Obesity

[doodle]

I think the women hand washing clothes with a washboard would take issue with the idea that all or even most modern conveniences are a form of "false happiness."

Want washboard abs? Save money and burn inches of your waist pioneer style with the "Washboard Abs Washing System" And for a limited time, buy a full sized washboard and get two smaller kids washboards for free! Healthy fun for the whole family!

Hey...this general strategy worked for Tom Sawyer and the whitewashed fence.

[Gumby]

I think there's a lot of wisdom in doodle's observation that we're a culture that prizes complicated, automated solutions to basic problems. The quantity of ostensibly "labor-saving" gizmos and devices available is incredible, to the point of ridiculousness. For example.

Sure. It's all well and good that doodle exercises a lot. But, I think it's important to understand that obesity is not caused by a lack of exercise. For example, a paraplegic doesn't automatically become obese when they can't exercise anymore. They will likely just consume less calories. And just because people didn't use elevators or cars historically doesn't necessarily mean they exercised a lot more. Buildings were rarely taller than two stories (and almost never taller than five) and people used horses and carriages when they travelled into town.

Watch an episode or two of Downton Abbey and you'll get a glimpse of the diet and exercise routine of a wealthy landowner. People went on occasional walks and ate wholesome fatty foods. Labor was beneath them and they rarely ever broke a sweat. They had cars and drivers to shuttle them to the train station. Servants did the laundry and the house work. Historically, obesity wasn't much of a problem. This is not to say that our ancestors or the wealthy never got fat, but what it does tell us is that there are many other factors involved with obesity, beyond exercise. Exercise is probably a tiny component of obesity.

[doodle]

Gumby,

Agreed! Diet is 80% of maintaining good health and a slim figure as I said previously. Exercise does allow you to get away with a lot of additional calories (very easy to do in a society where one is surrounded by food) and still maintain a healthy weight. It is also important to remember that there are health benefits to exercise that go beyond your weight and appearance.

I don't exercise an extreme amount, I just incorporate movement into my daily life. I think a combination of the two (diet and exercise) would be the ideal approach to tackling this obesity issue.

[Gumby]

I don't exercise an extreme amount, I just incorporate movement into my daily life. I think a combination of the two (diet and exercise) would be the ideal approach to tackling this obesity issue.

Agreed. But, I still think it's wrong to assume that obese people are lazy or don't expend calories. Many obese people try to exercise, but find it too difficult. And this is understandable, since when you wear an extra hundred pounds of body weight, you are burning more calories by just moving than the rest of us. Even calorie-counting has major flaws.

Also, I'd be willing to bet that there are Mr. Money Mustaches out there who have difficulty losing weight. Exercise can make it easier to lose weight, but exercise also increases one's need and desire for calories. So, it's not nearly as simple as most people make it out to be.

[MachineGhost]

My diet is pretty bad on occasion. For example, yesterday I ate two big iced honey buns from the vending machine at work for a total of 1200 empty calories. Fortunately, I have never had an issue with getting too overweight because by foregoing a car, I burn a tremendous number of calories just getting from point A to B on a daily basis. If I want to get a donut for instance, I

I had two double cheeseburgers and a medium fry (that wasn't filled completely up, grrr!) from McDonald's yesterday.  Yuck!  The problem with eating healthy all the time (i.e. 9 servings of veggies a day) is its monotonous and gets hard to keep swallowing it all down, even though I find McDonald's never seems to live up to my memory of how good it used to taste.  I regret it now, but I was in the mood for the taste of "Amtrak microwaved snack bar food" and not something more complex and upscale.

I do find that when leaving the house its very hard to resist the allure of fast food.  There's a lot more psychologically going on with the allure than just the convenience.  Perhaps its all the TV advertising that prompts us to expect a positive psychological benefit.  If I am disciplined as I am the super-majority of the time, I get the feeling afterwards that it was a waste not to take advantage of the bountiful cornucopia out of the house, even though experience vs expectations of convenience, cost and taste doesn't align for me at any fast food place anymore place except Carl's Jr. with a coupon.

