Avoid Enticement and other interesting dietary snipets

I want to share just a few bits of information from the mounds of articles and documents I have explored in the past few days.

The first is from the Surgeon Generals report from 1979 titled Healthy People: Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. [I must add that almost every report before this one and most after have to do with smoking or tobacco!] The 1979 report notes obesity as an issue and suggests that people not eat more calories than they need.  The same reference is made in the next report Nutrition and Your Health (1980).  Interestingly, none of these reports or any of the dietary recommendations or guidelines that begin in the early 1900s say anything about 2000 calories a day and yet even in  the very first, in 1894 - percent of total calories are mentioned.

I could find no reference to a recommended amount of calories for adults until 1989 and even then, the amounts are not 2000.  The first I can find of that is on the nutrition facts label which was mandated in 1990.  The footnote statement, that the Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet, must be on all labels.

Well - I said all that because I was frustrated in my efforts today.  I did find the science behind making population recommendations and the subsequent references to that same science from the WHO and the FAO, but not where the 2000 cals a day came from - in fact it seems arbitrary.  I finally gave in and emailed someone at the Rudd Center for Food Policy at Yale.
I did find reports on the trends over time which indicate, by self report , that people are not eating that many calories  and are obese anyways... CRAZY - but exactly why the sentence needs to be revised.  Still - how do people KNOW how many calories they are consuming if they do not know the amount in the food that they eat away from home?

Now  - what I meant to say today:  In 1979 the Surgeon General was making some statements on what individuals could do to keep from eating too many calories - "only sufficient calories to meet body needs and maintain desirable weight"... the exact phrase for meeting the above exact phrase  is "avoid situations that would entice them to overeat."  YA THINK?  Where is a person to go then??

In a commentary by Katan and Ludwig (JAMA 2010 vol 303) comes this pearl of wisdom -
First the context.  In regards to eating less to lose weight, the body acclimates to the new weight and so one's strategy must always be revised - after a period of loss, unless things are changed to trigger more loss, the weight loss will cease - the same is true of weight gain..  thus if one consumes 1800 calories a day for a few months and gets to their ideal weight - not only must they keep eating 1800 calories to stay at that weight, if they want to lose more, then the have to make other adjustments - in this discussion of persons who go "on a diet" to lose weight the authors say ...."after having achieved some weight loss.  Most do the opposite. They resume their original diet and exercise habits.  Consequently, weight gain recurs rapidly."  YES YES YES - I say this to people all the time - it cannot be something you do for a little while but something you do for your lifetime, thus it needs to be reasonable and pleasant.

In an article by Swinburn, Sacks and Ravussin (Am J Clincal Nur, 2009 vol 90) it is suggested that we are consuming 500 more calories per day than we were in 1970s.  If one were to try to make up for that extra intake  through exercise - it would take a two hour walk every day to do so.  Far easier, as I often say, to not eat that McDonald's burger or drink that smoothie.

okay that's it for today.....