Health is not an area I have taken a particular interest in during my life. I have always tried to eat ‘well’ (a concept I will talk about in a bit) and keep active, but calorie counting and weighing are not things I have been to familiar with. If anything I have always struggled putting on weight, rather than shedding the pounds. However recently there been an increased awareness and promotion of healthy eating and living, weight loss and dieting, something that until a few weeks ago I was certain was a good thing. After all we as a nation are getting fatter, there are more obese children than ever before, and these people are at risk from all sorts of diseases. As a nation we were facing an epidemic, a crisis and we have to act fast to prevent it. In America things are worse, half the nation is overweight and as Bill Clinton famously said this could be the first generation of children who fail to outlive their parents because of weight related diseases.
But what if this wasn’t true? What if a combination of scaremongering, bad science and scare tactics have infiltrated society and left perfectly healthy people afraid, worried and obsessive. What if promoting healthy living wasn’t in the publics best interest but being proposed for much more sinister reasons?
All these things are discussed far more eloquently that I could and dissected meticulously over at the
eye-opening blog Junk Food Science where the studies behind the headlines are looked at, and more often than not the reported ‘facts’ that we get fed day after day are loosely based and interpreted from information that often proves no such thing. The site is essential reading for everyone but especially if these issues interest you and whether you accept it or not it is a fascinating critical look at the way our society looks at body image and health.
For all the fear we see in the media nowadays there is no evidence whatsoever that we are unhealthier as a nation than before. In fact studies of heart disease and cancer are at their lowest ever and average life expectancy continues to rise year on year. Not only that but we have the widest choice of the safest and healthiest foods ever available. We have more knowledge of food preparation and production than ever before and the choice you get a local supermarkets is far beyond what you even would have found 10 years ago. So why are we convinced that ‘bad’ foods will kill us and that we should watch what we eat with careful scrutiny?
The answer is found in that sentence, the notion of ’bad’ foods, a ridiculously simplified and dangerous term that has infiltrated society almost unknowingly. Food is good for you, we need it to survive. It gives us vitamins and protein and energy and hundreds of things our bodies need to function each day. What is much worse for us than so called bad foo
d, that is food high in fats or sugars, is bacteria or germs. It is much worse for our bodies to eat ill prepared or out of date food than what we are told is unhealthy. Yet in the past when such food was more prevalent there were no such scares and the risks were so much greater. Fat has become a byword for unhealthy. Yet we need fat. We need to eat a certain amount of fat a day; our bodies store it for a reason, so why is it something so many people feel they need to get rid of when they don’t? Sugar has been studied for years and
has never been found to cause disease or obesity, yet even I feel such guilt from eating sweet food. Somehow, through the twisted views of healthy food we see sweets or drinks high in sugar as bad, and yet fruit with just as much sugar as healthy. Yes fruit has vitamins etc. but our bodies process all sugar the same way, saying one is natural and the other man made is not the point, if our bodies can’t tell then surely it doesn’t make a difference?
Now through this I am not noting that there isn’t a problem. People drastically overweight have severe health risks, and eating a diet of high fatty foods without a healthy mix of other nutrients is, of course, going to be bad for you. But the trouble is people who are in effect perfectly healthy start to think that they aren’t. The media’s constant vindication of petite models that adorn every newspaper, magazine and TV show have somehow convinced an entire generation of women that they are fat ugly and need to change. It breaks my heart to see this trend sweeping the nation. In surveys over the majority of women claim they are unhappy with their appearance, the rise of plastic surgery and diets such as the Atkins diet shows a nation of people who rather than feeling healthier than ever before, merely look at themselves as not good enough, as failures. In extreme cases this leads to eating disorders such as anorexia, but the fact is that this element exists in nearly everyone, even the men now.
This saddens me so much as we are all individual, all unique and we all have different shapes and sizes. The more people study the more they find that your genes influence your general appearance far more than the food you eat. The dangerous simplified diet + exercise = weight loss formula presented by many doesn’t help this. Our bodies are not simple calculators. You can’t count calories in and out and create a weight change, it doesn’t work like that. The way our bodies regulate and control weight is far more complicated and this is why people find it so hard to not only lose weight but keep it off. The irony of this whole venture is that we could even end up with a much unhealthier nation than before with the dangers from under-eating and over-exercising just as bad as those for obesity.
