7 ms·

In the United States, Obesity is one of the leading causes of death, with estimates as high as 300,000 deaths/year. (See https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult

In the United States, Obesity is one of the leading causes of death, with estimates as high as 300,000 deaths/year. (See https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html ) Deaths from Anorexia are about 150/year (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11513012 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11513012 ) Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. It would be like spending weeks in urban schools talking about how to avoid poisonous snake bites and spending 15 minutes on automobile safety.

paulddraper 9y ago
I'm sympathetic to your point, but there are effects other than death. Low self esteem has its own problems.
coldtea 9y ago
>Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. Probably because that offends/annoys more people (300,000 over 150 times more) than warning about anorexia.
thatfrenchguy 9y ago
As a French person: stop subsidizing corn, start subsidizing vegetables, stop eating take-out. If you look at a middle-class supermarket in France and in the US you understand why your poor are obese pretty quickly.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  Not just France, but most European countries.. every time I travel in Europe there's always this initial realization that I'm no longer surrounded by obese people. None of the places I've been to over there encourage the same eating habits that you find prevalent in the US.
  - jdavis703 9y ago
    Well portion sizes are smaller, but most people walk, bike or transit to work. For example this week I haven't done any exercise due to a "sports"-related injury, and yet managed to burn an average of 2571 calories -- and before you think I'm lucky to live near work, my one-way commute is 30 miles. Even just 40 minutes of daily physical activity built into a commute can make a huge difference.
    - craftyguy 9y ago
      Oh yea, totally. I bicycle to work almost every day (it's ~6 mi one way), but I'm lucky enough to live in a location with decent cycling infrastructure. I think another aspect of why most folks drive here (the US) is because a lot of locations have little or no infrastructure for getting around without a car. In the area where I am originally from (different part of US), you'd get smashed by cars pretty fast because you'd be forced to travel on highways/freeways.
  - chrisper 9y ago
    It does not help that in the US (or at least in California) you have to drive everywhere. I live in Europe now, but when I lived in the US I barley walked anywhere since it was just too far. In Europe I do not even own a car anymore. Most things can be done with a bike, by foot, or by public transport. For a few things where I prefer a car, I just use car sharing. So now I am way more active every day. And thanks to certain trains always be running late, I am running at least once a day as well!
  - tomp 9y ago
    Don't worry, obesity rates are going up in Europe as well, so we'll soon be just like the US!
  - 21 9y ago
    Besides different eating habits, one of the reasons is that there is a huge stigma of being obese in most of Europe. The fact that it is relatively rare makes any such person stand out even more, and makes it harder to justify (since your peers somehow manage to keep their weight in check)
- jdavis703 9y ago
  The food we have in the U.S., particularly in low-income areas is atrocious. However there are a lot of excuses being made about obesity, including that it's caused by poverty. Yes poverty is a component, but the obesity epidemic is striking all income groups, with no particular correlation to income [0]. It's more about the diet and exercise choices that people choose to make, include the middle class and upper class who most definitely have the ability to make choices around the food and beverages they consume. Further many of the most wasteful calories are not caused by high-sodium, high-fat processed foods but by excess sugar consumption in the form of sugary drinks. Switching to water, black coffee, or unsweetened tea could help the "Big Gulp" demographic big time. 0: http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/486733 http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullart...
  - Mz 9y ago
    Almost everyone in the US is a prisoner of their car. Our built environment presumes that you have a car. We make it very challenging to live without one. And then we have to listen to Stephen Hawking be judgy about how we "choose" to not be active, which he can't understand from his wheelchair. Most Americans are confined to a wheeled chair for many hours a week. We just call it a car, but good luck getting free of it. (I have lived without a car for about a decade, so this comment is not expressing discontent with me feeling trapped. I escaped that trap and walking everywhere has helped me shed a lot of weight without intending to.)
    - sametmax 9y ago
      Half of the problem is not the infrastructure, but peoples priorities and the public perception of the pros/cons of a car. Also the value of the car as a symbol. A couple will make 3 kids and say "I can't do without a car". But the couple never ponder the cost of making a family. The fact or having a car or not, and other matters of life style, are an after thoughs. And if you raise the issue, you are a cold robot for thinking that way instead of with your "heart".
      - Mz 9y ago
- simplyluke 9y ago
  I think it's a deeper cultural issue than that. Look at how much more expensive cigarettes are in France and the graphical warning labels that accompany them and then look at how much more commonplace smoking is in France, particularly among the youth. Regulations don't change cultures to nearly the effect many want them to.
- sametmax 9y ago
  Not sure we should be giving advice. Our situation has worsen during the last 15 years. The quality of food is going down (and the prices for good food up), the health habits are too. Not in the same proportion of the US yet, but it's significant. Compared to my parents or grand parent generation, the new ones: - spend much more time seated; - spend much more time in front of a screen; - have much less people knowing how to cook. Or choose tasty fruits or vegetable for that matters, and hence they believe good food taste like crap. - have more fat people, especially young ones; - eat less home made food; - consume more cereals, dairies, meat and refined sugar and less vegetables or fruits; - eat more, and more often; - consume products with less nutritional density, and a bigger concentration of additives of all sorts; - eat while doing something else, faster, with less mastication. So clearly our society is starting to fail on the health part as well.
  - thatfrenchguy 9y ago
    Source here ?
    - Simon_says 9y ago
      Source: I know it. You know it. Everybody knows it.
- chiefalchemist 9y ago
