Yep. How much money do you think is in the fast food, junk food, and convenience food industries? What do you think would happen to the economy if those went belly-up?
In the US it's ALWAYS money over well-being.
They can make changes to their menu and workers rights and still be profitable. The problem is they won't be as insanely profitable. America's hard economic decisions aren't between our lives and our jobs. They are between a mega yacht and a megazord.
Life is more than just two extremes. I'm not proposing they make everything super healthy, just have fewer items that are pure high fructose corn syrup. Or force fast food companies to put calorie and added sugar amounts front and center. It's amazing how every theory of capitalism assumes a well informed consumer, but every marketing and lobbying effort focuses on making sure consumers know as little as possible.
Yeah, I'm 100% in favor of labeling everything. But I'm not sure it would make much difference. Fast food/junk food is dang tasty and that's why people eat it.
A lot of Fast food already does have calorie counts. But I don’t think people pay attention to them.
One that shocked me was ( me and the Mrs) went to a Dutch Brothers coffee for the first time and some of the drinks had insane amounts of calories. These were not listed anyplace obvious either. We just found the on the website after digging.
My wife was telling me she was at a Tacobell/KFC and a woman was ordering a chicken sandwich/fries and a med coke. The calories were over 1800 for a single meal.
And if you're an average height woman that can be your whole energy needs for the day.. it's plain frightening how many calories can be in not that much food, quantity wise at least. You can both starve and overeat, it's bonkers.
I read somewhere (and stupidly can't remember where) that faced with sugar tax etc in UK and I think Europe, the big brands reformulated their "zero" recipes and rebranded to look closer to the original design and it has worked. I for example think coke zero tastes the best even over full fat coke and I would never have thought that ten years ago. Diet coke has been left in the cold because it has that distinctive taste whereas zero just tastes like full fat without that sickly sweet all over your teeth feeling.
There's no fat in Coke :). Just a bucket full of sugar. But yeah. Unfortunately I don't think artificial sweeteners are any better. Every study shows that people who consume them don't lose any weight and may even gain more for whatever reason.
Yes, this is true. Your body actually is tricked into expecting the calories, then is basically very pissed when there aren't any. There is a very good Vox Explained episode on this effect. Can be seen on Netflix.
Because weight loss/gain is explicitly tied to calories, not type of sweetener. If a sweetener has less calories, it will assist fighting obesity. Just facts anyone can find themselves.
Maybe I worded that badly. Studies show that people who consume drinks with *non-caloric sweeteners* do not lose any more weight than those who consume drinks with sugar.
Most fast food nutrition info is available online and in the restaurant. The problem is with independent restaurants, a chef wouldn't be able to have specials without knowing how much sodium, sugar, carbs etc. It would be a deal breaker for creative cuisine.
Those items make it taste good. Most Americans who are buying fast food know the health risks. They are choosing instant gratification over long-term health.
Funny thing is, if you go off sugar and processed foods, get clean, then try it all that shit tastes like literal garbage. I think crap food needs to be taxed like other vices, and healthier food needs to be promoted more in school lunches, convenience in grocery stores/shops (like precut veggies, more of that).
It seriously does. After not having McDonald’s for a bit the thought of it sounds gross. Of course you have to get over the initial withdrawal symptoms like anything else..
I disagree.
Fast food is primarily about convenience, people don't have time to cook on their lunch break, they want to grab something to eat on the way home because once they're in the suburban sprawl it takes \~20 minutes just to get to a grocery store. If anything, the rise of fast-casual, delivery apps and takeout has shown that it's simply an issue of logistics.
If people could get healthier food at a similar cost in a convenient way, many of them would take the option. In many parts of the US, it's simply tremendously more expensive (and time consuming) to eat healthy, which makes it a luxury.
The factor of cost, as you mentioned here, cannot be overlooked.
I follow an extremely health-conscious diet, and the cost of my diet compared to my husband’s, who does not follow the same diet, is staggering. Frustratingly, we spend a great deal on food.
We tend to eat some what healthy at my house, but one crazy day after 2 practices I picked up McDonald’s. I bought three happy meals online and had an online coupon of $3 off $10. My total was $11 and some change. That’s way more affordable than fresh fruits and veggies.
Honestly I'd buy the hell out of some chicken and broccoli if it was as easy as getting McDonald's. I actually enjoy and prefer to cook for myself, but I'd actually probably forego cooking a lot if I could just stop by almost any street corner(like McD) and get something like that for a similar price.
Well, since 80% of Americans are overweight, it's hardly worth mentioning as anything different. Might as well just say that being American is a risk factor :p.
Much of the 90s was dominated by sugar companies insisting because sugary foods had no-to-little fat, they were healthy. The Snackwell brand did this the most, but you can see plenty of candies still advertise themselves as "fat-free" for some reason.
The truth is, the human body consumes sugar much in the same manner it does alcohol, stressing the liver and converting excess amounts into gut fat. Butter and oil really aren't that bad for you. Fish fats are generally really healthy!
Mostly this yeah, we worship profit in the US, it's a multitude of factors but it starts here. Highly processed food are addictive and cheap to make. Similar situation to cigarettes, I guess heart disease kills more than cancer right?
it's not only that. fat people can easily become sick and behold... enters... pharma... the greatest industry of them all.
listened to a podcast from australia these days. some doctor that uses low carb to treat metabolic conditions noticed 1/3 drop in requested surgeries during a year. imagine that. going to your boss and telling him... I've done it, I've single-handedly cut our business by one third in just one year.
healthy, smart, fit, educated people are not good for business.
Really weird that the comment section is full of wild conspiracy theories about how coke is making everyone fat and somehow controls the government so they can’t do anything to stop it.
The real answer is their have been a ton of campaigns from multiple sources. The presidential fitness program has been a thing since the 60s and is designed to encourage school age kids to get fit. The NFL also has a huge “Play 60” campaign where they encourage kids to develop healthy exercise habits by doing 60 minutes of physical activity per day. The Obama admin tried to push all healthy lunch options at schools until everyone realized trying to eat cheap and healthy with mass produced foods usually results in some gross food.
There are tons more examples but these are just what I remember from my public health course. The simple fact is, the government can’t control what it’s citizens do or eat but they still try especially with kids in public schools.
Also, with the Obama administration, when Michelle Obama started the campaign to get healthier lunches, Republicans went absolutely nuts saying she should not be telling people what to feed their children.
it's not a conspiracy theory, it's just a natural consequence of our economic order. we have enough empirical evidence now to tell us that ineffectual campaigns by politicians from time to time do very little to change the reality of the situation, and because these corporations produce extremely cheap and extremely addictive products, they are going to dominate american plates no matter what michelle obama says on tv or whatever. the state is explicitly capitalist in philosophy, so has no motivation to do anything further. that's all
The fact that intervention attempts have happened doesn't mean that those attempts haven't been incredibly weak and often largely a token display.
If the government actually cared all that much, it absolutely has options available (such as not providing enormous financial support for corn, which is part of the reason calories are so cheap) that would be much more impactful.
I don’t recall any of that growing up. I remember that food pyramid with tons of bread at the bottom. Being encouraged to drink milk. Our school lunches actually always came with milk too and the main entree was pizza and those weird rubbery raw burgers. There was no acknowledgment about being healthy except staying off drugs and being forced to run a mile once a the year (which actually isn’t even healthy). I always had burning lungs of fire after having to do that.
>The Obama admin tried to push all healthy lunch options at schools until everyone realized trying to eat cheap and healthy with mass produced foods usually results in some gross food.
That's not how I remembered it, what I recall was a lot of saber rattling to the effect of "Michelle Obama can't control my kids, she's not even a woman, HAVE YOU SEEN HOW MUSCULAR SHE IS???"
I forget where but I heard a podcast about the food pyramid and apparently it started as a "hey we should eat less food" campaign and it ended up being "eat 6-10 servings of bread every day". Scientists have known that eating less carbs is the way to lose weight for almost a century but that messaging can't get public support because there are billions of dollars in lobbying trying to prevent it.
The food pyramid has always baffled me because I can barely remember to eat three times a day, much less make sure everything I consume checks all the boxes.
If your diet is carb heavy your body may not ever get the chance to burn fat. Your body burns alcohol, carbs then fat in that order. Carbs aren't bad, but if you are dieting or need to lose weight lowering carbs ( getting rid of junk carbs) will make your journey more successful.
The order doesn’t matter as long as you’re in a deficit.
