Pizza, pasta, potatoes, protein – how Italian children became so overweight | Hacker News Reader

Pizza, pasta, potatoes, protein – how Italian children became so overweight

bbc.com

Pasta and other carbohydrate-rich foods are nowhere near as bad as sugar for children. In the Nutella filled pastry, it is not the bread that’s the problem.

Sugar (particularly in beverages) and lack of exercise are the main contribution of child obesity increase worldwide.

Don’t blame the potato.

> Pasta and other carbohydrate-rich foods are nowhere near as bad as sugar for children.

Sugar is as bad as it is because it's almost instantly absorbed. Plenty of carbohydrates are the same.

Fiber is what separates healthy carbs from unhealthy carbs, heck, even sugars.

An apple is healthy even though it's loaded with sugar because it's also loaded with fiber.

Apple juice is unhealthy because it's basically just the sugar.

Were I to guess, what's changed in italy is what's changed in the US. Flour has become highly refined, removing all the fiber that used to be present. This gives flour nice properties in terms of baking and pasta making, but it also removes a vital part of pasta.

> removing all the fiber

Yes this.

Also reduced vegetable intake. In many cases the fiber from vegetables can offset some refined carbs intake.

On huberman show one guest described mechanics.

Fiber wraps and gelates fast carbs, and they reach later stages of processing were good bacteria lives and feeds on carbs.

As I recall from others sources, these bacteria produce drugs too, like barbiturate. They make host happier long after meal.

The real thing in relative moderation is better for you than the for profit chemicals and food additives/substitutes/extenders, cane sugar, honey are both better for you than high fructose corn syrup, and the same applies for all those flower/grain extenders and additives. Put in food mainly for profit.

Also the fact that in one of the examples the individual simply ate no vegetables.

Pasta is actually a relatively low GI food, due to long starch chains. Like fiber, some of the (resistant) starch acts as food for the microbiome of the gut. There’s a theory that eating lots of resistant starch has similar benefits to high-fiber diets.

Regular pasta and pizza dough are as almost as bad as sugar. Bread might not be as bad as Nutella but is still bad. Most popular Italian food tastes good but is horrible health wise.

Not by a mile, at least for pasta. When you compare the calorie density and glycemic index of pasta with other grains or grain-derived foods, it's really not bad. The dose makes the poison.

The pasta they usually serve is the worst kind of pasta.

Being a potato guy through and through, it grinds my gears that potatoes get a bad rap.

are you solid on the inside or like hash browns?

The American Indians in South America, ate potatoes for hundreds of years, potatoes, even saved many people in Europe there’s nothing wrong with them in moderation.

They also had a much more active lifestyle (e.g. farming, hunting, physical training, etc.) that would offset carb heavy foods.

those potatoes aren't like the ones we cultivate now; similar for things like corn and bananas.

and they weren't eating half a kilo of them, deep fried, in a sitting (e.g. fish and chips or McD's french fries) for breakfast lunch and dinner

> McD's french fries

those are not potatoes.

High fructose corn syrup, is the worst, and there are many other substitutes added to food products today for profit that are worse than the real thing.

So the problem is not Pizza nor pasta nor potatoes nor bread nor protein but all the extra supper high calories, near zero nutrition things that go on top of them?

> He also worries restrictive diets could carry psychological risks for adolescents, whose relationship with food is still developing.

As opposed to a relationship with food that causes overconsumption?

Adolescents still form a relationship with food from a young age, hence why we're talking about young overweight people. I'd rather teach them about nutrition and potentially how to eat the same amount of food but that has much less calories.

If their current diet reflects an overconsumption of calories then they may need to learn how to restrict through eating better foods. Because without a level of restriction of overall calorie intake they will continue to gain weight.

Sometimes I feel we're reluctant to have a conversation around consuming less food when it comes to losing weight. In order to lose weight you need have some level of hunger and that's okay, we don't need to go and reach for something.

Article is good but with one puzzling flaw. They mention protein is one of the culprits, but nothing about why or how.

They don't say that. They say the 5P diet is unhealthy and the Mediterranean diet is healthy. But the Mediterranean diet contains the 5 P's too -- just in moderation and accompanied by lots of vegetables. So the 5 P's aren't necessarily unhealthy by themselves, but a diet that basically only has the 5P's is.

Yes, something tells me there’s a lot of deli and processed meats involved.

Do remember that Italians cook all their meals, it's a cultural thing

Italy is also famous for deli meats. I’m going to hazard a guess that not every Italian is buying raw meat and then preparing traditional dishes from scratch with it using only the freshest of natural ingredients etc.

