Diet Thread

[Nobody]

First case of obesity in remote indian population in the Artic circle.
http://siberiantimes.com/science/opinio ... onal-diet/

Although these Inuits may not have suffered from obesity before, it doesn't mean they had a beneficial diet. Obesity wasn't that common in western countries in mid 20th century either (about 10%), but CHD was considered to be the biggest killer (which was also considered to be driven by smoking).

Claims that Eskimos were free of heart (artery) disease are untrue. A thorough review of the evidence concludes that "Eskimos have a similar prevalence of CAD (coronary artery disease) as non-Eskimo populations, they have excessive mortality due to cerebrovascular strokes, their overall mortality is twice as high as that of non-Eskimo populations, and their life expectancy is approximately 10 years shorter than the Danish population."

Mummified remains of Eskimos dating back 2,000 years have shown extensive hardening of the arteries throughout their brains, hearts and limbs; as a direct consequence of following a carnivorous diet of birds, caribou, seals, walrus, polar bears, whales, and fish. The June 1987 issue of National Geographic magazine carried an article about two Eskimo women, one in her twenties and the other in her forties, frozen for five centuries in a tomb of ice. When discovered and medically examined they both showed signs of severe osteoporosis and also suffered extensive atherosclerosis, "probably the result of a heavy diet of whale and seal blubber."

https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2015nl/apr/eskimos.htm

[CKinnard]

Nenet females have had a growing obesity rate for years, according to the literature.
Today 42.5% of Nenet females are obese.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4111876/

that rate, by the furtherest stretch of the imagination, does not support "first ever cases of obesity".

[mikesbytes]

Confession time... Yesterday I had lunch in McDonald's

Now what was interesting was that I was the only one eating lunch who ordered the salad (instead of the chips) and I was the only one who didn't have a soft drink.

[CKinnard]

Mike, do you think it is possible to have a healthy meal at McDonald's.
If you need help defining "healthy", how about we settle for a meal that could be had 5 times a week, without adverse health effects, and that meets the Australian Dietary Guidelines.
For comparison, a chicken and salad roll (lots of salad) with no mayo or similar, would meet the Australia Dietary Guidelines as a healthy choice for 5 meals a week.
I am asking you because I don't know what Maccas have on their menu these days.

[Abby]

No-one goes to Maccas because it's healthy...

Sometimes tough, you are really hungry, are caught out, and convenience trumps all else. Even so, if you can accept the meal won't be 'healthy', you can still make a 'relatively healthy' choice.

The touch-screen ordering system they have now is a boon for this. On the odd occasion I find myself in there - I'll do a 'create your own' burger - start with the basic burger & bun, but then skip the cheese and load it up with every type of salad vegetable they possibly have. Still not 'healthy' per se, but I can live with that...

Oh, and of course skip the fries and soft drinks...

[CKinnard]

Abby, you might be right about not going to Maccas cos its healthy.

But I think many are ignorant that the opposite to healthy is unhealthy.
So do ppl go to Maccas because it is unhealthy?
I don't think so. they suppress that thought, and go there because they are often overwhelmed by cravings, for unhealthy foods (salt, sugar, fat, refined carbs).

If one has a healthy diet, they are more likely to think of healthier food to buy when hungry and away from home. i.e. I often choose a fruit and vege shop before fast food. Yesterday I bought a mango when half way through a 70k ride. an expensive mango, but still cheaper than going to Maccas, at $4.95. Last week I was going to buy a couple of scones from a bakery, but saw a salad sanger and bought that.

Seven Elevens, service stations, and IGAs (in Qld) are open after hours and often have fruit that can settle your appetite til you get home. Anyway, don't mean to patronize. Am sure you know this stuff. OK, time to ride home.

[Baalzamon]

Mike, do you think it is possible to have a healthy meal at McDonald's.
If you need help defining "healthy", how about we settle for a meal that could be had 5 times a week, without adverse health effects, and that meets the Australian Dietary Guidelines.
For comparison, a chicken and salad roll (lots of salad) with no mayo or similar, would meet the Australia Dietary Guidelines as a healthy choice for 5 meals a week.
I am asking you because I don't know what Maccas have on their menu these days.

And that salad roll would see my blood sugar shooting sky high thanks to the bun!