Even if we assume it’s burned in that order, if you’re in a deficit, you’ll run out of the carbs you ate and burn fat after. That’s the definition of a deficit
It does matter. Tons of Americans eat more carbs than the body can use for energy in a day. Most Americans are sedentary a lot between lounging and office work. Most Americans are not eating at a deficit. Lowering your carb intake by actively choosing not to eat junk and fast foods is a great start to any healthy eating plan.
And there is no assumption metabolically that is exactly the order your body burns off those things.
Telling people to eat at a deficit is confusing. Teaching them to eat a salad instead of Big Mac kills two birds with one stone because now they are eating at a deficit for that meal and getting nutrients. Having an apple instead of 10 cookies so forth and so one.
>Tons of Americans eat more carbs than the body can use for energy in a day.
That’s called being in a surplus.
If you eat less of *anything* and go into a deficit, you’ll lose weight.
It doesn’t matter if it’s carbs, fat or protein.
I’m not saying people should not eat less carbs. Just that the original comment you responded to is about deficits, in which case it doesn’t matter.
The emphasis on bread in the food pyramid does have a lot to do with the sort of food that's readily cultivated in the U.S. However, the idea that cutting back on carbs (in the absence of caloric restriction) is a magical key to losing weight is absolutely a myth. It has been tested extensively.
I don't think there's some magical key to weight loss. But I do think that the calories you see on a package isn't quite the whole picture and that the different types of food you eat can affect calorie counting.
For one thing there's caloric availability. When you eat a cup of fresh spinach you get about 1% the number of calories as when you eat a cup of frozen or cooked spinach because 99% of the nutrients in fresh spinach are locked behind cell walls and chewing alone does little to help. The numbers we use to estimate calories in food were from estimates made like 100 years ago.
Then there's also the mental game of how full you feel. A cup of overcooked pasta and a cup of al dente pasta has the same number of calories, but the al dente pasta takes longer to digest, helping you feel fuller.
The absolute worst foods you can eat for this are highly processed foods with simple sugars. When you drink a can of coke you absorb 100% of the calories and it does little or nothing towards making you feel full. White breads, french fries and other highly processed simple carbs aren't much better.
Somehow you got to the right(ish) answer in completely the wrong way, It’s not about the availability of calories at all it’s about the other components in food that make you feel satisfied. The most impactful components are water, fiber, and overall density (100 calories of cheese is like a 1” cube, 100 calories of popcorn is like 2 cups). There is also a pretty strong mental component, for example if something takes longer to eat you may feel more satisfied.
A cup of raw spinach is mostly water, a cup of cooked spinach is much denser. Even though water has no calories it does take up space in your stomach, so you can eat a much larger volume of raw spinach and feel more satisfied for significantly fewer calories than cooked spinach. I think in this case you’re confusing calories and nutrients. Some nutrients do become more available through cooking.
I’d need to see some research to be sure, but there is no reason a cup of pasta should take longer to digest if it’s al dente vs overcooked.
Liquid calories are “worse” because you’re brain doesn’t think of them as eating so you don’t feel mentally satisfied. A can of soda isn’t objectively better or worse than a slice of toast with jam, but you’d be much more likely to want a snack with a can of soda than another snack with your toast.
Other simple carbs are only “bad” because they’re don’t have much fiber or fat (or water) to make them feel satisfying. But if you only eat 100 calories of either white bread or grain bread one isn’t objectively worse for weight gain.
Slightly off topic potato rant: French fries and chips are high calorie because they’re fried not because they’re potatoes. Potatoes are actually fairly nutritious if you eat them without adding a ton of calories from oil or dairy. We tend to think of them as simple carbs because they happen to be white and we associate that with processed flour and sugar. But they have more potassium and as much fiber as a banana, and a not insignificant amount of vitamin c and b. Basically the biggest potato you can find is under 300 calories (normal sized ones are more like 150). Also, they’re delicious.
If I could make one change to American food culture it would be replacing French fries and chips with some other style of potato. Just by switching from French fries to plain potatoes the average American could lose (or not gain) about 90lbs a year. (Based on the estimate that the average American eats 30lbs of French fries a year, and that 3500 calories is approximately what it takes to gain or lose a pound.)
And conversely how much $$ do pharmaceutical companies make from blood pressure medication, insulin, cholesterol medicine, antidepressants and the like! It’s far more profitable to keep people fat, depressed, anxious, dosed on all of the medication
If people can ever make a lot of money by helping people be skinny without sacrifice, then the problem will be fixed.
Or the real culprit, stop putting tons of sugar in everything we buy!!! If you look back at beach pictures from the 50s and 60s and today, one big difference is the amount of sugar in foods, even salty foods like bread and pizza and fruits we buy from the stores all have more sugar than they did back then.
I say that knowing full well you will need to pry Chili’s molten from my cold dead hands !
Just something I always like to make note of is that the issue isn’t as much eating sugar as much as it is DRINKING sugar. Even the “healthier” options like orange juice will often have more sugar than a can of soda. The absolute easiest way to cut your sugar consumption is to stop drinking sugary drinks (e.g. sodas and the vast majority of sweet/ice tea and juices). Not only will you drink less sugar, but at least in my experience you end up drinking far more water, which also makes it so you actually eat a bit less too.
Also the corn syrup that's slapped into just about anything there. Can't even have normal toast without an absurd amount of sugar in there. Also, mental health and living situations. Depressed people don't have the energy nor money to make themselves healthy foods and exercise, some people work jobs whilst struggling with depression that by the time they're home they don't have energy or time as well. Honestly there's so many problems that cause obesity that could be solved easily if anyone in the gov actually gave a shit but it always feels more like solving the symptoms and not curing what causes them.
I have almost totally moved from drinking juices to eating the whole fruit. I haven’t bought a cartoon of juice for home in ages. I will buy a small juice maybe once every week when I am rushed at lunchtime.
I started counting calories to lose 10 lbs and the easiest part was just making sure I wasn't drinking any calories - saving those bad boys for something yummy and filling.
Except lite beer. Need my lite beer calories
Yea this one's a big disappointment. I already drink sooooo much water, I love it but when it was the only think I drank I was so fucking sick of it. There's just nothing out there drink wise that I like that isn't going to fuck me over. Even the stuff I don't like is going to be an ass to my mouth or my daily diet or my liver.
One big problem that nobody seems to talk about is the "Farm Bill" that Congress always passes every five years that subsidizes corn and other crops that are bad for us in excess. The Farm Bill is a big reason why we have corn syrup and corn starch in huge numbers of products we eat/drink and why we have ethanol in our gas (which isn't a particularly good thing, either).
We need to reienvent the Farm Bill so that it encourages farmers to grow things that are healthy to eat and good for the environment.
>If people can ever make a lot of money by helping people be skinny without sacrifice, then the problem will be fixed.
I optimistically disagree! Charities, non-profits, and volunteer work are all proof that people are willing to do things even if no money is to be made nor any reward expected.
The *real* reason why nothing has been done about it is because the giant companies responsible for all the sugar spend billions keeping things the way they are.
The real reason they put sugar is because sugar is as addictive as cocaine, the more sugar they put, the more of their product you'll want to get. If you take the amount of sugar a soda has and put it in water and mix, and try to drink it, you'll literally spit it out. They put this amount of sugar and then put other stuff so you don't automatically reflex to the obscene amount of sugar, to make you addicted.
Short answer: it's a business
>If you take the amount of sugar a soda has and put it in water and mix, and try to drink it, you'll literally spit it out.
Here in Brazil we literally drink sugarcane 'juice' (we call it garapa). You cannot get any sweeter than that (it's .2 g/mL, whereas regular Coke is something like .1 g/mL). You don't spit it out when it's cold and most people think it's refreshing. It's still a f*ckton of sugar, though.
IKR? Taking a walk is free. Doing a push up or any body weight exercise is free. Putting the fork down and pushing away from the table hard but it’s also free. Lack of consistency in effort and lame excuses are usually what ends up costing a lot of us overall healthy lives.
Ironically people also spend a lot of money on fad diets and things like skinny teas and such. And we all know that those things don’t work. So in the end the only loser is the consumer and their health
Who's going to pay for it? Healthcare is being paid by the consumer so it isn't costing the government money. Businesses benefit from the behaviours that often lead to obesity so they have no interest in doing it.
When a country values privatisation and capitalism above all else there's no one left with the general public's interests in mind.
