Sober Thread: Our Ever-Declining Health

I've been trying the Thirty Days No Carb Challenge, with an exception made for the occasional beer. I am currently on Day 5.

Hooooly shit. Right now, I am FULL of turkey burger, bacon, lettuce, pineapple chunks, and a little bit of mozerella cheese... and my brain is knife-handing me going "GET PASTA RIGHT NOW. GET PASTA RIGHT NOW. GET YOUR FUCKING PASTA RIGHT NOW YOU HUNGRY LITTLE BITCH."

I feel horrible and have absolutely zero energy. Honestly, this is withdrawal. Does it get any better with time?

 

So I know I went on record saying I don't think exercise is what's going to solve the epidemic, but sweet mother of Jesus when did it become standard for healthy people to stand still on escalators? I mean seriously, the only way you'll move is if there isn't a machine actively assisting you?

P.S. Omega, I took a stab at answering your question in the Paleo thread.

 

It all depends. In the morning on the way to work, I'll take the escalator up from the train and I'll stand. I'm tired and its morning and I like being moved for even just 15 seconds.

 

It's also no secret that an overwhelming majoriy of those who use Rascal scooters really DON'T have to use them. They'd rather just putter around in their little public bumper car.

How many times are you in a two, maybe three story building equipped with a lift and you see people take time to wait for the elevator to take them up or down? As for escalators, I bombard up them full-tilt while crowded, knocking people careening over the side to the granite tile below. Nobody gets in Drago's way. Dude punches speed bags while jogging.

 

It is truly amazing to me how addicted I was to my car before moving. Here its a normal day to walk 5 or 6 miles just getting around. My flat is on a hill and for the first few weeks, my legs were killing me every night walking up from the train station. The mentality of lets get in the car to go one block to do food shopping was normal. Now, 4 or 5 bags up the hill is the norm and I don't flinch about it. I think we get addicted to comforts and ease and choose those methods because we're soft bitches who don't like to sweat or feel muscles throb. We like sweet, salty, buttery nom noms and can't be bothered to do anything about it until forced to either by circumstance or as the title of the thread states 'Our Ever-Declining Health'.

 

Absolutely right.

There is a particular brand of Ice Cream sold in Australia; Nestle Connoisseur Ice Cream that comes in some amazing flavours.

http://www.nestle.com.au/Products/Categories/Ice-Cream/Connoisseur/Tub/

I have been known to eat a 1 litre tub of this evil concoction in one day and now know that no amount of self discipline or willpower will stop me from not going stupid once a tub of it is in the house.

 

And what makes this all the more problematic is when someone else in the house isn't on board. My wife would buy snack packs under the rationale that "They're only 100 calories each!". Right. But when someone eats six of them in one sitting, the only difference is packaging. She also didn't see that eating something like that didn't sate the cravings but instead intensified it for more of the same. That's addiction.

As to the escalators, add to that "people movers". What I think started out as a concept of some futuristic Jetsons aesthetic has just encouraged more laziness. Just the name itself says a lot.

Now if you'll excuse me, my Segway is finished charging so I can go get the morning papers.

 

Interesting article on fit vs. fat.

 

This site has two very interesting maps showing a) obesity rates by state and b) car use by state. Very interesting. Another article I was reading showed a ridiculous correlation between countries with high car use and countries with obesity problems, but I suspect that on a macro level you start getting into issues of agrarian lifestyle v sedentary office worker etc.

 

<a class="postlink" href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443995604578002253859884598.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLE_Video_Top" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087 ... _Video_Top</a>

This was in today's WSJ. There's another article on how food companies are embedding their products into video games to "market" to kids, but you need a subscription to view it.

 

Staying on diabetes since that was the focus of the article:

There's a ton of factors that go into this, most of which are touched on by the article.

One particularly interesting one that's not: differences in the drugs they're on. For example, Metformin has all sorts of unexpected & unexplained protective effects for completely non-diabetes related things such as lung cancer. We have no clue why or how, we just know that people on Metformin die less if they get primary lung cancer. Figuring out how much effects like this contribute to mortality is incredibly difficult.

