We keep asking ourselves can Government Intrusion into our lives get any worse, and the answer keeps coming back Yes It Can. Trust me this will not end at Trans Fats. Salt and Sugar are next on the list.
I had a great aunt who weighed probably 275lbs or more. She was the best cook and always used LARD!!! YUMMY!!As I once posted elsewhere:
She died of a heart attack... wait for it............AT AGE 96!!! :silly:
I have a pragmatic side. Look at the evidence, Lipstick. Obesity is rampant – even among children, something never heard of before the food industry began tampering with the balance of nature.
I have a pragmatic side. Look at the evidence, Lipstick. Obesity is rampant – even among children, something never heard of before the food industry began tampering with the balance of nature.
I'd love to carry on this discussion later. I'm already late for work.
I realize that, but my question had more to do with your support of government regulation, which is bound to keep creeping forward. Do you really think that manufacturers won't figure out a way to substitute trans-fats with other forms of fat?
Those hormones used to fatten cows don't stop working in humans. Neither do chemicals used to make fields and fruits grow. You're not just getting obese people, you are also getting humans reaching sexual maturity at younger ages.
Humans evolved eating trans fat. It makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint to ban a food source that made us who we are, Homo sapiens. Of course, in it's hubris government thinks it can control time and the rising seas – so why not evolution?
Having said that, the food industry moved away from that evolutionary scheme when it began producing trans fats in the laboratory – hydrogenation increases product shelf life and decreases refrigeration requirements. There is ongoing debate about a possible differentiation between trans fats of natural origin and trans fats of man-made origin, but so far no scientific consensus has been found.
Milk and meat from cows and other ruminants contain naturally occurring trans fats in small quantities, about 2 to 5%. But by creating artificial trans fats and putting it in so much of what we eat we lose that natural balance of trans fats to other fatty acids. I think that's where the problem comes in. In humans, consumption of trans fats increases the risk of coronary heart disease by raising LDL's.
If people were scientifically and medically literate we probably would have no need for regulation of trans fats. Unfortunately that is not the case. Have you ever seen people at Costco or BJ's loading up their carts with packaged food? Such little understanding of what they're putting in their bodies.
To avoid argumentation, I won't comment beyond what I've already said.
Whether in fact trans fats are bad for me or not, I totally oppose the government telling me I may not have them. If these tinpot little dictators really want to improve America's well being then completely ban all tobacco products, all alcohol, and require everyone exercise a minimum of one half hour each day.
I really don't need Big Brother telling me how to live my life or what I may ingest.
Give the government an inch ...
This all started with seat belt and helmet laws.
Progressive indeed.
I was thinking the same thing the other day. Drip, drip, drip... they just keep taking more, more and more personal decision-making away. Turning all of us into the zombies that walked out of the flooded New Orleans after Katrina in a daze not having a clue what to do or where to go unless someone told them.
Reminds me of that study years ago on low fat vs high fat diets an its effect on heart disease.
Facts revealed that there was NO difference in the rates of heart disease. Doctors were dismayed. The paradigm they had followed for literally decades was challenged.
Their conclusion: The study must have been flawed. The facts did not fit the model, therefore, the facts were wrong because they knew their low fat paradigm was right.
Abstract
Many epidemiological studies support the assumption that diet is of great importance in the pathogenesis of cholesterol gallstones1, but its role in the origin and development of non-cholesterol gallstones is less clear. In humans, a low-fat, low-protein, high-carbohydrate diet seems to increase the development of pigment gallstones2.
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/uncategorized/carbohydrates-and-gallstones/
The job of the digestive tract is to break down the food we eat and prepare it for absorption, then to carry out the absorption. Fat entering the small intestine is mixed with bile acids – made in the liver – that emulsify the fat, making it better able to be further broken down with lipases, enzymes that break it apart into its component fatty acids. The bile acids-fatty acid emulsified combo forms into micelles, molecules that allow the fat to be absorbed into the cells lining the small intestine. The bile acids then break off and recirculate back to the liver.
