Butrfly_Nirvana wrote:I feel bad for the people on these shows because obviously something is not right within their lives/selves besides the numbers on the scales. I think that if they were to instead be shown the lessons Buddha taught they could find the same comfort we have, and in effect apply it and see even more lasting results. Just my two cents.
The sad thing is that, apart from the extreme cases, it's not that much about overeating, but about a wrong cultural conditioning regarding what to eat and in what ratio.
In almost all of the recent traditional cultures, in the past 10 000 years or more, people lived on mostly starches (like grains and potato), vegetables and fruits, and they didn't have any problem with obesity; or with any other ills of civilization, for that matter. Even today this can be (and has been) verified in the rural areas of the eastern countries.
The metabolic pathway of transforming carbohydrates into fat is called "de novo lipogenesis", and it doesn't work well in humans. We tend to burn the extra calories from carbohydrates with the process of thermogenesis, that is, as body heat. On the other hand, fat can be readily stored by the body as fat. And there is a conflict between carbohydrates and fats. Since carbohydrate is the preferred energy source of the body, the presence of sugars and starches in the diet prevents the usage of the fat depositories, and at the same time encourages the deposition of dietary fat in the fatty tissue. The main agent of this process is insulin, which is also the main agent in the carbohydrate metabolism. This is the half-truth basis for the low-carb diets like the Atkins. But the truth is that the macronutrient what people should reduce in the diet is not carbohydrate, but fat. We have very little actual fat-requirements in adulthood, and it is just for omega-6 and omega-3 fats, like the omega-3 fat ALA, which can be converted by the body to EPA and DHA (though, the current excess consumption of omega-6 fats, i.e. as vegetable oils, hinders this metabolic pathway).
Basically, if one follows a carbohydrates-based diet, there is no need to limit the food-intake or to do strenuous exercises just for the sake of keeping a healthy body weight. The problem with the "low-fat" diet is that they are usually not "low-fat"
at all, due to the culturally conditioned inclusion of heaps and heaps of animal-based foods and refined fatty products, like margarine and vegetable oils. Most (staple) unprocessed plant-based foods have naturally low fat content, and a lot of fiber, resulting in less calorie-density.
According to my best understanding, the science is already pretty clear on this subject, backed up with not just theoretical knowledge, but also with epidemiological studies and controlled experiments. There are some minor conflicting organizations, like the Atkins group, the Weston Price Foundation and some interest-groups of the big-businesses (i.e. Center for Consumer Freedom). But the main issue is that nutrition, burdened with habits and consumerism, is a huge boat that needs a lot of time to change direction. Even with the tobacco case, we needed several decades to get from the "advertisements with doctors" state to the "banned in public places and sold with warnings" state. Meanwhile, people suffer, and often blame themselves needlessly.
"Just as in the great ocean there is but one taste — the taste of salt — so in this Doctrine and Discipline there is but one taste — the taste of freedom"