As per the title really, this was on BBC2 at 9 tonight and I wondered if anyone had seen it and what they thought?
Overall I really enjoyed it - it came down firmly on the side that sugar is a bit more problematic for obesity than fat and I was surprised and pleased to see a mainstream programme talking about that - I read some Gary Taubes last year and although I can't seem to make low-carb work for me, I roughly agree with his ideas about sugar being worse for me than fat in my diet. So overall I thought it was interesting and I'm looking forward to the next episode.
On the negative side, I'm not really keen on pursuing a witch hunt against the food industry. Regardless of how responsible 'they' are for making me fat, right now I need to believe that I myself am responsible for being fat (not in a bad way, just because if I believe I'm responsible then I believe I've got the power to fix it. If I believe it's ALL because of the food industry then I'm stuffed until the food industry sort themselves out).
The other thing I hated is that they used the usual footage of headless fat people walking down the street with the voice over talking about the obesity epidemic. I am so BORED of seeing those kind of clips, seems to me to be lazy programming. If you want to show a visual while you're talking about the 'obesity epidemic' then for goodness' sake show something else! (Part of this is because I'm terrified that one day I'll be watching one of these programmes and it'll be me walking along the street!)
Anyway, sorry, post is too long. This delurking is making me talkative!
Didn't see the programme (was in a carvery stuffing my face with veg lol) but sounds interesting. And I do agree that we alone are responsible for making ourselves fat and not the food industry. They're catering to demand but we all have choices.
I started watching Man V Food and that is scary too - I mean, WHY would anyone even want to attempt to eat a 7lb burrito containing 12 eggs, etc, etc...??? Not only that, the amount of sugary sauces etc included in everything makes it easy to see how people have become used to eating this stuff and don't realise why they are gaining weight so easily.
I've learnt a huge amount in the last year or so and now these sort of things are treats and not everyday food.
Haven't got round to watching it yet, but there was an article in the Guardian about the programme the other day. Very interesting stuff. I knew a lot of crap was added to food but I had no idea quite how much.
On the subject of blaming the food industry, though, you can still hold yourself responsible - you chose to eat what you did, and so on, and now you know what foods will help and which will hinder you've changed your choices so are still responsible. That doesn't change the fact that your original choices had a lot of unnecessary rubbish added, or the fact that the existence of that rubbish wasn't made common knowledge.
Food can be made much cheaper by making it much less healthy. The fact that this is done means the food industry is more concerned with profits than the health of its customers. While I don't think we can lay the blame for that entirely at the feet of the food industry (because capitalism, insert lengthy rant here), I do think the people responsible (but who are they? Insert another capitalism rant here) should be held accountable.
Just about all of us here know it's possible to eat a very healthy and satisfying diet. The food industry makes that task a lot more difficult than it needs to be. But they're just one aspect of the problem - there's a lot more to this "obesity epidemic" than just secret sugar. That said, I'm very happy to see a programme about it, because it's high time more people realised just how much rubbish they're sold as healthy.
They can't uninvent bagels and they can't send us all back on farms to pull ploughs with oxen and spin by hand! Essentially I guess the stuff we put in our mouths and how much we shift our bums is our responsibilty not "theirs" although you do have to wonder about all sugar, fat and other um.....stuff....that goes into our food!
I do agree with the whole profit agreement though.
And I completely agree with all of the pictures you get of wobbly buttocks wandering .....no shuffling around .....from icecream stall to burger van. We might be overweight but many many many of us exercise and eat well at least some of the time!!!
I didn't see it. I once saw an article pretty much arguing that it is the food industries fault for making food TOO NICE!! Maybe I'd be better off it wasn't.
Modern life doesn't make it easy to stay slim. But the mainly man who made me fat was ME! And that means I have the power to sort this out!
I sometimes watch man vs food. I must admit I think it all looks lovely and I think I could definitely manage most of those portions. I can eat really a lot. I hate those clips of bellies and bums, do they ask the people's permission. I fear seeing myself one day!!
xxxx
I guess the stuff we put in our mouths and how much we shift our bums is our responsibilty not "theirs" although you do have to wonder about all sugar, fat and other um.....stuff....that goes into our food!
Our responsibility, yes, but they're guilty of making it a lot harder to be responsible. So I won't say it's entirely my fault I got fat - I could have been better educated about what's in my food, and I could have had better food options available that wouldn't be so quick to make me fat - though the blame is still primarily on me.
I spent most of my life thinking that my weight was my fault, and only my fault. Even at 5 years old I felt that being fat was my fault, because my parents tried to keep me from overeating, but I was so hungry from "dieting" (medically supervised by my pediatritian) that I would wake in the middle of the night and sneak food.
I learned (as we all do) that to lose weight we have to lay the blame/responsibility squarely at our own feet in order to lose weight, because "people who make excuses, stay fat."
Turns out I was wrong. I didn't have to take all the blame (didn't even have to take any of the blame). I just had to unlearn all the crap I'd been taught about weight loss.
I didn't have to be hungry all the time.
I didn't have to have perfect motivation to succeed.
