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I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how diffi

by gdebel 6y ago

I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-added, except in Asian restaurants (and even there, food is often sweetened). Of course it is biased because I have no access usually to a kitchen when I travel. I think sugar is the main problem (not fat) and I'm not convinced calory count is key. We did not evolved to eat processed sugar, which is not easily found naturally in the environment. My 2 cents: - eat as much vegetables as you want (learn to cook them, with a little bit of olive oil) - eat as much fish as you want (no need to cook! Low temperature baking, 1h at 70-80°, the best cooking you'll ever have) - eat meat in reasonable, "as-if-you-had-to-hunt-it-with-a-bow" quantities - ban every processed food, sauce, appetizer.... If you would not eat a spoon of every single ingredient of some food, don't eat it. - ban all added sugar, except (real) honey in reasonable proportions. This implies to know/learn how to cook (not so hard but this is easier when the local/family culture allowed you to learn passively). It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar added. (Or I didn't look at the right place, once again this is not judgemental). Generally speaking, it is easy to find online high-level cooking courses, but hard to learn the basics of how to cook your onions or tomatoes in different ways in everyday life, or make an healthy meal with what's left in the fridge; this could be interesting to have. --edited for typing errors

tvanantwerp 6y ago
Last year I went to Europe for a two week vacation. I stuffed myself like a greedy pig for two weeks, but I barely gained any weight on my return to the US. The next week, I went on a staff retreat for only 3 days and stuffed myself again. That time, I gained more than twice what I'd gained in Europe. I'm convinced that the quality of European food is, on average, vastly superior to what's available in America.
- deleted 6y ago
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- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  I don't understand how you could possibly think this is a meaningful data point at all.
- PoachedSausage 6y ago
  Not to worry, you guys will be sending us boat loads of Chlorine Washed Chicken and pink liquid cow shortly: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47426138 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47426138
- starpilot 6y ago
  I remember a question of MetaFilter about this. A bunch of Europeans said that whenever they went on vacation in the US, they lost weight. You're on vacation, walking around all day.
- deleted 6y ago
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voisin 6y ago
When the production of sugar and related sweeteners is among the most subsidized industries in the country, is it any wonder that these find their way into everything? And a handy side effect for producers is that satiety is short lived, leading to repeated demand in the short term when included in a product.
choeger 6y ago
Quick remark: Sugar, as other carbohydrates, is cheap. It also tastes well, objectively (as much as taste can be objectively measured). So if you go for industrial-level food production, you end up with a higher proportion of sugar than what would be considered healthy. Sugar per se ist not bad at all (try to have an apple without it ;)). But our economy demands cheap, somewhat tasty, calories. Hence we end up with a lot of sugar or carbohydrates in general. Any diet that rules out carbs works well because of that, not because of some intrinsic property of carbs. As a French person you would probably never consider giving up on a good croissant or baguette, but in France these things are expensive. I doubt anyone gives their kids fresh croissant before school every day.
- abellerose 6y ago
  I've never known that people add sugar to their apples. I have lived in US & Canada and I find that odd people need to add sugar to enjoy an apple. Croissants or baguettes are not a daily thing if my assumption is correct. My experience is buying them when walking home from work and if I'm in the mood because bread isn't generally healthy for people compared to something else that happens to be better. edit: okay, I now understand the comment is about apples having natural sugar.
  - abnry 6y ago
    I think the OP meant natural sugar, not added! And sadly, many jams and pies have extra sugar added, I much prefer the no/low sugar versions.
    - karpathy 6y ago
      Yes natural sugar is just barely better than added sugar (due to the fiber it's typically mixed in with). The apples we eat today are candy bars, they just happen to grow on trees. Trees shaped extensively via artificial selection for thousands of years to pack in more glucose, trees that are nowhere near to what our ancestors have encountered for millions of years.
eatbitseveryday 6y ago
> you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar added I have a difficult time finding these, as well. The culture here (spoken as an American) is to avoid fats, which is why most products advertise "no fat" (yoghurt with no fat seems like a strange contradiction to me). > in Asian restaurants (and even there, food is often sweetened) This is also true from my experiences. Chinese restaurants add sugar due to believing that's part of the American palette. (For Chinese foods, there's also a distinction between "typical" and "authentic" styles, and most Americans are unaware of the latter.)
- gdebel 6y ago
  Exactly! No-fat is a strange concept. Fat is not inherently bad, too much added fat is. But I'm pretty sure you can eat 500mg of natural good yogurt a day without being sick. Well, I never tried.
- dumb1224 6y ago
  It depends on the places you went. Cuisine where I'm from has a lot of sugar in the diet; however it might not be popular enough to be included in international asian restuarants. But I can't be sure as we don't really measure the amount of sugar went into cooking. It might be there isn't much at all.
JamesBarney 6y ago
> I think sugar is the main problem (not fat) Most of the research is that it's both. (Tt's the worst when fat and sugar are together) Specifically food is more rewarding, denser, cheaper, and easier to find than it used to be, so we overeat it. Same thing happens with almost any animal that's given ad libitum access to the american diet. It seems there are two societal solutions, extremely heavy handed government interventions to ban tasty food or we invent a weight loss pill.
- nxc18 6y ago
  It doesn't need to be extreme, taxes are proven to be effective and are quite simple. They solve the problem of unhealthy food being too easily available by raising the price to reflect the true cost to society (the externalities, like obesity). Junk food is only cheaper than healthy food because our society has made that choice, and it can just as easily choose to change that.
  - JamesBarney 6y ago
    That's great news though I'm a little suspicious, where have taxes caused a significant change in body weight? > Junk food is only cheaper than healthy food because our society has made that choice, and it can just as easily choose to change that. Junk food is cheaper because it's easier to make junk food. If you want to make food more palatable cheaply, make it denser, fattier, and sweeter. i.e. turn it into junk food.
    - take_a_breath 6y ago
      Look into the government’s subsidies of corn. We have decided, as a country, to incentivize growing corn. From here, it’s not hard to understand why high fructose corn syrup is in almost everything packaged in the US.
    - tom_mellior 6y ago
      > That's great news though I'm a little suspicious, where have taxes caused a significant change in body weight? You could check https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax as a starting point. From a skim it doesn't look to me like a small tax is some kind of miracle cure for anything in this regard. Though I don't think anyone claimed that it would be the one factor that fixes everything. There is no one factor, and having the tax as part of a toolbox seems reasonable.
thebean11 6y ago
What part of the US were you in? I think your experience will vary widely; in NYC there are healthy meat n veggies fast food places every couple blocks. That being said I think you are accurately describing the majority of the country.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  The general jab at the Americans. If I look at Europe food culture with a certain lens, I just see shitty doner kebab places in every corner and turkish grocery/meat stores that smell horrible. Obviously, that lens is cracked, tinted with biases. Some points are valid though. Honestly, as an American, we've got some awful vegetables and tasteless food just about everywhere unless fat/sugar is added to them. Probably due to the way mass production and transportation of food goes in to the US. It wasn't like that. There is nothing wrong with our soil. I spent some time in India, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and Korea and the veggies are almost like they grow in your home garden. Go to a store and pick out a tomato and it is impossibly good. America has farmers markets in every city, even in some of the most impoverished cities. But that's not where the majority of the middle class goes to shop for their vegetables. Try growing veggies in your own garden on American soil and its gonna taste amazing. Don't worry, Asian population wants malls, walmarts, and giant grocery stores with similar tasteless food. It is happening at a massive unprecedented scale.
  - gdebel 6y ago
    I made clear I have no anti-american views (and I don't feel like US citizens, generally speaking, are so much more open to external opinions than Europeans by the way). The problem is not related to the quality of soil or to the borders but to the fact that we humans have a recent tendency to over-engineer a very natural process : eating simple, normal, things.
    - pottertheotter 6y ago
      As an American, I absolutely agree with your original post. I find it so much more difficult to eat good food here unless I pay a ton of money. Good food is also usually the most inconvenient choice. I also think that our obsession with work hurts us. We don't have time to slow down and cook.
atopia 6y ago
I absolutely agree - sugar is definitely the issue. Most individuals don't get enough healthy fats due to marketing tactics. Stuff like Omega 3s and general unsaturated fats are incredibly important for brain function, reparation of tissue, etc.
mettamage 6y ago
Ah, the Americans... ;-) As a Dutch person living in Amsterdam, I completely agree. I noticed when I visited SF a few times (and California in general) that: - Vegetables are more expensive - Bread is sweetened (there goes my breakdfast) - Bread sucks (yep, I said it, basic bread should be thrown into the thrash can) - Basic cheese in the US is a new species, and I am afraid of it I went around these 2 issues by buying the highest quality French bread and imported cheese (how I missed actual France with their actual French bread... :'( ). While it was expensive, I could at least make a breakfast that I eat in Amsterdam (bread with cheese with butter, unsweetened). The butter was normal. I have to give the US that. Though, I do like what you guys can do with oatmeal. It taught me that the normal Dutch breakfast is uninspiring as hell, haha. So all in all, it was reall a positive experience, but it's so much nicer when you meet American people showing how they eat breakfast rather than traveling around in the country and simply guessing how to eat normal (normal being unsweetened / healthy -- I find that normal...). Also, I found the US amazing with certain dinner options (e.g. sushi burito's).
- GuiA 6y ago
  San Francisco is an anomaly as far as food in the US is concerned. I'm French and have been living in SF for close to a decade (and Louisiana before that, so I've been spoiled when it comes to "american food" that doesn't suck), and there are very few things I cannot find here - people are into food, and if you take the time to look for specialty stores you will find them. Of course there's the cost difference, but then again that goes both ways - I can find avocados, strawberries, etc. here of a quality and at a price you'd be hard pressed to find in France. Tbh, I'd argue that as far as meat/seafood/etc. is concerned, you can get better quality in SF than you can in 90% of France, where your main option will be an Intermarché or a Carrefour. I'd also argue that the pastries you find at Tartine/Four Barrel/etc. (they typically source from a variety of bakeries from around the bay) are way beyond, in quality, what you'd find in 90% of French bakeries (the glory days of master bakers are long gone, and a lot of it is frozen crap these days, although it's been getting better in the last few years). I suspect that by this point there are more world class bakers by square kilometer in the Bay Area than there are in France, perhaps with the exception of Paris/Lyon (quite a few that I've met went to France to study baking though, so our national pride isn't completely destroyed). I bake my own bread and can buy freshly milled flour from the The Mill, which would also be hard to find in France unless you had personal connections. But of course, I haven't gotten to the main part - which is the insane diversity of food stores and restaurants here. No matter what kind of south american, african, middle eastern, asian cuisine you want to make/eat, you'll be able to find it. That is not the case at all in France.
shawxe 6y ago
In general, I agree with a lot of what you're saying here about eating more vegetables and way less sugar being the way to go health-wise, but I do want to respond to some specific things you've said. > You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-added, except in Asian restaurants Restaurants are typically not where I go to eat healthy food anywhere in the world, although I do think you have a pointed that American restaurants are often relatively junk food oriented. > ban every processed food, sauce, appetizer.... There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food; it is entirely possible to use industrial processes to make a perfectly healthy and wholesome food product. Take for example, (this is by no means an endorsement) Larabar [1]. They make snack bars that typically contain 2-3 ingredients that are all just dried fruit. Should they be banned as "processed" food because of how they are made? > If you would not eat a spoon of every single ingredient of some food, don't eat it This is a ridiculous statement and is one of the main reasons why I'm commenting. I wouldn't eat a spoonful of yeast, should I not eat bread? I wouldn't eat a spoonful of salt, should I not eat... anything? > It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar added. I've never lived in an area in the United States where I've ever had any problem finding anything like this. [1] https://www.larabar.com/ https://www.larabar.com/
