fresco

Didn't someone say, "never eat at a place called Uma's"?

I've never had the pleasure of watching Oprah, but know she has weight issues. Maybe she could turn her book club into a health club. (And watch ratings plummet).

You mean, "larger than life"?

MatthewB, Maybe you'll have more luck with Fat Guy. Every time I see the word "structural" my keyboard freezes up.

EJRothman, That was a magnificent and informative rant. What seems to be left out of just about every discussion of obesity and its causes is the role taste plays. People who are feeling generally shitty about their lives are more inclined, I think, to seek foods that are very sweet, fatty and salty--foods that make them feel better. It is no coincidence, and nor do I think it is some calculated evil, that there is a very high concentration of these foods at your local fast food purveyor. But the huge popularity of soft drinks, and endless variations on potato chips and dorritos, especially among the people who can often least afford them, also is testament to the powerful role taste plays in obesity, and why it is becoming such an intractable problem. George Orwell, in his role as a newspaper columnist, once received a letter from a well-to-do reader who boasted that he ate well on some absurdly small amount of money, explaining that he ate raw carrots, wholemeal bread and the like. Orwell's rejoinder was that the poor did not have the luxury of eating well--they needed oversweet, milk tea and fatty, salty fish and chips just to get through their days. One more observation: in Canada, donut shops do a booming business in recessions, because for little more than a buck, people can buy a hot coffee and a sweet donut, which eases their misery.

Actually, I was making a point about the incongruity of the growing global obsession about obesity running alongside continuing famine and food shortages. People used to fret about hunger as a great evil. Now they fret about fat. Soon, UNICEF and other worthy organizations will be collecting money to enrol Third World children in Weight Watchers.

MatthewB, Over the past 70 years, life expectancy has increased considerably in North America, as has, I would venture, the overall health of the population. It could be that obesity is being attacked because it is unfashionable. As Fat Guy has noted, there is a strong correlation between poverty and obesity, but it is not yet fashionable, in all save the most rabid neoconservative circles, to attack the poor.

Like smokers, think there is an argument to be made that the obese actually are less of a charge to the public purse than their fitter peers if they die off early.

MatthewB, Depends which farmers you are talking about. The farmers who plough with mules (actually saw some of them in Portugal) are burning calories. The farmers who ride around in air conditioned combines with on-board computers are storing fat.

Fat Guy, Agree with you entirely about the malign effects of the "food pyramid" etc. Like so many well-intentioned initiatives (remember the groundswell of good feeling about "slum clearance" and the ensuing massive public housing projects that now make the slums they replaced seem benign) the end results are impossible to predict.

It has been noted (and accurately, I think) on other threads that there is tremendous consumer resistance to paying a premium for better tasting food. If there was a better buck to be made by applying artisanal growing and food preparation methods on a mass scale, I suspect "big agri-business" would be doing so. (Enter Goliath, with sling).

Tempting as it is, I don't think "big agri-business" should be unfairly targeted. I would say that, if you include chain supermarkets, national brand manufacturers, livestock producers and fast food purveyors under this rubric, pretty close to 100 per cent of the people in Canada and the US rely to some extent (some no doubt pretty close to 100 per cent) on "big agri-business" for their nutritional requirements. Not all of them, obviously, are obese. And it would be vastly unfair, in my view, to say that people who are obese got that way because they are forced to buy from huge corporations. That makes about as much sense as blaming car makers for obesity because they deprive people of the opportunity to walk.

MatthewB, Please feel free to hijack--or at least sidetrack--this or any other thread. Some other observations: earlier this year I spent a month in Portugal. Despite staying in a region (the Algarve) that is chockablock with tourist development, I awoke every morning to the sound of not one, but three or four roosters crowing. The food was a revelation. Carrots, for instance, which have been so badly traduced and messed with over here, brought back childhood memories of what carrots used to taste like. So too with other humble foodstuffs--potatoes, chickens, cauliflower. I doubt that we ate much the whole time that had been grown more than 10 miles from where we stayed, which has a hell of a lot to do with the goodness of the produce. It's easy to blame the tastelessness of much of our food here in Canada on the vastness of the country (big shipping distances) and our cold winters, which force us to import stuff for many months of the year. But it wasn't too many years ago that one could go to Kensington Market here in Toronto, point to a live chicken and say, "Kill me that one." When you got it home, it tasted like chicken. The animal rights and sanitation geeks put a stop to that. In Portugal, I was heartened to see, people still go to their local market (there's one every few miles) point to a live chicken, and drag it home with them. One more thing: the Portuguese love their food and wine, but the fat and unfit we saw were invariably tourists.

