quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Sort of like if I said: "Ice cream is bad for you." You'd have to assume I wasn't talking about a sugar-reduced, low fat scoop of vanilla once a year.
Burgers, in reasonable and practical terms, are bad for you.
Nope, then I'm going to disagree. Just as one shouldn't assume we are talking about the healthiest interpretation, neither do I see any reason to assume we are talking about the worst. Anything in excess is bad.
Living on ice cream or burgers would be bad. But even full-fat ice cream once a week isn't all that terrible. Same with the burger.
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quote: For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub's pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.
His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.
But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.
Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.
"That's where the head scratching comes," Haub said. "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?"
quote:Just as one shouldn't assume we are talking about the healthiest interpretation, neither do I see any reason to assume we are talking about the worst. Anything in excess is bad.
Well sure, but then there is virtually no "food" short of non-dilute poisons that is "bad for you".
I think the only meaningful way that "bad for you" makes sense when applied to food is when we assume the common nutritional profile of that food (i.e. a fast food burger) and a lack of moderation.
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: I think the only meaningful way that "bad for you" makes sense when applied to food is when we assume the common nutritional profile of that food (i.e. a fast food burger) and a lack of moderation.
Or, you know, we could use moderation in language as well and avoid "bad for you" as a fairly useless label.
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: I think the only meaningful way that "bad for you" makes sense when applied to food is when we assume the common nutritional profile of that food (i.e. a fast food burger) and a lack of moderation.
Or, you know, we could use moderation in language as well and avoid "bad for you" as a fairly useless label.
Right, using that label is bad for discussion. Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I don't think it's all that useless of a label. When I say "burgers are bad for you", you could probably write a list of reasons why I'm saying that which would match the list I'd provide if asked to clarify.
At the same time you might be grumbling about how a Venn diagram containing "all types of burgers" and "healthy food" might have some overlap. But you'd still understand me.
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There are things that are bad for you only when not moderated, and there are things that are bad for you regardless of moderation. Distinguishing the two seems to be fairly important to me.
There's also an important distinction between "not healthy" and "bad for you."
[edit] In other words, the 'bad for you' label only becomes useful when it includes the point at which it becomes bad for you. The label by itself doesn't seem to offer much in the way of useful information. Eg., at what point does red meat, bacon, or alcohol become 'bad for you?'
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: What foods are bad for you regardless of moderation?
Many species of wild berries? Also, about 90% of mushrooms are poisonous. This is of course ignoring the sheer numbers of foods that are bad for you if they are spoiled. Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: What foods are bad for you regardless of moderation?
Several within this thread have compared happy meals with cigarettes and various types of drugs. I think there is a notable distinction between those types of things.
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: What foods are bad for you regardless of moderation?
Several within this thread have compared happy meals with cigarettes and various types of drugs. I think there is a notable distinction between those types of things.
This is precisely why I think it is misleading to label any food as "bad". There is no level of cigarette smoking that's safe. Smoking even one cigarette is bad for you. Unless you suffer from a severe allergy or intolerance, that isn't true for any food. All foods have can be beneficial if consumed in the right amounts as part of a healthy diet. Healthy eating is about proper balance and even things like hot fudge sundaes can be part of a healthy diet.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: Just as one shouldn't assume we are talking about the healthiest interpretation, neither do I see any reason to assume we are talking about the worst. Anything in excess is bad.
Look at what I was referring to, please:
quote:It's useful to take any comment such as mine with the understanding that I'm speaking to the overwhelmingly common experience , which is a burger on white bread, with fatty beef, covered in sauces high in fat and cholesterol as well as sugar- and that experience taken beyond moderation, which in the case of your typical burger is eating one anything more than very occasionally.
I don't describe the worst here- I describe the most common. You have some room to argue about how much people actually eat these things, but again, I think you could have reasonably assumed I meant burgers were bad for you in excess, or that at the very least it only *mattered* if you ate them in excess. To be perfectly clear though- I still think the average burger is definitely bad for you, even if you only have one. Just not *that bad*. Bad is not an absolute statement. Why does it have to be a black and white thing? Some stuff is bad- just *not that bad!*
If you don't agree that this is the case, fine, but there's no point arguing against something I didn't say.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Healthy eating is about proper balance and even things like hot fudge sundaes can be part of a healthy diet.
And a cigarette a day can be part of a healthy lifestyle. The odds of contracting cancer at that rate are pretty low- about as low as to make no odds. And if you support this one cigarette a day habit with 3 hours of yoga and a vegan diet, or whatever suits your fancy health-wise, I don't think a right minded person would call your lifestyle unhealthy. The cigarette itself is bad for you- but when did that become such a necessarily absolute statement? Some stuff is just bad for you- not *that* bad, but still bad. Negligibly bad, even, but still not good. I feel like you're all being trained in rhetoric by the GOP these days.
