15 ms·

As obesity keeps rising, more Americans are just giving up

45 points by upen 10y ago

minikites 10y ago
> Replicated by other studies, that research helps explain the discouraging finding that within five years of having lost weight, 95% of dieters will regain all the weight they lost. And most will gain a few extra pounds as well. I'm part of that privileged 5%. I lost around 60 pounds in 2009-2010 and I've kept it off. It really is a lifestyle change. You have to be constantly aware of the portions you choose and remember what you've already eaten that day to keep in "budget". There are tools and processes that can help, but it's a constant struggle against your body that is constantly lying to your brain. I can definitely see why many people would give up.
- brohoolio 10y ago
  Do you still have to actively manage your calorie intake?
  - minikites 10y ago
    I haven't A/B tested it so I can't say for sure if I "have" to but yes, I continue to manage my intake as closely as I can. I read the labels on everything, measure liquids or weigh foods where the package is larger than a single serving, and so on.
  - wccrawford 10y ago
    I'm not who you asked, but... I lost 55 lbs and have kept it off for a year now. It's a constant struggle. If I stop watching what I'm eating, I'll start overeating immediately and start gaining weight. I went to a wedding a week or 2 ago and gained 5-7 lbs. Watching my diet since then, I've dropped most of it again. If I hadn't watched it immediately, it would have stuck and I'd have a hard time losing it again. I'm very careful about what I eat for breakfast and lunch, to the point of almost always having the same thing. Dinner is very varied, but I still have to watch things or I'll go overboard. I eat burgers, Mexican food, Italian, pizza, etc etc... But I do not eat dessert. I've found that there's no way to avoid gaining weight if I eat any dessert at all. To deal with my sweets craving, I drink diet sodas (they've improved a lot lately) and Tic Tacs. If I really need a snack, it'll be peanuts and pretzels. They're high in calories, but no sugar.
  - sethammons 10y ago
    My wife lost about 70lbs and has kept it off for over three years. She is a fitness nut now (bar and ring muscle ups, handstand walks and handstand pushups, olympic lifting...). It is constant battle for her to manage her calorie and macro nutrient intake.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  I lost around the same amount about 2012, then gained 10kg/22lbs back as soon as I started earning enough to not worry about rent and medical costs every single time I went grocery shopping. Good for you - wish I could have been so disciplined (though 40lbs still isn't that bad when everything is said and done)
Neliquat 10y ago
Until this is treated like the public epidemic it is, and promote education, this will only get worse. Calories in - calories out = fat accumulation. It is literally that simple.
- devoply 10y ago
  Education does not work. Mexico has shown that regulation does work, they regulated sugar which has had a positive effect on health. The food industry needs to be regulated. The few conglomerates are engineering unhealthy people. It's that simple. There is very little actual food choice because the market optimizes for profits, not for health. In order to give health a fighting chance you need to regulate the market to change the game. Food is an addictive drug, we regulate all other addictive drugs. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/03/obese-soda-sugar-tax-mexico https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/03/obese-soda-suga...
  - TezlaKoil 10y ago
    > There is very little actual food choice because the market optimizes for profits, not for health. Hold on! The market consists of both suppliers and customer. One would think that being fat is not profitable for the latter. Meanwhile, only 3% of Japanese people have a BMI over 30, while 32% of Americans do. It must be that Japanese markets don't optimize for profit! Or maybe you got the source of the problem wrong. Guess which one I think it is. > Mexico has shown that regulation does work, they regulated sugar which has had a positive effect on health. Hungary has a higher sugar tax, had it for a longer time, and it appears to have no effect on health at all. Go figure.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  > promote education IMO it's not so much about education as about how to help people shape their habits. People already know that candy-bars and french-fries correlate to obesity, after all. > that simple Or at least, so close to being that simple that there's no point confusing people with erroneous details. https://xkcd.com/669/ https://xkcd.com/669/
- wavefunction 10y ago
quotemstr 10y ago
Is it really in the best interest of society to allow food makers to advertise superstimuli-level [1] food products that we know in aggregate make is less happy and likely to die earlier? Why? We regulate all sorts of substances that we know are harmful when ingested. We shouldn't make exceptions for things that happen to be called food. Even if we don't want to enact anything as drastic as a "soda tax" or a ban on refined sugar, we can at least stop processed-food companies advertising to children and creating life-long bad habits. The FDA could also be more eager in approving appetite-regulating drugs, allowing people to choose to take on certain risk in exchange for large potential weight loss. Several effective agents have been known since the 1920s; is a small risk of cataracts or heart valve damage in a small number of people really worth allowing millions of people to be sicker than they would otherwise be? Speaking of drugs: smoking decreases BMI quite a bit. Granted, it damages the lungs, but like most things, tobacco has a mixture of positive and negative effects. Given that we have an obesity crisis, was taboo-ing one of the more popular and effective anti-obesity tools really the right choice? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus
- lacampbell 10y ago
  At what point do people take responsibility for their own bodies and their own lives? We all know the secret to not being obese. Asking the government to step in and help us just seems... childish. Are we not adults? Do we have no agency?
  - zitterbewegung 10y ago
    There is a genetic component to being overweight that you are overlooking. It's not just eating less .
    - quotemstr 10y ago
      You're correct about there being a genetic component to obesity. Unfortunately, it's also the case that it is just "eating less" --- physics has no special case for 21st century humans. The way to square this circle, and what's particularly difficult for people in this society, is to accept that that there is a genetic component to this behavioral issue. We'd prefer very much going around believing that behavior is somehow disjoint from genetics. That just isn't true, and as long we continue believing it's true, we're going to make bad public policy.
DoodleBuggy 10y ago
Is this really different from smoking or another harmful unhealthy lifestyle choice? It's abusing food, and it has negative consequences. The cost of health care to manage obesity and related issues is staggering and will only increase. Maybe the USA should start having a BMI tax?
- bijection 10y ago
  It may be that that lower income means lower quality food means higher BMI, in which case a BMI tax would exacerbate the problem. Food for thought.
  - DoodleBuggy 10y ago
    OK, so tax garbage food and tax BMI. Really, it should be no different than any other sin tax. It's behavior you want to discourage, so tax it.
    - sethammons 10y ago
      Simply raising prices on bad food would not be enough. Food education and getting healthy food choices to be more affordable are key. There are huge swathes of people who have no clue what eating healthy looks like. And eating healthy is more expensive.
- sethammons 10y ago
  BMI is not always a valid gauge. It does not take into account above average muscle mass. My BMI says that I am obese. I have, maybe, 20 extra pounds on me. If I lost that, I would be abs-in-your-face shredded (or very near it).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
CPLX 10y ago
> weight bias and discrimination raise the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes The idea that a study conclusively demonstrated that in a meaningful way seems extraordinarily unlikely. I'd be awful curious to see the methodology of that.
BadassFractal 10y ago
I haven't really paid attention to men's physiques, but there's a stark difference between the silhouettes of women in many cities of Europe and those in even the most "superficial" US states such as California. I know the PC police will eat me for lunch for saying this, but the dating pool, at least in the 20s and 30s range, shrinks considerably in the US for anybody used to European body image standards. Whatever's happening to the population here is not normal. I don't know if it's our lifestyles becoming totally sedentary, if it's food marketing having reached absolutely irresistible heights, or if it's the lack of a culture of slow eating, but something is clearly not working and it really doesn't feel like the individual's fault, it seems actually systemic. One thought is perhaps we should start treating the constant incessant advertisement of food the same way we treated the cigarette industry and regulate its appeal to children, put up disclaimers about what happens when you down that entire bag of cheetos etc.
- minikites 10y ago
  One of the more plausible (to an uneducated person like me) theories I've seen in a few places is that we've bred food (both plants and animals) for size and pest/disease/shipping durability at the direct expense of flavor. Flavor is a key signal for nutrition, so our brain goes "not enough nutrients, eat more to get them!" Here's a Vox review/summary of a book: http://www.vox.com/2015/7/30/9070255/dorito-effect http://www.vox.com/2015/7/30/9070255/dorito-effect > Flavor technology got very powerful in the early 1960s, and it wasn't long after that that we began to see the startling increases in body mass index. > All the good stuff we grow — tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce — has gotten continually more bland. This has been measured. They have become diluted of nutrients, as well. As we selected crops for agronomic traits like yield, shelf life and disease resistant, we never selected for flavor. And we lost flavor as a result. It's reverse evolutionary pressure.
  - costcopizza 10y ago
    Also, grains used to be a decent source of Omega 3's until we (over the course of many generations) selectively bred for sweetness.
- 10y ago
aplomb 10y ago
We're at a point where there is so much technological, cultural, malicious disruption that people don't know how to live anymore and are trying to find their way on the fly or based on some diet/lifestyle du jour. Yes personal responsibility and all, but we've made it awful easy to fall into this trap.
tzs 10y ago