The liver produces bile, which is composed of bile acids, cholesterol, and a few other substances. This bile travels from the liver to the gall bladder – a little sack tucked beneath the liver – through a small tube called the hepatic duct. The gall bladder stores the bile and waits for a fatty meal to enter the small intestine. When the fatty meal arrives, the gall bladder squeezes the bile out through the bile duct (another small tube) that joins with the hepatic duct to form the common duct and empties into the upper end of the small intestine. So when the fatty meal arrives, the gall bladder douses it with the bile it has been storing for just this occasion. The bile then mixes with the fat and breaks it down for absorption as described above.
If very few fatty meals come down the tract – for example, if the owner of the GI tract is following the Ornish or other low-fat diet – the bile sits around in the gall bladder, unsquirted. The liver continues to make bile, but slows down a little in its production. The cholesterol component of the bile tends to become more concentrated with time and can ultimately become supersaturated and precipitate as a small cholesterol gallstone (cholesterol accounts for 80-90% of gallstones). If the stone stays in the gall bladder, it typically doesn’t pose a problem. The problem arises when the stone makes its way into and occludes the bile duct, or, even worse, if it travels further and blocks the common duct. In either case, terrible, colicky pain ensues ending up with a trip to the surgeon.
If one eats fatty foods often, then the gall bladder constantly empties itself and generally stays free from gall stones. If a one doesn’t eat much fat because one is following a low-fat diet or one is on one of the modified fasting programs (Optifast, Medifast, etc.), then one’s gall bladder doesn’t empty and the bile sits around supersaturating. Then if one blows it out, so to speak, on a big steak dinner, or a giant cheeseburger, or any kind of fatty meal, the gall bladder squeezes this sludgy gunk that may contain a few small stones into the bile duct, and, bingo!, one has a serious problem all of a sudden. One of the big problems people have with the fasting programs and with low-fat diets is a high incidence of gall bladder disease. We did a large maintenance study a few years ago in our clinic for the weight-loss drug Orlistat (now Xenical) during which we had to put patients on a low-fat weight-loss diet for six months, then they were randomized onto on of a number of doses of Orlistat or placebo. Before they started the six month low-fat diet, the subjects all underwent a gall bladder ultrasound looking for stones. Anyone found with stones couldn’t participate in the study. Those without stones started the diet and had another ultrasound at the end of the six months on the low-fat diet, but before starting the medication. I can’t remember how exactly many patients developed gall stones during that six month period without going back through the data, which is stored 1000 miles away right now, but I do remember that it was a considerable number, something like 10-20% it seems
snip......
I do not think you can prove this statement: Labels that today most people find indispensable to their shopping and food consumption practices. Some, maybe.
As for this: We had CONSUMER products for a couple hundred years. What took so long to put basic nutritional information on the labels? Perhaps because consumers did not care but some Liberal consumer advocacy group(s) did and used their political muscle to impose their will on us all.
Now please address the central issue: do you agree the government has the authority to require the private sector to require things like nutrition labels and ObamaCare because they are in our best interest? Do you perceive any limit to that power?
I like labels. So, labels, yes, Obamacare, no. (Quess I'm just at Quisling at heart)
I feel so unprotected and vulnerable... :thud:
Labels are exactly the sort of thing the government should be doing: reducing the level of information asymmetry that exists between sellers of food and buyers of food. Consider, without labels, and with an uncooperative manufacturer, a buyer who wanted to know what was in some item of food would have to carry around some sort of assaying equipment in order to find that out. You may laugh, but an individual with a peanut allergy has to be very suspicious of the foods s/he eats because even a little can kill them. That situation would be enormously inefficient - imagine having to carry the equivalent of a testing lab with you every time you go to the supermarket - and also potentially lethal, as many people would simply take their chances, or would act on the (erroneous) belief that they could "just tell" if something was tainted. Before the Food and Drug Act, unscrupulous sellers routinely diluted milk with things like formaldehyde, which is, shall we say, not the most healthy thing to drink; the trouble was, it was very difficult to tell the scrupulous from the unscrupulous ahead of time.
