Obesity: Why are we getting fat? :epizza:

[Moontanman]

I can say from personal experience that what you eat is very important and eating good is difficult not to mention expensive. I have concentrated on eating better the last couple of months and I have dropped 20 pounds. It made a big difference and walking has become an option and I feel much better. I am lucky to have a choice, so many do not and starchy food remains a staple for for many people even here in what is supposed to be among the best places to live in the world. Even though it is a choice it's often a difficult one and far too often an impossible choice to eat right in the correct amounts.

[mynah]

From time to time I follow a 14 day health diet containing lots of fresh vegetables - but it is ridiculously expensive and time-consuming. As I live on my own, I inevitably end up throwing mountains of rotting stuff away. Have those studying obesity ever considered the effects on eating habits of having smaller families/childless couples/many single and divorced people compared to a few decades ago? My parents had five kids and the whole family never ever dined in a restaurant together until we were adults. In comparison, many people nowadays find it cheaper to dine out or get takeaways much of the time rather than buy a variety of fresh produce.

[pamela]

Originally Posted by mynah

From time to time I follow a 14 day health diet containing lots of fresh vegetables - but it is ridiculously expensive and time-consuming. As I live on my own, I inevitably end up throwing mountains of rotting stuff away. Have those studying obesity ever considered the effects on eating habits of having smaller families/childless couples/many single and divorced people compared to a few decades ago? My parents had five kids and the whole family never ever dined in a restaurant together until we were adults. In comparison, many people nowadays find it cheaper to dine out or get takeaways much of the time rather than buy a variety of fresh produce.

I know for me, when i was married and there was 2 incomes, no problem having plenty of healthy food. Being able to shop at the upscale grocery stores with the sounds of classical music and coffee samples , was a pleasant experience.Now, being single, and feeling the effects of unemployment for a year, fighting the chaos at Walmart, is awful. Where there used to be ice cream for a treat, now its fruit and yoghurt.Amazing how they took strawberries for granted then, and now the look of excitement. It really reminds me of the 150 dollar rotten cherry tomato of Soylent Green. It has become a precious commodity in our house.It is easy to fall into buying cheap junk, when you worry about not having enough to feed your children. In these desperate times, i am sure obesity has risen in children for this very reason.Consider how many single parents are out there, just scraping to pay the rent.If there is anything in there fridge, it would be amazing. More likely, canned spaghettios, bread from the food bank, or the 99ct crappy meal from the local fast, shall we call it food, establishment

[Michaelangelica]

more prejudice?

The ABC has dumped a segment of its hit television show The Gruen Transfer which joked about the Holocaust, Jews, black people and homosexuals.

The corporation's lawyers stepped in and canned half of the segment in which two ad agencies compete to sell the unsellable, in this case obesity.
The part of the segment made by Sydney agency, The Foundry, was found to be racist and discriminatory, and will not go to air on tonight's show.

Gruen Transfer skit went too far for the ABC | Wil Anderson

Gruen Transfer Fat Pride Off Air | The Inspiration Room Daily
The ad, however, is online at Fat Pride - Fat Pride Home and The Foundry's Anti-discrimination Ad.

Click on the image below to play the video in YouTube (HD)

BTW
I don't criticise people, just what they say.

[Michaelangelica]

Further research into the effects of POPs may reveal many answers we would prefer to ignore.

Obesity's helper in triggering diabetes
12 April 2007 by Aria Pearson
Magazine issue 2599. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
. . .
While obesity is thought to be a major cause, there is more and more evidence to suggest that pollutants also play a key role
If true, it could turn the conventional wisdom of how obesity causes diabetes on its head. Emerging evidence suggests that pollutants stored in body fat may be contributing to the ongoing rise of type 2 diabetes.

While obesity is still thought to be a major cause, there is more and more evidence to suggest that persistent organic pollutants (POPs) also play a key role.

While obesity is thought to be a major cause, there is more and more evidence to suggest that pollutants also play a key role
POPs are synthetic chemicals that can accumulate in the fatty tissue of animals. Many POPs - such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which were used as coolants in electrical equipment, and pesticides such as DDT - have been banned in developed countries, but they remain in the food chain and often end up in people.

Last year, Duk-Hee Lee at Kyungpook National University in Daegu, South Korea, and her colleagues reported that people with higher levels of six different POPs were more likely to have diabetes than people with low levels of POPs (New Scientist, 30 September 2006, p 18).

Now, a follow-up study published last month suggests an association in non-diabetic people between certain pesticides, PCBs and insulin resistance - a precursor to diabetes (Diabetes Care, vol 30, p 622). Fat people with POPs in their blood were more likely to develop insulin resistance than thin people with POPs, but the expected association between obesity and insulin resistance disappeared in people with no POPs. "This suggests the possibility that POPs stored in fat tissue, not obesity itself, may be a key factor for the development of type 2 diabetes," says Lee.

