Then please tell me what gets to count as a real food and what has been decreed from on high as fake food. Fuck it, let's start with something easy: HFCS vs. regular table sugar. As best as I can tell HFCS is made up of 55% fructose and 42% glucose, while table sugar is sucrose, which is 50/50 fructose and glucose. That seems pretty chemically similar to me, so you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical when one gets touted by some as A-ok while the other is an insidious poison. What about soybean oil? Why should soybean oil be disallowed as food while other vegetable oils get the seal of approval? I'm looking at a chart that compares soybean oil with other vegetable oils and it has no outlying components that other oils lack, so again I'm forced to wonder why soybean oil is so bad.
I have a question: What the fuck is healthy!?!? I mean we keep throwing the term around as a goal we should all work toward reaching, but how do we even know when we get there? I honestly ask myself this a lot. Am I healthy? I mean I just had my annual physical with a full panel of labwork done, just like I do every year. My lab results indicate that all my diet and nutrition related factors fall within a healthy range. However I do have a vitamin D deficiency which my doctor says is common with people in Minnesota due to lack of sunlight exposure, which I can't argue with because I don't get a lot. Also, according to my BMI* I'm nearing the threshold of obesity at 28.7 since I'm 5'10" and weigh 200. Am I healthy? I feel pretty fucking healthy but everyday I read more alarmist "studies" and "expert knowledge" that I'm going to die of cancer, alzheimers, heart disease, and everything else at the age of 50 because I eat two eggs everyday, or because I eat too much salt, or too much red meat, or too many carbs, or because I drink skim milk instead of whole milk, and the list goes on and on. I'm so fucking sick of hearing it from every side that I pretty much just shut it all out and try to make my own decisions. But now I'm back to square one: Am I healthy? Now think about someone who is severly obese and suffers from hypertension, diabetes, and all of the other health problems that come with it. For them making a lifestyle change is literally life and death but how the fuck are they supposed to figure out what to do when no matter what choice they make they're going to get the message from someone that they're making the wrong choice that's actually making them worse? Absolutely compounding the issue is the fact that our cultural beliefs regarding beauty and aesthetics are so fucked up even people who to make a change in the right direction get discouraged because their lifestyle change - even while making them healthier - isn't making them look any closer to what they see on the cover of health magazines. Is it any wonder people just give up? *I agree with Frank in thinking that BMI is bullshit, but it's so commonly used and accepted I cited it for my argument.
I'd say don't sweat BMI if you work out at all. BMI counts your weight, not your lean body mass vs. fat. It would be more intelligent for insurance to substitute body fat testing for BMI and have a sliding scale of acceptable fat percents even though this system too would be limited. As far as what healthy is; healthy is making good choices often. If you're eating junk more often than you're eating vegetables, you're doing life wrong. People tend to make nutrition more complicated than it needs to be, usually just for the sake of making themselves feel better. Most people know what crap food is and choose to eat it for convenience. I'm talking about fried foods and binging on pizzas, rather than eating bread a few times a week. It's fine to indulge, but you just need to stay balanced. Going beyond that, you either care about achieving ideal health or you don't, as all the arguing is showing here. Some people don't want to hear that their diet isn't ideal, mostly because they already know it and are fine with it. Fine. But don't try to argue for a mediocre system just because it's easy and change is hard.
Real food: Animal protein Eggs Fruits and vegetables At its base level has no additives (I'm not talking about spices and herbs - those are naturally occurring things Isn't enriched or created Anything else is pseudo food. And I'm not vilifying you for eating it. But at least acknowledge what it is you're eating. I don't understand what's difficult here, except acceptance.
Moving away from the food topic, I think that kids should have the option of being active, and should be encouraged to do so. And it doesn't have to be a soccer mom taking her kids to 5 different AAU teams. I might have been geographically privileged here, but a basketball costs like twenty bucks. A soccer ball or football is the same, and you really only need one of those to entertain ten kids. I suppose that one of the issues is getting kids together, but that can be accomplished with just a couple of hard-working adults -- not everybody's parent needs to be totally present for their kid to be able to have fun while exercising. I know a lot of people don't like the "everybody gets a trophy" mentality, but if it makes kids want to get out there, I'm all for it. I think a lot of kids would be happier and better adjusted if nobody forced the idea down their throat that they had to win, and replaced it with letting them know that in the long run, that's not what's going to matter. What's going to matter is that they played hard, and that the played fair, and that they had a good time, and sometimes that leads to winning and sometimes it doesn't. What the "winning over everything" culture breeds is twofold -- one, it makes people who aren't ever going to win feel like trying isn't worth it, and two, it makes people who ARE going to win feel entitled. There's always going to be somebody better than you, and there's always going to be somebody worse than you, and really the only person you have to spend all your time with is yourself, so you might as well do you the best you can. tl;dr: more kids should play cheap sports, adults should organize and make them fun
You are perhaps failing to take into account that you are arguing against the conventionally-accepted wisdom that is taught in every primary and secondary school throughout the Western world. This seems to be the 'official' food pyramid which gets the most reposts when you search for 'food pyramid primary schools'. Note that it says that the things you should eat most of are breads, pasta, and rice. Is it wrong? Yes. Do most people believe what they're told, particularly in their formative years? Also yes. Hence the resistance to eating things like natural fat, which the pyramid suggests is OMG terrible for you. Now, if you want to argue that people should be very wary of everything they learn in school I'd agree with you, but that's not the way the system works.
Ok, so why do those count at real food while everything else counts as pseudo food? What properties do the "real food" items have that all other edible substances lack? Furthermore - and this is in regard to your last two points - why is it that food, unlike pretty much everything else humans interact with in the world, unable to be improved with science, technology, and knowledge?
