Certainly, and those are issues covered at length here before. Just adding to the pile.

That’s not Ampersand’s post; that’s Maia.

this food combination stuff has been going downhill ever since someone put peanut butter and jelly in the same jar.

Sigh, I probably need to just make one response on this and then bail before it gets nasty. While I grew up fairly thin until adulthood, I have a sibling who has been chunky from childhood and now has some fairly significant health problems.

* I don’t trust fat critics because my sister’s weight was a vector for some pretty profound emotional abuse throughout her childhood and adolescence. Ultimately I do think that some of the shit that goes down is because this is one area in which people do feel a license to be nasty and abusive.

* The typical success stories in medically-supervised weight-loss comes maintaining between 10-20% over extended periods of time, and that is hard work. While BMI is good for some population-wide generalizations regarding health, you can’t use it to determine who is and is not doing hard work to improve their health.

* Ultimately I think this is a problem that demands radical economic and social change. And I don’t mean punitive sin taxes on people, I mean overhauling our system of agricultural subsidies, changing the design of our cities, dealing with the ugly fact that poor people pay more for less selection in produce, and changing the nature of work in the United States.

One thing that annoys me is how Big Food spends umpteen millions of dollars to market their fatty, sugary crap, then turns around and plays the personal responsibility card whenever anyone suggests they do anything about that situation.

This is excellent. I often think about how even physical inactivity has become less calorie-intensive than it used to be. For instance, I’m so old I can remember when you had to get off the couch to change the channel. Or when driving in a car, and you wanted to open your window, you had to crank it. All these little modern conveniences add up—or rather, subtract from the amount of incidental movement we engage in in the course of a day.

On walking: I once had a six-month period between cars in my suburban existence. I knew it would be a while before I could afford to buy a new (i.e. used) car (and I was disinclined to finance one), so I made do. And it turns out, I could exist quite well in the not-winter months. Work was a walkable distance (if I cut through some non-public land masses, not possible to do if there was snow), so I walked.

When coworkers would pass me in their cars, they’d make a point to come up to me later and express pity: “I saw you walking, you poor thing, but I couldn’t pull over to give you a lift.” (Which, yeah, I’d be walking on the wrong side of a 6-lane boulevard to make that neither convenient or safe). I’m uninterested in pity, though, so I changed my response. “Oh, my gym closed, and I’m just trying to get in some cardio.” That changed the conversation. Now, instead of a pitiable creature that can’t afford a car (or worse, lacks somebody—anybody—to drop her off), I was a paragon of healthful virtue, to be despised instead for her discipline. Of course, neither was applicable.

But that’s the double-bind we’re in, isn’t it?

Two thumbs up on the post title.  Post itself is also spot on.

I gained weight—like 10-30 pounds within a matter of weeks—the three times I was put on hormones by my doctors.

It’s weight almost impossible to lose—and I’ve been every diet, exercise and healthcare plan on the planet—possibly compounded by another medication I take daily, known to have a weight gain as a side effect.

So it maybe no coincidence that Americans have grown obese in alarming numbers in the same decades that cows and cattle have been pumped full of hormones (so they gain weight fast, and are cheaper by the pound.)

I’m no scientist, but it would seem to me that our milk and meat are hormone laced. And if you believe some reports I’ve read, so is our tap water.

No every woman on the birth control pill gains weight (I’m apparently very sensitive to hormones, so I refused to take them during menopause.)

But every woman on birth control apparently pees those horomones into the water supply, which are not filtered out in sewage treatment plants, which apparently then seeps into our drinking water.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/091112-drinking-water-cocaine.html

The overuse of high fructose corn syrup use in prepared foods also coincides with the obesity boom…combine that with hormones…

I’d feel a lot better about American gluttony if it seemed like people actually enjoy what they’re eating.

Absofreakinglutely. It’s like the American processed food industry head the old joke: ““The food here is really terrible.” “Yeah, I know; and such small portions” and decided, “Well, we know how to fix that.”

I wonder how much food products like those waffles, and/or labor saving devices, etc, are the result of Industry’s need (or perceived need) to continue innovating at all costs.

I mean, there are only so many ways to make a waffle, particularly if you are trying to stay in the Envelope Of The Sane.  But they are driven ever-further outside the envelope because… Innovate Or Die, I guess.

It’s a topic I’ve been pondering lately.  If you take the point of view that any given product niche gets optimized fairly quickly, most products become commoditized correspondingly fast.  But businesses do not like commoditization—that isn’t where the juicy profit margins are.

I’m not sure what to make of that, or what to do about it.  But I suspect our economic system puts pressure in the direction of Innovation, regardless of whether or not any given product niche is past the point of diminishing returns on innovation.

I have to travel a bit more my job and two summers a go, I drove across country. One thing that struck me was how large the portions were outside NYC, which was the starting point. Even in places where food wasn’t overly processed and the restaurants were decent, Boulder, St. Louis, and Kansas City; the portion meant for one was too big for one person. It wasn’t till I reached San Francisco, where my brother lives, that I encountered relatively realistic portions and even then. Americans not only need to eat better, we need to less during every day occassions.

The problem is that many people like processed food, I certainly don’t mind occassional indulgences, and foodies even of the friendliest variety can come off as sanctimonious pleasure censors. Legislating against things that many people find pleasureable even if its for good public health reasons is really unadvisable.

  The surbanization/car culture of America certainly doesn’t help. The thinest cities in America tend to be in places with the most public transport because people don’t have to drive everywhere.

Your construction still presumes fat people are the product of failure and I just don’t think that’s fair. Thin people are eating the same foods and driving cars instead of walking, too. While rates of fatness and diabetes has risen, a good chunk of that is the result of a change of definition that made people fat and diabetic overnight. There is also good reason to think diabetes was underdiagnosed in the past.

The other thing to remember is that its not just that diets fail an overwhelming majority of the time. Most of the time that they fail, the dieter regains more weight than they had lost. A yo-yo dieting cycle isn’t going from 250 to 150 to 250 to 150 to 250. Quite often its going from 250 to 150 to 270 to 200 to 300. And its not just people who are fat being encouraged to diet. For many the cycle begins at 150 or 130 or even lower. And it starts younger than ever and since few fat people ever stop the cycle, this just allows a few more cycles in a dieter’s lifetime.

And even that doesn’t get into the health damage done by the disincentives for healthy eating for many fat people. They do what’s “right”, but it doesn’t make them thin, so it becomes seen as a failure to do that. I find the implications of that far more troubling than the existence of syrup infused waffles.

Blaming corporations for my body feels no different to me than conservatives who find blame in their own favored hobby horses like a permissive culture or a decline in personal responsibility. I don’t feel like either shows me any respect. There is no easy answer for why people are fat. The desire for people to make sense of my body is just emphasizing the stigmatization of it. Even from people who don’t think that’s what they are doing.

I lost a lot of weight over the past two years, and it still kind of blows my mind the way I used to eat.  People like to say things like bad food is cheaper, but that’s not always the case.  Bananas here in DC are $0.59/lb.  That’s cheap, people, real cheap.  And they’re tasty and good for you.  Same with apples.  Price is higher, but if you get a couple pounds of apples, it’s still cheaper than a couple bags of apple chips, or worse, potato chips.  Seriously, go around and compare. 

I think you’re right that people pretty much have to change the way they eat entirely, but I don’t think it’s that hard.  I’m not trying to simply be contrarian, because I think you hit a lot of right points—the structure of society is often stacked against healthful habits from what’s in the grocery store to how you get to it.  But personal responsibility has to be a component.

I also have to say that I get frustrated with the conflation of being a foodie with being healthful.  Really, people who call themselves foodies deserve a beating, but if we get past the stupidity of the label, I think we have to realize that there are a lot of things wrapped up in that concept that have nothing to do with health.  Foodieism (oh god, I can’t believe I wrote that) has as much to do with snobbery and indulgence as it has to do with eating fresh veggies.  People who eat fancy, fancy cupcakes call themselves foodies, but at the end of the day, it’s still a cupcake with all the negative health implications.

Anyway, I know I’m ranting a bit now, but I often get frustrated with how people confuse all the issues surrounding food.  For example, good for the environment and good for the body are not the same thing, but well-meaning and intelligent liberals often can’t tell the difference.  I wish we would sort through some of these things and try to communicate clearly what is going on.

end of rant.

Not really innovation of food products as message 18 suggests.  What’s rewarded is tiny and insignificant differences so there can be lots of products in the same category to fill up the shelves.  Possibly because vendors pay for shelf space in supermarkets but I don’t know if that’s the only reason.

Moving from one region to another makes this easier to spot.  Example:  in some cities all the supermarket frozen ravioli is stuffed with meat and in other cities it’s all cheese.  Both kinds of places have about the same number of varieties of frozen ravioli to choose from (about 10 - 12) but one has 10 kinds of cheese-filled and one has 10 kinds of meat-filled varying only by size or packaging or some other pointless difference so you get the appearance of great variety but no real difference.

Technically, Americans are weird for not having their syrup baked into their waffles.  If you get a street-waffle in Belgium, it’ll have sweet baked in, even the thin ones.  What’s also weird about us is we’ll take something with sweetness built in, and then put frosting on it…

Also, I think a better sign of a lack of activity or too many donuts is <i>a lack of activity and too many donuts!</a>  But it’s hard to count where the too-many is unless you’re putting on weight when not exercising.

Lastly, why does everyone bring up bizarre worries about hormones in the water/food/etc?  Our ability to detect these things far outstrips our body’s ability to react to it.  You need massive amounts compared to what is detected in food and water to have any effect on your body.  I say this as someone who takes hormones for life; it’s surprisingly easy to piss it all away.

Nutella:  Go from pharmacy to pharmacy and you’ll find the same thing, but worse.  Five different products for a cough, or hemorrhoids or sinus congestion - they’ll all have the same active ingredients.  But if you go to a different store, you’ll find a different five - with a different active ingredient!

Woe is you if you walk into a store and need a psoriasis medicine and all they have is dandruff medicine; because the active ingredient for one doesn’t work as well for the other!  Or are sensitive to aloe and have a rash; some stores stock nothing but products with aloe.  Five brands of nitrile gloves isn’t a choice.

<blockquote>It also can’t be ignored that less healthy food is also less expesive. Fresh fruits and vegtables are more expensive than canned, and spoil quickly. Austin is very health-conscious and foodie-oriented…and the most expensive city in Texas. If you don’t make much and are working long hours to support your family, you don’t have money to buy the better foods nor the time to cook it. You certainly don’t have money for a gym membership or an extra hour at night to go running. So, there’s a class difference too.
Comment #7: sassy on 09/02 at 02:31 PM <blockquote>

Oh yeah, I know, all that work to rinse a cup of blueberries, or an apple, or a peach.  So much easier to open the lunchable, the gogurt, or heat up the pre-syruped waffles.

What Reese said. Having gained and lost 80 lbs. of fat, I can say that yes, the lifestyle change is pretty drastic, and it takes patience and consistency. But it’s neither rocket science nor moving mountains: it’s just portion control and watching the empty calories. Small cuts /do/ add up, but it’s not as simple as skipping that Monday donut. The rest of your piece is spot-on. What I really logged in to say is: AUSTIN FTW! America’s 5th leanest city according to Men’s Health (I read it for the pictures). And 5 of the 10 fattest cities: all the other cities in Texas.

Your construction still presumes fat people are the product of failure

Yes, a failure of economics and culture.  Not your failure, or mine, either.  I’m sorry you feel scrutinized, but Amanda’s not really saying anything different than did the feminists who fought for access to higher education for women.  “Women can’t get good jobs because they’re stupid” and “Fat people can’t lose weight because they’re lazy” are both memes that culture has created and continues to reinforce with an environment that makes those judgements seem common-sensical and true.  You can’t change the system without recognizing that yes, it is the system—not fat people—that has failed.

Oh yeah, I also logged in to say that I think Amanda is being generous when she uses the term “maple syrup.”

purpleshoes: I’ve also noticed that a lot of people have been raised to finish everything on their plate. My parents raised me to not continue eating even if I felt that I’ve had enough.

<blockquote>Ultimately I think this is a problem that demands radical economic and social change. And I don’t mean punitive sin taxes on people, I mean overhauling our system of agricultural subsidies, changing the design of our cities, dealing with the ugly fact that poor people pay more for less selection in produce, and changing the nature of work in the United States.
Comment #11: CBrachyrhynchos on 09/02 at 02:38 PM </blockequote>

You forgot one thing.  We have to change the GDP accounting methods.  Right now, there are a lot of unemployed folks who are home (compared to when they were working) who could be cooking much healthier meals for their families (note, this is NOT a gendered work suggestion) or perhaps they started a garden, or perhaps they now get a chance to walk the dog or kids longer.  But, THAT doesn’t count in the GDP - so we continue to see “recession.”  As a result, presumably, they and their families may be healthier, all else being equal.  But, THAT won’t count in the GDP either.  Now, get them back to work, get them buying fast and convenience food crap, get their kids diabetic and all that, up to and including the insulin and the syringes, will boost the GDP.

Would it be a Pandagon food thread without phylosopher showing up to be a total privilege-choked asspuppet? I maintain it would not.

It’s been said that fat people are to the left what poor people are to the right.
Sure you may be talked about as if you’re less of a person, but it’s only because they’re so Concerned For Your Well Being(tm).

If people were really concerned for the well being of overweight people, they’d leave them alone or find better ways to encourage them to lose weight. The only thing more likely to give you a heart attack than being overweight is being constantly stressed out because you’re told you aren’t really a person on a pretty regular basis.

I grew up in a suburb that had a population of about 5,000.  My sister and I were both baby boomers, so there were lots of kids, and they were pretty much all our age.  When we were discussing the problem of childhood obesity, my sister reminded me that back then we referred to a chubby girl in the suburb as “the fat girl.”  Cruel, I know.  But her point was that she was really the only one.  Other kids might have two or three pounds extra, but only one out of thousands was fat.

One contributing factor, perhaps, is that back then, our non-school activities were largely unsupervised.  Parents told us to stay outside.  For lunch, they’d hand a sandwich through the door.  So, we just ran in packs.  If we wanted to go somewhere, we’d run or grab our bikes.  But the main thing is that our activities went on all-day long, all summer long.  We weren’t limited by an adult’s attention span or physical ability to keep up. 

Today, parents are afraid to allow their children that much freedom, and activity is largely supervised and scheduled.  That seems to me not only mind-numbingly more boring than my own childhood playtime, but also prone to limit actual exertion—running, jumping, climbing, just all those random things we did outside while the sun was out.

I know parents are just trying to protect their kids.  I marvel at the nonchalance of mine back then.  I suspect today’s fears are largely just the paranoia that infests our society, but that may just be my smugness for having gotten through childhood without being hurt or molested.  But, I have to say that I believe the independence we had . . . more, the independence our parents insisted we have, I believe that independence meant a lot more activity, and so less obesity.

“But every woman on birth control apparently pees those horomones into the water supply, which are not filtered out in sewage treatment plants, which apparently then seeps into our drinking water.”

How many times do people who aren’t eco-ascetics or anti-choice crusaders have to bat this one down before it finally fucking dies?  Jesus.

crissa:

It’s not “hormones” in the water. It’s female hormones. Those stories are written by people who are afraid of men with shrunken wieners. It’s the same reason it’s a lot easier to get Viagra paid for by health insurance than it is birth control pills.

I totally agree that the amount of incidental exercise is really a key driver.  For example, I grew up in New Jersey.  I walked to school and played sports, but most of the time going places involved driving.  Then I went to college in Chicago and dropped about 10 pounds because in Chicago it’s pretty much always faster to get somewhere using a combination of walking and public transit (at least over short to medium distances).  Fast forward to life in Atlanta where I worked in a restaurant and lost another 10 pounds (yay for being on your feet for 3-4 8 hour shifts a week), then flip to now when I have a desk job and have regained all the weight plus a bit more.

The thing I don’t like about some of the FA, is how they don’t say it’s hard to lose weight, they state right out you can’t do it.  If you do it, they say “see me in five years”.

I think it’s extreme.  And I ran into that exact attitude when I quit smoking.  It was the hardest thing I had to do, and it took me nearly two years of on and off the patch.  I can’t tell you how many people openly laughed at me and told me to let me know when I have a cig.  And some may say, well quitting smoking is different because once you’re done you’re done.  Not true for me, all these years later and I still want one sometimes. But many people who are still smoking finally understand I’m no longer a smoker, 

So I don’t think discouraging people and telling them, you ain’t gonna lose no weight and keep it off, you are kidding yourself is cool. 

The exercise thing though is so true.  I have to do a tremendous amount to keep my weight down.  And sometimes it’s very difficult to find the time.

Girls have also been entering puberty at earlier and earlier ages (7-8 now) and Chinese baby girls developing breasts.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,58388,00.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/female-infants-growing-br_b_676402.html

http://www.disinfo.com/2010/08/young-girls-developing-breasts-by-age-7-or-8/

Is there a link between damn early puberty and hormones in milk, meat and water supply? Not enough testing so far, but each time I was given hormones my breasts went up a cup and a size, as an adult.

“Some of the drugs that mimic hormones, such as birth control, may also throw off an animal’s endocrine, or hormone-regulating, system. Some male fish in the U.S., for example, have been growing female parts due to exposure to estrogen in the water.”

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070122-sex-change.html

Bat away all you like (but I noticed no links to evidence for those bats) and obviously, and maybe not everyone is sensitive to hormones, but anecdotally, I also know many women who, after being treated with steroids, ballooned up almost instantaneously, and then had great difficulty losing that weight.

And when I say “180”, I mean 180—-the only fat people I’ve ever known to get un-fat without WLS went from being people who didn’t get much exercise to people who turned into jocks.

Yes. 6 years ago Mr Kristin went fairly rapidly from being obese to being as thin as he’s ever going to get, and quite toned.

The precipitant for this change? He started a job at a plastics plant where he spent 10-hour shifts, 5 days a week, on his feet and active. When he got a job that sucked slightly less and didn’t make him wish he could die rather than going to work in the morning, he went right back to his old size.

So sure, technically the boostrappers are right. If he were sufficiently motivated he could get thin like that again! For a value of “sufficiently motivated” that equals LITERALLY MAKING IT HIS FULL TIME JOB TO BE THIN. Fifty fucking hours a week.

People who eat fancy, fancy cupcakes call themselves foodies, but at the end of the day, it’s still a cupcake with all the negative health implications.

True, but in my experience, foodies put an emphasis on flavor and pleasure, and subsequently they eat a lot less.  Not all, but many.  By validating their emotional need to feel pleasure from food, they are able to eat a little, feel good about it, and put the fork down.  I think people are far more likely to binge on flavorless, high calorie foods than, say, expensive cheese.  When I eat a fancy foodie pastry, for instance, I find a couple bites does it.  The urge to eat the entire pastry is much higher when the first couple of bites turned up very little pleasure.

“I lost a lot of weight over the past two years, and it still kind of blows my mind the way I used to eat…I think you’re right that people pretty much have to change the way they eat entirely, but I don’t think it’s that hard.”

On an FA blog that I read, different flavors of this comment come up occasionally, and the response is usually that it’s not (comparatively) hard for most people to lose weight, but it is damn near impossible for almost anyone to lose weight and keep it off for more than five years. 

My weight loss/gain experiences definitely support this: keeping my lost weight (50 lbs, a lot for me) off for about four years was a breeze, but after that, it came back (and then some) despite my new habits.  YMMV, but I do think that it is a good idea for people who have successfully achieved their weight loss goals to try to reach the five year mark before they start telling other people that it isn’t that hard.

(I’m not trying to pick on you specifically, Reece, or say that you will not be successful in keeping it off.  I just think a lot of people say things like that without realizing that the beginning is the easy part.)

I lost about 100 lbs during college (I am super tall for a girl, so it is not as much as it seems) and it really really really fucking sucked. I went from being pretty obese to on the cusp of “normal” and “overweight”. I think Amanda is right that it takes really changing your life—becoming a jock and making food a centerpiece of your life, but another important problem is that sustainable weight loss is usually slow. It took me like 4 yrs. I didn’t get any of the oos and ahs from people that a binge dieter would have gotten, because my weight loss was barely perceptible to people that saw me more than once a year. For me the first step for losing weight was just giving in to the fact that I was fat and would be fat for a long time and that didnt mean I was a bad person or undeserving of respect, etc. I also had to stop putting my life on hold for the magic day when I became thin.

I guess my main point is that not only is American culture structured to make a large portion of people fat, the way that we view fatness and reward rapid weightloss makes the hard process of losing weight even harder.

@judybrowni

There is at least one major flaw in the Time article (unless you have data to back up what they do not): the average age of menarche probably was never 17.  Studies done in the late-nineteenth century (and published in the early twentieth) found that onset was between ages 13 and 14 (some found slightly younger).

It can be hard to know how seriously to take many of these studies because many seem to start from the position that the more promiscuous working classes have a younger onset than good, moral middle class girls, but discounting all of their data in favor of 17?  That doesn’t make much sense at all.

In addition, there is a troubling tendency in discussing the onset of menarche for journalists to get into hand-wringing (like in the Time article) about the end of childhood and innocence, and the regretful sexualization of young girls.

So I don’t think discouraging people and telling them, you ain’t gonna lose no weight and keep it off, you are kidding yourself is cool.

AnglScarlett, it’s not right to discourage people from trying to reach their goals, but when people use their successful weight loss to imply that others are lazy/irresponsible/gluttonous for not doing it too, I think it’s fair to bring up the five year thing.

I’m sure that many here have heard of the book, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes
After five years of intense interdisciplinary research, Taubes found that the advice given by current weight loss authorities simply doesn’t work.

I’ve been obese as an adult since 1984-5, and the only thing that has worked is a program based on the below conclusions. It will take two or three years, but there are no ridiculous, impossible changes to make to my life. As I have commented before, I exercise once a week for fifteen minutes of pure exercise and any other activity I do is for pure pleasure, not obligation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Taubes’ Ten Conclusions

As I emerge from this research, though, certain conclusions seem inescapable to me, based on the existing knowledge:

1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of civilization.

2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis the entire harmonic ensemble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight, and well-being.

3. Sugars sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates.

4. Through their direct effect on insulin and blood sugar, refined carbohydrates, starches, and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and the other chronic diseases of civilization.

5. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating, and not sedentary behavior.

6. Consuming excess calories does not cause us to grow fatter, any more than it causes a child to grow taller. Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss; it leads to hunger.

7. Fattening and obesity are caused by an imbalance a disequilibrium in the hormonal regulation of adipose tissue and fat metabolism. Fat synthesis and storage exceed the mobilization of fat from the adipose tissue and its subsequent oxidation. We become leaner when the hormonal regulation of the fat tissue reverses this balance.

8. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage. When insulin levels are elevated either chronically or after a meal we accumulate fat in our fat tissue. When insulin levels fall, we release fat from our fat tissue and use it for fuel.

9. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat and ultimately cause obesity. The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be.

10. By driving fat accumulation, carbohydrates also increase hunger and decrease the amount of energy we expend in metabolism and physical activity.

Both the original article being critiqued and Amanda’s response ignore the concept of body type. In my family alone we have both mesomorphs and ectomorphs. One sister can’t gain weight no matter how much she eats and how little exercise she gets. She has been a junk food addict since her age was in single digits. I, on the other hand, have been fat since toddler-hood. Yet I was always active. We lived on a farm so there was space to run around and lots of chores. Plus no TV and no Internet. Also, as the oldest, I spent a lot of time giving the other kids wagon and piggy-back rides and having my calories restricted (since kindergarten). But I was the fat one, not my siblings who could (and did) eat anything and got to ride in the wagon.

As an adult, I can only lose weight by exercising three hours a day and limiting my calorie intake to 1200 calories. That’s also how I maintain the weight loss too, since I plateau. Ease up a little and back up I go. That’s not a lifestyle that is sustainable for anyone.

Moderate exercise—-which I still have no idea what that supposedly means anyway-

Thank gourd I’m not the only one!
I just started a CrossFit thing and while I’m feeling muscles that I haven’t felt in years and actually working out for less time than I had been previously - but working much harder - I still get down about “not losing weight fast enough”
I also just got a dog so taking him for hour long walks every evening has helped as well.

I still have a desk job & love to bake however. I think that cuts into any progress made by a large margin.

Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss; it leads to hunger.

Story of my life!

Illumination on the door to door service:

I would always deliver someone directly to their door just for safety. And watch while they made it inside. One of those things you pick up growing up in a city with three active serial killers.

It’s also kind of depressing how people do the “completely overhauling your diet isn’t that hard” thing to counter the point that, well, you have to completely overhaul your life.  I mean, I have a reasonable job with predictable hours and do not live in a food-desert and do have a car and have a kitchen and am reasonably competent in said kitchen and am not broke to the point where I cannot afford to buy food with an unpredictable expiration date and on and on down the line.  I am well-set up, as these things go, to decide that I’m never eating processed anything again, or going vegetarian, or whatever.  And it would still be a pain in the ass for me to unilaterally decide that I’m going to go veg or paleo or raw, because I’m shacked up with a partner, and there winds up being a subtle but fairly steady pressure towards a median diet.  Add kids to the mix, and it becomes exponentially harder to manage.

Hey, alysia, that kinda worked for me too.  Don’t give a shit about losing weight, but just feeling better through regular exercise.  Two years down the line and you find that you’ve lost 20lbs and easily keeping it off.  I still have fat around the middle, but I can wear Speedos with no shame when I run these days.  Much of this is simply about keeping going until you like it, or like the results (aside from losing weight) such as being able to do more for yourself.  It doesn’t hurt that I have a beautiful and interesting neighborhood to run through.

Mamran, I think people who do what you said are assholes.  For example, I would never dismiss a smoker with “you are a lazy stupid fuck, because after all, i quit”.

I know it’s like heroin.  Not everyone can do it.  And I paid a price for doing it that I’m still paying.  I’m tall and I was between a 6 and an 8 when I was smoking.  I’m between a 10 and a 12 now.  And I struggle to stay there.

So I agree with you, but as you say, it’s not a good thing to discourage people from goals, and it’s a terrible thing to openly scoff at their goals.

Same sentiment with preying mantis actually.  I have a good deal of introspective narcissism that for all the trouble that causes me, works for me here.  Devil may care and eff you too really helps keep certain personal priorities straight in looking out for numero uno.  Of course, you have to be privileged for that style to work.

I’m not as extreme a case as Mr Kristin, by the way. All it took for me to lose a lot of weight and be my thinnest in years (still plus-sized but the lowest plus size available) was crash-working-out for a dance intensive. For about four months I did a grueling workout every evening. The workout itself took only about an hour. The problem was that it left me with literally no energy to do anything else. I finished my workout, staggered to the shower and crawled from the shower into bed.

I did not cook. I did not clean. I did not go out with friends. I did not read good books. I did not sew or paint or build things. I did not play with my kids or read to them. I had no energy. So for me, becoming thin(ner) didn’t require a full time job type time investment, but it did require giving up pretty much my entire life outside of being thin(ner).

So I don’t think discouraging people and telling them, you ain’t gonna lose no weight and keep it off, you are kidding yourself is cool.

But it’s true. Not liking it doesn’t make it less true. Better we should lie? Lying is what the diet industry does, and it makes huge piles of money by promising “This time, honey, it’s going to be different. I swear. You know I only want what’s good for you.” The fact is that only 5% of people who lose weight will keep it off for 5 years. Everyone wants to think they’ll be in that 5%, but if it were everyone, or even a lot of people, it wouldn’t be 5 frigging %.

