Obesity

[Battle Monkey of Zardoz]

Yep. I'm sure the black market cigarette biz is booming. More Government is not the answer. Sorry. If you want the Gov to do everything for you then move out.

It's called personal responsibility. I have a BIL. Diabetes, massive problems associated with diabetes. Gov pays for all his medical. That doesn't stop him from ignoring Doctors orders on his massive drinking. His diet that he ignores or his smoking. In fact he will tell you that without .Govs help, he would have to stop smoking and drinking. His disease won't be the cause of his death. It will be his disease aggravated by him not taking responsibility for his situation.

People like this should be left to die. It goes along with what my folks taught. Work or starve. I think all forms of entitlements should stop. If people die, so what. Obese people fall in that group. If you can't pay your own way, it's not the job of others to subsidize your problem; your life. I don't care if the fault is yours and you just can't push away from the table or if it's disease/genetic in origin. Don't care. Not my problem nor my burden to pay for. And if that means people die. So be it.

[Brad Johnson]

With an outlook like that, how do you even have a computer?  Isn't that a modern technological gizmo that just contributes to the decay of society and your own entitlement mentality of having gadgets do the work that Real People (tm) do by hand?

Like I said, you have the option of kitchen gadgets or baby sitting food while it cooks so it doesn't stick/burn/blow up.  You might view the latter as a badge of honor.  I prefer the gadgets, and all I was saying is that for a lot of people, baby sitting food is a no-go regardless of how character building you think it is.

Again, entitlement mentality.  "If it won't happen RIGHT NOW  I'm not going to do it"  *pout pout* etc, etc, etc.

You either do it or you don't.  It has nothing to do with gadgets or convenience.  It has everything to do with mindset.

Brad

[Jamisjockey]

The issue is that under the current system it will have consequences to you and every other tax payer. Having said that, “Do nothing” is a valid option, as long as you are willing to deal with the consequences that will spring up and are springing up in the real, right now world.  Just don’t assume that by choosing to do nothing you are also choosing not to pay, because you are.

Maybe the current system needs to be dialed back.  Insisting that it can't be done is defeatisim.
 Admit that you think the nanny state can make your life choices better than you can for yourself.

[Monkeyleg]

You don't think taxes had any impact on smoking related illness?

Not really. We had a state tax increase two years ago on cigarettes from 75 cents a pack to $1.75 a pack--a 133% increase in the tax and ~25% increase in the price--and the smoking rate dropped less than one percent. They just tacked on another dollar last year, but the results aren't in yet.

I'd say that social pressure has much more to do with smokers quitting than taxes. Cigarettes are more addictive than heroin or cocaine, but I don't often hear coke addicts talking about how they can't afford their habit. Addicts of any kind will forego other things in their lives to support their monkey, and many will die before they'll voluntarily quit.

[erictank]

Eric, have you tried boosting your protein intake? i mean going to 3 to 4 times the recommended levels. i start feeling bad(well worse ) if i don't enough, not going to give any numbers because i don't want to make you sick or something.
this place is kind of odd, but there are some interesting ideas in the forum. i have ordered from the supporting site and they ship fast and there prices are good enough. the vitamin shop is handy if you have one local.

oh and muscle milk is good.

edit: misspelled my own middle name, sorry man.

Been a few years since the effort I was referring to, but as I recall, I was eating right in line with the program's recommendations, so it was relatively-high-protein compared to the typical American diet, but not anywhere near that level.  Wonder if I needed more?  I certainly wasn't burning the expected levels of body fat, and DEFINITELY not building muscle, given the pitiful rise in lifting capacity.  Hmmm. 

Well, I need to do SOMETHING - my doctors (yes, plural - GP and endocrinologist) are making more insistent noises about me needing to lose weight, and I'd love to be around for my stepkids' weddings eventually, and not be stuck in a wheelchair 20-30 years from now (if I make it that long) with my feet amputated, blind due to retinopathy, and on dialysis three times a week because my kidneys are dead.  It's just so FRUSTRATING trying so hard, not cheating at all, and getting virtually no results!  There's still time to keep the really bad stuff from happening, though - just gotta DO it.

