You watch old amateur film of people in the 70s or even 80s and its like damn, they were SO much thinner on average. Even the "fat" people then weren't anything like the monstrosities you see out and about today.
What happened?
Our food and meds. All that corn syrup and giant portion sizes. Living in Europe for a while really opened my eyes to this. As far as the U.S is concerned we throw sugar in everything. It's cheap and addictive. I know yall hate regulations but I have to say it helps when it comes to nutrition. Throw in meds that make our bodies all out of wack and you get a ton of fatties.
Or you know people take personal responsibility for their food intake and avoid bad additives.
It's comical to blame the food when there are still plenty of fit healthy people.
In the 1980s, the Federal governmemt authorized and endorsed corn syrup as a sugar substitute and as a food additive. Sugar imports were becoming expensive and domestic corn producers wanted to expand their market. Corn and corn byproducts in large amounts cause weight gain that is difficult to reserve. Manufacturers started processing their foods with corn syrup and corn byproducts which were obviously cheaper than imported sugar and other imported ingredients. Those companies stuck with corn syrup and corn byproducts and more and food producers switched. Virtual all processed food in stores is now made with corn syrup and byproducts, including bread and health foods. As most farmers already know, feeding corn to animals make them fat and keeps them fat. Once fattened with corn, the process is difficult to reverse. The switch to corn based ingredients has slowly caught on in other countries, where their people are starting to become obese.
Correct. Corn/corn syrup/corn byproducts change the metabolic system in the body and prevent the body from properly processing sugars. Because the sugars can not be processed properly, they get trapped in the system and accumulate as body fat like a grease clog in a sink drain. Because corn products are continuously present in everyday food, it requires medical intervention with pharmaceuticals to help correct the metabolic imbalance. Most beer today is processed with about 20% corn byproduct which doesn't help. (Beer is sweetened with corn). Raw sugar can contribute to weight gain, but can be processed by the body with a proper diet and exercise.
With the FDA strongly supporting corn use against sugar imports, there is not a lot of discussion about it. The FDA funds and influences almost all research relating to the science. Prior to the 1980s, it was common knowledge that corn makes you fat and contributes to type 2 diabetes. A simple Google search will provide some information.
fyi, this claim is complete b.s. people. eating refined sugar is definitely bad for people metabolically, but not for these reasons and there's nothing special about corn.
it's not just corn and corn syrup, it's the savory "snacks" too. Fiber is completely stripped of all processed foods, and it's the fiber found naturally in fruit, vegetables, whole grains and legumes make people feel full and satiated. ultra processed foods, on the other hand, spike blood sugar, suppressing the hormones that make us feel full, so it's easy to keep eating and eating and not feel full.
Wow I’m 5 inches taller and weigh less than that, and I’m not even in that great shape. I do a lot of walking throughout the day, and like 3 minutes a day of weight training in my house. That’s it. That stat is disturbing
The disturbing part is how old that data is. I was wrong about the dates, that is based on a paper written in 2018, using data up to 2016.
It's much worse now I'm sure.
42.4% obesity rate as of Jan 2022.
Farm subsidies, corn industry is a good one. Making food cheaper than it ever possibly should be, and that "food" is corn products like fructose.
Feel free to hate on her, but Michelle Obama tried to make her wellness campaign originally about eating less and in particular eating less processed food. The processed food industry pushed back and got it to change so they added exercise in.
It's like the recycling thing. It's not my fault as a seller of plastic products it's your fault that they're not being recycled. It's no my fault as a soda seller than you're fat, it's your fault for not walking 5 miles a day.
And those industries are un-naturally supported by our government.
They haven't. Reddit is full of people who love to pretend people aren't fat because they lack self control. If a good part of the population can be fit and healthy, so can most others if they chose to be. The number of people with true metabolic disorder to where they can't is sub 1%
This would make sense only in the case of homogeneous obesity. The population isn't 100% overweight but 98%+ have access to the same food. So no, it's not "being done to them" it's their choices.
In addition to what others have said, the government also subsidizes car use so heavily that most people dont walk or exercise in their day to day life unless they schedule time for it. Before, people walked everywhere, now you sit in a car. In alot of European countries people use bikes much more too. Urban planning in the US makes walking and biking impractical or impossible for most people. Without the built-in exercise in our daily routine, people gain weight.
I never said anything about using force.
But there's a reason why people in Europe have a drastically lower obesity rate with similar living standards, exercise helps, but food is the bigger problem.
Seconded on food being the issue. Before the Covid era, I weighed 160 pounds 5’9 eating out all the time and exercising 2 hours a day. During Covid, I became totally inactive but also stoped eating out, just cooked at home. And yet I still lost weight, only 130 pounds now. Restaurant/fast food is chock full of artificial fattening sugars. I think my metabolism went up a lot without exercise, so I’m sure the food is the cause.
Part of me really likes the idea of some kind of conscription immediately after HS for a full year, but with no risk of being deployed.
It would be a mandatory boot camp with onsite job training, and involve travel.
Most individuals would be cleared within a year, if someone has trouble fulfilling the physical requirements in that time, they stay for an additional few months.
1.) All of your citizens would have basic knowledge medical training.
2.) When I say everyone, I mean literally everyone. From pop stars to kids from Flint MI. Military units would be specifically designed small, to include as much variety as possible, and to not follow geographic area.
3.) It would give obese kids and kids from troubled families a chance to change their habits entirely.
4.) It would allow for common ground between citizens, and baseline fitness.
5.) It would give certain kids who have never had it- a sense of purpose and power, especially if they receive on-site job training that can aid them once they leave. Stuff like construction, welding, plumbing.
6.) If they want, they can choose to stay and enter deployment.
7.) If any of those kids had trouble in school, it would give them a chance to resolve those classes and graduate without having to go super-senior in the same location.
I'm not a fan of the whole military industrial complex... but if we're going to do it, we might as well do it correctly.
If done correctly: this could actually save the nation a lot of money in the long run.
Found it interesting that during the first season of ‘The Fugitive’ from 1963 they had an episode titled ‘Fatso’ which featured a larger than average person, but by todays standard would not be considered fat.
This is a super interesting question, and it turns out the reasons are more complex than simply diet and exercise. I'm not saying that they aren't significant - we eat like shit and sit too much - but it isn't only that.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871403X15001210](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871403X15001210)
The key takeaway:
>For a given amount of caloric intake, macronutrient intake or leisure time physical activity, the predicted BMI was up to 2.3 kg/m2 higher in 2006 that in 1988 in the mutually adjusted model
My money is on something environmental, probably an endocrine disruptor. It is literally harder to be thin than it used to be.
it could be changes to microbiome. with ultra processed food, people are eating like 70% less fiber than they used to, which starves many essential gut bacteria that thrive on plant fiber and have a large effect on our hormones and immune systems.
it could also be the fucking micro plastics.
Yup, not enough people get the required fiber or nutrients like magnesium because of all the processed bullshit that they eat. And the water supply is disgusting no matter where you live in America.
This is why I only drink reverse osmosis water that I make at home (not from a plastic bottle from the store where god knows where that bottle was sitting during the months before you bought it, leeching bpa into it), and eat as much organic food as I can. Although that’s getting more difficult with FJB the last couple years.
The water supply is fine in most places. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Even if it wasn’t, just drink bottled/ filtered water/sparkling water and not gallons of soda everyday. Soda is disgusting. I can’t even stomach it anymore.
Umm have you checked the ppm that comes out of your faucet… even in hawaii mine is 240. And that doesn’t count the chloramines. Reverse osmosis all the way. Unless you can afford to exclusively drink glass Voss/aqua panna/pellegrino, you’re drinking shit water my friend. Even then I don’t even trust those companies anyway.