Requiring food manufacturers to disclose the contents - and relevant nutritional makeup - of their products is one of the few areas where government interference produces a net benefit because the additional inefficiency created by the government's activity - such as additional taxes to pay for more gov't workers - is far outweighed by the increased number of market transactions that take place because of the reduction in informational costs.
The problem here is not that gov't is forcing sellers to disclose trans fat, but that it's forcing them to remove it from their products - without anything like the evidence about the deleterious effects of formaldehyde - and that creates a net inefficiency because the costs, direct and indirect, from this gov't action far outweigh the benefits to be gained.
In other words, this is like the difference between the government making sure everyone plays fairly and by the rules, by enforcing those rules, and the government picking the winners and losers without regard to who plays better than whom. Labelling requirements simply enforce the rules needed to maintain a fair and level playing field for buyers and sellers of food products in the free market; banning trans fat is picking winners and losers.
Amazing how our grandparents ate butter, buttermilk, cooked with lard, etc.,churned real ice cream, etc. and lived long lives without a single label to protect them.
http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/06/omega-6-fats-linked-to-increased-risk-of-heart-disease/
Omega-6 Fats Linked to Increased Risk of Heart Disease
A study shows that not all good fats are the same when it comes to protecting your health
By Alice Park @aliceparknyFeb. 06, 2013
Omega-3s as Study Aid? DHA May Help Lowest-Scoring Readers Improve
A study shows that not all good fats are the same when it comes to protecting your health.
For decades, the message about fats has been relatively simple — reduce the amount of oils and fats you eat from animal and dairy products (less red meat and cheese) and substitute them with healthier fats from plants or fish (olive oil, omega-3 fatty acids). The difference came down to the specific type of fats that make up these foods — animal and dairy fats tend to be saturated, which means all of the free bonds available in a chain of carbon atoms are bound to hydrogen atoms, while plant fats are unsaturated, meaning some of carbon atoms have double bonds with each other. Saturated fats are more likely to build up within artery walls and form plaques that can trigger heart attacks.QuoteBut in the latest study on fats published in the BMJ, researchers found convincing evidence that not all plant fats are created equal and that linoleic acid, or omega-6 fatty acids, may be associated with a higher risk of early death from any cause, as well as increased risk of heart disease and death from heart-related conditions.
The study is actually a reanalysis of data that had not been included in the original publication of results from the Sydney Diet Heart Study, a trial that was conducted from 1966 to 1973. For more than three years, researchers at the time followed 458 men aged 30 to 59 years old who had a history of heart disease; about half were told to replace the saturated fats they consumed from animal and dairy sources with omega-6 linoleic acid, which is commonly found in safflower oil or margarines made from it. The other half were not told to change their diet in any way. When that study was published in 1978, researchers noted an increased risk of early death from any cause among the omega-6 group, but did not break down the data by what caused the deaths.
(MORE: Study: ‘Good’ Fats Even Better for the Heart Than We Thought)
So Dr. Christopher Ramsden, a clinical investigator at the National Institutes of Health, who was interested in understanding the effects of linoleic acid on heart health, contacted one of the original authors and reviewed data that had not been included in the study. This information involved deaths from heart-related causes, and the new analysis showed that the omega-6 group had a 17% higher risk of dying during the study period from heart disease, compared with 11% among the control group.
The American Heart Association (AHA) currently recommends that people replace 25% to 35% of their daily saturated-fat intake with foods containing unsaturated fats, such as canola and olive oils. The AHA further breaks down the unsaturated-fat advice by suggesting that people devote about 5% to 10% of their daily calories to foods containing linoleic acid. The recommendation is based on a review of the available data.
(MORE: Study: Eating Omega-3s May Help Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk)
The latest results, however, raise questions about that advice. Ramsden says the findings provide some refined understanding of unsaturated fats, which come in different chemical forms that may have varying benefits or risks. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that the [current advice] is necessarily completely wrong,” he says. “What happened is that in the 1960s all polyunsaturated fats were considered the same. They were grouped together under one mechanism of being able to lower blood-cholesterol levels. Then, over the ensuing decades, it became clear as science progressed that there were multiple types of polyunsaturated fats, and these compounds potentially have distinct biochemical and health effects.”