Here's a nice map of the US showing the adult obesity rate in each state: http://stateofobesity.org/adult-obesity/ http://stateofobesity.org/adult-obesity/ Note that you can select earlier years using the controls below the map. Some depressing observations: • In 1990, the highest rate was 15% (Mississippi) and the lowest was 6.9% (Colorado). • In 2000, the highest was 23.9% (West Virginia) and the lowest 14.5% (Colorado). Note that in a mere 10 years, the lowest was almost equal to what had been the highest. There are plenty of other charts on the site. There is one for physical inactivity. That shows two interesting things: • The states with the highest obesity have the most inactivity, and the states with the least obesity the least inactivity. • However, for each state the level of inactivity has remained fairly flat over the last 10 years, even though the obesity rate has risen in those states. Inactivity might explain why some states are more or less obese than others, but it doesn't appear to have anything to do with why we are getting fatter everywhere.
- rpcorb 10y ago
  It really is interesting that only in the last 20-25 years has the obesity rate really taken off. In other words, it doesn't seem like this was gradual linear trend starting much earlier. So, why didn't it happen earlier? What changed (the most)? Was it a convergence of forces reaching a tipping point? Or did a single major change occur in the 90s, such as the food industry introducing a key st of addictive ingredients?
cletus 10y ago
As much as people like to jump up and down about public health issues like cigarettes or even guns, what I find interesting is how few people seriously talk about the car being one of the biggest public health crises to originate in the 20th century. There is of course the direct effect of the hundreds of thousands of vehicular related deaths per year (globally) as well as serious injuries but there are a bunch of other effects. One of these is the change in urban planning where life is centered around the car such that Americans, in particular, walk far less than people in other countries [1]. There's a big difference here between walking and needing to walk. People in NYC for example pretty much need to walk. I'm not saying it's impossible to become obese when your daily life requires you or even just encourages you to walk more but it sure makes it more difficult. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t_americans_walk_more_the_crisis_of_pedestrianism_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t...
beloch 10y ago
Losing a significant amount of weight and keeping it off is difficult but possible. My brother and I both did it, but in very different ways. Personally, I maxed out at a BMI of 34. I lost about 70 pounds, got back into the normal BMI range, and have stayed there for about a decade now. I changed my diet, changed my physical activities, and changed a lot of habits and modes of thinking. That last one is perhaps most important of all. For example, as kids, we were taught not to waste food, and that meant eating everything there was. Well, cleaning your plate (and the pot) isn't going to put food on the plates of starving children. Whether you eat it or not, the waste happened at the supermarket when you bought too much food! My brother saw me losing weight and wanted to do it too, so I tried to help him. He hated the food I was now eating. He didn't want to work out. He didn't want to change the way he thought. Instead, he got a lot fatter and, eventually, a sleeve gastrectomy. He's not in the normal BMI range yet, but he's been making steady progress and it's not optional for him. He literally can't eat enough to stay fat. His stomach is now tiny and fills up rather quickly. The prep for the surgery was harsh, and included a brutal, several week long crash diet. The surgery itself went off without a hitch, but he still had to recover on a morphine drip. I have no idea what kind of pain that involves, but it can't be pleasant. Bottom line, he thought he was choosing the easy way at the time, but we now both know it was the hard way. Harder by far. I got healthy. He inflicted a disability on himself that has the side-effect of losing weight. He still isn't active and, not surprisingly, has terrible energy levels. After both our experiences, I can reasonably say the media does a terrible job of helping people. It tells them about healthy things to eat, but never mentions these things are only healthy if you eat them instead of your usual fare, and in appropriate amounts. It tells people they need to be ripped, cross-fitting gym-bunnies to be fit, when doing just about anything besides sitting on your butt will be an improvement for many people. Finding a physical activity you can enjoy is far more important than being ripped. Above all, it rarely attempts to help people change the way they think, which is the key to making permanent changes. TL;DR: If I had to offer one piece of advice to those wishing to lose weight and become more active, it would be to ignore all the crap articles out there on diet fads and gym-crazes and pay some attention to how you think about food and activity. Change how you think, and everything else will come as a consequence of that change.
buzzybee 10y ago
