People eat too many calories and don't expend enough. It's easy to find calorie-dense food - fried anything, soda, greasy shit, etc. It's readily available and tastes good, so of course people buy it. Processed food isn't bad necessarily, fat isn't bad, sugar isn't bad. No food is bad per se, but if you eat a lot of calories, you're gonna gain weight, period. The state of nutrition and fitness education in this country is woeful. My dad tells me to eat peas for the protein. My mother thinks that crunches will make her belly fat go away. A friend of mine posted a pro-vegetarian picture that listed watermelon as a protein source. Another tried to convince me that bicep curls are a more functional and useful exercise than squats. There's so much misinformation and propaganda floating around that trying to teach people how diet and exercise actually works is like reversing decades' worth of brainwashing. This is absolutely true. I remember in my high-school gym classes, the guys were all retardedly competitive, so we'd be killing each other in whatever sport we played. The girls? Stand around and gossip, occasionally kick a ball if it got too close. Did they fail? Hell no, they got their B's and got out.
Hate to repeat others and be super cliche, but how is this not almost entirely the fault of parents? I'm lucky that my metabolism is awesome -- I haven't gained a pound since my teens, and I'm 30 next year. I'm also lucky that my parents (mom, mostly) made damn sure I ate healthy and was at least somewhat active throughout my youth (I liked sports anyways, but still). I ALWAYS had a packed lunch (spoiled, I know) and McDonald's was a treat -- usually an ice cream or shake, rarely for dinner. Today I eat at McDonald's or something similar maybe 20-30 times a year, usually as a drunken snack or hangover cure, and almost half the time, I feel bad after. I don't mean I feel guilty or anything, I mean I phsyically feel gross, like something alien is inside me. I can only attribute this to my upbringing, and it's not like my mom was some super health conscious freak or anything, she just instilled in me that if you want dinner, you cook it. And I'd argue that on top of being less expensive, cooking is less work, at least if you're single, than eating/ordering out all the time. This Sunday evening I had some time, so I cooked my epic tomato chicken 'n sausage linguini with mushrooms and red peppers. For the following three nights, I come home from work, watch a bit of TV, re-heat my awesome dinner, maybe whip up a salad (gasp!) if I feel like it, and am done eating sooner than I'd get back from a burger place or have a pizza arrive. Plus bitches love a guy who can cook, even to my very moderate ability. Seems like Canada is catching up with the U.S. in this regard, but I've yet to take a trip south and not come across someone who blows me away (or could, if they had the breath). In adults I find it mildly amusing. For kids I consider it child abuse.
I think this is shaky logic at best, plus you're not including travel time to and from and in the aisles of the grocery store, it is generally healthier and I guess you could argue more cost effective, but I don't make that argument unless you're cooking for at least two. Having complete control of the ingredients is where I hang my hat on cooking for yourself being the better option.
There's more to it than this. Certain "normal" substances have an effect on your brain, and it is very difficult to not eat them when they are so readily available. People say what you are saying all the time, and while it is true on the face, it is a slippery slope. If you have a genuine problem and buy into that above statement too much, you're setting yourself up for failure. I'm not going to participate fully in this discussion, because doing so would be repeating what others have said ad nauseum, but I do want to say this. Sugar addiction is a real thing. I love to cook and can cook well, but years of consuming sugary drinks on occasion (this includes calorie free drinks that are sweet) and candy and sweets led me to an actual sugar addiction. I too grew up with home cooked meals, bagged lunches, no fast food etc, but I always had a sweet tooth and it got out of control in college. I was steadily gaining weight. About 4 months ago I said enough was enough. Going cold turkey on sugary foods, INCLUDING coke zero, was the only way to make eating normal and maintaining a normal weight a reality for me, and I realized this through careful evaluation of my own diet and trial and error. I tried going the moderation route with the sweet things I loved, but somehow still binged and had mood swings and was constantly hungry. Cherry zero was the worst offender of all. They are fucking insidious. I thought they were harmless because they are calorie free, but I found out after cutting them out of my diet due to a jump in price that they were the catalyst behind my cravings and binges. Lo and behold, after 2 months of not allowing myself sweet things or pseudo sweet things like coke zero, eating normal food is easy. I don't have cravings, I don't have mood swings, and I have lost a lot of weight (even with very little exercise, but that is related to physical therapy stuff and will hopefully change in the near future). There are people who don't have the same problems that I do with certain foods. If you can keep junk in the pantry and only have a serving of it once a week without a second thought, then go you. I, however, am not one of those people. I think that there are a lot of people out there like me but they have not made the jump to healthy living. They cling to their junk food for a variety of psychological reasons and their behavior is reenforced because there are so many people out there in the same boat. At some point you have to stand up for your self and make choices that benefit you. No one else can do that for you.