- jfim 6y ago
  > There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food There's a distinction between processed and ultra-processed (or highly processed). For example, canned fish is processed (added salt and oil), while a frozen TV dinner is ultra-processed (many ingredients added, some of which you probably don't have in your kitchen). Processed food is fine assuming you're aware of what's in it, how it's processed, and make sure you're not overeating any of it.
  - shawxe 6y ago
    > There's a distinction between processed and ultra-processed (or highly processed). For example, canned fish is processed (added salt and oil), while a frozen TV dinner is ultra-processed (many ingredients added, some of which you probably don't have in your kitchen). Sure, but OP said ban all processed food. That's what I'm responding to, not "ban all ultra-processed food." That said, I do find your categorization to be troubling. Just because something is a frozen dinner doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad for you. Whether or not something is good or bad for you is based entirely on its chemical composition; it has absolutely nothing to do with how it has been put together or what form factor its being distributed in. It may sound like I'm being pedantic, but I think these kinds of short cuts are actually genuinely harmful. I've known many people who have thought "cheeseburgers from McDonald's are unhealthy not because cheeseburgers are unhealthy but because they are processed" and then gone right ahead and made themselves cheeseburgers that have three to four times the calories, fat, and salt of the McDonald's counterpart. Does that make McDonald's a healthy option? Absolutely not. But why is McDonald's unhealthy? It's because the food they serve is unhealthy. It's not that the food that is served at McDonald's is unhealthy because McDonald's is unhealthy. > Processed food is fine assuming you're aware of what's in it, how it's processed, and make sure you're not overeating any of it. s/Processed// If people want to eat healthier, they need to pay attention to the ingredients in the things they're eating. If we're going to regulate something, we need to regulate the ingredients that go into things people eat. Using buzz words like "processed" and "ultra-processed" with definitions that are, at best, not well understood by the general population just leads to people working around personal/social rules/regulations. Just because your t-bone steak is local organic grass-fed whatever does not make it good for you. That food is just not healthy, even if it is the only ingredient. We did not evolve eating food like that with any kind of regularity. If you want to be healthy, you need to just not eat it.
dahfizz 6y ago
You can get a burger, or salad (usually with an option to add chicken) at any "American" restaurant. Does that fulfill your standard meal?
LegitShady 6y ago
My recommendation, if you're staying at a hotel, is to ask if they have a BBQ for guest use. Most do, and then you can stop at the grocery store and buy some chicken/fish, some vegetables (also a roll of aluminum foil), and cook it on the bbq. I travel quite a bit for work (at least, when there's no pandemic) and even though my per diem would cover restaurants, I have almost completely switched over to hotel BBQs and eat better for way less money.
nugget 6y ago
Remember that (almost) everything in America is a business. Sugar is cheap and addictive. I had an "aha" moment when digging into Starbucks' nutritional labels. I realized that, with certain types of drinks, Starbucks had essentially legitimized drinking a milkshake for breakfast. I'm not sure how much that contributed to their success but it must surely have been a component.
novok 6y ago
Yup I agree. I call it the food gravity problem of america. Trying to eat healthy here is like trying to beat gravity: This youtube video goes into more detail about the US problem compared to japan: "Why is it so Easy to be Thin in Japan?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr4MmmWQtZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr4MmmWQtZM
dnhz 6y ago
Neither pure white sugar nor vegetable oil occur naturally in the environment. Can't just blame sugar when fat has twice the energy density of sugar and is used abundantly in the processed foods that we like to overeat.
- gdebel 6y ago
  Right but don't you think that olive oil for example was eaten since centuries? I often refer myself to the so-called "Mediterranean diet" as a good reference when I'm asking myself if I should eat something. This is based on data to some degree also.
  - dnhz 6y ago
    I don't know that much about the history of olive oil consumption. My hueristic is, the more fiber removed, the less healthful the food becomes.
txcwpalpha 6y ago
The US has its issues with food (in particular, lower class individuals have trouble finding cheap food that isn't junk food), but I'm surprised to read the rest of your comments. I travel all around the US a lot for work (or did, pre-covid) and all the way down to your fast food restaurants all the way up to fancy $500/plate places, I've never once found it difficult to eat a "standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-added". I would say that 80% of my meals are exactly that. I've never once been to a single non-fast-food restaurant where they didn't have multiple different kinds of vegetables on the menu. There's certainly an issue with portion size at most US restaurants, but I've never found it difficult to get a plate of plain roasted vegetables with lightly seasoned fish, for example. >It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar added. Yogurt in particular is not really popular in the US, so you will not find it in many restaurants. You can, however, find packaged sugarfree yogurt in most convenience stores and certainly every grocery store if that's your thing. Other than yogurt, there are plenty of sugarfree snacks widely available. Starbucks is on every corner and sells plain vegetables, plain fruit, plain eggs, etc, for example. I suspect your complaints are mostly rooted in simply not being aware of certain brand names or which stores are known for what type of food, because all of the things you mentioned definitely are available as long as you aren't going to McDonald's or Five Guys for every meal.
- groby_b 6y ago
  I would really like to know which fast food restaurant allows "normal" eating. They all use sugar, they are all way too fatty and salty. And vegetables are hard. (No, fried potatoes do not count) > "You can, however, find packaged sugarfree yogurt" That stuff is a miracle of modern chemistry. It has, however, only a passing resemblance to actual yoghurt. Nobody who grew up in Europe really wants sugar-free. It's "no sugar added" that matters. Nobody wants fat-free, either. And there are quite a few studies making the point that these "healthy" food actually contribute to weight gain. "Starbucks is on every corner and sells plain vegetables, plain fruit, plain eggs"... if you're lucky. Usually, it's sold out fairly quickly. In general, yes, getting healthy food in the US is much harder than it is in Europe. The vast majority of food here is processed to within an inch of its life, and the remainder is incredibly expensive, because it's treated as a luxury good. I've spent a few decades in Europe, as well as a few in the US. I'm fairly confident I know which food I can get where in either place - and the US is severely broken. Trust me, I wish it weren't. But healthy food is difficult, and becomes extra-hard as you leave bigger cities with specialty stores behind.
chubot 6y ago
As a Chinese person born in America, you're absolutely right. If you don't cook, it's difficult to eat reasonably / "normally" in this country, even if you have money. You kind of have to pick your poison: salt, sugar, unnatural fats, etc. At least I grew up on the east coast and my parents cooked. Anecdotally, I'm shocked by what my acquaintances from the midwest eat, and the consequences really start to show up when people reach their 30's (although there are signs earlier) I read Michael Pollan's books (Omnivore's Dilemma, etc.) 10-15 years ago and they opened my eyes to how broken this country is in terms of food. https://michaelpollan.com/books/ https://michaelpollan.com/books/ It's funny he is considered "liberal" here but it's just common sense in the rest of the world. The thesis is actually "conservative": eat things that your grandmother would consider food. If your grandmother wouldn't recognize it, don't eat it. Did your grandmother (or great grandmother) cook with high-fructose corn syrup? Or processed oils / margarine?
- malnourish 6y ago
  Margarine? Absolutely. Margarine was huge post-war time. In fact it was so scary to the dairy industry they lobbied to have it turned pink. That failed but you couldn't sell yellow margarine. Who knows what additives were in our grandparents' foods.
  - chubot 6y ago
    It's a heuristic, a rule of thumb. Think Michael Pollan's grandparents if you like (he's 65). The change in American diet was not subtle; it was huge. It was due to what's cheaper / more profitable for a huge industry to produce. It's similar to what's going on right now with the software industry -- cloud services with mobile clients is great economically and great for collecting data, but not necessarily in the short-term or long-term interests of the users. If you believe in capitalism, you would have to explain how optimizing for cheap and superficially appealing food would NOT happen.
- esperent 6y ago
  The chemical food additives industry has been around for a long time now - certainly since the times of our great-great-grandparents. The difference is that now we have both more variety, and much more rigorous testing. There's a reason every country has an equivalent to the FDA that has to approve food additives. These agencies were not formed in advance - they were formed as a reaction to dangerous unregulated food additives, supplements, medicines, and so on. The FDA was formed in 1906. Michael Pollan saying that our grandparents only ate real food is an example of the golden age fallacy.
slothtrop 6y ago
I held much the same view but it occurs to me that in many East Asian countries, added sugar to dishes is common and overall sugar consumption not necessarily that low. Not to say it's healthy, but it seems an insufficient explanation. The proliferation of junk foods, boxed refined products, seems higher in North America. As you say dining out tends to comprise the Standard American Diet of high fat and carbs, low fiber.
dorian-graph 6y ago
This may sound dumb, but any suggestions on how to eat (i.e. a recipe book) in what you describe as "normal"?
- gdebel 6y ago
  I had to think a little to answer. I don't know any book to learn to cook "as usual" (by the standards of my family for example). However, a good place to find such recipes could be a website called "Marmiton" , where people write their recipes , that are evaluated by the community. If you go for simple recipes, you should not be far from what I define as normal (with all my subjectivity: I understand this is not a valid standard)
  - dorian-graph 6y ago
    I appreciate you taking the time to answer! I'll check out Marmiton.
agumonkey 6y ago
Few years ago I had some eating disorder, I could only eat raw vegetables. My diet habit shifted 180deg in 48h, it's a weird realization: 1) eating raw vegetables tickles your brain differently (raw veggies make you feel full faster) 2) most probably because there's no fat nor sugar added (which makes you want to eat more I guess) 3) even dressing is bad, so raw is best to have a natural negative feedback system 4) even the most mundane raw veggies have a lot of flavour.. I eat carrots like M&M's nowadays, it's sweet. Same for lettuce or tomato. I really think modern western culture is hurtful there.
- borski 6y ago
  Fat actually satiates you more than almost anything else, so I suspect your culprit is sugar, not fat. If you cooked those veggies in some butter or olive oil, I would bet you’d get full faster.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    Possibly, I think I recall reading about the fat+sugar being ultra nasty because your brain never wants to stop this mouth sensation. That said, I don't feel the same when eating fatty stuff, it's more nausea than what I feel with veggies.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
I live near a college town, with food from dozens of nations. I can have crepes for breakfast, Vietnamese for lunch, good Italian for dinner. Tomorrow: steak and eggs at a diner for breakfast, sushi for lunch then dinner at a nice Czech place with cabbage and sausage. All cooked by immigrants or descendants of those heritages. But no, not typical. Most Americans buy all their food at the Dollar Store, and its everything you say.
- metrokoi 6y ago
  Most Americans buy their food at the grocery store, and there's nothing in them that wouldn't be found in any other country. Most Americans make their own meals with their families, which usually consist of meat, pasta, potatoes, and/or vegetables.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    You're right - there are 40,000 grocery stores in America, and only 30,000 Dollar Stores and their like. So less than half of Americans buy from Dollar Stores, if patronage equals frequency of the store. Buts Dollar stores are growing fast. That won't be true for long. I wonder at the "make their own meals". Maybe from packets or reheating frozen stuff. But the meat counter sure isn't the largest section in the grocery store, not by a large margin.
    - metrokoi 6y ago