  Yes and no. I live in the USA. I shop in a few different supermarket each catering to a particular class (if you will). Mind you, the overall selection reflects the income level the store serves. But that doesn't completely explain what goes into the carts. Long to short, I'm not so sure the less well to do are making decisions that keep them healthy. Soda, ice cream, sugary cereals, etc. These things are in the upper class stores aw well, but it seem less people are interested. I agree with you. But I want to added that the consumers' choices factor in as well.
  - egwynn 9y ago
    The way I’ve heard it explained is that poor people will base their grocery purchases based on price, and that gets to GP’s point about not subsidizing corn. The reasoning goes: cheap corn leads to low-end food being filled with corn syrup, which leads to poor people eating tons of sugar, which leads to health problems among poor people. The solution, under this scheme, is to help steer the schedule of food prices so that it’s cheaper for people to eat healthy food (eliminate corn subsidies).
    - chiefalchemist 9y ago
      Agree 100%! In fact approx 10+ yrs ago the NY Times Sunday mag ran an article that said what you just did. In short, corn subsidies lead to cheap sweeteners, and those to cheap (but frutose based) foods. Ironic that cities (e.g., Philadelphia) have a (so called) sugar drink tax" but their tax dollars (via subsidies) were already used to lower the cost of those drinks. Ultimately, the consumer pays. The consumer always pays.
  - ashark 9y ago
    Upper classes are socialized against sweet=good. That helps.
- hrktb 9y ago
  What does eating take-out have to do with obesity ?
benjojo12 9y ago
[ Disclosure: As Brit I have no idea how the US treats these issues, I'm only going on how the UK does ] > Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. The UK already tackles these issues by banning a great deal, if not all food adverts on TV channels at times that children will typically watch, it's very easy to say that we should be focusing more effort on some subject but actually in fact we are focusing on the problem of obesity the one of the things we haven't really focused a huge amount of effort on is anorexia which still kills people ( and even more tragically, typically young people ) > Deaths from Anorexia are about 150/year I actually went through and read the paper that you sourced that quote from and I think the author actually misses a big issue source of possible fatalities, primary it's not focusing on the suicide numbers. Instead it goes to focus on the death certificate counts for anorexia, there's probably doesn't mean that it's going to have a very good representation in the same way that you can't directly blame a lot of deaths on obesity directly because it causes other long-term issues
sillysaurus3 9y ago
What is your point here, beyond "Fat people are fat"? Do you believe that obese women don't know they're fat? What would telling them they're fat accomplish? None of this makes sense and it's just an excuse to be unkind.
- cyphar 9y ago
  TFA is about France targeting advertising that is known to cause anorexia. GP's point is that (in the US) obesity is a much larger issue and should have far more resources put into tackling that problem. Not being allowed to advertise to minors would be one idea. But since TFA is about France the situation is different. Your comment is a perfect example of being hypersensitive about this issue. As someone who used to be obese, I find it quite horrifying that more isn't being done to protect children from harmful advertising. I'm lucky that I found my motivation to combat my weight problems in my late teens, many people aren't so fortunate.
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    Mm, no, this is a different argument than "why not tell fat women they're fat?" I agree with you. But their argument was little more than an excuse to be rude.
    - thawkins 9y ago
      Perhaps a policy of telling fatist arseholes that they are fatist arseholes.
pjc50 9y ago
Generally people know they're overweight, and there is no shyness about telling people so. Especially women. What there is a lack of is compassionate, practical help. It's quite a bit like smoking; few people would argue that they didn't know they were smoking, the issue is whether they care about the negative health effects and how they can actually do something about it that sticks.
- cyphar 9y ago
  In Australia (after we introduced plain packaging laws for cigarettes, banned advertising, and made many other related laws) smoking has dropped significantly[1]. It's amazing how much advertising and education plays into this. What if it was not legal to advertise junk food to children, or you had plain-packaging style laws for junk food? I used to be obese, so I completely agree that fat people usually are somewhat aware of how fat they are and of the health impacts. It's just hard to make them care, and they need help with going through a lifestyle change that they are going to make mistakes during. [1]: http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyCatalogue/E6DE72422D16BBB4CA258130001536C2?OpenDocument http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyCatal...
  - kyriakos 9y ago
    It really helps that you can get a decent meal for the price of a cigarette pack.
  - chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
    One problem is that "junk food" is an ill-defined term, even though it may seem obvious. For example, years ago Greek Yogurt became popular in supermarkets in the U.S. If you look at the nutrition label of a yogurt like Chobani, it contains roughly 4 teaspoons of sugar in one small container. And yet yogurt is advertised as a healthy food. If you "quit sugar" in the U.S., you'll quickly realize just how many items at supermarkets have added sugar. I'm more concerned about "sneaky calories" then straight-up junk food.
    - GordonS 9y ago
cyphar 9y ago
> Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. Also smoking is very normalised in many parts of the world, thanks to American lobbying. I really wish more countries would follow Australia's lead on smoking legislation. Smoking kills ~500,000 a year[1]. > It would be like spending weeks in urban schools talking about how to avoid poisonous snake bites and spending 15 minutes on automobile safety. As an aside, in Australia we teach both (not to mention spider, tick, blue bottle, jellyfish, and octopus safety). [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...
- caseysoftware 9y ago
  That's because everything in Australia is [secretly] plotting to kill you! ;)
  - acheron 9y ago
    There was a kids' cartoon from the U.K. I think, where one of the episodes was about how spiders are our friends and you don't need to be afraid of them, etc. When the show was broadcast in Australia they left that episode out, because all the spiders in Australia probably will kill you. :)
    - cyphar 9y ago
      Yes, it was an episode of "Peppa Pig". https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/sep/05/peppa-pig-spiders-cant-hurt-you-episode-pulled-off-air-in-australia-again https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/sep/05/peppa-p...
      - acheron 9y ago
        Ha yeah, that was the one I was thinking of. Excellent.
- tgb 9y ago