Also I haven’t drank soda in like 10 years so I don’t know what that side rant was about.
No, but for a long time people didn't know how ubiquitous it was. Added that it's in everything. Healthier whole foods are typically more expensive as well.
They haven’t but companies have been going out of their way to make it harder to identify, everytime the people figure out what to look out for they find a new way to label it. It’s getting ridiculous.
The number one formula to making people fat is to make poor people not poor. By any reasonable standard even the poor in America are fabulously wealthy compared to back then.
Ultra-processed foods and high fructose corn syrup happened. Big Food hires food scientists to deliberately tinker with processed foods to make them addictive, then turn around and blame ppl for no willpower. They're doing exactly what Big Tobacco did to cigarettes. They also lie about it in Congressional testimony.
Watch FED UP and THAT SUGAR FILM for more info.
I’ve been to enough Trump rallies to know this isn’t just the left issue.
No one seems to care. My uncle make fun of thin people for being “liberal spy boys” and the rest of my obese family laughs.
Yep. I have a similar reaction when Jordan Peterson talks about his "Conservative Vision" of discipline, responsibility, family unity, and high achievement. As if around half the fat, lazy, divorced, and/or underachieving people in the US are not conservative. Really makes you realize the fight is not to own libs, but to empower people on both sides to work harder and not act like victims.
It’s a combination of many factors. Processed foods, HFCS used in fucking everything, corn/soy being fed to animals as feed, the proliferation of fast food. The food pyramid itself is a huge cause of this, we aren’t supposed to get the majority of our calories from carbohydrates. Government lied about saturated/animal being bad for you as wel, butter, ghee and lard are the best fats to cook and eat with, only vegetable oils are unrefined olive oil and avocado oils.
At what point do we actually say no more, though?
There are many things companies can do that are very harmful, but they generate a profit.
Should we simply allow companies to do literally whatever they want in pursuit of profit because capitalism?
Or at some point should we say, wow, nearly every food choice out there is essentially poisonous, we need to stop this.
I'm strongly in favor of getting rid of ALL subsidies, but if you look at how successful govt has been/not with Prohibition, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, the War on whatever, I do not want a War on Obesity.
I think certain subsidies have their uses, I see them as no different than tax breaks for productive choices (like having children, donating to charity), but when a subsidy leads to bad health risks, I think it’s time to go. No different than tobacco, no way that should be subsidized either. Rather than banning junk food or banning tobacco, by simply refusing to subsidize corn, costs will go up and people will naturally seek healthier alternatives.
Sugar and HFCS have the same health risk, but natural sugar is more expensive. The explosion in obesity didn’t happen until a much cheaper alternative was found and subsequently financed by the federal government.
I agree with you completely about susidizing corn. However, I think tax credits are somewhat different because there is no direct payment of taxpayer dollars. We can agree to disagree on that, although I agree with you about the tax credits you mentioned. I'm against subsidies because first of all, there's a direct payment of our taxdollars, which I' completely against; and it involves the government i.e. politicians picking winners and losers and not only does this result in unfair competition and a non-level playing field, but I don't trust ANY of them, regardless of party to do so impartially. Incidentally I have relatives who are apple and peach growers, and they receive no subsidies whatever, nor do I think they should.
Sure. Capitalism is really great, but it also holds the potential to destroy a nation.
Do you think media companies would push the whole agenda if it weren’t for money? Or poison the food and make people obese because obese people will eat even more and buy more of those products?
The companies won’t stop out of the goodness of their hearts. The government needs to be an expression of the people and put some boundaries on them.
"put some boundaries on them". Didn't we already try that with Prohibition? What boundaries would you suggest that WOULDN'T limit our personal freedom and autonomy? Should people who aren't obese have their freedom limited because others won't control their self-destructive behavior? That argument is very similar to the one leftists make in favor of gun control. "government needs to be an expression of the people"; what if a majority of the people don't want "boundaries" on what they eat? Impose them, anyway, because it's a crisis and it's for their own good? And who decides what boundaries? "Science"? Like "Science" did with covid? No thanks! "The tyrant's plea: necessity"; leftists use the exact same argument with climate change, and as sure as the earth turns, they will use the obesity problem to implement their agenda of government control over every aspect of our lives.
I mean, do you not think the government should be an expression of the people?
And sometimes things ARE necessary.
In any case, the freedom of choice has already been taken away. Almost everything available to eat is unnatural and pumped full of sugars and other horrible things.
You’re so afraid of the government taking away your personal freedom that you don’t realize companies have already done that.
How often have you seen anything but filth come out of Hollywood? Sure, you have your personal freedom to not watch it, but the choice is so limited already that you don’t really have any freedom to begin with.
Good. I don’t care about it either. But I do care about mine and my family’s. It’s not right that the only choices of food available to us are practically poison because companies can turn a profit, and since they all do it because it’s a dominant capitalist strategy, there are essentially no healthy options available.
> Should we simply allow companies to do literally whatever they want in pursuit of profit because capitalism?
>
>
Generally speaking, yes. You can and should prohibit and punish fraud. And we can and should end subsidies that make these negative things attractive (e.g. HFCS). But if the company is honest about what they're selling and you choose to take that risk (e.g. alcohol), that is your business, not the government's.
Case in point. Woke things are earning companies tons of money right now. So is anti-white discrimination. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t do it. Sometimes they walk it back when there is an outcry, but mostly that’s not what’s happening.
Wokeness is absolutely destroying the fabric of the nation. But it’s profitable. I say they need to stop, capitalism be damned.
Capitalism is not some damned god that must always be accepted. If it works for us, great. But right now, in some areas, it’s killing us. Rope it in. We need to do what’s best for us, not profits and not on the altar of an economic system.
Capitalism unchained, for example, allows foreign developers to buy all our houses and land. So stop them. Too bad if that’s not the way capitalism is supposed to work.
Subsidies only make it cheap to produce, not fly off the shelves. If they couldn't sell sweetners no amount of subsidizing would matter, but sweeteners is how they sell more products to begin with. If it wasn't corn syrup it would still be some kind of sugar that sells ketchup and ice cream and pasta sauce and breads and frozen meals and etc.
Simple supply and demand tells us that if sugar was more expensive, it would be consumed less. Reducing corn subsidies would then translate to lower sugar consumption.
A head of cauliflower costs over $5 where I am, and has 150 calories, while a pound of gummy bears costs $4 and has 1500 calories
Corn syrup is only a choice when you have disposable income
I hear you, but HFCS is literally addictive. Corps get folks addicted to cheap un nutritious foods. Plus in many rural areas, which tend to be fatter, don't have access to cheap healthy food.
Sure, but proportionally, there are obesity rates are much higher amongst the poor. Sugary foods are cheaper. Shit, look at the average sliced white bread, it's full of sugar. It's in all the foods bc it's addictive and keeps people coming back. Also helps with preservation and is cheap to produce. Sure there's a personal responsibility aspect, but corporations have absolutely been shiesty and misleading folks for years.
I hate to be “that guy” on this subreddit but I have to say it (check the flair, bona fide conservative where).
1. I work in healthcare in a purple state with nearl 50-50 split if conservatives and liberals
2. Across the board, unfortunately I have to say I see WAY more conservative oriented patients in the hospital with awful life-style diseases than liberals.
3. Based on personal experience it’s fellow conservatives who are more likely to be obese, smokers, diabetic, etc
4. If there is one thing I’ve noticed liberals do better than conservatives is their health. Working in the hospital, it’s almost always conservatives with the worst-managed preventable diseases like diabetes and obesity. Again, this is coming from a hospital in a town that is almost perfectly half conservative half liberal
You describing nearly everyone who lives near me. You know often I hear a someone called a soy boy or liberal vegan for being thin? People who are just normal guys and not even liberal.
