Polenta.
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So is chili. Meat and gravy chili anyways. It’s German goulash made with local ingredients.
For the record I have no idea which human group first stewed meat but the Germans brought goulash to Texas and married it with local ingredients.
Never been there.
They’re all homos there so you haven’t missed anything.
I don’t even know where to start with what this thread has spewed since my last visit.
@zecarlo gets to pull the trigger. He’s the only person making sense.
It’s all relevant. If much of American cuisine is really a bunch of dishes that were brought from Europe, then why are Americans so much fatter than Europeans?
Subsidized corn and seed oils snuck into EVERYTHING. Follow the money, as usual.
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I didn’t do that on purpose.
I know. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to ruin your reputation.
You ask an Italian their ten favourite dishes, polenta would probably be #1 or #2.
Muscle loss is about 1% each year starting in the forties, but you need to lose 30-40% for a big impact on daily activities. Less a cliff than a sandbar, no matter what Attia said. Another great reason to lift.
Crisco used to be made from hydrogenated cottonseed oil until trans fats were banned. That’s one of my very favourite cotton products to eat, along with Cotton Mather, water moccasin snakes, Q-tips and dungarees.
As a tourist in Europe I’ve noticed smaller portion sizes, more walking/biking in general as a mode of transportation and a different view of “fitness” as incorporating activity in to daily life vs a specific goal to either pass or fail on a rollercoaster. The ol’ calorie in vs out ratio.
Ingredient quality and freshness plays a role I’m sure but overall there’s less overindulging and more activity, which is ever present in a fit vs fat scenario.
They are not. Most statistics people use are from over 10 years ago. Certain countries, like states in the U.S., have lower rates.
"WHO European Region:
Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in this region, with prevalence higher among males (63%) than females (54%)."
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These 2023 rankings (using many sets of data, the oldest from 2019) imply the US is #10 (at least for adult males, 41.64%) in terms of obesity. The higher rates do not seem to be European countries. You could argue the difference between #16 Romania is only three percent though. I would have guessed Canada higher than #50 (28.16%).
For adult women, this list says US is #36, 43.82%, though still no European country is higher. Turkey (#42) and Georgia (#57) are several spots lower but similar percentages. I would not have guessed Canadian women rank as low as #104 (25.32%). It also seems to be true for children of both sexes that the US is ranked higher than any European country.
Only about 10% of French adults are obese by this data, and only 2% of Vietnamese. It took some digging, but this study seems to define obesity in common terms not always applicable to dedicated weightlifters.
Overweight is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 25 kg/m2 to 29.9 kg/m2 in adults and obesity as a BMI of 30 kg/m2 and above; while for children, overweight is defined as weight 1–2 standard deviations (SD) above the median weight and obesity as more than 2 SD above the median.
Just sayin’.
You did not argue against anything they wrote.
Calories determine your weight:
You were eating a sh*t ton to gain.
Macronutrients determine your body composition:
You were making sure to get a lot of protein.
Micronutrients determine how you feel
You ate quality food. You suggest limiting processed foods.
What does your genetics or force-feeding change?
How? You didn’t.
Your list is much more “black and white”.
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Dude, THANK YOU for this post. It’s got so much in it. Really appreciate you going so deep into your history. Food is one of the most anabolic substances out there, as you demonstrated and observed, and eating to grow can have some incredible outcomes.
Justin Harris has talked about this a bit. In gaining phases, we’re eating so much food in general that we are BOUND to get whatever micros we need simply by effect of volume. It’s like trying to fill a drinking glass by spraying it with a firehose: it’s gonna get full. When we cut the calories, THEN it gets more critical: now we’re trying to fill that glass with raindrops. Precision is key.
I imagine we saw that same effect with our big boys of yesteryear. In an era where people were catching polio and dying of consumption, dudes were eating just so much food that they were taking care of their health.
Love so much of this list. “No sugar no grain” per Vinnie Tortorich can already carry so many people so far, and here we’re pairing that with Dr. Ted Naiman’s “protein leveraging hypothesis” where, if we get our percentage of calories to be 35% protein, we put ourselves outside of the reach of obesity. These are such SIMPLE guidelines too.
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I believe this gets overlooked far too often. Mechanistic studies can give some insights but as a whole organism we function very differently. From my understanding, the human liver processes fructose much more readily than mice so much of the research stating that fructose is toxic can be ignored. (Speaking strictly about natural sources, not HFCS)
Talks about diet come up occasionally with patients at work. I’m pretty set in my ways and the majority of my meals are either
- Carrots with beef and/or eggs
- Cottage cheese and fruit, usually pineapple, mango, blueberries, strawberries, dates, and bananas
- A combo of choices 1 and 2
I’ve been asked if that’s whole 30, or some other diet. The fact that eating primarily whole foods is seen as a diet or some type of restriction just shows where we’re at culturally.
The main reason I’ve chosen to eat this way is that it’s cheap and relatively filling. I’ve been a glutton as long as I can remember so if I eat processed food that you barely have to chew it’s far too easy to go way overboard on calories.
I know everyone has different priorities when it comes to health but I doubt there’s very many people who want to be fat. I’m wondering how much is just due to a lack of self awareness on how you physically feel when eating some of the garbage out there.
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I did a Royal Caribbean cruise March 2023. I really liked it actually. Lots of soft bodies for sure, but a few that were clearly sauced to the gills. There was one dude that could have been a body double for the Rock except I think that dude was both taller and bigger than the Rock. I had to triple take that guy because for a second I thought I was on a cruise with the Rock.
I will say lifting on the cruise I don’t think is for me. I didn’t get sea sick until trying to lift at the cruise ship gym.
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That is not a lot?
If you only ate 5000 calories, would you put on weight? You know since caloric intake does not matter.
Again, that is not a lot?
Again what?
What were your protein sources? Why did you drink 2 gallons of milk? Why not 2 gallons of soda or kool-aid?
No one argued against this.
You may need more calories to grow but, you still need to be in a surplus.
No there are not. Any examples?
And again no one argued against this. What does this have to do with this thread TITLED “It Used To Be Hard To Get Obese” in which people are discussing the differences in food eaten. In particular it’s nutritional content (macro/micro makeup).
Why are you bringing up extreme outliers? There are none on this site and those people are not looking for advice.
Chimpanzees share 98.8% of genes with humans and mice about 85% including those encoding protein. Yeast at least 20%. The stories of mitochondria, and rapamicin and mTOR are fascinating. No doubt many old, primal metabolic pathways transcend species and we don’t know about many of them.
But even identical twins are much influenced by their epigenetics and environment. We have a lot to learn from fruit fly studies. The rub, of course, is it takes decades to test some claims for humans and it is hard to do this well. Most drugs that showed promise in animal studies do not have the same effects in people.
So what to do? Adopt the hypotheticals which are easy, unlikely to cause harm, make scientific sense… and keep one ear to the ground.