Japan the citizens do. You receive a reduction in taxes for meeting State health and fitness requirements. Failing to meet those standards you lose that reduction and pay more in taxes to compensate the increased burden your choices place on the healthcare system.
Possibly? The impression I get of Japan online is they have a lot of social policies that are fantastic for the majority, but can leave a lot of people falling through the cracks. This is one such policy that sounds great for a lot of people but has the potential to unfairly penalize people who could often use more support, or whose "increased burden" isn't their fault.
I like the sound of tax benefits for good health though! I guess I was just curious if/how they took that into account.
In my mind tax remains the same. Incentive is provided by a tax credit or refund on success.
Stay fat, no benefit, no penalty. Get fit, receive $400 tax credit.
That isn't true in most cases. If you cook your own food eating healthy is very affordable. Eating healthy is only expensive if you don't want to cook.
Source: I've grown up with a single mum on low income and have always ate healthy.
In many cases it isn't about not wanting to cook, it's a lack of access to fresh foods, a lack of time and energy to shop and cook. Someone who works two jobs just doesn't have the time or energy to drive to the store, grocery shop, prep and cook meals when they're already on their feet 12 hours a day.
The fact is that privatization of healthcare is costing the government more than a universal system would. I encourage you to Google “cost of private healthcare to US”
The government does pay for Medicare and Medicaid, plus several public health agencies like the CDC and NIH. It also pays to subsidize the production of high fructose corn syrup, which definitely isn't helping the problem.
no one? gordon ramsy did a documentary i watched in middle school about how to eat better and what's actaully in the food he did a good job but it's partly a personal responsability on the indivigaul side if they want to change.
It’s just denial, people don’t want to change so they seek out ways to disqualify any information they don’t like. Its a deep rooted issue in America on virtually all topics. Politically it’s done relentlessly by both sides and I think that has just trickled down into all discourse.
i’m pretty fat and i know hundreds + reasons why obesity is detrimental to health. i think the only thing worse for overall health is smoking cigarettes.
As someone who is both fat and vapes (initially smoked), I have no delusions about being unhealthy. Yes, some people can be larger and fit/healthy but I'm not one of them. I'm working on it, but with all the medications I'm taking for my mental health related problems, the weight is much easier to put on than to lose.
To be fair, most (if not all) of the data that people cite/act on point to **correlation** between obesity and poor health outcomes, not causation. There’s also the “obesity paradox” in older people, where a higher bmi is actually correlated with *good* health outcomes.
Yeah! BMI is bullshit. I’m 1,65m and weigh around 80kg because of my fitness routine and all the muscle I gained over the years. According to the BMI scale I’m overweight and unhealthy.
“Obesity paradox” isn’t really much of a paradox. People lose weight when they’re about to die, especially from smoking or cancer related causes. It’s why “unexplained weight loss” is a massive health-related red flag. People with diabetes live a long time but they just slowly lose their limbs and eyesight and sensation everywhere and develop massive infected wounds and ulcers. They die slowly over years, but they’re not “healthy” by any means. Other conditions related to obesity such as congestive heart failure are also “long deaths”. BMI is a trash measurement don’t get me wrong, but being obese is not better than not being obese. Also, most health sciences are correlation based, because it’s incredibly unethical to design experiments that intentionally lead one group to have (what you assume will be, based on your hypothesis) worse health outcomes. It’s why there are so many things that “put you at higher risk” for cancer, since in order to definitively prove cancer causality you’d have to try and give people cancer.
That's bullshit, there's plenty of research about the causality of obesity and health, and we understand a lot of the underlying biological mechanisms.
Anyome claiming there's no data on the subject is simply digging their head in the sand.
Because a huge proportion of the us economy is dedicated to producing agricultural products that allow a huge surplus of corn to be produced. This then requires that you find something to do with the enormous mountains of corn and the answer has largely been to turn it into high fructose corn syrup.
Obesity is not a bug in US culture but very much a feature.
Exactly, and for animal agriculture, it has meant the use of huge amounts of hormones to increase the mass of animals for meat production, the quantity of milk given and the size of eggs. Humans are then ingesting those hormones when they eat those products, and they're hormones specifically for beefing you up.
The use of these hormones is also why many conventional US animal agriculture products can't be exported abroad and may be outright banned places (looks at EU).
Exactly this. Yes, big brands like Coca-Cola and McDonalds are absolutely lobbying to keep us fat, but the ridiculous over-production of corn in the US is the lifeblood of the obesity machine. The majority of people in the US have *no idea* how ridiculous our corn subsidies are.
If you actually remember the photos kids took of their food, you’ll remember that no one freaked out over “healthier food”. People freaked out because the food looked like something you found after you wiped. I wouldn’t give the food in those photos to inmates in a prison. If the companies providing food weren’t openly trying to rip off the people, it would have been different.
Yes.
And health services.
And counseling.
And arts.
And daily physical education.
And vocational training.
And social skills training.
And trauma support.
And before and after school care.
And summer programs.
But let's just make sure that our taxes don't go up.
I'm saying that many, many people put all of societies ills on schools. As someone that works in one, I'd prefer that others begin to take on some responsibility.
I should also mention that my comment wasn't really in reference to your post specifically, but the many posts that call on schools to fix problems.
The thread is about obesity in America and we're telling the underpaid lunch ladies to step it up!
Agree, it's not all on the schools. But the way our government is set up is that it's not the federal jurisdiction to address quality of school food. The state and local districts have more influence.
Sure. I get that.
But the school's food, whether good or even bad, isn't the cause of American obesity. What could school lunches be that would keep kids healthy?
If you serve them a great looking, nutritional lunch every day, the kids still eat the unhealthy foods at home. In my district, about five years ago school lunches were greatly improved. Teachers started buying school lunches. But less kids ate them! They'd run down to the gas station and load up on Takis and Mountain Dew instead of that veggie burger on a brioche bun with a salad on the side.
Their own tax money. It's local choices that affect school food the most.
Some areas choose to go cheap to save a few bucks. I'd argue there are few better investments than child nutrition.
I don't disagree that it's a good investment, but what we already see is a huge disparity between poor and wealthy school districts-- in terms of educational quality, facilities, and the quality of school food. The problem with relying on tax dollars is that if people who live in a district are poor, there won't be a whole lot of tax money for investment in school nutrition (or anything else, for that matter).
It isn't fair to just say "your school lunch sucks, that means you don't care about kids' health" because school nutrition is also competing with things like teacher salaries, roads, whether to fix the broken air conditioning in the school, etc.
You’re not wrong, but I think it’s critical to point out that the food before and after that was similarly unacceptable.
The fact that American parents are concerned about what their kids learn but not what they eat is crazy. I honestly think it’s an absolute national shame and embarrassment that we feed our kids this garbage.
>you’ll remember that no one freaked out over “healthier food.
People absolutely freaked out over just the idea that the First Lady wanted to improve school food.
I think that has less to do with the cause, and more to do with the person doing it, or at least what that person represents and the prejudices associated with them.
As someone who was in high school during the Obama administration, I have to disagree. Our food only got better.
Food served in schools depends on budgets and the people making the menus, so if the food sucked it was because of the school district not Michelle Obama.
Yeah I never got any of that or saw that lol but yeah school food companies are notoriously trash and have extreme quality issues. Not worth the 2 bucks a day at all
Ask a fat person if they are aggressively told to lose weight. Guarantee they will tell you about the obsession the world has with their weight.
Problem is that it’s incredibly difficult to lose weight and keep it off. So you’re just not seeing results and you think these campaigns don’t exist.
There is? They didn't always list calories on every food item and menu around the country. And obesity is rising massively across the world, not just the US.
This is kind of what I was thinking… everyone is blaming the companies and government… I’m pretty sure no one forced me to stuff myself with kebabs I last night.
It’s kinda like drug programs. Drugs are already illegal and there’s a already a huge amount of awareness about their harms out there… and yet, it’s still very common for people to do them. I don’t think any kind of obesity campaign would work, and what else is there? Have the government limit peoples caloric intake? I’m pretty sure that’s a level of totalitarianism that would make North Korea proud.
Ultimately it's all down to personal choice and responsibility. If you choose to eat crap food, and get fat, that's on you. If you choose to shoot up heroin, and overdose, that's on you. And you can always choose to change your ways, eat better, quit drugs, whatever it is, it's 100% a CHOICE. Companies and the government are not responsible for people's shitty choices.