I didn't have to "start fresh" every time I made a mistake.
Nothing but giving up is "blowing it."
I didn't have to give up tasty food to succeed.
I didn't have to give up every bit of fun in my life to succeed.
There's hundreds of things I had to "unlearn" to lose weight successfully, and one of them was that I was 100% guilty and responsible for my choices.
I realize that I learned (and we all do) a lot of unhealthy and untrue or distorted beliefs about weight loss. I believed "a calorie is a calorie," and "calories in, calories out" (though never gave the calories out much consideration except for trying to burn more through exercise), and that hunger didn't matter, that willpower was all that mattered.
Ironically those beliefs, still the cornerstones of modern weightloss practice, were the cornerstones of my past failure. I kept trying to work harder, rather than learning how to make it easier.
We have a very deadly food environment and food culture. We value foods that will kill us, and overlook foods that are healthy because "they don't taste as good." And children aren't the only human beings who learn to do what they see - we all do. In fact, if the learn a rule, but see everyone else breaking it, we learn that the written/spoken rule isn't really the rule, the unwritten rule is the REAL rule. We do what everyone else does, because when we don't, people punish us for it, by looking at us strangely, laughing at us, shunning us...
We learn that it's a social crime to be seen in a bathing suit if we have any jiggle (even if it's the only exercise we can do - too bad - it's against the rules).
We learn that it's a social crime to turn down cake at a party, or if someone we love "made it just for us."
We learn that if we want dessert, we have to clean our plate first (even if the adult put too much on our plate in the first place).
We learn that if we order something at a restaurant or bring something for lunch that is too different from what everyone else does, they will laugh at us (if we're children) and there will be awkwardness if we're adults (and they might laugh at us anyway).
We learn that the correct response to an off-plan bite is todeclare that we have "blown it" and throw ourselves into the nearest pile of food and "start fresh" tomorrow (or if it's past Wednesday we'll start fresh on Monday). AND we're taught to blame ourselves for following this ritual that is so ingrained we don't even recognize it as a ritual. It's - we just do it, because that's how it's done.
And then we wonder "Why do I do this? Why do I sabotage myself? I must not really want to be thin. I must be lazy, crazy, weak, or stupid."
We don't HAVE many good models for weight loss. We hardly ever hear about slow, moderate, or even average weight loss. We hear the miracle stories (and don't want to hear the average stories - we blind ourselves from the average stories). No one wants to read the magazine article "How I lost only half the weight I wanted to, and took seven years to do it."
Haha, we laugh. That's not success. But it is, because most people who want to lose weight do not lose even half the weight they want to, so why are we so hard on people (or ourselves) for losing less than everything they need to in less than a year or two. Anything else, we label failure (because we've been taught to).
We do have to overhaul the social environment for weight loss and healthy eating, or obesity and other diet-mediated diseases are going to continue to be epidemic. That doesn't change our responsibility to ourselves to "unlearn the garbage" but the first step is understanding that there's something to unlearn.
I do want to change the world, but not in order to change myself, but to help others. Right now, I'm working very hard to change myself (and changing my beliefs about food and weight loss have been vital - unfortunately I didn't always recognize that I had a belief requireing change).
We like blaming. We like to say "it's all you're fault," even to ourselves - because that means change is 100% in the person's control. We don't have to help our fellow human beings because it's not our job. We don't have to ask for help, because it's all our responsibility. 100% responsibility makes it "easier" on everyone, but it's not true, and it perpetuates the problem.
We like to say "all I/you/he has/have to do is".......
If it were really that simple, everyone would be at an appropriate weight. Nothing about weight loss is easy or simple. It's a gargantuan problem, with thousands of elements. Some of which we have personal control over, and some we don't.
Success isn't only about taking responsibility, it's about learning what to unlearn.
Thank you, kaplods. Beautifully stated. (By the way, the Cthulhus on your etsy site are adorable.)
I think that unlearning a lot lately is why I will succeed this time. I'm not getting all bent out of shape because I missed a day of exercise this week and that I haven't gotten up early any day but one so far to walk; I've moved that walk to elsewhere in the day and had fun doing it. I'm making a point of not doing anything that I absolutely hate in order to lose this weight. I'm having fun with the exercise and having fun with my food. If I fall off the wagon, so what? I will get back on. The "You should do this" and "You should do that" from friends will fall on deaf ears. I'm not putting a time limit on this weight loss. Knowing my body as well as I do, time limits set me up for frustration and eventual failure. To friends who tell me I shouldn't eat meat and avocados and coconut oil, I will look in their eyes and, with a huge grin, down my steak and salad topped with coconut oil and avocados (among other lovely things). I won't starve myself or beat myself up. If being healthy is a way to love myself and honor my body, why would I beat it up to get there?
I have said this elsewhere on 3fc so forgive me for repeating myself! What society teaches us is " good" and "bad" ....you know eating a whole packet of chocolate hobnobs in the car then driving 5 MILES to find a bin to hide the packet is " bad" .RUBBISH Mugging little old ladies is "bad"...stabbing some 15 year old for a bg of chips is "bad" . Once we as people who have a variety of struggles with our weight stop thinking and talking about "good" and "bad" foods I think that helps us gain perspective and go easier on ourselves! and whilst I am on a rant.....
