Why America is fat

[shrubnose]

The in/out is a part of it, but the quality of the food, which effects how the body uses it, does have an impact also.

200 calories of potato chips versus 200 calories of fruits and veggies will produce different results.

Makes sense to me.

 

[shrubnose]

Sorry Lizzie - we're talking about obesity and weight gain/loss and to suggest that's not related to quality of health is nonsense - if you tell someone that they can lose weight by eating 1,500 calories a day, no matter what the make-up of those calories may be, you're setting that person up to fail. You cannot lose weight and keep a healthy body weight on a diet of potato chips, twinkies and Coke no matter how much you exercise. America, Canada, and other western societies have to accept that the types of foods we ingest are directly related to the size of our population. It's well documented that people who emigrate from more healthy, less processed food countries, to western societies tend to gain weight not because their lifestyle necessarily changed but because the types of foods they eat changed and that adversely affected their metabolism and their brain's chemical balances.






Telling an obese person that they're fat because they don't run on a treadmill enough is just ignoring the true causes of the obesity to begin with.

Correct.

And Europe is importing that problem from the USA.

 

[shrubnose]

I could be wrong, but I suspect the whole concern with obesity has something to do with health :shrug:

Maybe personal relationships also, eh?

 

[sangha]

Maybe personal relationships also, eh?

It's possible! :shrug:

 

[shrubnose]

Health food stores yes but that does not mean you can't eat real food far cheaper than packaged food. Look at the price per ounce on packages and you will see what I mean. On farmers markets I disagree though. We shopped at one last weekend and my wife said it was actually cheaper than he super market for produce.

My wife has a serious cholesterol problem and a big part of the way she deals with it is diet.

So we figure that her extra food expense for her her diet are part of our health care expenses.

We either spend the money on the correct food or on doctors and medicine.

 

[Helix]

Guess what? Europe (Including France.) is catching up to the USA in the fat problem area.

I also do a lot of walking. We have a car, but I seldom use it. I cut most of our grass (We have a 1/2 hectare garden/orchard with a lawn tractor and the rest with a power push mower.

But I'm still a little heavy. I'm working on that.

sounds like you're doing it right, though. i have to drive to work, but i generally park the car in the evening and just walk everywhere. i enjoy the exercise a lot. i do not enjoy the irresponsible dog owners in my area with their little free-roaming, territorial monsters, however.

 

[shrubnose]

No, I am not missing any point. Your thread is about the subject of why Americans are fat. Americans are fat because they are eating too much, and expending too little. It's about personal choices and responsibility. If I am fat (which I am not), it's because I am eating too much. I alone decide what I will eat. The corporate food industry doesn't force me to buy their crap. If I do, it's because I am either ignorant, or ignoring my own health.

This is one thing that I agree with President Reagan on - everyone is responsible for taking care of their own body.

We shouldn't expect the food industry or our government to do that for us.


"Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in trying to protect us from ourselves." ~ Ronald Reagan

 

[shrubnose]

sounds like you're doing it right, though. i have to drive to work, but i generally park the car in the evening and just walk everywhere. i enjoy the exercise a lot. i do not enjoy the irresponsible dog owners in my area with their little free-roaming, territorial monsters, however.

That's one problem with walking in some locations.

I have three dogs, when they are on the street, they are on a leash. Mostly I walk with them in our garden.

 

[shrubnose]

Taste is a pleasure and tasting good things can distract from bad things almost like a drug . Also a problem could be out of boredom and the availability of food , besides that the healthiest of foods that are tasty and low calories cost a bit more then the foods that are un healthy and cheap . Example is the 3 dollar strawberries compared to the one dollar burger at a fast food establishment . It is a bit abhorrent to think about our main concern is obesity where most of the world suffers from malnutrition and the lack of clean water .

Plant some good quality strawberries in your garden.

They are perennials. I have had them in my garden for 6 years and have not had to replant them. They just keep coming back every year and spreading.

 

[Cyrylek]

What food we eat and how much - those are the central issues, of course, but that's not the end of the story.

Consider a few factors:

1. Genetics. Hispanic and black Americans are much more likely to get overweight than their Asian and Caucasian compatriots. Head-to-head comparison with Finland makes no sense (as usual).

