GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs

[River Dog]

I'm sure that you folks have heard of them. They've become very popular over the past few months, but in case you haven't or aren't fully aware of what they are and what they do, here's a snippet from the Mayo Clinic that gives a good layman's description of them:

We all have GLP-1s in our bodies. These are naturally occurring hormones which are released from our gut after we eat. The function of GLP-1s is to boost the amount of insulin our bodies make to keep our blood sugar within a normal range, as well as provide the sensation of fullness after a meal. The same effect on insulin regulation and appetite happens when GLP-1 receptor agonists come into play. People who take GLP-1 agonists will:

Feel fuller after and between meals
Have improved glucose levels
Experience reduced thoughts about food

They've been around for a while and have been approved by the FDA to treat diabetes and other weight related diseases. I've been at least mildly overweight for most of my adult life, ranging anywhere from 20-50 pounds over what I consider to be a good, manageable weight for me. Last year when I queried my PCP about them, he said that they cost $1400/month for someone like me who would use them strictly for weight loss, so I passed. But when I had another visit with him this past February, he said that the cost had come down to $500/month and that he personally knew of some MD's who had taken it and had successfully lost weight with them, so I asked him to prescribe me some, which he did.

The drug I'm taking is called Zepbound. I get it via mail order directly from the drug manufacturer, Eli Lily. It's a weekly injectable that has to be kept refrigerated. I started on it on March 11th, the day after I returned from my tour of Australia. I started out on a 2.5mg dose for 4 weeks then increased it to 5mg. I've been weighing myself almost every evening, and after 6 weeks, I've lost 18.2 pounds. I'm about halfway to my goal. In addition, I've seen a decrease in my blood pressure, which has been mildly elevated for some years.

It's always irritated me at how our society treats individuals with weight problems. Many if not most feel it's simply a matter of will, that if a person would only do as they do, eat healthy, exercise regularly et al, that they wouldn't have such a problem. But there has to be something more. It's not a coincidence that some families have obesity problems while others don't. It has to more than just an environmental or lifestyle problem. Genetics has to be involved, at least in some cases. Such is the case with me as nearly all of my blood relations, both older and younger than me and which included my mother and father, have had a weight control issue at some point in their lives.

I can definitely tell a difference in taking this drug. My problem has always been at supper time. I'll eat a very modest breakfast and perhaps a bag of popcorn or handful of nuts mid-day but nothing else until dinner time. And it's not the type of food I eat that has been my nemesis, it's portion size. I'll start each dinner with a large green salad with plenty of veggies, but I'll end up just stuffing myself, pigging out. Now with the weight loss drug, I'm leaving food on my plate, even stuff that tasted amazingly good to me. To be fair, I've been much more conscious of my weight, weighing myself overnight, skipping the mid-day snack, etc, so for me, it's a combination of the drug and a lifestyle change.

Anyhow, I'm curious as to what you folks' comments are about this are. Our HHS Secretary RFK Jr. has come out strongly against them, says that if people would just eat healthy and exercise more, that all their problems would be solved, that these drugs are unnecessary.

[Aseahawkfan]

I'm invested in Eli Lilly. I'm still pissed off I missed this amazing drug before Eli Lilly shot up. I usually don't pay attention to the huge pharma companies like Eli Lilly as they don't have the kind of growth potential that a smaller biopharma has, but this drug is nothing short of a miracle drug. It's going to change the world and already is. I expect these drugs to get better and better. Glad you are using the Eli Lilly drug as it is considered the best drug at this point.

I'm also on the heavy side most of my life. I've mainly avoided the worst of the effects of being overweight or obese due to taking up weightlifting. At the time I started lifting, didn't even think about the health benefits of it. I just wanted to look like Arnold in Conan. That movie changed my life seeing Arnold appear on the screen looking like no human man I had ever seen. He looked like a real life superhero to my 10 or 11 year old mind. So I tried to figure out how to look like that and started lifting weights. It took years before I figured out it took more than lifting to look like that. I got plenty big and strong, but never could get that lean. I eventually found out about roids, but I despise taking drugs. I don't even take aspirin. I have a mild irrational bias where I want to let the body do its job without additional help unless I can't help it. That can't help it came to be the case as I got older and my weight fluctuated. High blood pressure runs in the family as well as obesity. I had to start taking blood pressure medication.

I hear you about the how society views weight. I used to think it was just willpower. I would use my willpower to lose weight, but eventually I would put it back on during a stress period of too much work or what not. I don't even overeat fast food or junk all the time. I can consume a lot of food, healthy or not don't much matter. I learned a whole lot about weight loss and how the body works in regards to it. Been listening to Herman Pontzer lately who did a very extensive study on calories and energy used in the human body. Very interesting stuff.

You're right. Willpower alone isn't how all this works. There's a whole lot going on involving genetics, the food environment with lots of high calorie, hyper palatable food, and other psychological issues like comfort eating or bad eating habits developed in youth and hunger signaling. I have real problems with hunger signaling. I don't get full easy. I learned this after watching other people eat. Some people can take a big 12 to 16 oz. ribyeye with a 10 to 12 oz, baked potato with all the toppings, eat part of it, maybe barely half, and push it away. Whereas I can stuff down a 16 oz. ribeye, a 10 or 12 oz. loaded baked potato, and still be hungry barely feeling full. I lose weight at about 2600 to 2800 calories a day which isn't too bad. I did some calorie tracking if I don't pay attention to my food and I had too many 4000 to 5000 average daily calorie weeks. I can easily put down 4000 or 5000 calories a day without even thinking much about it. Most people, even skinny people who think they eat a lot, can't do this. Even a lot of more obese people can't do this, but I can for some reason because of real bad hunger signaling.

These GLP1 drugs that moderate your hormones to control hunger signaling and feelings of fullness work amazingly well. Everyone I've known who uses them has benefitted even if they have side effects. The side effects are mostly mild, but one of the major ones I've seen that shocked me is people on these drugs eat so little they can end up suffering from malnutrition. Thus they have to make an effort to ensure they get a good amount of nutrition in the smaller meals they eat so they don't end up deficient on some nutrients they used to get enough of by eating a larger quanity of food. Maybe a multivitamin would help this some, but natural sources are definitely good to take in as well.

As far as RFK Jr., some of his ideas are good and some are goofy. I definitely wish we would move to a more European or Australian style of food management with more regulation as to what you can put in food as well as more accurate nutrition tracking. Right now we have a mostly free for all for nutrition. We have food producers making hyper-palatable food using chemicals in food design labs that they sell to the public for the sole purpose of "addicting" them to food. It may be a soft addiction that is more psychological, these empty calorie, hyper palatable foods are not great for humans and has a very correlated path with rising obesity rates. We allowed food companies to create a terrible, chemically driven food environment that has led to obesity with all its associated medical problems and we could get a lot of this under control by taking aggressive measures to improve food quality. As far as I know there is nothing in the Constitution to guarantee you some right to a crappy quality Big Mac and oil infused french fries, so I see no reason why the government can't move to force producers to greatly improve food quality to reduce obesity and all the costly, measurably terrible health outcomes from it.

It would lead to immense cost savings in healthcare and all associated systems like medicare and a healthier workforce with longer work lifespans and better quality of life in old age with better health longevity rather than living a long time to die slowly and miserably from obesity related health problems.

Glad you found GLP1s. They are great. Use this great tool to improve your health and quality of life. They are a miracle drug. Big time game changer and probably going down as one of the greatest drugs in history.

[Aseahawkfan]

Just got home, so I'll add some more information. Eat healthy and move more doesn't work. An anthropologist named Herman Pontzer and a scientist that studies human metabolism both proved that move more isn't an effective means of weight loss. Herman Pontzer wrote a book named Burn.

https://www.amazon.com/Burn-Research-Really-Calories-Healthy/dp/0525541527

This book studied the caloric burn of a group of hunters and gatherers using the gold standard for measuring caloric burn. He found that hunters and gatherers who moved far more than the standard Western person in a modern society and found that given the same size and lean mass they burned the same calories as a Western couch potato that works in an office. He found that the human metabolism will adapt up and down to stay within a certain caloric burn limit adapting to whatever you're doing. A hunter gatherer will burn the calories due to movement and activity, but a couch potato office worker will also burn the same amount of calories due to increased heart rate, inflammation, and the calorie burn necessary to sustain a person in poor physical health that spends all their time sitting around. Even Pontzer was shocked by this finding, so he reran the tests to be sure. Sure enough, a hunter gatherer moving around all day, hunting animals or digging up food burned the same calories as Western couch potato sitting at their office job and watching TV all night.

Kevin Hall has also confirmed this finding in scientific studies as he runs a metabolic ward that controls all variables for calorie intake that has studied different types of diets with different macronutrient profiles and shown that most diets cause weight loss from calorie restriction which causes the body to burn fat reserves.

This all makes sense due to what fat is which a lot of fad diets and scientific charlatans never want to explain to their followers. Fat is stored energy on the body. A certain amount of dietary fat is required for normal bodily operations, but excess fat is energy converted to fat and stored on the body. So if you eat an excess of calories, you will start to store fat, especially if you combine high carb and high fat foods which is tailor made to be stored as fat on the body given the carbs provide the energy that can lead any excess fat in the food is stored as the body prioritizes glucose as its preferred energy source which is provided by carbohydrates and stored in the muscles and liver for use and heavily used by the brain.

Alcohol is also a macronutrient that is prioritized for clearance by the body due to it being a toxin with very little nutritional value to the body, though the acetate metabolized by the liver can be used by the brain for energy but may also cause impairment doing so. Alcohol is not great for the body in any high quantity and lead to fat gain when combined with other foods as the metabolism and liver will process the alcohol first for energy at 7 calories were gram, then use any carbs you eat to store fat from the excess energy environment. But some people can be satiated by alcohol and will drink rather than eat which can cause other issues, especially if consuming hard alcohol and causing the brain to become accustomed to using acetate as fuel. Excessive alcohol consumption isn't a great idea.

RFK Jr. doesn't seem like a great source for scientific information as he's a big believer in whack job health science that has no basis in fact. I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't on TRT to maintain his physical health much like a charlatan named Liver King sold himself as this modern caveman living on healthy organ meats to get big and muscular and lean, but it was later found out he was using steroids to maintain his muscular leanness while making millions selling liver supplements. Total horsecrap.

Joe Rogan is similar claiming his health is from alternative lifestyle choice while it's mainly from TRT use. Certain supplements work really well like TRT and steroids, but these "alternative gurus" like to sell people it's not the TRT an steroids even when normal people not using TRT or steroids try using these methods and don't gain the benefits unless it's just from eating a healthy amount of calories to stay lean with enough protein and other nutrients.

Eating healthy certain doesn't hurt, but most quality science shows that a sustainable diet that is close to the right calorie level give or take a little even if you're eating some unhealthy food mixed with healthy food. People like to live so if they eat a few pieces of cake and drink a few beers with their lean steak and nice salad, they'll better be able to sustain a healthy diet long-term which is more likely to lead to successful weight management.

Exercise has its own health benefits even if weight loss isn't the primary ones. So most health experts recommend finding a health form of exercise you can enjoy even if it's just walking on a treadmill while watching TV or playing pickup basketball with your friends or hiking or walking the dog and do it consistently. Consistency is always touted over any simplistic idea of "Eat healthy, move more." Consistency and sustainability over perfection. They also recommend patience as most overweight people have become overweight or obese over years and it may take years of trying to reverse the weight and build the habits and consistency to maintain a lower, healthier leaner weight. No one should be beating themselves up. You just keep at until you get to a weight that is healthier and happier for you and sustainable without making your life miserable or lacking pleasure.

If you can use tools like GLP-1s which is healthier than bariatric surgery from what I've seen, then you use the tool that helps and works.

That being said I do hope RFK Jr. does clean up some of the food environment. Higher quality food for Americans even if more expensive to fast food companies will help more than harm and maybe make buying healthy food more attractive paying for low quality, highly processed ingredients that lead to bad health outcomes long-term.

[River Dog]

That's some good stuff, ASF! I'll check out the link. Thanks a bunch!

Edit: It sounds like an interesting subject, so I bought it as a Kindle book. Thanks again!

The weight loss drug market has literally exploded. I've been doing some of my own research on these weight loss drugs, and since I've been buying Zepbound for 2 months now and clicking on a lot of weight loss articles, I've been inundated with emails and ads offering cheap drugs, so there has to be a lot of scams out there. I met my current PCP at a NY Eve party at a time I was looking for a new PCP, so in addition to him being my PCP, he's also a personal friend that I can text message w/o having to go through his staff.