The reason I have chosen to post about this is mainly because I feel this needs to be discussed. There is very little critical debate of these policies and procedures, people take news reports and newspaper stories as fact, even I did until a few weeks ago, and we shouldn’t We should question these things, look into the science and decide for ourselves. We are being convinced we all suffer from a problem most of us don’t have, simply so that we buy the cure and eat up the solution without question. It is scary how many so called facts can be called into question. For starters a worrying number of articles recently focus on overweight children. Mainly these have been extreme cases, but
an article in the BBC today calls for parents of such children to be eligible for neglect. Again in extreme cases this may be fair, overfeeding a child can cause so many problems that something must be done, but for everyone?
So what is an overweight child? Well typically this is measured by
BMI, a simple weight by height ratio, but can this really be accurate for children? One scary study shows how a simply 5lb gain by an 8 year old girl can change her weight from being in the normal to the obese category. Similarly the fact that children’s bodies are still growing at different rates at different times means it is such an inaccurate guide, and yet the thought that simply based on this reading a child’s parents could be charged with neglect and the children taken away is a disturbing thought. Now we are not at that stage yet but where will this hand-holding end? I agree that having a healthy nation is a good thing but there are no proven long term government led health incentives that have worked. People will always make their own decisions; all we can do is ensure the information we have in order to make those choices is accurate and complete; currently what we have in uncertainty. Every day
a new study warns of the risks of a different food or substance, what is good for us today may be bad in a week and yet for centuries we never had these problems.
As long as we keep active, eat a variety of all kinds of foods we will, for the most part, live long and healthy lives. That one mars bar you had will not make the difference between life and death, on average we eat 1 million calories a year, yet our weight changes very little. We need to learn to love the people we are, the way our bodies look and work and the fact we live in a time with such effective healthcare and where people on average live to over 70 years old. We are so used to being scared that we forget how fortunate we are, so next time you peruse the calories label on a sandwich or turn down an invitation to dinner just think, is it worth it? Being sensible is not hard, our bodies naturally do more than we ever know towards keeping us healthy. When you feel guilty ask yourself why, is it because you feel bad, or are you living for what other people think? If you have a fridge full of food and a smile on your face then appreciate that you are one of the lucky ones, and that food is good and something to be savoured in all its shaped and forms.
Junk Food Science
Health is not an area I have taken a particular interest in during my life. I have always tried to eat ‘well’ (a concept I will talk about in a bit) and keep active, but calorie counting and weighing are not things I have been to familiar with. If anything I have always struggled putting on weight, rather than shedding the pounds. However recently there been an increased awareness and promotion of healthy eating and living, weight loss and dieting, something that until a few weeks ago I was certain was a good thing. After all we as a nation are getting fatter, there are more obese children than ever before, and these people are at risk from all sorts of diseases. As a nation we were facing an epidemic, a crisis and we have to act fast to prevent it. In America things are worse, half the nation is overweight and as Bill Clinton famously said this could be the first generation of children who fail to outlive their parents because of weight related diseases.
But what if this wasn’t true? What if a combination of scaremongering, bad science and scare tactics have infiltrated society and left perfectly healthy people afraid, worried and obsessive. What if promoting healthy living wasn’t in the publics best interest but being proposed for much more sinister reasons?
All these things are discussed far more eloquently that I could and dissected meticulously over at the eye-opening blog Junk Food Science where the studies behind the headlines are looked at, and more often than not the reported ‘facts’ that we get fed day after day are loosely based and interpreted from information that often proves no such thing. The site is essential reading for everyone but especially if these issues interest you and whether you accept it or not it is a fascinating critical look at the way our society looks at body image and health.
For all the fear we see in the media nowadays there is no evidence whatsoever that we are unhealthier as a nation than before. In fact studies of heart disease and cancer are at their lowest ever and average life expectancy continues to rise year on year. Not only that but we have the widest choice of the safest and healthiest foods ever available. We have more knowledge of food preparation and production than ever before and the choice you get a local supermarkets is far beyond what you even would have found 10 years ago. So why are we convinced that ‘bad’ foods will kill us and that we should watch what we eat with careful scrutiny?
