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Life Wisdom
i spent the last few days watching you tube videos
about people who weigh three and four hundred even eight hundred pounds
it's no secret that America is getting fatter, it's estimated that sixty four percent
of americans are overweight
with about half of those being clinically obese
even childhood obesity is skyrocketing
and now one in three children is over weight.
So clearly most of us are struggling with weight gain
and we're struggling against afood industry that seems dedicated to
selling us more crappy foods.
So recently we did a video recommending that people eat more like a our
grandparents ate when they were our age
and in this video I'm going to tell you how.
A quick look at obesity rates in this country
might help explain why we would recommend that we eat more like our
grandparents.
Prior to the 1950s, less than ten percent of Americans were obese
and that rate increased steadily until the 1980s when we saw
a pretty steep increase in. obesity.
At this point the obesity rate is three times higher than it was just fifty
years ago
so what's so different about the way the grandma ate when she was our age and the
way we're eating now
let's take a look
Grandma ate real food and that was prepared in a kitchen
but most modern processed foods are actually created in a laboratory by
scientists
a quick look at the back of the food label will tell you whether that food is
made of food or is made of chemicals
things like monosodium glutamate (MSG)
high fructose corn syrup
polydimethylsiloxane, brominated vegetable oil, EDTA, TBHQ,
most of these chemicals didn't even exist
when your grandma was your age.
now this rules out all the fast food the processed food junk foods
just add water instant meals or microwave meals
but it doesn't necessarily rule out bread pasta hamburgers pizza french fries
or any of the foods that you really want to eat.
You just have to make sure that they're actually made of real foods and
were prepared in a kitchen
rather than in a laboratory by scientists.
Grandma's food mostly came from her own backyard
or maybe her neighbor's backyard
but most modern foods
travel anywhere from thirteen hundred to five thousand miles
from the farm to your table.
grandma may have every once in a while gotten to enjoy some food that someone
brought to her or maybe the milkman had to travel thirty or forty miles to make
his delivery
but most modern foods are traveling significantly larger distances
and most people aren't eating foods that were grown locally
In 1870 one hundred percent of the apples consumed in iowa were
grown in Iowa, but in 1999 only fifteen percent of the
apples consumed in Iowa
were actually grown in iowa.
the nutritional content of a food decreases over time
and it decreases significantly when foods travel a significantly
long distance.
in many cases chemicals are even used to preserve the foods.
civil engineers use the term food miles to describe how this mass
transportation of food
affects the environment and our energy usage
your best bet is to try as much as you can to eat locally grown foods
and depending on where you live this can be somewhat difficult
the website www.localharvest.org
will actually let you search for farmers markets by zip code
Another option would be growing your only food or even starting shared
community gardens in your city.
Grandma's food came out of
her oven
or maybe she ate them right out of the dirt.
but most modern processed foods come out of drive-through windows cardboard
boxes
plastic wrap
or even electronics snack-dispensing robots
close to one hundred percent of the food that grandma ate when she was your age
she actually had to cook and prepare herself
maybe she was lucky enough to have someone else do the cooking
but the point is that
if most of the figure eating is coming out of a microwave or plastic container
and you're not feeling particularly vibrant and healthy,
then that could be your problem
and if your mouth is gaping open at the thought of having to actually cook, then
you need to snap out of it
millions of people are doing it right now in most of them aren't as fat as we
are
and millions of people have survived exclusively on cooking their own food
before us
so just suck it up
Grandma wasn't exposed to hundreds of food advertisements day after day
but we endure temptation after temptation every time we turn on the
TV
walk down the street or even go out to a ball game
next time you're watching tv
count how many commercials you see for junk foods or restaurants
and pay attention to what kind of foods there featuring in those advertisements
chances are most of those foods didn't even exist when your grandma was your
age
once i started becoming aware of how relentless their marketing is
and how much they assumed that i would just be a "good little overeating
consumer"
it became a lot easier for me to recognize those temptations and
consciously divert my attention.
grandma only ate when she was hungry
or when she could afford food, depending on her situation.
but in 2000 americans were eating an average of five hundred
calories more than they were eating in the 1960s,
and that fact alone can explain the obesity epidemic.
But why are we eating so much more food?
of course there are a lot of different factors like the temptations i mentioned
earlier
but we should also remember that junk and processed foods
are full of Empty Calories and that means these are calories that turn
straight into fat but they're not going to fill you up they're not going to leave
you satisfied and you're going to be hungry again pretty shortly after eating them.