I suspect if one could actually fix a burger at home that tastes like what specialty hamburger chains serve, it would deprive them of a lot of revenue.

[Pointedstick]

Making an awesome burger at home isn't that hard. My wife and I cook 'em all the time. We take some ordinary supermarket ground beef and mix it with a bit of salt and pepper, and fashion them into patties. We fry the patties in their own juices on a cast-iron skillet, top them with cheddar cheese, add some lettuce and tomato slices, and put it all on regular supermarket-purchased buns. Tastes like heaven.

I'm sure it would be even better with grass-fed ground beef and homemade buns but you don't even need to do all that to have a delicious, inexpensive burger that beats the fast food stuff every time.

[doodle]

Unfortunately I can't eat beef after living in Europe throughout the Mad Cow scare. Watching multiple documentarys about the industrial food industry has made me even more wary. I crave a hamburger from time to time but I just can't get past the phobia. Maybe grass fed beef is a solution for me, I just don't know who to trust anymore.

[MachineGhost]

The only meaningful difference between chocolate, vanilla and strawberry Ensure is the flavor, yet rats eating the chocolate variety overate, rapidly gained fat and became metabolically ill, while rats eating the other flavors didn't (1). Furthermore, the study suggested that the food's flavor determined, in part, what amount of fatness the rats' bodies "defended."

B.S.!  Chocolate is loaded with xanthines and other substances which produce very addicting highs.

[Gumby]

The only meaningful difference between chocolate, vanilla and strawberry Ensure is the flavor, yet rats eating the chocolate variety overate, rapidly gained fat and became metabolically ill, while rats eating the other flavors didn't (1). Furthermore, the study suggested that the food's flavor determined, in part, what amount of fatness the rats' bodies "defended."

B.S.!  Chocolate is loaded with xanthines and other substances which produce very addicting highs.

Huh? You are saying the same thing as Guyenet . "Flavor" is being used loosely. Yes, of course the chocolate "flavor" contained xanthines and other substances which produce very addicting highs. That's the point! The other "flavors" didn't include those substances. (Though, technically, there probably isn't that much real "chocolate" in Ensure). This is what Food Reward is all about. The food industry is very focussed on engineering Food Reward into their products.

[MachineGhost]

Making an awesome burger at home isn't that hard. My wife and I cook 'em all the time. We take some ordinary supermarket ground beef and mix it with a bit of salt and pepper, and fashion them into patties. We fry the patties in their own juices on a cast-iron skillet, top them with cheddar cheese, add some lettuce and tomato slices, and put it all on regular supermarket-purchased buns. Tastes like heaven.

I'm sure it would be even better with grass-fed ground beef and homemade buns but you don't even need to do all that to have a delicious, inexpensive burger that beats the fast food stuff every time.

The problem I have with burgers like that is they taste like ground beef, and not something from Denny's, Jack in the Box, Five Guys, Carls Jr, In and Out, etc. nevermind the "unique" taste of McDonald's (???) or Burger King (soy in burgers).  I don't like "homemade hamburger" taste.

Even if you do somehow manage to find Grade A 30% ground chuck at the grocery store, there is still the issue of what proprietary spices/seasonings to use and what "proper" cooking equipment to get to the right taste and not shrink and plump up the burger.

Grass-fed hamburger ground beef would make it even worse, unless you prefer gamey/fishy tasting meat!

[MachineGhost]

Unfortunately I can't eat beef after living in Europe throughout the Mad Cow scare. Watching multiple documentarys about the industrial food industry has made me even more wary. I crave a hamburger from time to time but I just can't get past the phobia. Maybe grass fed beef is a solution for me, I just don't know who to trust anymore.

If you stick to ground sirloin or ground chuck, especially if you watch a butcher grind it in front of you, you wont have any issues.  "Ground beef" is a nasty conglomerate of beef muscle and potentially spinal cord and fecal matter from different cows containing both fresh ground beef and recycled ground beef.  I refuse to eat it anymore.

