"Later, doctors and psychologists came to the (wrong) conclusion that overweight people were lazy, and society adjudicated heaviness a 'disgrace,' in the words of Lulu Hunt Peters, an early diet-book author. Dieting organizations ruthlessly shamed people into losing weight. In the early ’50s, one such 'support' group held public weigh-ins and forced members who’d gained weight to stand in a 'pig line,' where they would sing a song that included the lyric 'We are plump little pigs who ate too much, fat, fat, fat.'"
Writes Olga Khazan in
"People Just Want to Lose Weight/Americans go on yo-yo diets, but we also have a yo-yo relationship to dieting" (The Atlantic).
These days, of course, "we’ve conceded that dieting people don’t want to be moral, patriotic, or shamed. They just want to lose weight. That desire has always been value-neutral. But now it’s more attainable."
What's more attainable? The "desire" — that is, the desire to lose weight? I think she means actually losing weight is more attainable. The article is mostly about Noom and those new drugs like Ozempic. But people were less obese in the old days — whether that was because of the shaming and moralizing, I have no idea.
Posts
66 comments:
People smoked. Food didn’t have corn syrup. People were more physically active in everyday life.
But people were less obese in the old days — whether that was because of the shaming and moralizing, I have no idea.
People were less obese because food wasn't as calorie rich then as it has been since the end of WWII. They also did much more actual physical labor than we do now. I can remember watching the BBC's "1910 House" and laundry day is called that for a reason. They spent an entire day (sunup to sundown) boiling, beating and scrubbing clothes before hanging them up to dry. And this was a lower middle class London family! They had a pump in the yard, you can imagine that there were lots of other places where all that water had to be carried in to do the washing.
I think more people have caught on that the food pyramid is a bunch of government garbage intended to get us to buy more Ovaltine, I mean sugars and grains.
Growing up in the 50's and 60's we rarely saw fat people. No one knew kids with peanut allergies, Gluton or the current long list of kids behavioral diseases, autism, and the like.
RFKjr says it's the huge number of vaccines given to children. Some say its processed food.
Kids, especially boys, weren't medicated like they are today.
I have no idea what is happening, just noticing how things have changed on the streets and playgrounds of this country.
Television didn't really exist until the mid 1950s for most Americans, and the internet was added in the 1990s. Those are probably the real reasons for the sudden increase in obesity- people watching screens for 12-16 hours/day.
If she doesn't highlight the effects on nutrition and obesity of high fructose corn syrup, she's missed a big factor in overweight Americans.
Noom works because it pages me several times daily if I don't fulfill the data logging it allows. Sort of a Tamaguchi, where I am the critter and the phone/app is the device helping run its life.
I used to spend a week in Ft Worth while the son was attending TCU. That accustomed me to crowds of thin people. Arriving back in ATL was stunning. 90% of the people in the airport were at least 100 pounds overweight.
But they seemed to be healthy. I guess they did not ride horses.
It's interesting to see the origin of our national anorexic obsession with linking food and emotion.
I assume the majority of the population at that time smoked cigarettes.
Probably because in the old days, people did much more physical labor, both on the job and in their day-to-day lives. Today, with working at home, I could go an entire day taking about 300 steps and not lifting anything heavier than my laptop.
People are bigger now. Wear bigger size clothes. Heavier, fatter. All very unhealthy.
People are also living longer than ever. Life expectancy is up.
Amazing what will happen when the body gets food. Even if too much of it.
There's an argument that obesity increased when, at the behest of the nutrition "experts", people switched to a low-fat diet. That necessarily required people to eat more carbohydrates. (There are only 3 macronutrients: protein, fat, and carbohydrates. If you cut out one, the others have to increase. You have to eat something, after all.)
"But people were less obese in the old days — whether that was because of the shaming and moralizing, I have no idea."
Fun fact: when the TV show Mad Men wanted a period accurate office coffee cart, they had to have the bagels and pastries specially made, since modern baked goods are much larger than their 1960s counterparts.
Bring back Ayds.
Fat people get fat by means of the cardinal sin of gluttony. It's a moral issue.
"Look, fat.."
I have to wonder, during WWI, where were the people who were eating a lot? Was it on farms, or in cities where the wealth was.
Maybe living on the Farm is what should have been considered patriotic. They're the ones with Victory Gardens. Can't really do that in a city.
