8 ms·

This is directly related to the way American cities are designed. It’s a car centric culture where big houses are far away from each other. That means driving e

This is directly related to the way American cities are designed. It’s a car centric culture where big houses are far away from each other. That means driving everywhere. That means long commutes. That means TV over communal activity. That means big grocery runs with shelf stable food. Then pile on hyper sweet drinks and nutritional misinformation campaigns, and of course Americans are going to be overweight. The worst part is it’s becoming culturally acceptable for children to be overweight. I do not advocate for fat shaming—but there is a limit to my tolerance. Children should not consume anywhere near the amounts of sugar that they do and the pervasive attitude of “just one [soda, ice cream, pop tart, pie slice, muffin, cupcake, cookie] won’t hurt!” is incredibly damaging. Five grams of refined sugar a day. That’s it. That is less than one tenth of a “personal” (16oz / 500ml) bottle of Coca Cola. We’re poisoning our kids.

nawitus 9y ago
It should be plausible to design a scientific study on how much a car centric culture is causing overweightness.
- pm90 9y ago
  Why is it only now that obesity is reaching such epidemic proportions though? We've had a car-centric culture since Post WW2. Why haven't we seen this epidemic before?
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    Because GP's reasoning is likely not to be correct. The proliferation of cheap, high calorie foods along with a sedentary lifestyle (including occupations that require very little physical activity) are more likely to blame than 'cars did it.'
    - yodsanklai 9y ago
      I would add that food corporations devote a lot of resources to make people eat their junk. It's not only that the food is there to eat. Companies like Coca Cola or Mac Donald's spend billions to convince people to eat their stuff.
  - NTDF9 9y ago
    Suburbs are growing farther and farther away. More indoor entertainment than ever (Internet, video games) No free spaces, parking lots for kids and young adults to just go out to walk/play Took some time for the cumulative effect of all this to show up.
  - pascalxus 9y ago
    If you look at the obesity charts, year by year, you can see precisely the year obestity took off like a rocket. It was the year following the US Gov announcement that Fat is evil. This caused all the food manufacturers to start pumping everything full of sugar. In the coming decades, gym memberships increased quickly to no avail - you can't out excercise a terrible diet.
  - dcchambers 9y ago
    The rates have been steadily going up since that time, though. It makes sense that you would see a gradual ramp up in a drastic change like ths. I don't have sources to back this up, but here's some thoughts: * Gradual changes in types of labor? (From agriculture -> industrial -> office jobs) which are less calorically intensive. * Changes in food? Calorie-dense food is cheaper and easier to get than ever. People have less free time to cook healthy meals (working more hours, far fewer homemakers, longer commutes, more time spent doin extracurriculars outside the home, etc). As a result, people consume more calories because they're easy to get. * Health/Food misinformation. The demonization of nutritional 'fat' which lead to it being replaced by sugar, which is even more addictive. * Changes in drink consumption? Alcohol consumption is up (at least compared to ~25 years ago), and alcoholic drinks area very high in calories. * Childhood changes due to changes in food and care. More high-calorie, "manufactured" foods introduced earlier into peoples lives sets them up for a lifetime of bad habits and problems that only compound over time.
  - artursapek 9y ago
    Add in addictive computers, TV, and vidya - and that's probably your answer.
izietto 9y ago
I'm italian and I visited united states a couple of months ago. In my opinion the biggest problem is that you don't have decent food at affordable prices. Healthy food has nonsensical high prices and if you want something at a human price you don't have much choice except fast food. What a shame.
- pascalxus 9y ago
  That's partly because much of the government subsides go towards subsidizing corn, ending up in high fructose corn syrup and all the junk food most people consume. It's quite sad, that everyone is so okay with this. Personally, I try to eat as healthy as possible and use my nutrient finder (https://kale.world/c https://kale.world/c) to find high nutrient, low calorie foods, which end up being mostly beans, vegetables and fruits.
  - nickcoury 9y ago