Fast food chains use ground chuck.  "Ground beef" is not chuck or sirloin, so I think PS is crazy if he thinks that homemade hamburger from ground beef beats most fast food joints.

[Gumby]

I'm sure it would be even better with grass-fed ground beef and homemade buns but you don't even need to do all that to have a delicious, inexpensive burger that beats the fast food stuff every time.

True. But, if you want to make a fantastic burger — better than anything you've ever had at a fast food chain — you need to grind your own beef. If you don't have a grinder, no worries, here's what you do...

Get two parts beef chuck (80% is fine), 1 part beef brisket and 1 part short rib and cut them into 1-inch cubes. Really you can mix and match a bunch of different blends (2 parts sirloin steak tips to 1 part short ribs works well too). Anyway, cut them into the 1-inch cubes and place them on a cookie sheet, spaced apart, and place the cookie sheet into the freezer for 15-20 minutes. When they come out, they should be hard but ever-so-slightly pliable. Before the pieces warm up, throw them into a food processor and do about 10 to 15 one-second pulses. When you are done, you should have small pebbly beef pieces. Dump out those pieces into little mounds and GENTLY shape the ground beef into loosely packed patties. The less you touch them the better since packing the patty will only toughen the collagen proteins as they shrink and tighten when exposed to heat. Season with salt and pepper and sear on a hot griddle. You've never had hamburgers that good.

If you use grass-fed beef, you should lower the temperature a bit and cook them a little more gently.

There's nothing like fresh-ground beef burgers. Nothing comes close. The biggest problem with getting ground beef from the supermarket is that you are just eating the "trimmings" which is the in-between parts between the various cuts of meat — the least flavorful parts of the cow. Actually, supermarket ground beef is often old dairy cows that are the least desirable.

I believe I saw somewhere that scientists have found over 1,000 different strands of DNA in a single pound of supermarket ground beef. That's not surprising since the beef is processed in enormous warehouses where thousands of cows are being processed. So, taking three cuts of beef and grinding them (or getting your butcher to grind them) will provide much tastier burgers.

And grinding bacon into the beef doesn't hurt either

[Gumby]

Grass-fed hamburger would make it even worse, unless you prefer gamey/fishy tasting meat!

Not true at all. You just need to use the right parts of the cow (brisket, short rib, etc) and cook them a little more gently. For proof, find yourself an Elevation Burger near you and try it. They grind fresh in the morning and everything is 100% grass-fed beef (i.e. no grain finishing) 100% free range, 100% ground-on-premises. One of the best fast-food burgers I've ever had. It's the fresh-grind and the specific cuts that make the most difference.

http://www.elevationburger.com

My only complaint with Elevation burger is that they use "100% heart-healthy olive oil" for cooking. Olive oil is certainly much better than cooking with PUFAs, but I don't believe their thousands-of-gallons of Bertolli olive oil are actually 100% olive oil, unbeknownst to them. If people weren't so afraid of saturated fat, they could just use the beef tallow from their own grass-fed cows, which would withstand the heat much better and give customers a healthy dose of Vitamin A & D. Oh well.

By the way, I love how this discussion of obesity has morphed into a discussion about how to get the best burgers.

[Pointedstick]

The problem I have with burgers like that is they taste like ground beef, and not something from Denny's, Jack in the Box, Five Guys, Carls Jr, In and Out, etc. nevermind the "unique" taste of McDonald's (???) or Burger King (soy in burgers).  I don't like "homemade hamburger" taste.

I guess I have the advantage that I think most fast food tastes revolting. My co-workers think I'm nuts for not wanting to guzzle pounds and pounds of In-n-Out burgers!

Gumby, that homemade ground beef sounds awesome. Where do you get your grass-fed beef in bulk from? I can't imagine you're buying small quantities given your beef-rich diet and meals.