I started out the first month of Zepbound at a 2.5mg dose, but the research I read indicated that most MD's increase that to 5mg's after the first 4 weeks, so I messaged my doctor about increasing the dosage, and he agreed. Just recently, he texted me saying that he received a refill request and wanted to know if I wanted to increase it further, to 7.5mg, and since I began to lose the sensation of being full at the end of my current weekly cycle, I asked him to go ahead and issue the refill for the higher dose. I think they can go all the way to 12.5mg.

To date, I'm down 21 pounds, or about 9.5% of my body weight and roughly halfway to my goal. The big challenge, as you alluded to, will be keeping it off once I reach my target weight. Both my doctor and the research I've done indicates that most patients have to stay on the drug after they've reached their goal, and I'm prepared to do that if necessary. My plan is to try to do without it once I reach my target but monitor it closely and go back on it if I find myself putting weight back on. I've committed to staying on it at least until late August and my next doctor's exam.

Obesity is by far the #1 health problem in the country, perhaps the world, as far as how many people it affects. Most insurances, including Medicare, do not cover the cost of these weight loss drugs unless it's associated with another disease like diabetes, a situation I'm personally OK with as I can afford it. Eli Lilly has a pill form of their drug that's in clinical trials and could be available by early 2026, which if it's successful, should bring the price down substantially.

As far as RFK Jr. goes, he's a moonbat. His own family has disowned him. He's personally responsible for the measles outbreak in Texas and has already done far more harm in his position than he ever can good. IMO he should be charged with 3rd degree murder. He as much admitted to it by attending the funeral of one of the unvaccinated kids that died of measles. Maybe not convict him, but I'd love to see him defend himself in front of some aggressive prosecutors on the witness stand.

It's a different subject altogether but having worked in the food processing industry for 40 years, I can attest that there are bigger fish to fry as far as health issues goes besides what the food industry is adding to their products, the aforementioned obesity problem topping the list. That doesn't mean that I don't think improvements can be made, just that it's not high on the list of priorities.

[Aseahawkfan]

That's some good stuff, ASF! I'll check out the link. Thanks a bunch!

Edit: It sounds like an interesting subject, so I bought it as a Kindle book. Thanks again!

The weight loss drug market has literally exploded. I've been doing some of my own research on these weight loss drugs, and since I've been buying Zepbound for 2 months now and clicking on a lot of weight loss articles, I've been inundated with emails and ads offering cheap drugs, so there has to be a lot of scams out there. I met my current PCP at a NY Eve party at a time I was looking for a new PCP, so in addition to him being my PCP, he's also a personal friend that I can text message w/o having to go through his staff.

I started out the first month of Zepbound at a 2.5mg dose, but the research I read indicated that most MD's increase that to 5mg's after the first 4 weeks, so I messaged my doctor about increasing the dosage, and he agreed. Just recently, he texted me saying that he received a refill request and wanted to know if I wanted to increase it further, to 7.5mg, and since I began to lose the sensation of being full at the end of my current weekly cycle, I asked him to go ahead and issue the refill for the higher dose. I think they can go all the way to 12.5mg.

To date, I'm down 21 pounds, or about 9.5% of my body weight and roughly halfway to my goal. The big challenge, as you alluded to, will be keeping it off once I reach my target weight. Both my doctor and the research I've done indicates that most patients have to stay on the drug after they've reached their goal, and I'm prepared to do that if necessary. My plan is to try to do without it once I reach my target but monitor it closely and go back on it if I find myself putting weight back on. I've committed to staying on it at least until late August and my next doctor's exam.

Obesity is by far the #1 health problem in the country, perhaps the world, as far as how many people it affects. Most insurances, including Medicare, do not cover the cost of these weight loss drugs unless it's associated with another disease like diabetes, a situation I'm personally OK with as I can afford it. Eli Lilly has a pill form of their drug that's in clinical trials and could be available by early 2026, which if it's successful, should bring the price down substantially.

As far as RFK Jr. goes, he's a moonbat. His own family has disowned him. He's personally responsible for the measles outbreak in Texas and has already done far more harm in his position than he ever can good. IMO he should be charged with 3rd degree murder. He as much admitted to it by attending the funeral of one of the unvaccinated kids that died of measles. Maybe not convict him, but I'd love to see him defend himself in front of some aggressive prosecutors on the witness stand.

It's a different subject altogether but having worked in the food processing industry for 40 years, I can attest that there are bigger fish to fry as far as health issues goes besides what the food industry is adding to their products, the aforementioned obesity problem topping the list. That doesn't mean that I don't think improvements can be made, just that it's not high on the list of priorities.

The obesity problem is directly linked to the increase in hyper-processed, highly palatable foods produced by food companies, so no there are not bigger fish to fry. That is absolutely the biggest fish to fry and the biggest cause of obesity.

Every major scientist, dietitian, and general follower of the obesity epidemic has said food environment is the absolute, indisputable cause of the obesity epidemic and everything they've studied shows that the American diet changing from home cooked, unprocessed food to highly processed, hyper palatable food did it.

This book you're reading may help explain why because Pontzer proved it wasn't the reduction in activity that led to American obesity as some hypothesized as a major factor. Activity isn't great for weight loss as human metabolism will adapt to changes in the activity level.

So the currently hypothesis is obesity is in the brain and the main changes that brought it about was a food environment that is built for obesity. Highly processed foods full of fats and carbs with low protein aka French fries, cheetos, doritos, fast food and hyper palatable foods that light up the brain's pleasure centers causing you to eat more while not having a satiating effect on the body meaning you don't feel full after eating them, in fact you feel still hungry and the food was designed for this purpose so you would purchase and eat more. Look at the macronutrient profile of foods like Doritos, fast food, cheetos, cake, cookies, and modern processed food whic is high carbs, high fats, and low protein which is absolutely the formula for obesity when taken in excessive quantities.

I must disagree with you as all the evidence most certainly does indicate the food environment with highly processed food is the number one biggest fish to fry for the obesity epidemic and the hardest to do because the corporate lobby for food production is powerful and well-funded. They don't want their sales reduced even if it means better health for the country.

In nations with lower rates of obesity like Japan and in many European countries, regulation on food production is a big reason why as well as cultural traits like the Japanese requiring schools in Japan to prepare healthy food for young students to start them on the right path of healthy eating young.

There is nothing nefarious about the food companies as a food companies job is to design the tastiest food they can for the lowest price possible. But this type of food production is detrimental to a species evolved to eat like food is scarce and store excess calories for times when they can't find food. Toss that species into an environment where calories are aplenty, food is designed to light up your mental pleasure centers, then watch them get fat. It's like the experiments on rat obesity when rats are given abundant food in the form of fat and sugars and all them become super fat rats who won't stop eating. Same thing. We basically screwed ourselves by accident by being extraordinarily good at food design for pleasure and abundance.

[Aseahawkfan]

As a thought experiment, Riverdog, think about naturally occurring foods.

Meat: Protein and fat, no carbs.

Fruit: Carbs with low fat unless like an avocado which is high fat, low carbs, low protein.

Nuts: Moderate protein, high fat.

Fish: High protein, moderate fat.

Vegetables: High carbs, low protein, low fat.

Almost nothing occurring in nature that ancient humans eat would be a combination of low protein, high carbs, and high fat. That is an almost entirely a man made creation and the number of foods designed in this fashion are many.

[River Dog]

I can only speak to my obesity problem, and it has little to do with processed foods. I'll make up green salads 6 at a time, one for each dinner meal, using fresh mixed lettuce/spinach, fresh cukes and zukes, mushrooms, a salad topper consisting of nuts, seeds, and craisins, a hard-boiled egg, broccoli slaw, and croutons. There are very few processed foods in them. Most of the meats I eat, pork, chicken and turkey, are fresh or frozen. Sometimes I'll have some rice, but it will be the kind you have to cook for 40 minutes, not the instant stuff that takes 90 minutes in a microwave. I've been following this diet for about 20 years. My problem has never been what I eat. It's always been about portion size.

There are things that are added to foods that increase our appetite. At my former employer, we found that the only spice that actually increases the consumption of French fries is salt. Burger King had us print in big bold letters on their cases of French fries "Salt the fries" as a reminder to their workers. IMO we need to get better education about the foods we eat, make companies print some sort of disclaimer that certain foods will increase consumption. Have you ever had any Dots pretzels? That's a perfect example of a food that is designed to make you overeat.

So, I have my doubts about your theory. You'll have to show me some legitimate research before I buy into it.

I hit the -21 pound mark last night, 10.2% of my body weight. I haven't changed a thing about my diet. I'm leaving food on my plate, even food that I still really like.

[Aseahawkfan]

I can only speak to my obesity problem, and it has little to do with processed foods. I'll make up green salads 6 at a time, one for each dinner meal, using fresh mixed lettuce/spinach, fresh cukes and zukes, mushrooms, a salad topper consisting of nuts, seeds, and craisins, a hard-boiled egg, broccoli slaw, and croutons. There are very few processed foods in them. Most of the meats I eat, pork, chicken and turkey, are fresh or frozen. Sometimes I'll have some rice, but it will be the kind you have to cook for 40 minutes, not the instant stuff that takes 90 minutes in a microwave. I've been following this diet for about 20 years. My problem has never been what I eat. It's always been about portion size.

There are things that are added to foods that increase our appetite. At my former employer, we found that the only spice that actually increases the consumption of French fries is salt. Burger King had us print in big bold letters on their cases of French fries "Salt the fries" as a reminder to their workers. IMO we need to get better education about the foods we eat, make companies print some sort of disclaimer that certain foods will increase consumption. Have you ever had any Dots pretzels? That's a perfect example of a food that is designed to make you overeat.

So, I have my doubts about your theory. You'll have to show me some legitimate research before I buy into it.

I hit the -21 pound mark last night, 10.2% of my body weight. I haven't changed a thing about my diet. I'm leaving food on my plate, even food that I still really like.

It's not my theory. You will see the research if you read the Pontzer book or delve into the subject. I cannot show you research to support this when I accumulate the data I summarized for you by drawing from multiple sources. There are many base studies by scientists studying individual variables. Pontzer book and his studies showed that move more doesn't work for weight loss. Weight loss comes down to calories meaning a sufficiently low calorie intake to cause the body to use fat as an energy source while not enough calories to put the fat back on. So you have to ask the question if you want to pursue that research of why are so many humans able to consume a massive excess of calories to cause an obesity epidemic? What changed? You have a scientist like Pontzer that studied the variable of activity and showed that greater or lesser activity doesn't massive effect calorie burn and has a minimal impact on energy. So where do you go next?

I don't know you're diet. I don't know what you drink, if you use dressing, what amount of croutons you use, or what processed elements you use or even how overweight you are. I don't even know if you track calories or have learned what ingredients are in your food. Another aspect of the research is people aren't very good at tracking their calories or food intake and vastly underestimate what they eat, especially when you introduce confounders like alcohol consumption or coffee with caloric substances in it like sugar or cream, both can be high calorie drinks along with drinks like soda that when added to a diet already in excess of calories creates a obesogenic environment in the body.

You are basically saying, "I eat a salad, it must be healthy and unprocessed." That isn't the case at all. What you put in the salad matters as does the dressing. Croutons have a lot of calories. Ever count them? Do you put cheese in your salad? Even low fat dressings have a lot of fat and are considered processed.

So this idea you have in your head of what processed food is and how you prepare it isn't an example of unprocessed food. Even cooking oil is processed and one of the biggest additives that increases calories massively, including so called healthy options like olive oil.

Do you track calories? Do you know how many calories are in your food?

Toss me a breakdown of one of your salads and I want to see if I can estimate the calories based on what you use. Lettuce is very lower calorie. The majority of the calories in a salad come from what you add with dressing being the main culprit, but croutons and cheese also being big calorie adders. The protein should not be too bad unless you're using a fatty protein prepared in oil like chicken thighs which can be calorically dense with the oil make it even higher calorie.

I'm sure you've read on macronutrients. Protein and Carbs are 4 calories per gram and fat is 9 calories per gram and alcohol 7 calories per gram.

[River Dog]

OK, here's the contents of my salads:

1.5-2 oz spring mix lettuce
2 oz broccoli slaw
1/6 zucchini, or approx. 1 oz
1/6 cucumber, peeled and seeds cleaned, approx. 1 oz
1/2 whole, fresh mushroom, 20-25 gm
1/4 cup packaged organic salad topper (sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds)
1 serving packaged croutons, 30 calories
2 tbsp packaged salad dressing, 100 calories.

Each night at supper, I have two-5oz glasses of Chardonnay wine, ABV 11%, 120 calories per serving.

Last night, in addition to my salad, I had a fresh (perhaps previously frozen but not processed) split chicken breast, approx. 6oz uncooked, and perhaps a half dozen packaged processed/frozen mini potatoes w/ketchup. My morning breakfast consists of two packages of flavored oatmeal mixed with 1 cup almond milk and cooked in the microwave.

