And to think…
And to think…they didn’t have McDonald’s in my day.
(William Howard Taft)
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And suddenly, the reason why people write stupid things like FIRST become painfully apparent to me.
Ah, but you resisted the siren call of the darkness… well done!
You did the right thing
Yeah, having no one else’s comments up there kind of makes your mind go blank. XD
Ehhh, yeah, something like that.
the cake…….
you-you-you-
you lied to me!!!
here, have some more cake…
Third !
The full name of jazz crooner/pianist/actor Harry Connick Jr is Joseph Harry Fowler Connick II.
I think Taft gives an inkling of the real reason people get fat (and are fat today). Back in his day, junk foods such as chocolate, sugar, and the multitudes of corn-based products Americans eat today. (Next time you’re shopping, turn it over to the label and see if it doesn’t have the word ‘Corn’ in the ingredients somewhere)
So when those were expensive, usually only rich people got fat. Now the balance has shifted so that the cheapest foods are the ones loaded with sugar and other carbohydrates while the expensive “health” foods are much lower in these. It’s obvious today that, on average, people with minimal wages weigh more than those making 70k-100k or more a year.
You can still eat pretty healthy for very little money if you know how. Whole grains like beans and rice are still affordable, education is key. Poor people used to grow a lot of their own food back then too and now since most of our food is grown out of the country it would be a good idea to start doing that again for many reasons. We also have freezers now so lean meat dishes can be prepared in bulk and frozen for economies of scale. There are a lot of tricks. The junk food with all the sugar these days is highly addicting contributing to obesity and degenerative health problems.
We need to become a self sufficient nation again and not dependent on the fast food industry anymore than we should be dependent on the government!
True, you can cut corners, but there are still plenty of people who can only afford to eat ramen and boxed mac & cheese, or the occasional dollar-menu item.
Yes, I know there are, that’s why I say education and working together with families and friends is key. It would be great to see families working together to grow communal crops or cooking large meals together and freezing the leftovers for the week instead of depending on the fast food industry. Eating off the dollar menu may seem inexpensive and convenient, but there are huge costs associated with that habit that show up later in our health care system.
That would require a great deal of investment in education to teach them, assuming they’re willing to learn, as well as in the startup costs. That would be considered too much “spending” by some. Also, in inner cities, they may not have the space even for hydroponic gardening. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, just that there would be many obstacles before this sort of idea could be implemented. Also, there’s the issue of gov’t telling people what they can and cannot eat. Does it infringe on personal liberties if I just really, really like eating nothing but Funyons and donuts?
Really, I think better education is a key, as you say. Taking people’s best loved comfort food away all of a sudden won’t work. We learned to cook with better oils than lard, but it took time. It will likely take a generation or two to change our food culture.
I see this type of spending which will prevent problems in the future as being a great investment. Creating space in inner cities might not be that difficult, each neighborhood could have a lot that is used for communal gardening. It wouldn’t have to be huge, I know of neighborhoods that do this already. Can you imagine how great it would be if we were allowed to have chickens!? Fresh eggs! But you are correct, change does come slowly. I see this as being key if we are to move to publicly funded health care. It may infringe on personal liberties somewhat, but there is a cost to everything. We all have to be more responsible in the way we feed ourselves and our children or we could bankrupt our government.
There are TONS of benefits to be had in community gardens.
I volunteer in one, and the kids learn a lot! Among the great
lessons learned is a sense of how we all depend on the land.
Kids who garden tend to try new foods, eat more whole and
raw foods, and understand the difference in “real” and
processed foods. There is a great book we have used to set
up kid-sized gardens: Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartho-
lomew. We used the principles from the book, and made
small gardens out of old tires.
We had no idea the project would be as popular as it has
become. We now have elderly volunteers who interact with
the kids. It helps them to pass along their knowledge to the
future generations, and gives them a great feeling of involve-
ment and worth.
YES! That’s exactly what I’m talking about, these are truly worthwhile endeavors. Your project sounds amazing! Can you imagine the impact something like that would have on the entire country if more people could experience truly fresh picked vegetables? I bet McDonalds would soon lose it charm!
Anyway, nothing against fast food in general,
it’s just that it should not be the goto meal for the nation IMHO.
While I agree in principle with all of these comments, those who have never experienced poverty do not understand the incredible amount of stress poor people are under. When the parent(s) of the family is working two jobs just to be able to buy the macaroni and cheese that costs 4 for $1 and the kids start working as soon as they’re old enough to contribute to the family income, there is very little time to work in a garden, whether it is their own or a community garden Most often, poor people know they are not eating healthy, but have very little ability to change things.
