This study shows that fat and thin people eat different foods, but correlation does not equal causationThat's my concern. In the US, food choice is correlated with a lot of other lifestyle factors, and it seems like it would be challenging to correct for them. I mean, lots of people eat yogurt because they perceive it to be a healthy food and are concerned about their health, right?
Now I wonder if this is a bad assumption...Yeah, I think it is. I think when most Americans say "yogurt," they're thinking the single-serving, fruit-flavored kind.
I heard part of an interview on NPR the other day with one of the study's authors, and he was clear that the benefit from yogurt comes from the non-crap-filled kind - unsweetened, not the pudding-like "chocolate coconut" flavors.He wasn't, actually. He said that you should eat that stuff. He didn't say a thing about whether that's what the people in the study ate. I bet it's probably not: my sense is that the natural stuff is expensive and tends to be a kind of luxury product.
gurple: I always wonder about self-reporting data in dietary studies. For instance, are people who eat healthily more likely to self-report their diets accurately? How do you determine whether there's a bias there, and, if so, correct for it?
I have never looked up any comparative statistics, but I do go to Canada fairly often and people there don't look enormously (ahem) different from here, despite the death panels good healthcare.According to the US Centers for Disease Controls, Americans are significantly more likely to be obese than Canadians. 34% of Americans and 24% of Canadians are obese.
Turnips are cheaper by half. Carrots probably too.Yeah, but it's really hard to make an entire meal out of carrots and turnips. Carrots, turnips and potatoes, roasted in some butter or oil, is a meal.
Actually, if you're going to roast them in butter or oil, carrots and turnips (and squash and peppers and other such things) make a very adequate meal.We were talking about what's cheap. Squash and peppers aren't cheap. And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't ever actually eat just carrots and turnips for dinner. Whereas I really have done the roasted potatoes, carrots and onions thing quite a bit when I was really broke. Trust me: potatoes may be evil death-tubers, but there's a reason that they're popular food among people who don't have much money.
Zucchini, squash, various tree fruits: around here it takes active effort to avoid having these things foisted upon oneself.Ok, well, when I was really broke, I was living on the seventh floor of a high-rise on the South Side of Chicago. There were not a lot of people foisting garden produce upon me.
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(When we started this low-carb thing in January, I thought I would really miss things like potatoes. And I do, kind of, especially when I've got all this lovely bacon fat left over from making the jam and nothing to fry in it, but it hasn't been anywhere near as hard as I thought it would. Well, except for the restaurant we went to a couple of months ago that had fries fried in duck fat. They are my kryptonite.)
The findings add to the growing body of evidence that getting heavier is not just a matter of “calories in, calories out,” and that the mantra: “Eat less and exercise more” is far too simplistic. Although calories remain crucial, some foods clearly cause people to put on more weight than others, perhaps because of their chemical makeup and how our bodies process them. This understanding may help explain the dizzying, often seemingly contradictory nutritional advice from one dietary study to the next.
Yup.
posted by rtha at 8:29 AM on June 25, 2011 [5 favorites]