And that's it. Obviously, I don't always eat like that as like everyone else, on rare occasions, maybe once a month, we'll go out to dinner and I'm not very disciplined when I travel. I'm not going to count up the calories, calculate fat content, et al. But I think you get my point, which is that I'm on a pretty damn healthy diet, have been for years, and I still have had a persistent weight problem.

The other thing to keep in mind is that there's a tradeoff. If you take out the preservatives that are added to many of the packaged/processed foods, you make foods less shelf stable, more likely to spoil, and increase the risk of food borne diseases like salmonella, listeria, E.coli, botulism, etc. I'm not saying that it's all well and good with the industry, just that there are reasons why they put many of those additives into foods besides just making people eat more of it.

[Aseahawkfan]

OK, here's the contents of my salads:

1.5-2 oz spring mix lettuce
2 oz broccoli slaw
1/6 zucchini, or approx. 1 oz
1/6 cucumber, peeled and seeds cleaned, approx. 1 oz
1/2 whole, fresh mushroom, 20-25 gm
1/4 cup packaged organic salad topper (sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds)
1 serving packaged croutons, 30 calories
2 tbsp packaged salad dressing, 100 calories.

Each night at supper, I have two-5oz glasses of Chardonnay wine, ABV 11%, 120 calories per serving.

Last night, in addition to my salad, I had a fresh (perhaps previously frozen but not processed) split chicken breast, approx. 6oz uncooked, and perhaps a half dozen packaged processed/frozen mini potatoes w/ketchup. My morning breakfast consists of two packages of flavored oatmeal mixed with 1 cup almond milk and cooked in the microwave.

And that's it. Obviously, I don't always eat like that as like everyone else, on rare occasions, maybe once a month, we'll go out to dinner and I'm not very disciplined when I travel. I'm not going to count up the calories, calculate fat content, et al. But I think you get my point, which is that I'm on a pretty damn healthy diet, have been for years, and I still have had a persistent weight problem.

The other thing to keep in mind is that there's a tradeoff. If you take out the preservatives that are added to many of the packaged/processed foods, you make foods less shelf stable, more likely to spoil, and increase the risk of food borne diseases like salmonella, listeria, E.coli, botulism, etc. I'm not saying that it's all well and good with the industry, just that there are reasons why they put many of those additives into foods besides just making people eat more of it.

This is not about the preservatives. Those are fine. Food environment encompasses hyper-palatability (how the food works with your brain to activate pleasure eating), hyper-processed (food made with unhealthy nutrient profiles like carbs and fats combined in excessive quantities), portion sizing (large portions of excessive calories), accessibility of food (restaurants everywhere, grocery stores, corner stores), advertising (these foods being pushed by effective marketing to look delicious), and probably some other factors I'm missing. But those are the major ones I can recall and they start young. Other nations are regulating these factors and it appears a major factor in lower obesity rates.

Not too bad a meal. What is broccoli slaw? Is that made with coleslaw dressing? Coleslaw dressing is calorie is about 100 calories a serving. Or if is just broccoli shredded. Seeds have a high fat content. Cranberries are fairly low calories. That package if small about 100 calories. Potatoes are 110 calories per 5.3 oz.

1.5-2 oz spring mix lettuce: 15 calories
2 oz broccoli slaw: not sure of this has dressing or what else is in it, but broccoli has 20 calories per serving
1/6 zucchini, or approx. 1 oz: 10 calories
1/6 cucumber, peeled and seeds cleaned, approx. 1 oz: 10 calories
1/2 whole, fresh mushroom, 20-25 gm: 10 calories
1/4 cup packaged organic salad topper (sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds): 50 to 100 calories
1 serving packaged croutons, 30 calories
2 tbsp packaged salad dressing, 100 calories.

Total Salad: 270 calories for base salad
Chicken Breast has to be cooked. You don't eat it raw. It was 6 oz. pre-cooked I'm assuming. That would be 165 calories skinless. With skin 255 calories. I'm assuming you boiled it or something. I generally boil with maybe a little seasoning after boiling.

Half a dozen tiny potatoes, processed. I'm not sure what processed means. If fried then could be big calories, otherwise 110 calories per 5.3 oz. 5.3 oz. is about 1 medium potato. This is raw potatoes. Not sure what processing was done. If this is chips or fried, the same potatoes could go from 110 to 340. I'll split the difference and call it 170. Ketchup is 20 calories a serving. So we'll make that 40 calories for 2 servings. Hopefully you don't love ketchup and squirt a massive amount on.

I'm going to assume Quaker flavored instant Oatmeal. Tasty stuff. I don't like nut milks. 150 per pack. Almond milk 40 calories for a cup

270 salad
240 wine
255 split chicken breast with skin (since you didn't state skinless)
170 potatoes.
40 ketchup
340 calories breakfast

1315 calories for the day thereabouts so long as you didn't sneak some snacking in there somewhere or caloric drinks.

Not sure what your weight is, but around a 200 lb. male who maintains at about 2500 calories or so a day that would be a calorie deficit of 1200 times seven or 8400 calories or about two lbs. of fat a week taken off if you ate that much daily with fair accuracy tracking. I've never eaten that low losing weight in my life. I doubt a person could maintain even a 200 plus pound size eating that meal every day. It's a good weight loss daily meal. You'd waste away eating like that all the time. It would be easier to do at your age as metabolism starts dropping after 60 some, but it might lead to other health issues like sarcopenia or nutrient deficiency.

Given my dad eats similar to you in his 70s but maintains his weight around 170 to 180, though he's up to 190 now at 6'1 and half a inches I guess this doesn't surprise me.

Is this the daily intake with GLP1 or you been eating that light for 20 years? Do you do any resistance training or anything to maintain muscle? Grip strength and leg strength are both strong indicators for longevity. If either weakens, you can end up with age-related sarcopenia. You don't want that if you get old and laid up. My dad gets a little unhappy when he gets closer to 190 and I try to tell him that being a big overweight in old age is healthy. Shows you're not wasting away and protects if you do end up sick and laid up in a hospital by giving you some energy and muscle stores to resist inactivity.

[Aseahawkfan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7mCP8PtgCI

Here's a podcast discussing some of the science on various diets and calories by one of the premiere researchers Kevin D. Hall.

Might be more than you want to know, but maybe you'll find it interesting.

[River Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7mCP8PtgCI

Here's a podcast discussing some of the science on various diets and calories by one of the premiere researchers Kevin D. Hall.

Might be more than you want to know, but maybe you'll find it interesting.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

So far, I've lost 23 pounds in a little under 2 months since I started taking the drug, or 10.7% of my body weight. It's as light as I've weighed in 30 years. The only thing I've changed about my diet is that I often times had a bag of microwave popcorn (190 calories) mid-day. I still have the urge to do so but have been successful in skipping it. The biggest effect this drug has had on me is at supper time where I feel full much faster and have been leaving food on my plate.

I don't want to appear like I'm not accepting responsibility, but a lot of my problems have to do with the way my parents conditioned me when I was growing up. We had to belong to "the clean plate club" in order to get served desert. "There's kids starving in Africa that would love to have what you're throwing away!" It resulted in my hardly ever throwing away food I can't eat.

[River Dog]

Did you see the latest half baked idea out of RFK Jr.? He wants to replace vegetable oil with beef tallow, claiming that it's healthier for us:

Steak 'n Shake, a fast-food chain, recently announced it is switching from vegetable oil to beef tallow—a type of saturated fat derived from animals—to cook its signature shoestring fries.

The company called the change “RFK-ing their fries,” referencing U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has said that Americans are being “unknowingly poisoned” by seed oils, such as grapeseed, sunflower, corn, and canola oils.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/beef-tal ... tm_term=PM

When I first entered the food processing business in 1978, beef tallow was the standard. It was cheaper and easier to process than vegetable oils. But the move away from saturated fats and a healthier lifestyle led the industry away from it and to vegetable oils, mostly canola. By the time I had retired in 2018, I hadn't seen a product made with beef tallow in at least 15 years.

This is just one of many reasons why I can't stand RFK Jr. He's an environmental lawyer, not a medical professional or food scientist. The guy is a confirmed lunatic. If he thinks that beef tallow is better for you than vegetable oils, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

[NorthHawk]

On the other hand, fries cooked in tallow taste way better than oil. But obviously that comes with a health cost.

[Aseahawkfan]

Did you see the latest half baked idea out of RFK Jr.? He wants to replace vegetable oil with beef tallow, claiming that it's healthier for us:

Steak 'n Shake, a fast-food chain, recently announced it is switching from vegetable oil to beef tallow—a type of saturated fat derived from animals—to cook its signature shoestring fries.

The company called the change “RFK-ing their fries,” referencing U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has said that Americans are being “unknowingly poisoned” by seed oils, such as grapeseed, sunflower, corn, and canola oils.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/beef-tal ... tm_term=PM

When I first entered the food processing business in 1978, beef tallow was the standard. It was cheaper and easier to process than vegetable oils. But the move away from saturated fats and a healthier lifestyle led the industry away from it and to vegetable oils, mostly canola. By the time I had retired in 2018, I hadn't seen a product made with beef tallow in at least 15 years.

This is just one of many reasons why I can't stand RFK Jr. He's an environmental lawyer, not a medical professional or food scientist. The guy is a confirmed lunatic. If he thinks that beef tallow is better for you than vegetable oils, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Fries in beef tallow taste amazing. I still remember the slight difference between McDonalds fries cooked in beef tallow versus the low cost seed oil they moved to. Beef tallow is more expensive too. Another oil that tastes amazing is peanut oil which is what Five Guys uses.

Companies moved to cheap oils a long time ago to save costs, not for health. Oil isn't healthy as much as some people try to sell olive oil as healthy, but even that isn't great. Better to eat the olive which has all the other nutrients in it and the fat in its unprocessed state.

[River Dog]

On the other hand, fries cooked in tallow taste way better than oil. But obviously that comes with a health cost.

Yes, they did. There's an old saying, that everything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

Back in the 80's when we made fries for Burger King and before the change to vegetable oil, they insisted that we use non-deodorized beef tallow so that it would "compliment the taste of our flame broiled hamburgers." It was beef tallow in fast food restaurant's deep fat fryers that you could smell as soon as you pulled into the parking lot. You don't smell that anymore.

One of the things about beef tallow is that it had a higher melting point and would leave more of a film on our equipment. Vegetable oils didn't leave the same amount of residue and were easier to clean up. I'm not a food scientist and I don't know if there's a relationship between what happens to our equipment vs. the human body, but I could imagine it doing the same thing to the inside of our bodies.

McDonald's was one of the last to convert to vegetable oil, and one of the reasons why they hesitated was because with their size, that if they quit buying beef tallow, the beef industry would face a major economic stress as they would not have an outlet for their natural biproduct.

Companies moved to cheap oils a long time ago to save costs, not for health. Oil isn't healthy as much as some people try to sell olive oil as healthy, but even that isn't great. Better to eat the olive which has all the other nutrients in it and the fat in its unprocessed state.

Categorically false! Beef tallow was way cheaper than vegetable oil back in the 80's. We got our tallow from Iowa Beef Processors (IBP ) in Wallula, now Tyson Foods and within 150 mile radius of all of the basin French fry plants in WA and OR. All of the vegetable oils had to be transported by rail from back in the Midwest and Canada. The move to vegetable oil had nothing to do with money, to the contrary. It was all driven by consumer demand. That's back when Subway, with their healthier menus, started cutting into McD and BK's market share.

[Aseahawkfan]

Thanks, I'll check it out.

So far, I've lost 23 pounds in a little under 2 months since I started taking the drug, or 10.7% of my body weight. It's as light as I've weighed in 30 years. The only thing I've changed about my diet is that I often times had a bag of microwave popcorn (190 calories) mid-day. I still have the urge to do so but have been successful in skipping it. The biggest effect this drug has had on me is at supper time where I feel full much faster and have been leaving food on my plate.

I don't want to appear like I'm not accepting responsibility, but a lot of my problems have to do with the way my parents conditioned me when I was growing up. We had to belong to "the clean plate club" in order to get served desert. "There's kids starving in Africa that would love to have what you're throwing away!" It resulted in my hardly ever throwing away food I can't eat.

People in these industries have moved far away from blaming the person or assuming no accountability. Not throwing away food didn't cause the problem. Some of the variables for psychological causes mostly center around comfort eating and if your parents were feeding you trash food like eating boxed mac and cheese or potato chips or raising you on soda or even sugary orange juice where they aligned your taste buds with energy dense food combinations. They have tied weight almost completely to calorie consumption in excess of what your body burns with the caveat that most people are completely unaware of this number or how this process works. Highly processed, highly palatable foods are not a problem due to preservatives, but due to nutrient profile meaning the energy density which comes from the combination of fat and carbs in the food, the two primary energy sources the body uses for daily operation when when combined leads to activation of the fat storage mechanism where as your body stores fat for later use when you consume excess calories. They are slowly studying and eliminating variables.

