An Unhealthy Fear Of Fatty Foods Your Health Journal | Your Health ...

From The Baltimore Sun?..

By now all of the Twinkies, Ho Hos and other Hostess baked goods have been stripped from grocery store shelves ? and countless tributes paid via Tweets, blogs and Facebook posts.

After more than 80 years in business, Hostess declared it was going under last week, dropping off the last of its Wonder Bread and Zingers deliveries, possibly ending jobs for more than 18,000 people, and marking yet another sad demise of a venerable American business institution.

Now, in a perhaps ill-fated 11th-hour round of negotiations with its workers, Hostess is struggling to escape the Great Recession sandpit, or get bought out. Yet this octogenarian snack king is really just the victim of another movement sweeping the country over the past couple decades: ?low-fat? and ?health food? trends, and the current government-sponsored anti-obesity campaign.

Among other evolutionary changes, Hostess-style chocolate and cr?me desserts are being replaced by a seemingly endless variety of gluey cereal bars with nearly as much sugar ? but containing the word ?fiber? on the label.

Funny how Americans weighed less when it was still OK to eat a Twinkie. In the same past couple decades, the number of overweight Americans has risen to 2 in 3. Dieting is rampant, yet numerous studies have shown that dieting in the long run frequently leads to overall weight gain.

To me, it?s just this obsession with weight ? instead of balanced living ? that is fueling the decline of yet another little bit of joy on the planet: the unrepentant $1 snack dessert. Consider the Zen of the moment when you take a bite, that taste of something so simple yet decadent, Godiva for the everyman, and, for many, the savory hint of childhood and innocence. Can that small pleasure be had any longer without fear of diet-busting self-loathing?

One unintended consequence of anti-obesity campaigns (which are filtering into our schools) is clear, according to health experts: an increasingly all-consuming fear of gaining weight and an unhealthy relationship with food. ?Kids are at all different stages. Some are stick figures, some are not,? says Dr. Harry Brandt, director of the Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt Health System. ?But to tell kids at that age not to eat fat, or to just eat low-fat, is wrong. Fat is a normal part of the diet.?

I?ve seen that fear in my own family. At age 8, my daughter swore off sweets. At 10, though thin, she kids around with her friends about how to best burn calories. And they are hardly alone. A whopping ?81 percent of 10-year-olds are afraid of being fat,? according to studies cited by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD).

To read the full story?..Click here

Source: http://www.lensaunders.com/wp/?p=7076

carlos condit diaz vs condit super bowl 2012 kickoff time football score ron paul nevada buffalo chicken dip soul train