McDonald's UK CEO Blames Video Games for Childhood Obesity 321
BoingBoing is reporting that Steve Eaterbrook, McDonald's UK CEO, says that video games are leading the charge in obesity. He does have the decency to at least admit fatty foods are a part of the problem, but points the finger at interactive games for keeping kids indoors and not out burning off energy. "According to The Times, McDonalds UK is 'on the brink of its best year for two decades'. The firm has enjoyed six per cent like-for-like sales growth in the last year. More than 88 million visits were made to McDonald's restaurants last month, up 10 million on the previous year." Don't forget, we have known for ages that video games make us fat and mean.
The Layer Cake of Disappointment (Score:5, Insightful)
Disappointment Level One: Someone, somewhere decided that it is one single factor contributing to this, not a combination. Blame is absolute and illogically must be placed on one thing.
Disappointment Level Two: The media reinforces Lvl 1 idea and is on a witch hunt.
Disappointment Level Three: Each alleged witch further exacerbates by shifting blame to another witch, none of them ever admitting to being part of the problem. Once a new target is acquired, they escape the public eye.
Disappointment Level Four: Lvls 1-3 act as a free pass to parents. There are so many witches to point at, surely nothing they have done resulted in this. Again, no responsibility is taken.
And all the while, we're setting ourselves up for a diabetes explosion [time.com]. Although many have claimed it's been on the horizon for a long time, the numbers are starting to creep. Enjoy eating through all four layers of that cake!
Re:The Layer Cake of Disappointment (Score:5, Informative)
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Destroy ADM and Cargill, today!
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Re:The Layer Cake of Disappointment (Score:5, Informative)
I own chickens. It might seem unrelated but in owning chickens I wanted to learn how best to feed them. (I learned much about their nutrition and the epidemic of obesity in the industrialized world by this.) So I went to the local feed suppliers and tried to determine the best diet for feeding the birds. The answer to the question of how best to feed the birds was always another question that made no sense. "How much Antibiotics do you want?" was the answer! After getting this illogical response about 6 times, and eliminating disease as a reason for this, I finally got it out of the feed suppliers what is going on. Chickens gain 1.3 times as much weight per pound of food consumed when fed antibiotics as when they are not fed them. Typically Chickens convert about 3kg of feed into 1kg of chicken meat but when fed antibiotics it only takes 2.3kg of feed to produce 1kg of chicken meat.
Shortly there after I learned that this was a fairly typical gain associated with feeding animals. I learned that chickens being such high efficiency converters of food into meat and eggs also didn't alter the feed that much in its content. The Future Farmers of America (FFA) typically has an experiment that shows this very well. It involves feeding a laying hen purple dyed food. The egg yolks from that hen become purple!
I learned a lot more about the breeding of birds in the years that passed and about their raising. A typical farm raised bird is sold with about a 4% margin to the farm. This leaves the farm about 25% "under water" financially if the do not feed antibiotics. This is also typical in most meat production. Unless the meat is specifically raised without antibiotics it has them in it. These antibiotics pass through to the one eating the meat and they affect that person exactly as the feed animal. How this works is pretty simple and leads right into our epidemic of fat people. Antibiotics screw of the Glucose metabolism causing Hyperglycemia. Bluntly they cause a temporary diabetic episode. This triggers insulin release and begins damage towards type II diabetes. This causes almost instant weight gain in the individual. But this is hardly all of it regards our feed animals.
