Oklahoma City's War on Obesity
mosaicscience.com
mosaicscience.com
More importantly I find the focus on low-fat fast food menu items highly suspect -- significantly reducing carbohydrate consumption has been shown, empirically and anecdotally the world over, to have a greater impact (if not the greatest impact) on weight and health management.
The low-fat diet craze has hurt more than helped the fight against obesity.
The problem with restricting carbohydrate intake is that it's everywhere and it hurts the bottom line of pretty much all of the prepared food and drink industry.
That said, I'm not at all advocating that we all start eating sticks of butter, but a balance must be maintained -- 30/30/25/10 with 30% protein, 30% fat, 25% carbohydrates, and 10% dietary fiber.
This is back of the hand math but I think it works out. Most people trade out protein for carbs (because protein is expensive) and fat for carbs (because fat is apparently bad for you), which results in weight gain and diabetes risk.
Generally it can be assumed that the most common form of carbohydrate substituted is a sugar or grain, which usually have very high-glycemic indexes. This spikes the blood-sugar and beta-endorphin levels, the latter encouraging addictive habits (feeling good after eating high-glycemic food, going into withdrawal when not consuming frequently enough, etc).
Iowa is way ahead of you: http://www.eater.com/2011/8/10/6663841/a-deep-fried-stick-of...
For instance, I'm _very_ lean and active, and I thrive on a diet that is almost fat free (I get my essential fats from eggs and fish oil).
You are correct, given a person's current health and activity level, their nutrient requirements can vary greatly.
Furthermore, you can't make blanket claims like "eggs are damaging to your health", because there are tons scenarios where that is untrue. Are eggs a bad dietary choice for someone who already consumes a high saturated fat, low fiber diet? Probably. On the other hand, eggs are an integral part of my diet and I would be much less healthy without them.
You should at least be honest about your motivations as a vegan. I don't care if you want to take a stand against subjugation of animals, that's fine, but don't try and sell the diet to people who don't share your feelings in that regard with health scare tactics. That's just plain lame.
Please cite any references which support this claim.
That being said, in addition to the anecdotal evidence that vegans are VASTLY under-represented in the upper echelons of strength and power sports compared with their relative abundance in the general population, there are some good studies comparing muscle protein synthesis following ingestion of whey vs soy protein:
http://jap.physiology.org/content/107/3/987.short http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/2/373.short http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1743-7075-9-57.pdf
There is also some data suggesting vegans have slightly lower free testosterone and free IGF-1 than omnivores too, though at the highest levels rampant steroid use probably makes this a moot point.
> There is also some data suggesting vegans have slightly lower free testosterone and free IGF-1 than omnivores too, though at the highest levels rampant steroid use probably makes this a moot point.
Again, you are using conjecture over peer reviewed research. Take a look at http://nutritionfacts.org/2013/02/12/less-cancer-in-vegan-me... if you're interested in actually learning the facts.
Finally, the down votes just serve my point. People rather bury their heads in the sand and pretend animal products have some magical effect on human health, especially in athletes, which is a true ode to powerful industry lobbying.
Additionally, eggs are very high in arachidonic acid, which is the thing your body actually needs (linoleic acid is only essential as a precursor to arachidonic acid production), and the eggs I buy also contain very high levels of vitamin D, vitamin E and iodine.
As for the fish oil, I buy a high quality supplement that claims to be extremely high purity (though of course this being supplements, that could mean anything). The rational for fish oil over flax is that it contains EPA/DHA, which are the fatty acids that are actually responsible for most of the beneficial effects; your body is pretty poor at metabolizing alpha-linolenic acid to EPA/DHA.
Its greatest advantage is that the seed does not need to be milled (exposing the oils inside to light and oxygen) to be digested. Second, it has more of that mucilaginous fiber coating than flax, making beverages such as chia fresca possible. Third, I just like the flavor better. The disadvantage is cost per kg. Chia still costs more than flax.
But one need not pick just one or the other; they're both excellent foods.
Non-vegans can go lower on the food chain than fish oil by eating krill oil. Krill are only one step up from algae. In theory, krill-based foods could be farmed more sustainably than fish, but in practice, most of the wild krill catch is fed to fish farms. If krill were more popular as a direct-to-human food, there might be more financial incentive to farm it rather than catch it wild.
There's also something to be said for algae and algae oil, but it isn't likely to be useful until someone works out how to change its flavor to be more palatable.
Since you're asking personal medical questions, my blood pressure/blood tests are all nominal, my RHR is ~55, and I eat a high-protein vegetarian diet, with the primary protein sources being skim greek yogurt, whey powder, eggs, tofu, edamame, and seitan. Besides that I mostly eat vegetables and noodles.