I'm not even sure you sound heavily overweight like some of these 300 plus pound folks who have really obesity issues.

I don't hear RFK talking much about the current science on health. He's kind of a whackjob. That's why all I can hope is he whackjob's his way to a few positive changes, then at some point we hire a real food scientist like a Herman Pontzer or Kevin D. Hall to really study how to get the obesity epidemic and all associated problems under control on a macro-societal level with better management of the food supply.

RFK Jr. is focusing on crap that don't matter much, though I guess a lot of nations have banned red dye in food.

[Aseahawkfan]

Yes, they did. There's an old saying, that everything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

Back in the 80's when we made fries for Burger King and before the change to vegetable oil, they insisted that we use non-deodorized beef tallow so that it would "compliment the taste of our flame broiled hamburgers." It was beef tallow in fast food restaurant's deep fat fryers that you could smell as soon as you pulled into the parking lot. You don't smell that anymore.

One of the things about beef tallow is that it had a higher melting point and would leave more of a film on our equipment. Vegetable oils didn't leave the same amount of residue and were easier to clean up. I'm not a food scientist and I don't know if there's a relationship between what happens to our equipment vs. the human body, but I could imagine it doing the same thing to the inside of our bodies.

McDonald's was one of the last to convert to vegetable oil, and one of the reasons why they hesitated was because with their size, that if they quit buying beef tallow, the beef industry would face a major economic stress as they would not have an outlet for their natural biproduct.

Categorically false! Beef tallow was way cheaper than vegetable oil back in the 80's. We got our tallow from Iowa Beef Processors (IBP ) in Wallula, now Tyson Foods and within 150 mile radius of all of the basin French fry plants in WA and OR. All of the vegetable oils had to be transported by rail from back in the Midwest and Canada. The move to vegetable oil had nothing to do with money, to the contrary. It was all driven by consumer demand. That's back when Subway, with their healthier menus, started cutting into McD and BK's market share.

Show me the evidence. Seed oils have not proven to be healthier and are cheap to produce.

I wonder if beef tallow is more costly now. I'd have to check. My understanding is the move to seed oil was not due to health, but cost. Seed oils don't require an animal having to be slaughtered. You can grow massive crops of seed oil producers for far cheaper than the cost of producing beet tallow. Health was not at al the reason for the move to seed oils as seed oils have been clearly shown to be unhealthy, as unhealthy as beef tallow or animal fat if using low quality, cheap seed oils like canola oil.

[River Dog]

Thanks, I'll check it out.

So far, I've lost 23 pounds in a little under 2 months since I started taking the drug, or 10.7% of my body weight. It's as light as I've weighed in 30 years. The only thing I've changed about my diet is that I often times had a bag of microwave popcorn (190 calories) mid-day. I still have the urge to do so but have been successful in skipping it. The biggest effect this drug has had on me is at supper time where I feel full much faster and have been leaving food on my plate.

I don't want to appear like I'm not accepting responsibility, but a lot of my problems have to do with the way my parents conditioned me when I was growing up. We had to belong to "the clean plate club" in order to get served desert. "There's kids starving in Africa that would love to have what you're throwing away!" It resulted in my hardly ever throwing away food I can't eat.

People in these industries have moved far away from blaming the person or assuming no accountability. Not throwing away food didn't cause the problem. Some of the variables for psychological causes mostly center around comfort eating and if your parents were feeding you trash food like eating boxed mac and cheese or potato chips or raising you on soda or even sugary orange juice where they aligned your taste buds with energy dense food combinations. They have tied weight almost completely to calorie consumption in excess of what your body burns with the caveat that most people are completely unaware of this number or how this process works. Highly processed, highly palatable foods are not a problem due to preservatives, but due to nutrient profile meaning the energy density which comes from the combination of fat and carbs in the food, the two primary energy sources the body uses for daily operation when when combined leads to activation of the fat storage mechanism where as your body stores fat for later use when you consume excess calories. They are slowly studying and eliminating variables.

I'm not even sure you sound heavily overweight like some of these 300 plus pound folks who have really obesity issues.

I don't hear RFK talking much about the current science on health. He's kind of a whackjob. That's why all I can hope is he whackjob's his way to a few positive changes, then at some point we hire a real food scientist like a Herman Pontzer or Kevin D. Hall to really study how to get the obesity epidemic and all associated problems under control on a macro-societal level with better management of the food supply.

RFK Jr. is focusing on crap that don't matter much, though I guess a lot of nations have banned red dye in food.

You're talking to someone raised in the 50's and 60's. Soda pop was a treat, something we got to have when we went out for dinner. If we had a beverage, it would be in the summertime when mom made us Kool-Aid. I don't think my parents ever bought canned or bottled soda pop for us. It wasn't until the 70's when Coke and Pepsi really started to take off.

What has driven the country towards food processing is the working families and demand for quick and easy to prepare meals. The introduction of the microwave changed everything. My mom used to spend 30-45 minutes preparing a meal. Now it can be done in less than 5 minutes, and with a lot less mess to clean up. It's what helped jump start the fast-food industry as a working mom could stop by a McDonald's or KFC and pick up a meal and not have to worry about cooking or clean up. With both parents now working, consumers demanded convenience.

And yes, I'm not that overweight and I don't have a condition like diabetes where insurance would cover the drug. I'm paying for it out of pocket, $500/month. I'm 5'10" tall and in mid-March when I started taking this drug, I weighed almost 215 lbs. But that's still at least 40 pounds overweight. My weight has yo-yoed between 200-225 for the past 25 years. At my age, 70 years old, I need to get my weight down if I want to live into my 80's.

[River Dog]

Show me the evidence. Seed oils have not proven to be healthier and are cheap to produce.

I wonder if beef tallow is more costly now. I'd have to check. My understanding is the move to seed oil was not due to health, but cost. Seed oils don't require an animal having to be slaughtered. You can grow massive crops of seed oil producers for far cheaper than the cost of producing beet tallow. Health was not at al the reason for the move to seed oils as seed oils have been clearly shown to be unhealthy, as unhealthy as beef tallow or animal fat if using low quality, cheap seed oils like canola oil.

I'm sure that the reason why vegetable oil got cheaper was the industry responded to demand, producing in quantity and lowering unit price. The opposite is likely true to beef tallow, forcing them to close rendering plants and making their unit cost for that process more expensive. Tallow is also used in lubricants, and with the price of gas having gone like it has, the demand for tallow as a substitute for oil-based lubricants could have raised the price for that tallow which is used for cooking oil. Tallow is also used in cosmetics, but I couldn't tell you if demand for it has increased or decreased.

They don't raise cattle for the tallow. They raise them for the meat as that's where the money is. Tallow is a byproduct of beef processing and will occur anytime a cow is slaughtered and processed. The price of tallow will vary depending on the price of beef and the demand for the tallow. If people eat less beef, ranchers raise fewer head of cattle, and less tallow is produced, thus raising the cost.

I'm only speculating about the differences in price of the two oils between today and 30 years ago, but I can vouch for the fact that the move to vegetable oil was NOT because it was cheaper. I was in management in that business at the time the transition occurred, so take my word for it.

There's plenty of evidence out there that vegetable oil is healthier than tallow. If you go back and look at the link I posted, you'll find some in the article. Here's a snippit:

“I don’t think there’s a case to be made for health benefits of beef tallow,” Dow told Verywell. “If any exist, they are minor, and are vastly overshadowed by the harm of beef tallow’s saturated fat content.”

Many wellness influencers who promote beef tallow also criticize seed oils, often calling them the “Hateful Eight.” This term refers to canola, corn, cottonseed, grapeseed, soy, rice bran, sunflower, and safflower oils. They claim that omega-6 fatty acids in seed oils can break down into toxins when used for cooking, leading to inflammation.

However, seed oils themselves aren’t the problem. Their reputation for being unhealthy largely stems from their presence in ultra-processed foods, which often contain other ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup, added sugar, and excess sodium.3

The rising interest in beef tallow is bewildering to Christopher Gardner, PhD, a professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine in California and a nutrition scientist at the Stanford Prevention Research Center.

“The science on the health benefits of replacing saturated fats like beef tallow with unsaturated fats—such as most seed, vegetable, and plant oils—is solid and goes back many decades,” Gardner said. But he recognizes that health is often not the top priority when people make food choices.2

https://www.verywellhealth.com/beef-tal ... tm_term=PM

[Aseahawkfan]

You're talking to someone raised in the 50's and 60's. Soda pop was a treat, something we got to have when we went out for dinner. If we had a beverage, it would be in the summertime when mom made us Kool-Aid. I don't think my parents ever bought canned or bottled soda pop for us. It wasn't until the 70's when Coke and Pepsi really started to take off.

What has driven the country towards food processing is the working families and demand for quick and easy to prepare meals. The introduction of the microwave changed everything. My mom used to spend 30-45 minutes preparing a meal. Now it can be done in less than 5 minutes, and with a lot less mess to clean up. It's what helped jump start the fast-food industry as a working mom could stop by a McDonald's or KFC and pick up a meal and not have to worry about cooking or clean up. With both parents now working, consumers demanded convenience.

And yes, I'm not that overweight and I don't have a condition like diabetes where insurance would cover the drug. I'm paying for it out of pocket, $500/month. I'm 5'10" tall and in mid-March when I started taking this drug, I weighed almost 215 lbs. But that's still at least 40 pounds overweight. My weight has yo-yoed between 200-225 for the past 25 years. At my age, 70 years old, I need to get my weight down if I want to live into my 80's.

So you're not really obese except on some BMI chart that also has been shown to not apply well across populations. I know certain doctors I listen to want a waist size under 40 or under 36 inches for a male and this is around the broadest part of the waist size, not the pants size. So has to be measured. I know your generation prefers to be a little leaner as my dad is that way too.

We're talking obesity here. People your height weighing 250 to 300 lbs and other insane examples of obesity.

I recently hit 290. I'm down to 276 right now. I was around 229 before COVID. Waist size around the biggest part is around 50 inches at 290 while wearing pants size of 38 to 40, which is why pants size isn't an accurate indicator. Only thing that saves me from looking like the obese people I see around me is I also carry a lot of upper body muscle. My shoulders, chest, and back are over 50 inches which makes my belly look smaller. When I get to 229 I drop to around 42 inches at the largest part of my belly and look even more muscled up. Just random chance I chose a hobby that builds muscle. Probably saved me from a lot of metabolic disorders. It's even worse for women.

So you're not that overweight. You're more like my bad who doesn't like having even a moderate belly. That's likely a generational viewpoint as you grew up when people weren't as uber fat as they are now.

[Aseahawkfan]

I'm sure that the reason why vegetable oil got cheaper was the industry responded to demand, producing in quantity and lowering unit price. The opposite is likely true to beef tallow, forcing them to close rendering plants and making their unit cost for that process more expensive. Tallow is also used in lubricants, and with the price of gas having gone like it has, the demand for tallow as a substitute for oil-based lubricants could have raised the price for that tallow which is used for cooking oil. Tallow is also used in cosmetics, but I couldn't tell you if demand for it has increased or decreased.

They don't raise cattle for the tallow. They raise them for the meat as that's where the money is. Tallow is a byproduct of beef and will occur anytime a cow is slaughtered and processed. The price of tallow will vary depending on the price of beef and the demand for the tallow. If people eat less beef, ranchers raise fewer head of cattle, and less tallow is produced, thus raising the cost.

I'm only speculating about the differences in price of the two oils between today and 30 years ago, but I can vouch for the fact that the move to vegetable oil was NOT because it was cheaper. I was in management in that business at the time the transition occurred, so take my word for it.

There's plenty of evidence out there that vegetable oil is healthier than tallow. If you go back and look at the link I posted, you'll find some in the article. Here's a snippit:

“I don’t think there’s a case to be made for health benefits of beef tallow,” Dow told Verywell. “If any exist, they are minor, and are vastly overshadowed by the harm of beef tallow’s saturated fat content.”

Many wellness influencers who promote beef tallow also criticize seed oils, often calling them the “Hateful Eight.” This term refers to canola, corn, cottonseed, grapeseed, soy, rice bran, sunflower, and safflower oils. They claim that omega-6 fatty acids in seed oils can break down into toxins when used for cooking, leading to inflammation.

However, seed oils themselves aren’t the problem. Their reputation for being unhealthy largely stems from their presence in ultra-processed foods, which often contain other ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup, added sugar, and excess sodium.3

The rising interest in beef tallow is bewildering to Christopher Gardner, PhD, a professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine in California and a nutrition scientist at the Stanford Prevention Research Center.