The point is not to discourage people from exercising and eating food that makes them healthier. If they go in knowing that longterm weight loss is massively unlikely, people just might start to focus on how they feel instead. And then, when their regimen fails to melt away the pounds maybe they’ll stick to it because it’s making them feel better, instead of deciding “ahhhh crap, this isn’t making me any skinnier, it must not be doing me any good”. People have a 5% chance of being able to lose weight longterm; they have, like, a 100% chance of feeling better if they take good care of their bodies.

Perhaps the onset of puberty was always 13 or 14 for girls (however, my mother started at 17 back in the early ‘40s, I was 14 in 1964.)

But 7 or 8 at menarche (5 and babies for breasts!), especially at the numbers now being seen, is way off any kind of bell chart of previous normalcy. Or so say those who study that sort of thing.

One of the differences between then and now: hormone treatments for both milk cows and meat cattle.

Are the two connected? I’m no scientist, but more and more scientists are leaning to that connection.

Hormones are given to cattle to fatten them up: again, the obesity plague in America follows that tendency.

(Although I also give props to high fructose corn syrup and the rise in packaged and fast food consumption.)

That combination, in addition to more general inactivity, and we may have created a perfect storm for obesity, not completely connected to “will power.”

Shah8, 20lbs really isn’t a lot of weight. It’s generally a relatively small proportion of body weight, within an amount that (a) doesn’t take a hugely long time to lose and (b) can be maintained for a fairly long time by many people. 40, 60, or 100lbs is another matter entirely.

What is missing from this discussion is the importance of pleasure.  People don’t like to talk about it, preferring to be puritanical.

I recently read a blog about a White House recipe for fruit/nut slices (what I - but I think not Americans - would call flapjacks). They came in at about 140 calories per portion. Almost all the posts in response were about how incredibly unhealthy that was, full of butter and sugar, and how no-one could just eat one, and it was so irresponsible, and it was much healthier just to have a 60 calorie cookie. Or two. It was ridiculous. The things weren’t _intended_ to be eaten by the dozen. They were cakes! And as cakes, 140 calories per slice, full of fruit and nuts, is ridiculously healthy. It’s as if the very idea of food as a pleasure itself is bad, that it’s better to eat ten portions of low-calorie crap and stuff yourself to bursting, than one portion of a decent dinner, that if food is labelled “healthy” then any amount must be OK (and that food only can be labelled healthy if you can eat any amount of it), but if “unhealthy” than a mere spoonful is an abomination.

Perhaps the onset of puberty was always 13 or 14 for girls (however, my mother started at 17 back in the early ‘40s, I was 14 in 1964.)

I was 17 in the mid-nineties. Juliet Capulet’s mother gave birth at twelve in 15—- the play suggests this is younger than ideal socially, but doesn’t have a line about it being physiologically remarkable.

IIRC correctly, the Swedish study about 17 year olds was actually an anomaly at the time - it’s based on girls who were considered to be menstruating too late. Yes, the age of menarche has dropped a bit, but we’re infinitely better nourished than the average person 100 years ago. It’s the same as average height increasing by generation over the same period - a slightly annoyig side-effect when you walk into a doorframe. Chinese babies with breasts is completely different - that’s a side-effect of deliberate adulteration of a product. Comparing it to the drop in average age of puberty is like saying that the effect of natural radon exposure in Cornwall is the same as being exposed to an unshielded nuclear reactor.

The first time I experienced rapid weight gain through hormones (10 pounds, almost overnight) and the enlargement of breast by cup size, was when I went on the Pill in 1970.

Admittedly, hormone levels were higher then in the birth control pill, but first time dizzy spells also decided me for getting off them.

Hormone treatments in my ‘30s saw bigger weight gain, 30 pounds in six weeks, breasts up a cup and a size.

Hormone levels have been dropped in the Pill, but I wonder, if the wide use may also be contributing to obesity in women, or at least, those who are as sensitive to hormones as I am.

But again, Nineveh, you’re ignoring the new menarch for American girls at 7 or 8, hardly a gradual drop, and certainly an historic one.

Juliet’s mother may have been 15 when—she wasn’t 7 or 8, or 5.

And I doubt anyone would attribute that precipitate drop to good nutrition.

However, if you control for weight, those ages may be remarkable - but the weight is pretty consistently the trigger.  Puberty triggers by a combination of factors, but weight is the biggest.  Not hormones.

Like I tried to say earlier: If these ‘hormones’ in the water and food were it, we’d see this effect in every watering hole and cattle pond around calving season.  We don’t.

Our ability to make up stuff to worry about bizarrely outstrips the world’s ability to hide to stuff to worry about.  There are people worrying about the lack of potassium in their water, let alone things that could actually have an effect upon their health.

I’ve also read that Americans are dropping in height, which may be attributable to poor childhood nutrition, especially in comparison to certain Europeans who, apparently eat more whole foods, rather than processed.

So the idea that American girls are going into early childhood puberty is even less likely to be connected to “good” nutrition, but may be connected to childhood obesity.

@kristin, I’m dealing with the whole “I’m not getting skinnier, so what’s the point?” thing with my sister.  She’s ludicrously healthy, eats a primarily vegetarian diet, has cut out HFCS, walks a minimum of four miles a day, and she’s still a size 24.  So a lot of people assume she’s lazy, doesn’t ever exercise and eats nothing but junk food all the time. 

So what the hell do I tell her after, “But you feel better right?  And your numbers are good!” elicits, “Yes, but nobody can see my numbers.  And I’m sick of being told I should START doing all the things I’ve been doing forever.”

I understand it.  I had to offer to bench press my GP to get her to shut up about my weight.  I’m short and stocky, just like my entire family.  I may look like a short, round little pudding of a person, but I can bench press a Buick.

I have been thinner, much thinner, in the past, but I was also suffering from grossly disordered eating and worked out 2-3 hours a day 4-6 days a week. 

I’m a grown up now.  I don’t have the time to work out as a part time job anymore, and I also don’t have the time to suffer from constant bouts of bronchitis, mono and every other disease that comes down the pike because of malnutrition.

But we don’t need links, judy.  Yours have the information.  If a seven-year-old weighs as much as a 14-year-old, isn’t that more an issue than otherwise worrying about whatever random thing you want?

Look up at #48.  It’s a list of bizarre conclusions with no facts behind them.  People make up things to worry about when they don’t know the exact cause.

Say what you will the European Union won’t buy American meat precisely because it’s hormone laced:

“For more than four decades,American ranchers and farmers
have been injecting tiny pellets of hormones into the ears of
cattle raised for beef.The drugs, delivered with
needle-tipped guns, are sex hormones sold under such names as Steer-Oid,
Ralgro and Synovex, and they make the animals grow faster and
produce more meat for every dollar spent on grain and hay…”

“in the U.S., where three out of four cattle raised for beef are
treated with one or more hormones.
But it won’t be routine in Europe any time soon. Not only is the
practice illegal there, but the European Union has refused for a
decade to permit imports of beef from hormone-treated cattle.”

http://www.organicconsumers.org/Toxic/beefhormone.cfm

@Nineveh

Exactly.

@judybrowni

If 17 is within the range of normal (and from what I have read, it is) and 13-14 is the average (or middle of the bell curve), then how is 7-8 “way off the bell chart” and at what crazy big numbers?

I have read some of the things from “people who study that sort of thing” and there are never decent studies for comparison with the good ol’ way things used to be.

I actually have read quite a bit about this because all of the hand-wringing over the issue is so completely anti-feminist.  Why should society care if menarche slightly lowers (probably because of nutrition)?  Menarche and sex are (or should be) completely unrelated.  But, no, the female sexuality must be controlled by all means possible, from arbitrary lines of childhood (with no sex) and adulthood (with sex, but only in the right way) to making sure that sex and reproduction are ALWAYS linked.

The science really isn’t there to support the hand-wringing, and that is a problem in and of itself, but even if the science were there, the hand-wringing itself is a problem.

(BTW, Anne Frank was 14 in 1943.)

Juliet Capulet’s mother gave birth at twelve in 15—- the play suggests this is younger than ideal socially, but doesn’t have a line about it being physiologically remarkable.—Ninevah @60

While it’s true Shakespeare doesn’t mention it, historical analysis of Veronese social norms in the 1400s and 1500s does indicate that 12 would have been very young (illegally so, in fact - the reason there is so much Sturm und Drang regarding Juliet’s planned marriage is that she will be barely legal at 14). Marriage was far more common in the early 20s, and one of the reasons it was so was because it was considered that teens weren’t strong enough to have children.

So which is the chicken and which the egg?

Childhood obesity, early menarch which may be connected in hormones—or childhood obesity which creates early menarch?

No one knows for certain: but I haven’t dreamed this up out of whole cloth. Not only have I seen my health and life adversely affected by hormones, but it’s scientists who are worried about a possible connection, as well.

Silly, silly scientists, and the European Union!

Crissa

Please look up before you criticize and show the depth of your ignorance. Gary Taubes is an investigative science journalist who, during interviews with some nutritional researchers some ten years ago, found that they were lying about their research and their conclusions. He went on to interview more research people in the nutritional field and wrote an article, “What if it’s all Been a Big Fat Lie”

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html

It started a Big Fat Controversy, which you can follow from above link.

He then spent five solid years doing nothing but research in at least a dozen disciplines such as anthropology, archeology, bariatric medicine, etc., across two hundred years and various countries. In other words, he put together all the research that no one else bothered to bring together in one work. Up until now, dietary research has been so specialized that it was like the six blind men who examine an elephant, each drawing very different conclusions from one another. Taubes puts the elephant back together.

The facts behind the ten conclusions are irrefutable and yes, very,very numerous, making his book a slow if not difficult read for many. He HAS come up with the exact cause.

Crissa, I do realize that there is no context for you or others reading the ten conclusions because the conventional dietary wisdom being presented by corporate media is so very different from the ten conclusions.
Read the article at least.

Being someone who used to be more hardline FA and later decided a lot of it was approaching denialism territory, I always find myself nodding along to these posts, Amanda. One of the hardest things for me to articulate is the way weight loss was only possible for me when I decided that I had to ‘pretend’ like all these environmental cues to eat and not move were not there. Not that I play pioneer, but I look for opportunities to walk and move. I try to remember that even if sitting at a desk is mentally exhausting, I’ll actually feel better if I give my body some movement afterwards. I look out for ways restaurants provide specials (get an appetizer, 2 entrees and a dessert to share for $20, only 1800 calories per person!) that would cause me to eat more than I need. While my weight loss has been slow* and absolutely painless in terms of hunger and mood and such, it still takes mental energy to fight one’s environment. Especially here in West Virginia. I hate being used as a positive role model for that reason. I don’t believe people should have to put as much thought into eating and movement as I have.

* I say slow because in biggest-loser culture, people expect 100 pounds a year type weight loss. However, as I said on my blog when I first started losing weight,  it took me a decade to go from 180 to 280 pounds so why anyone expects that reversing that process should take 1 or 2 years max is beyond me.

It was illegal to sell alcohol on Sunday in Oklahoma and we can’t sell plain solvents in amounts more than a pint in California and it’s illegal to plant GM corn in Mexico.  So what?  Laws aren’t logical.

Being as you can test the obesity thing by checking what weight the children are and match that to remote areas of the world that don’t get hormone-induced beef… Except you won’t do that.  Because it would contradict what you’re coming up with, because children in the EU, who don’t get beef raised on american ranches still have early puberty if they’re obese.  Yeah, they have les obese children, but they still have more than they used to.

Chicken and egg problems can be solved if you go out and look.  Controlling for variables is something scientists do and journalists don’t.  American children aren’t the only obese children in the world.

And on Mr Taubes, apparently he thinks that humans shouldn’t eat any source of sugar - since he names every single type as bad, the existence of insulin in your bloodstream as bad (because <a herf=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin”>among other features</a> it encourages fat cells to grow). 
His recommendations aren’t worth shit, because they’re contradictory and therefore stupid.  His premise that we’ve been lied to by diet-hawkers?  That part is right.  The rest is rubbish.

Judybrowni, the issue is not the actual female hormones, as per the birth control pills. It’s the estrogen impersonators. Many, many plastics break down into estrogenoids and get into the water supply, and the degree to which this is occurring utterly dwarfs any effect that could possibly be caused by actual women. The estrogenoids are also more dangerous than real estrogens because they don’t break down in the same way.

So yes, there is a clear problem with estrogen-like hormones in the water supply—it is affecting the reproduction of frogs and fish, and may be related to the steady decline of the human male sperm count in the developed world, and could very well contribute to human weight gain in the United States. But it’s *not* caused by human women on BC pills peeing into the water.

LCforevah, I’ve found that my health improved following the diet of those ten conclusions (although I wasn’t familiar with your source.)

Indeed, those guidelines may be helping me avoid adult onset diabetes that three of my friends in their 50s and 60s have developed (who admittedly ate a diet with a high, refined carbohydrate load.)

It’s the diet they now must follow to avoid complications.

(And I’m afraid that a big refined carbos with sugar goodie now also makes me feel ill.)

the new menarch for American girls at 7 or 8, hardly a gradual drop

Where is it?

Do you know any girls starting their periods at 7 or 8? I don’t. I’ve never heard of one, not even one.

I’m pretty sure the teachers at my kids’ elementary school would know about it too, if girls in first and second grade suddenly started needing pads. And yet there are still no sanitary products vended in the kids’ bathrooms.

Do I buy that some girls have had menarche at ages we consider unusually young? Sure. Do I buy that 7 or 8 is “the new menarche?” Uhhhhhhh no. Most girls still have their first period in the ages we think of as adolescent.

@judybrowni

Your premise does rely on the assumption that early menarche is a bad thing.  That is anti-feminist hand-wringing. 

The fact that some scientists engage in bad science (and any research that starts with the assumption that menarche used to happen at age 17 is probably bad science) is not evidence that their theories are sound.  Quick googling reveals a pdf of this “scientist” (a research psychologist from Canterbury University) who claims that his research shows a link between earlier menarche and absent biological fathers (stepfathers don’t cut it).  His “reason” why earlier menarche is bad is asynchronous body/brain development.

There really isn’t much sound science to substantiate your claims about hormones, but if you want to continue to argue, I would appreciate it if you left menarche out of it.  Even if increased hormones were causing a younger onset of menarche, that would only mean that the hormones were “bad” if there is something wrong or damaging about menstruation itself that younger bodies must be protected from.  Obesity has been linked to damaging the body (in the young and old, male and female), but menstruation/menarche? Seriously?

I mean, sure we can discuss what seems to be fairly good evidence for estrogen impersonators fucking things up in some bad ways, but before we get all invested in whether or not they cause menarche at 7 or 8 maybe we should establish whether there actually IS a growing phenomenon of it happening, and not just handwringing and a few bizarre cases being blown up into the sky falling.

Quick googling reveals a pdf of this “scientist”  (a research psychologist from Canterbury University) who claims that his research shows a link between earlier menarche and absent biological fathers (stepfathers don’t cut it).

One of judybrowni’s “sources” features a commenter opining that girls are hitting puberty sooner because they’re exposed to things like Bratz dolls. And at least one other commenter nods sagely along with hir. That’s the level of rigorous investigation involved here.

@kristin

Ugh.  I didn’t get that far.  I feel a little bad for derailing the thread, but the hysteria over younger menarche is one of those things that just really gets to me.  It is always assumed to be a bad thing (whether or not it is even happening) and the sexual politics of that assumption are NEVER interrogated.  Menstruation (and, by extension, menarche) is one of those topics that feminism has made more okay to talk about in public, but all of that discussion just ends up reinforcing patriarchal ideas about women, their bodies, and their sexualities.  It is so aggravating, especially since wanting to talk about menstruation and its related issues/social constructs pretty much means that you will be seen as a moon-worshiping, blood-saving, pagan, lesbian-separatist.  (Not like there is anything wrong with being that sort, but it is pretty narrow.)

Seconding LCForevah on Taube’s Good Calories/Bad Calories .  Last winter I went from reading the books of Michael Pollan, to Lierre Keith’s The Vegetarian Myth(thanks Amanda!) to Taube’s book. In January I decided to reduce the amount of refined foods and starches from my diet and have effortlessly lost 35 pounds, have more energy, and am less moody than I was. In May I had a physical exam and my cholesterol and blood triglycerides were way down despite my high meat diet(lean and grass fed when possible). I didn’t adopt this lifestyle for purpose of losing weight(I didn’t think I needed to), just for general health benefits, but the weight loss has been a great fringe benefit. It feels great to get into 30W pants.

1) Body fat levels are related to menstruation. Female athletes who get their fat levels down too low often stop having their periods. When girls have higher fat levels, they start their periods earlier.

2) An even scarier article was in the New York Times about the rise in bone fractures during basic training because American children are drinking soft drinks instead of milk. You don’t have to be a war monger to recognize that children need proper nutrition and our nation is paying and is likely to continue paying a high price for our new nutritional, social and exercise practices.

I don’t see how babies or 5 year-olds with breasts could be a good thing, and if it also worries scientists, well that’s another.

But touting menstruation for 7 to 8 year olds as a good thing or even neutral thing seems ridiculous on it’s face.

Even if overlooking the unknown health problems possible in a young girl’s lifetime, of which a menarch forced that early may be the first indication.

Even if overlooking the sexual harassment from other children (no less adults). If for no other reason that a pregnancy at that age would compound the harm done by molestation with a life-threatening pregnancy, or abortion for a little girl.

Don’t see how either feminists or the Patriarchy gain with very young girls artificially forced into puberty.
And don’t think I’ve ever encountered a more pretzel-logic argument in my life, and that’s saying something.

I have to say, I see no good whatsoever coming of 8 year olds experiencing something that is painful, can ruin their clothes in a deeply embarrassing way, and makes them vulnerable to pregnancy.

I don’t know if it’s *true* that 8 year olds are menstruating any more than they used to, but given that the menstrual cycle is *painful*, and that this is an objective fact that would be true even in a matriarchy where there was no shame attached to it, I can’t see any positive value in children experiencing it for five years longer than they should have.

There are all kinds of issues with menstruation that could and should go away if we weren’t a culture of patriarchal ass-wipes. The shame and embarrassment that 8 year olds will experience when they get their periods is something that shouldn’t happen to anyone who gets her first period… but it will. The risk of getting pregnant from being raped is something that shouldn’t happen to any girl getting her first period… but it will. The onset of disorders like endometriosis is something that in a perfect world we’d be able to medicate and resolve very rapidly.

But healthy girls still get cramps and pain on their periods, and I think it sucks bad enough to start suffering that when you’re 13. To get it when you’re 8? No. Bad thing. Menses suck, they objectively suck, and they’re going to suck even if we create a matriarchy where the suckage of menses is celebrated the way we glorify war in this culture. I mean, I’ve got my period right now, and I feel so much better when I get my periods now than I did when I was 33, because I had major abdominal surgery and it cut some of the nerves and now, although my skin is numb on my stomach, I don’t get cramps anymore! Something has really got to suck big time when “I have permanent nerve damage” is a *good* thing in comparison.

I don’t think early menarche means the sky is falling, I can’t even imagine why any moron would think it had to do with Bratz dolls or relationships with your father, and if indeed there are girls undergoing menarche at 8, I am sure that most of them will have perfectly normal happy lives if the fact that they’re undergoing menarche at 8 is not used to pathologize them, stigmatize them, or justify raping them. But in the most supportive and wonderful environment, period cramps still hurt like fuck and I wouldn’t wish them on 8 year olds. So I gotta say, early menarche? Yeah, it’s a bad thing. If it’s happening. I have kids in the public school system and I don’t see a lot of it myself, so I gotta wonder if in fact it *is* a serious concern. But if it is happening, I think it is not good, because periods hurt and menarche exists to make you ready to have babies and 8 year olds having babies is a goddamn awful idea, so why should they suffer the pain of periods so long before they’re ready to reproduce? Fuck it, I want to genetically engineer the human race so human women don’t enter menarche and start suffering period cramps until we stand in front of a mirror and say three times “I’m ready to have babies”, and then once we’ve had babies, we can stand in front of a mirror and say “Okay, done with babies” and it will stop.

I agree that Gary Taube’s book is great. I still eat refined carbs as an occasional guilty pleasure but that’s it, and it has improved my health and general well-being tons.

Also, a lot of people on here might find this lecture interesting (if you have an hour, though its less if you skip through the dry chemical reaction charts in the middle):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Kaleberg, maybe that’s why I’m the only person I know who’s never broken a bone in my body. I was the one who drank milk, and still drinks milk, because I like it.

And I didn’t lack for physical activity as a kid. I could fall out of trees with the best of them.

The hormones in the water thing sounds suspiciously like a moral panic to me.

I’m with Reece:

That’s cheap, people, real cheap.  And they’re tasty and good for you.  Same with apples.  Price is higher, but if you get a couple pounds of apples, it’s still cheaper than a couple bags of apple chips, or worse, potato chips.  Seriously, go around and compare.

I think you’re right that people pretty much have to change the way they eat entirely, but I don’t think it’s that hard.

If you are mentally healthy enough to care, I think you can lose weight.

If you’re all fucked up by personal history, that’s another story.

@judybrowni

I think we have to overlook “unknown health problems possible” since we can’t talk about what may be good or bad outcomes.  Does early menarche lower the risk of breast cancer?  We don’t know.  Does it raise it?  We don’t know.  Does it result in girls hating Barbie dolls? We don’t know.  Does it lead to more divorces?  Who the fuck knows.  Right now, there is no evidence of anything bad (or good) happening as a result.  If there are negative consequences, then why care only about the 7- or 8-year-olds?  What about those 9, 10, 11, 12, etc.?  Hand-wringing over a possible shift of the arbitrary line only serves to harm those girls who happen to fall within the normal range, but at its edges.

I vehemently oppose the notion that we should consider there to be something wrong with a child because other children (no less adults) are fucking assholes.  By that logic, we should vigorously enforce gender norms on our children lest they be teased. 

In terms of getting upset over the possible pregnancies of raped children, menarche has little to do with the fertility of a young woman.  Some girls ovulate before their first menstruation, some long after.  I have not seen any data on younger ages of nubility.  From Wikipedia: “In most girls, menarche does not signal that ovulation has occurred. In postmenarchal girls, about 80% of the cycles were anovulatory in the first year after menarche, 50% in the third and 10% in the sixth year.”  (This is pretty basic female anatomy, I think.)

Finally, I didn’t say that the patriarchy gained with young girls artificially forced into puberty, I said that the (possibly not happening) phenomenon of younger menarche is used to police female sexuality.  That sure as shit benefits the patriarchy.

Besides, aren’t male children *also* going through puberty earlier than they were 100 years ago? How does the female hormones in the water supply stuff fit into that, exactly?

About the “five year” thing: are people not aware that as adults their metabolism plateaus down, and yeah, in five years it’s going to be harder?  This is kindergarten knowledge.

Get to 53 and you only need a salad plate for your whole dinner.  Big fucking surprise.  Not.

@Alara J. Rogers

Fuck it, I want to genetically engineer the human race so human women don’t enter menarche and start suffering period cramps until we stand in front of a mirror and say three times “I’m ready to have babies”, and then once we’ve had babies, we can stand in front of a mirror and say “Okay, done with babies” and it will stop.

This I can pretty much agree with, but at the same time this argument works almost as well for all of the other shit that goes along with bodies.  Shaving sucks, but so does having a beard.  If boys start growing facial hair slightly before they used to, should we collectively freak out to protect them from that unpleasantness?  Acne sucks, but if an 8-year-old gets a zit, should we start ranting about how terrible life will be to them?

I am not celebrating younger menarche, but it is not the end of civilization.  Yes, periods can suck, but some women do find them to be overall wonderful things.  I am not one of those women, but they aren’t wrong.  Lots of things with human bodies suck (and life in general), but protecting children from those things is not always a good thing.

Well, there is the problem of having hormone-induced urges or body functions before the brain is ready for it.  Of course, I don’t think the brain is ever ready for it, if you’ve ever followed any transperson right after they started hormone therapy, you’d know that even occuring later in life puberty makes you do stupid stuff.

Nineveh wrote:

20lbs really isn’t a lot of weight. It’s generally a relatively small proportion of body weight, within an amount that (a) doesn’t take a hugely long time to lose and (b) can be maintained for a fairly long time by many people.

Really?  For a 200 lb man, that’s ten percent of his body mass; for a relatively short woman, who believes she should weight 110 lb, you’re looking at having to lose more than 15% of body mass.

I don’t get this Amanda, you write an entire article about all the ways American’s are lazy and spoiled, and then conclude by stating Americans aren’t lazy and spoiled? It’s true that it isn’t easy to lose weight but once you get to a certain point of obesity, or worse morbid obesity, the conclusion has to be that you have an eating problem. Anorexia, alcoholicsm, problem gambling, drug addiction - all of these are also incredibly hard to kick and have a high rate of reoccurence too but that doesn’t mean people don’t have an obligation to themselves and the people around them to kick these habits.

But then they don’t have an increasingly loud pressure lobby defending and normalising those practices, making excuses (‘Overreating at parties is just what you do’ - Really?) and blaming the world around them for what is still at base an issue of self control, and it’s this that I find really problematic. I know this will probably be interpreted as trolling (but it’s honestly not meant that way) but I find it especially incongruous that people are being encouraged not to take responsibility for their bodies and lifestyles on a feminist site and being told that, hey, it probably won’t make any difference anyway.

I get that processed food is shit and I get that that American habits tilt towards indolence but ultimately, each person has to take repsonsibility for their own bad habits and diet. And while it’s true that some of the shit overweight people have to deal with is linked to a specific body politic, once someone gets up to 300 lbs it’s time to change lifestyle, even if it’s just to prevent getting even bigger. Really though, this has to start in childhood and in school. Surely healthy cooking and exercise is exactly the kind of thing that should be taught in home economics classes?

83/87 Not everyone can regularly drink tall glasses of milk… and by “not everyone”, I mean 70% of the world’s population, and 27% of Americans post-infancy. The demographic composition of the volunteer military differs significantly from that of the drafted military… their ranks are drawn heavily from the poorer members of the majority group and minorities. The former are less likely to be able to afford to regularly drink milk* than the general population, the latter are less likely to be able to digest it.

84# “Babies with breasts”? Come on.

*Soft drinks are way less expensive, they often don’t need refrigeration, and even when they do, they don’t spoil as quickly.

@Stubborn Kind of Fellow

Really though, this has to start in childhood and in school. Surely healthy cooking and exercise is exactly the kind of thing that should be taught in home economics classes?

That isn’t a personal responsibility issue unless you think children are designing their own curricula.  It isn’t that Amercans are lazy and spoiled, it is that culturally we are set up to discourage any other behavior.  That Americans conform to societal expectations (and in some cases like unwalkable cities, societal requirements) is not the same as claiming that Americans created those expectations and requirements because overall we are lazy and spoiled and designed the world to cater to those traits.

#96. The vast majority of fat people are not 300 pounds, nor do they need wrecking balls and a crane to leave their homes. Concentrating on the extreme examples of obesity is just as preposterous as using athletes and bodybuilders as examples of how useless the BMI is for average people. And I contend that society does defend, condone and normalize binge drinking.