If I had a pound ( in money not food!) for everybody who offered me a slice of cake and when I politely decline respond by saying" Oh go on....one slice won't hurt......"!
These are the same people who then offer me unsolicited advice about the slimming miracles of Lighter Life or South American Yams or whatever!!
Oy you lot....my wobbly butt is nobody's business but mine and if I say no to cake.....it's because I don't want any!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you, kaplods. Beautifully stated. (By the way, the Cthulhus on your etsy site are adorable.)
Thank you (on both counts - my Cthulhu obsession started as a gift to hubby for his birthday - then all his RPGaming friends wanted them. I'm hoping to eventuallly write the patterns up and sell those too).
I have said this elsewhere on 3fc so forgive me for repeating myself! What society teaches us is " good" and "bad" ....you know eating a whole packet of chocolate hobnobs in the car then driving 5 MILES to find a bin to hide the packet is " bad"
Wow! When I was still living at home, I sometimes used to get in trouble if my family found junk food packaging hidden in my bedroom... I don't drive, I used to sneak out with the rubbish and put it in a bin in the park. That ritual used to make me feel really lonely and sad. I still have some funny habits around how I dispose of food packaging. I think it is a hangover from that, plus of course my flatmate won't tell me off... but I do worry of her seeing. Strange, these situations. I don't know if this shame has just been taught, or if I am right to feel it.
I don't blame the food industry for my obesity, nor the doctors who told me wrong information from faulty research studies. However, having lived in the 50's/60's before the major shift in eating patterns, I can definitely say that the way food is presented today, the endless variety, the massive shift from home cooked to prepared foods, fast foods, snacks and drinks, the culture of eating has changed dramatically.
The food industry is extremely powerful and does have influence in how we perceive food and eating. They have manipulated research and suppressed vital information from the public in the name of preserving their profit margins. Through advertising, manipulation of tastes, textures, availability, foods that were never conceived of in my childhood are now staples. Again, as a comparison, in my childhood, people did not eat food walking around in public, or carry drinks. They did not eat crisps, and a couple of biscuits were served with tea as a sit down break perhaps once during the day, it was never about eating a whole package in one get-go. What the food industry did do, was encourage people to eat whenever they wanted to, whatever they wanted to and as much as they wanted to. They led us to believe that their foods could make us happy, that we deserved the pleasure, that it was easy, convenient and cheap.
It's being under the influence that is difficult to gauge what damage has been done. Each new generation that grows up with a different food culture cannot see the manipulations, they have nothing to compare it to. For instance, I grew up on the principle of three balanced meals a day, no snacks. Everything was home cooked from scratch. I was thin and rarely thought about food. When I left that way of eating in favour of snacking, I began my love affair with high carbohydrate foods. That in turn grew into a 30 year battle with obesity. So, no, the Food Industry did not cram the food into my mouth, but they influenced me, guided me, lured me with countless adverts, the massive portion sizes, the sheer availability.
There was a turning point, a shift in my thinking, from a traditional way of eating to a chaotic way, where meals blended into snacks, where portion sizes were no longer much of a concern, when I grew less careful and more obese. Where did that influence come from? The Food Industry who bet on it and won.
MSD I agree with the changing culture issue.
I was working full time and with 2 children, much as I tried I couldn't always ensure we all ate in the best way.
Now I have given up work ( long story) I cook everything from scratch which I find cheaper and much, much more healthy. My only beef is the high price of fruit in particular and veg too. Tesco were asking £2.50 for fresh green beans enough for only 2 people the other day. I try when I can to buy class 2 veg( who cares if your carrot is a funny shape!) but it still makes up a large % of our food outlay.....any suggestions?
£2.50 for green beans for two?! Get yourself to a greengrocer's, MW! I pay £1.20 for a pack with about six servings in it. At supermarket prices I'd struggle to afford all the fruit and veg I eat. Strawberries are one of my most regular purchases. They tend to be £2 or £3 for a decent sized punnet in the supermarkets, but at the greengrocer's they're anything from £1 to £2 for a bigger one.
Even when I was a kid in the nineties, we didn't snack like people do today. Whining about "I'm hungry!" would always be met with "Well, it's teatime in an hour, you can wait!" The small children I know these days are likely to be offered a snack - often fruit, but food nonetheless - where in my day we'd just be told to suck it up.
Top tip Brid
And you are absolutely right about snacking I am going to keep a mental note of how often my 7 year old expects a snack. Although it's always fruit and water it still means your body expects to be fed on demand instead of waiting for proper hunger.
Did any one see "The Men Who Made Us Fat?"
I am so BORED of seeing those kind of clips, seems to me to be lazy programming. If you want to show a visual while you're talking about the 'obesity epidemic' then for goodness' sake show something else! (Part of this is because I'm terrified that one day I'll be watching one of these programmes and it'll be me walking along the street!)
Strange, these situations. I don't know if this shame has just been taught, or if I am right to feel it.
