talk about yank obesity.....

just been for a cheapish weeks hol in spain, not bad at this time of year.

place is full of fat people, and guess what, they are all british, all the overweight blobs...

beer, pringles, curries, biscuits, fast food crap food mentality.

even the kids, some real porkers.

no wonder when you look at the sugar products on the supermarket shelves.

its all the food companies fault for giving us trash. we are genetically programmed to like fat and sugar for survival, but as we are now 'advanced', we don't need it as much. and they exploit that, and we love it, together with heightened stress and crises causing binge reactions.

 

well it's not ALL the food co's fault that's a very american point of view. we have a choice as the what to buy and most of the time we don;t even think about the food we eat, just it's price or brand name.
one of the things that the atkins diet made me realise was, all the junk i ate before i started caring about what i consumed. if possible i buy organic, if not then i go for the stuff with the least junk in it, even if it costs a bit more and i end up having to skimp somewhere else.
i just wish i could get my kid to eat in a healther way but she just won;t try anything new. still her diet isn;t too bad - no turkey twizzlers at any rate.
cheers


julian.

 

Don't offer any alternative. And mock her when she won't try things

 

feed 'em lard, keeps me smilin

 

Hi,

I agree with Julian, you can't blame it all on the foods companies. A lot of the blame has to go on parents, adults and the kids themselves. The choices are there but people seem to ignore them.

I do think to many parents are too soft with their kids. They need to give kids a varied, healthy diet from a young age. Plus plenty of exercise. I had this when I was a kid.

SCIDB

 

Well after a US holiday that was not healthy we are just about to start on the Gillian McKeith (You Are What You Eat) diet ('cept its not a diet its just a new way of eating - allegedly) - I've got to go shopping for the stuff tomorrow which will be a challenge. Anyone heard of quinoa - never mind where can I get it from?

Roll on punnets of blueberries for breakfast - I can see this being expensive.

Cheers

Rich

 

The bloody adverts on telly are the biggest culprit if you ask me, complete shite advertised day after day.

Like Julian I try to buy organic as much as poss its no more expensive than buying freezer crap etc. I eat alot of eggs (chuck & duck), chicken, beef, tuna, pasta, spuds, oats, soya milk, fruit and veg every week and my food bill comes to about £25, not bad at all, and most of that is organic.

The size of kids today is getting very worrying, even when I was at school only 10+ years ago there was nothing like as many chunky kids.

 

I found quinoa in my local Safeway/Morrisons.

It tastes good!

There's a simple answer to that one

 

Not sure I totally agree with Julian.

A couple of years ago a friend sent me a link to a website regarding the evils of Aspartame - or nutrasweet to the common man. This artificial sweetener breaks down to two exceptionally toxic chameicals when it reaches a certain temperature - which is less than body temp.

My friend sent the link cos being Asthmatic this is one of the main side effects. The details shocked me and I cut this from my diet completely and after about 6 months almost no asthma - I used to go through an inhaler about once a month - my current inhaler has lasted about 16 months and I no longer need to use it during exercise.

The worrying thing is that this got knocked back by the American food commision until a certain Rumsfeld got into power and then it magically became legal to put it in food. He just happended to be a director on chemical companies board - pure coincidence I'm sure - http://www.aspartamekills.com/

You will be amazed the number of foods and drinks this appears in - put in by the food companies.

 

Quinoa is pretty good (and very good for you) - make sure you thoroughly rinse before cooking or it'll be bitter. It can be pretty much used where you would use rice or couscous. Interesting thing is it seems like a carbohydrate type food, but its actually full of protein. There's an organic supermarket near us, which is where Auntie gets it, but if your local supermarket doesn't stock it your local health foods shop almost certainly will.

People are responsible for their own actions and if they choose to eat crap food and get lardy and unhealthy as a result - then that's the price they pay (and unfiortunately the price the rest of us pay because of the strain on the NHS). Kids however are the responsibility of their parents.

 

had me interested there for a minute.... but at 59g of carb (per 100g i presume) that's about 3x my daily carb intake so a definite no no. oh well back to beansprouts and cabbage as rice, spud and pasta substitutes it is then.....
cheers


julian.

 

the media has a lot to do with this - it's mainly the poor people that buy all the sh*te processed food, but they don't realise that if they buy wholesome raw materials then it'll cost less....but they're too lazy for that...

 

Uncle Ants, people are not entirely responsible in this area, one only has the choice that is offered by the makers, and there is an unbelievable amount of sugar products, all is carbohydrate, cereals, just look at the salt and sugar, all the processed foods, and the kids are genetically made to love this sort of food.

together with less time, more demands, more things to do, we naturally gravitate towards convenience ready made on the fly foods which are massively processed and looking at the ingredients, really are cheap in the sense they have seen little 'real food' and are full of additives, fillers and stuff used to make it look good, give it consistency...stabilisers, colours, emulsifiers, its full of shit basically. and like I said, the stress response giving crafings for chocolate, crisps and all that.

that's the diagnosis, we can only buy what is offered.

The poorer will buy the cheaper stuff which is even worse, couple with aggressive marketing/adverts.

I am asthmatic, too, and a lot of processed rubbish leaves me wheezing.
diluted juices have sodium benzoate/ metabisulphite which are known chest irritants.

they are putting toxic crap in our food as they are cheap.

in fact your food largely isn't food anymore, its just chemical soup.

I don't want to eat rubbish, give me good stuff, none of this aspartame, I would rather eat sugar, real butter instead of monodiglycerides of fatty acids.

Its all so very wrong.

 

Hmmmm. But that's what the labels are for. I look at the labels and avoid anything which is full of shit n sugar - unless I choose not to. All you need is the ability to read.

 

I have to agree with Uncle Ants on this. People are responsible, they do have a choice. Most supermarkets will sell stuff that will give you a balanced diet. There is plenty of stuff in shops that will do this. All you need to do is read the labels.

Parents need to look at what they are giving to their kids.

Again if you choose your food well you can have good convenience food. A bowl of cereal or some fruit is a good example of this. Eating ready made meals won't kill you, so long as you don't eat them all the time.

In a way, it's more fool them. There is plenty on offer if people took the time to look along the shelves. Some people are just too bone idle. A lot of good food dosen't take long to cook. Parents give in too much to their kids. Kids end up eating an unbalanced diet and some do very little exercise. The same is said for a large number of adults.

There is nothing stopping you. Read the labels, have a balanced diet, drink plenty of fluids, have variety in your food and do some exercise. This will benefit most people.

SCIDB

 

I have found that after many years of eating too many sweets and drinking too much fizzy rubbish, I now get very bad headaches from an awful lot of fizzy drinks and sweets. These days I drink oriental teas, water and diluted fruit juice, eat much less in the way of junk, etc.

People are lazy. They'd rather take ragu out of a jar than put some tomatoes (which you can buy tinned without any added junk in them) in a pan with some herbs and let it reduce.

 

scidb,
it's tough to put into practice though, even though i'm only the parent of one child it's still very tireing just for day to day things without a battle of wills over food. personally i make sure she has a vitamin suppliment, a reasonable amount of milk, cerial without added sugar, raw vegitables / fruit, wholegrain bread, etc. as much as possible but sometimes a burger king kids meal is so much easier (only once a week though).

isaac,
are you sure that those tinned toms don;t have added sugar?
cheers


julian.

 

The ones I buy don't, but there may well be some that do. Again, read the label...