> By the Food and Drug Administration’s standards, that’s not real cheese—which is why the FDA forced Kraft to change its label from “cheese spread” to “cheese product.”
No cheese in Velveeta, in the best Shiny-land tradition. Breyer’s ice cream used to be fairly good. Now, many flavors have so little milk and cream content, “big gummit” won’t let them call it “ice cream” anymore. Look closely at the cartons. Many say “frozen dairy dessert”. In a bit of irony, my local grocery store charges more for Breyer’s muck than for Hudsonville or Stroh’s, which are both real ice cream. I had been getting suspicious of the quality of Breyer’s because I noticed that, just like the cheap store brand muck, it didn’t melt, indicating it’s mostly thickeners and fillers.
In other fun things: Anderson claims it’s “fibrex” replacement windows are superior to vinyl windows. What is “fibrex”? It’s vinyl mixed with sawdust.
“Innserseal” siding is made from sawdust. OSB is made from chipped up wood scraps. We have millwork made by gluing wood scraps together.
We have so many “products” made from waste, I start to wonder where all the actual stuff that generated the waste is?
Steve
Unilever spokesperson explains Breyer’s decline into muck is due to customer demand.
I don’t think the paper this article is based on quite says that.
“Modifiable risk factor” doesn’t automatically mean that these are easily controllable and, although the numbers used to come up with this is pretty vast, they’re from a database that’s been built via questionnaire. You can get plenty of seemingly robust answers this way … and journal editors surely love big numbers … but not necessarily to the right questions. Nuance is one area that tends to get missed.
For example, these modifiable risk factors aren’t stand alone variables are they? Obesity is a multifactorial issue and is so closely tied to lack of activity that it’s hard to say that it’s overtaking physical activity as the most important when you rarely have one without the other.
The data analysis was an effort to see if the relative proportions of these modifiable risk factors have changed with the passage of time and, yes they have but you can see why…the number of folk with obesity is greater than ever.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an apologist for the obesity epidemic. For sure, I don’t understand why folk don’t take action with the first 5lb of weight gain … or, for that matter, why folk pop those first few illegally obtained opioids for recreational purposes only … but I’m not fat so don’t have insight. However, I’m pretty darn sure weight management is a bit trickier than those of us who’re speaking from lack of experience realise.
Given that, from balance of probabilities, there are likely folk who are or have been (overweight/obese) on this board, maybe they should share insight.
I’m not seeing a problem here. Why does it matter if the product performs well and looks good.
Isn’t masonite and pegboard just basically sawdust and glue and its been around for a century.
I think OSB is stronger than the similar thickness plywood.
MDF and other particle boards have been used for many decades too.
I think it is a good idea to use the sawdust and scraps left over after cutting up lumber into 2x4s.
I recall touring a lumber mill 20+ years ago and was amazed at how they semi-automatically finger glued small scraps together to make pre-primed baseboards into long sections. Seems like it would be a waste to use a real long and straight board for a painted decorative item like this.
I worked Noom for about 9 months and lost 50 lbs. The final date on that was Aug 2021.
Now I am using the app but not the program. The app is free. It can count calories and follow your weight in every day on the scale. I weight early in the morning.
It was not working. I stayed down 50 lbs but recently my work life became hectic. I gained 5 lbs.
Now I am losing weight again. I have about 35 lbs to lose.
I used to have a day planner on my dining room table. I went to Google’s calendar app which is better on the road.
But five days ago I bought another day planner for my table. Now I lay out what I will eat for the day every morning with a running calorie count next to it.
I still use the app to record the food as I eat it. My day’s plan in place i do not stray. I am shedding the weight.
Is it discipline? It is internally discipline. External discipline gets a bad rap in an individualistic society. Worse and more confusing external discipline as a topic gets totally confused with watching TV commercials. Your parents were not on the air.
Good news. If you are disciplined, it is a lot easier to exercise regularly and cook and eat good food in retirement if you make it a priority. At least it has been for me - so far - four years into retirement.
There is a larger element of what I am going to say that is not in the least selfish in my book. But there is a huge hardship for poorer workers in the US.
The well off, not necessarily rich, Americans get the best medical care and live at least something like 5 to 7 years longer than most places in the world. I am basing this on the life span differential that I believe is different in the US from other places with universal care. Meaning the poorest Americans have a life span that is 15 years less than the well off Americans. Many of us are in line frankly to have a longer life span on average than anywhere else.
