from the these-boots-are-made-for-walkin dept.
NewsChina http://new.newschinamag.com/newschina/articleDetail.do?article_id=2414 is running an article titled, "The Walking Dead - The lack of public sport facilities and sites have seen a growing number of urban residents take to public roads for exercise"
Xu Guilin has been restless and anxious of late. As the head of the Outdoor Sport Association of Lanshan District in the city of Linyi, Shandong Province, he's used to organizing hikes and walks in an urban landscape increasingly hostile to pedestrians. But now he's facing a media blitz after tragedy struck his group – while also handling members who are keen to take to the roads again.
In the early morning of July 8, 2017, a taxi rammed into a crowd of walkers on the highway in the city, killing one and injuring two. After the accident, more than 20 teams of walkers were told to halt their activities.
"I am under mounting pressure," Xu told NewsChina. He doesn't know how to cope with his thousands of members. "They want to exercise and walk, where could they go?" He's very worried that some walkers will strike off on their own, risking another accident, and he's facing massive criticism online where netizens flocked to condemn walkers for their alleged intrusion onto public roads.
It seems that with all the new urban construction in China, they haven't built sidewalks, parks or sports fields. Meanwhile, people that want to walk for exercise have banded together in groups and take to the streets for lack of anywhere else to walk. These are not small groups -- one founder started in 2010 with a few friends and by 2015 his group had grown and split many times...10,000 people were engaged in group walking in Linyi city.
We may think that groups of road cyclists are blocking the roads in a few places, but walking in China appears to be in a whole different league. Some groups taking a lane have been run over by cars (there is a picture in the article that purports to show this) and other groups banned.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday October 09 2017, @04:20PM
"groups of road cyclists are blocking the roads"
I blame the groups of auto vehicles blocking the roads. Especially at the times i want to drive somewhere.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @04:21PM (23 children)
Whereas I have zero faith that the West has any capability, much less will, to solve its problems.
It will be interesting see how China deals with this. Certainly, the Chinese must sense everything wrong with the Western way of life and the sedentary diseases it brings, the expanding waistlines. The Western solution, is, of course, more consumerism. Westerners pay to have membership in a gym, as though natural exercise can be bought, sold, and leased. Getting exercise requires capital investment in the West! Obviously, the people in China disagree with this notion, otherwise they wouldn't be putting themselves in danger here.
Eating healthy in a Western society is more expensive than eating shit that's barely food. Health is a commodity, bought and sold--being thin is now a sign of wealth--, and only those with means and privilege may have it.
Something about essential freedom and security. Do "commies" understand this better than Westerners these days? Well, perhaps at least for this matter.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 09 2017, @04:52PM (12 children)
It's not *as* hard to eat healthy in the West as some people think, but it does require about $30-60 of hardware (a slow cooker and one of those outlet timer circuit plugins) and some pretty heavy diet changes. The slow cooker + timer is a cheaper solution than something like a programmable Instant Pot, and it lets you control when your food is done. Get into dhal, rice-n-beans, and similar things, and you learn how long to leave the pot on. Just dump everything in it in the morning, adjust the timer so that it's done when you get home (set the start point for however many hours your food needs *before* your estimated arrival) and you're set. You can do edible if not exactly gourmet Chinese, Mexican, and (old world) Indian food this way.
A lot of Americans don't like this idea because, frankly, they'll say "that's beaner/dothead/chink food, I ain't eatin' like no mexican/indian/chinaman." They do this at their peril and to their loss.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Monday October 09 2017, @07:04PM (9 children)
How's slow-cooked rice and beans any healthier than what most Americans eat? Last I checked the problem was too many carbs and not enough proteins and fats. And slow-cooked foods are typically high carbs dishes.
I guess that makes anyone eating corn, potatoes or chili, or even taking a sip of coffee or tea on occasions a tolerant individual by definition. Seriously, Americans are probably the most unprejudiced eaters on the globe. If it tastes more or less palatable they'll eat it with little care to what it is or where it's coming from. Especially compared to Asians and Europeans who have a whole national pride thing going on with their cuisines.
Regardless, since I'm not going to leave a food discussion without prompting a recipe, one of my favorite dishes is Gordon Ramsay's Thai-style beef stir fry recipe [wordpress.com] and should fit the premise of easy-to-make Asian and healthy food.
compiling...
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by frojack on Monday October 09 2017, @07:09PM
It wasn't a food discussion until another food bigot decided to make it into one. You're not helping here.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday October 09 2017, @07:24PM (2 children)
> Last I checked the problem was too many carbs and not enough proteins and fats
Last I checked, the food problem was too much energy coming in (too often, indeed, in ratios of molecule types not balanced to match biological needs), and not enough going out.
