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Why is the American diet so deadly?

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Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?

#111

Post by galangalalgol »

logicchains wrote: post #96
verteu wrote: post #53

For me, the biggest mystery is this: If obesity is caused by poor diet, why doesn't dieting work long-term? https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/when-dieting-doesnt-work... > 121 eligible trials with 21 942 patients were included and reported on 14 named diets and three control diets ... At 12 months the effects on weight reduction and improvements in cardiovascular risk factors largely disappear.

Simple, it's called a selection bias. The people able to long-term control what they eat aren't obese, so by running a study on obese people, you're essentially biasing the study towards subjects who have difficulty controlling what they eat. This means most of the subjects will struggle to stick to the diet long term.

I think these studies controlled the diets entirely? The notion is that they did not deviate from the diet, yet their body adjusted to return to the original weight. Presumably by slowing the metabolism and decreasing energy for activity. If activity was controlled as well that would be truly fascinating. There is quite a bit of room for optimisation apparently. Through hikers often have trouble maintaining weight after stopping because their metabolism becomes very efficient.

Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?

#112

Post by lithocarpus »

hnpolicestate wrote: post #21

I'd be curious to see if replacing seed oils with olive, peanut or avocado oil as the default would improve health.

It probably would if it means oils with less chemicals, but might not affect diabetes much which is as I understand it, caused by glucose/insulin spikes.

I did the math once and Americans ingest a lot of hexane just from seed oils every year on average.

Peanut oil is a seed oil though and it's refined the same way as others using hexane.

I don't know how much it's the fact of them being seed oils vs the toxic stuff added to them in the refining process.

Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?

#113

Post by bumby »

verteu wrote: post #53

For me, the biggest mystery is this: If obesity is caused by poor diet, why doesn't dieting work long-term? https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/when-dieting-doesnt-work... > 121 eligible trials with 21 942 patients were included and reported on 14 named diets and three control diets ... At 12 months the effects on weight reduction and improvements in cardiovascular risk factors largely disappear.

You cut out the part that said the diets improved people’s health at 6 mo. But they were hard to maintain for 12 months. I think a lack of consistency is the issue. From your link:

>What if they'd lasted 12 months, or two years, or a lifetime? The benefit would likely have been greater and more long-lasting. The trick is to pick a diet with foods you actually like so that it's not so hard to stick with it.

Meaningful behavioral change is hard, especially in a modern food environment.

Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?

#114

Post by macNchz »

tombert wrote: post #25

In July of 2023, I was about 254lbs. I'm a pretty tall dude (about 6'5"), so it's not quite "obese", but it's pretty heavy, and it was only growing. Amusingly, by accident, I started losing weight a month later, because I bought a kegerator, and I had up to 10 gallons at a time of Diet Coke in the kegs. Suddenly, I almost completely lost my urge to go to Taco Bell for every meal. I guess it turns out that I wasn't ad…

Soda really is something—I drank plenty as a kid, but I kind of soured on it after an interactive exercise in a college class, where we each guessed the amount of sugar in a can of soda, scooped the sugar into a glass, and then were shown the actual amount. In seeing that, I realized I would simply never put that much sugar in anything on my own, if I were sweetening a drink rather than buying something pre-sweetened.

Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?

#115

Post by deeviant »

resource_waste wrote: post #34
CharlieDigital wrote: post #9

> Why Is the American Diet So Deadly? Too much sugar. Too carb heavy. Not enough fiber (fruits, veg). Fats demonized for a long spell. No time for preparing whole foods in daily lives. No easy access to cheap, prepared whole foods. Edit: car-focused culture and zoning laws/planning that result in more sedentary day-to-day lifestyle that magnifies the effect of the poor diet.

>Not enough fiber (fruits, veg). I'm not sure why people think fiber is great. Yes it pushes things through. Yes there are bacteria that eat it. So does other food. But it also makes you go poop more often, which is bad for your body. I mostly eat meats and relatively low fiber food. I don't track it closely, so occasionally I'll eat corn and it passes through. --- My point: "Why fiber?" Actually prove that the gener…

Why fiber?