Yes, that is why obesity is so prevalent in countries like Japan (3.2%), Switzerland (7.7%), and Norway (8.3%). I mean, look at those statistics! Those socialist bastards are right on our fat asses (US: 30.6%) in terms of how fat they are! 3.2 percent of the Japanese population is obese! Fat fucking socialist assholes, those Japanese and Swiss are. At this rate, with their socialized medicine, those fat fucks will overtake us by the end of the year! Seriously, have you ever seen a thin Japanese person? They don't exist! Fucking socialized medicine RUINED their shit, just like it ruins EVERYTHING! Seriously, this is the dumbest comment in an otherwise very intelligent discussion. Congrats for that! Statics via
Advertising/availability of shit food vs advertising/availability of healthy food, that's why we're all fat.
Fun fact: I have been prescribed quite a bit of medication over the last four years or so and gained quite a bit of weight, in spite of working out. I decided to quit taking the meds prescribed (weaned off of most of them, of my own accord) and lost nearly fifteen lbs within a month. My energy shot through the roof, I was thinking clearly, and was spurred into adopting a mostly paleo diet.* I weighed myself this morning, I am down 31 lbs. I feel great and have been inspired enough to make several positive life changes. People are afraid to change and have been conditioned to accept what they see, even in the mirror. It's up to the individual to discern what is good for them. Most people don't want to change, change is work and often uncomfortable. If you don't want to know, you won't read it. You will justify why the reality of your health and vitality can't be optimal through all manner of excuses. When there are so many overweight people around you in WalMart, it's easier to buy that bag of Doritos. When your doc says your birth control, antidepressants and whateverthehellelse will make you gain weight, you accept it. *Not saying everyone should just stop taking their meds. Be informed.
Wow, reading this thread cast a whole new light on why Congress can't get anything done. Why are people fat? Hmmm. Let me think, I know the answer is right there in front of me... Oh yeah, people eat too much food. Period. Let's not overthink this. You can say 'well, this is processed' or 'this is corn' or 'this isn't food' or any other number of variables, but ultimately, most of these foods have been around for decades, and the current weight explosion is a fairly recent development. Prior generations managed to eat very similar foods and not look like Governor Christie. Solution? Eat less, exercise more. You didn't see a bunch of fatties at Auschwitz, did you? No. Probably because they didn't eat a lot. (And no, I'm not recommending this as a method of weight loss, my point is merely that people look for boogeyman for weight gain, as if eating less and exercising somehow wouldn't work for them, usually that certain foods (even in moderate amounts) cause you to blow up like a life raft - just not true as my example illustrates). And I'm guessing their diet wasn't tailored for maximum health benefit either. You eat less, you lose weight. Maybe not as quickly as you'd like, but the solution has been staring Americans in the face for at least a hundred years. Not really sure what all the debate is about.
You must have glossed over some of the posts, a few of us think the whole "everything in moderation, calories in calories out" mentality is horse shit and what got us here in the first place. I come from a family that has struggles with their weight, but most of them eat "healthier" than the average skinnier person, and to lose any weight at all they have to pretty much starve themselves on top of beating the tar out of themselves everyday at the gym, then of course they can't maintain that long term and the weight comes back on. People metabolize food differently and to just say "eat less, do more" is completely irresponsible, an insulin resistant obese person needs a drastically different diet than an average person, namely a much lower carbohydrate diet to stop storing fat. As for processed foods vs real foods, you have to realize people are paid a lot of money to make sure that processed food blunts the hormonal response that we're full so we keep eating. It is borderline impossible to make someone obese if they eat nothing but fruit, vegetables, meat, nuts and tubers because they will stop eating when their body has had enough.
While it IS as simple as that, the reasons why people are resistant to it are not. I think the biggest reason is that American society is centered around food. Going on a date? Dinner. Meeting with a client? Lunch. Visiting parents / friends? We make dinner. Party? Food is part of the hospitality. And in all of these, the healthiness of the food isn't really considered. When you're taking a girl out to eat, you aren't going to go to Jimmy's Celery Emporium; you're going to go somewhere that has good, tasty, filling food. Parties are even worse. At least a restaurant makes FOOD. Parties, outings, etc, you're looking at Pizza Rolls and microwave burritos. Back in the old days, food was more expensive and the unhealthy stuff was either prohibitive or in small portions. Right now, I can go to Walmart and get angel food cake for five bucks. How many people could do that in the 1950s? Back then, you COULD have a culture centered around food, because it wasn't available in the massive quantities that it is now. And our culture really hasn't caught up to this new reality. Exacerabating the issue is the fact that most people no longer work manual labor jobs and commute more. Here's my program to dampen obesity's effect in America. 1. End all farm subsidies. This will make food more expensive, which means that we won't have as much of it. 2. Put in a massive tax on fast food. If your Big Mac is eight bucks, you will definitely think twice before going to McDonald's. People don't give a fuck about insurance breaks or being put in different brackets. They care about prices that are hitting them in the face every single day. An insurance boost gets a "meh." Doubling the price of a Whopper is something that Johnny McBitchtits will stare at every day when he considers whether he is going to go to Burger King or stay in. 3. Put in a massive tax on prepared meals and snack food. 4. Tax soda the same way that we do liquor. I am very aware that this will never happen, simply because of the drastic change in society that this would cause. Americans are used to easy, cheap, convenient food. These laws will force Americans to either make their own food or spend all of their disposable income on their crap of choice.
