Sept Issue of Scientific American

[luja]

It's a special issue on diet, food, health - it's really interesting read. There are some articles about obesity, being fit and fat, the paradox of growing obesity in developing countries, the neuroscience of food addiction, and so on.

The main point it wasn't exactly surprising - eat more fruits and veggies and whole grains, and less fat and sugar. They also talked about the "weight loss registry" that shows that people who've successfully lost weight and kept it off over time exercise 60-90 minutes a day; they keep fat to 25% of their caloric intake; almost all eat breakfast; and they weigh themselves regularly.

There was an interesting blurb about a 1907 SA article stating that Americans eat too much meat and need to eat less of it and more fruits and vegetables. Here we are 100 years later talking about the same thing. Humans are something.

[TurboLeda]

I would love to read that article! I read a great book called The Okinawa Plan (or Diet- I forgot the last word). It's all about how residents of Okinawa, Japan are the world's longest-living people. Literally living beyond 100 with no cripling health and an active lifestyle. It talked about how their diet was mostly fruits and veggies (in stir-fry form a lot) with fish mostly and rarely did they eat red meat. their staple food is actually sweet potato.
its so interesting to know what works in our bodies and how.

leda

[Outland]

1907 thats about right. Going off things that my Great great grandmother spoke of.( she was born somewhere around the ealry 1900. When she was young people still didn't talk about the civil war as it hurt most and she remember when the town got its first electric streetlight). Also have read and seen stories to back it up. That was when the US started moving form a agricultural society to industrial. People worked on farms for 12hr+ days and ate what they raised and grew. But the hardness of the work burned off those large intakes of cals as people worked hrs and worked less hard they still ate the same types of food so I can see how we still have the same issues now as back then.

[Steelslady]

Originally Posted by luja

There was an interesting blurb about a 1907 SA article stating that Americans eat too much meat and need to eat less of it and more fruits and vegetables. Here we are 100 years later talking about the same thing. Humans are something.

Interesting, isn't it? My grandmother (my Mother's Mom) hardly served or ate much red meat- she said it was a treat, but not something to be served on a daily basis. She also believed that a huge part of weight problems began with red meat, processed foods (cereals, frozen foods with chemicals, canned foods, etc) and dairy products that had preservatives in them.

My aunt (Dad's sister) does not eat red meat and has hardly ever eaten it in her lifetime. She told me a couple of months back, the last time she had a steak was sometime back in the 70's, and that was the first and only time since she was in her 20's that she had had red meat. She is now 74, and if it wasn't for a broken hip, she would still be up and hopping around. She's still very trim even if she doesn't get to exercise like she used to! She eats lots of fruits and veggies, and still weighs herself daily on the nursing home's scale, to make sure she doesn't go over her five pound "extra weight" limit.

My Dad used to cut out anything made with yeast to lose weight. He used to make "breadless" sandwiches- he'd make deli meat and cheese wraps with lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, mayo, mustard, salt and pepper, and bring some fruit and raw veggies to eat for lunch everyday. He would drop weight quickly doing that and sit ups and walking every morning. He hardly ever ate pasta- thought it was not good for one's stomach because it was "gluey".

They were all on to something back then.

[balloonlady]

Sometimes we should listen to the wisdom of the years. My grandparents didn't eat so much red meat either. If you wanted a late night snack you took of one of the tomatos recently picked from the garden. You didn't reach for a snack cake. Admittedly my grandfather had two main weaknesses. Hard candy and ice cream. His idea of a small serving was supersized long before Mickey D's used the term. However until he got older and started living with my aunt who is a processed food junkie he was very very healthy. Within a year of ingesting her high fat, high carb, high sugar diet he developed diabetes. (she had it 15 years before her father) Now he may have been prone to it already, but I think that food tipped the scales a bit.

Maybe we should think 'retro' when looking for diet ideas, not new and innovative.

[Heather]

Beef used to be more expensive, and really was a treat back in the day, so people tended to eat less of it. And then, apparently the corn fed beef
most of use in the US eat today has much more saturated fat (and much less omega-3 fats) than grass fed beef -- so even when they ate it back then, it wasn't as bad for them as our beef today!

[Luminous]

The more I eat unprocessed foods the more I am inclined to believe that processed food's the rub, entire. I'm going to depart from diet canon and say I don't think fat is bad ('cept trans fats—trans fats count as processed), I don't think red meat is bad, I don't think egg yolks are bad, and so on.

Medicine is shifting to a more mature viewpoint. I recently realized that most food advice for the longest time came from simple cause and effect assumptions. We all know people who have been told to curb their intake of cholesterol-containing foods because obviously that was what gave them high cholesterol. Newer studies are showing that ingesting cholesterol != higher blood cholesterol numbers. I'm fairly sure I've read that research is pointing in the same direction regarding saturated fats, ie, that consuming saturated fats may not actually be linked to more fatty deposits. And the obvious one: remember the low-fat food craze, when low-fat and non-fat versions of everything were suddenly produced? The mantra was, "Fat makes you fat. I can eat all the low-fat Snackwells I want and it won't hurt!"

I'm not backing any of this up with references because I'm too lazy to think of where I read about these studies, so I won't be upset if I'm corrected for being wrong!

[Heather]

Amy -- I don't have references either, but I wouldn't be surprised if you're right! Experimental research is good for addressing cause and effect questions, but often isolates just a few variables to study -- and the problem is that our bodies as systems are more complicated than that. I'm coming to the conclusion that it is difficult to mirror with simple experimental research the complex and interactive issues going on.