fast food nation
while enjoying a little bit of the fine "where in the world is matt lauer?" this morning, my pleasures of seeing mr. lauer shoosh down a ski slope in switzerland with a former swiss olympic gold medalist..wait..not pleasure...can't breathe... now hyperventilating, flashbacks, loud sounds, so white, back in interlaken, facing down impossibly steep mountain drop that said it was 'the easy slope' with europeans laughing all around and I CAN'T SKI OH MY GOD I'M GOING TO DIE OH MY GOD OH MY GOD
so during that segment, it was interrupted by a commercial, for, of all abominations, carb-lite ORANGE JUICE. (i can't believe there is a low-carb blog out there.) it was light 'n healthy orange juice by tropicana, and it sounded utterly disgusting.
i am so completely grossed out by the whole low-carb phenomenon that has been sweeping the nation for a while now. hello, if you eat only cheese and meat you are going to end up fat and alone. will americans ever learn that there is no easy way to cheat in dieting? i don't care what success story you are going to flaunt in my face, the low carb crap does not work. you *will* succumb again to the lure of the carbs, and if you've cut out carbs completely, you're going to swell to the size of an elephant the first time you have a slice of wonderbread.
i can't believe i sound like such eurotrash in every entry i write lately, but look at the italians. the stereotypes are true: they love their pasta and pizza. they eat it all the time. they have that gelato thing, too. but all italians are incredibly skinny (except for the old italian women, who are, without fail, stooped, chubby and have no ankles. but i've read that women of a certain age suffered from extreme malnutrition in the years after wwII in italy because the country went through a severe depression, and this apparently changed the way they ate and therefore their bodies).
it's just that italians are smart about the way they eat. no, actually, they're not consciously smart about the way they eat; they don't even think about the way they eat, and since they don't worry about their diets and overanalyze every little bite they put into their mouth, they have no issues with food. they don't eat if they're not hungry. they eat food that's good and real and fresh. they indulge in the god of condiments, olive oil. their portions are reasonably sized. they walk everywhere. they don't even really work out or go to gyms, but this is the sad truth: when i flew back from italy this summer, in my first ten minutes at dulles airport, i saw far more obese people than i'd seen during my entire year in italy.
americans are gross.
also, it's all hydrogenated high-fructose corn syrup's fault. peter jennings told me so.
this article is about the french, who are mean, but eat in basically the same manner as italians.
Comments
i agree that no-carb will not work, because people will eventually give that up. however, low-carb, and low bad carbs will work. a lot of carbs aren't necessarily that bad for you. for instance, wheat bread carbs - yes, there are lots of carbs, but they aren't that bad. my boyfriend could give a whole lecture on all of this. yes, americans are gross, but it's an entire lifestyle of being gross. you cant really compare us to any other country. we've all grown up with our lives revolving around food. and most of us don't get basic everyday exercise - like walking. just a fact of life. therefore, we have to make up for it. i agree, you can't obsess over every little thing you eat, but if you eat to much, or eat all the wrong foods, then you'll probably be unsatisfied with your weight.
i'm rambling. i just know that i want chocolate all the time, and just can't have it. phooie.
i just don't think carbs are that bad for you. i'm talking like pasta, grain bread, etc. simple carbs, i guess they are. obviously, cutting down on 5 lb muffins and boxes of cookies is a good thing - but those aren't bad because they're carbs; they're bad because they're completely unnatural and filled with chemicals and sugar. but you need simple carbs for energy, like fruits and crackers and spaghetti.
also, i think americans latch on to whatever the latest diet fad is because they can't commit themselves to an overall healthy lifestyle that might require a modicum of sacrifice or hard work on their part. each new fad is the one that will REALLY WORK a miracle this time. i mean, do you really think that carbs were ever a problem before? humans have been eating carbs since the beginning of civilization, and it's only in the past few decades that americans have become grossly overweight as a nation. look at asian countries - rice is a huge staple of their diets, but they have nowhere near the rate of obesity that we do. and i like i said before - italians love that pasta, and they are super-skinny.
basically, i don't think it's carbs that are the problem - i think it's high-fructose corn syrup (aka that sweetener that is found in sodas, etc) and the fact that americans rarely eat fresh produce/natural foods.
that was incoherent! basically, bread=yum.
carbs are not the problem. Enchiladas are the problem. Which is why my recommended 100% success weight-loss plan was to move out of Texas.
Though I gotta tell you, when I lived in Italy at a nice art school (in Castiglion Fiorentino, near Arezzo, capice?) complete with mamas cooking us mamamia food all day... whew, not the fabled Mediterranean-diet effect. These women would not leave a pasta bowl empty and it took its toll.
That, or beer. I'm not sure who to blame; regardless, poverty turns out to make for an efficient diet.
for serious? i definitely lost weight in italy. that may be because the school i was working for more or less paid us slave wages, and i therefore often lived off of bread rolls i stole from the cafeteria. you're right; poverty diet=awesome weight loss plan.
arezzo is in a beautiful area, though i haven't been to castiglion fiorentino.
hmmm... I'd get myself in bigbig trouble for disagreeing with the last point.
But the no-carb thing does make sense. I'm with Jillyn's boyfriend on this one. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie, but insulin is what makes your body favor storing available blood sugar as fat. And simple carbohydrates -- refined starches and sugar -- are what spike your insulin. At least this is my understanding of things.
So say you've just eaten a big steak. If you add a baked potato on top of that, you'll prime your system to store more of that steak as fat than if you just had a potato's worth of extra protein calories.
But I believe all of this has to be done with precision or it's pretty much useless. When you start Atkins you go through a 2 week period where you basically have no carbohydrates at all, where you feel like shit as your body readjusts its metabolism. Your body stops burning sugar and starts burning protein, which makes you smell like ammonia and you can't think straight. Sounds delightful doesn't it?
The point is, anyone who thinks a glass of no-carb OJ on top of their morning hashbrowns is going to make a bit of difference is nuts.
yeah i mean i can see why cutting down on carbs would work. i just think something like a 40-40-30 percentage is smarter. and, in general, i think eating fresh produce and avoiding pre-packaged foods is the way to go.
and still, no one can answer me why the italians eat carbs just as much as americans, if not more, and are at least 500% skinnier.
Pretty clear to me: They walk a lot, and they don't extrapoquadruple-size whatever they eat! (I believe that was my problem in Italy.)
exactly. which proves, to me, that carbs don't cause obesity. large portions and inactivity do. i just don't get why the american public CANNOT UNDERSTAND THIS. there is no magic diet! never will be!
I donno, what about unicorn meat?
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