One of the community gardens in our area is at a
day care center for people who can’t afford full
priced facilities. The kids taught there are pre-
school. Neighborhoods with community gardens are
safer than those without, because the people get to
know each other, and build something together.
Check the link under my name for a list of advantages.
The plants in the community garden where I volun-
teer are donated (in exchange for a sign) by a
local home improvement/lawn and garden store,
and the water is donated by the owner of the
property. You would be amazed at what a few
people can do, with not much time. You would also
be amazed at how much companies are willing to
donate. Several of them have given us mulch,
edging (for the larger gardens), compost, fertilizer,
etc.
I’ve never experienced poverty, but work with
people who are in it. You wouldn’t believe how
much stress is released when the fingernails get
dirty! Your situation may be unique, but most of
the people I see out there are happy to have
something to do with their kids that is wholesome,
educational, and safe. Most of the volunteers have
gardens at home, and share their excess yields,
as well. The families benefit from the free food, but
that’s just the start of it.
Link to a video (don’t worry you’ll like it) on “Edible Estates” landscaping, which should interest you. It wouldn’t work in my part of the country but it could be very nice in warmer climes.
Though I don’t know why the guy says people find it strange to eat something they grow themselves…but I come from the garden state and my grandfather was a farmer, so. I didn’t realize anyone would find gardening odd.
Funny story about that. In one of the other commu-
nity gardens, a little boy didn’t want to harvest his
eggplant, because he had become attached to it.
They had a lot of ’splainin’ to do before convincing
him that it would be okay, and that the plant would
make more fruits next year.
I like to mix edibles in with my ornamentals at
home. It’s fun to have a watermelon vine roaming
around amidst the other plants. I prefer to eat
things I’ve grown myself, as I know exactly what
has happened to them, what (if any) pesticides
have been used, and, most importantly, *when.*
Did he like the eggplant? Eating it, I mean?
I’ll have to ask. I’m not sure, but I think it
was used in the big grilled pizza party they
had. I’ll check with someone from that
group. I only heard about it at a meeting,
and IIRC, nobody asked.
I wrote about another cool website, but PK
ate my post. If you go to riverwired dot
com, you’ll find lots of fun green articles
about people making a difference. If you
use the search there and type in “green
roof,” there’s a neat video. If my other
post doesn’t appear after a while, I’ll type
the rest again. *sigh*
Does it infringe on personal liberty if I enjoy nothing but Heroin and cigarettes anymore than it does Funyuns and donuts?
We bought a 50 lb sack of whole grain hard white (Prairie Gold) bulgur for $15 years ago, and still use it. Also 200 lbs of whole wheat in buckets which lasts literally forever (some grains of it were cultivated from a Pyramid in Egypt from thousands of years ago and have become a favorite strain, I can’t remember the name of it now, but it’s good) but while it can be just boiled and eaten, it’s best to have a mill or processor, which costs money.
Kamut, that’s the one. Link
Good idea. But it does assume that you have a big enough living space to store a 50 lb bag of anything…
The buckets are bulky but the bag doesn’t take up more space than half a folding chair.
Link to The Science of Sweets…it’s kind of an urban legend about the corn syrup being responsible for fat. It’s a hard one to shake, but it’s really been hyped beyond its scientific value.
Not true, I’m a health food freak and my grocery bill is small. Granted I’m vegan so I don’t buy meat or milk or egg, and I don’t buy mircowave stuff either, I just spend an hour once a week making lunches for work. A lot of people want cheap food AND food that requires minimal preparation time, even someone with a lot of money to spare on groceries might eat a lot of ramen and mac and cheese since they can just throw it in the microwave.
Same for me. I think that people really mean healthy *convenient* food is expensive. Cooking from scratch tends to be pretty cheap, but it takes time/fitting it into your schedule. Some people feel they’re too busy for this, but I think it’s a worthwhile investment. It’s your health at stake.
I understand when it’s all members of the household working full time or over time just to make ends meet. But frankly, all the people I know who are like this prepare basically all their own food for financial reasons too.
I find it fascinating that computer jockeys turn into obesity specialists, epidemiologists, statisticians and dietitians when the subject of fat people comes up.
Fascinating why? Seems pretty unexpected to me.
Ehrr. I mean expected. :p
Ah, the pissed kid again.
Pardon?
It’s me talking to myself. Shh!
Whowhatwhere?