Our culture has acquired a lot of poor health habits that are seemingly inescapable, depending on your socioeconomic background: * Most industrial food products are adulterated with dairy, sugar, or both * Industrial food is also cheap and widespread. It takes dedication to avoid it or restrict its impact: At parties, the default non-alcoholic beverage is sugar water, and the default food is pizza * "Sleep is for the weak" is an oft-repeated, sometimes praised meme * Driving everywhere is expected in many cities. In some neighborhoods, "taking a walk" is looked upon with suspicion * Most jobs now are low on physical intensity, while work hours and work-related stress remain high * The most popular recreations involve "screen time" * Fitness is polluted with snake oil, "bro science" superstition, and image-driven advice; exercise and training itself as a form of character-building is viewed derisively * Diet advice is similarly polluted with snake oil and superstition. Commerce drives the market, leading to quick-fix bandaids that promise a temporary change followed by a return to the original (unhealthy) habit Lots of people are stuck in this scenario, because it takes uncommon dedication and some financial freedom to break with the culture and build a lifestyle of your own design. When their health fails we all pay the price.
delerio 10y ago
It honestly is pretty simple, self-control and discipline. I lost 75lbs over the last year. I was at my high weight (250) for over 8 years. I finally just gave up almost all "sugary" things, which was the most difficult part, I didn't realize I was so addicted. I ate much less calories than I used to. I started exercising regularly, not too much at first, but eased myself into it. After 4 months, and a significant weight loss, I stepped up my calorie intake a bit and then started exercising more vigorously. Currently I go through periods of eating a lot, and then eating very little. My weight continues to go down. It really is simple, if you can get over the feelings of "severe hunger" for the first few months you can shrink your stomach. I hardly get hungry anymore, and have been trying to eat more recently to get my stomach a bit bigger so I don't lose too much. It's just willpower and dedication. Companies are to blame for making it easy to eat unhealthy, but I feel healthier than I ever did just by cooking my own meals and eating a reasonable amount.
dageshi 10y ago
I think most of the comments in this thread miss out the fundamental issue, which is bad food not only tastes better than "good food" it also often is cheaper and crucially is more convenient. Convenient food, that tastes good but is bad for you will beat out inconvenient food that tastes "ok" and is healthy for you. For a lot of people cooking is just more work and if they've got the choice and the money they'll order take out or buy pre-made ready meals. Moaning about sugar and advertising is just tinkering around the edges, to me if you want to solve this problem you've got to make eating healthy as convenient if not more convenient as eating badly.
DrScump 10y ago
Am I the only one who got a Reese's video ad when loading this article?
sssilver 10y ago
As a skinny immigrant who moved to USA and started growing a tummy, I have a few questions. - Why does American food go bad so much later than back home? It shocks me how strawberries here can stay in the fridge for over a week and not go bad, same about tomatoes, or yogurt, or even bread! Back home if you don't eat your strawberries on the same day, the next day they're just gonna be mushy, and the day after they're gonna be inedible. I get so skeptical whenever I see any food that can last over a year - The portions are just monstrous, I remember when I was new I couldn't finish a single restaurant main course, and now I sometimes catch myself that I could actually get a main course and an appetizer, and a dessert! Wouldn't restaurants make more money if they sold less food for the same price? - The culture of "snacking" is quite interesting, I used to only eat during dinner/breakfast, now I find myself snacking in between, because snacks are so accessible and yummy and almost addictive - Ingredients are often tasteless, so you guys add a lot of sauces to make them taste better. The sauce usually contains sugar and other stuff that doesn't help you stay fit. Why not just have food with more natural flavor? This applies to everything from blueberries to meat - Meat sizes are completely bizarre! I've never seen such huge chicken breasts where I'm from. They're also quite bland and not soft/juicy at all. How does this even work? - The concept of zoning is a disaster, if I wanna eat I need to sit in a car and drive where the restaurants are, and if I want booze I need to sit in a car and drive where the bars are, and if I wanna work again sit in a car and go where work is, then for sleep I need to sit in a car and drive home. Why?? Why can't I live in a residential building where first floor is restaurants and cafes, and a few blocks away is my work? You have huge residential communities where it would be foolish to even attempt to walk out of them, because the nearest grocery store is several miles away! Who came up with this, and how can this be a thing?
- capsule_toy 10y ago
  - Most fruits in the US are bred to last longer and picked earlier so that they can survive long trips from the farm to the grocery store. - Take a closer look at the ingredients in your bread. You're most likely buying bread with preservatives. There are bread makers that make bread without them and those will go bad sooner. Look for sprouted bread. Those can go bad within a couple days of the sell by and the sell by itself is only like 3 days from when they get it in. - Why would a customer want to pay more for less versus your competitors? - Ingredients are tasteless because same as with breeding fruits for transport, we do not optimize for flavor but quantity and cost. Good meat is a function of what the animal eats and if they exercise. What you're looking for can be most likely found at your local farmers market.

