Official Diet Recommendations & Obesity — Guest Post by Robert Yoho

Official Diet Recommendations & Obesity — Guest Post by Robert Yoho

This is excerpted from Hormone Secrets by Robert Yoho, MD, pending publication.

This chapter is the background for the next one about the use of thyroid and other medications to treat weight loss. Obesity is pandemic, and the cause(s) and treatments for both individuals and the world are in question. Likewise, we know little about the optimal diet. We do know that refined sugars and trans (partially hydrogenated) fats damage health and that animal protein and fat cause no special harm.

Agriculture is a great gift that is saving the world. Farm productivity exploded over the past 50 years. Worldwide famine deaths have crashed. The following chart is from Steven Pinker’s phenomenal Enlightenment Now (2018):

Hybrid crops and mechanization have driven up corn yields. There were 20 bushels per acre in 1980, but by 2019 this increased to 160. Other crops show similar trends.

Abundant food has been paralleled by other advances. Global literacy was 55 percent in 1950 and rose by 5 percent a decade after that. It is now 86 percent. No rational person—outside of an oddball billionaire or two—still worries about the “population bomb.” The number of people in the world is projected to be 9.7 billion by 2064, but this will decline to 8.8 billion by 2100.

These trends debunk the media’s disaster-mongering. But against this optimistic tide, we have our obesity. The daily calories supplied by US food producers rose from 2900 per person in 1961 to 3700 today. Adult caloric requirements range from 2000 for sedentary women to about 3000 for a few active adult men. Big Food must either export the excess or force-fed it to us using marketing. In 1980, 15 percent of us were obese, but this number is now a third. Overweight people are another third (CDC figures).

Authorities have recommended low-fat diets for forty years. “Saturated” animal fats increase blood levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL), which was assumed to be evidence that a high-fat diet caused heart disease. In 1985, the Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health recommended dietary fat restriction. When the Food Pyramid came out in 1992, these guidelines went mainstream. Later versions were promoted in 2005 and 2011. It sounded sensible enough—the government was trying to help. What could go wrong?

1992

2005

2011

Our obesity began about the same time as the Food Pyramid recommendations for low-fat diets. The for-profit food industry marketed these ideas, peddling cheap manufactured fats and processed sugar under “low fat and cholesterol” labels. The graph below shows that this effort has certainly done us harm and possibly caused our obesity.

Although the consensus is not complete, powerful evidence has developed that we eat too little fat, and that saturated animal fats are safe. Even though fatty meat consumption raises the bad LDL cholesterol, it also raises “good” one, HDL. Dozens of studies have proven that this diet does not cause heart disease itself. Others showed no association with death or stroke, either. And eating less fat encourages carbohydrate consumption, which increases heart disease risk.

Cholesterol numbers are related to heart disease, but changing them with drugs or diet is much less beneficial than originally thought. Statin medications are more evidence of this. These lower the bad LDL cholesterol but do not improve heart attack deaths enough to justify their side effects. (For more, see Butchered by Healthcare. Statins are useful in only a few circumstances.)

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Agency (FDA) are our food regulators. These are captives of the industrial food manufacturers’ money. (See Martha Rosenberg’s Born With a Health Food Deficiency.) These two organizations, along with their puppet masters from big Food, spread this now-obsolete idea that animal fat causes heart disease. They recommended replacing butter with cheap, processed vegetable oil that is manufactured using high pressure and temperatures. This creates the hazardous “partially hydrogenated” oils and “trans fats” that have infested our foods for a century.

This commercial process transforms cheap vegetable oils into tasty solids with seductive textures and “mouth feel.” These are ideal for cooking because they tolerate high temperatures. When baked into cookies and sweets, they can sit for years in colorful packages on store shelves before becoming rancid. They are commonly found in:

1) Margarine

2) Vegetable shortening (often used in restaurant deep fryers)

3) Many packaged snacks

4) Many commercial baked foods

5) Ready-to-use dough

6) Many fried foods

7) Coffee creamers, dairy, and nondairy

The good news as I write this is that these synthetically altered oils have been partially banned in many countries and some states. The US requires labels and is supposedly phasing them out.

Corn is used to create most of the additives and sugary junk in our packaged food. Although we know refined sugar causes heart attacks, we continue to spend $5 billion a year in corn subsidies. These federal farm supports began ninety years ago as well-meaning attempts to protect farmers from bankruptcy by dampening fluctuations of crop yields and markets. In recent decades, this mutated into a system mandating the overproduction of corn sugar and its products. A few monster agricultural producers pay lobbyists tens of millions of dollars to keep it all going.

