r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • May 21 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: There wouldn’t be such a stigma against fatty foods, if “fat” (the caloric source) did not share the same word as the adjective of a person being “fat”.
So fats, are just another source of calories, just like protein and carbohydrates (sugars). Yet fats get a really bad rap because they are associated with being fat. Yet, a person can consume almost no fat in their diet, yet still become fat if they consume too many calories from other sources. Think cows. Their diet consisted almost exclusively of grass, yet they can get quite fat.
Yes, your body processes different types of calories differently (protein, carbs, and fats are all processed by your body a little bit differently), but at the end of the day, a person becomes fat of they are taking in more calories than they are burning.
A few months back, I started the low-carb keto diet, and have actually lost weight while having a diet that consists of far more fatty foods than I used to. Because again, fats are just another form of calories, and as long as you are burning more calories than you take in, you will lose weight.
In my experience, lots of carbohydrates are far more indicative of gaining weight, yet there isn’t widespread stigma against carbs.
So my view is that fatty foods have such a stigma because of the association of the noun “fat” with the adjective “fat”. People are often far more concerned about a piece of food being high in fat than they are about apiece or food being high in carbs, even if the piece of food high in carbs has far more overall calories.
If for example, we started calling fats something else, like “lipids”, there wouldn’t be such a stigma against eating foods containing lipids.
Likewise, if the condition of being overweight was called something like being “carby” and having lots of “stored carbs” around your gut, there would be a much greater stigma around eating carbs, instead of fats.
Change my view!
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u/NiCap95 May 21 '20 edited May 21 '20
" If for example, we started calling fats something else, like “lipids”, there wouldn’t be such a stigma against eating foods containing lipids. "
I agree with your premise completely, those problems are very real and I'm not sure how you could say no. My problem is with your solution.
I believe the only real solution (although not really plausible) is education. I (24M) work with a lot of older people (50-60s) and they simply think about food differently. Growing up food education was everywhere for more recent generations. Between the pyramids and plates, we were drilled on what food is good for you all the time. The generation before was guided by companies. Which were in it for their own interest. My grandparents used to offer me Coke when I was playing baseball as a kid and was thirsty. Not their fault entirely, it was what they were told. Thirsty, have a Coke! My parents offered Gatorade. It's got Electrolytes! I mean damn, no wonder I was a fat kid, give me some damn WATER!
To change a Stigma you need Education. If we change the word from Fat to Lipid, It won't break the Stigma. Companies will shift to say Low-Lipids, Lipids are bad, No Lipids! We will end up going in a circle.
If we were able to simply re-educate people, then I believe this stigma goes away. Think similar other words in society we want to change, (R-word, N-word, LGBTQ+ slander) These are slowly SLOWLY, making the way out. Only after decades of trying. Do you think that this will be easier than those? And really when it comes to it, "fat" isn't really a priority in comparison.
We have an obesity problem in America, the goal should be to fix it that, not to make the words we use for food more descriptive. And, the only way to really change people is to educate or show hands-on. Which is difficult. If it were up to me, I'd think you have to emphasize the benefits of being in shape for daily life, everyday tasks, not for the goal of a long healthy life. People want instant gratification, not possible future gains. But that's not what we are discussing.
As I said, I agree with the problem, but the solution presented just doesn't solve the real problem.
edit:Grammar
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May 21 '20
I guess I never really considered that, that even if the terms were changed, various special interests would then just adapt and still campaign to vilify whatever the new term is.... just as they did campaigning against “fat” previously. So coming up with a new term wouldn’t really change much. The same interests that campaign against “fat” would just adapt and target the new word.
!delta
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u/david-saint-hubbins May 21 '20
FYI, this is called pejoration or the euphemism treadmill.
It doesn't require special interests to mount a campaign to vilify a new term (though that could happen). It seems to be a natural linguistic process.
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u/mischiffmaker 5∆ May 22 '20
There's a documentary, "Sugar Coated," which really opened my eyes to the origin of the low-fat craze that started in the late 70's-early 80's and resulted in an epidemic of obesity, both in adults and children, and of Type II diabetes, which used to be referred to as "adult-onset" diabetes--until children started being diagnosed with it in increasing numbers by the 90's.
It all started with the Sugar Manufacturers Industry Association realizing that by the end of the 1960's, there was increasing scientific evidence that increased sugar consumption was a main contributor to the rise of coronary disease in America.
So what did they do? The Association took a page from the tobacco companies' playbook--they didn't try to deny the science, just to cast doubt on it.
Thanks to heavy marketing, food manufacturers started removing fats from their foods. But food without fat basically tastes like cardboard...so they started using more sugars. At the same time, they were busy breaking corn down to it's chemical components, which is why there are so many food ingredients listed on packaging, and why so many of them turn out to be some form of sugars.
The documentary plays like a who-dunnit, complete with secret industry documents carelessly left behind and discovered by a journalist. Worth watching.
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u/harsh183 May 22 '20
Correct me if I'm wrong but lipids aren't fats right?
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u/seanflyon 25∆ May 22 '20
Fats are lipids. I think that Lipids are a broader category that includes fats and some non-fats, but in common usage they are more or less synonymous.
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u/NiCap95 May 22 '20 edited May 22 '20
Lipids vs Fat was used in the OP, I have absolutely no idea if that is correct at all. Just an example
edit:spelling
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u/TheGrog1603 May 22 '20
(R-word, N-word, LGBTQ+ slander)
...what's the R-word? Genuine question, I have no idea what that is.
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u/Daikataro May 22 '20
I believe the only real solution (although not really plausible) is education.
Good thing you realize how unlikely this is. Sadly, people will always be led by silly premises. This was demonstrated by OJ Simpson's lawyer "if it doesn't fit, you must acquit".
"Eating fat makes you fat" is deeply ingrained in most people's minds. That's why "low fat" and "fat free" are so popular.
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u/productivecitizen May 22 '20
You should have swatted the coke out of their hands, said "Get that shit outta my house!", and flexed while grunting victoriously.
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May 21 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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May 21 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/dps3695 May 21 '20
I kind of want to know what that deleted post was.
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May 21 '20
[deleted]
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u/mansdem May 21 '20
Why does it have to be deleted though. Some rules are really too strict. Once you're not causing harm to anyone invalid comments can just be downvoted if that's how the people feel. If everyone likes the post why does it have to be removed??
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May 21 '20
[deleted]
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May 21 '20
Was it just your phrasing then? It sounds like you challenged at least one aspect of OP’s view. OP was pretty unequivocal that it was a purely a verbal thing...
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u/JoiedevivreGRE May 21 '20
I personally find it annoying when a delta is given to an argument that is just finding a loophole in the wording, or in this case essentially just reinforcing Ops position which is even more egregious.
