Quick Notes And Updates

Updated 11.26.2014;reformatted 8.31.2015
A brief survey of one mom's open browser tabs after a morning's reads, as well as an update or two.

FDA publishes new rules for calorie display.

The requirement to prominently display calorie content of food was written into the Affordable Care Act. The FDA finally released the proposed regulations, Marion Nestle is pleased with them, which means the food industry is unlikely to be. Nestle reports that regulations apply across the board and have very few exceptions. She also notes that the real lobbying begins now. Here's the New York Times take.

Beyond Meat Experiment
So last night was are first meal using Beyond Meat Beefy Crumbles. It's supposed to be a beef replacement, and I think if I'd used a sauce on top of it would be fairly indistinguishable from actual beef. But my son won't touch meat that's covered in sauce and so I simply fried it in a pan with some olive oil, and a bit of water because I thought it was drying out.

We basically tried it out of curiousity after seeing coverage of the product on Bloomberg TV. We used an entire bag to feed 4 people (the bag says it can feed six.) No one went hungry, but I think it would be a stretch to satisfy six diners on a single bag. Still at $5 for a bag, that's not a bad price to feed four people. Obviously we had other dishes with it, and I would buy it again.

The Cost of Obesity on the Economy.

Nothing sets the fatosphere off like an article purporting to put a monetary figure on the cost of obesity. Of course, in the Health at Every Size sphere of the internet, there's nothing wrong with being obese, so the entire argument is dehumanizing. The offending salvo can be read at Fortune Magazine. Fortune's article argues that obesity is a $2,000,000,000,000 (that's two TRILLION dollars) drag on the world's economy. The article is based on a recently published McKinsey report. A quote:

Taking together the costs of healthcare, of lost productivity and other spending needed to mitigate its impact, consulting firm McKinsey reckons the annual cost of obesity fat now tops $2 trillion, or 2.8% of global economic output. That compares with an estimate of $2.1 trillion for war and terrorism, and for smoking, and is way ahead of alcoholism ($1.4 trillion), illiteracy ($1.3 trillion) and even climate change ($1.0 trillion).

Along with the usual arguments and rationalizations (and false assertions that weight loss is not possible) there is outrage about the report's authors. Some of the authors have worked in the weight loss industry. My bottom line remains the same: Weight loss is possible, but discrimination based on body size is repugnant. But if you choose to be large and in charge, own it. It's a choice, and as always, choices have consequences, including those related to health.

Fad diets don't work, but that doesn't mean all diets don't.

A study again shows that short term behavioral changes don't result in long term change. All diets work so long as you stick with them. The problem of course is that people try to adopt habits that they either don't like, or can't maintain. If your new lifestyle is one that requires will power to maintain, then you won't.

The fact that fad or extreme diets don't work for almost everyone does not therefore mean that no diet works. If you adopt habits that result in your eating less and moving more, then your body will settle into a new weight. It will take more time than a fad diet plan would take— but you didn't gain the wait rapidly (unless you had some rare medical condition), so you shouldn't expect to lose the weight rapidly. But of course, fat activists see it differently. They can't even allow that changing habits result in weight changes, because that disproves their primary tenet that weight loss is impossible.

Lefty fat activists want to know where the solidarity for their movement is.

Is meat healthy?

Stephan Guyenet is considering the question. His blog is always worth reading, and this series is no different. So far, fish and chicken get a pass, but red meat causes issues. (I hugely over simplifying, go read the series.)

Maintenance Update

A couple weeks ago I decided to adjust my habits a bit to see if I could establish a new, lower weight set point for myself. So I went to my favorite metabolic model and ran the numbers for my new chosen set point. [Note: I recognize that the set point might not be possible for me, in that I might not enjoy the new habits to maintain them.] But having announced this fact, I need to establish some sort of reporting regime to make updates— if only for myself.

The real news today is that my left knee is still bothering me, and thus running three days a week is not possible for the foreseeable future. We are traveling for Thanksgiving and so I wouldn't be running this week anyway, but I haven't been able to run for about a week already. At 50+ my body simply heals slower than when I was younger. In fact, this week I haven't even been walking on my treadmill desk. While I think the knee will heal and I will go back to running, I decided to investigate how my eating habit would need to change if it turns out that I can't run any more. I can still stand though, and am doing so as I type this up.

I had more to write here, but I need to start making pies for Thanksgiving, so I'll have to put in a separate update on another day.

Disclaimer