What the fuck is wrong with this country, part 68.

[elfs]

Seattle is considering requiring all restaurants to include a "nutrition facts"-like label next to every meal on the menu. As I was driving into work this morning, I heard local talkshow host Dave Ross (710 KIRO) discussing a newspaper article in the PI recently about how restaurants are fighting back. One of the stunts the restaurants pulled recently was to hire a man for 30 days to eat out morning, noon, and night in Seattle, to get all of his nutrition from restaurants, to demonstrate that one could do that, remain healthy, and even lose weight.

"And then," says Ross, "At the bottom of the article is a quote from his dietician. Welllll! I said, if you can afford a dietician of course you're going to lose weight! But for you and me and Joe Average, and I don't have a dietician, believe me, it's a whole lot harder! We don't have any idea!"

I don't normally get angry at talk show hosts. I know they get paid to act stupid (or, in Limbaugh's case, to be stupid). But this one absolutely infuriated me. Jesus fucking Wonder Woman (yeah, let that image percolate through your brain, it'll relieve the tedium), after forty years of "eat less, move more" and all of the other nutrition information we've been given, do people really need to hire a dietician tell them, "Don't eat at McDonald's every freaking day?" and "Don't supersize that," and "Don't stick the entire damn Denny's Ham & Cheese omelette down your gullet" and "For Gods' sake, the Starbucks Frappucino is a milkshake and you should treat it like a dessert and have it maybe once a week‽"

You do too have "an idea." You've got a simple one. Eat less, exercise more. Ignore it at your peril.

Comments

[mundens.livejournal.com]

I feel everyone should be aware of the latest research on what causes hunger (which in turn causes obesity) and how to stop to it. This transcript of a radio interview with Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Paediatric Endocrinology at UCalSF, covers the basics pretty well.

To summarize that article in a very basic way, fructose increases insulin production which in turn makes you hungry, so you eat more. Also fructose, unlike glucose, is metabolised like a fat. Fructose is a major component in table sugar, corn syrup, fruit and soda drinks, and any food that uses sugar, like donuts and cakes.

While I agree that personal responsibility is a good thing, a lot of the argument for regulation is that food producers, like cigarette companies, are well aware of what they are doing, which is increasing fructose content, to make you hungrier, so you buy more.

Eating until you don't feel hungry any more (as scyllacat mentions above) just doesn't work for most people who do not already control their diet in some way, because in many cases the food you eat is designed to make you feel hungrier!