>> ^scannex:

Certainly didn't take you long to resort to personal attacks. Sorry I annoy you.
Congratulations, you annoy me.
1. Your connection is ridiculous. I must somehow be privileged or sexist to have this view?
2. I guess I cannot figure out your point, since I only directly dealt with #3 in your post it sure sounded like "because she cannot turn off being fat, its nothing like smoking". Your other points are you soapboxing about how you want the world to be and are not something I am likely to convince you about.
3. She needs to binge eat in front of the camera to draw the conclusion that she overeats? I completely disagree with you that SHE is in a situation where being overweight is a necessity.
A point I will concede to: It is WILDLY more expensive to healthily than to eat garbage. Being on a local TV program however makes me think she is likely able to afford healthier choices.
3b. Please feel free to provide some hard numbers on the incidence of genetic obesity
4. I redefined behavior following you redefining behavior as essentially a state one can inhibit in the presence of others. Obesity is a behavioral problem. Feel free to use meriam webster if that link is insufficient for you.
5. I didn't ignore 1, and 2 of your post I just didn't reply to it. I don't agree with you. Period. It is tangential to our argument and while valid arguments will further take it off topic.I will say that you ascribe such heightened value to everything it makes me think you are on the brink of a nervous breakdown.
6. What do I care if what she said was not reprehensible? To be blunt, she cites this as a bullying event. It isn't. That is inaccurate. Its becoming the first warcry of those with hurt feelings. My main problem with it is that doing this has the effect of DEVALUING the term, and often when that happens people become desensitized to it. Not every statement is bullying. Not everyone who hears a negative utterance was bullied.
7. One said wasn't saying Shh. One side was privately making a statment. Voicing an opinion, however dickish. Was it his place? Nope. Was it nice? Nope. Was it his right? Yes if you live in any of the 50 states it is his right. A lot of assholes do things with words, like the westboro baptist church and gay soldiers funerals. When it reaches a point of bullying things need to be done (and in the westboro case something WAS done to stop them). That's a good thing. That differentiation between systemic hatred and one guy writing an email NEEDS to be made clear.
Last to your example of Chris Christie, people are BRUTAL to that guy. He gets his share of mail I assure you. People give him shit for the exact same reason of being int he public eye as well. The sexist/privelaged thing is just wild speculation on your part that only makes an angry situation seem angrier. That says a lot about you and your mindset, too.
>> ^hpqp:

Words



It's a fair point to call me out on making presumptions about you and linking your comments to those I've been reading elsewhere; my apologies for that.

You cannot dissociate my first 2 points above from the third: you do not go telling strangers, even in a passive-aggressive way, that they are unfit to be in the public eye. For someone so quick to see personal attacks in comments about you, you seem rather impervious to those in the letter you defend (then again, 'tis true that I'm not very subtle when pissed). The real tangent, one I should probably not have given so much weight to, is whether or not obesity is something one can show/not show and induce simply by showing it (my argument remains valid, btw, it's just not so important as to repeat it all over, and your strawmen are so obvious as to no longer require pointing out).

Your point as I understand it is twofold: the letter-writer has a right to send the anchor his personal criticism and is right to do so. I only agree with the first part; he has a right to do so ((so long) as it is not harassment/threats), but she is also right to call him out for it, and point out that such behaviour is wrong, and that it participates in a culture that tolerates bullying, by letting people think it's fine to say whatever they think to whomever without questioning whether it might be hurtful or not. And nobody's saying that something like this is as bad as WBC-style bullying or systemic racist bs, just like nobody would argue that a female politician being meowed in a session by a colleague is as bad a case of sexism/misogyny as a continually harassed or beaten wife, for example. They are, however, on a spectrum with a unifying underlying belief, namely "I can and should voice my opinions/(dis)tastes about others without taking how it affects them into consideration (and society has nothing to say about it)".

The reason I projected the whole sexism/privilege thing on your comments is because they contain the same "it's harmless/no big deal" and "just poor me self-victimisation" and "what's with making a private event/exchange public?" and "you're trampling his rights!" dismissals. It was wrong of me to do so, but at least now you can understand why I did.