McDonald's Corporation, KFC and several other major US food delivery companies have done tremendous research now covering something close to 70 years to optimize user demand and to breed foods that stimulate demand. Chickens for example are highly genetically altered through breeding and other processes so that they produce meat of this profile. Similarly most meat animals have been modified this way. In addition our vegetable crops have been altered this way as well. This modification has come to dominate the production of most food crops in the USA. Potatoes and many other crops have become altered to achieve the goals of McDonald's et al. The essential demand increase is to produce a food that demands more food by screwing up blood sugar. As a result a person gets a very high blood sugar followed by a very low one. This is very nearly a profile for diabetes and weight gain. If you are a farmer, it is very nearly impossible to get farm loans and such to raise crops outside this genetic and marketing chain. As a result it is beyond doubt that McDonald's and other similar institutions have caused our epidemic of obesity. Their success in genetic and farming control is about 20 years old now and it corresponds directly to the time when this obesity started developing dramatically. It is so deep and so profound in the food chain in North America, that it is quite possible to point out that even a vegan who never ate at McDonald's could be proved to have problems directly traced to McDonalds et al.
The point here isn't to divorce any personal responsibility from the system. Rather to point out that it is a far lessor factor than we might like to think. Frankly it has fallen to a trivial level of consideration. The real issue here is when will be realize that our foods have been screwed up to the point wher
Re:The Layer Cake of Disappointment (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Layer Cake of Disappointment (Score:4, Insightful)
What is Fatty restaurant's responsibility involved here? or Video game industry? It's all about education...
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The issue here is that the
Tell Ronald to stay the frack away from my kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell Ronald to pull his creepy pedophile advertising from all the children's shows. Tell him to quit bribing my school board for access to the classroom for his "special presentations." Tell him to keep his Richard-Simmons fat ass away from whispering in my children's ears 24/7 "McDonald's is cool and magical and if your Mommy and Daddy will take you there Grimace has a special present for you."
Pull his multi-billion dollar marketing machine away from my children's playground. Stop cramming preternatural amounts of fat, sugar and salt into their food so that my children's hindbrains don't scream "My God, we found the mother lode, we'll never need to eat again!" at the first whiff. Tell Ronald to quit fucking around with the peace in my home, and I'll lay off trying to shove him in jail with all the other fat, middle-aged men who wanna wear makeup and play with little kids.
Yes, I keep my kids away from that crap, but I'm sick of Ronald spending billions of dollars worming his way into my kids' dreams telling them that Mommy and Daddy are keeping them from something special.
Parental Responsibility?! How would you react if I followed your kid around all day telling them "I'll take you to McMagicFairyLand if your Mommy and Daddy will let me..."
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The real issue is a underdeveloped sense of pro active thinking in young minds. Less and less are kids encouraged to think critically, more and more are they spoon fed. I trus
Re:The Layer Cake of Disappointment (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans are sickeningly fat, but it isn't video games or McDonalds -- its their love of sugar and sugar-like products (HFCS). I can't believe how many unbelievably fat people I know, and I know I'll have to pay for their early retirement because they won't stop shoving candy into their mouths. Cola soda is candy. "Healthy" Granola is candy. Most of the products on Weight Watchers are candy. Don't these fat people see that they're not only killing themselves, but they're putting the cost on me and others who decide to live healthy?
Here's a reason why I detest single-payer healthcare: because people will have LESS reason to live a healthy lifestyle. I haven't been to the doctor in years except for my annual checkup. I haven't been sick in years, either. And yet I know my health costs go up because of the people who refuse to look into what ails them in terms of weight problems.
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I think part of the problem is that we try to communicate the idea that "it's healthy to do XYZ", rather than giving people the basic information and letting them make their own decisions about how they want to manage their health. Telling everyone that X is bad and Y is good and you should avoid X and do Y instead just makes people resentful, because they like doing X and then feel guilty when they
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Actually it is a lot worse than that. Part of the problem is that the media jump all over new results and publicize them before they have been scientifically confirmed (although the huge number of conflicting reports which the medical profession apparently produces does give one pause to consider the level of scientific rigour). A
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Re:The Layer Cake of Disappointment (Score:4, Funny)
But, I have to admit, I sort of wanted some cake to go with it. And maybe a tall glass of whole milk. Duh, of course there should be chocolate syrup in the milk.
I hate to be the one to break it to you (Score:4, Funny)
But, I have to admit, I sort of wanted some cake to go with it.
