To wonder why governments,WHO and scientists are allowed to be bullied by big food companies-The Men Who Made Us Fat?

[Rockpool]

Following on from the program last night and the thread in Telly Addicts I just don't get why they're allowed to get away with it.

As somebody said last night it's the tobacco industry all over again,haven't we learnt from that?

It's political though really at the heart of it - the 'free' market is king and I use 'free' because advertising immediatly pollutes the idea of the market regulating itself and only providing what there is already a need/want for. I think truly free market economics may actually work (said as a lefty) if people were truly equal in their starting place ie. money was not allowed to distort what the genuine market - which is the mass of consumers not the elite 1% that controls the market in order to boost profits.

People may seem to have 'choice' but advertising and PR use every psycological trick in the book to encourage people to make the choice that will reward that company with the most gains. So you put cocaine into Coke to make it addictive, when that becomes illigal you use huge ammounts of sugar and caffine and use peoples natural hormone/pleasure response to compounds high in energy. You use high fructose syrup becasue it's cheaper than cane sugar and more addictive, stimulates appetite and people will then eat more - and avoiding high fructose corn syrup IS more expensive than a lot of people can afford either money or time wise as it's in soooo many things, from bread to baked beans.

None of us live in a bubble, we respond to our environment, our peers, psychological manipulations, evolutionary reward systems ect ect. The more we look at decision making processes, the more we find our choices and decisions are rarely made purely on a rational basis and they involve our emotions - no matter who we are and how adament we are that we don't involve our emotions we are creatures of instinct still in the 21st century. That's why we have collective responsibility to each other and why those who hold the purse strings of manipulative practices need to be controlled, they do not have our best interests at heart and they are not benign.

I think it's the same reason why governments won't really go head to head with the tobacco industry. It's all down to money and profit. I find this genetically modified food thing very scarey.

www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/11/why-our-food-is-making-us-fat?INTCMP=SRCH has a synopsis of episode 1 (though the programme is worth watching too). To respond to the "it's just greed" school of thought, the key biological mechanism is to do with leptin. In thin people eating a healthy diet (not too much sugar), when you eat, leptin is released which then lets the brain know you're full, you stop feeling hungry and stop eating. Too much sugar in your diet leads to vast deposits of intra-abdominal fat, especially round the liver, which screws up the production of leptin, leaving you feeling permanently hungry even when you've just eaten.

I was absolutely like that watching this programme, and I'd heard lots of it before.

The world is crazy. I just can't get my head around how immoral it all is. We have a major obesity epidemic, which costs the NHS billions, not to mention the personal suffering it causes, and food companies are allowed to do things like stuff their food with corn syrup and similar sugar syrups which not only mean that people can't tell when to stop eating, but also are highly addictive.

I eat very healthily. I have cut out most things which might have added fructose-gluctose/corn syrup/what have you and cook fresh food from scratch most of the time. But for example, although I mostly buy natural yoghurt, I bought some good brand fruit yoghurt the other day as a treat. It has inverted sugar syrup in it. There is no escaping the stuff.

It's mind-boggling why the government isn't making an almight fuss about this. (I know, I know, it's about money)

This is the children's activity study referred to in the programme. It was to do with finding the reason why Type 2 diabetes (up till recently never heard of in children and younger people) was now occurring at earlier ages than ever before.

As stated in the Guardian article that Lurcio links to, we are getting bigger and bigger but clothing sizes keep moving up to accommodate this. I thought back to when I left school in the late '70s and the measurements a UK dress Size 10 then is now a UK Size 4 (US Size Zero - 32/22/34). I saw a picture in the paper of a girl sitting by an empty UK reservoir in 1976 (to illustrate an article on drought) who would probably be rushed into hospital and force fed now!

I might be terribly ignorant here, but why are we blaming anyone but ourselves for being fat.

White widow - because the food is filled with things that interfere with your body's ability to recognise when it is full and some of those ingredients are addictive. And because these foods are marketed to children.

Oh fair enough. Well I don't think I know enough to say that's not true, because obviously it is to a point. But the reason I was fat is because I ate too much of the wrong things.

The reason I'm now slim is because I've ate enough of the good things.

Even if these items have these things in them, surely we should be intelligent enough to recognise it and not be all amazed and finger pointing when we put weight on?

I am "angry" that as the token fat kid at school in the 80's, the grain-based food pyramid was thrust at me and I was told to eat toast with low-fat marge or cereal. I'd have been much better off as a pubescent girl eating a lump of full-fat cheese.

This same medical thinking told my type I diabetic mother to eat lots and lots of toast & potatoes.

I take lot of official advice with a large pinch of salt (badoom-tish) these days and give not one fig if I am demonised for it by some WHO-totin' follower.

White did you watch it?

AlpinePony same thinking told my MIL who'd had a heart attack but no colesterol problems to pretty much cut out eggs, switch from butter to marg and cut out all the good colesterol while increasing her grain intake - outcome, colesterol through the roof and medics telling her she must be lying - she went back to butter and eggs and her colesterol fell rapidly and the medics congratulated her on sticking to the diet so well

Only way I've ever lost weight is to cut sugar and eat high fat - not low carb by any streach of the imagination, just no grains or sugar. But my mum brought me up to ignore the low fat message and the only time I put on weight was when I became imobile and was eating too much sugar (I didn't even loose weight eating 1250 calories, I maintained - luckily I was doing it online or I'd have been told I was lying too and I'm very compliant anal about these things - if I had sugar in my coffee it was counted, if I nicked a square of choc from hubby, it was counted). I've never eaten McDonalds though, or processed meat things so it's much easier for me to do this kind of thing, I'm really lucky that I was taught to ignore most of the advertising - never had a subway sarnie for instance. That's my education and my cultural background though and I'm unusual was always considered a freak growing up

WhiteWidow, I think that for a very long time, people didn't know that certain foods were addictive - in fact, I think they are only coming to realise it now. It's one thing to eat something fattening and to be aware that it is high in calories and low in nutrition, but quite another to eat something fattening, which makes you crave more of the same and messes up your body's ability to recognise that it is full. That should be stamped on the packaging imo. We know that certain foods are bad, but they have turned out to be bad in ways we were never told about and that is plainly immoral.

