Obesity

[Blue Hills]

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...

Pringles were of course made by/for Proctor and Gamble, best known for soap powder.
I was introduced to this factoid by a marketing course - when the big P&G did still hand-craft/extrude them.

 

[Reynard]

And doesn't the advert for Pringles contain the gem of "once you pop, you can't stop"

I mean I know I picked Pringles out of thin air to compare to the raspberries, but then that popped into my head...

 

[Milzy]

Some great posts here but most obese people I know are not from poverty. They are the ones with quite a bit of wealth. Mortgages paid off, both with high salary jobs resulting in large amounts of expendable cash. They are always buying takeaways or eating out. They are always at coffee/cake shops where ever they go. Not all are lazy some are running & cycling almost every night but they are still way over weight because you can never out run/ride a poor diet with portions too large.

 

[Blue Hills]

. Not all are lazy some are running & cycling almost every night but they are still way over weight because you can never out run/ride a poor diet with portions too large.

A certain truth in this - cycling is so damn **ing efficient.
myfitnesspal highlights this.
We all know cyclists bulging though lycra - some alarmingly so.
On their lightweight bikes.

 

[KnittyNorah]

Not all are lazy some are running & cycling almost every night but they are still way over weight because you can never out run/ride a poor diet with portions too large.

Portion control is a sadly-neglected factor in obesity (and also in increasing weight in the unhealthily-underweight).
But baggage from so many things in our lives is hung on the food that we eat, that separating them all out one from the other, to arrive at a universal solution is simply impossible. Providing 'generous helpings', and accepting them, is culturally-mediated (in lots of cultures!) and a difficult habit to break. In fact for some it might even be impossible to break without causing deep offence somewhere in the family.

 

[Reynard]

I certainly agree with the whole culture thing @KnittyNorah - Being a child of two immigrants, one from Belgium and one from Poland. I've certainly had plenty of first-hand experience of that.

Polish and German (my paternal grandmother's family were ethnic German) hospitality is *very* generous. I've had experience of Poland before and after the Iron Curtain came down, and certainly, after, the emphasis was that if you could afford it, you ate all the things that were once difficult to get under the communist system. Which basically meant a lot of meat (mainly in the form of hams and sausages) and a lot of sweet food. Added to the fact that Polish food does tend towards the stodgy at best...

Mum and I ruffled a fair few feathers when we pointed out the distinct lack of vegetable matter - we were told in no uncertain terms " but that's what poor people eat, and we're not poor"

The sausages and cakes were, admittedly, very nice, but our digestive systems certainly didn't appreciate it, and neither did our waistlines. Oh yes, and this was staying with the cousin of Red Velour Tracksuit fame... (that I mentioned up thread)

N.B. The diet under the communist system was heavily skewed towards dairy, vegetables and potatoes.

 

[KnittyNorah]

we pointed out the distinct lack of vegetable matter - we were told in no uncertain terms " but that's what poor people eat, and we're not poor"

N.B. The diet under the communist system was heavily skewed towards dairy, vegetables and potatoes.

That sounds quite similar, although a different sort of timeline, to my parents generation who were brought up in the aftermath of WW1 and the depression, and then were adults during WW2 and rationing. It was only the relatively wealthy who could eat any sort of meat or poultry regularly. At least during WW2, rationing in the UK resulted in a much better diet, nutritionally-speaking, than previously for many people, especially poor pregnant women, babies and children, as it was a very healthy one overall, and they had special allowances.
Come the end of rationing though (which BTW did not finish until 1954 - almost 10 years after WW2 ended!), everyone was more than ready, in the 'new prosperity' of the 1950s, to have loaded tables groaning with the - in hindsight somewhat-questionable - delights of industrially-produced processed foodstuffs.
And here we are today.

 

[winjim]

I certainly agree with the whole culture thing @KnittyNorah - Being a child of two immigrants, one from Belgium and one from Poland. I've certainly had plenty of first-hand experience of that.

Polish and German (my paternal grandmother's family were ethnic German) hospitality is *very* generous. I've had experience of Poland before and after the Iron Curtain came down, and certainly, after, the emphasis was that if you could afford it, you ate all the things that were once difficult to get under the communist system. Which basically meant a lot of meat (mainly in the form of hams and sausages) and a lot of sweet food. Added to the fact that Polish food does tend towards the stodgy at best...

Mum and I ruffled a fair few feathers when we pointed out the distinct lack of vegetable matter - we were told in no uncertain terms " but that's what poor people eat, and we're not poor"

The sausages and cakes were, admittedly, very nice, but our digestive systems certainly didn't appreciate it, and neither did our waistlines. Oh yes, and this was staying with the cousin of Red Velour Tracksuit fame... (that I mentioned up thread)

N.B. The diet under the communist system was heavily skewed towards dairy, vegetables and potatoes.

