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778 neighbour of some guy
3rd October 2013, 11:21
Title is self explanatory,3 very informative hours, make of it what you will.

The information in these docu's is just the tip of the iceberg.

FYI.

Around the world, obesity levels are rising. More people are now overweight than undernourished. Two thirds of British adults are overweight and one in four of us is classified as obese. In the first of this three-part series, Jacques Peretti traces those responsible for revolutionising our eating habits, to find out how decisions made in America 40 years ago influence the way we eat now.

Peretti travels to America to investigate the story of high-fructose corn syrup. The sweetener was championed in the US in the 1970s by Richard Nixon's agriculture secretary Earl Butz to make use of the excess corn grown by farmers. Cheaper and sweeter than sugar, it soon found its way into almost all processed foods and soft drinks. HFCS is not only sweeter than sugar, it also interferes with leptin, the hormone that controls appetite, so once you start eating or drinking it, you don't know when to stop.

Endocrinologist Robert Lustig was one of the first to recognise the dangers of HFCS but his findings were discredited at the time. Meanwhile a US Congress report blamed fat, not sugar, for the disturbing rise in cardio-vascular disease and the food industry responded with ranges of 'low fat', 'heart healthy' products in which the fat was removed - but the substitute was yet more sugar.

Meanwhile, in 1970s Britain, food manufacturers used advertising campaigns to promote the idea of snacking between meals. Outside the home, fast food chains offered clean, bright premises with tempting burgers cooked and served with a very un-British zeal and efficiency. Twenty years after the arrival of McDonalds, the number of fast food outlets in Britain had quadrupled.

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Jacques Peretti investigates how the concept of 'supersizing' changed our eating habits forever. How did we - once a nation of moderate eaters - start to want more?

Speaking to Mike Donahue, former McDonalds Vice President, Peretti explores the history behind the idea of supersizing. 40 years ago, McDonalds hired David Wallerstein, a former cinema manager who had introduced the idea of selling larger popcorn servings in his Chicago cinema. Wallerstein realised that people would eat more but they didn't like the idea of appearing gluttonous by going back for seconds. By increasing the portion sizes and the cost, he could sell more food. In 1972, he introduced the idea to McDonalds and their first large fries went on sale.

By the 1980s, we were eating more - and eating more often. Perretti speaks with industry professionals to examine the story behind the introduction of value meals, king-size snacks and multi-buy promotions. How did the advertising industry encourage us to eat more often?

The programme also explores the developments in dietary advice - by 2003, the Chief Medical Officer was warning of an 'obesity time bomb.' Peretti speaks to obesity expert Professor Philip James, who made recommendations in his 1996 report that the food industry should cease targeting children in their advertisements. He also speaks with Professor Terry Wilkin, who led a pioneering study into childhood weight gain; and former Labour MP David Hinchliffe, who chaired the 2003 Parliamentary Select Committee on Health.

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Jacques Peretti examines assumptions about what is and is not healthy. He also looks at how product marketing can seduce consumers into buying supposed 'healthy foods' such as muesli and juices, both of which can be high in sugar.

He speaks with Simon Wright, an 'organic consultant' for Sainsbury's in the 1990s, who explains how the food industry cashed in on the public's concerns around salmonella, BSE and GM crops. By 1999 the organic industry was worth over £605M, a rise of 232% within two years.

How did the mainstream food producers compete? Peretti speaks with Kath Dalmeny, former policy director at the Food Commission, who explains some of the marketing strategies used by mainstream food producers to keep our custom.

The programme also explores the impact of successive government initiatives and health campaigns, such as the proposal of 'traffic light labelling', the introduction of which the food industry lobbied hard against.

But in 2012, when we have an Olympic Games sponsored by McDonalds and Coca Cola, has anything changed?

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markpierre
3rd October 2013, 12:19
I don't measure 'fat' with anything. So what. We are who we are by choice. Someone has called it a problem.
It's like calling 'tired' lazy. You wouldn't know.
Lets just use it as a metaphor for something deeper and inclusive.
No one made us fat as a culture. Ignorance makes us fat. No one has seen that happening? Ignorance means ignore.
But there are a lot of ways that we exercise that.
Offered us opportunities to exercise our ignorance perhaps.
Victims of someone else's stupidity is sort of doubly stupid.
There's no one to blame but ourselves, and so there lies the solution.
So it should be comforting to know there's a solution, still it's easier to blame something else.
The question would be, and the solution will be, 'how much stupidity does it take to become aware of it?'
Could take lifetimes.
And sometimes 'lazy' is just tired.

conk
3rd October 2013, 15:27
And yet there are proponents of consuming sugar on this forum! In the face of facts stacked a hundred miles high, "sugar is good for you". Sigh..............

Sloppyjoe
3rd October 2013, 16:13
The problem exists in both the big corporations feeding us crap as well as human beings lacking self-control and discipline. Yeah we can be surrounded with McDonalds all we want but its up to us to put it in our bodies. If most of humanity would start eating healthy and rejecting all the fast food they would all go out of business.

northstar
3rd October 2013, 16:36
The problem exists in both the big corporations feeding us crap as well as human beings lacking self-control and discipline. Yeah we can be surrounded with McDonalds all we want but its up to us to put it in our bodies. If most of humanity would start eating healthy and rejecting all the fast food they would all go out of business.

I totally agree, but...
Sugar and gluten is massively addicting. It is hard for people who are not addicted to sugar and gluten to understand this. They say things like "just eat moderately". The problem is that when you are addicted to these substances it is very, very hard to stop looking for your next "fix". People also say "just have will power" but if you are experiencing powerful addictive food cravings, willpower is impossible. Nobody tells alcoholics to "drink alcohol in moderation, and have willpower" because it is well known that addiction to alcohol must be managed by abstinence. Just as alcoholics cannot drink in moderation, when people are consuming sugar and gluten addictively, it cannot be dealt with by white-knuckling it, and willpower. Often food addicts who do this do lose weight, but then they almost always gain it all back and more.

Think about it. If a vast part of the public was addicted to gluten and sugar would that be a good thing for agribusiness and the food industry? (which is in the business of peddling empty, sugar laden carbs to the public). The answer is obvious.

I stopped eating all gluten last year and within 2 weeks the overwhelming addictive food cravings for wheat products that I had suffered from for decades simply disappeared. It was like being let out of jail. To this day I have zero desire to ever eat wheat again.

I recently removed all refined sugar from my diet and I am feeling a truly remarkable surge in energy, health, clear thinking (the brain fog is gone!), calm, even mood, etc. I simply cannot understand anyone claiming that sugar is healthy. There is a huge amount of recent research that makes it clear that refined sugar is a poison for the human body.

I eat a "paleo" diet now and I have not felt this healthy in decades.