Fat people Not responsible.

[joshh]

But I'm not over weight either, I'm not a
Buff guy but I can see my toes or my Lil pecker; I'm not that fat for my size, 36 jeans are loose on me. That test truly applies to short people in my
Opinion. I can easily run a ten minute mile. Hell I'm cutting weight and have a
Huge fear of looking skinny being this tall.

Fat people gross me out; I see on my business trip nothing but sick fat fuck southern inbred Texas fucks eating shit
Food and know they are the problem but this Bmi test needs some more work.

The BMI scale is meant for people without muscle mass. The "average" (scrawny) individual out there.

[gwb72tii]

i just watched Fork Over Knives on Netflix, and it's enlightening about diet and health, specifically animal fats and their affects.
so yes, maybe a fat tax would work, but only if we somehow eliminate the influence of the lobbyists inside WA DC, and educate people about choices in their eating habits and how it correlates to health.

[Massimo]

They are going to do something similar here I believe. But the I think the money from the tax will go to subsidiaries for healthy food. Therefore making fatty food more expensive and healthy food more cheap.

I am all for it. I understand that being fat is a personel issue and that the government shouldn't be putting there noise where it belongs. But if this makes healthy food more cheaper then I see nothing wrong.

[Morrison]

I just watched that Forks over Knives on netflix last night. I thought I was pretty well informed on nutrition but some of the info in their shocked me. The correlation data they found between animal protein at 5% ratio vs. 20% ratio and cancer rates was staggering. I've been trying to eat "paleo" lately which calls for a lot of meat. I'm not really wanting to take the plunge into vegetarianism, but I plan on trying to stick to lean meats and in moderation.

[gwb72tii]

i am coming to the end of an "elimination" diet recommended by my nutritionist. I have food alergies, migraines etc and the diet was meant to reset my body by getting rid of known alergenic foods and also purging toxins that are stored in your fat cells. basically, in the middle, for 12 days, you eat fresh vege's and fruits only. no caffeine, no sugar, dairy, eggs, wheat, alchohol etc.
i can tell you this, i haven't felt as good as i do today in a long time. no ringing in my ears, no upper lung congestion, clearer mind, more energy etc.
i can't say i'll never eat meat protein again, but we will be eating far less.

[Stanley Rockafella]

i am coming to the end of an "elimination" diet recommended by my nutritionist. I have food alergies, migraines etc and the diet was meant to reset my body by getting rid of known alergenic foods and also purging toxins that are stored in your fat cells. basically, in the middle, for 12 days, you eat fresh vege's and fruits only. no caffeine, no sugar, dairy, eggs, wheat, alchohol etc.
i can tell you this, i haven't felt as good as i do today in a long time. no ringing in my ears, no upper lung congestion, clearer mind, more energy etc.
i can't say i'll never eat meat protein again, but we will be eating far less.

After going vegan and "cheating" by going back to some meats and dairy stuff, I really start to feel terrible. I used to have seasonal allergies where I'd have to take Claritin to stop the sneezing and congestion, now I have none of those symptoms. And when I eat dairy, i start to suffer from a runny nose...not fun.

[nando]

But I'm not over weight either, I'm not a
Buff guy but I can see my toes or my Lil pecker; I'm not that fat for my size, 36 jeans are loose on me. That test truly applies to short people in my
Opinion. I can easily run a ten minute mile. Hell I'm cutting weight and have a
Huge fear of looking skinny being this tall.

Fat people gross me out; I see on my business trip nothing but sick fat fuck southern inbred Texas fucks eating shit
Food and know they are the problem but this Bmi test needs some more work.

it doesn't sound like you're "fat". obviously, muscle mass is part of the equation.

BMI can be useful for the general population. But, the people who it doesn't really apply to, know who they are. There are people who are skinny, and there are people who are fit - not neccesarily the same thing. :)

me, I struggle to stay up to 190lbs. When I train really hard, I actually lose a lot of weight. In half marathon shape, I'm only around 170lbs (6'-2"). if people just got off their asses more, and ate less shit, it would be much harder to be obese.

oh, I hope I'm still training/running/etc when I'm in my 50's. heh, that's the only chance I'll ever have at being "competetive" in sports. In my age group, there's no hope of coming in anything other than dead last.

[Vtec?lol]

I think fast food should be taxed at 80%. fuck that, make it 180%.
The fact that a double cheesburger cost less than a can of green beans bothers me.

[nando]

well, a can of green beans is full of salt. it's not really great either. plus it's water down/processed crap. I'd rather have fresh veggies any day. :p

[BraveUlysses]

Good read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/sc...o-obesity.html

Carson C. Chow deploys mathematics to solve the everyday problems of real life. As an investigator at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, he tries to figure out why 1 in 3 Americans are obese.

We spoke at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where Dr. Chow, 49, gave a presentation on “Illuminating the Obesity Epidemic With Mathematics,” and then later by telephone; a condensed and edited version of the interviews follows.

You are an M.I.T.-trained mathematician and physicist. How did you come to work on obesity?

In 2004, while on the faculty of the math department at the University of Pittsburgh, I married. My wife is a Johns Hopkins ophthalmologist, and she would not move. So I began looking for work in the Beltway area. Through the grapevine, I heard that the N.I.D.D.K., a branch of the National Institutes of Health, was building up its mathematics laboratory to study obesity. At the time, I knew almost nothing of obesity.

I didn’t even know what a calorie was. I quickly read every scientific paper I could get my hands on.

I could see the facts on the epidemic were quite astounding. Between 1975 and 2005, the average weight of Americans had increased by about 20 pounds. Since the 1970s, the national obesity rate had jumped from around 20 percent to over 30 percent.

The interesting question posed to me when I was hired was, “Why is this happening?”

Why would mathematics have the answer?

