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Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

cdc.gov

261–270 of 271 posts

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#261

I think it is important to diffirentiate between people who are born with overweight body and cannot do anything with it and people who would have normal weight but are gaining it because of unhealthy food or lifestyle. Sadly, the page doesn't have such a table.

As I understand it, the idea that people are "naturally" overweight and cannot change that is a complete myth with no scientific backing. In some cases, certain diseases/medications can cause a very small weight gain but nothing significant.

Yes, I don't know if it is checked scientifically, but people have different figures. If we take several people of the same height and age and will give them the same food and the same amount of physical load, they still will have different body mass.

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#262
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.

Meh, veggies, rice, etc. are super-cheap everywhere in the world. It doesn't take money to eat healthy. It's not that fast food restaurants are the only choice is you don't have money. You can go to a grocery store and eat extremely healthy if you want to. Those who eat at fast food restaurants all the time are more uneducated than poor (although both things might go hand-in-hand), and might not know how many calorie…

FWIW Vietnam War prisoners (Americans held in North Vietnam) strongly tended to live longer than their peers after release. Years without artificial light eating a basic diet and limited calories made a big difference, even without factoring out torture.

In contrast the starvation diet the Japanese imposed on their WWII prisoners (from Hong Kong in particular) shortened their lives quite a bit.

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#263

Of course "overweight" has as-good or better long term health outcomes so... Meh? https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/35/1/55/849914

Too old by more than half. 2005. The discussion has moved on since. For more recent articles, I went to pubmed.com and entered "obesity longevity review." Four quick highlights:

"Although a recent meta-analysis suggests that overweight individuals have significantly lower overall mortality than normal-weight individuals, these data are likely to be an artifact produced by serious methodological problems, especially confounding by smoking, reverse causation due to existing chronic disease, and nonspecific loss of lean mass and function in the frail elderly." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24628815

"Utilizing novel models of visceral obesity, numerous studies have demonstrated that the relationship between visceral fat and longevity is causal while the accrual of subcutaneous fat does not appear to play an important role in the etiology of disease risk." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23764746

Mexico: "Obesity and overweight have a strong effect on the incidence of T2D;this, combined with the large impact of diabetes on adult mortality, generates increases in mortality that translate into losses of 2 to 3 years of life expectancy at age 50." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26172231

Trend: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24913899

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Bologna not too long ago and I was baffled by how fresh, high quality ingredients are available at affordable prices. I've seen similar quality ingredients in the Bay Area but they charge an arm and a leg for it. I don't know how the Italians do it or why we Americans have such a hard time doing something similar.

Why would "fresh" and "high quality" make you lose weight?

I can't think of too many food products that are making people fat that can be called fresh and high-quality.

Fruit and vegetables come to mind.

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#265
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, I was chasing asian street food for breakfast. From my touristy experience US breakfasts consist of no vegetables and all sorts of sweets.

Not a lot of vegetables but eggs, sausage, and bacon are very common. But yes, if you’re vegan or at least prefer food that is more vegetable in nature you’ll have a tough time other than fruit.

I'm quite far from a vegan, but eating all you mentioned + waffles with syrup really is too much for my stomach. Some salad/tomatoes/cucumber next to that would have helped.

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#266
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

maybe it's also

- microbiome activities

- epigenetics

- what you eat at a young age

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#267
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hurts to watch you child starve because they are being picky. I had a teacher tell me she didn't want to eat peas one night, so her father sent her to bed hungry. She woke up a few hours later, went downstairs to her cold plate of peas still on the table, and ate the whole thing. I had a classmate in high school who ONLY ate pancakes and fries. He was from a wealthy family and his mother had various supplements sh…

My dad made me sit at the table until I finished my milk and peas. After waiting two hours to spite him, I then had to drink warm milk and eat cold peas anyways. I learned pretty quickly that the manipulation didn't work on him. I have no doubt that a lot of parents have that "my little angel" syndrome that keeps them from disciplining their children, but notice how that doesn't free them from the responsibility nor…

I wonder if it is a good approach to force children to finish their plates?

Seems like not. There are some studies [0][1][2] that show parental control over food intake may result in children's (mostly girls') obesity since it teaches children to ignore their satiety/hunger mechanism and thus overeat.

It may lead to the situation that once grown up, they could keep this habit of leaving the plate empty no matter how full they feel.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2045650/

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11358344

[2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2384361/Leading-nu...

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#268
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

If you spend 3 months body-building, you will know first-hand that this isn't true.

70% of the US population must be body-builders.

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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." New York City is perhaps one of the most walkable cities in the world. It's also a place where you absolutely do not need a car and the majority of residents don't have a car. Yet 34% or New Yorkers are overweight and 22% are obese.[1] The BMI statistic for the EU are none too…

I'm the OP. I agree NYC should be better but a number of problems are present there: 1. Cultural. I haven't been there for two years, but people use the subway, not the bike lanes. And I remember as recent at 2010 taxis were very prevalent, although slightly less so last time I was there. Though that could be Uber. The walkability of a city isn't just its density, it's its zoning, the width of its streets, the expect…

>"I haven't been there for two years, but people use the subway, not the bike lanes."

The bike lanes are actually quite busy. This was true two years ago as well. It has also been steadily increasing with the increase in the number of Citibikes. The NYC DOT even has stats that support this [1]

>"They have many of the problems that most American cities have: Dirt cheap unhealthy food and sugar consumption rates that are unhealthily high."

There's also shortage of affordable and healthy options in just about every neighborhood.[2] There's also plenty of Whole Food and fruit and vegetable are present outside most bodegas.

>"Many people come to NYC to make it. If they're coming from the rest of America they're coming in overweight."

That's is a pretty absurd statement. People come for all kinds of reasons and they generally bring their A game if trying to "make it."

[1] http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/cyclinginthecity...

[2] https://www.timeout.com/newyork/restaurants/the-best-healthy...

Re: Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the OP. I agree NYC should be better but a number of problems are present there: 1. Cultural. I haven't been there for two years, but people use the subway, not the bike lanes. And I remember as recent at 2010 taxis were very prevalent, although slightly less so last time I was there. Though that could be Uber. The walkability of a city isn't just its density, it's its zoning, the width of its streets, the expect…

>"I haven't been there for two years, but people use the subway, not the bike lanes." The bike lanes are actually quite busy. This was true two years ago as well. It has also been steadily increasing with the increase in the number of Citibikes. The NYC DOT even has stats that support this [1] >"They have many of the problems that most American cities have: Dirt cheap unhealthy food and sugar consumption rates that a…

>"There's also shortage of affordable and healthy options in just about every neighborhood.[2] "

This should have been:

There's also NO shortage of affordable and healthy options in just about every neighborhood.[2]

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