Chew, Swallow and Then Burn

After reading 50 more pages of Fat Land, I learned quite a few interesting things. I have to clarify though that this book was published in 2003, so many of the data that the author uses is from the 80's and 90's. Still, my knowledge on diets and nutrition has been expanded and I realized that there are many different theories regarding a perfect diet. What's important is to be smart and not let all of the different theories get to you. It has happened to me before, where I heard about a new diet that would for sure make you lose an certain amount of pounds, but in the end it just wouldn't work. What I can conclude from everything that is being exposed in chapters 3 and what I read from 4 is that you can eat all of the different types of food ONLY if you manage to burn it. In other words, exercise is key. 

So at first, when chapter 3 begins, Critser talked about how people became overweight or obese. He mentioned how "eating out" became "a thing" and people would just eat the majority of their meals at places other than home. This brought negative consequences because eating out was viewed as a treat, which meant that people could order bigger sizes. They only did this because cooking at home would just mean more work and time spent on something that shouldn't require so much time. It would also take away time with family. In economics, this is called opportunity cost, by the way (the cost of the best next alternative). Anyway, Critser then talks about puericulture, which originated in 19th century France and was basically adapted to teach mothering techniques to new mothers. This meant that new mothers would learn how to feed a child. More towards the 21st century, a basic principle in puericulture was to "never put a child on a diet" (pg. 39) because (very long story short) that would lead to eating disorders later on in that child's life. 

Dyspepsia: (noun) indigestion

 Scientists discovered later on, that "snacking", something that emerged in the 1980's would bring negative consequences. This truly shocked me because I had heard multiple amounts of times by nutritionists and non-professionals, that eating healthy snacks between foods would speed up your metabolism and thus make you lose weight. However, I learned that there was and still is a wide variety of snacks, and "variety had become the enemy" (pg. 40). Researchers at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center from Tufts University found that: "the higher the variety of snack foods present in the subjects' diet, the higher the number of calories from those foods they would consume, and the higher would be the subjects' consequent body fatness" (pg. 40). The snacking explanation truly impressed me, since I thought that snacking was actually helping people lose weight when in reality it does the opposite. 

 Another very interesting thing that came up was how more kids are becoming obese each day. After some research and an observation of 4,063 children, researchers came to the conclusion that "the more TV a child watched, the less she exercised and the more likely she was to be either overweight or obese" (pg. 73). When they asked the parents why their kid wouldn't go outside and get active, the majority of parents more or less said that even though TV watching is bad, their kid at least wouldn't be exposed to the dangers of the street. To me, that sounds ridiculous. I would understand that answer if they lived here in Colombia, where crime is much greater than in the US. Plus, in the US there are a lot of different safe parks and places that kids can go and be well supervised. 

Fat Land has been quite an interesting book, and I've learned so much about nutrition and eating concerns. I am still hoping to maybe get to a part where the author might give out some of his personal experience. I don’t know, I just hope that I can be able to get out as much as possible from this book in order for me to adopt a healthier lifestyle.