melkor

You can find lamb and goat at almost any Halal butcher. There are Halal butchers in nearly every city in the country. Lamb may be difficult to find at a local megamart in middle America, but that doesn't mean it's actually difficult to find.

There's a meat goat farm in Saugerties, look them up next time you're headed south.

I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that it's directly across the street from the Six Flags parking lot...

There's plenty to eat in Vallejo without the foul excuse for food that Carl's Jr sells.

I think there is general agreement among us that profanity is a part of many restaurant kitchens. We get that part. But I see the heart of the discussion more a question of whether or not profanity should be accepted as appropriate in a top, professional kitchen. It seems as though we often accept the unacceptable as a normal course of business-in this case swearing in the kitchen-but do we stop long enough to ask whether or not that is what we should be accepting as the norm? ← As long as the customers can't hear it, I don't think profanity is going to leave any industry.

People in every profession I've ever been involved in swear. This isn't unique to restaurant kitchens.

So, the Times article in your opinion is junk, and Jason, aside from his diabetes, was in fine shape?

So to summarize - You don't think being overweight is a health risk, nor do you believe that food focused communities like this one support being significantly overweight.

Drew Nieporent used to be 325 pounds - unless he's six-four, he had a BMI over 40 when his doctor was recommending gastric bypass. I'd bet Batali is a similar weight. At the dozen or so eGullet events I've been to and the several dozen I've seen photos of on the site I can't recall ever seeing anyone who looked like they played in the NFL. At every eGullet event I've been to, the bulk of the significantly overweight people in the building have been at our tables. I'd expect the same to be true in NYC, but perhaps not in a place like Cleveland. In a city like SF, I'd say the foodie community is heavier than the general population. Hop over to chowhound and take a look at the pics of their events.

If your position is that diabetes is not relevant to this discussion, that's kind of funny too. I'll be the first to say that diabetes is not the whole discussion. But irrelevant? No, it's highly relevant. It's relevant because what I've found in researching this topic extensively -- from a journalistic perspective, of course, as I'm not a medical professional (I suck at math and can't stand the sight of blood) -- over a period of a nearly a decade is that when we start unpacking the specific beliefs about obesity and health that underly the conventional wisdom there's some pretty surprising (to most people) information there. Diabetes is one example. I imagine that almost everybody reading this topic thought the notion of a diabetes epidemic was axiomatic. Now at least I hope everybody reading this topic sees that there is a body of evidence and thinking that says it's a hoax. I don't expect everybody to agree with that position, but I hope at least some folks now know the position exists and has support in credible, mainstream publications. ← My position isn't that diabetes is irrelevant, I apparently foolishly thought that everyone would be able to grasp that after reading what I've already posted in this topic. The Times article wasn't specifically about diabetes, it was about health problems brought on by obesity. Batali, Cutlets, Steingarten, and the rest of the people interviewed aside from Jason aren't diabetic. The argument you seem to be making is that being morbidly obese isn't a health problem. Is that accurate? If that's the position you're taking, that's fine - just don't hide it behind what you believe about diabetes.

I read that the same way as you did.

Jim is correct. For fish tacos. ← That doesn't seem wasteful to anyone else? How hard is it to drag a few friends along so the food you order doesn't go to waste?

While it's clear that the site isn't a resource for those who eat to live, there's a middle ground between discussing food as utility and being a support group for those who chose to eat themselves to death.

Obesity has gone from being an individual problem to being a shared problem for all of us in this country, regardless of your body weight. That there isn't any sort of health related subforum or even a few health related active topics on the site is a good indication that eGullet doesn't consider healthy eating to be relevant. It's a shame that this is the current state of things - ignoring the fact that the forum software hasn't been updated in two and a half years, the same discussions are rehashed over and over again. I agree that there is substantial value in a topic that discusses every hamburger in NY, I also agree that nobody cares about the salad I had with dinner last night. I still think that there would be significant value in focusing a little bit of energy on health, at a minimum it would provide something different for the community to talk about.

This has nothing to do with being thin or looking perfect. It has everything to do with not doing your grocery shopping from a motorized cart at age 35 before you drop dead at 50 from a heart attack or have your feet amputated because of your uncontrolled diabetic condition. I haven't had a 'healthy' BMI in a long time, I'm a big supporter of the concept of being overweight and fit. I may eventually lose enough weight for me to be both a healthy weight and fit, but for now just being reasonably fit is a good start. Being thin and unhealthy isn't a good thing either - people just need to take care of themselves, whatever their weight.

I disagree. Communities like this one are extremely supportive of people who ignore their weight problems. There are individual examples of weight loss topics and 'blogs' but overall, what this site is great at is as a chronicle of gluttony. This is the ideal place to document it if you spend a week in NYC waking up each morning and going to a couple of different bagel shops to find the one you like best. After breakfast you wander the city for pizza stopping two or three times in the afternoon in the name of science. Throw in some Chinese food while you're at it, and you might as well run up to Harlem to check out the Ghanaian restaurant your cab driver told you about. You then have dinner at a two or three Michelin starred restaurant each night. Nobody is going to post asking if you might have been better off cutting back to only 4,000 calories each day. It's clear that Jason didn't believe that healthy eating needed to be addressed before his doctor told him he had no choice. I'd say the chances are good that a number of other eGullet contributors are in the same situation Jason was in before he spoke to his Doctor. Almost all communities suffer from being mutual admiration societies - you can see it most clearly by looking at the 'Dinner' topic. It really doesn't matter if you post a picture of something that looks delicious or horrible, people will compliment you on it. That isn't inherently a bad thing in that topic but it illustrates that as a community we are supportive of each other more or less no matter what. Blind praise isn't always a good thing - for the person being complemented on the horrible food they cooked it means they'll continue to serve their family gruel. For the person who has a BMI of 75 and is getting rave reviews about the two dozen different hot dogs they documented eating that day it means they focus more on gluttony and less on their health. We as a community really need to think about the impact this blind support has on the other members of the community. Obviously it wouldn't work if this were a hostile environment where everyone trashed each others posts, but there has to be a middle ground where critique and constructive criticism plays a role.