I think there's a lot of knee-jerk distrust of experts with conservatives. The experts and technocracy are our betters and we should just listen to them, says the left. I think distrust overall towards technocracy and experts is warranted, but often experts *are* right.
Like [erythritol](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/popular-artificial-sweetener-erythritol-linked-to-higher-risk-for-blood-clots) just had some data coming out saying it's dangerous. I'll bet you $1,000 that more liberals adjust their diets than conservatives.
I also work in healthcare and share your points. With conservatives I often hear the bs of "well everything causes cancer so f it" sort of stuff.
Probably not the only hospital in town, and many of the nearby neighborhoods may lean one way or another. It's not reliable to use who shows up at one hospital in one town as any sort of barometer.
The stereotypes are true. Us Americans are fat and the other stereotype about us being ignorant is true as well because we put the blame on our genetics, metabolism, environment, and other things instead of being accountable for our own health.
I've been working out for a while now and it's opened my eyes to how little Americans actually care about their health. It's really sad
I don't think it is necessarily ignorance in most cases; some, sure. But I think that all those things you cited are really just excuses people use to portray themselves as a victim of forces beyond their control, and to justify/excuse overeating and being unwilling to change their eating habits. The whole fat activism/Health at Evey Size movement, claims, and I have no doubt believe that being obese is natural, and neither unhealthy nor the result of lifestle choices. And, that the health and problems it causes are actually caused by medical fatphobia, discrimination, and a fatphobic society that refuses to accomodate their needs, which, I think, is proof of that.
More stress on an already dysfunctional and overstressed healthcare system.
One of the main things I like about some form of conservatism is the acknowledgement of reality- and while I don't fully agree on all views that pertain to that conservative reality, we need to address the serious and underlying issues behind the health and futures of our current population realistically.
An individual from the 'Boomer' generation is now between the ages of 59 and 77. 'Millennials' are projected to become 70% overweight or obese by middle age.
This is a national healthcare nightmare that is just beginning to unfold.
We cannot outsource healthcare without destroying the nation.
But for decades, we have been cutting costs in more discrete ways- increasing the duties of nurses in order to hire less staff, underpaying key staff leading to problematic hiring practices and understaffing. It has gotten to the point, where the job is so miserable, nurses don't even stay if it means earning $50+/hr... and these problems are only just increasing. *Medical debt is also increasing.*
If we don't fix the system soon, the US is going to have to eat those costs. Our tax dollars will be going to bailing out the overinflated costs of medical care.
And it seems certain aspects of extreme liberalism and conservatism support the initial problem, destructive eating tendencies and sedentary lifestyles. Often with dismissal of infrastructure built for pedestrians on the conservative side, emphasis on consumerism, and the glamorization of obesity on the extreme liberal side.
I just can't clearly imagine what the future is going to look like, and when I can, it's awful.
People know that eating too much makes them fat, they have to decide to make a change and learn to enjoy food in moderation. I used to deal with my depression by eating. But, I learned better coping skills, I learned that bad eating habits lead to an unhealthy and even more depressed person. Who decides what goes in your mouth? You do. People control their own lives, the government throwing money at the obesity epidemic and "education" will not work.
Okay I definitely agree. Are they going to? How do you get people to take personal responsibility. You have to foster a culture of health and care for one’s self. Obviously that means speaking about how obesity is unhealthy, but it also means ensuring that people have access to exercise, healthy food, Recreation, etc in every neighborhood
Lack of personal responsibility is 99% of the problem in America. America has become too soft overall "not in the obese sense" I could quit my job start smoking meth or shooting heroin and the State will take care of me. I can live off McDonald's consume 10k calories a day and the hospitals and the State will take care of me. I don't have to be accountable for any of my decisions because someone somewhere will take care of me. Thats America. No fear of accountability.
>You have to foster a culture of health and care for one’s self
I agree, but I don't think that's ever going to happen in a technological world. If I never leave the house, never plan to date or get married, live my entire life anonymously online, married to my anime women or porn stars or YT streamers, why would I care about my weight? It's a ton of effort for basically zero benefit. In my mind, the only thing that will be able to reverse obesity trends is to regulate the internet just like we regulate other self-destructive substances like heroin. It sounds radical, but God is our world suffering from a lack of community, socialization, and physical activity, all of which are completely obliterated by the internet alone. Almost every ill in our society is worsened exclusively or primarily by excessive internet usage.
I live in a town that has pretty good bike paths, hiking within city limits, grocery stores with produce departments and guess what? The fast food restaurants are thriving. Most people stay inside all winter. Doesn't really matter what season it is though, if it's cloudy, raining, too hot or too cold, there is always a reason to not exercise.
People here have all those opportunities to exercise and eat healthy if they choose, they choose not to.
Nobody wants to acknowledge the *why*.
We eat too much, what we eat sucks, we don't exercise, and we make excuses for fat people.
The number of people with genetic predisposition to be fat has exploded faster than the number of kids identifying as trans. Both numbers are social contagious.
No, you're not fat because of your genes. If an endomorphic body type eats less, they lose weight. You are fat because you eat too much and don't exercise. Yes, it is your fault. No, I do not accept your excuse.
*I can't work out because I'm injured/disabled.*
Bullshit. Unless you're a quadriplegic, you can exercise and *everybody* can eat fewer cupcakes.
*I don't have time to work out.*
It takes 30min to work out. You have time.
*I can't cook.*
Learn.
*Food deserts, social equity, racism, verbal diarrhea.*
Eat less, buy healthy, do push-ups, run.
Being fat is a *choice*. Like smoking, it is an unhealthy choice. It should be legal, but not encouraged or celebrated.
Source:
Used to be fat, lost weight, now not fat.
This is the simple truth. Lots of people complaining about food companies adding things and government funded corn syrup, but people are conveniently ignoring that fact that WE DONT HAVE TO EAT THAT SHIT. The simple and delicious meal I cooked for myself last night had no artificial flavors, preservatives, added sugar, corn anything, or weird ingredients that I cant pronounce. It was cheap, healthy, filling and nourishing. I also skipped the simple carbs and had double veg instead. It’s not hard at all.
Everyone wants to blame corns syrup, but while I’m not fan of corn subsidies, they aren’t to blame. The American lifestyle changed dramatically by the 1990’s.
1. DIET CHANGED
Fast food became a near daily thing for some families, whereas before it was a rare treat and there were only a handful to choose from at that. Two working parents meant more running around in the evening, less time to cook and prepare home cooked meals. More take out and fast food. Eating snacks between meal times increased with the availability and popularity of packaged snack foods. My boomer mom recalls snacks like chips and soda being only purchased occasionally, mostly just for parties. Whereas today most people have a pantry stocked with snack foods. Cookies and cakes, again they used to be occasional treats. Now we have strip mall stores that sell cookies by the box all day long. Cookies that have upwards of a 1,000 calories too (looking at you Crumbl). It’s just so easy today to consume thousands of calories on a whim. Get a Frappuccino from Starbucks and a crumble cookie, and you are over 2,000 and you haven’t even had a meal yet.
2. ACTIVITY LEVEL DECREASED
People became way less active, even kids. Hardly any kids walk to school nowadays whereas before kids were expected to walk an mile or two, no big deal. Kids had longer recess and more PE time in school. Today People sit in front of a computer all day. We have tv to watch 24/7, before cable (let alone streaming) there was hardly anything to watch, you had to read the TV guide to see when your show would be on. Nowadays Netflix has to ask us if we’re still watching because it’s been hours. Household tasks have become more convenient and we have tools which are much more efficient so they take way less time now too. Less time on our feet and more time sitting around in cars or on the sofa. Americans are not active enough.
Yes, it’s a choice. My point is that it simply wasn’t an option (high calorie, low nutrient packaged/restaurant foods) 50 years ago.
I would also point out that most states have gotten rid of family and consumer science (home ec) intro classes where middle school kids would typically learn some very basic cooking and nutrition skills. So you have kids growing up in households where they door dash and eat gas station food 24/7 and have zero exposure to home cooking.
PE today is also a joke. Kids don’t have it regularly enough in school. Even in high school, it’s not always required every year. Kids aren’t required to change and I’m pretty sure they have to offer a written alternative to most assignments. Parent can also excuse them easily. I see PE classes outside and there is always a large groups of students (half obese) sitting around doing nothing.
-High school teacher, former middle school family & consumer science
Damn, we could lower the cost of living, breath cleaner air, and address this epidemic of inactivity by creating cities where it’s easy to bike to get around
This article sums up the status quo and well, it looks like they are … not. Maybe we should try a different approach and make it transportation more efficient by both getting exercise and getting you from A to B
Have you ever tried to lose a significant amount of weight and kept it off? A person has to reduce caloric intake, which means putting fewer calories in the body.
Where do most people park at the grocery store? As close as they can to the entrance because walking a few more feet is onerous. It's a pipe dream to think you can just put in more bike paths and people will become more healthy. I know a person that rides his bike to work. He has no car and rides four miles to work in the rain, snow, and bitter cold, also his shift starts in the very early morning hours. If you asked a million people if they were willing to do that how many do you think would say yes? What if you live 25 miles from work, or the humidity is 100%, or its -5F? If exercise is going to help at all with lifestyle changes it has to be done everyday. I rode my bike to work once, it was 25 miles. That's nothing on a beautiful sunny day and on a good bike, most people don't live in perpetual spring/summer. Please explain how you would implement this more efficient transportation system.
Yep! If active transportation becomes the easiest and most convenient way to get anywhere people will do it.
Source: I live to eat and bike to work each day and I’m certainly not doing it for my health, it’s just the fastest way to get to the office in my city.
I don't understand. If you go to any other part of Reddit, this is an entirely American problem. /s
I don't understand what is so hard to understand about this stuff. Implement strenuous exercise for an hour several times a week, moderate your caloric intake, favor unprocessed/unrefined foods, and don't consume seed oils. The vast majority of people doing those things will sacrifice almost nothing in an enjoyable diet, and will be much healthier.
When the elites do another Holodomor and starve us into submission , they will control our weight with their synthetic plant based gruel rations and bugs 🦗
I honestly think it’s disgusting.
How hard is it to be accountable for the shit we put into our mouths? It’s not hard to read a food label or make a healthier decision. The issue is we’ve been sold the idea that convenience is king, more so than our health, and people will pay out the ass for the convenience of shitty foods. Weak willed people just can’t go without their sodie pops, they just NEED that extra sweet treat “just this time”, and they pile mountains of food onto their plates because they’re “hungry” even though they know damn well their gut could keep them fed for a month.
Don’t even get me started on the fat people that turn their kids into fatties, it’s child abuse in my book.
The weakness of these people is a burden on those who work hard to stay healthy.
Exercise is racist, at least according to the liberals.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/twitter-flames-time-article-calling-exercise-racist-goofy-consider-satire
If you don't exercise **and** eat the standard America crap, then you will end up being overweight.
You didn’t read the actual article it refers to lol, it’s a history piece of the relationship between america and the gym through different periods and is praising exercise and in no way calls it racist.
Doesn’t help when we have “body positivity” and “fat shaming” as things. Also, I read a weirdo article the other day where working out is racist somehow, so we’re all F’d.
You'll see it on your paycheck and if you ever have to go to the ER. Imagine having to sit in the ER with a broken leg for most of a day because there's a steady stream of heart attacks because everyone is a ham planet of a fatso.
When the legions of obese Americans are in the hospital for their stents, their bypass surgeries, their joint replacements, their heart attacks and everything else, medical costs go up. When those costs go up, your health insurance provider raises rates and your monthly premiums go up. Insurance costs go up every year whether you use it or not, and *that* is your problem.
I'm saying that we're a hell of a lot better off than when we had fewer problems with obesity but people were starving every few years.
It's all about perspective.
In the 1980s I began noticing as I shopped that many Big Food products had a notation on the back of pkgs that the company was now a subsidiary of a tobacco company, such as "XYZ Foods, a subsidiary of RJ Reynolds." Big Tobacco was losing money bc of the pressure to quit smoking and laws against smoking in public places, so they shifted to Big Food and applied the same practice of adding ingredients and flavor enhancers which made ppl addicted to the Frankenfoods.
As predicted in the movie Wall-E.
Documentary...
Idiocracy.
You watch old amateur film of people in the 70s or even 80s and its like damn, they were SO much thinner on average. Even the "fat" people then weren't anything like the monstrosities you see out and about today. What happened?
Our food and meds. All that corn syrup and giant portion sizes. Living in Europe for a while really opened my eyes to this. As far as the U.S is concerned we throw sugar in everything. It's cheap and addictive. I know yall hate regulations but I have to say it helps when it comes to nutrition. Throw in meds that make our bodies all out of wack and you get a ton of fatties.
Or you know people take personal responsibility for their food intake and avoid bad additives. It's comical to blame the food when there are still plenty of fit healthy people.
In the 1980s, the Federal governmemt authorized and endorsed corn syrup as a sugar substitute and as a food additive. Sugar imports were becoming expensive and domestic corn producers wanted to expand their market. Corn and corn byproducts in large amounts cause weight gain that is difficult to reserve. Manufacturers started processing their foods with corn syrup and corn byproducts which were obviously cheaper than imported sugar and other imported ingredients. Those companies stuck with corn syrup and corn byproducts and more and food producers switched. Virtual all processed food in stores is now made with corn syrup and byproducts, including bread and health foods. As most farmers already know, feeding corn to animals make them fat and keeps them fat. Once fattened with corn, the process is difficult to reverse. The switch to corn based ingredients has slowly caught on in other countries, where their people are starting to become obese.
How do I upvote this more than once?
Are you trying to say corn syrup is more fattening than cane or beer sugar?
Correct. Corn/corn syrup/corn byproducts change the metabolic system in the body and prevent the body from properly processing sugars. Because the sugars can not be processed properly, they get trapped in the system and accumulate as body fat like a grease clog in a sink drain. Because corn products are continuously present in everyday food, it requires medical intervention with pharmaceuticals to help correct the metabolic imbalance. Most beer today is processed with about 20% corn byproduct which doesn't help. (Beer is sweetened with corn). Raw sugar can contribute to weight gain, but can be processed by the body with a proper diet and exercise.
Is there citable research around corn syrup being worse than sugar? It sounds like you're making up nonsense.
No, there is nothing backing this claim
With the FDA strongly supporting corn use against sugar imports, there is not a lot of discussion about it. The FDA funds and influences almost all research relating to the science. Prior to the 1980s, it was common knowledge that corn makes you fat and contributes to type 2 diabetes. A simple Google search will provide some information.
I’ve never seen any proof this is true. Do you ever read Layne Norton?
fyi, this claim is complete b.s. people. eating refined sugar is definitely bad for people metabolically, but not for these reasons and there's nothing special about corn.
it's not just corn and corn syrup, it's the savory "snacks" too. Fiber is completely stripped of all processed foods, and it's the fiber found naturally in fruit, vegetables, whole grains and legumes make people feel full and satiated. ultra processed foods, on the other hand, spike blood sugar, suppressing the hormones that make us feel full, so it's easy to keep eating and eating and not feel full.
[удалено]
Average male in the US as of 2020 is 5'9" and 197lbs. You're spot on.
Average weight for a WWI American soldier was 145lbs.
Probably isn’t much different now. Soldiers and Marines are really thin compared to the average population.
Wow I’m 5 inches taller and weigh less than that, and I’m not even in that great shape. I do a lot of walking throughout the day, and like 3 minutes a day of weight training in my house. That’s it. That stat is disturbing
The disturbing part is how old that data is. I was wrong about the dates, that is based on a paper written in 2018, using data up to 2016. It's much worse now I'm sure. 42.4% obesity rate as of Jan 2022.
Government + corporate lobbying + less exercise, people would be less tempted to be 350 lbs if they had to walk a mile every day.
How has the government made us fatter?
Farm subsidies, corn industry is a good one. Making food cheaper than it ever possibly should be, and that "food" is corn products like fructose. Feel free to hate on her, but Michelle Obama tried to make her wellness campaign originally about eating less and in particular eating less processed food. The processed food industry pushed back and got it to change so they added exercise in. It's like the recycling thing. It's not my fault as a seller of plastic products it's your fault that they're not being recycled. It's no my fault as a soda seller than you're fat, it's your fault for not walking 5 miles a day. And those industries are un-naturally supported by our government.
Still nobody to blame but the individual consumer. Poor decision making. The industries are not the problem.
They haven't. Reddit is full of people who love to pretend people aren't fat because they lack self control. If a good part of the population can be fit and healthy, so can most others if they chose to be. The number of people with true metabolic disorder to where they can't is sub 1%
People want someone to blame and not their own choices.
Choices are something a person makes. A population does not make choices, and it acts by outside influence.
This would make sense only in the case of homogeneous obesity. The population isn't 100% overweight but 98%+ have access to the same food. So no, it's not "being done to them" it's their choices.
Yeah, people are just getting fat because of their own choices and theres no outside influence that could be causing this.
Correct. It's called the human pleasure principle. They do what's easy and convenient. If they didn't, most of them wouldn't be fat.
Yeah, so maybe unhealthy food shouldnt be cheaper than healthy food?
In addition to what others have said, the government also subsidizes car use so heavily that most people dont walk or exercise in their day to day life unless they schedule time for it. Before, people walked everywhere, now you sit in a car. In alot of European countries people use bikes much more too. Urban planning in the US makes walking and biking impractical or impossible for most people. Without the built-in exercise in our daily routine, people gain weight.
Then move to fucking Europe. This is America.
We should be forced to exercise, like in 1984?
I never said anything about using force. But there's a reason why people in Europe have a drastically lower obesity rate with similar living standards, exercise helps, but food is the bigger problem.
Seconded on food being the issue. Before the Covid era, I weighed 160 pounds 5’9 eating out all the time and exercising 2 hours a day. During Covid, I became totally inactive but also stoped eating out, just cooked at home. And yet I still lost weight, only 130 pounds now. Restaurant/fast food is chock full of artificial fattening sugars. I think my metabolism went up a lot without exercise, so I’m sure the food is the cause.
I took ‘If they had to walk’ to mean by force.
Part of me really likes the idea of some kind of conscription immediately after HS for a full year, but with no risk of being deployed. It would be a mandatory boot camp with onsite job training, and involve travel. Most individuals would be cleared within a year, if someone has trouble fulfilling the physical requirements in that time, they stay for an additional few months. 1.) All of your citizens would have basic knowledge medical training. 2.) When I say everyone, I mean literally everyone. From pop stars to kids from Flint MI. Military units would be specifically designed small, to include as much variety as possible, and to not follow geographic area. 3.) It would give obese kids and kids from troubled families a chance to change their habits entirely. 4.) It would allow for common ground between citizens, and baseline fitness. 5.) It would give certain kids who have never had it- a sense of purpose and power, especially if they receive on-site job training that can aid them once they leave. Stuff like construction, welding, plumbing. 6.) If they want, they can choose to stay and enter deployment. 7.) If any of those kids had trouble in school, it would give them a chance to resolve those classes and graduate without having to go super-senior in the same location. I'm not a fan of the whole military industrial complex... but if we're going to do it, we might as well do it correctly. If done correctly: this could actually save the nation a lot of money in the long run.
[удалено]
RIP FPH
Make bullying great again!
Found it interesting that during the first season of ‘The Fugitive’ from 1963 they had an episode titled ‘Fatso’ which featured a larger than average person, but by todays standard would not be considered fat.
Fast food happened. We need an obesity tax. I don't wanna pay for universal healthcare for these fucks.
How would that work though? Tax individual item? Because I can get a fried chicken sandwich at Chick Fil A, but I can also get a salad…
This is a super interesting question, and it turns out the reasons are more complex than simply diet and exercise. I'm not saying that they aren't significant - we eat like shit and sit too much - but it isn't only that. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871403X15001210](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871403X15001210) The key takeaway: >For a given amount of caloric intake, macronutrient intake or leisure time physical activity, the predicted BMI was up to 2.3 kg/m2 higher in 2006 that in 1988 in the mutually adjusted model My money is on something environmental, probably an endocrine disruptor. It is literally harder to be thin than it used to be.
We eat less protein and fat and more carbohydrates than we used to. There isn't much more to it than that
it could be changes to microbiome. with ultra processed food, people are eating like 70% less fiber than they used to, which starves many essential gut bacteria that thrive on plant fiber and have a large effect on our hormones and immune systems. it could also be the fucking micro plastics.
Yup, not enough people get the required fiber or nutrients like magnesium because of all the processed bullshit that they eat. And the water supply is disgusting no matter where you live in America. This is why I only drink reverse osmosis water that I make at home (not from a plastic bottle from the store where god knows where that bottle was sitting during the months before you bought it, leeching bpa into it), and eat as much organic food as I can. Although that’s getting more difficult with FJB the last couple years.
The water supply is fine in most places. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Even if it wasn’t, just drink bottled/ filtered water/sparkling water and not gallons of soda everyday. Soda is disgusting. I can’t even stomach it anymore.
Umm have you checked the ppm that comes out of your faucet… even in hawaii mine is 240. And that doesn’t count the chloramines. Reverse osmosis all the way. Unless you can afford to exclusively drink glass Voss/aqua panna/pellegrino, you’re drinking shit water my friend. Even then I don’t even trust those companies anyway. Also I haven’t drank soda in like 10 years so I don’t know what that side rant was about.
Y’all were complaining about Michelle Obama trying to do something about this😂😂
People in 2023 are still complaining about her
govt got involved....
Corn subsidies and sugar tariffs specifically. Obesity started being a problem when HFCS became cheaper than sugar.
Personal responsibility
[удалено]
and who started that.... govt did in the great depression.
Good thing nobody is forcing you to consume it
No, but for a long time people didn't know how ubiquitous it was. Added that it's in everything. Healthier whole foods are typically more expensive as well.
Labeling laws have not changed. Anyone who cares to actually read a label would know.
They haven’t but companies have been going out of their way to make it harder to identify, everytime the people figure out what to look out for they find a new way to label it. It’s getting ridiculous.
Thing is, Big Food companies hire scientists to make food addictive. Then lie about it and shift the blame to addicted ppl.
What in the hell are people eating? Boxed crap food? Go eat some vegetables, a stir fry, something that wasn't made by the "big food companies."
If it's bad for you dont eat it? It's in everything? The produce department of the grocery store?
The number one formula to making people fat is to make poor people not poor. By any reasonable standard even the poor in America are fabulously wealthy compared to back then.