    Agreed, the subsidized corn is also used as cheap feed for low quality meat. On the flip side fruits and vegetables receive the lowest subsidies. Plus the lower cost of unhealthy foods decreases demand for relatively more expensive healthy foods, lowering demand which drives prices up even higher. Tough to keep perishable foods when people don’t buy them as quickly. It’s a self reinforcing cycle to the bottom.
  - artursapek 9y ago
    Did you make this kale.world? It's pretty nifty.
    - pascalxus 9y ago
      yes. Thank you.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    Wow - the rest of the thread aside, that's a fantastic nutrition tool. edit: I just fed it one of the tasks I've found most frustrating - how to optimize protein:carbs ratio without resorting to meat. Most of the diet advice I've seen on that question is unhelpful, since it emphasizes for "enough protein" and not ratio. But this turned up exactly what I was after.
nkkollaw 9y ago
The reason Americans eat that much sugar is not the "one won't hurt" mentality, but the fact that the government singled out fat as the only source of evil, and companies started adding sugar to everything because without fat everything tastes like cardboard. I bet most of the sugar consumed is from things that no one would think contain as much sugar as they do (like--bread, meat, etc.), which is added to make it more palatable.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- RightMillennial 9y ago
  I was curious so I checked the bread in my cupboard. The generic loaf of white bread has high fructose corn syrup, and the fancy whole wheat loaf has sugar. Both are pretty high up in the ingredient list.
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    Yes because in European bakeries they might add butter to make it taste good, but in America no one would buy it because it wouldn't say "fat-free", so they add sugar.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      By and large, the mass produced American breads aren’t very good. But the bread sitting on my counter right now from Trader Joe’s, which is not actually an artisanalproducer, doesn’t seem to have any added sugar. No it’s not a mass market product but it’s also something that’s more than “no one” buys.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lamename 9y ago
tangentially relevant and interesting summary on mass-transit in the US https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cjfTG8DbwA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cjfTG8DbwA
protonimitate 9y ago
While I agree American cities don't promote the most healthy lifestyles, it's not like city-dwelers are less healthy or more obese on average than those who live in the country. You're spot on with your second paragraph though. There is a lot of misinformation about nutrition, dieting, and food in general, and it's all aimed at one goal: turning a profit. Sugar is one of the major culprits, but over eating in general in America is an issue. We need to start health education on a basis of Calories in vs. Calories Out, what healthy bodies actually look like, and dispel the myths of fad dieting and fat-burning-exercise routines/equipment. Eat a balanced diet, consisting of little to no processed foods, and keep your calories close to your TDEE (or below if you are overweight). Exercise for long-term health (physical and mental), not weight loss binges. It's really that simple.
- yequalsx 9y ago
  Pretty much all cities and towns in the U.S. are car centric. Large amounts of space wasted in the form of parking lots. Houses are mostly built away from grocery stores and shops. Usually there are no decent foot paths to get to them. It’s not just a phenomenon of large cities. It’s pretty much everywhere.
- bunderbunder 9y ago
  It really depends on the city. A lot of the "urban/rural" statistics are somewhat clouded by the fact that most American cities aren't really walkable outside of a central business district that nobody really lives in, and that its residents probably have to drive out of to get to such basic places as a grocery store. The correlation looks a lot firmer when you look at overweight rates compared to population density or walkability instead of trying to just coarsely bucket it into "urban/suburban/rural".
- westiseast 9y ago
  Absolutely. I think people underestimate how much walking or physical activity they’d need to do to counterbalance the calorie surplus they have on a daily basis. You’d literally need to be fast walking for hours and hours a day. Cars don’t help, but walking for an extra 3-4hrs a week isn’t the major factor here. It’s the pound of cheese you had melted on everything, or the 24oz Cola.
rich_ard 9y ago
Were this the case, you would see a correlation between urban development and obesity rates; cursory examination of obesity rates and population density (and our basically unchanged urban planning methods since the 1960s) reflect that this is not the case.
bogomipz 9y ago
