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103 responses total.

I'm still used to thinking of myself as a fairly active young person who
doesn't really have to watch what he eats too much.  This isn't true anymore,
but I'm only slowly getting into thinking about "eating healthy".  Actually,
Valerie probably isn't talking so much about me, though I certainly don't eat
as healthily as she does or as I should.

probably because they *like* the cheez-dipt deep-fried grease balls
more than the rabit food.

"Tase equally good" is a subjective judgement. Perhaps the
healthier choices don't taste as good to them.

Taste is acquired, learned. Being an even older fogey than
Jan, I waked up a while ago to the necessity of watching what
I eat. So I've been making a conscious effort to eat healthier,
and I find that healthier stuff comes to taste better as I get
used to it. But it doesn't necessarily taste all that good in
the beginning.

(#2 slipped in)

Several years ago my wife and I decided that eating good food was
important to us even though it costs more.  Most of what we eat
these days comes from the co-op and I have found that most of their
food tastes better than the Krogers counterpart.  We make *all* of
our own bread, cookies, etc. and I can only say the food has been
nothing short of fantastic!  Most of the credit also has to go to
my wife, who has become a great cook over the years despite her
telling me she was not interested in cooking when we were married.

Healthy food is boaring. Junk food is fun. I see the same situation
with people that are in my family. But the negatives for good food
are around too. I once asked my mother why she purchased some 
junky items and her reply was cost. Good food takes time and effort
and is not regularly found in a restaurant. 

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OK, you ask a weird question, you get a serious response, Valerie.

Here's an economists' answer:  It has to do with implicit discounting.
Of course, people may place different values on their lives (not to mention
different values on the satisfaction derived from eating junk food).  But,
however you value your life, it makes a big difference, *when* the increased
risk of death occurs.  If the danger of junk food was such that each time
you eat some, you incur a small risk of being immediately crushed by a
giant weight...maybe a lot of people would forgo junk food.  But if it
causes an equivalent risk 20 years from now, people may feel that is not
so bad.  That makes economic sense, just as it might make sense to prefer
being given $100  right now over being given $1000 20 years from now.

The rate at which you convert future utility (disutility, risk, etc) into
current is your discount rate--equivalent to an interest rate.  People have
done various pyschological experiments and found out that criminals,
sociopaths, various categories of alientated people, have measurably higher
discount rates.  In other words, the future matters less to them.  It is in
fact true that murderers tend to eat more twinkies than ordinary people. 
There is a plausible and an implausible direction of causation related to that
phenomenon.

By the way, I eat a lot of junk food.

Oh please Valerie, enough with the healthier-than-thou!  Maybe the person ate
"healthy" all week, and not feels he's entitled to splurge.  No one ever said
that you can never eat something with any particular frequency that
nutritionists would consider unhealthy to eat all the time.  Your question
is the same as asking "Why do people sky dive?"

You slipped in with #7.

Well, if it is really true that the utility derived from consumption of
greaseballs is exactly identical to that of rabbit food, as you explain
in #7, then my answer doesn't really apply.  I'm skeptical about the premise,
but if it is really true then the only explanation is that there is some
revealed positive utility in the increased health risk.  People are worried
about living too long and being lonely in old age?  Of course risk does have
a weird positive utility in some cases--or at least being scared does--such
as in skydiving or something.  The Japanese like to eat a kind of poisonous
fish that sometimes kills the people who eat it.  Maybe there is a little
thrill in that.  I don't really see it, myself, and I sure don't see much
thrill in the possibility of having a heart attack years from now.

Many people equate 'healthy' with raw carrot sticks, steamed broccoli,
and nothing else.   That's utterly untrue, of course, but it means that
'healthy' = 'less satisfying' to many people.  

*I* know better, and yet, when I'm in a restaurant, I'll be tempted to
order junk food.  Sometimes I do.

I've always been fond of someone's description of the Pritikin Diet:
"If it tastes good, spit it out."
 
But what I really want to know is, which restaurant in town is 
serving the cheese-dipped deep-fried greaseballs.  Mmm-mmm!