So then after the War, city cognoscenti looked around and said "How can we feel better than those rubes out in the Country" and came up with divers diet plans. I question whether people on the farm had time to stand in lines and sing about how fat they are.
Sorry, corn syrup was available in the 19th century out of a barrel and Karo syrup brand was released in 1902. Now if you want to consider the enzymatically altered high fructose corn syrup...
A century ago, people had late winter carnivore diets as their preserved foods were used up. Sugary cereals, candies, etc., were expensive when available. In winter the produce section got a bit limited to root vegetables even into the 1970s.
In the early '80s, more people could afford to eat out, fast food, drink high caloric sodas. I might proffer that some preservative started being added that increased ravenous eating. We could throw in the near 24 hour availability of eating thus ending the who idea behind "break fast"
came to the (wrong) conclusion that overweight people were lazy, and society adjudicated heaviness a 'disgrace,'
There were no Twinkies, and HoHos at the end of WW1.
......and let's get something straight. Obesity is a disgrace.
It's not like the risk of too much sugar wasn't known....
"One may say in general that the wholesomeness of sweetened foods and their utilization by the system is largely a question of quantity and concentration. For instance, a simple pudding flavored with sugar rather than heavily sweetened is considered easy of digestion. But when more sugar is used, with the addition of eggs and fat, we have as the result highly concentrated forms of food, which can be eaten with advantage only in moderate quantities and which are entirely unsuited to children and invalids."
[...]
"The amount of sugar that may be eaten without bad effects depends much on the amount of exercise taken. It has been observed that a man doing hard work in the open air can easily assimilate large quantities of sugar, while the same quantity would cause indigestion if eaten when living indoors and taking little exercise. This is what might be expected, as the active outdoor life means much physical work or exercise, either of which involves much muscular energy. Sugar, as has been pointed out, is a valuable energy-yielding food."
--Sugar and Its Value as Food, USDA, Farmer's Bulletin 535, 1913
The causes and effects of overweight and obesity are complex, and still poorly understood. The linkage to diabetes, and cardiovascular disorders like COPD, stroke and heart attack are impossible to ignore.
That said, it's just too easy for the enterprising free lancer to glom onto some juicy anecdotes and spin out a narrative that makes the past look bad, and our current state of perfect enlightenment the final word. Fat shaming hurts people who often shouldn't be hurt. But incentivizing healthy eating and exercise necessarily entails the implicit condemnation of those who choose to live badly.
Socialized medicine has the effect of giving all of us a reason to object to people who elect to live in ways that increase healthcare costs.
Paywalled but I wouldn't read the Atlantic if you paid me.
Food is far cheaper than it used to be. Plus we can afford more processed food, which my mom didn't start buying until the 70s
"I assume the majority of the population at that time smoked cigarettes."
They started young.
When I was coming up almost all the adults smoked, and at the U they distributed little aluminum ashtrays (MSU branded of course). Smoking was divine.
Lack of central HVAC. You burn a lot of calories when it’s 50 degrees everywhere in your house except right in front of a fire. Even bundled up with sweaters etc, you still have to heat up the air you breathe.
Then in the summer, you don’t feel like stuffing yourself when you’re hot.
JSM
Food wasn't as calorie rich and it wasn't processed. In the 50s, 60s and 70s, I was skinny as a rail (my size 12 in 1972 would be a 4 or 6 today). I didn't consume as many calories back then because food wasn't as tasty as processed food is today. For example, meals at home were typically roast beef (usually overcooked), boiled potatoes with beef gravy, a canned vegetable and jello. Yuck. A few bites of each and I was done.
Recently you posted about cottage cheese making a comeback of sorts. When I lived in an apartment during college, I'd come home to lunch of a bowl of cottage cheese every day. That's it. One cup of cottage cheese is 180 calories.
A food scientist I knew told me High Fructose Corn Syrup was like weapons grade plutionium. So little in suspension goes a long long way. That is part of the reason it is used. He added that HFCS distributed equally in suspension and could be used in ways sugar could not. Also, most everything was evaluated higher in testing by the subjects when even a little "sweetness"
was detected. His wife of many years was a Juvenile Diabetic. Read the package.
Losing weight and maintaining that healthy weight are very simple things to do. Unfortunately, for many people, simple is not the same as easy. I have tremendous sympathy for people who struggle to live at a healthy weight. No one wants to be fat. For me it is pretty easy to be thin and fit, and I gave up smoking many years ago, so it's not about nicotine.