No of course, but a whole prosciutto package is very little (100g). There aren't enough calories in a single package to make you fat. Way easier to attribute the problem to pasta. Eating that lunch and dinner, if you make it using non-veggies a pasta dish can easily be more than 600 calories (and that also depends on how much is eaten).

Prosciutto is often eaten with melon, or with figs, so yeah it's processed meat, but then it's eaten with fiber and healthy micronutrients.

Mozzarella could be a problem too (center of Italy), eating a mozzarella with tomato and basil (caprese) is simple, yet the mozzarella is loaded with calories.

Then again, most dishes in Italy use natural ingredients, but that doesn't spare you from getting fat. Take pasta with egg and guanciale (carbonara) is a ton of calories even if home made

I wonder if biscotti is the real deal. In Italy, kids have breakfast with a cup of milk and X amount of biscuits, those are sugar, flour, egg, milk and something else to give flavor. Eat 4 of those and it's 200 calories. Eat 8 of those and it starts to get scary (400 calories) + 1 cup of milk = ~550 calories.

I did not realize this is mostly in the SOUTH.

This would be funny to hear for you, but to become fat in the south you just have to have a good appetite: most moms, grandmas and aunts will cook you INCREDIBLE meals (very flavorful stuff), but of course it will also be loaded with fats.

The likelihood of this being a problem related to preprocessed stuff is low

The thing that hurts most people around the world is that we still eat as if we’re gonna work from sun up to sundown habits are hard to break…

capitalism needs to sell you more food and bigger portions.

BIG FARMERS BREAKFAST, and many types of breakfast foods are largely a marketing invention; many societies never ate large breakfasts, and many still don't, e.g. the soup & natto breakfast in Japan

And meanwhile, the Italian food lobbies are blocking Nutri-Score adoption at the EU level

I'm not sure nutri score is helpfull, most people don't understand how it even works and whats actually being compared for the rating.

Nutriscore is a meme because it only refers to products in the same product category. Some Nestle's ultra processed sugary cereal has scores of A-B, it does not mean it's healthy, it just means it's less bad than other sugary cereal slop. It's very misleading.

Yeah, in America they have processed level score thing alike and use it in schools.

In 2004 I visited my family in Valencia, Spain. There was a local construction boom. There were family owned shops everywhere. Bakeries, fruit stands, etc. When I went back in 2014, it seems everything had changed. The shops were gone. The construction had slacked off. Instead there were now giant supermarkets and superstores. They were on the Euro now. My cousins blamed the EU for this. I'm assuming something similar happened in Italy, tho it is not mentioned in the article, which instead tends to blame the victims. When you replace the local food supply chain with prepared branded foods (Nutella, etc.), you get this. The EU has been great for European capitalists, but a detriment to the people in Europe.

PS This was one of the major complaints of the long forgotten yellow-vests protests in France.

I'm over 50. I played in the streets whole afternoons, full days during school vacations. They were dangerous years in Rome, terrorism, political violence, heroin everywhere.

Despite we are now living in safer years, no kids are playing in the streets anymore. Also in the nearby park, they struggle to reach a 5 vs 5 football (soccer) match when we had plenty more for a 11 vs 11.

A prominent psycologist just released an interview: why do italian parents love Sinner, the tennis player, praise his capabilities, his energy and willingness to train, but accept that their kids spend hours sitting on the couch playing games or browsing socials?

I also agree with you about local, family owned shops: in my area there were 2 supermarkets and they were far away. Now there are at least 6 and one is less than 300mt from my house. The family shops are still operating and thriving, but some have changed, adding locally pre-cooked food to the old offer.

So, less sport, more easily available junk food, more parents working late to keep supers open so more use of pre cooked food, more time spent on social media... a explosive mix

Pre-cooked means NOTHING like what you find in north America.

You can get plenty pre cooked food that are healthy (and flavorful).

Of course you can also still ask for fries, but that's not common in Italy

I vecchi hanno così tanto potere politico ora, al punto tale che stanno facendo chiudere i campi di calcetto degli oratori, lamentandosi del rumore. I bambini non hanno più dove andare all'aperto senza infastidire qualche adulto.

The hypermarket concept was more or less invented in France in 1963. Clearly joining the EU allowed greater trade options which suit large scale market leaders, but their growth would have happened anyway.