>"This is directly related to the way American cities are designed. It’s a car centric culture where big houses are far away from each other." New York City is perhaps one of the most walkable cities in the world. It's also a place where you absolutely do not need a car and the majority of residents don't have a car. Yet 34% or New Yorkers are overweight and 22% are obese.[1] The BMI statistic for the EU are none too encouraging either. [2] [1] http://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/obesity.page http://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/obesity.pa... [2] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Overweight_and_obesity_-_BMI_statistics http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
- _dark_matter_ 9y ago
  I think you may have proven the point. That's less than half the general population.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    I don't believe so. Given that its a reference for one of the great "walking cities", I think it disputes the OPs assertion "the design of American cities" and "car culture" are substantial contributors. In other words whether one walks or or drives to McDonalds probably matters very little.
- bunderbunder 9y ago
  Even if it doesn't explain 100% of it, it's still striking that the overweight rate in NYC is, according to your figures, less than half of the US average.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    But even at half of the US average its still at a level considered epidemic.
- RealityVoid 9y ago
  Well, honestly, this comment is only giving more credence to OP, since, apparently, the US average is 70% is much much worse than the 34% of NY. EDIT: Haha, apparently the HN crowd is very quick to point out inconsistencies since the original comment has been up 2 minuites and there are already 3 comments pointing the same thing (and counting)
halotrope 9y ago
Sugar seems to be a major driver of this development. The main problem is likely excessive sugar and especially fructose consumption starting with the emerge of cheap HFCS in most products. Dr. Robert Lustig has put a lot of research into the causes of the obesity crisis. He goes into great detail in his lectures on YouTube https://youtu.be/ceFyF9px20Y?t=51m41s https://youtu.be/ceFyF9px20Y?t=51m41s He also argues against the "gluttony and sloth" prejudice by saying that you eat too much and move to little as a consequence of messed up hormones due to excessive fat. Not the other way around. The problem is probably more dimensional but the correlation between increasing Sugar/HFCS amounts in foods and the onset of obesity seems to be pretty strong.
- ellyagg 9y ago
  You should read Stephen Guyenet to challenge what you've heard about sugar, both his twitter and his blog. He's a Ph.D. neuroscientist who studies the connection of the brain to fatness for a living. A recent tweet from him: Most comprehensive analysis of macronutrients vs. lifespan, fatness, health in mice. High fat + high carb + low protein = highest body fat. High fat + high carb + high protein = highest insulin. High carb + low fat + low protein = longest lifespan. https://twitter.com/whsource/status/965330116468502529 https://twitter.com/whsource/status/965330116468502529 There is an air of certainty about low carbs permeating our culture right now that is not justified by the evidence at all. The Kitavans today get 70% of their calories from potato and have no diabetes or metabolic syndrome. Look up Ray Peat for a good argument in favor of sugar. Plenty of people are thriving on high sugar diets. For my own part, I've consumed 1300 or so calories of sugar a day for 20 years and my biomarkers are 99th percentile. I'm very consistent about resistance training and I don't overeat, both factors likely dwarfing my sugar intake. Of course, obviously that's an anecdote, but I would caution anyone who automatically judges someone else for their sugar consumption. You might be wrong about sugar and, more importantly, you might be wrong about sugar paired with a particular person's genes or other lifestyle factors. Because of my high sugar consumption, I eat relatively low fat and protein. What if that's better for you, assuming you don't overeat? Guyenet is somewhat in favor of the hypothesis that sugar increases fatness, but he thinks it's because humans are susceptible to the "unnatural" increase in food reward that adding extra sugar induces, not because sugar is toxic in and of itself.
lhorie 9y ago
> It’s a car centric culture I don't really see the correlation. In Brazil, obesity is commonly associated with lower incomes, and if you were to correlate with the transportation system usage patterns there, one might misguidedly conclude that public transit usage is related to obesity. It seems more logical to make a correlation with lack of food variety (in both cases, cheaper food tend to be heavy on carbs and fats) and sedentary lifestyle
