Suing food companies for making you fat!! - Page 2

The best thing one can do is to serve as an example of what can be achieved through exercise. That's what I do. I'm finished with preaching to others since I'm neither the pope nor a politician; people will make their own choices based on verbal and visual information that I provide. I won't preach, however...the responsibility for self improvement and maintenance is theirs, not mine.

Rose I can see your point of view.(Very well expressed BTW)
But I agree with Andrew with that. Regulations have failed in every field. Why to succed in the Food industry?

Well with the risk of being "accused" of being extreme liberal , I am against of any kind of regulations that have to do EVEN with drugs and alchohol.

Give people some human-centric education and do not worry about drugs, alchohol, obesity etc

The only ones that are favoured by regulations are the governments who find ways to step on our human rights and the system that makes a living from this regulations.

But Rose you have to admit. None wants educated citizens and above all the governments.

If you put regulations ,you don't need to educate anyone. You have some other to think on your behalf.

Ask for better education. Don't let the other think on your behalf.Don't let the others decide what will you eat or if you will exercise.

The problem is political and asks for political solutions

I've read all of these messages with great interest. i do believe greatly with personal responsability, but i think one must also take a great number of socio-economic factors into the equation. Having experienced life in a Mediterranean country and now living in the heart disease capital of Europe, as the West of Scotland seems happy to crown itself, i have noticed so many differences in our attitude to food.
One Italian writer pointed out that while the working classes of Naples eat fresh vegetables made into sauces for pasta, working class families in Glasgow eat chips with tomato sauce. But try being working class in glasgow and get half decent fgresh vegetables. It's too expensive. For me to get fresh vegetables that don't taste like mass produces plastic I have to travel about 8 miles. In my local supermarket, my trolley of fresh vegetables and fresh meat - none of it organic - all of it factory farmed, costs double the amount of the lady next to me, when she has double the volume that I have to feed a family of three children. In Spain her trolley would be full of fresh vegetables, cost a lot less than processed food and she would feed her family with that. A Spanish working classs housewife wold not have to travel long distances to get good quality fresh food. Once she got it she would not what to do with it.
People here wouldn't know how to cook if they did get fresh produce. TV chefs do not help. They are the preserve of the middle classes - and as one journalists said they are like pornorgraphy. The people that watch the programmes are the ones that don't cook.
To change this we will have to change the culture which requires a mass movement of poeple taking responsability for themselves. Finland has done it, but only by creating a culture of a mass desire to change. I hope that we can too. And i sincerely hope that Americans, who incidentally, are one of the few countries to have a worse health record than us, can change their food culture. This would have a far reaching effect for the rest of the world.

The bad thing about all these warning labels and lawsuit is the fact that it takes Darwin out of the picture. Survival of the fittest is supposed to weed out the truly weak and stupid. If you're dumb enough to trim your bushes with a lawnmower and wind up bleeding to death from two stumps...Oh Well.

To answer you Koko I started to write about every problem I had with doctors over the years. All this to proove it may not be easy to be a doctor but it’s even worse when you are the patient. But what would be the point? We will never agree on this one...

I read these post with interest, mainly to see where it would shake out in the end. Having know read the posts here is my 2 cents: I agree with Kokopuffs here. The main problem is not what we eat per say but how much we eat and what kind of exersize we get. For the most part I'm Mr. Excuse on this subject for if I'm not at my desk , I'm on my cell phone in the car or at some meeting with the county. I eat on the run and instead of packing healthy snacks or a lunch I do the drive thru because it's quick and a no brainer. Then I don't exercise other than my mouth so there it sits. I'm not stupid I know that it is bad for me yet I continue to make the excuses. So... If I drop dead tonight I've got noone to blame but myself (as I wipe the secert sauce off my chin) I hope that once our project finally gets it's approval that my better habits will return. But until then.....I'd like the combo #2 with a large Iced Tea please!

Suing food companies and the Government!

The food companies are partially at fault because of misleading advertising. I got fat eating Snackwells. I thought that since they were lowfat, you could consume the whole bag as one serving. The real purpose of such foods is to consume as much as is considered one portion of a corresponding full fat food. Bear in mind that a fat free product would not satiate a person as much as a full-fat product. (Not as many "buttons" are pressed.) Also, when fat is removed, something else has to be added...usually sugar. With all the concentration on fat intake, people forgot to give some attention to calorie intake. In the grand scheme of things it's the lopsided calorie intake vs. the calorie expenditure that makes people fat.

When fat free cakes came out, Entenmanns made a "pound cake" but the serving size was 1/16th of the cake. This made a slice you'd need a micrometer to measure. What the ****, I'll just eat 1/4 of the cake now and save the rest for breakfast. It's fat free!

Now for the government. They are a glaring example of "even when they have it right, they got it wrong." The basing of a healthy diet on grains, veggies and fruits is right on but can you tell me please which college graduate decided on the "servings" designation?? According to the government, you should consume 11 servings of grain. A "serving" to me is what appears on my plate! So I'm supposed to eat 11 plates of grains? No. Couldn't they arrive on a portion size, either weight or volume, the consumption of which would satisfy the requirement? No wonder Americans blow up like balloons...We can't decipher the instructions!

Let's take a look at restaurants as well (so sue me, I'm on a roll). Show of hands... Who here would opt for a restaurant that serves you a healthy sized portion vs. "all you can eat" or a plate two feet across loaded with meat and potatoes and deep fried onions? More is better here in the USA. That's how the Europeans can eat all that triple-creme cheese, drink all that wine and still stay somewhat close to an ideal weight...they don't gorge themselves at every meal. What satisfies the palate seems to satiate the hunger. They have a right to be snobs because they prepare locally grown, well raised food vs. our supply which is pumped with chemicals to get maximum weight/yield. Give me a Mediterranean diet anyday.

Had the governmental instructions been clear - and the food companies charged with some responsibility for consumption guidelines of low/non-fat products vs. full-fat products, there would have been less confusion and erring on the "heavy" side. We have such great resources yet we have to hear that cellophane wrapper crinkle as we open some of the mass-produced foods offered for sale. If we can get away from "quick is better" and re-focus on quality, I think we'd be a lot better off. Looks like Alice Waters had it right.

People want all you can eat and huge plates full of food because they want to get the most for their dollar...and then we've all grown up trained to eat everything on our plates, so we consume these huge amounts of food, even when we're full.

I've started paying attention when I eat. Instead of wolfing my food down, I take time to chew it and swallow. I'll take a drink of water every few bites. And when I feel full- I stop! Even if that piece of cheesecake looks really tempting. It will still be there later if I want to eat it when I'm hungry.

If people would slow down and just stop eating when they're full, that would be about half the problem solved right there.

I think that I read somewhere about 15 years ago that the group/tribe with the greatest longevity lives in South America. Their dietary intake is approx 1000 calories per day - mostly veggies and food from trees. Don't remember the name of the tribe, however. No football widows there!

Some people, unfortunately, are overweight due to no fault of their own. It's hormonal. As to the rest of us we need to look within ourselves for the solution rather than searching for that magic pill or good doctor for healing.

I'll take the Swedish Bikini Team with a side order of Bud any day!

What really irks me about this whole thing is, the talking heads who want to tax fast/junk foods sky high to discourage people from eating them, just never seem to stop and think of perhaps, reducing the cost of healthier foods instead??????

Hello!!!