It has been a long time that I have visited Argentina. Lately, re-established contact via Facebook with friends and their families, and they sent me pics. Something terrible has happened to the Argentine people, they are no more, a strange race has taken their place. No picture shows a typical porteño pituco (well dressed resident of Buenos Aires) but grotesquely obese creatures in gigantic T shirts with futbol clubs's colors. In my time, an Argentine over the age of 12 would die before being seen in shorts ("pantalones cortos"!!) or without a fancy Italian silk tie, yet now everybody is wearing tent-like blue-jeans and ties are unknown. Buenos Aires today is not the Paris of the River Plate. But Paris is not Paris anymore.
13 comments:
We, on the other hand, are Aryanizing our population!
But we are also gaining weight :(
Brazilian mulatonas are a UNESCO World Treasure, please dont let them disappear!
There seems to be enough food in Argentina.
Anon.
Argentines believe that God is Argentine and that the asado is a religious ritual.
These people who are as fat as cows are not eating the traditional meat heavy diet. Gauchos were lean and wiry. People achieve such bovine proportions by eating like bovines - a diet rich in processed corn and other grains, cheap vegetable fats, sugars. Modern junk food.
They take their fashion cues from the US now - they would not attract attention in any Wal-Mart in America. In the US, their "look" is most associated with the lower classes - rich women are called "x-rays" because they are so skinny (think Callista Gingrich).
K
K
I dont know what they eat. But still they eat a lot of meat.
Oh God. Not the low carb nonsense again.
I am in Thailand right now. Everyone here eats the typical *bovine* diet - incredibly high in grains and sugars and low on meat. The people are INCREDIBLY thin.
It is useful to check your theories against the actual state of the world.
All you have to do to be thin is eat less. To make that sacrifice, being thin must be an aesthetic and cultural ideal of yours. Even a moral ideal.
If Argentines are getting fat, it points to a change in cultural ideals - looking good no longer seeming to matter so much.
It is no coincidence that in America, the obesity epidemic coincided with the decline in standards of dress and personal appearance and formality and good form in attire. The concept of looking good was seen to be elitist and non-egalitarian.
If Americans ever want to be thin again, they simply need to re-learn looking good as a cultural and moral ideal. This would would probably mean moving away from egalitarianism and towards elitism.
American elitists of the SWPL variety are thin, as are old-money WASP women. Fat chance that their ethos will take hold among the masses without cultural pressure, which cannot be applied because it would be insensitive (sizist) and racist.
Yes, but before the 60s revolution, the lower classes emulated the upper classes, who have always valued looking good.
After the 60s the lower classes learned that it was perfectly OK - even laudable - to not try and achieve any kind of personal distinction or excellence, and that caring about personal appearance was superficial and pretentious.
People stopped dressing well. People started getting fat. People stopped having good manners. All that stuff was pretentious. *Letting oneself go* was the proper egalitarian thing to do - anything else was elitist and anti-egalitarian. I bet if someone did a study they would find the thinnest countries are the least egalitarian and have the most rigid class hierarchy and are *aristocractic*.
The SWPL and other elitists never bought into this, so of course remained thin.
Don Quixote was tall and thin, Sancho Panza had a big beer belly. Stereotypes hold.
I am in Thailand right now. Everyone here eats the typical *bovine* diet - incredibly high in grains and sugars and low on meat. The people are INCREDIBLY thin.
And genetically identical to Argentines?
Or do you think genes don't influence carbohydrate metabolization?
East Asians, including Southeast Asians, evolved to metabolize a grain-based, high-carbohydrate diet, ore than anyone else. This is why they can healthily carry more body fat than other races. Your Thai friends (who are probably trim and healthy rather than disgusting and emaciated) can or do carry moderate levels of body fat without getting pot bellies and double chins.
Whites can't do that, and blacks certainly can't do that.
Lo-carb is only nonsense to the degree that race is nonsense.
Olave, that is pure speculation. There is no evidence for what you are saying. Not is there any evidence that carbs cause weight gain. The idea has been extensively considered by scientists but the science simply does not add up. Do a google search for the latest research on the effects of carbs on the body - turns out, insulin is positively correlated with satiety, red meat increases insulin almost as much as carbs, and un-refined carbs release the same insulin as refined carbs, in most cases.
Further, studies of long-term weight loss have shown that low-carbers are underrepresented amongst success stories, and an analysis of American diet in the past 100 years shows that American ate MORE carbs in the early 20th century, a period when obesity was barely existent.
Further, we have clear evidence that Europeans evolved since the advent of agriculture, even metabolically - lactose tolerance, alcohol, etc. So the idea that we cant possibly have evolved to handle a diet that has been with us for a very long time has no basis in reality.
Finally, I am NOT Asian, yet when I spend extended periods in Asia , I LOSE weight, almost imperceptibly - because I conform to local eating habits of small portions and less eating.
Low carb theory simply delays the day of reckoning when we all have to face up to the painful necessity of eating less - hopefully, low carb was a last ditch effort by our collective subconcious to avoid this painful truth.
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