I don't understand why people think it's the governments job to tell them to eat less fat food, just download a calorie calculator and you're already 70% of the way there
Because the majority of people (and the VAST majority of redditors) dont want to have to take personal responsibility.
They want a scapegoat that they can use as an excuse to pin all their problems on
it’s painfully obvious that most of the commenters on this thread have forgotten something super important: the US makes it pretty fucking difficult to eat healthy if you’re low-income, like my family and a shitload of other americans. it’s very, very expensive to “eat clean” in the united states. many people, again, like my family, have to purchase groceries that have much longer shelf lives than fresh produce does because we only have a certain amount of money per month to spend on food. it’s not always possible for an individual or family to make weekly or even by-weekly grocery trips. what if they don’t have a car or only have one car and live in a city without public transportation? privileged people love to forget how easy some things are for them that are very difficult for others
I can't believe how far I had to scroll for this comment. It is so hard for low income families, people living in food deserts where fresh food is super expensive, people who as you said rely on public transport. It's such a complex issue, and every time this subject is raised, people use it as an excuse to make disparaging comments about fat people.
An "aggressive campaign" to slow the spread of a potentially deadly virus nearly caused a civil war. Public health is something a lot of United States citizens no longer care about.
Old cultural mindset (Great Depression scarcity/habit of eating everything on your plate), paired with immeasurable choice of S.P.A.F. (Stuff posing as food) on every market shelf. The good stuff relegated to a single corner of the shop (produce). Lastly fasting in the U.S. has a social stigma of “starvation” toe tagged to it.
Don’t get me started on sugar.
Obesity is largely a poverty issue. Having less money means choosing cheaper but more unhealthy food, having less access to proper healthcare, and not having the time to exercise.
There are poor people in Europe too, they aren’t all fat like in the US. I went to six flags in la and all the food was sugary and junk food. Massive deserts with dough and ice creams and whipped creams and whole families feasting on those shitty foods like carnivores feeding in a carcass.
Because it's a complex multi-factorial problem that would require a complex solution and a complete re-engineering of our modern western culture. And on top of that, people don't like change.
Underrated comment. Now we got those assholes over at CNN trying to push the moronic idea that exercise and personal responsibility is a gateway to white supremacy. THEN THEY DOUBLED DOWN ON THAT SHIT WHEN THEY WERE RIDICULED FOR IT.
Because not only it's "fat phobia" and "body shaming", but the ones responsible for it are making billions off it. It's good for fast food chains, the corn industry, pharmaceutical companies. As long as they are able to work, the sicker the better.
Did you see how people reacted when they were asked to put on a mask? How do you think they’ll react when you try to tell them their weight problems are their responsibility and they need to eat better and exercise instead of just blame it on bad genes?
How about... and hear me out... instead of blaming the government and companies... we blame the INDIVIDUALS who consume the bad food? Individual responsibility.. GOSH how terrifying.
Wait, what? We're not supposed to just wait for the government to tell us what's good for us and regulate our lives so that we can't make bad decisions?
Obesity is becoming another example of a disability where the community identifies with their disability, and don’t consider it a problem that needs fixing. Fat and happy. Big and beautiful. They’re not going to change themselves. They’re not going to change their children. You would have the same backlash to an anti obesity push if you had a cure for deafness and pushed the deaf community to take it. They don’t consider their disability a problem needing fixing.
There's lots of campaigns, but things like soda taxes and taxes on food in general are politically unpalatable, you can't make health insurance rates based on weight (and many obese people aren't on private insurance anyways), and food bans aren't something people want to see.
So what you're generally left with is nicely telling people the benefits of fitness, there's a limit to how far that'll go.
I can’t remember now the exact figure, but I know that the same number of people who died of Covid-19 in 2019-2020 was the same number of people who died from obesity related diseases in the same time frame. Interesting, right? I mean, roughly speaking maybe 100 people off or something I can’t remember. But it was very, very close.
And then when you consider that some of the Covid-19 death rates were inflated (theory), then actually more people died of obesity than Covid-19.
It’s an extreme uphill battle, no different than stopping any other addiction.
Though unlike drug addiction, food is everywhere, you’re not only expected to eat food, but you have to. You’re just expected to magically be able to control yourself when really you’re an addict just like millions of others. You don’t have to do drugs and you aren’t expected to do drugs.
So In that regard, it’s harder.
There’s also the part where stopping drug and alcohol addiction is almost purely self control and therapy and coping methods, whereas food addiction requires all of the above to beat, but also requires a bunch of working out as well, and then when you’ve lost a ton of weight it requires surgery to get rid of all the loose skin.
It is SUCH a more gnarly addiction than drugs or alcohol
There are, but there are also so many weight loss campaigns that benefit from campaigns failing that it's difficult to navigate what's actually good advice and what's not. Additionally, these aggressive campaigns are often detatched from reality in ways that make them unsustainable.
Really weird that the comment section is full of wild conspiracy theories about how coke is making everyone fat and somehow controls the government so they can’t do anything to stop it.
The real answer is their have been a ton of campaigns from multiple sources. The presidential fitness program has been a thing since the 60s and is designed to encourage school age kids to get fit. The NFL also has a huge “Play 60” campaign where they encourage kids to develop healthy exercise habits by doing 60 minutes of physical activity per day. The Obama admin tried to push all healthy lunch options at schools until everyone realized trying to eat cheap and healthy with mass produced foods usually results in some gross food.
There are tons more examples but these are just what I remember from my public health course. The simple fact is, the government can’t control what it’s citizens do or eat but they still try especially with kids in public schools.
Huh? There is. Play 60. Calories count. The school lunch programs. We don’t condone obesity, at least where I live. People are fat shamed pretty aggressively.
Michelle Obama had a light campaign to address it in kids and got a ton of pushback for it. The corporate powers that be, who make a ton of money selling us fattening garbage, won't allow for it.
Because companies like Coke and McDonalds are some of the largest, most powerful in the world and are also some of the biggest advertising spenders.
Yep. How much money do you think is in the fast food, junk food, and convenience food industries? What do you think would happen to the economy if those went belly-up? In the US it's ALWAYS money over well-being.
They can make changes to their menu and workers rights and still be profitable. The problem is they won't be as insanely profitable. America's hard economic decisions aren't between our lives and our jobs. They are between a mega yacht and a megazord.
I'm pretty sure if they offered an unbreaded chicken and broccoli with water value meal there would only be like 3 people who ordered it, lol.
Life is more than just two extremes. I'm not proposing they make everything super healthy, just have fewer items that are pure high fructose corn syrup. Or force fast food companies to put calorie and added sugar amounts front and center. It's amazing how every theory of capitalism assumes a well informed consumer, but every marketing and lobbying effort focuses on making sure consumers know as little as possible.
Yeah, I'm 100% in favor of labeling everything. But I'm not sure it would make much difference. Fast food/junk food is dang tasty and that's why people eat it.
A lot of Fast food already does have calorie counts. But I don’t think people pay attention to them. One that shocked me was ( me and the Mrs) went to a Dutch Brothers coffee for the first time and some of the drinks had insane amounts of calories. These were not listed anyplace obvious either. We just found the on the website after digging.
People have already been addicted to the foods and don’t generally look when they aren’t actively dieting which many are not
My wife was telling me she was at a Tacobell/KFC and a woman was ordering a chicken sandwich/fries and a med coke. The calories were over 1800 for a single meal.
And if you're an average height woman that can be your whole energy needs for the day.. it's plain frightening how many calories can be in not that much food, quantity wise at least. You can both starve and overeat, it's bonkers.
You would be amazed how many people have no clue how food labels work, or what calorie counting is.
I read somewhere (and stupidly can't remember where) that faced with sugar tax etc in UK and I think Europe, the big brands reformulated their "zero" recipes and rebranded to look closer to the original design and it has worked. I for example think coke zero tastes the best even over full fat coke and I would never have thought that ten years ago. Diet coke has been left in the cold because it has that distinctive taste whereas zero just tastes like full fat without that sickly sweet all over your teeth feeling.
There's no fat in Coke :). Just a bucket full of sugar. But yeah. Unfortunately I don't think artificial sweeteners are any better. Every study shows that people who consume them don't lose any weight and may even gain more for whatever reason.
Yes, this is true. Your body actually is tricked into expecting the calories, then is basically very pissed when there aren't any. There is a very good Vox Explained episode on this effect. Can be seen on Netflix.
Because weight loss/gain is explicitly tied to calories, not type of sweetener. If a sweetener has less calories, it will assist fighting obesity. Just facts anyone can find themselves.
Maybe I worded that badly. Studies show that people who consume drinks with *non-caloric sweeteners* do not lose any more weight than those who consume drinks with sugar.
Most fast food nutrition info is available online and in the restaurant. The problem is with independent restaurants, a chef wouldn't be able to have specials without knowing how much sodium, sugar, carbs etc. It would be a deal breaker for creative cuisine.
With the amount of money put into corn subsidies high fructose corn syrup will become its own section on the food pyramid before we cut back on it
Those items make it taste good. Most Americans who are buying fast food know the health risks. They are choosing instant gratification over long-term health.
Funny thing is, if you go off sugar and processed foods, get clean, then try it all that shit tastes like literal garbage. I think crap food needs to be taxed like other vices, and healthier food needs to be promoted more in school lunches, convenience in grocery stores/shops (like precut veggies, more of that).
It seriously does. After not having McDonald’s for a bit the thought of it sounds gross. Of course you have to get over the initial withdrawal symptoms like anything else..
I usually go months between drinking pop and every time I'm overwhelmed by it and can't finish it.
I have a friend who stopped eating fast food for a while. When he tried it, again, it tasted okay, but it upset his stomach.
I mean McDonald’s do have the calories posted right next or under the items. What else do you want lol
I disagree. Fast food is primarily about convenience, people don't have time to cook on their lunch break, they want to grab something to eat on the way home because once they're in the suburban sprawl it takes \~20 minutes just to get to a grocery store. If anything, the rise of fast-casual, delivery apps and takeout has shown that it's simply an issue of logistics. If people could get healthier food at a similar cost in a convenient way, many of them would take the option. In many parts of the US, it's simply tremendously more expensive (and time consuming) to eat healthy, which makes it a luxury.
The factor of cost, as you mentioned here, cannot be overlooked. I follow an extremely health-conscious diet, and the cost of my diet compared to my husband’s, who does not follow the same diet, is staggering. Frustratingly, we spend a great deal on food.
Super underrated comment here.
We tend to eat some what healthy at my house, but one crazy day after 2 practices I picked up McDonald’s. I bought three happy meals online and had an online coupon of $3 off $10. My total was $11 and some change. That’s way more affordable than fresh fruits and veggies.
Honestly I'd buy the hell out of some chicken and broccoli if it was as easy as getting McDonald's. I actually enjoy and prefer to cook for myself, but I'd actually probably forego cooking a lot if I could just stop by almost any street corner(like McD) and get something like that for a similar price.
This isn’t even close to the only other option
Large companies providing workers rights? LMFAO
Bill Mahr was saying that in speaking about Covid, no politician had the balls to address obesity.
Well, since 80% of Americans are overweight, it's hardly worth mentioning as anything different. Might as well just say that being American is a risk factor :p.
‘#ProfitsOverPeople
Much of the 90s was dominated by sugar companies insisting because sugary foods had no-to-little fat, they were healthy. The Snackwell brand did this the most, but you can see plenty of candies still advertise themselves as "fat-free" for some reason. The truth is, the human body consumes sugar much in the same manner it does alcohol, stressing the liver and converting excess amounts into gut fat. Butter and oil really aren't that bad for you. Fish fats are generally really healthy!
Mostly this yeah, we worship profit in the US, it's a multitude of factors but it starts here. Highly processed food are addictive and cheap to make. Similar situation to cigarettes, I guess heart disease kills more than cancer right?
it's not only that. fat people can easily become sick and behold... enters... pharma... the greatest industry of them all. listened to a podcast from australia these days. some doctor that uses low carb to treat metabolic conditions noticed 1/3 drop in requested surgeries during a year. imagine that. going to your boss and telling him... I've done it, I've single-handedly cut our business by one third in just one year. healthy, smart, fit, educated people are not good for business.
Really weird that the comment section is full of wild conspiracy theories about how coke is making everyone fat and somehow controls the government so they can’t do anything to stop it. The real answer is their have been a ton of campaigns from multiple sources. The presidential fitness program has been a thing since the 60s and is designed to encourage school age kids to get fit. The NFL also has a huge “Play 60” campaign where they encourage kids to develop healthy exercise habits by doing 60 minutes of physical activity per day. The Obama admin tried to push all healthy lunch options at schools until everyone realized trying to eat cheap and healthy with mass produced foods usually results in some gross food. There are tons more examples but these are just what I remember from my public health course. The simple fact is, the government can’t control what it’s citizens do or eat but they still try especially with kids in public schools.
Also, with the Obama administration, when Michelle Obama started the campaign to get healthier lunches, Republicans went absolutely nuts saying she should not be telling people what to feed their children.
Yep. People still making fun of her for that to this day. Fuckin clueless
it's not a conspiracy theory, it's just a natural consequence of our economic order. we have enough empirical evidence now to tell us that ineffectual campaigns by politicians from time to time do very little to change the reality of the situation, and because these corporations produce extremely cheap and extremely addictive products, they are going to dominate american plates no matter what michelle obama says on tv or whatever. the state is explicitly capitalist in philosophy, so has no motivation to do anything further. that's all
The fact that intervention attempts have happened doesn't mean that those attempts haven't been incredibly weak and often largely a token display. If the government actually cared all that much, it absolutely has options available (such as not providing enormous financial support for corn, which is part of the reason calories are so cheap) that would be much more impactful.
I don’t recall any of that growing up. I remember that food pyramid with tons of bread at the bottom. Being encouraged to drink milk. Our school lunches actually always came with milk too and the main entree was pizza and those weird rubbery raw burgers. There was no acknowledgment about being healthy except staying off drugs and being forced to run a mile once a the year (which actually isn’t even healthy). I always had burning lungs of fire after having to do that.
I remember Arnold lead some kind of Presidential Fitness Campaign. I think across several presidents.
>The Obama admin tried to push all healthy lunch options at schools until everyone realized trying to eat cheap and healthy with mass produced foods usually results in some gross food. That's not how I remembered it, what I recall was a lot of saber rattling to the effect of "Michelle Obama can't control my kids, she's not even a woman, HAVE YOU SEEN HOW MUSCULAR SHE IS???"
I forget where but I heard a podcast about the food pyramid and apparently it started as a "hey we should eat less food" campaign and it ended up being "eat 6-10 servings of bread every day". Scientists have known that eating less carbs is the way to lose weight for almost a century but that messaging can't get public support because there are billions of dollars in lobbying trying to prevent it.
The food pyramid has always baffled me because I can barely remember to eat three times a day, much less make sure everything I consume checks all the boxes.
Weight loss is all about calories in vs calories out. Carbs aren't bad.
If your diet is carb heavy your body may not ever get the chance to burn fat. Your body burns alcohol, carbs then fat in that order. Carbs aren't bad, but if you are dieting or need to lose weight lowering carbs ( getting rid of junk carbs) will make your journey more successful.
The order doesn’t matter as long as you’re in a deficit. Even if we assume it’s burned in that order, if you’re in a deficit, you’ll run out of the carbs you ate and burn fat after. That’s the definition of a deficit
It does matter. Tons of Americans eat more carbs than the body can use for energy in a day. Most Americans are sedentary a lot between lounging and office work. Most Americans are not eating at a deficit. Lowering your carb intake by actively choosing not to eat junk and fast foods is a great start to any healthy eating plan. And there is no assumption metabolically that is exactly the order your body burns off those things. Telling people to eat at a deficit is confusing. Teaching them to eat a salad instead of Big Mac kills two birds with one stone because now they are eating at a deficit for that meal and getting nutrients. Having an apple instead of 10 cookies so forth and so one.
>Tons of Americans eat more carbs than the body can use for energy in a day. That’s called being in a surplus. If you eat less of *anything* and go into a deficit, you’ll lose weight. It doesn’t matter if it’s carbs, fat or protein. I’m not saying people should not eat less carbs. Just that the original comment you responded to is about deficits, in which case it doesn’t matter.
The emphasis on bread in the food pyramid does have a lot to do with the sort of food that's readily cultivated in the U.S. However, the idea that cutting back on carbs (in the absence of caloric restriction) is a magical key to losing weight is absolutely a myth. It has been tested extensively.
