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Old 07-05-2008, 12:01 PM   #1  
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Default Obsessed on foods

Does anyone else get the feeling we are all obsessed about foods in this world today? We debate and argue about getting all the right balance and all the right ingredients by eating a very wide variety of foods. It seems to me we have a glut of food in a glut of variations and it's brought us to a strange place.

75 years ago most people had no refrigeration and most foods were grown in the summer and canned for winter use. Root cellars held veggies over for winter use and animal meats were canned like veggies and fruit. But only the very fortunate had enough to really last them until the next harvest came in. They ate very restriced amounts and variations over the winter months.

No one every heard of eating fruit in the winter if it wasn't canned (with a ton of sugar included). Often you heard the term "the meal months" and that was a time at the end of the season, before the harvest was ready, when folks lived on what amounted to oatmeal porrage.

My ancestors lived exclusively on potatoes and so did many in Finland and France and other countries. They added in a wee bit of cabbage and maybe an onion if they were lucky. These people, as long as the potato was available to them, were completely healthy and had healthy children....and lots of them. They often lived to be 80 years old without much illness affecting them.

Do you think we are a bit obsessed with all this food issue? We load our cupboards and eat a grand variety of veggies, friut all year round, meat of all sorts and cuts.......and we live in fear of not getting the balance right. Everyone accusses everyone else of eating a very poor diet and we blame every ill known to man on the food we eat....do you think maybe God planned this thing a bit better and if we eat reasonably of the good foods provided for us that we might all be just fine and have no need to worry?

If we didn't eat TOO MUCH food we would not have the weight problems we face and struggle with........maybe you really can have too much of a good thing and we humans are doing that in this generation? Are all the vitamins and suppliments necessary or are we just a whole world of silly worry warts?

Last edited by Timlin; 07-05-2008 at 12:03 PM.
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Old 07-05-2008, 01:17 PM   #2  
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Default Obsessed with Food

I totally agree with you! I was thinking the other day about how many calories were in nuts and how God must have designed them that way knowing that many of our anscestors couldn't go to a convenience store and by a large jar of them. God didn't intend for the high calorie content of nuts to be a punishment but a blessing.
The majority of US citizens have access to a ridiculous supply of food. Our portions are crazy and just tend to make us want more and more. My heart has been enslaved to food for years now. I would ask God, "Why me? Why do I have to fight this desire to constantly eat beyond what my body needs?"
I then realized that my weight was a way for God to draw me to him. To realize that I can't beat this food addiction on my own. To truly realize that without relying on him I could never lose AND keep it off. Every day I'm trying to turn my heart from food to him.
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Old 07-05-2008, 01:29 PM   #3  
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I then realized that my weight was a way for God to draw me to him.
Forgive me if this comes across oddly, but I really would like to understand this...

Are you saying God made you gain weight to make you become closer to him?

Or

Are you saying that you will use the weight you gained to help allow you to become closer to God?

Or

Something else entirely?

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Old 07-05-2008, 02:06 PM   #4  
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Soulbliss if you want to discuss God and Food please start another thread. I really would like to hear how others feel about our food issues today.

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Old 07-05-2008, 02:22 PM   #5  
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Soulbliss if you want to discuss God and Food please start another thread. I really would like to hear how others feel about our food issues today.
Sorry! You and the other poster BOTH mentioned "God" and "food" in your posts in relation to food, so it doesn't seem off topic to do the same.

Alright then. I don't agree that people lived "exclusively on potatoes" and were "completely healthy".

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My ancestors lived exclusively on potatoes and so did many in Finland and France and other countries. They added in a wee bit of cabbage and maybe an onion if they were lucky. These people, as long as the potato was available to them, were completely healthy and had healthy children....and lots of them.
I think that as science allows us to more fully understand the needs of the human body as they change throughout time in relation to lifestyle, habits and nutrition, the information will come out that shows us how to optimize health.

As with everything, some take it to an extreme and it becomes an obsession.
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Old 07-05-2008, 02:56 PM   #6  
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Of course, a livelihood dependent on hard labor makes an enormous difference.
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Old 07-05-2008, 03:05 PM   #7  
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Gardening, growning your own food ~ may bring you closer to the source.

We need a variety of nutirents to keep healthy. Potatoes are good, but you can get pretty ill just eating them. I'm thinking suplementing tatoes with meat, fish, fruits and veg would make a healthy diet.

Skervy, Rickets, Loss of bone mass, anemia ~ Yup, a variety is the way to go.

As I like to say, everything in moderation. (k so i don't always follow that.... but i ain't gonna cast stones....)
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Old 07-05-2008, 04:10 PM   #8  
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This is probably the first generation that will not (on average) outlive it's predessessors. So, until recently, the increasing availability and variability of food was not inhibiting, but rather improving human health.

I don't think "variety" of foodstuffs is the largest part of the modern problem. I think the wider availability of healthy food options is a boon to health, not a detriment. Having 30 varieties of apples, instead of 2 or 3, for example, I believe is a great thing. Certainly for me, who never liked Red Delicious or Yellow Delicious (still the most popular, but at one time, the only variety consistently available). I like Granny Smith (the other variety that I remember being common when I was younger), but it's a little tart for every day eating, for me. Braeburn, Pink Lady, Cameo, Gala, Honeycrisp, Fuji, and many others changed my view of apples for the better.