A lazy illustration, but there is not a single mention of the EU, the introduction of the Euro, or the single market on the extensive Wikipedia about the topic in the context of France, suggesting minimal impact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-scale_retail_in_France

Nobody is forced to eat (Italian!) Nutella instead of local made alternatives. As such many Germans do that.

I do look for regional food, though they are more expensive but also Aldi + Lidl are a bless.

Highly processed fake food with shelf extenders added to the mix…

I like how the article points out that it's the small bits of overconsumption (e.g. Nutella) each day that amount to obesity. Add in less physical activity and eating less fibrous foods like vegetables and you're multiplying that issue further.

Overtime is a recipe for obesity.

When it comes to losing weight its important to remember, its easy to gain fat, its a task to maintain fat and its hard to lose fat. Therefore a little calorie deficit requiring a little hunger and restraint is how you reverse it.

Nobody yet mentioned young-learnt habits: school cafeterias & snack machines.

When I was young, in lunch breaks you'd head over to the school's cafeteria. And what they had there? "Gevulde koek", stroopwafel, snack-sized bags of crisps, various (sweetened) dairy products, and iirc bananas & apples too. No veggies or fibre-rich food in sight. So of course kids would go for the sugar-laden & salty snacks. For drinks, there were vending machines. My favorite was hot chocolate. Again: high in sugar (no "more or less sugar" option).

Sometimes there were longer breaks due to a teacher falling ill or whatever. Then we'd head over to a supermarket nearby, and buy similar junkfood.

Of course we'd bring sandwiches from home. But not everyone, and not always. Some kids would throw their sandwiches in a trash can, and proceed to buy the junkfood mentioned above.

That school was 6 years of us kids' lives. Plenty of time to pick up unhealthy habits & bring those into adulthood.

Wouldn't surprise me at all if most schools worldwide are still like that. Healthy diet choices for pupils is far from #1 priority for school management given all the other things they have to deal with.

The fix would be to make healthier options the easy pick, and remove all junkfood offerings from schools' cafeterias. But good luck doing that nationwide under the watchful eye of junkfood multi-nationals.

In primary school (in Europe), we had a cafeteria, that served decent, regular meals, with one modest dessert. There were no vending machines, no child carried cash, only coupons for the cafeteria, tied to your name, entitling you to exactly one meal per day. There was also a smaller brunch at 10.

Why give children the option to make the wrong choice? If they were wise and disciplined, they wouldn't be children.

In America, the school cafeteria used to prepare the meals for the kids those days are largely gone. Everything is prepackaged and processed. Who knew all the cooked meals were going the way of the dodo.

Surely writing 374 lbs is easier than 26st 10lb.

The 2nd number immediately means something to me. While I have to consider the first. From my perspective it isn’t easier to comprehend.

An unrelated point. I’ve noticed more people in the UK measuring their weight in KG. I think I may be in a dwindling minority of people who think in stones and pounds.

What an Americentric point of view.

Not everybody measures weight in pounds, and to the primary readership of the BBC, stones and kilograms mean much more than weighing pounds.

Source: Canadian who understands neither kg or stones.

Isn’t stones/pounds just like feet/inches? Do you support dropping feet and only using inches? If not, why not?

I have no clue, give me kg thanks.

And 1.125lbs is easier to write than 1 pound 2 ounces, yet Americans will look at you with a blank stare if you don't use ounces.

When it comes to units, you can't please everybody. Especially if it's tangentially related to the old colonies.

people love to take potshots about how Americans don't know the metric system, but we love our 9mm's and a few grams

https://archive.ph/Shj4X

We've been doing variations of "educate the general public about healthy dietary choices" for roughly as long as the obesity epidemic has been around. Shouldn't it have worked by now, if it were going to? As purportedly modern, scientific, data-driven societies, why do we keep engaging in this impotent self-flagellation?

Just imagine how bad it would be if we hadn't.

This explains how sugars and fast carbs can be healthy https://youtu.be/n28W4AmvMDE?si=xEx29eVFgDEy2ktW

Tldr; highly processed food looses vitamins(micro nutrient starvation) and starch/fiber are needed to slow absorption until it gets to bacteria producing drugs(barbiturate and precursors to neuromediators including), and give signals over vagus nerve to head. May be summary of few books from me too. Do not recall. Add on top chewing fibery food takes time, feeling full starts earlier of being full, and saliva ferments help to digest either.

...In the South.

It's a culture thing.

Could it be explained by the local population density - basically the walkability for each resident?

I really doubt it

What makes you doubt it?

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