We also have to consider some reality: - Currently, American farmers do not have the capacity to feed the population healthy foods. There are not enough fruits and vegetables grown every year to feed some 300 million people. - Large swaths of urban poor live in food deserts. There ARE no grocery stores within their reach. They have no access to a vehicle, and even by bus the nearest store that sells fruits and veg might be an hour's ride away. Compounding that, there are no playgrounds or greenspaces safe enough for children to play in. There might be the occasional basketball court or parking lot, but often times gangs or drug dealers or whomever congregate there and it can't be used for play. - When we talk about "huge taxes on junk food," let us remember we are in essence talking about huge taxes on the poor. Your socioeconomic standing is a huge factor in your BMI. To put it bluntly, upper middle class children of soccer moms participate in five sports and eat organic from Wholefoods. Poor children watch TV and eat food from the local bodega. - Most parents aren't willfully blind or stupid. They cannot afford healthy food, or the lack resources to know/access what is/is not healthy. Here's my main point, though: human nature did not change between 1954 and 1984. Yet obesity has SKYROCKETED. Since people are the same as they always were, what's changed? The way food is grown, preserved and marketed. I think the problem lies in the food chain and big corporations. We're trying to feed people cheaply and reaping the cost.
I wasn't going to reply til I saw this; but what do you think the people that grow animals for meat, feed to the meat producing animals? Grain and corn. Right now the prices of both are going up, and it's cutting into my profit on my cattle; the same ones that are eventually going to make their way into the food supply one way or another. If you cut the subsidies on grain, my costs will rise because the cheap grain we used to fatten our cattle have isn't so cheap anymore. I'm going to pass this along to you, because I'll raise the price on my cattle when I sell them to the meat processing plant. The meat processing plant will pass the increased costs onto the grocery store; and that lean meat you want is going to cost double what it used to cost. Thus making the cheaper, unhealthier foods remain a viable option. (I'll admit, I simplified things because I'm tired and in no mood to propose a complicated argument.) Focus: The causes have pretty well been covered, so I'm not going to rehash any of them; but I will propose a very simple solution. Let people die. Cut out all forms of government sponsored healthcare; cut taxes on tobacco and encourage people to light 'em up. Throw traffic laws off the books, no speed limits or seat belts required. No labor laws, you make a mistake... Too bad for you. No WIC, no food stamps, or subsidized housing; make it on your own or good luck. Do anything at all to thin the numbers by the carelessness or stupidity of the public. Like one of the first posters said, machines have and continue to replace manual labor; ergo we don't need as many people. Why have a worldwide population of billions when we can do more with less? What I'm getting at here is if we reduce the population by an appreciable amount, there will be less demand for food. Less people, smaller amounts of land needed for housing that could be used to grow more food of better quality and quantity. One of the key things that leads to obesity, is that cheaper food isn't very healthy... But if we can take the land used to house a few hundred thousand people, and replace it with acres of tomatoes; why even market cheap food? More tomatoes, less people, means you can sell tomatoes cheaper due to overabundance and less demand. Agricultural technology is at the point where massive amounts of food can be raised and harvested with far less labor than was previously needed, so while you'd still need human labor for certain crops and situations, more can be done with less. Granted it's off topic but this would have quite the ripple effect... Less demand for goods and commodities across the board, although manufacturers could theoretically raise prices to compensate. Yet with a far smaller population the supply of fossil fuels could be stretched further; and less bodies to fill the labor pool would halve the unemployment rate. How would we accomplish this? Well to be quite honest, we as a species need a good plague or a massive meat-grinder of a world war to thin the numbers. The obesity epidemic is married to the growing global population; and we've lacked a good thinning for a couple of generations. Short of openly plotting genocide, I cannot propose any other efficient solution.