“The science on the health benefits of replacing saturated fats like beef tallow with unsaturated fats—such as most seed, vegetable, and plant oils—is solid and goes back many decades,” Gardner said. But he recognizes that health is often not the top priority when people make food choices.2

https://www.verywellhealth.com/beef-tal ... tm_term=PM

I'll take your word on it as I was mainly interested because I haven't done much studying on that subject. I've mostly heard a variety of reasons for it from cheaper, mass produced seed oil much like the reason we moved from sugar to corn syrup when processing of corn syrup became easier and corn was a crop we produce in mass quantities easier than sugar. I've heard we moved to seed oil due to complaints from Hindus when McDonalds and other fast food wanted to expand globally as Hindus won't eat any part of a cow. I know from growing up during that time that saturated fat was demonized for a while and so was milk and beef fat which led to the creation of margarine and similar products which over time have proven not to be as healthy.

There are a lot of different oils now, seed and all, none of them are particularly healthy they have found. They aren't necessarily unhealthy in small quantities, but not healthy either. Even olive oil with all their studies just seems to be another oil that adds calories slightly better than canola or other cheaper oils, but still when used to add fat to a meal doesn't do much healthy. Some studies are saying the major reason for the Mediterranean diet health outcomes has more to do with culture and eating heavily unprocessed food in reasonable quantities along with long-lived genetics with the olive in its base form being considered extremely healthy.

I've studied a lot of diets. One of the few things they seem to agree on is there is no way to make fried food healthy. So RFK saying beef tallow is better than vegetable oil is like telling someone smoking a filtered cigarette is better than unfiltered: neither one is a good idea for health. So I think RFK should leave that alone other than I like the taste of French fries in beef tallow better. I rarely eat French fries because there is just no away around the fact that fried foods are not great for you. Same as ice cream though I am seeing some lower calorie ice creams, but they don't taste near as good as real ice cream. If I'm going to eat ice cream, I want it to be good. Just like if I'm going to eat French fries, I'd prefer them in beef tallow for the taste. I'm not going to delude myself that ice cream or French fries are healthy.

I don't use oil much when I cook. I sometimes pick up sesame oil for use in an Asian stir fry because I found a little sesame oil tastes better. I don't even keep any cooking oil in the house as I even stopped using sesame oil in my stir fry. I buy a sauce now which usually has some oil, but I eat that meal so rarely it wasn't worth keeping the oil around. Oil is in a ton of stuff, no real need for more.

RFK saying beef tallow is healthier is BS. Ain't no way to make fried food healthy. If you're eating too much fried food, you're asking for problems long-term.

[River Dog]

I'll take your word on it as I was mainly interested because I haven't done much studying on that subject. I've mostly heard a variety of reasons for it from cheaper, mass produced seed oil much like the reason we moved from sugar to corn syrup when processing of corn syrup became easier and corn was a crop we produce in mass quantities easier than sugar. I've heard we moved to seed oil due to complaints from Hindus when McDonalds and other fast food wanted to expand globally as Hindus won't eat any part of a cow. I know from growing up during that time that saturated fat was demonized for a while and so was milk and beef fat which led to the creation of margarine and similar products which over time have proven not to be as healthy.

There are a lot of different oils now, seed and all, none of them are particularly healthy they have found. They aren't necessarily unhealthy in small quantities, but not healthy either. Even olive oil with all their studies just seems to be another oil that adds calories slightly better than canola or other cheaper oils, but still when used to add fat to a meal doesn't do much healthy. Some studies are saying the major reason for the Mediterranean diet health outcomes has more to do with culture and eating heavily unprocessed food in reasonable quantities along with long-lived genetics with the olive in its base form being considered extremely healthy.

I've studied a lot of diets. One of the few things they seem to agree on is there is no way to make fried food healthy. So RFK saying beef tallow is better than vegetable oil is like telling someone smoking a filtered cigarette is better than unfiltered: neither one is a good idea for health. So I think RFK should leave that alone other than I like the taste of French fries in beef tallow better. I rarely eat French fries because there is just no away around the fact that fried foods are not great for you. Same as ice cream though I am seeing some lower calorie ice creams, but they don't taste near as good as real ice cream. If I'm going to eat ice cream, I want it to be good. Just like if I'm going to eat French fries, I'd prefer them in beef tallow for the taste. I'm not going to delude myself that ice cream or French fries are healthy.

I don't use oil much when I cook. I sometimes pick up sesame oil for use in an Asian stir fry because I found a little sesame oil tastes better. I don't even keep any cooking oil in the house as I even stopped using sesame oil in my stir fry. I buy a sauce now which usually has some oil, but I eat that meal so rarely it wasn't worth keeping the oil around. Oil is in a ton of stuff, no real need for more.

RFK saying beef tallow is healthier is BS. Ain't no way to make fried food healthy. If you're eating too much fried food, you're asking for problems long-term.

I appreciate your acknowledgement. I wouldn't have been so passionate about it had I not been deeply involved in the transition some 40 years ago.

There used to be a robust sugar beet business in eastern/central Washington. U&I had a processing plant in Moses Lake kitty corner from where I worked at for over 11 years. My understanding of why the business collapsed was due to the advent of sugar free sweeteners, corn syrup, and competition for crop land, mainly from the potato industry. They couldn't get farmers to grow beets. I used to go pheasant hunting in beet fields. Damn hard to walk through.

You're right, no oil is 'good' for you. The argument here is which oil is healthier than the other, and there's no doubt that vegetable oil is much healthier than beef tallow. I don't use a lot of oil, either. It takes us 6 months to go through a quart bottle of olive oil.

I don't trust RFK Jr. any further than I can throw him. Even if he hits on one of those "even a broken clock is right twice a day" moments, he's lost his credibility in my eyes. He's already done far more damage to the country's health than he can ever do good. He takes stances like he has on vaccines, these weight loss drugs I'm taking, and beef tallow that does nothing but promote the spread of misinformation.

[River Dog]

So you're not really obese except on some BMI chart that also has been shown to not apply well across populations. I know certain doctors I listen to want a waist size under 40 or under 36 inches for a male and this is around the broadest part of the waist size, not the pants size. So has to be measured. I know your generation prefers to be a little leaner as my dad is that way too.

We're talking obesity here. People your height weighing 250 to 300 lbs and other insane examples of obesity.

I recently hit 290. I'm down to 276 right now. I was around 229 before COVID. Waist size around the biggest part is around 50 inches at 290 while wearing pants size of 38 to 40, which is why pants size isn't an accurate indicator. Only thing that saves me from looking like the obese people I see around me is I also carry a lot of upper body muscle. My shoulders, chest, and back are over 50 inches which makes my belly look smaller. When I get to 229 I drop to around 42 inches at the largest part of my belly and look even more muscled up. Just random chance I chose a hobby that builds muscle. Probably saved me from a lot of metabolic disorders. It's even worse for women.

So you're not that overweight. You're more like my bad who doesn't like having even a moderate belly. That's likely a generational viewpoint as you grew up when people weren't as uber fat as they are now.

I'm considered mildly obese, or at least that's how my doctor describes me in his summary. But you're right, I'm not that overweight. I have family members, in particular a niece and nephew, with a much more serious weight problem. Nevertheless, I can improve my overall health and extend my life expectancy by losing 40 pounds.

Obesity is the biggest health problem in this country. Nothing else comes close. And that's before you consider the social implications that comes with being overweight, especially for women. When my daughter was in high school, she went to a store to rent a dress, and they didn't have one big enough for her. Poor kid cried her heart out. These drugs offer people hope.

[Aseahawkfan]

I'm considered mildly obese, or at least that's how my doctor describes me in his summary. But you're right, I'm not that overweight. I have family members, in particular a niece and nephew, with a much more serious weight problem. Nevertheless, I can improve my overall health and extend my life expectancy by losing 40 pounds.

Obesity is the biggest health problem in this country. Nothing else comes close. And that's before you consider the social implications that comes with being overweight, especially for women. When my daughter was in high school, she went to a store to rent a dress, and they didn't have one big enough for her. Poor kid cried her heart out. These drugs offer people hope.

I'm all for these drugs.

I've been doing the yo-yo dieting for so long and like you considering it my "personal weakness" and listening to the "eat less, move more" crowd that I would beat myself up. Then I studied the subject more and more to understand it better and all the factors involved or as many as I could.

I started to look at my uncles and then myself and I look like them. Big old forearms, 13.5 inch lean forearms without touching a weight. Never even thought much about it until I started seeing this was some people's upper arms and mine started off at 14.5 before I even started lifting. The built up into 17 3/4 inch muscular upper arms without even working arms. Most of my fat goes around the waist to form a big belly and the side of my chest with some inner thighs. I look like a powerlifter. So that confirmed a genetic component into how I carry fat and build muscle.

Then I accumulated more information like what fat is and why it accumulates. Fat and the process of accumulation is an energy storage system on a mammal, primarily a system allowing a human to store additional energy during periods of food scarcity. Humans for thousands to tens of thousands or longer we have lived in a food scarce environment where we had to travel around and compete for food with animals.

That's when I came upon the current obesity theory where the scientists and various associated experts were trying to pinpoint a strong causal relationship. They were thinking carbs were a problem, lack of movement, the insulin model of obesity which is tied to carbs, and various other theories. The current science is tying much of the obesity epidemic to a rise in processed foods with unhealthy nutrient profiles meaning carbs and fat combined in large quantities into a food with high energy density meaning a lot of calories in a small amount of food. The scientists know the recipe for obesity is simple: energy (carbs or fat) in high enough quantity to cause the fat storage mechanism to activate (too many calories and a sufficient amount of fat to store with possible activation of the process which carbohydrates are turned to fat and stored).

That's when I accepted that this idea of discipline is misguided. We are a bunch of mammals that survived food scarcity and food competition for thousands to tens of thousands of years then our big brains built a food environment unequaled in history of abundant, energy dense food that requires about as much energy as it takes to call up to order pizza or drive your car to the local grocery store. Now I'm working to build my diet approach to this environment which also isn't easy. I'm glad that big pharma is making some drugs to do what bariatric surgery was doing: reduce the consumption of food. GLP drugs help our crazy, hungry minds from acting like rats given energy dense food that activates our hunger signals to eat and eat and eat while our bodies store all the excess energy as fat that we don't use because there is no food scarcity any longer in America or most 1st world nations.

Then after we've done this damage over years and decades, we have to put ourselves in starvation mode to get the body to use the fat we stored while resisting the abundance of energy dense food around us when starvation mode causes your brain to send out hormone signaling that you're starving and initiates chemical reactions to make you want to eat.

Which is where the GLP1s come into action to counter this effect and cause reduced hunger and increase fullness which causes the brain to indicate your full and can't eat more while eating very few calories.

That's why I am discussing the food environment with you. The GLP1 drugs themselves were made to counter the effects of this unhealthy food environment to help people lose weight while resisting cravings driven by hunger signaling that encourages excess consumption of calories. In your case, not such bad food. But the younger generation who was raised on fast food and processed food made for convenience with really unhealthy nutrition profiles with high carbs and fat that causes excess fat storage otherwise known as obesity.

GLP1s...miracle drug using your own brain to help you lose weight.

[River Dog]

I'm all for these drugs.

I've been doing the yo-yo dieting for so long and like you considering it my "personal weakness" and listening to the "eat less, move more" crowd that I would beat myself up. Then I studied the subject more and more to understand it better and all the factors involved or as many as I could.

I started to look at my uncles and then myself and I look like them. Big old forearms, 13.5 inch lean forearms without touching a weight. Never even thought much about it until I started seeing this was some people's upper arms and mine started off at 14.5 before I even started lifting. The built up into 17 3/4 inch muscular upper arms without even working arms. Most of my fat goes around the waist to form a big belly and the side of my chest with some inner thighs. I look like a powerlifter. So that confirmed a genetic component into how I carry fat and build muscle.

Then I accumulated more information like what fat is and why it accumulates. Fat and the process of accumulation is an energy storage system on a mammal, primarily a system allowing a human to store additional energy during periods of food scarcity. Humans for thousands to tens of thousands or longer we have lived in a food scarce environment where we had to travel around and compete for food with animals.

That's when I came upon the current obesity theory where the scientists and various associated experts were trying to pinpoint a strong causal relationship. They were thinking carbs were a problem, lack of movement, the insulin model of obesity which is tied to carbs, and various other theories. The current science is tying much of the obesity epidemic to a rise in processed foods with unhealthy nutrient profiles meaning carbs and fat combined in large quantities into a food with high energy density meaning a lot of calories in a small amount of food. The scientists know the recipe for obesity is simple: energy (carbs or fat) in high enough quantity to cause the fat storage mechanism to activate (too many calories and a sufficient amount of fat to store with possible activation of the process which carbohydrates are turned to fat and stored).