  I think the premise is false that the dishes people contemplate are
"equally good."  In some restaurants, the majority of the dishes sound
good, and a bunch even sound *really* good.  The dishes may be sound
good in different ways, and in different degrees, so they're not really
*equally* good.

  I might also consider if it would go with side dishes I want,
how long it takes to make, whether it would be good as leftovers,
serving sizes, or how long it will appease my appetite.

  There are also many different factors in what's "healthy;" it's not
just about calories or fat content.  I might also think about immediate
digestive consequences (heartburn, gas, etc.), what nutrients I think I
could use that day, how it might affect things on its way back out, how
it will affect exercising, and so on.  Sometimes a cheese-dipped deep-
fried greaseball can be a good choice!

Oil is essential to taste sequencing in many foods.  This is why low-fat
chocolates have always gotten the thumbs-down from chocolate fans.  When it
comes right down to it, fat is a large part of taste.

I've always wondered why foods that are bad for you should taste good. This
seems to me to be very piss-poor design. Foods that are healthy should
register as tasting good, and foods that are unhealthy should taste worse,
with poisons and toxins having the foulest taste.

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If you're a hunter-gatherer, it makes more sense to eat, say, a fat wild
pig than carrot sticks. There is simply much more energy in a wild pig. 
Today's health problems simply show that sometimes too much of a good thing
is bad.

People these days do not know what is "healthy" and what is "unhealthy." 
They think healthy is carrot sticks and unhealthy is everything else. I have
lost 50 pounds over the past year or so while gaining muscle mass and I have
researched nutrition, weight-loss, and proper diet quite extensively. There
are a few important notes:

1) The most important number to look out for in food is percentage of 
   calories from fat. For example, if total calories is 300 and fat calories
   is 100, then the percentage of calories from fat is 33%. Many Americans 
   consume more than 30%, 35% or even 40% of their calories from fat. No more
   than 30% of your calories should be from fat. I try to keep it under 10%
   but almost always under 20%. Think of it this way: The less this critical
   number is, the more you can eat. I still eat like a horse but just 
   different kinds of foods.
2) Exercise. Even something "tame" like walking helps. The best fat-burning
   exercises are probably running, rowing-machines, stair-climbers and bikes.
3) Build muscle. This is something people often fail to do. Muscle requires
   much more calories to maintain than fat. The more muscle mass you have, the
   more you can eat without gaining weight (or the quicker you will lose
   weight). Women especially fail to do this because some think muscles are
   not sexy. Check out how men drool at dancers and determine if muscles are
   sexy.
4) Substitute foods. Eat *smart*. For example, the only "junk food" I eat
   now are pretzels and low-fat granola bars. Instead of steaks and beef
   now I eat very lean chicken/turkey breasts. Brown rice is also excellent
   in terms of nutrition, fiber and low-fat content. 

Keep in mind that whatever satisfaction you get from stuffing your face will
last no more than 10-15 minutes a day; You have to live with your body for
24 hours a day. Eating smart and working out allows me to still eat like
a horse, treat myself to fat foods on the weekends with my friends, all while
looking and feeling a lot better. 

The problem is education. Americans do not realize they can eat "healthy"
food which tastes great, eat as much as they did before, and look and feel
a lot better. Oh, I forgot one point which is pretty important:

5) Eat at proper times. Do not skip breakfast!!! Your body needs energy in
   the morning in order to start burning energy. It sounds stupid but it's 
   true. Do not eat after 7pm -- have dinner before 7pm or even before 6pm.
   That pizza you have at 10pm will probably all turn to fat. Guaranteed.
   Have many small, healthy meals and snacks throughout the day. Do not wait
   until you are starving to eat because then you will eat more and more fat
   foods. It took me a while to get all this down but now it's easy. Now if
   I don't eat by 6:30pm or so, I get very, very hungry and after I eat before
   7pm I never get hungry afterwards.

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"Bunny food" is healthy but it's not the only healthy food available.

Another amazing thing is that Americans like to take healthy food and turn
it into something full of fat. Potato products are probably the best example.
Mashed potatos and baked potatos are excellent but toss the cream, butter and
gravy on and you got some pretty fat stuff. Americans also have an 
infatuation with putting cheese and/or fatty cream sauce on practically
everything. They ruin the natural flavor of the food and make healthy food
into a plate of oil, grease and blubber. Quite disgusting.