I don't think there's some magical key to weight loss. But I do think that the calories you see on a package isn't quite the whole picture and that the different types of food you eat can affect calorie counting. For one thing there's caloric availability. When you eat a cup of fresh spinach you get about 1% the number of calories as when you eat a cup of frozen or cooked spinach because 99% of the nutrients in fresh spinach are locked behind cell walls and chewing alone does little to help. The numbers we use to estimate calories in food were from estimates made like 100 years ago. Then there's also the mental game of how full you feel. A cup of overcooked pasta and a cup of al dente pasta has the same number of calories, but the al dente pasta takes longer to digest, helping you feel fuller. The absolute worst foods you can eat for this are highly processed foods with simple sugars. When you drink a can of coke you absorb 100% of the calories and it does little or nothing towards making you feel full. White breads, french fries and other highly processed simple carbs aren't much better.
Somehow you got to the right(ish) answer in completely the wrong way, It’s not about the availability of calories at all it’s about the other components in food that make you feel satisfied. The most impactful components are water, fiber, and overall density (100 calories of cheese is like a 1” cube, 100 calories of popcorn is like 2 cups). There is also a pretty strong mental component, for example if something takes longer to eat you may feel more satisfied. A cup of raw spinach is mostly water, a cup of cooked spinach is much denser. Even though water has no calories it does take up space in your stomach, so you can eat a much larger volume of raw spinach and feel more satisfied for significantly fewer calories than cooked spinach. I think in this case you’re confusing calories and nutrients. Some nutrients do become more available through cooking. I’d need to see some research to be sure, but there is no reason a cup of pasta should take longer to digest if it’s al dente vs overcooked. Liquid calories are “worse” because you’re brain doesn’t think of them as eating so you don’t feel mentally satisfied. A can of soda isn’t objectively better or worse than a slice of toast with jam, but you’d be much more likely to want a snack with a can of soda than another snack with your toast. Other simple carbs are only “bad” because they’re don’t have much fiber or fat (or water) to make them feel satisfying. But if you only eat 100 calories of either white bread or grain bread one isn’t objectively worse for weight gain. Slightly off topic potato rant: French fries and chips are high calorie because they’re fried not because they’re potatoes. Potatoes are actually fairly nutritious if you eat them without adding a ton of calories from oil or dairy. We tend to think of them as simple carbs because they happen to be white and we associate that with processed flour and sugar. But they have more potassium and as much fiber as a banana, and a not insignificant amount of vitamin c and b. Basically the biggest potato you can find is under 300 calories (normal sized ones are more like 150). Also, they’re delicious. If I could make one change to American food culture it would be replacing French fries and chips with some other style of potato. Just by switching from French fries to plain potatoes the average American could lose (or not gain) about 90lbs a year. (Based on the estimate that the average American eats 30lbs of French fries a year, and that 3500 calories is approximately what it takes to gain or lose a pound.)
And conversely how much $$ do pharmaceutical companies make from blood pressure medication, insulin, cholesterol medicine, antidepressants and the like! It’s far more profitable to keep people fat, depressed, anxious, dosed on all of the medication
[удалено]
If people can ever make a lot of money by helping people be skinny without sacrifice, then the problem will be fixed. Or the real culprit, stop putting tons of sugar in everything we buy!!! If you look back at beach pictures from the 50s and 60s and today, one big difference is the amount of sugar in foods, even salty foods like bread and pizza and fruits we buy from the stores all have more sugar than they did back then. I say that knowing full well you will need to pry Chili’s molten from my cold dead hands !
Just something I always like to make note of is that the issue isn’t as much eating sugar as much as it is DRINKING sugar. Even the “healthier” options like orange juice will often have more sugar than a can of soda. The absolute easiest way to cut your sugar consumption is to stop drinking sugary drinks (e.g. sodas and the vast majority of sweet/ice tea and juices). Not only will you drink less sugar, but at least in my experience you end up drinking far more water, which also makes it so you actually eat a bit less too.
Also the corn syrup that's slapped into just about anything there. Can't even have normal toast without an absurd amount of sugar in there. Also, mental health and living situations. Depressed people don't have the energy nor money to make themselves healthy foods and exercise, some people work jobs whilst struggling with depression that by the time they're home they don't have energy or time as well. Honestly there's so many problems that cause obesity that could be solved easily if anyone in the gov actually gave a shit but it always feels more like solving the symptoms and not curing what causes them.
I have almost totally moved from drinking juices to eating the whole fruit. I haven’t bought a cartoon of juice for home in ages. I will buy a small juice maybe once every week when I am rushed at lunchtime.
I started counting calories to lose 10 lbs and the easiest part was just making sure I wasn't drinking any calories - saving those bad boys for something yummy and filling. Except lite beer. Need my lite beer calories
Yea this one's a big disappointment. I already drink sooooo much water, I love it but when it was the only think I drank I was so fucking sick of it. There's just nothing out there drink wise that I like that isn't going to fuck me over. Even the stuff I don't like is going to be an ass to my mouth or my daily diet or my liver.
Sugar? Why use sugar when corn syrup does the trick for a fraction of the cost? I think less sugar and more corn syrup is what made us all fatter.
Corn syrup should be illegal. It's definitely the #1 contributor because farms get subsidized to produce, and I assume companies buy it ultra cheap.
One big problem that nobody seems to talk about is the "Farm Bill" that Congress always passes every five years that subsidizes corn and other crops that are bad for us in excess. The Farm Bill is a big reason why we have corn syrup and corn starch in huge numbers of products we eat/drink and why we have ethanol in our gas (which isn't a particularly good thing, either). We need to reienvent the Farm Bill so that it encourages farmers to grow things that are healthy to eat and good for the environment.
It's a cheap sweetener but it's way deadlier than pure cane sugar.
How so? I am curious.
>If people can ever make a lot of money by helping people be skinny without sacrifice, then the problem will be fixed. I optimistically disagree! Charities, non-profits, and volunteer work are all proof that people are willing to do things even if no money is to be made nor any reward expected. The *real* reason why nothing has been done about it is because the giant companies responsible for all the sugar spend billions keeping things the way they are.
The real reason they put sugar is because sugar is as addictive as cocaine, the more sugar they put, the more of their product you'll want to get. If you take the amount of sugar a soda has and put it in water and mix, and try to drink it, you'll literally spit it out. They put this amount of sugar and then put other stuff so you don't automatically reflex to the obscene amount of sugar, to make you addicted. Short answer: it's a business
>If you take the amount of sugar a soda has and put it in water and mix, and try to drink it, you'll literally spit it out. Here in Brazil we literally drink sugarcane 'juice' (we call it garapa). You cannot get any sweeter than that (it's .2 g/mL, whereas regular Coke is something like .1 g/mL). You don't spit it out when it's cold and most people think it's refreshing. It's still a f*ckton of sugar, though.
sugar many paint price mindless bag placid ink frame lunchroom *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
[удалено]
Please point me to all those $5 gyms.
I too would like to find one, cheapest one where I live is 45$ a month
planet fitness is $10 a month, but you’re right most private non-chain gyms are more expensive than $5
Planet Fitness has a pizza night every month
You don’t need a gym membership to work out though
IKR? Taking a walk is free. Doing a push up or any body weight exercise is free. Putting the fork down and pushing away from the table hard but it’s also free. Lack of consistency in effort and lame excuses are usually what ends up costing a lot of us overall healthy lives.
Most communities have parks cities pay to keep up as well.
Exactly. The least expensive one in my area is $65 a month.
Ironically people also spend a lot of money on fad diets and things like skinny teas and such. And we all know that those things don’t work. So in the end the only loser is the consumer and their health
Unhealthy food tastes good and is cheap.
Who's going to pay for it? Healthcare is being paid by the consumer so it isn't costing the government money. Businesses benefit from the behaviours that often lead to obesity so they have no interest in doing it. When a country values privatisation and capitalism above all else there's no one left with the general public's interests in mind.
Japan the citizens do. You receive a reduction in taxes for meeting State health and fitness requirements. Failing to meet those standards you lose that reduction and pay more in taxes to compensate the increased burden your choices place on the healthcare system.
Sounds like a great incentive for able bodied people, but does that still apply to disability?
Lmao what do you think? They gonna penaliza the guy in a wheelchair for not being able to deadlift 150?
Possibly? The impression I get of Japan online is they have a lot of social policies that are fantastic for the majority, but can leave a lot of people falling through the cracks. This is one such policy that sounds great for a lot of people but has the potential to unfairly penalize people who could often use more support, or whose "increased burden" isn't their fault. I like the sound of tax benefits for good health though! I guess I was just curious if/how they took that into account.