That's when I accepted that this idea of discipline is misguided. We are a bunch of mammals that survived food scarcity and food competition for thousands to tens of thousands of years then our big brains built a food environment unequaled in history of abundant, energy dense food that requires about as much energy as it takes to call up to order pizza or drive your car to the local grocery store. Now I'm working to build my diet approach to this environment which also isn't easy. I'm glad that big pharma is making some drugs to do what bariatric surgery was doing: reduce the consumption of food. GLP drugs help our crazy, hungry minds from acting like rats given energy dense food that activates our hunger signals to eat and eat and eat while our bodies store all the excess energy as fat that we don't use because there is no food scarcity any longer in America or most 1st world nations.

Then after we've done this damage over years and decades, we have to put ourselves in starvation mode to get the body to use the fat we stored while resisting the abundance of energy dense food around us when starvation mode causes your brain to send out hormone signaling that you're starving and initiates chemical reactions to make you want to eat.

Which is where the GLP1s come into action to counter this effect and cause reduced hunger and increase fullness which causes the brain to indicate your full and can't eat more while eating very few calories.

That's why I am discussing the food environment with you. The GLP1 drugs themselves were made to counter the effects of this unhealthy food environment to help people lose weight while resisting cravings driven by hunger signaling that encourages excess consumption of calories. In your case, not such bad food. But the younger generation who was raised on fast food and processed food made for convenience with really unhealthy nutrition profiles with high carbs and fat that causes excess fat storage otherwise known as obesity.

GLP1s...miracle drug using your own brain to help you lose weight.

I am in agreement with you up until your last paragraph. I don't think that the "unhealthy food environment" has as much to do with obesity as you're claiming it does. People don't always have control over how much they eat, but they do have control over what they eat. IMO overeating, ie portion size, as more to do with obesity than the food itself, at least that's what I've experienced in my own battle with the disease.

I do think that we can do a much better job of educating the public about what's in their food so that they make informed decisions about what they put on their plates. For example, excess sodium, i.e. table salt, is not only bad for your system, but it also has the tendency to make you eat more. As I mentioned earlier, my company did a lot of testing to determine what spice or ingredient caused a person to eat more French fries, and the only substance we found that actually increased consumption was salt. IMO not enough attention is paid to the sodium content in our food.

The food industry operates in a free market economy. It is extremely competitive. If people are willing to sacrifice cost and convenience for foods that are healthier for them, then companies will respond to that market pressure and sell it to them. It's worked in the past. Not to kick a dead horse, but that's how we got beef tallow out of our diets. It had nothing to do with companies prioritizing profits over health. There was a health movement that was born in the 70-early 80's that companies like Subway took advantage of and caused a shift in consumer demand. If we want to make our food healthier, then let's get the information out to the public so they can start patronizing healthier foods.

That's why I abhor RFK Jr., because he's undermining our ability to educate the public by his being a primary source of misinformation. He confuses the public, causes mistrust and suspicion, gives the public conflicting information, and people start making choices, not only about their diets but other aspects of their lives as well, based on their politics and who they choose to believe rather than solid scientific information.

[River Dog]

One other thing I've noticed since I embarked on my weight loss drug two months ago is the number of unsolicited emails and ads on social media that I've been exposed to offering cheaper access, medical providers to prescribe them, etc. I'm sure that there's a lot of scams out there.

[Aseahawkfan]

I am in agreement with you up until your last paragraph. I don't think that the "unhealthy food environment" has as much to do with obesity as you're claiming it does. People don't always have control over how much they eat, but they do have control over what they eat. IMO overeating, ie portion size, as more to do with obesity than the food itself, at least that's what I've experienced in my own battle with the disease.

I do think that we can do a much better job of educating the public about what's in their food so that they make informed decisions about what they put on their plates. For example, excess sodium, i.e. table salt, is not only bad for your system, but it also has the tendency to make you eat more. As I mentioned earlier, my company did a lot of testing to determine what spice or ingredient caused a person to eat more French fries, and the only substance we found that actually increased consumption was salt. IMO not enough attention is paid to the sodium content in our food.

The food industry operates in a free market economy. It is extremely competitive. If people are willing to sacrifice cost and convenience for foods that are healthier for them, then companies will respond to that market pressure and sell it to them. It's worked in the past. Not to kick a dead horse, but that's how we got beef tallow out of our diets. It had nothing to do with companies prioritizing profits over health. There was a health movement that was born in the 70-early 80's that companies like Subway took advantage of and caused a shift in consumer demand. If we want to make our food healthier, then let's get the information out to the public so they can start patronizing healthier foods.

That's why I abhor RFK Jr., because he's undermining our ability to educate the public by his being a primary source of misinformation. He confuses the public, causes mistrust and suspicion, gives the public conflicting information, and people start making choices, not only about their diets but other aspects of their lives as well, based on their politics and who they choose to believe rather than solid scientific information.

You are flat wrong about the food environment. Portion sizing is part of the food environment. You for some reason can reach the point where you go "willpower alone doesn't seem to be the reason for obesity" but for some reason can't puzzle out why that is.

Food environment includes the following which I will simplify further:

1. Hyper-palatability: Food built to activate your hunger signaling to consume more. The food is built to show activation of hormones that encourage eating like sugar boosting insulin in the system which is a storage hormone or ghrelin the hunger hormone.

2. Energy Density: Foods designed with carbs and fats in high quantities in smaller amounts of food.

3. Portion sizing: Energy dense foods in large portions.

4. Easily accessible: Restaurants, grocery stores, corner stores, and lots high energy density, tasty foods available in large quantities that don't require time to prepare.

5. Cheap or comparable cost to healthier foods: Low cost or relatively low cost.

Here is an article on the food environment from some doctors running a business to help deal with it. They believe in using everything and the kitchen sink to help people including GLP1s or bariatric surgery.

https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/how-to-eat-a-healthy-diet/


If education worked, America would be eating healthier as the information is available. It's like when we talk about money, plenty of people know how to manage money or can learn, but they don't do it because the environment encourages consumption.

I think most people know that eating french fries or hamburgers or other unhealthy, energy dense foods isn't great, but when you're in a hurry living the American life-style, they don't really stop. The the acronym for the Standard American Diet is S.A.D. Funny joke by the diet scientists.

[Aseahawkfan]

One other thing I've noticed since I embarked on my weight loss drug two months ago is the number of unsolicited emails and ads on social media that I've been exposed to offering cheaper access, medical providers to prescribe them, etc. I'm sure that there's a lot of scams out there.

Yep. There was a time when the GLPs were designated under-supplied. Knock off companies were allowed to construct GLP1s in these labs that apparently are allowed to replicate a drug based on its ingredients somehow bypassing the normal patent rules so long as they don't use the exact production process for creating the drug. There is this company called [b]HIMS[b] that made a killing doing this as well as selling knockoff viagra and such. They sell lifestyle products with weight loss drugs, virility drugs, and the like pushing their company as the way to be a better man.

I think they have a version of the lifestyle products for women called HERS.

Stock did really well as their is apparently big demand for how to be a better man or woman using modern pharmacology. Not my cup of tea, but I do wish I had tracked the stock earlier as I think it is a multi-bagger in the 800 or higher percent range.

[Aseahawkfan]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate

We are some fat people in America.

You went to Japan recently. What did you see that they are doing differently with food and eating?

I know Japan is heavily focused on teaching healthy eating young. They apply a lot of social pressure to not be fat. They have a lot of rules about food in Japan to ensure a quality food supply.

This is an example of a different food environment with lower obesity. Food environment is a catchall term for a multifactorial problem that covers everything from culture, food processing, types of foods, how you are taught to eat, and a variety of other factors food scientists are trying to tease out to figure out how best to attack the obesity epidemic. You seem very focused on food processing when that is only one aspect of the food environment. That's why I told no one cares about preservatives. Maybe these things have other health effects that are problematic, but for obesity the food environment in relation to processed food is far more focused on energy density and portion size. 3 oz. of French fries has a very different energy density than 3 oz. of chicken breast as an example.

https://time.com/6974579/japan-food-culture-low-obesity/

[River Dog]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate

We are some fat people in America.

You went to Japan recently. What did you see that they are doing differently with food and eating?

I know Japan is heavily focused on teaching healthy eating young. They apply a lot of social pressure to not be fat. They have a lot of rules about food in Japan to ensure a quality food supply.

This is an example of a different food environment with lower obesity. Food environment is a catchall term for a multifactorial problem that covers everything from culture, food processing, types of foods, how you are taught to eat, and a variety of other factors food scientists are trying to tease out to figure out how best to attack the obesity epidemic. You seem very focused on food processing when that is only one aspect of the food environment. That's why I told no one cares about preservatives. Maybe these things have other health effects that are problematic, but for obesity the food environment in relation to processed food is far more focused on energy density and portion size. 3 oz. of French fries has a very different energy density than 3 oz. of chicken breast as an example.

https://time.com/6974579/japan-food-culture-low-obesity/

I only spent two weeks in Japan so I couldn't really tell you anymore about their diet than what one can glean on the internet. But in general, Japanese food is relatively healthy as it contains a lot of fish and vegetables and not much pork or beef. But they do fry a lot of their food. And they have tons of American fast-food franchises, ie McDonald's, Pizza Hut, KFC, et al.

One of the differences could be environmental. Japan is an island nation, and in areas that are not occupied by humans, the geography is mountainous and forested, much different than the American west. It is not conducive to raising cattle. It's also not conducive to raising wheat, corn, and potatoes. Most of their grain is imported, so there wouldn't be cheap, reliable feed available. The reason they eat healthy could be something as simple as it being cheaper than eating an unhealthy diet.

Or it could be genetic. Asian countries have consistently lower obesity rates than European countries. But on the other hand, the most obese countries in the world happen to be island nations, and natives there are genetically more similar to Asians than they are Europeans. It would also shoot a hole in the theory that it's environmental as Pacific Islanders don't have any more access to red meat than do the Japanese, so go figure.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/count ... by-country

One of the facts that seems to contradict the genetic theory is that native Africans tend to have lower obesity rates while in the United States, the race with the highest obesity rate is non Hispanic blacks while non Hispanic whites have the lowest.

https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2019/18_0579.htm

It seems to me that there are a number of factors that are at play in what it is that makes people obese. All I can tell you is that with me, it all has to do with portion size. I eat relatively healthy foods, lots of fresh vegetables and whole grains, very little red meat or fried foods, very few sweets and sugar-added foods, and I get a fair amount of exercise for my age. My problem has been at dinner time. Indeed, I've lost 23 pounds in two months and with the exception of cutting out my mid-day bag of popcorn, I haven't changed anything in my diet. I'm eating the same food, just less of it.

[Aseahawkfan]

I only spent two weeks in Japan so I couldn't really tell you anymore about their diet than what one can glean on the internet. But in general, Japanese food is relatively healthy as it contains a lot of fish and vegetables and not much pork or beef. But they do fry a lot of their food. And they have tons of American fast-food franchises, ie McDonald's, Pizza Hut, KFC, et al.

One of the differences could be environmental. Japan is an island nation, and in areas that are not occupied by humans, the geography is mountainous and forested, much different than the American west. It is not conducive to raising cattle. It's also not conducive to raising wheat, corn, and potatoes. Most of their grain is imported, so there wouldn't be cheap, reliable feed available. The reason they eat healthy could be something as simple as it being cheaper than eating an unhealthy diet.

Or it could be genetic. Asian countries have consistently lower obesity rates than European countries. But on the other hand, the most obese countries in the world happen to be island nations, and natives there are genetically more similar to Asians than they are Europeans. It would also shoot a hole in the theory that it's environmental as Pacific Islanders don't have any more access to red meat than do the Japanese, so go figure.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/count ... by-country

One of the facts that seems to contradict the genetic theory is that native Africans tend to have lower obesity rates while in the United States, the race with the highest obesity rate is non Hispanic blacks while non Hispanic whites have the lowest.

https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2019/18_0579.htm

It seems to me that there are a number of factors that are at play in what it is that makes people obese. All I can tell you is that with me, it all has to do with portion size. I eat relatively healthy foods, lots of fresh vegetables and whole grains, very little red meat or fried foods, very few sweets and sugar-added foods, and I get a fair amount of exercise for my age. My problem has been at dinner time. Indeed, I've lost 23 pounds in two months and with the exception of cutting out my mid-day bag of popcorn, I haven't changed anything in my diet. I'm eating the same food, just less of it.

Now you're catching on. That's why they called it the food environment because it is a number of factors all wrapped up in how Americans and other nations deal with food in modern era where food is abundant. They kept trying to pinpoint specific factors, but no one specific factor seemed to explain it all. It was a bunch of factors in combination.