What constitutes the perfect balance is always a topic of discussions, fashions, and highly dependent on individuals. But the immutable part is how, unless you have a very specific extremely rare disease, people being overweight is the simple result of failing to address an intake that doesn't match a lifestyle.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @10:43PM
Wrong. Insulin spikes modulate food metabolism and drives the efficiency of digestion. Combined with how calorie dense high-carb food is compared to high-fat and high-protein (aka, meat) foods, and you end up getting fat on a high-carb diets that total the same calories as high-protein diets you'd lose weight on while only satisfying your appetite on the high-protein\fat diets. The actual number has been suggested to be as much as a 30% difference in calorie intake depending on meal frequency and life style but considering most people are getting fat from as little as 5-10% surplus and you can see what a huge difference it makes.
And it's not just the insulin. Protein digestion is relatively inefficient and has high limits whereby the body expels excesses early before making it to the blood stream. However, extra glucose readily turns into fat.
The insinuation behind your statement is that it's possible to build a healthy high-carbs diet even for people with sedentary lifestyles simply by reducing the amount of carbs. That's just wrong. Practically speaking not only people will never be able to satisfy their appetites on such a diet leading to it failing, their energy levels throughout the day will fluctuate as their blood glucose spikes leaving them dysfunctional in their lives and jobs. And that disregarding the health of their kidneys.
Honestly I don't know why people insist on repeating these sugar industry propaganda points. Food is addictive. The biological reason we have addiction in the first place is food. The idea a normal person should be expected to demonstrate self-control and regulate their own dosages when served the equivalent of pure heroin 3 times a day is against everything we observe in the real world. Millions of years of biological evolution were done around regularly consuming scraps of meat with the odd fruit you picked off a tree with a non trivial amount of effort. We're not built for growing and eating wheat, rice and corn. It's a recent change and our biology just hasn't caught up. You're not supposed to be satisfied with such an energy dense diet since it wouldn't have naturally happened enough for humanity to evolve to. Adopting self-flagellation in the form of exercise might satisfy emotional needs for some to the point of sedating their appetites, but it doesn't help most people and makes a really bad argument when considering other countries who don't suffer from obesity and have just as many sedentary people don't have huge populations of gym rats to offset the figures to their favor.
(Score: 2) by KiloByte on Monday October 09 2017, @11:24PM
And what, pray tell, a "very specific extremely rare disease" would make you gain weight while not eating enough? Breatharianism? A perpetuum mobile creating energy then converting it to mass?
Stuffing yourself is an absolute requirement. No matter what "healthy at any size" crowd will tell you, being fat is purely your fault. No "hormones" can make you produce body mass out of nothing.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 09 2017, @08:22PM (4 children)
Glad you asked! I should specify I use brown rice rather than white, so as not to spike blood glucose too hard and too fast. The beans add fiber (and, unfortunately, lectins, which is why you soak 'em beforehand...), minerals, and vitamins, as well as all-important protein. Sauces for this are easier than you might thing, as you can just dump a couple cans of diced tomatoes and some tomato paste in--or whizz some cut fresh tomatoes in the blender and pour that in! I've got enough spice in the cabinet to turn your eyes solid blue, and you get an intuitive feel for how much of what to use depending on the flavor you want.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Monday October 09 2017, @10:22PM (3 children)
What drives me nuts is the way the stores decide to charge a lot more for brown rice and brown flour than their white equivalents! Surely, it needs less refining, therefore should be much cheaper. I can see how maybe white being more popular could create some kinda economy of scale but it doesn't stop it being frustrating.
There's also this drive to hype up cheap, healthy basics into fucking "superfoods" or similar and charge the Earth for them. Lentils and chickpeas used to be much cheaper. Frugal people have to eat too y'know!
Once big business figured out anything can be made very expensive if only you market it right to the right idiots, we were all fucked. Nothing will ever be cost effective again.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday October 09 2017, @10:24PM (2 children)
Oh and same thing with brown vs white sugar. There are probably more examples of the less refined product costing more. Maybe it still needs to be selectively refined and that selective process is more difficult than the one used for white sugar.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Monday October 09 2017, @11:02PM (1 child)
Most brown sugar is white sugar with added color and flavor. In no way is it cheaper to produce. I stress "most*, not all. For brown sugar that is truly less refined than white sugar, see point 2 below.
There are two fundamental reasons brown rice, flour and sugar costs more:
1. Buyers are likely to be wealthier and can afford more.
2. These products sell lower volumes so the overhead costs of producing and stocking it are higher.
They are just like any niche product.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Tuesday October 10 2017, @09:04AM
Most is an understatement. The only exceptions I know of is a Japanese company that ships to restaurants directly. Even the rum industry in the Caribbeans use refined cane molasses. Everyone else will, at best, mix white with molasses [joythebaker.com] or just reintroduce resin from some other source.
