"A Fat Rant"

[kerosene]

I think they use grape juice to sweeten it, but that is much better than HFCS.

[Clodfobble]

Yeah, most of their flavors have a lot of pear juice too. But juice is juice.

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Yes, but the difference is you would basically only be left with the reasonably healthy overweight people, who would not have the same risk for heart disease and other problems.

That's not true, and it will be clear if I give you an example.

Suppose we have the following genes:
* gene C that predisposes someone to high cholesterol
* gene M that causes someone to be fat by way of an efficient metabolism

Someone who inherits neither will be thin and have good cholesterol levels.
Someone who inherits C will be predisposed to high cholesterol even if they are thin.
Someone who inherits M will tend to gain weight on moderate diets but will have healthy cholesterol.
Someone who inherits C and M will be fat and have high cholesterol.

Thus, your assertion is incorrect because you don't allow for other genetic factors that also affect health.

It's all a matter of the combination of genes that one inherits. In a world where everyone eats normally and gets exercise (and nobody smokes), there will still be fat people with normal cholesterol, thin people with high cholesterol, and fat people with high cholesterol.

Taken in isolation, being overweight is not a health risk. Other factors need to be present, such as a predisposition to various diseases. Nevertheless, everyone can maximise their chances of good health by eating a healthy diet, getting enough exercise and not smoking.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Kingswood

Taken in isolation, being overweight is not a health risk.

Actually, yes it is. The word "risk" is a statistical term here, and statistically, being overweight means a greater likelihood of being unhealthy. It is by no means a guarantee, as you point out. But it IS a decent predictor, and that's the business that insurance companies are in--predicting their future losses. Some people smoke for fifty years and never get lung cancer, but they have to pay the higher premiums too. Life isn't fair.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

But juice is juice.

Not if it's from concentrate, and it almost always is. Then the juice is a "natural" sugar delivery device. Read the label. Wherever you see the word "concentrate," substitute "sugar added."

Under FDA rules, you can take any fruit juice, remove most of the water from it, creating a sugary fruit juice syrup, pour that into a blend of juices, and still call it 100% fruit juice. You just have to declare that it's from concentrate.
EDIT:
And this link from Sugar.org says it better than I did.

What are juice concentrates?

Juice concentrates may be used to directly replace sugar. These syrups are made by first heating fruit juices to remove water, and then treating with enzymes and filtering to strip all characteristic color and natural flavor from the original juice. Because of their bland initial color and flavor, grapes and pears are the primary sources of the juice concentrates used as sugar replacers. Juice concentrates that replace sugar contain traces of sucrose, and variable amounts of fructose and glucose.

If a pear juice concentrate is used, the phrase “pear juice concentrate,” or a variation, would appear in the ingredient list.

Juice concentrates are used in any foods where corn syrups have replaced sugar. They are particularly prominent in baked goods, jams and jellies, and frozen confections.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

It's there, you just have to look for it.

Why should we have to go 'out of our way' to look for it? Once when people were not so fat, when it said Apple Juice, then it was made from apples. Now Apple Juice can be 100% corn syrup with artificial flavoring. Or it can be extract of apples modified for flavoring and then be called 100% apple juice.

Want to see what changed? Once a loaf of bread left out for four days would become moldy. Has grain now genetically changes so that bread does not get moldy for two weeks? What has changed?

Clearly this sudden explosion of people so fat that I have never seen so much ‘fat on one person' is due to genetics? Someone once said, "Give me a break". If it says Apple Juice, then why would I 'have to go looking for it'? And why do so many fat people at the Old Country Buffet go back twice or more for deserts? Why did the guy in "Supersize Me" – eating in this nation's most popular restaurant - suddenly have a weight problem? Clearly it’s all due to genetics.

The fact that so few realize the second carrot is junk food says so much about why some are so fat. If I had dieted like so many women now do, then I would have been a loser on the wrestling mat and would constantly have migraine headaches. No problem. Headon. Just apply it to the forehead. Says so much about why some people are also so fat. Blame it all on genetics. Clearly our diets are missing a miracle pill - phen phen. Real reason for this new and never before seen problem? Irrelevant.

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Actually, yes it is. The word "risk" is a statistical term here, and statistically, being overweight means a greater likelihood of being unhealthy. It is by no means a guarantee, as you point out. But it IS a decent predictor, and that's the business that insurance companies are in--predicting their future losses. Some people smoke for fifty years and never get lung cancer, but they have to pay the higher premiums too. Life isn't fair.

By your arguments, one can also say that being of normal weight or underweight is also a health risk.
* Underweight people get osteoporosis at greater rates than heavier people.
* For people undergoing certain medical procedures, having some extra weight leads to a better prognosis than someone who has little bodyfat. In this case, the extra bodyfat is used for its natural purpose of nourishing the body in times of low food intake - in this case a lack of appetite or inability to eat caused by medical intervention.

While it is true that obese people do have reduced life expectancy, it is also true that for a person carrying a few kilograms of extra bodyfat, the risk is statistically insignificant.

If anyone can provide a reference to a peer-reviewed scientific paper based on a study with sound methodology that demonstrates a decrease in life expectancy of more than six months for a group of people who are less than five kilograms overweight, I will happily stand corrected. But it is unlikely that anyone can produce such a paper, particularly one that isolates the life expectancy to being overweight, and only being overweight. For example, some studies into this problem were technically flawed by not taking other factors into account, such as the tendency of thin people to get more exercise or to eat healthier diets. Furthermore, there are also studies that suggest that people who have BMI's of around 26 or so (slightly overweight) actually have better life expectancy than people with a BMI of below 19.