[Gumby]

Where do you get your grass-fed beef in bulk from? I can't imagine you're buying small quantities given your beef-rich diet and meals.

If I were smart, I'd probably buy a share in a grass fed cow either on my own or with a group of people. I'm not that organized though (and as you know, I just started this diet a few months ago).  I prefer the fresh beef over frozen so locally sourced is a priority for me. When you freeze and then thaw beef, the water in the cells breaks out and the beef loses moisture.

I was lucky enough to find a local butcher that sources directly from local farmers (i.e. no middleman). It really comes down to researching local butchers and talking to them. Either that or traveling to local farms and buying shares of a cow each season, but I don't have the motivation to do that right now.

[KevinW]

I suspect if one could actually fix a burger at home that tastes like what specialty hamburger chains serve, it would deprive them of a lot of revenue.

IMO recipes like this one come pretty close:
http://www.grilling24x7.com/double.shtml

The touches that seem to matter, in terms of making homemade burgers resemble fast food ones, are: rehydrated minced onion; using a lot of salt; and zapping the assembled burger in the microwave to steam the bun and melt the cheese through.

[dualstow]

I guess I have the advantage that I think most fast food tastes revolting. My co-workers think I'm nuts for not wanting to guzzle pounds and pounds of In-n-Out burgers!

You are. 
Well, I'm biased. Coming from NY state, I always viewed California as the promised land, and even though I've only lived in the worst part of San Francisco (Tenderloin), I still feel that way. In-and-Out, being part of CA, is part of the promised land, and their burgers are lovely, IMO.

Just the same, I'm going to try Kevin's linked recipe w/ my grass feed beef.

[Pointedstick]

Promise of high taxes and bad government, maybe. *grumble grumble* Bad weather, too. 72 and sunny all the time? Ugh! No variation! No moisture! No cloud cover! No snow or awesome thunderstorms!

Maybe I'm just a weirdo.

[dualstow]

Promise of high taxes and bad government, maybe. *grumble grumble* Bad weather, too. 72 and sunny all the time? Ugh! No variation! No moisture! No cloud cover! No snow or awesome thunderstorms!

Maybe I'm just a weirdo.

I do love my snow and my thunderstorms.

[notsheigetz]

I had to get a "biometric screening" at work the other day to save money on my health insurance (is this a trend for the future - first your employer and then the government requiring something like this every year?)

This as close as I've been to the medical system in about five years. The bad (and not unexpected) news - I'm officially obese, but just slightly. The good news, everything else was good - blood pressure, cholesterol, sugar, so I'm just going to gently work on getting back under the obese line and not worry too much about it.  My dad, now 93, has probably been officially obese for about 20 years now.

[Gumby]

Where do you get your grass-fed beef in bulk from? I can't imagine you're buying small quantities given your beef-rich diet and meals.

Also I tend to buy some of the cheaper cuts. Tri-tips, Feather steaks, Top Blade/Flat Iron, stew meat, etc. You don't need to buy a Porterhouse to have a good meal. A good butcher can really help educate you on those cuts. I've learned a lot about meats and cooking just from talking to the butcher. And of course, organ meat is pretty cheap!

In terms of getting a good butcher for local grass fed meats, that can be a challenge. Some butchers are clueless about the difference and think that you need to source grain-finished beef for good taste. That's only true if you don't know how to cook grass-fed beef. When you find a butcher that understands the difference between grain-fed beef and 100% grass-fed beef, you'll know it — the one's who understand the difference are pretty passionate about it.

[Gumby]

For those who want to learn why grass-fed beef tastes better than grain-fed meat, here's a great Harvard lecture by Dan Barber — of Blue Hill restaurant in NYC — on the flavor of 100% grass fed meat:

Harvard University: Cultivating Flavor: A Recipe for the Recipe | Lecture 11 (2010)

(Skip to 15:00 for the beginning of Dan Barber's lecture)

If you watch this lecture, it all begins to make sense. Nothing comes close to the flavor of properly raised, properly slaughtered, properly chilled/aged, and properly prepared meats.