The land in the US now devoted to corn is an area 80 percent as large as California. Yet our agriculture produces fewer person-calories per acre than that of other countries because three-quarters of the corn goes to biofuel or animal food. We are depleting resources and destroying natural habitats. This effort has caused or at least contributed to our obesity and heart disease.

Industry gave us a third damaging “food” class—artificial sugars. The first artificial sweetener, saccharin, was invented in the late 1800s and was in common use for most of the 20th century. The FDA banned it in 1977 because it caused cancer in lab rats. Indigestible sugars like this, just like real sugar, stimulate the body to produce insulin, which drops blood sugar and makes people hungry. This promotes a vicious cycle of more junk food purchases and more obesity.

The vegans are vocal, but their evidence is slender. Michael Greger, an influential herbivore, makes convincing, rational arguments favoring vegetable diets and against fat consumption on NutritionFacts.org. His latest book, How Not to Diet, includes over 5000 citations. Some were valid, but others back oddball ideas. For example, Greger reports how consuming chili peppers burns a few extra calories a day.

Greger is an “ethical” vegan. This means he believes animal lives matter and that we are murdering them. A plant-eating friend patiently clarified their doctrine for me. She said that meat-eating increases carbon usage and “all the scientists agree” that we are racing toward planetary apocalypse. If this is true, it renders any other considerations frivolous. My friend adds that because of this, she does not care if these eating habits damage her health.

Although I am not an expert on climate change, my study of healthcare corruption has taught me to doubt conclusions based on small numbers. Likewise, divining the future is a game that most experts lose. I also have suspicions that these scientists are as subject to muddy thinking and bad influences as the people in medicine. And after all the falsehoods the media has fed us recently, I have trouble believing anything they claim as fact. So I leave these considerations to the reader. For myself, I chose not to imagine that I am living in a dystopian science fiction novel.

The “China Study” (the China-Oxford-Cornell Study on Dietary, Lifestyle and Disease Mortality Characteristics in 65 Rural Chinese Counties) was a massive epidemiological investigation of nutrition conducted in the 1980s. It concluded that dining on animals was harmful to the heart and caused cancer. It advocated consuming carbohydrates and, like the other sources of its day, was critical of cholesterol consumption. Vegetable advocates oft quote it.

But the science supporting the superiority of these diets is questionable, and many studies undermine it. A meta-analysis with 37,000 participants showed higher rates of bone fractures and osteoporosis in vegans and vegetarians. They had lower bone density. Another study of 42 European countries showed that the populations that consumed more fat and meats had lower heart disease and death rates than those with higher carbohydrate consumption. An interview study of 1300 Australians found “a vegetarian diet is associated with poorer health (higher incidences of cancer, allergies, and mental health disorders), a higher need for health care, and poorer quality of life.” Vegans have a higher overall death rate (earlier mortality) in both Australia and Britain. Harriet Hall’s article in Science Based Medicine (2013), Death as a Foodborne Illness Curable by Veganism, is a skeptical, comprehensive review.

Our current practice is to eat anything, any time we want. We often consume food from the time we arise until we go to sleep at night—16 hours a day or more. Contrary to the “eat many small meals” myth, this is unhealthy.

Human studies support various types of fasting (see Weightlifting is a Waste of Time, 2020, for many references). During the period that people do not eat, their bodies heal. They produce higher levels of testosterone and growth hormone. These have “anabolic” effects that stimulate muscle growth and fat loss.

Mice experiments on food deprivation have been performed as far back as 1945. One recent study showed extended lifespan and improved health when the animals were fed over eight hours rather than the entire day. The mice lost weight even though the number of calories they consumed was the same.

Humans who have a modicum of restraint can simply eat for 8 hours in a row and then quit, from 11 AM to 7 PM, for example. This has been successful for many if they restrain junk food consumption. Some do well if they just cut out eating after six PM. The next step in a restricted diet is to limit food to two to four hours. This is popularly called “one meal a day” (OMAD). Some people require longer fasting periods of up to several days to see significant weight loss.

These are complex issues with no consensus. John Ioannidis, the renowned Stanford study design expert, says the trials about the effects of diet on health are fundamentally flawed. He believes these are too small, not randomized, or otherwise biased. Observational studies such as the China Study show correlation and not causation. This means that the Chinese likely have less heart disease because of factors other than diet.

