In article <svcr34hvoqbnm961urek7vtmh9priffgv2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Roedy Green <see_website@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> The obesity epidemic is being blamed on kids watching TV, playing
> computer video games (boys), and chatting on the net(girls).
>
> I wonder how we might redesign computers to make them burn more
> calories.
>
> here are some ideas
The problem isn't lack of activity (e.g., too few calories being used).
The problem is too many calories coming in.
Food is an industry nowadays, and like most industries, finds it
im****tant to have sales keep growing. With food, the way to do that is
convince people to eat more food. So that's what they've done, using a
couple of clever tricks.
First, they've boosted the sweetness of many things. People evolved to
seek out sweet things, so this makes people prefer the artificially
sweetened food.
Second, they've engineered the foods to release their energy quickly.
When you eat such food, your blood sugar spikes, and then crashes. Your
body interprets that crash as a sign that it is time to eat some more,
sending you to snacks. (Nice, high sugar snacks, that will do the spike
and crash thing again).
Third, they've taken advantage of psychology. People like bargains, and
people tend to assume that whatever is placed before them is the amount
they are supposed to eat. So, by making ****tions twice as big, for only
50% more, say, people buy the bigger packages to get a bargain, and then
eat the whole package. (Check out drink prices at a fast food place, or
french fry prices, for good examples of this).
Forth, even when the food industry gives you good health advice, they
often do it in a way that encourages you to eat more. For example, the
current thought is that you should consume approximately equal amounts
of omega-3 fatty acids and omega-6 fatty acids. The typical person in
the US or Canada gets about a 10:1 ratio in favor of omega-6. So, the
message we are given is to eat more omega-3's. The way most people do
that is by finding foods that are high in omega-3's, and *adding* them
to their diet, without removing something else! Result: more calories.
We are told to add omega-3's rather than to ****ft from what we now eat
to foods that are more balanced between the two, because that would
offend the producers of the foods ****fted away from, and that's not
politically feasible.
Fifth, much of the marketing of food is aimed at getting us to eat
faster. The ease and speed of preparation is emphasized. The goal is
to get is to nuke up our packaged meals and eat them quickly. Eating
quickly is good for people selling food, because that makes us eat more.
It takes about 20 minutes to feel full after starting to eat, so if they
can get us to eat all our meals in under that time, the can cram in
those supersized ****tions (see the third item, above).
The bottom line is that eating nowadays is an adversarial process. It
is you versus the big food companies, and for them to win, you have to
lose, and vice versa.
Result: even a very active person can have a very hard time keeping
their weight down.
The good news is that it is not actually hard to get out of that game.
It takes some care at first, but can be done. An excellent book on this
is "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan.
--
--Tim Smith
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