A lot of us bloggers are trying to lose weight, Shelley, Frank and Scott are but a few. It's a symptom of our North American society, whether we need to lose fat or not (and most of us do) we think we do. But we, as a societym, are schizophrenic about it. On the one hand we are bombarded by messages to be fit, healthy, the GQ man and the Cosmo woman. On the other hand we are bomabrded with messages to eat this, eat that, eat to stay slim. Most of the food that is pushed to us in ads is heavily laden with fats whether htey admit it or not. So what do I see tonight that just had me sitting there stunned?Kentucky FRIED Chicken KFC has a new commercial:
[scene] Man sitting on couch watching sports on TV. Focus in on woman entering house in the background. She is carrying something in her hands.
[woman] Remember when I said we were going to start eating healthier?
[man] grimaces in anticipation of "tofu" or "vegetables" or something "healthy"
[woman] sweeps into room and with a flourish places the object in her hands in front of the now surprised and smiling man. It is a bucket of strike>Kentucky FRIED Chicken KFC Chicken.
[voiceover] Two breasts of KFC chicken contain less fat than a (Burger King) Whopper
Give me a fucking break! Hell they aren't even telling the truth. A whopper has between 39 and 47 grams of fat (without cheese and with cheese) a KFC chicken breast has between 24 and 29 grams of fat depending on the style - original, crispy , hot & spicy. No matter how you cut it 2 breasts are at least 1 gram more than a Whopper.
But that's hardly the point. Neither choice is a healthy choice. That's a whole day's fat content just in part of one meal. The executives that put this deceptive piece of crap out should be shot. THey do not deserve to live - their lies are killing people. Of course I feel hte same way about the Chickenhawk politicians and talking heads that send other people's sons and daughters into harms way but make certain that their son's and daughters aren't and who themselves never served their country.
Posted by The Dynamic Driveler at October 30, 2003 12:04 AMEver since we started on Weight Watchers, I've been stunned by the amount of fat I discover in foods. It really isn't any surprise why we're all battling this once you take a closer look at things.
Posted by: Scott on October 30, 2003 01:06 PMThe biggest problem with eating healthier is that it's more expensive then eating crap. For instance, fresh vegtables and fruit are incredibly expensive, as are canned fruit usually. Compare that with cheap burgers and french fries.
Lean meats are more expensive than fatty ones, except for chicken.
As for specialized foods such as Tofu, costs the moon usually. And still tastes like foam.
But, we will persevere. I heard we can lose all the weight we want just eating subway sandwiches...
Ok, I don't diet but I have to, uh, weigh in here. My husband & I lived in Brookline & Beverly, Massachusetts for 17 years (from '85 to '02) and W. in particular saw his weight go up and up as the typical American lifestyle got to him: driving everywhere and eating more than he needed. (As for me, after Adam was born, I'm 178cm -- 5'9.5" -- and weighed about 60 kilos -- 132 lbs. -- because we had one car which W. used for work and I walked everywhere with my baby in a stroller, and nothing burns calories faster than nursing constantly and not having a car. When he was 6 months old, I got a job teaching undergrad & grad seminars at MIT, bought a 2nd-hand car to get to Cambridge, and put on 10 lbs in no time...)
Since we moved here last year, our lifestyle has completely changed. During a routine checkup, our GP sent W. to a heart specialist -- he's always had borderline high blood pressure. The specialist told him to lose weight, and recommended the GI Diet -- stands for Glycemic Index Diet. I can only assume that it's because of the NIH phenomenon that it's not better known in the US -- NIH stands for "not invented here [i.e., the US]". In Canada (where it was "invented" from British-Canadian research) it's well-known in the medical community, ditto in the Commonwealth. W. has lost about 9 kilos in a couple of months, and his blood pressure is way down, too. He eats across a normal range of foods, with most of the emphasis on fresh food. There's nothing faddish about it. It's normal. It's probably how previous generations ate, which means you can kiss a lot of lower-end restaurant fare good-bye, and forget fast food forever: that's just loaded with fat & a high glycemic factor anyway. It's such a normal, un-dieting, and totally unfaddish way to eat, meaning you can adopt it for life. Once you start doing it, though, you'll be amazed at how much junky stuff you've been relying on. And whose fault is that? The industrial food production industry. They need you to stay this way, and all those unhealthy fatties that grow out of that culture are made to keep running to every new fad that comes along, with the industry providing a "new" product to "help" them.
There's a class issue here, too. It's like smoking. Upper middle class educated people don't smoke anymore. But poor people still do. Right now, obesity runs across the class spectrum, but one day fairly soon, upper middle class people will walk around nice 'n slim, while poor people will continue to get fatter and fatter and more and more diseased. The consequences are rolled over to the public (in terms of health care costs etc.), while the corporations will rake in the profits.
Sorry about the rant, I'm just an old commie witch! Happy Samhain to everyone! ;-)
He doesn't give away much about the diet on his website :-) Gotta buy the book I guess.
I agree with your assessment about class "warfare". But then I'm just an old leftist witch myself.
Posted by: The Dynamic Driveler on October 31, 2003 11:04 PM