Oh I'm aware that I'm fighting conventional wisdom. I do it daily. But that doesn't mean I'll stop. It just means that l have to acknowledge the uphill battle.
Are these real questions? Like, I honestly can't tell if you're asking me real, honest questions, or if you're just being obtuse.
Ultimately, foods improved by science will probably be better for us. That day is not today. If you follow current science trends in health and fitness, what's right today is often wrong tomorrow, back to the first place the next day, and then in a new place altogether later. A lot of the tampering scientists has done with food has had a LOT of unintended consequences, and we are the guinea pigs. It is quite unfortunate. I believe the reason that Shimmered feels fine fighting conventional wisdom is this; look where it is leading us. It is conventional thought, but not certainly wisdom.
I don't actually believe the bolded part for a second. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to have an awful lot of vitriol and disdain for the overweight, especially with respect to how they eat. It's hard for me to believe that, in your heart, you simply want people to be have the option of being healthy when you don't really seem to respect people who don't fit your body ideal at all.
You are in fact 100% wrong. I have vitriol and disdain for lazy. For anyone who says "I want..." but isn't putting in the work to get. For anyone who doesn't *try* to be better every day. Not thinner. Not prettier. Not ideal. Not cookie cutter. Just a better version of themselves every day. THAT is my passion. Working every day with people choosing to be better makes my job fucking amazing. Yes. I have disdain for people who won't at least attempt to educate themselves about what they're doing to their bodies. I have disdain for people who say "it's too hard..." without once giving it a real honest to God effort. Success is not a finite and definite point. The success doesn't happen when you achieve this or that. The success happens in fucking falling down and then getting up and continuing. That's success. And finally, regarding body ideals - Sir, I LITERALLY busted out...not at the seams but in the actual leg of the pants...of my favorite jeans a month ago. Split them. Typical women's jeans - I can't wear them. Most womens shirts...don't fit me. I wear athletic attire 90% of the time because civilian clothes DO NOT FIT my body. My waist is a 6-8 and my ass is a 10-12. I weigh close to 160 lbs at 5f3, and by most standards, I'm a fucking fat ass. I drink beer and eat cupcakes. I fucking LOVE tacos. Tuaca and lemon is amazing. I drink boba tea. I drink lattes. I ate a piece of cake the size of a football two weeks ago. As a result, I don't HAVE an ideal body. I'm short and stocky and kind of stumpy. One of my clients is a member here (racer-x). PM him and he can verify. Fuck. Look at my pictures and you can see for yourself. I respect and appreciate effort. Perfection is not necessary.
To answer your question- all of those things exist naturally in nature, and for the most part we can (technically) eat them raw. Things that require more processing are not fitting into that definition, so everything else is pretty much out. There are no such thing as bread trees.
Come on. I know this is a piss-taking board, and we all make jokes, but the jokes you choose to iterate and reiterate...well they suggest something. All I really know is the stuff you choose to post, and you know what that says? None of those posts said anything about "lazy people unwilling to change." They just said "fat." A goodly number denigrated fat women, (which is a different issue in and of itself), but it's complete revisionist history to pretend that you haven't been anti-fat on this very board. This is basically the same exact point I made earlier with a different name, but it seems to me if you happened upon Neil Degrasse Tyson tanning shirtless at your pool (and you didn't recognize him), you'd lump (see what I did there) him in with the "lazy and unwilling to change."
This post isn't on topic. Focus: Some people seem to look at food from a stance that is purely physics, aka calories eaten versus expended. While this makes sense in theory, it ignores the fact that different foods stimulate different hormonal responses in the body. Thus, a calorie from source A and B aren't necessarily treated the same in the body. There are a ton of different kinds of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. To put it basically, carbohydrates and fat are fuel for your body and organs, and protein is amino acids whose function is to help repair muscles. If anyone wants to learn some more of the science behind nutrition, which it seems like many people here seem to lack, there are some very knowledgeable people on this board.
A basic understanding of macronutrients is only slightly more complex than understanding calories in calories out. This stuff about food additives is some levels beyond that, in terms of complexity and in terms of relevance to the average person.
Very true. But, you need to start somewhere. Many people I talk to don't yet have an understanding of how the macros work, let alone the more complex issues.
I'm very interested in the nutrition science side of things. I had a vague understanding of 'carbs-as-fuel' and 'protein is useful for building muscle', but the way you've spelled it out here is helpful. I'm not sure if the more general information about nutrition belongs here or if we should start a thread along the lines of Basic Nutrition: Useful Shit You Should Know.
I want a job where people pay me to have disdain for them and occasionally tell them what failures they are! Usually I have to do that on my own nickel. Serious question: how much of that science is actual science, with double-blind experiments and longitudinal studies and the like? Because from the outside looking in, a lot of practitioners seem to have wildly differing ideas about how things work and it's very hard or impossible to differentiate them. This is, to me, indicative of a sort of lack of rigor, or at least a lack of insight provided by whatever data there is.
There aren't any double blind studies and the USDA will make sure there never will be. But there's also no double blind studies to support that eating grains and legumes, which are incredibly toxic to us raw, are healthy for us. Yes, there are differing views within paleo, not everyone has read every single scientific study out there, so naturally the conclusions will not be completely uniform. Also new research comes up all the time so views can change. For example some of the guys were recommending way too much fish oil and nuts a couple years ago and have reversed their position. Yes, that's discouraging, and yes that means it's not perfect, but I'd rather go with the people who admit they make mistakes and admit they're human than the person who thinks they got it all right the first time.