

A letter to a patient - niels_olson
http://wherein.posterous.com/a-letter-to-a-patient

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DanBC
About a third of Americans are obese today, so to say that only 42% will be
obese in 2030 seems optimistic.

Colorado has about 1 in 5 obese people. That's already making "overweight"
look normal and normal look thin.

If you're a non-hispanic black in America you're already in a group that's
over the articles 42% in 2030 obesity rate: 44.1%

These are CDC figures. They are gently tricky because they're self-reported.

(<http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html>)

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atomical
This post has the feel of a well-written article but then succumbs to the
unscientific process of telling the reader not to eat X,Y, and Z like every
other diet book. That's pretty much the pattern for the modern diet book.
First, bash other books in the industry. Then put forward your own approach as
unique.

Rice isn't bad for you. Healthy people around the world have been eating it
for hundreds of years!

~~~
mahyarm
It's eating patterns, amounts and composition of the rest of the food
environment. How thais eat rice (one small scoop) and the rest of their food
culture is very different from USA's food culture. It's a huge inconvenient
effort to avoid unhealthy calorie and carb ratios in america, so you must
compensate by avoiding carbs as much as you can. In thailand, it's very easy
to avoid crap and eat very healthily. Even thai desserts and candy is
significantly healthier with significantly less amounts of sugar and other
crap.

~~~
atomical
It's as easy to avoid unhealthy foods in America as elsewhere. It begins with
a trip to the grocery store buying vegetables, rice, and lean meat. The
problem is that articles like this are so dogmatic that they teach people
things that are incorrect. Carbohydrates aren't the problem. They provide
essential energy and should make up a majority of a healthy person's diet.

~~~
mahyarm
That is the problem. You have to cook all of the food yourself and bring it
with you wherever you go. When you go out, you probably have to refuse most
food people offer you because it will get in the way of your goals, especially
if you want to reduce to a healthy body fat %. You end up not being able to
eat for hours at a time and that makes you non performant and irritable. It
creates social friction and it can take an extra 10 work hours out of your
week, a significant chunk of productive time.

You cannot go to the convenient and ubiquitous street food vendors/fast food
places in america and consistently eat food that will stabilize you to a flat
stomach body. In Thailand, you can. It is a large reason why many Thai's are
amongst the least overweight people in the world, and you see similar results
in developed asian countries. It's not because they have more 'willpower' or
other such things. Even though they have carbs in their diet, they have a very
different composition and ratios of the types of nutrients they eat and sell
as fast food.

This food environment difference results in the statistical difference in
obesity statistics, it's nearly inevitable. That is why I said to compensate
for the negative food environment in the USA, you have to do more extreme
things.

The carb heavy and low fat diet you espouse is a part of the problem. Since
the USA started espousing a high carb diet in 1984, obesity rates have been
rising linearly and haven't been stopping[1].

[1] <http://youtu.be/FSeSTq-N4U4?t=2m35s>