      That's assuming people go to the Dollar store specifically to buy food instead of going to the grocery store, which is certainly not the norm. People go to the Dollar store to buy food containers, snacks for a road trip, batteries, toothbrushes, etc. That's like assuming people buy groceries at the hardware store; the intended purpose isn't the same. At all of the American grocery stores I've been to, the unfrozen meat section is as large as the entire refrigerated section, which are all very typical grocery stores.
      - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
heavyset_go 6y ago
I imagine eating a spoonful of pure steviol would be unpleasant, the acceptable daily intake is at most 12mg per kg of body weight. It's fine for you otherwise, and at a reasonable dose makes a great sugar substitute.
fudged71 6y ago
The problem with restaurants (globally!) is they have zero responsibility or incentive to serve food that fits the nutritional needs of their customers. • Restaurants don't sell food, they sell satiation, taste, brand, ambiance, customer experience. • You rarely can ask for an ingredient list, you often can't see who made your food, it is a black box in a black box. • All we really care about are omissions: the list of chemicals, macronutrients, hormones, and ingredients that are excluded from our menu items. Not only does this disconnect us from the ingredients in our food... I think this is a huge problem that compounds toward multiple health crises such as obesity and diabetes. Chefs are seen as food experts, yet the nutrition aspect of restaurant food is entirely ignored. We expect individuals themselves to be their own nutrition experts (curating meals and ingredients for their own health). I don't know what the solution is. But at the very least I think every restaurant owes its customers the macros and ingredients for every product they serve, in accessible formats. It should be easier to get that information onto your phone than a tweet. Food receipts should list macro and calorie breakdowns. Tools for nutrition analysis should be free, standard, integrated, and widespread. etc
- tcgv 6y ago
  > The problem with restaurants (globally!) is they have zero responsibility or incentive to serve food that fits the nutritional needs of their customers. I will have to disagree. Maybe this is a cultural thing (I'm from Brazil) but on business days I mostly refuse to have lunch in restaurants that don't offer nutritional food options, and I'm not alone in this matter, the majority of my team mates also care about their diet. Those who don't care about it and eat junk food at work every day are the exception. Hence, restaurants have the incentive to serve healthier food in order to attract customers like me and my team mates. That's not to say that I don't like junky food. I love to grab a beer and a burger, but I grant myself that treat at most once a week, not more than that.
dialamac 6y ago
> We did not evolved to eat processed sugar, which is not easily found naturally in the environment The flour you make French bread with is not found any more or less naturally in the environment than the sugar you get from cane or beet. This whole thing about evolution and nutrition is entirely pseudoscientific woo. If humans had to eat the same way as our ancestors (ie actual paleo, not some hipster fad diet) humanity would have died out long time ago. The French thing makes this all the more ironic... I can’t imagine much more triumph in modern processing than the five mother sauces. Clearly the American diet has a crazy oversupply of sugar... fructose, glucose, sucrose... at the amounts we’re talking about in the average American diet it doesn’t fucking matter (making the whole HFCS controversy always a joke).
- gdebel 6y ago
  I respectfully disagree. Flour is basically crushed wheat. Refined sugar is not crushed beet, and you would have to eat a lot of beet to eat the same amount of sugar that you eat in a typical "industrial food" diet. I would not take paleo food as a reference, but rather look toward what our grandparents had for lunch when they were kids. I don't think they were doing so badly. And I don't cook like Bocuse everyday, the five mother sauces are not intended to be eaten on a daily basis :-)
  - dialamac 6y ago
    Well sugar beets excluding water content are about 85% sucrose. Sugar production and consumption dates to antiquity, long before mass western obesity epidemics, a luxury item. It essentially became a staple food in the North American diet in the 20th century. Anyway, honey has a higher concentration of fructose so it has a lower GI than table sugar, but this difference is quite moderate (a few percent) - it seems to get overstated a lot on the web. Honey is basically refined/processed fuel produced by bees - and on evolutionary time scales it has been in use by humans about the same as sugar. Don’t get me wrong, it has chemical and physical properties that make it a beneficial sugar alternative - probably most of which is earlier satiety and therefore less consumption. If consumed in similar quantities it’s still going to make you fat. TANSTAAFL. My grandparents are probably older than average... but the life expectancy was a fair bit shorter just 100 years ago. Most didn’t even get the opportunity to live long enough to have gastric cancer (smoked meats) or a second MI.
lumberingjack 6y ago
As an American that avoids sugar like the toxin it is I agree. The food manufacturers put it in everything. I got an off brand of milk the other day because of the shortage, a local brand it had added sugar, I took two gulps and said "WTF". Bread it's like a staple now in baking white bread fuck it pack it with sugar from corn. Pizza make %50 of the sauce sugar. Drinks, would you like 100MG of liquid sugars in every $5 bottle? Coffee: Have some bean filtered water with that Mocha sugar sludge.
- jacobush 6y ago
  Bean filtered water, that’s what we had during the war. What is your war? :-)
- m0zg 6y ago
  Milk does have sugars by itself, just different kind. That's how you're able to ferment it and make yogurt, kefir, sour cream, etc. I do agree that the quantities of sugar in everything are _way_ too excessive though.
- tom_mellior 6y ago
  This isn't unique to America though. Here in Austria it's impossible to buy mayonnaise without sugar, for instance. Pesto is getting difficult as well. And many many other things that when you make then yourself would never be sweetened because they are not sweet foods. I don't think we're putting it in plain yogurt yet, but if I had to guess that's probably more due to food labeling laws than the manufacturers not wanting to. Anyway, here in the EU we have strict rules on when/how foods may be labeled as "no added sugar". I think we should take those rules and turn them around and require "with added sugar" labels on basically everything that is not candy or patisserie, where you would clearly expect sugar as a main ingredient.
dpoochieni 6y ago
As a Mexican I agree (even if I think hating on sugar is misguided, in an otherwise healthy diet you would be sufficiently healthy to deal with it in reasonable amounts.) The US simply has such a mind boggling reliance on empty calories and overall low-quality food, with brothless soups, iceberg lettuce salads, and frying everything in cheapo oils like sunflower, canola or similar. If I do not cook at home, or choose very carefully, or as you say spend the big bucks at a fine restaurant, I simply cannot find nutritious good quality food. I now realized I was spoiled growing up by having two parents who love to cook good stuff and find good eats.
RealityVoid 6y ago
I am totally not convinced by this argument against sugar. Yes, sugar is calorie dense. Yes, it's easy to eat a lot of calories from sugar. But in the end, even eating NO sugar, if you eat a ton of things, you'll get fat. An then you go on to recommend honey as though there is something magic about it and not pretty much the same thing with sugar.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  Not quite. Sugar spikes your insulin, insulin provokes fat storage. This does not happen with fat, so it is harder to get fat by eating fat. If you want to get fat, like a sumo ringer, simple carbs are the way to go.
  - ryeguy 6y ago
    Insulin is not required for fat storage. Insulin spikes do not create energy out of nowhere and don't suddenly make the same number of input calories multiply. Also, insulin spikes are nearly unpredictable anyway. Carbs aren't necessarily the trigger, protein and fat can be too. Sometimes foods are synergistic and spike insulin together more than eaten separately. Insulin spikiness is also determined by food in your stomach, further complicating things. For example, having fiber with a meal can "smooth out" an insulin spike. I summarized some articles that dispel insulin voodoo here, if you're interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/j853z/insulin_an_undeserved_bad_reputation_plus_notes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/j853z/insulin_an_u...
    - balnaphone 6y ago
      The linked-to discussion of insulin has a major error logical error. The title is "Insulin: An Undeserved Bad Reputation", but then the body of the article says for example "Carbs are not alone in being responsible for insulin secretion. Protein can cause just as much, if not more, insulin secretion as carbs". This is a straw man, because the point that is trying to be refused is that "insulin is bad", not "carbs are bad". Insulin, being necessary for healthy human life, is certainly not "bad". However, a shortage (e.g. Type 1 diabetes) or excess (e.g. Type 2 diabetes) is certainly a problem. Given the current epidemic of Type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and NAFLD, triggering excess insulin production is certainly something to be wary of. Also of concern is impinging on the glucagon cycle, and in the linked-to post there is no mention of the important function of glucagon, which is typically considered as having effects opposite to insulin. Maintaining the insulin/glucagon cycle is important in maintenance of a healthy metabolism. The article makes a point about how "Insulin is not needed for fat storage", but omits the fact that in reality, practically all fat storage is mediated by insulin and its effects on glucose. Insulin mediates glucose transport and promotes absorption of blood glucose into the liver, fat and muscle cells. Once the liver has filled its compliment of glycogen, it will indeed produce fat locally. Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) currently afflicts about 25% of the entire human population, and the linked-to author would have the reader believe that excess insulin production isn't an issue? Very strange. All in all, this article paints a false picture of human metabolism. People eating a typical Western diet should be concerned or at least aware of the facts of that process, and be wary of having an excess or deficit of insulin; and should know that the excess case is the more common condition. A reasonable scientifically-accurate depiction of the process can be found, for example, in Jason Fung's books, "The Diabetes Code" and "The Obesity Code".
outworlder 6y ago
> I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" That very much depends on your location. High tourism locations will often have lots of junk food places. If you can move larger distances (i.e. rent a car and the like) you'll find wonderful and cheap restaurants pretty much anywhere. Even in otherwise expensive places like SF or NY. Here's the problem though: portion sizes are _enormous_ . It took quite a bit of time to adapt, and adapt I did, if my measurements are any indication. If you want healthy portions, you'll either waste food, or you'll have to ask for a take out box. Essentially, a lot of places will serve you portions that are enough for two meals. Ingredient availability varies a lot. In larger centers you can find almost anything you could possibility want. Even farmer's markets if you are lucky, which will often have locally sourced produce at lower prices compared to big supermarket chains (and sometimes even lower if you get there near closing hour ;) )
- bilekas 6y ago
  > That very much depends on your location. High tourism locations will often have lots of junk food places. This I don't agree, I was in a backwhole and all I got was a supermarket and fast food. Sure I could take the raw veg, but it was cheaper to get the TV dinners. Maybe you know your area better to find them but are they known by all, known enough to be advertised to tourists/visitors ? > Here's the problem though: portion sizes are _enormous_ This is a result.. Not really a cause, I fully agree with you the portions are alien for me, but they didn't decide on those portions from nowhere. > Ingredient availability varies a lot > Even farmer's markets This is both true and the problem. The fact you need to say that sometimes Farmers markets can handle you meats, and depending on what supermarket you go to you can get good veggie.. It's strange from an EU POV. We have EU standards on all food trades, the UK is leaving the EU based on a few lies about the standards. But it actually is standing to prove that hey : 'Don't eat shit'.
- Kuinox 6y ago
  > If you can move larger distances (i.e. rent a car and the like) you'll find wonderful and cheap restaurants pretty much anywhere. Even in otherwise expensive places like SF or NY. After doing a trip in America, I interpret "eat normally" for a French as not eating in the restaurants, but the food available in the supermarket that you cook at home. Finding vegetables, fruits is hard, if not impossible. You don't find it in every supermarket. Eating normally, for me, is buying the vegetables, meat, etc, and cooking it myself. Yesterday I made a ratatouille: Eggplant, courgette, poivron, tomatoes. I remember finding these in USA was really hard. And the only fruits we found was already cuts pineapply/mango/apples/etc...
suyash 6y ago
Cheap Fast Food and Huge Portion Size are the biggest culprits to the heath (obesity) crisis in the US.
bilekas 6y ago
> Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" I'll second that, I've only been once for a few weeks on a work related trip, and I never paid attention to what I was eating but by the second week I felt run down, lathargic and really 'not great' - Hard to describe properly but I wasn't myself at all. With work I was connected with a doctor that I met because I just didn't feel 'right'. I wasked asked the usual questions but after talking a bit more about my diet usually (even before mentioning what I was eating in the US) she knew exactly what was going on. My body wasn't used to breaking down the amounts of processed sugars that are more commonly found in everyday foods in the US. I took a more concious approach to what was coming into my body and over a week I was able to feel normal again. I come from Ireland, we have a diverse mix of foods available, you pick a country, I can tell you a street to find their food authentically and I love trying them. I also cook heavy with bad cholesterol, lots of butter thanks to French friends, lots of salt in other dishes from others, lots of cheese, cured meats, smoked cheeses and meats, snacks etc. - My diet was never interestingly good. After my US trip I realised that there is a small poisoning in a sense being taken over the consumption. > My 2 cents: - eat as much vegetables as you want (learn to cook them, with a little bit of olive oil) I'm not stereotyping here, my exposure to the collegues from the local area never cooked. This is fine, but when you replace good food for fast food, you start to go into that chain. They didn't know a good way how to peel an avocado, which I found out on a drunken night with them in my apartment. 10+ and none of them knew how to prep an avocado. But that is not their fault at all.. > It looks like this is hard to do in the USA Spot on. I cannot stress this point enough. You have to go out of your way to eat even moderately health conscious. This is a real shame. We will all take the easier path : 'Ah tonight I'll just get take-away, I'll just grab something on the way home.' I grew up as a kid in Italy until I was 12, probably the only thing that I too away from it as a positive was that preparing, cooking and eating food is really not for sustenance. Sustenance is the result, what matters is the social time, the prep is almost like a meditation, and the collaborative effort is like a social movement. Food is really not just for sustenance. And I implore anyone reading this to try just cook a meal with friends, family or loved ones. It has a nice impact on way more than your sustenance intake. Sugar is good, avocadoes have a lot of them, even the bad ones, but I would much prefer to enjoy my food than inhale it, in the US, it was seen as a time consumer. 'You are what you eat' - This expression didn't come from nowhere. PS: 5 a day and the Pyramid might be wrong, there is no 1 scale for everyone. But there sure as shit isn't a cereal loaded with sugar for anyone. What really annoyed me though, was the cost of it. To eat more natural, is more expensive than processing food. Odd.
dnprock 6y ago
Your opinion is balanced. But it'll appear as nonsense to Americans. Americans are ideologues. They love freedom. They like their own camps. They want to find eternal truths in everything. (There's no such thing). In the dietary world, you'll find anti-sugar camps, anti-fat camps, Atkins diet, ketogenic diet, fitness buffs. This article is an example. It's a deep dive full of science. The conclusions, however, are mostly nonsense. I'll eat like you suggest. But I'll entertain with the reading. :)
- w0de02 6y ago
  I’m sure we have a camp that is militantly in favor of moderation. It’s our great innovation, as Americans: the ability to be extremely angry about minuscule modalities.
  - dnprock 6y ago
    I agree. The moderation camp exists. They're just not as loud. :) I like your characterization of Americans: extremely angry about minuscule modalities. :)
bilekas 6y ago
> I'm French ... I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" This really needs so much attention and focus given the ungodly delicious amount of butter French people cook with.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). As biologist with a background in Agriculture and Culinary: they exist, most farm to table restaurants in the US just have a small footprint in overall ecosystem. I spent most of my culinary career within them, ranging from Vegan to vegetation to seasonal based omnivore option. I also worked and ran kitchens in Agrotourisms in Europe and I'm familiar benefits with the Mediterranean diet, Spain having now surpassing Japan in Life expectancy, and diet is a significant contributor to it. > I think sugar is the main problem (not fat) and I'm not convinced calory count is key. We did not evolved to eat processed sugar, which is not easily found naturally in the environment. Agreed, and even that is not always so cut and clear as having extra CNV of the amalayse gene (like I do) can be super beneficial, which leans to the need of the Biohacker space (of which I'm a part of and is comprised mainly of many dissatisfied Health Scientists) to play with diet and the epigenetic effects of it, as that has been woefuly neglected for decades in Medicine and Scientific journals but a mainstay in the Biohacker community that has become mainstream due to influencers. As a kid I never understood the allure of sweets/desserts because of the CNV in my saliva is already breaking down the sugars in my mouth and makes super sweet things always taste a bit like the after taste of bitter chocolate or coffee--none of which I like. I always liked eating fruit, especially tart or sour ones more as a desert and only found out later in Life why that was. the study of how a palette is formed is a very interesting and entirely negated study in my opinion. > This implies to know/learn how to cook (not so hard but this is easier when the local/family culture allowed you to learn passively). Agreed! The best thing to do is to learn to cook with local, fresh organic products and help solidify a local food supply chain and relationship with your local farmers! This has a compound effect throughout the entire community and many communities are open vacant lots to community garden spaces. > It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar added. (Or I didn't look at the right place, once again this is not judgemental). It's there, its just found at higher end stores and outlets, ironically it costs more to deliver a product with less sugar and additives; but even Walmart has been a big player in the Organic produce Market. There is one next to my gym and I often went in to buy a pre-workout snack or a kombucha and there was always something I could eat without spiking my glucose levels. > Generally speaking, it is easy to find online high-level cooking courses, but hard to learn the basics of how to cook your onions or tomatoes in different ways in everyday life, or make an healthy meal with what's left in the fridge; this could be interesting to have. Agreed. Its an undervalued art and craft, in Boulder (one of the most concentrated 'foodie' places in the entire US) there are classes offered via a business that offers Learning Kitchen experiences where professional chefs from the surrounding area are commissioned on a topic/recipe/menu and teach paying members of the community on how to do things via interactive cooking. Its a very cool model that I think should be expanded on. I'd love to be able to work with some of my old team members in the Industry especially if it could help offset my expenses and help me fund other projects in my Life; online learning could be a bridge or a primer, but cooking is ultimately a craft you learn by repeated instruction and correcting hand positioning (re-enforced with lots of cuts, burns, scrapes) that makes it more like going to the gym than watching a lecture on a subject. You can learn online, I know I did watching Michelin Star chefs on Saturday Kitchen on the BBC before making the return into culinary in Europe, having only ever worked in catering while I was attending University as it inspired me to experiment with different techniques. I'm now retired from Kitchens but want I want to create a food docu-series, as I feel now is a critical time in Restaurants after having been so impacted due to COVID, that many may not make it. > ban every processed food, sauce, appetizer.... If you would not eat a spoon of every single ingredient of some food, don't eat it. - ban all added sugar, except (real) honey in reasonable proportions. I'm not for banning anything, just using it in moderation and having people have a solid understanding on what it does to you metabolically and its impacts on health. Japanese and Italian cuisine are the two pillars my culinary repertoire and sugar is a vital component of Japanese recipes that simply cannot be substituted. I've tried stevia and honey but it just doesn't work, a proper tare is sweetned with sugar not just for taste and lush sheen and gloss when used to grill, but also as the precursors for the bacteria to ferment that takes place over years to give it a unique and umami loaded taste that defines Japanese cuisine. And pasta and bread, carbohydrates, are just processed long-linked sugars and I can never give those up despite seeing and personally experienced the benefits of keto and carnivore diets in my friends. I'd throw including intermittent fasting and meditation/yoga in that equation as well and you have a solid foundation for how to be healthier and more productive in Life that I found via Biohacking methods, cooking and farming professionally. I also have the genetics for longevity on both sides of my family: my grandparents all made it to their late 90s, and my grandmother on my maternal side hit 99.7 before passing due to non health related issues, so I'm hoping that with this information guiding my behaviour I can make it to 150 years of age.
wait_a_minute 6y ago
It is not actually that hard to do, we just have a rushed culture that ends up encouraging people to pick the fastest option. A lot of us are too lazy to cook properly.
ryeguy 6y ago
Calorie count _is_ the key. This is incredibly well established in studies. Weight loss does not occur without caloric deficit, no matter what you eat. Likewise, weight loss will occur in caloric deficit even when eating what people would consider "junk", including sugar. See The Twinkie Diet, for example: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/... Avoiding food because "we didn't evolve to eat" is not sound science, either.
emmelaich 6y ago
I find that the Wholefoods and big Walgreens stores have the best natural healthy food for the least amount of money.
phs318u 6y ago
Irrespective of ingredient choices, another thing that differentiates commercial food (non home-cooked) in the USA vs just about everywhere else, is portion sizes. Your portions are huge.
antonvs 6y ago
> standard meat-with-vegetable "Standard" in the countries I've lived in would include a starch. Part of your reaction may just be to cultural differences in what's considered a standard meal. Your "2 cents" is nothing more than an expression of the food culture you grew up with. There are many other amazing food cultures around the world - even in parts of the US, although you don't find them in the chain stores and chain supermarkets.
charliebrownau 6y ago
Spot on Gdebel Food in USA has extra bacon sugar oil corn crap If you get a chance before SHTF or 2030 Visit Japan Food is cheap and healthy When you goto japan , be sure to buy a JR pass 2-4 weeks before you leave
garfieldnate 6y ago
One interesting and also really annoying phenomenon about going to another country is that it can be really difficult to find what you want to eat in the grocery store. I think the grocery stores in each country have to categorize and organize goods by how people use them, which differs in each country, and when you mix that in with goods actually missing, the experience can be really frustrating. It is not unusual for ex-pats to swear that something is not sold in the country, only to find out that they were looking in the wrong section. For example, in Germany I've known ex-pats to complain that there is no sweetened condensed milk, but I found it at Rewe next to the coffee (do Germans put it in coffee? Sounds good, I guess). At Rewe the peanut butter is next to the jelly, where I would expect it, but at Real it's in the "American foods" section :D I would expect any store that sells yoghurt in the US to have non-sweetened yoghurt, too. Just keep looking :) Dairy products are also sorted differently in each country.
- kaybe 6y ago
  > do Germans put it in coffee? Yes. What do you do with it?
m3kw9 6y ago
Yes eating out is mostly unhealthy. Anyone who have tried to recreate restaurant dishes at home, you will know how much extra salt, sugar, fat is needed to get that similar tasting profile.
dreamcompiler 6y ago
The American processed food industry uses very cheap ingredients that inherently taste awful, but they get us to eat them by adding salt, sugar, and fat, all of which Americans are semi-addicted to. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/26/172969363/how-the-food-industry-manipulates-taste-buds-with-salt-sugar-fat https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/26/172969363/ho...
resfirestar 6y ago
As an American who has traveled a lot, I think a large part of the problem here is Americans’ over reliance on restaurants for food. You can rightly criticize the processed, sugary, or fried foods that many people habitually cook, but to claim that Americans don’t know how to make plain foods or have access to the ingredients is ignorance: every proper grocery store sells good proteins, fresh vegetables, and unprocessed grains, and they do it because it’s profitable, because people do largely cook pretty standard meals at home (and as others noted, your yogurt example is wrong). But regardless of how healthy our cooking is, why is it so rare for Americans to eat a home cooked lunch, and so strikingly common to meet people who never cook their own dinner when compared to other countries? Your country has on average healthier foods than we do (not sure by how much once you account for the dishes people actually order), but the portions at restaurants are still too big. People are healthier in France because they cook most of their meals at home, not because the restaurants give them a proper diet. If we all started eating like the French do we’d probably have a more balanced diet, but we’d still be fat if we ate at restaurants all the time.
- justaguyonline 6y ago
  You took the post from right under by fingers. The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. Gordon makes the exact same point but gets there via analysis of where Americans are spending money for food. Since the 70s we've more than doubled the fraction of our income we spend eating outside of the home.[1] This tracks with the rise in adult obesity in America and is a divergence from trends in other developed countries like France. [1] Chapter 10