The hyper-processed food alone is not doing it. People tried Twinkie diets and Big Mac diets that were calorie equated meaning they only ate enough Twinkies or Big Macs to match the calories of a weight loss diet and still lost weight and fat. So processed food alone is not some single factor, but one of many.

https://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

This has led to the confirmation that calories aka biological energy is the primary factor driving weight gain and weight loss. If that is the case, how did our calories reach a point to cause the obesity epidemic and why are we having trouble controlling our eating? As you're now starting to see, it is a multitude of reasons that scientists are loosely referring to as the food environment. Kind of a catchall for a variety of factors that all contribute to obesity.

They did some studies on some of the obese Island nations. Apparently these nations moved from eating fish and local natural foods to imported junk food from America. At least that is one of the theories as to why they have become obese.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/04/07/473371279/is-samoa-s-obesity-epidemic-a-harbinger-for-other-developing-nations

[River Dog]

I only spent two weeks in Japan so I couldn't really tell you anymore about their diet than what one can glean on the internet. But in general, Japanese food is relatively healthy as it contains a lot of fish and vegetables and not much pork or beef. But they do fry a lot of their food. And they have tons of American fast-food franchises, ie McDonald's, Pizza Hut, KFC, et al.

One of the differences could be environmental. Japan is an island nation, and in areas that are not occupied by humans, the geography is mountainous and forested, much different than the American west. It is not conducive to raising cattle. It's also not conducive to raising wheat, corn, and potatoes. Most of their grain is imported, so there wouldn't be cheap, reliable feed available. The reason they eat healthy could be something as simple as it being cheaper than eating an unhealthy diet.

Or it could be genetic. Asian countries have consistently lower obesity rates than European countries. But on the other hand, the most obese countries in the world happen to be island nations, and natives there are genetically more similar to Asians than they are Europeans. It would also shoot a hole in the theory that it's environmental as Pacific Islanders don't have any more access to red meat than do the Japanese, so go figure.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/count ... by-country

One of the facts that seems to contradict the genetic theory is that native Africans tend to have lower obesity rates while in the United States, the race with the highest obesity rate is non Hispanic blacks while non Hispanic whites have the lowest.

https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2019/18_0579.htm

It seems to me that there are a number of factors that are at play in what it is that makes people obese. All I can tell you is that with me, it all has to do with portion size. I eat relatively healthy foods, lots of fresh vegetables and whole grains, very little red meat or fried foods, very few sweets and sugar-added foods, and I get a fair amount of exercise for my age. My problem has been at dinner time. Indeed, I've lost 23 pounds in two months and with the exception of cutting out my mid-day bag of popcorn, I haven't changed anything in my diet. I'm eating the same food, just less of it.

Now you're catching on. That's why they called it the food environment because it is a number of factors all wrapped up in how Americans and other nations deal with food in modern era where food is abundant. They kept trying to pinpoint specific factors, but no one specific factor seemed to explain it all. It was a bunch of factors in combination.

The hyper-processed food alone is not doing it. People tried Twinkie diets and Big Mac diets that were calorie equated meaning they only ate enough Twinkies or Big Macs to match the calories of a weight loss diet and still lost weight and fat. So processed food alone is not some single factor, but one of many.

https://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

This has led to the confirmation that calories aka biological energy is the primary factor driving weight gain and weight loss. If that is the case, how did our calories reach a point to cause the obesity epidemic and why are we having trouble controlling our eating? As you're now starting to see, it is a multitude of reasons that scientists are loosely referring to as the food environment. Kind of a catchall for a variety of factors that all contribute to obesity.

They did some studies on some of the obese Island nations. Apparently these nations moved from eating fish and local natural foods to imported junk food from America. At least that is one of the theories as to why they have become obese.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/04/07/473371279/is-samoa-s-obesity-epidemic-a-harbinger-for-other-developing-nations

I don't think it's a matter of my "catching on" so much as it that we aren't as far apart in our opinions as we both assumed we were.

I guess what got me going was our argument over how beef tallow was originally removed from the American diet, that it was purely price related, that it was the work of evil men in the boardrooms of corporate America looking to turn a profit that was responsible. I knew better.

I've lost weight before only to gain it back, the most recent being during the pandemic when I reach a level a pound or two higher than I am today. Psychologically one of the keys for me is weighing every evening after I get out of the shower. Some people say not to, that you can get discouraged when you see the weight unexpectedly tick up a bit. But for me, it keeps me conscious of it. What I have to guard against is hitting an inevitable plateau and getting discouraged.

One more thing about beef tallow and I'll leave the subject alone. Beef consumption per capita has decreased since what it was in the 70's and 80's when industries like mine used it in their process. In 1980, beef accounted for 80% of all the meat consumed in the US. That number today is around 50%, the difference being increases in poultry and pork. You can't produce tallow without a market for the beef it comes from. When you toss in the fact that oil prices were much cheaper back then, meaning less demand for tallow as a lubricant, and that there was very little vegetable oil processed back then, one can understand how the price relationship between the two oils has flipped.

Eli Lilly has a weight loss drug in a pill that is currently undergoing trials. Initial results are mostly positive, and if it gets FDA approval, it could be available by this time next year. That could significantly reduce the cost.

[Aseahawkfan]

I don't think it's a matter of my "catching on" so much as it that we aren't as far apart in our opinions as we both assumed we were.

I guess what got me going was our argument over how beef tallow was originally removed from the American diet, that it was purely price related, that it was the work of evil men in the boardrooms of corporate America looking to turn a profit that was responsible. I knew better.

I've lost weight before only to gain it back, the most recent being during the pandemic when I reach a level a pound or two higher than I am today. Psychologically one of the keys for me is weighing every evening after I get out of the shower. Some people say not to, that you can get discouraged when you see the weight unexpectedly tick up a bit. But for me, it keeps me conscious of it. What I have to guard against is hitting an inevitable plateau and getting discouraged.

One more thing about beef tallow and I'll leave the subject alone. Beef consumption per capita has decreased since what it was in the 70's and 80's when industries like mine used it in their process. In 1980, beef accounted for 80% of all the meat consumed in the US. That number today is around 50%, the difference being increases in poultry and pork. You can't produce tallow without a market for the beef it comes from. When you toss in the fact that oil prices were much cheaper back then, meaning less demand for tallow as a lubricant, and that there was very little vegetable oil processed back then, one can understand how the price relationship between the two oils has flipped.

Eli Lilly has a weight loss drug in a pill that is currently undergoing trials. Initial results are mostly positive, and if it gets FDA approval, it could be available by this time next year. That could significantly reduce the cost.

That often happens between us in these discussions. I didn't know much about the beef tallow other than conservative friends bitching McDonalds changed to vegetable oil due to pressure from the Hindu Indian population and blaming it on wokeness or the term at the time since it keeps changing while staying the same thing. All I remember is the French fries did change in taste and I was too young to care much as a French fry is a French fry and it's hard to make it not taste good, though some companies like Dairy Queen and Burger King found a way to make crappy tasting fries. I know if I'm going to eat an unhealthy French fry, I don't care if its slightly less healthy with beef tallow if it tastes better. French fry is never going to be healthy. It's super goofy for RFK Jr. to be worrying about whether fries are cooked in vegetable oil or beef tallow. I imagine it's another one of those niche issues that Trump and his team figured out how to manipulate to their advantage for support like he did when he pulled his weird crew together with nuts on the left and right pushing weird issues that he supported just to get votes he doesn't really care about. Who knows. Trump is a big McDonalds fan and may be personally unhappy his McDonalds fries aren't cooked in beef tallow, so RFK Jr. is helping him get his precious beef tallow fries back. That is how insane this whole situation is where the president's personal preference for how his Mcdonalds fries were cooked as a child is driving this policy.

[River Dog]

That often happens between us in these discussions. I didn't know much about the beef tallow other than conservative friends bitching McDonalds changed to vegetable oil due to pressure from the Hindu Indian population and blaming it on wokeness or the term at the time since it keeps changing while staying the same thing. All I remember is the French fries did change in taste and I was too young to care much as a French fry is a French fry and it's hard to make it not taste good, though some companies like Dairy Queen and Burger King found a way to make crappy tasting fries. I know if I'm going to eat an unhealthy French fry, I don't care if its slightly less healthy with beef tallow if it tastes better. French fry is never going to be healthy. It's super goofy for RFK Jr. to be worrying about whether fries are cooked in vegetable oil or beef tallow. I imagine it's another one of those niche issues that Trump and his team figured out how to manipulate to their advantage for support like he did when he pulled his weird crew together with nuts on the left and right pushing weird issues that he supported just to get votes he doesn't really care about. Who knows. Trump is a big McDonalds fan and may be personally unhappy his McDonalds fries aren't cooked in beef tallow, so RFK Jr. is helping him get his precious beef tallow fries back. That is how insane this whole situation is where the president's personal preference for how his Mcdonalds fries were cooked as a child is driving this policy.

To be honest, I never could tell a great deal of difference between the taste of fries processed in tallow and that processed in vegetable oil. All I can remember is how much easier it was to keep our equipment clean once we changed to vegetable oil. Prior to the change, we had to scrape our product contact surfaces of the grease accumulation as beef tallow has a higher melting point than vegetable oils. One of our biggest customer complaints we received was grease scrapings when someone got lazy and did it without taking proper precautions. Changing to vegetable oil made that all go away, made my job easier.

I agree about this debate about beef tallow being idiotic. Everyone knows, or should know, that French fries, pizzas, cheeseburgers. and most other items on a fast-food menu are unhealthy for you, so if health is your big concern, don't patronize them.

There is no doubt that obesity is the biggest health issue that our country, and indeed the world, is facing. But the good news is that it is easily solvable. Just get people to consume fewer and/or burn more calories. These weight loss drugs stand alone are not the answer, but they can be an invaluable tool.

RFK Jr. better not take away these weight loss drugs. There was a conflict between him and Musk, with Musk saying that he wanted to make them "super cheap". I would eventually like to see them covered by Medicare and other insurances, but I understand why they're not.

[Aseahawkfan]

To be honest, I never could tell a great deal of difference between the taste of fries processed in tallow and that processed in vegetable oil. All I can remember is how much easier it was to keep our equipment clean once we changed to vegetable oil. Prior to the change, we had to scrape our product contact surfaces of the grease accumulation as beef tallow has a higher melting point than vegetable oils. One of our biggest customer complaints we received was grease scrapings when someone got lazy and did it without taking proper precautions. Changing to vegetable oil made that all go away, made my job easier.

I agree about this debate about beef tallow being idiotic. Everyone knows, or should know, that French fries, pizzas, cheeseburgers. and most other items on a fast-food menu are unhealthy for you, so if health is your big concern, don't patronize them.

There is no doubt that obesity is the biggest health issue that our country, and indeed the world, is facing. But the good news is that it is easily solvable. Just get people to consume fewer and/or burn more calories. These weight loss drugs stand alone are not the answer, but they can be an invaluable tool.

RFK Jr. better not take away these weight loss drugs. There was a conflict between him and Musk, with Musk saying that he wanted to make them "super cheap". I would eventually like to see them covered by Medicare and other insurances, but I understand why they're not.

Did you work at McDonalds? I don't remember McDonalds ever having problems with the beef tallow or greasy layers. Then again McDonalds is a machine when it comes to their food. Consistency over decades with mostly the same menu. Pretty amazing company. I would be ok with peanut oil too. Five Guys fries taste pretty good cooked in peanut oil. Generic vegetable oil like canola isn't quite as good. Olive also doesn't taste great for fries.

Yeah. Weight loss drugs should be covered by all insurance. Obesity leads to so many other bad health issues. Even for myself, my high blood pressure is caused by my weight. Whenever I lose weight, my blood pressure drops substantially.

But I love food...healthy food, unhealthy food, tasty drinks, milkshakes, and all types of food. Good food and drink are some of the pleasures of life. We've gotten so good at making amazing food. I don't even like fast food very much and rarely eat it. I do like to try different restaurants like Thai food, Chinese, Teriyaki, Indian food, Afghan food, Ethiopian food, German food, and Mexican food. Then I like to make tasty burgers at home, spaghetti, a good roast slow cooked until it falls part in a nice gravy with potatoes, a seasoned steak, baked potatoes with cottage cheese and butter, pizza, tacos, enchiladas, and so much good food. You have to stop yourself from eating it or you get fat and your health is messed up. But it's so damn tasty. America has never starved. Even poor people in America eat like kings of old because we have so much food in America.

[River Dog]

To be honest, I never could tell a great deal of difference between the taste of fries processed in tallow and that processed in vegetable oil. All I can remember is how much easier it was to keep our equipment clean once we changed to vegetable oil. Prior to the change, we had to scrape our product contact surfaces of the grease accumulation as beef tallow has a higher melting point than vegetable oils. One of our biggest customer complaints we received was grease scrapings when someone got lazy and did it without taking proper precautions. Changing to vegetable oil made that all go away, made my job easier.

