The only thing more disaffected than an NYC hipster is an NYC hipster with a vice in the media.

I'm still glad he did this though.

Casey isn't a hipster. He's more of a granola eating eXXXtreme sports kind of guy. He works really hard though. He won international fame when he left ,000 of equipment in a taxi and the kindly Muslim driver returned it all. Then he made some kind of commercial or something where he ran across the planet in 3 days or something and it got a billion views.

Tell us how that goes!

JHM's gonna get laid!

What?

I'm not going to get laid. I'm going to post this link on Twitter. A website, much like poetv, where people share links, like on poetv.

Or maybe not. The moment seems to have passed.

Should've used it while it was up JHM. But it's okay, it happens to all guys sometimes.

The video is still up. Although I get that you were attempting some sexual innuendo, which, if the video was not still up, would have actually been really funny.

I enjoy this guy's idiocy but I'm not a big fan of Twitter. It's the other big time waster next to this but without the fun.

Not on Facebiook, then? Me neither.

Yeah. I knew several "vegetarians" in college who were anything but.

You can fry a lot of stuff in vegetable oil, and often low fat means high sugar/salt. Most of the time, cooking with actual butter and lard is "healthier" overall than going with artificial substitutes.

Are you implying that all those Haitians living on dirt-and-lard biscuits aren't healthy?

I don't think the trouble is that he equates "low calorie" with "healthy" - he doesn't, really, though he seems to be beating around the point that "more calories than you think" is unhealthy, which it can be. It's a hideous oversimplification, but an extra 500 calories a day works out to about one pound gained per week. Quantity matters.

What I found disingenuous is that he seems to treat all calories as equal, and didn't take nutrition or things like sodium into consideration at all. Claiming that eating too much tofu sandwich is the equivalent of eating some extra donuts and big macs is ridiculous.

And badmouthing that muffin because it didn't match up with the claims of some shop keeper who didn't even make them is dumb. Granted, a 735 calorie muffin is nauseating, but the website didn't seem to suggest that it was anything but moist and beautiful, and presumably tasty.

Still, I really hate these inaccuracies, and the fact that nothing is ever done about it. My local bakery makes these amazing cinnamon buns, and the label seems to indicate that they aren't as many calories as you'd expect.. however, I have a food scale at home, and it turns out that each bun weighs about 80-100% more than the label says they do.

Note that even without the inaccurate labeling he'd still be eating about 2700 calories a day. Fatty.

The moral I got out of it was "food you make from scratch might not be healthy; food someone else is paid to make for you never is." Which seems like common sense to me, but America's bodies say otherwise.

I think it's fair to say that food that other people make for you is more likely to come with an accurate calorie count, which is hardly the same thing as accurate. For that to even matter, people need to pay attention to that sort of thing, and most people never do.

Again, I'm reminded that the problem is that our technology and economy have created an environment that runs counter to what have evolved for. We're hard-wired to seek high calorie foods and eat as much as we can get. From a biological point of view, this calorie counting seems like a losing game.

Correction: I think it's fair to say that food that other people make for you is more likely to come with an accurate calorie count, which is hardly the same thing as HEALTHY

How is that bullshit? I thnk you're missing the point. He took a random sampling, got random results, that, I assume, were purely factual. Was he supposed to know the results BEFORE he did the experiment?

I didn't see an anti-chain restaurant agenda at work here. The only opinion he expressed directly is that the accuracy of the results should be enforced. The problem is that a little sandwich company is less likely to be able to pay for the scientific testing, so maybe the conclusion to be drawn is to eat at more chains.

I completely agree with you. His whole selection method biased the -entire- thing before he started, even before that "healthy" sandwich was factored in. And when one item like that skews the average that much, it would be considered an outlier and not even factored into it.
The sample size is also far too small to draw -any- conclusions from either, even if it was somehow considered a "random" sampling of food items. So, I think, yes, it is interesting, but NO it is not in any way scientific. I would love to see an actual public health journal try this in a genuinely scientific way.

I didn't see your reply JHM. But, I sort of addressed it. This isn't how you do a random sample. And isolated (not repeated) results don't count for shit in drawing any conclusions about the variables involved.

even ten percent is a pretty meaningful discrepancy when it comes to calories

but you don't want people to be fully informed about calories, do you RaggaMUFFIN??

I think the standards for "random sample" are different for a youtube video than for a university study. I mean, he tested "samples" of food that he chose "randomly". This has nothing to do with what i was saying to ragamuffin. My point was that the sample was not chosen to produce a certain conclusion. And he didn't make any conclusions.

Likewise "conclusions". I wasn't actually making a conclusion, i was suggesting that the video wasn't saying what he(she?) seemed to think it was saying about restaurant chains.

Actually I'd endorse that as a tentative conclusion based on anecdotal evidence. In science, anecdotal evidence don't mean shit, but in life, it's a huge factor in nearly every decision we make.

There's really only one sold conclusion to be drawn: not all of this stuff is accurate. Everything else is... I'm going to say "hypothesis.

It may be that, to a scientist "random sample" has a precise meaning, but if I use it simply as a combination of the meanings of "random" and "sample", outside of the context where the scientific standards are important, am i wrong? I don't see how I could be, but i thank you for making me aware of the difference. Next time I'll be more careful.

I think the fact that one of these items skewed the all data is pretty good evidence to support the one thesis that the guy makes: That these labels need to be enforced. I don't know if i agree, since this would put a proportionately larger burden on the smaller business.

>>I completely agree with you. His whole selection method biased the -entire- thing before he started, even before that "healthy" sandwich was factored in. And when one item like that skews the average that much, it would be considered an outlier and not even factored into it.

