Coronavirus and obesity: Doctors take aim at food industry over poor diets

foodnavigator ^ | 22-Apr-2020 | Oliver Morrison

[Drango]

A cardiologist has blamed the food industry for ‘normalising’ ultra-processed junk food as more evidence emerges suggesting poor diet is the root cause behind increased mortality from Covid-19.

~snip

[Cheesehead in Texas]

I eat Exo cricket bars for snacks when I’m backpacking. It’s all about calories and protein per ounce of food carried and not needing refrigeration. Not about saving the earth.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Exactly, it's an act of free will to stuff Big Macs down your gullet.

A Big Mac is the byword for unhealthy food, but it's got 24 grams of protein, which is the quintessential food, absolutely necessary for all body processes, most importantly, growth, repair and immunity. If everybody in the Third World could get one Big Mac ever day it would probably reduce the incidence of disease in those countries by a significant amount.

[Drango]

I’m very sorry for you."

Well, bless your heart.

[Mr Rogers]

The food industry responded to what people demanded after the US Government deceived them about the role of fat in heart disease - which is either minimal or none.

People cut out the fat like the government told them was necessary, and so the food industry added sugar so the food had some taste. And our carb-driven binges exploded like our waistlines!

[logi_cal869]

Time will prove me correct. It’s a reckless extreme with short-term gains and long-term consequences.

I’m done with health discussions on FR but WILL voice an opinion of the idiocy from time-to-time.

[Ragnar54]

It's also Vitamin D (most people are deficient):

Probability of Vitamin D Deficiency by Body Weight and Race/Ethnicity

"Conclusions:
The effects of skin color and body weight on vitamin D status are large, both statistically and clinically. At typical target concentrations of deficiency (below 20 or below 30 ng/mL), those with darker skin colors or heavier body weights have a higher probability of being vitamin D deficient. Knowledge of these effects may facilitate the diagnosis of vitamin D deficiency."

...

"As the theory suggests, at the latitude of the United States, those with darker skin colors actually have much lower vitamin D concentrations than those with lighter skin. For US individuals age 6 years and older, average 25(OH)D concentrations are 17.4 ng/mL for non-Hispanic blacks, whereas Mexican Americans average 26% higher at 21.9 ng/mL and non-Hispanic whites average 62% higher at 28.3 ng/mL (Table 1). In terms of sun protection, on the other hand, invasive melanoma is 24.7 times more likely among US non-Hispanic whites than US blacks.6 Ghanaian farmers living near the equator (6° N) have an average concentration of 30 ng/mL,7 while dark-skinned people living traditionally in east Africa (4° S), who provide the best estimate of vitamin D concentrations over the course of human evolution, have an average concentration of 46 ng/mL.8 "

There is a sad familiarity to the distribution of this disease, if one reviews the history of rickets:

Rickets before the discovery of vitamin D

"Progress in studies of the causes and treatment of rickets suddenly moved much faster, in the period 1917–1922. At the beginning of that time, Huldschinski33 advocated ultraviolet light treatment for rickets. At the same time, Hess34 showed that cod liver oil could prevent and cure rickets in Afro-American children in New York. ... On the veranda (Figure 3) one group was kept well covered while the other group of children, wearing remarkably little clothing, was exposed to sunlight. This second group got better. Thus it was shown that cod liver oil and exposure to sunlight both healed rickets. However, it was not clear at that time whether the effectiveness of cod liver oil was due to vitamin D or to vitamin A,... "

Unfortunately, once a minimal dose of Vitamin D was found to be enough to cure rickets, our government keepers pronounced any more to be probably "toxic" or at best unnecessary. It is time to consider whether we need "ancestral" levels of vitamin D:

People who work outdoors int the summer have levels of up to 80 (unless they use lots of sunscreen). Most Americans have levels below 30.

There is an article on NIH by a Canadian physician (Dr. Gerry Schwalfenberg) who works in nursing homes. He has developed a protocol for reducing flu like illness among his patients. This should be tried against the corona virus in US nursing homes:

Vitamin D for influenza

"A colleague of mine and I have introduced vitamin D at doses that have achieved greater than 100 nmol/L in most of our patients for the past number of years, and we now see very few patients in our clinics with the flu or influenzalike illness. In those patients who do have influenza, we have treated them with the vitamin D hammer, as coined by my colleague. This is a 1-time 50 000 IU dose of vitamin D3 or 10 000 IU 3 times daily for 2 to 3 days. The results are dramatic, with complete resolution of symptoms in 48 to 72 hours. One-time doses of vitamin D at this level have been used safely and have never been shown to be toxic. We urgently need a study of this intervention. The cost of vitamin D is about a penny for 1000 IU, so this treatment costs less than a dollar."