Until only a few decades ago
food was grown and supplied by people, hundreds of thousands of them
but most modern foods
are actually manufactured by machines
or grown on factory farms by small numbers of people.
Since 1999 over three hundred thousand farmers have gone out
of business
in1980, it was estimated that eighty percent of the meat consumed in
America
was being produced by only four companies,
and it's also been estimated that up to ninety percent of the foods found in
grocery stores are produced by only ten companies
In the 60s and 70s Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butts,
orchestrated significant changes in federal farming subsidies
and food manufacturing policies,
all in an effort to boost US production and income.
The system ended up fueling large agribusiness producers at the expense of
small farmers
Butts was also a supporter of chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizers
perhaps it's presumptuous to link the significant changes in food production
policies
with the skyrocketing obesity rates only a decade later
but i'm going to do it anyway
your best bet is to opt for local or organic foods as much as possible.
Grandma got a workout preparing her food. Whether she was milking cows, churning
butter
or working in the garden all day
she was burning a whole lot more calories than we do
walking to and from the car
or handing our credit card to the cashier
the farther back in time you go
the more physical labor was required
just for everyday survival
dishwashers microwaves and other modern conveniences are
convenient
but the lack of physical exercise is certainly taking its toll
whether you take up gardening or just try to cook more meals at home
there's an added bonus that you're going to be burning some calories in the
process
cooking at home can even be a fun family activity too where you get the kids
involved in helping you cook and even helping you clean
Grandma ate her food at a table
I'm being pretty presumptuous here, because i don't really know where your grandma ate
her food
but i do know that she didn't eat in a car or while sitting on a counch in
front of a television or computer screen
It's likely that most households ate meals together
and chances are they actually sat at at table
The point here is to actually sit down
and relax while you eat your meal,
eating while you're stressed out or while you're multitasking or running
errands can literally cause you to gain more weight. When you're stressed out
your body is releasing cortisol and cortisol inhibits digestion
so if you can actually sit down relax enjoy your meal
you're not only more likely to feel full and satisfied afterwards but it's also
going to help you digest that food better and it's going to contribute to
you not being such a fat ***.
Grandma was a meal planner and chances are she had more than just one mouth to feed.
She was constantly in a state of preparing food and thinking of what she
was going to serve everybody
and she's probably kind of a Ninja of meal planning,
it became so subconscious that she really didn't even have to think about it that
much
the point here is that most of us eat
whatever we drive past or whatever we see we have
tons and tons of junk food
at our beck and call anytime we wanted
but grandma didn't have that she just out of necessity prepared foods
and people were a lot healthier because of it
so if you're horrified at the thought of putting meals together just get over
yourself and realize
it's just not that big of a deal.
Grandma ate vegetables gosh darn it!
But according to the UDSA
less than ten percent of the average American's caloric intake
is coming from fruits and vegetables.
In our video on the average American diet
we explained that twenty five percent of the average caloric intake is coming
from added fats, so these are things like margarine
processed, partially hyrdogenated oils,
and other foods which literally didn't even exist when your grandma was your age
It's also estimated that up two 17 percent of our coloric intake
is coming from added sugar,
so Americans are literally eating more sugar than fruits and vegetables
combined. If there's one thing that you take from this video it's to please
please please, Eat more vegetables!!
Many people say that they can't eat healthy because they just
cant afford it
but i think that's a big load of bull
and in a future video we're going to do the price comparison fast foods verses
the raw ingredients it would take to make them yourself.
i personally think don't eat very much meat
but it's not because of philosophical reasons
it's because modern factory farming methods makes really unhealthy meat.
in a future video i'm gonna talk more about factory farming and what's wrong
with the meat we eat.
if there's something that you'd like to see us make a video about
please leave me a comment and let me know what that is
thank you so much for watching today
please be sure to give me a thumbs up if you liked this video,
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to see the original video where we recommended that people eat more like
our grandparents did when they were our age,
check out the video a diet that really works
how did Americans get so fat?
To find out more check out our video on the Average American Diet.
If you've ever like you just can't resist junk foods
it could be because they're literally designed to be addictive
to find out more check out our video on junk food addiction.
to see my complete playlist of videos on weight loss nutrition and wellness
check out the Ultimate Corrina Playlist.