Another one not mentioned: a higher proportion of thin diabetic patients may have developed type 2 diabetes secondary to a viral infection (usually Hep C or CMV). The course of viral induced diabetes may be more severe, it's not well studied.

In practice though, ~all of the type 2 patients I've seen have been significantly overweight (or were previously).

My point: there are tons of factors that go into understanding something like this, a huge chunk of which we don't have a solid grasp on.

Side note: wish I had time to read through this whole thread.

 

Stanford Report: Little evidence of health benefits from organics foods.

This isn't some private company with bullshit to sell things. This is Stanford. Hm...

 

Oh, really now?

 

Well if you're te sort of person who thinks the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a giant Monsanto conspiracy, you must live a strange life. Is your tin foil hat organic?

 

I want to say this is because people don't go outside as much anymore. Between the internet, video games, and TV there is no longer any reason to go out and find entertainment when you can get it for free in your home. I'm not sure this is a good reason, but that's what may account for laziness. As for why people don't eat healthy, I have no idea. Maybe they're not educated on eating right, but I'm pretty sure kids are inundated with eat healthy messages at school these days.

 

Here's a thing that since I have become an adult have noticed undebatably about America: industrialized food and especially chain restaurants are the most in-your-face form of advertising your country has. You have nine times our poulation and at least twenty to thirty times the chain restaurants. Aside from fast food, you have Chilis, Applebees, Black Angus, Steak & Ale (actually ), TGIFridays, Dennys, Olive Garden, Cheap Charlie's, Fudruckers, etc. those are the ones I just see in Michigan. I'm sure you guys can name off much more. And they're all on billboards. Billboards as far as the eye can see. And on every fourth TV comercial it seems.

The food industry doesn't just have the ability to change society, it DOES change society. Because society can't fight back against it. The government is an ENTIRELY owned subsidiary of the food industry. Remember that little boy? 2.5 years old, perfectly healthy, bit into a rancid hamburger and died two weeks later. It took TWO MONTHS of fighting to pull that e coli-festooned meat off the shelf. And to show their sympathy, the food companied threatened to sue the grieving mother and father for EVERYTHING they had if they even once slandered the food company publicly. So they went unnamed and unslandered.

...That cocksucking, piece-of-shit, numbskull open sore food company run by nothing short of rat fuckers is your friends at Tyson, by the way. Our largest meat provider. So, something for you to try and avoid.

If you want to live, you have to eat. So everybody shops at the grocery store, where they at least TRY to shop as healthy as possible by buying "diet" beverages (which is still carbonated evil) and "fat free" cheese and milk products (which is impossible- and utterly processed) and if they want to bythe ACTUAL health fod there, they have to pay two to four times as much. It's lose-lose.

The only have I have heard to escape this black hole is through farmer's markets, which also can't be trusted and never have everything that you need. Not to mention they're inconvenient for most people. Like I said, lose-lose.

 

Speaking of which, yesterday I went to three different grocery stores and couldn't find anything but low or nonfat buttermilk. 'Tis bullshit I say.

 

And there, everyone, is your perfect example of the Big Lie. It's called BUTTER-slash-MILK. Fat with fat. Those are two things that naturally have fat in them. You can only process something like that to be fat-free. Saying buttermilk is fat-free is like saying that celibacy is a sex move.

 

My favorite one lately is low fat french fries. I think it was Idaho frozen french fries. You've seen this commercial. You know how they made a reduced fat fry? THEY CUT THE SERVING SIZE. It's right there in the advertisement; the frame shows you the nutrition label. Pause it, compare it. All they did was cut the serving size.

Low carb bread? They reduced the size of the slice by a quarter. HI-larious. Yet, these fucking monkeys can't see that.

CR is right. Disingenuous advertising coupled with a parasitic lobby will continue to ruin our health.