shados 9y ago
I moved from Canada to the US a few years back, and gained an enormous amount of weight and gained a bunch of health issues, all food related. Here's my take on it. Food is much, MUCH cheaper. Not a big difference at the grocery store for whole produce and raw ingredients (though it is cheaper). But the processed foods, premade stuff, deserts, drinks, etc? A fraction of the cost. Restaurants are also much, much cheaper. Where I used to work, going to the sit down restaurant next door downtown brought me down 20-25 bucks. A similar restaurant downtown where I now live has equivalent food for 8-10 bucks. I make 4 times my Canadian salary and pay a lot less taxes, so effectively, it's virtually not worth it for me to cook, if my only constraint was money. Sugar in EVERYTHING. Food that used to be a little bit sweet (not necessarily health, but not the end of the world) is drenched in sugar. I have to be careful when I get an orange juice in case its sugar added. A milkshare at the local icecream shop has way more sugar. Sugar sugar sugar EVERYWHERE. Ordering food is also way easier, with formerly Foodler, GrubHub, Doordash, etc. I have no idea if those services became common up north after I left, but that was a big change, being able to order from 100 different restaurants at any point in time, sometimes in the middle of the night, with a few mouse clicks. The portions: Cheesecake Factory exists up north, but it's not considered normal. Here, while the portion sizes are certainly above average, they aren't exactly unique either. You have Outback and the like all service you enough food to last you 3 days. I also find it a lot more common to have fatty or sugary snacks at the office, and soft drinks, etc. I'll shamefully admit I have zero self control when it comes to food. I have a sweet tooth like no other. But the price and availability constraints in my hometown stopped me from going overboard. For a while I was pretty much flush at my "recommended" weight. After I moved here? Things got really bad for me.
poulsbohemian 9y ago
You are spot on here -- I lost ten pounds in just the past few weeks simply by upping my step count. Taking it one step further though... I think about my forebear farmers. When I would hear my grandmother talk about the huge meals they would eat daily, you'd think they were all 300 pounds and died of heart disease by 40. Instead, they were trim and lived into their 80s and 90s. The reason being that they were physically active all day long on the farm. In a modern services economy though, we have to go to a gym, go for a run, IE: build physical activity into our day. After a long work day, this is a mental challenge for many people just as much as a time challenge. So, in many ways it's an artifact of the transition away from the farming / industrial economy of the past that many segments of the population have simply not addressed.
Brybry 9y ago
I'd like to note that poor quality of food does not make one overweight (and lack of exercise does not either). Exercise and good food are good for you (diabetes and heart disease are bad) but in terms of weight what matters is pure number of calories consumed. This has been true from everything I've read on the subject and what I've seen from my own underweight failures and triumphs to gain weight. Americans just eat too much, for a variety of reasons.
chisleu 9y ago
You are not wrong, but I will say that overweight is a really low threshold. For me at 6'5", it's about 200lbs at the top. Factor in that tall people generally have more variance in torso to leg ratio, and it makes it difficult to get down to that weight. I was 235 lbs when I left the Army and was incredibly trim. At 200 lbs, I would have been very skinny. At the middle of the healthy range, 175 lbs, I would look incredibly skinny. My goal weight is 200. I've got 100 to go and I've lost 40 so far. I got there because of the sugar and depression, but I thought it was important to note that 200 for me is going to be incredibly skinny. I don't think it is practical for most people to maintain that.
- nradov 9y ago
  The top of the normal BMI range for someone 6'5" tall is actually 210 lbs. That's not incredibly skinny nor would it be impractical for most people to maintain.
nicoslepicos 9y ago
Just wrote a little Medium article about your post, as your comments about car culture made me wonder: Will Autonomous Cars & Mobile Gyms Help With America's Obesity Epidemic: https://medium.com/@nicolaerusan/will-autonomous-cars-mobile-gyms-help-with-americas-obesity-epidemic-f398dbe379a8 https://medium.com/@nicolaerusan/will-autonomous-cars-mobile... Def, the nutritional issues are still there & so are the issues around communal activity - but I think for a lot of people I know who have long commutes to work, the opportunity to exercise in transit would be compelling.