To illustrate how little we know about nutrition, diet, and weight loss, see the next chapter’s discussion about the Adkin’s-type diets. These consist solely of meat, eggs, cheese, and fat. According to mainstream medicine, Atkins was discredited (he died, after all). But patients who stick with these restrictions watch their cholesterol fall and can quit most of their diabetes and high blood pressure medications. Some eat hamburger patties from fast-food restaurants, and it works.

What can we conclude?

1) Consuming food all day promotes weight gain and is less healthy than eating only one or a few meals.

3) Both sugars and artificially processed hydrogenated and trans fats cause heart disease. These are everywhere, so we must watch the food labels. For example, there is a lot of sugar in almost all dried cranberries and beef jerky. And if you don’t see your peanut butter ground, it may have partially hydrogenated oils.

4) Animal fat consumption has no special damaging effects on the heart.

5) Monounsaturated fats such as olive, almond, coconut, and avocado oils are traditionally thought the best choices for cooking. The evidence for their superiority to animal fats such as butter is weak, however.

6) Avoid restaurants. They want our business more than they care about our health. Many serve the least expensive and most palatable fats, along with all the sugar possible, and they put salt in everything. This has effects on high blood pressure and stomach cancer.

7) You must ignore tens of thousands of alluring, colorful packages in grocery stores. I am shocked every time I go, and it is getting worse. Check the labels but always remain skeptical. Processed foods are unhealthy and hard to evaluate. Frozen, packaged, and canned foods usually contain undesirable ingredients. If “hydrogenated oil” is listed, it could contain the partially hydrogenated type.

8) Meat, fruit, nuts, dairy, whole grains, and vegetables are likely the best choices. Buy foods you understand and recognize.

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30 Comments

  1. Sheri

    Interesting what we “know”. I have noted that on this blog we “know” what we WANT to be true and diss the rest. Science is pretty much absent here as in most of the internet. Why do we “know” CO2 is not a problem, but sugar is? The body is a SIMPLE system where cause and effect are linear? I thought climate science was the same way. So sugar bad, CO2 BAD. THAT is science.

    My list of crap food: Anything organic, Kale, most meat, anything the Hollywood type eat. Now, prove to me your beloved list is better. Because we all know IT’S NOT. Unless CO2 is bad and ruining the planet. SAME FAKE “SCIENCE”.

    Self-awareness score: ZERO for nutrition and medicine. I see no reason to listen to the anti-climate change garbage presented when there is ZERO self-awareness or science. It’s just evil hatred of the politics, not science. That’s obvious.

    “Big Food”, the term of an idiot who is doing an emotional appeal. This is disgusting. ZERO DAMN SCIENCE. I am going to go read the HuffPo for a more accurate article. Briggs, your blog is worthless except for propaganda purposes.

    “CONSENSUS”: CO2 KILLS US. CLIMATE CHANGE WINS WINS WINS WINS.

    I quit. What a stupid, evil propaganda site this has become[—ATKINS sellers, antivaxxers, antimedication. Who gives a damn people live longer—IT’S NOT THE WAY BRIGG’S READERS AND WRITERS DEMAND PEOPLE LIVE. EAT AS YOU ARE TOLD, YOU STUPID DOLTS, AND THIS BLOG KNOWS IT ALL. WHAT a joke.

  2. pK

    I venture to say that all popular diet studies are too short, too uncontrolled, and too intercorrelated to draw conclusions that will make any effective predictions. The studies are designed to make headlines, not science.

    I agree with Sheri that organic Kale is the worst crap out there, except maybe organic Kale from California.

    The food pyramid graphics could make a great article themselves. The pile of food from 2005 is something else. Can anyone interpret what that means? The pie chart on the plate is also a particularly bad exemplification of one of the worst chart types.

    The article is also a bit misleading about the Atkins diet. The high protein and fat diet described only applies to the first two weeks, or induction period, of the Atkins diet. After that, the Atkins diet recommends a pretty standard diet of healthy foods. Moderation and sticking to healthy, mostly natural foods is probably the best way to go, and the cheapest.

  3. JM

    I find it amazing that the first foods that one is urged to cut-out when one wishes to diet are potatoes and bread. Why? They are carbs (starch) which, in the body, changes to sugar and, then, fat. Yet most food ‘authorities’ urge more carbs and less protein -see the first triangle that Briggs shows.

