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A bone to pick for fitness [Article]

Posted by Pascal Landshoeft

Apr 2, 2018 10:00:00 AM

A bone to pick for fitness

A bone to pick for fitness

It can be quite confusing to know what to eat and why. You will find conflicting information. This can lead to losing track of the big picture. This article connects the big picture with the choices you make every day. It is based on the book "A bone to pick" by Mark Rittmann. You will learn how conscious choices about your diet improve performance and happiness. You will also learn what you can right now to get ahead.

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The choices we make every day

 

Change begins with the choices you make every day. There is not this one big event that changes everything. You are what you do, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day. Your individual diet choices impact the overall picture. This holds also true for your diet and health. The big picture currently looks bad. This is especially true for the US.

Nearly 70.000 people die from diabetes 2 every year. Diabetes 2 is a condition which usually roots in poor nutrition. It is thus preventable. You can decide actively to heighten or lower the risk of getting it. If Americans only ate one extra serving of fruit a day 30.000 fewer people would die each year from cardiovascular diseases.

If you want a fairer, healthier world, food is one of the areas to make a start. The book Biting the hands that feed us gives you a deeper look at what is currently going wrong. This is an article to get you started.

 

When do you start thinking about food differently?

 

I have never given much thought to what I eat. Why do I eat what I eat? How much do I spend on it? Is it making me better? Most importantly, where does it come from? When I was in my teens I just shoveled the food into my mouth. My metabolism and Judo did the rest to keep me slim. My twenties were my wasted decade in terms of fitness. Studying did no good for my health and belly. Guinness, Dominos, and Fish & Chips made me grow. Just in the wrong directions. Maybe you have experienced the same and want to lose weight now.

At the end of my twenties, I started running. I ran my first marathon in Dublin and lost 15kg in half a year. My resistance to proper dieting continued from 2013 to 2016. I ran three marathons, but my performance did not increase. The penny did not drop until my wife got into keto dieting. In preparation for our wedding in 2017, I was able to shed 15kg while lifting more and more in the gym. Since then I have been looking closer into what I eat and where it comes from. Some of the revelations are shocking.

 

What is the food industry currently doing?

 

The food industry is a business. You might not think about it as with cars and houses as the money you spent is not a lot in one buy. Still, you buy food every day. The big shopping every week means big money to companies. Some brands are Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola.

Businesses strive to optimize profits. To optimize profits, you increase revenues and cut cost. One major tool to increase revenue is marketing. All the companies mentioned have huge marketing budgets. You will at least have seen one of their advertisements. Two major tools to decrease cost are labor costs and product quality. Putting your production in a country with low labor costs is one way. Selling it in a market where prices are high is smart business.

Making a profit is not inherently bad. Companies create jobs and innovation. The comfort you enjoy reading this blog post stems from pioneering and risk-taking. Still, you have a responsibility, as your demand determines which behavior gets rewarded.

A can of soda is as sugary as a cup of coffee with nine teaspoons of sugar in it. The ten biggest producers of sugar in the world in 2015 in thousand metric tons were:

 

  1. Brazil 739.267
  2. India 341.200
  3. China 125.536
  4. Thailand 100.096
  5. Pakistan 63.750
  6. Mexico 61.182
  7. Colombia 34.876
  8. Indonesia 33.700
  9. Philippines 31.874
  10. The United States 27.906

 

The graphic below is based on data from the World bank in 2011. Except for grey, the darker the color the poorer the people. You can see that there is a correlation between the countries which are producing and poverty levels. Of course, this is a very crude method of making a point by comparing different data from different years in this way.

 

The book "Price of Inequality" goes into the topic. The big picture is that countries which consume are better off than the ones who produce food.

The average amount of meat consumed in America is twice as high as globally. To keep up with demand, food producers use all kind of tricks. As a result, you eat meat which is full of antibiotics and growth hormones. You run the highest risk of consuming growth hormones when you eat beef.

Officially it is illegal in the US to treat chicken with growth hormones. For beef and pork, it is allowed and regulated. The risk of growth hormones in your meat causing damage to you is relatively low. This assumes that producers of meat play fair. There have been several meat scandals in the past which can make you doubt. Once you create an environment that asks for unnatural amounts of meat the quality will suffer.

 

What can you change about your diet?

 

Since my wife and I are more careful with what we eat, we are healthier, happier and slimmer. There are small changes you can put in place right away which have an impact.

The first thing you can do is to limit your intake of fizzy drinks. These sugar bombs have low nutritional value. This means that when you consume them they do not give you a lot of energy. If you are looking for a boost to stay awake, coffee with butter is a better option. By cutting out sugary drinks you make your family healthier and also drive down demand for sugar.

Another change you can start is to cook yourself. Cooking yourself means more control of what goes into your food. There is less of a chance of antibiotics, growth hormones or of other pollution in your food. You can make a conscious choice of sourcing your food locally from the butcher and market. Besides, you will also get a few more social interactions, as shopping at these places helps the local community.

Starting to cook also saves you money. A family of four might spend $28 for a meal at McDonald's. That is roughly the price of two Big Macs, a cheeseburger, some chicken nuggets, fries and a few sodas. A roasted chicken, vegetables, salad, and milk come in at 14$. It takes more time to cook and you can turn this into a family effort. Avoid that mommy has to do everything by herself. Dad can prepare the vegetables while the kids season the season the chicken. Mom prepares the salad and does everything which could potentially burn the little one's hands.

While this is what can be done at the family level, governments can also act to fight obesity. The Mexican government introduced a 10 percent tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and an 8 percent tax on junk food in 2014. This was shortly after Mexico became officially the most obese country in the world.

 

Conclusion

 

Food is something you have to take care of every day. When you are more informed about the food you can make better choices to be healthy and happy. This does not mean that you can never feast on a Big Mac again. Be mindful of your choices and what they do to your health. Taking more responsibility in the kitchen will lead to you taking more responsibility for yourself. This gets you in control. Once you fell in control, good things will come from it.

 

Further reading

 

 

 

Topics: Food & Diet, Fitness, Diet