nawitus 9y ago

It should be plausible to design a scientific study on how much a car centric culture is causing overweightness.

pm90 9y ago
Why is it only now that obesity is reaching such epidemic proportions though? We've had a car-centric culture since Post WW2. Why haven't we seen this epidemic before?
- craftyguy 9y ago
  Because GP's reasoning is likely not to be correct. The proliferation of cheap, high calorie foods along with a sedentary lifestyle (including occupations that require very little physical activity) are more likely to blame than 'cars did it.'
  - yodsanklai 9y ago
    I would add that food corporations devote a lot of resources to make people eat their junk. It's not only that the food is there to eat. Companies like Coca Cola or Mac Donald's spend billions to convince people to eat their stuff.
- NTDF9 9y ago
  Suburbs are growing farther and farther away. More indoor entertainment than ever (Internet, video games) No free spaces, parking lots for kids and young adults to just go out to walk/play Took some time for the cumulative effect of all this to show up.
- pascalxus 9y ago
  If you look at the obesity charts, year by year, you can see precisely the year obestity took off like a rocket. It was the year following the US Gov announcement that Fat is evil. This caused all the food manufacturers to start pumping everything full of sugar. In the coming decades, gym memberships increased quickly to no avail - you can't out excercise a terrible diet.
- dcchambers 9y ago
  The rates have been steadily going up since that time, though. It makes sense that you would see a gradual ramp up in a drastic change like ths. I don't have sources to back this up, but here's some thoughts: * Gradual changes in types of labor? (From agriculture -> industrial -> office jobs) which are less calorically intensive. * Changes in food? Calorie-dense food is cheaper and easier to get than ever. People have less free time to cook healthy meals (working more hours, far fewer homemakers, longer commutes, more time spent doin extracurriculars outside the home, etc). As a result, people consume more calories because they're easy to get. * Health/Food misinformation. The demonization of nutritional 'fat' which lead to it being replaced by sugar, which is even more addictive. * Changes in drink consumption? Alcohol consumption is up (at least compared to ~25 years ago), and alcoholic drinks area very high in calories. * Childhood changes due to changes in food and care. More high-calorie, "manufactured" foods introduced earlier into peoples lives sets them up for a lifetime of bad habits and problems that only compound over time.
- artursapek 9y ago
  Add in addictive computers, TV, and vidya - and that's probably your answer.

izietto 9y ago

I'm italian and I visited united states a couple of months ago. In my opinion the biggest problem is that you don't have decent food at affordable prices. Healthy food has nonsensical high prices and if you want something at a human price you don't have much choice except fast food. What a shame.

pascalxus 9y ago
That's partly because much of the government subsides go towards subsidizing corn, ending up in high fructose corn syrup and all the junk food most people consume. It's quite sad, that everyone is so okay with this. Personally, I try to eat as healthy as possible and use my nutrient finder (https://kale.world/c https://kale.world/c) to find high nutrient, low calorie foods, which end up being mostly beans, vegetables and fruits.
- nickcoury 9y ago
  Agreed, the subsidized corn is also used as cheap feed for low quality meat. On the flip side fruits and vegetables receive the lowest subsidies. Plus the lower cost of unhealthy foods decreases demand for relatively more expensive healthy foods, lowering demand which drives prices up even higher. Tough to keep perishable foods when people don’t buy them as quickly. It’s a self reinforcing cycle to the bottom.
- artursapek 9y ago
  Did you make this kale.world? It's pretty nifty.
  - pascalxus 9y ago
    yes. Thank you.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  Wow - the rest of the thread aside, that's a fantastic nutrition tool. edit: I just fed it one of the tasks I've found most frustrating - how to optimize protein:carbs ratio without resorting to meat. Most of the diet advice I've seen on that question is unhelpful, since it emphasizes for "enough protein" and not ratio. But this turned up exactly what I was after.

