A gordura pode matar!!!!
AH! Está em inglês! Sorry! Muita coisa para traduzir... Leiam com atenção...
Jane Clarke and Jamie Oliver reveal the grisly postmortem that proves fat can kill the body
By JANE CLARKE -
Experts in a major new documentary on British food were shocked by how much fat we atend.
As a nutritionist I've seen plenty of shocking things and know exactly what a bad diet can do to the human body.
I've even witnessed major operations - from gall bladder removal to women being sterilised - and know how a body stores fat.
But nothing could have prepared me for the experience of watching an autopsy on an overweight man and seeing the full horror of what his diet had done to his body.
There was so much fat inside his body that the doctor performing the autopsy struggled to locate the man's heart.
It was one of the most sad and shocking things I have ever seen.
What's so horrifying is that our eating habits mean more and more Britons are going to end up the same way - on a mortuary slab in this terrible state.
The autopsy was part of a documentary I made for Channel 4 with Jamie Oliver to highlight just how bad the British diet is.
We asked a panel of ordinary people from across the country to join us as we looked at how much fat, sugar and salt Britons are now consuming.
These were all people who ate the typical British diet - high in processed foods and low in fruit and vegetables - and who wanted to improve their diets.
Read more...
Eat your way to cleverness ... how foods can dramatically affect your brainpower
Eat yourself clever: Four-week eating plan
As well as showing them in practical terms how much fat they were consuming in a year (one girl was made to lie in a bath as she had gallons of oil poured over her to graphically demonstrate her fat consumption) the idea was to show these people - some of whom were overweight, some who weren't - just what kind of damage their diets were causing to their insides.
The most dramatic part of the programme was where Dr Gunther von Hagens - who is world-famous for his exhibitions of dissected human bodies - performed an autopsy on a 25-stone man to ascertain the cause of death.
This man had died from heart failure. He had also suffered from diabetes and high blood pressure in the years leading up to his death. Taking a look inside him, it wasn't difficult to see why.
Jane Clarke: The nutritionist was stunned by the results of the autopsy on a 25-stone man
There was fatty tissue everywhere, squashing and pushing his vital organs out of place. He had literally eaten himself to death.
Watching the autopsy was our panel of 18 members of the British public. They were visibly shocked and repulsed by what they saw.
It was fascinating seeing their reactions, especially as many of them have a similarly fatty diet to this man.
We explained that many of them faced the same fate as they were eating way over the recommended amount of salt, sugar and fat.
Many were living off ready meals and takeaways. Despite this, few of them realised just how bad their diet was or the implications it could have in the long-term.
After measuring all of them, many learnt they were officially "obese", much to their surprise.
The autopsy was a sight to behold - and not just because the human body is so fascinating.
The sheer volume of fat inside this man's body had distorted his organs so much that Dr von Hagens struggled to find the liver and heart because they'd been shunted so far out of place by fat. When Dr von Hagens did locate the heart, it was twice the size it should have been - the size of two fists rather than one.
This was because it had to work so hard trying to pump blood around blood vessels narrowed by fatty deposits.
The man's liver was "fatty" - when you're overweight the liver struggles to deal with fat and starts to store it.
Instead of being spongey and soft the liver becomes hard and rigid.
Jamie Oliver: Believes most people choose to ignore the facts when it comes to diet
His diaphragm - the set of muscles that lies across the chest cavity, helping to pull oxygen into the lungs - had also been pushed up by the excess fat, and his lungs were half the size they should have been, meaning it was harder for him to breathe.
We were also shown the lungs removed from a smoker - worryingly, a smoker with a normal weight had healthier lungs than this man, a reminder that obesity really can be worse for you than smoking.
His body was in such a mess that it would have been impossible for him to walk more than a few steps without getting out of breath.
It is no wonder that obese people are comfortable and have no energy when their organs are rearranged in such a way.
The tragedy is that this man could have lived on with his fatty liver, diabetes and various other ailments but for his ruined heart.
And you don't need to hit 25 stone for this to happen.
One of the fundamental things people fail to realise is how over-eating, even by a small amount can, over time, pile on the pounds.
So many people have failed to make the connection between that extra bag crisps and the fact their weight is creeping up.
In the programme we met one 25-year-old woman who needs to lose weight.
Her daily treat of crisps and a latte coffee, combined with the rest her fatty diet, was pushing her over the recommended calorie intake for a woman of 2,000 a day by 300 calories.
That doesn't sound like much - but over 15 months, it adds up to three-and-a-half stone.
On the other hand, just because you're thin, it doesn't mean you're healthy - you could still be eating yourself to death.
Firstly, many people associate the term "obese" with somebody so overweight that they're waddling along or gasping for breath.
