Here:
IN THE LATE 2000s, Carlos Monteiro noticed something strange about the food that Brazilian people were eating. The nutritionist had been poring over three decades’ worth of data from surveys that asked grocery shoppers to note down every item they bought. In more recent surveys, Monteiro noticed, Brazilians were buying way less oil, sugar, and salt than they had in the past. Despite this, people were piling on the pounds. Between 1975 and 2009 the proportion of Brazilian adults who were overweight or obese more than doubled.
This contradiction troubled Monteiro. If people were buying less fat and sugar, why were they getting bigger? The answer was right there in the data. Brazilians hadn’t really cut down on fat, salt, and sugar—they were just consuming these nutrients in an entirely new form. People were swapping traditional foods—rice, beans, and vegetables—for prepackaged bread, sweets, sausages, and other snacks. The share of biscuits and soft drinks in Brazilians’ shopping baskets had tripled and quintupled, respectively, since the first household survey in 1974. The change was noticeable everywhere. When Monteiro first qualified as a doctor in 1972, he’d worried that Brazilians weren’t getting enough to eat. By the late 2000s, his country was suffering with the exact opposite problem.
The place got richer, diets were fuller, physical labour declined – because that’s what getting richer means, less physical labour.
On the back of this gross misunderstanding – folk got rich! – this whole ultraprocessed food nonsense is built.
Sigh.
Well, yes Tim. I can only agree!!! In my experience, if I eat less, I carry less blubber.
Despite the UK headlines of food shortage, we actually have a shortage of certain fresh foods, but not of food.
Thank goodness for processed foods.
Is it just more profitable to unload vast corn syrup oversupply in “processed” foods, thus hooking your market on easy quick gratification, then collude to take away any of the old options?
Why wouldn’t a good crapitalist drool over the idea of incentivizing ppl to become fatter, lazier, dumber?
“The place got richer, diets were fuller, physical labour declined – because that’s what getting richer means, less physical labour. On the back of this gross misunderstanding – folk got rich! – this whole ultraprocessed food nonsense is built.”
That’s the obvious conclusion, yes. But it turns out to be completely false.
Countless millions around the world have tried to restrict their intake and move more in order to lose weight, and they fail miserably because you can’t go through life in a state of semi-starvation. Whereas those on a healthy – unprocessed – diet consume to satiety and don’t get fat – even with zero exercise – and are vastly less likely to suffer the diseases of the West which have come to be thought of as a normal part of ageing.
Obesity is all about the body’s hormonal responses to food. If you eat the wrong stuff it will necessarily go to fat where, locked away, it’s unavailable as energy even if you’re on a treadmill.
Keep telling yourself that Mr Dabny. Being overweight is being a slave to your own body. Few people nowadays have ever had a minute’s hunger in their entire lives. They just feel uncomfortable if they haven’t stuffed something in the top end of their digestive tract recently. It’s not what you eat, it’s how much. The root cause is insecurity & lack of will power.
If they were substituting oil, sugar and salts asa bulk time to add to foods for foods with these things already added, shouldn’t the outcome be the same. A pound of pint of oil, pound of sugar, ounce of salt is the same no matter their source.
Other factors therefore explain.
“Obesity is all about the body’s hormonal responses to food. If you eat the wrong stuff it will necessarily go to fat where, locked away, it’s unavailable as energy even if you’re on a treadmill.”
Completely true. This is the key to nutrition in an age when we’ve found ways to manufacture cheap goo that carries tons of calories, when we no longer need to fight for calories.
Drop carbohydrates, get 40% of your calories from animal fats. Pretty much the opposite of what the experts told us for decades.
“They just feel uncomfortable if they haven’t stuffed something in the top end of their digestive tract recently.”
Also completely true. But it’s true specifically because of the factors that Wat Dabney talks about. Hunger pangs come from blood sugar variations, carb inrushes and insulin spikes. Control those, and the hunger pangs don’t come even with an empty stomach.
@ bobby b
Or ignore/resist the hunger pangs. I’ve done it so I *know&* that it’s possible.