I agree about this debate about beef tallow being idiotic. Everyone knows, or should know, that French fries, pizzas, cheeseburgers. and most other items on a fast-food menu are unhealthy for you, so if health is your big concern, don't patronize them.

There is no doubt that obesity is the biggest health issue that our country, and indeed the world, is facing. But the good news is that it is easily solvable. Just get people to consume fewer and/or burn more calories. These weight loss drugs stand alone are not the answer, but they can be an invaluable tool.

RFK Jr. better not take away these weight loss drugs. There was a conflict between him and Musk, with Musk saying that he wanted to make them "super cheap". I would eventually like to see them covered by Medicare and other insurances, but I understand why they're not.

Did you work at McDonalds? I don't remember McDonalds ever having problems with the beef tallow or greasy layers. Then again McDonalds is a machine when it comes to their food. Consistency over decades with mostly the same menu. Pretty amazing company. I would be ok with peanut oil too. Five Guys fries taste pretty good cooked in peanut oil. Generic vegetable oil like canola isn't quite as good. Olive also doesn't taste great for fries.

Yeah. Weight loss drugs should be covered by all insurance. Obesity leads to so many other bad health issues. Even for myself, my high blood pressure is caused by my weight. Whenever I lose weight, my blood pressure drops substantially.

But I love food...healthy food, unhealthy food, tasty drinks, milkshakes, and all types of food. Good food and drink are some of the pleasures of life. We've gotten so good at making amazing food. I don't even like fast food very much and rarely eat it. I do like to try different restaurants like Thai food, Chinese, Teriyaki, Indian food, Afghan food, Ethiopian food, German food, and Mexican food. Then I like to make tasty burgers at home, spaghetti, a good roast slow cooked until it falls part in a nice gravy with potatoes, a seasoned steak, baked potatoes with cottage cheese and butter, pizza, tacos, enchiladas, and so much good food. You have to stop yourself from eating it or you get fat and your health is messed up. But it's so damn tasty. America has never starved. Even poor people in America eat like kings of old because we have so much food in America.

No, I never worked at McDonald's. I was referring to my work in the food processing industry. We made French fries for all the major fast-food chains. One of the problems beef tallow caused us is that we used size graders, basically shakers with screens that have various sized holes in them used to separate long fries from short ones. The smaller fries would be utilized in other biproducts, ie retail to be sold in supermarkets, diced hashbrowns, etc. What would happen is that the friction caused by the movement of the fries across the shakers would cause the beef tallow to sluff off the fries as they transited across the shakers, causing the holes to narrow, putting more short fries into the packaging line and putting us out of grade for sizing. We would have to go to the graders with a metal scraper and scrape the grease off the shakers or change them out with clean screens, causing lost production time. At times, the grease would be heavily caked up, and if you weren't careful, it could make its way into a finished bag of French fries. It wasn't a health hazard, but most customers don't like opening a bag of fries and seeing big grease chips in it. That problem went away when we changed to vegetable oil.

I don't want to ban any of the foods you mentioned. So long as they are able to meet current USDA standards, the public should have the right to buy and consume these foods should they so desire. Eating is one of the more enjoyable aspects of life, and for government to deny that aspect of our lives is unconscionable IMO. What I do want to see done is that the public be provided information on all foods sold to the public exactly what the consequences are if they choose to eat them. Sure, the public is basically stupid and/or apathetic, but that's their problem, not mine. There should be established criteria, of which I believe some already exists, on how companies can advertise their foods as "healthy," "diet", "low calorie," and other terms that people interpret as meaning that the food is good for you.

[Aseahawkfan]

No, I never worked at McDonald's. I was referring to my work in the food processing industry. We made French fries for all the major fast-food chains. One of the problems beef tallow caused us is that we used size graders, basically shakers with screens that have various sized holes in them used to separate long fries from short ones. The smaller fries would be utilized in other biproducts, ie retail to be sold in supermarkets, diced hashbrowns, etc. What would happen is that the friction caused by the movement of the fries across the shakers would cause the beef tallow to sluff off the fries as they transited across the shakers, causing the holes to narrow, putting more short fries into the packaging line and putting us out of grade for sizing. We would have to go to the graders with a metal scraper and scrape the grease off the shakers or change them out with clean screens, causing lost production time. At times, the grease would be heavily caked up, and if you weren't careful, it could make its way into a finished bag of French fries. It wasn't a health hazard, but most customers don't like opening a bag of fries and seeing big grease chips in it. That problem went away when we changed to vegetable oil.

I don't want to ban any of the foods you mentioned. So long as they are able to meet current USDA standards, the public should have the right to buy and consume these foods should they so desire. Eating is one of the more enjoyable aspects of life, and for government to deny that aspect of our lives is unconscionable IMO. What I do want to see done is that the public be provided information on all foods sold to the public exactly what the consequences are if they choose to eat them. Sure, the public is basically stupid and/or apathetic, but that's their problem, not mine. There should be established criteria, of which I believe some already exists, on how companies can advertise their foods as "healthy," "diet", "low calorie," and other terms that people interpret as meaning that the food is good for you.

So that's how they do the frozen fries. Did you do fries for McDonalds? Did they keep wanting beef tallow fries after everyone else or did they take the vegetable oil fries and do the final fry in beef tallow for a while?

That's one area where you and I differ. When I look at the human race, I see animals. Basically humans are a social animal like a herd or pack animal. The systems we use to upload the morality into the human mind is illusory and ever changing. Religions, Constitutions, and differing belief systems uploaded to the human brain via language with simplified, clearly spelled out behavioral teachings are part of management of the human group. If the leaders of humanity don't ensure a good upload of information including controls in place to prevent humans from doing harm to themselves, they are unlikely to protect themselves.

When government of The People refuses to either let them suffer the consequences of their negative behavior thus culling the herd of idiots, then the only choice to avoid the negative monetary costs of stupid human behavior is manage it before it happens. Government isn't going to let the individual suffer the consequences. Due to the way we vote with politicians promising to use the power of government to fix problems and the wealthy paying for campaigns so they can have politicians put policies in place to benefit them leading to our current economic problem of a 38 trillion dollar national debt, it's smarter to realize this and take measures to reduce the cost by ensuring that humans don't have the means to harm themselves to an excessive degree or put a health tax or something on truly bad food to pay for these costs in government healthcare systems.

Americans raised to believe in individual liberty hate to admit that the masses with their vote and the wealthy with their money refuse to abide by the consequences of liberty. They want to be protected whether Joe Citizen wanting money given to fix what they think is a problem or Mr. Wealthy not wanting to pay taxes and thus ensuring massive loopholes and things like loans or bailout programs to ensure their business doesn't fail so they don't lose their wealth under the guise of "systemic risk" which always seems to mean socialized corporate welfare at the taxpayers expense. So how do you deal with this reality?

You have to regulate well before these things happen so we don't end up having to foot a huge bill for negative behavior that leads to massive harm that The People poor, middle class, and wealthy decide to force the government to pay for leading to more massive debt that costs the taxpayer more money poorly spent on debt interests and increased costs for government medical programs as well as the general, unmeasured lost productivity and consumption from poor health.

I tend to see humans as too disorganized, self-centered, and uninformed to manage themselves well enough and hold themselves accountable to where we're not paying for what they do anyway. If we gotta pay, we should take measures to cut that cost by controlling behavior and options so humans don't overeat at the trough around them.

[River Dog]

So that's how they do the frozen fries. Did you do fries for McDonalds? Did they keep wanting beef tallow fries after everyone else or did they take the vegetable oil fries and do the final fry in beef tallow for a while?

We made some Mac Fries at the places I worked and some other products like hashbrown patties, but the places I worked at didn't have McD's as a major customer. McD's is big enough that they would buy out the entire production of a plant. They didn't like their competitors being able to see how their fries were processed. We had two entire plants dedicated to nothing but McDonald's products. When I worked for my original employer and we were courting McDonald's, I remember hosting a tour of McD people and having to get all the cases that had customer names on them, ie BK, Wendy's, etc, out of their sight and stock the pack room only with cases with our company name on them.

McDonald's was one of if not the last of the major FF franchises to convert to veggie oil. They were concerned that they were so big and used so much tallow, that if they changed to veggie oil that it would seriously disrupt the beef industry, cutting off their nose to spite their face. I'm not sure when they made the change to veggie oil.

As far as I know, all of the customers we dealt with re-constituted our products in their restaurants in the same oil as it was processed in. There might be some legal complications if they mixed oils as it would invalidate the ingredient statement on the cases, so if someone had a medical issue after eating fries, they wouldn't be able to tell exactly what was served to them.

That's one area where you and I differ. When I look at the human race, I see animals. Basically humans are a social animal like a herd or pack animal. The systems we use to upload the morality into the human mind is illusory and ever changing. Religions, Constitutions, and differing belief systems uploaded to the human brain via language with simplified, clearly spelled out behavioral teachings are part of management of the human group. If the leaders of humanity don't ensure a good upload of information including controls in place to prevent humans from doing harm to themselves, they are unlikely to protect themselves.

When government of The People refuses to either let them suffer the consequences of their negative behavior thus culling the herd of idiots, then the only choice to avoid the negative monetary costs of stupid human behavior is manage it before it happens. Government isn't going to let the individual suffer the consequences. Due to the way we vote with politicians promising to use the power of government to fix problems and the wealthy paying for campaigns so they can have politicians put policies in place to benefit them leading to our current economic problem of a 38 trillion dollar national debt, it's smarter to realize this and take measures to reduce the cost by ensuring that humans don't have the means to harm themselves to an excessive degree or put a health tax or something on truly bad food to pay for these costs in government healthcare systems.

Americans raised to believe in individual liberty hate to admit that the masses with their vote and the wealthy with their money refuse to abide by the consequences of liberty. They want to be protected whether Joe Citizen wanting money given to fix what they think is a problem or Mr. Wealthy not wanting to pay taxes and thus ensuring massive loopholes and things like loans or bailout programs to ensure their business doesn't fail so they don't lose their wealth under the guise of "systemic risk" which always seems to mean socialized corporate welfare at the taxpayers expense. So how do you deal with this reality?

You have to regulate well before these things happen so we don't end up having to foot a huge bill for negative behavior that leads to massive harm that The People poor, middle class, and wealthy decide to force the government to pay for leading to more massive debt that costs the taxpayer more money poorly spent on debt interests and increased costs for government medical programs as well as the general, unmeasured lost productivity and consumption from poor health.

I tend to see humans as too disorganized, self-centered, and uninformed to manage themselves well enough and hold themselves accountable to where we're not paying for what they do anyway. If we gotta pay, we should take measures to cut that cost by controlling behavior and options so humans don't overeat at the trough around them.

I agree with some if not most of that. I'm all about opportunity, making information available, giving people choices, etc. After that, I begin to lose sympathy for their plight.

[Aseahawkfan]

I agree with some if not most of that. I'm all about opportunity, making information available, giving people choices, etc. After that, I begin to lose sympathy for their plight.

If we made people abide by the consequences of liberty, I'd be with you. But we talk about liberty, but most humans don't want it. They want safe, controlled, protected lives, especially females. Liberty is a male virtue as males hate being told what to do, some to the point they would jump off a cliff to their death if you told them not to. Which is why I understand your sentiment as most of us males hate anyone trying to control us and hate having to pay for some other idiot acting like an idiot. Seems at least one political party named the Democrats feels like getting votes by promising to fix problems by spending more and taxing more and telling us its for our own good and people keep voting for them as their prices keep rising due to these taxes and regulation, so if they're going to force our hand we might as well regulate intelligently to minimize it since the Democrats seem vote for these people that regulate and tax very stupidly where it doesn't fix problems and keeps on requiring more taxes and regulation to try to "fix it more."

Never seen a Democrat say, "We should tax less and regulate less and have a smaller government to do things more efficiently so we don't spend the taxpayer money irresponsibly." You'd never here a Democratic voter admit how badly their party spends money and manages the economy, especially on the state level where every Democratic state and city is run in a way that creates more wealth stratification between rich and poor than Republicans have ever managed to do. A Dem would never admit it.

So only way to deal with that is take over the regulation as the Dems will never cut spending or manage taxation intelligently. They keep adding more taxes when you try to get rid of one or rename it or vote in a backdoor way to get more taxes or fees. Or make up something stupid like carbon credits where you pay money to pollute.

Did you ever read on how Elon Musk manipulated the carbon credit program put in place by Democrats to build Tesla? He sold the carbon credits to other car companies making billions so they could produce more cars using the money to build Tesla stronger. Another way even the Democrats put policies in place the rich take advantage of while the Democrats pretend they are the party that helps the working man.

https://carboncredits.com/teslas-carbon-credit-revenue-soars-to-2-76-billion-amid-profit-drop/