Speaking of projection, presumption and personal attacks, you sure are quick to jump to (and stick to) the conclusion that the anchor is overweight because she has poor lifestyle choices (the same assumptions behind the letter), which is why I (and @bmacs27) went on the tangent of "there's-more-to-obesity-than-being-a-lazy-junkfood-gobler". The assumption that an overweight person is that way because s/he choses so is insulting and ignorant in and of itself, the same way the GOP's "poor people are that way cuz they're lazy moochers who don't pull themselves up by the bootstraps" is.

As for Chris Christie, I refer to point 1) of my comment above: public denunciation all 'round!

I hope that has clarified my argument. Otherwise, I refer you to @Thumper's comments, less contentious than mine and with which I wholly agree.

Certainly didn't take you long to resort to personal attacks. Sorry I annoy you.
Congratulations, you annoy me.
1. Your connection is ridiculous. I must somehow be privileged or sexist to have this view?

2. I guess I cannot figure out your point, since I only directly dealt with #3 in your post it sure sounded like "because she cannot turn off being fat, its nothing like smoking". Your other points are you soapboxing about how you want the world to be and are not something I am likely to convince you about.

3. She needs to binge eat in front of the camera to draw the conclusion that she overeats? I completely disagree with you that SHE is in a situation where being overweight is a necessity.
A point I will concede to: It is WILDLY more expensive to healthily than to eat garbage. Being on a local TV program however makes me think she is likely able to afford healthier choices.
3b. Please feel free to provide some hard numbers on the incidence of genetic obesity

4. I redefined behavior following you redefining behavior as essentially a state one can inhibit in the presence of others. Obesity is a behavioral problem. Feel free to use meriam webster if that link is insufficient for you.

5. I didn't ignore 1, and 2 of your post I just didn't reply to it. I don't agree with you. Period. It is tangential to our argument and while valid arguments will further take it off topic.I will say that you ascribe such heightened value to everything it makes me think you are on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

6. What do I care if what she said was not reprehensible? To be blunt, she cites this as a bullying event. It isn't. That is inaccurate. Its becoming the first warcry of those with hurt feelings. My main problem with it is that doing this has the effect of DEVALUING the term, and often when that happens people become desensitized to it. Not every statement is bullying. Not everyone who hears a negative utterance was bullied.

7. One said wasn't saying Shh. One side was privately making a statment. Voicing an opinion, however dickish. Was it his place? Nope. Was it nice? Nope. Was it his right? Yes if you live in any of the 50 states it is his right. A lot of assholes do things with words, like the westboro baptist church and gay soldiers funerals. When it reaches a point of bullying things need to be done (and in the westboro case something WAS done to stop them). That's a good thing. That differentiation between systemic hatred and one guy writing an email NEEDS to be made clear.

Last to your example of Chris Christie, people are BRUTAL to that guy. He gets his share of mail I assure you. People give him shit for the exact same reason of being int he public eye as well. The sexist/privelaged thing is just wild speculation on your part that only makes an angry situation seem angrier. That says a lot about you and your mindset, too.

>> ^hpqp:

Words

You keep using the word diet as something you can just go on and off of. That's the problem; 'Going on a diet' implies that it's temporary. What's needed to eat and live healthy is a permanent lifetstyle change. In other words, you don't stop the diet. The previous diet is what led to getting overweight in the first place, so of course they gain the weight back if they start eating like that again. Exercise all you want, if you take in more calories than you expend, you will gain weight. If you expend more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. It doesn't matter if you have a problem with that, or if people get depressed, or if you just straight up don't think it's a health issue (it is), that's how it works. That's why this argument takes place when this issue is brought up. It really is just a matter of will power and education on nutrition. How much will power's needed depends on the person, along with their knowledge on nutrition and eating well. Breaking these long standing habits can be incredibly tough, but not impossible.