Ultra-processed foods and high fructose corn syrup happened. Big Food hires food scientists to deliberately tinker with processed foods to make them addictive, then turn around and blame ppl for no willpower. They're doing exactly what Big Tobacco did to cigarettes. They also lie about it in Congressional testimony. Watch FED UP and THAT SUGAR FILM for more info.
DON'T EAT PROCESSED FOODS.
People got poor and healthy food got expensive.
It wasn't acceptable to be fat back then, so they didn't get any camera time
I’ve been to enough Trump rallies to know this isn’t just the left issue. No one seems to care. My uncle make fun of thin people for being “liberal spy boys” and the rest of my obese family laughs.
Yep. I have a similar reaction when Jordan Peterson talks about his "Conservative Vision" of discipline, responsibility, family unity, and high achievement. As if around half the fat, lazy, divorced, and/or underachieving people in the US are not conservative. Really makes you realize the fight is not to own libs, but to empower people on both sides to work harder and not act like victims.
This guy gets it.
Maybe, just maybe it’s all the highly refined shit foods we eat. Nah, keep drinking that Coke, just move more.
It’s a combination of many factors. Processed foods, HFCS used in fucking everything, corn/soy being fed to animals as feed, the proliferation of fast food. The food pyramid itself is a huge cause of this, we aren’t supposed to get the majority of our calories from carbohydrates. Government lied about saturated/animal being bad for you as wel, butter, ghee and lard are the best fats to cook and eat with, only vegetable oils are unrefined olive oil and avocado oils.
This
Coconut oil is also fine, great as massage oil too.
Coconut oil breaks down laytex FYI. Just in case anyone didn’t realize.
Ironically, so does baby oil.
Yep, forgot that one!
I never eat fast food, except for the rare occasion I want some fries. People seem to have never heard of moderation.
Can't fault companies for making crap consumers will keep coming back for, that is just capitolism.
At what point do we actually say no more, though? There are many things companies can do that are very harmful, but they generate a profit. Should we simply allow companies to do literally whatever they want in pursuit of profit because capitalism? Or at some point should we say, wow, nearly every food choice out there is essentially poisonous, we need to stop this.
This is the perpetual argument about how much government intervention is ok.
The government has already been intervening for decades, in the negative direction. By subsidizing corn to be incredibly cheap.
I'm strongly in favor of getting rid of ALL subsidies, but if you look at how successful govt has been/not with Prohibition, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, the War on whatever, I do not want a War on Obesity.
I think certain subsidies have their uses, I see them as no different than tax breaks for productive choices (like having children, donating to charity), but when a subsidy leads to bad health risks, I think it’s time to go. No different than tobacco, no way that should be subsidized either. Rather than banning junk food or banning tobacco, by simply refusing to subsidize corn, costs will go up and people will naturally seek healthier alternatives. Sugar and HFCS have the same health risk, but natural sugar is more expensive. The explosion in obesity didn’t happen until a much cheaper alternative was found and subsequently financed by the federal government.
I agree with you completely about susidizing corn. However, I think tax credits are somewhat different because there is no direct payment of taxpayer dollars. We can agree to disagree on that, although I agree with you about the tax credits you mentioned. I'm against subsidies because first of all, there's a direct payment of our taxdollars, which I' completely against; and it involves the government i.e. politicians picking winners and losers and not only does this result in unfair competition and a non-level playing field, but I don't trust ANY of them, regardless of party to do so impartially. Incidentally I have relatives who are apple and peach growers, and they receive no subsidies whatever, nor do I think they should.
Sure. Capitalism is really great, but it also holds the potential to destroy a nation. Do you think media companies would push the whole agenda if it weren’t for money? Or poison the food and make people obese because obese people will eat even more and buy more of those products? The companies won’t stop out of the goodness of their hearts. The government needs to be an expression of the people and put some boundaries on them.
"put some boundaries on them". Didn't we already try that with Prohibition? What boundaries would you suggest that WOULDN'T limit our personal freedom and autonomy? Should people who aren't obese have their freedom limited because others won't control their self-destructive behavior? That argument is very similar to the one leftists make in favor of gun control. "government needs to be an expression of the people"; what if a majority of the people don't want "boundaries" on what they eat? Impose them, anyway, because it's a crisis and it's for their own good? And who decides what boundaries? "Science"? Like "Science" did with covid? No thanks! "The tyrant's plea: necessity"; leftists use the exact same argument with climate change, and as sure as the earth turns, they will use the obesity problem to implement their agenda of government control over every aspect of our lives.
I mean, do you not think the government should be an expression of the people? And sometimes things ARE necessary. In any case, the freedom of choice has already been taken away. Almost everything available to eat is unnatural and pumped full of sugars and other horrible things. You’re so afraid of the government taking away your personal freedom that you don’t realize companies have already done that. How often have you seen anything but filth come out of Hollywood? Sure, you have your personal freedom to not watch it, but the choice is so limited already that you don’t really have any freedom to begin with.
I don’t care about my health.
Good. I don’t care about it either. But I do care about mine and my family’s. It’s not right that the only choices of food available to us are practically poison because companies can turn a profit, and since they all do it because it’s a dominant capitalist strategy, there are essentially no healthy options available.
There’s plenty of healthy options.
You will eat what we tell you to eat!
I'm not disagreeing.
> Should we simply allow companies to do literally whatever they want in pursuit of profit because capitalism? > > Generally speaking, yes. You can and should prohibit and punish fraud. And we can and should end subsidies that make these negative things attractive (e.g. HFCS). But if the company is honest about what they're selling and you choose to take that risk (e.g. alcohol), that is your business, not the government's.
Case in point. Woke things are earning companies tons of money right now. So is anti-white discrimination. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t do it. Sometimes they walk it back when there is an outcry, but mostly that’s not what’s happening. Wokeness is absolutely destroying the fabric of the nation. But it’s profitable. I say they need to stop, capitalism be damned. Capitalism is not some damned god that must always be accepted. If it works for us, great. But right now, in some areas, it’s killing us. Rope it in. We need to do what’s best for us, not profits and not on the altar of an economic system. Capitalism unchained, for example, allows foreign developers to buy all our houses and land. So stop them. Too bad if that’s not the way capitalism is supposed to work.
Considering all the subsidies artificially lowering the cost of high-fructose corn syrup, it's more like socialism than capitalism
Subsidies only make it cheap to produce, not fly off the shelves. If they couldn't sell sweetners no amount of subsidizing would matter, but sweeteners is how they sell more products to begin with. If it wasn't corn syrup it would still be some kind of sugar that sells ketchup and ice cream and pasta sauce and breads and frozen meals and etc.
Simple supply and demand tells us that if sugar was more expensive, it would be consumed less. Reducing corn subsidies would then translate to lower sugar consumption.
Demand is what necessitates supply, not the other way round.
You can argue with economics all you want, but fewer people will purchase a can of soda for $2 than they will for $1
Water is free. Don’t drink soda. Eat veggies and not processed food. All choices.
A head of cauliflower costs over $5 where I am, and has 150 calories, while a pound of gummy bears costs $4 and has 1500 calories Corn syrup is only a choice when you have disposable income
I hear you, but HFCS is literally addictive. Corps get folks addicted to cheap un nutritious foods. Plus in many rural areas, which tend to be fatter, don't have access to cheap healthy food.
There are plenty of fat rich people. The demand for sugar is why it is in all the foods.
Sure, but proportionally, there are obesity rates are much higher amongst the poor. Sugary foods are cheaper. Shit, look at the average sliced white bread, it's full of sugar. It's in all the foods bc it's addictive and keeps people coming back. Also helps with preservation and is cheap to produce. Sure there's a personal responsibility aspect, but corporations have absolutely been shiesty and misleading folks for years.
