I have just watched the Jamie Oliver series Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and just about fell of my chair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G2bHmXNBSA

Is the policy of NOT allowing primary school aged children to use a knife and fork at primary school a dastardly plan to ensure that the convenience food restaurant chains (a major cause of the obesity health epidemic around the world) are influencing the way young children not to eat properly unless its their product? To eat properly you need the skills to get the food from the plate to the mouth.

Does the USDA really think that pizza is a whole food considering these small children were having this for breakfast?

If folks can't even cook and prepare food from basic principles without the appropriate knowledge that even French fries are made from potatoes, let alone know that potatoes are grown in the soil, what on earth is going to happen in a economic or natural environmental related emergency where these just in time, highly automated and even perhaps unsustainable industrial food processing and distribution and delivery networks might not be available.

Or are we conditioning this generation for a Soylent Green future?

The mashed potato episode. OMG. What peel a spud!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFIF6_UBCbc

Freakonomics - a book and blog I read frequently - is intended to question the "conventional wisdom" in entertaining and interesting ways. Unfortunately, it's also highly selective in the use of data sets so that it always comes to the "opposite" or "opposing" view. That's what sells books.

Obesity is a direct, causative (not correlated) factor in heart disease as well as diabetes. There is ample clinical research to this conclusion.

Yes, we often hear about the healthy athlete running along and dropping dead from a previously undiagnosed heart condition. That't not heart disease, that's a heart defect. Very different.

You don't need a lot of research or tables of data to know the effects of being overweight on most (not all, most) people who get called in for a cardiac. They are fat. In fact, I can't think of a single cardiac arrest victim I've ever hauled out of the woods who WASN'T overweight. I only run the calls where there's a rescue/extrication/assist the squad component, so my experience is with people in slightly strenuous situations, not sitting at home and standing up to go pee and having the heart give out - but that happens too.

All I'm saying is take care of your heart. That's it.

We absolutely love - and live - the Food Revolution.

Remember, guys, I'm the one who weighed in at - and I just confirmed this with a review of my old medical records - 231 lbs on my 5' 8" frame in December 2008.

I'm still 5' 8" and I'm at or about 175 and still (slowly) dropping, will be at 165.

And I credit two authors with the diet guidance I need and live with every day:

Jamie Oliver - currently with the TV show "food revolution"
Micheal Pollan - author of many book, but the one that mattered most was "The Omnivore's Dillema".

Yes, I agree absolutely.

But defining obesity only by the classical BMI calculations clearly does not tell the whole picture, in particular for muscular individuals.


I'm 5'10", 207 lbs, which is a figure I am happy to say is slowly dropping. To be classified as "normal" by the BMI classification I must be down to 175 or lower. I don't see that happening without loosing quite a bit of muscle mass - my bulge in the middle is NOT 30 pounds of fat. No way. With regards to fitness, performance, stamina, strength and overall health I absolutely does not fit into the "obese" category, which I am bordering according to the BMI classification. I am happy to say I don't look fat - though there is a bulge in the middle if you look for it.


I work on loosing the "bulge", though. Excessive tummy fat is a pretty good indicator on the risk of developing diabetes, which runs in my family. Loosing the bulge is my best weight indicator - but when that happens my BMI will still classify me as "overweight".

Howdy all,

I'm an RN on a telemetry unit. I won't attempt to make a cause and effect relationship between heart disease and obesity. I'll leave that for minds far superior to mine. I do know that it sure seems that a large percentage of my patients with heart disease are also obese and quite a few have type II diabetes. Seems like there is some sort of connection ......

LW