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Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

cdc.gov

71–80 of 271 posts

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#71
When you're poor, you prioritize calories over nutrition, and Americans are becoming increasingly "poor". From https://twitter.com/hugwins/status/963282840292032512?lang=e...:

> When you are in a place where it's eat food that gives you no vitamins, no protein, no micronutrients, etcetera, or eat food that does not give you enough basic breakdown of glucose to get your body through another day, you do not have the luxury

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#72
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not about eating healthy food, obesity is about the over consumption of food. You can maintain a healthy weight eating hamburgers and fries every day. The problem is portion size.

It's a combination of: - food quantity - genetics - physical activity or lack thereof - food quality and make-up (plant / animal for instance) - and an addictive element thrown in for some individuals

I'm curious, what makes you say genetics is an important factor? And what would make our genes change en masse in the last 50 years?

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#73
post #8

This is directly related to the way American cities are designed. It’s a car centric culture where big houses are far away from each other. That means driving everywhere. That means long commutes. That means TV over communal activity. That means big grocery runs with shelf stable food. Then pile on hyper sweet drinks and nutritional misinformation campaigns, and of course Americans are going to be overweight. The wor…

While I agree American cities don't promote the most healthy lifestyles, it's not like city-dwelers are less healthy or more obese on average than those who live in the country. You're spot on with your second paragraph though. There is a lot of misinformation about nutrition, dieting, and food in general, and it's all aimed at one goal: turning a profit. Sugar is one of the major culprits, but over eating in general…

Pretty much all cities and towns in the U.S. are car centric. Large amounts of space wasted in the form of parking lots. Houses are mostly built away from grocery stores and shops. Usually there are no decent foot paths to get to them. It’s not just a phenomenon of large cities. It’s pretty much everywhere.

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#75
post #30

If this is based on BMI, I couldn't care less. It's a terrible metric which is not fit for its purpose. "Obesity is defined as body mass index (BMI) at or above the sex- and age-specific 95th percentile BMI (based on the variable BMXBMI) using cutoff points from the 2000 CDC growth charts for the United States: Methods and development. NCHS. Vital Health Stat 11(246). 2002. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/…

BMI is a sufficiently sensitive metric for this. BMI can be relied on to confirm overweight/obesity. It cannot be relied on to confirm normal weight (that is to say, if your BMI says you're overweight, you're overweight. If it says you're normal weight, that may or may not be true).

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#76
post #8

This is directly related to the way American cities are designed. It’s a car centric culture where big houses are far away from each other. That means driving everywhere. That means long commutes. That means TV over communal activity. That means big grocery runs with shelf stable food. Then pile on hyper sweet drinks and nutritional misinformation campaigns, and of course Americans are going to be overweight. The wor…

Were this the case, you would see a correlation between urban development and obesity rates; cursory examination of obesity rates and population density (and our basically unchanged urban planning methods since the 1960s) reflect that this is not the case.

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#77
post #18
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a small investment in a food oriented start-up and I really hope they will succeed in their dream of feeding people healthy stuff. Many companies claim to want to 'change the world for the better' when actually they are just looking to make bank. These guys are driven because of their ideals, they're super nice and have a good idea + track record. Time will tell if it works out.

Its not about eating healthy food, obesity is about the over consumption of food. You can maintain a healthy weight eating hamburgers and fries every day. The problem is portion size.

Sure, but you will be hungry and tired a lot of time.

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#78
post #20
post #8

This is directly related to the way American cities are designed. It’s a car centric culture where big houses are far away from each other. That means driving everywhere. That means long commutes. That means TV over communal activity. That means big grocery runs with shelf stable food. Then pile on hyper sweet drinks and nutritional misinformation campaigns, and of course Americans are going to be overweight. The wor…

I'm italian and I visited united states a couple of months ago. In my opinion the biggest problem is that you don't have decent food at affordable prices. Healthy food has nonsensical high prices and if you want something at a human price you don't have much choice except fast food. What a shame.

I don't understand this. Rice, potatoes, vegetables are still cheap here. I guess if you're looking at restaurants, this is true. If you are with a group and have to go eat somewhere, they usually provide healthy options which are not too expensive compared to the unhealthy ones (though sometimes, that's just due to smaller portions).

Maybe you have a different experience, having just visited, instead of living here.

addendum: it also depends quite heavily on the area's cost of living, apparently. I just bought a sack of potatoes for $0.40/lb, whereas https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16448984 says potatoes in LA are $1.88/lb (nearly 5x as expensive).

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#79
post #30

If this is based on BMI, I couldn't care less. It's a terrible metric which is not fit for its purpose. "Obesity is defined as body mass index (BMI) at or above the sex- and age-specific 95th percentile BMI (based on the variable BMXBMI) using cutoff points from the 2000 CDC growth charts for the United States: Methods and development. NCHS. Vital Health Stat 11(246). 2002. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/…

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bmi-is-a-terrible-measu...

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#80
While this might be true, the CDCs “healthy weight” ranges are laughably inaccurate for anyone that does weight resistance training. And in my circle of friends, this is becoming the more common form of working out.

The CDC calculations basically assume 100% of us are sedentary.

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