4 ms·

> one of the primary causes of America's obesity > problems. As any European who's spent time in the US can tell you, a dramatically simpler explanation is

> one of the primary causes of America's obesity > problems. As any European who's spent time in the US can tell you, a dramatically simpler explanation is that portion sizes are enormous and many foods are "low fat" which mean they're loaded with sugar.

MichaelGG 11y ago
Stuff's ridiculously loaded with sugar. I stopped eating sugar for a few months on a whim. It's rather difficult to do so. Everything just pointlessly has loads of it. Even trying to use no-calorie sweeteners is difficult as some places like to tout how natural they are. I went back to eating sugar but I can no longer stomach a lot of foods I would happily have eaten before. Everything is so sweet.
- peteretep 11y ago
  The sugar's not pointless - it's a cheap and effective way to make low-fat food taste good. I gave up sugar (well, candy, anything that had refined sugar added, most fruit) for four months. I lost a lot of fat quickly, but it was exceptionally hard from a willpower perspective, and I'd get a massive high when I accidentally ate sweetened food. I'd love to give it up again, but my self discipline is currently needed elsewhere...
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    Is sugar that much cheaper than aspartame, sucralose, erythritol, or other fake sweeteners? I found that chewing on erythitol-based bars (Quest) sorta satisfied most of my need to eat sweets. I suppose it's a bit of an arms race: keep adding sweetness to add a bit more flavour and soon we're escalated so far up the sweetness chain with no commercially viable way to back down.
    - peteretep 11y ago
      I believe that high-fructose corn syrup is, because of subsidies.
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        Commodity sugar costs less than $0.15 cents per pound, so the price difference with corn syrup only matters to a profit maximizer. (There is 1 or 2 cents of sugar in a can of soda!)
  - tdkl 11y ago
    It helped for me that I have a designated day in a week for sweets, where I get a chocolate or some favorite candy and eat it guilt free. Don't even crave it for the rest of the week. When you get the habit going, it's much easier. One important thing though, I go and buy the sweets I'll eat on that particular day. If you have a habit of buying sweets and have it easily at hand, it's way harder (which goes for every addicting thing there is).
  - geebee 11y ago
    I watched a documentary called "Fed Up" that addressed this. I haven't verified the accuracy of the documentary, but here was the explanation it gave, which is consistent with your first sentence. "Fat" was declared the enemy, so highly processed food providers started removing fat. The food tasted bad. So they added in sugar. So now people were eating much more sugar, but still craving fat, and seeking it from other sources. So it became a double whammy. At the same time, as many products (such as dairy) were being made low-fat, the highly processed food industry needed something to do with all that fat, so it launched the "cheese glorious cheese" campaign, where highly processed cheese (with lots of added salt) was now added to almost every conceivable thing, at low cost (because it was left over from the milk). Cheese went into pizza toppings (extra cheese!), pizza crusts, processed mac n cheese, all kinds of approximations of previous foods. So now, Americans, instead of eating fat where it naturally exists, were instead eating lots of low fat processed food products with sugar to replace the fat, and then eating the fat in other products, with lots of added salt. The other thing the documentary asserted (well, a physician in the