Obesity Epidemic

[Panacea]

I disagree with the idea that taxing unhealthy foods will make people cut down. Over here, they tax cigarettes to hell, yet people still smoke. All a tax would do is penalise people who want to treat themselves.

They tax cigarettes to hell here in the US, too (you're in Australia, right?).

What they have found consistently is, when cigarette taxes go up, smoking rates go down. Part of the decline in smoking rates in the US is directly attributable to taxes (the other part is education and an increasing social stigma attached to smoking, and laws designed to limit smoking in public). Sure, some people will continue to choose to smoke in spite of the expense. It's a tough addiction to break.

I remember when my parents quit smoking. They marveled at how much money they were saving every year because they were not wasting them on cigarettes: about $3000/year (and that was back in the mid 90's when they were cheaper than today).

[Nyoibo]

I don't buy the whole I don't have time to cook thing, I can knock up enough fried rice to feed 4 people in about 15 minutes no problem, that includes prep and cooking.

[Canarr]

Sure, but who wants to eat fried rice every day? Can you come up with a different 15-minute-meal for every day of the week? Or every day in two weeks?

[Fashion Lad!]

I don't buy the whole I don't have time to cook thing, I can knock up enough fried rice to feed 4 people in about 15 minutes no problem, that includes prep and cooking.

AA admitted that's it's really not the time issue, it's a will issue.

I make a lot of the foods I want to eat in advance on the weekend. If I want a pizza, I have crust pre-made for myself. Since I'm on a low carb diet, I can't just go to the store and buy crust.

Like anything, a good diet requires effort. Effort is a lot harder to make people put into something.

[Nyoibo]

Sure, but who wants to eat fried rice every day? Can you come up with a different 15-minute-meal for every day of the week? Or every day in two weeks?

Probably, I'll give it a go and get back to you.

[Andara Bledin]

What about steamed rice? Cheap as hell and takes less effort in itself as ordering a pizza online and you can dress it up in just as many ways.

^-.-^

[AdminAssistant]

AA admitted that's it's really not the time issue, it's a will issue.

It's both.

What about steamed rice? Cheap as hell and takes less effort in itself as ordering a pizza online and you can dress it up in just as many ways.

Look, I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass. I'm just providing the 'obese person' perspective. When trying to figure out meals, it often feels like, "Cheap. Healthy. Tasty. Quick. Pick three." Well, cheap, quick, and tasty are my current priorities. Fiance and I are both at risk for a wide variety of lovely diseases. I know that. From both health and vanity perspectives, I should be eating steamed brown rice with vegetables and tofu. But I don't want that, because rice is boring and it takes effort to chop up vegetables and then you gotta do the dishes and blah blah blah. Not to mention going to the store every few days to prevent food waste (more of a problem with singles and couples.) And that's the biggest problem. Sure, there are grocery deserts in urban areas and that's a problem that can and should be fixed. Convincing someone in suburbia to trade in a Big Mac-a-day habit for a few hours at the gym is going to be significantly harder.

[Gravekeeper]

The other problem is that no roasted vegetable, quinoa salad, or tofu anything tastes as good as a pizza or chicken strips or *insert junk food here*.

I find this is more a matter of addiction than taste. If you eat junk, you like junk, your body gets use to junk, it wants junk because junk is what it knows. When you try something else, it goes "Ew, this isn't junk!". This is why there's a divide in understanding here. Because the exact same thing happens when you don't eat junk.

I mean I use to love KFC and McNuggets and all that good stuff when I was younger. But I ate less and less junk as I got older to the point where I don't have any junk at all. Then the reverse began to happen. I can't eat junk or fast food now. I have the exact same aversion to it as you do to the opposite. When I eat junk, I just taste the hemicals, filler and preservatives. It tastes revolting and my stomach goes "Ew, what the fuck is this junk?".

This is why there's a problem. The thing people don't seem to realise is your body is fucking stupid. It doesn't actually know better. It learns what you teach it and then from there thinks what you taught it is right. The further down any particular path you go, the harder it is to change direction because when you do, your body will throw a temper tantrum like a 3 year old. Even if what you're trying to do is better for you.

As for tofu, quinoa, etc not tasting good. Those are kind of extreme examples. Tofu doesn't really taste like much at all, it absorbs other flavours. Other staples, like quinoa, rice, etc are similar. They're there to hold onto the flavour of something else. I'm not saying eat them mind you, Hell, I don't like Tofu either. I need to trick myself into eating it by putting it in something else and even then I'm certainly not making any concentrated effort to include it in my diet.

I think the big thing isn't so much what tastes good or bad, but learning how to get the shit that tastes good from better sources. IE a Big Mac is a pile of perservatives and filler. A real burger isn't. Delivery pizza is usually total shit ( Especially chain pizza ), home made pizza, or premade ones from local delis, or even if you can find a nice local pizzaria are all better options. Chicken strips? Problem isn't the chicken, its usually the batter they stick the chicken in. Try breaded/baked instead of battered/deep fried.