It’s a pretty big topic nowadays, Danbala, what with the fat acceptance movement gaining mainstream credibility, and some of the science being debunked. I’m linking you to a really interesting article – I have probably linked it before, but it’s well worth reading (good books are Gina Kolata’s “Rethinking Thin” and Paul Campos’ “The Obesity Myth”. Even Penn and Teller did a “Bulls***” episode on fat.) The starvation experiments have held to this day, and it really had held true that there is no known, safe way to make thin people permanently fat or fat people permanently thin. Even gastric bypass turns out to have weight regain as a known side effect, and the *average* regain is 50%. The International Journal of Obesity reports that 98% of ALL people who lose more than 70 lbs regain all of it back within 5 years, and the rest within 10 – it appears to be a genuine anomaly that someone keeps it off permanently. I know they exist, but not many, and they have to make a life out of it. I think the article will interest you.
Plus, the dangers of bypass are very stark – not only death from the surgery but permanent malnutrition and rickets, and all the attendant problems of starvation. I know some people are caught between a rock and a hard place when they weigh 500 lbs so it’s understandable why they do it, but doctors are pushing it on people who are only a little overweight now (and mistakenly touting it as a cure for diabetes which is a whole other story), and it’s really horrible.
I’m not a doctor but it’s something I’ve been studying for the past year and a half
I’m significantly overweight but at almost 6′ tall I do, truly, carry it well. (A former coworker refused to speak to me for more than a week because she thought I was mocking her when I told her that I bought the skirt she was admiring at Lane Bryant. She was a size 16 and I was a size 18, and I outweighed her by at least 30 pounds, but at her 5′1″ compared to my almost 6′, she *looked* significantly heavier than me.) I was happy, and looked great, at about 190-210, despite the charts saying I should be about 160.
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About seven years ago, I got astonishingly sick with what the doctor said was mono. After a month of being too exhausted to get out of bed, most days, I was horrified to find I had gained nearly 50 pounds. The most surprising part of all was that I’d hardly eaten anything – most of the time I was literally too tired to chew, and I just had zero interest in food anyway.
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I starved myself and lost about 15 pounds, but then I got sick again – and gained another 25-30, despite, again, barely eating.
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And it continued. My doctor didn’t believe me, naturally, until he had me hospitalized for one of the episodes, on a strictly enforced 1000-calorie diet. I should have lost significant weight, under his assumption that I was stuffing ice-cream sundaes and twinkies into my face nonstop. In just under a week in the hospital on that strictly controlled diet, I gained almost 10 pounds.
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We’ve never figured it out, and I’ve given up trying to. I won’t say I’m happy with my weight or accepting of it – I’m not, at all; this new person in the mirror is not the Me I expect to see. But I’ve stopped obsessing about it and I refuse to “diet” per se. I try to watch what I eat for health content, but if I want seconds I get them. If I want ice cream, I have some.
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Bizarrely enough, I can eat just about whatever I want without gaining an ounce – until I have another “episode” of the exhaustion, weakness, fever, pain, lethargy. I’ve found that if I force myself to eat when I have an “episode” of whatever it is, I actually gain less weight, and I get better quicker.
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My mother is constantly clipping “lose weight now!” articles for me in the mistaken belief that she’s helping. She has been on one diet or another – including starvation diets where she’d go for four or five days of eating nothing, then “binge” on a single scrambled egg – ever since I was in grade school. (I turned 40 this year.) She’s been diagnosed with osteoporosis and thyroid disease, and keeps insisting that I get checked for those as well. She’s also borderline diabetic.
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With the irregular weight gain, my thyroid has been tested to within an inch of its life, including bloodwork, scans, and biopsies. Perfectly normal. My bone mineral densities are “beautiful,” in the words of the examiner. My glucose is always normal, tending towards low. My blood pressure does run a bit higher than it used to, but still “excellent” according to the doctor.
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My mother says that with her history of osteoporosis and thyroid disease, I am at risk too and feels that the tests are wrong. I’ve tried to point out to her that I don’t have the history of near-constant dieting and starving myself that she does. I strongly feel that her medical problems are related to the years of fad diets and starvation, messing up her metabolism and depleting her body’s reserves of various minerals and vitamins.
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I figure, I have enough weird medical shit going on as it is, I’m not going to add food-deprivation to that mix. I’d like to lose weight, sure, but at this point in time, I’m just focusing on eating more healthy foods, boosting my immune system, and trying not to gain.