nkkollaw 9y ago

The reason Americans eat that much sugar is not the "one won't hurt" mentality, but the fact that the government singled out fat as the only source of evil, and companies started adding sugar to everything because without fat everything tastes like cardboard. I bet most of the sugar consumed is from things that no one would think contain as much sugar as they do (like--bread, meat, etc.), which is added to make it more palatable.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
RightMillennial 9y ago
I was curious so I checked the bread in my cupboard. The generic loaf of white bread has high fructose corn syrup, and the fancy whole wheat loaf has sugar. Both are pretty high up in the ingredient list.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  Yes because in European bakeries they might add butter to make it taste good, but in America no one would buy it because it wouldn't say "fat-free", so they add sugar.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    By and large, the mass produced American breads aren’t very good. But the bread sitting on my counter right now from Trader Joe’s, which is not actually an artisanalproducer, doesn’t seem to have any added sugar. No it’s not a mass market product but it’s also something that’s more than “no one” buys.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

lamename 9y ago

tangentially relevant and interesting summary on mass-transit in the US https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cjfTG8DbwA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cjfTG8DbwA

protonimitate 9y ago

While I agree American cities don't promote the most healthy lifestyles, it's not like city-dwelers are less healthy or more obese on average than those who live in the country. You're spot on with your second paragraph though. There is a lot of misinformation about nutrition, dieting, and food in general, and it's all aimed at one goal: turning a profit. Sugar is one of the major culprits, but over eating in general in America is an issue. We need to start health education on a basis of Calories in vs. Calories Out, what healthy bodies actually look like, and dispel the myths of fad dieting and fat-burning-exercise routines/equipment. Eat a balanced diet, consisting of little to no processed foods, and keep your calories close to your TDEE (or below if you are overweight). Exercise for long-term health (physical and mental), not weight loss binges. It's really that simple.

yequalsx 9y ago
Pretty much all cities and towns in the U.S. are car centric. Large amounts of space wasted in the form of parking lots. Houses are mostly built away from grocery stores and shops. Usually there are no decent foot paths to get to them. It’s not just a phenomenon of large cities. It’s pretty much everywhere.
bunderbunder 9y ago
It really depends on the city. A lot of the "urban/rural" statistics are somewhat clouded by the fact that most American cities aren't really walkable outside of a central business district that nobody really lives in, and that its residents probably have to drive out of to get to such basic places as a grocery store. The correlation looks a lot firmer when you look at overweight rates compared to population density or walkability instead of trying to just coarsely bucket it into "urban/suburban/rural".
westiseast 9y ago
Absolutely. I think people underestimate how much walking or physical activity they’d need to do to counterbalance the calorie surplus they have on a daily basis. You’d literally need to be fast walking for hours and hours a day. Cars don’t help, but walking for an extra 3-4hrs a week isn’t the major factor here. It’s the pound of cheese you had melted on everything, or the 24oz Cola.

rich_ard 9y ago

Were this the case, you would see a correlation between urban development and obesity rates; cursory examination of obesity rates and population density (and our basically unchanged urban planning methods since the 1960s) reflect that this is not the case.

bogomipz 9y ago

>"This is directly related to the way American cities are designed. It’s a car centric culture where big houses are far away from each other." New York City is perhaps one of the most walkable cities in the world. It's also a place where you absolutely do not need a car and the majority of residents don't have a car. Yet 34% or New Yorkers are overweight and 22% are obese.[1] The BMI statistic for the EU are none too encouraging either. [2] [1] http://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/obesity.page http://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/obesity.pa... [2] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Overweight_and_obesity_-_BMI_statistics http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...

_dark_matter_ 9y ago
I think you may have proven the point. That's less than half the general population.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  I don't believe so. Given that its a reference for one of the great "walking cities", I think it disputes the OPs assertion "the design of American cities" and "car culture" are substantial contributors. In other words whether one walks or or drives to McDonalds probably matters very little.
bunderbunder 9y ago
Even if it doesn't explain 100% of it, it's still striking that the overweight rate in NYC is, according to your figures, less than half of the US average.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  But even at half of the US average its still at a level considered epidemic.
RealityVoid 9y ago
Well, honestly, this comment is only giving more credence to OP, since, apparently, the US average is 70% is much much worse than the 34% of NY. EDIT: Haha, apparently the HN crowd is very quick to point out inconsistencies since the original comment has been up 2 minuites and there are already 3 comments pointing the same thing (and counting)

halotrope 9y ago

Sugar seems to be a major driver of this development. The main problem is likely excessive sugar and especially fructose consumption starting with the emerge of cheap HFCS in most products. Dr. Robert Lustig has put a lot of research into the causes of the obesity crisis. He goes into great detail in his lectures on YouTube https://youtu.be/ceFyF9px20Y?t=51m41s https://youtu.be/ceFyF9px20Y?t=51m41s He also argues against the "gluttony and sloth" prejudice by saying that you eat too much and move to little as a consequence of messed up hormones due to excessive fat. Not the other way around. The problem is probably more dimensional but the correlation between increasing Sugar/HFCS amounts in foods and the onset of obesity seems to be pretty strong.

ellyagg 9y ago
You should read Stephen Guyenet to challenge what you've heard about sugar, both his twitter and his blog. He's a Ph.D. neuroscientist who studies the connection of the brain to fatness for a living. A recent tweet from him: Most comprehensive analysis of macronutrients vs. lifespan, fatness, health in mice. High fat + high carb + low protein = highest body fat. High fat + high carb + high protein = highest insulin. High carb + low fat + low protein = longest lifespan. https://twitter.com/whsource/status/965330116468502529 https://twitter.com/whsource/status/965330116468502529 There is an air of certainty about low carbs permeating our culture right now that is not justified by the evidence at all. The Kitavans today get 70% of their calories from potato and have no diabetes or metabolic syndrome. Look up Ray Peat for a good argument in favor of sugar. Plenty of people are thriving on high sugar diets. For my own part, I've consumed 1300 or so calories of sugar a day for 20 years and my biomarkers are 99th percentile. I'm very consistent about resistance training and I don't overeat, both factors likely dwarfing my sugar intake. Of course, obviously that's an anecdote, but I would caution anyone who automatically judges someone else for their sugar consumption. You might be wrong about sugar and, more importantly, you might be wrong about sugar paired with a particular person's genes or other lifestyle factors. Because of my high sugar consumption, I eat relatively low fat and protein. What if that's better for you, assuming you don't overeat? Guyenet is somewhat in favor of the hypothesis that sugar increases fatness, but he thinks it's because humans are susceptible to the "unnatural" increase in food reward that adding extra sugar induces, not because sugar is toxic in and of itself.

lhorie 9y ago

> It’s a car centric culture I don't really see the correlation. In Brazil, obesity is commonly associated with lower incomes, and if you were to correlate with the transportation system usage patterns there, one might misguidedly conclude that public transit usage is related to obesity. It seems more logical to make a correlation with lack of food variety (in both cases, cheaper food tend to be heavy on carbs and fats) and sedentary lifestyle

shados 9y ago

I moved from Canada to the US a few years back, and gained an enormous amount of weight and gained a bunch of health issues, all food related. Here's my take on it. Food is much, MUCH cheaper. Not a big difference at the grocery store for whole produce and raw ingredients (though it is cheaper). But the processed foods, premade stuff, deserts, drinks, etc? A fraction of the cost. Restaurants are also much, much cheaper. Where I used to work, going to the sit down restaurant next door downtown brought me down 20-25 bucks. A similar restaurant downtown where I now live has equivalent food for 8-10 bucks. I make 4 times my Canadian salary and pay a lot less taxes, so effectively, it's virtually not worth it for me to cook, if my only constraint was money. Sugar in EVERYTHING. Food that used to be a little bit sweet (not necessarily health, but not the end of the world) is drenched in sugar. I have to be careful when I get an orange juice in case its sugar added. A milkshare at the local icecream shop has way more sugar. Sugar sugar sugar EVERYWHERE. Ordering food is also way easier, with formerly Foodler, GrubHub, Doordash, etc. I have no idea if those services became common up north after I left, but that was a big change, being able to order from 100 different restaurants at any point in time, sometimes in the middle of the night, with a few mouse clicks. The portions: Cheesecake Factory exists up north, but it's not considered normal. Here, while the portion sizes are certainly above average, they aren't exactly unique either. You have Outback and the like all service you enough food to last you 3 days. I also find it a lot more common to have fatty or sugary snacks at the office, and soft drinks, etc. I'll shamefully admit I have zero self control when it comes to food. I have a sweet tooth like no other. But the price and availability constraints in my hometown stopped me from going overboard. For a while I was pretty much flush at my "recommended" weight. After I moved here? Things got really bad for me.

poulsbohemian 9y ago

You are spot on here -- I lost ten pounds in just the past few weeks simply by upping my step count. Taking it one step further though... I think about my forebear farmers. When I would hear my grandmother talk about the huge meals they would eat daily, you'd think they were all 300 pounds and died of heart disease by 40. Instead, they were trim and lived into their 80s and 90s. The reason being that they were physically active all day long on the farm. In a modern services economy though, we have to go to a gym, go for a run, IE: build physical activity into our day. After a long work day, this is a mental challenge for many people just as much as a time challenge. So, in many ways it's an artifact of the transition away from the farming / industrial economy of the past that many segments of the population have simply not addressed.

Brybry 9y ago

I'd like to note that poor quality of food does not make one overweight (and lack of exercise does not either). Exercise and good food are good for you (diabetes and heart disease are bad) but in terms of weight what matters is pure number of calories consumed. This has been true from everything I've read on the subject and what I've seen from my own underweight failures and triumphs to gain weight. Americans just eat too much, for a variety of reasons.

chisleu 9y ago

You are not wrong, but I will say that overweight is a really low threshold. For me at 6'5", it's about 200lbs at the top. Factor in that tall people generally have more variance in torso to leg ratio, and it makes it difficult to get down to that weight. I was 235 lbs when I left the Army and was incredibly trim. At 200 lbs, I would have been very skinny. At the middle of the healthy range, 175 lbs, I would look incredibly skinny. My goal weight is 200. I've got 100 to go and I've lost 40 so far. I got there because of the sugar and depression, but I thought it was important to note that 200 for me is going to be incredibly skinny. I don't think it is practical for most people to maintain that.

nradov 9y ago
The top of the normal BMI range for someone 6'5" tall is actually 210 lbs. That's not incredibly skinny nor would it be impractical for most people to maintain.

nicoslepicos 9y ago

Just wrote a little Medium article about your post, as your comments about car culture made me wonder: Will Autonomous Cars & Mobile Gyms Help With America's Obesity Epidemic: https://medium.com/@nicolaerusan/will-autonomous-cars-mobile-gyms-help-with-americas-obesity-epidemic-f398dbe379a8 https://medium.com/@nicolaerusan/will-autonomous-cars-mobile... Def, the nutritional issues are still there & so are the issues around communal activity - but I think for a lot of people I know who have long commutes to work, the opportunity to exercise in transit would be compelling.