  Is it American lobbying? As an American, I could never live in Europe since the cigarette smoke everywhere disgusts me. Too bad because they have a lot of other things figured out but will still be smoking the cigarettes outdoors in a crowded restaurant seating or worse, around children. I've never seen anything like it in the US though the current riser of ecigs is concerning.
xkcd-sucks 9y ago
Obese people make jobs in fast food and healthcare, anorexic people don't buy much and are bad for the economy
brainfire 9y ago
Can you relate your comment to the article? What does obesity have to do with fake body shapes?
deleted 9y ago
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Mz 9y ago
Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. One of the reasons for this is that women don't really get told they should work on their fitness to improve their own quality of life. The framing is almost always that the only real value a woman has is as a sex object. Telling women they need to lose weight is also a blame game where people with relatively little control over their lives are tasked with yet one more standard to meet instead of being given the support they need. I am a woman. I am still alive when I should not be in part because I refused to cave to enormous social pressure to diet and force my body to conform to certain expectations. After getting the right diagnosis in my mid thirties, I was empowered to finally take proper care of myself. I shrank dramatically, even though that was not a goal of mine and my doctor was not trying to get me to lose weight because my condition usually leads to people being severely underweight and this helps kill them. Our built environment used to be designed with fitness is mind. Now, many Americans are prisoners of their cars, spending long periods driving to and from work or school and finding nothing within walking distance. Elevators and escalators have replaced stairs. Sedentary office jobs are more the norm than hard physical labor. Everyone is too time stressed to go home and cook a real meal from scratch, so folks eat crappy microwave meals or get fast food at the drive through window or some other equally unhealthy option. From my perspective, women giving push back and saying "I'm not your bitch, don't hang your shit on me. Quit judging me for how I look and pressuring me to conform." is actually the essential first step for trying to take control of their lives. That control leads to better health. Women starving themselves to try to conform does not lead to better health. It is just one more source of stress and problems for people who already tend to have too little control over their lives.
- cyphar 9y ago
  Or maybe some people legitimately were concerned for your health? The statistics are indisputable, being obese causes permanent damage to your body and reduces both the quality and length of your life. Wanting someone to frame this differently is a bit of an odd complaint. I also used to be obese, and I also made my own decision to become healthy. I don't think you can force someone to become healthier, but I doubt that I would be in my current state today if nobody mentioned my weight to me. Maybe you feel differently, but ignoring a problem rarely helps make it go away. Blaming your environment (Elevators? Really? Every building has fire stairs...) or society at large for people not being motivated to lose weight is an odd perspective (especially blaming people who are trying to help by bringing the problem to your attention). Letting things slide, and a lack of constant affirmation is what caused to me to remain obese for several years. There are better ways of helping (offering to go for a run with someone), but ultimately that's just a nicer way to remind someone of their weight. Also, GP was pointing out the double standard when it comes to how anorexia and obesity are treated by society.
simplyluke 9y ago
Humorously going through K12 in Texas I remember multiple safety lessons before doing (literal) field trips in grade school about rattle snakes and I never received drivers education through a school.
RodericDay 9y ago
Posts like these make me very happy I'm hellbanned from this website. An article talking about making life easier for women by removing all this odious, absolutely bullshit pressure to see themselves primarily as sex objects, measuring themselves against unrealizeable standards... And the first top-voted reply is some complete nonsense about how we need more of that shit not less. Fun fact: Obesity has far more to do with car-centric america. Fun fact: Obesity has far more to do with poor cultural diets, food deserts, and poverty in America. Fun fact: Making a goal seem completely unreachable is a great way to get people to give up before even trying. And, since I'm already hellbanned: fuck you.
DanBC 9y ago
> Deaths from Anorexia are about 150/year > (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11513012 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11513012 ) treatment for anorexia has got very much better. It used to kill about 20% of people with the diagnosis. More people get full recovery than used to, and more people live long term (either maintaining low weight, or relapsing & remitting) with anorexia. But, also, deaths from anorexia are often coded as something else. EG https://twitter.com/MaskedAMHP/status/910465836170846208 https://twitter.com/MaskedAMHP/status/910465836170846208 https://twitter.com/AgnesAyton/status/913722609610760192 https://twitter.com/AgnesAyton/status/913722609610760192 etc. http://content.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB21748 http://content.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB21748
runeks 9y ago
> Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese So you think the problem lies in obese people being unaware of how much they weigh?
- dorian-graph 9y ago
  Seems like a facetious over-simplification of what the poster said. If it's hard (socially) to approach something, because people are hyper-sensitive, then it's simply hard to help those people. In a lot of Western culture it generally seems accepted to tell people they're too skinny, but not to tell people they're too fat—obviously I don't just mean walking down a street and saying this to a stranger, but in appropriate settings.
  - runeks 9y ago
    You're right. I wrote the comment without having read the article, which is why I wasn't able to put it in context. After having read the article, I agree, I think he makes a good point. Although I still think telling a person that you consider he or she to be either overweight or skinny is quite meaningless. If they ask you for your opinion, it makes sense to answer, but I have a really hard time believing that an over/underweight person wouldn't have noticed this already while looking in the mirror. It's a bit like telling a cigarette smoker that smoking is unhealthy and that they should quit. The chance that they didn't know this already is practically zero, which means you're not offering any help.
    - dorian-graph 9y ago