There has been some evidence to suggest that omega-6 fatty acids, for example, may trigger inflammation, a condition that is linked to an increased risk of heart problems, while omega-3 fatty acids, found in deepwater fish like salmon, tend to inhibit inflammatory reactions. Ramsden says the results highlight the need to study dietary ingredients in more detail, rather than lumping them together and assuming they have the same effect on the body.
(MORE: Can Olive Oil Help Prevent Stroke?)
Recognizing that need, the AHA says it is considering re-evaluating all its dietary recommendations, and will make the issue of polyunsaturated fats part of this assessment. Reviewing the dietary advice as a whole is important, says Alice Lichtenstein, a spokesperson for the association, since changes in one area could have unexpected, and potentially harmful, effects on other eating habits. When health organizations advised people to lower their intake of saturated fats, for example, many replaced the fats with carbohydrates, which can increase risk of diabetes and lead to higher levels of another type of fat in the blood, triglycerides. “One of the things we learned is that we need to look at the whole picture,” says Lichtenstein. “Just looking at one individual component puts undue emphasis on that component, and may lead to unanticipated consequences. We need to look at dietary patterns rather than individual nutrients or individual food components.”
Whether the association will change its advice about consuming linoleic acid isn’t clear yet, but Ramsden says the results of the latest study “could have important implications” for the way people eat if they want to stay heart-healthy.
Well, time for my midnite bacon snack...
I forgot to mention. Instead of buying the unhealthy whipped margarine. Buy real butter and let it sofen to room temperature and then add a equal amount of walnut oil, mix it well in your food processor and place in a container in the fridge. The taste is wonderful and it is much healthier for you.
:beer: Thought we were the only ones to do that!
We prefer to use olive oil mixed with unsalted butter though, about 1/3 to 2/3. About the same mix as you'd use for frying off leftover potatoes.
It's funny you should mention turning the bottle or box over and reading the label.
Conservatives opposed the 1965 Fair Packaging and Labeling Act as too much government intrusion.
* crickets *
Big difference between listing the ingredients and nutritional value on a label AND Government controlling the recipe.
Big difference between listing the ingredients and nutritional value on a label AND Government controlling the recipe.
Olive oil is okay, but the walnut oil gives it a really nice flavor.
BTW Humus is a wonderful snack food - and you can make your own (though it is easier to just purchase at the store) but with some raw red or yellow peppers or jicama or even celery it is a wonderful healthy snack and humus is a very “slow” carbohydrate because it's a low-glycemic food - which is good for anyone who has problems with blood sugar, it is high in fiber and is healthy for the colon and the heart and it's high in vitamins and the important omega-3 fatty acids.
I love walnut oil. My wife hates the taste. Guess who won that particular discussion. :laugh:
We adore hummus. Tend to buy it from the local store, dice peppers and garlic really fine and stir them in with a tiny bit of lemon juice. Leave it in the fridge for an hour, then we make pan bread - usually with chick pea flour.
I haven't cooked with chick pea flour - though it is an ingredient in the food I feed my dogs - but I do use almond flour and coconut flour.
BTW I imagine where you live you have access to good fresh fish? The one thing I eat, but really don't love is salmon. George loved salmon and we used to eat it at least twice a week. I prefer halibut (or King crab)...
Mackeral? How can you stand it??? I have fed it to my dogs.
But people need to be controlled! Government knows what is best for you and you are too dumb to figure it out for yourself!!!
Sarc tag needed on that?
Though a quick scan through the pictures on people of Walmart and it becomes very hard to argue the point.
The thinking is, of course, that by forcing people to eat more healthy, they will stay healthy for longer and health care costs will go down. A healthier population is a more productive population, meaning a greater GDP and more tax revenues. That sound at all familiar?
I can accept the government controlling the recipe of canned or processed or fast foods to a certain extent. Who wants to go to McDonalds and not know what is in the burger and fries? (Arby's somehow gets away with mystery meat - must be a CIA front)
Grading and checking slaughterhouses, including the pink slime - fine. Maybe it is the horror stories I heard as a kid. Maybe it is too many years eating field rats. But the thought that someone not from the company is doing the quality control checks is reassuring to me.