Way to reinforce stereotypes, #94.  FFS.  Next time, I suggest you use over-testosteroned gay men as your example for Hormones: Dey Iz Powerful.  You know, just to spread it around a bit.

Thirded or fourthed or whatever on Taubes. 

My dad was recently redefined as a Type II diabetic (and it wasn’t all bullshit, he had peripheral neuropathy, which means he was losing sensation in his extremities) one of my sisters is hypothyroid (but skinny, so they didn’t diagnose her) and I’m hypoglycemic and have shown some symptoms of thyroid issues.

For all three of us, cutting way back on carbohydrates, especially refined carbohydrates, and axing the grains has been great.  My hands used to routinely shake and I would feel faint—now that I’m only eating 15-20g carbs per day, I’m not having that problem.  The problems I had with my skin (cyclical acne) and my cycle, have diminished significantly now that I’ve lost weight, and my back is bothering me less.

And unlike the time that I lost weight by going low fat and not watching carbs, I don’t feel hungry all the time. 

It’s weird too-when I do feel hungry, it’s not in my stomach.  Oh, and I can stare at a cupcake, but I don’t much like supersweet things any more.  Unless I’ve eaten more than usual carbs and am “used to” them again.

(What I mean is I can stare at a cupcake and not really want to eat it, which is a weird feeling.)

Also, I think “snack waffle” might be a great insult.

Atheist, the society is geared towards making people lazy as it’s also geared toward making people superficial and consumerist (and that’s not a dig at Americans, it’s true throughout much of the western world) but it’s still up to the individual to define their own habits and lifestyle, as they do their values, instead of using that as an excuse. But the best way to change things pratically in the long run is to teach these values young so people are maintaing healthy weights instead of attempting to work off large amounts of weight.

And Selena, I agree with you in theory but if someone’s unhealthy diet and lack of exercise has caused them to increase in weight to the point that they reach obesity, it’s quite logical to expect that continuing with those will increase their weight further to the more extreme ends of obesity. And there is a significant difference between what society, or more accurately the media refers to as ‘binge drinking’ and alcoholism. Binge drinking is one night, alcoholism is a constant.

Ismone—

I’m becoming the same way. I tried eating ice cream on my birthday as a “treat”—I just really didn’t like it as much as I used to. Not because of fear over gaining weight, I just honestly didn’t find it that good.

Another example, I stopped eating cereal for breakfast (and this was one of the “healthy” cereals, not Sugar Smacks or whatever) and switching to canadian bacon and a piece of cheese I’m not hungry until 1:00, which cereal I would be hungry by 10!

The media’s definition of binge drinking is a little ridiculous. More than four in one sitting? Period? Regardless of someone’s body size? Setting (ex, holidays?) Time inbetween drinks?

Nope, they always say “more than four in one setting”. That’s “binge drinking”? Give me a break.

Binge drinking is drinking until you vomit, drinking so much you feel like you want to die the next morning.

Has anyone else noticed that the FA people while espousing the belief that being obese is neither a health hazard nor a matter of personal weakness, are constantly looking for scapegoats like the socioeconomic availability of junk food vs. healthy natural food, hormones in the water, HFC’s, or some other food contaminant? Maybe eating in a healthy manner requires some effort? Make that effort. Society isn’t holding a gun to your head and making you eat McDonalds or Doritos.

Pablo—

I think FA’s are ridiculous, but how do you explain how we end up with obese six month olds if it’s 100% “personal responsibility”? The youtube link I posted discusses that.

It’s partly personal responsibility and partly society. Both/and blog.

Sense of pleasure?  Having a body and admitting to enjoying it? Spending time loving yourself instead of working more and more and more?  What sort of degenerate libruhhhl sickness is this?

That, folks, is part of the problem.

“Fat acceptance” really is the left-wing version of “smoker’s rights”, isn’t it?

I’m just going to mention one name: “Liv Films”. It’ll take a while to get to the WTF moment, but it’ll come after four or five of their shorts. (Or you could just skip straight to the one about the beer diet.)

Purpleshoes—

They’re not disagreeing, they’re trying to have it both ways. It’s like the global warming deniers who spend a lot of time saying global warming isn’t really happening, then turning around and saying well it’s not caused by humans, and then finally say even if it IS happening it isn’t that bad anyway! Usually within the same thread.

if someone’s unhealthy diet and lack of exercise has caused them to increase in weight to the point that they reach obesity, it’s quite logical to expect that continuing with those will increase their weight further to the more extreme ends of obesity.

Yeah, totally logical.

Except for, you know, that part where it’s completely fucking wrong and you’re just making up whatever you’d rather believe about the gross ever-inflating fatties who WON’T STOP UNTIL THEY ENGULF ENTIRE CITIES WITH THEIR LOATHSOME FLABBY FLESH.

In fact the evidence is very good that it’s extremely hard for mammals, at least, to maintain a body weight either smaller or larger than the one their genes dictate. Yes, that dictated weight will be a range, but not a city-crushing range.

If you stopped to think about the real world rather than an apocalyptic fear of fat people, you’d realize this: everyone knows at least one thin person that can eat, and eat, and eat all kinds of crap, but not gain weight. In some cases (like my sister’s) they can be so thin as to be judged pathological and put on all kinds of special face-stuffing diets and still not gain more than a handful of pounds.

But whatever. I see that, as always at Pandagon, we’ve reached the fat-hating portion of the evening, and I don’t have enough Points left in my Sanity Watchers program to binge on the vitriol.

Oh, excuse the briefly failed flounce, but since I’m bitter now:

No, Amanda, “but some highly muscular people are technically obese!” is NOT a fucking disingenuous argument. The point is not that on the “obese” end of the BMI scale there are 40 million fat blobby dumplings and 3 ripped bodybuilders. The point is that at every part on the BMI scale there are people ranging everywhere from dumpling to ripped and the entire range between. If you looked at the illustrated BMI project you would realize this. BMI says so little about an individual’s body condition as to be completely worthless.

While rates of fatness and diabetes has risen, a good chunk of that is the result of a change of definition that made people fat and diabetic overnight.

I know it’s way up thread… but for fucksake can we stop pretending that there has been no actual huge change in the American population over time? Scientists can control for shit like redefinitions, yanno—saying “oh, well now we’re just calling more people fat” and pretending like no epidemiologist has eeeever thought of that is just complete bullshit. BMI is an imperfect indicator of fat, health, etc. (particularly on an individual level) but it is very consistent. The percentages of the population in certain BMI classes have changed dramatically, and no amount of fingers-in-ears “la la la scientists are dumb!” can erase that.

It’s crap like that that makes it so damn hard to take FA seriously at all. Too much woo, too much ignorance, too little critical thinking… Strict ideological adherence to the FA party line should not preclude actually doing a PubMed search once in a while!

One thing I don’t get about the hormones in drinking water panic is what about pregnant women?  Don’t pregnant women excrete a lot of hormones?  I mean, that’s the entire basis of at-home pregnancy tests.  Once upon a time, women were pregnant for much of their short lives, unlike today where they can plan/postpone pregnancy.  Why weren’t there hormones in drinking water before the advent of the birth control pill?

But I have to counter one thing I read up thread.  There is a high correlation between early menarche/late menopause and breast cancer.

I don’t think that the comparison to tobacco psuedo-science with fat acceptance is fair. While quitting smoking is something I have heard is vary hard, it is really easy to determine what makes someone a smoker. Obesity is caused by some combination of how much you eat, what you eat, how much exercise you get, your age, your genetics, your gender, a symptom of some other ailment, etc.

I also think that people have misconceptions about what it is to be “obese” back 100 lbs ago when I was 5 10 and 270, i worked out for about 1/2 hour everyday, fit in an airplane seat w/o an extender belt, etc.  The obesity crisis is mostly people who lead fairly normal lives but fuck up a bit around the margins (if it is not caused by one of the myriad other conditions), not people who need to be removed from their homes with cranes eating entire pizzas and 2 liter colas for every meal. And these little changes can be really really hard to change and take forever to see results.

I think that FAs are right on in trying to get people not to see being overweight is not some sort of moral failing and getting out their that the “obesity crisis” did not come about because not enough skinny people are total ass-holes. They are wrong to say that poor diet and lack of exercise, habits of which obesity is a symptom, are totally harmless, but can’t we just say that everyone shoudl eat well and exercise (assuming they can, etc)? I think it is way more effective to criticize people for verbs rather than adjectives.

Ben D.- I see your point. I guess I’m just tried of the trope that “either society presents on a silver platter everything i need to live a good life, or it’s not my fault.”  i understand that there are social justice and economic issues at play here, but it doesn’t completely excuse personal responsibility(I even hate using the expression “personal responsibility” because it has been so co-opted by the right wing). The information and resources are out there for whomever cares enough to try.

In re: the people who have trouble with the concept of fat acceptance because being fat is bad for you… I struggled for a while with the concept of ableist language. This was my thought process (and I apologize if this is so pre-101 for everyone, but this really is what I thought):

- Aren’t some things better than others?  I mean, isn’t it better to be able to see than not?

- YES BUT just because it is better to be able to see than not doesn’t mean that people who can’t see are less human than people who can.

That is what is missing from a lot of the discussion of obesity - the “fat is bad for you/fat people are bad” distinction is not made. Yes, it is probably bad for you to weigh more than you would without excess calories.  That doesn’t explain the widespread hand-wringing about fatness, or the *universal* shaming that women experience about their body shape/size.

My personal feeling is that obesity is the hysteria of our age - when cheap high calorie food is widely available (more widely available than cheap lower-calorie food) it’s hardly surprising that many people would carry more weight than they would otherwise, especially if the majority of people have lifestyles that proclude intensive exercise.  Just like when women had no acceptable outlet for their ambitions or agressions, it’s not surprising that they would develop baffling psychosomatic illnesses.

Anyway.  Having been fat, thin, and medium (currently medium), I don’t think fat-shaming helps anyone, least of all fat people.  I think the attitude of alysia and shah8 is what we should all aim for - do/eat what makes you feel healthy, and you’re OK, whether or not your BMI is below 25.  The fact that in North America it’s *really hard and a privilege* to eat in such a way and maintain a level of activity that makes you feel healthy is the issue, not that fat people can’t stop eating donuts.

It’s always bad for you, there are no good cigarettes and bad cigarettes, you probably shouldn’t smoke if you’re fat and you probably shouldn’t smoke if you’re skinny.

You can’t say that about all food, but you CAN say it about certain groups of food: ex., regular soda is always bad for you. Period. End of story. There’s no nutritional value in a Mountain Dew. None. You’re body doesn’t need it to function, and we never EVER consumed sugar in the amount we do today until very recently.

Another example? Refined carbs are always bad. Again, your body doesn’t need them and, indeed, our body isn’t made to function on them.

Those two groups are very similar to tobacco in that they’re always harmful, and not a natural bodily need.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that at the very moment we started loading up the grocery store shelves with refined carbs and sugary drinks that the percentage of overweight and obese people went through the roof, along with diabetes (and the misguided “low fat” diet crazy that replaced the traditional American egg/bacon breakfast we had been eating since colonial times with “heart healthy” Lucky Charms and the like.)

@keshmeshi

But I have to counter one thing I read up thread.  There is a high correlation between early menarche/late menopause and breast cancer.

It is my (limited) understanding that the link is actually to earlier ovulation and breast cancer.  While menarche and the onset of ovulation are somewhat linked, are there studies showing that the age of the onset of ovulation is going down along with menarche (which may not actually be going down that much)?

I looked at some studies, but am not an expert, and many of those discussing the links cited the drop from 17 to 13-14 of menarche, which is highly disputed.  In addition, some of the studies showed a genetic link between breast cancer risk and age at menarche, which would be a different thing altogether than “forced puberty” through hormones, absentee fathers, what have you.

Ben D.—you’re arguing for societal pressures, not against them.  Yes, of course it’s true that once we started loading up stores with the food equivalent of crystal meth, bad things started happening to people.

The obvious solution is to keep that crap out of stores, not blame millions of people for their genes being fooled by people who are paid millions of dollars to fool them.

I also really hate how fat and not fat are usually shown as two discrete categories, which is obviously bs. Holding all else constant, is the difference between a bmi of 24 and 25 really that different from the difference between a 25 and 26? It would be easier if we gave more credit to being healthier and thinner rather than healthy and thin, but I have never heard anything about how an increase in 1 unit bmi corresponds with an X % rise in the chance of getting diabetes on average, holding everything else constant.

Finally, if you’re referring to a study done in the past 30 years on health, stop.  They are all bad.  All of them.  They all have bad sample sizes, did not control for confounding variables, and are only released if they conform to the funder’s biases.

Especially in nutrition.  You cannot trust a thing a Western doc says on nutrition.  The Food Pyramid was constructed by a crazy person.

I don’t know when you were a teenager but if it was in the ‘80s or early ‘90s it was the awful “low fat” diet craze period. Where people cut out eggs but ate bags of pretzels, snackwell cookies, etc., because “hey! they’re low fat!”

To make all those “low fat” foods taste good, the corporations took out the fat but added twice as much refined sugar. I can’t not emphasize how much that fucked the American diet and public health.

Low fat diets were supposed to be for people who had serious heart issues, not the entire population.

And notice that obesity rates REALLY started to take off (ironically) during the low-fat diet craze.

We had car culture in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and the ‘70s. We had the suburbs. We had fast food for most of that time, too. But obesity rates didn’t really explode until the 80s. What changed? Bigger soda sizes, more fruit juice, more gatorade, low-fat diets that restricted protein leading to sugar cravings, and so on.

Ben D.—you’re arguing for societal pressures, not against them.

I agree it’s a part of it but you CAN resist the societal pressures. However, it’s VERY hard to do and there’s no reason for us as a society to make it this difficult.

Nothing like a thread on fat to bring out the fat-shaming fauxgressives and their smug, smarmy concern trolling.

**is fat at Ben D., Pablo, Stubborn Kind of Fellow, and Phylosopher**

Assholes.

purpleshoes-There are always going to be some exemptions to the rule. There are going to be some people who are genetically predisposed towards being fat or due to some medical ailment or disability, but to write off the vast majority of the overweight and tell them that they can’t lose weight, not to even try, because it’s not unhealthy, and that it’s not their responsibility because the deck is stacked against them is doing them a disservice.

Yes, the person calling other posters “assholes” and personally attacking them isn’t the one trolling. Okay.

Nobody in Particular-You make me proud to all myself a fauxgressive.

Tone argument for the fail, Ben. You think we can’t see through your concern for our health? Try to police other people’s bodies and you tend to make them angry. Deal.

Trying to police other people’s bodies would be a bad thing, but I never called for that on this thread, and have no intention of.

I’d like to police corporations so they don’t fill literally 9/10 bags of bread on the grocery store shelf with HFCS, but that’s no more “policing other people’s bodies” than banning corporations from using leaded gasoline.

Uh-huh. That must be why you’re rattling off talking points about “personal responsibility.”

I’m sure you think you sound very moderate and reasonable, though.

Don’t waste your time Ben D. Nobody in Particular is going to stuff his/her face with cornchips until he/she is diagnosed with type II diabetes and then blog about how it’s everyone else’s fault because there wasn’t enough organic rhubarb available at the nearest Safeway.

Uh-huh. That must be why you’re rattling off talking points about “personal responsibility.”

I used the phrase in a grand total of one post, and in the context of questioning the assertion that it is all or even mostly a matter of personal responsibility.

Have you even read the thread?

Excuse me, Nippy@ 131, making a suggestion which goes along with Amanda’s point that part of the problem is our jobs and our leisure are circumscribed by pressure to be sedentary and suggesting a way to change that is concern trolling?  Tell you what, go fuck yourself and the the two of youselves can share a banana split in celebration.

I’m sorry I can’t copy and paste here, I don’t know why it won’t let me but it won’t.

For the person who basically dismissed smoking with “smoking is a hard habit to quit, but…”

It’s not a “habit”.  It’s a brutal, physical and, I believe more imporantly, psychological, addiction.  I know someone quite well who survived (but it hasn’t been five years, so hopefully survived) stage four throat cancer and did not give up smoking.  He simply cannot give it up.  So if you never smoked, you don’t know.  And even if you have smoked, you may not know.  Even I have a bit of trouble understanding how he doesn’t quit.  Seriously, you just don’t know.  So don’t dismiss it as a habit.  It’s everything but a habit.

As for the food, what I think some are missing here is that, basically, we all have our thing.  I don’t care who you are, something is helping to get you through life.  I used to work with this obese woman who had the most striking lack of empathy for pretty much every single thing in the world accept being fat.  I mean the things she used to say, especially about alcoholics.  She was so mean about it.  No sympathy whatsoever.  Cold. 

And then when talking about weight she’d always bring up that one skinny person who eats yodels all day, and say “you can’t tell me it’s not genetics.”

Well yeah, but guess what?  So is alcoholism.  So are a lot of things.  And even if theyr’e not, if you have a fucked up childhood, you are going to come out of it using something as a crutch.  A lot of people are emotional eaters, they eat for safety, whatever.  It’s the same with smoking.  Some can give it up like poof.  For others, it’s the battle of a lifetime.  Some, can never give it up at all until they are in the ground. 

I already said what I don’t like about the FA people.  But OTOH, pretending that everyone is the same, or that something that is easy for you is easy for everybody, is stupid.  I guarantee you there is something you are doing that I could give up in two seconds. Whoever you are, you’re not all that. 

We’re all fucked up in some way in this life.  I dislike high horses as much as I dislike the insistence of FA’s on calling size 10 women “fat” and demanding that everyone accept that no one will ever lose weight.

Yeah, actually, Ben, I did, and just because you only used that particular phrase once doesn’t mean your comments haven’t otherwise been implying the concept. Really, you’re not fooling anyone who doesn’t buy into your mindset already.

Pablo, thanks for demonstrating the truth of my initial comment. Yeah, I’m so convinced you mean well and are only concerned about the health of fat folks.

I loves me some jerks who think that because they’re nominally progressive, they don’t need to be examining their privilege. However, I’m sure that “privilege” is too much of a ... “Professional Left” word for you “reasonable,” “moderate,” “pragmatic,” “common sense” types.

Feh. Nauseating thread.

Oh, and I missed the comment from Phylosopher while I was typing. Hey, Phyl, are you still running your A/C as a “noise screen” these days, as you admitted to in an earlier thread? Such a good li’l environmentalist you are.

Also, thanks for proving just like Pablo did that you don’t give a shit about fat people’s health and simply look at us as moral failures whom you can patronize and mock at will.

Yeah, actually, Ben, I did, and just because you only used that particular phrase once doesn’t mean your comments haven’t otherwise been implying the concept.

How am I implying it? Which comments, exactly, set you off and why?

Nobody in Particular- be a dear and tabulate my privilege for me?

mamram@#47 - we tend to do that in resposne to your “well IIIIII had a problem so everyone else MSUT have a problem, too.”  Uhh, no, actually yeah there was a lifestyle change - kids -  when the weight cam on, and now - kids are older and more active and mobile when it’s coming off.  Summer and warm weather help, the fresh produce available during it help, a decreased schedule helps, and the anti-depressant sunlight helps, as well as lifestyle changes like turning off the AC.  If oneis warmer one wants to eat less, and there is certainly biological evidnece to back this up.

BMI is an imperfect indicator of fat, health, etc. (particularly on an individual level) but it is very consistent. The percentages of the population in certain BMI classes have changed dramatically

I suppose you could say that it’s “consistent” but that’s one of the reasons it is creating more absurd results. There’s no variance to the formula and a 5’0 individual is expected to be at the same proportions and scale of weight that a 6’0 individual should be. That’s not the way things work however.

According to BMI a 6’ male that weighs 185 is “fat”, and if you know many “tall” people you can tell how ludicrous that is. The inability to account differences in height construction is a known problem for the BMI calculation.

Now combine that with the fact that our population is continually getting taller and that in some countries 6’ is quickly becoming the “average” male height.

When your statistical analysis comes to absurd conclusions for approximately half your male population, it is a deeply flawed system. The BMI system does not work for individuals or for general populations.

Also, it’s worth pointing out I said things like sugary soda and refined carbs are not good for anyone.

I have a good friend who lives off Mountain Dew Game Fuel, Ramen noodles, and KFC, and is a bean pole. His diet though indicates he’s really, really unhealthy or will be in the future regardless of his weight.

kristin@#113 “the weight their genes dictate?”  OK, so tell me what is the weight my genes dictate? for more than 1/2 of my life I would have been called thin, for my childhood, let’s just say the nickmanes were all ones based on a lack of heft.  Then there was the weightlifting phase - no supplements, a vegetarian diet and what would be termed a toned or even defined physique.  For the past ten or so years, it’s been a five year pound per year gain and loss of tone due to mild depression, junk food, depression eating, overeating, sedentary lifestyle, and a spouse who has the metabolism of an ADD hummignbird and likes to share.  Now I’ve “managed” to lose @ 5-10 pounds through an active vacation and cutting out the processed food (no fast food, fruit for munchies, less carbs) the same habits I had as a child , BTW and decreased serving size.  Please read the genes, oh Kristin the Magnificent, and tell me what my true and forever weight is dictated to be?

purpleshoes@ #125 - that’s an interesting one - we know our soils are becoming more and more mineral depleted - esp. those used in the corn bean rotations.  IIRC, one of the minerals that helps the body use stored fat is chromium and chromium is one tha tis in short supply in teh soil - so it’ snot in the veggies/fruits/grains.  We really need ot look at soil health again, as they did in the ‘40’s and ‘50’s.  Not just NPK.

I didn’t mean to dismiss the difficulty in smoking. I was trying to say that smoking is a behavior where fatness is a result of other behaviors. If we wanted to make a metaphor from tobacco to obesity the national conversation on obesity would be akin to saying that we need to act more judgmentally towards those with emphysema.

Ben @129 - have to disagree here - we did NOT have the car culture we do today.  Most families had ONE car.  Moms still walked young kids to school and kids walked or biked much, much, much, more, and zoning wasn’t the nightmare it is today in the ‘burbs or the city - there were still mom and pop stores in most neighborhoods that one could walk to and get milk, bread and green groceries.  And in the ‘60’s there were still bakeries and butcher shops that sold local, not to mention the truck farms that still existed, and the fruit stands in the peri-urban boundaries. Even out in the country, roads were less traveled making walking along or biking on rural roads possible -in my area, I did this up until the housing boom of the late ‘90’s.  Now, we are forced to get in the car every time we leave my peri-urban property, rapidly suburbanized, sidewalk and shoulder-less roads and subdivisions abound.

Actually, nip-yourself-in-the- ass, I’m not.  I took some personal responsibility and made one of those oooohhhh soooooo hard lifestyle changes like moving around the rooms and not being confined by the societal pressure of what the room was originally designed to be just LOOOOVE opening the windows and still sleeping in.  Haven’t had the A/C on in weeks. Then again, listening to your nasty hot air spew, I may just have to crank it up.

The BMI system does not work for individuals or for general populations.

I agree it doesn’t work for individuals, absolutely. But it really does tell us important things about populations. Changes over time in the BMI distribution in the population can’t all be accounted for by 6-ft-tall men… according to the CDC http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html#State in 2000 every single state in the US had <24% of the population with a BMI above 30 (currently termed “obese”.) By 2009 41 states had >24% of the population with a BMI of >30 and in 8 states <u>></u>30% of the population was “obese.” There is no way an uptick in men’s heights accounted for that kind of shift in less than a decade.

Also, BMI categories correlate really strongly with a lot of health issues. The prevalence of various diseases in a population jumps up (often considerably) as the BMIs increase. That doesn’t necessarily mean that a higher BMI will cause health problems or disease, nor is it predictive for any one person, but it’s still useful information to have. The BMI system is limited but you can’t deny that there is a lot of data showing its utility in describing a population and correlating with population health outcomes.

I have little to say about this topic, but damn do those waffles look tasty.

Ultimately I do think that some of the shit that goes down is because this is one area in which people do feel a license to be nasty and abusive.

I just want to repeat this comment made very early on in this inevitably ugly thread.

Can’t rail on black people, poor people, diasbled people, women, or gays?  Tell ya what - the fatties are still available for insult!  Jokes about Doritos and banana splits stay funny forever!

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@Alara, #85: I have never disagreed with you more.

There is nothing “objectively” sucky about having periods that you can’t find in any other aspect of having a body. Growth spurts are pretty painful, as are muscles after strenuous exercise. People how jog, or just run for the bus, end up panting and sweating like they’re having a heart attack (in proportion to their overall level of fitness, but everybody gets to that point). Does that make having legs “objectively sucky”? Being hungry is an unpleasant physical experience - should we bemoan the fact that people are feeling hunger at earlier ages? Er, no - that doesn’t even make sense. Snot is pretty disgusting, and sometimes people with bad cold and allergies sneeze in public and have embarrassing snotplosions. What about farting? Farting is pretty tricky for all concerned. So? Sew up assholes until the age of maturity? I think not.

Grouping the several physical manifestations of a period into a “thing” and then calling this “thing” objectively a bad thing is 100% a result of culturally driven framing. Cramps, body effluences, skin changes, size changes (what we call “bloating”) etc. are all tings that happen in other contexts, an they don’t all happen to all women during periods - they don’t even happen to every woman they happen to at every period, if you see what I mean.

I really recommend Gloria Steinem’s If Men Could Menstruate. She (naturally) says it so much better than I can. Please let go of the meme that there’s something “objectively” wrong with periods. It’s so antifeminist and it’s not even true…

@Katherine #157: Er, that’s not even remotely true. Obesity/fatness is by far not the only area where people feel a license to be nasty and abusive. It’s just one of the few that repeatedly surfaces on the Left, and of those the only one that gets serious pushback.

I was involved in a thread on Feministe once where smokers were likened to murderers, were called smelly, disgusting, selfish, weak, inferior, malicious and more. If you took all references to smokers and smoking out and just looked at the form the discourse took, it was pretty disturbing. But there wasn’t much pushback, because unlike with fat, where everybody eats, fewer and fewer people smoke anymore, and it’s considered quite legitimate - and supported by legislation - to marginalise and demonise them. Which is not an argument in favour of smoking, just an argument against your and the previous point that fat people are somehow “the only” group against which invective is still socially acceptable.

If you watch a certian genre of daytime TV then it’s pretty obvious that class bashing and poor-people-snuff-porn are still very mainstream and considered fair game for entertainment. Sometimes it’s overt, sometimes it hides behind more respectable things like political and cultural differences between Us(tm) and the poorly educated Midwestern right wing red staters. I think we often don’t notice this class bigotry because in a way the rural working classes have reclaimed that identity and are all “fuck you, we have guns” about it, but it doesn’t really make it better. And it still excludes fat people from any special category of vilification.

I think we should definitely not vilify fat people, not because they’re special victims, but because we just shouldn’t, because it’s just wrong. And that includes well meaning advice how to become not-fat-people (cause there’s no implicit judgement there, oh no!). So I’m keeping schtum in that topic.

I agree it’s a part of it but you CAN resist the societal pressures. However, it’s VERY hard to do and there’s no reason for us as a society to make it this difficult.

Right, but you’ve been getting the order reversed.  You’ve been saying that resisting the societal pressures is something we should expect people to do.  In fact, the truth is that failure is what we expect (due to the stats), and so if we’re helping someone in our lives with this issue, we should expect that extraordinary effort would be required to help them over, if any effort could work at all.

