fat thursday

[moominmolly]

From Junkfood Science, via the_xtina, an article on the Minnesota Starvation Study (about the effects of dieting on healthy adults) that I found quite interesting.

EDIT, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD: What I found interesting was: the mental effects of this deprivation on the healthy, normal-weight patients; the idea of patriotic conscientious objectors in a medical study; and the attitudes surrounding the study in general. The whole article was chock full of interesting attitudes toward the world. The general tone of the article and the obvious bias of the author are not my own.

Comments

[water-childe.livejournal.com]

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<a href="http://tinyurl.com/2ohodr"NYTimes article citation here". <a>

The research itself seems to be in various other places on the web, although somewhat debated because, as someone already pointed out the info seems corrolative. All I know is that I personally don't trust sugar substitutes as they seem to have long history of being deemed "fine, OMG better then the real thing" and then a few years later, "OMG this stuff does scary unpredictable things to your body if you consume it regularly."
I'll stick to real sugar thanks. Still not great for me, but seemingly okay as long as it's not something I go crazy with.

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

the research isn't very good. it found a bunch of correlations between food and metabolic syndrome, a large set of related conditionsn including (but not always) elevated fasting blood sugar. the correlations least likely to be due to chance are meat and diet soda (but not any specific sweetener). unfortunately, this isn't surprising: one part of the definition of metabolic syndrome is a big waist, and it seems reasonable to me that people who are/consider themselves to be fat might drink more diet soda than otherwise.

the study's got some problems with its statistics that make the conclusions suspect, but i'll spare you the details unless you're interested. :)

[water-childe.livejournal.com]

the study's got some problems with its statistics that make the conclusions suspect, but i'll spare you the details unless you're interested. :)

I went back and reread the NYT's article. Admittedly, I don't think I read it carefully enough the first time. It sure does seem like the statistics are spotty. Their demographic for one. Uh, why only people aged 45-64? And they said more then 9,500, but not how many more then. Maybe I don't know enough about how these studies are conducted, but that seems like a small sample margin. And did these men and women have any other risk factors for diabetes other then drinking diet soda?

I supposed I was more willing to believe that something like aspartame could be a factor in causing diabetes, because I have the idea that so much of what we as humans consume to aid in weight control, other then oh, I don't know eat reasonably as our bodies require (not diet, mind you), and get some regular activity, so often seems to do the opposite. I don't trust fads, I don't trust weirdo additives and synthetic fat and sugar substitutes.

I think it would be so much saner to convince people to enjoy good food, as well as the joy of it's preparation, without gimicy new fangled additives that we don't know enough about the safety of. That bodies come in all shapes and sizes and that's okay. If people could learn to like their bodies, even if they wanted to make improvements. I mean, I'm tall, I'm muscular, and I'm not *dainty*. I'm no waif. I've changed my overall shape somewhat, largely via weight lifting, but there is nothing in this world that will make me a dainty waif.
There are realities about people's bodies that they just need to accept. Limitations that each individual needs to own up to.

But instead what we get is a weight loss and *fitness* industry that is honestly more about looks then it is about health, or overall capability.
*sigh*