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Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

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Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#781
post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this is the most repeated and most incorrect thing in the whole debate about food. More than a billion asians eat nutritious, cheap and calorie-balanced meals every day, unprocessed. Staples like legumes and rice don't cost much and are very nutritious. And supplementing with moderate amounts of seasonal fruits and vegetables and moderate animal protein is still very affordable and healthy. A kilo of (dry) legumes…

This is the kind of thing that looks good on paper but then breaks down when you try it. If you are seriously comparing the attractiveness of “legumes” (what legume and recipe is that?) with the attractiveness of Doritos I don’t know what to tell you. If you cook something that is nearly as attractive as ultra processed foods, the price skyrockets.

Grandparent:

> Processed foods are much cheaper per calorie than "healthy" options.

Attractive is a separate topic. Regardless of budget, for many people a chocolate cake will always be the most attractive food, regardless of cost. Doesn't mean we should have people living on chocolate cake diets.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American shopping experience is weird as well. There's a spectrum of supermarkets. Versus the UK, any US supermarket I've ever visited (I lived there for a couple of years) seemed to have far less fresh food, especially vegetables and fruit, but stuff in boxes was piled high. Then again, the UK vs. Spain or France is weird, by the same metric, they have even more fresh food than us in supermarkets, and much less…

Is that accounting for just how much bigger the US supermarkets are? The ones by me, ranging from cheap grocery stores, Walmart/Costco, through premium grocery stores, all have plenty of fresh food available. They absolutely have aisles and aisles of frozen, packaged, etc; but outside of like specialty tropical fruits, there's nothing reasonable you could walk in for and not find fresh or at least frozen w/ minimal p…

Those kinds of gigantic supermarkets do exist in Europe too, you're just not likely to see them as a tourist going around historical city centres.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this is the most repeated and most incorrect thing in the whole debate about food. More than a billion asians eat nutritious, cheap and calorie-balanced meals every day, unprocessed. Staples like legumes and rice don't cost much and are very nutritious. And supplementing with moderate amounts of seasonal fruits and vegetables and moderate animal protein is still very affordable and healthy. A kilo of (dry) legumes…

> More than a billion asians eat nutritious, cheap and calorie-balanced meals every day, unprocessed. [...] rice This is one of those reasons that the term 'processed' food is stupid. White rice is a very processed food - what is the removal of the bran and germ but processing? And many other 'processed' foods undergo processing with the same sort of ramifications for health. Legumes are also not complete proteins in…

PDCAAS is dumb when looking at multiple foods. E.g., beans and rice, when consumed together, are like, 0.99, depending on the ratio. That is, the sum is greater than the parts.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#784
post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all drive to where we’re going we do not walk or bike daily like most Europeans do. When in Europe for my ten day trips I always come back five to ten pounds lighter. Myself I count calories (1500 to 1800 a day for middle aged dude) and lol drive to do my daily five mile walks on a rail trail. Foods here if ur lazy and just buy whatever indeed are lasted with preservatives but you can put some effort into ur healt…

Because you are on vacation. That’s why you walk. Europe is much bigger than Amsterdam and Berlin. People drive everywhere here too. You should look up average steps per day by country and you will see the difference between the US and European countries is practically inconsequential, especially taking into account how few calories walking burns.

Do you have a source for that? I can only find crappy data and it doesn’t show what you are saying.

It also gives what seems like very low numbers across the board.

https://www.healthline.com/health/average-steps-per-day#occu...

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#785
post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alcohol is no joke. I never got this, other than seeing it's hard for others. So in that sense I agree. I've seen the effects on others and how hard it is to quit. That's no joke indeed. I just don't get why I find it quite easy to stop drinking for a year (or longer). While I haven't been able to stop for life, doing those yearly challenges is relatively easy, for me. If I'd be a normal person then that's whatever…

I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’m almost positive that the effects of alcohol are wildly different between the two of us. When I drink my brain spits out more reward chemicals than I know what to do with. It makes me feel extremely energetic and creative. It inflates my sense of self-worth and gives me confidence. It’s genuinely more enjoyable than sex. And that’s how it dug its claws in, because almost all of those go…