      I don't think it's about not knowing if they're under- or over-weight or not. I'm sure there's a massive amount of research into why we knowingly do things that are harmful to our selves too. What I took away from the original poster is that, it seems more appropriate in many Western societies to make available help for those who are under-weight or who smoke. It also seems more appropriate to proactively try help others too. AFAIK too, we don't have the equivalent with smoking of people promoting that being severely overweight is okay. As for the equivalent with being under-weight, from what I see, many years ago the focus was being on skinny for the sake of being skinny as it's attractive. These days it seems to be a focus on being fit (and healthy), which generally means not being skinny, but having a more toned body, or rather, simply not excess fat.
deleted 9y ago
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smegel 9y ago
It's crazy really. Showing extreme thinness is probably not healthy, but that is not what this is about. All these photoshopped images show fit, but not anorexic bodies. Encouraging healthy diets and exercise to achieve bodies like that is not a public health threat.
gnaritas 9y ago
> Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. Women don't need to be told they're overweight and obese, all fat people know it, they think about it every day. Are you really so insensitive that you think they need to be told?
wpietri 9y ago
You talk about these like they are two distinct problems, but they're closely related. Unhealthy body image drives a lot of unhealthy food behaviors and weight gain [1]. That negative body image is driven by many things, including fashion culture promoting atypical or fictional bodies [2][3]. It is also driven by a culture of fat shaming. [4] So if you are really serious about reducing harm from obesity, promoting more realistic, healthier body images is a valuable step in that direction. [1] e.g.: http://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X%2815%2900288-8/pdf http://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X%2815%2900288-8/p... [2] http://www.sirc.org/publik/mirror.html http://www.sirc.org/publik/mirror.html [3] e.g.: the phenomenon of "shadow pies" http://memehuffer.typepad.com/meme_huffer/2008/06/who-ate-all-the.html http://memehuffer.typepad.com/meme_huffer/2008/06/who-ate-al... [4] http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/07/health/fat-shaming-sick-study-partner/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/07/health/fat-shaming-sick-study-...
- deleted 9y ago
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- nv-vn 9y ago
  I don't think the first link really provides any real insight into the problem. First of all, the study isn't experimental. There could easily be many confounding variables here, such as depression causing more body satisfaction issues. Another issue could be that overweight people with low body satisfaction are less satisfied because they have been warned more about it (chicken-and-egg); for example, if a child had a binge eating disorder to begin with, their parents/doctors/friends would intervene more to try to stop them from gaining so much weight. The study also doesn't clearly define how the survey worked, and the study referenced for the survey didn't explain much either [1]. It doesn't seem like there's any measure of whether low body satisfaction means weight is too high/weight is too low (I think there's some nuance to this, for example someone desiring larger breasts may want to gain weight even if they see themselves as fat, and there's a big difference here based on culture). Finally, keep in mind the jump back to weight gain with "Very high body satisfaction". These are separated into 4 groups (apparently by quartile, although clearly every group is a different size just by looking at the chart), but this information could reveal a sharp spike as you get to the top 1% or something. Also, look at the difference in size between the 4 groups, the first is 4x larger than the last, which seems really strange. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3140795/#R27 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3140795/#R27
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lloydde 9y ago
I don’t have the expertise to comment on the effectiveness of this legislation, but your simile doesn’t work. Both anorexia and obesity are symptoms of the same problem: society projecting unrealistic body imagery, more generally over focus on physical appearance over health indicators, contributing to serious body image psychological issues, particularly among females. People with either diagnosis often have related eating activities like restriction and many overweight people have been underweight or undernourished previously. These are complex physiological and psychological topics and we won’t make holistic progress as long as diet and health advice, including government programs, are dominated by pseudoscience — case in point, the joke that is the food pyramid.
- userbinator 9y ago
  Both anorexia and obesity are symptoms of the same problem: society projecting unrealistic body imagery It is interesting to note that several centuries ago, when far more of the population was underweight, being somewhat overweight or even obese was considered the ideal. Now that the average weight has increased significantly, it seems the "unrealistic body imagery" has gone in the other direction.
  - lloydde 9y ago
    This observation distracts from the fact that that nutrition and body science is young. Hypothesizes that have experimental support come from the last 130 years, but even then most of popular theories of the last decades have contradictory evidence.
  - lloydde 9y ago
    It would have been more accurately if I had included psychological unrealistic body imagery. Others in this thread have suggested that the manipulation is to make people look fit, but there are regular articles that describe those clicks of the mouse resulting in physiologically extreme, if not impossible body proportions.
  - lloydde 9y ago
    What I do like about your observation is that it brings to my mind that although there has always been artistic license in previous centuries, for the most part the images were attempting to accurately represent the specific persons show.
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
I didn't see the 300,000 number in your CDC link. I'm curious where you found a number so low. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm says that some 2.6 million Americans die each year. I think it's safe to estimate that more than the 36.5% obesity rate for the entire population applies to this group, implying that some 958 thousand people died while obese (ignoring cause). The top 10 causes of death include heart disease at #1, strokes, and diabetes; these factors alone total to 853 thousand deaths due to conditions largely caused by obesity. Furthermore, studies suggest that some fraction of the almost 600k cancer deaths are caused by obesity. I think you're at least a factor of 3 too low. I will play devil's advocate for a moment, though, and say that among high school girls, anorexia is a much more frequent problem than death by heart attack. No, it doesn't lead to death, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.

