Re: Labor saving devices lead to obesity

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Mar 25 2002 - 23:20:35 MST


Hal Finney wrote:

> One of the paradoxes of current American culture is that despite an
> emphasis on low-fat, healthy eating and exercise, people are fatter
> today than ever.

They emaphsize these things along with all the other "shoulds"
but almost no one actually eats the stuff ast their only food.
Most people are more than irrational enough to hold "shoulds"
that have no or little bearing on their actual behavior. Often
they should be a lot more careful about they believe they
"should" do. But since they don't actually hold themselves or
one another to what they profess to believe they "should" do,
"should" is cheap.

Cheap "should" makes sense when the "shoulds" are largely
irrational as in Christian moralizing. A case could be made
that irrational morality have thus seriously undermined many
people's ability to act on rational "shoulds".

According to today's L.A. Times,
> http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-000021490mar25.story?coll=la-headlines-health-manual,
> the reason may not be junk food or less time at the gym, but rather the
> dozens of small labor-saving innovations which have been introduced into
> our daily lives over the past few decades.
>

Bullshit. We eat more raw sugar and fat for a larger percentage
of calories consumed than ever. But the Chritianized press will
attempt to blame labor-saving devices as the devil's work.

> Blair contends that America's diet and leisure-time exercise habits
> have changed little during the past few decades. Dietary surveys and

Not in the past few decades but America, even its teens, had
some of the worst overall fitness scores even BEFORE the past
few decades.

> other data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture "[suggest]
> that energy intake in the United States has not increased during the
> past 40 years," he writes. Studies of physical activity habits only

It was overly high even then for the amount of energy expended
in more or less sedentary jobs. The number of relatively
sedentary jobs probably has increased. I would also bet that
the amount of leisure time in front of the tube, or more
recently the computer has increased quite a bit.

> assess participation in leisure-time sports and fitness activities,
> says Blair, who adds that these numbers have remained constant over
> the last 25 years.
>
> If people aren't eating more or doing less sports and fitness activities,
> why the increase in fat? According to the article, it's the little things

They weren't in good shape to start with and the amount of
sports and fitness activities is certainly reduced among myself
and almost everyone I know.

> that count: paying at the pump instead of walking into the gas station;

ridiculous. The number of calories difference is utterly
minuscule.

> buying prepared salad instead of chopping up your own lettuce and carrots;

miniscule

> using your TV remote and garage door opener instead of walking a few feet.

sub-miniscule

> Each of these things only costs a few calories, but they add up over the
> course of the day to perhaps 100, which equals 10 pounds of fat per year.

In practice, no. Ask anyone who has managed to lose 10 or more
pounds in a year.

>
> The article suggests wearing a step counter, and setting a goal to
> increase your steps per day by 2000. It didn't say how many most
> people get, but 2000 steps is about 15 minutes of walking and will
> burn maybe 90 calories, so that could make a significant difference
> in the long term.
>

Doing enough to go aerobic 20-30 minutes a day would do a lot
more to gear up the entire metabolism and make fat a lot harder
to put on.

I don't buy it. Our diet and level of activity (for most of us)
sucks. Walking 15 minutes a day will not fix the cumulative
effects.

- samantha



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