Fight obesity like tobacco

[boboff]

Having actually worked in Food Manufacturing, and having spent a great deal of time with Supermarket Food Technologists, and undertaking Research programs with Internationally reknowned research agencies, I know you guys are talking utter garbish. I don't need Google to tell me a load on cheap unproven facts. I know for real and for sure.

Your negative "hyperbolic stance" on all things corportate is a bit boring really, but I understand you take Citizen Smith as your role model, so can laugh at you all with a sence of patronisation a School Maam would be proud of.

What more can we do as a nation, we have the most stringent food regulations in the world, 99% of food MUST include ingredients, and a statement showing what % of the RDA of each main component of the food is, what more regulation can you need? Oh yeah from 2014 all food will need a traffic light on the front, showing Red = Bad, Amber = Watch it, Green = Good, just to bring everything down to the lowest common denominator.

Oh and as for tax, we have such good freedom of information we know the ones that don't pay CORPORATION tax in this country, but they still collect VAT, pay 12% Emlpoyers National Insurance, business rates, PAYE and provide a service. Dividends they pay they have to pay Tax on, on behalf of the investors also, so please don't think what the BBC says on the subject is even 1/3 of the facts of the matter. They could pay more tax, sure, but if they have the choice to pay 2% in Switzerland, or 25% here, if it was your money, and it was legal, where would you pay it?

Anyway, we do not agree on these any many other things, as I think we have different inherant beliefs, but we all like Gardening, which is nice, and we all like eating fresh fruit and veg, homegrown meat, and being outdoors and healthy, what I don't like is that some how this makes us superior and virtuous, I can't accept that condescention of the British collection intelligence, but admit I am almost certainly deluded in that assumption.

[oldfella]

You are quite entitled to your opinion, as I am, but I do believe the evidence is on my side, and would prefer to believe the independent studies rather than those carried out by vested interests.

[boboff]

I couldn't comment on the situation in France, as I have no first hand current experience of it, however in the UK......

[gregorach]

Your negative "hyperbolic stance" on all things corportate is a bit boring really, but I understand you take Citizen Smith as your role model, so can laugh at you all with a sence of patronisation a School Maam would be proud of.

Yeah, I'll be sure to scream "Power to the people" when I'm on my conference call with the guys at Disney later today...

I'm not the caricature you think I am. You don't know me.

[boboff]

I know dunc, it was a joke, sorry.

I thought everyone North of the border was "disney" "dis ney vote Tory!"

Bedum Tish.

Hope the call goes well.

[gregorach]

As for your point about labelling requirements... If any of those requirements applied to the people I'm actually talking about (i.e. fast food "restaurants" such as McDonalds and KFC) then I think that would be a very significant step in the right direction. I don't really think that supermarkets are the main problem here, and I apologise if I didn't make that clear.

[gregorach]

Just doing my morning rounds of the science blogosphere, and this is very interesting: Subtle but potentially serious: health effects of low-level pesticide exposure

A new study has been added to the growing body of literature reporting on the potential health effects of low-level exposure to widely used pesticides. In this study, a pesticide used on leafy greens, apples, cherries, strawberries, cucumbers, grapes, watermelons, and other food crops has been identified as an obesogen in mice. An obesogen is a chemical that promotes obesity by prompting the growth of more and larger fat cells, often doing so through prenatal exposure and setting the stage for metabolic disease later in life.

Since the identification of these effects in the past ten years or so, pesticides and other synthetic chemicals have come under increasing scrutiny for the role they may play in promoting childhood and adult obesity and related health effects. “An alarming recent trend is the increasing rate of obesity in very young children, even infants,” writes Bruce Blumberg, University of California Irvine professor of developmental and cell biology who led this new study of the fungicide called triflumizole (TFZ). “Since it is unlikely that infants are consuming more calories and exercising less than in the past, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the prenatal and/or early postnatal environment has recently changed.”

Now there's a mechanism which hadn't occurred to me at all...

[boboff]

See it's fruits fault!

I see your point on Fast Food, but if you're not a regular you may not know that both the names you mention now clearly state (as does Wetherspoons) Calorie content on all their menus now. It's not the complete answer but it is a start, and it has been instigated "voluntarily"

[gregorach]

"Not a regular" would be something of an understatement...

[boboff]

I thought so! So me living in cornwall, I have eaten in Edinburghs Finest KFC and McD's in the last month more than you! (and the Standing Order on George St, which is a Wetherspoons!)

We have no take-aways in the village, so we just don't normally, one night we all had proper Kebabs from a greezy No1 Takeaway near Haymarket, I have a "munchies" box, which was so nice, Doner Meat, Chips, Garlic Mayo, Chilli Sauce, Veg pakora, Chicken Pakora, oh and some salad, I think the salad had some pestiside on it, as I put on 1/2 a stone!

[gregorach]

You've eaten in Edinburghs Finest KFC and McD's more often in the last 20 years than me... In fact, I don't think I've ever set foot in a branch of KFC.

The Standing Order's OK, but I much prefer the Guildford Arms...

[boboff]

We did chance upon Dirty Dicks in Rose Street, but my other half muttered something about unhygenic Homosexuals, and we went for a Milkshake instead!

[oldjerry]

We did chance upon Dirty Dicks in Rose Street, but my other half muttered something about unhygenic Homosexuals, and we went for a Milkshake instead!

!

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Just doing my morning rounds of the science blogosphere, and this is very interesting: Subtle but potentially serious: health effects of low-level pesticide exposure

Now that is an interesting paper. I commented some pages back that some medication could increase the efficiency of fat lay down, interfering with hormones to change gene expression, but I'd not heard that pesticide residues could do something similar. I particularly liked the bit about:

Intriguingly, a recent study showed that animals (pets - cats and dogs; laboratory
animals - rats, mice; 4 species of primates; and feral rats) living in proximity to humans in
industrialized societies exhibited pronounced increases in obesity over the past several decades
(Klimentidis et al. 2010). The likelihood of 24 animal populations from 8 different species all
showing a positive trend in weight over the past few decades by chance was estimated at one in
12 million (1.2 x 10-7)

Of course, gaining weight does still require the consumption of more calories than are burned, but this suggests yet another reason to eat organic and grow your own.

[demi]

It's also possible that the animals living in close proximity to humans are gaining weight due to scavenging off the copious amounts human waste, raiding bins, being fed and steeling food ect .