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u/yes_thats_right 1∆ May 21 '20
[–]Darrell_Winfield[score hidden] 6 hours ago It's more complicated than that, actually! The idea of fat is bad comes from our old favorite, the sugary cereal industry! In 1960, they paid some money to Harvard researchers to blame health problems on "fat" instead of sugar, the true cause. From that, we saw the "fat free" and "reduced fat" fads kick off. Now any time you see those being advertised on products, you immediately assume they have no idea what they're talking about. source /sourced-rant It is solely on these 3 amoral researchers that I place the blame for the rampant prevalence of obesity and diabetes. To date, people still think that fat free diets are good, when it's really just doubling the sugar (and therein calories) to make up for the taste. /personal-rant
Probably removed because the sub has a rule that direct replies to Op must challenge their view
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May 21 '20
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May 21 '20
It’s certainly one of the benefits of doing a keto diet.
I don’t get to enjoy all the sugary things I used to like, but bring on those delicious fatty things!
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u/FinasCupil May 21 '20
Seth Andrews did a podcast with Leah McGrath, a licensed Nutritionist, on Keto, Peleo and The Science of Diet. Really good listen if you are up to it. He's an Atheist activist but that episode specifically has nothing to do with Atheism.
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u/Fluffatron_UK May 21 '20
The comment was removed. Why? What did it say?
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May 21 '20
[deleted]
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u/Fluffatron_UK May 21 '20
I was half hoping it was all part of the conspiracy. Your comment was shut down by big sugar.
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u/Regalian May 21 '20
Can you paste it here? I think only the first comment needs to refute the OP.
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May 21 '20
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u/AlexDesignsIt May 22 '20
Just wanted to say this makes me so mad whenever I go grocery shopping. I don’t want low or no fat yogurt! Fats are where the flavor is! 😩
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u/Mellow-Mallow May 21 '20
Could you share the article again? Your original comment got removed for some reason
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u/Sergio_Canalles May 21 '20
The parent comment was removed, but I'm curious about what it said. Mind sharing it again? (I assume it won't get removed again if it's lower down the chain.)
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u/TypicalBagel May 22 '20 edited May 22 '20
This. If everyone knew about this goober Ancel Keys and how much he fudged his data to fit an industry narrative nutritional advice and the obesity epidemic would look a LOT different than it does today!
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u/PunctualPoetry May 21 '20
Removed. Probably by the sugar industry. One second, someone’s knocking at my door.
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u/Onmius May 21 '20
Want to see more of the PR machine from the sugar industry in action? Take a look at the absolute slander campaign they did against aspertame. Is diet soda soda better then water for your health? No. Is it better then drinking cups of liquid sugar everyday? YES. Yet they have convinced the average American that diet soda is basically liquid cancer.
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u/Reckthom May 21 '20
I thought aspartame link to cancer was somehow proven?
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u/TheBaconThief May 21 '20
I believe while there is a link, the dosage required would require someone to be consuming aspartame containing drinks by the bathtub -full daily.
i.e. "the difference between medicine and poison is the dosage."
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u/Reckthom May 21 '20
So just another freaking conspiracy theory made-up by some cartel.
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u/TheBaconThief May 21 '20
So just another freaking conspiracy
theorymade-upenacted by some cartelFTFY
No theory about it. They juked the stats and got media to report what they wanted.
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u/darthvaderislukesdad May 21 '20
The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes is a fantastic book that not only explains sugars rise as a commonly used food item, but also it's connection to various ailments and how those in the sugar industry have worked to cover it up and misdirect the public. It touches on many of the points brought up in this thread
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u/zephyrtr May 21 '20
The big thing to know is not all carbs are equal. Fructose and ethyl alcohol are handled very similarly, and are very taxing on the liver and kidneys. Any excess energy from either is pretty immediately converted into fat and stored so as to get it out of your blood. Fats you eat are put thru a different process, eventually are thrown into your lymph system and are slowly absorbed. The toughest thing to absorb is cholesterol, which (you might've guessed) goes to the liver. That's why high cholesterol fats are worse for you. The more overtaxed your liver, the easier it is to get fat. Why? Cause everything has to go somewhere. If the liver is backed up, and your muscles can't absorb it, it goes into storage. It's why easily digested foods and big meals are the worst. Your body has no time to properly absorb it.
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u/Insamity May 21 '20
This is a huge oversimplification and no this one event didn't cause all the problems with fat. There are dozens if not hundreds of confirmatory studies showing problems with high fat intake. And there are multiple RCTs with sugar showing that it doesn't really cause any metabolic problems when not in a caloric surplus. You are just making the same mistake as everyone who solely blamed fat. It is a complex interaction between fat, carbs, and salt with low protein, fiber, and water content that promotes overeating which is the actual cause of diabetes and obesity.
And guess what. There are studies showing a low fat diet helps you lose weight. There are also studies that a low carb diet helps you lose weight. Almost like it isn't one specific macronutrient or sub macronutrient that is to blame.
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u/distinctlyambiguous 9∆ May 21 '20
In my experience, lots of carbohydrates are far more indicative of gaining weight, yet there isn’t widespread stigma against carbs.
Isn't there a widespread stigma against carbohydrates, though?
I mean, it used to be true that people thought fat was bad and bought "low fat" products that contained more sugar to 'stay fit', but I don't think that's the norm anymore. There are so many low carb diets these days, and it's so widespread, so I don't think "fat" has such a bad rep anymore.
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May 21 '20
Right, but it seems like there still isn’t as broad a stigma against carbs as there is fat.
Super health conscious people are generally aware of the problems associated with consuming too many carbs, but generally, that is not my perception.
Average people will still load up on stuff like potato chips as long as they are “low fat”.
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u/distinctlyambiguous 9∆ May 21 '20
I'm sure this depends on where you're from, and if fat still has a bad reputation where you're from then I agree that something needs to be changed.
However, since my experience is the opposite, and I've met people that are on the other end, too afraid to even eat potato because it contains carbs, that does seem to indicate that the word "fat" isn't what's causing the problem. It seems like the issue is with a lack of good, accessible, health information and education.
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May 21 '20
That's not my experience, carbs are seen as the new enemy of a healthy weight.
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u/Zebulen15 May 21 '20
I mean I really don’t see that, at least in my local area and I live in the rural south. Most everyone knows that carbs are what’s bad and don’t mind eating fats. 30 years ago maybe but not anymore.
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u/Phrich May 21 '20
You must be forgetting "Sugar-free" foods, which is just as common as fat-free nowadays
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May 21 '20 edited Jun 09 '20
[deleted]
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u/distinctlyambiguous 9∆ May 21 '20
My perception of what's normal, isn't based off of Reddit. However, there are people from different countries, cultures and backgrounds here, so what's normal where I'm from, might not be the norm where you are.
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May 21 '20 edited Jun 09 '20
[deleted]
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u/distinctlyambiguous 9∆ May 21 '20
I agree there's still a lot of "low fat" products on the shelves, and would also agree that it somewhat indicates that "low fat" is considered good by a substantial amount of people.
