Healthism!!11

[Venkman]

There's a bunch of systems out there that are proved to work. The problem is people see early success and give up. Instead they need to see it through and then, yes, for the rest of their life, consider everything they eat, with some type of regimented cheating program.

Fast food and take out are not designed to help that 

[Count Nerfedalot]

If by "bunch of systems out there that are proved to work" you are talking about Weightwatchers and similar diet systems, those are pretty much all in the category of "eat less", with possibly maybe perhaps a whiff of eat better (but I doubt it).  So yes, those and any other diet plan will work, up to a point, IF and only AS LONG AS you stick to them.  And they do provide most of the convenience of at least grocery-store convenience food and eliminate a lot of the hassle of planning menus and such.  But they are even more expensive than eating healthy, and I know of VERY few people who last more than a week on them before they start cheating.  Those are some REALLY small portion sizes, even for a healthy-sized individual, much less someone hauling around double or more of their ideal body weight and with a stomach and appetite sized to match.

We just didn't evolve in (or weren't designed to handle, if you prefer) an environment where we sit around most of the day and are constantly surrounded by overabundant and easily-accessed sugar, salt and fat. In such circumstances our bodies work against us both to drive us to eat way more than we need and in storing up a lot of the surplus for leaner times.  We are children walking around in one gigantic candy store with bodies designed for surviving on hunting and foraging and moderate continuous exercise most of the day.

[angry.bob]

What makes American tomato paste so much more deadly then Canadian tomato paste?

They're probably the same, I'm not sure though. Anyway, the tomato paste in our grocery stores that people pick up to use as a base for their "healthy" home made sauce and soups has the same amount of crap like high fructose corn syrup as Ragu or some other ready to use sauce. So other than personal taste the stuff you spend time making is no better than crap you'd dump out of a jar you bought. To make anything healthier you need to start from scratch at the tomato level. That's just what I ran into when I decided to make our own spaghetti sauce to try and eat healthier as a family. I imagine just about everything is like that. It wouldn't even surprise me if dairy companies were adding HFCS to milk now.

[Cyrrex]

One of the benefits of living in the heart of Socialism:  we have fewer worries about shit like that.   Not zero worries, but definitely fewer.  HFCS isn't even a thing here, for starters.  And if it was a thing, no way the government would allow it, commie pinkos that they are.

I just went out to the pantry and checked the ingredients on a can of tomato paste.  You ready for this? 

[Fordel]

My Tomato paste is just like Cyrrex's, the only ingredient being Tomato's.


Like, I'm fully willing to believe the American tomato paste is full of shit and assholes, I just find it difficult to wrap my head around at the same time. You mush up tomatoes and put them into a can, it's not rocket surgery.


Then again you fuckers managed to screw up Kraft Dinner. I don't know HOW, but American made Kraft Dinner tastes like feet. To the point where I won't buy any of it that was made in the states.

[Trippy]

Yeah tomato paste is just tomatoes and sometimes salt. That's why I thought he was referring to BPA in the packaging. Tomato sauce, on the other hand, can have all sorts of crap in it.

[Cyrrex]

CAN have....but doesn't need to have.  I don't happen to have a can of marxist tomato sauce at the moment, but if I did I bet I wouldn't find anything more inappropriate than a bit of basil or oregano.  Maybe salt, but I'm not even sure about that.

Note:  I am not talking about ready-made spaghetti or pizza sauces.  Those will have sugar in them, as that is kind of part and parcel to the taste. 

[Maven]

Ugh, tomato paste. Read those labels! Stopped using ketchup when I saw Heinz, the most readily available condiment, contained High Fructose Corn Syrup. I still consume too many processed foods but there's a growing availability of natural ingredient snack food. This is Los Angeles though, your locale may be different.

Side note, if you can get your hands on it, Umami Burger's Umami Ketchup is pretty awesome.

[Mithas]

I'm not saying you should go out of your way to eat it, but HFC is no worse for you than sugar. That ketchup bottle you read would just say sugar instead of HFC if it wasn't in there. Pretty much every ketchup has a sweetener of some kind.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/business/yourmoney/02syrup.html?_r=2&oref=login&

Just like this push to accept fat people, there is an overreaction in the other direction saying you should only eat unprocessed foods. Everything in moderation. Anyone with children understands just how difficult it is to cook healthy foods. My wife and I both work, and she goes to school in the evenings. I don't get home with my daughter until after 6:00 PM most days. There are days where the kid is screaming, the cat puked on the floor, and my phone is ringing off the hook with some emergency at work all at the same time. Well guess what, it is hot dog night again.

[Cyrrex]

That is NOT true, but not for the obvious reason.  The problem with HFCS is not so much its chemical makeup.  The problem is that it is put into things that do not need it at all, and there tends to be more of it in the products that do "need" it.  Go look in beverage aisle.  Go find random soft drink A sweetened with sugar.  Now go find random soft drink B sweetened with HFCS.  The HFCS drinks always seem to be higher calorie and way sweeter for no goddamn reason.

And, well, tomato paste apparently.  Just the fact that it can even be included in tomato paste should tell you all you need to know.  It is about the corn farmers in the US and the way they are subsidized, and the way they are trying to get their fucking shit product into EVERYTHING.  HFCS is worse than sugar because of politics.

[Miasma]

Edit: oh wait

Edit2: I googled heinz tomato paste and I was impressed that google brought back the ingredients list directly on the result page sort of like how it does with weather.  I noticed it had corn syrup but then I also noticed google failed me by giving the ingredients for ketchup, not paste.

I don't know why I was fascinated by the tomato paste discussion but I can't find anything worse than citric acid in American stuff.  Even the no name cheapest generic can has 'tomato pulp' as the only ingredient.

[01101010]

That is NOT true, but not for the obvious reason.  The problem with HFCS is not so much its chemical makeup.  The problem is that it is put into things that do not need it at all, and there tends to be more of it in the products that do "need" it.  Go look in beverage aisle.  Go find random soft drink A sweetened with sugar.  Now go find random soft drink B sweetened with HFCS.  The HFCS drinks always seem to be higher calorie and way sweeter for no goddamn reason.

The reasoning behind making things sweeter is to offset the mass amounts of sodium preservative in those drinks.

[Merusk]

My Tomato paste is just like Cyrrex's, the only ingredient being Tomato's.


Like, I'm fully willing to believe the American tomato paste is full of shit and assholes, I just find it difficult to wrap my head around at the same time. You mush up tomatoes and put them into a can, it's not rocket surgery.


Then again you fuckers managed to screw up Kraft Dinner. I don't know HOW, but American made Kraft Dinner tastes like feet. To the point where I won't buy any of it that was made in the states.

Hunts is Tomatoes.
http://healthyheartmarket.com/huntstomatosaucenosaltadded.aspx

Heinz I can't find a label for.

They changed Kraft cheese powder about 10 years ago when they introduced the microwavable single-serves.  I used to love the stuff but it's really gritty and grainy now and doesn't mix with the milk and water anymore.  Probably cheaper chemical cheese flavoring.  I miss the real stuff Canadians can still get.

Saying you can't make a meal because you're home at 6:00 is an excuse you're telling yourself. I know because we used to make it ALL THE TIME.  "Oh it's after 6:30, can't cook, order a pizza."  "Oh, i want to watch this show/ play this game/ putter around the house/ read F13 instead of cook."   When you start to actually log what you're doing when you get home you find you're blowing a lot more time than you think.

It honestly doesn't take any longer to prepare a decent meal vs. a prepackaged one once you've started practicing cooking and plan a menu. The 'takes forever' part was always the deciding what to make in our house.  Plan ahead, get the meat in the fridge the night before and it takes all of 20-30 mins to do a lot of healthy meals.  

Will your kids bitch and throw a "i'm not eating that" fit sometimes? Yes. Guess what, they're not precious little angels who you should bend will to, they're assholes.  Tiny, self-absorbed pains in the ass who you'd bitch about if they weren't your genetic material.  It's your job to teach them they don't always get their way before the rest of us have to deal with them and call them out on being self-absorbed assholes. Start with meals.

