The Mediterranean Diet is a Whitewashed Fantasy

Culture, Media, General
101

This is something my PIC and I struggle with. We’re not wolfing food down, but I like my hot food hot, not lukewarm, and some foods tend to cool down faster than others (if only I had any Greek in me, who seem to prefer lukewarm foods), so overall I think we could use some slowing down.

It’s not even that we’re not savoring the food - which is maybe the biggest problem. Hard to have tiny servings of Very Good Food. If I were a shit cook or lost my sense of taste or smell (like some here have for various reasons), I think I’d eat far less. Bc when I’m bored with my food or a dish I made, I don’t tend to have much of it.

102

in reading/reviewing this thread, one single issue stands out:
all of the “experts” disagree.

which means, they ain’t really so expert…

personally, we eat everything and anything, , , , in moderation.

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103

I was talking with husband about this, and he says having a BMI number in the chart tends to be more acceptable to patients than the word “obese”.

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104

That’s too bad. :slightly_frowning_face:

Some people become faster eaters because of their occupation. Medical residents, firefighters, farmers, etc.

When I was a resident we smoked cigarettes, and hardly ate at all. Okay, I smoked cigarettes and hardly ate at all. :grimacing:

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105

I’m not sure if you mean that literally, but which experts disagree? My apologies in advance; Its a long thread and I may have missed them.

To me, many seem to agree that there are no easy answers. A few seem to disagree, but are they experts?

ETA Maybe experts disagree about the value of the “Mediterranean diet” and the BMI?

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106

Many experts disagree.
:rofl:

Right?

I think I am guilty of cherry picking data I like and pasting it in the forum.

Discourse is almost dead. :rofl:

I go ahead and like the posts by my HO pals and I might get pedantic and list all the anecdotes and exceptions I can think of to disagree with someone posting data I don’t like.

Have I changed my mind about anything since I started to post on Chowhound in 2003?

Why yes, I have!

I thought I hated banh mi based on Chowhounds raving about Rose’s Banh Mi. I rarely throw food in the trash and I threw that Banh Mi into the trash.

I tried a couple more over the next 15 years, and it turns out, I like some Bahn Mi, just not Rose’s mushy pre-made Banh Mi.

I am also now open to eating all types of baklava.

I seek out more French restaurants now. I avoided French food 20 years ago because so many people seemed obsessed with it.

Have I changed my mind on diet , regimens, the Mediterranean diet, the Zone?

Not really. I lost about 20 lbs over 2004, with a kick start in Greece during the Olympics. I kept my BMI around 24 to 25 and my weight around 145-150 for 2 years. I was pescatarian for 1 of those 2 years, but I was craving chicken soup the whole time. It wasn’t sustainable for me. I haven’t been able to stick to a pescatarian diet for more than 4 days in a row since then. The first 15 lbs of weight crept on over first 6 months I went back to an omnivorous diet, and coincided with me starting to meet up with Toronto Chowhounds for group dinners once or twice a month, and Chowhound being purchased by CBS, becoming more addictive to chat and fight, relative to the old Blue and White board .

The Chowhound restaurant meetups turned into restaurant meetups as well as potlucks, cake days and waffle days a couple weekends a month.

In 2015, I backed out of group home cooking meetups partly because I couldn’t keep a healthy regimen and I couldn’t. I threw myself into my ski club and hiking, and changed my pattern so there was cooking focused socials and feasting.

Most recently, since I haven’t really returned to indoor dining apart from one indoor meal before the opera last week, my one Toronto Chowhound friend for on a 10 to 14 km bakery walking tour a couple times a year. :rofl:

I keep trying to lose weight. I do use BMI, and scales, and I measured my waist and hips last night.

I understand not believing in BMI. I understand BMI not working for many body types. I understand BMI not working for very athletic or muscular people.

I also know, being white and also small-boned, I have a whole set of medical issues that are more likely to happen to me. My friends who are South Asian, Black, Asian, First Nations and/ or mixed race have sets of medical issues that might happen to them.

BMI is a tool that doesn’t work for everyone. That’s all.

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107

It is completely and utterly meaningless. But I repeat myself.

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108

That’s just like your opinion, man.

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109

Yup. I got LOTS of those… def more than fucks to give at this point :wink:

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110

The thread is pretty old, and a lot of the disagreement was on the value of BMI. From my scanning of the initial posts, a lot of it was focused on the value of the Mediterranean diet. On the latter, I don’t think there is actual much credible scientific disagreement on the principles behind the “Med Diet” but rather what is is professed to become, and in the original linked article, allegations of racism.