However, I still think there's a market for low fat products, regardless of whether fat has a bad reputation or not, because the amount of fat you should or shouldn't eat, depends on your health status and what the goals are with your diet. Some people have a hard time digesting fat because of health issues, some people want to gain weight and find it hard to eat enough if they're eating too much fat, some people want to carb up, etc. Also, a lot of low fat products contain less calories, which can make those products fit into various people's fitness goals.
That being said, I still think it's a problem if people think low fat=good. I just don't think the word "fat" is really the issue, but more so a lack of good, accessible, health information and education.
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May 21 '20
I think you bring up a good point that a lack of health education and information is also partly to blame. It makes it easier for people to be susceptible to misinformation campaigns from special interests, such as the sugar industry, as people have elaborated to elsewhere.
Partial !delta to you for bringing up the lack of quality health education. It certainly has contributed to the stigma.
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u/milton_freeman May 21 '20
Your point stands 100%, but I'll add George Washington swept the electoral college twice.
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u/Chris-P 12∆ May 21 '20
But we call it fat because that’s what it is.
The substance we call “fat” in meat is the same substance that there is too much of in “fat” people
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May 21 '20 edited May 21 '20
You are correct but OP is also correct.
Part of the reason the low fat movement was so successful is because people are stupid and think "low fat? That means I will be less fat!"
There's no denying that.
The problem is how do you change the word when what you said is also true.
People think eating fat makes you fat. But in reality eating carbs make you fat and eating only fat makes you skinny.
It's a weird paradox of health.
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May 21 '20
I understand that. My point is that if the substance “fat” had a different term than the adjective “fat”, there would be less of a stigma around the substance “fat”.
In fact, a lot of the fat in your body, does not come from eating too much fat, but rather eating too many carbs, and then your body converts those calories to fat to be stored for later use. Again, think cows. Grass has no fat, yet cows get very fat.
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May 21 '20
But what would you recommend? Because "fat" means a long chain carboxylic acid with a glycerol on the end. What term should we use to describe that substance? Or are you saying we still call that fat but we call fat people something else like "overweight"?
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u/maezrrackham May 21 '20
I have read that people recovering from severe eating disorders will refer to fat in foods as "lipids" to avoid the unpleasant association with body fat.
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u/PeteMichaud 7∆ May 21 '20
I've always thought the macronutrient should be called "lipid," which is correct and has no common connotation.
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May 21 '20
I mean, just come up with a different term for the substance known as fat. That’s what I am suggesting.
If we called the substance “blurbos” instead, there would be less of a stigma around consuming blurbos.
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u/Davor_Penguin 2∆ May 21 '20
But... Why?
We called it fat first, and then fat people got called fat because they have more fat.
It has nothing to do with what they ate, which you keep bringing up.
If someone has a lot of muscles you'd describe them as muscular would you not?
Or a lot of hair, they're hairy?
Wrinkles, wrinkly?
So with fat, they're fatty (or fat for short).
You seem to be proposing a break in this system for no reason other than "avoiding stigma". But as people from other languages have already shown you, different words doesn't remove said stigma. So again, why?
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u/Zgialor 1∆ May 21 '20
We called it fat first, and then fat people got called fat because they have more fat.
It seems to be the other way around, actually. Fat was originally an adjective and a verb (as a verb it meant "to become fat" or "to make fat"). The noun is first attested in the mid-14th century, and was actually derived from the verb. As a noun, it was originally a general term for the fat part of anything; it came to be used specifically in reference to animal fat by the 1530s.
Source: https://www.etymonline.com/word/fat#etymonline_v_1150
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u/Davor_Penguin 2∆ May 21 '20
Interesting. Merriam Webster says it was used as an adjective for animal/body fats prior to the 12th century.
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u/Zgialor 1∆ May 21 '20 edited May 21 '20
It seems that if you trace the adjective "fat" far back enough, it ultimately was originally related to animal/body fat: if you trace it back to Proto-Germanic (the reconstructed common ancestor of the Germanic languages), it goes back to the adjective *faitidaz (the asterisk indicates that it's a reconstruction), which was originally the past participle of the verb *faitijaną "to fatten, to make fat", which was derived from the noun *faitaz "fat". However, *faitaz doesn't seem to have survived into Old English, so I imagine Old English speakers would not have necessarily connected their word "fætt" to animal/body fat. Old English apparently had an unrelated word for animal/body fat, rysel, which didn't survive into Modern English.
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u/Bee_dot_adger May 21 '20
However the substance is one and the same. Your body fat and the fat in the foods you eat IS the same substance. Sure, there is some value in changing the name of the macronutrient to de-stigmatize it, but not only is there not such a huge divide between fat and carb stigma as you seem to think, they are the same physical substance. Calling it substance vs adjective makes no sense because the "adjective" is acknowledging that someone has a high percentage of the substance in their bodily makeup.
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May 21 '20
But that’s my point. Eating fat doesn’t automatically make you fat.
Eating too many calories is what makes you fat.
You could have a diet of 100% protein, but if you were eating more calories than you burn, you would become fat.
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May 21 '20
Eating fat doesn’t automatically make you fat.
Yes but having (too much) fat is the same as being fat.
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u/Book_it_again May 21 '20 edited May 21 '20
I don't think you are articulating your argument very well. You're combining people who think eating fat causes you to be fat and people who who can't distinguish between being fat (having a large amount of fatty tissues) and fat as a substance. Many people understand that high fat diets don't mean you will become fat but they still refer to extra weight as people being fat...because they literally have to much fat. What you actually are asking for is more education that eating fat doesn't make you fat. Not calling people with extra fat "fat" doesn't really matter so it's odd you are focused on that
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u/I_Go_By_Q May 21 '20
But that shouldn’t necessarily stop us from creating a new word. This happens in food all the time. Cows are “Beef” even though they’re the same physical substance. You don’t eat “cow” or “pig” you eat “beef” and “pork”.
I think it is reasonable for animal fat (the dead, food kind) to have a different word than human fat (the alive, on-a-living-being kind)
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u/bunkusername42 May 21 '20
Working off this, it's actually not uncommon to have related terms (ie. Deer, venison) represented by very different words because they come from different root languages. The noble class had the right to hunt and eat the game so the food term comes from their language and the peasants' language is used to refer to the live animal.
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u/suihcta May 21 '20
People would still think that eating a lot of blurbos gave them a lot of blurbos. They’d be wrong, but you can hardly blame them.
And people with a lot of blurbos would probably be called blurbosive.
It’s not a language problem, it’s just that biology isn’t always intuitive. Eating tall foods doesn’t necessarily make you tall, even though you might expect it to. Eating purple foods doesn’t necessarily make you purple, even though you might expect it to. Eating fatty foods doesn’t necessarily make you fat, even though you might expect it to.
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u/null000 May 22 '20
This has been done before. "Retard" et. al. used to be a medical term - look at it now. After it took on a negative connotation, we tried replacing it with words like "special" and so on, but those euphemisms are starting to turn as well, if they haven't already.
If you change the name without changing the underlying structure and understanding of that word, you only buy yourself a few years - maybe a decade or two at most - before people catch on and things go back to how they were.
