The size 12 hour-glass figure, an endangered body shape.
If you love old movies, you’ve noticed that women back in the old days tended to have beautiful hour glass body shapes, a la Marilyn Monroe. Nowadays, such figures have become a rarity because women have become “boxy” in shape. Research suggests there are now five times as many “rectangular-shaped” women than those with the classic Marilyn Monroe hourglass shape. Almost one in two British women fall into the rectangle category, a boy-ish body shape where there is little difference between the bust, waist and hip measurements.
According to the CDC, about one-third of U.S. adults (33.8%) are obese and approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2 – 19 years are obese. In 2010, no state had less than 20% obesity prevalence. Another statistic tells us that over two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or obese.
Two thirds! In the country where the USDA food pyramid and low fat eating has guided food choices for at least two generations!
Worldwide, with the spread of Western lifestyle (including diet), obesity has more than doubled since 1980. In 2008, 1.5 billion adults, 20 and older, were overweight and nearly 43 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2010.
According to MyPyramid.gov, you should be consuming at least 3 oz. of whole grain cereals, breads, crackers, rice, cereal or pasta; ideally 6 oz. A lot of people consuming exactly the recommended amounts see no weight loss at all and might actually see their weight go up.
Could there be a relationship between this dietary advice and the obesity epidemic? Could it be that the root of the obesity problem is due to our health advisers who believe that animal fat causes heart disease and high cholesterol, and that carbohydrates in grains and vegetables are The Healthy Solution? Based on this, it follows that a diet restricted in carbohydrates and rich in fat is going to be discouraged by them. We are supposed to be consuming at least 45% of our calories as carbohydrates where most of it should come from vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. This diet philosophy is dominant in our world today despite the facts cited above, despite the fact that the obesity epidemic has come upon us in lock-step with this dietary philosophy.
The Staff of Life
Of all the grains in the human diet, wheat constitutes the main source of so-called nutrition in the human diet. It is our staff of life. People have wheat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. It is even found in shampoos and medicines and most processed foods. What many people don’t know is that wheat stimulates the appetite because wheat gluten is a morphine-like chemical that creates havoc in our brains. Wheat produces blood sugar surges that trigger cycles of satiety alternating with heightened appetite; it promotes glycation (“caramelization”) in our bodies that is at the root of disease and aging; it activates unbalanced immune responses, and more. Wheat consumption is related not only to celiac disease, but also to neurological disorders, heart disease, arthritis, peculiar skin rashes,schizophrenia and many other conditions.
In Wheat Belly, Dr. Davis describes how wheat strains have been hybridized and crossbred to make the wheat plant resistant to environmental conditions, such as drought and pathogens, and to increase yield per acre. The average yield on a modern North American farm is more than ten times greater than that of only a century ago. This is because during the latter part of the 20th century, an upheaval in hybridization methods transformed wheat into a frankengrain whose safety for human health is highly questionable to say the least. As Dr. Davis argues, small changes in wheat protein structure can spell the difference between a devastating immune response to wheat protein versus no immune response at all. He reports: Read more…