Having said all that: Battle Monkey (and others) - I agree with you 100% that my personal medical issues, my obesity, ought to have no impact on you.  It's not your responsibility to take care of me, it's mine.  'Bout all I want to ask from you guys, maybe, is moral support.

[Battle Monkey of Zardoz]

erictank.

My best to you. And I can tell you that people like you, who play the cards they are dealt within the rules, are not the ones who get folks like me fired up. I pray that you are with us for a very long time to come.

Government should not be in the charity business. But it is. And no amount of weaning it off will work. IMO it will have to be cold turkey. And deal with the aftermath. It's coming. One way or the other. We can either stop entitlements all together and deal with it. Or. We can continue and go broke and deal with the aftermath. The difference is only a matter of time.

[Tallpine]

Per cup, White, All-purpose, Enriched, Bleached flour contains:
455 calories
95.4g carbohydrates
12.9g protein

I guess the bugs don't read the labels 

[KD5NRH]

Again, entitlement mentality.  "If it won't happen RIGHT NOW  I'm not going to do it"  *pout pout* etc, etc, etc.

Exactly; people used to cook rice in cast iron pots over wood fires, and it still didn't take up so much time that they couldn't plow fields with a mule or wash their clothes with a scrub-board.

[Monkeyleg]

Exactly; people used to cook rice in cast iron pots over wood fires, and it still didn't take up so much time that they couldn't plow fields with a mule or wash their clothes with a scrub-board.

Don't know if you're being sarcastic, but welfare recipients today have more creature comforts than my family had when I was growing up. Nearly all have color TV's, some have large screen TV's (to me, anything larger than 21" is "large screen"). Many have cars, and some of those cars are very nice. Here in Milwaukee, nearly all have cell phones provided by the county (I don't have a cell phone, although I suppose I could afford one).

Just how much should we give to those living off taxpayer dollars?

[Nick1911]

I guess the bugs don't read the labels 

Flour Weevils seem content to live off of it. 

[KD5NRH]

Just how much should we give to those living off taxpayer dollars?

A 50lb sack of rice, a cast-iron pot, a wood stove, a plow, a mule and a scrub-board.  Then give them my laundry and point them to my field so they can pay for that stuff.

[coppertales]

A moment across the lips, a lifetime on the hips/belly.  If you don't put it in your pie hole, you won't gain weight.  You would not believe how many people will dispute this with me.

I am a competitive powerlifter.  I would like to drop 10 pounds and compete in the 242 weight class.  But, I drive a computer 9 hours a day.  No activity except after supper.  Being an old guy, 65, I just cannot work out more than 3 days a week with the weights I lift.  I do'nt recover like the young guys.  However, I retire in 77 days so that should help alot.  I will be much more active then and be able to spend more time in the gym...chris3

[KD5NRH]

A moment across the lips, a lifetime on the hips/belly.  If you don't put it in your pie hole, you won't gain weight.  You would not believe how many people will dispute this with me.

What, you believe that silly bit about matter not being created from nothingness?

I worked down the hall from a woman who had to turn sideways to get through the door.  She came in every morning with two fast breakfasts and a 2-lite Diet Coke.  Lunch was a family meal from a fast food place, and another 2L Diet Coke, plus another Coke to get her through the afternoon.  She just couldn't understand why she kept gaining weight.

[mellestad]

Might be applicable.  Right now, many of the obesity drugs in the pipeline are actually addiction controlling psychotherapy drugs of one kind or another.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/28/fatty.foods.brain/

Fatty foods may cause cocaine-like addiction
By Sarah Klein, Health.com
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Brains of rats that gorged themselves on human fatty foods changed
Dopamine appears to be responsible for the behavior of the overeating rats
Findings could lead to new treatments for obesity
RELATED TOPICS
Addiction and Recovery
Body Weight
Foods
Healthy Eating
(Health.com) -- Scientists have finally confirmed what the rest of us have suspected for years: Bacon, cheesecake, and other delicious yet fattening foods may be addictive.

