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Adult Obesity Facts

cdc.gov

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Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#51

Post by CabSauce »

yupper32 wrote: post #23

Every time I comment on one of these threads, I mention how most people don't know about the most fundamental component of weight control: Calories-in calories-out. And then I get a mass of people complaining that "it's not that simple! x y and z also impact weight!" I think so much has to do with these two points: 1. Most don't know about CICO. 2. Many who do throw it away as not useful. We should be teaching this i…

We (Americans) didn't understand CICO any better in the past. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the way we get our food has changed dramatically. For the most part, we know what we're supposed to eat. It's just so much easier to eat poorly now. We need to change incentives to make it more costly to eat unhealthy food.

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#52

Post by canjobear »

rjbwork wrote: post #2

We've designed our cities, suburbs, food industry, and society such that the average person is at least overweight, nearing obese. If the average person suffers from what should be an anomaly, perhaps it is less a personal failing than a societal failing and we should try to fix the societal problems generating the poor outcome.

City design and the food industry haven't changed substantially in the last 40 years. If anything, there has been increasing emphasis on walkability in communities and health in foods. And yet the obesity rate was 15% in 1980 and 42% now.

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#54

Post by Falling3 »

sharkmerry wrote: post #8

Is this solely done based on BMI? Some of you may know that BMI can be wildly inaccurate. (this guy is technically obese on BMI scale - https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=153207891 ) I wonder if we would find better connections between disease and "weight" with body fat % or similar measure.

Beat to the reply by a few other people on the accuracy across populations. The only thing I'll add is that BMI is a much more accessible measure. The more accuracy we want, the more invasive and expensive it is to collect. Just about anyone who's ever been seen by a healthcare provider has their height and weight taken so it's a very easy metric to capture across an entire population.

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#55

Post by lotsofpulp »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #18

Sugar and its synthetic brothers are addictive. Sugar addiction should be classified as an addiction and given the same sort of attention and funding that alcohol and drug addictions receive.

What harm is there from artificial sweeteners? Or rather, how much consumption of artificial sweeteners is harmful?

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#56

Post by ksdale »

yupper32 wrote: post #23

Every time I comment on one of these threads, I mention how most people don't know about the most fundamental component of weight control: Calories-in calories-out. And then I get a mass of people complaining that "it's not that simple! x y and z also impact weight!" I think so much has to do with these two points: 1. Most don't know about CICO. 2. Many who do throw it away as not useful. We should be teaching this i…

I think a third major thing is that people often have very skewed ideas of how many calories things have, like you decide to have a salad instead of a burger at a restaurant because it's the "healthy" choice, but often, because of the dressing, the salad will have as many calories as the burger, and then you feel like you were "good" so you have dessert!

Or people will try to do something like cutting the 30 calories of cream from their coffee, while leaving their 1,400 calorie lunch untouched, trading big expenditures in effort and habit changing for tiny calorie improvements.

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#57

Post by paulddraper »

rjbwork wrote: post #2

We've designed our cities, suburbs, food industry, and society such that the average person is at least overweight, nearing obese. If the average person suffers from what should be an anomaly, perhaps it is less a personal failing than a societal failing and we should try to fix the societal problems generating the poor outcome.

The problem with "policy solutions" is that they don't account for individual preferences.

Do people want walkable cities? Or do they want single-family dwellings and yards?

Do people want to be healthy? Or do they want sugary foods and television programs?

Fortunately, the U.S. has plenty of each, to accommodate multiple preferences.

Life is trade-offs. It's the conceit of policy makers to force their trade-off preferences on people.

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#58

Post by gaws »

waiseristy wrote: post #26

There are plenty of people who consume highly processed foods and stay skinny. There are plenty of people who eat greasy, sugary, fattening foods who stay skinny. The problem is not car culture, sugar, and processed foods. The problem is overeating. America, and the rest of the first world has major issues with food addiction and a culture associated with "eating until the plate is clean"

> There are plenty of people who consume highly processed foods and stay skinny. There are plenty of people who eat greasy, sugary, fattening foods who stay skinny.

These people must burn at the stake.

Re: Adult Obesity Facts

#60

Post by yupper32 »

CabSauce wrote: post #51
yupper32 wrote: post #23

Every time I comment on one of these threads, I mention how most people don't know about the most fundamental component of weight control: Calories-in calories-out. And then I get a mass of people complaining that "it's not that simple! x y and z also impact weight!" I think so much has to do with these two points: 1. Most don't know about CICO. 2. Many who do throw it away as not useful. We should be teaching this i…

We (Americans) didn't understand CICO any better in the past. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the way we get our food has changed dramatically. For the most part, we know what we're supposed to eat. It's just so much easier to eat poorly now. We need to change incentives to make it more costly to eat unhealthy food.

Absolutely! There are a ton of cheap and easy ways to get calories these days. In the past we didn't need to worry so much about people understanding CICO.

However, now we have two options:

1. Education

2. Banning a ton of food-types.

Both seem hard at scale, but #1 can be achieved on an individual level, at least.

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