Because it creates customers for the Pharmaceutical companies.
Well makes sense. We live in a closed system. Go ahead, jump off the planet. I dare you.
Why is the American diet so deadly?
71–80 of 196 posts
Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you live near a Chipotle? Burrito bowl with brown rice, black beans, and chicken for $8.50. I really don’t understand this “I don’t have a choice all fast food is bad” some are pretty healthy even if they are less tasty. I think the real discussion is how addictive the trash foods are.
It is generally over $12 after tax https://chipotlemenu.me/prices/
You are right. I go to college in a low cost of living area so it is $9 with tax.
Is Chipotle the same price as a McDonald meal in other areas? Or just mine.
Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the carbs.
With a side of car-centric city planning where shops are often far from where people live, so everyone just drive everywhere. Also, with a pinch of pedestrian-hostile design, where some places don't even have sidewalks.
Pretty much every neighborhood created between 1940 and 1990 has no sidewalks, and even after that the zoning is such that the only place you can walk is to other residences.
Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is generally over $12 after tax https://chipotlemenu.me/prices/
You are right. I go to college in a low cost of living area so it is $9 with tax. Is Chipotle the same price as a McDonald meal in other areas? Or just mine.
Not sure; I never go there. McD prices https://mcdonaldsprices.com/mcdonalds-prices/
Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would guess it's because the calorie density of Japanese ultra-processed food is vastly different than the US (having eaten both extensively and also former over wight guy who calorie counts daily) - that's actually basically the premise of the article. American ultra-processed food is hugely calorie dense and refined to be palatable.
I feel like this gets at the core issue which is food being too palatable and not satiating enough? At least on the obesity / calorie overconsumption front, I think it's just that simple. 'ultra-processed foods' or 'too many carbs' or whatever other explanations people come up for are just lossy proxies for the underlying issue which is 'foods that people tend to eat too much of'.
I would tend to agree, I mean, I had to eat a lot of healthy shit as a kid that I did not enjoy at all because my mum is a LSD, from the earth only, 60s era hippie. Healthy but not delicious. The other day I bought some packaged mac and cheese from the grocery store, it was on the big side but I didn't pay much attention, zoned out watching TV and ate the whole thing. After I was thinking, hmm, I don't feel well. Grabbed the mac and cheese box, I'd just consumed near 2k calories in a very manageable meal.
Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?
#76> 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.
It's the carbs.
I don't think it's carbs as such necessarily, but the glycemic index of the foods and their addictive qualities - i.e. how easy it is to way overdo the glucose spiking.
Yes, if you cut the carbs the problem is solved, but there are different kinds of carbs and some kinds in moderation can be eaten regularly without causing big glucose spikes and metabolic disease.
Personally I go for low carb to make it easier, but I still eat limited fruit and starchy vegetables and rice and beans. (Some kinds of fruit do spike glucose and I need to be careful with.)
Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?
#77I think a big part of the problem is that even prepared foods are packed with garbage. There are a lot of Americans who can't/don't cook mainly for time reasons, and instead eat lots of prepared foods, whether that be from restaurants, shops, or grocery stores. If you are not cooking it from scratch yourself, it is almost guaranteed to be brimming with fat, salt, and sugar. This is true regardless of the source. Whet…
Thankfully I have a Chipotle 15 minutes away, but most of the other stuff is shit.
Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?
#78I think a big part of the problem is that even prepared foods are packed with garbage. There are a lot of Americans who can't/don't cook mainly for time reasons, and instead eat lots of prepared foods, whether that be from restaurants, shops, or grocery stores. If you are not cooking it from scratch yourself, it is almost guaranteed to be brimming with fat, salt, and sugar. This is true regardless of the source. Whet…
[deleted]
Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?
#79I think a big part of the problem is that even prepared foods are packed with garbage. There are a lot of Americans who can't/don't cook mainly for time reasons, and instead eat lots of prepared foods, whether that be from restaurants, shops, or grocery stores. If you are not cooking it from scratch yourself, it is almost guaranteed to be brimming with fat, salt, and sugar. This is true regardless of the source. Whet…
Do you live near a Chipotle? Burrito bowl with brown rice, black beans, and chicken for $8.50. I really don’t understand this “I don’t have a choice all fast food is bad” some are pretty healthy even if they are less tasty. I think the real discussion is how addictive the trash foods are.
> I really don’t understand this “I don’t have a choice all fast food is bad” some are pretty healthy
I agree with you, but when you factor in cost, availability, familiarity, and other psychological factors, you end up with people instinctively choosing really unhealthy options.
There's an acculturation issue IMO. I grew up white trash, while my wife grew up wealthy in an Asian household. I cook lots of healthy food, and even wrote a nutrition app before they really existed and hosted it locally, tracked my food, have spent months where I cooked everything I ate from scratch so I knew there was no added salt (I've had hypertension since I was 16yo, even though I was an elite high school athlete with a six pack and everything).
Despite all this, when under time pressure, I will instinctively prep unhealthy food because that's what I was raised with. It's completely mindless. One less thing to stress about, pure muscle memory taking over.
EDIT: My wife, OTOH, will throw stuff together that is so insanely health and based on random vegetables lying around, because that's what she grew up learning to cook.
It's not even conscious. I don't want to prep that food. It just happens because the stress of devoting even one brain cell to planning something that I didn't spend nearly two decades surrounded by just adds to the stress, even after all the deprogramming I've done the two decades since.
Re: Why is the American diet so deadly?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the carbs.
Japan, Vietnam, France, Italy, etc. would beg to differ. But they also don’t spray their wheat with roundup so it’s probably better to stay away from carbs in the US just on that basis.
Italy has the highest incidence of Celiac disease, so it isn't completely benign. But yeah, the portion sizes matter more.