by gdebel 6y ago

tvanantwerp 6y ago

Last year I went to Europe for a two week vacation. I stuffed myself like a greedy pig for two weeks, but I barely gained any weight on my return to the US. The next week, I went on a staff retreat for only 3 days and stuffed myself again. That time, I gained more than twice what I'd gained in Europe. I'm convinced that the quality of European food is, on average, vastly superior to what's available in America.

deleted 6y ago
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NikolaeVarius 6y ago
I don't understand how you could possibly think this is a meaningful data point at all.
PoachedSausage 6y ago
Not to worry, you guys will be sending us boat loads of Chlorine Washed Chicken and pink liquid cow shortly: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47426138 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47426138
starpilot 6y ago
I remember a question of MetaFilter about this. A bunch of Europeans said that whenever they went on vacation in the US, they lost weight. You're on vacation, walking around all day.
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voisin 6y ago

When the production of sugar and related sweeteners is among the most subsidized industries in the country, is it any wonder that these find their way into everything? And a handy side effect for producers is that satiety is short lived, leading to repeated demand in the short term when included in a product.

choeger 6y ago

Quick remark: Sugar, as other carbohydrates, is cheap. It also tastes well, objectively (as much as taste can be objectively measured). So if you go for industrial-level food production, you end up with a higher proportion of sugar than what would be considered healthy. Sugar per se ist not bad at all (try to have an apple without it ;)). But our economy demands cheap, somewhat tasty, calories. Hence we end up with a lot of sugar or carbohydrates in general. Any diet that rules out carbs works well because of that, not because of some intrinsic property of carbs. As a French person you would probably never consider giving up on a good croissant or baguette, but in France these things are expensive. I doubt anyone gives their kids fresh croissant before school every day.

abellerose 6y ago
I've never known that people add sugar to their apples. I have lived in US & Canada and I find that odd people need to add sugar to enjoy an apple. Croissants or baguettes are not a daily thing if my assumption is correct. My experience is buying them when walking home from work and if I'm in the mood because bread isn't generally healthy for people compared to something else that happens to be better. edit: okay, I now understand the comment is about apples having natural sugar.
- abnry 6y ago
  I think the OP meant natural sugar, not added! And sadly, many jams and pies have extra sugar added, I much prefer the no/low sugar versions.
  - karpathy 6y ago
    Yes natural sugar is just barely better than added sugar (due to the fiber it's typically mixed in with). The apples we eat today are candy bars, they just happen to grow on trees. Trees shaped extensively via artificial selection for thousands of years to pack in more glucose, trees that are nowhere near to what our ancestors have encountered for millions of years.

eatbitseveryday 6y ago

> you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar added I have a difficult time finding these, as well. The culture here (spoken as an American) is to avoid fats, which is why most products advertise "no fat" (yoghurt with no fat seems like a strange contradiction to me). > in Asian restaurants (and even there, food is often sweetened) This is also true from my experiences. Chinese restaurants add sugar due to believing that's part of the American palette. (For Chinese foods, there's also a distinction between "typical" and "authentic" styles, and most Americans are unaware of the latter.)

gdebel 6y ago
Exactly! No-fat is a strange concept. Fat is not inherently bad, too much added fat is. But I'm pretty sure you can eat 500mg of natural good yogurt a day without being sick. Well, I never tried.
dumb1224 6y ago
It depends on the places you went. Cuisine where I'm from has a lot of sugar in the diet; however it might not be popular enough to be included in international asian restuarants. But I can't be sure as we don't really measure the amount of sugar went into cooking. It might be there isn't much at all.

JamesBarney 6y ago

> I think sugar is the main problem (not fat) Most of the research is that it's both. (Tt's the worst when fat and sugar are together) Specifically food is more rewarding, denser, cheaper, and easier to find than it used to be, so we overeat it. Same thing happens with almost any animal that's given ad libitum access to the american diet. It seems there are two societal solutions, extremely heavy handed government interventions to ban tasty food or we invent a weight loss pill.

nxc18 6y ago
It doesn't need to be extreme, taxes are proven to be effective and are quite simple. They solve the problem of unhealthy food being too easily available by raising the price to reflect the true cost to society (the externalities, like obesity). Junk food is only cheaper than healthy food because our society has made that choice, and it can just as easily choose to change that.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  That's great news though I'm a little suspicious, where have taxes caused a significant change in body weight? > Junk food is only cheaper than healthy food because our society has made that choice, and it can just as easily choose to change that. Junk food is cheaper because it's easier to make junk food. If you want to make food more palatable cheaply, make it denser, fattier, and sweeter. i.e. turn it into junk food.
  - take_a_breath 6y ago
    Look into the government’s subsidies of corn. We have decided, as a country, to incentivize growing corn. From here, it’s not hard to understand why high fructose corn syrup is in almost everything packaged in the US.
  - tom_mellior 6y ago
    > That's great news though I'm a little suspicious, where have taxes caused a significant change in body weight? You could check https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax as a starting point. From a skim it doesn't look to me like a small tax is some kind of miracle cure for anything in this regard. Though I don't think anyone claimed that it would be the one factor that fixes everything. There is no one factor, and having the tax as part of a toolbox seems reasonable.

thebean11 6y ago

What part of the US were you in? I think your experience will vary widely; in NYC there are healthy meat n veggies fast food places every couple blocks. That being said I think you are accurately describing the majority of the country.