There's a lot of grey area in the discussion of being overweight and healthy/fit/etc. If you have terrible eating habits, exercise will only make things a bit better; it wont magically counteract all the negative aspects of your body composition, or of the food you eat. The effect food can have on a person astronomically outweighs the potential effects of exercise. That's in no way saying exercise is pointless, but if you're diet's not in check, the exercise alone is like ordering a diet coke with your ten cheeseburgers.
>> ^bmacs27:

You guys aren't listening to what I'm saying. There is nothing wrong with eating right and exercising. I have a problem with caloric restriction, or as it is commonly called "dieting." Further, I have a problem with judging health from weight or BMI. There is very little data to back that up, and in fact the data suggest that a low BMI is actually more problematic than a moderately high 30ish BMI in terms of life expectancy. My issue is that it's been so ingrained in people to associate weight loss (an aesthetic issue) with fitness (a health issue). There are plenty of people that are fit, and no matter what they do, will carry extra weight.
To me "eating right" means eating healthy foods, e.g. whole foods, fruits, vegetables, proteins as your primary nutrition rather than fatty and heavily sweetened foods. Exercise is the most important part of the equation. The data shows that so long as you are not sedentary you can pretty much eat and weigh whatever with little to no health consequence.
The depression does not come simply from the lack of eating, and thus the cessation of a rewarding activity. It comes from the diversion of energy away from active use (e.g. in the nervous system) and towards the restocking of fat stores. In other words, you'll never lose weight, and instead will just be bummed out all the time.
You talk of "millions of people" that have successfully lost weight. I'd like to see a data that shows a diet emphasizing caloric restriction leading to long term reductions in weight. Every study I've seen shows that diets of that sort yield short term weight loss although subjects generally reacquire the weight within a year of stopping the diet, and report depression during the diet. Prove me wrong.

You guys aren't listening to what I'm saying. There is nothing wrong with eating right and exercising. I have a problem with caloric restriction, or as it is commonly called "dieting." Further, I have a problem with judging health from weight or BMI. There is very little data to back that up, and in fact the data suggest that a low BMI is actually more problematic than a moderately high 30ish BMI in terms of life expectancy. My issue is that it's been so ingrained in people to associate weight loss (an aesthetic issue) with fitness (a health issue). There are plenty of people that are fit, and no matter what they do, will carry extra weight.

To me "eating right" means eating healthy foods, e.g. whole foods, fruits, vegetables, proteins as your primary nutrition rather than fatty and heavily sweetened foods. Exercise is the most important part of the equation. The data shows that so long as you are not sedentary you can pretty much eat and weigh whatever with little to no health consequence.

The depression does not come simply from the lack of eating, and thus the cessation of a rewarding activity. It comes from the diversion of energy away from active use (e.g. in the nervous system) and towards the restocking of fat stores. In other words, you'll never lose weight, and instead will just be bummed out all the time.

You talk of "millions of people" that have successfully lost weight. I'd like to see a data that shows a diet emphasizing caloric restriction leading to long term reductions in weight. Every study I've seen shows that diets of that sort yield short term weight loss although subjects generally reacquire the weight within a year of stopping the diet, and report depression during the diet. Prove me wrong.

Congratulations! Your comment has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

In "Why we get fat", Gary Taubes argues very persuasively that the above is almost entirely wrong. Increasing exercise will have have the effect of increasing hunger or reducing your activity at other times through tiredness. Eating less will likewise reduce your activity level or lead to levels of hunger that are intolerable in the long term. The way to lose weight according to him is the Atkins, South Beach, Primal method of reducing sugar and carb intake to something very low. Personally I found it very convincing and I strongly recommend the book.


Yup, I've done Keto combined with Intermittent Fasting (I usually eat one meal a day after I get home from work, sometimes I eat lunch too if we go out and eat at my workplace) and I've lost ~30 kg (~66 pounds) in 5-6 months and I have not been hungry once since I entered ketosis. No exercise involved at all either. (Yes yes... 1 data point does not a fact make, especially when they are subjective feelings)

So instead of eating sugar with more sugar and fat-free foods with added sugar in it to make it palatable... eat natural full-fat products and protein and be full all day... or you could eat sugar and have an insulin spike 30 mins later and end up with a lower blood sugar than you started with... unless you eat again. Ergo the "You should 5 meals a day" thing.