In the meantime, fat shaming is ridiculous.  Our society has an illness that makes its members fat.  That illness reached full flower in the 90s, and it’s not as though we became genetically inferior during that time.  Instead, we allowed changes to our society that are incompatible with living a healthy lifestyle for most folks.

We’re so used to the idea that it’s actually challenging to live reasonably healthily that we haven’t stopped to wonder if that’s insane.  Of course, it is.  Soda is poison; how is it reasonable that it’s advertised to children?

Comment #160: Punditus Maximus  on  09/03  at  08:53 AM

#157 Can I say for the record that all of those groups are still considered fair game in most venues? Whether it’s accepted as just the honest-to-goodness truth in a “homespun” way, an “edgy” way, or a “dispassionately scientific” way doesn’t usually impede the message that people in those groups are just plain inferior/defective and suggesting that they aren’t is political correctness run amok and inapplicable to real life where it’s self-evident that nature is a meritocracy and we’re just whining about being the losers. Additionally, if you think it’s a coincidence that obesity is more common among all of those groups mentioned with the exception of gays, I have a bridge to sell you. Why harp on these groups one by one when you can pretty much clothesline them all as fat ppl fatting everywhere?

Dangit, got the quotes reversed.  Preview is my friend.

What’s always surprised me about the “fat acceptance” movement is that they totally miss the real opportunity they have to get mainstream America on their side. They, like most bullshit groups, typically stick to the tired trope of using good logic—“don’t hide in the house until you lose the weight: get out there and have a good time while you’re doing it, and you’ll probably lose weight faster and more permanently” and “our society sucks w/r/t providing people with healthy foods and opportunities to exercise”—to support an idiotic conclusion: “there’s just nothing wrong at all with me weighing 300 pounds, and anyone who says otherwise is a hater!” 

But there’s a golden opportunity out there for “fat acceptance” activists. Morbidly obese people are patriotic, you see: they contribute more to the American economy than you skinny losers do. They spend more on food, they spend more per unit on clothing, and they spend a great deal more on medical services. All of this adds to America’s GDP, and makes us bigger and therefore better than other nations. It’s a win-win. Just look at a group of Tea Cracker vs. an equivalent group of middle-aged liberal activists: those conservatives are doing more for America. It’s such an obvious political winner than I’ve been baffled for awhile now that nobody’s made use of it. Think how much more corporate profit they generate than Amanda with that hippie CSA crap.

It’s absolutely true that age of puberty is continuing to decline.  It’s also true that rapid weight gain in childhood is the most likely cause.  Fat exudes estrogen, for good evolutionary reasons.  In a starvation environment, it’s a good thing your body holds off pregnancy until you have a sufficient amount of body fat.  I can safely say that because it’s true that a lot of the panic over younger puberty has a whiff of misogyny to it doesn’t mean that feminists have an obligation to pretend it’s all good for a 7-year-old to be getting her period because she weighs 100 pounds.  I’m not sure it’s so great for someone to have other-directed sexual stirrings literally 5-6 years before the others of the same age (for at least 90% of them, this means boys) can respond at all.  Nor to put 9-10 years between first onset of puberty and emotional maturity sufficient for a sexual relationship.

I think we should definitely not vilify fat people, not because they’re special victims, but because we just shouldn’t, because it’s just wrong.

But then where would someone get their moral superiority from?  It has to come from somewhere, right? /sarcasm

It’s not that food isn’t pleasure, it’s that fat people don’t deserve that pleasure.  No good food for fat people!  They have to suffer until they are thin, and then they can eat that cheeseburger/nut and fruit cake/tasty food.  Fat people don’t deserve to have sex, they have to wait until they are thin, and then and only then can they have their pleasure.  And it doesn’t matter how they got fat - genes, medical conditions/medications, stuffing their face - they still are wrong to want pleasure until they are perfect.  Sometimes, people make exceptions for medical conditions, but really, how many fat people walk around with signs that say “I have X condition” or “I’m on X medication”?  For the most part, it’s the narrative that fat people do not deserve pleasure.  And since they don’t deserve pleasure, here’s a tasteless, processed and refined sugary/salty concoction that is focus-group tested and chemically altered to soothe your soul, plus it’s priced right so that you can afford it.  Treat yourself to this, because we all know that you don’t deserve better!  Punishment has never tasted so good!

I don’t think these conversations will ever go good as long as fat-shaming is around.  As long as food is connected with pleasure, and fat people don’t deserve pleasure in all areas of life, this cycle will continue.  If we take moral superiority out of the equation, it is easier to talk about the problem of our food sources.  “Fat” and “lazy” and “stupid” aren’t a packaged deal and if we keep pretending it is, people will live down to those expectations, compounding the problems of our food sources.

By the way, I’m seeing a lot of conflating of two drastically different things in this thread: thin people staying thin and fat people becoming thin.  These are way different things.  The former requires no major calorie deficits.  The latter requires a lot.  The commenter who said that calorie deficits didn’t cause her to lose weight but to feel hungry?  Well, exactly.  Those two thing are mutually exclusive.  The elephant in the room is the unwillingness to talk about how some amount of hunger is necessary to lose weight.  The diet industry promises otherwise.  That’s one of their many lies. But hunger is why turning a fat person into a not-fat person fails 95% of the time.

I’m not surprised people lose weight when they make certain healthy choices like adding exercise or stopping with the crap food.  I’m sure if I lived like most Americans, I’d put 30 pounds on in a year, easy.  But I’m skeptical that focusing exclusively on turning fat people thin is really the way to do this.  I think better is to focus on reversing the trends.  Which is why I don’t get on board with the FA war on Michelle Obama.  She’s following the science that says diets don’t work.  Creating a population that doesn’t have weight to lose is a far more achievable goal than turning already-fat people thin.

Atheist, the society is geared towards making people lazy as it’s also geared toward making people superficial and consumerist (and that’s not a dig at Americans, it’s true throughout much of the western world) but it’s still up to the individual to define their own habits and lifestyle, as they do their values, instead of using that as an excuse.

That’s an excellent way to feel self-righteous and superior, but otherwise, it buys you nothing.  It certainly doesn’t do much to change trends that we all have to pay for.  That most people tend to go along with social mores is such a banal observation as to be tautological.  Demanding that everyone be exceptional instead of changing social mores is….I don’t know.  Wishful thinking?  Avoiding the issue? Prioritizing feelings of self-righteousness over effective action?

Wow. A lot of people sure do love getting a chance to talk about how much they hate fatties. They seem to like it even better when they can rationalize their political ideology with that hate. I guess it makes them feel smart or stuff. So you’ve got the conservative trolls whining about personal responsibility, the liberal concern trolls whining about corporations, but everyone coming together in their shared disgust at having to see our bodies in public.

The amount of “but, c’mon!” arguments when discussing fat is stunning. People hate fat and they just assume they are justified in doing so they just assert whatever they please. Never mind that there isn’t a way to safely and reliably turn fat people into not fat people. Point that out and the cry babies start pouting and calling you a meanie for not being more supportive. I’m not supportive of people buying lottery tickets as a financial investment either and that “works” some time, too. Never mind that the increase in fatness (and even some fat related conditions like diabetes) is at least partly the result of a redefinition in the middle of the game. Fat hatred means people are always thinking they are seeing too many fatties.  Never mind that the health concerns of other groups (like men, African Americans, THIN PEOPLE) are never seen as a justification to call for their eradication. I mean, fat is just wrong.

The result is a phenomenally prideful bigtory. People feel smug in their hatred and satisfied with their righteous dehumanization of a group of people already horribly stigmatized. Fat people aren’t the only people you can hate anymore, but a fairly wide and diverse group of people get the kind of motivating glee that inspires this kind of self-satisfied prejudice. They feel happy beating on fat people. Makes them feel like better people to try to enforce their privelege. Even if the only justification they ever have is “but, c’mon!”

The point is that at every part on the BMI scale there are people ranging everywhere from dumpling to ripped and the entire range between.

No one is denying that point.  We’re just pointing out that it’s irrelevant.  Imagine a bell curve—-people that are obese are the big bell, the vast majority of people with a certain BMI.  At one trailing end, you have the people that are just really tall and broad and at the other, you have body builders.  This means that it’s true that you can’t use BMI strictly as a diagnostic tool.  But you can in fact use it to determine public health trends. 

Look at it this way: If I said that we need to have a publicly funded contraception program because we have X % of the population that is women between ages 15-55, would you say, “Nuh-uh!  Some of them are transwomen and some of them are currently trying to get pregnant.”  Well, yeah.  But they’re the trailing ends of the bell curve.  No one is saying they don’t exist, just that the needs of the majority aren’t nullified by the non-needs of the few.

The “war” on Michele Obama is because no matter what the specifics of her plan, she’s still endorsing and promoting the stigmatization of fat people. Making the purpose to lose weight is a fatal step and even if what she’s advocating is good, if the purpose is something those measures will not achieve it actually becomes destructive. It trains people to regard those steps as worthless because they don’t reliably induce weight loss. Even though NOTHING safely and reliably induces weight loss. As long as we’re telling fat people to stop being fat people, we’re not helping. That goes for the otherwise good advice as much as the horrible advice. At least the horrible advice will fail and provide a reason not to do that again. But when you provide a reason to not do something good again, its pretty easy to do more harm than good.

@Katherine #157: Er, that’s not even remotely true. Obesity/fatness is by far not the only area where people feel a license to be nasty and abusive. It’s just one of the few that repeatedly surfaces on the Left, and of those the only one that gets serious pushback.

It’s also one of the few areas that is a changeable condition (barring something like a thyroid) where the person who is fat, believes it to be a changeable condition and laments their condition openly.  So there’s a huge (no pun intended) difference between “making fun of” and “working to help people lose weight /make conditions causing obesity less onerous.”

I really think the American craving for everything sweet, all the time might be because we have some systemic insufficiencies in other areas.

Anecdote, but I think an interesting one.  I don’t generally crave sweets.  If they aren’t in my vicinity, I will never eat them….. Except when I’m stressed.  I crave sweets when I’m stressed.  Sugar gives you a hormonal jolt or something, and it temporarily relieves stress.  Once I realized this, I saw how much sweets are directed at you right when you’re most likely to be feeling stress.  They often seem to *magically* appear.  Like the way that ice cream shops proliferate in airport terminals, ready to offer comfort when you flight is delayed.  Or chocolates proliferate where you have to wait in line, often after a long day at work.

I have little to say about this topic, but damn do those waffles look tasty.

I tasted one.  They were nasty.  I mean, edible, but in the way that all junk food is, because it hits on the “I’m sweet!” note.  But they didn’t taste like, you know, waffles.

Er, Bstu nobody is really engaging in the stigmatization of fat people because most people in large swaths of the First World trend towards being overweight if not fat. Even in large parts of the developing world, there are sufficient problems with over eating. In many ways this is a good thing since it means that starvation isn’t exactly a problem but being overweight, fat, or obease isn’t healthy and while some overweight people are in their condition for reasons beyond their control, this simply isn’t true for most overweight people.

What is being attempted is trying to get people to eat a more healthy diet and live a better life. This means pointing out the dangers of things like processed foods, sweets, soda, etc. It means taking steps to ensure that people have better access to nutritious food from encourging local farmer’s markets to ending the subsidies that led to a glut of processed foods like the corn subsidy. People should also be taught that they do not have to stuff themselves at every meal, just eat till they feel basically satisfied. It also means radically chaning community design to encourage a more active and less sedentary life style with mixed-use developments, better public transportation, and public parks and hopefully, eventually public gyms or at least encouraging every apartment complex to have at least a small gym for their inhabitants.

  There will still be holidays and special occassions when people get to indulge in over eating food that are not good for you. Personally, I think this is a necessity in order to enable most people to eat healthy most of the time. Trying to get people to constantly abstain in culinary pleasure is about as effective as trying to get people to abstain from sexual pleasure, not very and only causes very bad things. I’ve never met a person whose parents have forbidden them from eating anything lacking in nutritious but I’ve read articles about them and the results seem not to be that pretty. But everyday can’t be a day for indulgence in food, that isn’t healthy either.

    Its really a public health issue.

SPorkey - have you been reading Amanda’s postings AT ALL?  That chemically processed crap is disgusting and NOT satisfying.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the advertising infested brain may think those waffles look good - but the taste compared to some homemade real maple syrup real buttered waffles, is definitely inferior.  Most of us have forgotten what good tastes like or where to find it.  And the best diet advice isn’t to totally cut out high cal dessert foods, but have it in much smaller portions -
forgo the cheap 12 oz, CAFO cornfed, disease ridden ammonia treated steak and have a 4 oz, dry aged, grassfed one instead.

Have veggies.

Have a 1/2 sandwich on really good bread instead of a whole one on wonder bread

Yeah, even have ice cream or chocolate
1/4-1/2 cup of REALLY good ice cream w/o preservatives instead of a banana split at DQ. 

See I do want fat people to enjoy themselves, I just think that most of America has become brainwashed into thinking that crap tastes good because they have, in many cases, no comparison.

The idea that NOTHING reliably produces weight loss is just plain wrong and stupid, BStu.  Calories in versus calories expended is going to reduce weight - using muscles is going to cause them to grow/become stronger.  Maybe not as quickly or to the extent wanted or promised, but it is goign to have an effect. 

And the height of stupidity is claiming that Michelle is stigmatizing fat people - she’s promoting as beautiful a version of women, especially African AMerican women that has long been stigmatized. Large framed, wide shouldered, arms with biceps and omigosh an actual ass.  She’s not hiding what her body is under layers of upholstery this summer, but showing that even if you’re not model thin, you can wear fashionable clothing and wear it well. 

She’s also not doing it through some miracle weight loss drug, or ridiculous Oprah diet, but sensible changes that give everyone a chance - stopping high fat/cal unhealthy foods as the only choices among incarcerated school children.  Getting them to move, sowing gardening as a good hobby.  ANd you’re complaining BStu?

That’s an excellent way to feel self-righteous and superior, but otherwise, it buys you nothing.  It certainly doesn’t do much to change trends that we all have to pay for.  That most people tend to go along with social mores is such a banal observation as to be tautological.  Demanding that everyone be exceptional instead of changing social mores is….I don’t know.  Wishful thinking?  Avoiding the issue? Prioritizing feelings of self-righteousness over effective action?
Comment #168: Amanda Marcotte on 09/03 at 09:59 AM

OK Amanda - the question is then, how do we change the social mores - the societal tool for that is social disapproval of the behavior - smoking wouldn’t have decreased and it didn’t, even after the surgeon generals warnings, until people started answering “Yes, I mind” when someone bothered to ask if they could smoke, or for people to ask smokers to move or to simply feel free to say - “smoke and smoking are icky.”

So, since we can’t say “food’s icky” we need to start looking at which foods are “icky” and be able to say that.  But we also need to push back against portion size. And the idea that things like walking and minimal body exertion are strange activities to be avoided (when you suggest walking somewhere and the other person does the “are you kidding?  I don’t walk anywhere.”  If you want social mores to change, then that idea needs to be met with - disapproval?  incredulity?  because if it’s met with acquiesing indifference, then it’s just reinforced.

Making the purpose to lose weight is a fatal step

That strikes me as a misrepresentation.  Preventing obesity =/ promoting weight loss.  The conflation of the two is missing the vast gulf between them, in scientific terms FAs have brought much attention to.  To engage honestly, you have to stop conflating the two.  You need to forward an argument for why it’s important to make sure that kids who aren’t fat yet become so.

phylosopher at 177: I agree with you, especially on the portion size issue. Its not only what you eat but how much you eat.

phylosopher at 177: I agree with you, especially on the portion size issue. Its not only what you eat but how much you eat.
Comment #179: Lee on 09/03 at 10:53 AM

I think it ties into something else, Lee.  Americans also have an obsession with cheap/bargains.  No matter what kind of a fair price for a good product they may be getting, many will still hunt further for bargains.  Even when they can see the product is inferior.  This goes for food - they’d rather buy the $1.99 tasteless wet-aged burger than teh $4.00 dry aged one - even though they need to put tons of condiments on the one to make it taste like anything.  ANd then they eat two of them in order to be satisfied. The same for clothing they hunt out the cheapest bargains from some 3rd world country and then buy two (or three) of it, all the while decrying the lack of American made goods, the shoddiness of clothes/shoes, and the lack of space in their closets.

TheLady:
@Alara, #85: I have never disagreed with you more.

Well, honestly, the feeling is mutual.

When I was a teen, I believed, as you do, that the things that are bad about menstruation were entirely due to cultural framing, and woman power, and mind over matter, to the point where I believed that menstrual cramps and the pain they cause were caused by internalizing of patriarchal attitudes and disgust for one’s own femininity. So I tried to convince myself I didn’t feel pain. For five years. The discovery that there is a biological reason for period cramps to hurt, and that therefore I wasn’t a dupe of the patriarchy for being in pain, and I could take Advil without feeling like a personal failure, was one of the greatest days of my life and has saved me from what would have turned out to be years of agony if I had kept that attitude.

Menstrual cramps hurt. A lot. Statistically, they hurt more when they first start. And yes, not every women suffers pain from them, and yes, not every menstrual cycle hurts equally, and yes, cramping can happen for other reasons, but *none* of this is a reason to say that menstrual cramps do not, objectively, hurt most women most of the time when they occur. The egregious levels of shame that are heaped on us for menstruating and the stupid cultural myths about mood swings and what have you are ridiculous, but the physical pain is real and common.

Snot is pretty disgusting, and sometimes people with bad cold and allergies sneeze in public and have embarrassing snotplosions. What about farting? Farting is pretty tricky for all concerned. So? Sew up assholes until the age of maturity? I think not.

Um, if children did not fart or have snotty noses until the age of 13, and then suddenly they started experiencing those things at 8, we would consider it a very bad thing. Your logic basically suggests that because things that happen to human bodies hurt, but are natural, it’s okay if those things start happening much earlier. Which would imply that progeria is a-ok because it’s natural and normal for 75 year olds to experience old age, so if 5 year olds do, there’s no problem.

The Steinem piece does not argue that menstruation is good. It argues that it is unfairly vilified and shamed, and also, that men glorify stupid and painful things that happen to them if it marks them as men instead of women. In a patriarchy, anything that sets men aside as men is good, anything that sets women aside as women is shameful. However, that doesn’t actually mean that the things men are marking as “good” actually are. Men have traditionally glorified DYING IN WAR. So yeah, they’d celebrate the pain of their own menses if they menstruated and women didn’t, but that would not make that pain a good thing.

Menstruation is painful for most women most of the time. It also serves a useful purpose, for women who want to get pregnant, but that category should NEVER include 8 year olds, whose bodies will suffer much worse damage from pregnancy than a full grown woman’s. So for young children, menstruation is useless. It is also painful. Something that is useless and painful that is happening to people earlier than it should have is BAD. Facial hair growing on little boys is not painful unless society requires them to groom it (which it does, but in the absence of any socially constructed attitudes about facial hair, it wouldn’t hurt them). Breasts growing on little girls are not *more* painful than they would have been if they’d grown later; growing breasts hurt, but they grow and then they’re done. They don’t hurt every month for five years (unless they hurt during your menstrual cycle… which would be your menses doing it, not your breasts.) So I can’t really get too concerned about those things.

But menstrual cramps hurt, and telling me that it is just fine if 8 year olds start to menstruate is basically telling me that it is okay if 8 year old girls suffer useless and unnecessary pain that in the past they wouldn’t have suffered for an additional five years.

Menstrual cramps are not culturally constructed. They exist. They hurt. They hurt most women during most of their periods. The fact that you can also get a cramp from having to poop does not mean that eliminating menstrual cramps would not spare you pain, because the cramp from having to poop would happen with or without menstruation. Pain is bad unless it serves a purpose, and menstruation serves no purpose in 8 year olds. *any* pain that children suffer now, to no purpose, whereas in the past only teens or only adults would have suffered it, is bad. Therefore it is objectively a bad thing when 8 year olds start menstruating, because it will probably cause them pain.

If you want social mores to change, then that idea needs to be met with - disapproval?  incredulity?

No, it needs to be countered with something better.  This tastes better.  This feels better.  Try it.

Punditus @ 127, this is what Taubes suspected when he researched for his article in 2002! His training is in physics, but because he is primarily a journalist, he investigates all science fields.  He was developing an article on salt intake studies and the difficulty in getting grants if the grant applicant wasn’t already on board with the prevailing opinion when he started interviewing all these nutritional researchers and clinicians. That’s when he came to realize that the people he was interviewing were not only biased, but that their studies were badly formulated and that results were worthless.

Crissa, don’t dismiss what you have no context for. Please go to the links below, then read the prologue, epilogue, and afterword of the paperback edition of “Good Calories, Bad Calories.” I promise you will not regret it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4362041487661765149#

As you should see from this topic, Emmet - that isn’t enough.  It’s too expensive/difficult/time consuming to bother to…eat better/move more.  And the health gains are a long term reward, while the junk food one is an immediate gratification reinforced by a ton of advertising dollars.  You are fighting a losing battle if you think its a matter of “just serve it and they will eat.  Though I think that’s a helpful approach a la a Jamie Oliver, but it has to be coupled with something else - as in societal pressure to counteract the bad corporate/societal pressure.

And we do have studies to back that up - parenting vs. peer pressure.

One reason I’m kinda not buying the whole “junk food” hypothesis: does anyone remember the kind of bland greasy swill that passed for food in the 50s and 60s?  It wasn’t just smoking that was making people drop dead young - it was tons of fat and meat and sugar and salt, too.  Just because it wasn’t packaged for convenience, but shaken and baked and packed with bologna and mayo by dutiful wifemothers, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t gross and dangerous.

Re: people talking about food being awful… I’ve been changing my tastes recently, but I was eating a vending machine bag of either Doritos or Cheetos and noticed two things.

First, either they changed the recipe so it doesn’t taste as good as I used to remember it, or, my tastes have changed so I no longer like it.

Second, there was a pretty bad aftertaste. Now, that might have been accidental, but I stopped and realized something.

What if you *could* make chips/junkfood with a decent on-the-tongue taste, and a nasty aftertaste? Marketing *brilliance* - you’ll sell some soda pop to wash it down, or people will keep eating the junk food to get the initial taste back.

And at that point, I realized how much one had to distrust food companies. In a world where profit is praised as the primary good over all, people will make foods where it’s easy to eat a lot of them, whether due to lack of satiation, or due to any taste triggers you can manage.

There’s nowhere near as much profit in good, wholesome food that leaves you feeling satiated. And that means that investment money will chase the stuff that leaves you feeling a bit empty inside.

Phylosopher, you seem to be conveniently blind to the reality that we have been using the shaming stick approach for decades and it doesn’t work.  I don’t know how, b/c everything Amanda posts on this topic basically repeats that it doesn’t work and points out reasons why it’s fucked up.  By all means, continue dividing food and people into good and bad based on fat content, but the track record shows that it’s better at improving thin people’s self-esteem than it is at getting fat people to lose weight.

This is a both/and sort of situation, not either/or. I’m reminded of a poem by Edna Saint Vincent Millay, “This should be simple” where she gets the heart of the matter “But evil upon evil laminate, Through layers uncountable as leaves in coal.” We are both the unwilling victims of this laminate evil and its enforcers and perpetrators.

Simply put, we got fat, because we could (and I speak as one who could stand to lose a few off his gut). Nobody put a gun to our heads and said, “Eat this junk and sit in front of the boob tube.” We did so, because its easy and doing something, because it’s easy is a very human trait.

But we are also part of a society which feeds on making things easy. There’s a profit to be made in easy and we consumers (and think about what it means to identify ourselves as such), gobble it up (and I’m not just talking about food here).

We became fat, because we could. Just as we sprawled out into suburbia (leaving behind cities that look as if a invading army had wrought its destruction). Just as we go to malls and Wal-Marts, instead of shopping at local stores. Just as we go to rock concerts and load up our I-tunes instead of learning to make our own music.

What has made all this possible is cheap and easy fossil fuels, and if you don’t believe me, consider what happened to Cuba in the 1990’s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They call it the “Special Period.” Overnight, Cuba lost 80% of its export market and 80% of its imports, and most crucially of all, petroleum. With that loss, their transport, industrial and agricultural systems collapsed and the whole nation went on an unbidden diet. Caloric intake for the average Cuban dropped from 3052 calories in 1989 to an estimated 2099 in 1993, with some estimates saying it went to 1863 calories and as low as 1450 for children and the elderly. The result was the average Cuban lost 20 pounds in a few short years. There was a slight increase in the death rate for elderly Cubans, but there was an 18% drop in the overall death rate, with a 51% decline in deaths due to diabetes, a 35% drop in deaths from coronary heart disease and a 20% decline in deaths from strokes.

I mention this Special Period, because, in the not-too-distant future, we may enter one as well. Recently, the US Army and British and German military studies have raised the alarm about coming world oil supply shortages. And as the nation most dependent, in absolute terms, on imported oil, we are the most vulnerable to the effects of that great reduction in supplies. Like Cuba in the 90’s we may face the collapse of our transport and agricultural systems and then it’s bye-bye to fast food joints and convenience stores and Cheez Doodles and all the rest and hello to your labor-intensive backyard garden and food rationing.

Somewhere around 2013 the oil crunch will start to really bite and Mother Nature will make it really easy for us to lose weight, because she’ll make it hard to do anything else.

@Alara #181

I think we’re speaking slightly at cross-purposes: it is not my contention that periods starting earlier is good, or bad, or neutral - I have not formulated an opinion on this matter, because I think it is a difficult and tricky subject that one needs to be well read on, and I’m not.

Having said that, it does seem open to question, from reading upthread comments on the supporting evidence provided by judybrowni, that this is indeed the case (independent of weight issues, in which case we ought to be having a wider conversation about children’s health, not fetishising menarche).

However I do think it is an unwarranted leap of logic to claim that an 8 year old - the same 8 year old - would have been spared unnecessary pain until her 13th year “in the past”. I just don’t see how you can support that assertion - especially given that we are talking averages here, with small outlyer groups that have more or less always existed. We all went to school with the “early bloomer” who was having her bra straps snapped in grade school, and the skinny shy girl who learned to walk with a stoop to hide the fact that her chest didn’t exhibit any visible lumpyness until age 16.

Without being either fat or in any other way unusual, I was menstruating before I hit my teens. It had its downsides, but they were mostly social rather than physical. I did not feel then, nor do I now, that I had to suffer the not-inconsiderable discomfort of cramps with nothing but the healing rays of the ever-loving moon for comfort. Ibuprofen was my friend, and overall the disruption to my life was minimal: when going swimming, I worried more about my mascara running than anything tampon-related. I dismissed pads ealy on as self-evidently ridiculous, as did many of my friends.

I’m sorry that your experience was different; but neither your experience nor mine are really the best guides for pronouncing on issues of public health in pre-teen girls. Howsoever that may be, at best you can support the contention that the (manageable) pain of periods is an objectively negative thing; to then go on to say that periods are “bad” is a synechdoche I am not happy to leave standing.

***

Parenthetically, now that my hormones have settled down somewhat, I suffer significantly more pain from swollen and very hot breasts than I do from abdominal cramps (seriously, you could solve the energy crisis with those things). Furthermore the pain does not ebb and flow with uterine contraction cycles but is constant and starts several days before the actual bleeding. I find your dismissal of such pain somewhat wounding; it is just as real to me as her cramps are to any 8-year-old, and why should it not deserve your sympathy? :(

This is sort of off topic, but has anyone ever heard/read anything about the bmi thing perhaps being sexist. I know that in almost every country in the world women are about twice as likely to be obese as men, yet men are more susceptible to heart disease, are more likely to carry their weight around their organs than in their hips (where excess fat is relatively harmless), need a lower body fat level to be healthy and usually die at a younger age. It seems a bit off that women and men have the same levels for obese and whatnot.