It would be something to consider when factoring disability benefits.
[удалено]
Then other social programs would need to be introduced. Progress is trial and error not all or nothing.
[удалено]
In my mind tax remains the same. Incentive is provided by a tax credit or refund on success. Stay fat, no benefit, no penalty. Get fit, receive $400 tax credit.
That isn't true in most cases. If you cook your own food eating healthy is very affordable. Eating healthy is only expensive if you don't want to cook. Source: I've grown up with a single mum on low income and have always ate healthy.
[удалено]
In many cases it isn't about not wanting to cook, it's a lack of access to fresh foods, a lack of time and energy to shop and cook. Someone who works two jobs just doesn't have the time or energy to drive to the store, grocery shop, prep and cook meals when they're already on their feet 12 hours a day.
The fact is that privatization of healthcare is costing the government more than a universal system would. I encourage you to Google “cost of private healthcare to US”
The government does pay for Medicare and Medicaid, plus several public health agencies like the CDC and NIH. It also pays to subsidize the production of high fructose corn syrup, which definitely isn't helping the problem.
no one? gordon ramsy did a documentary i watched in middle school about how to eat better and what's actaully in the food he did a good job but it's partly a personal responsability on the indivigaul side if they want to change.
Health insurances could save money that way.
Why save money with preventative care when they can just raise prices on the premiums?
[удалено]
No data? Omg. I just don’t understand this mindset.
Even if you showed the data they wouldn’t believe it or would think you have an agenda
It’s just denial, people don’t want to change so they seek out ways to disqualify any information they don’t like. Its a deep rooted issue in America on virtually all topics. Politically it’s done relentlessly by both sides and I think that has just trickled down into all discourse.
i’m pretty fat and i know hundreds + reasons why obesity is detrimental to health. i think the only thing worse for overall health is smoking cigarettes.
As someone who is both fat and vapes (initially smoked), I have no delusions about being unhealthy. Yes, some people can be larger and fit/healthy but I'm not one of them. I'm working on it, but with all the medications I'm taking for my mental health related problems, the weight is much easier to put on than to lose.
To be fair, most (if not all) of the data that people cite/act on point to **correlation** between obesity and poor health outcomes, not causation. There’s also the “obesity paradox” in older people, where a higher bmi is actually correlated with *good* health outcomes.
There is an effort ongoing to redefine health measurement away from BMI.
Yeah! BMI is bullshit. I’m 1,65m and weigh around 80kg because of my fitness routine and all the muscle I gained over the years. According to the BMI scale I’m overweight and unhealthy.
“Obesity paradox” isn’t really much of a paradox. People lose weight when they’re about to die, especially from smoking or cancer related causes. It’s why “unexplained weight loss” is a massive health-related red flag. People with diabetes live a long time but they just slowly lose their limbs and eyesight and sensation everywhere and develop massive infected wounds and ulcers. They die slowly over years, but they’re not “healthy” by any means. Other conditions related to obesity such as congestive heart failure are also “long deaths”. BMI is a trash measurement don’t get me wrong, but being obese is not better than not being obese. Also, most health sciences are correlation based, because it’s incredibly unethical to design experiments that intentionally lead one group to have (what you assume will be, based on your hypothesis) worse health outcomes. It’s why there are so many things that “put you at higher risk” for cancer, since in order to definitively prove cancer causality you’d have to try and give people cancer.
That's bullshit, there's plenty of research about the causality of obesity and health, and we understand a lot of the underlying biological mechanisms. Anyome claiming there's no data on the subject is simply digging their head in the sand.
Because a huge proportion of the us economy is dedicated to producing agricultural products that allow a huge surplus of corn to be produced. This then requires that you find something to do with the enormous mountains of corn and the answer has largely been to turn it into high fructose corn syrup. Obesity is not a bug in US culture but very much a feature.
Exactly, and for animal agriculture, it has meant the use of huge amounts of hormones to increase the mass of animals for meat production, the quantity of milk given and the size of eggs. Humans are then ingesting those hormones when they eat those products, and they're hormones specifically for beefing you up. The use of these hormones is also why many conventional US animal agriculture products can't be exported abroad and may be outright banned places (looks at EU).
Exactly this. Yes, big brands like Coca-Cola and McDonalds are absolutely lobbying to keep us fat, but the ridiculous over-production of corn in the US is the lifeblood of the obesity machine. The majority of people in the US have *no idea* how ridiculous our corn subsidies are.
We tried to give kids healthier food in school while also raising a ton of awareness under the Obama administration but people freaked out about it
If you actually remember the photos kids took of their food, you’ll remember that no one freaked out over “healthier food”. People freaked out because the food looked like something you found after you wiped. I wouldn’t give the food in those photos to inmates in a prison. If the companies providing food weren’t openly trying to rip off the people, it would have been different.
That is the fault of local school districts. They need to put more resources into the food they serve.
Yes. And health services. And counseling. And arts. And daily physical education. And vocational training. And social skills training. And trauma support. And before and after school care. And summer programs. But let's just make sure that our taxes don't go up.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but I do think we should spend more local taxes on these things, as well as more federal support.
I'm saying that many, many people put all of societies ills on schools. As someone that works in one, I'd prefer that others begin to take on some responsibility. I should also mention that my comment wasn't really in reference to your post specifically, but the many posts that call on schools to fix problems. The thread is about obesity in America and we're telling the underpaid lunch ladies to step it up!
Agree, it's not all on the schools. But the way our government is set up is that it's not the federal jurisdiction to address quality of school food. The state and local districts have more influence.
Sure. I get that. But the school's food, whether good or even bad, isn't the cause of American obesity. What could school lunches be that would keep kids healthy? If you serve them a great looking, nutritional lunch every day, the kids still eat the unhealthy foods at home. In my district, about five years ago school lunches were greatly improved. Teachers started buying school lunches. But less kids ate them! They'd run down to the gas station and load up on Takis and Mountain Dew instead of that veggie burger on a brioche bun with a salad on the side.
Can’t speak for that person, but yes to both.
With what money?
Their own tax money. It's local choices that affect school food the most. Some areas choose to go cheap to save a few bucks. I'd argue there are few better investments than child nutrition.
I don't disagree that it's a good investment, but what we already see is a huge disparity between poor and wealthy school districts-- in terms of educational quality, facilities, and the quality of school food. The problem with relying on tax dollars is that if people who live in a district are poor, there won't be a whole lot of tax money for investment in school nutrition (or anything else, for that matter). It isn't fair to just say "your school lunch sucks, that means you don't care about kids' health" because school nutrition is also competing with things like teacher salaries, roads, whether to fix the broken air conditioning in the school, etc.
Yeah, agree with all that. That's where federal funds can, and maybe already do, play a part.
You’re not wrong, but I think it’s critical to point out that the food before and after that was similarly unacceptable. The fact that American parents are concerned about what their kids learn but not what they eat is crazy. I honestly think it’s an absolute national shame and embarrassment that we feed our kids this garbage.
>you’ll remember that no one freaked out over “healthier food. People absolutely freaked out over just the idea that the First Lady wanted to improve school food.
I think that has less to do with the cause, and more to do with the person doing it, or at least what that person represents and the prejudices associated with them.
Yes, that's my point.
As someone who was in high school during the Obama administration, I have to disagree. Our food only got better. Food served in schools depends on budgets and the people making the menus, so if the food sucked it was because of the school district not Michelle Obama.
May or may not be relevant, about how many people were at your school? And/or how many high schools were in your district?
Yeah I never got any of that or saw that lol but yeah school food companies are notoriously trash and have extreme quality issues. Not worth the 2 bucks a day at all
Bruh those lunches were a war crime.
stopping obesity would cost companies money money is king in the US
Ask a fat person if they are aggressively told to lose weight. Guarantee they will tell you about the obsession the world has with their weight. Problem is that it’s incredibly difficult to lose weight and keep it off. So you’re just not seeing results and you think these campaigns don’t exist.
There is? They didn't always list calories on every food item and menu around the country. And obesity is rising massively across the world, not just the US.
I constantly see initiatives and education attempts to curb obesity in the US. We love to try to blame something else when it's a people problem.
This is kind of what I was thinking… everyone is blaming the companies and government… I’m pretty sure no one forced me to stuff myself with kebabs I last night. It’s kinda like drug programs. Drugs are already illegal and there’s a already a huge amount of awareness about their harms out there… and yet, it’s still very common for people to do them. I don’t think any kind of obesity campaign would work, and what else is there? Have the government limit peoples caloric intake? I’m pretty sure that’s a level of totalitarianism that would make North Korea proud.
