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Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

cdc.gov

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Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#201

Post by factsaresacred »

izietto wrote: post #20
3pt14159 wrote: 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.

Decent by Italian standards is pretty decent. But if we're talking about fresh fruit and vegetables, go to any Asian market. Or Walmart. It's not that expensive.

There's few good reasons to be eating tripe if you live in a city or live in a 'food desert' (spare me) and have a car.

The real problem is the overabundance of crap choices crowding out the sensible ones.

For example, here's Walmart's online store: https://www.walmart.com/all-departments#food--household---pe.... Now look at the categories: Beverages, Snacks & Cookies (listed before meals), Candy & gum.

Ctrl + F for 'fresh', and all I get is flowers. Madness.

By contract, here's Tesco in the UK: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/?icid=dchp_groceriesshopgroc...

Fresh food is top of the list. And three sub-sections are all 'fresh' something.

There's zero reason Walmart can't do the same. Except for the fact that Americans demand soda and 800 different types of cookies, so that's what they're supplied with.

Edit: this submission was bumped from first to the third page within minutes...for whatever reason. Comment to upvote ratio perhaps?

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#202

Post by [deleted] »

trophycase wrote: post #68
izietto wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honestly this is only slightly true. Beans are 2 bucks a pound, cabbage is 2 bucks a head, bananas are 50 cents a pound, chicken is 4 bucks a pound, lentils are 2 bucks a pound, broccoli is 3 bucks a pound, yams are 1.5 bucks a pound, green bell peppers are 1 each, peanuts are 4.5 a pound, etc. You get my point but I think it's more of a culture and convenience thing.

[deleted]

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#203

Post by watwut »

whoisjuan wrote: post #180
aaron-lebo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people really not understand that drinking 23oz of empty calories day after day will make you fat? People aren't really that ignorant, they make choices, often driven by short term desire. The corporations get this, but I feel like you are using poor as a synonym for stupid. We gotta stop treating poor people like they are dumb helpless animals, it gives them no agency.

Dude. It's pretty easy to say that. You're educated and you definitely understand well the implications of sugar consumption. It's easy to imply this just because of your presence here. Someone uneducated will not understand this well. It's not about being stupid or being poor either. You don't hear people blaming their problems on sugar... I consume sugar products because they are delicious (dopamine release). Howev…

All the educated people in here are conflating health and being thin - while they are very different things. Part of difference might be that poor people simply value "looking fit" less. That is not the same as valuing health less, but there is strong component of competitiveness about looking fit and thin among more educated people that has zero to do with health.

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#204

Post by fileeditview »

jonaswi wrote: post #157
virtuowl wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is around 2 times what i pay in germany

A little OT: The price for food in Germany are to my knowledge one of the lowest in the world compared to the average income. This trend of food getting cheaper all the time has led to a real „industrialised“ agricultural sector in Germany. This effect is good for the consumer because an egg costs like 15 euro cents, but it is horrible for the environment and especially for the animals. You just can‘t produce so much…

Food prices here in Germany indeed are very low. In my experience this has another bad side effect. Many people expect food to be that cheap and don't even consider buying 'good' food for higher prices (even if they can afford it).

E.g. I buy ecological eggs (not the 'supermarket-ecological' ones) and they cost about 45 cents a piece. That's at least 3 times the usual price.

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#206

Post by chefandy »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #148
izietto wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm curious about this. I lived in a predominantly Latino (mostly Puerto Rican) neighborhood of Brooklyn for a while a couple of years back. The supermarkets were full of fresh, cheap food, yet the customers (who were consistently overweight and often obese, including the kids) were piling their shopping carts up with terrible stuff -- sugary cereals (Froot Loops etc.), sugary drinks (sodas, fruit juices, Caprisun, i…

Definitely seems odd on its face, but if you dig into it, you'll see that it's SO much more complex than simple access. Other factors include, but are certainly not limited to:

Time to prepare: fresh foods generally take a lot longer, and a lot more effort to prepare than processed foods. When you've got each available parent working two jobs then this is a huge barrier.

