I read about this yesterday. They have a new method they want to use for measuring obesity, called the Body-Adiposity Index. Now it hit me today, that if they do this, every woman on the planet will be obese. Isn't that what the pharmaceutical companies want? I hear there's a huge market for diet pills.
This method is so flawed, on multiple levels. First of all, it doesn't take into account Lipodystrophy, where body fat is stored in a particular location and not evenly throughout the body. I've seen men with humongous beer bellies that wear size 30 pants because their bellies hang out over their pants. Their hips are normal. So with this method of measurement, they'd not be overweight.
This method of measuring obesity sounds as much, if not more so, codswallop as using Body Mass Index as measurement.
I think measuring people in certain multiple locations could give a better idea about obesity, but not by merely measuring their hips. And I'm sure that even that would be flawed in the case of body builders. BAI is obviously very flawed in the case of men, who typically do not store fat in the hips. The storage of fat is driven by hormones, insulin and the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone. According to the measurements you're supposed to get with BAI, they've taken into account that men's hips are supposed to be smaller... maybe absurdly so.
The interesting thing is, the mum-in-law, hubby and I calculated our BAI using the formula given on various websites which is [hips in cm / ( height in m^1.5)] - 18. When we did the math, I came out with the number 32.08, the mum-in-law had 31.49 and the hubby had 26.07. I had a difficult time finding what the ranges were for normal, overweight and obese, but the one site I found that gave them says that I'm slightly over-weight, and that the mum-in-law is nearly so. Which is utter codswallop. She looks like a perfectly normal weight, and if you use the BMI she is, with a BMI of 22.5. My BMI is 26.6, which is reasonable, as I'm still a little overweight. I could definitely stand to lose another twenty pounds and am working on it.
Now we get to my husband. According to this silly equation he's obese. More codswallop. Men have more muscle mass than women (muscle is denser than fat), even if they don't lift weights, and he does not look obese. He looks overweight to be sure and could definitely stand to lose some weight, but if he had the numbers they want, he'd have to look like a skeleton to do it. To be in the middle of the normal range using the BAI he would have to lose 20 cm, or 7.8 inches. I don't think he could lose that much in his hips, as most of the extra weight he's carrying is in his stomach (like with so many males) and he's got a very large frame to begin with.
Just as with BMI, the BAI doesn't take into account body type or skeletal frame, and is therefore flawed. Honestly though, the true measure of health should have little to do with weight. I believe that blood glucose levels would give you a better image of how healthy someone is rather than how much body fat they have or don't have. This is something that Dr. Eades implies in Fat Head, when she says that the hardest person to make realize that they need to change the way they eat is the one that has metabolic syndrome/elevated blood glucose, and yet their weight is normal.
Showing posts with label overweight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label overweight. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Baby Formula is Junk Food: A Not-So Good Start
Not having children, and I would breast feed if I did, I never realized what was in baby formula. Have you looked at it?
Now knowing that sugar and refined carbohydrate consumption cause insulin resistance, which in turn causes diabetes and a host of other metabolic problems, you would that that baby formula would be the last place you'd find said ingredients.
But no! I, as an adult, wouldn't consume what's in baby formula, and yet people are feeding it to their children, probably because they think don't have a choice.
Out of many of the formulas I looked at on the shopwell website, which will give you nutrition facts and ingredient lists, a common first ingredient in baby formula was 'corn syrup solids' or 'corn syrup'. This is simply a form of corn sugar, not unlike High Fructose Corn Syrup, except not as sweet. Common second and third ingredients are vegetable oils, corn maltodextrin (another sugar absorbed as rapidly as glucose), and sugar (sucrose, which is table sugar).
Now you tell me, do any of these things come out of a woman's breast? Do you think that this matches breast milk? Not no, but hell no. Breast milk has animal fat in it, we being animals and all. It is not soybean oil, or sunflower oil, or any other oil derived from a plant. Also, the sugar in breast milk is lactose, it is not sucrose. It is absorbed slower by the blood stream, lactose having a much lower glycemic index than sucrose (46 vs. 61). Also breast milk has more whole, saturated fat in it, which slows the absorption of lactose even more. This matters in terms of insulin resistance! These things are not the same, they are completely different.
Besides the main ingredients, infant formula also has mono- and diglycerides, a hydrogenated oil (trans fat) that is used as an emulsifier. It also has carrageenan to extend shelf life.
Mothers often have no choice but to work, and often either don't have the facilities or time at work to pump breast milk, or they don't know they ought to. They probably think formula is fine. Why is this allowed? Breast milk is best obviously, but in the case it can't be used why must we have junk food as formula?
It's ridiculous. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is part of the reason why so many children are obese and type II diabetic.
Some examples:
Enfamil Prosobee, first ingredient Corn Syrup Solids, second ingredient is vegetable oil
Gerber good start Soy Plus, first ingredient is Corn Maltodextrin, second is vegetable oil
Similac Sensitive, first ingredient is Corn Syrup Solids, followed by sugar, as in table sugar.
And these are just a few of the ones on there. Almost all of them are the same crap.
I know that some infants are lactose intolerant or that some women don't produce enough milk. If you cannot feed your baby breast milk, I suggest looking into meat based formula. I know that's what I was fed, because I was allergic to milk and soy protein. I couldn't have regular formula or soy formula. Of course this was a long time ago, so if you found such formula now it may have crap in it too. Also, I bet regular baby formula when I was a baby did not have this crap in it.
Ridiculous. That's all I can think.
Now knowing that sugar and refined carbohydrate consumption cause insulin resistance, which in turn causes diabetes and a host of other metabolic problems, you would that that baby formula would be the last place you'd find said ingredients.
But no! I, as an adult, wouldn't consume what's in baby formula, and yet people are feeding it to their children, probably because they think don't have a choice.
Out of many of the formulas I looked at on the shopwell website, which will give you nutrition facts and ingredient lists, a common first ingredient in baby formula was 'corn syrup solids' or 'corn syrup'. This is simply a form of corn sugar, not unlike High Fructose Corn Syrup, except not as sweet. Common second and third ingredients are vegetable oils, corn maltodextrin (another sugar absorbed as rapidly as glucose), and sugar (sucrose, which is table sugar).
Now you tell me, do any of these things come out of a woman's breast? Do you think that this matches breast milk? Not no, but hell no. Breast milk has animal fat in it, we being animals and all. It is not soybean oil, or sunflower oil, or any other oil derived from a plant. Also, the sugar in breast milk is lactose, it is not sucrose. It is absorbed slower by the blood stream, lactose having a much lower glycemic index than sucrose (46 vs. 61). Also breast milk has more whole, saturated fat in it, which slows the absorption of lactose even more. This matters in terms of insulin resistance! These things are not the same, they are completely different.
Besides the main ingredients, infant formula also has mono- and diglycerides, a hydrogenated oil (trans fat) that is used as an emulsifier. It also has carrageenan to extend shelf life.
Mothers often have no choice but to work, and often either don't have the facilities or time at work to pump breast milk, or they don't know they ought to. They probably think formula is fine. Why is this allowed? Breast milk is best obviously, but in the case it can't be used why must we have junk food as formula?
It's ridiculous. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is part of the reason why so many children are obese and type II diabetic.
Some examples:
Enfamil Prosobee, first ingredient Corn Syrup Solids, second ingredient is vegetable oil
Gerber good start Soy Plus, first ingredient is Corn Maltodextrin, second is vegetable oil
Similac Sensitive, first ingredient is Corn Syrup Solids, followed by sugar, as in table sugar.
And these are just a few of the ones on there. Almost all of them are the same crap.
I know that some infants are lactose intolerant or that some women don't produce enough milk. If you cannot feed your baby breast milk, I suggest looking into meat based formula. I know that's what I was fed, because I was allergic to milk and soy protein. I couldn't have regular formula or soy formula. Of course this was a long time ago, so if you found such formula now it may have crap in it too. Also, I bet regular baby formula when I was a baby did not have this crap in it.
Ridiculous. That's all I can think.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Exercising your way to health or death?
Forty years ago, your parents or grandparents would have told you that exercise was bad for you. It wears out your joints and puts unnecessary strain on your body. Currently the CDC suggests 300 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity each week plus weight training for "greater health benefits." That's three hundred minutes of you wearing your body out every week. And if you do more than that, they say "you'll gain even more health benefits."
Now, do you think they have specific data on this? Of course not. But they'll tell you it's a good idea anyway, and in fact tout it as a way to prevent heart disease. Wait for it though, because I found this, written for heart month, from the newspaper the Asheville Citizen-Times and I found it amusing in it's glorious contradiction:
So, their first premise is that if you work your heart harder (by exercise) that you'll be healthier, but if your heart has to work harder because you're overweight or obese, that's bad. Can we say cognitive dissonance? Of course, being obese is associated with heart disease, but the primary reason for CHD isn't because your heart has to work harder, it's probably inflammation. However, I doubt having your heart work harder, either via strenuous exercise or by being obese, is very good for it.
