Lets fight fat people!

@ossobuco,

Ooohh... those look delicious, and possibly not too difficult for me to make!

What IS it with sweet potatoes lately, anyway? Have you seen them in your grocery stores, where they're so HUGE they look like doorstops?

I haven't tried them yet, as I must admit they seem a bit... scary. Do they taste like normal-sized sweet potatoes?

1 Reply

@BorisKitten,

I haven't tried the gorilla sweet potatoes either..

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@ossobuco,

You can also sprinkle your dry seasonings onto the chips just after you slice them, and put them into the dehydrator too.
This dries them out and brings out a lot of the natural sugar to the edges of it making it really sweet on the sides.

ohhhhhhh Yummy.

1 Reply

@shewolfnm,

I don't have a dehydrator - used to back in my laboratory days. I tend to roast veggies when I'm using the oven for something else too, or else roast a whole mass of veggies at once.

(love your santa/chimney thread)

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Since you live in a desert climate (although it works in hot summers everywhere), you can use the back of your car as a dehydrator - a hatchback is best. Just lay things out on parchment paper on cookie sheets on a hot sunny day. Takes about four hours to dry things like tomatoes. Only works on veggies and herbs, no beef jerky.

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@Green Witch,

Brilliant..
do you put dabs of oil on them or not?

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Lets fight fat people!

isn't this sumo?

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@djjd62,

A rose by any other name..

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@ossobuco,

You can. I also throw some fresh basil on when I do sundried tomatoes.

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@djjd62,

Go back a page to my picture. It's what I first thought of too.

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@Green Witch,

I was thinking along Shewolf's concept, if that works that way she said, and then dunking the dears, if they're tomatoes, into oil and basil and garlic afterwards.

Well, first I'll play with sweet potatoes. No tomatoes worth mentioning here now, in my opinion.

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@BorisKitten,

BorisKitten wrote:

Quote:
True sympathy is shown by those who can propose solutions that WORK, as in being EFFECTIVE, not by those who would encourage addicts in their self-destructive practices.

I must disagree here, that "true sympathy" is only "shown by those who can propose solutions that WORK."

There's no reason why you would know this, but I've considerable professional experience in this field, both in the 4-dimensional computer modelling (relevant app here being brain imaging) and risk assessment / management aspect (cost-benefit analyses). Obviously the mathematics involved are too complex to express in a post here, so suffice it to say that biochemists, DNA sequencers, other medics and any number of unrelated professionals (incl. law enforcement, e.g. "war on drugs" nonsense) are, to the best of my knowledge, agreed that the neural / hormonal / metabolic etc pathways affected by addictions are substantially similar. Actual experiments on human subjects (as those quoted in the previous article I posted) show what works and why; for theoretical underpinnings of this approach you can search using the tags here:

Quote:

....there exist common neural substrates underlying both food and drug intake behaviors. Recent studies have shown direct leptin effects on dopamine neuron function and behavior. This provides a new mechanism by which peripheral hormones influence behavior....

http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v33/n2s/full/ijo200968a.html

Summing up: common approaches to both drug and junk food addictions show 90 to 95% failure rates - and that's on top of the massive pain and suffering inflicted to the hapless individuals told to "just say no", "try diet and exercise" or religion, or psychobabbling, etc. It seems monstrous to me that, since alternative approaches with proven success rates of well over 50% are already well-established, some horrible political correctness should prevent them from being applied. So therefore: I don't understand what you mean by disagreeing with the statement you quote - you can't possibly be advocating that avoidable suffering is good for their souls? At least I hope that's not what you mean..

1 Reply

@Region Philbis,

Region Philbis wrote:

Quote:
Hate is an active emotion leading to violent action like murder and mayhem
nope.
there are several gradations of hate that do not result in bodily harm...

With respect, I think that Jespah, Thomas and others here are closer to the mark when they say it's a kind of ignoring, of dismissing, rather than any expression of hatred per se. In New York we recently had a case where 2 off-duty paramedics refused to go near this woman >

http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2009/12/21/amd_eutisha_revee_rennix.jpg

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/12/22/2009-12-22_call_911_emts_are_suspended.html
> who collapsed in a coffee shop and died before an ambulance got there. If you read Jespah's links you'll see medics often feel there's nothing they can do about people who weigh so much, so in an emergency the obese get pushed to the bottom of the triage lest. Btw, that order of priority was included in federal instructions to hospitals following the H1N1 alert - not sure if it's still in force though.

1 Reply

@High Seas,

sorry typo, that was triage list.

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@High Seas,

As of yesterday the new insurance reimbursement law went into effect, and weight-loss treatments may (MAY) be covered as part of treatment for addictions - the excess weight doesn't have to qualify as result of depression or other "mental illness", just of "addiction":

Quote:

Most insurance companies currently impose higher co-pays and greater restrictions on treatments for addictions, mood disorders, autism, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. The parity law, which will go into effect for most health plans on January 1, 2010, will improve coverage for 113 million Americans, according to the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare....

Food Fix
Obesity is frequently framed as an addictive disorder, but scientists understand little about what first prompts the compulsion to eat. Now a study at Tufts University suggests that the impulse could be hardwired. In addicts of any type, the brain’s signaling of dopamine"a chemical involved in motivation and reward"becomes abnormal over time. The Tufts study shows, however, that rats prone to obesity are born with low dopamine levels. Eating, then, is akin to self-medication because it helps to restore the chemical to healthy levels; obesity may simply be a side effect that develops from this self-remedy over time. ....

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brain-briefs-cut-up-those-cards

Jespah - all I ever knew of you being overweight was once (eons ago, on Ethel's Cafe, during a virtual pool party) you mentioned you had to wear a tankini because of that - and I only remember that because I had to look up "tankini". Btw, I sat at a year-end epidemiology risk review meeting and asked one of the visiting experts (a well-known psychiatrist) to read your posts here. He said depression is extremely common in cases of morbid obesity and it's resistant to serotonin-acting drugs but reacts to dopamine. It's amazing that you managed to lose 200 lbs, whether surgery was involved or not, and while I of course hope the original depression is gone, in case any residual is still left this dopamine info (apparently not in doubt among neuroscientists but little known among general medics) may be of help. Good luck to you and happy 2010 and decade.

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@High Seas,

Quote:

Summing up: common approaches to both drug and junk food addictions show 90 to 95% failure rates - and that's on top of the massive pain and suffering inflicted to the hapless individuals told to "just say no", "try diet and exercise" or religion, or psychobabbling, etc. It seems monstrous to me that, since alternative approaches with proven success rates of well over 50% are already well-established, some horrible political correctness should prevent them from being applied. So therefore: I don't understand what you mean by disagreeing with the statement you quote - you can't possibly be advocating that avoidable suffering is good for their souls? At least I hope that's not what you mean..

Actually, I was disagreeing with this statement:

Quote:

True sympathy is shown by those who can propose solutions that WORK...

And I still disagree with it. Clearly I personally have no solutions that work, yet I can, in fact, show true sympathy.

I really don't think that sympathy, human kindness, or empathy is related to proposed solutions, AT ALL: apples and oranges, no?

At any rate I'm much heartened to hear your further information, above.

Perhaps you can direct us to the alternative approaches you mention with such high success rates? I'm sure many A2Kers know someone they can pass this information to.

I have to wonder, and perhaps you have some insight here, why the US drug companies have not invented a pill to "cure" junk-food addiction? Think of the gobs of money that could be made with that one!

I can only imagine that some sort of dopamine regulator must have many, many difficulties associated with it, or it would have been on the market long before now.

1 Reply

@BorisKitten,

Hi, and sorry if I didn't clarify the statement you disagreed with: of course I didn't mean sympathy is "exclusively" shown by those who can contribute a solution! Certainly sympathy can shown by anyone at all. In answer to your question on treatments that work for obesity, much depends on parallels with the heroin addiction posted on a previous page:

There's no law to say you can't call up a clinic in Europe and book a room at $6,000/day for a month, though - plus doctors' fees, of course. In case you followed the pitiful case of Farah Fawcett you may know that's what kept her alive for years after the UCLA medical center told her she has 3 months to live - but expect nothing along those lines to be available in the States any time soon. It takes decades from labs to (US) pharmacies:

Quote:

....Neuroimaging studies suggest that obese people and substance abusers have abnormal levels of dopamine in the brain, contributing to cravings. "They always feel something is lacking, and in order for them to feel OK, they need to use something that boosts the dopamine in brain," says Gene-Jack Wang, chairman of the Medical Department Brookhaven National Laboratory.

http://www.wlscenter.com/the_new_addiction.htm

I really must add I'm no medic of any kind, and really not allowed to say much more as the epidemiology data I have in order to calculate risk assessments are proprietary. However now I've posted just about everything else that was relevant. Hope that helps Smile

1 Reply

@High Seas,

Quote:

It takes decades from labs to (US) pharmacies...

Well, there's the whole tragedy in a nutshell, in my opinion.

Yet even with all that, lookit Chantix, the quit-smoking drug. I personally know 2 people who have taken it, full-course, and both have started smoking again. If you just Google it, you'll see more horror stories about it than you can count.

A big "WTF?" What was the FDA doing all those years, other than just excluding your average smoker from Chantix's studies?

2 Replies

@BorisKitten,

The FDA isn't to blame - we're the ones forever searching for a magic pill and forgetting that a drug without side-effects is a drug without effects. If you read my previous link you may remember that "curing" obesity via surgery does eliminate addiction to junk food by restoring dopamine in the brain (among other benefits) but sometimes with weird side-effect. Other dopamine-replacing treatments produce similar results:

Quote:

Dopamine--a crucial chemical messenger in the brain--plays a central role in the brain's reward system. Dopamine neurons are active when we do pleasurable things, like eating or having sex, and also play a central role in drug addiction. Recently, studies have shown that compulsive gamblers exhibit different activity patterns in dopamine-rich parts of their brain.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/18593/

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@BorisKitten,

BorisKitten wrote:

Yet even with all that, lookit Chantix, the quit-smoking drug. I personally know 2 people who have taken it, full-course, and both have started smoking again. ..

All I know about Chantix is that the FAA had tentatively approved it for use by pilots a couple of years ago. Dozens of reports of seizures, hallucinations, suicidal urges, acute depressions, etc, started coming in, so the FAA banned it again after only a few months. Smoking and drinking aren't banned, of course, from which I surmise that your friends are probably better off smoking.

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