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Re:The Layer Cake of Disappointment (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:The Layer Cake of Disappointment (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was six, I used to walk a mile to school - and a mile back - every day. In the summer all through my chidhood, I'd make myself a sandwich before anyone else was up, and be out in the woods until evening - or else, later on, drop down river in my boat on the outgoing tide and come back in on the next. When I was twelve, I used to cycle twenty miles up into the hills with a friend - and, at the end of the day, twenty miles back. Kids these days aren't allowed to do that sort of thing. They're driven everywhere. They get no time to be out by themselves. The sea - the roads - the woods - are all suddenly 'too dangerous' for kids.
It isn't video games - at least, not mostly. It's over-protection. Of course, the over-protected, housebound kids then have to be entertained, so they get given video games. Diet doesn't help, this much is true. But the real problem is over-protection.
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By that logic.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:By that logic.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:By that logic.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey now.... turd sandwich is clearly the most qualified candidate to lead our country. You take that back right now!
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Let's make our voices heard!
We've been given the right to choose
Between a douche and a turd
It's democracy in action,
Put your freedom to the test,
A big fat turd or a stupid douche,
Which do you like best?
Re:By that logic.... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, it's often the opposite. (Score:3, Interesting)
Though sugar- and caffeine-laden drinks can perhaps wind a person up, most of a typical fast-food menu would probably leave you feeling lethargic and feeling a bit calmer, due to the high-fat content and other chemicals such as the enzymes in the cheese on your burger. That's what's a bit perverse about a lot of restaurant meals--not only will they make you feel fat, they'll put you in a lazy mood so you are less motivated to be active. When those effects wear off you'll feel
Helmet Society (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot to be said for this, but I think the finger should be pointed past the video games and towards an overprotective and overly litigious society.
When I was growing up we had our Nintendos and Segas and Ataris and Intellivisions and Apple IIe computers, but we only played around with those for a few hours, and then we'd go outside and play baseball or football or street hockey, or merely ride our bikes around the neighborhood for a few more hours.
But nowadays it seems like everyone is scared to get up out of their chair. Are you going to ride a bike? Better wear a helmet, get some reflectors, ride with a friend, attach a siren, etc. Going to play street hockey? Better wear a helmet and a bunch of pads and secure the services of a lawyer so you can sue the first person who body checks you into a parked car. Going for a walk? Better rethink that - you might get abducted by a stranger. Gym class? Recess? Are you mad? You might fall and skin a knee.
We didn't take precautions when we played when I was growing up. And you know what? We survived. We did amazing crazy things. We played tackle football in the street. We threw rocks at each other. And no matter what we did we didn't wear helmets. And the worst that came from all of it is one of my friends got a broken arm once.
I think we need more Nietzsche and less nurture. "That which does not kill me makes me stronger." Because that which does not make me stronger is killing me.
Re:Helmet Society (Score:5, Interesting)
The excercise myth (Score:2)
Half an hour of running is only a couple of Oreos so it isn't hard for kids to make it up by snacking. If you don't want your kids to get fat then don't give them free access to a refrigerator/pantry full of instant foods.
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Skinny doesn't necessarily mean healthy, though.
I'm still in college, and there are still students in college that literally go to class, get food to-go from the cafeteria, and sit and play video games until 2am. Some of them are still "good students," others definitely let their grades slide because of computer games.
Do computer games help obesity/health? No, they don't, I hope we can ALL agree on that. Do they hinder it? I think they do hinder it a little bit. How many people spend hours upon ho
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I've mentioned this
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p.s. if i crack my skull open take some pictures and show them to me later - i want to see what the plate looks like..
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Re:Helmet Society (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a friend that just recently had his fourth child (they are all 5 and under) and he said to me, "I need to buy a farm. I can't allow my children to do what I was able to do -- like ride my bike all over town." I asked, "why not?" Now, I want to mention that I wasn't allowed out of sight of my house on a bike until I was probably 12 and even then I had to be within earshot and 5 minutes of my father's whistle (which had quite a range). His reply, "They can't be trusted."