More importantly, this shit is marketed directly to our children.

People are intelligent enough to know that smoking is unhealthy - but when someone is addicted it is very hard to stop doing it.

Might be wrong about this,but I think that in America, the cattle are injected with growth hormones,to make them bigger. So even if you eat a lean piece of meat, you would be ingesting growth hormones. If this is true, then it's no wonder America has an obesity problem.

Trickle It's shit isn't it!? :( I now eat the same way as you and it really is the only way (for me). I remember sneering at a boy at school who had egg & bacon every morning for breakfast "how disgustingly fatty and unhealthy" I thought.

Sugar is very addictive. I had some Ben & Jerry's for lunch on wednesday, by mid-afternoon I'd stolen one of the "cornflake corner" yoghurts from the fridge and was craving carbs/chocolate/breatd/whatever - I could've eaten solidly until bed time.

"Even if these items have these things in them, surely we should be intelligent enough to recognise it and not be all amazed and finger pointing when we put weight on?"

But a lot of the programme was about how foods have been persuasively marketed as 'low fat' and we've been educated to eat things that are low fat to lose weight, but that these low fat might have, for example fructose-glucose/corn syrup or something in them, and as the liver treats doesn't know what to do with these items except turn them straight into fat, they are effectively very high fat foods.

So someone might think they are making good choices because they are eating diet products, but still be increasing their levels of internal fat; which even an outwardly skinny person can have too much of (by quite a long way).

Fwiw I still think the programme was saying 'eat things that are low in fat' to those people who are saying low carb/high fat diets are the best thing. I'm sure they said that at the end. Eat things low in sat fat and low in sugar - so lots of grains (not just wheat), pulses and legumes are good, and lots of good protein with good fat, but not necessarily high sat fat, iyswim. So eggs, nuts, olive and other oils good. Lumps of cheese, bacon, animals fats etc. still bad. But I know everyone has different viewpoint on that.

WhiteWidow - because current advice is to eat food in the following proportions: Carbs:Protein:Fat. But basing the majority of our diets on carbohydrates means that we put on weight. Carbohydrate causes the body to release insulin, which lays down fat. (Very simplistic - but the basic essence of the science!).

The evidence has been there since the 50s that carbs are 'bad' and that fat is 'good', but the scientists, and then the politicians and then the media, all decided that fat was the baddie and that we should avoid it and eat carbs instead. Interesting that rates of obesity have been growing ever since.

Sugar is very addictive, maybe to some people, but not everyone.

I really cant see how anyone can blame others (adults not children) for their own obesity.

I know I put weight on because I drank too much, ate too much, and exercised too little. It is not rocket science.

No food is bad for you in moderation, and if you use raw ingredients and do your own cooking from scratch, then 99% of the time, you know exactly what has gone into it.

Most diet produce has aspartame in it, which I would avoid at all costs anyway.

Carbs:Protein:Fat. But basing the majority of our diets on carbohydrates means that we put on weight

But not ALL carbs are bad for you. Our diet is too rich in white carbs, white bread, white rice, white pasta... swap it for wholemeal and it is a lot healthier.

Rates of obesity are growing because we have a much more sedentry lifestyle than we had 20 years ago. More time is spend sat at a computer, there are less manual jobs in the UK, public transport is much easier and affordable, and more people have cars.

20 and more years ago, less people socialised in pubs and clubs and less people ate out in restaurants, or ate junk food, but you cant blame the government on that.

I've since watched the programme, and I'm still of the opinion that people are choosing this to blame for being overweight. Sorry.

Absolutely, squeakytoy - carbs from vegetables and salad stuff are the good carbs that we must eat.

It's not that we should eliminate carbs, but we need to reverse the proportions so that we eat fat:protein:carbs, and focus on eating the good carbs.

BIWI - that's what I eat now, and I've gone from being overweight to fine. People have been brainwashed to believe carbs are bad for you, they're not. We need to eat the right ones.

We know a lot more about diets and food now then we did in the 50's. Just because we as a whole were thinner then and believed then that all carbs were bad, doesn't mean that's why we are fatter now. It's not a true correlation.

The data has always been there, WW. It was just interpreted wrongly, leading to the recommendation that we should eat low fat diets.

We're fatter now because of that advice - we've moved to up the amount of carbs we eat and reduce the amount of fat we eat. The wrong way round.

No we're fatter now because we eat more and do less excercise. There isn't some conspiracy theory.

Take someone who hasn't got a clue about carbs and fat and proportions. And they're fat. They're fat because they've ate the wrong things. Not because oh hell, they've been told the wrong way round to eat carbs and fat.

Again I'll ask, why are people so adamant on blaming someone else for their weight.

I totally agree with WW here. My mum always fed us 1/2 veg, 1/4 carb 1/4 meat.. she grew up in the 50's and knew what was healthy and what wasnt even back then... and she knew how to control portion size. She wasnt a nutrition expert, she just had the common sense to know what put weight on, and what doesnt.