systemvoltage 6y ago
The general jab at the Americans. If I look at Europe food culture with a certain lens, I just see shitty doner kebab places in every corner and turkish grocery/meat stores that smell horrible. Obviously, that lens is cracked, tinted with biases. Some points are valid though. Honestly, as an American, we've got some awful vegetables and tasteless food just about everywhere unless fat/sugar is added to them. Probably due to the way mass production and transportation of food goes in to the US. It wasn't like that. There is nothing wrong with our soil. I spent some time in India, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and Korea and the veggies are almost like they grow in your home garden. Go to a store and pick out a tomato and it is impossibly good. America has farmers markets in every city, even in some of the most impoverished cities. But that's not where the majority of the middle class goes to shop for their vegetables. Try growing veggies in your own garden on American soil and its gonna taste amazing. Don't worry, Asian population wants malls, walmarts, and giant grocery stores with similar tasteless food. It is happening at a massive unprecedented scale.
- gdebel 6y ago
  I made clear I have no anti-american views (and I don't feel like US citizens, generally speaking, are so much more open to external opinions than Europeans by the way). The problem is not related to the quality of soil or to the borders but to the fact that we humans have a recent tendency to over-engineer a very natural process : eating simple, normal, things.
  - pottertheotter 6y ago
    As an American, I absolutely agree with your original post. I find it so much more difficult to eat good food here unless I pay a ton of money. Good food is also usually the most inconvenient choice. I also think that our obsession with work hurts us. We don't have time to slow down and cook.

atopia 6y ago

I absolutely agree - sugar is definitely the issue. Most individuals don't get enough healthy fats due to marketing tactics. Stuff like Omega 3s and general unsaturated fats are incredibly important for brain function, reparation of tissue, etc.

mettamage 6y ago

Ah, the Americans... ;-) As a Dutch person living in Amsterdam, I completely agree. I noticed when I visited SF a few times (and California in general) that: - Vegetables are more expensive - Bread is sweetened (there goes my breakdfast) - Bread sucks (yep, I said it, basic bread should be thrown into the thrash can) - Basic cheese in the US is a new species, and I am afraid of it I went around these 2 issues by buying the highest quality French bread and imported cheese (how I missed actual France with their actual French bread... :'( ). While it was expensive, I could at least make a breakfast that I eat in Amsterdam (bread with cheese with butter, unsweetened). The butter was normal. I have to give the US that. Though, I do like what you guys can do with oatmeal. It taught me that the normal Dutch breakfast is uninspiring as hell, haha. So all in all, it was reall a positive experience, but it's so much nicer when you meet American people showing how they eat breakfast rather than traveling around in the country and simply guessing how to eat normal (normal being unsweetened / healthy -- I find that normal...). Also, I found the US amazing with certain dinner options (e.g. sushi burito's).

GuiA 6y ago
San Francisco is an anomaly as far as food in the US is concerned. I'm French and have been living in SF for close to a decade (and Louisiana before that, so I've been spoiled when it comes to "american food" that doesn't suck), and there are very few things I cannot find here - people are into food, and if you take the time to look for specialty stores you will find them. Of course there's the cost difference, but then again that goes both ways - I can find avocados, strawberries, etc. here of a quality and at a price you'd be hard pressed to find in France. Tbh, I'd argue that as far as meat/seafood/etc. is concerned, you can get better quality in SF than you can in 90% of France, where your main option will be an Intermarché or a Carrefour. I'd also argue that the pastries you find at Tartine/Four Barrel/etc. (they typically source from a variety of bakeries from around the bay) are way beyond, in quality, what you'd find in 90% of French bakeries (the glory days of master bakers are long gone, and a lot of it is frozen crap these days, although it's been getting better in the last few years). I suspect that by this point there are more world class bakers by square kilometer in the Bay Area than there are in France, perhaps with the exception of Paris/Lyon (quite a few that I've met went to France to study baking though, so our national pride isn't completely destroyed). I bake my own bread and can buy freshly milled flour from the The Mill, which would also be hard to find in France unless you had personal connections. But of course, I haven't gotten to the main part - which is the insane diversity of food stores and restaurants here. No matter what kind of south american, african, middle eastern, asian cuisine you want to make/eat, you'll be able to find it. That is not the case at all in France.

shawxe 6y ago

In general, I agree with a lot of what you're saying here about eating more vegetables and way less sugar being the way to go health-wise, but I do want to respond to some specific things you've said. > You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-added, except in Asian restaurants Restaurants are typically not where I go to eat healthy food anywhere in the world, although I do think you have a pointed that American restaurants are often relatively junk food oriented. > ban every processed food, sauce, appetizer.... There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food; it is entirely possible to use industrial processes to make a perfectly healthy and wholesome food product. Take for example, (this is by no means an endorsement) Larabar [1]. They make snack bars that typically contain 2-3 ingredients that are all just dried fruit. Should they be banned as "processed" food because of how they are made? > If you would not eat a spoon of every single ingredient of some food, don't eat it This is a ridiculous statement and is one of the main reasons why I'm commenting. I wouldn't eat a spoonful of yeast, should I not eat bread? I wouldn't eat a spoonful of salt, should I not eat... anything? > It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar added. I've never lived in an area in the United States where I've ever had any problem finding anything like this. [1] https://www.larabar.com/ https://www.larabar.com/

jfim 6y ago
> There is nothing inherently wrong with "processed" food There's a distinction between processed and ultra-processed (or highly processed). For example, canned fish is processed (added salt and oil), while a frozen TV dinner is ultra-processed (many ingredients added, some of which you probably don't have in your kitchen). Processed food is fine assuming you're aware of what's in it, how it's processed, and make sure you're not overeating any of it.
- shawxe 6y ago
  > There's a distinction between processed and ultra-processed (or highly processed). For example, canned fish is processed (added salt and oil), while a frozen TV dinner is ultra-processed (many ingredients added, some of which you probably don't have in your kitchen). Sure, but OP said ban all processed food. That's what I'm responding to, not "ban all ultra-processed food." That said, I do find your categorization to be troubling. Just because something is a frozen dinner doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad for you. Whether or not something is good or bad for you is based entirely on its chemical composition; it has absolutely nothing to do with how it has been put together or what form factor its being distributed in. It may sound like I'm being pedantic, but I think these kinds of short cuts are actually genuinely harmful. I've known many people who have thought "cheeseburgers from McDonald's are unhealthy not because cheeseburgers are unhealthy but because they are processed" and then gone right ahead and made themselves cheeseburgers that have three to four times the calories, fat, and salt of the McDonald's counterpart. Does that make McDonald's a healthy option? Absolutely not. But why is McDonald's unhealthy? It's because the food they serve is unhealthy. It's not that the food that is served at McDonald's is unhealthy because McDonald's is unhealthy. > Processed food is fine assuming you're aware of what's in it, how it's processed, and make sure you're not overeating any of it. s/Processed// If people want to eat healthier, they need to pay attention to the ingredients in the things they're eating. If we're going to regulate something, we need to regulate the ingredients that go into things people eat. Using buzz words like "processed" and "ultra-processed" with definitions that are, at best, not well understood by the general population just leads to people working around personal/social rules/regulations. Just because your t-bone steak is local organic grass-fed whatever does not make it good for you. That food is just not healthy, even if it is the only ingredient. We did not evolve eating food like that with any kind of regularity. If you want to be healthy, you need to just not eat it.

dahfizz 6y ago

You can get a burger, or salad (usually with an option to add chicken) at any "American" restaurant. Does that fulfill your standard meal?

LegitShady 6y ago

My recommendation, if you're staying at a hotel, is to ask if they have a BBQ for guest use. Most do, and then you can stop at the grocery store and buy some chicken/fish, some vegetables (also a roll of aluminum foil), and cook it on the bbq. I travel quite a bit for work (at least, when there's no pandemic) and even though my per diem would cover restaurants, I have almost completely switched over to hotel BBQs and eat better for way less money.

nugget 6y ago

Remember that (almost) everything in America is a business. Sugar is cheap and addictive. I had an "aha" moment when digging into Starbucks' nutritional labels. I realized that, with certain types of drinks, Starbucks had essentially legitimized drinking a milkshake for breakfast. I'm not sure how much that contributed to their success but it must surely have been a component.

novok 6y ago

Yup I agree. I call it the food gravity problem of america. Trying to eat healthy here is like trying to beat gravity: This youtube video goes into more detail about the US problem compared to japan: "Why is it so Easy to be Thin in Japan?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr4MmmWQtZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr4MmmWQtZM

dnhz 6y ago

Neither pure white sugar nor vegetable oil occur naturally in the environment. Can't just blame sugar when fat has twice the energy density of sugar and is used abundantly in the processed foods that we like to overeat.

gdebel 6y ago
Right but don't you think that olive oil for example was eaten since centuries? I often refer myself to the so-called "Mediterranean diet" as a good reference when I'm asking myself if I should eat something. This is based on data to some degree also.
- dnhz 6y ago
  I don't know that much about the history of olive oil consumption. My hueristic is, the more fiber removed, the less healthful the food becomes.

txcwpalpha 6y ago

The US has its issues with food (in particular, lower class individuals have trouble finding cheap food that isn't junk food), but I'm surprised to read the rest of your comments. I travel all around the US a lot for work (or did, pre-covid) and all the way down to your fast food restaurants all the way up to fancy $500/plate places, I've never once found it difficult to eat a "standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-added". I would say that 80% of my meals are exactly that. I've never once been to a single non-fast-food restaurant where they didn't have multiple different kinds of vegetables on the menu. There's certainly an issue with portion size at most US restaurants, but I've never found it difficult to get a plate of plain roasted vegetables with lightly seasoned fish, for example. >It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar added. Yogurt in particular is not really popular in the US, so you will not find it in many restaurants. You can, however, find packaged sugarfree yogurt in most convenience stores and certainly every grocery store if that's your thing. Other than yogurt, there are plenty of sugarfree snacks widely available. Starbucks is on every corner and sells plain vegetables, plain fruit, plain eggs, etc, for example. I suspect your complaints are mostly rooted in simply not being aware of certain brand names or which stores are known for what type of food, because all of the things you mentioned definitely are available as long as you aren't going to McDonald's or Five Guys for every meal.