So it has nothing to do with litigious society, etc, it has to do with parents realizing what they got away with as kids (surviving, yes) and attempting to stop it for their children. What these people don't realize is that kids are still going to get hurt, get abducted, steal shit, fuck, drink and do drugs. All that's going to happen is that they are going to find ways that we didn't think of to get it done.
Back on topic:
While what McDonald's UK douche says is true, it's also very true that the "Fast Food Nation" (sponsored heartily by communities like the one I live in where the little guy is ignored while the big box and chain restaurants are encouraged to thrive by the Council) is also killing us. I've read several books like Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally [amazon.com] and similarly Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life [amazon.com] which mention the advantages of local eating, home cooking, and healthy lifestyles. I'm really going to attempt to get into Community Supported Agriculture [localharvest.org], get out to our local farmers' market more than 1x a month, and stop eating out nearly as much as I was.
We've traded dangers from biking without a helmet, pads and an orange flag with blinking LEDs to eating foods with 50% of your daily need of fat, 75% of your calories and loaded with high fructose corn syrup. One might take 15 to 20 years to kill you rather than 15 to 20 seconds but we need to decide which is better.
Happy Meals need to be replaced with Happy Medium.
Re:Helmet Society (Score:5, Interesting)
You know what ruined it for me?
Air Conditioning. Cheap electricity, Central A/C, and summers just got too hot to bother going out in. Heating in the winter made going out in it too cold, nevermind our forebears survived quite handily. A couple years ago, I started an experiment. I quit using the A/C except for when I was expecting company. I opened up my windows, turned on a fan to circulate the air, and wouldn't you know it? I was hot, but after a couple weeks, I got used to it. Walking into an office building felt like I was walking into a meat freezer. My electricity bill halved, if not more. I was amazed. I went out for walks more. I lost 30 pounds that summer, because it was no longer "too hot" to go outside.
SO, I don't think it's video games, for sure. Video games are just what you do when it's too hot to go outside, and it becomes a habit. Turn off your a/c, let your athlon crank your room to 120 degrees, and you'll *want* to go do something else for awhile.
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Case in point, if creepy dude back then made unseemly remarks or advances upon a kid, 9 times out of 10, the dad would march over creepy dudes house and punch the guy in the nose until he was a bloody pulp. Police and courts weren't involved and the creepy dude was held in check.
Today, if that happened, creepy dude would walk
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Either the society got screwed up, kids got dumber, or something is very wrong with the current generation of kids.
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Well, the ones that survived did, at least.
We don't talk much about the boy who became a vegetable because he wasn't wearing a helmet and cracked his head open, or the girl who disappeared walking home from a friend's house and whose body was found in the woods a week later...
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Hm... (Score:4, Funny)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
A bit hypocritical? (Score:4, Insightful)
In related news (Score:5, Funny)
2) KKK Grand Wizard says video games are making children racist.
3) Exxon-Mobil says video games make children averse to renewable energy.
4) McDonald's CEO is a peen.
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When people finally realize this, something will finally be done about it.
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Video Game makers blame McDonalds for bad games (Score:5, Funny)
"Clearly our reliance on fast food, particularly McDonald's, has caused us to become unimaginative and lackluster in our new game designs. By buying initially from the value menu and then going to super sized items we have replicated this trained up-sell response in our own games. We haven't made an original game since Doom. We even tried watching Super Size Me 10 times, but that only made one designer go completely mad and make a copy of Burger Time. We can only hope that McDonald's changes the way they sell food items so that we can again create new and innovative games that people around the world will become lethargic blobs of goo playing. Thank you."
First soda, now burgers (Score:4, Informative)
http://kotaku.com/335546/soda-companies-blame-videogames-for-fat-kids [kotaku.com]
Except that he is right in part. (Score:5, Insightful)
Blaming McDonald's is kind of silly. Don't raise your kids on a diet of McDonald's. It is supposed to be a treat and not a diet.
