I'm curious about the general understanding what constitutes a healthy lifestyle. I'm in the UK so I'm particularly interested in how public health advice is being received by UK-based people, but am also interested the perceptions of people from other countries.
A few questions to gauge how people think about certain issues:
- Do you believe, broadly, that weight gain is primarily caused by eating too much and exercising too little, ie calories eaten = calories burned + fat gained?
- Do you believe that fat, and saturated fat in particular, is a leading cause of heart disease, diabetes, obesity and many cancers?
- Do you believe eating large amounts of red meat has a comparable risk to your health to smoking tobacco?
- Without looking it up, what's the rough proportional of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats in a sirloin steak?
- Do you believe that replacing fat with starchy vegetables (like potatoes), pasta, bread and rice will help obese people lose weight?
- Do you believe that the main problem with sugar, in addition to being bad for your teeth, is that sugary foods contain lots of calories without supplying essential micronutrients like vitamins, i.e. that sugar constitutes "empty calories"?
- Given the choice between two foods, both with equal caloric content, would you choose a lower fat option that replaces the calories from fat with sugar over the full fat (but lower sugar) option?
- Is it better to be fit or to be lean?
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