I'm not saying that some activity isn't good, especially walking, but these people are advocating that an already busy person, who is not sitting at home watching television all day, should try to fit exercising into their already busy schedule. And that just creates more stress because they think it's a character flaw that they've gained weight and blame it on not getting to the gym. I think that makes about as much sense as telling a diabetic they should eat more fruit. Oh, wait. They do that too.
I tried to find some studies to either backup what they're saying or refute it, but it doesn't seem like any have really been done, at least with exercise alone. I would imagine to find out if exercise were beneficial, that you would take two very large groups of healthy men and women and have one group exercise and the other not. Then you'd find out if one group lived longer than the other. Most of the studies I've seen however, are in patients who already have CHD, are part of Statin drug trials, or part of a diet trial. There is no controlling for variables, they test multiple things at once, and that is not science. It's quackery is what it is.
There are multiple possibilities for why exercise could be beneficial, or not. One might be if carbohydrates cause heart disease by creating inflammation, and if you consume carbohydrates and exercise, you may burn off the carbohydrates before they can have an effect on your tissues, if you're a person who can burn them off. Most people who are obese have a problem metabolizing carbohydrates, so this probably wouldn't work for them. Or maybe if you never eat carbohydrates, you would have no need to exercise very much, and you would still live just as long as someone who ate carbohydrates and exercised. These are things that could be tested.
We should know so much more by now about what it is that is killing us, but we don't, and we won't. The food industry benefits from people eating their processed, expensive junk food and the pharmaceutical companies reap the benefits of people winding up on maintenance medication from such diets. To a lesser extent the fitness industry benefits from this too, as people try in vain to exercise to lose the weight they gain (exercise makes you hungry) by eating the "recommended diet". And the newspapers? They benefit by advertising dollars from the previous three industries to push what they want to be said.
Now, do you think they have specific data on this? Of course not. But they'll tell you it's a good idea anyway, and in fact tout it as a way to prevent heart disease. Wait for it though, because I found this, written for heart month, from the newspaper the Asheville Citizen-Times and I found it amusing in it's glorious contradiction:
"A key contributor to heart disease is lack of exercise — again, a factor that seems to affect busy women as they juggle jobs, kids, homes and community work and fail to make time for their own good health, Palmer said. And obesity is a critical factor, because “the more you weigh, the harder your heart has to work to give your body nutrients,” she said." [emphasis mine]
So, their first premise is that if you work your heart harder (by exercise) that you'll be healthier, but if your heart has to work harder because you're overweight or obese, that's bad. Can we say cognitive dissonance? Of course, being obese is associated with heart disease, but the primary reason for CHD isn't because your heart has to work harder, it's probably inflammation. However, I doubt having your heart work harder, either via strenuous exercise or by being obese, is very good for it.
I'm not saying that some activity isn't good, especially walking, but these people are advocating that an already busy person, who is not sitting at home watching television all day, should try to fit exercising into their already busy schedule. And that just creates more stress because they think it's a character flaw that they've gained weight and blame it on not getting to the gym. I think that makes about as much sense as telling a diabetic they should eat more fruit. Oh, wait. They do that too.
I tried to find some studies to either backup what they're saying or refute it, but it doesn't seem like any have really been done, at least with exercise alone. I would imagine to find out if exercise were beneficial, that you would take two very large groups of healthy men and women and have one group exercise and the other not. Then you'd find out if one group lived longer than the other. Most of the studies I've seen however, are in patients who already have CHD, are part of Statin drug trials, or part of a diet trial. There is no controlling for variables, they test multiple things at once, and that is not science. It's quackery is what it is.
There are multiple possibilities for why exercise could be beneficial, or not. One might be if carbohydrates cause heart disease by creating inflammation, and if you consume carbohydrates and exercise, you may burn off the carbohydrates before they can have an effect on your tissues, if you're a person who can burn them off. Most people who are obese have a problem metabolizing carbohydrates, so this probably wouldn't work for them. Or maybe if you never eat carbohydrates, you would have no need to exercise very much, and you would still live just as long as someone who ate carbohydrates and exercised. These are things that could be tested.
We should know so much more by now about what it is that is killing us, but we don't, and we won't. The food industry benefits from people eating their processed, expensive junk food and the pharmaceutical companies reap the benefits of people winding up on maintenance medication from such diets. To a lesser extent the fitness industry benefits from this too, as people try in vain to exercise to lose the weight they gain (exercise makes you hungry) by eating the "recommended diet". And the newspapers? They benefit by advertising dollars from the previous three industries to push what they want to be said.
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