It's not the salt that's killing us, it's the shitty diet, too-large portions, and lack of exercise. If we ate reasonable portions of well-prepared meals the salt wouldn't be a big deal. But no, instead we eat extra large portions of everything, way too much meat, starch, fat and salt, so all these food items get a bad rap because we can't simply moderate ourselves...
Since the answer is basically either A: "no good reason" or B: "I believe I have science on my side", this really isn't a good response to an article about how controversial the science is. Which science do you think you have? Why is it better than the other half of the science?
This is a generic reply to everybody jumping up to explain what the truth really is.
Of course this point has the same problem of lacking details. But recognizing "modern food" as a culprit is actually less overeaching than putting the blame on a single substance that has been used for centuries.
No; that would fall under "no good reason". Are you sure people "ate less"? Given that we (think we) know that people of the past were also more active (although history is definitely on your side for that one), and how much more active people need to eat to sustain their activity, I would be completely unsurprised to learn that people in the past consumed more calories than the average American. You'd need to do quite a bit of science to nail this down.
Unless, of course, you've seen the relevant science, in which case it falls under B.
It's hard to escape from needing to have done science to really know what the problem is, and it's also hard to escape from the fact that all the science is really a great deal less clear than we've been led to believe by our government and public health organizations. It's clear we have problems; it's way less clear what the cause truly is. It also is reasonable to observe that you can "eat better" with less processed food, etc., and exercise is reasonably well established as helping, but why, exactly? We may speak in English of that as being one or two changes, but it's not; it's hundreds, thousands, perhaps even more changes, all at once. Which of them are relevant, and exactly how? Those questions are much less well answered. It also doesn't necessarily matter to you personally in the end. But it does mean that confident declarations about what is "really" the cause are poorly supported right now on all fronts.
I've been looking at this for many years too, and just about the only conclusions I've come to are A: less processed does seem better B: exercise does seem to be important but it's surprising how much debate about which types of exercise are good for what is still happening, again, despite what we've been led to believe and C: the consensus I was taught growing up in the 1980s is dead wrong in almost (but not quite) every detail, but that doesn't mean I know what is right.
There are still entire massive dimensions poorly explored by science; for instance, go look up the science on "intermittent fasting". One of the first things you ram into is that while there have been several studies on it, they all use the exact same schedule, which happens to be fairly unrealistic. No exploration of the space as a whole, just this one point, sampled over and over again. Does the schedule of your food intake matter? What's the best one? Science very nearly just shrugs at this question. Who knows what else we're missing?
My point was that, even if not exactly science, basic facts are known. Yes, I'm sure people ate less in the past. I've seen the numbers and, to a certain extent, I've seen people changing their habits in my lifetime.
This is like a tide, while many studies are focusing in a few waves. That's what my point anyway.
Better now? :)
Charts with the data from 1909-2010 can be found here:
http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/USFoodSupply-1909-2010
The kilocalorie availability per capita per day was pretty consistently in the 3100-3400 range until about 1976 or so. After 1976, the kilocalorie available per capita per day slowly creeps up until it reaches about 4000-4200 calories a day.
This metric is not perfect by any means, but I would say there's a high probability that this correlates to the United States consuming more food, for what it's worth.
It's honestly the one food metric with this particular dataset that stands out. The percentage of calories from sugars and sweeteners, sodium levels, and grain consumption seems consistent with the 1950s.
The only other data metric that stands out with to me (if this dataset can be inferred as a proxy of changes in the food industry) is a large rise in the percentage calories consisting of fat. Specifically, the "salad / cooking oils" rises from being 0.5% of calories available in 1909 to a whopping 15.1% of calories available in 2010.
You mean millenia. There's evidence of people harvesting salt dating back as far as archaeology takes us. Salt mines dating over 8000 years ago. Ancient observers writing about the salt trade 2500 years ago. And so on.
Also, your exercise and diet suggestions effectively reduce salt in your body. Less food, less salt. More exercise and more water means salt gets removed from your body faster.
I'm not trying to say salt is universally bad, but I'm pretty sure no one should literally swallow spoonfuls of the stuff either.
Similarly with sugar. Try to drink plain water with sugar (not tee/coffee or anything else that bring own taste). It is just impossible to drink too much of it. In fact for many people such plain water with sugar is a useful trick to limit appetite and loose weight.
So it is not the amount of what is eaten but rather something in food or food composition that makes people overweight.
As regarding exercising consider that doing high-intensity strength training for 15 minutes once per week is often enough to get into shape. So again, it is not the amount but rather the details of the exercise that are important.
> As regarding exercising consider that doing high-intensity strength training for 15 minutes once per week is often enough to get into shape. So again, it is not the amount but rather the details of the exercise that are important.
You make some wild claims here. Do you have anything to back that up, or are you just hypothesizing?
This is blatantly not true in the US, you can observe any number of people anywhere drinking full sugar sodas all day long.
I'd probably lose weight drinking sugar water because it would kill my appetite by inducing nausea.
The same applies to your starch comment. Yeah, it's hard to overconsume plain rice if you eat it with no sauce and no salt. Not because it's better for you, but because it's unpleasant. It'd also be hard to overconsume pure lard if that were all you could eat. It'd get old immediately and you'd eat enough to survive and not much more because it's so unpleasant.
I'll point out that Atkins makes similar claims for a fat-heavy diet. In essence, they claim that if you cut carbs entirely, you can eat as much as you want. In reality, people on Atkins tend to just eat less because the diet gets so monotonous.
[1] I misread initially and thought you said no salt. Sorry about the confusion there.
But anyway, key points on the rice diet:
> patients were hospitalized for several weeks at the beginning of treatment.
This was a diet specifically created for people who were otherwise going to die. It was never promoted as a healthy diet for normal individuals.
> white rice, sugar, fruit, fruit juices, vitamins and iron
So not just rice. Not just rice and fruit juice. But also whole fruit plus vitamins and iron to account for the fact that just eating rice will kill you.
Also, not brown rice at all. You're just pulling in random stuff to try to support your wild claims.
> Kempner described his diet as "a monotonous and tasteless diet which would never become popular.... Kempner's only defense of its use was the fact that “it works,” and that the diet was preferable to the alternative of certain death"
Sounds like a great endorsement of the diet from its creator.
So the comment that started this thread proposing that people consume too much is not true. It is just that people consume too much of wrong stuff. The solution is to limit bad items so normal body feedback loops work, not the amount of food.
When you're looking for a specific phenomenon, you're more likely to find supporting evidence. For example, if my hypothesis is that a crow can use a television remote, I'm going to stick a crow in a room with a television remote, and the crow will likely mash enough buttons that I can convince you it's true. And then of course there's statistics, and the famous saying which goes with it.
Maybe the real problem is that humans are biased, we're not really looking for the truth, we're looking for confirmation of beliefs we develop for whatever reason.
We've always been far better at beating the natural world into submission than observing it anyway...