BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Low Carb Low Carb diets a farse?

Think about it. There are many cultures that eat nothing but carbs & have for thousands of years. Yet they are more fit & tend to live longer than the general American population. The Asian culture is a prime example. So how can we say that low carbs are the way to go?
We are overweight because we are more stagnant than we have ever been in the past thanks to the information age. We are overweight because we overeat. That is, we eat until we are full, not until we are content & satisfied. This is due to waiting until we are starving to eat, then eating too much too fast.
We are overweight because of the chemical additives & growth hormones they inject in our meats. If the FDA put a stop to this maybe we would see less kids the ages of 10-14 with curves & boobs, which probably would cut down on the amount of sexual predators that seems to be more prominent in our society now more than ever.
Lastly, we are overweight because we eat too many diet foods. Yes, diet foods. Diet foods are full of man made chemical additives & sugar substitutes such as Aspartame & Sucralose. These don't breakdown properly in our bodies for they aren't natural. More importantly, they are full of empty calories. Calories that don't give our the cells within our bodies the nourishment it needs. This causes are metabolisms to slow down & are bodies to store fat, not burn it. This gets even worse because many people feel that since they are eating diet foods, they can go ahead & eat twice as much.
We just simply need to get back to eating natural foods & start becoming a more active society again. Especially the childern & teenagers.

Yes, you have to eat everything, but not in this amount - that`s all.

I agree, Terii...I think diet foods & drinks are okay as long as you eat them in moderation. I really like diet soda and figure that as long as I'm being healthy in general, drinking water, excercising, etc. it probably wont' effect me...I think sweeteners like aspartame are fine, and since i like soda, it helps me keep my calorie intake down a little...

Hey there, sorry I've been so busy for a while <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Actually, it's a myth that poor cultures that live on rice are incredibly healthy <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I ran the feudal Japan SIG for Mensa for over 10 years so Japan in particular was a field I was extremely interested in. What made the Japanese healthy is that they ate a lot of FISH - plus veggies. An all rice diet - which the very poor Japanese ate - caused incredibly nasty nutritional deficiencies. In fact rice was only for the rich - the poor had "rice left overs". There is an ailment called "beriberi" which is associated with eating polished rice that is rather nasty.

I think you have things a bit confused about diet foods and empty calories. Empty calories are calories that have no nutritive value. So let's say Thin Mints <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Diet foods are foods with no calories. So those are completely different things. If I drink a Diet Coke with zero calories, those aren't "empty calories". They are "absent calories". Quite different.

Now that being said, Low Carb is all about eating HEALTHY foods all day long. Low carb isn't about eating junk food whether it has calories or not. Low Carb has the theory that your stomach is only so big. Every day you need to bring in enough nutrition to fuel your body's growth and maintenance. We've had this discussion many times, but it is pretty much impossible to get every single vitamin you need, in the quantity you need, by eating food. So even if every single meal was optimized for nutrition, you still would be lacking and need to take vitamins. But you should do your very best to get as much vitamin as you can from natural sources during the day. That means, to be honest, there isn't "room left" for junk food. You should be eating fresh veggies, grilled fish (LOTS of fish!!) and so on. That gives your body the healthiest set of components to work with.

I am all for natural foods and no growth hormones. Again, that's what Low Carb is about - eating natural, not eating sugar. If you look at the sugar content of ketchup, peanut butter, etc. etc., that is what tends to make people fat. They grow up eating 100% sugar - and keep that up as adults. Our bodies weren't meant to live on sugar.

You mean... there is a lot of sugar in ketchup? Oj, great! I don`t eat it, neither peanut buter! Cool!
Thanks a lot for explanation!

You can get up to 220 calories in only **2 Tablespoons** of peanut butter. The stuff is like sugar spread! It didn't always used to be like this. Back in the Old Days peanut butter was mashed up peanuts. Just like ketchup was mashed up tomatoes. But over the years kids have gotten addicted to candy so EVERYTHING they eat is now full of sugar. Jelly is full of sugar. Peanut butter is full of sugar. The white bread they eat is completely devoid of fiber. They are living on sugar diets. They drink sugar-filled soda and Hi-C!! So then when those kids become adults, they have a completely built in sugar tooth that seems "normal".

It's even scarier when you hear stories about parents putting sugar-filled soda into baby bottles ... and how the vast majority of kids under 2 only ever eat "potato" as a vegetable - and NOTHING else.

I make my own peanut butter and it's yum!! No sugar added, and it's sooooo simple - ! a chimp could do it - !!

That's really great, Alexandra, more people should do that. It's got to be so much healthier for you than store bought stuff.

A friend of my boyfriend's at work was eating a snack every day - apples spread with gobs of peanut butter. He thought it was a "healthy snack". When his doctor heard what he was doing, the doctor told him to cut it out immediately! <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

It's scary how many people on low-carb diets go around just chomping on peanut butter, because they are thinking "high protein, yea!"

Now a couple of the big manufacturers have gotten smart and make "natural" peanut butters, which are just peanuts mashed up - these you usually want to keep refirgerated, and will need to stir around, because the oils tend to separate from the nut spread. There are also "butters" made from cashews, almonds, and walnuts, too - but I have found them way better for cooking with, than for eating straight.

Of course; as far as kids go - eating apple slices with peanut butter is way better than eating oreos or little Debbie cakes! Especially if you leave the peel on the apple and make sure they go out and do something energetic.

That's very true! There is always a "at least it's better than" situation <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> It's scary to start with how many oreos we put into our kids. People back in the 1920s didn't eat pounds of oreos a day! So compared to that, apple and sugar-filled peanut butter is far better.

Still, why use a sugar-filled peanut butter, if there is a healthy peanut butter right there on the shelf? I suppose it's the same question with cereals - why do parents choose the sugar-filled chocolate-chocolate-crisp cereals as a healthy breakfast, instead of say cheerios? You could say "the kids want it" but heck, who knows about nutrition, the kids or the parents? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> When I was a kid I wanted all sorts of things I didn't get <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />