I have a theory/question I'd like input on...

I'm convinced the obesity situation in this country is largely due to the discrepencies in prices of crap food vs. *real* food. I find myself constantly saying "You need to finish that, it's too expensive to waste food" to my kid...when I *should* let her be finished if she's full. And no, I don't over-feed her...the problem lies in that she's 5 and she sometimes says she's starving and then eats 3 bites and is full. (Hasn't quite figured out that "eyes are bigger than the stomach" thing just yet. ;))

But you can go to any fast food place and get just an obscene amount of food for $5. You can't get diddly for that price (nothing of quality, anyway) at the grocery. I understand that even our grocery prices are pretty low compared to some countries, but stuff like this almost makes me put on the :tinfoilhat:. Make crap food available for little $, people get sicker, need more drugs, more doctor visits = big profits for everyone.

What to do? :shrug:

(Yes, this probably should have been posted in GD, but those people are mean to me. :cry: ;))

The fast food industry.
The junk food industry.
The diet industry.
The sickness industry.
The restaurant industry.

They are all enemies of eating well and good health.

What to do? Go find a 'wellness industry' company and use their products.

I'm not impoverished by any means; however, I can't exactly spend the amount needed to feed a family of 4 "the good stuff", either. :(

and as a snack(and breakfast) and vitamins for the kids.

My son hasn't been sick in 3 years.
My daughter (4) hasn't, to my remembering, ever been sick.

Well, I don't think it's too tinfoily to say that it's all done so that all the corporate pockets are filled with filthy lucre...and I see what you mean about the easy availability and cheap price of lousy, fattening "food" -- but since I rarely have any money, I've found that eating decently on a budget is not impossible. It just requires more effort, and a strong resistance to advertising. I'd say it's more that shitty, bad-for-you food is practically shoved down America's throats by means of advertising overkill and over-saturation, combined with peoples' general laziness, or at least the demand for convenience over all other considerations, that is more to blame. It certainly is a sort of vicious cycle of hopelessness and poor health, though.

What to do? I say, don't eat crappy fast food...but it sounds like you've got that one covered already. I dunno. Maybe if more people saw what goes into a fast food burger, or some chicken nuggets....

watched "Super-size Me" together, which I was hoping would have some effect...nada. She just flatly doesn't care what she eats (and I have ALWAYS stressed good nutrition), as long as it's fast and tastes good. She is overweight, not terribly, but still. She just refuses to eat anything that's not pre-processed-packaged-devoid of nutrients. :(

I ate quite a lot of that kind of thing when I was in my teens/early twenties as well...ironically I'm probably pudgier now than I was then, but I'll put that down to aging, and not doing manual labor six days out of seven anymore.

At any rate, once I started having to actually buy groceries, my priorities changed considerably.

I would have thought Super-Size Me would have had some kind of impact, though. Then again, I haven't even eaten meat at all for many years, so I was already disgusted with fast food before I saw it.

it's just another way for the rich to stay rich

:(

tied into eating bad foods. The more obese and sicker we are the better for the food and health industry.:(

This is the substance that makes cheap food possible... it's in nearly every cheap food directly or indirectly, replacing healthier ingredients (sugar, for one) and tainting everything else. Bill Maher hates it, and so do I... but it's almost unavoidable.

I definitey keep an eye out for that when shopping. It's in EVERYTHING. x(

It IS sugar! It's not replacing sugar. It IS sugar.
The Professor

normally consider sugar is. There are those in the health field that believe HFCS is absorbed differently and affects the body differently. Sugar of course is not the only cause of obesity but I think its more than coincidental that obesity has been steadily on the rise since the 70's when HFCS started replacing cane sugar in most products. And another thing is HFCS is in everything. Even in things that are not sweet tasting have HFCS in them.

It's CALLED FRUCTOSE SYRUP. Fructose is a sugar, derived by the reaction of fruit acids and amino acids synthesized by the plant from nitrates in the soil with the help of the enzymes in the fruit.