Knowledge of preparation: especially in immigrant populations, not everybody has access to the ingredients they're used to.

Knowledge of nutrition: it's not like life comes with an instruction manual, and if you got little to no nutrition education, you probably don't realize the impact of those empty calories.

Fussy Kids: people who appeasing fussy kids (yeah yeah yeah... the hardos without kids will say you should just force them to eat it. Life isn't so straightforward.)

Waste: this is a huge factor. If you've got a tiny amount of cash and you need to spend it on things that will ensure you wont starve, something that will potentially go bad in a few days is a risky proposition, so you tend to stock up on heavily processed shelf stable items.

Price: Cheap is in the eye of the beholder. You can get a whole bag of chips for the same price as 2 apples. When you have a REALLY borderline income, your "cheap" is a lot different than someone else's.

There's plenty of other factors. Check out the research on it for more info. Really interesting stuff to dig into.

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#207

Post by chisleu »

3pt14159 wrote: 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…

You are not wrong, but I will say that overweight is a really low threshold. For me at 6'5", it's about 200lbs at the top. Factor in that tall people generally have more variance in torso to leg ratio, and it makes it difficult to get down to that weight. I was 235 lbs when I left the Army and was incredibly trim. At 200 lbs, I would have been very skinny. At the middle of the healthy range, 175 lbs, I would look incredibly skinny.

My goal weight is 200. I've got 100 to go and I've lost 40 so far. I got there because of the sugar and depression, but I thought it was important to note that 200 for me is going to be incredibly skinny. I don't think it is practical for most people to maintain that.

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#208

Post by croon »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #148
izietto wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm curious about this. I lived in a predominantly Latino (mostly Puerto Rican) neighborhood of Brooklyn for a while a couple of years back. The supermarkets were full of fresh, cheap food, yet the customers (who were consistently overweight and often obese, including the kids) were piling their shopping carts up with terrible stuff -- sugary cereals (Froot Loops etc.), sugary drinks (sodas, fruit juices, Caprisun, i…

No instructions on the label of a pak choi, and no industry gain from suggesting recipes using it, since it would just be rice, cheap meats and/or other vegetables. Blue Apron and similar services might be superfluous for some, as well as expensive, but they at least inspire people to use more basic ingredients. I don't know where one starts to educate people in making "real" food. New/old school subject?

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#209

Post by maxxxxx »

graeme wrote: post #135
maxxxxx wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will get worse. You rarely see fat children with skinny parents. But a lot of fat parents have fat kids too. Once these grow up it will be more and more likely that their children will get fat too. Also when you grow with a lot of fat people around you you don't even know how normal weight looks. I noticed this last time in Paris. I had completely forgotten how normal weight looks.

It's worse even than that. Over 40% of people in France are overweight now - the numbers have increased rapidly over the past 20-30 years. Paris is leaner than the French average, but you were probably still seeing a population with a fair amount of overweight people. Just, less overweight than what you're used to. Seeing Paris 110 years ago would be a shock. (On many levels, but certainly on the average body composi…

George Hebert certainly is "shredded"!

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#210

Post by qrbLPHiKpiux »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #85
bpicolo wrote: post #28

Doesn't a 25 BMI seem like kind of a crappy metric for "overweight"? That makes my 6'4" brother "overweight" at like 205 which seems nuts. That doesn't feel overweight at all. (Defined in the footnote on page 222)

My ex was career army. He had to pass a PT test and pass weight to keep his job. He was a little guy, so he lifted weights to be able to do his job. When he was on recruiting duty, every year they attended a conference. Every year, there was an insurance guy there. Every year, every one in the office was pronounced overweight according to their height and weight charts. The army offers a tape test as an alternative i…

I got so sick of that bullshit when I was in. Every damn time.
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