Fat makes you fat? Or not?

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petek

Über Member
Location
East Coast UK
I draw the line at beef dripping.
If there is any finer topping for a nice piece of warm brown toast than beef dripping with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Then I have yet to find it.
This whole fat or no fat fad is just that.
Faddish.
We were brought up eating whatever came and that included mutton, fat back bacon, pigs-'ead broth where the fat was in golden circles floating on top along with solid beef dripping in the chip pan that took ages to melt before you could fry chips. All sorts of fatty food, and it was GOOD. Plus, you never saw as many morbidly obese people about then as you do these days.
 
Isn't a major factor in that they we don't live such active lifestyles too though? The reduction in manual/labouring/industrial/agricultural jobs, the massive increases in car use etc?

I spent a couple of summers working on a rare breeds farm in the south of France. We ate huge amounts, including masses of delicious bread with lots of butter and cheese. I did most of the cooking and it was always of the generous sort - the batch production cooking for 8 people on the nights that I made fried eggs and chips with homemade mayo (one of the most popular menus I did regularly!) took hours, because I literally ended up making a bucket full of twice-cooked chips. I also lost a lot of weight those summers - because I spent 10 or so hours most days carrying out physical work.
 

MikeG

Guru
Location
Suffolk
[QUOTE 5010571, member: 10119"]Isn't a major factor in that they we don't live such active lifestyles too though? The reduction in manual/labouring/industrial/agricultural jobs, the massive increases in car use etc?

I spent a couple of summers working on a rare breeds farm in the south of France. We ate huge amounts, including masses of delicious bread with lots of butter and cheese. I did most of the cooking and it was always of the generous sort - the batch production cooking for 8 people on the nights that I made fried eggs and chips with homemade mayo (one of the most popular menus I did regularly!) took hours, because I literally ended up making a bucket full of twice-cooked chips. I also lost a lot of weight those summers - because I spent 10 or so hours most days carrying out physical work.[/QUOTE]

Exactly. Calories-in vs calories-out. I don't know why this is so upsetting for some people.
 

MontyVeda

a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
[QUOTE 5010571, member: 10119"]Isn't a major factor in that they we don't live such active lifestyles too though? ...[/QUOTE]
That and the fact we had fewer convenience foods, which often contain far too much sugar.
 

Julia9054

Guru
Location
Knaresborough
That and the fact we had fewer convenience foods, which often contain far too much sugar.
Food was also more expensive relative to people's incomes hence smaller portions and fewer snacking opportunities between meals. Etiquette also meant that people didn't mindlessly eat on the street (the height of being "common" according to my grandmother!) so less constant grazing.
 
Exactly. Calories-in vs calories-out. I don't know why this is so upsetting for some people.

Possibly because it is nonetheless a bit over-simplistic, and also tends to be used quite frequently as a shorthand for saying that fat people are stupid/lazy/dishonest?

There probably weren't a lot of obese people in the Victorian slums of course. That doesn't mean they had a healthy diet...
 

MikeG

Guru
Location
Suffolk
Again we're confusing "healthy diet" with the simplicity of the concept of eating no more than your body "burns" as fuel. And why are we talking about Victorian slums? There were very few obese people in Britain in the 50s and 60s, for instance, when there was plenty of food to go around.
 

MikeG

Guru
Location
Suffolk
I've now supplied a link to back me up and proves you wrong.

Respectfully, you really aren't going to try to suggest that a blog quoting a documentary is better evidence than published peer-reviewed science, are you? Seriously. Go and read the science. Its methodology is compelling, and the results couldn't be clearer. There are variations at the margins, and issues with the crudeness of some calorie calculations, but the basic fact is that if you take on more fuel than you burn you will gain weight, and I've linked to the science which showed this clearly.
 

The Jogger

Legendary Member
Location
Spain
Respectfully, you really aren't going to try to suggest that a blog quoting a documentary is better evidence than published peer-reviewed science, are you? Seriously. Go and read the science. Its methodology is compelling, and the results couldn't be clearer. There are variations at the margins, and issues with the crudeness of some calorie calculations, but the basic fact is that if you take on more fuel than you burn you will gain weight, and I've linked to the science which showed this clearly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/health/19brody.html

I'm sorry but you are quoting old science, things have moved on including lifestyle changes and dietary habits. I hope this will enlighten you but there are many more recent studies that prove my point.
 

MikeG

Guru
Location
Suffolk
Things move on, but the science doesn't change. It gets nuanced. Adjusted. Added to. Not chucked out with "proves your theory wrong" type statements (My theory? Really? I'm an architect).

So, let's look at your link. I followed it from the journalistic report to the actual published science. It's always worth doing that. It doesn't make quite the same claims as the article, unsurprisingly. It also says this about its methodology:

Participants were followed with the use of biennial validated questionnaires concerning medical history, lifestyle, and health practices.

So, twice a year they filled in a questionnaire.

Can you tell me what you were eating 6 months ago? How many times a week did you have chips? You see, right there is why you can't say "this study trumps that other one". It is perfectly valid to say "what can we learn from this?" and "what are the general trends (it was a huge study in terms of participants and time)?" and so on, but you absolutely cannot directly compare a study in which every single thing participants consumed was administered by the scientists, with a study asking you to fill in a lifestyle questionnaire every 6 months.

There will be a study somewhere, I am certain, comparing what people claim to have consumed with what they actually have consumed. If you find it, mentally use that as a correction factor for the results of this study.

I am perfectly happy to accept that calories in / calories out is crude. That there are subtleties at the margins. That not all calories are counted properly, and not all are digested in the same way. This is absolutely not the same as saying, as you did "it's just not correct" and "proves you wrong".
 
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