My Theory on the "Obesity Epidemic"

[liteweightbaby]

A couple of days ago I had what some people would call an "enlightenment."  I was reading my psychology textbook (currently reading about personality types and how they develop), when a flash went through my head.  And that was "I want to solve the obesity epidemic."

Except, the thing is the obesity epidemic isn't the problem.  This is a theory I've

Comments

[pinkminx]

PS. This is a better place to rant than many, so I'll just put this here.

I recently joined this slice-of-life online community that's about people taking photos of their days. And I'm horrified by the "healthy" food people put into their mouths. Iron and calcium enriched cereal, really? How about just eating something that's naturally rich in iron, preferably heme iron, and pairing that with vit C? And then having the high-calcium foods on a separate meal since, hello, calcium still blocks iron absorption.

I'm going to disagree with you on one point, and it's that I don't think that people really know how what they put into their mouths affects them. I keep seeing, over and over, people eating "healthy diets", which is to say low-fat dairy, a lot of fruit both fresh and dried, whole grain breads, cereal, juice, sweetcorn as the "veg" part of a meal, everything enriched-with-this-and-that, with the a small amount of lean protein thrown in with dinner as an afterthought... I cannot imagine what the glycemic load of meals like those would be, but for once I'm not tempted to find out for myself!

[liteweightbaby]

Sorry, but I don't really see the issue with eating these foods in moderation.

[pinkminx]

But that's not in moderation, that IS the whole diet.

I eat all of those foods on occasion, so obv I don't think that edibles should be strictly limited, quite the opposite.

Thing is, the fats-make-you-fat party line has been swallowed hook line and sinker by plenty of people along with the more recent thinking that eating a lot of processed sugar and white flour is not very good for you. What ends up happening is people hear both, get confused, and end up persisting on whole grains, fruit, possibly some veg, and not much more-- nonfat milk for coffee, maybe. This is what two of my friends who are on "diets" are eating: one of them has heard that dairy is the devil and has now cut out all of it, effectively removing the one good source of protein in her mostly vegan diet. A somewhat more limited version, only fruit and fruit juice, was what an ex of mine always went on for a few weeks when he found his weight slowly creeping up. And of course it'd go back down with adequate caloric restriction... and then back up again, because it's awfully hard to sustain a low body weight if you're only doing moderate amounts of endurance cardio and eating a diet that's predominantly carbs, wasting away muscle as it were.

This is awfully common. I don't interfere because I don't want to become the food police, and also because frankly it's none of my business, but this IS the face of "healthy eating" for most people. Those of us who have had that ah-ha! moment of, "no, wait, I can eat goodly amounts of tasty food with joy, I just need to pay a little attention to getting in sufficient protein and not avoid fat like it were the plague... and, oh yeah, preferably do some muscle resistance training" have, I think, a much easier time of eating in a sustainable way -- sustainable in that we can do it, and also in that it sustains our bodies well -- unless we've other addictions that interfere with that.