    Follow the Science and not the ‘science’.

  4. Hun

    Coconut oil is mostly saturated, unlike most other plant based oils.

  5. Kathleen

    The Food Pyramid was just insane. Anyone that ate that mountain of starch at the bottom was just doomed.

    What people need to do is simply get sane.

    A long shot at the moment, given.

    The modest amount of cane or beat sugar in a normal person’s diet prior to the 1960’s was causing no harm. The modest amount of starch, ditto. The modest amount of animal fats, ditto.

    All those things need to be modest amounts, in general, except for young ACTIVE males who are like food furnaces.

    For females, especially those with slower or post-menopause systems, we need to seriously restrict sugar and starch. But that doesn’t mean we have to eliminate them unless we’ve gone and made a mess of things.

    Everyone bounces from one fad to another.

    Just be Catholic about food.

    STOP eating between meals unless you’re a young ACTIVE male. Only eat enough to satisfy hunger. Avoid poison like Soy, High Frutose Corn Syrup, Trans Fats, and anything you can’t pronounce — which means — this is big.

    Cook and bake for yourself.

  6. Dale

    Americans cling to the precious belief that foods they (or don’t eat) profoundly impact health and longevity. There may be more evidence for anthropogenic climate change than for the that.

  7. Uncle Mike

    Tell ’em, Sheri. I was also offended by the crap shot at farmers, who according to Yabo MD should stop farming so their land can be seized by green army loonytoons and reverted to “natural habitat” Back the truck up, Mr. Natural. I’ll grow what I want to grow. Stay off my land, Yabo. Do I come down to your quack clinic and tell you how to “practice” doctoring? Maybe I ought to, Jackalope. Give you a taste of your own medicine.

    Did somebody die make you Lysenko, Yabo? What’s with all the kneejerk authoritarianism? Why is it that peabrains who couldn’t grow a chia pet suddenly think they know how to farm, and how Agriculture should be managed by the Government? Your totalitarian narcissistic self-image could use a diet, Yabo. Clearly you suffer from fatheadedness.

  8. JOy

    Bless Uncle Mike
    Always makes everything ok

    Farmers are taken for granted

    The miss-education that the current crop of young and old public are exposed to can do nothing more than cause a temporary hiatus hernia in the scheme of human discovery.

    Climate IS complex, so is the human body

    Food and Nutrition has always been tangled most unhealthily with interested parties pushing their own interests.

    genetics has a lot more to answer for than many “advisors” are willing to admit

    It takes the wind out of their sails and it removes their evil power, that’s why…

    Any issue which carries a degree of emotional charge is a potential selling feature.

    Emotion sells, ‘good’ OR ‘bad’ emotions…also a fallacy

    The two which fight to be top of the charts are fear and sex

    “Lifestyle” science of the type displayed in magazines, uses a combination of the two and now mainstream media is just a glossy magazine replacement.

  9. Thanks for reading. I thought I qualified what I said. The references weren’t maybe as bolded as they could be. We know little except that industry’s trans fats and refined sugars are bad for hearts. I took no shots against farmers, just against corn supports. Some of the readers seem to be obesity deniers. Fatness is not an individual responsibility issue spawned by sloth but a management (or lack of management) disaster with unclear causes. Obesity is the most remarkable, monster medical problem we have ever seen. The reasons are unclear and there is no clear path out of the woods. Adkins/keto diets fail when they are “moderated” by carbs. These and fasting are the only hopeful story. Although “moderate” diets work for thin people, they fail for the obese.

  10. Joy

    Dear Robert,

    “There were no fat people in Belson “

    Obesity is a the effect of intake of calories including all kinds of foods that are superfluous to the energy output/expended by an animal.

    That part isn’t mysterious.
    What causes the imbalance is different in each example and not necessarily easily managed depending on an array of different variables.

    Lumping everybody together in a bin marked “obese” is unscientific

    Lack of exercise IS the most important factor in my opinion and the one which is hardest to combat and therefore easiest to ignore, (bystaff and patients.)

    Whatever the cause, patients are trained before meeting the challenge, to have certain preconceived ideas about their weight.

