Sort of a tangent, but I legitimately thought at the start of lockdown that people would lose weight on average because they couldn't go out to eat anymore. It turns out I just completely underestimated how much people eat out, and how quickly they would all switch to just getting take out.
I have friends that would always talk about how we spend way more than them at the grocery store each week. Obviously, they'd tell me, it's because we didn't shop at Aldi. Nope. Turns out it's because we cook and eat at home.
I don't remember where I heard it (maybe Michael Pollen?), but the advice I try to follow is: Eat whatever you want, just make it yourself.
> the advice I try to follow is: Eat whatever you want, just make it yourself.
This is categorically bad advice. Anyone that has an obese friend that’s into baking knows why. It’s very easy to make incredibly unhealthy and calorie-dense food at home.
I understand the sentiment but there is nothing about the process of making your own food that makes you a more healthy person. It all depends on the ingredients and the amount.
It’s obviously better to eat healthy takeout every day than it is to cook home made french fries for dinner.
Sure, but most people also already know that soda is unhealthy for you, so they can stop buying it and drink water with their food instead. It doesn't require a framework of "home cook everything" to make these small, incremental changes: in fact I'd argue that these changes are easier than what's essentially just a diet by another name.
Yep. Dry pasta, white rice, pancakes, and hot dogs are all very easy to make and very calorie dense, especially when served as folks typically do: with buns, syrups, sugary sauces, etc
That's because _patisserie_ is really a combination of processed ingredients (fruit is mostly decoration). Should my obese friend grind wheat into flour, turn milk into butter, juice sugar canes into sugar, he'd surely bake less and expend more calories doing it.
It's not just intake but also how many calories we're burning. I've had dozens of days where I've barely moved more than shuffling around my home. Those days were rare or non- existent pre-lockdown.
As for eating out, I find it to be one of the great joys of life and civilization and wouldn't give it up for anything.
I'm astonished by how few people prepare their own meals. You're playing the diet game on hard mode if you're limiting yourself to cafe/restaurant food (not to mention the cost!). Conversely, it's actually pretty difficult to eat poorly if you cook everything yourself.
Eliminating sugar, refined wheat and ensuring every meal is at least 50% vegetables by volume would go a long way to reducing the number of people in the "obese" category. In that respect, I'd agree that calorie counting is at best unnecessary, at worst counterproductive.
But even with such an incredibly low bar to clear, I'm not sure it will make a difference to obesity rates. I'm highly skeptical that the upwards trend has anything to do with confusion, cost, lack of information or anything like that. People just aren't willing to give up the constant dopamine hit from fried and sugary foods.
That works only until you learn how to cook food that you really like. You can end up reproducing fattening food or even make it more fattening pretty easily.
Lack of physical movement that was on the background all the time. Before I had to walk for bus, take bus, walk from bus to work. Walk for lunch and back from lunch. Walk to nearby office to chat.
Walk to kitchen or wc in work is further away.
You dont even realize how much you are moving around until it stops.
I have friends that would always talk about how we spend way more than them at the grocery store each week. Obviously, they'd tell me, it's because we didn't shop at Aldi. Nope. Turns out it's because we cook and eat at home.
I don't remember where I heard it (maybe Michael Pollen?), but the advice I try to follow is: Eat whatever you want, just make it yourself.