A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction, the study found.

Doing drugs such as cocaine and eating too much junk food both gradually overload the so-called pleasure centers in the brain, according to Paul J. Kenny, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular therapeutics at the Scripps Research Institute, in Jupiter, Florida. Eventually the pleasure centers "crash," and achieving the same pleasure--or even just feeling normal--requires increasing amounts of the drug or food, says Kenny, the lead author of the study.

"People know intuitively that there's more to [overeating] than just willpower," he says. "There's a system in the brain that's been turned on or over-activated, and that's driving [overeating] at some subconscious level."

In the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Kenny and his co-author studied three groups of lab rats for 40 days. One of the groups was fed regular rat food. A second was fed bacon, sausage, cheesecake, frosting, and other fattening, high-calorie foods--but only for one hour each day. The third group was allowed to pig out on the unhealthy foods for up to 23 hours a day.

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Not surprisingly, the rats that gorged themselves on the human food quickly became obese. But their brains also changed. By monitoring implanted brain electrodes, the researchers found that the rats in the third group gradually developed a tolerance to the pleasure the food gave them and had to eat more to experience a high.

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They began to eat compulsively, to the point where they continued to do so in the face of pain. When the researchers applied an electric shock to the rats' feet in the presence of the food, the rats in the first two groups were frightened away from eating. But the obese rats were not. "Their attention was solely focused on consuming food," says Kenny.

In previous studies, rats have exhibited similar brain changes when given unlimited access to cocaine or heroin. And rats have similarly ignored punishment to continue consuming cocaine, the researchers note.

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The fact that junk food could provoke this response isn't entirely surprising, says Dr.Gene-Jack Wang, M.D., the chair of the medical department at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, New York.

"We make our food very similar to cocaine now," he says.

Coca leaves have been used since ancient times, he points out, but people learned to purify or alter cocaine to deliver it more efficiently to their brains (by injecting or smoking it, for instance). This made the drug more addictive.

According to Wang, food has evolved in a similar way. "We purify our food," he says. "Our ancestors ate whole grains, but we're eating white bread. American Indians ate corn; we eat corn syrup."

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The ingredients in purified modern food cause people to "eat unconsciously and unnecessarily," and will also prompt an animal to "eat like a drug abuser [uses drugs]," says Wang.

The neurotransmitter dopamine appears to be responsible for the behavior of the overeating rats, according to the study. Dopamine is involved in the brain's pleasure (or reward) centers, and it also plays a role in reinforcing behavior. "It tells the brain something has happened and you should learn from what just happened," says Kenny.

Overeating caused the levels of a certain dopamine receptor in the brains of the obese rats to drop, the study found. In humans, low levels of the same receptors have been associated with drug addiction and obesity, and may be genetic, Kenny says.

Health.com: The real reasons we eat too much

However, that doesn't mean that everyone born with lower dopamine receptor levels is destined to become an addict or to overeat. As Wang points out, environmental factors, and not just genes, are involved in both behaviors.

Wang also cautions that applying the results of animal studies to humans can be tricky. For instance, he says, in studies of weight-loss drugs, rats have lost as much as 30 percent of their weight, but humans on the same drug have lost less than 5 percent of their weight. "You can't mimic completely human behavior, but [animal studies] can give you a clue about what can happen in humans," Wang says.

Although he acknowledges that his research may not directly translate to humans, Kenny says the findings shed light on the brain mechanisms that drive overeating and could even lead to new treatments for obesity.

"If we could develop therapeutics for drug addiction, those same drugs may be good for obesity as well," he says.

