Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Did you expect the little men inside you to work overtime at night?
Despite the fact that the eating at night thing is not true
anyway, how can you think that you'd look visually fatter the next day anyway? You just wouldn't put weight on that quickly. Multiple days? Meh. Weeks, yes.
Quote:
I wasn't trying to argue against the whole "eating at night" thing, I was just making a side comment that I eat just before bed on a somewhat regular basis and still lose weight.
Of course, everyone's different. My dad used to exercise a lot, and be extremely careful with what he ate, but still never lost weight. He probably just didn't adjust his diet and exercise routine enough for his own individual needs, though.
Yakoob on 30/8/2007 at 06:14
Quote Posted by D'Arcy
Yes fett, but you're probably talking about short term effects. In the long term (meaning, if I spend my whole life consuming it) I don't know what will the effect be. And I prefer not to take any risks.
I'm not directing this specifically at you D'Arcy, but it always strikes me as overly simplistic and paranoid when people go "ooh this chemical is bad for you so I am going to avoid it at all costs." The more you listen to people the more you realize there's easily billions* of different little ingredients that could destroy your body within a week* if you consumed a little too much of them. It always seems to me that people pick a few random ones to avoid at all cost, giving themselves "aaah I am eating healthier!" mindset while completly ingoring all the other ones. It seems completly stupid to me.
In reality, anything can be poisonous to us due to too many variables (amount, body craving, genetics, environment etc.) Thus why I do not go after chemicals or read the ingridients all that often. It's common sense that things like burgers and soda are not good for you (which, again, is not true in moderation) and I don't need to scan the ingredient list searching for "chemical X" to determine what is edible and what is not. After all, statistically, approximately 100% of all people who breathe die, so...*
*note: exaggaration
D'Arcy on 30/8/2007 at 09:30
I'm not a healthy food nut, and I'm not particularly worried about 'eating healthy'. But I can't erase knowledge from my mind, and therefore can't avoid making decisions based upon that knowledge. Like I said, when I was in university (where I studied chemical engineering), in Organic Chemistry I happened to read a few things about aspartame. One of the things I remember was a study in which aspartame was linked to the appearance of 'holes' in mice and monkey brains (more or less similar to what BSE does), because of the effects of aspartic acid as an excitotoxin. Maybe I'm being overly simplistic or paranoid, but after getting this little piece of information I could no longer consume the stuff.
Thief13x on 31/8/2007 at 22:17
Quote Posted by BEAR
I and most other people don't thing the government should tell people what to eat,
I don't think the government will actually regulate what we can and cannot eat, rather, they will probably increase local taxes for things like public gyms, nice sidewalks, guards/patrols, add an extra tax to fastfood, etc, if they actually get serious.
Quote Posted by BEAR
what is sad is that so much food that is bad for people is the most highly marketed, lobbied food available. Fast food is everywhere and marketed right at kids.
it really is just supply and demand (good enough Starrfall?:cheeky: ). However, people seem to have an uncanny ability to ignore the facts...
Quote:
number of deaths for leading causes of death in the US (2004)#1) Heart disease: 654,092
#2) Cancer: 550,270
#3) Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 150,147
#4) Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 123,884
#5) Accidents (unintentional injuries): 108,694
... etc
Quote Posted by BEAR
Its not that these types of food shouldn't be allowed to exist, its that its EVERYWHERE, you have to try fairly hard to really eat good and its a lot more expensive than the garbage you can buy for 2 dollars at McDonald's.
I really don't think being tight on money is an excuse. Last weekend I brought home a 5 lb bag of rice for $3.82, contrast with a 1/4 lb cheeseburger for 3.?? alone at mcdonalds, and now we're talking.
Also, I brought home a bulk 5 lb bag of mixed frozen vegetables for another 4 dollars. Having cooked my rice for the week, I literally only used 1/4 of the bag (7 cups of raw rice).