You feed your kids the big breakfast at IHOP the same thing will happen. Again it is supposed to be a treat and not a diet.
Letting your kids play video games for hours on end. Also not a good plan.
Letting them sit in front of the TV is also not a good plan.
Frankly I am amazed at the amount of passive entertainment we have available to all of us. With NetFlix, PVP, PVRs, Cable, Video Games, and the Internet there is always something worth while to watch or read or play.
A kid today doesn't need to find something to entertain themselves with.
Combine that with traffic today and all the fears over safety, and both parents working kids are often raised on a diet of video and fast food. It isn't bread and circuses it is Burgers and Playstations.
I have noticed that McDonald's is offering some better choices on the menu as well.
So don't dismiss video games just because you like them.
BTW if you don't think the techie life style contributes to the problem take a look around your office.
Re:Except that he is right in part. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually you can blame them for marketing. It is a known fact that marketing affects people and they market a lot. Their marketing is directly connected to the amount of fast food people buy. If it wouldn't be, they wouldn't do the marketing as that wouldn't be worth of it.
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And that doesn't apply to video games?????
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McDonald's actually says this when questioned about it. However that is NOT how they market themselves. In fact they even market themselves as health food now. You may even believe it by how they market but their Chicken Selects Premium Breasts Strips just made the list of the 10 WORST FOODS: Foods You Should Never Eat [cspinet.org]. The point is the more McDonald's panders to the healthy foo
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Is it great for you? No.
But then they are not twisting your arm to buy it.
Korea and Japan (Score:5, Insightful)
Doh!
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Re:Korea and Japan (Score:5, Informative)
A stronger correlation... (Score:2)
Uncontrolled snacking = fat kid.
Being a larger guy... (Score:5, Insightful)
- Eating too fast
- Forgeting to enjoy food (fat people enjoy their food less than thin people while eating it)
- Very concentrated sugar / fat foods (e.g. Soft Drinks, Burgers)
- Society encourages us to stay home (Safer, Entertainment, and for Computer Geeks even work-useful activities like coding)
- Very little "good" help available (Doctors throwing pills, diets selling useless books, but nobody wants to give good advice except perhaps Paul Mckenna and a couple of others)
I wouldn't pin it down to Games or any other single form of entertainment. Well except perhaps World of Warcraft but that is a different kind of crack within its self.
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Re:Being a larger guy... (Score:4, Informative)
Lack of balanced protein and/or lack of fat makes you FEEL HUNGRY, and sugars early in the day make the liver "lazy" ("gimme easy food, not food I have to work to process!") and gives you the munchies. -- My diet is based around red meat (chicken, fish, and vegetable proteins do NOT have the right balance of amino acids to control your appetite), with normal amounts of fat (no particular effort made to trim it down). I don't eat carbs before noon, unless liberally lathered with grease. (Incidentally my cholesterol is way *down* there.) This serves to keep my appetite under control over the long haul, and prevents having the munchies during the day. -- I don't limit sweets otherwise, since I hit a natural limit of how much "tastes good" fairly quick. I suspect as a side effect, I do not get "sugar highs" even if I eat a lot of sugar at once.
Just because your stomach is empty does NOT necessarily mean you need to ingest more calories. Learn to feel when you need energy, don't just assume your stomach knows anything about it. -- My stomach does NOT control when I eat. It can growl all it likes, but if the rest of my body doesn't say it needs food TOO, the stomach will be ignored (or at best placated with a couple crackers or a piece of jerky); it has learned to produce a couple token growls, then shuts up and stops bothering me. If you don't give in every time you feel the slightest hunger, your stomach too can learn this self-control.
Don't stuff yourself. I feel no need to "clean my plate". That's what the fridge is for -- storing leftovers. One extra bite at every meal adds up. And if you eat out a lot, remember that both fast-food joints and 5-star restaurants have doggie-bags. Take it home, get another meal out of it, instead of shoveling down food you don't really want.
