Eat Your Veggies

[Berzerker]

I suspect most cases of type 2 diabetes are self inflicted with poor diets, please dont over do the crappy food. More leafy greens, more colorful foods, less processing, and avoid foods that cause spikes in blood sugar.

There's actually higher diabetes rates in Asia thanks to white rice and we're the ones with the obesity epidemic. Imagine that...

http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diabetes-more-white-rice-more-diabetes-risk.html

I heard somewhere white rice was the rich man's plague because in past times regular folk ate less refined rice and a more diversified diet and for some reason wealthy people wanted white rice. Very strange, I'm sure there's some explanation for that preference but I dont care for it myself.

Anyway, food is medicine... and crappy food is poison. I cant believe corporations get away with contaminating the food supply with "foods" that literally kill millions of people. I know, self restraint, etc...

But the stuff is in so much of the food supply, you basically have to go "organic" to get decent food with fewer pesticides and the irony is that food needs the least effort to produce (I think). Course the bugs eat more too so its a trade off, we might not be able to feed as many people without getting our food from Monsanto.

But there is hope, people with adult onset diabetes can slow or even reverse the disease.

http://www.webmd.com/diabetes/type-2-diabetes-guide/reversing-type-2-diabetes

The problem is the disease - all that sugar - zaps energy (go figure) and causes inflammation so exercising becomes problematic for the elderly or infirm who've fallen out of shape.

You cant give up though, find ways to exercise, change your diet, and get the blood sugar levels under control even if it takes a few months or years of whatever drugs you can tolerate best. One day good food might heal you, so eat your veggies!

 

[BvBPL]

Remember too that changing your eating habits is hard, at first. Once you've been a few days with better eating habits, your body will quickly adjust causing you to crave fewer poor foods.

 

[Zelig]

Your advice would be better if you stripped out the quackery about pesticides and inflammation.

 

[Sonereal]

-Deleted-

 

[Birdjaguar]

GMOs might not be evil, but Monsanto is not one of the good guys.

 

[Sonereal]

-Deleted-

 

[Zkribbler]

I heard somewhere white rice was the rich man's plague because in past times regular folk ate less refined rice and a more diversified diet and for some reason wealthy people wanted white rice. Very strange, I'm sure there's some explanation for that preference ...

White rice looks prettier.
As does white bread.

 

[Berzerker]

Your advice would be better if you stripped out the quackery about pesticides and inflammation.

What did I say about about pesticides and inflammation?

It is amazing how the original post went from sensible to lol so quickly.

I like how "foods" is in quotes. As if it isn't food. As if it isn't

Additives, preservatives, dyes, and various chemicals, etc are not food.

 

[Sonereal]

-deleted-

 

[Flying Pig]

White rice looks prettier.
As does white bread.

White bread is cheaper, and white rice cooks faster. 'Pretty' is flexible: nowadays, most people turn their noses up at the sort of vegetables their grandparents would have gone after, because we're used to a totally different way of seeing them.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

... various chemicals, etc are not food.

Ohmygoodness. I'd better stop drinking H₂O immediately.

And I hope you don't like pickles, since C₂H₄O₂ is necessary to make them.

Bad chemicals!

 

[warpus]

"Organic" is just a marketing label companies use to try to sell products to shoppers who are to some degree health conscious. I would guess that on average "organic" produce is probably better for you than non-organic, but I think I do remember a study that concluded that there really isn't much of a benefit at all, and that you're just basically paying extra for your feely feelies.

Want to feel better? Eat more vegetables, stop drinking pop, cut out the sugar, minimize the consumption of fast food, try to eat less processed carbs and less processed food overall, and cook at home often using a variety of ingredients (i.e. not just the same thing every night), from scratch if possible.

Want to feel even better, in a different way? Support your local farmers by buying locally grown food, instead of turning to cheaper alternatives from large corporations which try to pump out as much food as possible in order to increase their profits. Local farmers do this to some extent, but not on the same scale, and where I live a lot of local farmers have embraced "organic" tendencies. Which like I said is "just a label", but in some cases is actually indicative of a better product.

 

[Flying Pig]

"Organic" is just a marketing label companies use to try to sell products to shoppers who are to some degree health conscious. I would guess that on average "organic" produce is probably better for you than non-organic, but I think I do remember a study that concluded that there really isn't much of a benefit at all, and that you're just basically paying extra for your feely feelies.

I usually find it tastes better, which I suppose is partly a function of the cost - organic producers know that they're selling to people who need to be attracted by the food rather than the price, so they can't get away with selling you something tasteless in the way that cheaper supermarket ranges can. I don't set much in store by the health angle - though some of the pesticides and farming practices we've used in the past couple of decades have certainly been found, years later, to be extremely nasty for the people eating the end result - but taste and (for chicken and eggs, less so for other meats) animal welfare are both good arguments.

I think your post illustrates quite well why most people see an improvement from diets such as gluten-free: once you start taking charge of what you eat and preparing it from fresh, decent-quality ingredients, rather than accepting whatever the folks at Tesco thought would make the cheapest approximation to shepherd's pie or spaghetti bolognese, you find yourself eating better - consequently, you feel better, almost regardless of what you actually choose to eat.

 

[warpus]

Yeah, a lot of people are kinda nutty about it to be honest, latching onto all the latest craze, but yeah, even though some of that might be hogwash, if you actually care about what you eat, and try to eat better, even if some of it is BS, you will probably come out ahead anyway. I mean, if you used to eat junk food every day but now go out and buy organic vegetables and cook yourself a meal every day instead, you are going to eat healthier, whether those vegetables were actually "organic" or not and whether "organic" really means anything or not. In the end the fact is that you are eating less junk and eating more good stuff. And that's what I've noticed, people who follow all those dietary fads tend to eat healthier overall, just because they cut out processed crap and increase their intake of vegetables and other healthier foods.

 

[onejayhawk]

For what it may be worth, white rice was the preferred type for storage. Brown rice had oils in the skin, which would turn rancid. Fresh was best, but only the rich could afford rice for long term storage. It's one of many cases with a similar story. Rich man's food was the kind that would keep more than a few days.

then came refrigeration. Half of all generated power goes to refrigeration. Find a more efficient method and we would cut world electrical useage considerably.

J

 

[Flying Pig]

Ice houses have a much smaller running cost - I've got a plastic box in the garden which stays as cold as the fridge for at least half of the year, and doesn't (as far as I know) use any electricity. I suspect part of the problem is that we've grown too reliant on technology and ignore the actual principles at work.

 

[Zelig]

then came refrigeration. Half of all generated power goes to refrigeration.

This seems impossible... I've got a 29 cu-ft. fridge, which takes only about the same total electricity as a constant 63 watt appliance turned on 24/7.

Even with my kitchen entirely converted to low-power LEDs, that's less than the electricity to light up my kitchen.

 

[Joecoolyo]

White bread is cheaper, and white rice cooks faster.

Yeah, wait, is there a problem with white rice? I started to use it in lieu of brown rice because I was tired of waiting an hour for it to cook.

 

[BenitoChavez]

I went to my parents house for the holidays and my Father bought literally dozens of boxes of these ice cream cookie sandwiches from a local store called Melting Moments. Oh man those things taste heavenly but will make you obese, give you diabetes and heart disease all at once. Don't be like me. Don't eat ice cream cookie sandwiches.

Now if only they could make spinach tofu sandwiches taste good.

 

[warpus]

I bought a big box of 100 cream puffs from Costco and ate them all over like 3-4 days. My roommate was calling me obese even before I finished 50.