Food is much cheaper today than in was in past generations. And there is a downward sloping demand curve for food.
This may sound cruel, but I am in favor of fat shaming.
In the United States, obesity is the leading cause of death, including deaths from diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some types of cancer that are caused by obesity. We are all paying for the exorbitant health care costs of keeping fat people alive. Enough is enough.
The exact same food is in Colorado food stores as in Georgia. Rare to see a fat person in Colorado, rarer to see a thin one. In Georgia. This isn’t because Colorado folks are deep into physical labor and no they aren’t all hiking up and down the mountains. They eat less. They are not surrounded by fatties. I travel a lot and am appalled by the huge, really huge, people cramming into airplane seats. They have zero shame. Shame works if applied.
"In the early ’50s, one such 'support' group held public weigh-ins and forced members who’d gained weight to stand in a 'pig line,' where they would sing a song that included the lyric 'We are plump little pigs who ate too much, fat, fat, fat.'""
I guess we're supposed to be horrified by that, but it actually speaks to how much mentally healthier they were, as well as their will to be physically healthier. And they would have laughed at the notion that they were "forced" to do anything. They chose to participate.
Eat less.
Burn more calories.
You'll lose weight.
Don't get your tit in a wringer.
Actually happened to my aunt. Something like this.
I was too young to be let in on the details.
speaking as an obese person (as of June 28th, Offically just "obese" no longer "morbidly obese"),
How long do fat people live? Is it Healthy to be fat? should we encourage fat people to slim down?
Even in the early days of Hollyweird you had your heavyweight actors, e.g., Fatty Horsefuckall.
People smoked.
here's a sociology experiment that WON'T be run.. Which has killed more (in man/hours)?
smoking? or obesity?
Sure, smoking kills you.. When you're old you get cancer. Smoking Also inhibits appetite.
Obesity kills, and (probably) kills sooner.
So, the question are: Which is worse? for you? for society? for the workplace?
How many man hours are lost?
as i say.. They will NEVER check this.. BECAUSE
The only diet that worked was the Atkins Diet, which was ridiculed because it advised the opposite of what the government was telling us. Sound familiar?
Wow.
Well personally I'm glad that I live in a time and place where obesity is the biggest problem rather than starvation and malnutrition.
Also, tuberculosis was much more common back in the day.
I read long ago that early health studies on fat, using insurance data, were skewed. The fear of TB was so great that only healthy skinny people, as verified by a doctor, able to get insurance, whereas the plump were assumed TB free and less scrutinized. The data sets included nearly all fat people but only healthy skinny ones.
I'm not buying the crap about WWI.
my size 12 in 1972 would be a 4 or 6 today
Indeed... My grandmother, a tailor, made me an outfit for my high school graduation. She took my measurements and declared happily, "You're a perfect size 14!" I was 5'7" and tipped the scales at 134 lb. My waist was 26 inches, my hips 37. I was HORRIFIED, because in the stores (this was back in 1984) I bought size 10 clothes. But I checked the pattern envelope for the outfit she was making, and she was right.
Now, those same measurements would be a size 6. I wear an 8 now, which would have been a 16 in clothing pattern sizes back then.
There was an account on TikTok that only posted black and white photos (years approx 1900 to 1940) of fat men and women in order to dispel the myth that everyone was thin in those days. There were lots of them. You can google fat people photos 1900s or fat people photos 1930s, etc. , then click on images and you’ll be surprised. I don’t know if that proves anything or not but it’s interesting.
I found some old cookbooks in the attic - from the 60s & 70s. It was eye-opening to see how many recipes were made with almost no fresh foods. Maybe, as someone pointed out earlier, flavors were so awful that people didn't eat as much?
A couple of other differences with how we eat today is there weren't as many calorically-rich drinks and junk foods (sweets and snacks). Sugar consumption has gone way up, and so has consumption of seed oils (corn, canola, sunflower, safflower, etc.). They are in everything. Who knows if there's a connection there?
Our healthcare system is set up to treat medical conditions, not to prevent them. Until the incentives change from insurers, payers, physicians, etc., we won't see any meaningful change.
Quaestor said...
Fat people get fat by means of the cardinal sin of gluttony
i forget? which month is gluttony month?
June, is Pride Month
I'm guessing February (or maybe October?) is Lust Month?
I can never keep my sin months straight (STRAIGHT? maybe THAT'S my problem?)
"Chicken Fat" was the theme song for President John F. Kennedy's youth fitness program, and millions of 7-inch 33 RPM discs which were pressed for free by Capitol Records were heard in elementary, junior high school and high school gymnasiums across the United States throughout the 1960s and 1970s.[2] Willson contacted Fitness Council administrator Dick Snider with an offer to write a song to be used to promote exercise for children. Willson's offer was accepted and he consulted with Physical Fitness Council director Ted Forbes to ensure that the song would be effective.[1] The bouncy chorus ended with the words "Go, you chicken fat, go!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Fat_(song)
Get real. You wouldn't blame people for catching a virus, which is just a key to exploit some deficiency in human disease defenses. That's exactly what is happening to modern first-world humans in terms of weight gain.
Your body will not willingly let you starve. If it thinks you are starving, it will subvert your diet efforts.
The class of drugs represented by Wegovy do something unique. Along with telling you you're not hungry, they also tell your body you're not starving. Case solved? Maybe. At least it's a lot more effective than fat shaming.
Get real. You wouldn't blame people for catching a virus, which is just a key to exploit some deficiency in human disease defenses. That's exactly what is happening to modern first-world humans in terms of weight gain.
Your body will not willingly let you starve. If it thinks you are starving, it will subvert your diet efforts.
The class of drugs represented by Wegovy do something unique. Along with telling you you're not hungry, they also tell your body you're not starving. Case solved? Maybe. At least it's a lot more effective than fat shaming.
Can you just leave me alone to have my waffles? You fat shamers.
Well, waffles and syrup, and eggs/bacon, hashbrowns, whipped cream, strawberries, and toast with butter.
But mostly waffles.
Anyway, want to stay thin? I got some rules: Basketball. Smoking. And a bad marriage.
"Chicken Fat" was the theme song for President John F. Kennedy's youth fitness program, and millions of 7-inch 33 RPM discs which were pressed for free by Capitol Records were heard in elementary, junior high school and high school gymnasiums across the United States”
Holy shit! I’ve been singing that song occasionally to myself for 50 years! I had no idea it was part of any program and this is the first reference to it I’ve come across since the nuns tormented us with it in the late ‘60’s. I always assumed it was just some geeky Catholic school weirdness.
Odd that this isn’t part of Boomer lore. I’ve never heard a single riff on it.
"Now, those same measurements would be a size 6. I wear an 8 now, which would have been a 16 in clothing pattern sizes back then."
In high school (late 60's/early 70's), I wore XL t-shirts. Now, it's M to L. J.C. Penney underwear? Same size then and now. Shrink-to-fit Levis? Same size then as now. I probably weigh 6-8 pounds more than I used to.
Don't know what this means, but I do know there was never such a thing as "3XL" when I was a kid. If there was, there'd probably need to be a 5XL or 6XL today.
Losing weight is attainable. I've lost 25 percent of my weight over the last year. Now at a healthy weight, per BMI. I just started logging all meals on a food app and limiting daily calories. I got used to eating a lot less. Dinner used to be half a large pizza, and now it's a quarter of a small one. It helps to visualize the loss. Since I've lost 60 pounds overall, I imagine now carrying around three 20 pound containers of cat litter!
I don't believe in fat shaming. I don't see weight as a moral thing. And yet, I also felt guilty personally for being overweight. It's weird now not feeling that guilt. So apparently at some level I did see it as a moral issue, but just toward myself. Not interested in judging anyone. The challenge now is personal: to maintain what's been attained. So I'll keep logging meals.
calorically-rich drinks and junk foods (sweets and snacks)
What did people used to drink? water? or maybe, delicious whole milk?
Delicious Whole Milk is FULL of proteins and butter fat. One cup has:
Calories: 152
Protein: 8.14 grams
Carbs: 12 grams
Fat: 8 grams
It's filling and it's GOOD for you.. Plus it's an appetite suppressant because it SATES your hunger
Now look at syrupy sweet soda. one can (12 oz) has:
Calories: 140
Protein: 0 grams
Carbs: 39 grams
Fat: 0 grams
39 grams of sugar! NO Protein! No Fat! So, if Anything, just makes you hungrier
And, That is just one 12 oz can.. SUPER SIZE ME!!! still wonder WHY people are fat?
