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It's assumptions like these that drive the need for rigorous nutritional science initiatives.

• amalag 14y ago
  So Michele Obama's attempt to counter obesity with exercise for children and healthy fresh cooked food needs to be examined rigorously through the lens of a nutritional science initiative? We might discover that exercise makes you more fat or fresh vegetables contain an unknown chemical which makes kids fat? Again people don't want to cook simple healthy food and are more interested in the next four hour body guru telling them that they can eat lots of meat and no grains or some other crazy thing.
  • frankus 14y ago
    I agree with your comments on the benefits of cooking as many meals as possible from scratch, and on the idea that it clearly was possible for people decades and centuries ago to avoid getting fat. So absent some pervasive non-dietary effect, we should be able to stay thin by eating like our grandparents. On the other hand, we don't want to be spending limited resources on things that don't solve the problem at hand. For instance, as the American Heart Association and American College of Sports Medicine stated: “It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling.” If we tell people to go running during their lunch hour, and then they go eat at MacDonald's because they don't have time to cook, it's probably not helping the situation.