paulddraper 9y ago

I'm sympathetic to your point, but there are effects other than death. Low self esteem has its own problems.

coldtea 9y ago

>Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. Probably because that offends/annoys more people (300,000 over 150 times more) than warning about anorexia.

thatfrenchguy 9y ago

As a French person: stop subsidizing corn, start subsidizing vegetables, stop eating take-out. If you look at a middle-class supermarket in France and in the US you understand why your poor are obese pretty quickly.

craftyguy 9y ago
Not just France, but most European countries.. every time I travel in Europe there's always this initial realization that I'm no longer surrounded by obese people. None of the places I've been to over there encourage the same eating habits that you find prevalent in the US.
- jdavis703 9y ago
  Well portion sizes are smaller, but most people walk, bike or transit to work. For example this week I haven't done any exercise due to a "sports"-related injury, and yet managed to burn an average of 2571 calories -- and before you think I'm lucky to live near work, my one-way commute is 30 miles. Even just 40 minutes of daily physical activity built into a commute can make a huge difference.
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    Oh yea, totally. I bicycle to work almost every day (it's ~6 mi one way), but I'm lucky enough to live in a location with decent cycling infrastructure. I think another aspect of why most folks drive here (the US) is because a lot of locations have little or no infrastructure for getting around without a car. In the area where I am originally from (different part of US), you'd get smashed by cars pretty fast because you'd be forced to travel on highways/freeways.
- chrisper 9y ago
  It does not help that in the US (or at least in California) you have to drive everywhere. I live in Europe now, but when I lived in the US I barley walked anywhere since it was just too far. In Europe I do not even own a car anymore. Most things can be done with a bike, by foot, or by public transport. For a few things where I prefer a car, I just use car sharing. So now I am way more active every day. And thanks to certain trains always be running late, I am running at least once a day as well!
- tomp 9y ago
  Don't worry, obesity rates are going up in Europe as well, so we'll soon be just like the US!
- 21 9y ago
  Besides different eating habits, one of the reasons is that there is a huge stigma of being obese in most of Europe. The fact that it is relatively rare makes any such person stand out even more, and makes it harder to justify (since your peers somehow manage to keep their weight in check)
jdavis703 9y ago
The food we have in the U.S., particularly in low-income areas is atrocious. However there are a lot of excuses being made about obesity, including that it's caused by poverty. Yes poverty is a component, but the obesity epidemic is striking all income groups, with no particular correlation to income [0]. It's more about the diet and exercise choices that people choose to make, include the middle class and upper class who most definitely have the ability to make choices around the food and beverages they consume. Further many of the most wasteful calories are not caused by high-sodium, high-fat processed foods but by excess sugar consumption in the form of sugary drinks. Switching to water, black coffee, or unsweetened tea could help the "Big Gulp" demographic big time. 0: http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/486733 http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullart...
- Mz 9y ago
  Almost everyone in the US is a prisoner of their car. Our built environment presumes that you have a car. We make it very challenging to live without one. And then we have to listen to Stephen Hawking be judgy about how we "choose" to not be active, which he can't understand from his wheelchair. Most Americans are confined to a wheeled chair for many hours a week. We just call it a car, but good luck getting free of it. (I have lived without a car for about a decade, so this comment is not expressing discontent with me feeling trapped. I escaped that trap and walking everywhere has helped me shed a lot of weight without intending to.)
  - sametmax 9y ago
    Half of the problem is not the infrastructure, but peoples priorities and the public perception of the pros/cons of a car. Also the value of the car as a symbol. A couple will make 3 kids and say "I can't do without a car". But the couple never ponder the cost of making a family. The fact or having a car or not, and other matters of life style, are an after thoughs. And if you raise the issue, you are a cold robot for thinking that way instead of with your "heart".
    - Mz 9y ago
simplyluke 9y ago
I think it's a deeper cultural issue than that. Look at how much more expensive cigarettes are in France and the graphical warning labels that accompany them and then look at how much more commonplace smoking is in France, particularly among the youth. Regulations don't change cultures to nearly the effect many want them to.
sametmax 9y ago
Not sure we should be giving advice. Our situation has worsen during the last 15 years. The quality of food is going down (and the prices for good food up), the health habits are too. Not in the same proportion of the US yet, but it's significant. Compared to my parents or grand parent generation, the new ones: - spend much more time seated; - spend much more time in front of a screen; - have much less people knowing how to cook. Or choose tasty fruits or vegetable for that matters, and hence they believe good food taste like crap. - have more fat people, especially young ones; - eat less home made food; - consume more cereals, dairies, meat and refined sugar and less vegetables or fruits; - eat more, and more often; - consume products with less nutritional density, and a bigger concentration of additives of all sorts; - eat while doing something else, faster, with less mastication. So clearly our society is starting to fail on the health part as well.
- thatfrenchguy 9y ago
  Source here ?
  - Simon_says 9y ago
    Source: I know it. You know it. Everybody knows it.
chiefalchemist 9y ago
Yes and no. I live in the USA. I shop in a few different supermarket each catering to a particular class (if you will). Mind you, the overall selection reflects the income level the store serves. But that doesn't completely explain what goes into the carts. Long to short, I'm not so sure the less well to do are making decisions that keep them healthy. Soda, ice cream, sugary cereals, etc. These things are in the upper class stores aw well, but it seem less people are interested. I agree with you. But I want to added that the consumers' choices factor in as well.
- egwynn 9y ago
  The way I’ve heard it explained is that poor people will base their grocery purchases based on price, and that gets to GP’s point about not subsidizing corn. The reasoning goes: cheap corn leads to low-end food being filled with corn syrup, which leads to poor people eating tons of sugar, which leads to health problems among poor people. The solution, under this scheme, is to help steer the schedule of food prices so that it’s cheaper for people to eat healthy food (eliminate corn subsidies).
  - chiefalchemist 9y ago
    Agree 100%! In fact approx 10+ yrs ago the NY Times Sunday mag ran an article that said what you just did. In short, corn subsidies lead to cheap sweeteners, and those to cheap (but frutose based) foods. Ironic that cities (e.g., Philadelphia) have a (so called) sugar drink tax" but their tax dollars (via subsidies) were already used to lower the cost of those drinks. Ultimately, the consumer pays. The consumer always pays.
- ashark 9y ago
  Upper classes are socialized against sweet=good. That helps.
hrktb 9y ago
What does eating take-out have to do with obesity ?

