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More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

diabetes.co.uk

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Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#161

Post by tsherr »

konjin wrote: post #128
dwaltrip wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the definition of processed food? I think most people will think your proposal is very extreme.

>I think most people will think your proposal is very extreme. As would most heroin addicts in 1890. When 73% of your country is losing between 5 and 20 years of life expectancy drastic measures are in order.

We force people to wear seatbelts. We don't let them buy some drugs. We can make certain food illegal.

Post stomach cancer, I can't eat sugar without becoming ill. So I stopped. Regular fruits are now very sweet, and a chocolate bar is inedible.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#162

Post by lotsofpulp »

worik wrote: post #147
meowzero wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually, healthier cooking doesn't taste as good. Most of the food industry is focused on providing the best tasting food so people will buy them. How do you make food taste good? Add a lot of fat and/or carbs, which are the macro nutrients that are calorie dense. There doesn't seem to be much demand in healthy food services.

No! Healthy food tastes great!

But not as great as unhealthy food. So if you're trying to sell food next door to someone selling tastier food, you're probably not going to succeed unless you have a weird number of health conscious folks. And health conscious folks tend to cook at home anyway and not eat out anyway.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#163

Post by rsynnott »

meowzero wrote: post #72

This isn't surprising. We're conditioned to eat great tasting food and lots of it. Most American cities have a car-oriented culture, along with sedentary lifestyles; therefore, not much walking or NEAT (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis). It seems over the years, Americans are burning less calories, but consuming more. I usually cook at home now, thanks to the Pandemic. Looking at all the recipes I found online, I…

> I realized how much high-calorie ingredients you have to add to make the food taste delicious

What are these ingredients? When I'm cooking the ingredients I tend to overuse to make things taste good are garlic, ginger, chilis, and sesame oil. I suppose sesame oil is high in calories, but you don't use much of it. Deliciousness can come from lots of places!

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#164

Post by Sodman »

titanomachy wrote: post #71
vecter wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s all diet. I visited Nashville a couple of years ago and everything on the menu was fried or just terrible for you. Most of weight is diet. Exercise helps a tiny amount but is more for your cardiovascular health and strength. Running for an hour burns far fewer calories than half of a muffin.

> running for an hour burns far fewer calories than in half a muffin As a guy who runs pretty hard and weighs over 200 lbs, I burn nearly 1000 calories in an hour of running (~11km distance). I've tried a few different models to estimate this and they all more or less agree. A lightweight person jogging at low intensity for an hour, maybe .

Exercise is certainly helpful once you start getting close to your ideal caloric intake. If at rest you'd burn ~2000 cal/day, and you're consuming ~2300 cal/day, then exercising for one hour, three days a week can certainly make a difference.

Most people that are actually overweight though, have a much higher surplus in their caloric intake. Strenuous exercise like running over 10km isn't possible for many of these folks... and even if it were, it certainly wouldn't be possible every day. Cutting out the 600cal breakfast sandwich in the morning or the 200cal soda every day at lunch will have a bigger impact for most folks and is a lot more feasible.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#165

Post by rsynnott »

inglor_cz wrote: post #134
twblalock wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of other countries where sweet and fatty things are cheap, yet they don't have the same obesity rate as the US.

Everyone is slowly getting there, some countries (UK, Arab countries) faster, but the development seems to be unstoppable. In my country, never particularly known for being thin, I can see a definitive negative development since the 1990s. Morbidly fat teenagers were basically nonexistent then. Now you meet them all the time. IMHO the worst offenders are soft drinks, which have zero satiating effect and consist of a…

In the last few years, a number of countries have brought in sugar taxes that have in many cases caused soft drink manufacturers to push the zero calorie versions of their products, or reduce sugar in their normal ones (particularly common where there's a two-tier tax; I think about the only soft drink that's still in the top tier here is Coca Cola, but even they have been heavily pushing their Coke Zero product), or both. Will be interesting to see what impact this has.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#166

Post by baal80spam »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #112
29athrowaway wrote: post #34

In the US there are many highly processed foods with little fiber and added sugar. Nutrition fact labels can be very misleading. e.g.: showing nutrition facts per certain some arbitrary amount of weight, or having multiple servings per container, which is misleading if it's an individual serving container. e.g.: Oreo serving size is 2 cookies. Who opens a pack of oreos only to eat 2 of them? nobody. Many occupations…

“Servings” must be the biggest fraud in nutrition ever. The companies can basically make up whatever they want to make their foods look better. It’s unbelievable that this nonsense can be done.