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I know a woman whose blood pressure is regularly in the 90/60 range, and her pulse is usually in the 50s-60s. Her vitals would indicate that she’s a very healthy and athletic person, which she is… but she also weighs more than 400 pounds. She says her doctors will ignore the vitals readings and lecture her on the risks of high blood pressure and heart disease based only on her weight. They tell her to exercise, ignoring the fact that she hikes, swims, and bikes almost fanatically.
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Certainly I don’t compare myself to her in terms of health – I get winded walking more than a block… but I always have, even when I was considered *under*weight for my height in my teens/early 20s. She’s much more active and overall healthy than I am, despite weighing 100+ pounds more than I do. But the point is, the same thing happens to her – doctors ignore the data that doesn’t line up with their “fat people are just lazy, undisciplined, and unhealthy” preconception, and they make their diagnoses and recommendations based solely on her weight, instead of any of the other factors.
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All this verbiage to say – YES. For all the studies and all the articles in all the magazines and all the “common sense” and “conventional wisdom,” obesity is still not NEARLY as well understood, or as simple and cut-and-dried as a lot of people would like us to think. Thanks, Annie, for the links – I’m going to do a bit of turnabout and give my mother the “Rethinking Thin” book. Maybe she’ll stop giving me the damn “two sticks of celery a day” diet articles.
Oh my goodness, you’re more than welcome – before I finish, let me add that with “calories in/calories out” – it’s nonsense. Most of the processes involved (brain activity, et. al.) are **involuntary** processes over which a person obviously has no control whatsoever. Rather than that simplistic formula, at that junkfoodscience blog, I believe, she has posted somewhere a much more accurate (and far more complex) formula that actually includes the involuntary processes that account for the *bulk* of calories.
And now, please allow me to offer you a little personal history and a suggestion which I hope will give you a little help!!!
I too, got very ill some years ago, and kept getting sicker. No one could figure it out even though I ended up in a wheelchair and eventually bedridden and eventually flatlined. It took years. Only when I flatlined and the hospital tried to *send me home* without figuring it out and I fought them did they finally send me a doctor who asked the right questions and did the right test. It turned out to be a completely inexplicable and very severe form of endocrine deficiency – I had no calcium or potassium or magnesium in my body and required 6 days of hospitalization to keep me alive and restore my levels. (Boy was that a hairy bill LOL) But at any rate, I am MUCH better now and can work and am not so crippled up anymore. Oh, did I add that while I hadn’t eaten solid food (only a bite or two a day which I promptly threw up) for nearly a year, I had GAINED a significant amount of weight? Some of it was fluid, but not all – like I said, involuntary processes account for most of our calorie output. And you’d think I was burning calories because my muscles were bunched up and my body was running hot to the touch all that time!
At any rate, can I encourage you to try seeing an endocrinologist? They are amazing puzzle-solvers, and oftentimes they figure out weird things that NO one else even thinks of – at the very least they can probably point out to you who could help you. Don’t give up on a solid and explicable physical answer for yourself if you can help it, is what I’m saying. Had I given up I would have died and they would have kept telling me “fibromyalgia” when in fact I was seriously in physical danger. Good good good luck to you – and please let me know if you finally get the help you need!!!
I’m glad you shared your story – I cringed a bit when I hit post and realized now only how long my comment was, but how personal. Eek.
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And yep, I’ve been to numerous endos. The first one I went to, after the first time I got sick, told me that because I work from home (medical transcription) I’m “obviously stuffing [my] face all day” – those were his exact words, and my face still burns with (misplaced) shame when I think of it – and that I needed to walk or jog for two hours a day.
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I understand encouraging people to eat less and move more, and usually it certainly can’t help, but two frigging hours a DAY, when I’m presenting to you with a main complaint that i’m so exhausted I can’t stand up long enough to take a SHOWER? I did ask him if he thought I was hiding a third arm that I’d use to “stuff my face” while the other two were busy typing for 9+ hours a day, but he ignored me. It’s not like you can type and eat at the same time, you know?
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After that experience, I was reluctant to go do any more endocrinologists, until my mother tested positive for Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. So I went to her endo, figuring that the “family history” would be especially weighted (ha) since we were both seeing the same endo. He was quite nice, and they initially were all but certain that I had a pituitary microadenoma – but the MRI came back clean.
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Over the years I’ve gone to three or four other endos, usually at the urging of one of my doctors who’s a really wonderful guy and practically ITCHES with the frustration of not being able to figure me out. He even started me on thyroid replacement for a few months, on the suspicion that I was technically hypothyroid, but just not showing up for some reason on the blood levels. I went home walking on air, certain that this would be the “fix,” but it wasn’t. We tried three different formulations for two months each, with absolutely no change, before giving itup as a dead end.