Reminds me of this scene.


View: https://youtu.be/um2p4GlEbKg

 

[Reynard]

That sounds quite similar, although a different sort of timeline, to my parents generation who were brought up in the aftermath of WW1 and the depression, and then were adults during WW2 and rationing. It was only the relatively wealthy who could eat any sort of meat or poultry regularly. At least during WW2, rationing in the UK resulted in a much better diet, nutritionally-speaking, than previously for many people, especially poor pregnant women, babies and children, as it was a very healthy one overall, and they had special allowances.
Come the end of rationing though (which BTW did not finish until 1954 - almost 10 years after WW2 ended!), everyone was more than ready, in the 'new prosperity' of the 1950s, to have loaded tables groaning with the - in hindsight somewhat-questionable - delights of industrially-produced processed foodstuffs.
And here we are today.

I'm a keen student of WW2 history, both military and social. That includes the food of the era.

I've got several wartime and immediately post-war cookery books, and yes, I've tried some of the recipes. They're actually not that bad to be honest, and really rather healthy. Although the ingredients are limited, low in fat and sugar, and, if made to-the-letter, the end result can be a touch bland. (N.B. That's one of the reasons that condiments were always off ration)

It's easy to see why the pendulum then swung so far the other way in the intervening decades - the early convenience products were developed by people who lived through the wartime years and had a good handle on what would be appealing to the general public.

And of course, the chorleywood process brought soft, light and white bread to everyone, a product that couldn't have been any further from the wholemeal National Loaf. Although it was in the main developed as a necessity because the UK couldn't afford to import large quantities of high protein wheat from the US and Canada.

If you'll just excuse me, I just need to go and rescue tomorrow's bread from the oven...

 

[BoldonLad]

That sounds quite similar, although a different sort of timeline, to my parents generation who were brought up in the aftermath of WW1 and the depression, and then were adults during WW2 and rationing. It was only the relatively wealthy who could eat any sort of meat or poultry regularly. At least during WW2, rationing in the UK resulted in a much better diet, nutritionally-speaking, than previously for many people, especially poor pregnant women, babies and children, as it was a very healthy one overall, and they had special allowances.
Come the end of rationing though (which BTW did not finish until 1954 - almost 10 years after WW2 ended!), everyone was more than ready, in the 'new prosperity' of the 1950s, to have loaded tables groaning with the - in hindsight somewhat-questionable - delights of industrially-produced processed foodstuffs.
And here we are today.

So, was there an obesity epidemic in the late 1950s/1960s? There certainly was not in the area I lived. Being of 1947 vintage, I was a teenager by the 1960's. I somehow missed the epidemic of drugs and free love too.

 

[Blue Hills]

So, was there an obesity epidemic in the late 1950s/1960s? There certainly was not in the area I lived. Being of 1947 vintage, I was a teenager by the 1960's. I somehow missed the epidemic of drugs and free love too.

The obesity epidemic came later.
As for the swinging sixties, fret not on what you may have missed, didn't arrive most places to any degree until the 70s.
The "scene" in london was a very small world.
Folk outside that calmed themselves with boxed meals.

 

[KnittyNorah]

I'm a keen student of WW2 history, both military and social. That includes the food of the era.

I've got several wartime and immediately post-war cookery books, and yes, I've tried some of the recipes. They're actually not that bad to be honest, and really rather healthy. Although the ingredients are limited, low in fat and sugar, and, if made to-the-letter, the end result can be a touch bland. (N.B. That's one of the reasons that condiments were always off ration)

It's easy to see why the pendulum then swung so far the other way in the intervening decades - the early convenience products were developed by people who lived through the wartime years and had a good handle on what would be appealing to the general public.

And of course, the chorleywood process brought soft, light and white bread to everyone, a product that couldn't have been any further from the wholemeal National Loaf. Although it was in the main developed as a necessity because the UK couldn't afford to import large quantities of high protein wheat from the US and Canada.

If you'll just excuse me, I just need to go and rescue tomorrow's bread from the oven...

My mother's old cookbooks from WW2 and immediately post WW2 were in use in our house for a great many years, although with a much wider variety of veggies (dad was a keen gardener and a member of a couple of postal seed exchanges which had 'continental' links), butter rather than margarine, more meat, fresh eggs rather than dried, fresh milk and cream rather than National Dried Milk, and so on and so forth. Also ample herbs and spices, both fresh and dried. I remember her explaining to me, when I was abut 10 or 11, that Chorleywood process bread, soft and white, was a huge luxury for many people who'd previously had nice bread only on baking day then increasingly stale and difficult-to-chew stuff until the next week ... at the time I was questioning why people - lots of my friend's families for instance, when I went to tea with them - actually seemed to like soft white sliced bread from a packet.