Yes there'd be sugar vs HFCS, the problem is quantity not quality. Processed foods have a shit-ton of it and more gets added each year.  Our tasts acclimate to the quantity of sugar and salt in something so it doesn't taste salty anymore.  The more foods that have it the faster the tolerance builds. So MFRs have to engage in an accelerating arms race to get us to see things as 'salty' or 'sweet' vs bland when they're already carrying 2-3 times more than they need for flavoring.

[Cyrrex]

That is NOT true, but not for the obvious reason.  The problem with HFCS is not so much its chemical makeup.  The problem is that it is put into things that do not need it at all, and there tends to be more of it in the products that do "need" it.  Go look in beverage aisle.  Go find random soft drink A sweetened with sugar.  Now go find random soft drink B sweetened with HFCS.  The HFCS drinks always seem to be higher calorie and way sweeter for no goddamn reason.

The reasoning behind making things sweeter is to offset the mass amounts of sodium preservative in those drinks.

Not like that's any better, but you knew that already.  And other drinks seem to manage fine with lesser amounts of regular sugar.  The comparisons are easier to make when you look at the non-carbonated stuff.  The differences can be vast.

[Mithas]

Will your kids bitch and throw a "i'm not eating that" fit sometimes? Yes. Guess what, they're not precious little angels who you should bend will to, they're assholes.  Tiny, self-absorbed pains in the ass who you'd bitch about if they weren't your genetic material.  It's your job to teach them they don't always get their way before the rest of us have to deal with them and call them out on being self-absorbed assholes. Start with meals.

Thanks for the parenting advice. I thought my job was to be their friend until I read this.

[Chimpy]

Ugh, tomato paste. Read those labels! Stopped using ketchup when I saw Heinz, the most readily available condiment, contained High Fructose Corn Syrup. I still consume too many processed foods but there's a growing availability of natural ingredient snack food. This is Los Angeles though, your locale may be different.

Side note, if you can get your hands on it, Umami Burger's Umami Ketchup is pretty awesome.

Both Heinz (they call it "Simply Heinz", I just bought some like an hour ago) and Hunt's sell Ketchup without HFCS, they use sugar like they did for decades.

And the reason the HFCS thing took off is not just because of the corn lobby, protectionist trade policies to protect sugar cane farmers in the south from cheaper cane products from the Carribean and South America sent food companies scrambling for an alternative. HFCS just happens to be cheaper than sugar and because liquid is its normal state it is easier to use in food processing since it mixes easier.

[angry.bob]

I'll have to go look in the store next time I go shopping. It's been a couple of years since I saw that. I;m  pretty sure I'm not imagining it, but it's possible. It's also possible they changed the contents in the intervening time since we had a big push back on HFCS in foods since then. Regardless, I started making my own paste out of tomatoes. It's not hard, just really time consuming. Well more a pain in the ass because you have to flip the stuff every 20 minutes or so.

[Goreschach]

Only in America can you find people who will complain that they are too poor to be skinny.

[Sky]

There are still people who don't read labels?

Oh that's right, I was just at walmart where I get glared at because I'm taking too much time reading labels. Which is ironic because then the fat, toothless genetic mess that looked down on my researching ingredients then clogs up the entire isle by moving .001 mph with their overloaded cart of half-thawed 'frozen' food and meat well within the danger zone (daaanger zooone!).

So there are some reasons behind why healthy people get aggravated by lazy entitled people. We have to share the planet with them.

[Malakili]

Most people wouldn't know what to do with the information even if they took the time to read it anyway.

[Evildrider]

This is how you stop people from getting fat.

[Numtini]

Read those labels! Stopped using ketchup when I saw Heinz, the most readily available condiment, contained High Fructose Corn Syrup.

We noticed that the last time we were shopping. Shop and Shop has an earthy crunchy house brand and it was made with plain sugar. It tastes different and imho better, though that could be better ingredients or a different brand in general.

I'm inclined to believe the stuff about HFC not satisfying the craving for sugar based on the retro-pepsi, which I seem to drink a whole lot less of. Though mostly we don't drink soda, we drink the blood of Palestinian slaves, ie, soda-stream fizzy water.

S&S generic tomato paste is tomatoes and citric acid.

[Evildrider]

There is no substitute for Heinz Ketchup.  It has no equal.

[Signe]

I have to agree.  Heinz ketchup is yummy.  It might be because of all the stuff that's bad for you, but you can't get around it's yumminess.  I'm the only one here who uses it from time to time so I get away with buying teeny bottles of it that last a long time.  I will sub bbq sauce sometimes, but I'm sure it's got naughty things in it, too. 

If you like liquorice, you could try those very salty Scandi ones.  Fazer Tyrkisk Peber Volcano is awesome but really really hot.  Some of them from Sweden that aren't hot but just very very salty are pretty awesome too.  Dutch make good salty liquorice, too.  I'm sure you can find some of them in the Scandi and Dutch sections of your grocery store.  Wot??  Your grocery store doesn't have a Scandi or Dutch section?  Find a new grocery store!  Where else can you get your Stroopwaffels??

[TheWalrus]

I buy the Simply Heinz because it doesn't have the HFCS. Believe it or not, I think it also tastes better. I try to cut down on the HFCS anywhere I can, not because I'm super against it, but because it is in damn near every thing you buy. Like the commercials the corn lobby put out awhile ago, HFCS is just fine in moderation. The problem is we don't really get to moderate it on our end without going out of our way to do it.

[01101010]

I buy the Simply Heinz because it doesn't have the HFCS. Believe it or not, I think it also tastes better. I try to cut down on the HFCS anywhere I can, not because I'm super against it, but because it is in damn near every thing you buy. Like the commercials the corn lobby put out awhile ago, HFCS is just fine in moderation. The problem is we don't really get to moderate it on our end without going out of our way to do it.

I am in this boat as well - except for the simply Heinz. I don't eat enough ketchup to ever care about it. I been drinking Sierra Mist (cranberry if I can find it around here) for about a year now since it is one of the few to use real sugar and also is caffeine free. Not that I am against caffeine, but after redoing my diet, I cut out a lot of my excesses.

[Phildo]

Heinz makes a jalapeno ketchup that is fantastic.

On the subject of HFCS being everywhere, it is literally everywhere in the US.  Subway used to bake it into their wheat bread.  Looks like it was changed recently, but there's still sugar in all of it.

[Maven]

I saw a big advertisement on the television about that. When I heard Subway had HFCS in its bread, I immediately stopped shopping there. I really enjoyed the sandwiches I got there too for the price -- but even if they made that change, I'm not so keen to go back.

[Phildo]

It's still listed as an ingredient in lots of their meat-product.

[Chimpy]

I cut back on as much HFCS as I can, but mainly I just try to keep the calorie per serving (that I eat) low.

[tazelbain]

The issue is calories are determined by burning food. 100 calorie of broccoli = 100 calorie Caption Crunch. But our bodies don't work that way.

[Sky]

I eat lumps of coal.

[tazelbain]

And probably shit diamonds too.

[croaker69]

Will your kids bitch and throw a "i'm not eating that" fit sometimes? Yes. Guess what, they're not precious little angels who you should bend will to, they're assholes.  Tiny, self-absorbed pains in the ass who you'd bitch about if they weren't your genetic material.  It's your job to teach them they don't always get their way before the rest of us have to deal with them and call them out on being self-absorbed assholes. Start with meals.

Thanks for the parenting advice. I thought my job was to be their friend until I read this.

Here's some more since you're interested. 

Cook meals like sauce for pasta, chili, soups, braised meats, or stews on the weekend. Make 3 or 4 at once and freeze. You only trash the kitchen once and making the starch/veg for the meal takes way less time than the protein.

[Paelos]

I do all my cooking on Sundays during tax season, since that's my lone day off.

It's winter then, so stews work best, brown rice in containers is easy to make in bulk for the week, baked sweet potatoes in foil reheat in the oven fast, and I can make a quick fruit salad with no effort.