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The most recent endo I’ve seen is a female, my same age, who is also obese and is making a name for herself in our city for her rejection of the traditional perceptions of weight. She, too, said she was betting it’d be a pituitary microadenoma, but that MRI came back normal too. She went ahead and did an insane amount of bloodwork (I had to go in on two separate days to get it all completed) and a biopsy – all of which was perfectly normal.
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All my vitamin and mineral levels are always normal, except for my ?B12? levels a few times. (B-something, maybe B6, but I think B12.) I was on a course of twice-weekly injections for six weeks, and at the end of those six weeks, my levels were even LOWER than they had been to start with. I run a low-grade fever 24/7, but have no indications of any infection, local or systemic.
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None of my current doctors doubt that there’s something wrong, but they can’t figure out what it is. Several have suggested I go to the Mayo Clinic, and if I could afford it I might, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they wouldn’t find anything either.
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Anyway, thanks for the good wishes – I do appreciate them. And thanks again for the links and the posts – I know full well that most people will say some variation of “Stop being in denial about being a pig with no self-control” but I hope that if people like you (and me?) continue to try to show that there’s a bit more to it than that, maybe one day it’ll all be taken more seriously, and the mysteries will be solved.
Argh. Third paragraph: *certainly can’t HURT, and will probably help.
Well, it depends. I couldn’t have eaten any less during that year lol. Fat and hungry are not mutually exclusive
LOL even my correction was incorrect.
I meant exercise – generally speaking, exercising improves various body functions and imparts a sense of well-being, and in the absence of something like major cardiac or pulmonary issues, etc, it at least won’t do significant damage to one’s health.
Now I’m coming up with all the exceptions to that (degenerative joints! being attacked by dogs! sunstroke!) so I’ll quit while I’m ahead… or, at least, not any further behind than I’ve gotten so far…
degenerative joints! being attacked by dogs! sunstroke!
Lol!! Yeah the friend I mentioned at First Do No Harm has trouble finding exercises due to long-ago joint injuries, so she’s kind of stuck with very few options on that score. I never thought of the dog thing though hehe.
Ugh, well here’s hoping you make it there and they figure it out in the end!!
There are several varieties of fat acceptance sites (with varying political ideologies) and there are doctors and nurses waking up to the truth of the matter, too, so hang in there. Despite Meme Roth’s screaming, like I said, FA has been making it into the mainstream more and more.
One of the most heartrending facts is that fat people die for lack of medical care when doctors do not listen to them and merely try to get them to lose weight and it’ll all go away – there is a whole site dedicated to that reality, called “First, Do No Harm”. I’ll include a link to that one as well. A dear friend of mine is on the staff there.
I have chronic back pain, and several doctors have tried to blame it all on my weight. Truth is, it started when I was 14 and clinically underweight, and was exacerbated when I fell into a perfect, crotch-touching-the-floor, forward splits position while six months pregnant and ruptured two disks and tore a ligament. (Stepped on a piece of clear plastic, leg shot out in front of me, new center of gravity, nothing to grab hold of – it’d be AFHV-worthy if one didn’t know how much pain it’s caused over the years!)
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As a result of that back injury, I couldn’t move around for a while, and so I really packed on the pounds in the last three months of pregnancy. One of the (military) doctors told me that they’d have to schedule a C-section because I had gained so much weight that “the birth canal [would be] blocked by all the fat.” My hand to God, those were his exact words… I weighed 198 pounds that day (again: ~6′ tall). I wish the Today Me could go back in time and punch that bastard right in the mouth. (The Then Me was so emotional and under so much stress that she just burst into tears.)
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Doctors are INSANELY blind and sometimes (perhaps deliberately?) crule when it comes to blaming everything on “lose some weight.” Again, for most people, no, it won’t hurt to exercise a bit more, lose a pound or two – but for a LOT of people, their weight is a side issue and not necessarily related to what their actual problem is, yet the problem gets overlooked anyway.
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The blogger Mimi Smartypants mentions how she went for her annual checkup, and the doctor told her that while she’s still within her “healthy” range, it might be a good idea for her to try to lose 15 pounds. Mimi asked her if the standards for a healthy weight had changed since last year, because last year, when she weighed *exactly the same,* the doctor had said that although she’s within blah blah, lose TEN pounds. (Mimi’s miffed now, because she’s inadvertently lost some weight and she doesn’t want the doctor to think she took her advice seriously.) “Lose some weight” has replaced “take two aspirin and call me in the morning” for stereotypical medical catchphrases, I think.