Don't tell us you like bacon ice cream??? (the though makes me nauseous)...
No, I'm not that guy!
I love a good BLT in the morning tho!
Well, pardner, that depends.
Mayo, Mustard or both?
Well, pardner, that depends.
Mayo, Mustard or both?
For almost 60 years, it has definitely been mayo and mayo only. I have noticed lately that more and more mustard has crept into my condiment arsenal. It hasn't made it onto my BLT, tho.
(BTW, my friend... my sons are home! Going to see my Dad. Time will be short - so glad my boys are here. One of them is doing homework now.)
Mustard on a BLT?
Real mayo and yellow mustard and avocado.
When will they ban hemorrhoids? They are real pain in the *ss. :silly:
It actually turned out the low fat diet had unintended consequences in an increase in gallbladder disease........
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bjs.1800830140/abstract
and......
Mackeral? How can you stand it??? I have fed it to my dogs.LOL..yer on a roll.
Don't tell us you like bacon ice cream??? (the though makes me nauseous)...
true story - when I was in the 5th grade I "discovered" Bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwiches. For two months that is all I would eat, I insisted our house keeper make them for me for breakfast, lunch and dinner... finally my stepfather said no more and she was forbidden to give them to me any longer. Once in a great while I still really enjoy one...
The military is having trouble finding people fit enough to defend the country. I haven't noticed many obese Islamic fascist. Have you?
My office in Queens, New York is across the street from a police station. You know where I'm headed with this vignette ... Yes, that's right. Severely obese police. I see them every day, men and women. Couldn't rundown a perp if their life depended on it – oh wait, it does.
Sarcasm aside. Food manufacturers overuse of artificially hydrogenated fats – unnaturally and ubiquitously used – in nearly every food item has resulted in an unnaturally sickly and obese nation. It's not something the population can deal with on its own. To think that people are gonna start grinding chickpeas for hummus, en masse, to avoid the commercial hummus which may contain hydrogenated oils, is fanciful, idealistic, and dare I say, naïve.
People are literally eating themselves to death in America. I know – I shop at a BJ's in a black neighborhood. 90% obesity. How do we get through to them? How did we get through the ignorance and apathy? Before it's too late?
Sarcasm aside. Food manufacturers overuse of artificially hydrogenated fats – unnaturally and ubiquitously used – in nearly every food item has resulted in an unnaturally sickly and obese nation. It's not something the population can deal with on its own. To think that people are gonna start grinding chickpeas for hummus, en masse, to avoid the commercial hummus which may contain hydrogenated oils, is fanciful, idealistic, and dare I say, naïve.
People are literally eating themselves to death in America. I know – I shop at a BJ's in a black neighborhood. 90% obesity. How do we get through to them? How did we get through the ignorance and apathy? Before it's too late?
It's a problem. The usual answer is educate them, but every adult reachable that way has already learned, whether they follow the advice or not - looking at the obesity rates by class, many choose not to.
The big problem is that eating healthy costs. Not so much in terms of money, when you do a side by side comparison, but in time and planning.
Which is easier?
Go to the store, haul back 4 bags full of fresh veg and a bit of meat. Peel and chop the veggies and the meat. Clean up all the peelings and scrapings. Make some stock. Put it all in a casserole dish (or a slow cooker, those things are amazing) and let it cook fully, which takes a few hours.
or
Go to the store. Grab a bag of ready meals. Sling them in the microwave for a few minutes.
Don't know about that. I had to go to Walmart this afternoon.. I picked up a roasted chicken came home fed the dogs, made a salad and then deboned the chicken, saved the white meat for a sandwich later in the week and ate the dark meat with the salad... didn't take all that long and much healthier than if I would have gone through McDonalds and not any more expensive.
BTW I have to say I detest casseroles... I am one of those strange people who eats around my plate - just about the only exception is the occasional hamburger and the aforementioned BLT's... other than that I am pretty much keep my foods separate person... and I eat one thing at a time. Used to drive George crazy - he'd say it all goes to the same place and turns to ....
