
How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick  - pavel
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/24/132745785/how-western-diets-are-making-the-world-sick
======
forgottenpaswrd
Misleading title, it is not "western diet" what is bad for health, it is fast
food, and sugar sweety food what is.

What Americans were eating 70-50-30 years ago was healthy and "western".

It has been people eating industrial foods instead of someone making the food
what has changed. I use to look at obese people shopping cart and I see a lot
of Coca Cola, pizza, industrial bread, industrial buns,cookies, chocolate,no
fresh vegetables, no fresh milk or cheese, fresh fish or meat, no fress
anything.

Artic Circle people have a huge problem in winter, only fish is fresh, so they
eat potato chips with are easy and cheap to store for months(specially if they
use trans fat).

I can't believe someone can live eating only with this. I'm from north of
Spain and we like people from France used to eat very well, but people have
less and less time for cooking and this means worse diet.

~~~
beaumartinez
So, then, what is the "Western diet" if it isn't what the Western people eat?
(I see your point, though; it's been changing over time, and you're right: it
_is_ getting more and more processed and less balanced {and dare I say
"healthy"}).

Regarding obesity, exercise is far more important than diet. You can eat all
kinds of, well, crap, and if you exercise, you'll still be physically fit and
probably even look healthy. It's when the calorie ratio skews in favour of
_calories in_ that you start to put on weight―and in some cases its
_dramatically_ in favour of _calories in_.

Unfortunately people are even more adverse to exercise as they are to changing
their own diets.

Most damaging in my opinion is how this affects children, not only due to its
health risks: being obese as a child is often a social death sentence, and
that has all kinds of repercussions.

~~~
tomkarlo
"Regarding obesity, exercise is far more important than diet. You can eat all
kinds of, well, crap, and if you exercise, you'll still be physically fit and
probably even look healthy."

Can you support this? I feel like most things I've read and most of what I've
learned myself while training has been that diet in fact is a much bigger
factor, to a level of say 75%/25%. It's very hard to exercise enough to undo a
bad food decision, and even if you do exercise a ton, that's not going to
reverse vitamin and nutrient deficiencies that may result from eating
predominantly processed foods.

Moreover, the type of food you're eating has at least as much effect as its
theoretical caloric content. 300 calories of raw carrots is not equal to 300
calories of potato chips, as far as your body is concerned. We're not
calorimeters.

~~~
narrator
Have any of you guys ever seen pictures of the Woodstock festival in the 60s?
Everyone is skinny. It's something besides "The western diet" and meat-eating
that's causing obesity to increase. A lot of diet news these days has the
appearance of vegetarian activism with a severe case of confirmation bias, in
that any study that remotely hints that meat eating is bad for health gets
front page coverage.

The exercise issue is a red-herring. Sure you can run for an hour and burn 600
calories, or you can just skip a meal. What's gone wrong with our diet is most
likely occurring at the metabolic level with the types of processed foods we
eat.

~~~
Tichy
Or maybe there was a lot less industrial food around in the 60ies?

Seems McDonalds only started to grow in the early 60ies, and frozen pizza
didn't take off till the 90ies according to this:

"through the 1980s, frozen pizza occupied an increasingly tight niche. Sales
growth averaged a sluggish one percent a year, even with innovations such as
French-bread and microwaveable pizzas."
[http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2005/3/...](http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2005/3/2005_3_12.shtml)

~~~
AJ007
People are radically underestimating just how much these high glycemic index
calories, on demand, are contributing to the obesity explosion.

Whether you stop in for lunch at McDonalds or Subway, you are probably tossing
back at least 1,200 calories. Stop at Starbucks and add dairy to your drink
and you've got may be another 300-400 calories that aren't going to fill your
stomach up. On top of all of this, certain demographic segments are consuming
large volumes or alcohol 2+ times a week. The average person should be
consuming under 2,000 calories a day, not in an afternoon.

Once you do gain that extra weight thanks to a careless few months of eating
(may be in college, may be at your first real job), its a lot easier to add to
those pounds than drop.

I suspect that its not just the proliferation of on demand food that is
causing the problem, but in the disinformation coming from the US government
regarding healthy diet. People that want to eat healthy have no idea what they
are doing. Decades of hysterical news stories about how XYZ is an amazing
superfood and ABC is terrible and will kill you have just left a confused
population that doesn't know what is good or bad for themselves.