Sort of relatedly, I think a lot of the people that seem to feel they have a moral obligation to hate on fatties, at least a little bit, are from what I can tell men. It is worth pointing out that it is significantly easier (on average) for men to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight due to larger size, more muscle mass, and so on. Just keep in mind that bodies are all unique and because something works for you does not mean it will work for anybody else.

I am also really happy for all of you who have changed your lifestyles and no longer like unhealthy food, I am sure you will have a wonderful spot in anti-aesthetic liberal heaven, but I don’t think that your experience can be made universal. I have virtually given up all junk food for years except for on a few special occasions and when it is unavoidable, and I still get way way more satisfaction out of $1 of McDonalds than $1 of produce.

Yes, FA activists go too far in trying to claim that being over weight has no consequences; they should make arguments more along the lines of “I am who I am, I am happy, fuck you if you disagree” but they would get run out of town with pitchforks. There was a woman awhile back who wrote an article about that in Jezebel, an FA friendly site, and she got ripped apart in the comments.

And as far as “what we can do” to help people be more healthy: if we try to encourage behaviors (take a walk in the evening, eat healthy during the week and save junk food for weekends, etc) those are things people can start doing and succeeding at right away. Even if people don’t get to the magical number that makes them “not fat” such things will make people healthier and raise quality of life. If we take this “cease all fatness, immediately” approach, it doesn’t offer people anything they can do, and the goal of “do not be fat” means that you will fail for months or years (assuming you don’t just binge diet, which will exacerbate obesity) to succeed and dismisses any improvements you might make in the mean time.

You ever notice, that in different cars, the amount of weight you put on the pedal has a different result?  My dad’s truck, took a bit of weight, but the teeniest bit you budged it and it would roar down the street.

What you eat is like how far the pedal is down.  How fast the car goes is like how much you weigh.  You can stomp on the pedal and not really go fast as long as you don’t stay stuck tot he metal (an indulgence here and there.)  And some cars just take more than others… A good geared car, without hardly touching the pedal, might get going pretty fast.  And you get going to a speed and stop increasing.  You take your foot off the pedal, and little happens.  The body doesn’t have brakes, and can’t be fed nothing.

Weight is similar.  Fat acceptance people want people in general to realize that many ‘obese’ peoples aren’t stomping on the gas, their bodies just sock away the calories better.  And some of them aren’t unhealthy.  (Not the body builders, those guys are unhealthy.)  Harassing them about having a donut once in awhile is useless - not only can a heavier person eat more or less without much change in their body mass, they often aren’t eating more than a lighter person.

So the whole diet thing is disingenuous.  Yes, you can gain weight (in general) by eating more.  But only so much… And a single apple a day is the equivalent calories to weighing ‘normal’ and ‘obese’.  So WTF.

And on the Taubes guy…  Look, his conclusion is kinda no-duh.  But not based on real science.  Just because his solution works for some people doesn’t mean his reasoning is sound.  Ugh.

With the FA people and the body builders argument, I think in the US the converse is probably true—we have a lot of thin people who eat and live like they should be obese, but the focus on “OMFG Americans are ugl…er….unhealthy” that persons all important health is totally ignored.

One of the things that I really wonder about is work environment.  When I worked for other people, God it was so boring.  I really think that a lot of people underestimate just how soul-crushingly boring it is to work in most companies.  Mind-numbingly boring work.  Often under really bad conditions like being terrified of being ten minutes late in the morning.  Or having your boss scream at you for a mistake. 

Working for myself for the past several years, and just this year, beginning a second business with my brother, has been a revelation for me.  It’s the difference between being in prison and being free.  I would do anything, and I mean anything, to ensure I never have to go back to corporate America. 

And I think that eating junk food to aleviate both boredom and stress, is only one of the things workers use.  Some drink.  Honestly, I was a bit overfond of my liquid lunches back in the day.  I can’t even remember the last time i had a drink during the day now.  But back then?  It was a lot.

Sort of relatedly, I think a lot of the people that seem to feel they have a moral obligation to hate on fatties, at least a little bit, are from what I can tell men. It is worth pointing out that it is significantly easier (on average) for men to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight due to larger size, more muscle mass, and so on.

It’s also a LOT more socially acceptable to be a fat man than a fat woman.

One reason I’m kinda not buying the whole “junk food” hypothesis: does anyone remember the kind of bland greasy swill that passed for food in the 50s and 60s?  It wasn’t just smoking that was making people drop dead young - it was tons of fat and meat and sugar and salt, too.

I had a friend who was in his mid-60s, his wife was a bit younger, and they decided to start eating healthy, cutting out that kind of food you’re talking about, more veggies, etc.

Her mother thought that they were starving themselves, because she was used to thinking that gravy, lots of meat, starches, etc., were healthy because that’s how she was brought up back when nutritional science was still in its’ infancy.

I’m sorry, but where is it that people on this thread have been mocking people for their weight?  I’ve seen a few ad homs (the banana split comment comes to mind) but it seems to me that attitudes are being assumed by people who aren’t saying weight has a moral dimension, but rather that we have made some very, very unhealthy changes in our culture (sedentary nature, oversweetening, refined carbs, foods that cause people to crave more—i.e., refined carbs) are probably the reason why weight, across the population has increased.

I do want to say that I completely agree with whoever said upthread that you really have to accept yourself in order to make positive changes in your life.  The times I’ve succeeded with the whole weight loss (and fitness, and eathing healthier, and anything) have been when I stopped hating on myself for screwing up.  For being “weak.”  For being overweight.  So yes, the haterade is bad bad bad morally and practically.  So please stop.  No shaming, just education, and explaining to people what trade-offs are, and making healthy food more available *whether or not the availability decreases people’s weight.*

Also, regarding the claim that going hypocaloric makes people feel hungry all the time—I can personally say that doing that low carb (15-20g/day) for me means that I *do not* feel hungry all the time, even when I’m eating 800-1200 calories per day (I am very small and very sedentary, please don’t freak out/worry).  I was always hungry when I did the low fat/moderate carb diet (even though I ate a lot of veggies and few processed carbs then) and ate between 1200-1800, usually 1200-1500 to lose weight.

People are different.  I am probably very insulin sensitive.  But it is possible to go hypocaloric and not feel like you are starving (and yes, I am being very very careful to monitor myself and not lose too much weight/develop any patterns of disordered eating.  If anything, I do the calorie counts to make sure I do not undereat.)

“it was tons of fat and meat and sugar and salt, too.”

Ms Kate @ 185, simply take out the sugar and the combination of everything else is healthy. This is the way I eat and I have never felt better. Of course the fats have to be of animal origin since vegetable fats are simply not good for you in the quantities necessary for the health of the brain and nervous system. In fact, they are detrimental to the brain, nervous system and the cell walls of every cell in your body when ingested daily.

An occasional tablespoon of olive oil is fine, but animal fat is what should be eaten every day—oh, coconut oil is very healthy on a daily basis. It’s not only saturated, it has natural anti-microbials. Coconut oil is a minimally processed substance, while corn, safflower, canola, olive and others are overly processed unnatural foods.

“Bag of apples at my local grocery store = $3.29.  Bag of potato chips = $1.39.”

How many pounds / ounces is the bag of apples? How many ounces is the chips?

Might as well compare a 10lb bag of potatoes from the store ($3) to an order of McDonald’s French Fries (maybe $2 for a smaller size) and say “but the fries are cheaper!”

As for the rest:

Anyone who says stuff like “Being fat is totally unrelated to health, you can be any size and still be healthy” “Being fat is who you are, you cannot change it, or if you can it’s very unsafe to do so.”

is 100% wrong. FACT.

Why are those facts so hard for FA’s to accept?

Likewise, the people who say “fat=unhealthy, skinny=healthy” or “fatness is entirely due to your own actions” are also 100% wrong.

Why are those facts so hard for fat-bashers to accept?

Anecdote:

My girlfriend comes from a family who is genetically overweight. Her mom, her grandma, her aunt, are all pear-shaped and 170-200 pounds.

She, 5’4, is 140 pounds. She has been thus for about 10 years. She is a vegan.

At one point, she moved in with her mother and the mother became vegan with her for about 7-8 months. Her mother went from 180 pounds to 140 pounds.

Then her mother re-married and resumed eating meat, dairy, and other junk food. She went back to 180 pounds and more.

@LCforevah: Have you ever been to this blog: http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/
The author specifically breaks down how and why LC diets are healthy, and does a lot of informative picking apart of nutritional research studies.

Emmett what we haven’t had for decades is a better understanding of foods (we blindly trusted company marketing) and there were still a lot of manual labor jobs around, or folks who had the ideal, instilled when manual, physically exhausting labor was the norm, that one was given a certain amount of energy and one had better conserve it for necessary use. The rules are being re-written.  I just don’t think “I’m OK, you’re OK, obesity is OK”  should be one of them.  OTOH, I also don’t think that everyone should be or should think they should be a size 2.  Living with two athletes, I’m not hung up on the BMI.

Amen, revrick.  THough I’m not sure anyone is able to predict such an exact date. )Unfortunately, it will take a while to rev up the local systems if we don’t support the fledgling ones now.  It takes a few years to grow a fruit tree, or to plant pasture and hayfields, or to get soils fertile enough to grow veggies. .

Oh, so we’re speaking anecdotally now?

Okay, had high normal cholesterol, so for a year and a half I went low-fat vegetarian: and was ill over and over and over.

For the first time in my life, my blood pressure soared, although I’ve been “fat” for over 20 years.

Went to a doctor who considered himself “holistic” who did blood tests, hair analysis, and advised me that I was someone who was actually healthier eating meat and having some fat with each meal.

Reversed my health back to normal, my blood pressure went down to normal, my cholesterol high normal.

I lose weight when I go hunter-gatherer: meat, fish, chicken, eggs, vegetables, fruit.

I’d gained weight as a vegetarian and been sick, as well.

My father, a meat eater, is 87 and his blood pressure is normal, with high normal cholesteral.

No everyone is the same apparently (who’d thunk it?)

but it seems to me that attitudes are being assumed by people who aren’t saying weight has a moral dimension, but rather that we have made some very, very unhealthy changes in our culture (sedentary nature, oversweetening, refined carbs, foods that cause people to crave more—i.e., refined carbs) are probably the reason why weight, across the population has increased.

Yes. This. 

Let me make it clear that I don’t believe that fat people are lazy or gluttonous or both. I believe that the majority of them have a metabolic disorder brought about by the ratio of starch to protein and fat that they consume(not my theory btw).  This condition is correctible if they choose to do so. My problem with the FA’s is that they deny this, they choose carbs over health and they want everyone’s stamp of approval for it. If you’re happy being 300 lbs and eating cereal for breakfast, bread at lunch and potatoes for dinner, then fine. Just own it. Don’t ask reasonable people to accept that your weight and diet are natural, healthy, and doesn’t impact the rest of us.

Was at the Speedway last weekend in Indy for the MotoGP races. I thoroughly enjoyed biking from downtown to the track both days to avoid the traffic jams. I was the only person on a bike though that I saw. DH drove a cycle, and it took him over an hour after the main event to get back to our hotel 5 miles away. Guess how long it took me?

Hyperlipid! Thanks Pietoro, I didn’t recognize the URL. I visit from time to time. I go daily to

http://proteinpower.com/drmike

http://marksdailyapple.com

http://livinlavidalowcarb.com

Dr Mike hasn’t written a new post in a while, but his blogroll is comprehensive and if I forget some website, I go there to get the link. Hyperlipid is there.

Might as well compare a 10lb bag of potatoes from the store ($3) to an order of McDonald’s French Fries (maybe $2 for a smaller size) and say “but the fries are cheaper!”

When you have $2.15 in your pocket and fifteen minutes to get some food so you won’t be late to your second job? No matter how much you may want to be eating something that isn’t fried and salted to within an inch of it’s life, the dollar-menu burger and fries will give you the calories, fat, and protein you need to get through 8 hours at that second job without keeling over.

Poor people are not actually stupid, and it’s funny that privileged lefties who will agree with this when it comes to every other aspect of life in poverty are more than happy to join the pile-on when it comes to food choices.

Way to generalize there Crissa - not all bodybuilders do hormones, etc. There are moderate, natural builders and there are power lifters.

I work with a young man who thinks coffehouses are a waste of money and calls the most ubiquitous one *Starschmucks™* Because you are one if you go there!

Like Bex @ 211, I sometimes have to pick up something really fast and now Starschmucks™ is the place to do it. Not only have they got rid of trans fats, they have eliminated fructose from their food products. There is a chicken with hummus package, that, if you throw out the flat bread, becomes low carb. There is also a tarragon chicken salad sandwich that is low carb without the bread.

Basically all that FA says is that you shouldn’t be a douche to fat people.  Because it’s kind of hard to want to live your life when you have people being douches at you every time you leave your house, try to go to a gym, walk to work… 

And it’s funny, that every time this comes up you get the people who say that Fat Acceptance people advocate mainlining lard and snorting powdered sugar while eating the WHOLE WORLD, but I go to FA sites, a lot.  And I’ve never seen anyone advocate this.  It is equally telling that none of these people yelling about what Fat Acceptance REALLY IS can provide you a link.

Then we have Pablo, who says that if FA and HAES people really thought there was nothing people could do about their weight or that it’s not bad to be fat, that we wouldn’t be calling for giving people greater access to healthy foods and exercise.

Sigh.

Ok, for the last fucking time.  Fat Acceptance states that it is not ok to be a douche to someone just because you personally don’t find them fuckable because of their weight, that it is not ok to fat shame and otherwise be a jerk.  Shorter:  Quit being a douche.

Health At Every Size says that if you eat better and get exercise, regardless of what size you end up being (bigger, smaller, same) that you will feel better and be healthier.  And that healthy is good.  And that thin does not actually equal healthy.  Also, it is trying to combat the thinking that leads to things like my sister thinking that since she’s still fat, and will probably always be fat no matter how “good” she is, then what’s the fucking point?  Because no matter how healthy she is, she’s still fat, and jackholes still feel the need to fat shame her, even though her lifestyle is probably way healthier than theirs.

So A:  On the straw FA stance, STFU, ok?  Or come up with at least one fucking citation. 

And B:  HAES just says you can be fat and healthy, not that everyone would be healthy fat or that everyone should be fat. 

Everyone in this country could use access to better food and the opportunity for more exercise.  EVERYONE.  We really need to cut the corn subsidies, get HFCS out of everything we eat, and spend that subsidy money on healthier, more sustainable food crops.

Comment #212: phylosopher on 09/03 at 02:23 PM
Way to generalize there Crissa - not all bodybuilders do hormones, etc. There are moderate, natural builders and there are power lifters.

WTF?  Not what I wrote.

Apples = $0.10 per oz
Potato chips = $0.08 per oz

Might as well compare…an ounce of apples to an ounce of potato chips?

Price-wise, fine. But you get a lot more nutrition-and-satiety wise out of the apples than the potato chips, and I doubt anyone would argue with that. Sure, at times you want some damn chips, and go right ahead. But the point is that in general, you will get more for your money in the long run by spending that money on apples than on potato chips, and that in general, apples are better for you than potato chips.

You need to eat animal fat every day?  WTF.  A) Gross B) Why? C) It doesn’t contain any nutrients you can’t get from vegetable oils.

The ‘eat meat and lose weight!’ people here need to just stop it.  Yes, it’s possible to constrain your diet using proteins.  Yes, proteins break down slower in the digestive system, leading to a longer/quicker ‘full’ feeling on average.  But animal fat?  Like the Taubes guy, you’re taking what is a basic rule and turning it into something crazy and unrelated to healthy eating.  Or judybrowni’s claim that eating vegetables is bad because she gained weight and was unhealthy when she did it. 

These are claims of some pattern from limited evidence.  Well, it was snowing the last time I went through a mountain pass, therefore no one should ever go through mountain passes!  Bah.

Also, re-read GGR’s #214.

Emmett what we haven’t had for decades is a better understanding of foods

We don’t have it now either, by any stretch of the imagination.  We might have a better idea of the macronutrient breakdown of lots of foods, but we’re still pretty clueless why some lifestyles work better for some people than others.  We don’t know the exact combination of food, ingredients, additives, and lifestyle changes that have resulted in Americans on average weighing more.  We don’t know exactly how fat interacts with a bunch of health factors (some yes, but plenty others, not so much).  What we do have is a good idea what is healthier, and we ought to be working on the how of making it something you don’t need a fuckton of privilege to access, something that’s pleasureable instead of miserable, and something that’s seen as its own reward and not a penance served with a side of shame.

The rules are being re-written.  I just don’t think “I’m OK, you’re OK, obesity is OK” should be one of them.  OTOH, I also don’t think that everyone should be or should think they should be a size 2.

So, if only everyone fit your personal bell curve of body size, you’d be satisfied?  That’s bull, man, sorry.  #214 lays it out, so I’m only going to summarize.  No one is fighting for the rules to say, “Stuff your face!  It’s good for you!”  They’re saying, “Don’t be a douche.  It doesn’t help.”  Think of it like slut shaming.  Does slut shaming (like the lies peddled in abstinence education programs) really stop women from having sex?  No, but it makes them feel shitty for having sex and more likely to make bad choices about sex b/c they already believe they’re worth less for being a sexual human.  The solution is to stop shaming and provide proper education and access to opportunities to make healthy choices.  Same with fat shaming.  Being a douche doesn’t help.  Reforming our food system, economy, urban planning, and attitudes about pleasure, food, and the body are what will help.

GGR- go to bigfatblog and read the villianization of the efforts of Jaime Oliver and Michelle Obama.

@Amanda

It’s absolutely true that age of puberty is continuing to decline.  It’s also true that rapid weight gain in childhood is the most likely cause.

No, it is not.  One theory is that the age for the onset of menarche rose in the 19th century and that the (very slight) drop we may have seen recently is a return to previously normal levels.  If it has declined, we are talking about a decline of less than 1 year.  In addition, one of the problems with identifying “too young” is that it raises the question “too young for which group?”  There is data to suggest that African-American women begin menstruating about 8 months earlier than white women.  So, if white women begin menstruating “too soon” then were African-American women always menstruating “too soon” or are we now concerned about the 6 month or so (possible) difference moreso for the African-American population than for the white population?  (All of this is additionally to a certain extent ignoring the genetic component of the age at which menarche occurs.  If it is in fact a genetic shift, which there is not enough data to confirm or rule out, then that raises the question of how we address what would be a genetic “problem.”)

Weight gain in childhood in also thought to be a secondary factor.  The primary one is theorized to be skeletal growth.  Sharon Golub covers menstruation and menarche extensively.  I highly recommend Periods: From Menarche to Menopause, which additionally addresses the cultural differences in perception of menstruation and menopause, and there are excellent previews of much of her other work available through Google books.

I have read the “villainization” of both.

A. Jamie Oliver deserves it for being a classist prat.  Have you been following the scandals surrounding his helping that American town?  No one’s pissed at him for wanting people to eat healthier, they are pissed at him for being fat-shaming douchebag.  Not to mention the heaping helping of misogyny for yelling at a mother and telling her it’s her fault that her kids are obese, because it’s always mom’s fault. You know, instead of saying, “I have tools to teach you how to serve healthier meals.”  Like a reasonable human being.

B.  What people object to with the Michele Obama thing is framing it in terms of weight loss instead of health, because as many of us know, fat shaming when you’re a kid really sucks and is awful.  If she wants kids to be healthier great, but as we SHOULD all know by now, thin doesn’t equal healthy any more than fat equals unhealthy.

Any more questions?

Oh, did I also mention that he couldn’t craft healthier lunches for the school in the town and remain even remotely close to the budget he had?  And that had they tried to follow his plan with the money alloted the kids would have gotten LESS nutritional value, not more?

GGR,

That second bit may say more about the budgets being inadequate.  I don’t know this guy, he may well be a douche.

But re: Michelle Obama, since there are a lot of people who do want to lose weight, is it wrong for her to frame it that way?

When you frame it as a weight thing, and the binary minds of children take it, if thin = good, then what does fat equal? 

Yeah.  There are other ways to frame it that aren’t going to add more ammunition to the “Fatty Fatty 2x4” grade school brigade.  Like, say, how Nickelodeon frames it with their go out and Verb campaign.  No mention of fat, just get out and move and feel better. 

It’s not that hard, really.

phylosopher@206,
Actually, Wikipedia has a website on Oil megaprojects which looks at this very matter of world oil production and makes such projections. It’s based on a careful study of slated new oil field projects and the continued declining production of current aging oil fields. Up until 2013, we barely keep up and then a yawning gap appears that grows steadily wider.
However, this understates the problem since oil producing nations are using more for their own domestic purposes AND the newest supplies require more energy to get at, transport and refine (leaving less overall).
I guess my point is that Mother Nature is going to render moot all the arguments and concerns cited here, because the problem will swiftly become one of finding any food, period!

When you make thin the goal, why bother if you can’t get thin?

Way up further I talked about how my sister, who is a disgustingly healthy yet still a size 24 (walks 4 miles a day minimum, hikes, mostly vegetarian diet) told me she thought about giving up all of that.  Because when people like some of the above posters see her, they automatically assume she’s surviving on a diet of nothing but pure sugar and starch washed down with bacon grease, and will frequently fat shame her, or give her “helpful” tips, that just make her feel bad.  I told her, “Well, you’re healthy!  You feel good!  Your numbers are great!”
Her response, “No one can see my health.”  They just see her size. 

Getting in a workout when you work humongous hours of overtime, as she does, is hard, and would she rather sit on the couch and read, knit or watch TV. Probably. 

And yes, she should be doing it for herself and herself alone, but we don’t live in vacuums, and people are dickheads to fat people, because THEY JUST KNOW why you’re fat.

What I’m saying in my long-winded way is, thin ISN’T a realistically obtainable goal for a lot of people, but HEALTHY IS. 

And if thin is your goal, and it never happens no matter how “good” you are, why keep being good?

A lot of posters on this thread need to be reminded that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”.

My grandpa smoked a pack of Lucky Strikes everyday since he was a teenager. He died in his sleep of old age at 96 and had zero health problems.

This proves jackshit about the health effects of smoking.

And that’s posters on BOTH sides.

You know, if I was as dismissive as FAres I would tell your friend “lets see your numbers in five years!”

When you make thin the goal, why bother if you can’t get thin?

Exactly, exactly, exactly.  Why is this so difficult for people to grasp?  It seems like the idea is that since a lot of people are more motivated to be attractive than to be healthy, using the fat angle is a way of tricking us into adopting generally healthier habits.  I understand why a person would think that, but what I don’t get is why they insist that it is an effective approach when we, the very people that they are supposedly trying to pressure into being “healthier”, tell them that it does not work like that.  It is discouraging.  It makes you want to give up.  I have finally reached a place where I can exercise (I am 24 and still barely over my gym class induced fear of exercising in public) and eat well just for my health and not for my appearance.  When people treat me like I am an unhealthy slob anyway, it hurts that.  It sucks.  Seriously.  Anybody who thinks they are being helpful by explaining (thinsplaining?) to an overweight friend why their otherwise healthy diet and exercise regime isn’t helping them lose weight, just stop.  You are not helping.

@Ben D.  Well, her numbers have held steady the entire time she’s been doing this, which is about seven or eight years now.  So, I think she’s fine.  And still a size 24. 

My numbers have been holding steady for over 20 years, from an incredibly unhealthy (starvation and compulsive exercising) size 10 to my current size 22.  Actually, I think my blood pressure is lower now than it was in my late teens/early 20s.  So, um, yeah… about that dropping dead from dethfatz any second now?  Not gonna happen. 

My mom lost quite a bit of weight when her thyroid went haywire a couple years ago.  They had to zap it, because you know, heart palpitations and the potential of an early heart attack.  A couple months ago, she told me that if she’d know how hard it would be to keep that weight off and/or lose any more, she never would have had them zap it.  In spite of the vastly increased risk of heart attack.

THAT’S what focusing on thin gets you.

A lot of posters on this thread need to be reminded that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”.

The plural of “anecdote” is not “data,” but anecdotal evidence is sufficient to show that something is possible.  Seeing one brown cow in Scotland does not tell you that all the cows in Scotland are brown, but it is pretty good evidence that cows in Scotland may be brown.  Likewise, when somebody implies that all fat people are that way because they are unhealthy, or that losing weight and keeping it off is easy for everyone, an anecdote is a perfectly appropriate rebuttal.  It’s called proof by counterexample.

Yeah, my favorites are the guys at the gym who go out of their way to let you know you’re fat.  I dropped a free weight on someone’s foot for calling me a whale once.  Because, you know, fat people are so weak…

But seriously, if your goal is healthy people THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP WHEN WE’RE EXERCISING!!!!!

Do I really need to listen to the twit stretching next to me on the mats tell her friend that if she ever gets as big as me she’ll kill herself?  Do I really need the muscle bound douchebag to tell me I’m just wasteing space in the gym that real people could use better?  Do I?

Why the hell is it so hard for you clamfucks to grasp that all we want is for you to quit being clamfucks?  I don’t want or ask you to find me fuckable.  I ask you to treat me like a human being regardless of my perceived fuckability in your eyes. 

I want to be able to walk to the bus, or from the bus, without some asshead mooing at me.

I want to go to the gym without people snickering at me.  (Granted, the snickering generally stops when they see what I lift, replaced by expressions of “Oh sweet Jesus, did she hear us?”)

I want people to quit judging me because while I eat healthy, organic homecooked meals 95% of the time, I might just have a craving for Taco Bell, or be running late and decide MickeyD’s is better than nothing and on the way.  So obviously, because I’m fat I ALWAYS EAT fast or junk food. 

Conversely, I want to eat a salad in public without some well-meaning twit telling me what a “good girl” I am, and if I just keep it up “that weight will just melt off.”

And if I ever hear, “But you have such a pretty face” again,  Imma stab somebody.

I ask you to treat me like a human being regardless of my perceived fuckability in your eyes.

Sometimes it really feels like we might as well be asking for the moon.

Yeah…  I vacillate between wanting to curl up in a cave and wanting a bazooka.

I ask you to treat me like a human being regardless of my perceived fuckability in your eyes.

Sometimes it really feels like we might as well be asking for the moon.

Well, if we haven’t been able to achieve it yet for good-looking and thin and white and middle to upper class women with opinions…

Sometimes this “living while female” gig really blows.

I enjoy insults made of a random word and the word “fuck.” 

It amuses me.

Someone called you a whale and said you were taking up space that real people could be using?  That really astounds me.  I have definitely seen people approx your size working out at my gym, and I have never even thought anyting as fucked up as that.  But more importantly, I’ve definitely never heard anyone calling them names.  If I did, I’d definitely call that person a fucking asshole right out.  I’ve gotten into a few fights in the gym, one because I called a man a penis for thinking it was his right to come over and change the television station that was in front of my treadmill just because he was now there and didn’t like what I was watching.  So I totally know people in gyms can be asses, but what you are describing does blow my mind.

That’s just an animal as far as I am concerned.