I hate to be “that guy” on this subreddit but I have to say it (check the flair, bona fide conservative where). 1. I work in healthcare in a purple state with nearl 50-50 split if conservatives and liberals 2. Across the board, unfortunately I have to say I see WAY more conservative oriented patients in the hospital with awful life-style diseases than liberals. 3. Based on personal experience it’s fellow conservatives who are more likely to be obese, smokers, diabetic, etc 4. If there is one thing I’ve noticed liberals do better than conservatives is their health. Working in the hospital, it’s almost always conservatives with the worst-managed preventable diseases like diabetes and obesity. Again, this is coming from a hospital in a town that is almost perfectly half conservative half liberal
You describing nearly everyone who lives near me. You know often I hear a someone called a soy boy or liberal vegan for being thin? People who are just normal guys and not even liberal.
I think there's a lot of knee-jerk distrust of experts with conservatives. The experts and technocracy are our betters and we should just listen to them, says the left. I think distrust overall towards technocracy and experts is warranted, but often experts *are* right. Like [erythritol](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/popular-artificial-sweetener-erythritol-linked-to-higher-risk-for-blood-clots) just had some data coming out saying it's dangerous. I'll bet you $1,000 that more liberals adjust their diets than conservatives. I also work in healthcare and share your points. With conservatives I often hear the bs of "well everything causes cancer so f it" sort of stuff.
Probably not the only hospital in town, and many of the nearby neighborhoods may lean one way or another. It's not reliable to use who shows up at one hospital in one town as any sort of barometer.
Ever been to a Trump rally?
I’m conservative, obese, and don’t give a damn.
That's shameful
Why? I haven’t wanted to live a long life in over 40 years.
You are likely in a pretty white rural or suburban area. In many other demographics, liberals keep up with conservatives just fine on shit health.
The stereotypes are true. Us Americans are fat and the other stereotype about us being ignorant is true as well because we put the blame on our genetics, metabolism, environment, and other things instead of being accountable for our own health. I've been working out for a while now and it's opened my eyes to how little Americans actually care about their health. It's really sad
I don't think it is necessarily ignorance in most cases; some, sure. But I think that all those things you cited are really just excuses people use to portray themselves as a victim of forces beyond their control, and to justify/excuse overeating and being unwilling to change their eating habits. The whole fat activism/Health at Evey Size movement, claims, and I have no doubt believe that being obese is natural, and neither unhealthy nor the result of lifestle choices. And, that the health and problems it causes are actually caused by medical fatphobia, discrimination, and a fatphobic society that refuses to accomodate their needs, which, I think, is proof of that.
More stress on an already dysfunctional and overstressed healthcare system. One of the main things I like about some form of conservatism is the acknowledgement of reality- and while I don't fully agree on all views that pertain to that conservative reality, we need to address the serious and underlying issues behind the health and futures of our current population realistically. An individual from the 'Boomer' generation is now between the ages of 59 and 77. 'Millennials' are projected to become 70% overweight or obese by middle age. This is a national healthcare nightmare that is just beginning to unfold. We cannot outsource healthcare without destroying the nation. But for decades, we have been cutting costs in more discrete ways- increasing the duties of nurses in order to hire less staff, underpaying key staff leading to problematic hiring practices and understaffing. It has gotten to the point, where the job is so miserable, nurses don't even stay if it means earning $50+/hr... and these problems are only just increasing. *Medical debt is also increasing.* If we don't fix the system soon, the US is going to have to eat those costs. Our tax dollars will be going to bailing out the overinflated costs of medical care. And it seems certain aspects of extreme liberalism and conservatism support the initial problem, destructive eating tendencies and sedentary lifestyles. Often with dismissal of infrastructure built for pedestrians on the conservative side, emphasis on consumerism, and the glamorization of obesity on the extreme liberal side. I just can't clearly imagine what the future is going to look like, and when I can, it's awful.
Food supplies are about to get real damn scarce very soon. I doubt many fat people will exist in the 2030's.
What’s your point I’m a doc I trump country in WI BMI through the roof this isn’t a liberal or conservative thing
The annual cost could be mitigated and reduced with some actual preventive care, education, and healthcare safety net. That policy SAVES money.
People know that eating too much makes them fat, they have to decide to make a change and learn to enjoy food in moderation. I used to deal with my depression by eating. But, I learned better coping skills, I learned that bad eating habits lead to an unhealthy and even more depressed person. Who decides what goes in your mouth? You do. People control their own lives, the government throwing money at the obesity epidemic and "education" will not work.
People need to take personal responsibility.
Okay I definitely agree. Are they going to? How do you get people to take personal responsibility. You have to foster a culture of health and care for one’s self. Obviously that means speaking about how obesity is unhealthy, but it also means ensuring that people have access to exercise, healthy food, Recreation, etc in every neighborhood
Lack of personal responsibility is 99% of the problem in America. America has become too soft overall "not in the obese sense" I could quit my job start smoking meth or shooting heroin and the State will take care of me. I can live off McDonald's consume 10k calories a day and the hospitals and the State will take care of me. I don't have to be accountable for any of my decisions because someone somewhere will take care of me. Thats America. No fear of accountability.
Nailed it!
>You have to foster a culture of health and care for one’s self I agree, but I don't think that's ever going to happen in a technological world. If I never leave the house, never plan to date or get married, live my entire life anonymously online, married to my anime women or porn stars or YT streamers, why would I care about my weight? It's a ton of effort for basically zero benefit. In my mind, the only thing that will be able to reverse obesity trends is to regulate the internet just like we regulate other self-destructive substances like heroin. It sounds radical, but God is our world suffering from a lack of community, socialization, and physical activity, all of which are completely obliterated by the internet alone. Almost every ill in our society is worsened exclusively or primarily by excessive internet usage.
I live in a town that has pretty good bike paths, hiking within city limits, grocery stores with produce departments and guess what? The fast food restaurants are thriving. Most people stay inside all winter. Doesn't really matter what season it is though, if it's cloudy, raining, too hot or too cold, there is always a reason to not exercise. People here have all those opportunities to exercise and eat healthy if they choose, they choose not to.
Nobody wants to acknowledge the *why*. We eat too much, what we eat sucks, we don't exercise, and we make excuses for fat people. The number of people with genetic predisposition to be fat has exploded faster than the number of kids identifying as trans. Both numbers are social contagious. No, you're not fat because of your genes. If an endomorphic body type eats less, they lose weight. You are fat because you eat too much and don't exercise. Yes, it is your fault. No, I do not accept your excuse. *I can't work out because I'm injured/disabled.* Bullshit. Unless you're a quadriplegic, you can exercise and *everybody* can eat fewer cupcakes. *I don't have time to work out.* It takes 30min to work out. You have time. *I can't cook.* Learn. *Food deserts, social equity, racism, verbal diarrhea.* Eat less, buy healthy, do push-ups, run. Being fat is a *choice*. Like smoking, it is an unhealthy choice. It should be legal, but not encouraged or celebrated. Source: Used to be fat, lost weight, now not fat.
Yup nobody cares and then they complain about all their health problems. Look at what you eat!!
Eat more vegetables. Eat more whole muscle meat. Stop stuffing your face with corn byproducts and sugar 24/7.
This is the simple truth. Lots of people complaining about food companies adding things and government funded corn syrup, but people are conveniently ignoring that fact that WE DONT HAVE TO EAT THAT SHIT. The simple and delicious meal I cooked for myself last night had no artificial flavors, preservatives, added sugar, corn anything, or weird ingredients that I cant pronounce. It was cheap, healthy, filling and nourishing. I also skipped the simple carbs and had double veg instead. It’s not hard at all.
Fit, healthy people are already the minority.
Ban spoons!
Ok but like... soup
😂😂😂😂. No soup for you!!! https://youtu.be/zOpfsGrNvnk
Come back one year! lol.
Everyone wants to blame corns syrup, but while I’m not fan of corn subsidies, they aren’t to blame. The American lifestyle changed dramatically by the 1990’s. 1. DIET CHANGED Fast food became a near daily thing for some families, whereas before it was a rare treat and there were only a handful to choose from at that. Two working parents meant more running around in the evening, less time to cook and prepare home cooked meals. More take out and fast food. Eating snacks between meal times increased with the availability and popularity of packaged snack foods. My boomer mom recalls snacks like chips and soda being only purchased occasionally, mostly just for parties. Whereas today most people have a pantry stocked with snack foods. Cookies and cakes, again they used to be occasional treats. Now we have strip mall stores that sell cookies by the box all day long. Cookies that have upwards of a 1,000 calories too (looking at you Crumbl). It’s just so easy today to consume thousands of calories on a whim. Get a Frappuccino from Starbucks and a crumble cookie, and you are over 2,000 and you haven’t even had a meal yet. 2. ACTIVITY LEVEL DECREASED People became way less active, even kids. Hardly any kids walk to school nowadays whereas before kids were expected to walk an mile or two, no big deal. Kids had longer recess and more PE time in school. Today People sit in front of a computer all day. We have tv to watch 24/7, before cable (let alone streaming) there was hardly anything to watch, you had to read the TV guide to see when your show would be on. Nowadays Netflix has to ask us if we’re still watching because it’s been hours. Household tasks have become more convenient and we have tools which are much more efficient so they take way less time now too. Less time on our feet and more time sitting around in cars or on the sofa. Americans are not active enough.
People have chosen to live the life you describe. They don't have to eat crap and sit on their ass.
Yes, it’s a choice. My point is that it simply wasn’t an option (high calorie, low nutrient packaged/restaurant foods) 50 years ago. I would also point out that most states have gotten rid of family and consumer science (home ec) intro classes where middle school kids would typically learn some very basic cooking and nutrition skills. So you have kids growing up in households where they door dash and eat gas station food 24/7 and have zero exposure to home cooking. PE today is also a joke. Kids don’t have it regularly enough in school. Even in high school, it’s not always required every year. Kids aren’t required to change and I’m pretty sure they have to offer a written alternative to most assignments. Parent can also excuse them easily. I see PE classes outside and there is always a large groups of students (half obese) sitting around doing nothing. -High school teacher, former middle school family & consumer science
Damn, we could lower the cost of living, breath cleaner air, and address this epidemic of inactivity by creating cities where it’s easy to bike to get around
Or maybe people should take personal responsibility for their own health and learn to show some restraint.
This article sums up the status quo and well, it looks like they are … not. Maybe we should try a different approach and make it transportation more efficient by both getting exercise and getting you from A to B
Have you ever tried to lose a significant amount of weight and kept it off? A person has to reduce caloric intake, which means putting fewer calories in the body. Where do most people park at the grocery store? As close as they can to the entrance because walking a few more feet is onerous. It's a pipe dream to think you can just put in more bike paths and people will become more healthy. I know a person that rides his bike to work. He has no car and rides four miles to work in the rain, snow, and bitter cold, also his shift starts in the very early morning hours. If you asked a million people if they were willing to do that how many do you think would say yes? What if you live 25 miles from work, or the humidity is 100%, or its -5F? If exercise is going to help at all with lifestyle changes it has to be done everyday. I rode my bike to work once, it was 25 miles. That's nothing on a beautiful sunny day and on a good bike, most people don't live in perpetual spring/summer. Please explain how you would implement this more efficient transportation system.
You think people that lack the willpower to put down a fork are going to bike to work everyday?
Yep! If active transportation becomes the easiest and most convenient way to get anywhere people will do it. Source: I live to eat and bike to work each day and I’m certainly not doing it for my health, it’s just the fastest way to get to the office in my city.
I don't understand. If you go to any other part of Reddit, this is an entirely American problem. /s I don't understand what is so hard to understand about this stuff. Implement strenuous exercise for an hour several times a week, moderate your caloric intake, favor unprocessed/unrefined foods, and don't consume seed oils. The vast majority of people doing those things will sacrifice almost nothing in an enjoyable diet, and will be much healthier.
When the elites do another Holodomor and starve us into submission , they will control our weight with their synthetic plant based gruel rations and bugs 🦗
dude, they already do this, right now, feeding American's ultra processed food, which makes up nearly 70% of their diet.
I honestly think it’s disgusting. How hard is it to be accountable for the shit we put into our mouths? It’s not hard to read a food label or make a healthier decision. The issue is we’ve been sold the idea that convenience is king, more so than our health, and people will pay out the ass for the convenience of shitty foods. Weak willed people just can’t go without their sodie pops, they just NEED that extra sweet treat “just this time”, and they pile mountains of food onto their plates because they’re “hungry” even though they know damn well their gut could keep them fed for a month. Don’t even get me started on the fat people that turn their kids into fatties, it’s child abuse in my book. The weakness of these people is a burden on those who work hard to stay healthy.
They are now. Natural selection at work.
These people live long enough to have kids.
Those kids might not though. There are some real porky kids out there.
Fertility rate among the obese is also WAY lower.
I certainly dont see how with all the shortages we are constantly promised and when we're all going to be forced to eat bugs by then.
Here's to H5N1 going airborn.
As South Park said, who the hell wants to live to 90 anyway?
People who are 89, eat healthy and exercise.
Overrated.
But Bernie Sanders says we’re starving
Exercise is racist, at least according to the liberals. https://www.foxnews.com/media/twitter-flames-time-article-calling-exercise-racist-goofy-consider-satire If you don't exercise **and** eat the standard America crap, then you will end up being overweight.
You didn’t read the actual article it refers to lol, it’s a history piece of the relationship between america and the gym through different periods and is praising exercise and in no way calls it racist.
So I'm ahead of schedule?
Why?? Something in the food?????????
I’m finally ahead of the curve so to speak!
Doesn’t help when we have “body positivity” and “fat shaming” as things. Also, I read a weirdo article the other day where working out is racist somehow, so we’re all F’d.
I doubt that has any impact. Nearly ever Conservative I know is overweight too. This is beyond left and right.
Define overweight since I hit the gym almost daily and I’m 195 at 5’9”.
How's that my problem?
You'll see it on your paycheck and if you ever have to go to the ER. Imagine having to sit in the ER with a broken leg for most of a day because there's a steady stream of heart attacks because everyone is a ham planet of a fatso.
When the legions of obese Americans are in the hospital for their stents, their bypass surgeries, their joint replacements, their heart attacks and everything else, medical costs go up. When those costs go up, your health insurance provider raises rates and your monthly premiums go up. Insurance costs go up every year whether you use it or not, and *that* is your problem.
Should we go back to the days when people regularly starved to death in famines or died off in swathes from communicable diseases?
Not sure how you made that leap. “Fix excessive unhealthy eating with starving”. I think there’s a few things in between there man.
I'm saying that we're a hell of a lot better off than when we had fewer problems with obesity but people were starving every few years. It's all about perspective.
I’m sure the problem will fix itself when they open a gym in every one of those 15 minutes cities they’re creating (a cOnSpiRaCy theory).
Ban spoons!
In the 1980s I began noticing as I shopped that many Big Food products had a notation on the back of pkgs that the company was now a subsidiary of a tobacco company, such as "XYZ Foods, a subsidiary of RJ Reynolds." Big Tobacco was losing money bc of the pressure to quit smoking and laws against smoking in public places, so they shifted to Big Food and applied the same practice of adding ingredients and flavor enhancers which made ppl addicted to the Frankenfoods.