    Medical illnesses and or orthopaedic ones are common causes of the downward spiral of which obesity is just one more positive feedback

  11. Jan Van Betsuni

    ¶Observational research indicates that it was the assassination of JFK in 1963 which led to the epidemic of obesity in America. Peruse any photographic or videographic archives of that era and you’ll spot (nary but – none but – only) the rarest cases of substantially over-sized individuals – of either gender (or any ilk). Perhaps it was all a consequence of the Traumatic Stress Response transmitted down our generational lines. ¶But seriously, very few within present medical cadres have a clue about how metabolic flexibility, or insulin sensitivity as an essential gauge of sound health. The feverish rush into field specialization for today’s physicians in training is a broken process which caters principally to the hospital industrial complex and the insurance cabal ~ and the ingrained allopathic (reductionist) (and conceited) mindset contained therein.¶ Be on your guard against ALL broad claims that Scientific Evidence (e.g. USDA Food Pyramid Diagram) on nutritional habits supposedly trumps your own anecdotal experiences.. Become more conscious of what passes your lips so as to reorient yourself to that personal interconnection between appetite – and hunger – and eating or drinking. Too many of us have unconsciously automated ourselves to the barrage of societal triggers (delivered from on high and down low) about when and what we consume as fuel and lubricants. Try taking some deep breaths before instantly succumbing to those sudden impulses towards satisfying spontaneous cravings. Cultivate your individual GutMicroBiome (learn what that is) ~ if only to better regulate your emotions. Finally – never allow an obsessive mindset to rob you of The Joy of Eating. (w/ thanks for Dr. Yolo). **[Farm/Field to Plate has always been The Diet of Octogenerians > whatever your favorite foods may be.]

  12. Uncle Mike

    What you said, Doctor, is:

    The land in the US now devoted to corn is an area 80 percent as large as California. Yet our agriculture produces fewer person-calories per acre than that of other countries because three-quarters of the corn goes to biofuel or animal food. We are depleting resources and destroying natural habitats. This effort has caused or at least contributed to our obesity and heart disease.

    Let’s deconstruct that.

    You think too much land grows corn. OMG, 80% as large as CA. Is that some kind of metric, Doctor? What percent of CA should grow corn, in your expert opinion?

    But that corn doesn’t make your patients fat, because it’s not people food. Whaaaat? You just shot your thesis in the foot.

    But it is “depleting resources” and “destroying natural habitat”. Oh no, a new thesis, totally outside your area of expertise! Or are you some kind of resource depletion expert? What are your qualifications and certifications in that field? Please cite your publications on resource depletion. Ditto “natural habitats”. How exactly do you define natural habitats? Tick brush with rattlesnakes? What is your expertise in ecology? Please cite or provide your CV.

    OMG, you have none! You’re just blowing smoke with imaginary strawmen to bolster your original thesis, which you shot in the foot. How touchy feely! You CARE about resources and habitats, especially vis bad, bad farming that’s depleting them, even though you actually know jack about it.

    Then you blame obesity on corn farmers, again, even though you blasted that thesis two sentences earlier. As if the darn farmers were force feeding fat people! “Hold her down, Clem, while I pump this corn down her cake hole.” No, Doctor, fat people make their own eating choices. Duh.

    Take responsibility for your own life, Doctor. Don’t attempt to lobby Congress to rewrite Ag policies in order to starve the chubbies into emaciation. This isn’t Biafra. The Gooberment is NOT going to solve your problems. Never has, never will. If you can’t stand freedom, then leave.

  13. Jerry

    “The modest amount of cane or beat sugar in a normal person’s diet prior to the 1960’s was causing no harm. The modest amount of starch, ditto.”

    This was true before widespread consumption of vegetable oils (actually, they are seed oils). Linoleic acid is found in both animal and seed oils, but in animal fat it is usually a very small proportion of the fat (~1 to 2%); in seed oils it can be a very high percentage (>50%) of the fat.

    You need to keep your linoleic acid consumption down below 2% of your fat intake. If it gets much higher than this, weight loss will be very difficult and sugar and starch will always be a problem for you.

    Also, beware of non-ruminant animal fat. Ruminants (cows, goats, sheep) have multiple stomachs and intestines full of bacteria that can convert seed oil into saturated fat. But pigs (and chickens) don’t. When you eat a cow, you’re eating saturated fat, even if that cow was fed corn. When you eat a pig, you’re eating the same type of fat that the pig ate–and it’s probably soybean oil.

  14. DAV

    Avoid poison … anything you can’t pronounce

    I’ve always had trouble pronouncing chateaubriand but I like even if it is poison. Don’t get me started on Bánh cu?n, G?i cu?n, Bánh xèo and Kaeng phet pet yang.