It Ain't the hamburgers, it's the sugar water! And don't get me started on "Large Fries"
We Actually convinced a generation of girls (now a generation of moms) that "fats" were BAD,
and Carbs were GREAT!
Oh, we Also told that them being fat was fine (don't want your daughter to be anorexic, do you?)
SO, ALL the calories came from carbs.. Which All become sugars.. Which All becomes fat.
we replaced meat, with "boneless chicken breasts", and "the other white meat".
tasteless protein, no fats, and a big gulp of sugar water.
What do we DO with these calories? we watch TV
” There's an argument that obesity increased when, at the behest of the nutrition "experts", people switched to a low-fat diet. That necessarily required people to eat more carbohydrates. (There are only 3 macronutrients: protein, fat, and carbohydrates. If you cut out one, the others have to increase. You have to eat something, after all.)”
And of those three macronutrients, carbohydrates is the one that’s not dietary essential. That’s right, your body doesn’t need carbohydrates in the diet; the definitive experiment was done in the late 1920s, at the behest of famed-at-the-time Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson (look it up, it’s an interesting story). But try living without enough fat in the diet; search for “rabbit starvation” to find out what happens. Same kind of thing if you do get enough protein in the diet. But carbs…don’t need to eat them, and they give many people real trouble…including me.
Personally, I didn’t have any troubles with weight until I discovered the food pyramid; you mean all that pasta and bread my mom rationed for us was actually healthy?! And I should make it the cornerstone of my diet?! Sign me up! And about 70 lbs weight gain later…Gluttony had nothing to do with it. After discovering Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories, I finally tried the “no sugar, no starch” diet, aka the Atkins diet without the name baggage, and the extra pounds came off. Sure there are some gluttons out there in the obese population, but a large percentage is people like me, who just can’t handle carbs in any significant quantity. But it takes discipline, not from food cravings (except for ice cream!), but more that you have to go back to preparing most of your own food, and that - healthy as it is - takes significantly more time each day than picking up something on the way home, or making a plate of spaghetti. But it’s worth it.
"Get real. You wouldn't blame people for catching a virus . . . ."
OK, you and I might not blame them, but I'm fairly sure others would--and punish them to boot.
This discussion reminds me to put a gigajumbo size box of Saltisugarfat Snackettes on the grocery list.
"But it takes discipline, not from food cravings (except for ice cream!),…"
Keto ice cream is actually good! But forget about putting it on a keto brownie. Those things are nasty.
Even though I was normal weight to start out, going low-carb caused me to lose 30 lbs. It became a problem, but I have struggled back up to a normal weight.
Eva Marie,
Of course it means nothing. What matters is the statistical prevalence of the obese. Of course you can find plenty of pictures of antique fatties, but in terms of percentage of the population that is obese, we are hugely bigger than our recent ancestors.
Lisa in MT,
"Maybe, as someone pointed out earlier, flavors were so awful that people didn't eat as much?"
Oh good grief. I went through primary and secondary education in those decades, and things tasted just fine. Mind you, I had one brother who was a picky eater, but the rest of us ate very well.
Oh, and I have to add that the food we ate that was made by our South Sudanese neighbors when we lived there--rural subsistence farmers all--was quite tasty too.
Well, ok, not the porridge made from cassava flour, but pretty much everything else.
Another Taubes and Adkins fan here.
Regarding rabbit starvation, I don't think you can encounter that if you're getting lots of carbs. IIRC you're mostly at risk if you're trying to get most of your calories from very lean meat, and you end up having to process more nitrogen than your liver and kidneys can handle.
"In the early ’50s, one such 'support' group held public weigh-ins and forced members who’d gained weight to stand in a 'pig line,' where they would sing a song that included the lyric 'We are plump little pigs who ate too much, fat, fat, fat.'"
Thats better than the fat acceptance nonsense.
More on diet in the 50s and 60s and why none of us was overweight: Our only bread was white Wonderbread, which was only edible with peanut butter. I didn't eat rice and pizza until I was in my late teens. I didn't eat cheese on crackers until I was in my 20s. Pasta with spaghetti sauce was a rare treat. Meat was always some cut of beef cooked to well done. I drank milk with every meal. I ate a lot of fresh fruit off the tree and vegetables out of the garden during the summer. Potato chips were never in the house, they were for picnics and weenie roasts only. Ice cream was only served with cake and cake was only served on birthdays. Pie was homemade with fruit from our own trees. Pop (I'm from the Midwest, so it's pop, not soda) was full sugar not diet, but a rare treat only consumed outside the home. A case of pop was never brought into the house. TV dinners were tiny, they contained about as much food as an appetizer plate now. The only fast food I consumed was from A&W and that was a rare treat. I was a teenager before I ate my first French fry. We ate three times a day and no more, and there was always 15 hours of fasting between dinner and breakfast. And yes, I was part of the generation that was told to "play outside" from morning to dinnertime, and we did. I rode my bike for miles a day in the summer.