Because to do this experimentally would take years. You could find out much more quickly if you did the math.

Now, prior to my coming on staff, the institute had hired a mathematical physiologist, Kevin Hall. Kevin developed a model that could predict how your body composition changed in response to what you ate. He created a math model of a human being and then plugged in all the variables — height, weight, food intake, exercise. The model could predict what a person will weigh, given their body size and what they take in.

However, the model was complicated: hundreds of equations. Kevin and I began working together to boil it down to one simple equation. That’s what applied mathematicians do. We make things simple. Once we had it, the slimmed-down equation proved to be a useful platform for answering a host of questions.

What new information did your equation render?

That the conventional wisdom of 3,500 calories less is what it takes to lose a pound of weight is wrong. The body changes as you lose. Interestingly, we also found that the fatter you get, the easier it is to gain weight. An extra 10 calories a day puts more weight onto an obese person than on a thinner one.

Also, there’s a time constant that’s an important factor in weight loss. That’s because if you reduce your caloric intake, after a while, your body reaches equilibrium. It actually takes about three years for a dieter to reach their new “steady state.” Our model predicts that if you eat 100 calories fewer a day, in three years you will, on average, lose 10 pounds — if you don’t cheat.

Another finding: Huge variations in your daily food intake will not cause variations in weight, as long as your average food intake over a year is about the same. This is because a person’s body will respond slowly to the food intake.

Did you ever solve the question posed to you when you were first hired — what caused the obesity epidemic?

We think so. And it’s something very simple, very obvious, something that few want to hear: The epidemic was caused by the overproduction of food in the United States.

Beginning in the 1970s, there was a change in national agricultural policy. Instead of the government paying farmers not to engage in full production, as was the practice, they were encouraged to grow as much food as they could. At the same time, technological changes and the “green revolution” made our farms much more productive. The price of food plummeted, while the number of calories available to the average American grew by about 1,000 a day.

Well, what do people do when there is extra food around? They eat it! This, of course, is a tremendously controversial idea. However, the model shows that increase in food more than explains the increase in weight.

In the 1950s, when I was growing up, people rarely ate out. Today, Americans dine out — with these large restaurant portions and oil-saturated foods — about five times a week.

Right. Society has changed a lot. With such a huge food supply, food marketing got better and restaurants got cheaper. The low cost of food fueled the growth of the fast-food industry. If food were expensive, you couldn’t have fast food.

People think that the epidemic has to be caused by genetics or that physical activity has gone down. Yet levels of physical activity have not really changed in the past 30 years. As for the genetic argument, yes, there are people who are genetically disposed to obesity, but if they live in societies where there isn’t a lot of food, they don’t get obese. For them, and for us, it’s supply that’s the issue.

Interestingly, we saw that Americans are wasting food at a progressively increasing rate. If Americans were to eat all the food that’s available, we’d be even more obese.

Any practical advice from your number crunching?

One of the things the numbers have shown us is that weight change, up or down, takes a very, very long time. All diets work. But the reaction time is really slow: on the order of a year.

People don’t wait long enough to see what they are going to stabilize at. So if you drop weight and return to your old eating habits, the time it takes to crawl back to your old weight is something like three years. To help people understand this better, we’ve posted an interactive version of our model at bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov. People can plug in their information and learn how much they’ll need to reduce their intake and increase their activity to lose. It will also give them a rough sense of how much time it will take to reach the goal. Applied mathematics in action!

What can Americans do to stem the obesity epidemic?

One thing I have concluded, and this is just a personal view, is that we should stop marketing food to children. I think childhood obesity is a major problem. And when you’re obese, it’s not like we can suddenly cut your food off and you’ll go back to not being obese. You’ve been programmed to eat more. It’s a hardship to eat less. Michelle Obama’s initiative is helpful. And childhood obesity rates seem to be stabilizing in the developed world, at least. The obesity epidemic may have peaked because of the recession. It’s made food more expensive.

You said earlier that nobody wants to hear your message. Why?

I think the food industry doesn’t want to know it. And ordinary people don’t particularly want to hear this, either. It’s so easy for someone to go out and eat 6,000 calories a day. There’s no magic bullet on this. You simply have to cut calories and be vigilant for the rest of your life.

[Kershaw]

that was a good read!

[FunfGan]

If you have no idea what I am talking about then you have never owned a home, had kids, paid your own bills, have no concept of retirement, or are a trust fund child in which case I applaud your parents for their good taste in getting you an E30 but regret to inform you that they cheaped out and should have given you an E90 instead.


/ 2 cents

I wholly agree with you. My only thing to add to that, is that even the smallest things can improve your diet/ weight tremendously. I've simply been laying off eating so much snack food(besides carbs, all I really eat), replacing some of that with healthier snacks. Such as fiber bars, a healthy amount of cheese, granola bars etc etc. But I do think that the issues you brought up, simply that America is too fast passed is totally correct. After visiting Scotland/ Britain many times to visit family, and visiting mainland Europe a month ago, the eating habits are very clearly, vastly different(mind you, Britain is more like America in this respect). Not only what they eat, but how they eat. Even at Mcdonalds, the only people you really see taking their food to go are the Americans, most others actually sit down for a good long while to eat their meal. Americans treat food as something they simply need to do, and just cram it into their day, while Europeans actually make it PART of their day, a special occasion if you would. Unfortunitly, I'm not sure its a very easy thing to correct, but I can tell you that the government has no right to try to do so.

[z31maniac]

Interesting take, sounds kind of "Freakonomics-ish" though.

[Thizzelle]

My fat friend says it's ok to drink diet soda because it doesn't have sugar in it LOL just the fake shit, are they going to tax that? they should just tax everything you do jeez.

[FunfGan]

Posting tax on R3v.