Inside Every Fat Person (Health)

[john w robertson]

You've thoroughly chewed and spat out the carbohydrates.

Another major distinguishing feature of diets in the fat world is high dairy consumption and changing dairy consumption at that.

North America and Northern Europe - epidemics of arthritis, MS, autism, asthma and cancers as well as obesity. Areas of low milk consumption like China and Japan (so far) have lower levels of all these.

In addition to lots of dairy produce, increasingly 'we' consume milk from constantly pregnant cows - raging with hormones and protein levels designed to trigger cell growth which will turn a newborn calf into a massive beast in one year.

[Ray]

There's one thing that we've all overlooked while damning the carb:
Isn't it supposed to be true that since Japan entered the Hamburger Age its people have been getting bigger?

I'm not saying that bigger necessarily equals better, but biologically speaking size seems to be an indication of an animal's success in, er... successfully exploiting their niche. Dinosaurs got very big; whales have become pretty large; the Ice Age has produced all manner of giant beasts, whose further development was arguably thwarted by emergent humanity - and now it seems that humans too are getting bigger - but only since the advent of the carbohydrate diet.

[Komorikid]

Can't say yea or nay but I do know that the kids in Japan are definitely getting fatter. I was there in '96 and '98 and the kids are into junk food bigtime. Childhood obesity seems to be growing exponentionaly in cultures that until very recently were devoid of highly processed junk foods (Japan, China, and Eastern Europe). The western lardarse diet is being exported; so along with X-Boxes, X-Games and X-Sports we have K-Rap Music and K-Rap Food.

[Ra]

So, why ARE people, on the whole (at least in industrialized nations) getting larger? I don't mean just fatter, but taller, as well. I've heard it said that this is because of improved diet and medical care; yet we seem not to be eating any better than our ancestors did, and diseases of all kinds are on the rise. Is there some other reason why tallness is currently being favored in our evolutionary development?

[Mick Harper]

This is a question I have been banging on about for years! Every orthodox biologist claims that height is essentially genetic and that acquired characteristics cannot be passed on. Yet increases in height have been recorded over single generations, never mind the six hundred years between us and the people who wore the suits of armour one sees in museums and that none of us now could get into.

[Keimpe]

Diets and the Human Diet.

Being part of the tallest people in the world - although measuring a meagre 1m 77cm myself - I felt some responsibility to look into this.
It seems we were one of the shortest people in Europe around the second world war and have since then become the tallest people in a matter of decades. Am I fair in saying that this rules out genetics completely?

I've looked at some statistics and could not find a single and/or elegant explanation in them. I've looked at:
- Dairy consumption per capita (high but not highest)
- Meat consumption (high but not highest)
- Breast feeding (again high but not highest)

I did see one very plausible suggestion, namely that average height corresponds with the reach of health care. This means that if health care reaches the 'lowest' levels of society, this means people are healthier and taller. And our health care (apart from the usual epistemological oddities concerning vaccination, AIDS and cancer treatment) is sensationally good and reaches everyone that wants to be reached. In America (Americans used to be the tallest people by far for a long time) health care doesn't reach the lower echelons anymore, so they are losing ground.

Then again, I expect health care to be almost as good as ours in countries like Japan, but it's not making the Japanese any taller.
Japanese are famous for their lactose intolerance (they can't stand milk - literally) and northern Europeans are famous for their dairy intake. So maybe it's a combination of these factors?

The Masai have a diet consisting mainly of meat, milk and blood, and they're quite tall. I don't know about their health care.... Surprisingly though, I also read about a study that says 62% percent of the Masai are lactose intolerant....weird...

All in all, I think consuming animal products, and particularly milk, are the largest contributors to height. I think this because I think man is not supposed to drink milk all his life. Milk is meant for babies without teeth and as soon as you can chew, you don't need milk anymore. And of course the milk from a cow is different from the milk from a woman.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

[Mick Harper]

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

[Ishmael]

[Mick Harper]

It's odd that a Canadian should make this error since Canada does try, in its limited way, to embrace the European "inclusive" model in its social planning.

You are correct, Ishmael, to point to the French 'Third World' sector though it is, and this is important, very much inside Paris. France, like Britain, has a Third World immigrant and immigrant-derived population as a (by and large, accidental) backwash from colonial days. With the usual racial tensions -- though your idea they spend their days burning cars and beating Jews is risible. It's damned difficult identifying these Jews, you know, they're past-masters in disguising themselves as natives. And as for "cheap labour" -- the complaint is that they don't work at all! I am on the whole agreeably surprised by how well multi-racialism works in Europe.

What is particularly interesting though is that for countries, like Germany, with successful economies and no "colonials" there has been a need for many decades to import their own "Third Worlders" -- in Germany's case several million Turks. All this is now being rapidly overtaken by the constant extension of the European Union so that successive waves of "cheap labour" from Iberia then from Poland then from Bulgaria and soon Turkey itself can be made available.

Of course it's still early days but my impression is that the European model generally works in that the various auslanders become part of the whole over the long run whereas in America things seem to be getting worse rather than better.

[Ishmael]

[Mick Harper]

At least we're not a bunch of surrender-monkeys (viz Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq...)

[Hatty]

At a talk on "the bugs in your gut" the speaker, a prof in micro-biology, told us that the Atkins' Diet is effective for losing weight, burning off all that protein takes a lot of calories - but it should be followed for a limited period only or there would be serious long-term effects on health.

He was very much in favour of probiotics or at least the well-known brands, i.e. the expensive variety, and recommended certain foodstuffs such as onions, garlic, chicory which are supposed to be beneficial in the gut department . So what do you do if you can't abide yoghurty-type products and milk in general? (The large intestine has only been recognised as essential to our overall health since the beginning of the 20th century, and this breakthrough was on account of the Bulgarians, who presumably go in for yoghurty-type products...)