Yup.  All of those things have happened.  And I did actually drop the weight on his foot, and apologized effusively for it, I mean, “I should have known I was too weak to hold that, being so fat and all.”  And more…

My sister had a guy who used to follow her around her gym, calling her a fat cow, telling her she was disgusting and he should kick her ass for being there.  I’ve had multiple mooing incidents at gyms, as well as while walking down the street.  I have a bike, but I rarely ride it because other fat friends of mine who do ride get cups, pop cans and candy thrown at them, and the moo-ing.  Mooing is kind of ubiquitous.  A lot of us have taken to calling it getting “Cow-called.”  And this is in Seattle, which is a fairly nice and liberal city.  I shudder to think what it’s like in less, ahem, enlightened places in the country.

My current gym’s a lot better.  I’ve only gotten shit from other women here, no guys.  Come to think of it, I’ve actually gotten hit on a couple of times.  Weird.

Because when I’m red-faced, panting and sweating, or grunting while lifting, I am SUCH a sexy beast.

GGR @241—Jesus Christ!  Having garbage thrown at you WHILE YOU ARE TRYING TO NOT BE KILLED BY TRAFFIC???  I have encountered some assholes while riding, but nothing that horrible.  Wow.

Yeah, not me, but friends who are braver than I currently.  What is it about riding a bike that makes women’s asses such a tempting target for douchebags?

A lot of us have taken to calling it getting “Cow-called.” And this is in Seattle, which is a fairly nice and liberal city.  I shudder to think what it’s like in less, ahem, enlightened places in the country.

My current gym’s a lot better.  I’ve only gotten shit from other women here, no guys.  Come to think of it, I’ve actually gotten hit on a couple of times.  Weird.
Comment #241: GeekGirlsRule on 09/03 at 05:54 PM

Maybe the people at your new gym aren’t taking steroids so much.  I hear it can turn you into quite the asshole.

And maybe Seattle is actually worse than less “enlightened” areas, because as you can see here, politically left folks aren’t necessarily enlightened about weight, and liberal <> feminist.

Anyway, sorry you’re dealing with that crap.

@ 204

You must be kidding. I am in Canada (Vancouver) and a 235 gram bag of Old Dutch potato chips (http://www.bestairmiledeals.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/44066_p06_ab_cmyk-168.jpg) costs $4 in a convenience store, $2.50-3 at a grocery store like Safeway.

235 grams = 0.52 pounds = $4.80 per pound at the cheapest. Apples = $1.50-$1.70 per pound.

That isn’t even accounting sales tax (12% on chips, but no sales tax on apples).

I don’t know where you live, but are you seriously saying that your chips cost less than a quarter of what they do in Canada?

“Okay, had high normal cholesterol, so for a year and a half I went low-fat vegetarian: and was ill over and over and over.

For the first time in my life, my blood pressure soared, although I’ve been “fat” for over 20 years. “

Can you give a meal plan of the things you ate?

I lost 70 pounds six years ago, eating low carb. And have kept it off; gained some this winter because of great stress and some backsliding, but have already taken off 12 pounds by going back to low carb, and will get rid of the rest by the time winter comes around again. Fortunately, the stress issue is much lower, and I’ve learned my lesson.

Maybe I’m a mutant. But it works incredibly, amazingly, awesomely well for me. Great blood pressure, lipids, blood sugar, and other health metrics. I eat lots of meat and vegetables and fat. No formal exercising, unless you count living on the third floor.

So I’d just like to say that for me, and probably lots of other people, the advice to eat healthy whole grains and low fat foods kept me overweight, and constantly hungry. I couldn’t exercise enough to stay at a healthy weight. I used to manage two hours of working out a day, but I worked at home and had room for an exercise machine. Now, I don’t have the room, or the time, or the money, or the energy, being older now.

The advice people are given is simply wrong for most of us. So what happens next, if we listen, is not our fault.

“Tone argument for the fail, Ben. You think we can’t see through your concern for our health? Try to police other people’s bodies and you tend to make them angry. Deal.”

Hark.  The Fat-Earth Society Goon Squad cometh.

Those of us w/ who’ve had to deal with the hollowed-out droning of the Fat-Earth Society snake-oil salesfolk Really Don’t Give A Shit About Your Health.  Honest.  So buy a ladder & get over yourselves.  What drives the rest of us up the wall is having to listen to the endless one-note diatribe from victim-posturing Fat-Earth Society yahoos getting pissy at everyone else for having their half-horse pity-parade buzz harshed on by anyone w/ the audacity to state the sky-is-blue, water-is-wet obviousness that a) obesity is a condition of ill health that b) gives rise to other maladies &/ exacerbates existing ones.  Point this out to the Fat-Earth Society cretins & you get the same kind of pearl-clutching foot-stomping fist-waving temper tantrums of pathological denial that you would telling an Ayn Rand-worshipping Objectivist that private commerce, in fact, takes place w/in the public sphere, or, say, telling the talibangelists that Jesus was actually Jewish.

“Can’t rail on black people, poor people, disabled people, women, or gays?”
Obese people do have to deal w/ a ton of unfair BS & the scum that engage in fat shaming need their asses kicked, no question.  No one here is contesting that.  To expand on what TheLady said @ 160, fat shaming is not only morally wrong, it is a given that it leads to more unhealthy behaviours such as more comfort eating &/ fad/crash diets that are guaranteed to fail.  Designed to fail.  But the notion that one can be both obese & in perfect health is Absurd On Its Face & is part of what those of us not in the Fat-Earth Society/Cargo Cult Sciences take issue with. The other is the deeply offensive insistence that what obese people have to deal w/ is somehow on par/equal to racism / sexism / homophobia.  This is a profound insult not just to anyone w/ a residue of intelligence, but very much to anyone who’s actually had to suffer through any of these forms of ugliness.  Obese people are not & have never been enslaved like African-Americans, gassed & made into soap like Hebrews in Nazi-occupied Europe,  allowed to die from AIDS like GLBT folks were in the 1980s, being disappeared like Argentine student activists in the 1970s, sold smallpox-infected blankets as were North American 1st Nations, “repatriated” (literally kidnapped off the street & dumped off who-knows-where in Mexico) as were Hispanic Americans.  Lindsay Beyerstein took this brand of rhetorical self-absorption to task in this article & the response of the Fat-Earth Society knuckledraggers for calling them out on their bullshit was to impugn both her progressive credentials as well as her commitment to feminism.  Who are the assholes now?

“Yes, FA activists go too far in trying to claim that being over weight has no consequences; they should make arguments more along the lines of ‘I am who I am, I am happy, fuck you if you disagree’ but they would get run out of town with pitchforks. There was a woman awhile back who wrote an article about that in Jezebel, an FA friendly site, and she got ripped apart in the comments.”
SOP for the FAS.  You’ll get much farther w/ faster results pointing out to one of the Bither jerks that being biracial, born in Hawaii & attending the same church in Chicago for 20+ years doesn’t quite qualify one as a Kenyan Muslim.  I’m quite curious about this & would like to read the article.  If you would post the link I’d be extremely grateful.  Please & thanks.

Nothing like a thread on fat to bring out the fat-shaming fauxgressives and their smug, smarmy concern trolling.
Troll, fuck thyself.

“Fat acceptance’ really is the left-wing version of ‘smoker’s rights’, isn’t it?”
Worse.  Trying to get a Fat-Earth Society True Believer to see the connection between obesity & things like collapsed arches, ground-down knees & hip joints, hyperextended lumbar areas of the spine, herniated disks, heart disease & strokes, sleep apnoea, etc. is as futile as getting a Climate Change Denialist to see the connection between record drought in equatorial / southern temperate zones, killer heatwaves & massive forest fires in temperate zones, flooding & rising sea levels, extreme weather in the form of obscenely powerful hurricanes & tornadoes that are occurring w/ more & more frequency & Global Warming.  Saying “bullshit” to a Fat-Earther’s bullshit gets the same response as whispering “spontaneous abortion” in the ear of a Forced-Birther.

“Ultimately I do think that some of the shit that goes down is because this is one area in which people do feel a license to be nasty and abusive.”
For complete intellectual dishonesty, for being incapable of engaging in Good Faith, for spreading lies & misinformation, for sucking all the oxygen out of otherwise interesting & engaging comment threads w/ their insistence that they have everything their way all the way every day 24 hours a day 7 days a week & 365 days a year, for parading their wilful ignorance as a virtue, for directing nothing but monotonous & whining ad hominem attacks against anyone who dares to say Your Emperor Wears No Clothes & for all the rhetorical bullying the Fat-Earth Society feels free to indulge in:  Open Fucking Season & Warning Shots Are Not Required.

You twisted my comments to mean the exact opposite of their intent. Someone wrote an article saying “yeah I am fat, but it is my life.” The Jezebel comments were mostly along the lines of “but you are so unhealthy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!!eleventy!” One can’t even make the argument “yeah i am fat, but nobody is perfect.” There is this sort of trap were fat people have to say that they run 15 miles a day and eat nothing but whole-grain celery in order to make the argument that fat people deserve basic dignity. The FA argument is wrong, but the argument they should be making isn’t even allowed.

Also, one problem with talking about the risks of obesity is, again, that we talk about it as a dichotomos fat not fat variable, when a lot of the disagreement between FAs and anti-FAs is in the nuance in the interaction between weight and health. Since I struggled with my weight for so long, I have read a lot about fitness, etc. I am too lazy to look up sources, but my understanding is that weight-loss is really hard, but when people engage in healthy habits—like getting aerobic activity everyday and eating well most of the time—even if the weight doesn’t come off health outcomes improve tremendously. So even if someone like whoever’s sister taht lives healthfully never gets the weight off, her healthy habits will help improve her longevity/quality of life.  Only focusing on weight would be a detriment to that sister.

Another example, I was talking about Richard Simmons with a friend. She mentioned that the people at the end, who had weightlosses of 100+ lbs were still fat, so what’s the point? If you only see fat and non-fat, you deny the incredible hardwork and dedication as well as the vast improvement to health and quality of life of the person that has gone from 300 to 200 lbs.

Finally, the points on the bmi chart labeled overweight and obese are relatively arbitrary. I am 5 10 and my weight varies between 170 and 175 lbs. The former weight is normal while the latter is overweight, but I am sure that I have very similar health outcomes for either weight. The bmi people (I have no idea who is in charge of this) could just as easily have said that both weights are normal or both or obese.

My point is that the FAs are wrong if they claim that weight doesn’t matter, but the way obesity is talked about and the risks are presented is plainly stupid and offers little to no guidance for people trying to live their lives the best they can.

wrt fatphobia vs sexism, racism, etc it is stupid to make the comparison, nobody wins the oppression olympics, and so on. Trying to silence someone because other people have had it worse is just as stupid as bragging that yours is the worst oppression ever experienced.

I also loved how John McCay came and made some completely inane comment. He had been told that liberals were a united front, but he happened across a topic with vehement disagreement in liberal circles and didn’t know what to do to ensure that he was on team conservative, so he just shouted an obscenity. You are as classy as you are smart, Johnny my dear.

Jamie Oliver’s heart is in the right place, but he isn’t very good at being budget constrained.  And it really doesn’t help that vegetables both fresh, frozen, and canned have continued to raise in price while other things have not… They’re one of the parts that are above the inflation curve, way above.

Prices at Safeway in California:  Doritos, Pringles 22¢ an ounce; plain corn chips 12¢ an ounce.  The latter is about the same as you’ll find some apples in the same store.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen apples over $2.49 a pound out here, tho.  If you’re in a convenience store the apple will probably cost as much as the bag of chips, if it is available… It’ll be a per-each price instead.

PS, those prices aren’t on sale, and don’t count the bigger sizes.  Prices on chips range from $2 a pound to $4 an ounce for basic sizes.  So…

I suppose I could have interrogated people about why the front door service, but I don’t think they wouldn’t understand the question because the idea of walking when you don’t have to in a non-exercise context just isn’t really something many people do.

Every other day or so, I get off the bus on the way to work 4 stops early.  That’s 4 city blocks from my office.  I do so to have some alone time to walk and smoke a cigarette.

Every freaking day that I do this, I walk up to my building and see a woman that I ride the bus with smoking by the building.  She looks at me, walking up to her after having walked 4 whole, giant blocks, and says, “wow, that was some walk, huh?”  She says this with a tone that says, “lol, weirdo, I don’t know why you choose to walk when you don’t really have to… but you’re 3 decades younger than me, so I’ll be nice and simply giggle condescendingly.”  I’m so irritated with her that I’ve stopped pausing when I see her, head straight for the ashtray, and head right in.  I am so irritated and bored with her comments about how I OMG walk voluntarily sometimes. 

Also, I think that the reason that 95% of fat people stay fat is the same as why 95% of diets fail: the only weight loss that works is weight loss that comes as a direct result of changing one’s lifestyle.  If you alter your diet to lose weight, you go back to eating the other foods you were previously giving up, and you gain it back.  But if you change your lifestyle—become more incidentally active, and opt for walking or biking instead of driving, if possible—you will feel better and notice a drop in weight, if combined with healthy and nutritious eating habits.

I think another problem is that Americans, mostly those who grew up on a processed foods and fast food diet, have a hard time tasting broccoli and cauliflower and spinach and other whole, nutritious foods and believing that they are real foods, because we’re used to sodium, carbs, and sugar as our tastebud staples.  Boxes of macaroni, hotdogs with ketchup, and loaded baked potatoes.  But if you can muster the willpower to just quit fast and processed food for a week or three, you won’t even crave it anymore.  And when you feel better as a result, you want to be more active.  The rest comes naturally.  The only thing that works, barring a chronic or otherwise debilitating condition, is a change in lifestyle.

I don’t *like* apples!  I’m sure I’m not the only one.  I can’t eat anything that sweet without my teeth hurting.  I could back when I was a string-bean kiddo, but as a 34-year-old adult, I eat almost nothing that is sweet, because it makes my teeth hurt.  Thinking about eating a donut makes my teeth hurt.

I’m pretty sure this is because I have soft teeth - my dad has a filling in every single one of his teeth, but he was raised on a farm with well-water and I was raised in a city with fluoridated water, so I only have like, six.

Of course, I’ve had my thyroid removed because of cancer, and went on to gain 40 lbs. immediately after (which charmingly has my WiiFit tell me that “That’s overweight!”) and then lost 17 lbs. in a month when my husband left me.  But everyone complements on losing the weight!  Because spending all of your time crying in bed and being unable to eat is way better than being able to get up and do things.  And I also get to wear a sign around indicating that I’m “overweight” because of a hormonal problem…or not.  FA is about not judging people because you just don’t know shit about strangers, so back the fuck off.

I love mushrooms and hate apples.  My favorite potato chips are the ones I make myself in the microwave, but I don’t always have the time/inclination. You makes your choices, and I makes mine, but insisting you’re oh.so.correct and everyone should make the same choices you have is fucking insulting.

GGR, Emmet and Crissa:

1) You all better have a talk with people like Kristin then, who EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME this topic comes up, starts posting that genes are body weight fate. 

2) Fat acceptance = don’t be a douche - well no shit, but that isn’t just for “fat”  it can be for small stature (men), small boobs (women) thin( men and women) hell - acne.  So don’t be a douche is a nice rule in general.

3) however, when one is talking about oneself, or a family member friend as opposed to a stranger, where one is privy to the pains - not psychological, but the real pain of being fat or overweight, the longterm damage being done to joints, and the psychological: the missed experiences and opportunities, etc. because of the extra weight, then focusing on fat acceptance, rather than fat as motivating factor is both harmful and counterproductive - so it’s YOUR turn to STFU in those cases. 

And Crissa, there are indeed studies that animal fat is a necessary factor in brain development, particularly frontal cortex.  So women of child bearing age, pregnant women, children and young adults indeed need the animal fat.  Cambridge University Press had one such out.  ANd arounf here,we call animal fat, bacon - yummmmmmmm.

Yes, GGR, it is that hard - and let me guess - you don’t have kids?  It would be fucking hard for adults to tell if they are “healthy” or not.  And you want kids to do that?  All else being equal, not being fat and not being too thin is healthier than either extreme. Kids can feel pretty healthy, because they’re kids.  The ravages of bad food and obesity won’t kick in for a lot of them until their 30’s, 40’ s and beyond, when it gets harder and harder to undo damage, change habits, lose weight and gain muscle.  Damage your knees and hips at a young age by carrying too much weight, and the means to run/walk whatever to lose weight or even to be HEALTHY AT ANY WEIGHT are gone. 

As for Jamie Oliver - what he was doing in the Huntington case was getting people to realize the truth of what they were eating.  Yes, the old food may well be cheaper or even free, but at some point, it becomes poison.  Hey, you don’t have to go thirsty - here’s a cup of hemlock, courtesy of the USDA and corporate America!  Which is essentially what our school lunch programs are doing to kids.  And you want to bitch about that kind of expose?
Screw your whiny ass.

As for Michelle Obama, ONE MORE TIME, the woman certainly isn’t model thin, yet she dresses and acts in a way that shows she is very at ease with her body, a great performative role model.  And one more time - you STILL want to complain?  See last line of paragraph above.

Sorry, the FA movement has a screw or two loose, IMO.  And the whiny victim shit is counterproductive and downright dangerous and damaging to many.

“And Crissa, there are indeed studies that animal fat is a necessary factor in brain development, particularly frontal cortex.”

Um, no.

It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.

Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the lifecycle, including
pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/2009_ADA_position_paper.pdf

“I don’t *like* apples!  I’m sure I’m not the only one.”

Good for you.

Please explain what the fact that you don’t like apples has anything to do with my claims:

1. Saying that apples cost more than potato chips pound for pound is extremely wrong (at least in Canada)

2. Apples are healthier than potato chips.

Also, still waiting for Judy to explain her vegetarian meal plan, and for Lisa to explain where she buys potato chips that are less than 25% the price of potato chips in Canada.

GGR and ANGlScarlett, that would be covered under “going to the wrong gym.”  Seriously, there are gyms to be seen at - if I see matching spandex, makeup or smell perfume - Bali, Gators to name two regional chains.  I’m outta there. There are gyms to work out at - IME, those are the smaller non-chain ones where the world class lifter will take a sec to spot the skinny guy/girl who is barely benching half their own weight.  Or where the two ripped body builders keep an eye out for the person doing knee rehab.  Some gyms are meat markets and just not very friendly; some are almost “family - sort of like bars. 

We’ve all been in that “I’m not good at it” place.  Personally, mine is the exercise “class.”  The ones where they don’t give you any feedback or instruction by steps and it’s just expected that you know the moves and routines, even though it’s not an advanced or intermediate class.  The “class” is actually a “watch the instructor exercise and just try to follow along” (and end up at the chiropractors.)  I love stopping them to ask for a detailed breakdown.  SO yeah, I get the comments for being the uncoordinated one who’s slowing down the class - fuck’em.  Perhaps I should start an “Uncoordinated Acceptance group?

mamram@243 - and every in shape woman has had her ass grabbed or attempted to be grabbed while in traffic - either way, it’s unwanted and uncalled for attention - so you ain’t the only ones, get over yourselves.

ALysia @ #250 - uhhh, basic dignity - really?  Since we’ve shown that all kinds of body weights and types get commented on, dealing with nasty people is part of life, how is a fat person’s basic dignity being taken away?  If you are talking about seat accommodation issues, or clothing, again, the same thing can be said for short, tall, big or small-footed and disproportionately built people, too.

ANd two lines farther down in that Celda, it states that supplements may be necessary to be healthy.  There is also NO study out there that backs up the effects of low fat in kid’s brain development long term.  Usually, those studies stop with birthweight and neonate mortality.  Further, as the study says, there are numerous types of vegetarians - ovo-lactos make up for iron deficiency with the eggs, and lacto’s get their intake of animal fat. 

The I suggest you re-read the sections on Fatty Acid - n-3 and iron.  Most vegans aren’t OK without supplementation, or having a fulltime vegan cook.  IMO, it’s much, much harder to get what is necessary for good brain function from a vegan diet.  Speaking from experience (2-3 years) of myself and other vegans. It’s a ton harder if you live in the Midwest or North, non-coast areas.  Being an unhealthy vegan is pretty easy though - an ex-roommate was a lacto vegetarian - she didn’t have to want to cook and subsisted almost entirely on granola, cheese, pop and bread.  She ended up anemic, constant respiratory infections and at 22 had a blood profile that had her doc putting her on Lipitor.

Yes, supplements MAY be necessary for ANY person eating ANY diet, depending on individual cases. Some people require Vitamin B12 shots even if they eat steaks, because their bodies cannot absorb it from food. That is not an argument against vegetarianism.

Further, “There is also NO study out there that backs up the effects of low fat in kid’s brain development long term. is a very different statement than “animal fat is required for brain development.”

Please provide a link that says animal fat is required for brain development.

@Celda

Animal fat is really important for brain development in children (especially prior to age 2 or 3).

Of course, we don’t normally refer to breast milk as an “animal fat,” although that is what it is and what infant formula approximates (with modified cow’s milk, soy-based/vegan infant formula seems to be less recommended than either of the former, but understudied).

But no one here (I assume) is talking about raising vegan infants.  Higher fat milk is probably also recommended for slightly older children, but that seems to be the position taken in your link.  (I only scanned it, but strict vegan children are understudied while ovo-lacto-vegetarian children are no different than meat-eaters.)

Celda, I live in central NY and I can get a small quart of raspberries/blueberries for 2.99 or I can get an entire bag of potato chips for 1.99. Apples are very cheap right now, but that’s only because they are in season and where I live has at least 6 apple orchards surrounding it. Even still, they are 3.00 a bag or 1.69 a pound if you buy them in the store. My kids and I went apple picking last weekend and got apples for 89 cents a pound, which was awesome, but I am lucky enough to have a car to drive there to pick them, have kids who enjoy picking apples with me and to live near a huge apple orchard that has super cheap prices. I work with families who don’t have a car at all, where dinner consists of whatever they can afford with their food stamps (which aren’t accepted at apple orchards!), where they are trying to feed 5-7 kids with less than 200 dollars worth of food stamps and whatever extra cash they can get. What’s cheaper… hot dogs with chips or something healthy? I spent 30.00 last night on the stuff for chili made with ground turkey, an antibiotic/hormone free roaster chicken, soup for the kids (made with whole grain pasta and 25% less sodium) and whole grain bread. For that same 30.00, I could have gotten a few packages of 1.00 hot dogs, a couple packages of the 73% lean ground beef (1.99 a pound) instead of the 99% lean ground turkey(3.99 a pound), a couple of bags of chips (which were on sale buy one get one free!), some 2.00 tater tots and some pasta (1.00 a package) with sauce (1.50 for the cheap brand)... which might have lasted my family the whole week instead of just a few days. Eating healthier IS more expensive. I think it’s worth it, but I have the money and privilege to be able to make that choice. A whole bunch of people don’t… I work with families every day who don’t have that privilege. I’ve gone shopping with one of the kids I work with and the list we were given? 3 packages of chicken nuggets, two bags of fries, a saver pack of the “cheap” hamburger, two boxes of hamburger helper (the store brand), two loaves of white bread, processed cheese product and butter. It cost them about 35.00 at the cheap store (Save a lot.. not sure if they have those in Canada) and that was going to be dinner for 4 days for 9 people.

In general I do agree a lot with the original post, but I do think we tend to overlook genetics too much.  I don’t believe that our weight is solely determined by genetics, but I do think it is more of an influence than we admit sometimes. My whole family is overweight, yet in high school I was a size 8-10 because I was a cheerleader, which was 2 hours of physical activity every day, I worked at a fast food restaurant which was another 10 hours on my feet every week and because I ate just enough food not to pass out (because I was the fat cheerleader! at a size 8!). I had friends who were also cheerleaders who ate more than I did who were much skinnier than I was. At my thinnest, I was a size 8 and I desperately wanted to be a four or even a two like the other girls on the cheer leading squad, but I couldn’t get there no matter what I did. I ran after practice, I practically never ate and yet I stayed at an 8, which for me was about 132 pounds, putting me at the border of overweight according to my BMI. I started eating like a normal person when I became an adult and moved in with my boyfriend and immediately went to a size 12, even when I was working 40 hours a week on my feet (direct care at a house for adults with disabilities) and walking/running 4-5 days a week. By all accounts I should have been thin, but I wasn’t. I think my genetics did have a lot to do with that- I’ve never been able to maintain the weight that they say I should according to the BMI without really extreme measures like not eating and working out 2-3 hours a day… and that was even before I got as heavy as I am now. Now I’m a size 18 and I know it’s in part because of my lack of consistent exercise and part because after I had kids and a full time job, I tended to gravitate towards what I could make quickly and easily, just as Amanda mentioned in her post, and I have a largely sedentary job. I’ve noticed though that even now that we’ve made changes like cutting out HFCS, refined sugar, processed food and fast food, my husband has lost 25-30 pounds while I’ve lost 7. Two of my sisters have PCOS and tend to gain weight very easily, despite the fact that one of them eats VERY healthily and walks with her husband every night. Sometimes it’s not just as easy as “put down the donut”. Sometimes there are lots of other factors.

And Crissa, there are indeed studies that animal fat is a necessary factor in brain development, particularly frontal cortex.  So women of child bearing age, pregnant women, children and young adults indeed need the animal fat.  Cambridge University Press had one such out.  ANd arounf here,we call animal fat, bacon - yummmmmmmm.

No.  There are studies that indicate that infants need their mother’s milk, but there’s no indications that such animal fats can’t be replaced vegetable ones, or that vegetable fats are bad for people.  I trust my doctorate friends a bit more than an article or two filled with loaded language, even if it’s on a government website.

It’s like the studies that find that average 8 hours sleep people are healthier or whatnot - the average is more healthy because it contains the same bell-curve of healthy people.  You get off the bell-curve and you start encountering more people who are off the curve due to disease, which weigh down the average of the people who are off the curve due to no known disease.

Just because there are particulates in the air does not mean there is fire.

Oh, I don’t like apples, either.  I’ll eat them, because they’re good sources of fiber and kinds sweet, but I don’t seek them out except as a source of fiber and fruit that’s always available for my balanced diet.

mamram@243 - and every in shape woman has had her ass grabbed or attempted to be grabbed while in traffic - either way, it’s unwanted and uncalled for attention - so you ain’t the only ones, get over yourselves.

What? GGR shared a story, and I basically said, “wow, that’s shitty” and therefore I need to get over myself?  If a woman had shared a story about having her ass grabbed while riding her bike and I said, “That’s horrible!” would you be telling me the same thing?  Or is it just fat people who don’t deserve to have their shitty experiences recognized and called out?

phylosopoher, while normally “shut up, it happens to other people too sometimes” is a top-notch fucking argument to justify anything, it is obvious that fat people are subject to far more ridicule in the public sphere than any other body type. Headless skinny people aren’t the b-roll footage for any news stories, I have never seen a personal ad saying “no a-cups,” “the fat kid” is the archetypal kid-defined-soley-by-his/her-body-that-must-be-teased.

And, for what its worth, I have been very fat, but currently I am 22, 5 10”, athletic build, d-cup. The harassment I get now is nothing compared to when I was fat. You clearly do not know what anybody else’s life is like. you need to get over yourself.