I think I might still have an old Be-Ro recipe book from the 1940s or 50s, somewhere ...

 

[Reynard]

I think I might still have an old Be-Ro recipe book from the 1940s or 50s, somewhere ...

Guilty as charged on that one. Plus I have an early 50's edition of Good Housekeeping - which still does get used.

Actually, some of the older books are still eminently useful, although things do get a bit weird in the 60s and into the 70s - Margueritte Patten's "Cookery in Colour," anyone?

Although there's definitely a trend with cookery books themselves as well, becoming more "coffee table" type in the last two or three decades or so - almost entertainment because they tie into TV series, rather than being a guide to the basics full of easy-to-make everyday recipes. I'm a big fan of the Hairy Bikers and the Two Fat Ladies - their books have lovely recipes in them, but they do require a basic knowledge of kitchen skills. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but the novice cook seems to have been left behind on the book front in recent years.

There was a series of "Sainsbury's Book of..." that came out in the mid 80s that are very good. I remember buying some of them with my pocket money as a schoolgirl, and then picking up most of the others subsequently in charity shops. My copy of "Sainsbury's Book of Baking" is *very* well used, as is my copy of "Teatime Favourites". Marks & Spencer also put out some really good cookery books, though they were a little bit more posh than the Sainsbury's ones.

 

[battered]

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.

My comment was a reply to "there's someone at the top organising it and everyone else falls in line" which is pretty well the definition of a conspiracy. Especially next to the comment "the tobacco companies knew, the oil companies knew". There isn't. Like I said, no bugger I've met in 30 years is that bloody smart. On the contrary, pissups and breweries spring to mind.

As for deliberately making food addictive, I wish I could. I'd clean up. What I can do is listen to consumers and give them what they want. This is routine, obviously. In as much as "the industry knows, just like oil and tobacco" then , yes, some people eat too many biscuits. We know this. Did we set out to make this happen? No. Some people buy too many shoes. Who blames Jimmy Choo for this? Should he stop making pretty shoes and go back to safety boots so women stop spending shedloads of money? No, and the biscuit manufacturing industry isn't going to force everyone to eat unattractive food because a section of the population eat too many. The Digestive has been around since, when? Pre war, probably. Were they putting the crack cocaine in then, or is it a recent thing?

 

[battered]

I would like to ask you - as an adult, not as a 15 yo - what the food industry is doing to help prevent food poverty in areas where many of the basic ingredients which enable them to make such huge profits often at the expense of the health of the population, are produced by low-wage earners and their families.

Various things. I can't speak for the whole industry, but I've seen food bank donations, homeless shelter donations, staff shops selling food cheap ly, and staff being given food for free or for a nominal sum at the gate. As an example, one bakery I know of lets all its staff buy up to 3 loaves for 10p each every day. We all know the flour in there costs more than that. I ve also known companies that assist in education, work experience, and other child development stuff. Where does your food come from, etc.

Alice and my friend live very rurally in an area of large scale arable farming and horticulture where wages are low and a large percentage of the population are recent immigrants without fluent English, living in substandard housing in villages with no public transport.
Poor people there don't live 'on local estates' - there are none as city dwellers know them - they share cramped multi-family or multi-generational accommodation, and there is nowhere for anyone - rich or poor - to go and buy packets and tins at short notice without having their own transport.
So the list of shop-bought ingredients was largely inaccessible to all without significant notice at least, and all of it was provided by the school although naturally pupils were welcome to bring in their own stuff if they wished. or were able.
Poor people in that sort of area are much more likely to have access to fruits and vegetables which are discarded either accidentally or deliberately for a range of reasons, or which are available 'for the picking' and a blind eye turned to it at least occasionally and on a small scale. Alice knew perfectly well that the kids from the poorest families would have much easier access to that sort of stuff than to a jar of this, a tin of that, two packets of the other.
As one of the lucky ones with a mother who at least worked , albeit as a cook (not precisely a high-salary profession unless one is a celebrity cook ...), by standing up to the teacher who was clearly an entrenched townie, she was actually standing up for the poorest of the children in her class, and others who will doubtless come after her. In an area of extensive arable farming and horticulture, a bunch of basic veggies can often be picked up literally off the road- or at least off farm driveways as they exit to the road, while waiting for the school bus in the morning, or while walking home from the bus in the afternoon.

I grew up in an area such as you describe. I never routinely saw any food in gateways. The only free food I picked up was roadkill.