Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Draz]

[sarahsiobhan]

[El Macho]

It's amazing that some people need motivation to learn how to cook other than "The stuff I'm eating makes me fat and makes me feel sick". One of the things that motivated me was my friends and I getting together for weekly meals. We would take it in turn to cook for the group.
At first the meals were simple things (Breakfast For Dinner!), but as we started cooking better and better meals for each other a competitive element emerged and we all began to take cooking quite seriously and wanting to "practice".

[NYC_Gal]

[Slowmotion]

[DorkothyParker]

I can't cook, so I married a man who can. I would learn to cook but really it would frustrate my husband so I shan't bother.

I may never be as fit as NYCGal (as I envision her anyway) but I am well within healthy ranges in every way and am not overweight according to my BMI (and yes, I know BMI doesn't apply to muscular men, but it works fairly well for regular women).

What's my diet? I eat what I want, when I am hungry and stop before I am full. I have been known to sneak in a candy bar once or twice a month and the occasional icecream cone as well.

You don't need to be a health nut, you don't need crazy unattainable goals. And let's face it, eating organic, farm raised, blah blah blah is so upper middle class that we mere proles cannot aspire to it (plus it's bourgeois anyway) . But we can eat real butter (not margarine) and eggs and whatever raw meat and fresh veggies that are on sale.

Also, cars are for losers. Bikes + public transit ftw. (I have never owned a car in all my 27 years and no, it was not a convenient way to live at all in podunk Idaho but I managed because I am cheap).

Let's stop with this eat healthy or die mindset and get back to an "all things in moderation" way of living.

<3 Dorkothy "Shanghai Spice + diet coke" Parker

[NYC_Gal]

[sarahsiobhan]

From the Huffington Post's Food section.

I love Michael Ruhlman!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-ruhlman/message-to-food-editors-w_b_555003.html

[Sector7G]

[brento1138]

A few posts back I liked the discussion about what exactly is making Americans so fat. Because when you look at people from other areas of the world, they enjoy fatty / sugary foods... yet they are nowhere near as fat as Americans in general.

I think after watching "Food Inc." I was less inclined to eat packaged foods. Many of these packaged foods contain corn syrup, and cheap fats. The type of fat and sugar in your food really matters. Some easily break down, others do not.

Large corporations like Coca-Cola, Nabisco, Mars, McDonalds... these corporations only care about making a profit. And if an unhealthy additive is cheaper than a more healthy version, then they'll use the unhealthy additive. They don't care about you or your health, only your money. I feel that although we all have a choice in what we eat, these large corporations are producing foods that don't need to be so unhealthy... I've heard that products such as Coca-Cola, Oreo cookies, fast food restaurants, have slowly changed the ingredients over the years so that their products are cheaper. But with the cheapness comes the unhealthiness.

Well, cheaper is not always better... especially for the body. I think people just need to be properly educated about what ingredients are in their foods. The corporations will change if we stop buying products which contain lethal sugars and fats. In fact, it's already started. So, there is hope for the future!

[sallymonster]

I recently watched "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution", an American reality show. Basically, famous chef Jamie Oliver goes around to different schools in West Virginia trying to change the school lunches to healthier, more balanced meals made from all natural ingredients.

What struck me the most when I watched this show was the fact that one of the schools actually considered french fries a vegetable. Considering that poor kids who qualify for the Free Lunch Program usually can't afford to bring their own lunches and must eat school lunch or go hungry, I find this appalling and unacceptable. No wonder childhood obesity is on the rise.

Of course, parents definitely need to be responsible about what they feed their kids, but if some kids are relying on school as the sole source for a meal a day then I think the school has some responsibility too. Jamie Oliver even showed how to make school lunch healthier without affecting the school budgets too much.

Americans' sedentary lifestyles don't help the problem either. Kids these days just sit around watching TV, playing video games, going online, etc., without getting any exercise, and their parents just sit there and let them. It doesn't help that schools cut PE when budgets get tight. It's also sad that in some areas it is unsafe for kids to play outside, and even in safer areas there's this perception among parents that it's dangerous ("Double-bolt that door!"). Although I think the safety thing is just an excuse for many people. I think if more people just used the stairs rather than the elevator, or walked short distances instead of driving them, etc., just small things like that, they would feel better and wouldn't gain the weight.

[brento1138]

^ Also note that some schools in the good ole' USA classified "ketchup" as a vegetable!

I don't have any evidence to back this up, but perhaps as North America becomes a poorer nation, with less of a middle class, maybe the poorest people seem to be the ones reproducing... therefore, the working poor become the parents of the future. Parents who have neither the time or education to properly raise their children and inform their children of what to eat and what not to eat.

Luckily I come from an upper middle class family where I was afforded the opportunity to play a variety of sports (soccer, baseball, hockey, skiing), had a swimming pool in the backyard, and my parents would cook a very healthy meal every day, while limiting the amounts of junk food I was allowed.

No wonder I'm not obese today. But that could all have been very different had my parents not been smart, well-off, and had time for me.

[DeMayonnaise]

People spend way too much time thinking about food. If you have all sorts of rules you follow and weird dietary requirements, you probably aren't doing it right.

I grew up in a house where my parents cooked every day (both were good cooks) and made me eat everything on my plate. We never ordered delivery and rarely went out to eat for dinner. We didn't have much junk food around, and if we did it was usually cookies or brownies my mom would make. We had a big vegetable garden out back my dad would poke around in for a bit each day in the summer. Both my parents worked full time jobs yet found time to cook. It's not exactly rocket surgery to know you shouldn't eat too much junk food and eat mostly fresh foods you cook yourself...

To misquote Paul Newman...Fat people got no reason to live. If you can't even be bothered to take care of yourself and be healthy, well, you sure do have a lot of problems.

[brento1138]

^

Wow, rocket surgery! That sounds very very complicated!

But yeah, it seems lots of people have been straying from the very basic fundamentals of life, not learning about the basic requirements of existence. Things that people didn't even have to think about before the internet, TV, etc., were invented.

Now we have computers. I really do think that lifestyle is a big aspect of what makes people fat these days. It's simple... you gotta have a balance between energy input and output. Back in the day, people didn't even think about that because they were always outputting energy. These days however, we have a whole lot of distractions on the computer, TV, and we just end up not really moving around a whole lot.

[brickabrack]