
Told to Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries - grellas
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/health/policy/25vegetables.html?hpw
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neilk
How about looking at the cost? In America, grains, sugars, and meats are
subsidized in myriad ways, directly and indirectly.

It seems to me, when I was a child, salads were less expensive than meat. But
it's almost starting to become the opposite.

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twillerelator
>People know that vegetables can improve health

More like: we were cajoled and coerced into eating vegetables by our parents,
who were in turn cajoled by their parents, etc.

We then spend the rest of our lives rationalising this uncritical acceptance,
which isn't the same thing as _knowing_ something.

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zach
Not just our parents:

<http://www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov/>

This site is a production of the Produce for Better Health Foundation, founded
and funded by the Produce Marketers Association.

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anigbrowl
Like the meat producers don't do the same thing?

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zach
Is there an eatbeef.gov?!

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anigbrowl
You'd be surprised how much government money goes into marketing agricultural
products in general, including various flavors of meat. Strangely, nobody ever
talks about cutting any of these programs.

[http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?tem...](http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?template=TemplateN&navID=FindanAMSProgram&rightNav1=FindanAMSProgram&topNav=Home&leftNav=&page=FindanAMSProgram&resultType=&acct=AMSPW)

~~~
zach
What was surprising was seeing the marketing take the form of the Centers for
Disease Control offering health advice.

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wanderingmango
The Stonesoup cookbook was featured here in June:
<http://thestonesoup.com/blog/2010/06/a-free-e-cookbook/> I've switched almost
entirely to that book — 5-ingredient, 10-minute recipes. It is quicker than
eating out, and my veggie intake has tripled.

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ezyang
I suspect that if people knew how to cook vegetables properly, consumption
would increase dramatically. Ask your vegan friends for some recipes.

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midnightmonster
Obviously I'm not a controlled study, but I've found weight loss is easier
since I made a habit of eating a large serving of vegetables at least once a
day. And I don't worry about what I have to do to make them desirable--soy
sauce, salad dressing, salt and butter--just so long as I'm mostly eating
veggies at the time.

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Mz
_"Eating vegetables is a lot less fun than eating flavor-blasted Doritos,"
said Marcia Mogelonsly, a senior analyst for Mintel, a global marketing firm.
"You will always have to fight that."_

Just offer flavor-blasted veggies: Outback Bloomin' Onion. Hashbrowns with
onion and red pepper. Etc. I eat more veggies these days than I used to and
that is part of my approach. Veggies don't have to be bland.

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autarch
I'm pretty sure potatoes and other starches are _not_ included in the
definition. I don't think hash browns are the solution, though they make for a
delicious problem.

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Mz
My understanding is potatoes are a vegetable and very nutritious in their own
right, which is why they were a staple of the Irish diet until the potato
famine (by staple, I mean you could practically raise a family primarily on
potatoes and some poor families basically did just that). I do understand why
french fries and potato chips are considered "junk food" but I don't think
that changes the fact that potatoes are a vegetable.

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csallen
If you get a login wall from the above link, try going through Google and
clicking the first result:
[http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHMG_enUS291US301&so...](http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHMG_enUS291US301&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=told+to+eat+its+vegetables,+america+orders+fries)

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sesqu
_"We have to make the healthy choice the easy choice," Dr. Foltz said._

That's the ticket. Implementation over theoretical qualities.

I eat a salad pretty much every time I'm in a restaurant with a salad bar, but
rarely otherwise.

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jarin
Does anyone have a non-paywall link?

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barrkel
Changing the 'Referer' HTTP header to <http://news.google.com/> or similar
punches through many of these registration walls, like NYT, WaPo, FT, etc.

On Firefox, the RefControl extension works well.

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tomjen3
>Dr. Jennifer Foltz, a pediatrician who helped compile the report. She, like
other public health officials dedicated to improving the American diet,
concedes that perhaps simply telling people to eat more vegetables isn’t
working.

Jesus, you didn't know this? Really?

I have been bombarded with "this is healthy", "this is not healthy", "you
should eat so much of this, so much of that, only a little bit of this" ever
since I was four, possibly earlier. Same goes for all the calls to exercise,
the cute campaigns to "exercise 30 minutes a day", "take the stairs", etc,
etc, et fucking cetera.

So why, after all this time have they still not realized that the reason I
(and mostly everybody else) don't exercise isn't that we don't know we should,
it is that exercising sucks, getting sweaty takes time and then you have to
clean up again, getting back and forth to the gym, etc.

The same thing goes for eating healthy, although it is _slightly_ ofset by
carrots, which are very tasty.

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rubashov
The presumption that people need to eat a lot of vegetables is perhaps flawed:

<http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/why-eat-5-portions-1.html>

Population studies haven't really shown a clear benefit from eating a lot of
vegetables.

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atomical
The benefit is that you don't become overweight and obese. I lived in Korea
for a year and those people know how to eat vegetables. They are filling and
low calorie which makes it less likely for the sedentary person to put on
weight.

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points
It's not a direct link though. I can stuff my face with nothing but donuts for
weeks on end and never put on an ounce of weight. Which is probably as
irritating as someone who can't lose weight.

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atomical
It is a direct link because I am talking about calories. There is a myth that
there are people who can eat whatever they want and not gain weight. Everyone
has a base amount of calories to work from and if you go over that amount you
gain weight.

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joe_the_user
"Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" (Groucho)

I eat as much as I can, often twice as much an average person - it typical for
me to have two helpings in a meal where most people have one.

I have never gone over 145 pounds and I am 6' tall. I cannot gain weight,
period. And I'm not alone as other posters mention.

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what
You know, I find most skinny people who say they can't gain weight grossly
overestimate the amount that they eat. (myself included)

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itistoday

      I'm not afraid of zucchinis, but I just don't know how to cook them.
    

This is just sad. So many people are failing at something as basic and
fundamental as eating.

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cageface
Most vegetables are good if you just slice them up, steam them briefly, then
sprinkle a little salt on them. If you don't feel like doing anything more
ambitious this only takes a few minutes.

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nkassis
I just put them straight on the grill next to whatever I'm making. My wife
does the more complex stuff when needed but that sometimes make me feel dumb.
I can figure out most things on my own but cooking is something I just have no
interest in learning.

