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In 1980, 46 percent of U.S. adults were overweight; by 2000, the figure was 64.5 percent: nearly a 1 percent annual increase in the ranks of the fat. At this rate, by 2040, 100 percent of American adults will be overweight.
My current BMI is 27.1 (calculate yours), 2.1 points into the overweight category. That's no surprise. I'm a lot healthier after working out for the last seven months. I'm sure I have a higher percentage of muscle and a lower percentage of fat. But I also know I'm still overweight.
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The highly educated have only half the level of obesity of those with lower education
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Personal responsibility surely does play a role, but we also live in a "toxic environment" that in many ways discourages healthy eating, says Ludwig. "There's the incessant advertising and marketing of the poorest quality foods imaginable. To address this epidemic, you'd want to make healthful foods widely available, inexpensive, and convenient, and unhealthful foods relatively less so. Instead, we've done the opposite."
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Pumping up portion size makes good business sense, because the cost of ingredients like sugar and water for a carbonated soda is trivial, and customers perceive the larger amount as delivering greater value.
Maybe I could motivate myself simply based on being an educated consumer...
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In 1981, David Jenkins, a professor of nutrition at the University of Toronto, led a team that tested various foods to determine which were best for diabetics. They developed a "glycemic index" that ranked foods from 0 to 100, depending on how rapidly the body turned them into glucose. This work overturned some established bromides, such as the distinction between "simple" and "complex" carbohydrates: a baked russet potato, for example, traditionally defined as a complex carbohydrate, has a glycemic rating of 85 (±12; studies vary) whereas a 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola appears on some glycemic indices at 63.
Speaking of 'mile and honey', they're both 'sweets' in a pre-processed sugar society, as are fruits, as in 'the fruit of the Spirit' or 'the fruit to the meal' (Hamlet).
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Ironically, U.S. government agencies' attempts to deal with obesity during the last three decades—encouraging people to eat less fat and more carbohydrates, for example—actually may have exacerbated the problem. Take the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Guide Pyramid, first promulgated in 1992. The pyramid's diagram of dietary recommendations is a familiar sight on cereal boxes—hardly a coincidence, since the guidelines suggest six to 11 servings daily from the "bread, cereal, rice, and pasta" group. The USDA recommends eating more of these starches than any other category of food. Unfortunately, such starches are nearly all high-glycemic carbohydrates, which drive obesity, hyperinsulinemia, and Type II diabetes. "At best, the USDA pyramid offers wishy-washy, scientifically unfounded advice on an absolutely vital topic—what to eat," writes Willett in Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy. "At worst, the misinformation contributes to overweight, poor health, and unnecessary early deaths."
Note that the pyramid comes from the Department of Agriculture, not from an agency charged with promoting health, like the National Institutes of Health or the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The USDA essentially promotes and regulates commerce, and its pyramid (currently under revision; expect a new version in 2005) was the focus of intensive lobbying and political struggle by agribusinesses in the meat, sugar, dairy, and cereal industries, among others.
Food is the most essential of all economic goods. Fifty percent of the world's assets, employment, and consumer expenditures belong to the food system, according to Harvard Business School's Ray Goldberg, Moffett professor of agriculture and business emeritus. (In the United States, 17 percent of employment is in what Goldberg calls the "value-added food chain.") He adds that "7 percent of the farmers produce 80 percent of the food—and do it on one-third of the land in cultivation. In the United States, half the net income of farmers comes from the government, in forms like price supports and land set-asides." The food industry is huge and exerts enormous influence on government policy.
Consider the flap that arose after the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report in 2003 recommending guidelines for eating to improve world nutrition and prevent chronic diseases. Instead of applauding the report, the DHHS issued a 28-page, line-by-line critique and tried to get WHO to quash it. WHO recommended that people limit their intake of added sugars to no more than 10 percent of calories eaten, a guideline poorly received by the Sugar Association, a trade group that has threatened to pressure Congress to challenge the United States' $406 million contribution to WHO.
Clearly, some food industries have for many years successfully influenced the government in ways that keep the prices of certain foods artificially low. David Ludwig questions farm subsidies of "billions to the lowest-quality foods"—for example, grains like corn ("for corn sweeteners and animal feed to make Big Macs") and wheat ("refined carbohydrates.") Meanwhile, the government does not subsidize far healthier items like fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts. "It's a perverse situation," he says. "The foods that are the worst for us have an artificially low price, and the best foods cost more. This is worse than a free market: we are creating a mirror-world here."
Governmental policies like cutting school budgets by dropping physical education programs may also prove to be a false economy. "Supposedly, in the richest, most powerful nation on earth, we can't afford physical-education programs for our kids," says Willett. "That's really obscene. Instead, we'll be spending $100 billion on the consequences. We simply have to make these investments." Ludwig concurs. "There's fast food sold in school cafeterias, soft drinks and candies in school vending machines, and advertising in classrooms on Channel One. Meanwhile there are cutbacks in physical education, as if it were a luxury. What was once daily and mandatory is now infrequent and optional."
The advocated way of eating is 'Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating'. Their revised Healthy Eating Pyramid appears in this document (about a quarter of the way down).
Whole grains: Amaranth, Barley, Brown rice, Bulgur (cracked wheat),
Whole-wheat pasta or couscous, Flaxseed, Millet, Oats, Quinoa, Rye, Spelt, Wheat berries, Wild rice.
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