Weight gain in the American population 1960-2000

[BrotherIvan]

40. Agreed

The obesity epidemic was created by our agriculture policy. We subsidize the very things that make us fat.

I have always wondered what caused this huge explosion in my lifetime. We blame it on eating too much and exercising too little, but that can't be the only issue. When I was going to school, there was *the* fat kid. Now, when I go to the pool, most of the children are fatter than the fat kid. I travel quite a bit and there is no where I have been where I have seen the same amount of morbidly obese people than I have seen in an American mall. I know the rest of the world is catching up to us because they are adopting our food. I have friends who are overweight that I am shocked how little they can eat and work out like mad women and still lose very little weight. Obviously, something is very wrong.

So I started reading a lot to find the answer. Gary Taubes in Why We Get Fat is a good primer because he lays the story out out in the scientific history. Before WW2, scientists specifically related obesity to consumption of carbohydrate. But since many of the scientists were killed in the war (Germany was a leader in studying obesity), they started over with the law of thermodynamics. But that has never been clinically proven and has led to today's state of affairs.

The best guess is that the obesity epidemic is caused by fear of fat, too much added sugar, HFCS, and our grains that have been hybridized to have even more of the qualities that make us fat. Many of these foods were added because farmers were growing so much due to subsidies, they didn't know what to do with it. So they dressed it up and stuck it in our food, claiming it was so "healthy." We were told to stop eating meat and fat (the diet that humans had evolved upon) and consume loads of carbohydrates: "heart-healthy" wheat, phyto estrogens in soy, and fat-free foods. Industrial oils replaced shelf-stable saturated fats in baked goods such as lard and coconut oil; McDonalds fries used to be fried in tallow but are now fried in "vegetable oil" which is most likely soy and cotton seed.

Dwarf wheat is nothing like original diploid wheat and has far more starch and gluten. Our house has switched to Einkorn wheat whenever we eat wheat, which is very rarely, and you can tell the difference just by digestion. It does not rise very well for high-rising cakes, but it has a golden color and an actual flavor.

The amber waves of grain? They're gone in favor of dwarf wheat. In this photo, from left to right shows the changes. Crossing it with goat grass made it had heavy bulbs of grain at the top so they made it short so it wouldn't fall over. It was meant to feed a starving world but it also changed it's properties. It took over world wide about 1990.



Soy, which is in everything, especially processed food, has been altered to be far more estrogenic than the original soy you imagine slim Asians eating. It is estimated that an infant drinking soy formula gets the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. Soy milk is like mainlining estrogen and soy is a known goitrogen (thyroid disruptor) yet we are exposed to it at a shocking level never seen before. Men should run from it and women should watch out as well as it can lead to estrogen dominance. Soy is also extremely allergenic, so if you have digestion issues, it could be soy.

And then there is corn in everything, making up most of what fast food joints call meat. It too is changed from the original corn to contain far more sugar. So when a person thinks they are eating a balanced meal from processed foods, they are not getting much protein, mostly corn, wheat, sugar (as a preservative) and industrial vegetable oils.

And don't forget the industrial oils which were discovered because they particularly fattened up livestock. Most processed foods contain cheap, rancid oils that they put flavoring/smell ingredients so you can't taste them (as your body reacts to spoiled food like smelling a carton of spoiled milk). Soy, cotton seed, and canola (rapeseed) are all created for industrial uses and are highly inflammatory in the body. When they figured out how to clean it up and sell it, they sold it to us as healthier than traditional fats. Cotton seed oil was originally tested as a form of male birth control as it effected the motility of sperm. It is still used as the number one way to fatten up cows and pigs for market.

There are lots of reasons, and I feel very bad for all the people who have been shamed into thinking they overeat and are lazy and that's the reason they are overweight. There are lots of cooking blogs all over than talk about cooking without these foods and how people have regained their health. I'm sure the armchair scientists will have a lot to say about how everything I wrote is woo. But if you are having health problems, do the research yourself.