[zahc]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/07/americas-moral-panic-over-obesity/22397/

This guy seems to think that the obesity epidemic is just nothing but a moral panic. In other words, people have to have something to bitch about and right now it's fat people, despite that fat people aren't that much unhealthier than skinny people when controlled for other factors, and nobody knows how (IHO) to effectively skinniy people.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

I don't even like 90%.  Back when I still ate that stuff, I looked for 95% or 96% range fed.  But that isn't why I'm skinny.  There was a time when I ate a lot of pizza and high-sugar food, and I still didn't put on significant extra weight.  And now I'm very picky when I shop for food and I haven't lost any weight.  

I'm like you.  I can eat a ton of fatty, sugary food, no weight gain.  I can eat next to nothing, exercise like mad, and no weight loss.

Go figure.

[tyme]

Again, entitlement mentality.  "If it won't happen RIGHT NOW  I'm not going to do it"  *pout pout* etc, etc, etc.

You either do it or you don't.  It has nothing to do with gadgets or convenience.  It has everything to do with mindset.

I'm still boggling at this gripe about slow cookers, rice cookers, steamers, etc.  I guess I don't understand your argument.  The way it reads to me is "you're committing an ethics violation unless you spend an hour or more each day cooking your own food."  I don't even know where to start on that.  I can't fathom why you'd make a claim even remotely like that.

How is it entitlement mentality to want to have machines make cooking easier?  I was under the impression that entitlement mentality had to do with expecting other people to do stuff for you or give you stuff.  I don't expect anyone to cook me food.  That's why I like the above gizmos.  I figure I can be more efficient and have more fun in the time I save than what I paid for those gadgets.

Eating garbage -vs- using kitchen gizmos -vs- spending more time cooking, making less money and having less free time... am I missing an option somewhere?  You're making some fairly strong ethical/moral statements about cooking strategy but you don't actually explain yourself in a way I can understand, so I'm left to guess at your ideal of personal cooking.

[roo_ster]

I'm still boggling at this gripe about slow cookers, rice cookers, steamers, etc.  I guess I don't understand your argument.  The way it reads to me is "you're committing an ethics violation unless you spend an hour or more each day cooking your own food."  I don't even know where to start on that.  I can't fathom why you'd make a claim even remotely like that.

How is it entitlement mentality to want to have machines make cooking easier?  I was under the impression that entitlement mentality had to do with expecting other people to do stuff for you or give you stuff.  I don't expect anyone to cook me food.  That's why I like the above gizmos.  I figure I can be more efficient and have more fun in the time I save than what I paid for those gadgets.

Eating garbage -vs- using kitchen gizmos -vs- spending more time cooking, making less money and having less free time... am I missing an option somewhere?  You're making some fairly strong ethical/moral statements about cooking strategy but you don't actually explain yourself in a way I can understand, so I'm left to guess at your ideal of personal cooking.

I have to agree, tyme.  I am not sure the logic of BJ's statement can bear much scrutiny.  Taken to its logical conclusion, anyone who doesn't sew their own organic wheat, harvest it with hand tools, grind it up with two simple stones, culture one's own yeast, perform similar tasks to obtain eggs, hand-drill a well for water, and then bake it all in a brick oven heated by seasoned wood cut (again) by themselves to produce a loaf of "Non-Entitlement, Organic, and Morally Upright Wheat Bread" is a shiftless no-account.

[Brad Johnson]

Actually it's a direct finger-point at people who split hairs to try and make something look like it isn't.  You know, the school yard five year old who says, "You said not to light Jimmy on fire.  You didn't say anything about burning up Suzy."  You two are trying to do exactly that. "Brad said basic kitchen stuff so he must mean wood stoves and hot rocks."  Give. Me. Strength.  A couple months of scrounging for food and making do with what you have instead of worrying about how you're going to survive because the microwave won't work will change your perspective.  Sounds like you two could use some perspective.  Maybe a lot.