  15. Kathleen

    >> I’ve always had trouble pronouncing chateaubriand but I like even if it is poison. Don’t get me started on Bánh cu?n, G?i cu?n, Bánh xèo and Kaeng phet pet yang.

    Haha!

    I knew someone would call me on my glib comment!

    And you got me! Of course I’m notorious in my kitchen for not being able to pronounce half of the recipes I prepare!

    But though you got me, it’s a tad unfair given I of course mean nasty chemicals like say “azodicarbonamide” etc…

    >>When you eat a pig, you’re eating the same type of fat that the pig ate–and it’s probably soybean oil.

    Well that’s a tragic bit of information!

    But on the oil, you really can keep that all much simpler too!

    Extra Virgin Olive oil (the real stuff not the fakes) for virtually everything with a bit of real butter. Avoid Soy oil and only use the alternatives when absolutely necessary.

  16. rpt

    Thanks, Mr. Yoho. What you say confirms my own experience and observation.

  17. Jerry

    >>But on the oil, you really can keep that all much simpler too!

    >>Extra Virgin Olive oil (the real stuff not the fakes) for virtually everything with a bit of real butter. Avoid Soy oil and only use the alternatives when absolutely necessary.

    Olive is relatively high in linoleic acid. According to Wikipedia: Linoleic acid 3.5 to 21%. You might be able to loose weight if you use olive oil “for virtually everything” and it has 3.5% linoleic acid. Maybe. But you certainly will not loose weight it has 21% linoleic acid.

    Eat real fat from ruminant animals. A juicy ribeye steak is a good place to start. With butter on top, of course.

  18. Patrick healy

    There is only one guaranteed method of enjoying a long healthy life – choose your parents very carefully.

  19. Joy

    Oil of evening primrose and star flower oils are the ones to take
    Extra virgin is overrated, not better,necessarily.

    Olive oil is considered ‘good’ because its monounsaturated

    Butter is the way forward!
    With salt, the English way, unless you’re making chocolates or sweets.
    Full fat Jersey milk is the dairy answer to extra virgin olive oil.
    Olive oil is great for unblocking ear canals though! Officially recommended by the GP surgery.
    Olive oils also good as a moisturiser but it smells

    Cornflower?
    The best eyebright contains cornflower. Somebody has to grow it.
    It’s also needed to make custard! (One of the food groups)
    It’s used in confectionary and sauces, processed and home made.

    Tinned food is not bad for you
    Nor is frozen food, although it may taste better and may contain slightly more nutritional value regarding vegetables due to the break down/ denaturing of vitamin C

    Humans are omnivorous creatures.
    That means they can eat what they like without asking the government for permission!

  20. V

    Weightlifting is indeed a waste of time, if you don’t know how to do it.

    And, where does beer fit into all of this?

  21. Joy

    v,
    I dunno but mustard is poisonous so beware

  22. Kip Hansen

    Gosh, a whole lot of opinion and not too many facts. Assertions about diet and foods are not the same as actual scientifically supportable facts.

    “The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Agency (FDA) are our food regulators.” They regulate what can and can’t be sold as food, they regulate quality issues and purity issues, but they do NOT regulate what we eat. Humans worldwide eat a huge variety of foods in an infinite number of different proportions.

    Yet, obesity appears in all nations and under almost all diet regimens.

    The simplistic proposition that sugar, trans-fats and hazardous ‘partially hydrogenate’ oils are the cause of the obesity epidemic is a false but popular meme — just a meme and not scientifically-based.

    Obesity is complicated and very poorly understood — so far.

    Pretense of understanding is not helpful.

  23. I agree with Hansen.
    A smart man, on many subjects.

    I’ll also add these useful diet rules of thumb:
    (1) Ingest fewer calories than you burn, and you lose weight
    (sitting in front of a screen doesn’t count as exercise)

    (2) If you are a fast eater, and consume a lot of food before your body signals you are “full”, try the 1/2 portion rule: Eat half of what you consider a normal portion, wait 20 minutes,
    then continue eating if you are still hungry. Many times you won’t want the second half.

    (3) Food manufactured in a a factory is usually less healthy than food not manufactured in a factory.

    (4) Change your eating habits permanently to lose weight gradually — no crash “diets”.
    But if you need to lose a lot of weight faster than that, due to health problems, make a list of your five favorite foods. Then stop eating them.