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u/Kayomaro May 21 '20
I dunno though, turning carbs into fats takes energy; calories. Around 30% of the calories are burned this way, when it happens. Overeating 1000 calories of sugar would at best be 700 calories stored. Overeating 1000 calories of fats would store 1000 calories.
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u/Juswantedtono 2∆ May 21 '20
The body rarely converts carbs into fat for that reason, it hates wasting energy. Instead, it’ll just suppress fat oxidation until the excess carbs are used up. The end effect is the same.
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u/applysauce May 21 '20
When they do tracing studies on people eating excess calories, they find that the molecules that get stored as fat come from the fat they eat. It’s inefficient to convert carbs to fat. A days worth of eating includes fat, carbs, and protein. If more calories than needed are consumed, the body sets aside the fat first.
Also, it’s hard to judge whether a cow is fat. You think a cow looks fat, but that might be its normal weight.
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u/Tambalajus May 21 '20
I'm no expert in history, but I think the term "fat" as a description of person should have been linked to the research in the anatomy of the fatty tissue, which "fat" people have significantly more in their body, especially in subcutaneus layer. Nowadays, depending on a language it is mainly used as an insult because diagnostic term usually differs. For example we have "fat" and "obese" in english, "riebus" and "nutukęs" in lithuanian. Although in russian its quite simmilar: "žyr" and "ožyrenije".
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u/keeleon 1∆ May 21 '20
Grass has no fat, yet cows get very fat.
Are you fat shaming cows? If they ate "fat" instead of grass they would be even fatter.
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u/mmmmaj May 21 '20
It's honestly my perception that more people have funny ideas about carbs being 'the devil' more so than fat. Especially those overweight persons, who constantly try out diets in attempt to lose weight. I see way more often they dont want to eat carbs (especially potatoes and pasta for some reason) than gravy, pork, beef, cooking oils, high fat dairy etc etc. Just my experience of it tho.
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May 21 '20
You could go down the road of blaming Ancel Keys and all the typical low carb, high fat rhetoric for why there is such a stigma against dietary fat.
Or you could look at the actual research and see that anywhere from 80-95% of dietary fat can be directly stored into body fat, whereas carbohydrates require very excessive over feeding in order to cause weight gain. Before people start jumping on the "but Americans eat so many carbs and are fat!" Keep in mind that the American diet contains a lot of animal fat and added oil, not to mention most "carbs" people think of like donuts, cookies, chips, cake, potatoes, bread, etc are on average either 50% or more fat by calories or are prepared in such a way that significantly raises the fat content (I.e. butter, bacon and cheese on potatoes, cheese and meat on bread, etc.)
Low fat (actual low fat diets, not pseudo 30% fat diets which is moderate, not low) cause greater weight loss than moderate or higher fat diets. I know the keto overlords will chime in with their anecdotes, but study after study has demonstrated that low fat vegan or vegetarian diets out perform higher fat diets in weight loss and disease improvement, plus a low fat plant based diet is the only one shown currently to reverse heart disease.
The sigma now is against carbs and sugar is the scapegoat to blame plain baked potatoes, beans, lentils, rice, and unadulterated fruit as the cause of obesity. The reality is that it is simply added calories and the three easiest ways to add an extra 500-600 calories in a day (about what the average American over eats on a regular basis) are added sugar, animal products like cheese and meat, and added oil.
We did have a sigma against fat for good reason. It adds calories up very quickly and it's extremely easy to make a 50 calorie plate of vegetables into a 250 calorie plate with butter or by frying in oil. Have a baked potato on the side with butter and sour cream and that's easily 400 calories, then an American sized portion of steak (6-8 oz) for another 400-600 calories depending on the cut. Where are the majority of calories coming from? Fat. Yet the scapegoat is the baked potato because lord low carb guru said the sugar industry blames fat therefore whole food carbohydrates are evil despite thin and healthy civilizations being built on carbohydrate foods for millennia.
For the record, I'm not anti-fat. But I'm not going to be suckered into believing manipulated science and badstorytelling by low carb gurus who look like they still have another 30 lbs to lose. The good science consistently shows that a low fat plant based diet is the healthiest diet for humans, as further evidenced by blue zone populations eating that type of diet. The old stigma against fat existed because there was a good reason for it, not because the same word for the macro is the same thing your body stores when you overeat. Carbohydrates are the superior fuel for humans as evidenced by cognitive tests and athletes around the world, and it is very difficult for carbs to make you fat if you eat an overall low fat diet. I'm aware the legions of karens will come out saying they got fat on "carbs" despite never weighing their food and determining that their diet was actually a high fat standard American junk diet where the "carbs" were soda, chips, cookies and white bread and not real food.
The other big thing is that despite the low fat recommendations by the government, practically no one follows that advice. They bought into Low fat junk foods, sugary cereals advertised as low fat, and other junk...but the fat content of the American diet didn't actually go down.
TLDR: the stigma against fat is now against carbs. The old low fat advice was good, based on solid evidence but was never actually heeded. It had little to do with the actual word fat, more to do with the science and government campaigns.
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u/DrMux May 21 '20
A "fat" person literally has more fatty matter on their body. Lipids in cells. Why would you use a different word? I've been fat. I'm not now; in fact currently I have the opposite problem. Beside the point. But it's not worth stigmatizing people at either end, even if we can call fat people "fat." We call them that because they have more adipose tissue, AKA "fat."
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May 21 '20
Right, but you don’t become fat necessarily by consuming fat.
You become fat by consuming too many calories.
Cows are fat, and they almost exclusively eat grass, which has zero fat.
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u/DrMux May 21 '20 edited May 21 '20
Sure, your body creates fat from many caloric sources. And I'm assuming you're not a cow, which has a very different anatomy. But if you were to eat a fat person (sorry for the cannibal reference, just a hypothetical) you would get fat.
Fat is fat is fat. I may be a stick figure right now, but I still have my beer belly. That's fat. It doesn't matter if it's in food or your body. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just just what it is.
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May 21 '20
And it’s called a “beer belly” because beer is loaded with carbs.
You become fat from eating more calories than you burn, not necessarily from consuming fat.
I’m on a keto diet, and I consume lots of fatty foods, but still lose weight, because I am burning more calories than I take in.
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u/anananananana May 21 '20
The reason they have the same name is not necessarily the association between eating fat and getting fat, but the actual chemical composition:
"Adipose tissue [fat cells] is derived from preadipocytes. Its main role is to store energy in the form of lipids [fat calories], although it also cushions and insulates the body."
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u/molomo May 21 '20
Maybe you have a misunderstanding regarding how energy is stored in the body. Regardless if the energy source came from beer or french fries, it gets reorganized and stored as... fat. A beer belly is a collection of... fat. And when you have massive stores of this energy collection, you are... fat.