benjojo12 9y ago

[ Disclosure: As Brit I have no idea how the US treats these issues, I'm only going on how the UK does ] > Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. The UK already tackles these issues by banning a great deal, if not all food adverts on TV channels at times that children will typically watch, it's very easy to say that we should be focusing more effort on some subject but actually in fact we are focusing on the problem of obesity the one of the things we haven't really focused a huge amount of effort on is anorexia which still kills people ( and even more tragically, typically young people ) > Deaths from Anorexia are about 150/year I actually went through and read the paper that you sourced that quote from and I think the author actually misses a big issue source of possible fatalities, primary it's not focusing on the suicide numbers. Instead it goes to focus on the death certificate counts for anorexia, there's probably doesn't mean that it's going to have a very good representation in the same way that you can't directly blame a lot of deaths on obesity directly because it causes other long-term issues

sillysaurus3 9y ago

What is your point here, beyond "Fat people are fat"? Do you believe that obese women don't know they're fat? What would telling them they're fat accomplish? None of this makes sense and it's just an excuse to be unkind.

cyphar 9y ago
TFA is about France targeting advertising that is known to cause anorexia. GP's point is that (in the US) obesity is a much larger issue and should have far more resources put into tackling that problem. Not being allowed to advertise to minors would be one idea. But since TFA is about France the situation is different. Your comment is a perfect example of being hypersensitive about this issue. As someone who used to be obese, I find it quite horrifying that more isn't being done to protect children from harmful advertising. I'm lucky that I found my motivation to combat my weight problems in my late teens, many people aren't so fortunate.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Mm, no, this is a different argument than "why not tell fat women they're fat?" I agree with you. But their argument was little more than an excuse to be rude.
  - thawkins 9y ago
    Perhaps a policy of telling fatist arseholes that they are fatist arseholes.

pjc50 9y ago

Generally people know they're overweight, and there is no shyness about telling people so. Especially women. What there is a lack of is compassionate, practical help. It's quite a bit like smoking; few people would argue that they didn't know they were smoking, the issue is whether they care about the negative health effects and how they can actually do something about it that sticks.

cyphar 9y ago
In Australia (after we introduced plain packaging laws for cigarettes, banned advertising, and made many other related laws) smoking has dropped significantly[1]. It's amazing how much advertising and education plays into this. What if it was not legal to advertise junk food to children, or you had plain-packaging style laws for junk food? I used to be obese, so I completely agree that fat people usually are somewhat aware of how fat they are and of the health impacts. It's just hard to make them care, and they need help with going through a lifestyle change that they are going to make mistakes during. [1]: http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyCatalogue/E6DE72422D16BBB4CA258130001536C2?OpenDocument http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mediareleasesbyCatal...
- kyriakos 9y ago
  It really helps that you can get a decent meal for the price of a cigarette pack.
- chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
  One problem is that "junk food" is an ill-defined term, even though it may seem obvious. For example, years ago Greek Yogurt became popular in supermarkets in the U.S. If you look at the nutrition label of a yogurt like Chobani, it contains roughly 4 teaspoons of sugar in one small container. And yet yogurt is advertised as a healthy food. If you "quit sugar" in the U.S., you'll quickly realize just how many items at supermarkets have added sugar. I'm more concerned about "sneaky calories" then straight-up junk food.
  - GordonS 9y ago

cyphar 9y ago

> Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. Also smoking is very normalised in many parts of the world, thanks to American lobbying. I really wish more countries would follow Australia's lead on smoking legislation. Smoking kills ~500,000 a year[1]. > It would be like spending weeks in urban schools talking about how to avoid poisonous snake bites and spending 15 minutes on automobile safety. As an aside, in Australia we teach both (not to mention spider, tick, blue bottle, jellyfish, and octopus safety). [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...

caseysoftware 9y ago
That's because everything in Australia is [secretly] plotting to kill you! ;)
- acheron 9y ago
  There was a kids' cartoon from the U.K. I think, where one of the episodes was about how spiders are our friends and you don't need to be afraid of them, etc. When the show was broadcast in Australia they left that episode out, because all the spiders in Australia probably will kill you. :)
  - cyphar 9y ago
    Yes, it was an episode of "Peppa Pig". https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/sep/05/peppa-pig-spiders-cant-hurt-you-episode-pulled-off-air-in-australia-again https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/sep/05/peppa-p...
    - acheron 9y ago
      Ha yeah, that was the one I was thinking of. Excellent.
tgb 9y ago
Is it American lobbying? As an American, I could never live in Europe since the cigarette smoke everywhere disgusts me. Too bad because they have a lot of other things figured out but will still be smoking the cigarettes outdoors in a crowded restaurant seating or worse, around children. I've never seen anything like it in the US though the current riser of ecigs is concerning.

xkcd-sucks 9y ago

Obese people make jobs in fast food and healthcare, anorexic people don't buy much and are bad for the economy

brainfire 9y ago

Can you relate your comment to the article? What does obesity have to do with fake body shapes?