45 points by upen 10y ago

> Replicated by other studies, that research helps explain the discouraging finding that within five years of having lost weight, 95% of dieters will regain all the weight they lost. And most will gain a few extra pounds as well. I'm part of that privileged 5%. I lost around 60 pounds in 2009-2010 and I've kept it off. It really is a lifestyle change. You have to be constantly aware of the portions you choose and remember what you've already eaten that day to keep in "budget". There are tools and processes that can help, but it's a constant struggle against your body that is constantly lying to your brain. I can definitely see why many people would give up.

brohoolio 10y ago
Do you still have to actively manage your calorie intake?
- minikites 10y ago
  I haven't A/B tested it so I can't say for sure if I "have" to but yes, I continue to manage my intake as closely as I can. I read the labels on everything, measure liquids or weigh foods where the package is larger than a single serving, and so on.
- wccrawford 10y ago
  I'm not who you asked, but... I lost 55 lbs and have kept it off for a year now. It's a constant struggle. If I stop watching what I'm eating, I'll start overeating immediately and start gaining weight. I went to a wedding a week or 2 ago and gained 5-7 lbs. Watching my diet since then, I've dropped most of it again. If I hadn't watched it immediately, it would have stuck and I'd have a hard time losing it again. I'm very careful about what I eat for breakfast and lunch, to the point of almost always having the same thing. Dinner is very varied, but I still have to watch things or I'll go overboard. I eat burgers, Mexican food, Italian, pizza, etc etc... But I do not eat dessert. I've found that there's no way to avoid gaining weight if I eat any dessert at all. To deal with my sweets craving, I drink diet sodas (they've improved a lot lately) and Tic Tacs. If I really need a snack, it'll be peanuts and pretzels. They're high in calories, but no sugar.
- sethammons 10y ago
  My wife lost about 70lbs and has kept it off for over three years. She is a fitness nut now (bar and ring muscle ups, handstand walks and handstand pushups, olympic lifting...). It is constant battle for her to manage her calorie and macro nutrient intake.
lacampbell 10y ago
I lost around the same amount about 2012, then gained 10kg/22lbs back as soon as I started earning enough to not worry about rent and medical costs every single time I went grocery shopping. Good for you - wish I could have been so disciplined (though 40lbs still isn't that bad when everything is said and done)

Neliquat 10y ago

Until this is treated like the public epidemic it is, and promote education, this will only get worse. Calories in - calories out = fat accumulation. It is literally that simple.

devoply 10y ago
Education does not work. Mexico has shown that regulation does work, they regulated sugar which has had a positive effect on health. The food industry needs to be regulated. The few conglomerates are engineering unhealthy people. It's that simple. There is very little actual food choice because the market optimizes for profits, not for health. In order to give health a fighting chance you need to regulate the market to change the game. Food is an addictive drug, we regulate all other addictive drugs. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/03/obese-soda-sugar-tax-mexico https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/03/obese-soda-suga...
- TezlaKoil 10y ago
  > There is very little actual food choice because the market optimizes for profits, not for health. Hold on! The market consists of both suppliers and customer. One would think that being fat is not profitable for the latter. Meanwhile, only 3% of Japanese people have a BMI over 30, while 32% of Americans do. It must be that Japanese markets don't optimize for profit! Or maybe you got the source of the problem wrong. Guess which one I think it is. > Mexico has shown that regulation does work, they regulated sugar which has had a positive effect on health. Hungary has a higher sugar tax, had it for a longer time, and it appears to have no effect on health at all. Go figure.
Terr_ 10y ago
> promote education IMO it's not so much about education as about how to help people shape their habits. People already know that candy-bars and french-fries correlate to obesity, after all. > that simple Or at least, so close to being that simple that there's no point confusing people with erroneous details. https://xkcd.com/669/ https://xkcd.com/669/
wavefunction 10y ago

quotemstr 10y ago

Is it really in the best interest of society to allow food makers to advertise superstimuli-level [1] food products that we know in aggregate make is less happy and likely to die earlier? Why? We regulate all sorts of substances that we know are harmful when ingested. We shouldn't make exceptions for things that happen to be called food. Even if we don't want to enact anything as drastic as a "soda tax" or a ban on refined sugar, we can at least stop processed-food companies advertising to children and creating life-long bad habits. The FDA could also be more eager in approving appetite-regulating drugs, allowing people to choose to take on certain risk in exchange for large potential weight loss. Several effective agents have been known since the 1920s; is a small risk of cataracts or heart valve damage in a small number of people really worth allowing millions of people to be sicker than they would otherwise be? Speaking of drugs: smoking decreases BMI quite a bit. Granted, it damages the lungs, but like most things, tobacco has a mixture of positive and negative effects. Given that we have an obesity crisis, was taboo-ing one of the more popular and effective anti-obesity tools really the right choice? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