~~~
narrator
In line with the whole low glycemic index thing, I've been doing Tim Ferris's
slow carb diet lately. The main thing about it that gets me endless ridicule
is that Tim is big on eating the same few simple meals over and over again.
This is absolute sacrilege in west coast foodie culture.

------
aantix
Am I the only one that felt like he was holding the Afghanistan people up as a
model of health because they lack fat? Their life expectancy is a mere ~44
years ([http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-
wdi&met=sp_dyn_le...](http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-
wdi&met=sp_dyn_le00_in&idim=country:AFG&dl=en&hl=en&q=afghanistan+life+expectancy)).
Neighboring Pakistan is 66 years ([http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-
wdi&met=sp_dyn_le...](http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-
wdi&met=sp_dyn_le00_in&idim=country:PAK&dl=en&hl=en&q=pakistan+life+expectancy)).

~~~
shasta
It would be more interesting to limit the comparison to those who die of
causes other than, say, gunshot wounds. It would also be interesting to see a
comparison of health, rather than just length of life.

~~~
Retric
The real issue is child morbidity. There are plenty of old people in most poor
countries but if 10+% of the population dies before age 5 the average life
expectancy get's far shorter.

~~~
param
I think you mean mortality, not morbidity.

~~~
Retric
Sorry, I meant morbidity, but I should have been more clear. Childhood
disease(morbidity) leads to a high infant/child mortality rate in poor
countries due to poor nutrition, sanitation, and heath care. IMO, it's better
to think of these deaths as a symptom than a cause.

For comparison US death rate in the 0 - 5 range is really low.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Causes_of_death_by_age_gro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Causes_of_death_by_age_group.png)

PS: Nutrition is huge: _According to Jean Ziegler (the United Nations Special
Rapporteur on the Right to Food for 2000 to March 2008), mortality due to
malnutrition accounted for 58% of the total mortality in 2006: "In the world,
approximately 62 millions people, all causes of death combined, die each year.
In 2006, more than 36 millions died of hunger or diseases due to deficiencies
in micronutrients"[4]._

------
deveren
Good question and answer at the end of the article. Fat is not what's making
Americans fat. It's the prevalence of carbohydrates in our diets, and
overeating of the same. I was in KY last week interviewing my great aunt who
is 108 years old. Do you think she never ate bacon, beef, etc? Haha, their
diets would be today's poster child for meatlovers. They didn't eat too much
sugar, or carbs, but more importantly they never over indulged, and worked
hard everyday.

Now, we consider an 8 hour day in front of the computer as a hard day at work.
But eat like we've been working in the fields...

~~~
simonsarris
When my friends ask about nutrition, explaining fat is the very first thing I
try to do.

Eating fat does not necessarily make you fat, nor is it in itself a bad at
all. Many fats are among the best things for your brain and heart. At the same
time, fat-free foods can quite easily be bullshit.

A pound of sugar is fat-free, after all, but has an insane calorific value.
(110 per oz)

Sugar is 100% total carbs.

A ounce of feta cheese has plenty of fat, and less calories per ounce than
zero-fat sugar (feta is 75 per oz).

Feta cheese is 75% fat, 20% protein, 5% total carbs.

Then I try to show them some fat-free products that nonetheless has immense
amounts of sugar and calories.

I think that using this topic as a lead-in has been the most effective way to
get my friends to change their diets and consider what they eat.

~~~
jseliger
This is one reason I find Michael Pollan's work so interesting, like "Unhappy
Meals":
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html)
(advice: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.") and _In Defense of Food_ :
[http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Food-Eaters-
Manifesto/dp/01431...](http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Food-Eaters-
Manifesto/dp/0143114964?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957)
.

His basic point is that "food science" doesn't know very much, is heavily
politicized, and that we don't really know on a deep level how food, food-like
substances, supplements, and so forth work. The war on "fat," as you note,
doesn't make much sense because it counts the "fat" from a Big Mac and the
"fat" from almonds the same way, which makes little sense. It counts the
"sugar" from strawberries and Pepsi the same way. This is, to put it lightly,
stupid, and it makes people stupid, since most people hear marketing slogans
or public service announcements or whatever and follow those.

~~~
pnathan
Put another way, Pollan recommends looking at more of a systems-level view of
food, instead of a purely components-based view.

I do know that some people have raised issues with his science.

Haven't heard too many complaints about his general takeaways though...

------
viggity
I've been overweight my entire life, and honestly, I blame the Surgeon General
in the 1980s for telling my mom that feeding me low fat foods (which end up
being high carb foods) will make me skinny.

 _Everyone_ believed this cargo cult "science" and it has had a devastating
impact for hundreds of millions of people.

~~~
kgo
I'm asking this sincerely, but don't people from traditionally healthy Asian
countries eat a hell of a lot of rice? That's my first thought every time
someone mentions how bad carbs are. But I have trouble finding any non-
antecdotal data.

I want to believe the obesity problem is more of a portion control thing, for
example, when McDonald's opened, did a normal adult actually eat a hamburger
and small fries for lunch instead of a big mac and large fries? But once
again, I always have trouble finding any real data to verify my hypothesis.

~~~
SMrF
"According to the latest health ministry figures, however, 29% of Japanese men
aged 20 to 60 are overweight - an increase of 5% in only five years and a long
way off its 2010 target of below 15%"

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/mar/02/japan.justinmccu...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/mar/02/japan.justinmccurry)

~~~
nandemo
From the same article:

 _"About 24% of people aged 15 and over are considered overweight, compared
with 65% in the United States."_

------
frankus
If you're interested in this sort of thing, I can't recommend Gary Taubes'
book Good Calories Bad Calories highly enough.

If you're not so interested, he wrote a TL;DR version called Why We Get Fat
and What to Do About It.

He also has a blog: <http://www.garytaubes.com/blog/>

~~~
jerf
I actually recommend them in reverse order. Good Calories, Bad Calories is
information dense and the consequent fact that essentially nobody has actually
_read_ it and everyone is working off of third-hand summaries of summaries,
even the people here on HN, is plainly obvious every time the topic turns to
that book. Start with "Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It" and back up to
GCBC if you still want more history and a list of citations longer than your
arm (and slightly older science).

Also, I would adjust some expectations. The common "science" understanding
seems to be that it's Gary Taubes, crazed whacko, against nutritionists,
bearer of the holy and uncontested Peer Review. In fact it's Gary Taubes
advocating that we take mainstream 21st century endocrinology seriously, with
its actual biochemistry and explanation for the behavior of fat accumulation
in the body _in general_ , beyond mere obesity, and discard a scientifically
unsupported nutrition philosophy unchanged since the 1960s that can not
explain the matter of fat accumulation except in terms so broad and vague
(and, ultimately, _wrong_ ) that I can't hardly even understand why it is
still taken seriously when there's another branch of science that utterly
subsumes it. This juxtaposition becomes much more clear and refined in his
second book, though it is technically pretty much all there in GCBC if you go
looking for it.

That is, not "nut vs. science", it's "science vs. science", and yeah, I make
no bones about which science I think explains a hell of a lot more than the
other.

~~~
tcskeptic
Actually I think it really is a case of "scienceyness" vs. science.

------
mikecarlucci
It's scary that KFC and processed food is now equated with "Western diet."

Michael Pollan says it best: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

~~~
bryanlarsen
The article is mostly about Inuits. Their traditional diet was pretty much
100% meat and was healthy.

So maybe Michael Pollan's advice has to be reduced to "Eat food. Not too
much."

~~~
run4yourlives
The Inuit also traditionally live in the Arctic wearing Caribou and seal skin
pelts. They are the hardest m-f'ers I've ever seen, and I can guarantee that a
large part of their "health" is due to the tremendous amounts of energy used
by the body just to stay alive.

Eat like an Inuit and live in Florida and you'll probably resemble something
more like a manatee than a man.

------
wmboy
Once we realize that obesity is (by and large) a modern lifestyle disease
caused by needless stress and a diet consisting of mostly fake food perhaps
we'll return to eating a whole food diet consisting of real food?

e.g. margarine (which has color added to it to make it look yellow, otherwise
it'd be gray) is NOT a healthy alternative to butter.

~~~
ryanfitz
the paleo diet is a growing diet/lifestyle based on eating real foods. If
anything else its very interesting to read about.
<http://freetheanimal.com/ancestral-life-way> is a great blog for anyone
interested.

~~~
wmboy
The Paleo diet is interesting but is not the be all and end all.

Check out <http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/> ,
<http://www.marksdailyapple.com/> and <http://www.westonaprice.org/> for more
viewpoints.

The general consensus though is to avoid processed foods and stick to whole
foods. A big one is to eat animal fat instead of industrially produced
vegetable and seed oils.

Also, limit carbohydrate intake (ideally eating only fruit and vegetables).

~~~
pizza
You might be interested in www.reddit.com/r/keto

------
sklivvz1971
Relevant Skeptics.SE link here: What's wrong with processed food?
([http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1392/whats-
wrong...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1392/whats-wrong-with-
processed-food))

------
gcheong
Do you think we'll ever get to a point where people make food choices and
limit their intake based mainly on a rational weighing of available
information? I like to think we will but so far the track record is not too
encouraging.

~~~
johnny22
or we just make healthy food taste better.

~~~
houk
healthy good DOES taste better. you've just been raised on rubbish so therefor
you think that is how all food should taste.

I was the same. I hated peas, carrots, sweet potato, that sort of thing. A few
years ago I was at a friends place and she grew all her own produce. It was
the first time I had ever tasted fresh vegetables. Oh wow.

If (in Australia) the major super markets that advertise "We're the fresh food
people" I'm sure more people would be enjoying something other than lollies
(candy). As it stands at the moment any vegetable you buy from our two major
players (coles and woolworths) are terrible.

Eating better? <http://robbwolf.com/> try him.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
If a salad contains any dressing, it's not a salad anymore, it's a dish.

The only exception I allow is vinegar + olive oil. That's pretty yummy salad
dressing (especially with balsamic vinegar), and pretty healthy.

~~~
demallien
Ummm, vinegar + oil is pretty much the composition of every dressing out
there, sometimes with a small amount of emulsifier, such as mustard
(vinaigrette) or egg yolk (mayonnaise). Is it the fact that you use olive oil
that OS important? Or the fact that without an emulsifier the dressing is much
thinner, and hence ends up on the plate, not the salad, so you eat less?

~~~
Florin_Andrei
I just checked some random dressing in the fridge. It has 50% more carbs than
fat. It has more sugar than fat. It tastes sweet. I should probably toss the
piece of junk in the garbage, but then my wife would probably buy a
replacement. :/

~~~
demallien
Ahh, yes, sorry. I forgot about premade sauces. I make all of my dressings
myself, so they dont have any of that crap in them.

------
radioactive21
I think it would be more accurate to say "Western life style" is making the
world sick. Meaning work all the time, mostly sitting down, and have no time
to exercise or prepare a healthy meal. This leads to eating fast food and high
preservatives foods that last a long time but aren't really healthy.

You could eat healthy but still not be healthy without a proper life style
change. Meaning exercise, lowering stress and other harmful habits.

------
bane
It's also making people tall. Every-time I'm in South Korea the difference
between the height of High School kids and even people 10-15 years older
(read: folks who didn't grow up under any kind of severe hardship or food
shortage) is remarkable. I'm a fairly average height American guy 5'9", and
often find myself looking up to youngsters over there.

------
postfuturist
A lot of broad conclusions are made in this article without citing specific
sources of research or evidence. Mostly, it's just anecdotal evidence
(fictionalized at that) and obscure references to plotting curves (I assume on
a graph, though we don't get to see it).

------
Xodarap
For those interested, peta will give you a free starter kit to help you eat
more vegs (<http://bit.ly/hpGK0b>).

(Although of course they approach it from an ethical perspective. But it makes
you just as healthy.)

------
wil2k
Not much time to reply right now, but I really, really recommend this book:

The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and
the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health

[http://www.amazon.com/China-Study-Comprehensive-Nutrition-
Im...](http://www.amazon.com/China-Study-Comprehensive-Nutrition-
Implications/dp/1932100660/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301492092&sr=8-1)

~~~
gstamp
Some counter arguments for those interested.

[http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-
fal...](http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/)

------
seanalltogether
And the flip side of the coin. "How western diets are driving the next stage
of evolution in humans"

~~~
Andys
Talk about taking the long view! While you're watching that I'll watch the
rain making a new valley outside my window.

~~~
seanalltogether
Hah! I've just become so cynical about these kinds of things that I assume
genetic adaptation will solve this problem better then education will. We've
been tampering big time with our food supply since the 90's and only a few
people seem to care so far.

------
gopi
I dont think its western diet, i am orginally from southern india and the
number of diabetes there is one amoung the worlds highest. This is mainly due
to the traditional vegetarian south indian diet (processed white rice & veg
curry)

------
amitraman1
Excercise daily!

------
nhangen
What they failed to mention was that people in Afghanistan are starving and
left to eat bread and whatever they can scrounge up.

We're fatter because we have more to eat.

------
d2
The TL:DR is: Rich people (what he calls Westerners) are fat. Poor people
(like afghanis) aren't. Rich people get more diabetes which costs them money.
Poor people don't. He's cut both types of people open and looked at their fat.