(my emphasis) 2-3 hours a day, how many times a week? I'm curious - do you have kids? That's a lot of time.I try to walk everywhere, and watch my portions, but to a great extent my weight is what it is since I don't have a metabolism anymore (complete thyroidectomy and I-131 treatment 2 years ago). We eat lots of fruit and veg, and fish. I have found that a good way for me to not overeat at restaurants is to avoid tasting menus. ← No kids, but when work gets in the way of the gym I think more about what I'm eating. Three or four days a week at the gym means I can slowly lose weight and eat more or less whatever I want as long as the portion sizes are reasonable.

Doc, While you're giving out permission to eat stuff, see what you can do about making bacon Kosher, would ya?

Every time I've tried eating low fat stuff I've gained weight. Each serving may be lower in fat and calories but if it isn't satisfying I for some reason need to eat more before I'm full. I'm a big fan of the animal fat, cream, butter, cheese, and wine diet - but for it to work those things need to be a smaller part of an overall healthy lifestyle.

It's not my position that the diabetes epidemic is actually an epidemic of diagnosis. I didn't invent it. I read it. It's the position of diabetes researchers -- you know, people who have made it their life's work -- as reported in their published work. As for people with no background -- people who haven't done the reading, haven't done any critical thinking, and are not the slightest bit skeptical of conventional wisdom -- making authoritative statements with no basis, I agree that's pretty funny. ← You're picking a small detail in the larger discussion and focusing on it as if it were relevant. Being obese is a huge health problem, it doesn't matter if you're diabetic or not. They don't call it morbid obesity for no reason. For the sake of the argument, lets say the number of people with diabetes is decreasing rather than increasing. That in no way means that there isn't a massive obesity problem in this country. Friends that work as EMTs have collected an overweight person who bled to death having had their toilet colapse under their weight. Who cares if they were diabetic or not, if they were 100 pounds lighter, that wouldn't have happened. The doctors and nurses in this thread have said their biggest issue on a daily basis is obesity, aside from an article about the number of people with diabetes - what exactly suggests that having a BMI of 50 is a good idea? You're welcome to believe whatever you want to believe, but it sounds like your family history with heart disease is similar to mine and frankly mine scares the shit out of me.

But they are being well served if early detection and treatment can help ward off more severe disease and complications. The truth, though, is that those people are rarely started out on drug regimens. They are usually treated with dietary modifications. ← One of the things I love about the internet is that it provides a platform for someone with no background on a topic to argue at length about it with people who have made that topic their life's work. Personally, if a bunch of doctors and nurses tell me the bulk of the work they do every day is directly related to obesity, I'm not going to argue what the threshold should be for diagnosing diabetes. You don't need to be diabetic to have weight related health issues, being obese is bad for the rest of your body also, it isn't limited to kidney problems. We've got a nurse posting in this topic that she's seeing patients regularly who have festering sores in their fat folds...

That's a great point, I also eat no packaged/prepared foods. ← I certainly don't eat a lot of these, but I can't say I don't eat any. Sometimes, they are actually pretty good. ← True, I do buy a few packages of TimTams a year and sometimes we buy crackers. Otherwise it's pretty much from scratch forus.

That's a great point, I also eat no packaged/prepared foods.

I go to a rock climbing gym three or four days a week (in case you haven't guessed, I'm a little younger than my photo suggests) for two or three hours at a time. I'm down to twenty pounds heavier than I should be. Off the top of my head, here's what I've eaten the past several days - I make myself a latte (2% milk) and have a couple of biscotti with it for breakfast, otherwise it's: Yesterday: Went out for Korean for lunch (kalbi, tofu soup, scallion pancake, panchan), braised lamb shanks with celery root puree and roasted asparagus for dinner along with a red burgundy to drink. Monday: Lentil soup for lunch, buttermilk fried chicken, corn bread, blackened green beans with aioli, icecream for dessert. 2 1/2 hours at the gym. Sunday: Went to the Thai temple for lunch - som tam, fried chicken, jungle curry, fish and eggplant stirfry, khanom krok, stickyrice and mango. Taco truck for lunch (cabeza tacos and horchata). 2 1/2 hours at the gym. Saturday: Roasted asparagus with poached eggs and bread for lunch. Lentil soup, boquerones and aioli on crackers, steak au poivre vert, celery root puree, veg, cheese and bread, ice cream for dessert. Three bottles of wine for the four of us at dinner. Friday: Tuna sandwiches and salad for lunch, Pakistani restaurant for dinner (naan, tandoori chicken legs, bhuna gosht, chicken karahi, palak paneer, nihari, rice, mili juli subzi), 3 hours at the gym.

Let's try that again: Perlow was undiagnosed for years. How many people are six months behind the him on this? He's not the only guy who is two hundred pounds over weight and walking around under the impression that there isn't a problem. On a completely different note - I'm grateful for those of you who give years of your lives for the community. The thing that brought me to eGullet years ago was Jason's hot dog tasting thread. No person with any regard for their health would eat two dozen hot dogs in a sitting. Without research like that I would have had to purchase countless nasty products before discovering Usingers. edit: spelling - replaced was with is