I am not suggesting that being overweight is healthy. What I am saying is that the attitude of "overweight is bad" is overly simplistic and other factors must be taken into account such as genetics, diet, exercise, smoking, the presence of environmental factors such as pollution, whether one can avoid stress and so forth. Whether one has too much bodyfat - or indeed too little - is just one factor in a whole suite of health risks that one must consider.

[Kingswood]

Originally Posted by case

I think they use grape juice to sweeten it, but that is much better than HFCS.

Is it my imagination, or do American manufacturers find sugar so expensive that they must resort to various means to sweeten foods more cheaply?

I believe Americans pay far too much for sugar but without knowing the price of sugar in the USA i don't know for sure. I bought sugar this week here in Australia, and I paid A$1.44 for a 1 kilo pack. For the metrically challenged, that works out to be US$0.56 a pound. How much does sugar (sucrose) cost in the USA?

[tw]

Originally Posted by Kingswood

Is it my imagination, or do American manufacturers find sugar so expensive that they must resort to various means to sweeten foods more cheaply?

Something like 50% of the sugar is paid for by US Government "corporate welfare". Companies such as US Sugar thrive on these government handouts. Normally, the sugar industry would go to other nations where people need jobs and where sugar is easier to grow. That is the major and fundamental reason for a world wide walkout, three days early, in Cancun - the first major trade conference to ever fail - the Doha round.

Now here's an important question. How much did you know about this when it happened - when the world specifically blamed France and the US for that collapse?

Why replace everything with more sugar? First, it makes those foods sell better. Then when called 'Nutragrain', people believe the propaganda rather than reality. Then the industry does everything possible to have food labels distorted. For example, have sugar listed by five different names so that it does not appear high on the ingredient list and is not obviously sugar. And finally, replacing ingredients with more sugar means the government is paying for more of its cost - increase profits.

Sugar is being consumed by Americans in such excessive quantities that one in eight people in NYC is now a diabetic. One half of all residents in NYC will be diabetics. The consumption of sugar has increased that massively.

Why do people need more food? When you don't get sufficient nutrition from a meal, the body gets hungry again in hours. So we consume more sugary foods. Diabetes.

[Undertoad]

It doesn't even end at 100% juice, if you want to be paranoid. Apple juice is now made from a different apple than 50 years ago: bred and/or genetically engineered to be sweeter and juicier, as well as more uniform and disease-resistant.

[piercehawkeye45]

I just found out about Naked Juice today. It is an all natural 100% juice smoothie that has no added sugar, and has a pound of fruit in 15.2 FL OZ (450mL) of drink.

It is expensive (up to $3 for 15.2 FL OZ (450mL)) but it is probably the healthiest and best tasting (very thick) juice I've had. It actually fills you up.

Here is the site:
http://www.nakedjuice.com/

[Aliantha]

We don't have Naked Juice here, but we do have Nudies which are the same thing if I go by your description.

[piercehawkeye45]

Eh, one in the same.

[9th Engineer]

Kingswood, instead of using substitutions like "gene C" for the actual name of a gene, could you actually post the real name? If you use science as part of your argument then you're pretty well obligated to cite your sources and use correct terminology, otherwise most of us would have no idea if you're just blowing smoke up our asses unless we undertake a very time consuming search through the journals. Your info, your responsibility to cite. Nuff said.

I'd also like to pick a point on someone being predisposed to something vs having a guarenteed outcome. Yes, there is a difference in metabolisms between people, but it's not the be-all-end-all determinator you make it out to be. If you happen to not be blessed with the ability to eat as much as you'd like and still maintain a healthy weight, then you have to make a choice between indulging yourself and keeping your weight under control. If obesity is actually genetic, then it must be approached with the same attitude as any other condition that is dangerous if it gets out of control such as diabetes.

On a more personal note, I know many people on both sides of the average weight, and I can't think of a serious exception where the persons weight didn't match their eating and exersise habits. And in this case, people are most often haunted by poor decisions in the past. The body does not normally create new adipocytes (the primary cells for 'fat' storage) after the late 'teens. While they may not have been bloated at this stage, excess weight at this age probably means a gross over abundance of fat storage capacity to be filled later. When you try to lose weight later in life, they can lose most of their stored lipids, but you won't lose the cellular stucture you put down.

However, members of my family who have been extreemly overweight in the past have lost over 40lbs in a few cases, and have kept it off through very strict dieting and exercise. Unless you happen to be that one in several thousand with a serious disorder, your weight is the result of how you've lived your entire life.

As for me, I'm on my diet really for one main reason, to look more physically attractive. It also helps greatly in my day-to-day comfort and mental alertness, but my biggest motivator for keeping myself on 1450 calories of vegan food a day is so that I look better both with my shirt on and without it. I am absolutly not ashamed to say so. With others, it's your lifestyle that I care about. I watch what you eat to make my judgements more then watching to see if your belly jiggles. But around the pool, I'd be lying to you if I said that I'm as physically attracted to overweight girls as I am to those with slim physiques. I'm also very attracted to high cheek bones and narrow faces, it's just my taste.

[TheMercenary]