Some linky things
Scientific sources about the effects of Ketogenic Diet
1 Cancer
2 Alzheimers
3 Diabetes (Type 2)
4 Cardiovascular health and Dietary saturated fat
5 Review of LC diet and health markers

Blog
6 Cholesterol (Blog by a doctor so iffy source but interesting stuff anyway; I recommend reading all parts really)
7 How we came to believe cholesterol and fat is bad for us (From the same blog. 1 hour talk on the subject)

Video series/lectures
8 Cancer again (Video lecture)
9 The role of fat in weight loss (Video series, 3 parts)
10 Why we get fat (Video series, 3 parts)
11 2011 Public Forum in San Francisco at Nutrition and Health Conference (Video series, 4 part playlist)

You can also look into some of the videos on the sift such as:
12 The Food Revolution (Video/lecture sifted on VS)
13 Sugar the bitter truth.

(Seems they are both sifted by me... Oh my... self promotion galore!)

>> ^grubert:

From Wikipedia:
"Despite local laws prohibiting trade in slow lorises and slow loris products, as well as protection from international commercial trade under Appendix I, slow lorises are openly sold in animal markets in Southeast Asia and smuggled to other countries, such as Japan. They have also been popularized as pets in viral videos on YouTube. Slow lorises have their teeth cut or pulled out for the pet trade, and often die from infection, blood loss, poor handling, or poor nutrition."
That's why this thing eats rice instead of insects.

From Wikipedia:

"Despite local laws prohibiting trade in slow lorises and slow loris products, as well as protection from international commercial trade under Appendix I, slow lorises are openly sold in animal markets in Southeast Asia and smuggled to other countries, such as Japan. They have also been popularized as pets in viral videos on YouTube. Slow lorises have their teeth cut or pulled out for the pet trade, and often die from infection, blood loss, poor handling, or poor nutrition."

I suspect it's a great combination of factors that go into today's athletic success. Nutrition, training, athletic tradition and certainly a larger gene pool.

Below is the parable of the ox: (http://www.johnkay.com/2012/07/25/the-parable-of-the-ox)

Though it is about our economies in general, it also says something between the lines about markets without guidance. Namely that in ANY market, given enough time, you will get people who "abuse" the lack of rules and change the game in their favor. (Libor, credit default swaps, monopolies, etc etc) As free market policies work only when there is plenty of competition, as soon as some one cheats or in another form effectively removes competition the entire thing will collapse. Free market policies can be optimal during a time, however, that time is limited as before (just started market, monopoly or wild west) and after (mature market, few or 1 large competitors ruling the market, monopoly) you need guidance to make sure all the stakeholders are protected, not just those with power.

(BTW though there are rules setup to make sure the system works, you can see those are reactionary because otherwise the system doesnt work at all. They make sure there are good options for everyone, not just maximum options for those with power, aka in this case the cheaters)

25 July 2012, Financial Times

In 1906, the great statistician Francis Galton observed a competition to guess the weight of an ox at a country fair. Eight hundred people entered. Galton, being the kind of man he was, ran statistical tests on the numbers. He discovered that the average guess (1,197lb) was extremely close to the actual weight (1,198lb) of the ox. This story was told by James Surowiecki, in his entertaining book The Wisdom of Crowds.

Not many people know the events that followed. A few years later, the scales seemed to become less and less reliable. Repairs were expensive; but the fair organiser had a brilliant idea. Since attendees were so good at guessing the weight of an ox, it was unnecessary to repair the scales. The organiser would simply ask everyone to guess the weight, and take the average of their estimates.

A new problem emerged, however. Once weight-guessing competitions became the rage, some participants tried to cheat. They even sought privileged information from the farmer who had bred the ox. It was feared that if some people had an edge, others would be reluctant to enter the weight-guessing competition. With only a few entrants, you could not rely on the wisdom of the crowd. The process of weight discovery would be damaged.

Strict regulatory rules were introduced. The farmer was asked to prepare three monthly bulletins on the development of his ox. These bulletins were posted on the door of the market for everyone to read. If the farmer gave his friends any other information about the beast, that was also to be posted on the market door. Anyone who entered the competition with knowledge concerning the ox that was not available to the world at large would be expelled from the market. In this way, the integrity of the weight-guessing process would be maintained.

Professional analysts scrutinised the contents of these regulatory announcements and advised their clients on their implications. They wined and dined farmers; once the farmers were required to be careful about the information they disclosed, however, these lunches became less fruitful.

