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Author | Topic: More on Diet and Carbohydrates | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jon Inactive Member |
The fast food and junk food industries were able to leverage the bad dietary advice to successfully market foods with higher contents of carbohydrates and refined carbohydrates. That's just nonsense. Until very recently fast food has never been marketed as meeting or even aiming to meet any sort of dietary guidelines. The fast food industry has not leveraged any dietary advice. They have always had one goal: cheap food that people like to eat; and that means lots of fat and lots of salt, and that is exactly what fast food contains. Your position is getting more and more ridiculous, Percy. The fast food industry didn't change their menu to better conform to USDA guidelines.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks you're blaming the government.
And it probably has something to do with statements such as...
quote: quote: quote: quote: It's made even more ridiculous by stuff like...
quote: ... followed by...
quote: The emphasis on whole grains is not only an emphasis that has been lacking from American eating habits, but it's one that even you agree with...
quote: The USDA guidelines involved the same advice. Yet nobody listened to it. And still you think that "the government bears a substantial amount of the blame" even though it was "the decline in fiber consumption [that] played a significant role in the obesity and diabetes epidemic", which was never part of the government guidelines, which advised, in fact, exactly the opposite of eating refined carbohydrates and emphasized whole grains high in fiber. You're all over the place. The only thing that stays consistent is your desire to blame the government (and now also anyone who gave similar advice). And I think I and others have demonstrated with ample evidence that that blame is wholly misplaced. Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
But how much of this is related to the change in lifestyles away from people living on family farms and getting their milk straight from the source toward people getting most of their milk in supermarkets where they have those extra options, which slowly develop into a preference for lower fat milk (which, by the way, some people simply prefer for taste reasons)?
I think you are again taking a complex situation with a plethora of causes and trying to pin the whole thing on the advice of a few organizations and their echos.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
I agree that the fast food industry was one of the last to jump on the low-fat bandwagon. Given the industry it doesn't surprise me. And when did they jump on that bandwagon?Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
I explained this back in Message 61. My link to the 1980 guidelines was incorrect. It turned out to be a link to the 1990 guidelines. I apologized for the error. I don't know what more you want. Yes, but that isn't why I was bringing it up. I was pointing out your inconsistency and apparent inability to read your own sources.
But the 1980 guidelines were even more damning because they contained this gem:
1980 Dietary Guidelines for Americans writes: The major sources of energy in the average US. diet are carbohydrates and fats. If you limit your fat intake. you should increase your calories from carbohydrates to supply your body's energy needs. Well, sure. The government stated a fact and then advised people not to starve themselves. What of it?
Yes, that's true, but the message about whole grains isn't the message that got across. Which translates to: people didn't follow the advice that was being given.
I'll close with a quote from Nina Teicholz's introduction to her book:
quote: Which I think everyone here has agreed with, either for the sake of giving you the benefit of the doubt or out of genuine agreement. The point of contention is whether that 'bad idea' was the cause of all the obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease we see today. You still haven't presented evidence that it was. Now you're chalking up McDonald's role in all this to their attempt to offer low-fat salads and not the BigMacs they sell by the millions every day. It just keeps getting crazier.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
The actual claim is that the bad nutrition advice played a significant role in the increases in obesity, diabetes and heart disease. And that's simply false. You've been shown repeatedly that no one really followed the guidelines. You've been shown numerous other changes in American lifestyle and eating habits that better explain the trends of obesity and general health decline. Your source is just committing the same error as you: jumping on a coincidence and calling it a cause. Teicholz is also lying to claim that the U.S. has, "according to the government, faithfully been following all the official dietary guidelines for so many years". On what government report is this based? I quoted a 2000 USDA report that said:
quote: It also contains this:
quote: No one has been following the guidelines. Your source is lying to sell books. And you just keep parroting the lie. Why? What's in it for you? Edited by Jon, : No reason given. Edited by Jon, : No reason given. Edited by Jon, : No reason given.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
Well, first when you say "no one" followed the guidelines, even your own citation disagrees with you. I think it is clear what I meant: the percentage of people following the guidelines has not been anywhere close to the percentage of people who are obese, diabetic, suffering from cardiovascular diseases, etc.
And it's been explained that your criteria for "following the guidelines" are absurd. But they're not, because my one and only criterion is that the guidelines be followed. It is your criteria which are mangled; you seem to think it is fine to label as followers of the guidelines wishy-washy people who kinda get in the ballpark with some 'general spirit' (determined by you) of the guidelines.
