A Good Read: Silence of Yams.

[piterburg]

 Why after 30 years of  scientific advice on the ways we should eat, we only seem to get fatter and fatter? Why  every year we see  more and more obesity and diabetes?  Why do we keep discovering "miracle nutrients" only to see our expectations fail?

This fascinating article  by a Berkeley professor questions the very assumptions of our approach to

Comments

[vsopvs]

would it be possible to summarize the idea in a few lines? or the first line says it all, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."?

[piterburg]

The first line says a lot, if you keep in mind what he calls foods (vs. non-foods

[vsopvs]

this surely all makes sense to me. in part, this is why i find ridiculous when people say there's plenty of food and the planet can sustain whatever billions of the population.

it's sufficient to take a look at the shelves in a supermarket and see immediately that what they call "food" is not.

i remember talking with a friend of mine, an American guy, who was saying "Oh, this is not Tropicana, if you only knew what it was like 15 years ago".

and this happens to all foods in all countries.

but there's no way out, as the only way out is to get the population growth under control, which would never happen.

[piterburg]

"and this happens to all foods in all countries"

Yes it does. and more and more countries report alarming increases in obesity/diabetes/heart disease. I just read how it is becoming a great problem in India, among other places.

"but there's no way out, as the only way out is to get the population growth under control, which would never happen"

I am more optimistic on that - the population growth is already flattening. Most likely the population of Earth will start declining in the second half of this century.

[piterburg]

I am not surprised. I will definitely read his books given time.

Have you read any of his books? If you did, which ones would you particularly recommend?

Re: michael pollan

[piterburg]

I just finished reading his last book - "The Omnivore's Dilemma" - will write a review when I'll have a chance.

The book is excellent, (except maybe for the last part which is kinda off-topic, IMO). After reading this book I understood why I have instinctive aversion to eating beef in the US, while I loved eating beef in, say, Brazil.

[allita78]

I don't have time to read the entire article now (although, I'll definitely do it tomorrow), but the first line is what I tell people all the time if this topic comes up, while specifying a bit, what I mean by "food". Somehow, people just don't seem to believe me :-)

[zvuv]

makes sense to me. also, i think the more people fixate on calories, fat, nutrition, the worse off their food intake actually becomes.

somehow, in our day and age, most of us have lost touch with common sense. it's all about the expert advice, "scientists show...," etc. it's only once you look at the experiment--how it was conducted, how it was funded, that you begin to see how flimsy this all is. (i'm not knocking science here, but it's very difficult to separate the junk from the real thing.)

imho, the best thing to do is enjoy food, and the most enjoyable kind of food is what's made from scratch and from fresh ingredients. you just can't go wrong... :)

[piterburg]

"only once you look at the experiment--how it was conducted, how it was funded, that you begin to see how flimsy this all is"

He actually goes beyond simpler issues of bias due to factors you listed and into more fundamental stuff.

One of the fundamental factors affecting ALL studies is that BOTH control groups are eating Western Industrial diet and there is no way around it.

The other one is that most of these studies rely on self-reporting and people LIE about their eating habits (just as they lie about their sexual habits in studies of mating behavior).

[skavishkaa]

:-)
It always amused me that Americans eat "fat free" foods, count calories, follow diets and they are so heavy compare to French who spread butter on bread put cheese on top of it and just enjoy any food they like :-)

[piterburg]

Unfortunately, it is not just American problem any more.
Due to globalization and resulting invasion of "non-foods " the problem is rapidly becoming worldwide.

Just last month alone I came across info of Western European obesity rates on the way to catch up with American ones, of an obesity epidemic among Chinese children and of manifold increases in diabetes rates order in India and Thailand etc.

It seems that French are indeed holding up better than most other nations though. One reason is probably because their national identity is strongly wrapped up in their traditional foods. The other reason is that French
"artisanal" foods are heavily subsidized by EU, and as a result relatively affordable.