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: What foods are bad for you regardless of moderation?
Several within this thread have compared happy meals with cigarettes and various types of drugs. I think there is a notable distinction between those types of things.
Why? Can you back up that statement with some kind of reasoning? Because a happy meal a month is not going to noticeably affect your health, and a cigarette a month is not going to make a tiny bit of difference either. In fact, I would put odds on the cigarette being healthier than the happy meal at that rate.
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Can someone actually have one cigarette a day? I seem to recall the addiction rate of cigarettes as being freakishly high and a fairly quick rate of resistance (in order to get the same affect on the 10th dose as the first you need twice the dose). So the willpower to limit yourself to one cigarette a day becomes astronomical very quickly.
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: Can someone actually have one cigarette a day? I seem to recall the addiction rate of cigarettes as being freakishly high and a fairly quick rate of resistance (in order to get the same affect on the 10th dose as the first you need twice the dose). So the willpower to limit yourself to one cigarette a day becomes astronomical very quickly.
I don't have any data on that. I do know several people who smoke about that much- I think it does happen.
But I don't really care about that, its not to my point. I'm not talking addiction anyway- for that matter, having a meal at McDonald's once a week could lead you to crave more. Giving a meal to your children there once a month is exactly what the company *wants* to get the kids hooked on the brand. But anyway, I'm just saying- if you did somehow manage to have one cigarette a day, it wouldn't have any real effect on your health.
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: Can someone actually have one cigarette a day? I seem to recall the addiction rate of cigarettes as being freakishly high and a fairly quick rate of resistance (in order to get the same affect on the 10th dose as the first you need twice the dose). So the willpower to limit yourself to one cigarette a day becomes astronomical very quickly.
Yup. Right now I'm averaging about one a day.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: But anyway, I'm just saying- if you did somehow manage to have one cigarette a day, it wouldn't have any real effect on your health.
posted
Well, and even if my lifestyle is pretty healthy overall, I don't think I'd say that's a healthy part of it. *shrug*
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Right. I would definitely agree that someone who smokes one cigarette a day might have any overall healthy lifestyle. But claiming that is part of said healthy lifestyle -- rather than the exception to it -- seems a stretch.
I don't think the same distinction need be made about the occasional burger or sundae. Those have a place in a healthy lifestyle.
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If you would be willing to ban a government controlled rationed one cigarette per day, you'ld be willing to ban a cheaseburger.
Of course, you can feed your kids macaroni and cheese with sliced hot dogs, on your own and prepared in a government rent provided apartment, purchased with food stamps.
It should be illegal for me to cook a cheaseburger for my kids, on the backyard grill. I own a Fry Daddy too, I must be a child abuser. I break out that Fry Daddy a few times a year.
What happens to a parent that violates alcohol laws? A burger is a burger, a fry is a fry. Slippery slope,....home fries and home prepared burgers are fine. A parent can feed their children Top Ramen 7 days a week. We need the government to...
If you want to go down this road,.... Food stamp credit cards shouldn't be allowed to puchase hamburger and frozen french fries from a grocery store.....cheese is the worst food. Food stamp credit cards should forbid cheese purchases. Wait,...when I was a kid, the governemt gave away free cheese to the poor. There's no worse food for you, than cheese.
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quote:Right. I would definitely agree that someone who smokes one cigarette a day might have any overall healthy lifestyle. But claiming that is part of said healthy lifestyle -- rather than the exception to it -- seems a stretch.
I don't think the same distinction need be made about the occasional burger or sundae. Those have a place in a healthy lifestyle.
I think this depends on the food in question. If the only issue with a particular food is EXCESSIVE amounts of things (fat, sugar, salt, etc) then yes, you can conceivably say the food is merely part of a "healthy diet." But my understanding is that a lot of foods contain various things that are genuinely bad for you. I'm not educated enough in this matter to argue intelligently. But I'm pretty sure there's more too it than "some foods have lots of fat."
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When I was a kid, the government provided cheese and peanut butter to the poor. Cheese and peanut butter are very efficient in their delivery of calories and protein. Today, the government provides a credit card and cheese and peanut butter are considered evil foods. If you're hungry and can't afford food,..cheese and peanut butter is a good idea. Fat govt credit card holders are told to limit the cheeseburgers.
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When I was a kid, the government provided cheese and peanut butter to the poor. Cheese and peanut butter are very efficient in their delivery of calories and protein. Today, the government provides a credit card and cheese and peanut butter are considered evil foods. If you're hungry and can't afford food,..cheese and peanut butter is a good idea. Fat govt credit card holders are told to limit the cheeseburgers. McD's is evil...you can feed your kids with frozen microwave food, purchased with a federal food card, in a microwave running on welfare electricity, in a government provided house.
McD's doesn't accept the food stamp card.
