{"id":376,"date":"2012-07-11T16:38:34","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T20:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.borg.org\/?p=376"},"modified":"2012-07-11T16:38:34","modified_gmt":"2012-07-11T20:38:34","slug":"why-the-obesity-epidemic-my-3-part-express-explanation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/?p=376","title":{"rendered":"Why the Obesity Epidemic? My 3-Part EXPRESS Explanation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many have been puzzled over this.\u00a0 Well, it is becoming clear.\u00a0 Here is my express explanation, in three easy steps.<\/p>\n

These three things came together:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A guy at the University of Minnesota (the inventor of the K-Ration) made a persuasive–but incorrect!–argument: the cholesterol clogging our arteries is caused by eating cholesterol.\u00a0 Seems reasonable.\u00a0 Instead of meat–and particularly animal fats–he told us we should eat carbohydrates. If we must have butter, have margarine instead. If we want lard, have Crisco instead.\u00a0 Turns out this was all very wrong.\u00a0 Large quantities of refined starches, and particularly refined sugar, are very bad for us.<\/li>\n
  2. President Nixon and Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz changed US agricultural policy to encourage grain production, particularly corn production.<\/li>\n
  3. Industrialization reached its logical conclusion. This aspect is two part:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    First, industrial food was invented. (“Industrial food”, isn’t that an oxymoron?) Clever people looked for something to do with all that cheap corn.\u00a0 We don’t prepare our own food anymore so we don’t what we are eating.\u00a0 Notably, high fructose corn sugar was invented, and was cheap<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    Second, we don’t labor anymore, electric motors and internal combustion engines do our physical work, and most of us are now sedentary. But we are a species designed to move; getting a lot of exercise will forgive a lot of sins.\u00a0 For example, a bike messenger is not going to become obese and get type 2 diabetes, no matter what s\/he eats.\u00a0 Heart disease, maybe, but not obese.\u00a0 Unfortunately very few of us are bike messengers.\u00a0 Some of us go to the gym, but we drive to the gym, when we get around to it.<\/p>\n

    That’s it.\u00a0 Yes, there are other factors (for example, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle<\/em> set us up to want to believe the worst about meat, and particularly lard), but those three factors were sufficient.\u00a0 Don’t believe me (as you reach for your non-fat, fructose sweetened yogurt). Start investigating, maybe Google some of the tags attached to this post.<\/p>\n

    -kb, the Kent who resents that he was lied to when assured that a big plate of pasta is a healthful meal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Many have been puzzled over this.\u00a0 Well, it is becoming clear.\u00a0 Here is my express explanation, in three easy steps. These three things came together: A guy at the University of Minnesota (the inventor of the K-Ration) made a persuasive–but incorrect!–argument: the cholesterol clogging our arteries is caused by eating cholesterol.\u00a0 Seems reasonable.\u00a0 Instead of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[11,53,75,107,121,163,165,188,190,217,263,319],"class_list":["post-376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-tech","tag-ancel-keys","tag-carboydrates","tag-crisco","tag-fat","tag-gary-taubes","tag-john-yudkin","tag-k-ration","tag-margarine","tag-meat","tag-obesity","tag-robert-h-lustig","tag-type-2-diabetes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}