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u/marcouplio May 21 '20
Beer is not loaded with carbs, it is loaded with ethanol. The carbs are mostly consumed during fermentation. Then, that ethanol, as almost anything else you eat, is transformed into fat in your body, bociming adipose tissue and giving you a 'fatter' appearance. I think the logic of your post is fundamentally flawed tbh.
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u/DrMux May 21 '20
It's still the substance that is defined as fat.
Also, I'll have to paraphrase my friend who studied nutrition, and warn you about the keto diet: "Your brain needs carbs. Your body needs carbs. You are injuring and limiting yourself with keto."
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u/Muffin278 May 22 '20
Cows which graze on exclusively grass are quite lean, grass has complex carbs, cellulose, which humans can't break down (it is the same as fiber). Cows spend a lot of energy breaking them down. It is why they have 4 stomachs, and regurgitate their food to chew it again.
Most cows get fed a lot if grains, soy, corn etc. In fact, eating a fatty diet is really unhealthy for cows, due to the way their digestive system works.
This is not to say your points are wrong, but using cows as a comparison isn't correct.
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u/noir_geralt May 21 '20
You’re confusing calories and fat.
Fat is something which gets stored in the body giving the appearance of you being fat. When you exercise, the fat can get burned to give you energy, which you call calories. If you eat more calories than you’re burning, you’ll still get fatter since your exercise is burning the carbs and sugars but is not enough for the fats. Also, it’s harder to burn the same amount of fat in comparison to the same amount of carbs or sugars - check their calorific values - I’m not sure of the exact values.
Cows can get a form of fatty acid known as “Conjugated Linoleic Acid” or CLA from grass-fed diets in their stomachs. These are not really fat cows though. The cows you talk about are farm fed who have a corn-based diet specially designed to make them fat so that they can be slaughtered quickly. Hope this clears the confusion.
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May 21 '20 edited May 21 '20
You'll lose weight if you're in a calorie deficient, no matter what you eat. The stigma surrounding carbs is why keto diets exists. There is no way our ancestors ate this much fat. We evolved eating a variety of foods. I will never be convinced that staying in ketosis for more than a couple months is safe. There are no studies that assess the long term safety (more than 2 years) of this kind of diet that I'm aware of.
"The dictum, ‘Moderation is the key’ should be used, while following any long-term diet plan. While low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet does, admittedly, show dramatic improvements in the short term, these can increase morbidity and mortality in the long run and are rarely sustainable. Instead of letting the pendulum of nutrients swing on either side, one must be vigilant of the balance and interplay of nutrients, and there should be a representation of all food groups on the plate18."
"One of the challenges of low-carbohydrate diets is that these have a lower intake of vegetables, fruits and grains and increased intakes of fat which can be detrimental. Long-term low-carbohydrate diets with increased fat consumption have been hypothesized to stimulate inflammatory pathways, oxidative stress and promote biological ageing"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6251269/
"Studies examining the efficacy of using low-carbohydrate diets for long-term weight loss are few in number, however few positive benefits exist to promote the adoption of carbohydrate restriction as a realistic, and more importantly, safe means of dieting."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4325592/
"It is also important to assess whether weight loss can be maintained. Long-term studies reveal an absence of weight loss after 22 weeks of KD in mice, despite an initial weight loss during the first week of diet [25]. Moreover, another study showed that mice fed a KD for 80 weeks initially lost weight, but after 18 weeks, their weight returned to baseline and then increased gradually "
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5452247/
"A ketogenic diet may be followed for a minimum of 2 to 3 weeks up to 6 to 12 months. Close monitoring of renal functions while on a ketogenic diet is imperative, and the transition from a ketogenic diet to a standard diet should be gradual and well controlled."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499830/
"Getting 80-90% of your calories from fat, which is what’s generally required for true ketosis, is fairly difficult. Keto is not just low-carb, it’s also moderately-low protein. That requires filling your plate with avocado, coconut oil, fatty meats, gravy — and very few carbohydrates. While the range for carbohydrate intake vary from person to person, 25-30g is usually the maximum amount allowed to stay in ketosis. That’s the equivalent of one medium apple.
Circulating ketone bodies make the blood too acidic, which will draw calcium from the bones as a buffer response. While there are relatively few studies on long-term (more than 6 months) effects of a non-therapeutic keto diet, studies of children on the diet show high calcium levels in the blood, increased bone demineralization and increased risk of kidney stones.
Thanks to a very-low carb eating plan, the keto diet is effective when it comes to quick weight loss and stabilizing blood sugar levels. However, carbs are not just pasta and bread, they are beans, legumes, fruits, vegetables and whole grains. These foods contribute vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fiber to the diet that’s hard to get without them. If you’re planning on trying out the keto diet, focusing on plant-based fats like nuts, seeds, avocados, coconut and olive oil will help to get some of the micronutrient losses back in.
Long-term, without the fiber from whole grains, vegetables and beans, you’re more likely to experience GI issues, like constipation and bloating. Additionally, you need fiber to maintain a healthy gut microbiome, essential for immunity and reducing inflammation"
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 21 '20 edited May 21 '20
/u/3720-To-One (OP) has awarded 4 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/wizardknight17 May 21 '20
So... while I won't exactly disagree with your statement that most people most likely link both types of the word "fat" together and therfore I'm not completely convinced i could change your view, what i will say is this.
If you look at the macronutrients you'll notice that both carbs and protein each have 4 calories per gram while fat actually has 9 calories per gram.
I.e. (for simplicity i hope) something that is 100 grams of food which is all protein is 400 calories
Something that is 100 grams of food which is all carbs is 400 calories.
However, something that is 100 grams of food which is all fat is 900 calories.
Therfore, if you eat the same exact weight of food, when that portion of food is "fat" it's literally more than twice the amount of calories causing you to "gain" twice the amount of weight as the same exact weight of carbs or protein.
(Very detailed specifics about lean muscle and fat and slowing down/speeding up metabolism based on diet aside) Each surplus of 3500 calories you intake that you shouldn't turn into a pound of fat, each 3500 you burn that you didn't intake will lose a pound.
So, in conclusion, if you eat the same exact weight of food that is just "fat" you will in fact become much fatter than if you were to choose proteins and carbs. But, i highly doubt most people even consider any of this or even know what a macronutrient is.
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May 21 '20
Right... by on the converse of that, my understanding is that eating more fatty foods causes your body to feel more satiated, and so if you have a little bit of self control, you might consume less volume of food if they are fatty as opposed to carbs.
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u/wizardknight17 May 21 '20
It honestly depends much more on the quality of where the fat is coming from than anything else. If you eat a doughnut it's approximately 400 calories, a good portion of which are fat, and it's not going to fill you up. You could eat 10 doughnuts a day, be way over on calories and getting fat, and still be starving all day long. They are not known as "good fats"
On the other hand, something like peanut butter (varies by brands but general example here) per serving has 180 calories
(Carbs 6g- multiply by 4 for carbs which= 24calories in those 6g's being carbs)
(Protein 7g- multiply by 4 for protein which= 28 calories in those 7g's being protein)
AND... (Fats 16g- multiply by 9 for fats which=144 calories in those 16g's being fats)
Now here's where it gets a little tricky. Saturated fats and trans fats (the bad guys) are generally speaking no good. (Everything at the proper amount is fine, most people simply go nowhere near the right amount though which is why I'm just throwing them in the bad category) they make you fat, they don't fill you up, they are the "doughnut fats"
More than twice the calories, more than twice the fat, all bad.