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quote:Right. I would definitely agree that someone who smokes one cigarette a day might have any overall healthy lifestyle. But claiming that is part of said healthy lifestyle -- rather than the exception to it -- seems a stretch.
I don't think the same distinction need be made about the occasional burger or sundae. Those have a place in a healthy lifestyle.
I think this depends on the food in question. If the only issue with a particular food is EXCESSIVE amounts of things (fat, sugar, salt, etc) then yes, you can conceivably say the food is merely part of a "healthy diet." But my understanding is that a lot of foods contain various things that are genuinely bad for you. I'm not educated enough in this matter to argue intelligently. But I'm pretty sure there's more too it than "some foods have lots of fat."
I'd nominate high-fructose corn syrup. Fructose seriously messes with your body's ability to feel satiated.
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quote:Right. I would definitely agree that someone who smokes one cigarette a day might have any overall healthy lifestyle. But claiming that is part of said healthy lifestyle -- rather than the exception to it -- seems a stretch.
I don't think the same distinction need be made about the occasional burger or sundae. Those have a place in a healthy lifestyle.
I think this depends on the food in question. If the only issue with a particular food is EXCESSIVE amounts of things (fat, sugar, salt, etc) then yes, you can conceivably say the food is merely part of a "healthy diet." But my understanding is that a lot of foods contain various things that are genuinely bad for you. I'm not educated enough in this matter to argue intelligently. But I'm pretty sure there's more too it than "some foods have lots of fat."
I'd nominate high-fructose corn syrup. Fructose seriously messes with your body's ability to feel satiated.
My kids absolutely love the limited distribution sodas that contain real sugar. My children want the real deal more than the corn syrup kind. Coke distributed drinks with sugar instead of corn syrup. Americans love their coffee but it took Starbucks to teach them what decent coffee taste's like. In the end, crappy coffee and corn syrup are no worse for you than sugar and good coffee. My kids didn't care about soda before...they love the real sugar soda....is it an evil marketing scheme?
Government cheese was amazing and government peanut butter was awesome.....natural. Green peanut butter, natural peanut butter, requires you to mix the oil into the butter. Green cheese, natural cheese, is clumpy.
Government cheese and government peanut butter was as natural as you could get. The more natural it is, the cheaper is is. The grower didn't have to purchase pesticides or homoginize his product. Today, you pay more for "organic" peanut butter and cheese, when it used to be welfare food. Kinda like ribs, crabs and lobster....the food of the poor.
quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: But I'm pretty sure there's more too it than "some foods have lots of fat."
Granted. But the number of genuinely "bad" ingredients is much smaller than the average diet-fad-of-the-week book would have you believe. And I suspect most, maybe all, are highly processed. Like HFCS.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Healthy eating is about proper balance and even things like hot fudge sundaes can be part of a healthy diet.
And a cigarette a day can be part of a healthy lifestyle.
I am fairly certain that only a current or former smoker would claim this.
Sure- it's not something you'd normally have occasion to say. It's also not *generally* true, which was the point. It *could* be true, but with some major qualifiers.
I'd argue it's equally true that only those who eat at McD's or used to eat there claim that it can be a part of a healthy diet. Again, not because it isn't so, but because there'd be little reason to make such a point.
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quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: In the end, crappy coffee and corn syrup are no worse for you than sugar and good coffee.
:snort: What??
Bad coffee doesn't have any more effect on your health than good coffee. It's just- one tastes good and is prepared properly. And who flavors coffee with corn syrup? Honestly... what??
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posted
._. I did a health project on tea and coffee, they are both good for you, the only real negatives are caffeine and sugar and small amounts of either have no seemingly bad effect on overall health unleass you're diabetic.... -Probably the smartest thing I've said on this forum other than my discussion about Path...
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Ya the main thing here is. QUANTITY, this whole thing is nothing but quantity... everything is okay for you at one point and bad for you at another even dihydrogen monoxide ._.
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What tastes good, is good. Maybe too good, too efficient. Fat and sugar, we naturally crave. They are the most efficient delivery system of what the human body needs. Unfortunately, they aren't filling. You're still hungry due to the quantity in your stomach. Naturally we crave these things for their efficiency of caloric delivery. Can laws overcome human nature? Can a law overcome your urge to sleep?
You're free to speak, but not to sleep. Outlawing sleeping in public isn't going give a home to homeless people, it'll deprive them of rest. Deprive children of happy meal toys, they'll still eat happy meals.
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Really? A town of 13 thousand in NJ with a quesstionable ordinance? Is that really the best you got?
And yeah, laws can overcome human nature. It happens all the time. If you actually stop and think about it you'll realize what a silly question that was.
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This thread is about a San Fransisco law. One city to another, legally equal-despite their population. If one city can ban toys the other can ban sleeping. Neither city will reduce their homeless population or obese children. Both cities are punishing children and homeless and neither law will reduce homeless or obese children.