groby_b 6y ago
I would really like to know which fast food restaurant allows "normal" eating. They all use sugar, they are all way too fatty and salty. And vegetables are hard. (No, fried potatoes do not count) > "You can, however, find packaged sugarfree yogurt" That stuff is a miracle of modern chemistry. It has, however, only a passing resemblance to actual yoghurt. Nobody who grew up in Europe really wants sugar-free. It's "no sugar added" that matters. Nobody wants fat-free, either. And there are quite a few studies making the point that these "healthy" food actually contribute to weight gain. "Starbucks is on every corner and sells plain vegetables, plain fruit, plain eggs"... if you're lucky. Usually, it's sold out fairly quickly. In general, yes, getting healthy food in the US is much harder than it is in Europe. The vast majority of food here is processed to within an inch of its life, and the remainder is incredibly expensive, because it's treated as a luxury good. I've spent a few decades in Europe, as well as a few in the US. I'm fairly confident I know which food I can get where in either place - and the US is severely broken. Trust me, I wish it weren't. But healthy food is difficult, and becomes extra-hard as you leave bigger cities with specialty stores behind.

chubot 6y ago

As a Chinese person born in America, you're absolutely right. If you don't cook, it's difficult to eat reasonably / "normally" in this country, even if you have money. You kind of have to pick your poison: salt, sugar, unnatural fats, etc. At least I grew up on the east coast and my parents cooked. Anecdotally, I'm shocked by what my acquaintances from the midwest eat, and the consequences really start to show up when people reach their 30's (although there are signs earlier) I read Michael Pollan's books (Omnivore's Dilemma, etc.) 10-15 years ago and they opened my eyes to how broken this country is in terms of food. https://michaelpollan.com/books/ https://michaelpollan.com/books/ It's funny he is considered "liberal" here but it's just common sense in the rest of the world. The thesis is actually "conservative": eat things that your grandmother would consider food. If your grandmother wouldn't recognize it, don't eat it. Did your grandmother (or great grandmother) cook with high-fructose corn syrup? Or processed oils / margarine?

malnourish 6y ago
Margarine? Absolutely. Margarine was huge post-war time. In fact it was so scary to the dairy industry they lobbied to have it turned pink. That failed but you couldn't sell yellow margarine. Who knows what additives were in our grandparents' foods.
- chubot 6y ago
  It's a heuristic, a rule of thumb. Think Michael Pollan's grandparents if you like (he's 65). The change in American diet was not subtle; it was huge. It was due to what's cheaper / more profitable for a huge industry to produce. It's similar to what's going on right now with the software industry -- cloud services with mobile clients is great economically and great for collecting data, but not necessarily in the short-term or long-term interests of the users. If you believe in capitalism, you would have to explain how optimizing for cheap and superficially appealing food would NOT happen.
esperent 6y ago
The chemical food additives industry has been around for a long time now - certainly since the times of our great-great-grandparents. The difference is that now we have both more variety, and much more rigorous testing. There's a reason every country has an equivalent to the FDA that has to approve food additives. These agencies were not formed in advance - they were formed as a reaction to dangerous unregulated food additives, supplements, medicines, and so on. The FDA was formed in 1906. Michael Pollan saying that our grandparents only ate real food is an example of the golden age fallacy.

slothtrop 6y ago

I held much the same view but it occurs to me that in many East Asian countries, added sugar to dishes is common and overall sugar consumption not necessarily that low. Not to say it's healthy, but it seems an insufficient explanation. The proliferation of junk foods, boxed refined products, seems higher in North America. As you say dining out tends to comprise the Standard American Diet of high fat and carbs, low fiber.

dorian-graph 6y ago

This may sound dumb, but any suggestions on how to eat (i.e. a recipe book) in what you describe as "normal"?

gdebel 6y ago
I had to think a little to answer. I don't know any book to learn to cook "as usual" (by the standards of my family for example). However, a good place to find such recipes could be a website called "Marmiton" , where people write their recipes , that are evaluated by the community. If you go for simple recipes, you should not be far from what I define as normal (with all my subjectivity: I understand this is not a valid standard)
- dorian-graph 6y ago
  I appreciate you taking the time to answer! I'll check out Marmiton.

agumonkey 6y ago

Few years ago I had some eating disorder, I could only eat raw vegetables. My diet habit shifted 180deg in 48h, it's a weird realization: 1) eating raw vegetables tickles your brain differently (raw veggies make you feel full faster) 2) most probably because there's no fat nor sugar added (which makes you want to eat more I guess) 3) even dressing is bad, so raw is best to have a natural negative feedback system 4) even the most mundane raw veggies have a lot of flavour.. I eat carrots like M&M's nowadays, it's sweet. Same for lettuce or tomato. I really think modern western culture is hurtful there.

borski 6y ago
Fat actually satiates you more than almost anything else, so I suspect your culprit is sugar, not fat. If you cooked those veggies in some butter or olive oil, I would bet you’d get full faster.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  Possibly, I think I recall reading about the fat+sugar being ultra nasty because your brain never wants to stop this mouth sensation. That said, I don't feel the same when eating fatty stuff, it's more nausea than what I feel with veggies.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

I live near a college town, with food from dozens of nations. I can have crepes for breakfast, Vietnamese for lunch, good Italian for dinner. Tomorrow: steak and eggs at a diner for breakfast, sushi for lunch then dinner at a nice Czech place with cabbage and sausage. All cooked by immigrants or descendants of those heritages. But no, not typical. Most Americans buy all their food at the Dollar Store, and its everything you say.

metrokoi 6y ago
Most Americans buy their food at the grocery store, and there's nothing in them that wouldn't be found in any other country. Most Americans make their own meals with their families, which usually consist of meat, pasta, potatoes, and/or vegetables.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  You're right - there are 40,000 grocery stores in America, and only 30,000 Dollar Stores and their like. So less than half of Americans buy from Dollar Stores, if patronage equals frequency of the store. Buts Dollar stores are growing fast. That won't be true for long. I wonder at the "make their own meals". Maybe from packets or reheating frozen stuff. But the meat counter sure isn't the largest section in the grocery store, not by a large margin.
  - metrokoi 6y ago
    That's assuming people go to the Dollar store specifically to buy food instead of going to the grocery store, which is certainly not the norm. People go to the Dollar store to buy food containers, snacks for a road trip, batteries, toothbrushes, etc. That's like assuming people buy groceries at the hardware store; the intended purpose isn't the same. At all of the American grocery stores I've been to, the unfrozen meat section is as large as the entire refrigerated section, which are all very typical grocery stores.
    - JoeAltmaier 6y ago

heavyset_go 6y ago

I imagine eating a spoonful of pure steviol would be unpleasant, the acceptable daily intake is at most 12mg per kg of body weight. It's fine for you otherwise, and at a reasonable dose makes a great sugar substitute.

fudged71 6y ago

The problem with restaurants (globally!) is they have zero responsibility or incentive to serve food that fits the nutritional needs of their customers. • Restaurants don't sell food, they sell satiation, taste, brand, ambiance, customer experience. • You rarely can ask for an ingredient list, you often can't see who made your food, it is a black box in a black box. • All we really care about are omissions: the list of chemicals, macronutrients, hormones, and ingredients that are excluded from our menu items. Not only does this disconnect us from the ingredients in our food... I think this is a huge problem that compounds toward multiple health crises such as obesity and diabetes. Chefs are seen as food experts, yet the nutrition aspect of restaurant food is entirely ignored. We expect individuals themselves to be their own nutrition experts (curating meals and ingredients for their own health). I don't know what the solution is. But at the very least I think every restaurant owes its customers the macros and ingredients for every product they serve, in accessible formats. It should be easier to get that information onto your phone than a tweet. Food receipts should list macro and calorie breakdowns. Tools for nutrition analysis should be free, standard, integrated, and widespread. etc

tcgv 6y ago
> The problem with restaurants (globally!) is they have zero responsibility or incentive to serve food that fits the nutritional needs of their customers. I will have to disagree. Maybe this is a cultural thing (I'm from Brazil) but on business days I mostly refuse to have lunch in restaurants that don't offer nutritional food options, and I'm not alone in this matter, the majority of my team mates also care about their diet. Those who don't care about it and eat junk food at work every day are the exception. Hence, restaurants have the incentive to serve healthier food in order to attract customers like me and my team mates. That's not to say that I don't like junky food. I love to grab a beer and a burger, but I grant myself that treat at most once a week, not more than that.

dialamac 6y ago

> We did not evolved to eat processed sugar, which is not easily found naturally in the environment The flour you make French bread with is not found any more or less naturally in the environment than the sugar you get from cane or beet. This whole thing about evolution and nutrition is entirely pseudoscientific woo. If humans had to eat the same way as our ancestors (ie actual paleo, not some hipster fad diet) humanity would have died out long time ago. The French thing makes this all the more ironic... I can’t imagine much more triumph in modern processing than the five mother sauces. Clearly the American diet has a crazy oversupply of sugar... fructose, glucose, sucrose... at the amounts we’re talking about in the average American diet it doesn’t fucking matter (making the whole HFCS controversy always a joke).

gdebel 6y ago
I respectfully disagree. Flour is basically crushed wheat. Refined sugar is not crushed beet, and you would have to eat a lot of beet to eat the same amount of sugar that you eat in a typical "industrial food" diet. I would not take paleo food as a reference, but rather look toward what our grandparents had for lunch when they were kids. I don't think they were doing so badly. And I don't cook like Bocuse everyday, the five mother sauces are not intended to be eaten on a daily basis :-)
- dialamac 6y ago
  Well sugar beets excluding water content are about 85% sucrose. Sugar production and consumption dates to antiquity, long before mass western obesity epidemics, a luxury item. It essentially became a staple food in the North American diet in the 20th century. Anyway, honey has a higher concentration of fructose so it has a lower GI than table sugar, but this difference is quite moderate (a few percent) - it seems to get overstated a lot on the web. Honey is basically refined/processed fuel produced by bees - and on evolutionary time scales it has been in use by humans about the same as sugar. Don’t get me wrong, it has chemical and physical properties that make it a beneficial sugar alternative - probably most of which is earlier satiety and therefore less consumption. If consumed in similar quantities it’s still going to make you fat. TANSTAAFL. My grandparents are probably older than average... but the life expectancy was a fair bit shorter just 100 years ago. Most didn’t even get the opportunity to live long enough to have gastric cancer (smoked meats) or a second MI.