But the reality is many of us are obese and don't realise it - often because we don't look it or define ourselves as "curvy".
Take two of the panel, Sam and Dan. Sam was classed as only slightly overweight for his height, while Dan was classed as obese.
Gunther von Hagens: Had trouble finding the heart and liver during his autopsy because his subject's body contained so much fat
Despite this, when asked to perform fitness tests, Dan outperformed-Sam, as did another member of the panel ranked as morbidly obese.
A further investigation with an MRI scan found that Sam had 29 per cent body fat; "obese" Dan had just 15 per cent.
Sam's lifestyle of a high-fat, high-sugar diet, coupled with very little exercise, meant he was accumulating a lot of internal fat - and storing up problems for himself later in life.
So who's to blame? Over the past 50 years, the food we eat has changed dramatically - in many ways for the worse.
Fifty years ago, the average sausage contained around 70 per cent meat.
Today, you'd be lucky to find more than 35 per cent in many brands.
The shortfall is made up with extras such as dextrose, rusk and emulsifier, which have no nutritional value, more salt to add flavour to these "fillers", and often colourants.
Then there's products such as the cereal Special K, which contains double the amount of sugar it did 20 years ago.
Nothing is safe - there's more sugar in bread and soups than ever before and our sweet tooth is sweeter than ever - we're even opting for naturally sweeter versions of apples.
I believe the rise of the ready meal has had one of the most devastating effects on our health over the last 25 years.
When they first appeared in the 1980s, one in ten people was obese. Today it's one in four.
So many ready meals are loaded with salt, calories and fat - including many of the reduced-fat versions - and low in fibre, that they are a terrible longterm diet.
The problem is that fibre kills off the cancerous cells in the bowel - and in a nation where bowel cancer is the second biggest cancer, this is serious.
Despite being a wealthy, developed country, we only manage to pass an average of 110g of stools per day - less than half a block of butter in terms of size - compared with Ugandans, who pass a record 480g a day - nearly two whole blocks.
This is because their diet is healthy, highfibre and rich in nuts and fruit.
It's partly the manufacturers' fault.
Better labelling would help - "the British public aren't stupid," says Jamie, "but it needs to be clearer when one product contains more than 100 per cent of an average person's recommended daily fat intake."
It's also partly our own individual fault - as Jamie puts it, "we all know that fruit and veg are good for us but most of us choose to ignore it."
But the good news - and one of the reasons why I agreed to be involved in this programme - is that it really doesn't take much to start undoing the damage.
Most people think changing your diet and lifestyle involves spending a fortune on brown, unappetising food and weird and wonderful things only found in health food shops.
The reality couldn't be further from the truth.
As regular readers of my column will know, I'm adamant that eating your way to a longer life is all about making small but significant changes to your diet.
I am fed up with gimmicky, pseudoscience where people are first ridiculed for their diet and then told they must eat goji berries, cut out all alcohol and only drink herbal tea.
These diets are completely inaccessible and unappealing.
For far too long, healthy eating has been seen as an elitist thing to do, something that only the rich can afford.
But that simply isn't true. It's perfectly easy to live healthily on many mainstream foods - foods which other nutritionists often disparage.
White bread, tinned fruit and frozen vegetables are all OK - if you combine them with the right things.
So forget weighing your stools or eating sprouted greens and focus on what's actually achievable.
We explained this to our panel - and set them on a course of healthier eating that didn't demand a radical rethink of their diet or introducing them to mung beans.
If you only like white bread, fine - just try and eat it with something healthy. So swop your bacon buttie for an egg on toast.
Or eat white pasta but combine it with protein such as chicken or fish.
This will slow down the release of energy from the meal and keep you feeling fuller for longer.
If you can't - or don't want to - buy fresh fruit and veg, opt for tinned or frozen varieties.
They still count as part of your five portions of fruit and veg a day and sometimes, as in the case of frozen peas, they can contain just as many nutrients, especially vitamin C, than their fresh counterparts.
I think because we can't see the effects of excess salt, sugar and calories, we don't see - or appreciate - the catastrophic damage we are doing to ourselves.
There is something to be said for using images such as this autopsy as a shock tactic.
In a way, it's not dissimilar to showing smokers what happens to their lungs.
But at least with smoking it's purely just a case of quitting. Over-eating and obesity is not such a clear-cut matter.
It's not enough just to shock people - they have to be guided about how to change their lifestyle.
The human body is a wonderful thing; it is precious and we should look after it rather than thinking of it as a machine that can cope with anything we put in it.
JAMIE Oliver: Eat To Save Your Life, will be screened on Channel 4 on Wednesday, January 16 at 10pm.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário