Cost of Food & Obesity Amongst Poorer People

breadlinebetty

Generali wrote: »

Food is cheap so buying more food than you need is easy to do in the UK, even on a restricted budget.

@Saturnalia: good post BTW. My Grandad lost stones when he became diabetic and replaced white food with brown.

Is food cheap? A lot of people find their food bills have soared over the last year!!

bossymoo

Saturnalia wrote: »

Not only is junk quick, easy, cheap and aggressively marketed, but most of it is refined carbohydrates, i.e. white sugar, white flour etc.

Refined carbs make your blood sugar level rise rapidly almost immediately after eating them, which makes your pancreas put out insulin to lower the sugar level. Insulin is the hormone that causes fat storage and high insulin levels make you hungry... as does the crash in blood sugar levels caused by the sugar surge followed by the insulin surge. (That weak, shaky, sweaty, confused feeling you get when you haven't eaten for too long is low blood sugar - hypoglycaemia.)

Add to that that refined carbs aren't satisfying for long. They are broken down very quickly by the digestive system whereas the brown kinds take longer to pass through. Try it - see how a dish that has brown rice, pasta or bread keeps you feeling fuller for far longer that its white equivalent.

So you have a perfect storm where the more white carbs you eat, the more you want. And if you are hungry between meals you will probably go for high-carb snacky food, people don't tend to snack on meat & veg do they?

I'm diabetic on insulin and if my doses are increased I am hungry all day long until my body acclimatises, and I'll put on weight easily even if I don't eat more than normal. Plus I can test my own blood sugars and see how different foods affect it in different ways.

I think you're absolutely right! Sugar is everywhere. You can't hide from it. All these foods marketed as "lite" or "low fat" or attached to many diets are just packed with sugar to get lower in fat. What does the body do with the sugar? Turn it to fat!

The pharmacist sold my mil some weight loss sachets (milkshake type) and two weeks later she went back and was told she must have cheated as she wasn't in ketosis. It was absolute garbage, as the blinking things were 50% sugar! How on earth does that work then! I told her she would be better buying a sports protein shake mix if that was the type of thing she wanted.

If a pharmacist doesn't get it, how can Joe Public be expect to???

Zero_Sum

PaulF81 wrote: »

All of which is liable for vat and thus much more expensive than buying raw inedients to make a meal.

Tax junk more heavily. It has been talked about. Raise vat on these products to 30% to save the NHS budget in 20 years time.

Sausages, Burgers, Cake, Biscuits.... non of which are subject to VAT

Saturnalia

Blooming heck, if she wanted to cause ketosis, she should have been on low or zero carbs. And probably for the price and calorie content of those milkshakes, she could have had actual food - and far less sugar content. 50% sugar is appaling.

breadlinebetty

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

Starch not fructose, different sugar compound.

But don't they turn into sugar once consumed?

PaulF81

Zero_Sum wrote: »

Sausages, Burgers, Cake, Biscuits.... non of which are subject to VAT

They should be!

PasturesNew

breadlinebetty wrote: »

Swedes aren't particularly huge! And you don't normally stuff them (are you thinking of marrows?)

... 2 minutes...

They are when you realise they'll do for several meals and so you've got to eat swede for days... and "stuff" didn't mean stuff, it meant "other stuff" like peeling, chopping, boiling/roasting, waiting.... stuff.

It might take you 2 minutes, it takes me considerably more .... and the other things that go with it will probably end up taking longer too . Overall, most meals involving a swede would take 45-60 from start to cleaned up .... and a pizza's 12 minutes to cook and 5 to eat. Job done in under 20 minutes.

PasturesNew

Zero_Sum wrote: »

Sausages, Burgers, Cake, Biscuits.... non of which are subject to VAT

Cake is subject to VAT, biscuits not.
A Jaffa cake is defined as a biscuit - there was a court case about it a few years ago as they were hit with a VAT bill for being "cake", but it was decided they are a biscuit so no back-VAT due to be paid.

ILW

PasturesNew wrote: »

They are when you realise they'll do for several meals and so you've got to eat swede for days... and "stuff" didn't mean stuff, it meant "other stuff" like peeling, chopping, boiling/roasting, waiting.... stuff.

It might take you 2 minutes, it takes me considerably more .... and the other things that go with it will probably end up taking longer too . Overall, most meals involving a swede would take 45-60 from start to cleaned up .... and a pizza's 12 minutes to cook and 5 to eat. Job done in under 20 minutes.

Is your life too busy to spend half hour cooking something?

adouglasmhor

ILW wrote: »

Eat less calories than you burn and you will lose weight. Why do so many find that difficult to grasp.

But if you constantly eat less you will also burn less. This has been known for years.