billtech66's Journal, 06 October 2016

It's not some conspiracy though... Its the logical conclusion to feeding an overpopulated planet in a kapitalist economic environment. They "enrich"(its not enriching at all) most of the grain by stripping out the fiber. The reason they remove all but the endosperm of a grain is simply so it lasts longer. It's a preservation method. It also makes it taste sweeter. When europeans come to the US they often remark that our bread tastes like cake. The same holds true of salt. Salt is one of the oldest preservatives. Almost everything pre-packaged with a shelf-life will have 'enriched bleached flour' and tons of salt. When you're moving food from factory to factory, then shipping it all across a country in trucks, you need it's shelf life extended. Sugar is just put in everything so more people will buy it. That's about marketing and sales numbers and appealing to the lowest common denominator. People LOVE sugar. HFCS (55-60% fructose) is also terrible for us because fructose in the absence of fiber essentially doesn't register in the body as food. Its like a ghost. There is no blood sugar spike, and all of it is proccessed in the liver(where impurities are filtered out) instead of pulled into muscle tissue. People consume lots of empty calories of fructose that dont even register as intake to the body. HFCS is used in a lot of things because its cheap to make, registers as very sweet to the taste buds. Its terrible for your metabolic system though.  

It is still a personal choice!!! Nobody is forcefeeding anybody else. Not like they do with the poor ducks just to get 'Foi Gras' :( 

Nice Drop!!! 

^^Schmetterlinge34. It's down to personal choices in regards to what you eat and making the time to prepare what you know you should be eating. There is no "modern corporate forced diet." Your customer may fit the description of some, but I can't comment on how he got into that situation meaning maybe there is more to the story? There are a lot of sad things in the world, but there are a lot of wonderful things too. 

Billtech, I assume you are referring to America and not places like Greece or Japan or one of the Scandinavian countries where the diet is Fish & Veggies and they live healthy-ever-after. Most Americans suffer from Gluttony & Sloth and are addicted to carbs, and I blame parents for getting their kids hooked on McD's and sugar early.  

All good feedback, thanks everyone. :) 

[quote]Most Americans suffer from Gluttony & Sloth[/quote] ...........[quote]In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error, also known as the correspondence bias or attribution effect, is the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics of the agent (character or intention), rather than external factors, in explaining another person's behavior in a given situation. [/quote]  

@BS: I did mention the external factors: McDonalds! Multiple studies have already been done on America's lack of exercise and their sugar intake in pounds per year. 

There are a universe of external factors in any one event/thing/behavior. I see people and their dispositions more as victims to forces both larger and more numerous than them. Its not like they are creating their habits and dispositions, and decisions and thoughts ex nihilo. What happens with a particular person is completely interconnected and interdependant with everything else that happens. For instance, its hard not to consume lots of sugar when manufacturers add it to everything trying to drive up sales numbers, when you are bombarded with ads all the time from a very early age, when manufacturers add things like caffeine to make sodas physically addictive.... The economy is shifting more towards services than products, so laborious manufacturing and construction jobs are on the down swing and people naturally get less activity than previous generations. We have a million different technologies to make life easier. I would bet exercising for exercising's sake is is done more now than ever before.  

It's not like there are sugar warnings on anything, why should any given person question what they've eaten their entire lives. Further, not everyone has adverse consequences from a high sugar/high starch diet. I wish someone had given me a copy of Atkins Diet Revolution when I was a freshman in high school; education is key.  

^^Phil and SMB....great points. 

I just had a long running discussion with my wife who is an RN about this very subject. I was in Gettysburg for an army reunion. I saw a picture in which FDR had a 75th anniversary of the battle. They invited the veterans there at the government's expense. There were 1,359 Federal and 486 Confederate attendees. At that time we had over 8,000 surviving veterans of the war with the average age of ( I think is was 98 years old) The picture/plaque write up stated that many of those that attended were over 100 years old. I told my wife, just think for a moment. Transportation back in those days is not what it is today. Now these guys, over 100 years old made the trek back to Gettysburg on their own! Today we see someone celebrating 100 years old, they are usually in a wheelchair not walking around and not making an independant journey and surely never looking as good as these people in the picture. Maybe the overall live expectancy has increased but look at the shape people are in compared to what shape they were in 75-80 years ago. They were all slim, looked like they had fairly decent muscle tone for men 20-30 years younger by today's standards and many of them had the old handlebar mustaches, smoking cigars. I would bet they probably drank too (although I am just going with the stereotype there) but I guess the point I am making is they probably didn't over eat and had a very active lifestyle. That is just my take on things.