Some brighter analysts realised that understanding the nutrition and health of the ox was not that useful anyway. What mattered were the guesses of the bystanders. Since the beast was no longer being weighed, the key to success lay not in correctly assessing its weight, but rather in correctly assessing what other people would guess. Or what others would guess others would guess. And so on.

Some, such as old Farmer Buffett, claimed that the results of this process were more and more divorced from the realities of ox-rearing. He was ignored, however. True, Farmer Buffett’s beasts did appear healthy and well fed, and his finances were ever more prosperous: but, it was agreed, he was a simple countryman who did not really understand how markets work.

International bodies were established to define the rules for assessing the weight of the ox. There were two competing standards – generally accepted ox-weighing principles and international ox-weighing standards. However, both agreed on one fundamental principle, which followed from the need to eliminate the role of subjective assessment by any individual. The weight of the ox was officially defined as the average of everyone’s guesses.

One difficulty was that sometimes there were few, or even no, guesses of the oxen’s weight. But that problem was soon overcome. Mathematicians from the University of Chicago developed models from which it was possible to estimate what, if there had actually been many guesses as to the weight of the animal, the average of these guesses would have been. No knowledge of animal husbandry was required, only a powerful computer.

By this time, there was a large industry of professional weight guessers, organisers of weight- guessing competitions and advisers helping people to refine their guesses. Some people suggested that it might be cheaper to repair the scales, but they were derided: why go back to relying on the judgment of a single auctioneer when you could benefit from the aggregated wisdom of so many clever people?

And then the ox died. Among all this activity, no one had remembered to feed it.

Actually, this is made using the ingredients they use in Canada. This video is only linked on McD's Canadian website: http://yourquestions.mcdonalds.ca/questions/66

The stuff in the USA is different: http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/getnutrition/ingredientslist.pdf (page 2)

Soybean oil, pickle relish [diced pickles, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, vinegar, corn syrup, salt, calcium chloride, xanthan gum, potassium sorbate (preservative),
spice extractives, polysorbate 80], distilled vinegar, water, egg yolks, high fructose corn syrup, onion powder, mustard seed, salt, spices, propylene glycol alginate,
sodium benzoate (preservative), mustard bran, sugar, garlic powder, vegetable protein (hydrolyzed corn, soy and wheat), caramel color, extractives of paprika, soy
lecithin, turmeric (color), calcium disodium EDTA (protect flavor).

>> ^chingalera:

@Quboid ~ Hell yeah!!?? Tax the unhealthy and those who have caused their health problems. Television, Monsanto, manufacturers of the shit, advertisers, etc. AND, a point of sale tax for any food that is not organic, kind, or kosher!!
Churches should have 10 per-cent of their tithes received as well, go straight into the healthcare system...which incidentally is cranking along in the black now that diabetes and heart disease are virtually non-existent AGAIN ~


Hell yeah? This seems kind of fascist to me. Taxing foods based on their nutritional value wouldn't be a bad thing, if largely unenforceable. Actually we have a form of that in the UK, items that are considered necessities aren't charged VAT (sort of like sales tax) but luxuries are charged 20% VAT, with "normal" foods being necessities and fancier foods and eating out counting as luxuries. It's not particularly effective, but I'd guess it's doing some good.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

right so..
weird = stupid?
p.s. - I wanna give a sloth lots of caffine


Not stupid. Eating leaves that are toxic to other animals effectively removes competition for nutrition. It's the same tactic used by Koalas, which eat eucalyptus.

He's forgetting dietary rule #247: Some people are completely biologically dependent on being a pain in the ass. It doesn't matter what they're cutting from their diet: gluten, dairy, carbs or marshmallows. I believe that if you were able to genetically isolate these people and provide them with a situation where they could remain a constant pain in the ass to someone, they could survive purely on principle, needing no supplemental nutrition at all.

Damn she's so damn cute I can't stand it!!!
Acorn jelly look nasty!
Bet it's loaded with protein though~
YEP!
Nutrition Facts
Serving Size 100 grams
Amount Per Serving
Calories 45
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 2.0 g 3 %
Total Carbohydrate 2 g 1 %
Protein 10.0 g 20 %
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.