You classify anything short of 100% compliance as not following the guidelines. No. If most folks were following the guidelines to a significant degree, then I could agree that following the guidelines is what led to the nation's poor health. But that isn't the situation we have. Hardly anyone followed the guidelines to any appreciable degree whatsoever. In fact,
quote: And, of course, if these people weren't just eating whatever they wanted but actually following the USDA guidelines, then we wouldn't have a population that's 60% overweight, since your own link demonstrates that the USDA diet leads to weight loss, not gain:
quote: There's obviously something else responsible for what's been going on with the health of Americans over the last several decades, and it has little, if anything, to do with the USDA's guidelines to eat 6-11 servings of grains, preferably high-fiber whole grains, a day.
By your criteria, since most people roll through stop signs when they can, no one's following the traffic laws in America. And what is wrong with that conclusion? Are we forced to conclude that people in America follow traffic laws? If, for some reason, we wanted to conclude otherwise, must we reevaluate our position until we have convinced ourselves away from the obvious conclusion? We don't get to change the evidence just because we don't like where it leads.
Your own source reinforces what I've been saying about America's drive to decrease fat consumption, and about the increase in low fat options in grocery stores:
quote: Did you bother to read the whole thing, Percy?
quote: Their conjecture on the reasons for some of these trends sounds oddly familiar to what some of us in this thread have been saying:
quote: quote: But that's not following the guidelines, which, as you've been repeatedly reminded, set specific serving limits and emphasize whole grains. Furthermore,
quote: People are mostly getting more grains because they are eating more BigMacs, churros, and chalupas. Such eating habits are so far from the USDA guidelines it's laughable that anyone would try to connect the two.
You can't just pull out a few facts, make up your own rules, then leap to conclusions. Exactly. Like you can't just pull statistics out of context, make up your own version of the USDA guidelines, and then blame the government for everybody being fat.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member
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But I think most of us followed the guidelines for years where it counts: in cutting back on saturated fats and choosing the lower fat versions of dairy products and the leaner meats in the markets, some totally eliminating red meat, and cutting way back on eggs and the like. I think just about everybody has at least been doing that much as a general rule, which is a definite effect of the guidelines. This is a subjective impression but it covers a lot of observations and I would expect you to have the same impression because it's been hammered into us. I don't know anyone who did this.
I don't know why you are being such a stickler about exact following of the guidelines. As I said, I don't think Percy needs to demonstrate exact following of the guidelines, but so far he hasn't demonstrated following of the guidelines to any reasonable degree except, preferring to mention only vague generalities. Related to this are the following two points, which I have already brought up:
Perhaps the USDA diet isn't the best diet possible, but there is little to show that actually following that diet led to the health problems for which it is being blamed in this thread.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
Well, I'm very surprised that you haven't known people who insisted on avoiding fats because my experience has been that everybody around me was concerned to avoid fats because of the nutritional advice we've all been aware of. Oh, I've known people who would like to eat less fat, but I've never known anyone who actually has. And the data from the USDA that I've been posting suggests that my observation is far from unusual. Americans consume more from every food group now than they did in 1950. As a nation we aren't eating less of anything.
And the other effect is the proliferation of "low fat" processed items that contain sugar. All this certainly reflects the low fat diet guidelines and should certainly contribute to blood sugar problems at least. Anyway, my experience of people being super conscious of fat and avoiding it has been so total I'm amazed you or anyone wouldn't recognize it. Whatever the cause of low-fat, high-sugar foods there is no doubt that such things don't meet the USDA guidelines, which put sugar in the same category as fat and advise consuming both sparingly. Replacing fats with sugars is not at all part of the USDA guidelines.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
I can see that you're examining this claim and asking yourself, "What should we see if this claim is true?" One of the answers you evidently arrived at is that if the claim is true then the percentage of people following the guidelines should be approximately the same as the number of people who are obese, diabetic and heart diseased. The main point is that the article from the OP makes it clear that following the USDA guidelines actually does lead to weight loss. Thus, it is clear, that anyone who has gained weight has not been following the USDA guidelines It's simple logic, Percy.
... in any case you deny that there can even be a "percentage of people following the guidelines". You claim it's an all or nothing affair. Where did you get that idea from? Seems like a misreading of something...