WRT to the whole stupid apples argument. A pound of apples really isn’t comparable to a pound of chips, which is totally different than a pound of cheese, etc. People eat chips because they are easy, tasty and (temporarily) satisfying. I have literally never eaten apples to the point of being full. In the short term, chips are far and away the better choice. Leaving aside issues of availability and quality of produce in poorer areas and other structural issues, just thinking in the long-term is difficult, especially for segments of the population living with a lot of day-to-day uncertainty.

And to all of you who seem to be super offended that some people are offended by your thoughts on obesity, I think it is important to remember that, when we go beyond the structural issues that increase obesity rates and start advocating that individuals change their eating habits, we are basically saying “you are living your life wrong.” And even if that message comes from the right place, and even if that message is one that needs to be heeded, people will be hurt and defensive when strangers, who have no idea what their lives are like, come in and tell them that such a basic part of their livelihood and culture must be changed.

Every other day or so, I get off the bus on the way to work 4 stops early.  That’s 4 city blocks from my office.  I do so to have some alone time to walk and smoke a cigarette.

Every freaking day that I do this, I walk up to my building and see a woman that I ride the bus with smoking by the building.  She looks at me, walking up to her after having walked 4 whole, giant blocks, and says, “wow, that was some walk, huh?” She says this with a tone that says, “lol, weirdo, I don’t know why you choose to walk when you don’t really have to… but you’re 3 decades younger than me, so I’ll be nice and simply giggle condescendingly.” I’m so irritated with her that I’ve stopped pausing when I see her, head straight for the ashtray, and head right in.  I am so irritated and bored with her comments about how I OMG walk voluntarily sometimes.
Comment #255: April on 09/04 at 02:11 AM

Maybe she’s saying it sarcastically.  I might be thirty years your senior (and fat, too!) and I don’t consider four blocks a long way to walk.

I have literally never eaten apples to the point of being full. In the short term, chips are far and away the better choice.

...you can eat chips to the point of being full? Fer serious? They’re insubstantial little flakes of grease—totally not filling. Apples at least have fiber, if not as many calories.

...you can eat chips to the point of being full?

Maybe to the point of feeling like you never want food ever, ever again?  I get sick/full from chips in a way I am not sure I ever could with apples. 

Plus, with an apple, you eat one and then have to choose to eat another.  Once that bag of chips is open, it is much easier to have a chip…and then another chip…and then another chip without really choosing to do so in the same way.  The chips were designed for that to happen, the apple not so much.

And this is where I am going to be accused of being a fat disgusting slob, but I have definitely eaten tortilla chips to the point of being full.  It’s baked corn.  I can be satisfied from that in the same way that I could be satisfied from corn on the cob. 
Apples (and fruit in general) are just not very filling.  Plus they’re sweet, which doesn’t really make them the kind of food that I would want to make an entire meal out of.  Tortilla chips and salsa/guac, while maybe not the healthiest thing ever, could definitely be a filling lunch.

Well obvioulsy everyone has different tastes, but if I were in a hurry to eat something and had limited time and money, I would have to force myself to eat the apple and consider the long term effects rather than the short term satisfaction of chips. While the rise in obesity rates is obviously a lot more complex than people choosing chips over apples, the sorry state of the American diets suggests that lots of other people feel the same way I do, but obviously ymmv. I was mainly addressing the way these threads seem to become all “Silly fats, I like apples better than chips. Why don’t you try to emulate me instead of being a silly fat? You should be honored that you get to be street harassed just like the hot chicks!”

I do remember eating apples to the point of being very full, as a child, but those were orchard apples rather than supermarket apples - as I recall, back then one didn’t get very good apples at the grocery store (I don’t remember Washington state Fujis and so forth being common at the store then), but if one went to the orchard one got amazingly fresh, crisp, delicious apples that one could go on eating for hours.  Generally it was one Macoun (slightly tart) followed by one Spartan (sweeter), repeat as needed.
Seems like part of the problem is that there’s a much bigger difference between the best and the worst apple one can buy (or best and worst lettuce, tomatoes, etc.) than there is between the best and the worst chips one can buy - even the stuff in the Big Old Bag of Generic Chips performs the functions of a chip, being greasy and salty, whereas the nastiest apples (I am thinking here of the Macintosh apples sold in plastic bags, soft, mealy things with that waxy skin that chews like the bag they came in, often bruised and tasting of their wrappings) aren’t anything most people would eat for pleasure.  One can buy chips and be pretty sure of having something at least edible.

This heavily seems to be a multitude of issues rather than just “people are lazy”. I’m a college student. I live with my brother and my fiance in an apartment. Brother has Asperger’s Syndrome, thus I have to take care of him quite a bit. He doesn’t trust my fiance enough to help him. I take 12 credit hours and work around 24-30 hours a week. Upon returning home from classes or work,  I also have to clean up the place and do 3rd and 4th year college work, and sometimes cook dinner as well.

My fridge is filled with microwave lunches because I simply do not have the time cook or prepare anything. I also have to take into consideration of my brother’s disability and how it effects his diet. His Asperger’s Syndrome prevents him from trying something new or stepping out of his comfort zone. So when making dinner, we have to prepare two different meals or most of the time create one meal to save on time. He won’t eat vegetables. He won’t eat fruit. So most meals only consist of starch, cheese and meat.

I’m also a college student. I can’t be wasting my money on organic foods or wholesome foods. Where I am from they are usually 3 or 4 times the price of something that is not organic. I cannot buy produce often either because of how fast it goes bad. I have to stick to frozen or canned vegetables.

I am usually a supporter of your articles, but I have been keeping track of the foods you buy when you post those meals you make. Many times your list of produce would cost me around $30-$40. My weekly budget is about $50 and that’s for 3 people. I still have to buy the staples such as milk and bread. I will admit I splurge a bit to buy a nice grainy/nutty bread that costs between $3-$5 depending on what the news says about produce. Milk is $3, and that is the generic brand. I get two different percentages, a lower one for myself and a higher one for my brother. So about $10 average has been taken away. Leaves me with $40… I still have to buy meat…. that’s another $20 gone and that’s only for 3 or 4 meals worth of meat. $20 remains at this point. I can either buy veggies to last a day or two or enough boxed dinner mixes to last the rest of the week. Guess which one I am forced to choose?

You seem to be lucky. You’re in a position to buy the foods you need, as well as live in an area where food is affordable. You also seem to live on your own. You don’t have to worry about other people’s meals. Many of us have to sacrifice awesome taste and nutrition for the sake of budget.

You may be asking what about your fiance and your brother? Don’t they have jobs. They’re both in school. The brother’s Asperger’s prevents him from interacting with other people directly, thus making it impossible to get a position dealing with customer service. My fiance? 5 years in the blue collar industries, forced out by economic collapse and being considered too qualified to get a basic fastfood position. He’s doing what many have said to do, go to college and earn a degree.

So there is more in play than just an attitude of laziness and being spoiled. There are class issues. There are issues when dealing with a disabled family member. There are money issues. There are issues with time.

My boyfriend and I eat on $40-$50 a week, 95% organic and vegan, delivered to our door. #266 and #279 seem to think it’s impossible to eat healthy and cheap - not so.

I have a slow cooker and make a lot of soups, curries, and chili. I also bake from scratch pretty much daily. Want a cheap breakfast? A big bag of rolled oats costs about $3, lasts a month, and can be slow-cooked overnight with water, a bit of cinnamon, and sugar or maple syrup for easy, nutritious breakfast for a few cents a day. We get a weekly delivery of produce, tofu, soy milk, veggie burgers, bread(still can’t make that one myself - maybe one day) and whatever small things we need. It’s charged automatically to a rewards credit card and paid off, which get’s me enough “points” to stock up on staples like rice, lentils, grains, potatoes, chickpeas, general baking supplies, etc every few months for free.

Typical meals for us would be: Breakfast - fried seasoned potatoes(garlic seasoning, chili, cumin, pepper, salt) with onions, smoked tofu, and fried tomatoes, with a fruit smoothie Lunch - soup and sandwich(homemade spreads like hummus or guacamole are common) Dinner - slow-cooker chili with rice Snacks - Banana bread(stores are always trying to unload overripe bananas for next to nothing - yay!), fruit crisp, or oatmeal cookies are common

Again, that’s 95% organic - if we ate regular stuff it could be a lot cheaper.

SilverKitten:

I am usually a supporter of your articles, but I have been keeping track of the foods you buy when you post those meals you make. Many times your list of produce would cost me around $30-$40.

You’re missing the whole point, then, because she’s buying from a CSA, which supplies a large amount of produce for one low price because it’s what came from the farms fresh this week.  You don’t pick and choose.

You the reader are therefore not supposed to play along week by week and use what she uses.  It isn’t a meal plan or a cook along with Amanda.

“You’re missing the whole point, then, because she’s buying from a CSA, which supplies a large amount of produce for one low price because it’s what came from the farms fresh this week.  You don’t pick and choose.”

I use one of those as well, except it’s a bit of a larger operation that has a bakery and sources local suppliers for other grocery items - they let customers pick and choose a bit depending on what’s available, but it’s basically whatever’s fresh that week. I worked for an organic farm that did weekly bins as a teenager, and I think it’s definitely the way to go for fresh, cheap produce.

And SilverKitten, I don’t think you’re lazy. 

Amanda herself has addressed that issue and come out on your side. 

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/why_folks_dont_cook_more_part_gazillion_and_one/
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/why_dont_women_cook_as_much_as_they_used_to/

Not that there aren’t a few others here who will mock you for not making your own broth.

Shorter 280:

It cost them about 35.00 at the cheap store (Save a lot.. not sure if they have those in Canada) and that was going to be dinner for 4 days for 9 people.

So, roughly $2 per person per day.

My weekly budget is about $50 and that’s for 3 people.

So, roughly $2.38 per person per day and extenuating circumstances that preclude veganism.

My boyfriend and I eat on $40-$50 a week, 95% organic and vegan, delivered to our door.

But, we do it for roughly $3.21 per person per day with the benefits of a slow cooker and a rewards credit card.  Everyone has those things, right?  And we could totally do it for a lot cheaper, so <strike>everyone</strike> most people can do what we do.

Food deserts, what?  We get organic groceries delivered.  That has nothing to do with where we live or how much money we have upfront.

He won’t eat vegetables. He won’t eat fruit. So most meals only consist of starch, cheese and meat.

I can sympathize with you, as I had a brother who I believe had undiagnosed Aspergers’. As a child he would only eat one kind of breakfast cereal, would only eat leftovers if it was spaghetti, and would smell his food sometimes even if it was salad.

He once detected that my father had accidentally over-salted the popcorn and accused dad of trying to give him high blood pressure.

I would suggest fixing stuff when he’s around as he might like the smell of what you’re cooking. 

If you have an oven, you don’t need a slow cooker to make pulled pork or a deep pit beef roast.

The latter can be done with any cut of beef, no matter how tough it is.

4 to 5 lbs beef, cut into 1 inch cubes, sprinkle a dry rub of your choice on the meat, then wrap it up in butcher paper, tie with cotton string.  I recommend this one, as it has less salt while still being very flavorful at the same time.

Roast in the oven at 250 F for 8 hours.  Let cool off for 15 minutes, then have at it.  It’ll be the tenderest beef you’ve ever eaten.

” But, we do it for roughly $3.21 per person per day with the benefits of a slow cooker and a rewards credit card.  Everyone has those things, right?  And we could totally do it for a lot cheaper, so everyone most people can do what we do.

Food deserts, what?  We get organic groceries delivered.  That has nothing to do with where we live or how much money we have upfront. “

I bought my slow cooker new for $25 - you can get them second-hand for $5-$10, or free from a bazillion people who bought one and don’t use it, so yeah, pretty much anyone can manage that part.

Grains aren’t exactly expensive even without the rewards card, I bought a bag of oats for $3 the other day and it’ll probably make me a month’s worth of oatmeal snacks, granola bars, etc. I do believe farmer food coops are pretty widely available, not necessarily organic or free delivery, but fresh, healthy, and cheap - and not requiring any sort of money upfront. Why would this not be available to most people?

To A,aF, @ 265. Since the brain, according to recent studies is still not fully formed until on AVERAGE, 25, I’m not a neuroscientist, but seems it’s worth looking into further.

Julie@#266 - many farmers markets and orchards can now accept food stamps - I believe the USDA has a special program for seniors, too.

Gee, Crissa - are you that clueless or what?  Generally those studies exclude people with those known factors.  DUH much?

Right SIlverkitten - so you seem to have a very unique situation, one which is definitely NOT the norm - but of course Amanda shouldn’t write articles which describes activities which you cannot participate in, or do you just want her to include shitloads of caveats?

OK, one more time, bread machine - no, that’s not a privilege item.  One of the latest financial columns actually advises it.  If the initial investment seems high (and for some $30-40 may be)  garage sales, thrift stores sometimes have them super cheap. The time factor gets cut to negligible - like ten minutes, the rest is done by the machine, even if you’re not there, and an 8 y o can make bread with the machine .

DArk Avenger, your process will be WAY TOOOOO time consuming for many here.  Or so they will tell you.  ANd, you can actually take the frozen roast, just put it in a covered roaster aka any kind of oven proof pan - no cover, use aluminum foil) @ 200-250 for 8 hours and it will fall apart on its own - you can rub with seasoning beforehand if you like.  (I don’t, but then again, I’m privileged to have a source of affordable good quality dry-aged meat.)

@Zikoris

Even if we accept that food cookers and coops are available to most people, you are still talking about needing an extra 40 hour work week per year per person (approximately) to make up the difference between SilverKitten’s higher of the two price per person per day and your price per person per day.  For the example in Julie’s post, you are talking about an extra 56 hour work week per year per person.  Why would this not be available to most people?  Well, there are transportation issues, time issues, etc. which are sometimes related to food deserts and sometimes a separate issue entirely.

@phylosopher

It might be worth looking into further, but there are studies that show ovo-lacto-vegetarian children are no different than their omnivorous peers.  Most of the brain is built by age 2.  The brain triples in weight from birth to age 2.  It keeps developing certainly (it tops out at around 3.8 times its birth weight), but so does the body and so the body’s ability to process a variety of solid foods (plant and animal) that offer those necessary fats.

This is why full-fat milk is recommended for children under the age of 3 and not so much for older children or adults.  This is covered in the ADA position paper as well as other sources.

Slow cookers and bulk whole grain foods are available to the majority of people. What I was trying to say though, is that organic, locally grown, delivered-to-door veggies are not a necessity and that you could slash the costs quite a bit more by buying normal produce - probably down to about $30 a week from $50, which would be quite cheap for two people eating substantial amounts of whole grains, fresh produce, and lean protein sources. I believe this type of eating was quite common during the great depression, when families were quite a bit larger than today, very poor, and processed food didn’t really exist yet.

LOL, wtf? A bread machine? you think that the stupid fats are fat because they lack bread machines? Bread is hardly the be all and end all of health. Bread, even whole-wheat bread, is pretty calorie dense, something that I had to all but give up in order to lose weight. The truth is, you may have a general idea about why so many Americans are overweight, but you have no idea what small habits, health issues, etc make any individual fat. You are looking at this complex, multi-faceted problem and assumed it exists because some people have behavior that moderately deviates from your own. I think this is sufficient evidence for me to arm-chair diagnose you as an ass-hole, but fear not, I am sure there is a cheap and easy fix. My grandma is a sweet lady, and she doesn’t have a dishwasher. You should get rid of yours and that should fix your problem.

I believe this type of eating was quite common during the great depression, when families were quite a bit larger than today, very poor, and processed food didn’t really exist yet.

And, if nothing had changed in agribusiness and community structures in the past 70 or so years, then I am sure we could all eat like that today.

“And, if nothing had changed in agribusiness and community structures in the past 70 or so years, then I am sure we could all eat like that today. “

The majority of people could still live like that if they chose to - it costs the same or less as eating processed junk, and is light-years healthier. The foods are widely available, and keep very well in storage if needed.

@Zikoris

One of the many points made on these food-related threads is that the majority of people CANNOT still live like that even if they chose to (and that such a choice is often a very difficult one to make given the number of other factors involved).  Low cost health food is not widely available.

People on this thread (and on the numerous others on this or similar topics) have given examples of how difficult it is and your response was that you, who are privileged in many ways, can manage just fine.

You seem to be deliberately ignoring the math.  Even if you cut your grocery bill down to $30 from $50, which you think you can do, that is still more per person per day than the example given in Julie’s comment (and my $2 per person per day estimate was actually a high one).  The difference between what you think you could spend and what they actually spend is enough for almost two weeks of meals for a single person.

“One of the many points made on these food-related threads is that the majority of people CANNOT still live like that even if they chose to (and that such a choice is often a very difficult one to make given the number of other factors involved).  Low cost health food is not widely available. “

$25 per week per person for groceries is “privileged” for you? Like, seriously?

If $100 a month on groceries for a person is too privileged, then what is not privileged? 

“low cost health food is not widely available.”

Whole Russet potatoes are $3 for a 10 pound bag, or cheaper. A $3 bags of oats can make filling foods such as granola bars, breakfast oatmeal, or baked goods. Dried beans and lentils are $2-3 for a large bag which can feed a lot of people. 

If you buy overripe bananas, they are much cheaper than regular bananas and you can put them into smoothies or bake them in banana bread.

Grocery stores often sell funny-shaped produce (i.e. deformed peppers, loopy carrots) for cheaper than normal.

Oh wait, maybe having a $30-40 blender is privileged as well?

“You seem to be deliberately ignoring the math.  Even if you cut your grocery bill down to $30 from $50, which you think you can do, that is still more per person per day than the example given in Julie’s comment (and my $2 per person per day estimate was actually a high one).”

Wrong.

Julie’s $30 of crappy food was referring only for dinner (there were no breakfast foods and a family could not last on that amount of food for a week).

Zikoris was talking about buying enough food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Your claim that people cannot afford to buy this food is ridiculous. If the people in THE GREAT DEPRESSION could afford to eat that food, are you seriously saying that people nowadays cannot?

@Celda

And I doubled the cost of food in order to account for breakfast and lunch for Julie’s example.  If the children in that family receive free/reduced breakfast and lunch from the public school, then my estimate is grossly exaggerating the cost of food.

I also accounted for Julie’s example only including 4 days.  That is why my numbers are in cost per person per day and not per week.

It takes more time (which is money) to make the foods you list than the pre-packaged (and yes, cheaper) foods and that is ignoring the upfront costs of the equipment.

People in the Great Depression 1) starved, 2) were purchasing food produced in a different way than the food we have access to today, and 3) lived in communities that looked very different than our modern suburbia/exurbia.  The idea that we can all live the way we lived back when a significant number of people were malnourished and be healthy is ridiculous on its face even leaving aside the differences in industry and infrastructure.

WRT the relationship between poverty and poor diet, I don’t think it is right to say that poorer people literally cannot afford to buy produce, but the poorer you are, the more you have to overcome to get said products and make them into a satisfying meal. There are a lot of start-up type costs to going on the liberal elite diet: you need to have the cooking know how to make meals from a variety of foods with which many people are not familiar, a variety of spices and appliances, room to store those spices and appliances, you need to find out that CSAs exist, what the fuck they are, and how to join one, you need to adjust your palate to appreciate foods besides what you are used to eating, have a place to store food where mice and bugs won’t get to it—-all this w/o even getting to the cost of food, prep time, and, depending on how poor a person is and where they are poor, transportation to get to and from the farmer’s market or whatever. for people who are bus dependent, produce can be really fucking heavy and a pain in the ass to bring home.

If you go buy something off the McDonald’s dollar menu or a hotdog or whatever from 7/11, all of those costs are included in the price of the food. So sure, a poor person could find a way to buy and prepare healthy meals, just like a kid from the ghetto could work really hard and become rich or a child and a shit school district could go to the library and give themselves a fine education—it is just a hell of a lot harder and a hell of a lot less likely to happen.

And working out, which for me anyway has always been a lot easier than dieting, is a definite privilege. At the very least, you need time and a safe place and good weather to go outside. Working out is even easier if you have a gym membership, nice shoes (I seriously could not have lost weight without my asics), and so on.

If you think that we as a society need to move beyond eliminating structural barriers to staying in shape and actually encourage people to change their lives, there is a lot more flexibility than “EAT ORGANIC HOME COOKED MEALS!!!!!” For some people, joining a CSA and going to farmer’s markets might be a great strategy for getting in shape, especially if it is offered as advice for someone seeking a way to lose weight and not given in a condescending “stupid fatty, why aren’t you me?” manner. But honestly, I hate cooking and would only eat most of the CSA foods Amanda has cooked to be polite. (which isn’t meant as an insult in anyway, just a matter of personal taste), but there are lots of diet plans that will work to lose weight, the trick is that a person has to stay on that diet forever. It is absolutely vital that, if one wants to try to get a person to change the way he/she eats, that we recognize that different things work for different people and peoples times, tastes, preferences, and culture must be taken into account.

@alysia

Agreed.

I don’t think it is right to say that poorer people literally cannot afford to buy produce

I certainly didn’t mean to imply that all poorer people cannot afford produce, but was attempting to point out that Zikoris’ example of how cheap and easy it is to eat healthy ignores a rather sizable difference in cost.  $40-50 per week for two people is more expensive than $50 for three people (again, by around a full 40 hours of work a year) and much more expensive than an estimated $126 per week for nine people (again by around 56 hours of work per year).

Since the structural arguments didn’t seem to make difference, I went with the strictly economic one.  That obviously didn’t work either, but at least I tried.  (It is one we haven’t had on the threads before IIRC.)

I knew what you meant, atheist, I was just clarifying for everyone else.

Hey Asslysia, get over yourself.  There’s a ton of ideas on this thread, and one of them is about eating HEALTHY and how to do it a) cheaper and b) faster/easier which is a carryover from many many other cooking posts.  There are many studies that show that if one is going to eat bread, whole grains are better then white flour (Health issue) and we certainly know that real whole grains or even artisan breads are beaucoup expensive compared to wonder white bread.  Add in a dietary requirement like gluten free and you can spend $6 on a loaf.

It takes more time (which is money) to make the foods you list than the pre-packaged (and yes, cheaper) foods and that is ignoring the upfront costs of the equipment.

Uh, no, time isn’t money if you have nothing that makes money to do with it.  So filling that time with making healthier food instead of buying the prepackaged crap, can save money.  ANd most people can see that, unless they are very, very short sighted - find your glasses yet, AaF?

At it again, hey ASSlysia.  Whine, whine, whine.  LIe, lie, lie when you don’t know shit about something.  Can’t lose weight because she PREFERS not to do x, and thinks she needs the super duper cucumber slicing knife and cooking pan or cucumbers will just lay in the veggie bin, remaining inedible.

What utter, fucking nonsense.  People have cooked (and cooked very well) for years before the cuisinart, caphalon or tupperware.  Have you even read Amanda’s previous posts?  A beer growler as a storage container (my Depression era mom would be very proud of you, Ms. Marcotte.)

I worked for a program that taught limited income individuals to cook healthier - heck, to cook at all.  ANd that was one of the things they stressed- ways to make measuring cups, rolling pins, storage containers, and places to buy pots and pans. ANd a bit of technique.  You don’t need fancy stuff to cook well.  And sometimes, it doesn’t even make it easier - (sorry Amanda, tried those herb scissors)  I’m back to chiffonading herbs with a good chef’s knife.

Yes phylosopher, people who work 40 hour work-weeks (mostly doing physical labor) and probably spend an extra 10-15 hours preparing for and going to/from work (and probably another 3 hours per week on a lunch break in which they are still tied down to work) and, if they’re lucky, another 56 hours sleeping are just being lazy jerks who don’t want to spend an extra 8-9 hours per week prepping, making the food, and washing dishes, after all, they have 60 hours of free time during the week (a whole 48 hours during the work week!). Oh sure, they might be dog-tired and really hungry when they get off of work, but hey, that’s just proof that they’re just too lazy to cook for themselves and wait even longer before they can even have anything to eat. And I haven’t even brought up the possibility of having other familial responsibilities (which could eat another 10-20 hours out of the work week). But hey, they’re whiners for not going through the hassle that is cooking. Before you start with me, yes, I can cook, I worked in a professional kitchen doing prep work and some actual cooking for a couple years, I don’t cook too often myself mostly because of the dishes and clean-up involved in doing so.

Not only are you being really insensitive towards real time (and energy) constraints, you’re ignoring that fresh ingredients in poorer neighborhoods tend to be of a much worse quality than in more affluent neighborhoods (it’s probably older and closer to expiration, which means that you can’t really buy very much at one time, which means that multiple trips per week become necessary, which takes more time, more gas, and if you have to throw away some of those fruits/vegetables more money).

Of course, the really funny thing here is that you’re bringing up “people have cooked… for years”, which totally ignores that SOCIETY HAS FUCKING CHANGED SINCE THEN! People have less free time, more stress, but are treated like lazy slobs if they don’t want to spend any of their precious few hours of relaxation doing something that, for a lot of people, is not that enjoyable of an activity for them and involving quite a bit of clean-up (depending on what is being made).

The holier-than-thou attitude that a lot of you guys have is exactly why life is often so miserable for people who have weight issues, they have to be treated to lectures by assholes like you. Seriously, this reminds me of the fucking Catholic church which just has to judge the rest of the world and tell them about how they’re all horrible sinners and make them all feel as guilty as possible for some self-satisfying reason. I’m an atheist because I hate that attitude, and your attitudes about this are no better than those religious organizations who do the same thing in the name of saving souls.

At it again, hey ASSlysia.  Whine, whine, whine.  LIe, lie, lie when you don’t know shit about something….I worked for a program that taught limited income individuals to cook healthier - heck, to cook at all.  Comment #306: phylosopher on 09/07 at 02:18 AM

Shame, mockery, it’s a great teacher!

I note today’s news has a story about research that indicates people who don’t get enough sleep gain weight because of HORMONES.  Put that in your lazy fatties pipe and suck it down.

Can I ask, phylosopher, if there is a reason for all this vitriol?  Even if you think we are flat out wrong, that doesn’t really merit all the anger that I am getting from you (I apologize if I am misinterpreting your tone, but the name calling is just really…really.)  It’s almost as if you consider this a moral issue.  I mean, what if I conceded your point that anybody who wants to be thin can do so with a reasonable amount of effort.  What if I told you that I hit up a McDonald’s drive thru every day because it’s on my way home, and after work+commute, I would rather spend my five remaining waking hours reading, knitting, socializing, and doing things in general that make me happy rather than healthy?  Would that bother you?  Because it sounds like it wouldn’t be enough for us to accept that it’s totally our fault that we are fat; you give the impression that you want us to feel bad about it too.

Good question mamram and here’s the reason(s) for the vitriol…(and this isn’t a single thread thing, it’s a more ongoing thing)

1) these columns, coming from Amanda, aren’t about “I do this, so everyone should.”  They are, “here’s what I do to….”(environment, health, etc.)  Very often, someone will read that and say, great for you, but I CAAAAAAAAN’T, because…....  So someone else (not necessarily me) comes on and says, “I thought I couldn’t either, but here’s how I managed,” or “you could try x.”  And they get slammed, I mean,  WTF?  Then someone (an outlier to the general population on the topic at hand) comes in and outlines their very, very, very specific reasons for can’t and takes offense that someone would even suggest they be expected to try whatever. It gets very nasty from there on.

IN some cases, the exceptions to the rule become just ludicrous - Amanda says, “and I store x in the refrigerator” and a poster comes back with, “well the person I live with has this weird thing about all their clothes being cold, so I only get one shelf in the refrigerator…..” and you’re all just big meanies to even suggest such a thing and not consider….  Sorry, all the threads can’t be tailored to one’s specific idiosyncracies

based on that repeated threadline, I’ll just save some time and jump to the nasty, if I’m getting ‘tude - OK? 