I will add that France offers an interesting counterpoint. There is a distinct north-south split in average lifetime and societal health indicators. The role of diet has been extensively studied, and the fact that the differences are shrinking over time as the diet in the southern coastal regions (central/east) add northern (and foreign) influences, especially over the last two decades (There is also a role for relative affluence as well) I will add that I believe other cultures living across the Med regions are slowly losing the full benefit of their diet as foods from other regions have been adopted. You see that in Japan (esp Okinawa) as well.

My doctor was very upfront that BMI was not a good indicator for me – just keeping a more lean ratio via diet (with choices in moderation) and exercise has been a key in my situation.

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111

Broadly speaking:

It doesn’t.

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112

I didn’t know how the distinction between Registered Dietitians and Nutritionists works in the States.

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113



I would eat fast when competing with a friend or if attempting one of those restaurant “if you eat it all within X minutes, it’s free” kind of things. Specifically because of the satiety thing you mention - if you’re going hard and fast you can eat a LOT more than if you’re savoring it.

@Meekah “painful” - LOL, yes, the Army buddy I competed with most often would literally lay around moaning in pain for an hour or so after one of our contests.

You had to eat fast in boot camp and it took me over 6 months to fully revert to normal. If you were at the front of your platoon’s line, you might have 12+ minutes to get your food and eat. If at the back, you might have 3 minutes from the time you sat down. We rotated going in by front, then back, of the platoon, so the guys in the middle got a consistent amount of time (I’d guess about 8) but for those on either end, it tended to be feast or famine.

The fun thing was parent visit day, the day before graduation. The parents got to eat lunch in the mess hall with us and we were served seared NY Strip steaks and, by golly, actually had salt & pepper on the tables, as if we regularly ate that way.

I saw a number of young men get slapped by their mothers for wolfing through their meal before mom & dad had even finished deciding whether to add salt & pepper.

ETA @Phoenikia and other examples of dining habits as occupational hazards. During my UG, I worked a walk-in, do anything from stitches to pneumonia to school physicals type of clinic. We were open 8-8 and the docs were lucky if they got one meal in, let alone 2. But I don’t think anyone here were intending to be mean in their discussions.

ETA2


The exam room PEN CLICKERS! Drove me nuts.

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114

That sounds right . But one could smoke cigarettes, in the hospital no less.

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115

Narrowly speaking ( not sure if that’s a thing :wink:) here’s a link back to the Sutter website, with some of their research on the subject.

For what it’s worth, when faced with feedback regarding my AIC 7 years ago, I looked for a well researched diabetes prevention program. I understand the odds as well as most, and feel extremely fortunate that at least so far, it’s been helpful for me.

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116

medical residents were allowed to smoke in the hospital?

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Yes. :face_with_open_eyes_and_hand_over_mouth:

I remember in a room where we charted, in one called something like a “break room”. That break room was where I met my husband, or at least where he said he met me. He remembers someone yelled out “who the hell is smoking?”, and I yelled “me!”. This was in New York , early 80’s.

Before then, it was in a tiny room, right off the ER, where we charted, and no one batted an eye. That might have been D.C., late 70’s. We sometimes worked 36 hours at a time, then went home to sleep, and came back the next morning.

Interns and residents are still part of what makes health are work here, but a lot has changed.

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I am perpetually stunned just how many medical staff / nurses / doctors smoke outside of hospitals. More than in most professions.

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119

I like your new outfit!

I find any body smoking cigarettes stunning, but I find it hard to imagine a disproportionate number of physicians doing it in public now. But I’m trying!

I found this, a meta-analysis, but don’t know how it compares to the general population where the observations were made. It does stratify by continent.

When I moved to California I quit, because I had heard folks didn’t smoke cigarettes in California.

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120

Quitting smoking is the most important thing anyone can do for their health. I smoked for a long time (child of the 70s/80s), and also quit many times, including when I immigrated in 2001. I continued on and off, and have finally reached a point where I will occasionally have one with a friend at ladies night (there is always alcohol involved, as they are a match made in heaven… or should that say ‘hell?’), but I’ve found that the light buzz I get does not ever make up for the stench on my breath, clothes, hair, etc.

It’s a bit of a struggle every summer adjusting to Berliner habits, where people still smoke seemingly everywhere, all the time :nauseated_face:

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