Human nature didn't change, but culture changed. A lot. The "speed of life" has a lot to do with it. In 1954, the average American household had a mother at home cooking meals. In 1984, that bitch was at work. The appliances she filled her home with to wash and clean consumed just as much time as her manual labor, so the logical place to cut corners was in food production. In 1954, there was no money in food/farming, the average person of that generation was trying to leave the farm for a city. But when companies noticed a demand for foods that didn't go bad, foods that took less time to prepare, and foods that were delicious, that trend reversed. It took decades and billions to improve on a simple aspect of fruit (seedless watermelon, for example), so there was no marketing of natural foods, it was self-explanatory. But when it went from "food" to "food product", there was a bonanza of marketing and there are few forces more powerful on Earth than the American marketing machine. Food went from delicacy (rare and special treats in 1954 might have been an orange in January in Wisconsin), to superfluous fuel (oranges everywhere year round in 1984) to saturation (no one gives a shit about oranges, where are the Fruit Roll Ups?). Think about high-quality dining in 1954. Things like quail, duck and lamb are rare now, because they are not easily and cheaply farmed. Even turkey is an unusual meat outside of two specific months. The variety of food has narrowed down to the most profitable elements of a diet over the course of a few decades. If you don't believe me, try and find fresh mustard/collard greens in a supermarket.
I realize this is off topic, but the three supermarkets stores I go to have fresh collards, mustard greens, Swiss chard (multiple varieties) and kale stocked all the time for about a buck a pound. The big chain grocery store even has all of them in both organic and non-organic, and only one of the stores is in an affluent area. Not disagreeing with your overall point, just thought it was kind of funny.
Aside from the fact that declining populations are poison for an economy predicated on growth and a tremendous social problem for countries like Japan, Germany, Korea and Italy, AND that reducing the number of potential/future customers does not reduce the price of goods (it usually does the fucking opposite), this "solution" ignores ALL of the inefficiencies in the current system. Read "the Undercover Economist" to understand this argument. Generally speaking, you can use a few acres of land to grow a wide variety of vegetables that can support an entire community, but it's labor intensive and sensitive to a lot of factors. It's really cheap if you eliminate the "middle men" and supply directly, like in farmer's markets or co-ops. If you don't, you have to farm on a huge scale to turn a profit, which is part of the problem we're having. TL/DR: Letting billions die, rather than growing more cabbage is a stupid, stupid argument as any "pop economics" book will point out.
I was looking up some information related to Frank's assertion that processed food is designed to remove or cover up the satiety signals that should tell us when we've eaten enough, and I came across this article. So I looked up HFCS, and I found this: In the U.S., HFCS is among the sweeteners that have primarily replaced sucrose (table sugar) in the food industry. Factors for this include governmental production quotas of domestic sugar, subsidies of U.S. corn, and an import tariff on foreign sugar; all of which combine to raise the price of sucrose to levels above those of the rest of the world, making HFCS cheaper for many sweetener applications. (Wikipedia) Now that's just nasty. Step 1: Make sugar expensive. Make HFCS cheap. Step 2: Replace sugar with HFCS, which doesn't make you feel full (satiety). Step 3: Profit. Pass on all costs associated with 1 and 2 to the consumer, the health care system, and other parts of society. R_Flagg wrote: I wasn't going to reply til I saw this; but what do you think the people that grow animals for meat, feed to the meat producing animals? Grain and corn. Right now the prices of both are going up, and it's cutting into my profit on my cattle; the same ones that are eventually going to make their way into the food supply one way or another. This is interesting. I must admit, I know very little about commercial farming practices. My gut reaction is that it would surprise me if cattle evolved to eat grain and corn. I would have thought, instinctively, that they would be better suited to grasses, since as far as I know cows pre-date the mass farming of grain by quite a long time. I assume it's cheaper to feed them grain and corn than grasses? If so, that strikes me as a not-insignificant part of the problem.
It's not as simple as you make it. You have to take into consideration the high calorie/low satiety that a lot of processed foods have. Take Oreos for example. You can sit and eat an entire row of Oreos and still be hungry - but you've taken in more calories than most people need in a day.
Corn fed cattle eat grass and hay for most of their lives, and the corn that they eat is the entire corn plant, leaves and all, which is chopped up and stored. Eating this doesn't hurt them, and they enjoy the shit out of it. Corn is actually a grass, it's just higher in carbohydrates and sugar than most smaller grasses. A lot of times producers will mix in distillers dry grains (a byproduct of ethanol production) when they need some more weight gain. The truth is that there just aren't enough acres of pasture to feed the population grass fed livestock, especially when you can get 20 tons per acre of corn silage and 200+ bushels per acre for harvested corn. The human population keeps growing, and there is only so much farmland. Efficiency is the name of the game, and this will become more important as time goes on. As for the focus of the thread, I think that people need to stop eating grains. That shit is for livestock, not people. I grow it and even I don't eat it. Humans evolved to eat meat, fruit and vegetables and until everyone starts doing just that, there are going to be a lot of fat fucks. High fructose corn syrup has slowly killed a lot of people.