[Nobody]

Sometimes tough, you are really hungry, are caught out, and convenience trumps all else. Even so, if you can accept the meal won't be 'healthy', you can still make a 'relatively healthy' choice.

Or to rephrase what CK said; once people change their diet to less addictive food, there are less strong hunger pangs. That's my experience anyway. So I can easily skip a meal if the food isn't right. However the gold standard in diet success is preparing all your food and taking ample with you.

The touch-screen ordering system they have now is a boon for this. On the odd occasion I find myself in there - I'll do a 'create your own' burger - start with the basic burger & bun, but then skip the cheese and load it up with every type of salad vegetable they possibly have. Still not 'healthy' per se, but I can live with that...

Oh, and of course skip the fries and soft drinks...

I'd rather have the fries and soft drink if I could only choose between them and a burger.
https://mcdonalds.com.au/maccas-food/nu ... vAod3HEHUA

[Nobody]

And that salad roll would see my blood sugar shooting sky high thanks to the bun!

But not everyone's on a keto diet. I can eat over a kg of grapes at a time (which I did yesterday) or half a watermelon in a sitting. And I might finish with a banana or two after that.

[warthog1]

And that salad roll would see my blood sugar shooting sky high thanks to the bun!

But not everyone's on a keto diet. I can eat over a kg of grapes at a time (which I did yesterday) or half a watermelon in a sitting. And I might finish with a banana or two after that.

Was there an eruption at some point after that?

[mikesbytes]

The fast food topic is a big one, I'll divide this into 2 parts;
- My visit to Macca's on Tuesday
- A couple of years back when I did the maths at Hungry Jacks somewhere on the Hume Hwy

OK Macca's on Tuesday
As with all fast food chains the energy is stated on the menu and if your use to the old measurement system you can get an approximate by dividing by 4 or be more precise with the calculator on your phone. However in this visit I didn't bother with the energy figures, I just used my general knowledge of what to expect.
1. Burger vs Wrap. Prior experience has shown me that wraps from fast food stores contain similar calories to the bun of the burger. My info on this is a little out of date and next time I go I'll check to see if this is still the case. I selected Burger. I suspect you will find that the Bun has a higher sugar content than the bun's brought at the supermarket or bread shop.
2. Filling
2.1 Chicken. The calories from the chicken aren't to significant. To make a profit in fast food portion size of the more expensive ingredients needs to be limited. However this time I selected one with a coating and these coatings (crumbed, whatever) have the same calories if not more than the Chicken itself. A better option would of being to have grilled chicken.
2.2 Vegetables. Consisted of salad vegetables (lettuce, tomato, I forget) + japanolos (spelling) which is kinda part way between capsicum and chilli.
2.3 Sauce. For the life of me I forget but no doubt whatever it was it was bad. As Abby mentioned, you are better off to go for the custom build as this is one area where you can make a big difference
BTW it tasted good
3. Salad
As mentioned I chose salad instead of chips. The salad was a simple green salad of lettuce and tomato. I came with salad dressing in a separate packet. So you could simply discard the dressing, poor it over the salad or do what I did, which was to put it in the lid of burger box and dip the salad into it.
4. Drink
The Macca's I was at had a McCaffe, so I chose a long black. Not as healthy as water or even black tea but at 1 or 2 calories its miles ahead of a small soft drink (say 175 cal) or a cappuccino (also about 175 cal)
Total cost $11.20

BTW they default to a medium meal. The difference between small, medium and large is the size of the chips and soft drink. The burger/wrap remain the same size. So always select small or better still select just the burger or substitute was I did.

[mikesbytes]

Hungry Jacks a couple of years ago
Returning to Sydney from a road race somewhere in the country, might of been Cootamundra there was no way I was going to make it back without a feed and pulled into Hungry Jacks.

There was a queue so to pass the time I did the maths by comparing the products to work out what the differences made in the energy. To cut a long story short it worked out that the burger's calories was roughly in 3 even portions;
1. Bun
2. Filling
3. Coating on filling
So calories could be reduced to 2/3's simply by picking one that didn't have a coating.
The calories in the chips and soft drink was roughly the same as the burger without the coating so I concluded from that, that 2 burgers was a better option than one meal. If I wanted to be tighter again on the calories instead of getting a burger you could get a chicken salad, which appeared to be identical to the burgers filling (no coating) and hence eliminated the bun

Ironically the highest calorie burger was the vegetarian (might of been vegan), even outdone the mega one with 3 layers of meat. Goodness knows what the put in it, looked like deep fried lentil patties or the like.

