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Originally Posted by JEY100
Thanks, Kristine!
The Globe is behind a paywall, but found it on MSN.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/t...adly/ar-AAQYj0d
Of course Dr Mozaffarian is the diet expert behind the new Tufts Food Compass, which suggests Fruit Loops are better than eggs, but this short article doesn’t mention much but eat more fruit and veg and exercise. |
Thanks, Kristine, and thanks Janet for the alternative link to the article.
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"Mozaffarian believes we’ve been living through a slow-moving pandemic for decades, when it comes to weight gain and the complications that stem from it."
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Regarding poor metabolic health and the damage uninformed eating habits do, yes, it has been happening for decades. I find the following statement amazing and dangerously naive:
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“While we and others have been trying to shout this from the rooftops, why it is that people are ignoring it is a very interesting question,” says Mozaffarian.
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In the midst of people getting fat and developing epidemic proportions of metabolic diseases, there are messages everyday both direct and subliminal that counteract any amount of sound advice regarding nutrition, health, and lifestyle. Many believe that it's only for those of us who are old. The irony is that those who are older and have high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer to name a few have acquired these not simply because you get them when you get old; rather, you get them when you eat haphazardly beginning as a child. It takes years to emerge, so those of us when we were young and those who are young today don't think any of this applies.
Then we have the food manufacturers who sell "food" concoctions and advertise everything over the media sources we watch at all ages. Conflicting messages? Yes, but how does this dynamic of conflicting messages get reined in? Many of us have focused on diet and nutrition either because we had the foresight to understand this mindless eating couldn't support a long, healthy life or that we developed some of the diseases of metabolic syndrome and took action. Will the conflicting messages and advertising stop? No, not unless there is an underlying understanding and the recognition of the associated health risks.
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"Over the summer, the Government Accountability Office proclaimed - in what felt like a cry for help — that there needs to be a national plan to deal with diet. There are all sorts of programs — from school lunches to SNAP to scientific research to nutrition labels and subsidies — that have no single point of oversight, or coordination."
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Anyone who is familiar with SNAP and the previous food welfare programs of food stamps understands what is bought and consumed by those in these programs. Very few items purchased can be considered healthy, so I find a continuation of "a single point of oversight" using the government to be very expensive and risky. Think of the food pyramid. How did that help? Think of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. How's that working? Are we to expect that the solution is there and will change overnight? And how do we get the message out that eating whole foods is individually different and effects people differently? Yes, it's preferable to processed foods, but when a "single point of oversight" discourages, taxes, or eliminates whole foods that some consider healthy today, like red meat (also implicated in having a negative effect on climate change), we lose our freedom to eat the foods that work for us. I'm concerned that things like the Food Compass and other things that are designed to promote healthy eating are also the very things that are potentially limiting for many of us.
We are currently overwhelmed by the cholesterol hypothesis informing today's common health assessments, treatments, and the designing and designation of many "healthy" foods and preferred diets. If that hypothesis is incorrect, which I strongly believe it is, how do we navigate the chaos sure to come?