Listen to your body when it is "bored" and wants to move around, or needs to sleep. The "twitchies" you get after a marathon coding session are a major symptom of this physical boredom and sleep deprivation (the two tend to go hand in hand). -- Find something physical to DO for an hour or so every day, even if it's just walking around the block. And try to sleep at *night* (preferably by 10pm) -- that helps keep the rest of the system in sync, so your appetite is easier to control.
Take note of the metabolic slowdown that happens around age 30. If you keep eating as much as you did when you were 20, you WILL get fat.
If your lifestyle *becomes more sedentary* thanks to computer games or ANY "sit in one place" behaviour, you WILL get fat. I know a lot of formerly-active, formerly-thin people (mostly middle-aged guys) who got addicted to some computer game, or to the internet, or who got a desk job after being a field rep, and promptly put on weight, simply because now they sit there and snack instead of moving around, and they eat just because their body is bored. -- I can tell when a certain friend's computer is broken, because he loses weight. -- TV never had quite as much of an effect, probably because what interests most people is limited to certain hours and certain days, so sitting in front of the TV tends to be self-limiting. Conversely, you can play WoW 24 hours a day if you wish. -- I still play a lot of DOOM, and muck about online a lot, but I DON'T snack while I'm on the computer. And I do stuff besides just sit here all day.
So... that's it. Nothing special about my lifestyle, no particular diets, no deprivation, no exercise regimen (tho I do a couple hours of physical work every day, it's nothing strenuous, mainly just a lot of walking). Do likewise, and chances are you'll return to your teenage weight, too. It worked for generations of your forefathers, who never heard of all this low-fat, low-protein "healthy eating" that's been packing weight on Americans for the past two decades.
Who's To Blame? (Score:3, Insightful)
While McDonald's blames video games on the obesity trend, let's not forget the millions of Americans who work in physically inactive jobs for many hours per week, come home to eat a full dinner (while skimping on more important meals, like Breakfast) and then finish it off by watching a good amount of TV. Never mind the lack of (or committment to) exercise, eating healthier (which isn't as important as exercise) or even trying to be active.
When one sees public service announcements telling people to play at least ONE HOUR a day, then I think we know where a lot of the blame can be shifted. Ironically enough, in my mind it wouldn't be fast food...
Experiment (Score:2)
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There are many causes (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Paranoid and over protective parents not letting their kids play outside
3. Lazy parents buying ready meals and junk food
4. Lack of room in the school timetable for PE (physical exercise)
5. Computer games (parents should limit this)
6. Film and TV programme tie-ins with McDonalds and sugary foods such as cereals
7. Kids being driven to school
For the Win! (Score:4, Funny)
Fair's fair (Score:2)
Personally, I know why I'm fat (although I'm currently working on that problem [fourmilab.ch]). Soft drinks, pure and simple. I used to consume at least 1,000kcal/day of the stuff. At 3500kcal/lb, that adds up fast!
At least I don't smoke -- but as a soda addict, I do sympathize with smokers. It's hard to give up (or even cut back on) something you really enjo
Hmmmmm (Score:2)
If only... (Score:2)
BOOKS! (Score:3, Funny)
Not one cause, but (Score:2)
OTOH, everyone over
Video Games != Obesity (Score:3, Insightful)
World of Warcraft (Score:2)
Its not completely video games fault but its definitely a key contributor and it doesn't help that its contributing to the problem at an early age.
Keys lipid hypothesis is dead... (Score:2, Interesting)
Keys lipid hypothesis is dead... scientist are fleeing it like rats from a sinking ship. The media just hasn't caught up yet.
The truly frightening thing is that the diet that US and Canadian governments have been recommending over that last 30 years is pretty much the same thing that we use to fatten cattle up for slaughter.
But who Cares? (Score:2)
I suppose he's thinking that since he has the title of CEO that there is some credibility to anything he says. I suppose there is for quite a lot of people.