lacampbell 10y ago
At what point do people take responsibility for their own bodies and their own lives? We all know the secret to not being obese. Asking the government to step in and help us just seems... childish. Are we not adults? Do we have no agency?
- zitterbewegung 10y ago
  There is a genetic component to being overweight that you are overlooking. It's not just eating less .
  - quotemstr 10y ago
    You're correct about there being a genetic component to obesity. Unfortunately, it's also the case that it is just "eating less" --- physics has no special case for 21st century humans. The way to square this circle, and what's particularly difficult for people in this society, is to accept that that there is a genetic component to this behavioral issue. We'd prefer very much going around believing that behavior is somehow disjoint from genetics. That just isn't true, and as long we continue believing it's true, we're going to make bad public policy.

DoodleBuggy 10y ago

Is this really different from smoking or another harmful unhealthy lifestyle choice? It's abusing food, and it has negative consequences. The cost of health care to manage obesity and related issues is staggering and will only increase. Maybe the USA should start having a BMI tax?

bijection 10y ago
It may be that that lower income means lower quality food means higher BMI, in which case a BMI tax would exacerbate the problem. Food for thought.
- DoodleBuggy 10y ago
  OK, so tax garbage food and tax BMI. Really, it should be no different than any other sin tax. It's behavior you want to discourage, so tax it.
  - sethammons 10y ago
    Simply raising prices on bad food would not be enough. Food education and getting healthy food choices to be more affordable are key. There are huge swathes of people who have no clue what eating healthy looks like. And eating healthy is more expensive.
sethammons 10y ago
BMI is not always a valid gauge. It does not take into account above average muscle mass. My BMI says that I am obese. I have, maybe, 20 extra pounds on me. If I lost that, I would be abs-in-your-face shredded (or very near it).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

CPLX 10y ago

> weight bias and discrimination raise the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes The idea that a study conclusively demonstrated that in a meaningful way seems extraordinarily unlikely. I'd be awful curious to see the methodology of that.

BadassFractal 10y ago

I haven't really paid attention to men's physiques, but there's a stark difference between the silhouettes of women in many cities of Europe and those in even the most "superficial" US states such as California. I know the PC police will eat me for lunch for saying this, but the dating pool, at least in the 20s and 30s range, shrinks considerably in the US for anybody used to European body image standards. Whatever's happening to the population here is not normal. I don't know if it's our lifestyles becoming totally sedentary, if it's food marketing having reached absolutely irresistible heights, or if it's the lack of a culture of slow eating, but something is clearly not working and it really doesn't feel like the individual's fault, it seems actually systemic. One thought is perhaps we should start treating the constant incessant advertisement of food the same way we treated the cigarette industry and regulate its appeal to children, put up disclaimers about what happens when you down that entire bag of cheetos etc.

minikites 10y ago
One of the more plausible (to an uneducated person like me) theories I've seen in a few places is that we've bred food (both plants and animals) for size and pest/disease/shipping durability at the direct expense of flavor. Flavor is a key signal for nutrition, so our brain goes "not enough nutrients, eat more to get them!" Here's a Vox review/summary of a book: http://www.vox.com/2015/7/30/9070255/dorito-effect http://www.vox.com/2015/7/30/9070255/dorito-effect > Flavor technology got very powerful in the early 1960s, and it wasn't long after that that we began to see the startling increases in body mass index. > All the good stuff we grow — tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce — has gotten continually more bland. This has been measured. They have become diluted of nutrients, as well. As we selected crops for agronomic traits like yield, shelf life and disease resistant, we never selected for flavor. And we lost flavor as a result. It's reverse evolutionary pressure.
- costcopizza 10y ago
  Also, grains used to be a decent source of Omega 3's until we (over the course of many generations) selectively bred for sweetness.
10y ago

aplomb 10y ago

We're at a point where there is so much technological, cultural, malicious disruption that people don't know how to live anymore and are trying to find their way on the fly or based on some diet/lifestyle du jour. Yes personal responsibility and all, but we've made it awful easy to fall into this trap.