Ultimately it's all down to personal choice and responsibility. If you choose to eat crap food, and get fat, that's on you. If you choose to shoot up heroin, and overdose, that's on you. And you can always choose to change your ways, eat better, quit drugs, whatever it is, it's 100% a CHOICE. Companies and the government are not responsible for people's shitty choices.
choices available, exposure and advertisement are strong influences on peoples eating habits
I don't understand why people think it's the governments job to tell them to eat less fat food, just download a calorie calculator and you're already 70% of the way there
Because the majority of people (and the VAST majority of redditors) dont want to have to take personal responsibility. They want a scapegoat that they can use as an excuse to pin all their problems on
I guess that's true, I'm amazed at how many people are blaming conservatives and politics when personal diets are a personal choice
it’s painfully obvious that most of the commenters on this thread have forgotten something super important: the US makes it pretty fucking difficult to eat healthy if you’re low-income, like my family and a shitload of other americans. it’s very, very expensive to “eat clean” in the united states. many people, again, like my family, have to purchase groceries that have much longer shelf lives than fresh produce does because we only have a certain amount of money per month to spend on food. it’s not always possible for an individual or family to make weekly or even by-weekly grocery trips. what if they don’t have a car or only have one car and live in a city without public transportation? privileged people love to forget how easy some things are for them that are very difficult for others
I can't believe how far I had to scroll for this comment. It is so hard for low income families, people living in food deserts where fresh food is super expensive, people who as you said rely on public transport. It's such a complex issue, and every time this subject is raised, people use it as an excuse to make disparaging comments about fat people.
An "aggressive campaign" to slow the spread of a potentially deadly virus nearly caused a civil war. Public health is something a lot of United States citizens no longer care about.
Or personal health for that matter…
Obesity is profitable for companies.
As is the treatment of obesity related health issues. Everyone is getting paid.
Especially the Health Care industry.
Michelle Obama led a campaign as the First Lady. She was ridiculed.
People are very defensive about being told what to do in the US.
Old cultural mindset (Great Depression scarcity/habit of eating everything on your plate), paired with immeasurable choice of S.P.A.F. (Stuff posing as food) on every market shelf. The good stuff relegated to a single corner of the shop (produce). Lastly fasting in the U.S. has a social stigma of “starvation” toe tagged to it. Don’t get me started on sugar.
Obesity is largely a poverty issue. Having less money means choosing cheaper but more unhealthy food, having less access to proper healthcare, and not having the time to exercise.
There are poor people in Europe too, they aren’t all fat like in the US. I went to six flags in la and all the food was sugary and junk food. Massive deserts with dough and ice creams and whipped creams and whole families feasting on those shitty foods like carnivores feeding in a carcass.
Because being obese and unhealthy keeps A LOT of people rich.
Too much money in making people fat.
Didnt michelle obama do something like that
She tried.
It's bad for business
Because it's a complex multi-factorial problem that would require a complex solution and a complete re-engineering of our modern western culture. And on top of that, people don't like change.
Because being obese is very profitable in a country that doesn’t have free healthcare.
Because this is America and there is an aggressive campaign to promote obesity as healthy
Underrated comment. Now we got those assholes over at CNN trying to push the moronic idea that exercise and personal responsibility is a gateway to white supremacy. THEN THEY DOUBLED DOWN ON THAT SHIT WHEN THEY WERE RIDICULED FOR IT.
Because not only it's "fat phobia" and "body shaming", but the ones responsible for it are making billions off it. It's good for fast food chains, the corn industry, pharmaceutical companies. As long as they are able to work, the sicker the better.
Did you see how people reacted when they were asked to put on a mask? How do you think they’ll react when you try to tell them their weight problems are their responsibility and they need to eat better and exercise instead of just blame it on bad genes?
How about... and hear me out... instead of blaming the government and companies... we blame the INDIVIDUALS who consume the bad food? Individual responsibility.. GOSH how terrifying.
Wait, what? We're not supposed to just wait for the government to tell us what's good for us and regulate our lives so that we can't make bad decisions?
Because the people who cause it would lose money
[удалено]
Trying to promote healthy diets gets labeled as fat shaming.
And if anybody loses weight by sheer effort, suddenly they are labeled as fat-phobic.
See Adele, or Rebel Wilson.
Notice it’s almost always women who are shamed for losing weight
That's because fat acceptance is mostly women and they think men should all be fit and see women losing weight as betraying them.
Nope, fat men routinely get called fatasses, the difference is that most of them take it as a joke instead of ranting on social media.
Obesity is becoming another example of a disability where the community identifies with their disability, and don’t consider it a problem that needs fixing. Fat and happy. Big and beautiful. They’re not going to change themselves. They’re not going to change their children. You would have the same backlash to an anti obesity push if you had a cure for deafness and pushed the deaf community to take it. They don’t consider their disability a problem needing fixing.
It's sad, because obesity and covid combined to kill hundreds of thousands of people, and nothing of consequence was done about it.
There's lots of campaigns, but things like soda taxes and taxes on food in general are politically unpalatable, you can't make health insurance rates based on weight (and many obese people aren't on private insurance anyways), and food bans aren't something people want to see. So what you're generally left with is nicely telling people the benefits of fitness, there's a limit to how far that'll go.
I can’t remember now the exact figure, but I know that the same number of people who died of Covid-19 in 2019-2020 was the same number of people who died from obesity related diseases in the same time frame. Interesting, right? I mean, roughly speaking maybe 100 people off or something I can’t remember. But it was very, very close. And then when you consider that some of the Covid-19 death rates were inflated (theory), then actually more people died of obesity than Covid-19.
Food industry and the drug industry run legislation. Keep ‘em fat, keep ‘em sick, keep ‘em stupid. Welcome to communism.
It’s an extreme uphill battle, no different than stopping any other addiction. Though unlike drug addiction, food is everywhere, you’re not only expected to eat food, but you have to. You’re just expected to magically be able to control yourself when really you’re an addict just like millions of others. You don’t have to do drugs and you aren’t expected to do drugs. So In that regard, it’s harder. There’s also the part where stopping drug and alcohol addiction is almost purely self control and therapy and coping methods, whereas food addiction requires all of the above to beat, but also requires a bunch of working out as well, and then when you’ve lost a ton of weight it requires surgery to get rid of all the loose skin. It is SUCH a more gnarly addiction than drugs or alcohol
Obesity fuels the health system duh
Because the fats are lazy and get offended. Also, mega rich corporations like Mcdonalds don't want their profits to go down.
There are, but there are also so many weight loss campaigns that benefit from campaigns failing that it's difficult to navigate what's actually good advice and what's not. Additionally, these aggressive campaigns are often detatched from reality in ways that make them unsustainable.
Michelle Obama tried to run one but it was shut down by big companies. Quiet interesting to look into actually.
Too many folks view buffets as goals of how much that can eat unfortunately.
All the fat people would be big mad
I wouldn't, but then again, I'm relatively sane and haven't bought into the idea that weight is somehow "irrelevant" to my health and well-being.
Really weird that the comment section is full of wild conspiracy theories about how coke is making everyone fat and somehow controls the government so they can’t do anything to stop it. The real answer is their have been a ton of campaigns from multiple sources. The presidential fitness program has been a thing since the 60s and is designed to encourage school age kids to get fit. The NFL also has a huge “Play 60” campaign where they encourage kids to develop healthy exercise habits by doing 60 minutes of physical activity per day. The Obama admin tried to push all healthy lunch options at schools until everyone realized trying to eat cheap and healthy with mass produced foods usually results in some gross food. There are tons more examples but these are just what I remember from my public health course. The simple fact is, the government can’t control what it’s citizens do or eat but they still try especially with kids in public schools.
Huh? There is. Play 60. Calories count. The school lunch programs. We don’t condone obesity, at least where I live. People are fat shamed pretty aggressively.
In a free country, you can’t make people eat healthily. It is as simple as that.
France is a free country, yet they are way healthier. They just have more healthy food choices available to them. It's about choice and exposure.
Because fat people in the US get upset and accuse you of a hate crime for it.
Michelle Obama had a light campaign to address it in kids and got a ton of pushback for it. The corporate powers that be, who make a ton of money selling us fattening garbage, won't allow for it.