|
U.S & obesity
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Chimney |
My best friend went to the US to work with Work & Travel and experience a bit of the American culture. His experience was generally positive, saying that everyone there was extremely friendly and easy-going, the muscle-heads were much more immense than their European counterparts, but also that the average people were way fatter. What is considered over-weight over here in Europe is considered regular over there.
He also said that the fast food is extremely cheap and the menus are a lot bigger. As an example, a regular size Big Mac menu costs in my country the equivalent of 9.07$, which I assume is smaller than the regular size one in the US and far more expensive.
Fast forward to two weeks ago. I was sitting with another friend at a cafe when a couple of Americans entered the building. The guys were normal-looking while the women, in number of 8, were all morbidly obese. When I say morbidly, the size of those women was beyond anything I've ever seen.
I gained a few pounds myself since I've stopped working out due to a surgical intervention which made me a bit unable to move so well and truthfully, sweets are my favourite thing in the world. Yet soonish enough, I'll return to my diet and exercise.
Yet it got me thinking: Aren't there health-care programs and advertisements about the risks of obesity? Is this 'epidemic´as Americans refer to it due to the lack of education or simply lack of concern about one's health? Who is the bad-actor in this entire situation? The reason why I'm asking is that last year, I came across a documentary which showed an obese American child who complained about losing weight yet they showed her eating Nutella sticks during the lunch-break. Unfortunately, the documentary didn't provide any adequate answers.
PS: Thinking about visiting the US myself in a couple of years. Heard Utah is pretty cool. |
|
|
| Dykes_on_Jay |
| I've gained quite a few pounds since here. but you aren't insane, Americans (at least here) are mostly extra fat. |
|
|
| Dykes_on_Jay |
| Utah is cool if you want to bang your sister. |
|
|
| Chimney |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dykes_on_Jay
Utah is cool if you want to bang your sister. |
:stongue::stongue:
You're in China right? Guess all those noodles got to you. Can't hate, they're delicious. |
|
|
| Vector A |
It's cheap to buy lots of calories and simple to eat a lot at once since they come in big packages. They're also engineered with tons of sugar, salt, and fat to push all the right evolutionary reward system buttons. The culture of sitting down to eat communally has kind of gone by the wayside, more than in some European countries anyway.
I'm pretty sure they've done studies on bigger portion sizes actually leading to more eating. I guess somehow half of a 72 oz. soft drink seems less "bad" than all of a 36 oz. one.
Then throw in the car-focused structure of most cities, i.e. not walking more than the couple hundred feet from your parking spot to your store, job, whatever.
Also there is the "fatty ambiance" effect (I don't think this has a name yet, but it has been studied). That is, the more you hang out with fat people, the likelier you are to put on weight yourself, since it doesn't seem like you are really that fat in comparison to someone who has a couple dozen kilos on you. So the more people become fat, the more socially accepted it is to be fat, and the less people tend to care about slowly drifting fatward. |
|
|
| SYSTEM-J |
There are plenty of fat people in the UK as well, and our own obesity statistics don't make for good reading. But the food in America is something else. Everything is either sweet or salty, even staple stuff like bread. Portions are huge, junk food is the norm. Think of the quintessential American foods: burgers, hot dogs, fries, steaks, etc. There is a whole culture of unhealthy food. I'm reminded of a lyric from that Faithless track Postcards:
America's big, you'd love how they pile up your plate
Only place in the world even I can gain weight |
|
|
| Dykes_on_Jay |
| quote: | Originally posted by Chimney
:stongue::stongue:
You're in China right? Guess all those noodles got to you. Can't hate, they're delicious. |
Naw...i drink way too much beer and work so much I don't cook for myself. I'm a guy that really likes to cook too...I'm lucky if I can make 3 meals a week now.
Obesity is hitting China hard as well...too much disposable income equals indulgence. |
|
|
| Dykes_on_Jay |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
There are plenty of fat people in the UK as well, and our own obesity statistics don't make for good reading. But the food in America is something else. Everything is either sweet or salty, even staple stuff like bread. Portions are huge, junk food is the norm. Think of the quintessential American foods: burgers, hot dogs, fries, steaks, etc. There is a whole culture of unhealthy food. I'm reminded of a lyric from that Faithless track Postcards:
America's big, you'd love how they pile up your plate
Only place in the world even I can gain weight |
Jack, list me the top 5 British staples ;)
It's not so different, other than it doesn't taste as good. |
|
|
| Dykes_on_Jay |
| British food is healthy...I'm not even an Americunt, but , come on now. TESCO is like Walmart with less teeth. |
|
|
| DJ RANN |
Good points by jive, but there are several other factors.
The first is that the giant food companies and big agri here control the supply chain for masses, and I'm not even talking about the fast food producers. You have no idea how much this market is worth annually.