  French Fries must represent the culmination of a quest for the least
healthy way to eat potatoes.  Salt is a good unhealthy topper, but I'm
surprised cheese sauce isn't a more popular fry dip than than ketchup. :-)

  Interesting info about nutrition, Jemmie...I didn't consider that
muscle tissue requires more calories for maintenance.

I find that as long as I'm getting enough excercize I can eat pretty much
whatever I want, whenever I want.  It seems, though, that with each more
interesting job that I get, I have less time than I did with the previous one.
Also, now that I'm working in Livonia and living in Ann Arbor, biking to work
is no longer an option, so I'm getting rather out of shape, and for the first
time in my life really feeling like I need to be more careful about what I
eat.  Then again, it's probably better one of these days for me to figure out
how to fit biking back into my schedule.

   so what do you do about eating after 7 pm if you're on a night schedule?
my first meal generally gets eaten sometime between 2 and 4 pm, my second meal
sometime between 9 and 11 pm, and my third meal sometime between 3 and 6 am.
is that 7 pm thing related to your least active time of day, or does it have
more to do with how humans are designed?

My schedule shifts around quite a bit, since I don't have any sort of set
schedule at work to force me to get up in the morning.  The last few days,
7 pm has been about lunch time.  As I type this I'm eating dinner at 5:30 AM.
It probably is a little too close to bedtime for it to be a really good time
for eating, but I find that if I go to bed hungry I tend to wake up with a
headache.

#20: When something like Olestra comes out, french fries may be "healthy"
     to consume. Now, I avoid it like the plague. 

     Muscle requires *ALOT* more calories to maintain than fat. Fat is your
     body's way of storing energy. It would not make sense to fat to be
     high maintenance. Building and toning muscles is one of the smartest
     and most effective ways to lose or maintain your weight because it works
     to burn fat even when you are not.

#21: You're under 20 years old, right? When you pass about 21, it's all 
     downhill. :-) 

#22: 7pm has to do with when you go to bed. I usually go to bed around
     12am, so I try not to eat close to bedtime. If you work the nightshift
     and go to bed at, say, 9am, I would recommend that you eat no later than
     4am or so. Eating a big meal close to bedtime pretty much ensures that
     the meal will turn into fat. 

     If you eat a lot of fast food, there is good fast food and bad fast food.
     The worst fast food: pizza, burgers, french fries, etc. The better
     fast foods: some subs at Subway, bagels without the fat cream cheese,
     bunny food (salad with lite dressing, etc).

One pretty significant diet guideline which few people know is that a diet
high in fiber may help you lose weight. The reason is that fiber helps fat
go through your digestive system without being absorbed. Which foods are
high in fiber? Whole wheat breads, most vegetables and fruits, some cereals,
brown rice. Which foods have little or no fiber? Meats, white rice, white
bread, most junk foods (except pretzels, which have some fiber). Given a 
choice, I always pick the high fiber foods. It works.

Some foods are totally amazing in how absolutely destructive they are
nutritionally: pizza (especially stuffed crust, extra cheese, lots of meat),
fried cheese sticks, Wendy's burgers have got to be the greasiest things on
earth (especially the double and triple styles), fried chicken (fried 
anything, really), ice cream (frozen yogourt is much better). These are some
of the most popular foods in this country. It is a surprise that 1/3 of the
people in this country are overweight?

(It struck me that Jemmie was looking admirably slim and trim
the last time I saw him...)

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The regimen Jemmie describes is sound. It certainly works for
him; the results speak for themselves. It's similar to the
regimen I try to follow myself, with variable tenacity and
hence lesser effect. (The effect is also lesser, no doubt,
because of my greater age.)

I do like a small snack (but no major pigging out) not too long
before bedtime, as it helps me get to sleep and keeps me from
waking up hungry in the middle of the night.

Back to Valerie's orginal question.  I often feel like eating in a restaurant
is a "special occasion" and since I eat fairly healthily most of the time a
restaurant meal feels like "splurge" time.  So even though I consider more
healthy alternatives, I choose the items I'm least likely to get at home. 
That usually leaves a pretty unhealthy selection on my plate.  

