Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More than 73% of American adults are overweight or obese

diabetes.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 217 posts

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

#81

Post by ransom1538 »

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 .

A Burger King Whopper with cheese, for example, has 710 calories. You would need to run 10km. Running and exercise is worthless. Don't eat the Whopper. Cancel the gym membership. Workouts cause calorie cravings - and most Americans will just eat processed garbage [ or unless you are super healthy - then you drink the "Mocha Mojo" from jamba juice 680 calories ].

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

#82

Post by linspace »

meowzero wrote: post #44
symlinkk wrote: post #12

Isn’t it strange how the only way to eat healthy food in America is to cook it yourself? Every fast food restaurant is unhealthy. Most sit down restaurants are unhealthy. I can pay someone to change my oil, I can pay someone to cut my grass, but for some reason cooking healthy food, the most essential service, is difficult to find. Why has our economy failed us in this sector specifically?

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.

For the same amount of taste healthy food is incredibly more expensive. I have eaten vegetables as good as any meat.

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

#83

Post by mkl »

zackkatz wrote: post #5
Clubber wrote: post #2

Using the BMI to gauge obeseness of a population is very lazy and disingenuous.

Yeah I came here to say the same thing. I’m 6’8” and if I were within the suggested range, I would be 227 pounds. I’ve been that weight and when I look at pictures of myself at that weight, I always think I look dangerously thin. BMI is a far too simple a measure to be helpful.

Your height puts you at the 99.986 percentile [1]. You are an extreme outlier, so can't possibly expect general metrics to fit well.

[1] https://tall.life/height-percentile-calculator-age-country/

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

#84

Post by inglor_cz »

tunesmith wrote: post #66

It's impressive, because it's as if in America, we've figured out how to design a system that gets 73% of us to agree to do whatever we are doing to be overweight. That's really something when you think of it in terms of a population that is otherwise divided and polarized.

Our firmware back from the ape era contains instructions to enjoy anything sweet and/or fatty.

Of course, this worked back in the Paleolithic, when you found something sweet and/or fatty several times a year.

It becomes a bad loophole for metabolic diseases when sweet and fatty things are everywhere and cheap.

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

#85

Post by ambivalents »

> A new report has also revealed that 19.3% of children and young people, aged between two and 19, had obesity, with 6.1% of kids identified as being severely obesity.

Small point but I found it interesting that 'obesity' is used here as a condition one can have, rather than be. Maybe that's the norm in science writing but first time I've seen it.

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

#86

Post by shinycode »

symlinkk wrote: post #12

Isn’t it strange how the only way to eat healthy food in America is to cook it yourself? Every fast food restaurant is unhealthy. Most sit down restaurants are unhealthy. I can pay someone to change my oil, I can pay someone to cut my grass, but for some reason cooking healthy food, the most essential service, is difficult to find. Why has our economy failed us in this sector specifically?

Because processed food yields the most profit. It’s cheap and quick to cook. It’s the economy of profit, with 8h of work and the same food budget you cook more and make more profit ...

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

#87

Post by konjin »

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…

>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.

The worst are chocolate bars, a serving is three squares. I don't know anyone who has just three squares, two year olds included.

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

#88

Post by misja111 »

I find it amazing how much effort and economic sacrifices we are willing to take to fight COVID, while at the same time, even now, the death toll because of unhealthy lifestyles is far greater. Why don't we put a similar effort into banning fast food, for instance? How can the USA allow companies to advertise that stuff when the bad consequences can be seen everywhere?

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

#89

Post by Barrin92 »

vecter wrote: post #62
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…

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.

It's always 'diet' in a first order sense. The interesting question is why all the mechanisms broke that prevent diets from looking like this at a social level.

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

#90

Post by teddyfrozevelt »

HuwytNashi_008 wrote: post #67
turing_complete wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Body positivity" is -- inadvertently for the most part -- insidious. Of course, don't make fun of overweight people for being overweight, don't be an asshole. However, making people people believe that they can eat whatever they want, can be obese and still healthy doesn't help at all. It might make you feel nice, but it is very destructive and unhelpful in the long run.

>It might make you feel nice, but it is very destructive and unhelpful in the long run. This is the decline of the West in a nutshell. Expect the obese to become a legally protected class and have our governments actively importing obese foreigners soon. I'm sure there's already some kind of quota giving them preferential employment opportunities.

what
Post reply on HN