There is a presentation by Dr. Robert P Heaney on the healthful effects of adequate vitamin D levels:

Vitamin D Sunshine Optimal Health: Putting it all Together

[1Old Pro]

A Big Mac is the byword for unhealthy food, but it's got 24 grams of protein, which is the quintessential food, absolutely necessary for all body processes, most importantly, growth, repair and immunity. If everybody in the Third World could get one Big Mac ever day it would probably reduce the incidence of disease in those countries by a significant amount.

Fine, that's not the point of what I wrote.

[riri]

It's mighty tasty too.

When I was pregnant with my son, I lived overseas and had horrible moring sickness. The local food just nauseated me even more. We lived pretty far out in the country and once a week I would drive into town to get groceries.

I ate two Big Macs every time! Guiltlessly, I might add.

[Freee-dame]

People cut out the fat like the government told them was necessary, and so the food industry added sugar so the food had some taste.

It would be interesting to see side-by-side graphs showing the increase in consumption of low-fat foods prompted by the Government's anti-fat crusade and the increase in Type 2 diabetes.

[aquila48]

Blame the food industries not the people that make bad choices.

[blam]

"The food industry is no more responsible for obesity than Smith & Wesson is responsible for gun violence. "

Thank you.

Individual responsibility has been out of style ever since someone else was made to pay for your smoking.

[Mastador1]

The food industry is no more responsible for obesity than Smith & Wesson is responsible for gun violence.

Exactly! No one forces anyone to eat fast food, which in and of itself is not bad if eaten in occasionally and in moderation. But apparently the purveyor is responsible for an individuals gluttony! I ran Mickey D's locations for decades and every time the Corp folded to the demands of dietary and vegetarian nutbags placing "healthy" food on the menu absolutely no one bought it because it tasted like crap.

Now the push is for plant based imitation meat and fowl that costs as much as the real thing but is actually worse because of additives and high levels of sodium.

I wish these 'experts' would just stay the hell out of my food!

[maddogtiger]

EBT paying for gobs of junk food.

[PA Engineer]

Good work and stay with it. I'm pretty much heading towards keto carnivore with more precise time regulated eating.

Glycated hemoglobin is the killer in this disease. Keto is the most effective at reversing that condition suffered by over 46% of the US.

Funny how our supposed conservatives here are parroting Michael Obama's eat less (crap food to boot) and move more. It hasn't worked for 40 years, whereas Keto reverses all conditions related to metabolic syndrome with triglyceride/hdl ratios within a few days and other metabolic markers in a month.

Why are they putting sugar in all foods now including different lunch meats off the bone? Yeah, the food companies are complicit in fructose addiction. Even more funny than that. The American Heart Association heart healthy sticker on Oreos. LOL.

Ignore the stupid here. They will be on Aricept sooner than later.

[gandalftb]

Ask any primary care doctor how often they see vegetarians with Type II diabetes. My doc just stared at me, almost unknown.
..........
I eat some meat such as fish and chicken, red meat a couple times a week, lots of veggies.

[LouAvul]

Wait. Isn’t this what Wookie O’Bama did to the schools? How’d that work out, anyway.

[PA Engineer]

I have. We discuss it a great deal. Taurine depletion, lysine dysregulation and sarcopenia are very endemic to the population.

Even amongst "vegetarians", sugar and seed oils are killers. Depletion of amino acids are secondary. Why to vegetarians require so many supplement that are found naturally in meat?

[JimRed]

You can make all the healthful foods you want, but you can’t force the fatties to eat it.

[Oatka]

On one of the comic strip threads, a guy mentioned that a study about obesity caused by fast foods couldn’t get any grants. The authors added “due to Climate Change” and the money came rolling in.

Now all they have to do is change the meme to “due to the coronavirus”.

[gandalftb]

I eat meat, the extreme of denying all meat is not advised.
..........
My point is that veggies.......in a balanced diet.........greatly support healthy glucose levels. Obviously sugars need to be strictly limited, vegetarians or not.
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I think vegetarians are prone to supplements and go overboard. I take turmeric, resveratrol, multi-vitamins.
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Portion control!