2. How the data is collected. It's not like the NSA had a secret program for surreptitiously measuring everyone's BMI, and then some heroic/treasonous nerd leaked the results to the media. Obesity is generally self-reported. Now, in our open (some would say "shameless") culture, saying "I am fat and ugly, and about to die of heart attack, so sue me!" is OK (outside of Hollywood and other such special zones of privilege and snobbery). There's no way your average Pole, Indian or Mexican will tell a surveyor that he is "fat"- he is exactly how the ladies like him, perfect in every way, thanks for asking.

3. Our little friends. When we say "an epidemic of obesity", we mean it usually as a metaphor. But it just may be an apt literal description of what is happening. In the last couple of decades, a lot of evidence had been accumulated in support of the idea that both our appetite and our rates of absorption of "fattening" substances are pretty much under control of our commensal gut bacteria.

http://www.med.muni.cz/patfyz/trans/obezita/microbiom/insulin_resitance.pdf

4. Expectations of your peers and childhood (and not just childhood) associations ("culture"):

When I came to the USA in the mid-1980s, I was absolutely puzzled: How can people who can afford (even the poorest of them) an excellent cup of coffee (just walk two blocks to the North End (Boston), four minutes - and you don't have to swallow this dishwater that pretends to be "coffee" at the Store 24) how can they drink THAT?. What's going on, don't you people have taste buds?
Speaking of "buds" - How can anyone continue to suck on the Budweiser cans when Red Hook and Sam Adams are offering vastly superior beer - at about the same price?!
And then it hit me: None of this has anything to do with taste, quality, healthiness, or what-not.

People like what they associate with great experiences of their lives. It is "your Bud" not because it is a good brew (it is a horrible brew), but because your team had won when you were drinking it for the first time, or had lost valiantly, or you don't quite remember what happened - because that was when X. had kissed you for the first time....Stuff like that.

Get real: we are not being manipulated by some evil-corporate-profit-seekers (some will try, but how far can they get, without our full cooperation?). We are being manipulated by our own infantile minds.

"Oh, my gosh, a lard-dripping, foul-smelling rotten-cabbage-surrounded pseudo-frankfurter - just like my dad bought for me at the Seattle World Fair in 1962!"

Nobody doubts your Dad's good intentions. Doesn't mean you have to devour the same "food" forever.

 

[Un biased]

Plant some good quality strawberries in your garden.

They are perennials. I have had them in my garden for 6 years and have not had to replant them. They just keep coming back every year and spreading.

I was answering the question on why people are fat not that I was complaining about the price of strawberries I used them as a example on how healthy food is generally a bit more pricy then their un healthy counterparts as to a answer of many reason of why people are obese . ps : I used to grow grapes they were good but in Jersey the weather was a getting unpredictable snowing in march and the plant died .

 

[CanadaJohn]

sounds like you're doing it right, though. i have to drive to work, but i generally park the car in the evening and just walk everywhere. i enjoy the exercise a lot. i do not enjoy the irresponsible dog owners in my area with their little free-roaming, territorial monsters, however.

As a dog owner all my life, nothing peeves me more than irresponsible owners who don't clean up after their pets. I often pick up other droppings when I'm walking my dog, especially if I'm passing a home where I know they don't have a dog.

 

[Joechilli]

An Unhealthy Corporate led Consumption Consumer culture, addictive bad eating *habits, Oversized portions, buffets, too much fried food, too much extra sweet food & hidden nasties in the large amounts of processed food consumed. Lack of fruit and vegetables. Strong reliance on Dairy products.

Increased reliance on SUV's to get everywhere. Lack of healthy alternatives, Lack of diet education, a dependence on convenience food -moving away from traditional square meals.*

Polyunsaturated fats, too much salt, too much sugar, too much subsidised high fructose corn syrup.*

Big business industrial food practice. Trying to get the most profit from creating the cheapest food product in high volume.*
- Hotdogs*

Lack of economic and competitive natural healthy organic alternatives.*

More people staying in to play Xbox, Watch TV, sit at the PC,use the phone. (We used to just have a radio to listen to)

 

[Gipper]

Not hard to know why America is fat. It's very simple, actually.

 

[Helix]

As a dog owner all my life, nothing peeves me more than irresponsible owners who don't clean up after their pets. I often pick up other droppings when I'm walking my dog, especially if I'm passing a home where I know they don't have a dog.

i won't even complain about the poop if they would just keep the beasts restrained. i've been accosted by free roaming street wolves multiple times in the past year. it makes me angry.