Wait, WHAT? He chose the items based on what he would eat during a normal day. If he ate it, it would be digested, along with everything else.

Maybe we're fundamentally disagreeing on what the point of this was. I thought that since he used a bomb calorimeter operated by a scientist who employs math that he was going for a scientific approach, not purely anecdotal evidence (like "I ate that burger, and I bet it was more calories than it said because I feel fat"). If he wasn't attempting science and all the things that come with those claims, he shouldn't have presented the data in that way.
The fact is, if products are being purposefully or accidentally mislabeled, that's a huge cause for concern, but I think it is a disservice to the issue to not address it in a scientific way. This is more KONY2012 than actual gonzo journalism.

>> I thought that since he used a bomb calorimeter operated by a scientist who employs math that he was going for a scientific approach,

He used test results to tell a story. Maury Povich does the same thing with DNA tests.

>>If he wasn't attempting science and all the things that come with those claims, he shouldn't have presented the data in that way.

Weren't you just saying that he didn't present the data in a scientific way?

>>This is more KONY2012 than actual gonzo journalism.

I associate Gonzo journalism with Hunter Thompson who is known for writing books. I never saw it, but KONY 2012 was a youtube video, and this is a youtube video, so yeah, sure.

Whether it's science or journalism, i think the question is does he back up his claims. The one thing he proves is that not all calorie counts are accurate, and I think it backs up his only real thesis, that calorie counts ought to be enforced.

I agree that a 10% discrepancy in calories is significant, so I was wrong to say that the other differences weren't meaningful. But consider that if you take his totals as he presents them, you've got a 20% discrepancy between the labels and the actual consumed calories. If you throw away the data from the outlaying sandwich, it becomes closer to 8% or 9%. All because of one sandwich, a difference of about 12%.

I mentioned the "chain restaurant" factor, because they seemed to be the subject of this video, based on the introduction. The fact that the sandwich isn't from a chain restaurant is a second possible reason why it shouldn't be included.

The narrator himself does admit that this isn't scientific, but that just goes even further to show that a non-scientific study is practically pointless, which is the only point of value that I take from it.

^ yep, agreed on all points.

>>I mentioned the "chain restaurant" factor, because they seemed to be the subject of this video, based on the introduction.

FDA regulations requiring labels on packaged foods like muffins and sandwiches are mentioned in the second sentence of narration, or maybe the third, depending on whether the author has the temerity to begin a sentence with "and".

The intro to the intro is a simple graphic beginning with one word: OPINION.

That's because this is an "op-doc", a short video documentary meant to be posted ion the opinion page of the New York Times website. Do you really think this an appropriate place for a scientific study?

If the scientific method would require removing the abberation from the data, that would be pretty bizarre in this case, since the abberation is really the point. The NRA could use this method to prove that guns are safe, since the relatively few guns that are used to kill people could be excluded from the sample.

I think you guys have got it backwards. It's an opinion piece. The author needs objective facts to back up his opinion, and he gets them. The Opinion is Batman. The science is Robin. Wait. Make that Alfred. The science is Alfred.

You're saying obesity is a first world problem? Thank you for that penetrating insight.

First world disastrous epidemic.

Because inaccuracies on a label that nobody reads are a significant contributing factor to obesity.

So you're saying that it's NOT a problem?

Let the fat person speak. I ALWAYS read those things, and while I don't use elaborate math to compute my daily calorie intake (not YET, anyway. I'm about to start taking drastic action), I'll use this information to choose one menu item over another.

The problem is the poor bastard who eats a lot tofu sandwiches. If you're trying to lose weight,and that one item that is vastly under-counted happens to be a staple for you, I think that could really fuck you up. I mean,it cost you a lot of unnecessary effort. It could lead you to give up, absolutely.

What I really like about this video aren't necessarily the conclusions that it reaches, but rather that it encourages us to look at these questions critically.

A guy with enough money to get food scientifically tested for caloric content is complaining that he's getting too much nutrition when there are millions of people who aren't getting enough. Hence, first world problems. Obesity is also technically a first world problem because it's a side effect of too much convenience. I just don't think food labeling factors much into the equation.

I get your point about having the power to get food scientifically tested for one's benefit as a sign of extreme privilege, but to equate obesity as a "first world problem" is a dangerous inaccuracy. Your first mistake is equating obesity with getting "too much" nutrition, when it's often the case that the obese are very nutrition-deficient. Fat and sugar will keep you alive and functioning, but not in good working order.

In fact, obesity is starting to become a symptom of extreme _dis_enfranchisement. Without even going into the kinds of food desserts you get in poorer communities, or the fact that you have to have a lot of leisure time to eat well and exercise, people often eat cheap, fatty foods because it's been economically forced upon them to do so. Farmers in the Andes, for instance, can no longer afford to buy their millennias-old staple food--quinoa--because of its newfound popularity among protein-craving vegans, and have had to turn to fast food to make up the difference. Hence they're starting to have obesity issues. The same thing is happening in a lot of native tribes in North America--and reservations are decidedly NOT first-world communities--who have far higher rates of obesity than the general population.

From Teju Cole's twitter feed:

"I don't like this expression "First World problems." It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn't disappear just because you're black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here's a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are."

Nicely done, Jane.

The obesity epidemic? A first world problem is exactly what it is. We evolved under conditions that hard-wired us to crave high calorie foods and store fats. Our economy evolved under conditions that hard-wired it to provide us with a lot of what we crave at low cost. So we have a problem, and it is a uniquely first world problem. You got a problem with that?