Correction: Not only did I spell “cruel” wrong, but I unfairly and inaccurately generalized all doctors as being that way. Should say something along the lines of “too many doctors are…”
Ah, yes, the ever-changing BMI standards – about ten years ago they arbitrarily changed them making something like 30 million people go from “overweight” to “obese” literally overnight! The fact is that the headless fatty on the top of so many obesity epi-panic articles is a straw-fatty.
Oh my god…that injury is excruciatingly horrible just to read – I am cringing – horrific!!! And don’t worry about going easy on doctors – like I said, people are dying because of this fake panic. The bit about birth? Utter nonsense – you know they didn’t used to spout that crap even 20 years ago, really. It’s a brave new world. Ever seen the Venus of Willendorf? She’s the ancient symbol of fertility, and she am fat – it used to be considered a good thing for birth. Our own government is declaring war on fat people (the War Against Obesity) and it’s not good. I’m gonna give you just one more link, but it’s a good one.
Tell her to strap on some ankle weights or carry some weights in her pockets when she sees the doc to make up the difference. XP
And you are right, you can not judge a person’s health or vitals by looking at them or knowing what they weigh. Not by a longshot. I know many people who are upwards of 400 lbs who are quite healthy, and many thin people who are very ill. You just don’t know by looking
Oh, and then there are so many “Obesity Paradoxes” that they aren’t a paradox anymore. The most famous of which is that fat people survive heart attacks in greater numbers and thin people die of them more easily. But there is an entire series of “Paradoxes” at the junkfoodscience site, which is a great resource. Point your mom to some of those
Your big words make my head hurt…
I just meant I don’t think it’s strange that “computer jockeys” tend to a)be interested in the concepts of health and fat, and b) turn into “specialists, epidemiologists, statisticians and dietitians”.
I actually agree with you…
*pretends to faint*
*dispenses with sarcasm*
I’ve read both of the books you mention, and thought that both authors brought some interesting information to light.
However, I will say that I don’t think that’s quite the whole picture. I know some skinny people who eat junk food and some fat people who eat what appears to be a healthy diet (obligatory disclaimer: In neither instance do I follow them home and spy on them through their windows, so what they eat when I’m not around is a matter of speculation).
Food manufacturers are in business to make a profit, like everybody else. If junk sells, they’ll continue to manufacture and market junk. If the aggravated guy or gal with three jobs buys microwaveable foods because they don’t have time to cook a meal, let alone tend a garden, they may be aware that it’s not the healthiest lifestyle, but what choice do they have?
I’m having trouble finding it at the junkfoodscience blog but there was a lengthy report on the biggest most comprehensive study to date on healthy eating – it was 8 or 12 years and had thousands of women, clinically controlled and not self-reported, not a data dredge; at the end of the study the women who had maintained what we think of as the healthiest eating habits had the same rates of all the various illnesses as those that just ate what they wanted. Really the only thing that turns up regularly is to be sure you get enough food so you don’t develop deficiencies – even the sharp decrease of table salt has proven problematic because of the iodine deficiencies, which used to cause retardation among entire populations. Anyway, there’s a link that challenges our ideas of “fake food”. A variety of foods is good, of course, but our ideas of what is bad sometimes get rather hyped.
Because often ‘computer jockeys’ trained as engineers, marine biologists, mathematicians, statisticians, health care professionals, dieticians, etc…
It’s reverting to type. My training is stats, production engineering, and mathematical computing. I stopped doing it because there’s no real money in it outside academia, and that way lies madness… So, I chose something else that used my other talents.
I had a history teacher whose father had Two-Ton Taft as a Latin professor. The boys in his class would take turns telling jokes in Latin, purely because when Taft laughed, his entire frame bounced like a rubber ball …
Heh, that’s pretty cool. I would have liked to see it.
Meh
Hmm…I’m not big on fat-bashing (or blaming McDonald’s for people’s body types), but this one isn’t too bad. Not a gut-buster. Heh.
And yet he died at the age of 72.
Had he been thin, maybe he could have lived long enough to know what it’s like to get Alzheimer’s, or to lose the ability to use the toilet by yourself.
What a tragedy for him!
Yeah, I’d rather live doing whatever I want until I’m 70, than to live until Im 90 forsaking all the good things in life and still ending up forgetting my childrens names in the end.
That’s so true. Not that there’s anything wrong in the first place with the age of 72 – in 1850 the life expectancy for someone who had reached 40 years old was 69 years. In 1955 it was 70. In the Book of Psalms it was noted that men lived about 70 years. Now it is close to 78, but there have been a lot of life-extending things happen. But still, what good is it to live an extra 6 years and be living a life with few to no pleasures?
I rather aspire to be my mother’s friend–95+, still totally with it, still can hear and see well. And she uses the coolest walker in the world, but only as insurance to prevent falls, and to carry around her book and cellphone.
You know that Taft lost a crapload of weight after he left the presidency, right? I guess he just didn’t get so many pictures taken after that…
Hmm, no McDonald’s?
How can you possibly get fat without fast food?
Sounds like the pundit kitchen guardians let through a conservative lol!!!
Because McDonald’s is the only cause of obesity, really… *eyeroll*
A few years ago, I was diagnosed with diabetes. My doctor told me to loose weight; indeed, I was fat then. I’m still heavier than I would like to be.
I cut starches and sweets out of my diet, and bought a good used bicycle. Every time I went on an errand I asked myself, “Can I do this on the bike?” If I could, I did. I lost 10″ off my waistline and had to send all my trousers to Goodwill. My diabetes is under control without any use of drugs, and I want to keep it that way as long as I can. Every time I hear a doughnut or a hot fudge sundae or a Whitman’s sampler or a plate of Toll House cookies calling my name, I say to myself, “I LIKE my eyes; I like my kidneys; I like my fingers and toes; I want to keep them.”
Type II Diabetes, Hypertension, Arteriosclerosis, Osteoarthritis, and a host of other conditions that were formerly almost always seen only in the middle aged and elderly are now becoming more and more common in adolescents and even in elementary aged children. There are two elementary schools and one middle school that I pass regularly, and–while I haven’t made a survey–it seems that the vast majority of children at both schools look like the Pillsbury Doughboy or the Michelin Man. When I look at pictures of schoolchildren only ten years ago, far fewer were pudgy; when I look at my own HS yearbooks, I see hardly any fat kids. While genetics may be a part of why one is lean or plump, it certainly isn’t the whole story.
Of course in our youth, there were no soda or candy machines in the school hallways. And they didn’t cut phys ed classes back (or out) to try and save taxes…
TIME magazine recently did an excellent article about childhood obesity. Well, more like an special..there were a number of artciles. I blieve it was the May or June 2008 issue. Childhood obesity is on the rise, and much of it is to do with poor nutrition knowledge at home. But the real culprit is marketing. Children are so suspecptible to “cool” marketing, and food companies use it to their advantage. If you have time, watch a kid’s show on TV (like a cartoon on a Saturday morning) and count the junk food commercials. Parents can’t win that fight, they are outnumbered by the influences reaching to their children.
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That wasn’t covered in the TIME piece, as I remember, but in a Dateline episode (I don’t know the date). It was aboslutely fascinating. I used to go to schools to teach basic nutrition, and the amount of overweight children is staggering. Parents: Having an overweight child or baby IS NOT a sign of health. Fat babies are NOT happy babies!
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Some of the best food advice I’ve seen? If your grandmother (or nowadays your great grandmother) wouldn’t recognize it as food, it’s not food. It’s processed cr*p.
Oh, Jeebus. I lost count of all those typoes. I blame a sick spouse leaving me exhausted by the end of the day…yeah, that’s it. Let’s blame the sicky.
No mcdonalds isn’t the only cause of obesity, but without a national nutrition program (and i’m not talking WIC) and people getting together having mcdonalds being that accesible CERTAINLY isn’t helping the nation. i mean think of all the abandoned buildings that are sitting in inner cities. They’re probably if you think about it, crack houses. Knock them ALL DOWN (some parts of philly have WHOLE BLOCKS of them just…empty and boarded up!!) and build a huge community garden. That’s another way to try to attack the drug war and get the nation’s poverty some healthy food and learn a skill or two. Am I right? some people don’t even know they qualify for food stamps so that they can GET something other than mcdonalds for dinner after surfing the couch cushions for change. I think i’m rambling here…
There are also those women that can’t cook what about them? They constitute ordering pizza, chinese, mcdonalds, KFC or something coming out of a box as “Dinner” being “done”. I home cook everything every day, whether I want to or not because I know all that stuff is REALLY bad for you (Watch supersize me, it made me SICK) esp if you eat it every day. Not only that it’s EXPENSIVE AS HELL (that shit adds up quick when you go thru your checkbook).