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Mz 9y ago

Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. One of the reasons for this is that women don't really get told they should work on their fitness to improve their own quality of life. The framing is almost always that the only real value a woman has is as a sex object. Telling women they need to lose weight is also a blame game where people with relatively little control over their lives are tasked with yet one more standard to meet instead of being given the support they need. I am a woman. I am still alive when I should not be in part because I refused to cave to enormous social pressure to diet and force my body to conform to certain expectations. After getting the right diagnosis in my mid thirties, I was empowered to finally take proper care of myself. I shrank dramatically, even though that was not a goal of mine and my doctor was not trying to get me to lose weight because my condition usually leads to people being severely underweight and this helps kill them. Our built environment used to be designed with fitness is mind. Now, many Americans are prisoners of their cars, spending long periods driving to and from work or school and finding nothing within walking distance. Elevators and escalators have replaced stairs. Sedentary office jobs are more the norm than hard physical labor. Everyone is too time stressed to go home and cook a real meal from scratch, so folks eat crappy microwave meals or get fast food at the drive through window or some other equally unhealthy option. From my perspective, women giving push back and saying "I'm not your bitch, don't hang your shit on me. Quit judging me for how I look and pressuring me to conform." is actually the essential first step for trying to take control of their lives. That control leads to better health. Women starving themselves to try to conform does not lead to better health. It is just one more source of stress and problems for people who already tend to have too little control over their lives.

cyphar 9y ago
Or maybe some people legitimately were concerned for your health? The statistics are indisputable, being obese causes permanent damage to your body and reduces both the quality and length of your life. Wanting someone to frame this differently is a bit of an odd complaint. I also used to be obese, and I also made my own decision to become healthy. I don't think you can force someone to become healthier, but I doubt that I would be in my current state today if nobody mentioned my weight to me. Maybe you feel differently, but ignoring a problem rarely helps make it go away. Blaming your environment (Elevators? Really? Every building has fire stairs...) or society at large for people not being motivated to lose weight is an odd perspective (especially blaming people who are trying to help by bringing the problem to your attention). Letting things slide, and a lack of constant affirmation is what caused to me to remain obese for several years. There are better ways of helping (offering to go for a run with someone), but ultimately that's just a nicer way to remind someone of their weight. Also, GP was pointing out the double standard when it comes to how anorexia and obesity are treated by society.

simplyluke 9y ago

Humorously going through K12 in Texas I remember multiple safety lessons before doing (literal) field trips in grade school about rattle snakes and I never received drivers education through a school.

RodericDay 9y ago

Posts like these make me very happy I'm hellbanned from this website. An article talking about making life easier for women by removing all this odious, absolutely bullshit pressure to see themselves primarily as sex objects, measuring themselves against unrealizeable standards... And the first top-voted reply is some complete nonsense about how we need more of that shit not less. Fun fact: Obesity has far more to do with car-centric america. Fun fact: Obesity has far more to do with poor cultural diets, food deserts, and poverty in America. Fun fact: Making a goal seem completely unreachable is a great way to get people to give up before even trying. And, since I'm already hellbanned: fuck you.

DanBC 9y ago

> Deaths from Anorexia are about 150/year > (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11513012 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11513012 ) treatment for anorexia has got very much better. It used to kill about 20% of people with the diagnosis. More people get full recovery than used to, and more people live long term (either maintaining low weight, or relapsing & remitting) with anorexia. But, also, deaths from anorexia are often coded as something else. EG https://twitter.com/MaskedAMHP/status/910465836170846208 https://twitter.com/MaskedAMHP/status/910465836170846208 https://twitter.com/AgnesAyton/status/913722609610760192 https://twitter.com/AgnesAyton/status/913722609610760192 etc. http://content.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB21748 http://content.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB21748

runeks 9y ago

> Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese So you think the problem lies in obese people being unaware of how much they weigh?

dorian-graph 9y ago
Seems like a facetious over-simplification of what the poster said. If it's hard (socially) to approach something, because people are hyper-sensitive, then it's simply hard to help those people. In a lot of Western culture it generally seems accepted to tell people they're too skinny, but not to tell people they're too fat—obviously I don't just mean walking down a street and saying this to a stranger, but in appropriate settings.
- runeks 9y ago
  You're right. I wrote the comment without having read the article, which is why I wasn't able to put it in context. After having read the article, I agree, I think he makes a good point. Although I still think telling a person that you consider he or she to be either overweight or skinny is quite meaningless. If they ask you for your opinion, it makes sense to answer, but I have a really hard time believing that an over/underweight person wouldn't have noticed this already while looking in the mirror. It's a bit like telling a cigarette smoker that smoking is unhealthy and that they should quit. The chance that they didn't know this already is practically zero, which means you're not offering any help.
  - dorian-graph 9y ago
    I don't think it's about not knowing if they're under- or over-weight or not. I'm sure there's a massive amount of research into why we knowingly do things that are harmful to our selves too. What I took away from the original poster is that, it seems more appropriate in many Western societies to make available help for those who are under-weight or who smoke. It also seems more appropriate to proactively try help others too. AFAIK too, we don't have the equivalent with smoking of people promoting that being severely overweight is okay. As for the equivalent with being under-weight, from what I see, many years ago the focus was being on skinny for the sake of being skinny as it's attractive. These days it seems to be a focus on being fit (and healthy), which generally means not being skinny, but having a more toned body, or rather, simply not excess fat.