 

[shrubnose]

I was answering the question on why people are fat not that I was complaining about the price of strawberries I used them as a example on how healthy food is generally a bit more pricy then their un healthy counterparts as to a answer of many reason of why people are obese . ps : I used to grow grapes they were good but in Jersey the weather was a getting unpredictable snowing in march and the plant died .

I hear you. we have a problem here with not enough rain a good part of the year.

Fortunately we have a good well, so for now we just have to pay a little bit for the electric and we're good to go. Of course someone has to deal with the hoses, etc.

Actually a lot of our plants do better with the water from the well.

I have about 3,000 square meters of grass and that has to have water from time to time, eventually I intend to install sprinklers. I already have most of the pipe in the ground.

 

[shrubnose]

What food we eat and how much - those are the central issues, of course, but that's not the end of the story.

Consider a few factors:

1. Genetics. Hispanic and black Americans are much more likely to get overweight than their Asian and Caucasian compatriots. Head-to-head comparison with Finland makes no sense (as usual).

2. How the data is collected. It's not like the NSA had a secret program for surreptitiously measuring everyone's BMI, and then some heroic/treasonous nerd leaked the results to the media. Obesity is generally self-reported. Now, in our open (some would say "shameless") culture, saying "I am fat and ugly, and about to die of heart attack, so sue me!" is OK (outside of Hollywood and other such special zones of privilege and snobbery). There's no way your average Pole, Indian or Mexican will tell a surveyor that he is "fat"- he is exactly how the ladies like him, perfect in every way, thanks for asking.

3. Our little friends. When we say "an epidemic of obesity", we mean it usually as a metaphor. But it just may be an apt literal description of what is happening. In the last couple of decades, a lot of evidence had been accumulated in support of the idea that both our appetite and our rates of absorption of "fattening" substances are pretty much under control of our commensal gut bacteria.

http://www.med.muni.cz/patfyz/trans/obezita/microbiom/insulin_resitance.pdf

4. Expectations of your peers and childhood (and not just childhood) associations ("culture"):

When I came to the USA in the mid-1980s, I was absolutely puzzled: How can people who can afford (even the poorest of them) an excellent cup of coffee (just walk two blocks to the North End (Boston), four minutes - and you don't have to swallow this dishwater that pretends to be "coffee" at the Store 24) how can they drink THAT?. What's going on, don't you people have taste buds?
Speaking of "buds" - How can anyone continue to suck on the Budweiser cans when Red Hook and Sam Adams are offering vastly superior beer - at about the same price?!
And then it hit me: None of this has anything to do with taste, quality, healthiness, or what-not.

People like what they associate with great experiences of their lives. It is "your Bud" not because it is a good brew (it is a horrible brew), but because your team had won when you were drinking it for the first time, or had lost valiantly, or you don't quite remember what happened - because that was when X. had kissed you for the first time....Stuff like that.

Get real: we are not being manipulated by some evil-corporate-profit-seekers (some will try, but how far can they get, without our full cooperation?). We are being manipulated by our own infantile minds.

"Oh, my gosh, a lard-dripping, foul-smelling rotten-cabbage-surrounded pseudo-frankfurter - just like my dad bought for me at the Seattle World Fair in 1962!"

Nobody doubts your Dad's good intentions. Doesn't mean you have to devour the same "food" forever.

I didn't read the whole study, but what I read gave me the impression that we have evolved to be fat in the USA.

 

[shrubnose]

An Unhealthy Corporate led Consumption Consumer culture, addictive bad eating *habits, Oversized portions, buffets, too much fried food, too much extra sweet food & hidden nasties in the large amounts of processed food consumed. Lack of fruit and vegetables. Strong reliance on Dairy products.

Increased reliance on SUV's to get everywhere. Lack of healthy alternatives, Lack of diet education, a dependence on convenience food -moving away from traditional square meals.*

Polyunsaturated fats, too much salt, too much sugar, too much subsidised high fructose corn syrup.*

Big business industrial food practice. Trying to get the most profit from creating the cheapest food product in high volume.*
- Hotdogs*

Lack of economic and competitive natural healthy organic alternatives.*

More people staying in to play Xbox, Watch TV, sit at the PC,use the phone. (We used to just have a radio to listen to)

I am old enough to remember the days before everyone had a TV.

