From Lora Carpender's newsletter
This week, another few articles in the news have inspired my column... First off, let me call your attention to one such article. It's titled "Scales tipping toward diabetes" and appeared in USA Today (thank you to Janice Brown for sending me the article.) You should read the entire article (link below), but let me point out a few things...
It starts out with a bang: "If Americans keep putting on the pounds at the current rate, almost everyone is going to be overweight by 2030, a top obesity researcher says."
That's sickeningly chilling, isn't it?
It goes on... "These grim projections from some of the nation's top obesity and diabetes doctors are based on new government statistics showing that almost 65% of American adults, or more than 120 million people, are overweight or obese."
"Foreyt [a weight-loss researcher at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston] predicted in a 1995 scientific journal article that almost everyone in the USA would be overweight or obese by 2230. Now he has moved that up 200 years. At the rate we're going, he says, almost everyone could be not just overweight, but obese, by 2100."
They go on to look at how this could cripple the health care system. And look at childhood diabetes. All stark realities difficult to look at, but even harder to deny. Yet at the end of this roster of doom, there is no conclusion or answer other than to further educate people to eat "healthy" and "get exercise." The link to diabetes alone should be a clue. How can this "phenomenon" remain a mystery to them? (The full article is available here.)
Let's look around us for just a few moments, both at advertising, the news, and the way of the world:
I searched for recipes geared for kids to cook for a friend of mine. All the books I found (and there were hundreds) heavily utilized sugar and other empty carbs as the mainstay of kids' recipe ingredients. Of course the Sugar Council and every major sugar manufacturer has areas on their sites for kids (that feature "sweet treats" usually hawked by adorable characters), and have articles for parents showing that sugar is not at all harmful for children.
The news tells of the latest "craze"... fried Twinkies! (If you hadn't heard, this is spearing a frozen Hostess Twinkie on a stick; dipping it in sweet waffle batter, frying it in hot oil or shortening; and then further dusting it with powdered sugar.) Taking a product already made entirely of white flour, sugar and transfats, then adding more flour and more transfats, and MORE sugar! Then they sell 'em at fairs and fill their children with them.
When I'm standing in the checkout the other day, the clerk looks down at my stack of low carb bars. She says, "I've been thinking of giving up sugar, but it will be hard with the kids' sweets in the house." Then she leans in to me with a concerned (conspiratorial) look on her face and says, "You DO know you can't put kids on a sugar free diet, right? Kids need the sugar for their growing brains to function." WHAT?????
In this time of a struggling economy, more people than ever need to rely on grocery coupons. Have you seriously looked at coupons lately? They're 95% for high-carb food products. I am told this is because cheap (for them) carbs are where all the profits are.
Look at the rack of "Women's Magazines"... the first thing you'll note is that each one has found THE PERFECT DIET or TRICK that will allow you to lose the weight forever. They're all totally different from magazine to magazine of course. And the very next week (or month), look again... OOops.. guess they were wrong last time, because THIS is the REAL miracle! (Well, until next issue, I guess.) And it never fails that each week some of my friends are trying yet another "sure fire" diet they found in Good Housekeeping, Woman's Day, Redbook etc. They usually promise "... without giving up your favorite foods!!" So, there's a diet that will let you eat cookies, pies, candy bars, chips, fries, Coke, and Krispy Kreme and still lose weight??! Think they might have just realized that in an ever fattened up world, magazines just sell better with weight loss promises on the cover??
Have I mentioned that as a society we need to all just wake up and look reality in the face... while our reflections still fit in the mirror!?
The article referenced above says, "we won't reach a point at which every single American will weigh too much. Some small percentage, possibly 5% to 15%, probably will be able to maintain a healthy weight because they are genetically protected, or they are willing to carefully watch what they eat and be fairly active. But they will be part of an ever-increasing minority.."
You know who most of their "small percentage" of normal weight people will be?
Us. The low carbers.
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