One thing suggested earlier in the thread is that "most" people remain healthy on a high processed carb diet.
You know, given 300+ million people for a statistic, this might average out to accurate. But we know already that genetics have a great deal to do with things. Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at Rockefeller University, once said in an interview:
Quote:
It turns out that that weight increase isn’t uniform across the population, and there’s actually really good epidemiologic evidence to suggest that. I think that a lot of the weight gain is concentrated in specific ethnic groups.
...I think that what we’re seeing now is ethnic groups that are predisposed to obesity are now getting access to unlimited calories. And I think that has a lot to do with that weight increase. And there’s some evidence to support that but it’s not definitive. Actually a lot of the epidemiologic data that you would really want to understand things like this is lacking.
...it turns out actually that these really obese kids are concentrated in particular ethnic groups and the gene pools are different in different ethnic groups.
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I mention this to sort of accompany the following personal observation:
Of the ~25 people in my semi-immediate family; and of the ~25 people I know best; I believe only two are genuinely healthy, by which I mean, "free of any presenting disease and/or combined-symptom-group". This would be my cousin TJ and his wife; both were 'natural' bodybuilders until fairly recently (when they quit competing); both eat low-carb and nutrient-rich and both are fairly young (mid-late 20s).
It has been one of the most astounding things to me personally, that the sheer enormity of the % of the people I know are not healthy. My parents and I once had this discussion and it expanded to many other family members at a gathering. They were all basically insisting that by the time you hit your 30s it was perfectly normal for 'something to go wrong' because of age and to need surgery or treatment/ medication for one thing or another.
I was aghast, and insisting this was completely wrong and ridiculous. And yet at 42 I was the only person in the house of a couple dozen that was not missing an internal body part; I was the only person that was not on chronic medication for something; I was the only person without multiple chronic symptom-complaints (such as odd rashes, back problems, chronic headaches); etc. Now, since I also, unfortunately, was by far the fattest person in the room, and quite obviously had my own 'disease' of 'obesity' (or its underlying causes), I was a fine one to talk (as this hit in my early-mid 20s).
I have often sat in the car at the local super-walmart for a short time, waiting for someone who just ran in real quick that I drove there, and watching people come in and out, sometimes choosing a cut-off age to not go above/below for the casual count. I have counted in my head, just as a quick glance, the number of people who seem obese vs. morbidly obese vs. normal vs. overly-skinny. The numbers are the kind of thing that back in California where I grew up, I would not have believed. I mean really, I would not have believed it. In my home culture where surfing and sailing and skating and biking are extremely common, where shorts and tans are the norm much of the year, I wouldn't have seen more than a tiny fraction of this. Then again, consider the social issues; when I got fat in CA, I didn't even want to leave the house. It was a huge thing, no pun intended, to be that fat in that environment. Here, it is not such a huge thing; fat people are
everywhere. And I don't just mean overweight, I mean REALLY FAT.
Now I'm not sure why this is. But in a small city where there is almost nothing for this and the outlying areas but that one store -- so nearly everybody goes through there -- a fairly random sampling of population strolling by shows the vast, vast majority as overweight, a shocking percentage of those morbidly obese, and most the remainder overly skinny--by which I mean, the "skin and bones" kind that tells you that person is genetically skinny and they are probably going to BE skinny until they fall over dead of something else. The number of "normal sized" people was so low each time I've done this out of curiosity that it actually kind of upset me; it just made me feel like, "Something is so, so profoundly wrong here."
But the base of the population here is Irish and Native American. As opposed to home in CA where there was a very big mix of racial backgrounds. I'm an estimated 14 nationalities including those so I'm too big a mutt to figure out, but I think those two are high majority here. So it's possible that the 'combination' of
* available
and affordable fresh produce
* varying genetic mix of the population
* stronger cultural bias against being fat, which might mean more likelihood fat people avoid public places
could be some of the factors related to my home town (Ojai, CA, or 'ventura county') seeming, as a casual personal observation, a lot "less fat" than here in NE Oklahoma.
I can't agree with the idea that "most people are healthy on a high processed carbs diet." Research is starting to show that even many children have indicators of heart disease and growing insulin resistance, and the thing is, just because someone has "not yet keeled over" of something does not make them healthy by any means, it just makes their disease state or symptoms not easily observable without careful questioning and testing. So I think it is a very big and dangerous 'assumption' that 'most people are healthy on a high processed carb diet'. I think even in a group of people of mostly normal size and seemingly decent health, there may be a whole variety of physical ailments that for truly healthy people would not exist; and likely lots of "silent" symptoms of "something to come".
By far the majority of people I know are battling a variety of things. I am the only woman over 30 in my family (the majority of the members local are women over 30) not on thyroid medication. (And maybe I should be, but I'm offended at the idea of medication [a little Type-A, am I] and hoping to find a way to improve my health AND that possible issue through natural means.) And some are alcoholics (I consider this a disease), some are on depression medication, the list goes on. The fact that my only 'presenting' issue, when on lowcarb, is that I'm ridiculously fat (though this is gradually reducing), is kind of amazing.
In fact my whole family made it clear to me that the fact that I had not "yet" had cancer, gallbladder problems, heart disease, or some other issue, especially given [a] my weight, and [b] that my mom died at 37 (when I was 9) of lung&brain cancer, was pretty much astronomically improbable, and likely indicated one of these would be falling on me out of the sky Any Minute Now, which simply made me laugh at them (in the hopes no part of my subconscious took that seriously).
Perhaps in other parts of the world than the tiny group of my family, people eat high-carb for the long term and are just perfectly healthy with it. Perhaps in other cultural/racial groupings than my small town in Oklahoma, people eat high-carb for the long term and are not dominantly obese to morbidly obese from it. But in my environment, it is perfectly obvious that a high processed carb diet is hurting the majority, if not the vast majority, of the people I know.
But yeah, it helps with that other elimination too...
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