Fact of the matter is food is part nutrition and part enjoyment. No one's going to be happy being forced to eat shit they hate, regardless of the benefit. Its better to compromise and try to make the shit you already eat in a way thats better for you and branch out into new foods that are better for you which you might actually enjoy. Instead of the ones you already have a preconcieved notion of "Ugh that will taste like crap" towards. Like Tofu. -.-

[Panacea]

Look, I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass. I'm just providing the 'obese person' perspective. When trying to figure out meals, it often feels like, "Cheap. Healthy. Tasty. Quick. Pick three." Well, cheap, quick, and tasty are my current priorities. Fiance and I are both at risk for a wide variety of lovely diseases. I know that. From both health and vanity perspectives, I should be eating steamed brown rice with vegetables and tofu. But I don't want that, because rice is boring and it takes effort to chop up vegetables and then you gotta do the dishes and blah blah blah. Not to mention going to the store every few days to prevent food waste (more of a problem with singles and couples.) And that's the biggest problem. Sure, there are grocery deserts in urban areas and that's a problem that can and should be fixed. Convincing someone in suburbia to trade in a Big Mac-a-day habit for a few hours at the gym is going to be significantly harder.

I get your perspective on this. Believe me, I get it. That's how I've lived my life for most of my life since moving out of my parents house and giving up my mother's cooking (and damn, she was a good cook, too. And healthy).

I work two + jobs and have a life constantly on the go. Sitting down for healthy meals is hard, always was. As a nurse I knew exactly what I was setting myself up for, especially given the broad cardiovascular disease that runs on both sides of my family.

But I eat unhealthy anyway.

Last year, I started noticing my blood pressure was inching up when I visited the doctor. I have severe and frequent migraines, and my BP always goes up when I have a headache. Blew it off. Then routine blood work showed my blood sugar was borderline. I cut back on sugary snacks, it came down. Then my triglycerides went up. My doctor wanted to put me on meds for it. I refused, and adjusted my diet again. They came down.

But my blood pressure stayed up. Then I started noticing my hands were getting puffy. Then, when seeing my ortho about my knees, he noticed my lower legs were puffy.

Now I'm on a diuretic (water pill) and a beta blocker. My blood pressure is coming down, but I still have the edema. So I try limiting my salt intake.

And that's the hardest thing I've ever done. Salt is in everything. Some of the edema has gone away. Not all of it. I have to cook more, but when I get lazy and eat out, the edema comes back. I can't ever go back to my old habits, and am trying to make new ones . . . and wishing I'd eaten a healthier diet years ago so maybe I wouldn't be struggling with this now . . . at age 46.

I'm too young for this shit.

[Andara Bledin]

But I don't want that, because rice is boring and it takes effort to chop up vegetables and then you gotta do the dishes and blah blah blah. Not to mention going to the store every few days to prevent food waste (more of a problem with singles and couples.)

Excuses. It's all excuses. I know because they're the same ones I still use half the time.

Don't want to chop veggies, pick up a bag of fresh, pre-chopped veggies at the store. The place I go has a bag with snap peas, small broccoli bits, and sliced carrots. Or grab a container of mushrooms. Each of those will last a couple of meals worth and won't spoil for several days. There are also some great combinations of veggies available in the freezer section (usually listed for stir fry), and then you don't have to worry about spoilage. I do shopping once a week and unless I feel ambitious at the store and then fail at home, I don't throw out much in the way of food.

I've also been grabbing fruit assortments, as well. It's a whole lot healthier to be munching on melon pieces all weekend than digging into the bucket of cheese puffs.

There are a lot of options that are better than fast food that take little to no more effort at feeding time and cost a whole hell of a lot less.

^-.-^

[Lace Neil Singer]

^ Exactly. I've got frozen veg in the freezer, which is a lot more cost effective than buying fresh all the time, and just as good.

I can knock up some pasta in half an hour, or a stirfry. If you want to be lazy and stuff your face with junk, feel free; the only person who's going to suffer from your diet is you. Unless of course, you end up morbidly obese and become a strain on the long suffering NHS that is...

Oh yeah, and I'm English. I'm one person living on my own, and I shop once a week. Sometimes I may have chips and burger sauce from the local kebab shop, or a McDonalds, but that's a treat, not an every day thing.

[Wingates_Hellsing]

More and more I feel like the only person on the planet who has sat down with a nutritionist who went on to inform me that, at the end of the day, any difference in frozen v fresh, normal v organic, self-cooked v (not totally crap) pre-packaged is most likely barely worth any kind of effort to go from one to the other (except the amount of sodium in some things, but unless that's specifically a problem, meh)

In short, food is food, don't over-analyze.

Unless you only eat knockoff frozen dinners or nothing but the same crap frozen burgers, you're getting the nutrients from somewhere. And you're weight is 20% exercize, 20% diet, and 60% dumb fucking luck (genetics).

And this wasn't some random dude, this was one of half a dozen nutritionists, all of whom agreed on this, specifically giving advice to people who don't absorb nutrients as well as normal people. I seriously feel like the only guy who looks up and doesn't see the meteors falling, what gives?

[Gravekeeper]

When it comes to something prepacked, I just read the ingredients and check to see if there's anything there I don't recognize or can't pronounce. If it reads more like a chemistry set then a food item, perhaps you should put it back. >.>

[Canarr]

Probably, I'll give it a go and get back to you.

Cool; that'd be interesting to try out.

Basically, my cooking skills suck. I can do a decent breakfast, and some simple stuff like pasta or home-made pizza, but anything more complex than that, never really tried.

My problem is: I'm lazy. If not for the fact that my girlfriend is a decent cook, I'd probably dine on sandwiches and take-out most of the time. It's not even the ingredients; in Germany, there's no shortage of grocery stores or discounters that stock produce and fresh meat. It's just that the effort of cooking a meal puts me off.

[Lace Neil Singer]

That probably makes all the difference. My mum taught me how to cook when I was a kid, and I love to cook.