It's sad.
I'm running out of tinfoil.
Next: Tobacco companies will use the same logic (Score:2)
By the same logic, tobacco companies will argue that people who play video games are more likely to stay indoors, where second-hand smoke is concentrated, rather than spending their time outdoors.
Fucktards.
It's not rocket science (Score:2)
If the calories eaten outweigh the calories burned then weight is gained. Steve Easterbrook is stating the blisteringly obvious, and in doing so completely misses the point.
Increasing obesity levels are not as straight forward as blaming fast food or video games though, there are several other factors:
When I was a kid (Score:2)
Being captain of the cross country team and also in the marching band probably helped. I think 'social networks' (to include networked video games) are more to blame than just games themselves. It is much harder to pull yourself away from interaction with other people online. It's just so much easier than doing it in real life. It'
It's a combination, sure, but... (Score:2)
It's not just games, food, or even parenting (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's look at one. Why do kids eat too much bad food? Because:
1. processed crap is cheaper per calorie (and gram) than healthier foods
2. freshly made food takes more time and energy to prepare than crappy food
3. people typically have a poor understanding of what exactly is in their food
Why are these things true? Partly because we didn't evolve to eat what we eat, and our bodies sometimes have trouble coping; partly because our diet isn't varied enough, and there's been a fair amount of research showing that more varied diets improve health; allergies/reactions to foods are higher in populations that eat a lot of those foods; and, among other things, decades of giant agribusinesses lobbying the government for laws and subsidies that support their business model of mass-producing cheap junk, and (sometimes) trying to suppress research that shows that cheap junk is unhealthy. Take "enriched flour". This is wheat flour that has had the husk removed (the husk contains almost all the fiber and other good nutrients; the germ contains basically nothing but carbohydrates), and then had artificially-produced versions of the nutrients in the husk added back in. What the hell? How about we just eat the whole grain instead (or flour therefrom) and cut out the middleman?
#3 really vexes me. My son has reactions to milk protein (irritability, rash around his butt), wheat (skin rash), canola (screaming hyperactivity), and artificial food coloring (more irritability and hypersensitivity to things going wrong); since my wife is still nursing him, she has to avoid those things too. And she's discovered that she reacts to milk protein (rashiness) and soy (body temperature drops by 1-2 degrees, cold sores develop on lip every couple of weeks, versus virtually never when she's off soy).
We still like to go out to eat, but it's a chore because we have to grill our waiters about what exactly they use to prepare the food. The question "What kind of cooking oil do you use to prepare X?" is usually met with either a blank stare (why should we expect someone who works in a restaurant to be informed about what's in the food? madness!), or the answer "Vegetable oil." Uh, yeah, pretty much ALL cooking oil is vegetable oil (animal fats are solid at room temperature, and are not "oil", culinarily speaking). WHICH VEGETABLE DID IT COME FROM? It matters! We eventually started saying "What kind of vegetable oil do you use," which frequently gets the answer "Regular vegetable oil", which lead to much headdesking frustration. Now we actually cue them by saying, "What kind of vegetable oil do you use, like, canola, corn, safflower, olive oil?" and most of the time that seems to get them to provide us with an actual answer (but sometimes they still say "regular").
Hell, one time we went to a very nice restaurant, and my wife expained that she couldn't have dairy or wheat. The waiter dutifully returned later and told us that he'd checked on the desserts and found one that wasn't made with dairy or wheat flour, "just white flour." We stared at him for a second and asked what plant white flour comes from. It was priceless watching the expression on his face as it dawned on him that white flour is also made from wheat. And this guy was a waiter at a well-known upscale restaurant in Los Angeles. And we've had this experience repeated numerous times, at restaurants all along the scale.
