Could nutritional content of commercially produced meats and produce be a factor in childhood obesity?

Question

In 1940's Lady Eve Balfour of England (she's regarded as the mother of organic farming in England), warned of dired consequesences of continued use of commercially developed foods. Maybe we eat plenty of foods but our body is starving for nutrition.

Answer 1

Yes it could be.

The once healthy corn coming from Mexico has been selectively bred for high crop harvest at the cost of its nutritional value (look at the nutrients of your can of corn). I'm not saying corn in unhealthy to us, we need to eat about 3 cups of starches each week. Subsidized farming encourages farmers to grow huge amounts of this corn.

In return, farmers use this as a cheap feed for their cows. Cows have evolved to eat grass. When we eat the hamburger meat from a grass fed cow it helps restore the acid levels of the body to proper levels. Corn fed cows' hamburger meat has the opposite effect (for this reason you may have heard 'avoid eating red meats'). On top of that, the corn makes the cows extremely obese, and their meat higher in saturated fat.

Other than this, there are arguments on whether or not organic meats are any better for you or not. There are just not enough tests or poor testing.

Answer 2

Yes.

Researchers now prove that skimmed milk [fat free] is responsible for developing more obesity than ordinary milk.

This has also been studied in pigs.

So, natural and balanced is always better for your health.

Answer 3

I expect that mostly our obesity problems come from eating too much grain and sugar. My reasoning is that these products flood the body with too much glucose, triggering a flow of insulin to protect our cells, and in so doing store that excess glucose as fat.

Well, beside pushing that glucose to our fat cells, the insulin keeps on doing its work until we are ravenous... into a low glucose trap that we quickly fix by eating more high glycemic index foods.

Now high-sugar fruits can do much the same, but this is almost entirely a function of plant species and variety, not much how it was produced. The same species and variety grown organically will have essentially the same sugar content.

One thing we can say with confidence, people who consume foods sweetened with fructose will add more  weight than people who do not feed on fructose. We have less evidence that this applies to naturally occurring fructose in fruit.

Corn syrup appears can have a major role to play in triggering obesity.

Answer 4

Even more so these days of high rates of artificial colourings, preservatives and who knows what.

Answer 5

It isn't just what you eat that makes for overweight problems. People eat too much at a sitting and do not eat what we were designed to eat in the amounts we as a species where evolved to consume. On top of that we do not have the activity levels to metabolize it properly. A big problem also is that as humans moved out to colonize the world, they adapted to a huge variety of climates. Genetics and natural selection played a role in giving people the physical resources they needed to stay alive and well. You needed to be bigger in the cold regions, both in weight and in height, with a good insulation factor to keep the body core heat "fires" burning. So too were the changes in melanin by the way. Equatorial peoples didn't need the extra insulation. Then when established peoples started to move around the globe, and especially in the last century of high speed mass movements, genetic traits that relate to modern obesity issues where "carry on" baggage. Given a predisposition to be big, moving to a new home land with different foods and eating habits, and the lack of intense activity of modern humans, some people are just heavy. As a species also we have lost touch with how to eat as we were designed to eat when our species was young. Modern conveniences especially in the world of food has really added a lot to the issue of being too heavy. We make a bigger deal of it as we are so health conscious as a society. Like literally everything in the world, there is NEVER one cause to an effect. And what is important to us now, and here, would not have been important to another in a different time and place.

Answer 6

Childhood obesity is the result of overeating. More exactly junk foods, sweets, McDonald's, Taco Bell, etc instead of good fruits and vegetables, commercially produced or organic. It is eating habits of our children and ourselves that must be changed before commercially produced vs organic is going to make much difference.

Answer 7

I am not against organic foods yet I do not believe that they are as "pure" as we wish for them to be.  There are any number of "commercial" operations that produce "organic" foods in very large corporate settings, yet people will accept this food regardless of what is really in the bag, as long as it says "organic".

Yes there are poor people in this world that do need more nutrition, yet this is a problem of political policies and distribution issues that are often out the control of most of us common folks.  

Childhood obesity is taught by adulthood obesity.  We live in a propsperous country (USA as well as many other parts of the world) with abundant food.  There really is no such thing as a good food or a bad food.  Overconsumption is the number one reason for obesity.  Can we tweak the nutritional contents of real foods ie. meat, eggs, milk, grains possibly to some extent yet mother nature and man together have provided very well for most of us.  

Overconsumption followed by highly processed foods and beverages.  Chips, cookies, refined flours, hydrogenated fats, trans-fats & oils, deep fried foods, sodas, Starbucks drinks and the list goes on.  

It is not the empty food syndrome from one person's opinion of over 60 years ago... be realistic and look at the over abundance of fruit juices (sweetened) in infants bottles; sodas, fries and a toy at a fast food joint.  Starch, starch and more highly refined starch and sugars.   It's everywhere and we can buy it cheap.

All of this cheap food and then on top of it we sit and watch TV, set and work... the sedentary lifestyles that many of us live.  The obesity issues (even 10 and 20 overweight) lead to medical issues that cost of heavily.  

We are not starving for nutrition, we need proper proportions of good foods, activity, physical education in schools EVERYDAY.  One way to eat is to pick from the rainbow of colors, as this will entice you to eat a variety of foods.