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smegel 9y ago

It's crazy really. Showing extreme thinness is probably not healthy, but that is not what this is about. All these photoshopped images show fit, but not anorexic bodies. Encouraging healthy diets and exercise to achieve bodies like that is not a public health threat.

gnaritas 9y ago

> Yet we're all hypersensitive about telling women they are overweight or obese. Women don't need to be told they're overweight and obese, all fat people know it, they think about it every day. Are you really so insensitive that you think they need to be told?

wpietri 9y ago

You talk about these like they are two distinct problems, but they're closely related. Unhealthy body image drives a lot of unhealthy food behaviors and weight gain [1]. That negative body image is driven by many things, including fashion culture promoting atypical or fictional bodies [2][3]. It is also driven by a culture of fat shaming. [4] So if you are really serious about reducing harm from obesity, promoting more realistic, healthier body images is a valuable step in that direction. [1] e.g.: http://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X%2815%2900288-8/pdf http://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X%2815%2900288-8/p... [2] http://www.sirc.org/publik/mirror.html http://www.sirc.org/publik/mirror.html [3] e.g.: the phenomenon of "shadow pies" http://memehuffer.typepad.com/meme_huffer/2008/06/who-ate-all-the.html http://memehuffer.typepad.com/meme_huffer/2008/06/who-ate-al... [4] http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/07/health/fat-shaming-sick-study-partner/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/07/health/fat-shaming-sick-study-...

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nv-vn 9y ago
I don't think the first link really provides any real insight into the problem. First of all, the study isn't experimental. There could easily be many confounding variables here, such as depression causing more body satisfaction issues. Another issue could be that overweight people with low body satisfaction are less satisfied because they have been warned more about it (chicken-and-egg); for example, if a child had a binge eating disorder to begin with, their parents/doctors/friends would intervene more to try to stop them from gaining so much weight. The study also doesn't clearly define how the survey worked, and the study referenced for the survey didn't explain much either [1]. It doesn't seem like there's any measure of whether low body satisfaction means weight is too high/weight is too low (I think there's some nuance to this, for example someone desiring larger breasts may want to gain weight even if they see themselves as fat, and there's a big difference here based on culture). Finally, keep in mind the jump back to weight gain with "Very high body satisfaction". These are separated into 4 groups (apparently by quartile, although clearly every group is a different size just by looking at the chart), but this information could reveal a sharp spike as you get to the top 1% or something. Also, look at the difference in size between the 4 groups, the first is 4x larger than the last, which seems really strange. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3140795/#R27 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3140795/#R27

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lloydde 9y ago

I don’t have the expertise to comment on the effectiveness of this legislation, but your simile doesn’t work. Both anorexia and obesity are symptoms of the same problem: society projecting unrealistic body imagery, more generally over focus on physical appearance over health indicators, contributing to serious body image psychological issues, particularly among females. People with either diagnosis often have related eating activities like restriction and many overweight people have been underweight or undernourished previously. These are complex physiological and psychological topics and we won’t make holistic progress as long as diet and health advice, including government programs, are dominated by pseudoscience — case in point, the joke that is the food pyramid.

userbinator 9y ago
Both anorexia and obesity are symptoms of the same problem: society projecting unrealistic body imagery It is interesting to note that several centuries ago, when far more of the population was underweight, being somewhat overweight or even obese was considered the ideal. Now that the average weight has increased significantly, it seems the "unrealistic body imagery" has gone in the other direction.
- lloydde 9y ago
  This observation distracts from the fact that that nutrition and body science is young. Hypothesizes that have experimental support come from the last 130 years, but even then most of popular theories of the last decades have contradictory evidence.
- lloydde 9y ago
  It would have been more accurately if I had included psychological unrealistic body imagery. Others in this thread have suggested that the manipulation is to make people look fit, but there are regular articles that describe those clicks of the mouse resulting in physiologically extreme, if not impossible body proportions.
- lloydde 9y ago
  What I do like about your observation is that it brings to my mind that although there has always been artistic license in previous centuries, for the most part the images were attempting to accurately represent the specific persons show.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago

I didn't see the 300,000 number in your CDC link. I'm curious where you found a number so low. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm says that some 2.6 million Americans die each year. I think it's safe to estimate that more than the 36.5% obesity rate for the entire population applies to this group, implying that some 958 thousand people died while obese (ignoring cause). The top 10 causes of death include heart disease at #1, strokes, and diabetes; these factors alone total to 853 thousand deaths due to conditions largely caused by obesity. Furthermore, studies suggest that some fraction of the almost 600k cancer deaths are caused by obesity. I think you're at least a factor of 3 too low. I will play devil's advocate for a moment, though, and say that among high school girls, anorexia is a much more frequent problem than death by heart attack. No, it doesn't lead to death, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.