This thread really is full of crap.

To the OP: just stop being a pussy and quit. I smoked for eleven years, from the age of ten, 20+ a day. I quit aged 21 by just stopping. 'Trying' to quit is another way of telling yourself you're not actually quitting. Don't try to quit, just stop buying the cigarettes and smoking them. If other people around you are smoking, so what? It's just a craving. Don't be that weak person who jumps back on the bandwagon because others around him are doing it too. If you want to stop, you'll stop. If you don't, stop talking about it like you do.

Blahah Wrote:This thread really is full of crap.

To the OP: just stop being a pussy and quit. I smoked for eleven years, from the age of ten, 20+ a day. I quit aged 21 by just stopping. 'Trying' to quit is another way of telling yourself you're not actually quitting. Don't try to quit, just stop buying the cigarettes and smoking them. If other people around you are smoking, so what? It's just a craving. Don't be that weak person who jumps back on the bandwagon because others around him are doing it too. If you want to stop, you'll stop. If you don't, stop talking about it like you do.

You'd make a great suicide counselor!

thurd Wrote:

Raschaverak Wrote:Seriously, I can't believe what I'm reading. You've made me now even curiouser. For instance, my diet consits mostly, of chicken, rice, apples, tomatoes, cucumber, and cereals (wheat), and some nuts, and bread and maybe soy milk. Chicken and rice and cereals make the majority of my diet.
Are you saying that in America an average Joe (which I am in Hungary) can't afford these? Because even with my diet, if you don't overeat yourself, you wont get too (if any) fat. In fact, I'm quite lean...
Or could you elaborate on what high quality food means in America? (or in Japan for that matter...)

Oh he can afford them alright but its quality will be much lower to yours. It's genetically modified, sprayed with all kinds of shit that it tastes like crap and has marginal nourishing value. There are options to get more natural, not mass produced goods but they are more expensive. That means most consumers just buy whatever is available that doesn't taste like roadkill.

There was a study in America pitching natural and preprocessed food against each other. In one of the tests kids were given a strawberry milkshake, one made with real strawberries (expensive) and a "regular" one bought in shop. Results were they found real strawberries "unnatural" and didn't like them.
If you never ate a real strawberry in your life no wonder you don't know how it tastes.

Thurd, you seem like a nice guy and I generally like your posts but your argument doesn't make any goddamned sense. Just because eating healthy "tasted" bad to the kids does not mean that A) people can't afford healthier options compared with fast food and B) that healthy food is always expensive. We are throwing the term "healthy food" around pretty loosely so we might need to agree on what "healthy food" means before we continue but the argument that Americans are the victims in the crime of obesity rather than the culprit is just absurd.

I've got to put my foot down on this and say that eating healthy food is not expensive in every situation and it is possible and very likely that one can and should eat healthy food (that even tastes good) which is cheaper than eating fast food.

bizarrojosh Wrote:Just because eating healthy "tasted" bad to the kids does not mean that A) people can't afford healthier options compared with fast food and B) that healthy food is always expensive.

Sorry I didn't phrase it correctly, this paragraph was meant just as an interesting piece of information, not as an example to support my thesis.

bizarrojosh Wrote:We are throwing the term "healthy food" around pretty loosely so we might need to agree on what "healthy food" means before we continue but the argument that Americans are the victims in the crime of obesity rather than the culprit is just absurd.

I'm not arguing that they are forced into this situation, but I do believe there are two sides to this story. One is a lazy bastard that chooses to eat really unhealthy and the other are the corporations/government (not in a conspiracy theory sense) that allowed this to happen.

bizarrojosh Wrote:I've got to put my foot down on this and say that eating healthy food is not expensive in every situation and it is possibly and very likely that one can and should eat healthy food (that even tastes good) that is cheaper than eating fast food.

Thats my point, its only eating healthier (which is already great) but still not exactly healthy. Its one thing to cut on fast food and cook for yourself, but to use natural and nutrition rich ingredients is a completely different matter.

To make my argument a bit clearer let me use an example:
The best fruit I've ever tasted was in Morocco, a country thats not heavily industrialized, has lots of sun and is a natural place for such fruits to grow without any additional chemistry. They were fresh, juicy and delicious but didn't always look pretty on store shelves.
In America, fruits are engineered to look great but their taste is comparable to chewing paper

I have a feeling that if that Moroccan apple was placed in an American store with plastic packaging, you'd say it's a foul tasting corporate McApple too

@Magamo I'll just focus on this quote:

It is the quitting method used by 80[5] to 90%[6] of long-term successful quitters in some populations.

This is not direct and irrefutable proof that it's the best method but if your populations are, say the US and Australia (as seems to be hinted by the citations) then these are countries where alternative treatments are widely marketed and used by the population. Therefore, it is significant that 90% of successful quitters used method A over any other method.

Anyway, these are just two citations at the bottom of a Wikipedia article. It's possible that they're biaised, wrongly interpreted, etc.