And mind you, this is done with good reason. Not only the shipping costs for the extra water content is prohibitive, the whitening process is essentially a form of pasteurization to kill off the germs and remove the insects, insecticides, fungi, heavy metals and the really rare stuff like polio that live in the canes and beets or the surrounding ground and that people won't wash down with soup since it's sugar we're talking about.
Regardless, if people are really interested in raw sugar they can just buy sugar canes.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Monday October 09 2017, @07:12PM (1 child)
The nihilist in me chuckles at that notion.
It is true that eating healthy is easier and cheaper than thought. The problem is it requires more effort than cheap fast food and other junk food. And the crock pot thing isn't the end all be all of that either. You can cook regular meals in about 15 min with a little more prep and some waiting for a meat to cook (chicken takes a while). So you might spend 45 minutes to an hour cooking but most is just waiting, the actual work is 10-20 min.
I used to live in a tiny studio, about 25 m2. I cooked almost every day when I lived there because it was so damn easy. The kitchenette was just a few steps from the computer so I could read a recipe from the stove. Need to wait for something to cook? Just walk over to my recliner a few steps away and watch some TV. The stove was just a few steps feet from the chair. Maybe play on the computer and just turn my head to check on things. Only downside was all my clothes smelled of whatever I cooked. And I liked to cook with a lot of garlic. Like where most people use a clove or two, im like yea that's cute and half a bulb goes in.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 09 2017, @08:24PM
After two damn jobs, one of which is food service, I'm too bloody knackered to cook. I want to come home, wait a bit for the cook cycle to finish, then pop the lid and have a nice bowl of stew/soup/curry.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Monday October 09 2017, @05:36PM (1 child)
Every city I've been to in "the West" already has sidewalks...
(Score: 3, Informative) by KiloByte on Monday October 09 2017, @11:37PM
Only if you don't go too far to "the West". If you stop before the first puddle, sidewalks are guaranteed. After the puddle, that's one giant parking lot. Then, after the second puddle, you get China.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 09 2017, @06:37PM
In my neck of the American woods, I see plenty of runners outside. Maybe you'll begrudge them their sneakers.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 09 2017, @07:06PM (1 child)
You mean like the capital investment in a pair shoes so you can step outside onto the sidewalk that takes you anywhere in the city and the suburbs?
How in in the name of all that is rational do you build an entire city without sidewalks? (I've google earth surfed the town. There really aren't many areas with sidewalks. A few scattered areas, but no way to get to them from the vast apartment block tracts.
In the mow-down shot, the taxi driver had a minimum of 4 different lanes to choose from and the walkers had a curb lane they could have been walking in. So there seems to be enough blame to go around.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:09AM
> How in in the name of all that is rational do you build an entire city without sidewalks?
That's easy, you don't have city planners or zoning backed up by serious penalties. The developers clearly control everything and all they want to do is use the minimum land for the max number of units. Sidewalks and/or bike lanes are just a nuisance to these Chinese developers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:51AM (4 children)
Let's take a tour of the problems that the West not only has the capability or will to solve, but actually has done so:
So what? Good food is always going to be more expensive than bad food, no matter what happens.
Hell no. Did you even read the summary? Commies are telling these groups to stop walking.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:12AM (2 children)
. 1. Wars -solved.
Huh? I'm in the USA and we've been at war, often multiple wars at once, almost continuously. This has been for my whole life (starting in the 1950s). I think there was a brief gap after Vietnam? True, these wars were undeclared by Congress--but I doubt that the casualties can tell the difference.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by khallow on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:53AM (1 child)
Not with another developed world country - not even by proxy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:32AM
Proxy conflict is a little more serious, with private US support, for example, for Northern Ireland paramilitary groups versus the UK over a several decade period. But it's still far more minor involvement than anything that happens outside that sphere.
That's the sort of conflicts the developed world engages in with each other over a 70 year period and hence, why I consider the matter of war solved in the developed world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:18AM
> Commies are telling these groups to stop walking.
The city heavies may call themselves "the party" in China. However, China is still a country without fairly universal rule of law--one side effect of this is that corruption, at all levels, is far beyond anything we complain about in USA. The city government has most likely been bought off by developers (who find this cheaper than building parks and sidewalks, although they are "required"). The politicians are the minions who are trying to chase walkers off the streets.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:42PM
That long opening sentence visually collides with the links floating at the top right:
systemd is Roko's Basilisk