Because a diet rich in fiber has been repeatedly found to significantly reduce the chance of early death?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026156142...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25552267/

https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10...

(You can find many more)

Literally thousands of studies with one of the clearest results in nutritional science, frankly.

Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?

#116

Post by lalaland1125 »

deeviant wrote: post #104
lalaland1125 wrote: post #36

The problem is really quite simple: Americans overeat Processed foods are part of the problem (in that they are tastier and easier to consume than "rawer" foods), but increased wealth and ability to consume food is also a part of the problem Food has literally never been cheaper and tastier

If processed foods are why Americans overeat (and they, and their abundance, price and marketing is why ), then they are not part of the problem they are the problem.

Americans overeat unprocessed food as well. Look at portions and calorie counts in restaurants.

Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?

#117

Post by HEmanZ »

cf100clunk wrote: post #61
lalaland1125 wrote: post #36

The problem is really quite simple: Americans overeat Processed foods are part of the problem (in that they are tastier and easier to consume than "rawer" foods), but increased wealth and ability to consume food is also a part of the problem Food has literally never been cheaper and tastier

Restaurants in the U.S.A. belonging to large franchise chains have portion sizes that are astonishingly large in comparison to those I've typically seen in my world travels, and the ingredients tend to be heavily processed. Even quick snacks found at U.S. gas stations (when I'm running late) consist chiefly of mass-produced, sugary, heavily processed desserts like Twinkies and HoHos, whereas options for fresh fruit a…

The cultural attitude about appropriate portions in America bothers me a lot. People blame restaurants but just anecdotally from my own life, Americans will refuse to eat at restaurants that serve “European size” portions. Restaurants in most of the US go out of business if they don’t serve a 3k calorie meal, American patrons won’t go there.

Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?

#118

Post by lithocarpus »

hnpolicestate wrote: post #110
jeffbee wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peanut oil is a seed oil.

I stand corrected. Then the question becomes are certain seed oils healthier than others? Soybean oil seems to be the default in most dressings, condiments now.

Maybe, but all of the ones commonly called "seed" oils do as far as I know use a similar refining process with toxic hexane and probably other toxic stuff if I were to guess.

There may also be a difference in the polyunsaturated fats being worse as humans haven't been eating them in quantity for as long historically and maybe aren't well adapted, but I don't know as much about that.

Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?

#119

Post by otikik »

dukeyukey wrote: post #11
cratermoon wrote: post #5

Why? ultra-processed food.

Then you need to explain why the Japanese diet, also filled with ultra-processed food, is vastly healthier.

"Ultra-processed" is a term denominating a particular kind of food. Not every food that "involves a lot of treatment of the raw ingredients" qualifies as ultra processed. In particular, the end result needs to be high in fats, salts and/or sugars. The production cost also plays a role.

Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?

#120

Post by CharlieDigital »

resource_waste wrote: post #39
CharlieDigital wrote: post #9

> Why Is the American Diet So Deadly? Too much sugar. Too carb heavy. Not enough fiber (fruits, veg). Fats demonized for a long spell. No time for preparing whole foods in daily lives. No easy access to cheap, prepared whole foods. Edit: car-focused culture and zoning laws/planning that result in more sedentary day-to-day lifestyle that magnifies the effect of the poor diet.

>No easy access to cheap, prepared whole foods. Apples, Bananas, Carrots, Milk. I imagine there are other foods too. But its weird to see people think they don't exist.

In the US, there aren't many options for whole, prepared foods (meaning someone prepared the food from whole ingredients, fresh) for various reasons. One that is common, for example, is a rotisserie chicken.

If you go to Asia -- Japan, Taiwan for example -- you'll find cheap, fresh, prepared whole foods everywhere to the extent that many households have very small refrigerators and many families have access to prepared whole foods even without having to expend the time cost of cooking at home.

For a dual-income household, this is a big win.

There's various reasons for this: lower labor costs, smaller land mass/higher density, better access to local/fresh ingredients, more favorable climate and longer growing seasons, etc.

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