Hearing you two whine about not being able to eat well because they don't have a rice steamer or some other frilly kitchen gadgetry is a laughable example of how far the idiocy has progressed.  Hearing you try to justify your position by trying to turn a statement about basic kitchen amenities into one advocating "wood stoves and such" is just pathetic.  It's an attempt to justify your position by invoking a legalistic misinterpretation of an overall intent.  And it's juvenile.  You have become the five year old on the playground.

In other words, you two know exactly what I'm talking about.  You're just trying to twist words so you don't look like the entitlement mentality boobs your argument suggests.  If you don't understand the concept of being able to eat well with some basic cooking skills and non-gadget-oriented kitchen equipment, then, well, you have a great deal yet to learn and a whole lot of growing up to do. 

Brad

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Wait, are people actually saying you can't eat healthy without a fancy kitchen?

As my old math teacher would have said, it is intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that the proposition under consideration is blatantly false.

I must be misunderstanding something here...

[Brad Johnson]

I must be misunderstanding something here...

Nope.  You're understanding it perfectly.

Brad

[roo_ster]

BJ:

Try the decaf.  (Be sure to use the hand-powered grinder on the beans, though, wouldn't want to develop a sense of entitlement.  )

Your statement has attracted mild criticism because it is an absurd stretch.  You oughtn't be surprised to be called on it.

Wait, are people actually saying you can't eat healthy without a fancy kitchen?

As my old math teacher would have said, it is intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that the proposition under consideration is blatantly false.

I must be misunderstanding something here...

No, folks are not saying "you can't eat healthy without a fancy kitchen."  The question is one faulty or just plain weird ethics.

BJ has made a jump in logic/ethics that was absurd and doesn't like being called on it...from two different posters who usually find agreement on little else in the realm of ethics, morality, etc.  Quite a feat, that. 

For whatever reason, BJ's posts have been particularly incensed on this thread and not tolerant of mild criticism of his propositions, as the 2010-03-20_11:23:41 (in my time zone) post demonstrates.

Do trace the sub-thread back as I did before I posted my latest venture into the absurd.  BJ's post equating frustration with waiting for beans to soak and boil with an entitlement mentality is the one in question.  Tyme's tone was one of a bit puzzlement...

You're making some fairly strong ethical/moral statements about cooking strategy but you don't actually explain yourself in a way I can understand, so I'm left to guess at your ideal of personal cooking.

...but I figured such absurdity just begs for application to the point of absurdity.

[tyme]

@brad

I assume you do not own a microwave?

I'm perfectly capable of eating somewhat well without said gizmos.  Hell, if I wanted to be even more efficient, I could go on a raw veggie/fruit/nut diet.  No cooking time at all!

What I'm not capable of doing is eating a wide variety of consistently-prepared cooked food without baby-sitting the cooking stage or resorting to gadgets.  Part of what inspired me to switch to kitchen gadgets was burning the bottoms of two le creuset pots in about a year.  I did not come out of the womb demanding electric steamers and crock pots.

I think you're not considering just how much of an efficiency boost cooking with modern kitchen appliances can give.  I think you are grossly mis-applying the concept of entitlement mentality to support your pet peeve about how everyone should cook as if they were stuck mid-20th century.

The wood stove analogy is not pathetic and directly applies.  Electric and gas stoves were once new-fangled kitchen gadgets, even if most of us weren't around that long ago.

[Brad Johnson]

I think you're not considering just how much of an efficiency boost cooking with modern kitchen appliances can give.  I think you are grossly mis-applying the concept of entitlement mentality to support your pet peeve about how everyone should cook as if they were stuck mid-20th century.

Thank you for illustrating my point in one single, concise paragraph that is the very definition of "Want vs. Need".

Game.  Set.  Match.

Brad

[tyme]

Want vs need: false dichotomy.

Have fun on your raw food diet, or chopping wood for your next cooked meal.