tzs 10y ago

Here's a nice map of the US showing the adult obesity rate in each state: http://stateofobesity.org/adult-obesity/ http://stateofobesity.org/adult-obesity/ Note that you can select earlier years using the controls below the map. Some depressing observations: • In 1990, the highest rate was 15% (Mississippi) and the lowest was 6.9% (Colorado). • In 2000, the highest was 23.9% (West Virginia) and the lowest 14.5% (Colorado). Note that in a mere 10 years, the lowest was almost equal to what had been the highest. There are plenty of other charts on the site. There is one for physical inactivity. That shows two interesting things: • The states with the highest obesity have the most inactivity, and the states with the least obesity the least inactivity. • However, for each state the level of inactivity has remained fairly flat over the last 10 years, even though the obesity rate has risen in those states. Inactivity might explain why some states are more or less obese than others, but it doesn't appear to have anything to do with why we are getting fatter everywhere.

rpcorb 10y ago
It really is interesting that only in the last 20-25 years has the obesity rate really taken off. In other words, it doesn't seem like this was gradual linear trend starting much earlier. So, why didn't it happen earlier? What changed (the most)? Was it a convergence of forces reaching a tipping point? Or did a single major change occur in the 90s, such as the food industry introducing a key st of addictive ingredients?

cletus 10y ago

As much as people like to jump up and down about public health issues like cigarettes or even guns, what I find interesting is how few people seriously talk about the car being one of the biggest public health crises to originate in the 20th century. There is of course the direct effect of the hundreds of thousands of vehicular related deaths per year (globally) as well as serious injuries but there are a bunch of other effects. One of these is the change in urban planning where life is centered around the car such that Americans, in particular, walk far less than people in other countries [1]. There's a big difference here between walking and needing to walk. People in NYC for example pretty much need to walk. I'm not saying it's impossible to become obese when your daily life requires you or even just encourages you to walk more but it sure makes it more difficult. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t_americans_walk_more_the_crisis_of_pedestrianism_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/why_don_t...

beloch 10y ago

Losing a significant amount of weight and keeping it off is difficult but possible. My brother and I both did it, but in very different ways. Personally, I maxed out at a BMI of 34. I lost about 70 pounds, got back into the normal BMI range, and have stayed there for about a decade now. I changed my diet, changed my physical activities, and changed a lot of habits and modes of thinking. That last one is perhaps most important of all. For example, as kids, we were taught not to waste food, and that meant eating everything there was. Well, cleaning your plate (and the pot) isn't going to put food on the plates of starving children. Whether you eat it or not, the waste happened at the supermarket when you bought too much food! My brother saw me losing weight and wanted to do it too, so I tried to help him. He hated the food I was now eating. He didn't want to work out. He didn't want to change the way he thought. Instead, he got a lot fatter and, eventually, a sleeve gastrectomy. He's not in the normal BMI range yet, but he's been making steady progress and it's not optional for him. He literally can't eat enough to stay fat. His stomach is now tiny and fills up rather quickly. The prep for the surgery was harsh, and included a brutal, several week long crash diet. The surgery itself went off without a hitch, but he still had to recover on a morphine drip. I have no idea what kind of pain that involves, but it can't be pleasant. Bottom line, he thought he was choosing the easy way at the time, but we now both know it was the hard way. Harder by far. I got healthy. He inflicted a disability on himself that has the side-effect of losing weight. He still isn't active and, not surprisingly, has terrible energy levels. After both our experiences, I can reasonably say the media does a terrible job of helping people. It tells them about healthy things to eat, but never mentions these things are only healthy if you eat them instead of your usual fare, and in appropriate amounts. It tells people they need to be ripped, cross-fitting gym-bunnies to be fit, when doing just about anything besides sitting on your butt will be an improvement for many people. Finding a physical activity you can enjoy is far more important than being ripped. Above all, it rarely attempts to help people change the way they think, which is the key to making permanent changes. TL;DR: If I had to offer one piece of advice to those wishing to lose weight and become more active, it would be to ignore all the crap articles out there on diet fads and gym-crazes and pay some attention to how you think about food and activity. Change how you think, and everything else will come as a consequence of that change.