The information used by the researchers was designed to be representative of the general population in the US. "That's the somewhat shocking implication," says David Jacobs at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, who supervised Lee's research. "The association exists at everyday background levels of POPs."

The precise mechanism by which POPs could contribute to diabetes remains a mystery. Some PCBs, such as dioxin, are known to interfere with genes that control insulin sensitivity, says Lee, although dioxin was not studied by her group.

Obesity's helper in triggering diabetes - health - 12 April 2007 - New Scientist

Could the diabetes epidemic be down to pollution?
15 September 2008 Science news and science jobs from New Scientist - New Scientist
News Service Phyllida Brown
Ask why diabetes is epidemic in the 21st century and most people will point the finger at bad diet, laziness and obesity. According to a small but growing group of scientists, though, the real culprit is a family of toxic chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants, or POPs.
If these researchers are right, POPs - which include some of the most reviled chemicals ever created, including dioxins, DDT and PCBs - may be key players in the web of events that lead people to develop the disease.
The claim has yet to attract widespread attention from mainstream diabetes research. Even its champions were initially surprised by it. "I had never even heard of POPs until 2005," says Duk-Hee Lee, an epidemiologist at Kyungpook National University in Daegu, Korea, who led the work.
Lee and her co-workers are now convinced, albeit reluctantly, that they are onto something.
"The hypothesis is one that I wish were not true," says her colleague David Jacobs of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

http://www.fnehin.ca/uploads/docs/Co..._pollution.pdf

[paigetheoracle]

I said in a previous post it could be something like a histamine reaction Mike and it seems you've found something that sadly agrees (perhaps Man is not going to go out on a bang but a Wimpey?)

[paigetheoracle]

Originally Posted by Jay-qu

I here there are some medical conditions that make people more prone to become overweight - not overweight prone to it. These people just have to live with it, like people that have food allergies or diabeties

True and staying in bed makes you fatter because of Leptin suppression (Walter Reed Army Medical Centre) and even monkeys in zoos put on weight, where those in the wild regulate consumption of protein (Australian researchers studying Spider Monkeys): Couch potato-ism in action.

[lemit]

So . . . Spider monkeys like TV and junk food? I think that was an episode on "The Simpsons."

--lemit

[Nitack]

Weight Loss Weapon -- Carb-cutting Enzyme Stopped By Bean Extract, Endocrinologists Say

Weight Loss Weapon
Carb-cutting Enzyme Stopped By Bean Extract, Endocrinologists Say

April 1, 2007 — UCLA researchers have found an extract in white kidney beans may help the body stop carbs from breaking down into sugars. A digestive enzyme in the body normally acts like scissors, literally cutting starches into little sugars. Phase 2 stops the enzyme from cutting, so the starches stay in the body as long fibers and are burned off quicker. Patients in the clinical studies who took Phase 2 lost body fat, not lean muscle.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by paigetheoracle

I said in a previous post it could be something like a histamine reaction Mike and it seems you've found something that sadly agrees (perhaps Man is not going to go out on a bang but a Wimpey?)

POPs would certainly explain the world wide nature of this epidemic as they just spread out. they don't degrade in the common use of the tem they sometimes even turn into nastier stuff (DDT becomes DDE) I posted on the DDT thread that DDt impregnated mosquito nets being given away by the UN to poor african villagers are mostly ending up being used as fishing nets, wedding dresses, and fruit/food drying nets.

I don't think Australia even has the technology for identifying all chlorinated hydrocarbons some Syndney fishermen were just found to have high levels of some compound POP left in Sydney Harbour by Union Crabide now Dow- but the blood had to be sent to Germany to be tested! Interestingly, and counter-intuitively, the kids had higher levels than the parents.

High Pesticide Levels Found In Fruit-based Drinks In Some Countries Outside United States

ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2008) — In the first worldwide study of pesticides in fruit-based soft drinks, researchers in Spain are reporting relatively high levels of pesticides in drinks in some countries, especially the United Kingdom and Spain. Drinks sampled from the United States, however, had relatively low levels, the researchers note.

High Pesticide Levels Found In Fruit-based Drinks In Some Countries Outside United States
so its just not the corn syrup you have to worry about!
We import a lot of juice from places like Brazil, especially orange juice. Most orange farmers here are just ripping out their trees.

So I wonder is that before or after obesity causing drugs like Zyprexa or Mirtazon (& Valium family sleeping pills?) are prescribed for the depression?
Obesity And Depression May Be Linked

many poor cannot afford good dental care. It is abig problem in Australia. Dental healt care for the poor is almost unavailable.

Obesity Associated With Periodontal Disease

ScienceDaily (Apr. 6, 2009) — Investigators from the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Puerto Rico asked "Is there a prospective association between obesity and periodontal disease?"

Obesity Associated With Periodontal Disease