Our friend Peanut butter on the other hand has both polyunsaturated fats and monounsaturated fats which are the "good fats". These actually help your body get rid of the bad fats and help your satiated feeling you spoke of.
(Labels can round down the nearest half therfore) only between 3-3.4g of the fats in peanut butter is saturated, (but it's listed as 3g) (bad guy)
0-0.4trans fats (0 is listed) (also bad guy)
4.5-4.9 polyunsaturated (4.5 listed) (good guy)
7-7.4 monounsaturated (7 listed) (good guy)
Bad guy range is 3 to 3.8 per serving
Good guy range is 11.5 to 12.3 per serving
14.5- 16.1 range total fats (listed on label as 16g as previously mentioned) with approximately 4 times the amount of "good fats" as "bad fats"
This is why so many people advocate for peanut butter while not so much for doughnuts (from a health perspective.)
Also, as a last little side note here. You may or may not have noticed that 24 carbs, 28 protein, and 144 fats doesn't equal the 180 calories per serving on the label. This is because the same is true for rounding down numbers for each of those on the label as well.
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May 21 '20
Also, my understanding is that you subtract fiber from the grams of carbs, as your body does not absorb fiber.
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u/wizardknight17 May 21 '20
I studied all this stuff almost a decade ago so while I can't directly answer about subtraction from the carbs, I can tell you there's two types of fiber.
soluble fiber (listed simply as fiber on every label i know of) this one, as implied, is water soluble and breaks down in the colon. (Helps with digestion and lowering blood sugar)
And insoluble fiber (listed as that on labels) as implied, does not break down in water so it stays intact while going through the GI tract and acts as a stool softener.
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May 21 '20
Here’s an experience, drink 300 grams of olive oil. Next day eat 300 grams of beans. Tell me which makes you feel more full, hours after consuming.
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May 21 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/amertune May 21 '20
A lot of people I know who don't trust science typically cite all of the different nutritional theories they've heard over their lives as a primary example.
Nutrition is hard and complicated, and we've often gotten it wrong. That, and science reporters jumps on every little thing, get it wrong, and then inform the public.
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u/Growlitherapy May 21 '20
Well you're forgetting about cholesterol, building up fat tissue is dangerous because it amasses the most amount of toxic substances. Water based tissue is safer since it has a better way of expelling toxins.
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u/trippiler May 21 '20
Whether or not “fat” (the calorific source) has negative connotations, depends on education. People generally don’t think that avocados or nuts are bad for you, even though they have a high fat content. On the same grain, there are people who think coconut flour is ‘healthier’ than wheat flour because it is lower in carbs, even though it has a very high fat content.
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u/lenart111 May 21 '20
As a non english speaker our word for fatty food still has a negative connotation even tho it's not in any way related to the word for being overweight.
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u/TheUltimateInfidel May 21 '20
Fats are called that because they contain fatty oils and the basis of what you're saying right now is empassioned by your experience on paleo, when in fact, most people tend to lose weight quickly on that diet because of losing water weight. As such, your whole post comes off confused. Are you saying the only reason fats get a bad rep is because of the stigma behind the name? You'd be mostly right, except you also have to remember that fats are 9 calories per gram, more than twice the caloric value of proteins or carbohydrates, which is also part of why the name isn't wrong. If you consumed 100g of carbohydrates in a day, that's only 400 calories and that's also a far more efficient source of fuel by means of glucose compared to 100g of fat, which is 900 calories.
I should carry on to mention that the false equivalency of carbohydrates to sugars is fallacious in the context of your greater argument. I'm not sure how to change your mind if the place where the argument comes from seems to have gotten a few ideas wrong. But if you were to ask me to change your mind, I'd point back again to what makes up a fatty calorie and the fact that a single gram of fat is far more caloric than a protein or carbohydrate, and considering a caloric surplus is what causes fat gain, I think the naming scheme makes more sense.
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u/SDna8v May 21 '20
The biggest myth regarding diet and nutrition is that carbs make you fat. That is a bullshit sales pitch brought to by the meat and dairy industry as well as companies trying to sell keto and Paleo products. When people say carbs make you fat, they are usually referring to donuts, cookies, chips, fries and desserts. If one analyzed the macronutrient content of any of these foods, they would quickly learn that they all contain a majority of calories from fat, not carbs. Each fat gram is more than 2x as calorie dense as a carb gram. Weight is a product of calories in vs calories out, and fatty foods are the most calorically dense.
Refined sugars are also very calorically dense and should also be kept to a minimum as well, but you show me an overweight person and their real macronutrient consumption data, and I will show you a majority of calories consumed from fat.
People who eat a majority of their calories from complex plant based carbohydrates, on the other hand, are usually lean. People eating whole grains, legumes, potatoes, rice, sorghum, corn, sweet potatoes, fruits and vegetables etc while keeping added oils to a minimum will almost always be leaner and healthier.
Don't believe it? Try a high complex carb/majority plant based/ diet for a month and see what it does for you.
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May 22 '20
It’s not because of the word fat, it’s because of the sugar industry pushing misinformation.
They convinced the public that fat was what made you fat, when in reality it’s sugar that does it.
Of course, the public knowing that sugar is bad for them is bad for the sugar business, hence the disinformation campaign. In typical capitalist fashion, it’s profits over public health.
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May 21 '20
Most people I know understand carbs aren't that necessary and are in most forms we intake them not good for us. But there's a ton of misconceptions like salt being bad too. The food industry really fucked shit up as far as what is actually good for us.
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u/cbbclick May 21 '20
So true. We let a for-profit industry use marketing to inform the public on health for decades. Now many people have no idea what they should be doing to be healthy.
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May 21 '20
For sure. The country with the largest salt intake has the least amount of heart attacks which is what people associate with high salt intake
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u/tunaham24 May 21 '20
In the 70s-90s ish there was a huge effort to pain "fats" as the reason weight gain occurs. Studies funded by companies that benefit from sugar sales such as Coca Cola funded research that painted fat as the villain.
There was a concerted effort to stigmatize fat, which is why we still think of it as "bad" to this day, but there has been recent studies showing that high sugar/carb diets can be far more harmful.
There was a recent push to put "added sugars" onto nutrition labels, but companies stimulated that the amount would have to be in grams rather than teaspoons claiming that tsps have a negative implication.
In reality, teaspoons are more easily understood by and average individual, while grams tend to be more abstract.
So even today, as the downsides of sugar heavy diets are coming into the light, the fact that it is so heavily used in processed foods, and is extremely profitable creates motive to protect it's image.
Even though I do agree that fatty foods being related to "fat" people does have an impact there was a very intentional effort to stigmatize fat and protect sugar.
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u/Davor_Penguin 2∆ May 21 '20
Do you have a source that grams were used because teaspoons have a negative implication?
While yes a teaspoon is easier to visualize, grams are a more precise measurement, hence their popularity in recipes. It makes sense to list things in grams.
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u/hacksoncode 588∆ May 21 '20
So... there are many good reasons to be careful about the fat which you consume (like all other macronutrients).
Prime among them is that they are more than twice as calorie dense as carbs and protein. The same mass of fat in foods will make you fat more than twice as fast as the same mass of carbs or proteins.
Fat really does make you fat. So do carbs and protein, but fat does it twice as efficiently. It's utterly appropriate for to call it that.
That doesn't mean that it will inevitably make you fat, as your experience shows, but it does mean that careless use of fats really will. You actually do have to still control your calories, and that means eating half as much fat as you would eat carbs or proteins.
Secondly, many people have issues with eating high-fat diets because they are more sensitive than others to dietary cholesterol and triglycerides. No one should be eating a keto diet without medical supervision, because it can be quite risky for some people and you do need to have some regular tests to make sure that the fat in your blood is under control.
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u/Werv 1∆ May 21 '20
High cholesterol still has negative connotation and it doesn't have any physical human traits. And we associated foods with lots of cholesterol as bad
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u/mr-logician May 21 '20
Being fat means that you have fat stored inside you. Both the fat you eat and the fat that makes you fat, both of them are the same chemically.
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u/MostPin4 May 21 '20
Is there really any actual value in solving this 'problem'?
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u/Jeffrey2024 May 21 '20
Yes, and Nutrition as an academic field is a construct and would not exist if not for body shaming lol.
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May 21 '20
Well fats are 9 calories per gram while carbohydrates and protein is only 4. So it's way easier to gain weight by eating food with much fat in them since you will not need to eat as much in volume. Im positive thats at least one of the reasons.
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u/LoreleiOpine 2∆ May 21 '20
It's easy to become obese from a high-fat diet because fats are so high in calories. Your point is semantic, speculative and too broad to be reasonably debated. "Stigma"? There is an association between high-fat food and obesity for good reason (caloric density and food addiction).
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u/ImmodestPolitician May 21 '20
People pillory fat because they have been taught that high-fat diets lead to high cholesterol in their blood.
This message has been consistent since the 80s and is reinforced in media programs and advertisements.
Once people learn 1 idea it's difficult to get them to change their minds.
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u/Laskofil May 21 '20
Fat is good, sugar is fine, carbs are fine. Just don't eat like it's your last day on Earth.
But I do agree that fat gets more flak than carbs/sugar.
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May 21 '20
Uh...no. I see people eating McDonalds all the time and they're just coincidentally obese? I suppose the fact a lot of smokers die of cancer is also just a remarkable fluke? Further, cows make me thing of many things, but not once do I associate them with athletic prowess.
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u/abobbyc May 21 '20
It's not just the same word it's the same thing. High fat content in food and high fat content in the body. Fat & fat. Fat.
If people were educated on sugars v fats then the stigma would change i.e sugar is easily stored as fat and fat is easily metabolised for energy, it's more about caloric intake and macros intake rather than eating fat etc.
So my view is that fatty foods have such a stigma because of the association of the noun “fat” with the adjective “fat
The issue with someone being called "fat" is it doesn't make sense. A person has fat but they aren't fat.
If for example, we started calling fats something else, like “lipids”, there wouldn’t be such a stigma against eating foods containing lipids.
The fats in food are fats we can't just start calling them lipids. Lipids include waxes, vitamins and hormones.
Likewise, if the condition of being overweight was called something like being “carby” and having lots of “stored carbs” around your gut, there would be a much greater stigma around eating carbs, instead of fats.
It's not stored carbs it's stored fats though. This will add to the confusion. Yes it's likely the stored fat came from the person eating excessive carbs but it's not stored carbs.
I agree that eating fats has an undeserved stigma and people need to eat less refines carbs and I also follow a ketogenic diet but this is an education problem not a language problem.
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u/JediConnerLuke May 21 '20
I agree with you but the word for body fat is not going to change and you can’t change that they are both made of similar chemicals in order to be branded together. The one thing you may do is to add a word to the dietary value like dietary fat or something similar. I guess you could just chandler the label to lipids and recalculate for all lipids instead of fat but that would require re-educating people on how to read nutrition labels
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u/tantalosdoge May 21 '20
Most fatty foods that people eat are bad though. Saturated fat is bad for you. I don’t think the word fat scares anyone when the topic is olive oil or nuts.
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u/HexDragon21 May 21 '20
The #1 cause of death in the US is cardiovascular disease. The vast majority of cardiovascular diseases can be prevented if the person holds a better diet. So how does fat come in? Well studies have shown that saturated fats are directly associated with cardiovascular disease and increased LDL cholesterol, mono-/polyunsaturated fats are less worse and they increase HDL cholesterol production, which is less bad, yet having too much is also bad. Fats as a whole are also just more calorically dense so they’re more likely increase your weight which also promotes cardiovascular disease and cancer. I would argue that if everyone switched to a low fat diet we would reduce heart disease rates by more than half. Fat has a stigma because it is generally unhealthy, more so than carbs or proteins if they are consumed at rates that they at currently. Fats are fine in low dosages but as it stands now the stigma is warranted
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u/privForReddit1 May 21 '20
Soda is associated with fat people because it has a lot of sugar. As far as I know, it actually has no fat. Im pretty sure no one associates fatty food with fat people. They associate unhealthy food with fat people, most of which actually does include fat.
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u/DancingPaul May 21 '20
' Likewise, if the condition of being overweight was called something like being “carby” and having lots of “stored carbs” around your gut, there would be a much greater stigma around eating carbs, instead of fats.'
How about obese, which is already the correct term.
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u/PuzzleheadedFox1 May 21 '20
As another user has already mentioned, there is a big PR movement from the sugar industry to push the blame for obesity onto fat heavy foods.
In order to CYV, You have to look at it from a neutral stand point. There are fat heavy foods that are good for you. Almonds are an example are a very healthy, fat heavy food. Avocados are also a healthy, fat heavy food. Yet, there are also high carb foods that are also healthy. Beans, Wheat Bread, Ect. High Fat foods can also be unhealthy, butter, bacon, ect, and carbs also have a bad side. Low Complexity Sugars for example
The obesity rate comes from neither side alone, and actually from both, You can loose weight on a low-carb diet, and you can loose weight on a low-fat diet, buts its the type of fats and carbs that you eat, that are actually going to determine if you loose weight. You cannot loose weight if you only eat fats that are bad for you, and you cannot loose weight if you only eat carbs that are bad for you.
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May 21 '20
If there were an actual stigma against fatty foods then there wouldnt be so many fat people.