documentary asserted) is that the popular believe that "a calorie is a calorie regardless of source" is incorrect in terms of how the body processes calories from different food sources. A calorie of sugar can lead to weight gain in a way that a calorie from other sources doesn't. Again, this is just what was in the documentary "fed up", I don't know much more about it than that. Rather than focusing too much on the difference between Europe and the US, I think it might be useful to realize the difference between "big, corporate food" and an almost completely orthogonal supply system. Orange juice and a juiced orange may have almost nothing to do with each other, at this point (depending on the source, of course). The reason I say this is that I think it would be foolish to count on the atlantic or a national border as safety, instead, think of something that has conquered the US food market (among other markets) and will absolutely expand and conquer new territory when possible.
  - talideon 11y ago
    I've been doing that and have seen pretty steady drops too. Since June when I started, I've dropped 11kg, with a rate of about 0.9kg per week. Asides from one weekend when I went to visit friends in the UK for a Real Ale Train trip, and a couple of slices of fudge cake in the office, pretty much the closest thing to processed sugar I've been consuming is some honey on soda bread in the evening. Once I run out of honey, I'll probably stop with that too. The biggest thing I've done regarding fruit is getting rid of fruit juice. I don't think fruit itself is so bad, because of the sheer solid mass of the fruit itself. With fruit juice, that's mostly thrown away, and you're consuming what's essentially fructose water, which isn't particularly healthy!
- thorin 11y ago
  Make all your own food (including bread), then you can control the amount of sugar you put in. Not difficult!
saiya-jin 11y ago
true but again just a part of the problem (although a big one). I recall, back in 2004 during summer break, I worked 6 weeks in LA (Universal Studios), and then moved to Maine to work in some resort. Needless to say, those places were continents apart. In those 4 weeks in Maine, I've seen roughly 5 fat people, non obese (also cca 2 black... err african american altogether). Different attitudes to activities, moving around and sport, different eating habits etc. They all play the game together to produce the result we all can see. You want to have a real clue what you eat? Either do it yourself, or eat as much raw stuff as possible. Over time, you will get used to it and processed food will taste like a canal cooking.
arethuza 11y ago
My first meal in the US, 21 years ago - a club sandwich. Safe choice? Came battered, deep friend and sprinkled with icing sugar. I mean if a Scot is surprised at what you do to food then you are doing some weird stuff. [NB I know you can get really good food in the US - but the portion sizes still amaze me].
- wavefunction 11y ago
  It sounds like you ordered a Monte Cristo rather than a club sandwich.
Gatsky 11y ago
Yes. Consumption is encouraged. In Chicago a restaurant wanted to charge me a fee to share a meal with my partner. It was therefore cheaper by 1 dollar to buy an extra muffin nobody wanted to avoid the sharing fee than to just share what we actually wanted to eat.
spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
A lot of the Lo fat lo salt versions that have been heavily marketed are worse a bit like reducing Co2 by pushing Diesel engines. my specialty nephrology dietician commented when i asked about lo salt products "all the shit they put in it makes it worse" and that is a direct quote
smackfu 11y ago
>portion sizes are enormous Portion sizes at restaurants are enormous. Tourists eat out way more than locals.