buzzybee 10y ago

Our culture has acquired a lot of poor health habits that are seemingly inescapable, depending on your socioeconomic background: * Most industrial food products are adulterated with dairy, sugar, or both * Industrial food is also cheap and widespread. It takes dedication to avoid it or restrict its impact: At parties, the default non-alcoholic beverage is sugar water, and the default food is pizza * "Sleep is for the weak" is an oft-repeated, sometimes praised meme * Driving everywhere is expected in many cities. In some neighborhoods, "taking a walk" is looked upon with suspicion * Most jobs now are low on physical intensity, while work hours and work-related stress remain high * The most popular recreations involve "screen time" * Fitness is polluted with snake oil, "bro science" superstition, and image-driven advice; exercise and training itself as a form of character-building is viewed derisively * Diet advice is similarly polluted with snake oil and superstition. Commerce drives the market, leading to quick-fix bandaids that promise a temporary change followed by a return to the original (unhealthy) habit Lots of people are stuck in this scenario, because it takes uncommon dedication and some financial freedom to break with the culture and build a lifestyle of your own design. When their health fails we all pay the price.

delerio 10y ago

It honestly is pretty simple, self-control and discipline. I lost 75lbs over the last year. I was at my high weight (250) for over 8 years. I finally just gave up almost all "sugary" things, which was the most difficult part, I didn't realize I was so addicted. I ate much less calories than I used to. I started exercising regularly, not too much at first, but eased myself into it. After 4 months, and a significant weight loss, I stepped up my calorie intake a bit and then started exercising more vigorously. Currently I go through periods of eating a lot, and then eating very little. My weight continues to go down. It really is simple, if you can get over the feelings of "severe hunger" for the first few months you can shrink your stomach. I hardly get hungry anymore, and have been trying to eat more recently to get my stomach a bit bigger so I don't lose too much. It's just willpower and dedication. Companies are to blame for making it easy to eat unhealthy, but I feel healthier than I ever did just by cooking my own meals and eating a reasonable amount.

dageshi 10y ago

I think most of the comments in this thread miss out the fundamental issue, which is bad food not only tastes better than "good food" it also often is cheaper and crucially is more convenient. Convenient food, that tastes good but is bad for you will beat out inconvenient food that tastes "ok" and is healthy for you. For a lot of people cooking is just more work and if they've got the choice and the money they'll order take out or buy pre-made ready meals. Moaning about sugar and advertising is just tinkering around the edges, to me if you want to solve this problem you've got to make eating healthy as convenient if not more convenient as eating badly.

DrScump 10y ago

Am I the only one who got a Reese's video ad when loading this article?

sssilver 10y ago

As a skinny immigrant who moved to USA and started growing a tummy, I have a few questions. - Why does American food go bad so much later than back home? It shocks me how strawberries here can stay in the fridge for over a week and not go bad, same about tomatoes, or yogurt, or even bread! Back home if you don't eat your strawberries on the same day, the next day they're just gonna be mushy, and the day after they're gonna be inedible. I get so skeptical whenever I see any food that can last over a year - The portions are just monstrous, I remember when I was new I couldn't finish a single restaurant main course, and now I sometimes catch myself that I could actually get a main course and an appetizer, and a dessert! Wouldn't restaurants make more money if they sold less food for the same price? - The culture of "snacking" is quite interesting, I used to only eat during dinner/breakfast, now I find myself snacking in between, because snacks are so accessible and yummy and almost addictive - Ingredients are often tasteless, so you guys add a lot of sauces to make them taste better. The sauce usually contains sugar and other stuff that doesn't help you stay fit. Why not just have food with more natural flavor? This applies to everything from blueberries to meat - Meat sizes are completely bizarre! I've never seen such huge chicken breasts where I'm from. They're also quite bland and not soft/juicy at all. How does this even work? - The concept of zoning is a disaster, if I wanna eat I need to sit in a car and drive where the restaurants are, and if I want booze I need to sit in a car and drive where the bars are, and if I wanna work again sit in a car and go where work is, then for sleep I need to sit in a car and drive home. Why?? Why can't I live in a residential building where first floor is restaurants and cafes, and a few blocks away is my work? You have huge residential communities where it would be foolish to even attempt to walk out of them, because the nearest grocery store is several miles away! Who came up with this, and how can this be a thing?

capsule_toy 10y ago
- Most fruits in the US are bred to last longer and picked earlier so that they can survive long trips from the farm to the grocery store. - Take a closer look at the ingredients in your bread. You're most likely buying bread with preservatives. There are bread makers that make bread without them and those will go bad sooner. Look for sprouted bread. Those can go bad within a couple days of the sell by and the sell by itself is only like 3 days from when they get it in. - Why would a customer want to pay more for less versus your competitors? - Ingredients are tasteless because same as with breeding fruits for transport, we do not optimize for flavor but quantity and cost. Good meat is a function of what the animal eats and if they exercise. What you're looking for can be most likely found at your local farmers market.