Oh and P.S...Bananas are $0.39 / lb at Wal-mart. Sorry, but I don't buy the cost excuse, even if you're not a huge fan of the rice and vegetables (it doesn't taste as good as a bigmac!) it's worth the sacrafice imho.
Lean meat, however, does seem to be a little more expensive...and thats why I simply eat less of it. Like I said, 80% rice and vegetables.
fett on 1/9/2007 at 02:59
I think I said this earlier, but money IS an issue. One person can eat a fairly limited variety of frozen veggies and rice, but feed a family of four on it - 2 of them kids who aren't going to eat the same thing two days in a row. Plus they eat more often, plus the price of ACTUAL fruit juice without concentrate additives and so on. Contrast all of that with Arby's "5 for 5" deal and yeah, eating healthy is more expensive for a family, all of whom have different tastes and preferences. You can 'make them eat what's in front of them' only to a certain extent - you have to provide a certain amount of variety.
Time is a huge issue as well. Do I want to spend half an hour to an hour (3 times a day) preparing cooked, balanced, fresh meals, or is it easier to toss these corndogs in the microwave for 3 minutes and hit the road? Try finding fast, convenient, healthy food for kids - it doesn't exist. Everything's loaded with preservatives, sodium, sweetners, and corn syrup. Raisins and bananas are the only true portable healthy foods we've found that our kids will eat on a regular basis. And not two days in a row. We've slowed our lifestyle to make time for cooking, but you're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 21, 4-person meals a week without using junk or microwave food? I can't afford it. Bananas are cheap, sure. What about other fruit the kids will eat? Seedless grapes? Cantaloupe? Ounce for ounce, gummi fruit snacks are cheaper, not to mention more convenient.
Edit: (because the above sounded a little harsh) I'm just trying to point out that eating cheap and healthy as a single person is easy if you put the effort in. When you insert kids into the picture, not only does money become a major factor, so does time - you've got 4 (often conflicting) schedules that make it hard to even sit down on a regular basis and eat together. It requires a change in lifestyle and also sacrificing some other creature comforts to make good food a financial priority. When we started eating healthy (and gluten free) our grocery bill jumped about 30% a week. We got rid of cable TV, quit some magazine subscriptions, and cut out the quickie coffees everywhere we went.
As for the food itself, it's a trade off. Healthy cereal seems to be cheaper than the junk cereal, but when you put together a meal of fresh veggies and lean meat, it's far more expensive than buying the frozen microwave meal in a bag abominations. Snack food is where it really hurts because you're buying nuts, beef jerky, trail mix, raisins (organic - no sugar added) and it's more expensive than cookies, chips, fruit roll-ups, etc. Then there's the fruit - kids usually love and will eat fruit, but you can't hand a 4 year old an apple or plum and send him on his way. They have to sit at a table, you have to cut it up, you have to clean it up, then clean the kid up - fruit is messy. Sometimes you're talking a change of clothes, maybe even washing hair (if, like my 2 year old, they like to rub food all over themselves). When you're busy - it's SO much easier to just throw them a little bag of Fritos or a pop-tart. So that's what most people do.
Ko0K on 1/9/2007 at 04:04
I really shouldn't be surprised to see well-informed people on this subject here. :D
I think the current weight gain trend corresponds pretty well to the elevated mean stress level for the population as a whole.
Thief13x on 1/9/2007 at 15:39
good point...sadly, the #1 contributing factor to heart disease is obesity and the #2 is stress.:( I think I'm going to go to grad school, then grad grad school, then grad...well, you get the point, I don't wanna go out there and kill myself:erg:
Fett I really see your point there... I think it is alot easier since I'm single, and since I'll eat just about anything (besides hotdogs). Being 1 of 8 kids in my family, I got used to eating the same thing for 2 days straight whether I wanted to or not, of course, all things considered, my mom did a great job of cooking a healthy variety, but she was stay-at-home too...
I'd be interested to know what they feed kids at daycare and school these days...since these people are cooking for numerous kids, it seems like it would be worth taking the extra time to cook healthy for them.