The answer is found in that sentence, the notion of ’bad’ foods, a ridiculously simplified and dangerous term that has infiltrated society almost unknowingly. Food is good for you, we need it to survive. It gives us vitamins and protein and energy and hundreds of things our bodies need to function each day. What is much worse for us than so called bad foo
d, that is food high in fats or sugars, is bacteria or germs. It is much worse for our bodies to eat ill prepared or out of date food than what we are told is unhealthy. Yet in the past when such food was more prevalent there were no such scares and the risks were so much greater. Fat has become a byword for unhealthy. Yet we need fat. We need to eat a certain amount of fat a day; our bodies store it for a reason, so why is it something so many people feel they need to get rid of when they don’t? Sugar has been studied for years and has never been found to cause disease or obesity, yet even I feel such guilt from eating sweet food. Somehow, through the twisted views of healthy food we see sweets or drinks high in sugar as bad, and yet fruit with just as much sugar as healthy. Yes fruit has vitamins etc. but our bodies process all sugar the same way, saying one is natural and the other man made is not the point, if our bodies can’t tell then surely it doesn’t make a difference?
Now through this I am not noting that there isn’t a problem. People drastically overweight have severe health risks, and eating a diet of high fatty foods without a healthy mix of other nutrients is, of course, going to be bad for you. But the trouble is people who are in effect perfectly healthy start to think that they aren’t. The media’s constant vindication of petite models that adorn every newspaper, magazine and TV show have somehow convinced an entire generation of women that they are fat ugly and need to change. It breaks my heart to see this trend sweeping the nation. In surveys over the majority of women claim they are unhappy with their appearance, the rise of plastic surgery and diets such as the Atkins diet shows a nation of people who rather than feeling healthier than ever before, merely look at themselves as not good enough, as failures. In extreme cases this leads to eating disorders such as anorexia, but the fact is that this element exists in nearly everyone, even the men now.
This saddens me so much as we are all individual, all unique and we all have different shapes and sizes. The more people study the more they find that your genes influence your general appearance far more than the food you eat. The dangerous simplified diet + exercise = weight loss formula presented by many doesn’t help this. Our bodies are not simple calculators. You can’t count calories in and out and create a weight change, it doesn’t work like that. The way our bodies regulate and control weight is far more complicated and this is why people find it so hard to not only lose weight but keep it off. The irony of this whole venture is that we could even end up with a much unhealthier nation than before with the dangers from under-eating and over-exercising just as bad as those for obesity.
The reason I have chosen to post about this is mainly because I feel this needs to be discussed. There is very little critical debate of these policies and procedures, people take news reports and newspaper stories as fact, even I did until a few weeks ago, and we shouldn’t We should question these things, look into the science and decide for ourselves. We are being convinced we all suffer from a problem most of us don’t have, simply so that we buy the cure and eat up the solution without question. It is scary how many so called facts can be called into question. For starters a worrying number of articles recently focus on overweight children. Mainly these have been extreme cases, but an article in the BBC today calls for parents of such children to be eligible for neglect. Again in extreme cases this may be fair, overfeeding a child can cause so many problems that something must be done, but for everyone?
So what is an overweight child? Well typically this is measured by BMI, a simple weight by height ratio, but can this really be accurate for children? One scary study shows how a simply 5lb gain by an 8 year old girl can change her weight from being in the normal to the obese category. Similarly the fact that children’s bodies are still growing at different rates at different times means it is such an inaccurate guide, and yet the thought that simply based on this reading a child’s parents could be charged with neglect and the children taken away is a disturbing thought. Now we are not at that stage yet but where will this hand-holding end? I agree that having a healthy nation is a good thing but there are no proven long term government led health incentives that have worked. People will always make their own decisions; all we can do is ensure the information we have in order to make those choices is accurate and complete; currently what we have in uncertainty. Every day a new study warns of the risks of a different food or substance, what is good for us today may be bad in a week and yet for centuries we never had these problems.
3 comments:
I found this post through the link on Junk Food Science. This is a great post and I hope ideas like this (and those presentat at JFS) get out to more and more people.
I found it through the JFS link as well. Very well put and well thought out.
of all the blogs on the net davey boy, yours is by far the most engaging! keep up the good work.
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