Is nutrition education making Americans fat?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

The nutritional recommendations don’t help. There’s an article by Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, that talks a little about nutrition education in the US. He points out that meat consumption is down; people followed the nutritional advice to consume less meat. Saturated fat consumption is down too; see above.

A lot of people are doing what they’re told — eat more “healthy” grains, less meat, less fat — but the average American is fatter than ever. That, to me, shows that the advice is wrong. Yeah, people might be eating too much along with it, but part of why they’re eating too much is also probably linked to what they’re eating.

In the fitness community, everyone gives completely different advice, and they’re getting completely different results. Krista of stumptuous.com has a very short, simple e-book that I found a few weeks ago called Fuck Calories that can serve as a good, if brief primer. Believe it or not, you can be very healthy and lean even if a lot of your calories are from fat. In fact, depending on how you were eating before, you can be more healthy and lean from eating dramatically more fat.

I run at about 8–10% body-fat, and my fat intake runs between 30 and 50% of my caloric intake, depending on the day. I used to be about 40 lbs. heavier, and a lot weaker. I don’t follow any diet strictly, but my eating recommendations mirror Krista’s pretty closely. She saved me the trouble of typing it now that I’ve found a place to point to when people ask me for nutrition advice.

I’d also recommend checking out Cordain’s book on the Paleo diet, or Robb Wolf’s book if you want something with more citations than Fuck Calories. High-level performance athletes are by and large not vegetarians, though they do eat a lot of vegetables. Athletes who were omnivores with good diets who have gone vegetarian have generally seen a negative impact on their performance.

Advice seems to be clustering more and more around paleo lines, with the possible exception of people who want to be 70s Big. If you want to be strong, lean, and healthy, eating paleo is the best advice I could give right now.

42

Exactly! And exactly the point of the OP. We need more flexible mental kits when it comes to nutrition and eating. We need to be flexible enough to think that a salad for dinner is acceptable and enough to fill us up, rather than an appetizer or side dish. We need to be flexible enough to think that a plate of vegetables, no matter what vegetables those are and even if they aren’t covered with a creamy dressing or cheesy sauce, make a reasonable and acceptable dinner. Right now, in most of America, we don’t have that flexibility. And what the OP is asking, and I’m saying yes, is whether our current nutritional teaching reinforces that inflexibility.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. When the only sample pictures of “meals” we see on nutrition posters are creamy covered lettuce based salads with fat heavy proteins on top OR a three or four point plating with grains and proteins as well as vegetables, we’re going to keep inflexibly thinking of vegetables as a side dish.

IMHO, we need to teach older kids and adults the same thing we teach mothers of toddlers: every *meal *doesn’t need to be “balanced”, but your diet over a *week *should be balanced. That a one dish meal of vegetables isn’t weird or incomplete, but part of a healthy diet. That 95% of us don’t need protein or grains at every meal, just several times every week.

This “toddler diet” would be revolutionary in terms of US federal level nutrition teaching and what’s taught in US schools. It’s almost the antithesis of how nutrition is taught today, with its emphasis on “balanced meals”.

43

I remember being a kid and the television was constantly blaring “Eat milk for protein! Eat cheese for protein! Eat meat for protein!” Never “Eat lentils for protein” or “eat dark leafy vegetables for fiber and vitamin A”. I’m pretty sure it was food industry lobbyists behind those messages.

Fast forward to today, and there’s a different kind of mininformation going on, tentative scientific studies without any context. “Eat chocolate for antioxidants! Don’t reduce calories or your body will go into starvation mode! Eat 6 meals a day” which might be true, sometimes, for some people. But it promotes the reasoning that “I need to eat 6 snickers bars a day or my body will think an ice age is coming and never lose weight.” And here again, I’m sure chocolate companies have no problem with this kind of information getting out.

So yeah, we get a lot of bad messages.

44

I think you may have hit that one out of the field. In Spain the emphasis is on una dieta equilibrada: equilibrated eating habits… along time, week per week and month per month. Does that mean we don’t have obese people? No, and it’s getting pretty bad specially among some socioeconomic groups (recent immigrants from Latin America are a big one), but except for that PITA “5 veggie/fruit portions per day” campaign (which is very irritating, because those portions are not what people think of as portions; most people decide to disregard it once they realize this), “vary what you eat” and giving what you should eat in terms of “per week” is the standard message.

Many people here have no solid food before lunch; they’re late risers and their stomachs simply aren’t up to the task. Is “a cup of coffee mid-morning” an equilibrated meal? No, but “a cup of coffee midmorning, one in the afternoon, a two dishes and dessert lunch and a two dishes dinner” is healthier than forcing yourself to eat two slices of bacon and a bowl of cereal with milk and raisins when your stomach isn’t ready for it. Me, I’m an early riser: proteins and milk for breakfast, light lunch, light dinner - it’s equilibrated through the day, more equilibrated week-long, and it fits my internal clock.

45

And here it’s “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day”!