Anyway, rant over, but if you don't already, do yourself a favor -- find out what the hell you're eating. Learn about food. Read ingredient labels. (Did you know that "rapeseed" is another name for "canola"? Did you know that "casein" is milk protein? Did you know that virtually all soy sauce contains wheat, which is a pain in the ass for us because we love sushi?) Avoid proc
Increase amount of information available (Score:2)
A tad draconian / big brother but perhaps making a rule of no single order can exceed 500 calories and a certain fat percentage, if you want more, buy 2 / 3 etc. That way people will at least be aware of much they're eating.
Article picture Freudian? (Score:2)
Not that anyone actually reads TFA, but did anyone else think the baby and the bun looked like a baby trying to suck on a sesame-seeded hamburger-bun breast?
We'll ignore for the moment that McDonald's basic burgers don't have seeded buns.
Bah. (Score:2)
Gaming powered by BigMacs (Score:2)
that's rich coming from them... (Score:2)
Calories in video games? (Score:3, Interesting)
Gym class. . ? (Score:3, Informative)
Life hasn't changed that much for kids except that the TV and video game quotient has crept up, (but not by so much), and McFries along with much of our food supply now uses GM vegetable oil. (McFries used to be cooked with animal fat back in the good old days when the oils wouldn't break down under heating into toxins; but that's another story. . ).
And yet there has been a distinct change, and I don't think it is linked to any one thing; not to video games or TV or our diets. I think it's a collective build-up of unhealthy and limiting forces, no one of which is going to tip the scales on its own. But it's there. People today are in general, less interesting. I'm sorry, you youngsters our there, but it's true. There's a curve of sorts going on. Want to test it? Do the following. .
Sit down with a sampling of regular burger-eating, TV-watching twenty-year-olds, (I should note that this does not apply to people who have disengaged from all the normal culprit lifestyles), and ask about their lives and their childhoods. Listen to their stories. Then do the same thing with a bunch of people in their late thirties and early forties. Move through the decades. --You'll begin to really notice the trend with people who were born in the fifties and sixties.
I did that for a while without particularly planning to measure anything; I was just in a phase where I was meeting lots of people, and was stunned by just how much more alive people seemed who had been born in the earlier decades. --I knew this one girl who must be in her late forties by now, who when she was a kid burned down a garage in the middle of one of her adventures. She and her gang also used to hike through the city ravine system which back then could take you from one end of the city to the other without needing to abandon the tree line, and they knew when all their various abusive parents would be away so that they could raid their separate kitchens en masse for lunch without being spotted. They'd take in fifty-cent films down at the Kingsway with the gang sitting along the entire front row passing roaches made from wild marijuana they'd picked in the forest and rolled into joints the size of 12 gage cigars. --One time they went to their favorite baseball field only to find that the Toronto chapter of the Hell's Angels had settled in for the day. --So they challenged them to a baseball game, and everybody ended up having one of the most exciting days of their lives.
Shit. I was born in the early Seventies, and my stories weren't nearly so bloody or amazing. --I did a few cool things; I burned down a fence one time trying to reverse-engineer fireworks, and I stole a shipment of wonderbread from a grocery store with my friends one night on a whim.
But I know a guy who was born in the fifties who has stories like Indiana Jones. And a thirteen year-old today whose big adventure was that she lost her cell phone and had to go looking for it in the woods.
--Now, I know this is not the norm. There are placid people in all times. --And adventurous ones, too. But it's the style and depth of adventure which I notice seems to have diminished over the decades. George Lucas used to be into street racing and hot rods; American Graffiti was drawn from his own teen years. Most of the young wannabe directors I meet today just watch movies. And
Re:Not only that (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot, of course, does far more.
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Now, people who think fat people are *bad* or *amoral*, those people are assholes. But the fact remains that being fat will kill you early, and will impact the quality of your life for a long time before you die.
I'm not judging you or other fat people. I'm just speaking the truth. It's bad for you. I used to be fat, and thanks to the laws of thermodynamics I'm not any more. I can ride my bike 50 miles and feel great the rest of the day. I can run, do pushups, etc. I couldn't