It's chemically the same family as sucrose which is made by cane and beets in the exact same chemical mechanism, but with different natural amino acids and a a different polymerase enzyme.

Corn has been hybridized for over 150 years for the purpose of increasing sugar content to make it taste better. Hence, SWEET CORN!

It turns out that the high sugar producing enzyme is actually a more dominant trait than originally thought, so all corn produces more sugars than it would have in 1900. As a result, sweet corn is sweeter for direct eating and there's more to extract by the corn syrup people. Face it, part of the attraction of corn on the cob is the great sweet taste, no?

In fact, fructose is an easier to metabolize sugar than sucrose and is in many ways healthier for people. That's biochemical fact. It's a slightly simpler sugar and flows through the Krebs cycle more rapidly, with far lower conversion to glycogen and glycogenates.

White sugar is far more processed in secondary steps than corn sugars, and even brown sugar is processed to greater degree. And, it's a medical truth that people with diabetes can far more easily metabolize fructose and dextrose than they can sucrose. So, for many people, it's the ONLY viable option.

This HFCS scare is a big time canard! It's a completely natural by-product of the extraction of corn. There is NOTHING synthetic about it. If it were synthesized, it could never be made more cheaply than cane sugar. The only reason why it's cost competitive is because the United States produces more corn than cane or beets.
The Professor

HOw can you disagree that it's a natural product that is a SUGAR? Are you so willing to be anti-"the man" that you'll ignore scientific fact?
The Professor

corn syrup. What else was the discussion about? :eyes: And yes, I have a right to disagree. Sorry. Good grief. I wasn't nasty to you nor did I imply you were stupid. You continue using HFCS, I will continue to use sugar when I do use a sweetener, ok?. And by the way I know other professors who feel the same way I do. In fact that is where I got some of my information from. I know, I know... they are idiots, right?

as weight control issues go the more complex the sugar the more your body has to work to break it down, thus: less absorption.

I could be wrong. I am not a Professor. :D

Since cows and pigs and chickens are now fed almost exclusively feed corn, it's changing their chemistry, and it's making their meat that much harder for humans to digest.

:tinfoilhat:

soybean oil can cause weight gain. It has been in use increasingly since the end of WWII. Almost all "vegetable oil" is soybean oil. Also compared to the way we lived before WWII things have changed dramatically in our diet. We have a lot of genetically modified crops. Instead of everyone getting their meat and produce from local sources, everything is mass produced, including animals. They are fed corn which is not their natural diet. Lots more processed foods, larger portions, decreased activity due in large part to modernization and high tech equipment. PE classes were once standard in schools. They are not anymore. Schools used to have cafeterias with real food cooked. Now a lot of them contract their lunch programs to fast food companies, and install candy and soda machines to raise funds for the school. People on the go eat take out, frozen food entries, etc. Cooking from scratch is becoming a lost art.

Citizens of the Western world aren't generally tuned in to the whole preventative medicine/healthy lifestyle way of thinking.

Half your teeth rotting out? No problem, just go to the dentist. He/she will fix you right up.

High cholesterol? Just take a pill.

Your knees and back are bad? Can't be because you're obese. Must be something wrong with your knees/back.

I've heard that in some Eastern societies, you pay your doctor a certain amount a month to keep you healthy. If you get sick, you don't pay. Makes sense to me.

:eyes: ;)

It probably isn't a conspiracy per se, but they certainly don't go out of their way to discourage people's innate laziness. I think the dr. scenario you posted is ace, but it'd never fly here.

...............to discourage people's innate laziness"

That's one of the foundations of capitalism.

:grr:

Its hard to eat healty and only buy organic food when you're broke and hungry

You'd think that by using less chemicals and crap on and in foods, it would LOWER the cost...not put it out of reach. :shrug:

is that since they don't treat it with chemicals, it seems more likely that a larger percentage of their crops are unfit to sell, perhaps they are damaged by insects or what have you...

In a lot of cases, such as chickens and the like, the animals are treated more ethically and therefore less efficiently. So costs are higher to offset cost of production, so the farmer can still profit.