    (5) With some climate alarmists protesting eating beef, I decided to buy a $1 hamburger at Burger King today. It’s considered a children’s portion. 50 years ago a hamburger the same size (under two ounces) was considered an adult meal.

    If anyone finds these tips useful, my fee is two cents.

  24. Joy

    No, Patrick Healey is the only one with the best advice
    To Mr Kips I wasn’t pretending I DO understand!!!! I am an actual expert
    Most of the others were joking
    Uncle Mike was correcting the inbuilt assumption within the article

    Sheri? knows quite a lot about sugar in the diet and it’s effects.
    Dav knows everything to know about poisonous words
    Kathleen knows everything there is to know about cooking
    V has, a point?
    Kip and the last one, Richard, you both make good points!

    An ounce of pretension is worth a tonne of manure
    Sauce?
    (Steel Magnolias)
    Here’s one of mine:
    Watch out for people giving dietary advice

  25. Joy wrote:
    ” I am an actual expert”

    My reply:
    Expert at what, self-promotion?
    Real experts don’t tell others they are “experts”.
    Real honest people don’t tell others they are “honest”.
    I stopped reading after “I am an actual expert”.

  26. Joy

    Richard, I have an A Level in Domestic Science, I’ll have you know!
    It’s a hard science
    So there!

  27. Joy
    I was not suggesting you were dumb — your words show intellegence and humor, which rarely occur together.
    I have no idea what an A Level in Domestic Science means.
    It sounds like you are an excellent housewife?
    It doesn’t matter what your credentials are
    — your comment was wise, and funny too.
    I have a BS degree and MBA -= so what ?
    There are plenty of government bureaucrat science Ph.D.s spouting nonsense about climate change — they started predicting a coming climate crisis in 1957 (oceanographer Roger Revelle) — and they keep making the same prediction every year, for 64 years in a row.
    As far as I am concerned, Ph.D. means Piled High and Deep.

  28. Joy

    Sheri,
    saw your name, glad you didn’t quit
    ~~~
    Richard, Take no notice, it’s okay

    Sorry about that
    A-Level = qualifications for entrance to University in the UK
    “Domestic science” = euphemistically called food and nutrition and it might be where some of the trouble started with the left wing feminism creeping into heads. One third was called “social science’ which was without doubt the dullest thing in the world and so much so that I never revised or listened so when it came to the exam I was making things up from scratch! About breast feeding and benefits for this and that person

    Cooking section? Lost all the marks possible for safety in the kitchen (3%): set fire to the oil, cut my thumb and scolded my face with watercress soup.

    But for my lovely teacher who encouraged me back in, while pealing leaves from my eyebrows, I’d have failed! Nowadays they’d have rushed to A and E
    For advice.

    So no, I am a practical person despite all of that but not a housewife as I turned the job offer down on a preconceived notion that one’s supposed to tell the truth in Church.

    *more than once, which is the definition of madness

    When they were giving out cynicism, I was at the back of the queue

  29. john b()

    Joy

    Aah DS – Domestic Science (you said DS elsewhere I thought it meant Deep Doodoo)

    “not a housewife as I turned the job offer down on a preconceived notion that one’s supposed to tell the truth in Church” – my wife and I saw a judge – he was okay with dropping the “obey” bit as it was our contract

    And my wife’s not a housewife, said she’s not married to no “house”

  30. Joy

    Johnbee,
    That’s lovely

    However it isn’t even about the obedience, although a lot of women think it should be taken out
    (Don’t laugh)
    It’s rather a lot of things that come from being a reflective person and there’s no law against that yet.

    One would hope that if one ‘liked’ one’s ‘boss enough, that doing his bidding would be no chore and if the boss cared about his staff he wouldn’t be a tyrant or insert whatever

    If the staff knew what was good for them, they wouldn’t choose a bad job, they’d just give it up or wouldn’t take it on in the first place

    The old bag from Importance Of Being Earnest was right
    No long engagements, they give the parties far too long to find out about each other
    Which is bleak

    I’ve done some investigation into this matter and discover I am indeed labouring under a very false sense of reality

    One of our GP’s didn’t marry until she was in her 40’s and claimed it was worth the wait
    He’s dead now!

    A family member lost her husband when she was expecting their first and she was only 28 or something similar. She’s also been dealt a bad lot and is an inspiration

    ShXT happens and I don’t swear, by the way, only on the internet and only one particular word which I have difficulty in not outbursting with and it rhymes with rollocks

    Bad habit, I hate it and never used to do it

    DS? Those salad days

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