The food producers look at these as products and all that matters is cost analysis and the lower end of the chain. Nutritional content does not matter, it's about (as already pointed out) getting dopamine and serotonin levels to spike, and how to make that last on a shelf.
it's why yoga mat material was sold in Subway sandwiches for years. It's why we had pink slime instead of meat. It's why Jamie Oliver pointed out that McDonalds burgers were we're not fit for human consumptions (which resulted in a multiyear lawsuit from mcD's which Jamie won when it found that those "burger" patties contained less than 15% meat).
That's the first part. The second part is that uneducated people buy this stuff, so it's what is sold to them. Typically poor, dumb people, buy , calorie laden artificial food substitutes.
Now because of these factors the supply chain has changed. here's an example:
You'll find this pattern across the food industry for anything living or grown.
This is not good for us for reasons that are too obvious to explain.
Combine this with a lifestyle that consists of driving everywhere, sitting at a desk all day or in front of the TV (which only assists in exposing you to more bad food) and before you know it, you're morbidly obese.
When i first got here, I had to (and still do) make a concerted effort to check the ingredients of everything was I was buying, and bear in mind I live in liberal, California, specifically in a city obsessed with looks and fitness.
Juice manufacturers put high fructose corn syrup in every single product, even the ones labeled as "natural" (after all HFCS is still technically "natural"). you'll find on all the "diet" products, they swap the nutrition for artificial ingredients that let them make a product that tastes like fatty food but without the calories, rather than using foodstuffs that may not taste as good but actually are better for you (you know, like vegetables).
Now the real kicker, even here in california, is what big Food and Agri have done to shield consumers from what they are doing to your food.
It started out with some clever labelling things like "this milk is from cows free of hormones" Consumers would look at that, ooh, that's better milk, not knowing that it's been illegal for decades to use hormones on dairy producing animals.
Then it got really worrying.
Massive lobbying from the Food and Agro which resulted in many legal changes to food production and labelling.
For instance, a couple of years ago, they somehow successfully passed a law, under the guise of "protecting trade secrets" that made it illegal to film in a slaughter house or abattoir or anywhere animals are raised and killed. This was done so you don't see animals getting force fed, plumped, kept in horrific conditions then killed by machines, yet all the while they can label it and call it "natural" even "healthy" and "organic".
I know a guy that used to work in food label design and you have no idea the directive these companies have to make the food look as disconnected from the animal and it's actual life/death conditions.
The next part of lobbying was the GMO debacle and more recently the Dark act, which along with other measures cunningly pushed through the US legislation has made it easier for food and agri to do whatever the to our food and put whatever the in food they want without being required to tell us about it.
Recently there uproar over a smuggled video from Foster farms of terrible conditions for chicken raising and processing.
So guess what? A law was just created that allows food companies to send live chickens to china for processing then be shipped back to the USA for sale WITHOUT ANY NOTIFICATION TO THE CONSUMER. Yep. We can now send animals to a country that has no food processing or livestock standards whatsoever to be killed, processed and packaged, so the pesky USDA can't start messing with the "food" we eat.
Education is changing here. Obesity is actually on the decline which is a good thing but the worst part is, the poor and uneducated are the ones who really suffer from the clever tactics of the food producers here.
If you really want to understand food here in the USA, a good starting point is the Film Food inc and just about anything by Morgan Spurlock. |
|
|
| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dykes_on_Jay
British food is healthy...I'm not even an Americunt, but , come on now. TESCO is like Walmart with less teeth. |
Not everything is a dick-measuring contest, Jay. I wouldn't even try to claim British food is healthy, and I was even mentally prepping a post about our "takeaway culture" if someone asked me to follow up my comment about our own obesity problem. But the fact remains, American food is a step up from ours in the junk factor. |
|
|
| DJ RANN |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
Not everything is a dick-measuring contest, Jay. I wouldn't even try to claim British food is healthy, and I was even mentally prepping a post about our "takeaway culture" if someone asked me to follow up my comment about our own obesity problem. But the fact remains, American food is a step up from ours in the junk factor. |
There's no way American food is a step up. Sure pie and mash and fish and chips (etc) are not healthy but at least they are often made with real ingredients.
What you don't understand about american food in general is far more synthetic and much lower nutritional value.
There's also no such thing as a healthy ready meal in the USA, but in the UK you can walk in to any super market and get a pretty decent instant meal for a not a lot of money. You just simply don't have the same level of sugars and incredibly higher processed foodstuffs back in the UK.
Sure, anyone can eat anywhere, but it's a lot easier to eat healthily in the UK, not to mention see what's in your food as the UK has some of the strictest labels for salt, sugar, sodium content etc. If you still eat then it's a choice, but in the USA you really ing have to investigate what the you're eating. |
|
|
|
|
