May 17, 2006

• I do not own or watch tv, rarely read magazines and usual food shop at a non-corporate/non-chain health-o-rama type of place, yet I am frequently, nay, often, driven to near insanity by random food cravings of all sorts.
• I'll take a triumvirate of twinkies! just noticed the sidebar title
• You were in a different focus group. Shhh. Television advertising has been said to account for around 75 percent of food manufacturers' advertising expenditures. In 1997, when the last data for the current study was collected, the food industry spent around $11bn on advertising. . . . The American Academy of Pediatrics has long recommended limiting children to no more than two hours of television per day to decrease sedentary time and exposure to content that may encourage a range of negative behavior.
• Chocolate cravings. Usually after, eh, stressing times. Big time chocolate jones.
• Yeah but what they found is that for some people, it's as easy as showing food on the magic box. That there's some kind of hardwired button that vill forzce zem to buy!! Ha ha!! MuwhaAHAhHAhaaaaaaa!!! eeehhh. Humans.
• What is it with people putting the extra i in Australia? It's rediculous.
• It's the Kiwis. They want you to look silly.
• Man, I wish I could hire their grant writer for one semester. "Yes, I'd like $25,000 to prove that showing people pictures of food makes them want to eat." Maybe next they could solve the age-old unanswered question, "Can looking at pictures of naked ladies excite heterosexual men?" Our business office has restrictions on us using our departmental credit cards to buy lab animals and radioactive material, but I wonder what they'd say to a Penthouse subscription?
• Chyren, they borrowed the extra 'i' from 'ridiculous, right? TUM, go for Hustler, its much dirtier!
• “The researchers showed people pictures of highly appetizing foods (eg chocolate cakes), bland foods (eg broccoli), and disgusting foods (eg rotten meat).” Pota-to, potah-to, they call it rotten meat, I call it aged beef. ...which is also what I call my ample phallus. - Ladies? *looks around expectantly - in vain* Seriously though - Dr. Beaver? Could you take real advice from that guy?
• It's not polite to make fun of a person's overbite. Seriously though, "Greater stimulation of this area by food images is likely to encourage over-eating, and obesity." It's not that your favorite industrialized nation is necessarily lazier than another or specifically eats worse food, but that the trigger to eat is more often pulled.
• I had a real problem with this when I was pregnant. See food on TV, develop craving, instantly. It was a little scary how that worked. So I'm glad it was scientifically determined not to be my fault, but the damn advertisers who made my husband go out at night in search of chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and little tiny sprinkles. Not those little sprinkles shaped like sticks, but the tiny, multi-colored dot sprinkles. And frozen yogurt, but not chocolate. Maybe vanilla, with chunks of something. Not nuts, though. I hate nuts. I'll have to show him the link. He might start talking to me again.
• I have to find a link to a study I saw a (sorry Pete) TV documentary on. In it, they took thin people and obese people, put them in an MRI, and gave them bites of different foods. In the heavy people, the pleasure centers of the brain lit up far more strongly than in the thin, suggesting that there is a true addiction caused by overreactive pleasure areas of the brain. Off to see if I can find a link...
• Wait - wait - slow down! You're saying that overweight people* like food? And that seeing something is often enough to make you want it? NO WAY.
• * Like myself, lest anyone think I'm slandering the obese.
• I'm stimulating my pleasure centers right now with a slice of raisin bread. I know I shouldn't, but here I am.
• mmmm, hot buttered raisin bread toast. hubba hubba
• WOW, petebest, I'm sorry, that was a really bitchy thing to say, even for me. In my defense, it's been a long day, and I've been on a very strict diet/exercise regime. (10lbs so far!) And did you know that if you lose body mass, it takes a while for your hormonal system to back off the output, so it's like having PMS all the time, for months? It's delightful. Anyway, let's strike those last comments from the record, and replace them with: This study raises some Pavlovian questions. I'd be curious to see if they could isolate the big brain excitement in a little baby, then see if it grows up to be an overweight adult. Or do we teach ourselves that food brings happiness, and therefore our brains learn to respond accordingly? (I'll just go have some baby carrots now... they're just as good as Little Debbie Nutty Bars. No, really. Even better. *grits teeth*)
• oh my gawd....I'd completely forgotten about the existence of nutty bars.....nuutttty baaarrrssss.............../droooool
• Funny story about Little Debbie Nutty Bars: one morning I awoke to find that my shoulder and upper arm were smeared with a squishy brown substance. "OMG!!!" I thought, "I've sh*t the bed!!!" Then I noticed that it didn't smell like poo. In fact, it smelled like chocolate. Glancing around, I discovered that I was sharing my bed with a flimsy plastic wrapper. Turns out that in the middle of the night, I'd sleepwalked into the kitchen, fetched a Nutty Bar, took it back to bed, and ate half of it before falling asleep on it. Let's hear Science explain THAT...
• Turns out that in the middle of the night, I'd sleepwalked into the kitchen, fetched a Nutty Bar, took it back to bed, and ate half of it before falling asleep on it. I've done the sleep-eating thing before (although never with anything as scrummy as a Nutty Bar). I hear it's one of the more common parasomnias, but it totally freaks me out. The worst one was 2/3 of a jar of salted cocktail peanuts. I woke up feeling like I'd eaten a beach.
• *snorts peanut out nose* TUM! Stop that! No mechagrue, that's fine . . *snif* . . I know I'm not wanted . . . *sniff, snort* Actually, the angle I got from it was about how the natural confluence, if I may use that word, of advertising and this atavistic impulse to crave food at the sight of it was very likely for some portion of the "pandemic" of obesity. The advertising part. That was the part I was on about. TV People! It's eating our cultu-*ow!* GramMa quit biting! You'll see! Pretty soon we'll all be zombies! Fat, stupid zombies who vote Bush! And don't have even the most basic emotional reactions to simple stimulus!! Led Zeppelin Ruuuuuules!!! *Sploosh!*
• Thanks, BBC. Now I want chocolate cake.
• Possibly I'm weird - but the ads with junk food don't appeal to me. It's the ones with the green broccoli and red capsicum and so on that get my juices flowing. As much as I love choccie the colour doesn't excite me visually as much as the vibrantly coloured veggies and fruit. BTW I'm doing another 10 day fast next month - who wants to join in?
• OBOY! What fun!!
• Whenever I happen to catch some broadcast TV, I'm always struck by how the commercials are full of FOOD. And everyone is INSANELY EXCITED to be eating the food, which is filmed in dewy, near-pornographic close-up. I swear to you, I have never been as happy in my life as the people featured in any given Taco Bell ad. Weight Watchers preaches that food can't make you happy, but have they watched TV lately? Tell that to the dude with the Whopper!
• MonkeyFilter: filmed in dewy, near-pornographic close-up. BTW I'm doing another 10 day fast next month - who wants to join in? I'm in! When do we begin? I would love to be thin! But then . . . again . . .
• put me down for a day and a half. or maybe two.
• From June 9 - 19, with a few days of preparation before and a winding down after. Mail me at gomichild@gmail.com so we can set up some kind of support. Let's starvation!
• Gomi: I may be able to join you for a bit. Say, on the second day of your fast, between noon and six thirty?
• Awwww - fat is so cute.
• What th' . . .
• Fat is the new thin.
• Well then, call me Kate Moss.
• I wasn't sure where to link this; this thread seemed like as good a one as any. Very first McDonald's TV Ad. Dig Ronald's nose, and the sweet cars in the parking lot at the end.
• Holee shit! That's Willard Scott!