Obesity

[Reynard]

Certainly. Children are in school for 6 hours a day, 5 days. What are you taking out of their day to put this in?

A lot of this is basic science, general knowledge plus stuff that should be covered in Personal and Social Education (or whatever it is called these days).

 

[BoldonLad]

Surely the parents have the main responsibility over the schools? If you have children the onus must be on them to teach the basics.

Good luck with that one

 

[Blue Hills]

Give over with the conspiracy theory. I've been in the food industry for over 30 years, working at all levels, and trust me, no bugger in it is that bloody clever.

The statement was:
>>In all of my nearly 40 years in the Food Industry I have never ever met a single person who is looking to engineer a certain Fat/Salt ratio into a product to create that pleasure point to sell more.

I don't think you need to be that clever at all to do that.

No conspiracy theories at all my end in thinking that the manufacturers of foods try to do that.

Methinks you protest too much.

Are you seriously trying to tell me/us that food companies go out of their way to ensure that folk don't want to eat more of their stuff?

I rather worry what you have been eating - I skimmed that BBC prog but I believe it made reference to brain changes.

You'll be trying to tell us next that "more-ish" is a non thing and that food manufacturers are conducting some sort of aversion therapy via their products to make us hate their stuff.

I'd be frankly amazed if there isn't a stack of documents/emails from lots of companies addressing the question of folk coming back for more of their stuff.

Some of it pretty transparent and damning.

It will come out in time.

Suggest you watch the prog and read a few books on ultra processed foods.

And get in tune with your body when you do eat the stuff.

I stress that I do now and then - am not a hair-shirt character.

 

[Blue Hills]

Surely the parents have the main responsibility over the schools? If you have children the onus must be on them to teach the basics.

well yes and no.
My parents weren't exactly into freshly prepared stuff - apart from peeling spuds for chips - and the veg was definitely overcooked.
A lot of the rot started in the 60s and 70s.
I am sure many adults of that era have an inbuilt suspicion of fresh stuff when there appear to be tech solutions - anyone who was young in that era will surely remember all the excited talk of how we would all in the bright new future be popping food pills like astronauts. As a kid I remember being a tad enchanted by this space age solution since the stuff I ate/was fed wasn't exactly tasty and interesting.
My mum still eats lots of junk.
Has a pretty low appreciation of what is healthy - is very suspicious of anything "different".
I owe my awareness of healthy eating - and it took a while - to moving away to university, fending for myself and sharing a flat with someone who told us to eat lots of veg for economy and other reasons.
It is in society's interest to teach basic food intelligence, whatever the inclinations of whatever parents.

edited for typo.

 

[matticus]

This was our bible. I hope it's still in print, despite "Grant" ??? being an obsolete term.

 

[Blue Hills]

am reading a book about student life in london in the 70s.
when white basmati was considered some sort of exotic health food for self-flagellating eccentrics and such stuff had to be sought out.
Things are getting better in some ways - there is hope.

 

[Reynard]

View attachment 592018
This was our bible. I hope it's still in print, despite "Grant" ??? being an obsolete term.

It's available as a downloadable *.PDF

"How to Boil an Egg: 184 simple recipes for one" is another cook book of the same genre.

We had a book club at junior school, where you could subscribe for the year and then buy books at a reduced price. One of the first books I bought was "The Piccolo Cook Book" by Marguerite Patten. And I still have it, you know... (It's also sold under the title The Junior Cook Book)

 

[Fab Foodie]

The statement was:
>>In all of my nearly 40 years in the Food Industry I have never ever met a single person who is looking to engineer a certain Fat/Salt ratio into a product to create that pleasure point to sell more.

I don't think you need to be that clever at all to do that.

No conspiracy theories at all my end in thinking that the manufacturers of foods try to do that.

Methinks you protest too much.

Are you seriously trying to tell me/us that food companies go out of their way to ensure that folk don't want to eat more of their stuff?

I rather worry what you have been eating - I skimmed that BBC prog but I believe it made reference to brain changes.

You'll be trying to tell us next that "more-ish" is a non thing and that food manufacturers are conducting some sort of aversion therapy via their products to make us hate their stuff.

I'd be frankly amazed if there isn't a stack of documents/emails from lots of companies addressing the question of folk coming back for more of their stuff.

Some of it pretty transparent and damning.

It will come out in time.

Suggest you watch the prog and read a few books on ultra processed foods.

And get in tune with your body when you do eat the stuff.

I stress that I do now and then - am not a hair-shirt character.

Well between @battered and me that's 70 years of experience around the industry.
Of course we want to make products that people like and want to buy. Of course we/our customers want to make foods that taste good and that people want to consume regularly. That's done in a variety of ways in all different products, good bad and indifferent.
But people seem to think that we sit around with some magic formulas to sell as much salt/fat/sugar/unhealthiness as possible, or we have some magic ingredient(s) to make food addictive to children and we sit in secret designing how to do this...and it simply isn't true.
All food however it is produced even when cooked at home is made to have nice visuals, good flavour/aroma/texture etc. there are myriad food cues that make some products more appealing than others, the Industry is no different be it human, or animals, we all have preferences. It's why some go to 'The star of India' when pothers prefer the 'Taj Mahal' or people prefer the chips or batter at 'Joe's Plaice' rather than 'The Cod Father'.
Yes, we try to make foods that people like/want. But we're not setting-out to make them 'addictive'. Addiction comes from more than just consuming a certain type of food. I can see however there's a fine line.

