Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire world eats 3 meals a day. Even if you eat 6 meals a day you can easily lose weight. It’s about the contents of the meal, not the frequency.
I eat one meal a day for as far as I can remember. Fatties love to tell me it's unhealthy, my doctor hasn't figure out yet though so I imagine it really isn't that unhealthy. Eating three meals a day is a very very very recent thing if you account for human history, or even modern human history
Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy
331–340 of 985 posts
Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there is argument to be made that the path of least resistance is very different in the US, Europe and Asia. I think maybe by living abroad you have adapted by default to a path (shaped by the environment) to eat more healthy. In the US I heard there is now parity in terms of quality products, but maybe culture takes some time to adapt to such environments.
As usual the difference is in distribution. In North America there are a lot of "food deserts" especially in poorer neighbourhoods. "Healthy" foods become a class marker. Distribution of higher quality food is through more upscale grocery stores. Same goes for walkability in neighbourhoods. To live in a place that has transit accessibility, green grocer and bakery you can walk to -- that's not possible for the vast m…
Almost nowhere in the US walks to go to the grocery store. Exceedingly small portions of major cities. Where I live in Chicago is quite walkable, but the vast majority of my neighbors load up the car for the vast majority of their shopping trips. There are pockets of course, but they are rare.
My neighborhood also happens to be much more fit than the national average - obesity is somewhat rare to see. The correlation is with wealth. Why there is such a correlation is much more interesting, and it likely is not as simple as people want to believe.
Same goes for the poor inner ring suburbs where I lived in my 20's in a different state. Very high rates of obesity. In the rich outer suburbs obesity levels were visibly less.
It's far cheaper to meal prep and make your own food from base ingredients. It doesn't need to be fancy. When I grew up poor (working class) this is how we made it work. By buying staples in bulk and buying other items opportunistically on sale. We didn't even own a car for most of that time - and the nearest grocery store was at least 3 miles away. It simply wasn't an option to exist off of junk food since it was too expensive.
Eating junk is easier and more convenient. It feels good in the immediate moment and is low-effort. It's the default, and the environment around you encourages it. Add in lack of any peer pressure and it being normalized by those around you and I believe that explains nearly everything. Lack of walkability certainly hurts, but it's not a primary driver anywhere I've lived.
Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
As you gain weight, your base metabolic rate also increases. Having fat means you inherently burn more calories, even if you don’t exercise any more. Take one person, say they eat 2000 calories to maintain bodyweight. If they start eating 2500 calories a day, they won’t gain 1lb of fat a week forever. As they gain fat, their body naturally burns more calories due to the increased body weight, and eventually a stable…
Fat does not raise your metabolism by a lot (relatively), and tiny changes in diet lead to massive swings in the equilibrium implied by basal metabolic rate formulas. In fact, some formulas do not include weight due to body fat. If you think about it, that fact touches on the idea that your natural weight is being maintained by another body system, one related to GLP-1. By the way... if humans had to count calories t…
Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cooking good food takes time. I can slap some pre-made burgers in a pan, throw some buns in a toaster and have a "meal" in 10 minutes. I can stop by fast food on the way and have the same meal (at only slightly more cost) in 5 minutes. I typically spend more than an hour in the kitchen cooking every day, and then there is half an hour clean up after my family is done eating. I eat much better and healthier food, but…
The average American spends five hours a day watching television. They could find the time if they wanted.
Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't dismiss any benefits. But so many people needing an anti-addiction drug to get off addictive foods IMO should raise alarm bells. The food producers need to be sanctioned. It's unsustainable for a whole nation to be on these expensive drugs. If you think an outside perspective is irrelevant I'm also not sure why you don't just move on and not comment.
Food is addictive because all animals including humans are by our very genes instructed to be addicted to it. Even the most healthy food is addictive. Just like water and air is addictive.
Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy
#336Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In my friend circle in Germany I don't even know one single person on this stuff. Most people don’t announce when they’re taking a new medication. GLP-1 drugs are popular in Germany, too. Not quite to the level of some other countries but a quick search shows about 1 in 12 individuals in Germany. Note that the US number quoted above was for households not individuals, so the numbers of households in Germany with at…
>I was wondering how you could get such a high impact overall. But it seems one in 6 households are on GLP-1 drugs in the US. I had the same question and did some back of the envelope math. The data I have seen says the average American eats 400-700 excess daily calories, and 3600 daily calories total. That means 10-20% excess per person. If everyone started eating the right amount overnight, grocery spend would drop…
I doubt that $ spend on the top end of caloric intake scales linearly with # of calories because of high caloric density foods.
If I spend $500 a month on groceries, lets say I need $400 to keep me alive and hygienic and the last $100 are going to be the candy and sodas that make me fat. So to give an example, reducing the caloric intake by 50% could be achieved by reducing spend by only 5% if there's very caloric foods making me fat.
Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
i considered it, but the gym was a much better option. for everyone who says "i've tried etc doesnt work" all i would say is, possibly if you dont have the time due to kids etc. Otherwise, get to it!
You can't out excercise a bad diet. You can hit the weights for 2 hours straight every day and eat those calories back with a single bad dietary choice (like a handful of peanuts or a single large cookie).
It's not like I live off McDonald's or anything. But I'll be overweight, change only my exercise habits, and notice big changes in body comp on the timescale of a couple months.
So clearly I'm out-exercising my evidently-bad diet.
IDK. Maybe it's different with this kind of functional exercise vs 30 minutes on the elliptical or whatever.
Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't out excercise a bad diet. You can hit the weights for 2 hours straight every day and eat those calories back with a single bad dietary choice (like a handful of peanuts or a single large cookie).
I must’ve missed when peanuts became a bad dietary choice. What’s the evidence for this?
Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Again I don’t really care”. Yet you keep coming back saying your way is the only way.
I'm convinced it is but you can't help people who don't want to be helped. People who want to be helped get out of the problem in a matter of months. Fix your shit, it's much better than taking pills for life to fix your obesity, which is arguably the very last link of a long chain of problems. Eat clean, exercise, understand that food is fuel, understand how the fuel is used, learn discipline, learn timing, learn to…
Why is that so bad?