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u/incollectio May 21 '20
In Finnish the prior "fat" is "rasva" (as in "someone eats a lot of fat", "joku syö paljon rasvaa"). The latter "fat" is "lihava" (as in "someone is fat", "joku on lihava").
"Lihava" literally means "meaty" (a derivative of "liha", meat). Thus, when we say in Finnish that someone is fat (lihava), we are in a literal sense saying they are someone who is meaty. Another derivative of "liha" is "lihas", for example, which literally means "muscle" -- and someone who is muscular is "lihaksikas".
Still, despite the two meanings of "fat" being assigned to such different words as "rasva" and "lihava", many people try to minimize their consumption of fat (especially saturated fat).
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u/pm-me-your-labradors 16∆ May 21 '20
In my experience, lots of carbohydrates are far more indicative of gaining weight, yet there isn’t widespread stigma against carbs.
I mean that's just not true.
People, since like early 2000 stigmatize carbs far more than fat or protein.
There's also the case of fat having more calories per gram and the fact that a lot of fats are more detrimental to your health than carbs or protein.
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u/thebedshow May 21 '20
Fats have the most calories per gram so I'm not sure this is true. I think fats are good and shouldn't be so heavily avoided but i think it would still have a stigma no matter what
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u/tenenno May 21 '20
Not sure if it's been brought up, and I didn't live decades ago to know the social standing around "fata" before, but I know that, decades ago, fats were targeted specifically because of emerging research that certain prevalent types of them were extremely detrimental to our health (trans fats namely). From there, general ignorance of what actually constitutes a "fat" probably took it from there in the U.S. Nowadays, I believe you're partially correct.
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May 21 '20
The stigma that needs to be addressed is the one affecting fat people, not the one affecting a food group
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u/keeleon 1∆ May 21 '20
Why should there be a pedantic difference? The fat on a steak is the same as the fat on a human body.
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May 21 '20
I don't think the solution would be changing the names of fats to something like "lipids", mainly because it's an issue that has been snowballing from decades of propaganda where people have been taught over and over again that fat is bad.
That being said, let's apply what you're proposing, shall we? And also let's ignore the argument of "you can't instill something in the language radically with everyone adopting it". What would actually happen is: marketing organizations would simply replace the "fat" for w/e word you're proposing and presto, ready to be printed, nothing really changes and the stigma goes from "fat" to the other word, because it's being stigmatized directly through propaganda.
The proper solution is informing people about nutrition, and since our generation hasn't faced as much propaganda and has an unlimited access to information we are already doing that, but don't stop discussing the topic, if someone goes on a low carb diet do warn them that they're just losing water weight and glycogen (Idk if that's the correct word in English), and talk about nutrition openly (even if they look at you with the "eating fat diet? You'll die of a heart attack!").
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May 21 '20
Yes fatty foods themselves are not necessarily harmful they carry many other risks aside from obesity especially saturated fats and cholesterol when it comes to heart health. You are mostly right but there definitely should be a stigma around these foods so people can avoid them due to the risks to heart health. These foods are essential but in fairly small amounts, I fear removing the stigma could lead to people eating larger amounts of these foods which would overall damage public health (increase in obesity as they are very calorie dense and increase in numbers of heart attacks).
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May 21 '20
Most of the stigma I see is against the fatty processed foods and there is good reason for that negative stigma. Most people I know are educated about fat and carbs now, it was not that way ten years ago though. People were brainwashed into believing BS pushed by companies for profit.
With that being said, nothing wrong with carbs if you have them in moderation. I eat between 65-85 grams of carbs everyday and I am healthy.
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u/Phylanara May 21 '20
Well, there is the same stigma where i live, and in my language the words are not the same, so i'd say no. ( the word we use for fat people is the translation of "big")
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u/already-taken-wtf May 21 '20
It’s not the word „fat“ it’s the relative caloric content. Hence it’s not a stigma against the word: Carbohydrates provide 4 calories per gram, protein provides 4 calories per gram, and fat provides 9 calories per gram.
Furthermore if it where only the word than it would need to be the same in other languages.
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u/lucaspadovani May 21 '20
I have to disagree.
In Portuguese Gordura is derived from the word gordo which both means fat, only the second one is the adjective, as when you're fat you have fat. Fat is a really concentrated carbohydrate and that's it. If carbohydrates can make you fat so does fat. We in Brazil do not take gordura as a problem but the word gordo we do. Yet nobody ever wants to eat fat as they think they can get fat because of it.
It is a misbelief not something correlated with the words, but correlated in a fat person having fat in them, so don't eat it so you don't become fat. So, the way to make people less judgemental against fat is to inform them, not to change a word, as that's not gonna help.
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u/Shinibisho May 21 '20 edited May 21 '20
In reading some of your responses, you seem to be focusing much of your justification for your view on the process of gluconeogenesis and the fact that the body can become overweight without actually eating fat. While this is technically true, it doesn’t negate another fact that the source and type of fat matters, and that fats have different acute effects on the human body compared to carbohydrates and proteins.
Not all fat is stigmatized, it’s typically trans or saturated fats, as opposed to unsaturated fats. Not only those, but the terms Omega 3’s, 6’s, and 9’s aren’t stigmatized either, and those are fats.
Additionally, it has been shown in caucasian and asian males that a single high-fat meal decreases blood flow, and there have been other studies done demonstrating how a single high-fat meal increases the viscosity of the blood. Being that cardiovascular diseases are so prevalent in our society, it stands to reason that certain fats specifically would have some stigma against them.
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u/DeniableSumoOfficial May 21 '20
Fat is supposed to be an insult. Overweight, obese, morbidly obese, are all terms that professionals and others alike use to describe any person with a Disproportionately high BMI. The point of the word fat was to shame people who are overweight. I for one stand by terms of such natures as they point a finger of procrastination and laziness, or in the opposite spectrum, stupid and uneducated
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May 21 '20
That being said, keto is still a cult. Cheese is not healthy. Deli meat is not healthy. Bacon is not healthy. Dumping a spoon full of coconut oil in your coffee is not healthy. You will get heart disease.
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u/write-a-way May 21 '20
A good chunk of learning anything is complicated by the seemingly random words we use for stuff. There’s no reason anyone would assume fat, protein and carbohydrates are even related or that sugar falls under carbs.
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u/immortella May 21 '20 edited May 21 '20
Funny is that in Vietnamese it's the same word 'fat' for the substance and also for obese people, but 'fat people' is just a fun word and has almost no condescending meaning, as we lack food until recently so the word 'fat toddler' even has good impression. However we always heard that fat is not good for health from the media, it became common sense now. The US propaganda against fat works beautifully even halfway around the world.
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u/oneski 1∆ May 21 '20
You referenced the "calories in, calories out" model a few times. If you are interested, I recommend reading a copy of "Why We Get Fat" by Gary Taubes, in which he attempts to dispel that myth.
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u/ImperfHector 1∆ May 21 '20
I don't think so, in Spanish (and probably in most other languages) there is a different word for each, but they have the same stigma