I’d love to. In fact I already have. Here’s a link to a post I wrote probably a decade ago on the LBYM board.
… Well, I guess that’s no longer possible. The old boards are gone. History doesn’t matter. We’ll just have to repeat it instead of learning from it.
Let’s see if I can recreate it.
My wife has been overweight all of her life. And she was never really happy with that. (I’m also on the borderline of obese, depending on the definition of the day, but that’s a different story for a different time.)
She has done various diets. She has tried exercise. Not long enough at a time, IMHO, to see any real benefits. She had gastric bypass surgery in the early 2000s. That did help, taking her from morbidly obese (about 325 at her peak) to as low as 220, before rebounding and settling in at about 250 a couple years after the surgery. But she didn’t get any taller, so at 5 feet even, that’s still obese.
I’m convinced there is at least some genetic component to her struggle with obesity. Her brother was also obese most of his life. Her mother was morbidly obese from the day I met her until the day she died. All of her mother’s siblings were in the range from definitely overweight to morbidly obese. I never met my wife’s maternal grandparents, but from the photos I’ve seen, they were also overweight.
Among my wife’s first cousins (and she’s got a whole bunch of them - her mother was the 6th of 7 children and the least productive with a scant 2 children of her own), none will be mistaken for a runway model. At best, they could stand to lose 20 pounds. Most are borderline obese.
Now I will grant that there are almost certainly behavioral issues regarding food and exercise that get passed down from parent to child. But there is likely a genetic component as well.
Once she got into her 40s, my wife generally ate about half of what I did. She had her gastric bypass in her early 40s, which is certainly a factor in the drop in her food intake. And, being married and all, we generally at the same foods. But on her half ration and with a gastric bypass, she didn’t lose weight (after the initial loss and rebound from the surgery). And I didn’t gain weight on my double portion.
Backing up, she certainly had some behavioral factors in there as well. She led a very sedentary life style. Much of that came from her childhood. She had brain cancer when she was 5 or 6 years old. The surgery involved removing a small portion of her skull to get at the tumor. That left her at risk of injury, so she didn’t participate in most physical activities at school, from grade school all through high school. Of course, for a short while, even walking was a challenge right after the surgery. But she ended up with surprisingly few long term effects of the surgery and subsequent radiation therapy. A little hitch in her walking gait, and an occasional eye twitch. I guess the point here is that from a young age, she was encouraged to avoid a lot of movement that most young children do routinely. She never learned to like physical activity. And that certainly worked against her over the decades.
My wife’s situation is certainly unique. But I think most people have, in the end, a unique set of circumstances and life history that impact their long term health and weight.
The most important thing I can suggest is to be understanding and encouraging to those trying to lose weight and to those who probably should lose weight for their longer term health. Above all, avoid being judgemental and thinking that the situation is always black and white - that the person just needs to do this or that and they will magically lose weight. As with most things in life, dealing with weight is complicated.
Particularly annoying to me is the common idea that all someone needs to do is eat this or that or the other, and then do all of the exercise that you do. Topping my annoyance chart is the suggestion that people are lazy and just waiting for some pill to take to make them lose weight. I suspect most who really do want to lose weight are willing to do some things. Changes to diet are pretty universally expected, but titling a thread with an insult about food is not helpful. Frankly, it’s off-putting and de-motivating.
Peter,
I apologize for my attempt at finding humor in Steve’s admitted diet of a string of fast-food joints exposing him to an apparent buffet of over-processed foods which are allegedly bad for consumption if taken on a constant basis. It is not as a general indictment of those who are having weight challenges, but rather of a particular slice of many Americans tend to classify as food - including “cheese-food”, “mayonnaise-like dressing”, “fortified” bread, “meat flavored” sauces, “butter-flavored” sauces and anything with a toy in the box.
Sounds like, while he (@steve203) does eat out at those places nearly every day, he DOES choose their more healthful offerings. I don’t think those are anywhere as near as harmful as the typical deep fried, or otherwise badly prepared, stuff they serve.
The one that rankles me most in recent years is “frozen dairy dessert” … it’s when they put so much cr*p into it that they can’t legally call it ice cream anymore. I may have to go back to making my own!