My diet wasn't different from my friends. For all of us, a weenie roast with hot dogs, pop, chips and brownies was as exciting and exotic as going to a 3-star French restaurant is to me now.
Today I think many children live on a diet at home of highly processed hot dogs or chicken nuggets; pasta, chips or fries; and pop or fruit juice sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. And the rest of the time they eat fast food. No wonder obesity is an epidemic.
gilbar said...
"Quaestor said...
Fat people get fat by means of the cardinal sin of gluttony
i forget? which month is gluttony month?"
All of em, gilbar. All of em.
I had a burger at HopDoddy(google it) that ruined burgers for me. It was that good. But the real problem with HopDoddy is the giant mixing bowl of fries.
So I'm at home cutting wayyyy back on carbs cause the ladies like to feed dad.
Anyone can lose a few pounds if they "want to". It's coming back sooner than later.
Anyone can permanently lose many pounds if they "commit" to doing so. This is an active endeavor. A passive approach will fail. Every time.
I was once a 170-180 pound 6'3" college athlete. Over the next 50 years, I super-sized myself incrementally until I plateaued around 300 for 15 years. There were ups and downs, of course.
My epithany came one Spring day at Home Depot's Garden Department as I struggled to lift a 40 pound bag of garden soil. I was carrying THREE of these around every day of my life! Oddly enough, I spent a month or two most years hiking the Swiss and Austrian alps (10 miles and, at least, 2,000 feet of vertical every day). This was HARD but, for me, beauty trumps hard every time.
I am now a fit 180 pounder again and have been for six years.
Write down EVERYTHING that goes in your mouth (and how much). Count carbs, not calories. Eliminate processed food. Eliminate sugar. Eliminate stuff that says "low fat" or "fat free". Skip alcohol if you can. If you can't, drink hard stuff, not beer. Drink WATER with just a squirt or two of an actual lemon or lime. Most importantly - Invent some mind games.
Craving a midnight snack? Pretend you're a POW. Focus on how relieved you are that you're not being beaten tonight.
How to resist a second helping of something really tasty? Remind yourself that you shared your meal with a pitifully malnourished 6-year-old. Be grateful that you did.
The scenarios are endless. Pick some that are meaningful to you.
Show the doubters how strong you are by taking a slow stroll through a supermarket and looking at all the most tempting offerings. Consciously, reject every one. Just say, "No, I don't need that."
A month later, every aspect of your life will be easier. You will like yourself more. People will compliment you. You will want to keep going another month and another month...
Blogger Colonel Mustard said...
-------------
Thank you so much for your post. It is so true. I am on track to get back to my original weight as a senior in high school, but it is going to take me a lot longer than I thought, and it is really going to be hard, but I thank you for your words of encouragement. It's not just that you want to live longer rather than die early, but that you want your elder years to be healthy and productive, and that you want to have the energy to live your last years with zest and vitality. Thanks again.
N
JMS, where did you grow up? Your experience seems vastly more limited than mine in terms of food prepared at home. (I grew up in the Puget Sound area; My wife speaks of a much more limited set of auctions in northern Minnesota - for example her mother was hopefully famous because she somehow got a hold of and made chef boyardee pizzas.)
From what I understand, High Fructose Corn Syrup isn't any worse than sugar, it's just that it get used well beyond where it's required. Also, the body breaks down HFCS easier than sugar - i.e. it consumes less energy to use the HFCS than sugar.
Maybe simplistic, but it's only bad in the same way sugar is bad.
Remember the National Lampoon chart about fat and thin and death?
Fat babies lived. Skinny babies died. Fat older people died. Skinny older people lived.
I might not have the details right.
I only read it for the articles.
Unless you break the lie of the Food Pyramid and completely denounce the Ancil Keys lipid hypothesis, this problem won't be solved. The explosion of carbohydrates in the diet as a result of these things correlates with the explosion of obesity.
Post a Comment