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Can you elaborate what "legally equal" means in this context, and why it should matter for the purposes of this discussion?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Juxtapose: Really? A town of 13 thousand in NJ with a quesstionable ordinance? Is that really the best you got?
And yeah, laws can overcome human nature. It happens all the time. If you actually stop and think about it you'll realize what a silly question that was.
A city in NJ has a 13k population a city in California (San Fran) has a population of 815k. Legally, what's the difference? Does law depend on population? The 815k city has a local law to ignore federal law...sanctuary city for illegal immegrants. This 815k has a local law that that deviates from federal marriage law...gay marriage. This 815k city has a drug law opposing federal drug laws, medical marijuana.
The 815k city and the 13k city are equal under the law. They are cities. PC is in the way. A town is a town, a county is a county and a state is a state, under the law. State's rights have nothing to do with population.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: But my understanding is that a lot of foods contain various things that are genuinely bad for you.
To the best of my knowledge, this is not true, or at a minimum there is no scientific evidence to support that it is true. Misconceptions like Ray's are why I think it is confusing to call any food "bad for you". Nearly everything found in our foods can be beneficial for most people when consumed in moderation as part of an overall balanced diet but at the same time harmful if consumed in excess. I don't know of any established exceptions to that. It is certainly not true for things like high fructose corn syrup, cholesterol, or trans-fats.
If you are interested, read this this abstract from a recent review on health effects of fructose.
The key conclusion is
quote:The issue of dietary fructose and health is linked to the quantity consumed, which is the same issue for any macro- or micro nutrients. It has been considered that moderate fructose consumption of [less than or equal to]50g/day or ~10% of energy has no deleterious effect on lipid and glucose control and of [less than or equal to]100g/day does not influence body weight. No fully relevant data account for a direct link between moderate dietary fructose intake and health risk markers.
The bad health effects of fructose are categorically different from cigarette smoking. It is well established scientifically that smoking even one cigarette is bad for you. The same can not be said for any food or food additive (at least not for the vast majority of people).
[ November 17, 2010, 09:53 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote: This is in fact very different from cigarette smoking. It is well established scientifically that smoking even one cigarette is bad for you. The same can not be said for any food or food additive.
What about things like whiskey?
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posted
Alcohol should be illegal as it doesn't only typically effect the person drinking but the people around that person, not to mention how it effects society, being used as an excuse for kids doing stupid things even though they shouldn't even be able to get ahold of it.
Also, what about caffeine which is considered a drug and it has addictive properties, also sure it's considered an additive aswell.
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posted
Diet also can be different at different times of life and for different people. For a while, we had three different types of milk- lactose free milk for my husband (and 2% because at the time he had trouble keeping his weight up), regular whole milk for my daughter (2 year old) and skim milk for me (I'm the overweight one). So yeah, fat may be bad for you, but all three of us had different optimal levels. I have a feeling my daughter will be allowed a lot more carbs and fat in general than I get since she is super active and seems to have her daddy's metabolism.
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posted
Lets see if I can be fair to Mal's arguments.
I mean, when he exaggerates the degree that this law will slippery slide slope us into--his arrest for poisoning his children via Fry Daddy and a cheeseburger, that is fine. When the opponents exaggerate by bringing in Cigarettes or Alcohol--well that has nothing to do with food.
Mal's argument seems to have little to do with this law per se. It isn't that advertising food via free kids toys is the topic. (And yes, free Toys do increase the sales of Happy Meals, and can lead to a pattern of fast-food eating later in life. The proof--Its something McDonalds spends millions of dollars doing. If it didn't increase their sales they wouldn't be doing it because poor little children need cheap little toys.)
Mal's real topic is that the government should not control our diet.
Mal doesn't seem to care that this law isn't really an attempt to control our diet. Mal fears that it may lead others into creating laws that will begin eating away at our right to eat what we wish.
The point Mal wants to make is not "where should we draw the line at the Government's intrusion in our kitchen". It seems to be "any thing the government does that even hints at intrusion in our kitchen should be stopped, removed, revoked, and ridiculed."
However, Mal is a "Black and white--no Grey" kind of person. Either its an attack on all of our right to eat whatever we want, or its total freedom of the stomach.
I'm more of a spectrum kind of guy. There are two poles that his options represent, and I think the line should be drawn somewhere in the middle.
Where would you draw the line:
Government Allows Anything to be sold as food.(buyer beware) Government Allows Food that May be Poisonous Government Allows Food that Food Producers Say Is Not Poisonous. Government Determines Foods That Are Not Poisonous and Disallows All Others. Government Government Determines Which Foods Are Poisonous, allows all others, but promotes with advertisement foods that the producers say are healthy. "" foods that the Government says are healthy. Government limits foods to those that are healthy according to the Producers. Government limits foods to those that they determine are healthy.
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