For those who enjoy a good cheese cake, the following are my wife’s “secret” recipe (don’t tell her I spilled the beans) as well as one of my favorites:
Wife’s Famous “New York” Cheesecake
Crust:
1 ¾ cup (435 ml) graham cracker crumbs
¼ cup (60 ml) walnuts crushed
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup (125 ml) melted butter
Filling:
3 eggs
2 packages (8 oz. size or 250 gm size) cream cheese
1 cup (250 ml) sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups (750 ml) sour cream
Mix all crust ingredients together.
Reserve 3 tablespoons for topping.
Press remainder into bottom and side of 9 inch (225 mm) springform pan.
Combine eggs, cheese sugar and sour cream. Pour into crust. Top with reserved crumbs.
Bake at 375 F° (175 C°) for one hour. Chill 4 to 5 hours.
Serves 12
To make into chocolate cheesecake:
Chocolate Mousse:
1/2 pint Heavy Cream
2 oz. melted chocolate (make sure it’s not hot)
2 Tablespoon. confectioner’s sugar
Whip heavy cream; add melted chocolate and sugar; mix until well blended.
Spread on top of cooled cheesecake.
With pastry bag and star tip, pipe a border of your favorite chocolate icing around edges.
Sprinkle chocolate curls on top of mousse.
Jeff’s Italian Ricotta Cheesecake
Ingredients
2 Tablespoons Softened Butter
1/2 Cup Amaretto Crumbs (From About 4 Or 5 Amaretti)
1/2 Cup Golden Raisins
3 Tablespoons Dark Rum
5 Large Eggs
1 Cup Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
4 Cups (2 Pounds) Drained Fresh Ricotta, At Room Temperature
1 Cup Mascarpone, At Room Temperature – can substitute 1/3 cup all purpose flour
Finely Grated Zest Of 1 Lemon
Finely Grated Zest Of 1 Orange
1/2 Cup Toasted Pine Nuts or chopped candied orange rinds (options)
Directions
Preheat oven to 350° F. Brush an 8-inch springform pan with butter on the bottom and sides. Coat bottom and sides with amaretto crumbs, tapping out excess. For a simpler cake, you can simply dust the buttered pan with all-purpose flour.
Put raisins in a small bowl and pour rum over, let soak while you make the filling.
In a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat eggs, sugar and salt at high speed until foamy and the sugar has dissolved and no longer feels grainy, about 2 minutes.
Add flour, little by little, if substituting for mascarpone.
Add ricotta, mascarpone and zests. Drain raisins, set aside and add leftover rum to the mixer, mix on medium until smooth and fluffy, about another 2 minutes. Fold in raisins, candied rinds and pine nuts by hand.
Put spring form pan on a baking sheet and pour batter into pan, smoothing the top with a spatula.
Bake until edges are set and light golden but the center is still a bit jiggly, about 1 hour. Cool on a wire rack completely before cutting and serving.
There is a clear correlation between childhood trauma and obesity. I’m not sure what to make of that, but it is clear that we don’t really understand the mind-body connection as it applies to obesity. It is not a problem with a simple or obvious solution for many people.
Sort of fell off the wagon today. :^) Wendy’s sent me a coupon: baconator, fries, and pop, $2 off…and 1436 calories. So, my budget allows about 200 more calories tonight. I have a grilled chicken bachelor chow that will fit the bill.
Thank you. At this point, I had forgotten who started the thread, and what the OP was about. After looking at it again, the OP and article are not in my category of annoying comments on weight and health. My complaint was misplaced in this case.
I tried a diet once. Not for any weight management issue, mind but a dozen or so years back, there was a fair bit of back and forth on a fitness instructor forum I’m part of. It was about this time of the year and the topic was how to keep class members and clients on track with weight management over the holidays.
There were a few RDs on the forum and the convo turned to the topic of diets, dieting and recommendations from folk who’d never needed to diet. These women apparently all had the experience whilst at school of being assigned a diet to follow each semester…just so they appreciated what their patients went through. A few of us decided to do the same ourselves and vowed to start in the New Year. How hard could that be, right?