46

The only ones who say that here are Kellogg’s and yoghurt companies. You know, the same people who sell, respectively, “low-fat!!!” healthbars which are 60% nuts (low fat compared to what, a handful of almonds?) and the notion that their bifidus are better than other brands’ bifidus…

47

I read the actual letter – it wasn’t even an article – that the “chocolate can help people lose weight!” meme was based on. Basically, it’s an incidental finding in a much bigger study that the authors found interesting and probably worth studying on its own. And they’re not talking a king-size Hershey bar every day, but an ounce of chocolate (about 2/3 of a regular-size Hershey bar) once or twice a week, give or take.

That being said, and on further reflection, the sheer amount of bogus information that’s out there isn’t helping. Thanks to the “starvation mode!” meme, many Americans think it’s not OK to be hungry, ever, and that if they have the slightest feeling that they might be hungry, they eat something.

Sadly, it’s not just the food industry giving out that lousy information. Oprah, who is one of the most influential women in the United States, has made it OK to “accept who you are” and not even try to lose weight. She’s also guilty of foisting “experts” who don’t really know their ass from a hole in the ground on the gullible public who are looking for a magic bullet that will make them lose weight with little effort or sacrifice on their part. And it’s not just Oprah. Very few reporters have any real training in science beyond the general education classes they have to take in college. They don’t know how to read a study, and they certainly can’t interpret it. So they simply repeat what they’re told about it without questioning where that explanation came from.

And the truth is that losing weight isn’t exactly rocket science. Yes, you will have to give up some of the sugar and salt and fat, and you will have to lower your daily intake of calories and exercise to reduce it a little bit more. It takes sacrifice and a change in your thought processes and daily habits, but it can be done; lots of people have done it successfully.

48

Breakfast is a good thing. From my experience, many “no breakfast for me!” people are often overweight. They may skip on breakfast, but then they do it up royal at lunch time, plus snacking all day long. A little piece of leftover salmon with a fried egg has become my favorite way of starting off the day.

49

I’m probably the most overweight person in this room full of sedentary IT workers, and I’m in the “it would be nice if you lost a few pounds” range given age and build. About 1/4 of my coworkers don’t have solid food before noon. Another quarter has a piece of fruit mid-morning. There’s about 1/3 which has a light breakfast (a piece of fruit and a cup of coffee, or a bowl of milk with cereal/cookies). I’m in the 1/6 that breakfasts heaviest.

But it’s rare to see anybody here eating, and usually the eaters go for “fibery doesn’t taste like much” stuff (if the problem is anxiety) or a piece of fruit (if they get hungry mid-morning); when I worked in office environments in the US, it was rare to see a waste basket which didn’t have one or two snack wrappers. A basket of Fuji, Reineta and Golden apples like we had in my last job? Yeah right!

50

Everyone around me at work loves to snack. Most try to go healthy, but it’s still calories whether is a 100 calorie banana or a 100 calorie bag of miniature oreos. Now why are they always snacking? What activity are they doing that’s requiring an IV drip of calories?

My WAG is it starts off a way of trying to stay alert. Whenever I get a little sleepy sitting in front of my computer, I think about that little 100 calorie pack of M&Ms I have buried deep in my desk. Or I’ll go into the breakroom to see if anyone has brought in cookies. Lately I have been succumbing to the temptations. But I need to stop because I don’t want to turn into a habitual snacker.

51

I think some of it is that they’re bored, and having a snack gives them something to do.

Habit is another factor. You get used to eating around the same time every day. If you’re used to having a snack at 3pm every day, you’re going to feel hungry around then.

Well, there’s breakfast, and there’s breakfast. If you’re regularly eating something like one of these restaurant breakfasts, you might be better off skipping breakfast.

52

This is interesting.

Jared Polis (D-CO) has introduced legislation that would allow the Department of Agriculture to accurately count the amount of tomato paste on a slice of pizza, as well as set reduction targets for sodium, and set a requirement for whole grains.

Although the bill is specifically intended to address the issue of pizza served in school cafeterias, I think it points to the larger issue of maintaining the pretense that some foods are healthier than they really are. While the Contadina brand of tomato paste that I buy at the supermarket has no added sugar, other brands do, and tomato sauces – especially pasta and pizza sauces – certainly do, and they’re often high in sodium as well.

Of course, Big Frozen Foods isn’t especially happy about this, and they’re taking umbrage.

53

I think what was mentioned here is also a big part of the problem. One of the lines from “Supersize Me” was that the food industry lobbies 1) don’t want any lawmakers saying anything bad about their products, 2) don’t want any lawmakers passing any laws that may be harmful to the sale of their products, and 3) do want lawmakers to pass laws that are favorable to their products. The movie went on to demonstrate the power of the amount of money the lobbies spend to advertise their products (enormous), compared to that spent on marketing fruits and veggies (miniscule). It does not help that (IMHO) about 30% what one may encounter as advertising on the television are for highly-processed junk food, fast food, shitty restaurants, and soft drinks. It is going to be tough to convince the meat-&-potato 'Merican masses that a meal of only vegetables is anything but wierd, nutrition education notwithstanding.