Unfortunately there was free soft drink refills and I watched 2 morbidly obese gentlemen go back several times.

[Nobody]

Was there an eruption at some point after that?

No, but I feel my stomach stretching a lot.
Like riding or any other training, you've got to work up to eating a lot of low calorie density food.

[Baalzamon]

And that salad roll would see my blood sugar shooting sky high thanks to the bun!

But not everyone's on a keto diet. I can eat over a kg of grapes at a time (which I did yesterday) or half a watermelon in a sitting. And I might finish with a banana or two after that.

Did I mention anything about fruit, nope. Did I mention a bun which is a bread roll YEP.

[Nobody]

And that salad roll would see my blood sugar shooting sky high thanks to the bun!

But not everyone's on a keto diet. I can eat over a kg of grapes at a time (which I did yesterday) or half a watermelon in a sitting. And I might finish with a banana or two after that.

Did I mention anything about fruit, nope. Did I mention a bun which is a bread roll YEP.

Do you notice any changes physically from this "sky high" blood sugar? I can't say that eating any amount of bread in the past has ever done anything to me that I noticed. But then I don't appear to have the genes or the diet for diabetes. I think you need both the genes and a high fat diet to cause T2D. Once you have it then processed carbs easily induce the symptoms.
https://youtu.be/_66q8trrrYk?t=7m18s

[CKinnard]

And that salad roll would see my blood sugar shooting sky high thanks to the bun!

Your blood sugar would be fine if you had a wholemeal roll and enough salad on it, which doesn't mean 1 slice tomato, 1 slice cucumber, and 1 leaf lettuce.

Here's a challenge. serve yourself 4 cups of salad and 120g chicken in a bowl and eat a wholemeal roll with it.
Then see how your blood sugar goes.

[RhapsodyX]

First case of obesity in remote indian population in the Artic circle.
http://siberiantimes.com/science/opinio ... onal-diet/

Although these Inuits may not have suffered from obesity before, it doesn't mean they had a beneficial diet. Obesity wasn't that common in western countries in mid 20th century either (about 10%), but CHD was considered to be the biggest killer (which was also considered to be driven by smoking).

Claims that Eskimos were free of heart (artery) disease are untrue. A thorough review of the evidence concludes that "Eskimos have a similar prevalence of CAD (coronary artery disease) as non-Eskimo populations, they have excessive mortality due to cerebrovascular strokes, their overall mortality is twice as high as that of non-Eskimo populations, and their life expectancy is approximately 10 years shorter than the Danish population."

Mummified remains of Eskimos dating back 2,000 years have shown extensive hardening of the arteries throughout their brains, hearts and limbs; as a direct consequence of following a carnivorous diet of birds, caribou, seals, walrus, polar bears, whales, and fish. The June 1987 issue of National Geographic magazine carried an article about two Eskimo women, one in her twenties and the other in her forties, frozen for five centuries in a tomb of ice. When discovered and medically examined they both showed signs of severe osteoporosis and also suffered extensive atherosclerosis, "probably the result of a heavy diet of whale and seal blubber."

https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2015nl/apr/eskimos.htm

So - what you are saying is that it's O.K. for them to start putting weight on because they will have less atherosclerosis?

"Direct consequence"? So McDougall has all the answers to atherosclerosis? I guess all of those research teams out there are wasting their time.
Or perhaps you should broaden your horizon.

[RhapsodyX]

And that salad roll would see my blood sugar shooting sky high thanks to the bun!

Your blood sugar would be fine if you had a wholemeal roll and enough salad on it, which doesn't mean 1 slice tomato, 1 slice cucumber, and 1 leaf lettuce.

Here's a challenge. serve yourself 4 cups of salad and 120g chicken in a bowl and eat a wholemeal roll with it.
Then see how your blood sugar goes.

I do believe the context is "McDonalds".

[mikesbytes]

Before we get into an argument I'll clarify RhapsodyX's comment. McDonalds and other fast food chains have a reputation for loading the bread and other products with sugar and hence his comment about the blood sugar spike. What CK has suggested sounds vastly more healthy than what most people eat in a fast food outlet and no doubt CK is thinking of a normal bread roll, not what's given at the fast food outlet.