#25: Thanks.

#27: I think a small snack is tolerable. Sometimes I have some fruits in
     the evening or a granola bar. However, many Americans have pizza or
     a rack of lamb before going to bed. :-) That is not healthy.

#28: I do that too. Sometimes I go to a restaurant and pig out. If you stick
     to a healthy diet throughout the week you can generally let your hair
     down, within reason, on the weekend. As a matter of fact, most 
     responsible diet plans tell you that you should reward yourself on the
     weekends (again, within reason). If you don't reward yourself every
     once in a while, you will probably fall off the wagon and screw up the
     whole diet plan. 

     I also have a rule I follow: If I really, really, really, really, really
     want to eat something, I eat it. However, I save up my credits for those
     special occasions.

(Klaus thinks back to the days when he'd ride a bicycle 300 miles a week
in the no-snow season and cross country ski 100K+ on weekends in the snow
season, eat LOTS of good food, feel great, and still look like a string
bean.  He's also looking forward to sharing these with his kids as they
grow older and, hopefull, give HIM a run for his money some day!  ;)

The reason that foods that are considered "unhealthy" taste good, whereas
those that are considerd "healthy" don't is because your tastes are the
product of evolution, which doesn't care if you get clogged arteries in your
sixties; it only cares that you survive your twenties in order to reproduce.

Also, in the course of our evolution, much of our existence was spent eating
the sorts of things that are considered to be "healthy" by today's standards:
fruits, nuts, vegetables, etc.  These items are scarce during the winter, and
in cold climates.  Fats and sugars taste good in order to get you to eat them,
and they *are* good for you -- in limited quantities.  Our problem isn't so
much "wrong food" as it is simple over-abundance.  We have been very
successful as a species.

I wouldn't bet on the first paragraph.  I bet that humans with living
grandparents have had a selective advantage for a long time.  As a species
that is more socially programmed than genetically programmed, it is useful
to have elder members in the community, so genes for longer life, even past
breeding age, *have* been selected for.  It is probably no coincidence that
humans are among the longest lived mammals and also among the animals that
are most able to learn from their elders.

The second paragraph makes much more sense.

I choose what I choose in restaurants based purely on what sounds good to me.
Yep, three or more things might sound good, but I imagine each of them in my
mouth and how they would taste and feel -- then I select based on what really
feels like it will hit the spot *now*.  Since I started doing this I've begun
eating a lot less and enjoying it a lot more.  I went through a phase of
eating mostly "bad" foods because they had been "forbidden fruits" for so
long, but now I find that I often can't finish a small order of fries and
burgers and such just don't taste good.  I still probably end up eating "bad"
foods more often than I once did...but I enjoy what I eat, I eat less because
I'm less hungry, and my weight has finally stableized...after years of
struggle.

So, it might look to others like I'm making "bad" choices, but they suit me
and I'm not specifically rejecting "good" choices.  I'll get to them next
time, probably.

I often feel that by deciding to eat in a restaraunt, I have already pretty
much abandoned all hope of eating healthily.

I agree with Catriona. I spend almost all of my time eating a very healthy
diet, and don't go to restaurants very often. When I do, I want something I
wouldn't have at home. Like a patty melt and fries. <egad!>
Would the appropriate part please link this to the health cf? Thanks.

Now linked to health as item 39.

I have a somewhat opposite approach to most restaurant meals these days, but
mainly because I'm doing some business trips.  After a few days, I get
desperate to find healthy food at a restaurant.  I usually stop at a grocery
to get bagels and fruit, but that doesn't help a huge amount.

        When I order at a resturant, I conside what I can't make at 
home (cheese breading-dipped greasballs) or what I'm not likely
to prepare for myself at home, or what I am more likely to ruin
if I make it for myself at home.  I have ruined a few good and 
expensive steaks at home, so a well-prepared steak dinner would
sound good to me.

Business trips are really bad for eating healthy.  What I do is cut way back
on how much I eat, skipping lunch fwhenever I can.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss