Selling old meat and stale bread

revere: I'd post something nasty here about you being anti-just-about-everything-I'm-for but your story made me hungry. PBJ sandwhich here I come!

"About half of us Americans ate a sandwich, sub or wrap prepared outside our homes. "

Is this per year, month, week, day, or meal?

Or is it saying that half of all sandwiches are prepared in the home?

Well one reason that sandwiches in Europe dont sell is there taste. While the bread was good the meat was not well refrigerated (or at least the color and smell was off). We tried sandwiches four or five times while in Paris each time the sandwiches turned out like the ones you buy out of the refrigerator at a gas station.

Also in the US sandwiches are marketed as low fat, low calorie food. A large sub chain advertises customers who have lost weight by eating 200 to 300 calorie subs. I suspect that the original article was written in the EU.

Yes I know there are 1000 calorie super subs.

Are not tacos and burritos sandwiches?

Darwin: Good point. I omitted that. It is per week

Awesome: Don't know the answer to that. I wouldn't categorize them that way but I couldn't tell you why. I don't know what the marketing report assumed.

More to the point, aren't all the hamburgers, hot dogs, fast-food fried chicken "burgers," and all the breakfast on a biscuit/croissant/bagel/muffin also sandwiches? Only thing that changes is the shape/texture of the enclosing carbohydrate and the temperature of the enclosed ingredients.

For that matter, isn't a pizza just a glorified open-faced sandwich?

Pauls:

I am impressed by your postings, swift and heavy-weighted comments. It seems that you have a good grasp on this style and the flavor that we encountered in Freethinker: When you said "I missed your chastising phila..." I thought this was disarmingly good. Like Library Lady's amiability, all these styles add to the graceful quality of the debate which I have learned here.

I have been told that at the best universities, they reserve some space for guest speakers (PhD candidates) to bring new ideas. The reason is to prevent bias (initiated by the professors themselves) and to invite open discussion and new ideas.

I have also been told that the best students do not really believe their teachers. (Though they trust them, nevertheless).

I'm not applying this analogy to you, because you are not a student. What I would like to say is that I appreciate your critical input. Your comments make this a very valuable blog. I say this as a volunteer of the Revere Academy. ( I do my voluntary work to save the world.:-)

After giving you these compliments, I have one request that I hope will be enjoyable homework for you. Understand, I am not forcing you. Just a request.

In 2007, I read two very important articles relating to a paradigm shift. One referred to defects in American nutrition which deteriorates health. The title is Unhappy Meals, so it fits to this thread, sandwich meat. The second relates to the role of viruses in the ecosystem; that viruses are very important in sustaining the ecosystem. For example, without the ocean viruses, the oxygen released from algal photosynthesis would be destroyed. The oxygen provided by oceans is more than the total of oxygen from rain forests.

Here are these two and you can read from the links:

1. from New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html
2. from Nature
www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v5/n10/abs/nrmicro1750.html

The reason why I find your involvement and viewpoint so crucial is that I suspect that the current paradigm of human health management is seriously flawed, as reflected in the two examples I mention here. This paradigm is seriously mistaken. I wished I was wrong, but I am afraid that this flawed paradigm is wasting the energy put into it. And I suppose that this is the right place to debate this concern, because many brilliant public health people are reading this and it is being led by a great group of people.

For fairness sake, I should brief you on my background; I was a 1972 graduate in Biology, after several years of working in a research institute. I have worked for more than 30 years in shrimp production. Lately I have been involved with designing selective breeding programs directed at virus resistance. My base is in Thailand now.

Please indicate your signal, therefore I can elaborate more specifically.
Please visit freethinker-your native town sometimes.

Paiwan

No, Reveres, in my experience the British are excellent at aping the worst habits of the USA and we're fattening up quite nicely. We may be using pies, pasties, kebabs, beer, full English breakfasts and microwave meals rather than 'subs', but we're getting there.

paiwan - you flatter me. Let me make this perfectly clear, I am not a scientist. But I won't let that trivial detail stop me from telling all what I know about food and humans. All food is good food. There is no such thing as a 'bad' food. By its very definition all food must be good, it sustains life. There are of course exceptions, for example peas and brussel sprouts are terrible foods. They aren't really 'bad' but they do become awful once they get into the mouth. A food that goes 'bad' isn't a food anymore, it becomes nonedible therefore not food. In the worse case it becomes a poison, definatley not a food. I know that the messier, sloppier the food the better tasting it is. Also foods that can be picked up with hands and not utensils are also better tasting. I have no idea why this is, sloppy foods and 'hand' foods just taste better then foods where utensils are required. Some examples, spaghetti (sloppy and delicious), barbacued spare ribs (very messy and exquisite), steamed blue crabs (messy, requires hands, and extraordinarily delicious), mashed potatoes (not too messy at all, need a utensil, good), peas (neat and tidy, requires a fork although a knife will do, yucky). For you scientists out there here is a little experiment, broil two nice thick pork chops or steaks, just make sure if you choose the chops broil them well done. Next (and you might want to try this in the privacy of your own home) eat one using the traditional knife and fork, then eat the second one using just your hands. Just rip right into it using nothing but hands and teeth. Keep the napkins out of arms reach. I think you'll see that I've proved my point. (A side note, this experiment works even better if you are really, really hungry). The next thing I know about food is that delicious food is usually not very good for you if you eat it in excess and that horrible tasting food is good for you and you can eat it till the cows come home. I don't pretend to understand this either, perhaps some scientist can figure out why nature plays such dirty tricks. Now about humans, for some reason we choose the delicious foods, try to stay well clear of the horrible tasting food, and settle for just ok tasting food if delicious food cannot be found. I guess if one were starving and the only thing available was horrible tasting, one would eat it - but once, survival wasn't an issue any longer, the horrible tasting food would be dropped and forgotten as quickly as possible. So where does all this good information lead too? Revere's article is blaming the sandwich. Sandwiches have come a long way since the 'old meat, stale bread' style of cuisine, popular in the Earl's day. How can anyone gaze upon an Italian Hoagie and think "obscene thing"? The Italian Hoagie is a delicious, wonderous meal unto itself, for heaven's sake! Its got new meat, different types of new meat at that, different types of cheeses, lettuce, onion, spices, all covered with thick olive oil! You can pick it up with your hands! The oil dribbles down the corner of your mouth! Hands, messy, its got it all! An Italian Hoagie wouldn't hurt anyone if consumed once a month. And there is the difference between myself and revere I believe. I see the problem of obesity as a person problem, not a food problem. You eat lots of questionable food you will probably gain lots of weight. You eat healthy, even if you have to force yourself and suffer through some meals, you probably won't gain weight. Nothing is easy in this life, not even meal times anymore, a pity that. It comes down to personal responsibility and parental responsibility. Its not the sandwich, its not the sandwich makers, its you. I know. I once weighed 265 pounds. I put myself on a proper diet, moderate excercise, and now I'm a svelte 208 (I'm 6'2"). I was down to 190 pounds which according to the government is the proper weight for my height. My family and friends thought I had some horrible, dreadful disease, and that I looked frail, so I bulked up! Don't ever trust the government.
I'll take a peek at those articles.

Always loved the fact that "SUBWAY is a registered trademark of Doctor's Associates Inc."

It's gotta be healthy if they are run by Doctor's Associates Inc. . . Geez

Pauls says: It comes down to personal responsibility and parental responsibility. It's not the sandwich; it's not the sandwich makers, its you. I know.

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This reminds us the food (not only sandwich) that we eat daily is so important to our health. Four of the 10 leading killers in America are linked to diet.

If you have time to read Michael Pollan's ' Unhappy Meals', which is a rather thrilling message to me, because I have witnessed that my relatives emigrated from Asia to the United States suffer much higher rates of diabetes, obesity, and breast cancer.

Spending more and more professionals involved, but less healthy. Why?

Paiwan: I read Pollan's article. What he is saying in those 12 pages is that the money spent researching diet and nutrition has led scientists to find out more but learn nothing as far as healthy diets are concerned. I can remember when eggs were good for you, then eggs were bad for you, now I think eggs are good for you again. Not sure. I gave up listening to nutritionist and paying little heed to daily recommendations a long time ago. They are average daily recommendations. I don't trust averages. I think genetics, environment, lifestyle, and diet all play a role in health. A highly-stressed office worker who eats extremely healthy but doesn't get any form of excercise probably has as much chance of becoming ill as someone non-stressed and eats a high-fat diet but manages to walk a mile or so a day. I also believe a person should let loose every once in awhile. Go out, gorge yourself, have a few drinks and don't feel guilty for doing it. Whether or not the money spent in nutrition research was wasted is a difficult question to answer. Hindsight may lead some to say yes but you can't know it was wasted until after it was spent. Should there be more money and time spent? I really don't know. Perhaps less money and time should be devoted to that particular science and maybe science should take a step or two back and re-think. As Pollan implies a carrot is a carrot and no matter the make-up of it, it is still a carrot. But I'd rather see money and science devoting time to nutrition research then cloning cats that glow in the dark. Now you tell me if this is far-fetched - you take a people, in your case Asian who have lived for thousands and thousands of years on a particular diet, in the same type environment, and have had basically the same lifestyles for all those years. You take some of these people and put them in a place where the environment is different, the lifestyles are different, the diet is different from their anscestors. Could it be the combination of these factors lead to disease?

I really don't know what's the matter with the English. Don't they want to be morbidly obese like their American cousins? Weird.

Revere, the English are the people who invented the "chip butty" (sandwich made of french fries on bread). I honestly don't think they (or you) have anything to worry about.

I'm Canadian and my boyfriend is English. I worry about starving to death if I move there, because I'm used to house-brand gourmet food in every grocery store, not chip sandwiches and curry-in-a-box from Tesco's...