Barber points out that even the standard USDA law-mandated post-slaughter 31.5º chilling process can ruin the taste of grass-fed meats, since the grass-fed meats don't have the huge layer of fat to insulate the cuts from the extreme cold and don't go through rigor mortis properly. Fascinating stuff. So, to truly experience grass-fed meat, you not only need to have proper pasture-rotation, haying, etc. but you also need to have a modified chilling and aging technique. Very difficult in this day and age to find that.

[Gumby]

I made it to the end of that lecture. Absolutely fascinating stuff. Barber shows that there is new evidence linking high Brix (sugar) levels in plants — that both we and herbivores like to eat — that corresponds with anti-cancer properties. So, our natural instinct for sweet sugary foods may very well be part of an evolutionary instinct that all animals have to find the best-tasting and healthiest plants, anti-oxidants, flavonoids and phytochemicals. Furthermore, when herbivores eat the sweetest grasses, their meats are more nutritious as well.

In our modern world that natural high-Brix-seeking instinct has been hijacked by the food industry with high fructose corn syrup and refined sugars. Pretty amazing stuff. We think of our cravings for sugary and fatty foods as a defect, but it seems all animals were meant to thrive on that instinct in the right environment.

[dualstow]

Grass fed does NOT taste better, IMO, than corn fed. It's just better for you.
I buy it every Saturday, though.

[Gumby]

Grass fed does NOT taste better, IMO, than corn fed. It's just better for you.
I buy it every Saturday, though.

Again, if you listen to the lecture, Barber clearly explains that grass-fed tastes infinitely better than corn fed when it's chilled and aged properly. Barber is one of the top chefs in the country, so I tend to believe him.

The problem is that the corn industry wrote the laws on how meat is aged (at 31.5º) so as to make grass-fed unpalatable. So, if you get grass-fed meat that tastes worse than corn-fed, it's because the slaughterhouse shocked the meat with too much cold. This isn't the slaughterhouse's fault, per se, since it isn't legally allowed to chill grass-fed meat properly in the US (this is why grass fed meat in Argentina tastes so much better, as they slowly chill the carcass at a warmer temperature). In the US, the proteins are exposed to too much cold too quickly and rigor mortis doesn't set in properly. This is called "cold shortening". With corn-fed, there is so much fat around the meat that the extra fat acts as a winter jacket, protecting the meat from the freezing temperatures.

Immediately after slaughter, many changes take place in muscle that convert muscle to meat. One of the changes is the contraction and stiffening of muscle known as rigor mortis. Muscle is very tender at the time of slaughter. However, as rigor mortis begins, muscle becomes progressively less tender until rigor mortis is complete. In the case of beef, 6 to 12 hours are required for the completion of rigor mortis, whereas in the case of pork, only 1 to 6 hours are required.

The carcass is chilled immediately after slaughter to prevent spoilage. If the carcass is chilled too rapidly, the result is "cold shortening" and subsequent toughness. Cold shortening occurs when the muscle is chilled to less than 60°F before the completion of rigor mortis. If the carcass is frozen before completion of rigor mortis, the result is "thaw rigor" and subsequently extremely tough meat. Under normal chilling conditions, it appears that unprotected carcasses with less than 0.50 inch of fat over the rib eye probably will have some reduced tenderness because of cold shortening. Aging a carcass affected by cold shortening or thaw rigor will not alleviate the detrimental effects on tenderness caused by these two conditions. To ensure more tender meat, home slaughtered animals and wild game should be protected from very rapid cooling during the first 6-12 hours after death.

Source: http://www.extension.umn.edu/distributi ... .html#cold

Again, the extra fat surrounding corn-fed meat protects it from the rapid cold shortening. Grass-fed meat is ruined by this rapid chilling.

Basically the laws are purposefully written that all grass-fed meat is given a sort of freezer burn in the US. If the laws were different, grass-fed meat would be far more desirable than corn-fed and the corn industry would have a big problem on their hands.