Obesity Rates Jump in 28 States, Report Shows

a reply to: 38181

reading 'Labels' Is not worth spit

the food producers make Frankenfoods exclusively, there is a RARE alternative, non-Processed 'real food' that is hard-to-get or else too costly to buy as a staple food source...

the deck is stacked against those who desire wholesome foods... the FDA makes sure the franken-food Lobbyists prevail in stacking the shelves with Poison

fish used to be pretty much an end around tactic but the engineered Fukuishima 'Wormwood' action fixed that escape route...

read 'em & weep

originally posted by: ketsuko
I was at 190 a little over a year ago. Now I'm at 145 on my way down to around 140ish.

We cook most of our food from scratch. When we buy, we get the stuff with the fewest ingredients on the label and avoid sugar on the label.

Get a bit of exercise.

Drop soda.

Portion control! Even the healthiest stuff will make you fat if you don't control the amount you eat. So at that point, feeling full is about eating smart. Some stuff is healthy but not very filling.

I think those are two that people don't really have sink in well at all -- reading the nutrition label/ingredient lists, and then adjusting portions accordingly.

There's a TON of crap in mainstream & value packaged foods, and it does not take a lot of effort to compare products. Similarly, it does NOT take much effort to switch from National Brand A, loaded with the extras, to the version from Healthier Brand B, and accommodate a price increase with decreased shoveling of said food. Yes, you're paying more for less weight in the package (that's a whole 'nother bitch-fest, but rooted in costs of certifications and such) BUT, and I stress the "but", you're getting cleaner products in terms of less, or even no, fillers to pork you up further.

That's what counts.

Portions run a very close second here, if not outright tie the spot. Ours are SO horribly huge in the US. Over the years, we've cut down our portions dramatically in our house, from what I like to dub "American Standard", to Reasonable. Meaning, I don't eat a 10+ oz steak all to myself anymore, a one pound cut of rib eye or porterhouse reasonably feeds the 4 of us well, along with the veggie sides not soaked in butter. I stopped buttering everything but potatoes a long time ago, things like buttered green beans taste very heavy & unappealing to me now. Believe it or not, a very LIGHT amount of sea salt to taste gives them far better flavor than butter does.

The biggest issue in this country is those extremely simple changes are met with enormous resistance. "How can you call 4 ounces of rib eye a meal, you trying to starve people? How can you eat a vegetable without something on it! That's not food, I'm not eating that!" People are fat because they prefer the prepackaged stuff loaded with all the extras we don't need, and come hell or high water, will NOT cut their serving portions down. Gluttony or bust, it seems.

If you can manage to eat a piece of meat no bigger than or thicker than your palm (no fingers, just the palm) or a deck of playing cards, then that's a nutritionally adequate serving of meat. A big slab of carcass the size of the plate is not. If you're not going to try to weed out the worst of the prepackaged things, at least start with your intake amounts of meats. It really is not hard to do, and the payoff is worth it.

originally posted by: Jordan River
My bmi is 200. and I am 240. I'm happy where I am at. I work out, exercise, body building.

BMI is like 1950 data when men had little arms and legs and no chest or back. Today I'm at 275 6'5" and I could lose 30 pounds to be slim and trim at 60, but My BMI is still 32.6 obese. Doesn't help I have large muscles with a waist about 39 and when I was thin my waist in my 20s it was still 35.

It's a shame to see so many overweight children. They are in the prime of their life; more active than adults could ever hope to be (fat or skinny) and yet so many more kids seem to be over weight than when I was a kid.

I also think they demonstrate that it's a bit more complicated than portion control, ingredients, and exercise.

My daughters (9 and 6) are thin as a rail. Their two best friends (9 and 6) are overweight. I know for a fact that they all eat the same basic food and portions (I feed them all half the time) and they all engage in the same activities at the same intensity level. But again my two girls are thin as a rail while their seemingly equal friends are overweight. I am no paragon of healthy eating; me and the girls indulge unhealthy food more than we probably should. These girls and their mother aren't remarkable different than my family is.

There are two differences though; 1) we do not have the same ethnic background and 2) their parents are divorced.

Not quite sure how ethnic background would cause such a drastic difference. But the stress that comes from a broken home as an explanation for the difference is where I put my money.

I think that is what we need to address when it comes to the obesity epidemic in the US.