2) Realized yesterday what a strawman the whole FA thing is based on.  Sorry, most of us (posters on this blog)don’t run around looking for fat people to insult when we’re out in public.  Most of us know the actual fat person in question…relative, friend,co-worker.  As a rule, they’ve shared - “my doc says my cholesterol/bp/sugar/back pain is high/acute and I need to exercise/lose weight/???  but I just can’t.”  SO we tend to know the weight IS causing a problem.  And generally we’re close enough to see behaviors (daily donuts/candy/large portions/fast food/refusal/disparagement to try offers of “rabbit food”/sedentariness) that can be changed.  We know them well enough to see that this isn’t a one time thing, but a habit.

At some point, you don’t need another observation or another bit of data to confirm that most fat people are not healthy, or could be more healthy if they lost weight, and that they really aren’t trying, or don’t know how to, but claim to want to. Probability approaching certainty.  The FA posters here come up with very, very, very unusual, often extraordinary examples and are incensed! that people would use the inductive method of reasoning in everyday life.

Sorry, oldfeminist, but at some point, even the best teachers cut their losses with students who are willfully ignorant.

  And, excuse me for pointing out that your logic slip is showing, amount of sleep has little to do with laziness. Besides, I’m a proponent of plenty of sleep, and even naps-for adults.  They often make one MORE productive than pushing on.  You are barking up wrong tree , here.

OK Elliott, wher do we start:

Yes phylosopher, people who work 40 hour work-weeks (mostly doing physical labor) and probably spend an extra 10-15 hours preparing for and going to/from work (and probably another 3 hours per week on a lunch break in which they are still tied down to work) and, if they’re lucky, another 56 hours sleeping are just being lazy jerks who don’t want to spend an extra 8-9 hours per week prepping, making the food, and washing dishes, after all, they have 60 hours of free time during the week (a whole 48 hours during the work week!). Oh sure, they might be dog-tired and really hungry when they get off of work, but hey, that’s just proof that they’re just too lazy to cook for themselves and wait even longer before they can even have anything to eat. And I haven’t even brought up the possibility of having other familial responsibilities (which could eat another 10-20 hours out of the work week). But hey, they’re whiners for not going through the hassle that is cooking. Before you start with me, yes, I can cook, I worked in a professional kitchen doing prep work and some actual cooking for a couple years, I don’t cook too often myself mostly because of the dishes and clean-up involved in doing so.

Funny, but many dinners can be made quickly - if one is living alone, then there isn’t that much to clean up…if one lives with someone else or a family - hello,...WTF are they doing?
“The hassle that is cooking”  life in general, especially maintaining all those bodily functions is a hassle.  Tell me, do you use Kleenex, or your sleeve when you have a runny nose.  After all, having kleenex in the house costs $, and it’s such a hassle to pull the tissue out and throw it away after wards - ...  I wouldn’t be surprised if you remained in actuality the snot-nosed kid you sound like on the Internet.

Not only are you being really insensitive towards real time (and energy) constraints, you’re ignoring that fresh ingredients in poorer neighborhoods tend to be of a much worse quality than in more affluent neighborhoods (it’s probably older and closer to expiration, which means that you can’t really buy very much at one time, which means that multiple trips per week become necessary, which takes more time, more gas, and if you have to throw away some of those fruits/vegetables more money).

Insensitive?  Fuck you.  I’ve been working my ass off on community garden projects, farmers market food stamp acceptance, public transit to larger stores and other like issues for years. 

Of course, the really funny thing here is that you’re bringing up “people have cooked… for years”, which totally ignores that SOCIETY HAS FUCKING CHANGED SINCE THEN! People have less free time, more stress, but are treated like lazy slobs if they don’t want to spend any of their precious few hours of relaxation doing something that, for a lot of people, is not that enjoyable of an activity for them and involving quite a bit of clean-up (depending on what is being made).

First part, I was responding to a specific post that brought up needing special or expensive equipment to cook - and that’s a fallacy.  We have those now, didn’t always and people cooked.  ANd the Depression era and into the 1950’s pregnant woman solely taking care of 3 kids under age 4 in a third floor walkup, or even a small house, with an icebox (maybe) a single sink, no automatic washing machine or dishwasher, might have a bit to say about how much freetime and how stressfree she was. But those folks did manage to get dinner on the table without it coming out of a box and without relying on McD’s So claiming that one MUST have them - well, no and some are just goofy - an egg cutter?  Huh?

con’t

The holier-than-thou attitude that a lot of you guys have is exactly why life is often so miserable for people who have weight issues, they have to be treated to lectures by assholes like you. Seriously, this reminds me of the fucking Catholic church which just has to judge the rest of the world and tell them about how they’re all horrible sinners and make them all feel as guilty as possible for some self-satisfying reason. I’m an atheist because I hate that attitude, and your attitudes about this are no better than those religious organizations who do the same thing in the name of saving souls.

Right, we must be kidnapping and tying up fat people so we can lecture them.  Holier than thou?  Bullshit.  I’ve said I’m needing to lose weight, and yep, the ubiquitousness of fast food, badfood, even though I am privileged enough to have access to the good stuff makes it hard (but I am not wealthy, and by monetary standards,not even economically middle class)  The computer in front of me, is much more interesting at times than the gym, walking path - even though I know where my widening girth should be. 

And who is giving the lectures? I’ve had some success at healthier eating/more exercise/and losing weight/feeeling a bunch better and the lecture by some of the FAs’s is well, what you’re doing is useless because you’ll gain it all back because your weight is ruled by your genetics, even though they can’t ever answer what my weight should be, as it was on the very thin side for most of my life, and is now in the +30 range….

So I’d say the lecturing is mutual.

ASSlysia, hahah you are sooooo clever. Guess what? I did lose weight, dude. Like a100 lbs. I mentioned it several times on this post. I did it all while hating to cook, which I only mentioned because there was a multitude of comments suggesting that you join a CSA, learn to cook, and BAM! you are skinny. I just counted calories and still ate basically what I did before, only in smaller portions and a change in emphasis to less calorie dense foods at the expense of calorie rich things like bread and pasta. I actually had a stay at home mother growing up. We didn’t have fancy appliances, cooked most of our food in a cast-iron skillet, and belonged to a food coop. I was the fat kid from eating homemade bread (from a bread machien even!) with all natural nut butter. I lost all the weight when I moved out. I also spend a hell of a lot of time at the gym. I also eat a lot of really inorganic things like low-cal butter. I am not at all suggesting that what I did will work for everyone, or even anyone else. My point is that there is more than one way to become thinner, or physically fit if that even matters.

I also wanted to point out that there are a lot of structural reasons making it HARDER, not impossible, for thinner people to lose weight and also providing incentives to buying premade food rather than cooking it on their own, and this makes it more likely that poor folks will be overweight (note that I am not talking about myself). For example—my daily 5 mile run and weight living gives me enough extra calories that I can go out with friends for beer and pizza on the weekend (both highly processed, inorganic, full of empty calories, and DELICIOUS). If I had kids or whatever to drive around and take care of and didn’t have time for exercise, I would have to forgo this social outing and fun times. I know that I could do it, and it would probably make me a better person in your eyes, but it would also mean that being in the normal bmi category would come at a higher price to reducing my quality of life.

And good for you for helping poor people that want to learn how to cook to do it; I mean that seriously. I am sure there are a lot of people who want to change their lives for the better and would enjoy cooking healthy food if they knew how. But if you want to reach out to people that aren’t already perceptive to your ideas, you need to recognize how hard these life style changes are to make and how hard it is to be told you are doing something, especially something as basic as eating, wrongly. Look at how offended you are by criticism and imagine how someone else might feel.

Additionally, if someone is seriously obese, a few minor lifestyle changes will help them get thinner, but likely not make them thin. For example, despite claims in this post to the contrary, losing weight will require sacrificing things you like and feeling hungry. Perhaps eating more filling, less calorie rich foods will help some. So lets say it makes a 200 calorie a day deficit from what that person ate before. I am guessing this is a lot if we assume that this person is just eating differently, not acting differently and not going hungry. If we have a woman who is 5’5” and 250 lbs (morbidly obese). She should lose about 2 lbs a month at first, but as her body weight decreases, so will her metabolism until at least 20 months go by (I am not in the mood to do the calculus to find out the real number) she gets a new equilibrium weight at 210 bmi 35, still quite obese. I am sure she will be much better off healthwise, but still fat. And in obesity discussions all that seems to matter is fat vs not fat.

I guess the point of all this is that loosing weight is really hard. Not impossible, but really hard. It isn’t that fat people are stupid and don’t know now cheap and fantastic apples are, but that they ahve to make real sacrifices in the things they like and their quality of life. These sacrifices are not impossible, but they are harder the less resources you have. And to do weight loss properly, it takes years and reward is small and slow. By all means, everyone should workout and eat right, but you are really best of learning to love your fat ass and just be healthy for healths sake. I say this as someone who was able to lose about 6 lbs a month for a little over three years. It was slow. People that saw me more than once a year didn’t notice anything of give me compliments or oo and ah. Losing weight was painful and hard and I still often wonder whether or not it was worth it. So don’t act like it is this easy thing that people are just too stupid not to do. I speak from experience.

Phylosopher—when you are fat you get tons and tons of strangers coming up to you and telling you conflicting dieting advice. “Dn’t eat carbs. You should only eat brown rice and chicken, no fruit, eat bread, for the love of GOD! don’t eat bread” This is a real experience that overweight people have. And, fwiw, I reached my peak weight after a summer job at walmart. I had to stand on my feet yet barely move for 9 hrs shifts that varied from morning to evening. I was usually to tired to exercise (even when I was fat, I worked out for 30-40 minutes almost everyday) and be social so my highlight of the day was getting home, eating some delicious fat while watching tv, and then going to sleep. I gained 30 lbs that summer. If i was careful, that wouldn’t have happened, but it would have been a lot more difficult and painful then if i had a better job with more regular hours.

I also usually agree with Amanda 100% on these posts. Most of my criticisms were to the apple-brigade. It is great that you are helping to break down some of the structural barriers to accessing healthier food. None of my criticisms to you were about how weight is genetic and impossible to lose though (although there is a genetic component that makes a difference at the margins).

This is sort of off topic, but I want to talk about it anyway (maybe I should just start my own blog, lol). But last night I was trying to find out some info about bmi, and it was striking how useless the bmi is as presented in pop journalism. Perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough, but I couldn’t find any good info on it. Like right now, my bmi is about a 24.4, which is almost in the overweight category, but I have a large frame, I work out, I have a relatively full bust, I am exactly the kind of person the bmi is biased against, but I couldn’t find any information on how biased it was or what the bias meant. Like, should my bmi normal range maybe go up to 27? Nothing on that. I also couldn’t find why 25 and 30 were chosen for the cutoffs to the different categories. It seems like they could have just as easily chosen 24 and 32 or 26 and 31. Furthermore, why is this treated as an ordinal variable rather than a continuous one? It would be great to have info like “a change in 1 unit bmi equals x more units of health” because losing a bmi is so much better of a goal than “get thin.” I also coudn’t find what control variables they used to determine mortality rates for the obese, etc. Maybe I need to look beyond google, but I think these fights over weight would be sooooooooo much less inane if we actually had useful information about bmi and what it means rather than vague threats of bad health and arbitrary boundaries.

Crissa and Celda please go visit Hyperlipid, the website Pietoro and I were posting about. It’s written by a British veterinarian whose passion is human nutrition. There you will find the studies that point to animal fats being good and veggie fats being bad, to put it simplistically. His examinations of current studies are very thorough.

http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/

Crissa, once again let me state that Taubes’ opus is irrefutable. You need to pick up the paperback and read before you criticize. No one in the current, conventional nutritional field can back up what they’ve been saying for the last thirty years especially after this book has come out and exposed the lack of rigor in nutrional science. At the very least read the NYTimes article that started it all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html

There is plenty of evidence for high fat, moderate protein, low carbohydrate being the default human diet. Unfortunately, a lot of this evidence comes from studies done in other countries and not presented to the American public. Do you really expect the corporate media to be any better at presenting real nutritional information any more than real political information? Media serves corporate interests—that includes Big Agra.

phylosopher: I guess I haven’t followed these threads enough to observe the pattern that you have seen, but I am guessing that a lot of the FA commenters make the same assumption of bad faith and behave accordingly too.  That might be why the conversation escalates into useless snipping so quickly. 

At some point, you don’t need another observation or another bit of data to confirm that most fat people are not healthy, or could be more healthy if they lost weight, and that they really aren’t trying, or don’t know how to, but claim to want to. Probability approaching certainty.  The FA posters here come up with very, very, very unusual, often extraordinary examples and are incensed! that people would use the inductive method of reasoning in everyday life.

But why would you ever use this reasoning in everyday life? If you are close enough to somebody for their health to be your concern, you probably have better information (like what you said, their cholesterol levels, blood pressure, or their eating habits) and don’t need to make assumptions about what their weight means.  If you aren’t close to somebody, then it’s just really none of your concern.  They might be that fat person who goes jogging daily, or they might be overweight because of their epilepsy meds, or they might be a total glutton.  It’s great that you don’t treat fat people poorly because of assumptions about their lifestyle, but a lot of people do, and this is why people throw out the anecdotes about healthy fat people.  As a person who went from being a a fat teenager, to a size zero college student, to an obese midtwentieser, I can tell you that fatphobia is not a strawman. 

I don’t have any problem with the assumption that overweight is related to health problems when discussing fat as a public health issue.  To me, the problem is that there are a lot of people out there who apply this assumption to individual people, and it affects how they behave.

After reading phylosopher’s comments on this thread, I’ve decided there’s only one way for me to really show my complete contempt for his/her attitude—have pizza for lunch.

***is fat at phylosopher***

Sure, I could have a salad and go for a walk instead.  But since I can’t insult him/her in real life with my fat self, I’ll be offensive by being another fatty mcfat-fat eating badly and NOT CARING about how I’m destroying America by prefering to be fat and happy than thin and miserable.

Here’s a thread that should be retitled No, no podemos! that demonstrates what phylosopher is talking about:

You just said it yourself: this task would take cabinets, a wall to hang them on, furring strips, screws, a drill, a hammer, transportation to a store that has those things, and time to do the work. Lots of people have all that but LOTS OF PEOPLE DON’T. And if they don’t, then growing and canning food isn’t simple or cheap, it’s time-consuming, hard, and out of reach for many.

headdesk.  And you accuse ME of being obtuse?  One more time, read my materials list- no cabinets listed, because THERE ARE NO FUCKING CABINETS INVOLVED in that utilitarian version.  It is a set of shelves inset into an interior stud wall.

You actually listed “a wall to hang them on?” Shit Kristin, if someone is living in a tent, or under a bridge, I really don’t think they’re hanging out on the Net in their spare time reading Pandagon, a thread on ways to save cash, no less.

Look, this started in response to someone upthread saying something like, I’d can, but I don’t have room to store the canned goods.  It was meant as a suggestion for removing a final impediment to someone already contemplating the canning.  OK?

Comment #144: phylosopher on 07/07 at 09:52 PM

@321: Yeah, I’ve seen that pattern too. Sometimes (often?) phylosopher acts like a bit of an asswipe, but you also see a lot of people on threads just go absolutely completely fucking limp with despair (often on behalf of people who are too busy being actually, and not hypothetically, too poor and overworked to delicately faint on blogs all day.)

It can get frustrating, the race to the bottom. (“Oh yeah? Well some people don’t have hands and are in comas so how dare you suggest cooking? You bastard!”) I mean, I’m not the rustic pioneer type phylo apparently is (indoor heating ftw! ;D) but I also realize that there is a middle ground between growing your own wheat and living off of Snackables. Not everyone can leap to phylo’s end of that continuum (fighting off bears and plowing the fields uphill both ways in the snow) but most everyone can at least inch up it a wee bit, and suggesting inching type steps really isn’t innately fatphobic even when it’s not directly applicable to everyone on the thread.

Not everyone can leap to phylo’s end of that continuum (fighting off bears and plowing the fields uphill both ways in the snow) but most everyone can at least inch up it a wee bit, and suggesting inching type steps really isn’t innately fatphobic even when it’s not directly applicable to everyone on the thread.

I don’t think suggestions like that are inherently fatphobic or classist, especially in a situation like the one that was linked to.  What rubs me the wrong way is when it is clear that the suggesters have no idea that their suggestion is only applicable to people with a certain kind of privilege (CSAs and farmer’s markets are great, but they just aren’t possible for a lot of people), when they act like people who don’t follow their advice are some kind of failure (like calling someone a bad parent for not cooking everything from scratch), or when they give unsolicited advice based on incorrect assumptions about what people are already doing (when well-meaning thin people suggest that I start exercising when I already exercise for at least an hour five days a week). 

It is likely that a lot of people (myself included) are so used to hearing suggestions like that that we react unfairly to some perfectly acceptable ones.  I think the food wars are just so overdone that we all (both sides) probably fall into our default positions almost immediately.

What rubs me the wrong way is when it is clear that the suggesters have no idea that their suggestion is only applicable to people with a certain kind of privilege (CSAs and farmer’s markets are great, but they just aren’t possible for a lot of people),

I wonder if it’s fair to assume a certain level of privilege about the Pandagon readership, though? Obviously everyone’s from different backgrounds, but things like walls we certainly all have in common, I think. And things like literacy, internet access, some amount of free time… Do discussions on blogs like this require that commenters consider every possible stratum of class, etc, or do you think it would be reasonable to say “well, audience of people who are literate and have some free time, here’s some suggestions…”?

I guess that’s sort of a general question about blog culture… but I do get the feeling that people want lip service given to “oh yeah, starving kids in Africa” every time food is mentioned and I think that’s just odd and silly for a discussion between mostly not-very-bad-off people. Talking about cooking is meaningless to someone who has literally nothing, but then everything we talk about here is meaningless to someone who has nothing. At some point, is it “alright” to assume that a decent number of suggestions (even fancy schmancy “herb scissor” suggestions :p) will be viable for a decent chunk of Pandagonians and then just kinda move on with the discussion?

I wonder if it’s fair to assume a certain level of privilege about the Pandagon readership, though?

Yeah, probably—that walls thing was absurd.  But there is a difference between assuming that a person who is commenting on Pandagon all day has internet access and is literate, and assuming that their circumstances are conducive to participating in a CSA.  I mean, I have the startup money, live in an area with plenty of local farms, am okay with getting unpredictable produce, and have time to cook from scratch and I still can’t buy a share because I don’t have a car and none of the farms around me will deliver to apartments.  I think somebody who makes that suggestion to a person who has already stated that money, diet, and time are serious restrictions for them (this happened upthread) is either completely oblivious to their own privilege, or is acting in bad faith.

Also, regarding reasonable assumptions and blog culture in general: a lot of these things wouldn’t be problems if this weren’t the internet and everyone weren’t always on a hair trigger to jump down somebody’s throat.  A well-meaning but incorrect assumption about a fellow commenter shouldn’t be a big deal, but everybody assumes malice or ignorance on the part of everybody else.  I guess that’s just the medium that we’ve got.

I know this is beating a dead horse, and I will completely admit that some of the posts, including mine, came from emotional gut reactions rather than logical argument. However, a lot of the discussion—which I interpreted as being about why obesity is such a big problem in the US and not advice to any individual on how to lose weight—seemed to be based on the assumption that people were acting irrationally (in the economic sense were rational means self-interested) by choosing to eat unhealthy foods. But when you sum the cost of the CSA model cooking advocated for in the comment section—space for supplies and spices, time to cook and clean up, decreased pleasure from eating those foods—I think for many people (not all people) the rational decision is to eat bad food in the short term. Long term consequences, which are vague and ill-defined and hard to quantify, are not usually the way that people make decisions. So while it is erroneous to say “think of the tent people, what should they do?” it is equally wrong from a policy perspective to assume that we need to get the word out that fat is bad and tell everyone that they just need to learn about apples. From a policy standpoint, we would be a lot better off if, for example, Michelle Obama lobbied to get congress to incentivise produce, got the fda to quit classifying fries as a vegetable, and started selling pre-made meals that are low cal, yet satisfying, rather than just going around telling kids that veggies are good and fatness is bad.

Furthermore, while many people apparently do really well and are really happy with a CSA-type diet, it doesn’t work for everyone. I personally could not sustain a diet like that with out some major cheating. One thing I discovered while losing weight is that there are like a billion diets that will work, the trick is finding one that you can stick with. If you really want to work with people to change their eating habits it has to be an individualized process, and, from what I could tell, there were no individuals seeking to try a home-cooked meal type diet that couldn’t do it on a budget. The reccomendations were supposed to be seen as at-large solutions to the obesity crisis. There just isn’t a way of telling people you don’t know what sort of diet will satisfy them and not come off like a total ass. Furthermore, while simply switching to a home-cooked type diet may help some at the margin, it simply won’t make a fat person thin without that person engaging in major sacrifice and pain unless it is advocated as some sort of decade long deal. To suggest otherwise is selling people a bill of goods.

I just want to emphasize that losing weight doesn’t always have to be about sacrifice and pain.  Granted, I have enough money to afford to eat low carb, I realize that is privileged, but I really don’t want people thinking that you cannot lose weight without suffering.  I’ve done both—the low fat high suffering diet, and the high-fat low suffering diet.  I realize that people are different in terms of what diet works for them, as alysia points out, but I just want to share that I do think some of the pain is caused by bad advice regarding what is good to eat.  I eat the hamburger, I just don’t eat the bun or the ketchup, that sort of thing.  And I think some of the education that people advocate here can be a really good thing.

I think for many people (not all people) the rational decision is to eat bad food in the short term. Long term consequences, which are vague and ill-defined and hard to quantify, are not usually the way that people make decisions.

I basically agree with you—I differ a bit in that I would describe the short-term-benefits over long-term-harm choices (as mentioned above) to be “realistic” rather than strictly “rational.” Rationally we should all account for future consequences but expecting anyone to do that on a consistent basis is foolish—immediacy trumps a lot of nebulous futures even if we know intellectually that there will be consequences. People aren’t really wired to be rational.

Ismone, it could just be that I had a lot of weight to lose and for whatever reason a personal disposition towards things that create fatness. It is also worth noting that the more resources you have, the more weightloss options you have and the higher your odds of finding something that suits you. I am both too poor to afford a no-carb diet and to in love with carbs to completely give them up enough to go into kytosis. It just really gets on my nerves when people talk about how they love diet and exercise and feeling great. I haven’t found diet and exercise to become addictive or anything in the least. At best, for me, it is less intolerable than I once found it.

Mamram—I also think that part of the problem is that their is so little precise info about bmi and health outcomes and weight in general. Everyone just assumes that there are fat people and thin people and then sort of reads their own biases into what makse someone fat or thin. It would help improve the discussion a lot if there were numbers about what percent of people are fat because of thyroid problems, what percent are fat because of pcos, what percent are fat because a dissability, what percent are fat because they eat too much wholesome food, what percent are fat because they eat high calorie foods that are not satisfying in the long run, etc. And while some part of weight is obviously the result of your genetics on your metabolism, what percent is it? If we took two people with the same eating/exercise habits on opposite ends of the metabolism scale would the difference be 1 bmi? 10? Also, to what extent has obesity increased because the population has age. Or how many people were like me where I was really really sick as a child and couldn’t play much and threw up all the time. I grew out of that but never got into running around and playing and never stopped eating like i was going to throw most of it up. I count towards the fat statistic, but if I was much older, I would have been in the dead statistic. There don’t seem to be a lot of answers.

Another interesting hypothesis I sort of gleaned off of FA: One of the problems with short-term binge diets is that most people tend to gain the weight back and then some, fucking up their metabolisms in the process. It is therefore possible that the push to diet makes people fatter on average. Which means that if noone dieted, the obesity problem may not be as bad as it is for the population as a whole. Obviously some individuals are very successful at changing their lives, but most people seem to end up worse off then when they started. I would love to see a study tracking over the longterm wether people who don’t try to diet end up heavier than people who do. I couldn’t find any solid evidence on this question either way, but it seems like a key element into determining whether FAs are right or whether diet culture needs to continue.

Anyway, more information would lead to much better discussions and less shouting matches. Also if someone had quick links to answers for any of these questions, I would really like to know. I might try an academic search or something too.

That should say I countED towards that statistic as a child, but I am not sure if the obesity epedimic was a big issues for 90s children or if it began to be a crisis in the 00s.

mamram@323 - when it’s something else you want, what do you do?  Find someone who has a car, right, and who might be interested in x also?  Or asking the CSA how many people would need to be recruited to make a new dropoff. 

Most of the CSA’s I know are wiling to work with potential customers.  Even tons of privilege (not mine)has meant meeting farmers halfway.  It’s probably worth asking, if you haven’t already.

Ahh Bagelsan @322.  The point of that post which was about saving money by not using the A/C was to show that what some would consider a luxury - cushy Down comforters for all!! - was actually a cost savings (convincing my own spouse of that was not an easy sell until the utility bill came) that had other unexpected side benefits - fewer colds/better sleep for us.  (I have indoor heating and like to use it - coveting a Danish wood stove for aesthetic reasons, but alas, not in the budget). 

I think Amanda’s doing a lot of that with these posts, too - CSA’s seem pricey or wasteful, but are not if you know what to do with the stuff, including what may have been thought of as scrap - that damn broth - and a a side benefit healthier eating - and incidental weight control.

@333: Yah yah, I’m just teasing you.

phylosopher, it had never occurred to me to inquire about alternative delivery methods or how many people it would take for a new drop off.  My suspicion is that there wouldn’t be a ton of demand for a drop off here, because there is actually a pretty great weekly farmer’s market in the neighborhood that a lot of people take advantage of.  Unfortunately, it’s from 11-6 on Thursdays, when I am almost always at work a 90 minute train+bike ride away.  But at any rate, it would probably be worthwhile for me to contact some of the local farms about it.

To clarify, I live in a city with decent public transit so I rarely need to bum a ride for anything.  The issue is that most of the CSAs around here that I know of either deliver only to homes, or have pick up locations that are well enough outside of the city itself that getting there without a car would be a huge pain, and not something that I would consider worth the savings.

I know Bagelsan - and thanks for the ribbing (emoticon challenged). 

Mamram, we had a similar problem with getting our product to customers - too time/gas consuming to do home deliveries (house or apt) and we’re too small to have a storefront.  We found a local food business that understands and supports CSA’s/local and the owner offered us a bit of storage space for drop off day.  It brings customers into the store (we encourage folks to buy something while there for our stuff) and helps us out - great cross promotion.

Now hey, would any organic food supporters hop on over to the CSA thread - dude thinks GMO’s are the answer to all - shit.

Page before the copyright of “Good Calories, Bad Calories” paperback edition:

“Gary Taubes uses an impressive combination of rigorous logic and no-nonsense empiricism to thwart medical dogmas, particularly the one about the ‘calorie in, calorie out,’ notion that no evidence can dislodge from the mind of medical doctors. This is a true document about scientific method, even a monument in the history of medicine—and something that will change your life.”

                                            —Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan”
                                                  (and, thanks to this book, low carb practitioner)

For those who don’t know anything about the influence of Taleb’s “The Black Swan”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb

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