And I don't remember as many fat people as we have today.

Most people were in pretty good shape back then, on average.

 

[Un biased]

I hear you. we have a problem here with not enough rain a good part of the year.

Fortunately we have a good well, so for now we just have to pay a little bit for the electric and we're good to go. Of course someone has to deal with the hoses, etc.

Actually a lot of our plants do better with the water from the well.

I have about 3,000 square meters of grass and that has to have water from time to time, eventually I intend to install sprinklers. I already have most of the pipe in the ground.

Its not the water but the cold and the weather is very un predictable this year in march it was 65 degrees one day but snowing the next day

 

[shrubnose]

I saw this guy on Dr Oz last night ( my wife makes me watch it OK :lol and I think he is onto something. Americans have started eating so much prepared food instead of real food they prepare themselves that they have become food junkies. The pushers are the refined food industry who go to great pains to make things artificially good. I don't make excuses for obese people though, it's your body and you choose what to put in it so if you chose this crap that they alter instead of real food you can only blame yourself for your weight.

In the hands of food manufacturers, cheese has become an ingredient,” Mr. Moss writes. Thus we have cheese-injected pizza crusts and cheese-draped frozen entrees, cheesy chips and cheezy crackers. Cheese and its processed derivatives were deployed across a gazillion new products and line extensions during decades when Americans, as a fat-avoidance tactic, were actually cutting their milk consumption by 75 percent. From a fat-consumption point of view, he says, “trading cheese for milk has been a poor bargain indeed.” And that is the nub of Mr. Moss’s case: By concentrating fat, salt and sugar in products formulated for maximum “bliss,” Big Food has spent almost a century distorting the American diet in favor of calorie-dense products whose consumption pattern has been mirrored by the calamitous rise in obesity[/URL] rates. Entire food categories were invented to support this strategy (Mr. Moss is particularly fascinated by Kraft’s near-billion-dollar line of Lunchables snack trays), as processors bent the American appetite to Wall Street’s will.
Mr. Moss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times who put the phrase “pink slime” into high rotation with a 2009 article on beef safety, deftly lays out the complicated marriage of science and marketing that got us where we are. Is that place a state of addiction? The book uses the language of addiction liberally — soldiers returned from World War II “hooked on Coke,” kids “lunge” for the sugar bowl, a typical salt lover is a “hapless junkie” — and it’s a metaphorical usage that must drive some research purists bananas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/books/salt-sugar-fat-by-michael-moss.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I just read on Yahoo that the American Medical Association has decided to classify obesity as a disease.

I find that interesting, and will have to read more about it.

I wonder how that will affect peoples insurance.

 

[straykatz]

I've always heard that it isn't what you eat but how much you eat. I'm sure that what one eats is of obvious importance, but the problem really seems to be the amount of food people eat--and it's not just Americans. If we suppose the problem is the amount, we ought to think of the circumstances that lead people to eat larger quantities of food; television, internet, social media, etc., all seem like likely factors in this. Although certain companies and governments make it easier for people to consume fast food, it's really a lack of self-control that is the problem. An issue for all Western society, and not just Americans. But hey, we're all pretty the way we are, right?

What you eat is more important than how much you eat.....for example if you over eat on fruit and veggies do you think your body would have the same effect as overeating bread/pasta?.....I've never heard of an overweight person claiming to overeat their veggies...in fact most Americans do not consume even the recommended daily servings of veggies per day...and no french fries is not a veggie.

 

[sawyerloggingon]

I just read on Yahoo that the American Medical Association has decided to classify obesity as a disease.

I find that interesting, and will have to read more about it.

I wonder how that will affect peoples insurance.

I heard that too, complete BS if you ask me.

 

[kingsbridge]

I heard that too, complete BS if you ask me.

Why? Just curious.

 

[shrubnose]

Its not the water but the cold and the weather is very un predictable this year in march it was 65 degrees one day but snowing the next day

We have had some strange weather this year also. I lost most of my apricots because we had warm weather followed by quite cold weather. I have found that when this happens, the next year we get a lot of fruit.

I have some grapes, mostly for eating. I also Have 15 Plum trees. I use that fruit to make Tuica. This is illegal, but the government tolerates it since it is traditional.

 

[shrubnose]

I heard that too, complete BS if you ask me.

That's what I think also.

Maybe the doctors are looking for some more work.