Exactly. As a (Central) European, I've never understood how can you calculate stuff in servings. To me, a serving is completely subjective.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#167

Post by rsynnott »

dwaltrip wrote: post #104
konjin wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would showing added lead in baby formula help? Kind of shocked how in the US an issue that is obviously a health issue is treated as a personal failing. If you want sugar in your food you're free to add some after the fact, or buy it from a non-food store. Warning people that all the food they have access to is poison is not a solution to anything.

> Warning people that all the food they have access to is poison is not a solution to anything. It sounds like you are suggesting all food in American grocery stores is equally bad when it comes to sugar. Perhaps I misunderstood you, as that is obviously absurd. While I do wish there were more healthy options, I can assure you that the mainstream grocery stores (Ralph's, Safeway, etc) contain many products with low o…

> While I do wish there were more healthy options, I can assure you that the mainstream grocery stores (Ralph's, Safeway, etc) contain many products with low or no sugar.

What struck me as weird was the sugar in products where I'd never have expected to find it in the first place. In particular bread (most non-absurdly-expensive brands seemed to have added sugar, which would not normally be the case here).

In fact, an Irish court recently ruled that Subway 'bread' wasn't actually bread at all (important for VAT purposes here); too much added sugar.

I'm sure it is _possible_ to get food that doesn't have added sugar in the US, but it does seem to be the default to add sugar in some quite weird places.

Edit: One way to regulate this, less draconian than actually banning added sugar, would be to regulate naming (for instance, banning sale of a bread-like product with added sugar as bread).

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#168

Post by tasty_freeze »

kbenson wrote: post #63
tasty_freeze wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time BMI is mentioned someone has to come up with an example of a body builder or fit athlete who has a high BMI. Yes, everyone realizes this already, and nobody who is in that position is going to be mislead into thinking they are obese. Sure, it would be great if everyone could do a caliper test or a water displacement test, but that isn't ever going to happen, and BMI is a trivial and good enough place to st…

> Yes, everyone realizes this already, and nobody who is in that position is going to be mislead into thinking they are obese. No, but someone who works out the numbers and realizes that the BMI doesn't match them well, or their circumstances well, realizes it calls the study and what it represents into question. Using controversial metrics because they are easily available is counter-productive in the long run, beca…

We have an epidemic of overweight people. We can worry about misleading BMI stats when we have an epidemic of bodybuilders who worry they might actually be overweight.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#169

Post by robocat »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #61
rsynnott wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only ever visited San Francisco in the US, and the first time I was there I was slightly surprised that in terms of obesity it seemed pretty similar to Dublin (which wouldn't be the thinnest city around, but is middle of the road European). Then I flew back via O'Hare, and really saw the difference when waiting for the transfer; quite dramatic levels of obesity. I wonder how much of it is just down to urban Amer…

There are probably multiple factors, walking more and fewer time sitting in cars is quite possibly one of them. Urban areas also have more young people. The added sugar in the US is a shame. Just this year, the nutritional labels are mandated to show added sugars in products now. I hope that helps.

> walking more

I remember how much everyone has to do some (or a lot) of walking in London, New York, and other cities where you use public transport to get around.

I suspect that daily walking makes a huge difference.

Re: More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

#170

Post by robocat »

ekianjo wrote: post #105
titanomachy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> running for an hour burns far fewer calories than in half a muffin As a guy who runs pretty hard and weighs over 200 lbs, I burn nearly 1000 calories in an hour of running (~11km distance). I've tried a few different models to estimate this and they all more or less agree. A lightweight person jogging at low intensity for an hour, maybe .

> I burn nearly 1000 calories in an hour of running (~12km distance). You get a lot more calories than you can physically burn in one day. A donut can be something like 500 kcal. Skipping on snacks is more much effective than exercising no matter how you look at it.

For losing weight, yes.

However AFAIK fit and moderately overweight is better for your health than unfit and skinny.

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