Mass produced food is more unhealthy, but its easier to obtain.

I'll add that it is possible to feed people real food cheaply BUT it takes more time than most people have. I've actually been working on the real-food-cheap thing, in preparation for when I might be a broke student, living with another broke student. I've found I can make food for a lot less than it might cost at a casual sit-down restaurant, but not at a fast-food restaurant.

It extends to groceries, too -- I can make a pizza crust for far less than it would cost to buy a Boboli. Add sauce and toppings, though, and it ends up costing about what I'd pay for a frozen pizza -- less than ordering one, sure, and much tastier and healthier, but it takes longer.

I made a boatload of granola for far less than what that same amount of granola would cost in a box. Sounds good, but a box of generic cereal (again -- more sugar, less fiber, less taste) costs less than the homemade granola and takes no time.

Sigh.

But then that ties into my wacky :tinfoilhat: theory with the whole 'people having to be wage slaves for the man' sorta angle... :crazy:

ps-This thread title has given me a massive Buffy earworm. :D

Hm...bunny stew. That could be cheap and real, assuming you got the bunny yourself.

they surveyed the residents of the poorer neighborhood where the co-op was located and found that due to fast food and the lack of good grocery stores in the area, there were young people who literally didn't know how to put together a meal without processed junk. They lived on pizza, fast food burgers, and fried chicken.

The co-op put on free cooking classes, showing how to make nutritious meals based on one of the cheapest fresh ingredients around--vegetables. I think they called the series something like "Delicious Home-Cooked Meals for a Dollar or Less" (This was the 1970s.)

I don't know what the long-term effect of these classes was, but I do know that more education of that type is needed.

Unfortunately, home ec classes have been another casualty of school budget cuts.

I have friends whose kids live on fast/processed food. And most of them would be unable to cook *anything* without the aid of Banquet or Kraft. :(

I know people like this who would not be able to figure out how to make even a simple home cooked meal.

most people have come to expect. Especially in Italian joints around my area, 15 bucks for a chicken parm cutlet will get you 6 oz of flattened, breaded, and baked chicken, cheese, sauce, and about 2 boxes worth of pasta.

Ok, well maybe one box. But it's ridiculous - partly because it costs about a buck.

Preventive maintenance through better quality food, and regular doctor checkups hurt big pharma companies because they can't sell you expensive pills you shouldn't have needed in the first place- so you'll never see it happen.

:D

:D

edit: see, I can't even spell "of" correctly

So its usually microwave something or a can of soup. I plead guilty of not know how to cook anything. But I have no interest in it either.

and to do so myself...that said, I also smoke a half pack a day. ;)

After working all day, the last thing I want to do is cook. I make whatever requires the least amount of effort and just try to be sure there is a vegetable in there somewhere. The day my husband hires a maid, a nanny, and makes enough for me to stay home is the day everyone eats like a king!

This ripples through the entire food industry and results in low prices for grain based foods, including factory farmed animals which are fed grains. This also accounts for the extreme presence of high fructose corn syrup. These subsidies go primarily to big agriculture and contribute directly to overproduction of grains and their subsequent disposal on American waistlines.

Fruits and vegetables don't get nearly the same support. Beef and milk from grass fed cows is much more expensive. Many fish species are not amenable to farming.

Your suspicions about our food industry are dead on, and there is plenty of government support behind it. Examining facts and drawinf reasonable conclusions does not make you a tinfoil hatter. Sick people who are still functional enough to work most of the time are huge profit center. There is plenty of evidence that diet and exercise are the foundations of health, yet there is no education in schools on good food choices, and physical education is steadily being removed. There's not much to do but make the best individual choices you can, and do what you can to get information out.

than when you see folks in line paying with food stamps...carts loaded with frozen food and mac and cheese dinners. How can you feed a family of 4 on $350/mo* any other way? So sad... :(

(*This is an amount I know a friend of mine with 3 kids got...your mileage may vary.)