MichaelGG 11y ago

Stuff's ridiculously loaded with sugar. I stopped eating sugar for a few months on a whim. It's rather difficult to do so. Everything just pointlessly has loads of it. Even trying to use no-calorie sweeteners is difficult as some places like to tout how natural they are. I went back to eating sugar but I can no longer stomach a lot of foods I would happily have eaten before. Everything is so sweet.

peteretep 11y ago
The sugar's not pointless - it's a cheap and effective way to make low-fat food taste good. I gave up sugar (well, candy, anything that had refined sugar added, most fruit) for four months. I lost a lot of fat quickly, but it was exceptionally hard from a willpower perspective, and I'd get a massive high when I accidentally ate sweetened food. I'd love to give it up again, but my self discipline is currently needed elsewhere...
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Is sugar that much cheaper than aspartame, sucralose, erythritol, or other fake sweeteners? I found that chewing on erythitol-based bars (Quest) sorta satisfied most of my need to eat sweets. I suppose it's a bit of an arms race: keep adding sweetness to add a bit more flavour and soon we're escalated so far up the sweetness chain with no commercially viable way to back down.
  - peteretep 11y ago
    I believe that high-fructose corn syrup is, because of subsidies.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      Commodity sugar costs less than $0.15 cents per pound, so the price difference with corn syrup only matters to a profit maximizer. (There is 1 or 2 cents of sugar in a can of soda!)
- tdkl 11y ago
  It helped for me that I have a designated day in a week for sweets, where I get a chocolate or some favorite candy and eat it guilt free. Don't even crave it for the rest of the week. When you get the habit going, it's much easier. One important thing though, I go and buy the sweets I'll eat on that particular day. If you have a habit of buying sweets and have it easily at hand, it's way harder (which goes for every addicting thing there is).
- geebee 11y ago
  I watched a documentary called "Fed Up" that addressed this. I haven't verified the accuracy of the documentary, but here was the explanation it gave, which is consistent with your first sentence. "Fat" was declared the enemy, so highly processed food providers started removing fat. The food tasted bad. So they added in sugar. So now people were eating much more sugar, but still craving fat, and seeking it from other sources. So it became a double whammy. At the same time, as many products (such as dairy) were being made low-fat, the highly processed food industry needed something to do with all that fat, so it launched the "cheese glorious cheese" campaign, where highly processed cheese (with lots of added salt) was now added to almost every conceivable thing, at low cost (because it was left over from the milk). Cheese went into pizza toppings (extra cheese!), pizza crusts, processed mac n cheese, all kinds of approximations of previous foods. So now, Americans, instead of eating fat where it naturally exists, were instead eating lots of low fat processed food products with sugar to replace the fat, and then eating the fat in other products, with lots of added salt. The other thing the documentary asserted (well, a physician in the documentary asserted) is that the popular believe that "a calorie is a calorie regardless of source" is incorrect in terms of how the body processes calories from different food sources. A calorie of sugar can lead to weight gain in a way that a calorie from other sources doesn't. Again, this is just what was in the documentary "fed up", I don't know much more about it than that. Rather than focusing too much on the difference between Europe and the US, I think it might be useful to realize the difference between "big, corporate food" and an almost completely orthogonal supply system. Orange juice and a juiced orange may have almost nothing to do with each other, at this point (depending on the source, of course). The reason I say this is that I think it would be foolish to count on the atlantic or a national border as safety, instead, think of something that has conquered the US food market (among other markets) and will absolutely expand and conquer new territory when possible.
- talideon 11y ago
  I've been doing that and have seen pretty steady drops too. Since June when I started, I've dropped 11kg, with a rate of about 0.9kg per week. Asides from one weekend when I went to visit friends in the UK for a Real Ale Train trip, and a couple of slices of fudge cake in the office, pretty much the closest thing to processed sugar I've been consuming is some honey on soda bread in the evening. Once I run out of honey, I'll probably stop with that too. The biggest thing I've done regarding fruit is getting rid of fruit juice. I don't think fruit itself is so bad, because of the sheer solid mass of the fruit itself. With fruit juice, that's mostly thrown away, and you're consuming what's essentially fructose water, which isn't particularly healthy!
thorin 11y ago
Make all your own food (including bread), then you can control the amount of sugar you put in. Not difficult!

saiya-jin 11y ago

true but again just a part of the problem (although a big one). I recall, back in 2004 during summer break, I worked 6 weeks in LA (Universal Studios), and then moved to Maine to work in some resort. Needless to say, those places were continents apart. In those 4 weeks in Maine, I've seen roughly 5 fat people, non obese (also cca 2 black... err african american altogether). Different attitudes to activities, moving around and sport, different eating habits etc. They all play the game together to produce the result we all can see. You want to have a real clue what you eat? Either do it yourself, or eat as much raw stuff as possible. Over time, you will get used to it and processed food will taste like a canal cooking.

arethuza 11y ago

My first meal in the US, 21 years ago - a club sandwich. Safe choice? Came battered, deep friend and sprinkled with icing sugar. I mean if a Scot is surprised at what you do to food then you are doing some weird stuff. [NB I know you can get really good food in the US - but the portion sizes still amaze me].

wavefunction 11y ago
It sounds like you ordered a Monte Cristo rather than a club sandwich.

Gatsky 11y ago

Yes. Consumption is encouraged. In Chicago a restaurant wanted to charge me a fee to share a meal with my partner. It was therefore cheaper by 1 dollar to buy an extra muffin nobody wanted to avoid the sharing fee than to just share what we actually wanted to eat.

spacecowboy_lon 11y ago

A lot of the Lo fat lo salt versions that have been heavily marketed are worse a bit like reducing Co2 by pushing Diesel engines. my specialty nephrology dietician commented when i asked about lo salt products "all the shit they put in it makes it worse" and that is a direct quote

smackfu 11y ago

>portion sizes are enormous Portion sizes at restaurants are enormous. Tourists eat out way more than locals.