Anyway my comments about the visit to Macca's was more about how there are choices but hardly anyone makes those choices

[CKinnard]

Well Mike, the bun is probably also refined flour in addition to a lot of salt and sugar.
Nevertheless, my point is that if you eat adequate salad, that will slow absorption of grains as well, and thereby keep blood sugar from spiking.
That's why smashing salad and veg is recommended by dietitians and doctors to T2D at True North and John McDougall's centers.
So many of dietary centered health issues would resolve if we just ate enough fibrous carbs and fruit. We'd tolerate refined starches better, like the Mediterranean cultures and their white pasta.

P.S. no more arguments between Rhap and me, as I adopted the mod's suggestion to put him on my ignore list. Hopefully he'll read this and find another way to vent his spleen. If he keeps getting triggered, you could offer him the same suggestion I was offered.

[RhapsodyX]

ROFL.

[RhapsodyX]

Chronic (long term) stress associated with obesity. Of course, it could be that being obese is stressful, but they make a pretty good case for it being the other way around.

The journal article.

[Nobody]

Although these Inuits may not have suffered from obesity before, it doesn't mean they had a beneficial diet. Obesity wasn't that common in western countries in mid 20th century either (about 10%), but CHD was considered to be the biggest killer (which was also considered to be driven by smoking).

So - what you are saying is that it's O.K. for them to start putting weight on because they will have less atherosclerosis?

By adding highly processed grains they are only going to make their situation worse. Western diets have generally shown that half measures in reducing animal products have little benefit to those very susceptible to atherosclerosis. Driving an unsafe car into a wall at 80 km/h or 50 km/h both kill. Under 10 km/h would result in a far better survival chance. Adding highly processed grains (noodles) will just add body fat without displacing enough animal products to make a significant difference to their atherosclerosis risk IMO.

[Abby]

Abby, you might be right about not going to Maccas cos its healthy.

But I think many are ignorant that the opposite to healthy is unhealthy.
So do ppl go to Maccas because it is unhealthy?
I don't think so. they suppress that thought, and go there because they are often overwhelmed by cravings, for unhealthy foods (salt, sugar, fat, refined carbs).

If one has a healthy diet, they are more likely to think of healthier food to buy when hungry and away from home. i.e. I often choose a fruit and vege shop before fast food. Yesterday I bought a mango when half way through a 70k ride. an expensive mango, but still cheaper than going to Maccas, at $4.95. Last week I was going to buy a couple of scones from a bakery, but saw a salad sanger and bought that.

Seven Elevens, service stations, and IGAs (in Qld) are open after hours and often have fruit that can settle your appetite til you get home. Anyway, don't mean to patronize. Am sure you know this stuff. OK, time to ride home.

I hear ya CK, and pretty much agree. Have often swung by a fruit shop and grabbed some bananas, a mango, or a bag of grapes to top me up as I get through the day!! And yep, when a healthy diet becomes the norm - healthy choices become the norm.

That said, I am the first to put myhand up and say I'm far from perfect! I do get caught out occasionally - especially some days when you are running the kids around to various sports activities or social stuff, juggled in amongst wider work/family commitments. So sometimes it's just the "what's the 'best of the worst' I can choose to get me through until I can have a proper meal" type of decision.

Also - and this is drifting away from the post a bit - but also am super-conscious of not modelling any 'obsessive dietary traits' given I have two teenage girls. Obviously key part of that is modelling healthy choices to begin with, plus doing my best to raise two girls with a good self-esteem and strong resilience. But knowing the relative prevalence (and seeing it in some oftheir friends) of disordered eating that can occur in that demographic, I'm very careful to never 'freak out' or be upset/annoyed on the odd occasion when I head down the fast food route... (hope that makes sense!)

Loving the discussion! Cheer all...

[mikesbytes]

You have brought up an interesting point CK about the salad slowing digestion of other foods and hence reducing the insulin spike. two questions;
1. How much does it slow down the absorption of food that caused the insulin spike? I'm thinking that its not quite as simple as being proportional to the overall digestion time. IE the sugars tend to get there before the fibre.
And more importantly;
2. How to sell this benefit to those with a poor nutritional lifestyle which needs to be addressed for things like type 2 diabetes? I recall you saying that some people have an aversion to vegetables