I do agree with you that if Americans had followed the guidelines to the letter that the obesity/diabetes/heart-disease epidemic would have been largely avoided. Exactly.
I understand that other parts of the guidelines reinforce what you've been saying about people not following the specific details of the guidelines, and I readily concede that point, but it was never mine or anyone's claim that they did. But those specific details are essential to the guidelines. You declare that they are not, but you are wrong. And the evidence that they are essential is the fact that everyone who ignored those details got fat eating too many refined grains, too much fat, and too much sugar. When you follow the guidelines with attention to those details, you lose weight. When you 'follow' the guidelines without regard to those details, you get fat. Obviously those details are important, because without them the diet doesn't work.
The claim is that the nutrition advice community, most importantly the government, focused the public's attention on avoiding fat when the real danger was carbohydrates. The claim is becoming more and more vague with each of your posts as you try to back your position to a level of such generality that it could be true no matter what. The reality is that the guidelines were what they were and had people actually followed them, by your own admission, we wouldn't have all the weight-related health problems in the country that we now have.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
I don't think there's any point in us continuing this conversation in the circles we've been going.
You wanna blame the government? Blame the government. Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
I know my name was only brought up in one paragraph, but I'm gonna respond to a little more of your post...
It starts out with an anecdote about a woman who claimed to have been following the guidelines very closely but still gaining weight and being unhealthy. Which implies that even closely following them does NOT promote good health after all. Unfortunately anecdotes don't count for a whole lot. The study discussed in the OP's link makes it pretty clear that following the guidelines leads to weight loss. I have time this weekend, so I will try to actually read through your link and perhaps post a reply.
Some nutritionists, like diet guru Mercola, get into conspiracy thinking about the USDA, claiming the guidelines exist to promote profits rather than health. This article I've linked does say that the USDA has the task of promoting agricultural products, which can create a conflict of interest, without getting into a conspiracy theory, but that they also step on the toes of the industry in their recommendations too, such as when they recommend against major agribusiness products such as beef, dairy and eggs. Indeed, it is difficult to see how the USDA's dietary guidelines have ever been aimed at increasing agricultural profits. To begin with, all food starts out as an agricultural something or another, so it isn't really like the USDA can promote agricultural food products over non-agricultural food products. Also, as you mention, the USDA's guidelines promote some products and shun others. Perhaps tracing money around will show who pulls the USDA's strings, but I'd imagine that their advice given about nutrition is mostly done as an honest effort to promote good health, etc.
The more I read what's out there, though, the harder it is to understand how anyone (Jon?) could not be aware of the artificial diet standards we've all been trying to follow for years to one degree or another, the demonizing of animal and dairy fats and cholesterol in particular, the proliferation of low fat products in the markets and the continuing health problems that are clearly linked to diet. There are many health problems linked to diet, sure. But the questions are how much is linked to the diet and to which diet are the problems mostly linked. I think, and I believe any reasonable person will realize that the evidence makes it clear, that the problem rests largely with the McDiet,1 not the USDA diet, and that likely half the cause involves an increase in sedentarism. Tackling this would do so much more for promoting health in this country than bashing the USDA.__________ 1 By which I mean diets high in calories from junk food, fast food, convenience food, processed food, and high in calories in general. Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
It might be helpful, for the sake of comparison, to get some links to typical or preferred low-carb diets.
Do Faith, Percy, or anyone else, have any particular low-carb diets that they would like brought into the discussion?Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
It's OK with me to think about the low carb diets at some point if you like, but before we do would you please confirm the impression that you aren't aware of what seems to Percy and me to be the rampant insistence on avoiding animal fats and cholesterol in our diets, and the symptomatic proliferation of "low fat" offerings, from every conceivable angle of our experience, in the stores and restaurants and all over the media for decades? I'm not sure what has given you the impression that I've lived under a rock and not noticed 'low-fat' options nor advice on avoiding fats and cholesterol. But I have no reason to lie to you and make myself look like a fool. Sure, I've heard the endless advice against fat and cholesterol and seen the low-fat options offered everywhere. Who hasn't? Now let's talk some specifics on the low-carb diets.Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
If you want to discuss low-carb diets, then I'm all ready to discuss low-carb diets.
If you want to go in circles over past confusions, you'll have to do that on your own.Love your enemies!
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