Better knowledge of Highway Code changes to protect cyclists and more 20mph speed limits recommended by professor who argues active travel is "best buy" for improving nation's health

Milan Sanremo, rugby later.

I can see why you didn't want to watch it...

It wasn't very pretty. Milano Sanremo was most enjoyable, I had an old mate racing but he wasn't name checked this year and he didn't feature anywhere, his team did though (they got plenty of TV time).

The media like to focus on one or two things at once, and as much as I'd also like more focus on active travel, I'm pleased that there is finally some proper focus on food, and more importantly, the quality of our food. As the saying goes, you can't run away from a bad diet, and the multi-national edible chemical industry that calls the stuff it sells food has for too long been allowed to get away with the assertion that they aren't to blame and that obesity is down to laziness.

That doesn't mean that excercise isn't also important for health, but diet far more than exercise is relevant to the obesity crisis.

But just as we need governments to make it easier to eat well, they should also be making it easier to incorporate exercise into our every day lives via active travel. It's not one or the other - it's both.

FionaJJ wrote:

That doesn't mean that excercise isn't also important for health, but diet far more than exercise is relevant to the obesity crisis.

No.  The evidence seems to suggest that exercise is more important.

She began by acknowledging the "urgent need to improve the nation's health, which worsened over the pandemic", and noted that an "abundance of evidence and reports" point to exercise being a "miracle cure that improves physical and mental health and reduces demands on NHS services and the need for social care".

And five or six years ago, NICE said that achieving the government's cycling targets was the best way of tackling the obesity crisis.

Whilst you acknowledge that exercise is important, you don't explain why the media completely ignores it, or even trashes it e.g. when Henry Dimbleby investigated the obesity crisis a few years ago, and he said many times that exercise was completely useless and it was entirely due to diet.  The media were all over it, especially the BBC, with a Dimbleby and food together, two of their favourite subjects.  Again, I contacted the BBC progs about their reporting and his mistake, to no avail.

eburtthebike wrote:

FionaJJ wrote:

That doesn't mean that excercise isn't also important for health, but diet far more than exercise is relevant to the obesity crisis.

No.  The evidence seems to suggest that exercise is more important.

She began by acknowledging the "urgent need to improve the nation's health, which worsened over the pandemic", and noted that an "abundance of evidence and reports" point to exercise being a "miracle cure that improves physical and mental health and reduces demands on NHS services and the need for social care".

And five or six years ago, NICE said that achieving the government's cycling targets was the best way of tackling the obesity crisis.

Whilst you acknowledge that exercise is important, you don't explain why the media completely ignores it, or even trashes it e.g. when Henry Dimbleby investigated the obesity crisis a few years ago, and he explained many times that exercise was completely useless and it was entirely due to diet.  The media were all over it, especially the BBC, with a Dimbleby and food together, two of their favourite subjects.  Again, I contacted the BBC progs about their reporting and his mistake, to no avail.

My belief is that for weight loss, then diet/portion control is the best method, but for improving general health, then exercise is critical (though, there's some cross-over with obesity related conditions where a diet change is more important than exercising).

In general, it's a lot easier for people to incorporate Active Travel into their lives than it is for them to forgo sugar-laden snacks, but it seems that we have big money invested in opposing both - oil money opposes Active Travel and food industry money opposes healthy eating.

"My belief is that for weight loss, then diet/portion control is the best method, but for improving general health, then exercise is critical"
A combination of the two is best. Diet control will have you lose weight, physical activity will make it sustainable.

marmotte27 wrote:

"My belief is that for weight loss, then diet/portion control is the best method, but for improving general health, then exercise is critical" A combination of the two is best. Diet control will have you lose weight, physical activity will make it sustainable.

Definitely.

A big benefit of cycling is that your metabolism runs hotter/quicker for several hours after riding, so it can aid with weight management as long as you don't use it as an excuse for scoffing loads of pizza

Clearly faked, there's no pineapple on the pizza, squirrels' favourite topping.  You are that royal bint who faked the photo and ICMFP.

eburtthebike wrote:

Clearly faked, there's no pineapple on the pizza, squirrels' favourite topping.  You are that royal bint who faked the photo and ICMFP.

The pineapple got eaten first

hawkinspeter wrote:

don't use it as an excuse for scoffing loads of pizza

Wash your mouth out!

And eating the right things. Most of us don't eat enough fruit and veg, and a lot of stuff packaged as healthy is anything but. 

As an over 50, I have just lost over 6 kilos since Christmas, I haven't rationed a single meal and have eaten when hungry, more importantly I have eaten whatever I wanted. I generally eat cleanly, cooking from scratch for most meals and I don't have a sweet tooth. I lost weight during lockdown and again during my three months in Morocco. Lockdown came with an alcohol free 4 month period and 600km per week of riding, Morocco offered zero alcohol, very little exercise and a very clean diet of no ultra-processed foods. The weight gain came from work related meals and the alcohol that was accepted in such environments and a sedentary lifestyle where a crap diet didn't spark one's enthusiasm for doing exercise.

In my view, weight loss can be achieved by diet alone, the diet gets a little more complicated as you require certain foods to help with exercise and those foods alone may not assist weight loss (looking at you carbs). But a combination of not eating crap and exercise is also good.

But this is UK, government is not interested in the wellbeing of the population, pharma gets no profits from the fit and healthy.

eburtthebike wrote:

No.  The evidence seems to suggest that exercise is more important.

Research suggests that what you eat and drink is more significant than exercise, though both are important, and the exercise bit is not solely about burning calories. All discussed in a recent talk given by Chris Van Tulleken at the Royal Institution. 57 minutes and full of straightforward (but rather concerning) information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk

It's not just the media that prefer to lampoon and criticise cyclists, lots of politicians are in on it too, taking the petrodollars and other bribes and pandering to all the blinkered voters who drive and think they're victims but don't realise how mollycoddled & subsidised they are and don't care about their part in making the roads more dangerous for everyone.

The evidence is that for most people diet is far more important to weight than exercise. People who take up exercise in the hope of losing lots of weight whilst still eating unhealthily are doomed to disappointement. 

Of course weight isn't the only factor for what makes us healthy, and a healthy diet goes well beyond the appropriate number of calories. Unfortunately in this country most of us don't eat enough fruit and veg, nor do we do enough exercise. It shouldn't be one or the other.

I wasn't dismissing the value of exercise. It's important for many aspects of health, and even if it won't directly make you lose weight, there is a case to be said that the benefits to mental health and feeling better about yourself will encourage people to be more health conscious and eat well. I'm certainly not discounting that. 

But for years the industrial food sector has tried to discount the issues with their products, and claimed that obesity is nothing to do with them, and finally there is a bit of momentum to push back against that, and we shouldn't let them off the hook by letting them use exercise to deflect from their responsibilities.

In France last year and I got a bit frustrated as there were days when I just wanted a quick and easy ready cooked meal, just something like ready cooked rice/beans/legumes that I could throw in with some meat. Nothing at all of that ilk in the Aldis and Lidls I visited, wall to wall proper food that need cook's input in preparation. I quietly confident that there weren't even frozen pizzas in the freezer aisles.

I find it unbelievable that the majority of supermarkets here dedicate so much shelf space to crap.

Aldi [here in UK at least] have a good selecion of beans, grains and rices in a bag for around a £1. Ideal for bikepacking or 1min in microwave for a small meal/part of bigger meal. A meal in bag from outdoors shop will cost £5-6. 

It's also worth looking at the proportions dedicated to fruit and veg vs ready meals vs snacks etc of supermarkets of the same brand in different parts of the country and even different parts of the same city. Poorer areas have a lot more crap. There are regional differences too. I'm afraid Scotland does live up to the stereotype by having more shelf space for sweets and biscuits.

I was chatting with a student this morning who commented that she could cook a meal from scratch quicker than it takes to reheat a ready made meal in UK. I don't understand ( I do) how this country has fallen for the poor quality of food that's on offer and lost the skills to feed itself healthily

Oddly, in Spain, I noticed more and more people buying ready meals from supermarkets and felt that they were making a statement on status, that they were too busy and important (and have enough money) that they have no need for buying cheap fruit and veg from the local shop. They did this with ciggies, the status symbol was Marlboro while those that couldn't afford them smoked Fortuna (or whatever local brand was available).

Ducados was the deadliest cheapo ciggie. Mercadona supermarkets now have a little área past the checkouts with a microwave, plastic cutlery and tables so you can wolf down your ready meal right there, in horrendously depressing ambiente. That this can happen in Spain makes me dispair for humanity

My first ciggy was a Ducados.

That's not all Mercadona, is it? I didn't see that last year in any of them. That's horrendous.

The key to that understanding is to get more drivers out of their cars and onto bikes.

...yes, and the key to that is getting past "but I'm not cycling, because nobody else does and because it's inconvenient / unpleasant / too dangerous because of all the other drivers".

...yes, and the key to that is getting past the capitalist me first and strongest wins mentality. We're in a complete vicious circle, where everything skews the wrong way.

In ye olde days there used to be government sponsored adverts on TV to influence behaviour and be generally informative. They normalised the wearing of seatbelts and rightly stigmatised drink driving. 
In the 70s the Netherlands stigmatised killing people with cars, children in particular and this was the impetus to change the previously car choked cities into cycling friendly places.
If advertisng didn't work, billions would not be spent on it