macrosan, Here's one link about MDs in the UK pushing for a fat tax: http://www.cnsnews.com/ForeignBureaus/arch...R20030611b.html

MatthewB, You raise some interesting points. Never getting your hands dirty (ie, not farming or growing anything, or, for that matter, never buying anything from a farmer's market) is probably not a good idea. Quite aside from any pleasure you might derive from growing your own and the enhanced prospect of eating stuff that tastes good, super-sanitation has now been linked to a tremendous increase in allergies throughout the developed world, because people don't develop the immunities that come from contact with soil. On the other hand, in countries where people tend to cluster in large cities, even gardening is becoming a luxury, like cooking itself, that only a small group of hobbyists can enjoy. The estrangement from the countryside is so complete that not far from where I live, in the middle of a large city, there is a model farm, where city kids can have the exotic experience of seeing real cows, pigs and chickens. For many, sadly, it will be their only contact with the live version of KFC, Quarter Pounders and McRibs. My own roots, though, are too close to the farm (both parents came from farm families) for me to ever get too teary-eyed about rural roads not taken. I do notice that some schools have set aside part of their yards for gardens where kids can actually grow a few things. A nice gesture.

There is a grotesque element to all this, set alongside reports of famine and food shortages in Africa and elsewhere, but affluent countries around the world seem to be moving in lock step to attack what they perceive to be the causes of obesity. One common theme--an assault on fast food. There are now proposals in the US, the UK and New Zealand for various "fat taxes" to be levied against the likes of McDonalds and Burger King. In each of these jurisdictions there is also considerable disagreement about the wisdom of such punitive and coercive measures, and not just from the fast food lobby. On the face of it, encouraging a more healthy diet seems sensible, but the tactics do smack of political opportunism and an unwholesome appetite for government meddling. That aside, is there any evidence to suggest that governments in democratic societies can, through legislation, encourage people to eat more sensibly? Or is this just more unhealthy food faddism?

More than even the people who post here could ever possibly want to know about how temperature affects appetite (but which is must reading in the military): http://web.ask.com/redir?bpg=http%3a%2f%2f...html%2f187.html

Ellen, As you say, there is rationing and there is rationing. People also had a variety of experiences during the war, some horrific, and some much less so. My parents were both raised on farms on the Canadian prairies, an area particularly hard hit by the depression. For many of their generation, if they managed to escape death or injury, the war actually opened up unheard-of possibilities, including the chance to escape the various forms of poverty and servitude that are often life on a farm. It opened the doors of universities to tens of thousands of people, and propelled them into lives and careers far more engaging and rewarding than they might otherwise have enjoyed. So it is entirely possible that rationing, for people exposed so unexpectedly to such opportunities, became a trifling inconvenience that was quickly forgotten.

"I would have to say that the various levels of undress one sees in this type of weather more than makes up for any discomfort caused by the heat." And some of it puts you off sex as well as food.

Why do we find it so difficult to just turf food we'll never eat? Is it the early childhood exhortations about starving children? My wife, fortunately, is made of sterner stuff.

Human bean, Think you are right about wheat. What I think I meant to say was canola (rapeseed) which is a huge crop in western Canada and an ingredient in just about everything.

Dr. Norman Borlaug, the Nobel laureaute, says that interest groups are hindering research and other efforts to move from the "green revolution to the gene revolution" and thus provide for up to 10 billion of us. It would have been nice if he had added that Monsanto and other food science companies have really screwed things up and made things much more difficult than they need by through greed, short-sightedness and failing to think through the consequences of rushing GM seeds to market: http://www.cropdecisions.com/show_story.php?id=20101

Don't know how true this is, but I have heard that the worst time to attempt a diet is in the fall, because we are programmed to start storing fat for the winter. It's also a lot more pleasant to eat plenty of fruit and veggies in the summer. The first of the local strawberries are starting to come in and asparagus hasn't yet run its course...

Nerissa, I am as prone to food additive paranoia as the next person, but, and I am no medical or nutritional expert, is it possible that there are a number of factors here--better over-all nutrition, the eradication of many diseases, and rendering others far less harmful? I think it is also the case that in North America, people have been, on average, becoming taller for the past couple of generations, but this is not usually considered cause for alarm. It may also be worth noting that while puberty may be coming earlier, it is also the case that adolescence seems to last much longer. I often joke with my son than he and his friends run the risk of living in their parents' basements well into their 40s, while continuing to bitch about what a bitch it is to have to live in their parents' basements.

Not to quibble, but if 12.5 is the "new norm" 7-9 is indeed an anomoly. I take your point though--girls are reaching puberty earlier.