I recall yeas ago when they were redesigning the “food pyramid” there was of course intense lobbying to ensure the meat industry was well represented, as well as dairy and of course sweets/carbs. I am not sure if anyone was lobbying on behalf of more veggies.

54

[quote=snowthx;15067787 The movie went on to demonstrate the power of the amount of money the lobbies spend to advertise their products (enormous), compared to that spent on marketing fruits and veggies (miniscule).[/quote]

I always have bitched about the lack of coupons for fresh meats and produce that don’t require buying some damned convenience food as well. sigh

On the plus side, when civilization falls, I won’t be jonesing for kraft dinner … :smiley:

55

Most of the nutritional advice in this country is stupid and wrong IMO*, and it’s helping to make a lot of people fat, sick, and rotten-toothed.

I’m feeling extra-smug about just how right I am for going directly against most of what the USDA recommends, since I just got new lipid panel results back and somehow managed to raise my HDL by 20 points, and lower my trigs by 10, since I changed my diet. Also my acne cleared up and I have 2x the energy I used to.

*this is my opinion. It’s an informed opinion, and one which is netting me large improvements in my general health, but it’s just an opinion. There is no study which proves me right (or wrong).

56

Really?

From my local supermarket:

Thin BBQ sausages - 4.12 dollars per kg.
Chicken breast - 9.90 dollars per kg
Salmon Fillet Skin on - 32.95 dollars per kg.

Potato - 1.66 dollars per kg.
Sweet potato -2.98 dollars per kg.

Salmon is one of the most expensive things out!

57

Salmon is not as cheap as boloney, but it’s not expensive. I’m thinking of the canned stuff.

You can eat healthy and cheap, I think. I can think of some fairly inexpensive but nutrient-rich meals, and I’m no betty crocker. But I lack the know-how to make them delicious. I also know that these meals wouldn’t provide the same feeling of fullness that a Big Mac and medium fries do. So I think that’s really the hurdle. Beans and rice are cheap and good, but without a bunch of pork fat thrown in and some buttery corn bread on the side, is a family of four going to be happy eating this every day? Happiness isn’t everything, but if you’ve got to compete against a Popeye’s on one corner and the 7-11 on the other, it does become a factor. Wealthier people can afford to eat healthy and emotionally satisfying foods, while also splurging occasionally. Why cry about having to nibble on whole-wheat crackers and carrots for lunch when you know you’ll be having filet mignon and red wine for dinner? But for poor people, it’s a trade off between health and happiness. The latter will always win over the former.

58

Seriously? Spain? Back in college one of my friends and I jokingly agreed that Spain was the best place to eat because it was the only place in the world with more fried food than the U.S. And I will state that contra your earlier post, I never once ate an ensalada or amanida there that consisted of nothing but vegetables. (That’s the sort of overt and ultimately sabotaging self-denial I normally expect from Americans.) Actually, when I ate salads in Spain, they were properly dressed and quite tasty. Not at all like chasing around dry lettuce leaves and tomato wedges with a fork.

I don’t know of anyone here in the States who eats breakfast routinely either.

What’s been bothering me about this is that it’s probably the case that one of the biggest virtues of vegetables is simply that there’s not much to them. They’re food, that takes up space in your belly, with very few calories. They have fiber, definitely, and vitamins. And two tablespoons of tomato paste actually compare pretty well with a serving of vegetables in terms of vitamin content. But it may well be that the chief benefit of eating a serving of actual vegetables is not the vitamins (very few of us are short here in the Global North) but rather the fact that it fills us up with something that has very low calorie density. It’s possible that that is the biggest benefit of vegetables (aside from the fact that they are tasty). Tomato paste on crappy frozen pizza doesn’t remotely serve that function.

59

It’s also highly contrary to most school-served lunches.

60

First, where did I say that a salad would be undressed? But yes, I see many salads which consist of nothing but vegetables and condiments - condiments in moderate amounts. Yesterday Bet had for lunch a salad which was baby corn, lettuce, tomato and diced cucumber; Rox had one which was lettuce, tomato, cucumber slices and soy sprouts. I went for a rice and lentils potaje. We don’t even think of those as “vegetarian meals”, but in the US I’ve opened a tupper of potaje and been told “oh, I didn’t know you were a vegetarian!” “:confused: looks at tupper oh, I’m not, I’m just having a potaje, doesn’t mean I’ve given up meat”

Second, have you heard of paella, fabada, cocido (of which there are several hundred varieties), asados, pastas or the aforementioned potajes - just to name a few? Given that you felt the need to drop amanides into your paragraph, I assume you’ve heard of arròs negre. Yes, there are many fried foods - but also many which are not, and many things which are described when speaking English as “fried” because we don’t know how else to describe them are not deep-fried but a la plancha (with just enough oil to keep them from sticking to the pan).