'Moreishness' is most definitely is a thing, it's a natural thing. Understanding it is important both to sell products and also to understand overconsumption. People have been using moreishness since forever.

 

[Reynard]

You end up with something way better than the overpriced additive added tomato slop sold as ready sauce in many supermarkets.

A couple of tins of plum tomatoes, a large onion - finely chopped, half a head of garlic - finely chopped, some oregano, salt, black pepper, a glug of olive oil and let that simmer slowly for a couple of hours. You won't get a better authentic Italian tomato sauce than that.

Courtesy of a Sicilian bloke I hung around with at uni.

 

[BoldonLad]

Well between @battered and me that's 70 years of experience around the industry.
Of course we want to make products that people like and want to buy. Of course we/our customers want to make foods that taste good and that people want to consume regularly. That's done in a variety of ways in all different products, good bad and indifferent.
But people seem to think that we sit around with some magic formulas to sell as much salt/fat/sugar/unhealthiness as possible, or we have some magic ingredient(s) to make food addictive to children and we sit in secret designing how to do this...and it simply isn't true.
All food however it is produced even when cooked at home is made to have nice visuals, good flavour/aroma/texture etc. there are myriad food cues that make some products more appealing than others, the Industry is no different be it human, or animals, we all have preferences. It's why some go to 'The star of India' when pothers prefer the 'Taj Mahal' or people prefer the chips or batter at 'Joe's Plaice' rather than 'The Cod Father'.
Yes, we try to make foods that people like/want. But we're not setting-out to make them 'addictive'. Addiction comes from more than just consuming a certain type of food. I can see however there's a fine line.

'Moreishness' is most definitely is a thing, it's a natural thing. Understanding it is important both to sell products and also to understand overconsumption. People have been using moreishness since forever.

Good defence.

I agree by the way.

 

[Blue Hills]

A couple of tins of plum tomatoes, a large onion - finely chopped, half a head of garlic - finely chopped, some oregano, salt, black pepper, a glug of olive oil and let that simmer slowly for a couple of hours. You won't get a better authentic Italian tomato sauce than that.

Courtesy of a Sicilian bloke I hung around with at uni.

sod the two hours.
I used to know an italian (actually sicilian as well) in london through cycling - every evening, despite living in a cramped bedsit with one other person, he cooked in an oven for about two hours I think. Maybe more.
Madness - italians do have a good attitude to food in many ways but can be extremely anal about it - and can be more narrow-minded than the most narrow-minded "traditional" working class brit northerner.
The tinned tomato is a thing of wonder though - I was pretty old before I realised what they were for - opened a few tins when younger and emptied the sad looking contents onto a plate.
I reckon you can make a perfectly decent sauce while the pasta is cooking.
which of course means that opening a ready sauce is no time-saving.
(or maybe I'm easily pleased)

 

[Blue Hills]

But people seem to think that we sit around with some magic formulas to sell as much salt/fat/sugar/unhealthiness as possible,

with respect no-one in the entire thread has I think suggested that the industry is setting out to damage health as a primary aim.
Something of a straw man/conspiracy theory.
Nor has anyone suggested that putin is behind it all.

 

[Reynard]

sod the two hours.
I used to know an italian in london through cycling - every evening, despite living in a cramped bedsit with one other person, he cooked in an oven for about two hours I think. Maybe more.
Madness - italians do have a good attitude to food in many ways but can be extremely anal about it - and can be more narrow-minded than the most narrow-minded "traditional" working class brit northerner.
The tinned tomato is a thing of wonder though - I was pretty old before I realised what they were for - opened a few tins when younger and emptied the sad looking contents onto a plate.
I reckon you can make a perfectly decent sauce while the pasta is cooking.
(or maybe I'm easily pleased)

Hah! Tell me about it! Put ten Italians into a room and they will never agree on how best to cook a particular dish - except to say that their Nonna's spaghetti / cannelloni / aubergine parmiggiana / whatever is the best and that everyone else is cooking it wrong.

Sure, you can make a very decent pasta sauce in about ten minutes, but there's something about that long, slow cooking that just lifts the flavour to another level.

 

[Blue Hills]

Hah! Tell me about it! Put ten Italians into a room and they will never agree on how best to cook a particular dish - except to say that their Nonna's spaghetti / cannelloni / aubergine parmiggiana / whatever is the best and that everyone else is cooking it wrong.

yep
the
"just like mamma used to make" has a real basis in fact - not just a comedy routine.
I well remember an italian telling me that pasta can't be brown.
They were introduced to that via sainsburys I think and their 70s student clientele.
Italians are riddled with rules about food.
The basis of much of their stuff is of course the (wondrous) tomato.
But it came to them pretty late.
I well remember some recipe bollocks from Italy claiming that a certain recipe was several centuries old.
It used tomatoes.
A fair few Italians have a dodgy ethnocentric view of history.
This recipe supposedly pre-dated the introduction of the tomato to Italy.

 

[Reynard]

Yes, we try to make foods that people like/want. But we're not setting-out to make them 'addictive'. Addiction comes from more than just consuming a certain type of food. I can see however there's a fine line.

'Moreishness' is most definitely is a thing, it's a natural thing. Understanding it is important both to sell products and also to understand overconsumption. People have been using moreishness since forever.

The line is indeed a fine one - as with a lot of other things. But a consequence, no matter how unintentional, still has to be taken into account.

Also, there is moreishness and moreishness. There is a big difference between scarfing a punnet of raspberries and sticking a whole tube of pringles down the hatch...