I found a “cutting” diet in Oxygen magazine that looked just my style…minimal ingredient cooking that wasn’t tremendously different from what I normally ate. A 3 week meal plan centered around 120 or so gms of protein a day and coming in at around 1600-1700 Cals a day. I did not do well. First off, for all the similarity to my regular eating pattern, the fact that it was “Someone’s” prescribed diet messed with my head and, although it was a high satiety diet with the protein and “healthy fats” etc and I wasn’t hungry, I found myself either thinking about food or trying not to think about food! Added to that, I found that the caloric deficit really cut down on my NEAT…that non exercise activity thermogenesis that you’re not aware of during the day. My step count outside of my teaching and own training regimen dropped by about 4 or 5k steps a day (yes, I move a lot!) and I really couldn’t train to full capacity.
Needless to say, after about 10 days of that misery, I’d dropped maybe a pound tops and, just like the RDs on my forum, I was cranky as Hail. Forget that. Went back to just being plain old accountable for what I eat without the overfocus and everything went back to normal. I could see me developing an unhealthy relationship with food if I tried that trick again.
No doubt some have reasons for weight issues that are beyond their control, such as genetics or childhood trauma. But I am pretty sure that is a small minority given the enormous number who have serious, debilitating weight issues. Take a look at this chart.
I am a geneticist and I can think of no genetic mechanism to explain such a rise in obesity in the past 40 years. America is a wealthy country with lots high caloric food choices and reduced need for physical exertion, which gives an obvious reason why American might weigh more than they should. But obesity is the extreme, and we have reached the point where over 40% of Americans are not simply overweight but are clinically obese. In fact, there are more obese Americans than overweight ones!
Unlike other physical attributes, obesity is a problem that impacts everyone. It significantly increases the risks of all sorts of chronic diseases as well as dementia and so is a major factor in rising health costs, particularly impacting medicare and medicaid. I doubt that we can control health care costs without controlling obesity rates. So obesity is not just a personal issue, it is a problem affecting the entire community.
Fact is that obesity rates have been rising for 40 years with almost half the country now obese. That is pretty good empirical evidence that Americans are unable to control their weight through behaviors that require self-discipline and so the only remaining solutions I can think of to the obesity epidemic is economic coercion (e.g., soda tax, sugar tax, higher medical premiums for the obese) or the development of a miracle pill.
Excuse me but medications often needed for reasons involved in individual genetic make can stimulate appetite. It may be a secondary side effect but it is major.
There is no one factor.
My own problem was overeating and straying from a healthier diet. Exercise was also a problem. I used to over do it and get an unmanageable urge to eat.
Insisting on exercise to lose weight is false. We do not burn that much energy with exercise most of us. Some can exercise and manage their hunger around activity. Others are better off managing their caloric intake without exercise as I did for most of a year. The following year I went into the gym to lift weights and rebuild the muscle.
We can point to economics as a factor. Poorer workers make worse food choices. A matter perhaps perceptually of individual value in society. The bulk of the rise in obesity is among the lower middle class workers. It is not exclusive to them. With 60% of workers making under $40k per year many face a harsher reality.
This is very related to weight. More importantly the weight CAN be related to cancer. Alley died of colon cancer. The stats in this article on how common colon cancer is might shock many of us into getting colonoscopies. Dying of colon cancer is not necessary for most who catch it in time.
Could the genetics have remained more or less the same while what people do has changed significantly?
Until the industrial revolution, all work - in the home and for employment - was accomplished with manual labor. Occasionally supplemented with animals, such as horses and oxen. That is how humans evolved, basically to be laborers. From hunting and gathering, to farming, and even skilled trades, almost all work was physical.
The industrial revolution provided significant increases in productivity, but the work remained mainly physical.
But in the US over the last half century, work has shifted from physical to mental. Services, rather than manufacturing, are the large part of todays economy. While some services involve physical activity, many don’t.
It strikes me that the increase in obesity lines up fairly well with the shift from manufacturing to services.
It would make sense, then, that our bodies - evolved to crave high energy food sources like fats and sugars - tend to store that excess energy as fat when we are not sufficiently active. And with manual labor falling as a source of daily exercise, it’s no wonder that the population is getting heavier on average.
—Peter <== who still believes that individual genetics plays a role in how individuals respond to the lack of manual labor as a form of daily exercise.
For me it was two things: 1. Intermittent fasting as outlined by Mark Mattson at John’s Hopkins, and 2. Eating primarily from the ten food groups as laid out by the Harvard Medical MIND diet.