My experience is closer to yours, and I've had to learn to enjoy without alcohol, which has been a positive transformation. I still drink, but now I know when to stop. Some of my friends still drink too much and would probably benefit from GLP drugs even when they are not obese.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#786
post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that’s the dirty secret. once you start this drug you basically need to be on it for life. I mean, you _can_ get off it, but studies show the effects reverse pretty quickly. Crucially, if you decide to get off of the drug, you’ll likely end up in a worse position than you started. Why? Many Ozempic patients lose some bone density. That can be an issue as you age. So if you get off the drug, your food habits revert to…

I’ve been taking Zepbound for a year and a half now. I’m at 210lb/95kg, as a 6’2”/187cm man. A year and a half ago I weighed 318 pounds. Ozempic had substantial mental side effects, and was not great for me. Zepbound on the other hand has been a dream. As I lost weight I discovered a love for bike riding, with a lot of E-Bike assist at first, then progressively less assistance, and took my wheelchair user daughter on…

It sounds like you're making great changes to your health. Although BMI is a population metric and has its flaws it is accurate for the vast majority of people. The reason the weight component _seems_ low is that being overweight is so normalised. Most UFC fighters are in the normal weight range and are clearly more muscular than the average person. Society isn't suffering an over-abundance of buffness, it's just people are generally carrying lots of extra weight.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#787
post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I will be downvoted into oblivion for this but here goes: Im sorry to be crass but if someone makes lifestyle changes after taking drugs its 100% the drugs. Kind of tired of people taking anabolic steroids and then claiming it's a smaller part of their success or people being born rich talking about hard work whilst being on the golf course. Just be happy that we live in a time where drugs have been painstakin…

"Kind of tired of people taking anabolic steroids and then claiming it's a smaller part of their success" Sounds like you've never taken steroids brother, and with that mindset you shouldn't, because I'll tell you that no matter how much you shoot into your muscles, if you don't put in the work in the gym, there's no way you're going to get jacked.

That position does not appear to be supported by clinical evidence. [This study](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dar.12433) references several studies that show that taking low (in the context of gym users) doses of steriods and not exercising is more effective at building muscle mass than strength training and not taking steroids.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#788

I'm confused by the language... Within six months of starting a GLP-1 medication, households reduce grocery spending by an average of 5.3%. A household doesn't take Ozempic, a person does. Are they implying that if everybody in the household takes Ozempic, as a group they see a 5% reduction? Or, any one person in the household causes a 5% reduction for the group? The average household in the US is 2.5 people...

How can they measure individual grocery spending habits? People buy groceries for their whole household.

If the dataset includes household size you could limit the analysis to that subset. Alternatively you could focus on households with lower average basket sizes and hypothesise that those households have fewer adults. Obviously those measure aren't going to be anywhere near perfect but might be informative.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t seem to be working in the UK. We are nearly as bad as the US for obesity.

Indeed, I would caution pretty much everyone else in the world (except maybe Asians, but even then) to be circumspect when taunting Americans for their obesity rates. Germany, to use an example from this discussion, has been going up steadily for decades. Doesn't seem like this is a US-specfic problem or something that Europe has a good answer for.

Europe is just lagging behind. There's not that much difference between the US and Europe. Europe just has more history and culture which makes the changes less extreme.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American shopping experience is weird as well. There's a spectrum of supermarkets. Versus the UK, any US supermarket I've ever visited (I lived there for a couple of years) seemed to have far less fresh food, especially vegetables and fruit, but stuff in boxes was piled high. Then again, the UK vs. Spain or France is weird, by the same metric, they have even more fresh food than us in supermarkets, and much less…

Is that accounting for just how much bigger the US supermarkets are? The ones by me, ranging from cheap grocery stores, Walmart/Costco, through premium grocery stores, all have plenty of fresh food available. They absolutely have aisles and aisles of frozen, packaged, etc; but outside of like specialty tropical fruits, there's nothing reasonable you could walk in for and not find fresh or at least frozen w/ minimal p…

Food quality and options vary significantly with location in the US. In my city I have a Gucci market that gets super fresh veggies and fruit, along with imported cheeses, fish, very fresh meats, and other low processed food, but at a premium price point. There are also 2 other supermarkets to choose from. If you go an hour away there is one supermarket for the area that is "okay." Go to the next State over and the towns have 1/4 the fruit/veggie options and very limited meat options, all at a premium. The veggies are not fresh, no exotic fruits, and you might not find the cut of meat you are looking for.
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