Every year our farmers' markets get better (and more varied) and it's been a help, not a hindrance.

I think the modern problem is complex, but I don't think variety is the largest problem, but rather the entire social and cultural system. Advertising that pushes low nutrient foods (often disguising them as "healthy" by misrepresenting the truth, if not outright lying in order to do so). A culture that values convenience over value. The changing attitude that restaurant and convenience eating are the norm, rather than the exception. The decreasing costs of fattening foods, and the increasing cost of low-calorie "real" foods). The increasing acceptance of food that our greatgrandparents wouldn't recognize.

And not insignificantly, our biology. The natural order (whether you consider the origin God, evolution, or both) is well, naturally balanced. Eating, in the natural world, is an obsession that is healthy to have. Food, is the critter's first priority. And energy expenditure is the cost of obtaining the food, and in survival itself. You must hunt or travel and work to obtain the food and prepare it (for immediate or later use). For the leopard, this means running down the gazelle fawn and dragging it into a tree to keep it from others. It means fighting in defense of food, or in defense of their position among their own kind. For the gazelle, it means traveling great distances to graze (and a great deal of running to avoid being the leopard's meal).

The natural response to an overabundance of food, is overpopulation. In most species, overabundance, reults in overbreeding long before it results in overeating.

We've changed the natural order, and wondered why we've altered the natural outcome. I think variety is the least of our issues. We eat more, and we do less. In its simplest form this is the problem, the reasons behind this change, and what we can do about it is complex.

It is the natural response to eat as much as possible (which "naturally" wouldn't be much because of the limits caused by natural resources and competition for them) and do as little as possible (which "naturally" would still be a lot, because of the energy needed to eat and avoid being eaten).

I don't think we're by nature, more obsessed with food than in the past, rather we have a lot more time to think about it (as opposed to working hard to obtain it) than our ancestors.

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Old 07-05-2008, 04:16 PM   #9  
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I don't think we're by nature, more obsessed with food than in the past, rather we have a lot more time to think about it (as opposed to working hard to obtain it) than our ancestors.
Ding Ding Ding!!!



Bingo.

Most of your post resonates with me, but that part above, especially.
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Old 07-05-2008, 07:58 PM   #10  
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Excellent post kaploids. I couldn't have said it better myself.
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Old 07-05-2008, 10:37 PM   #11  
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Okay but my arguement was not that variety was bad. I love the variety we have been blessed with. My thought was that people have become obsessed with thinking they won't get enough vitamins and goodness from their food when here we are with the best variety and supply of food in the history of the world.

(you don't get scurvy or most of the other things you comment on if you have a potato diet. All the Vit C and other nutrients are in a potato.....all you need to be healthy......you just have to face the bordom of eating the same thing day after day for your entire lifetime. I can't imagine.)

My thought is that we are getting silly with our worry over food. We should never be lacking in any vitamin or mineral with the variety that is available in our over stocked supermarkets. We are so lucky and yet we obsess.
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Old 07-05-2008, 10:55 PM   #12  
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(you don't get scurvy or most of the other things you comment on if you have a potato diet. All the Vit C and other nutrients are in a potato.....all you need to be healthy......you just have to face the bordom of eating the same thing day after day for your entire lifetime. I can't imagine.)
A potato is not a nutritionally "perfect" food, containing all that is needed to sustain life and be healthy. It isn't. I am not sure why you think that it is, but it really isn't.
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Old 07-06-2008, 07:24 AM   #13  
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http://www.mvproduce.com/spudfacts.html

Since generations of people lived exclusively on the potato and were very healthy and gave birth to many healthy children it would seem argueable. The only time they got in trouble was when the potato harvest failed them.

We tend to turn our noses up on things that sustained humanity for a couple hundred years because we have so much choice now and this seems to have caused us to have become obsessed with thinking we won't have enough vitamins and minerals from our foods.

I'm NOT trying to say you should include potato in your low carb diet.....I'm simply saying the potato was the food that sustained millions for a very long time.......I personally wouldn't want that one food diet myself but it did!
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Old 07-06-2008, 12:02 PM   #14  
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The bigger problem is processed food and replacing fresh produce with boxed crackers, chips and bars.

I still can't get my head around perfect health on a potato diet. Yes potatoes are packed with goodness, but I don't think it a healthy diet alone.
You are correct about the scurvy, sailors who ate potatoes did not get scurvy at the rate of non potato eaters.
However the Irish, who lived mainly on potatoes were malnourished even before the great potato famine.

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Old 07-06-2008, 12:59 PM   #15  
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Timlin, where are you getting your information on life expectancy and general health in Ireland in the 1700s and 1800s? I would not have thought it to be so rosy a picture. I tried to google, but didn't really find much. It's all about potato famine, not about longevity and healthy when there wasn't famine.
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