It’s cheaper to buy lean cuts of chicken or beef, I buy yes i will admit frozen veg but i steam them till they’re done, NOT till they’re mush. I will eat brown rice, or sometimes skip the starch all together. And i’m 5′8 and still weigh almost 260 pounds. Have had every test ran, doctors all come back with the same thing: “Huh. That’s strange. Everything seems normal and yet you’re huge”. Thank you captain obvious. But the good news is since I got divorced two months ago I dropped TWO PANT SIZES. So that’s what, the equivalent of 20 pounds? It’s AMAZING what stress will do to your body, and what a relief it is NOT HAVING IT!!!
Don’t they teach Home Economics in the schools any more?
Probably not, Home Ec (at least when I was in school a century ago) was traditionally a class that girls took. However, to buck that trend, a few of us decided to invade the class for a semester. We ended up being there for 3 years and enjoyed every minute of it! Especially since the girl to guy ratio was something like 6-1.
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I don’t really know if they still have home economics, if they do I’ll bet it’s not like it was 30+ years ago.
My Dad’s class was one of the first at his school which taught boys Home Ec… But since they were boys it went something like “how to make toast”…
…AND THEY DON’T SEW ENOUGH IN HOME EC…. Endless bloody rock scones and curries and lasagnes while those lovely shiny sewing machines sit there, hardly used.
my home ec teacher (mind you I am 30 years old) was AWESOME. she no longer teaches at the high school but she still lives in our neighborhood. She was one of those very creative teachers who could make a dollar out of fifteen cents (I’m not kidding). The school did not SPONSER the home ec program, she bought our groceries OUT OF HER SALARY because the school wouldn’t fund the program so she did. She said that we need to learn how to do all of these things in order to be considered a self sufficient adult instead of asking MOM to do it for us. We had to usually buy our own material for sewing one year we made a pair of shorts, then we did book bags, then a button up shirt. She was the coolest. She would work with us on side projects, if you wanted to make something BIGGER and badder (like, a prom gown…) you could take your study halls with her. She would work with you after school. it was AWESOME.
Now they don’t even have a life skills department. Then again none of the old teachers that were there when I went to school even teach anymore and sadly everything has gone down hill. As it stands i loved it when I went to school there, but now i wouldn’t even dream of sending my kids there, they got the lowest scores in the PSA test.
PSA? What does that mean?
For me it means ‘Prostate Specific Antigen’, but that’s because my father and my paternal uncles all had prostate cancer.
I meant to say PSSA pennsylvania state school assesment tests every state has to take them, it’s yet another measure of that failure we call “no child left behind”. In the school i went to as a kid, trust me, they all fell off the turnip truck no joke. Our school next to like two others scored the lowest in our county all the time, the teachers just didn’t care. You were right about the PSA test… i looked at that and went “DOH!” I left off an “s”!
they did at my school but all we did was make a pillow for the whole 2 years i was there. we did do some kitchen stuff, but all that came down to was making a fruit smothie. yum.
i dare the grammar nazis to come after my lack of caps. i always seem to get at least one.
So why not use capitals then?
They also never got to that tricky shift-key part of the keyboarding in that class?
I don’t care, at least they aren’t capslocked. That I hate…
Agreed about the CAPS, but I think it’s the ultimate in laziness if you can’t make that minuscule effort to hold the shift key…
whataboutleavingoutthespacesbetweenwordswouldn’tthatbelazier?
pillows and fruit smoothies? I want a fruit smoothie!!! No fair!!
Akshully in our home ec we did chicken noodle soup, spaghetti, yknow THE EASY STUFF…. no sesame crusted hamachi tuna (maybe cuz it was expensive) and we never EVER got to use sharp knives to dice an onion the teacher always had our onions diced as well as the carrots or whatever…. mainly because i live in an inner city suburb of pittsburgh that has quite rapidly gone to hell in a handbasket…. if the kids will throw PENNIES at each other in hopes of blinding (or seriously hurting) another the second the teacher turns their back (or the lights go out which was often) why should she trust the little heathens with knives?
I saw my old home ec teacher yesterday, as it turns out the school discontinued the program (and her position) the year after i graduated.
*wakachikawakachikawakachika*
Taft!
*Taft!*
Man, that Taft is one fat mutha-
*shut yo mouth!*
Hey, I was just talkin’ bout Taft…
*we can dig it!*
He’s a complicated president
But no one understands him
But his cabinet
Ok… best post EVER!
You, sir/madam, are a genius….thanks for a good laugh!
Pure genius! And with 1,000 times more lol power than the caption
He also got stuck in a bathtub, so I wouldn’t be looking to him for answers on weight loss.