Thanks for this thread. Obesity also increases our risk of cardiovascular diseases, so it definitely puts a crimp in our lifespan. The comments on
serving size reminded me of a recent survey of paintings of The Last Supper, done over the last 2,000 years...as the eras in which the art was created
get nearer to the present day, the plate sizes get steadily bigger, no joke! This study compared the plate size in each painting to the size of the
people's heads in that painting. Here is a link to a discussion of that study on the WebMD site:
www.webmd.com...
And in Dan Brown's novel The DaVinci Code, he points out the tiny size of the wine cups on the table at The Last Supper...it's true, those things
are truly small. My family and I moved to the home of a deceased relative who lived into her 90s...many of the drinking glasses in her kitchen
cupboards are only 4 ounces in size! What a trip. She also left us 3 sets of dishes: The ones handed down from her mother look to have been
manufactured around 1915, with 4-ounce teacups and 9-inch dinner plates. A slightly newer set of dishes has 9 and 1/2 inch dinner plates, and a set
of dishes made around 1985 includes 4-ounce teacups still, but has 10 and 1/2 inch wide dinner plates! Conspiracy!
I have also seen a study online somewhere done by a member of the American Dietetic Association (ADA). The experimenters provided a cold creamy
dessert at an ADA annual meeting banquet, two evenings in a row. For the first dessert, they set out small bowls, and for the second evening, same
dessert but big bowls...results? Every one of the dietitians ate a much larger portion of the second meal's dessert! When the study was published
in the ADA Journal, everyone was pretty stunned. Fact: Until you get hip to serving size, it's what they call a subliminal cue and will trip you up
every time.
I agree with the ATS member who suggests reading the book by Neal Barnard, MD on food addiction. There's another and more recent book by David
Kessler, MD, former FDA Commissioner here in the US, which proves that food manufacturers know how to addict people to foods...it's the
fat/salt/sugar combo that gets ya. In order to fight food addiction strategies, it's very important to start reading some of these books to
understand the psychological and physical mechanisms involved. For more information on the Kessler book, here is my earlier thread that discusses
it:
www.abovetopsecret.com...
In addition to proving his case on deliberate addiction tactics of the food industry, Kessler found out that the U.S. has an overproduction of food,
due to government subsidies for the farm industry...that's really why the U.S. food production industry doesn't care if we get fat, as long as
someone keeps eating what they have over-produced.
More on serving size: The late Ray Kroc (the McDonald's restaurant kingpin) wanted to sell more french fries, but claimed that customers didn't want
to come back to the restaurant counter to order more fries because they were aware that gluttony is, well, one of the 7 deadly sins. One of his
vice-presidents suggested they test market larger portions of french fries, and before you could say Ronald McDonald the Super Size was off and
running. It took Morgan Spurlock and his documentary film Super-Size Me to change that.
[edit on 4/23/2010 by Uphill]