Sounds nice - what dressing do you use on chicken salad? We prefer citronette. :beer:
Think of the time taken though. Assuming you are a speed demon with the deboning, that takes, what, 15 minutes? Wash your hands, prepare the salad - another 10 minutes. Plate up - 2 minutes. You could have stopped at McDonalds on your drive back, got your meal within 5 minutes, and be finished eating by the time you were home, with no clean up to do.
(Hope you are making stock from the carcase!)
Nope carcase went down the garbage disposal (they call it a bone crusher for a reason)....... I never eat before my dogs ~LOL~ and it takes longer to feed them than it does to feed myself. The chicken was on a separate plate (I ate the salad first with olive oil and balsamic vinegar for the dressing and some Mandarin oranges in the salad along with arugula, spinach, red-and green-baby greens, red pepper, mushrooms and cucumber)
Invite me to dinner! Sounds wonderful!
I bet your dogs still give you the sad eyes while you are eating though. They are rascals like that :laugh:
That they do because my husband could not resist the sad eyes and he fed them from the table... I refuse to do it..... they still give me the big eyes...... but heck they eat better than 99% of the dogs out there so they have nothing to complain over.
BTW I made a wonderful sugar-free pumpkin pie last night.....
(http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/692/7555/original.jpg)
Yes, and way too many people suffer when they shouldn't have to because they don't have health insurance. How do we get to them? Should we mandate that they buy health insurance? Oh, wait, we already did that.
Don't know about that. I had to go to Walmart this afternoon.. I picked up a roasted chicken came home fed the dogs, made a salad and then deboned the chicken, saved the white meat for a sandwich later in the week and ate the dark meat with the salad... didn't take all that long and much healthier than if I would have gone through McDonalds and not any more expensive.SAMs $4.88 roasted chicken is great. Bought 2 of 'em yesterday along with the $4.35 banana nut muffins.
SAMs $4.88 roasted chicken is great. Bought 2 of 'em yesterday along with the $4.35 banana nut muffins.
Gotta do my trans fat thing.
The $3.03 a gallon gas was nice too. It's the only place that doesn't sell corn oil gas (ugh, horrible stuff)
One stop shopping :).
That's not fair. Perhaps I should qualify my position.
I'm not against saturated fats, I'm against the unnaturally high amounts hidden in all of our foods – in foods one wouldn't expect to find them. Evolutionary diets that included eggs, butter, cream, sugar and other natural ingredients are fine (just watch for excess calories).
But, hydrogenated oils hidden in all our food? No. That's wrong from a normal and natural evolutionary standpoint. Our bodies' digestive systems did not evolve that way. That is a recent development in food science the effects of which are not as yet fully understood. And I believe we are seeing the results of that in rampant obesity levels, diabetes and in inflammatory diseases.
So you're telling me that two egg, two strips of bacon, one slice of dry toast, and glass of orange juice breakfast is OK?
Are you taking on any new patients?
So you're telling me that two egg, two strips of bacon, one slice of dry toast, and glass of orange juice breakfast is OK?
Are you taking on any new patients?
I eat that exact thing about every other weekend. Except 1/2 bagel in place of the toast with Philadelphia low fat veggie cream cheese (which is very good, BTW) Oh and black coffee--lots of that. Heaven!
I eat that exact thing about every other weekend. Except 1/2 bagel in place of the toast with Philadelphia low fat veggie cream cheese (which is very good, BTW) Oh and black coffee--lots of that. Heaven!
In my case it's about ever other DAY. So far no ill effects but I do nuke the bacon instead of frying it!
In my case it's about ever other DAY. So far no ill effects but I do nuke the bacon instead of frying it!
How do you nuke bacon? Doesn't it make a mess of your microwave?
Nope! Just fold a couple of paper towels and put them under the bacon on a plate and then cover with another paper towel and turn on the nuke machine.
That's how George used to do it, too... he loved his bacon ~LOL~
So you're telling me that two egg, two strips of bacon, one slice of dry toast, and glass of orange juice breakfast is OK?
Are you taking on any new patients?
Absolutely. Take a one hour walk every day and you're good to go.
Absolutely. Take a one hour walk every day and you're good to go.