Please post the actual numbers, as "nominal" levels in a society where it is normal to die from cardiovascular disease, for example, are not a good representation of optimal health.
Well, they'll gain weight; whether that's muscle or fat -- and thus whether it contributes to obesity by the more significant adiposity-based standards rather than the less-meaningful BMI-based standards -- depends on other factors than whether they are consuming more calories than their TDEE.
Dietary fiber (at least fermentable poly/oligosaccharides), while technically a form of carbohydrate, is fermented to short chain fatty acids by the bacteria in your gut. These short chain fatty acids have some fairly special physiological effects that you can't get from other macronutrients. For this reason, from a health perspective it does make sense to treat fermentable fibers as a separate category of nutrient, and set an intake target for it.
Also, lactate is the preferred fuel for your brain; it has been shown that if lactate is available glucose uptake by the brain is _greatly_ diminished. In fact, a major role of astrocytes in the brain is the metabolism of glucose to lactate for primary neurons.
As for the 5% protein number, for starters that is meaningless without knowing the number of calories being consumed. If someone was somehow active enough to burn 10K calories a day 5% protein might be a reasonable amount. For your typical 2K cal/day diet, however, that number is woefully inadequate. 0.8g/Kg/day is the minimum anyone should reasonably be getting, and even non-exercising populations will tend to be leaner and feel better around 1.2g/Kg/day, not to mention athletes who will do best around 1.7g/Kg/day.
Absolutely. The one big component we have forgotten is appetite. In theory weight loss is simple. Eat less. But a lack of appetite control gets in the way of that. Carboydrates are immediately stored away and trigger hunger pangs again.
It's worth noting that my cousin also moved to SoCal. She's now in her 40's and snorts cocaine 2 or 3 times a week in the evening to skip eating to keep herself slim. Apparently it's a very common practise amongst her and her friends.
This seems insane, if you want to stay thin, just eat at or below your TDEE and... that will happen (or increase your TDEE).
Obesity is a national (global?) security crisis. It will cost trillions in preventable medical expenses, it causes excess fuel consumption, reduces productivity, and government+industry seems complicit in continuing the trend based on city planning and subsidy allocations. (Not to mention government policies/recommendations probably started the whole obesity crisis by promoting "low fat, high carb+sugar" eating practices ("food pyramid") for two dozen years across an increasingly sedentary population.)
What about lost productivity due to self-induced health issues? Economic security.
What about military? We can't have armed forces of obese recruits. National defense security.
What about police? What's the use of an overweight police force that can't walk up stairs without getting winded? Local security.
Of course, cows are "designed" to do this, while people seemingly are not.
~So yeah, not inherently obesity-preventing.~
The downside is that you will be consuming about 80 grams of oxalic acid. The LD-Lo is 600 mg/kg, meaning that unless you are 135 kg (300 lbs), that much spinach could possibly kill you. Aside from bursting your guts from the inside from the sheer volume of it, that is.
I guess the steaks just kill you more slowly.
While the article mentions meat being more expensive, the rest of the article is filled with quotes like "snacking all day on bits of burger and pizza" and "drink lots of atole – a heavily sweetened corn-based drink". All pretty carb heavy. The article mentions that the dietary changes made are: "eats fast food just once a week, cooks more vegetables, has cut down the number of tortillas".
Is stone a regionally popular unit, or have I just been utterly oblivious to its modern commonality?
Oklahoma is composed of three things: fast food, buffets, and gas stations.
As an example, on my most recent trip to Oklahoma, we went to a buffet and I decided to get a salad. At the large "salad" bar there were exactly three vegetables: iceberg lettuce, radishes, and carrots. Everything else was meat (mostly fried) or bread. I ordered a side of green beans; they were canned and fairly unappealing.
No wonder people don't eat healthier when the options are so limited and unattractive.
The woman quoted is correct, however Guatemala is semi-unique in Latin America for being lower on the obesity scale than most countries there. Obesity is generally just as big of a problem across Latin America as it is in the US, with Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, El Salvador, Belize, Panama, Uruguay - all ranking either fairly high or very high on the obesity scale. I'd be very curious to know what separates Guatemala from its neighbors Belize / Mexico / El Salvador, which all have serious obesity problems.
OKC is a lot more walkable though now. It would be nice to get people from Norman, Moore, Edmond, etc to the city without their cars.
A volleyball is about 20cm in diameter. Not even as a child could I have eaten that much ice cream. At least not without doing like the Ancient Romans.
That's actually an urban legend based on a mistranslation. The term "vomitorium" just means "exit corridor"; a room which "vomits" people out into the street. They did not have dedicated barfing rooms in their homes, nor was barfing a routine part of their lives.