lumberingjack 6y ago

As an American that avoids sugar like the toxin it is I agree. The food manufacturers put it in everything. I got an off brand of milk the other day because of the shortage, a local brand it had added sugar, I took two gulps and said "WTF". Bread it's like a staple now in baking white bread fuck it pack it with sugar from corn. Pizza make %50 of the sauce sugar. Drinks, would you like 100MG of liquid sugars in every $5 bottle? Coffee: Have some bean filtered water with that Mocha sugar sludge.

jacobush 6y ago
Bean filtered water, that’s what we had during the war. What is your war? :-)
m0zg 6y ago
Milk does have sugars by itself, just different kind. That's how you're able to ferment it and make yogurt, kefir, sour cream, etc. I do agree that the quantities of sugar in everything are _way_ too excessive though.
tom_mellior 6y ago
This isn't unique to America though. Here in Austria it's impossible to buy mayonnaise without sugar, for instance. Pesto is getting difficult as well. And many many other things that when you make then yourself would never be sweetened because they are not sweet foods. I don't think we're putting it in plain yogurt yet, but if I had to guess that's probably more due to food labeling laws than the manufacturers not wanting to. Anyway, here in the EU we have strict rules on when/how foods may be labeled as "no added sugar". I think we should take those rules and turn them around and require "with added sugar" labels on basically everything that is not candy or patisserie, where you would clearly expect sugar as a main ingredient.

dpoochieni 6y ago

As a Mexican I agree (even if I think hating on sugar is misguided, in an otherwise healthy diet you would be sufficiently healthy to deal with it in reasonable amounts.) The US simply has such a mind boggling reliance on empty calories and overall low-quality food, with brothless soups, iceberg lettuce salads, and frying everything in cheapo oils like sunflower, canola or similar. If I do not cook at home, or choose very carefully, or as you say spend the big bucks at a fine restaurant, I simply cannot find nutritious good quality food. I now realized I was spoiled growing up by having two parents who love to cook good stuff and find good eats.

RealityVoid 6y ago

I am totally not convinced by this argument against sugar. Yes, sugar is calorie dense. Yes, it's easy to eat a lot of calories from sugar. But in the end, even eating NO sugar, if you eat a ton of things, you'll get fat. An then you go on to recommend honey as though there is something magic about it and not pretty much the same thing with sugar.

gridlockd 6y ago
Not quite. Sugar spikes your insulin, insulin provokes fat storage. This does not happen with fat, so it is harder to get fat by eating fat. If you want to get fat, like a sumo ringer, simple carbs are the way to go.
- ryeguy 6y ago
  Insulin is not required for fat storage. Insulin spikes do not create energy out of nowhere and don't suddenly make the same number of input calories multiply. Also, insulin spikes are nearly unpredictable anyway. Carbs aren't necessarily the trigger, protein and fat can be too. Sometimes foods are synergistic and spike insulin together more than eaten separately. Insulin spikiness is also determined by food in your stomach, further complicating things. For example, having fiber with a meal can "smooth out" an insulin spike. I summarized some articles that dispel insulin voodoo here, if you're interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/j853z/insulin_an_undeserved_bad_reputation_plus_notes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/j853z/insulin_an_u...
  - balnaphone 6y ago
    The linked-to discussion of insulin has a major error logical error. The title is "Insulin: An Undeserved Bad Reputation", but then the body of the article says for example "Carbs are not alone in being responsible for insulin secretion. Protein can cause just as much, if not more, insulin secretion as carbs". This is a straw man, because the point that is trying to be refused is that "insulin is bad", not "carbs are bad". Insulin, being necessary for healthy human life, is certainly not "bad". However, a shortage (e.g. Type 1 diabetes) or excess (e.g. Type 2 diabetes) is certainly a problem. Given the current epidemic of Type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and NAFLD, triggering excess insulin production is certainly something to be wary of. Also of concern is impinging on the glucagon cycle, and in the linked-to post there is no mention of the important function of glucagon, which is typically considered as having effects opposite to insulin. Maintaining the insulin/glucagon cycle is important in maintenance of a healthy metabolism. The article makes a point about how "Insulin is not needed for fat storage", but omits the fact that in reality, practically all fat storage is mediated by insulin and its effects on glucose. Insulin mediates glucose transport and promotes absorption of blood glucose into the liver, fat and muscle cells. Once the liver has filled its compliment of glycogen, it will indeed produce fat locally. Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) currently afflicts about 25% of the entire human population, and the linked-to author would have the reader believe that excess insulin production isn't an issue? Very strange. All in all, this article paints a false picture of human metabolism. People eating a typical Western diet should be concerned or at least aware of the facts of that process, and be wary of having an excess or deficit of insulin; and should know that the excess case is the more common condition. A reasonable scientifically-accurate depiction of the process can be found, for example, in Jason Fung's books, "The Diabetes Code" and "The Obesity Code".

outworlder 6y ago

> I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" That very much depends on your location. High tourism locations will often have lots of junk food places. If you can move larger distances (i.e. rent a car and the like) you'll find wonderful and cheap restaurants pretty much anywhere. Even in otherwise expensive places like SF or NY. Here's the problem though: portion sizes are _enormous_ . It took quite a bit of time to adapt, and adapt I did, if my measurements are any indication. If you want healthy portions, you'll either waste food, or you'll have to ask for a take out box. Essentially, a lot of places will serve you portions that are enough for two meals. Ingredient availability varies a lot. In larger centers you can find almost anything you could possibility want. Even farmer's markets if you are lucky, which will often have locally sourced produce at lower prices compared to big supermarket chains (and sometimes even lower if you get there near closing hour ;) )

bilekas 6y ago
> That very much depends on your location. High tourism locations will often have lots of junk food places. This I don't agree, I was in a backwhole and all I got was a supermarket and fast food. Sure I could take the raw veg, but it was cheaper to get the TV dinners. Maybe you know your area better to find them but are they known by all, known enough to be advertised to tourists/visitors ? > Here's the problem though: portion sizes are _enormous_ This is a result.. Not really a cause, I fully agree with you the portions are alien for me, but they didn't decide on those portions from nowhere. > Ingredient availability varies a lot > Even farmer's markets This is both true and the problem. The fact you need to say that sometimes Farmers markets can handle you meats, and depending on what supermarket you go to you can get good veggie.. It's strange from an EU POV. We have EU standards on all food trades, the UK is leaving the EU based on a few lies about the standards. But it actually is standing to prove that hey : 'Don't eat shit'.
Kuinox 6y ago
> If you can move larger distances (i.e. rent a car and the like) you'll find wonderful and cheap restaurants pretty much anywhere. Even in otherwise expensive places like SF or NY. After doing a trip in America, I interpret "eat normally" for a French as not eating in the restaurants, but the food available in the supermarket that you cook at home. Finding vegetables, fruits is hard, if not impossible. You don't find it in every supermarket. Eating normally, for me, is buying the vegetables, meat, etc, and cooking it myself. Yesterday I made a ratatouille: Eggplant, courgette, poivron, tomatoes. I remember finding these in USA was really hard. And the only fruits we found was already cuts pineapply/mango/apples/etc...

suyash 6y ago

Cheap Fast Food and Huge Portion Size are the biggest culprits to the heath (obesity) crisis in the US.

bilekas 6y ago

> Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" I'll second that, I've only been once for a few weeks on a work related trip, and I never paid attention to what I was eating but by the second week I felt run down, lathargic and really 'not great' - Hard to describe properly but I wasn't myself at all. With work I was connected with a doctor that I met because I just didn't feel 'right'. I wasked asked the usual questions but after talking a bit more about my diet usually (even before mentioning what I was eating in the US) she knew exactly what was going on. My body wasn't used to breaking down the amounts of processed sugars that are more commonly found in everyday foods in the US. I took a more concious approach to what was coming into my body and over a week I was able to feel normal again. I come from Ireland, we have a diverse mix of foods available, you pick a country, I can tell you a street to find their food authentically and I love trying them. I also cook heavy with bad cholesterol, lots of butter thanks to French friends, lots of salt in other dishes from others, lots of cheese, cured meats, smoked cheeses and meats, snacks etc. - My diet was never interestingly good. After my US trip I realised that there is a small poisoning in a sense being taken over the consumption. > My 2 cents: - eat as much vegetables as you want (learn to cook them, with a little bit of olive oil) I'm not stereotyping here, my exposure to the collegues from the local area never cooked. This is fine, but when you replace good food for fast food, you start to go into that chain. They didn't know a good way how to peel an avocado, which I found out on a drunken night with them in my apartment. 10+ and none of them knew how to prep an avocado. But that is not their fault at all.. > It looks like this is hard to do in the USA Spot on. I cannot stress this point enough. You have to go out of your way to eat even moderately health conscious. This is a real shame. We will all take the easier path : 'Ah tonight I'll just get take-away, I'll just grab something on the way home.' I grew up as a kid in Italy until I was 12, probably the only thing that I too away from it as a positive was that preparing, cooking and eating food is really not for sustenance. Sustenance is the result, what matters is the social time, the prep is almost like a meditation, and the collaborative effort is like a social movement. Food is really not just for sustenance. And I implore anyone reading this to try just cook a meal with friends, family or loved ones. It has a nice impact on way more than your sustenance intake. Sugar is good, avocadoes have a lot of them, even the bad ones, but I would much prefer to enjoy my food than inhale it, in the US, it was seen as a time consumer. 'You are what you eat' - This expression didn't come from nowhere. PS: 5 a day and the Pyramid might be wrong, there is no 1 scale for everyone. But there sure as shit isn't a cereal loaded with sugar for anyone. What really annoyed me though, was the cost of it. To eat more natural, is more expensive than processing food. Odd.

dnprock 6y ago

Your opinion is balanced. But it'll appear as nonsense to Americans. Americans are ideologues. They love freedom. They like their own camps. They want to find eternal truths in everything. (There's no such thing). In the dietary world, you'll find anti-sugar camps, anti-fat camps, Atkins diet, ketogenic diet, fitness buffs. This article is an example. It's a deep dive full of science. The conclusions, however, are mostly nonsense. I'll eat like you suggest. But I'll entertain with the reading. :)

w0de02 6y ago
I’m sure we have a camp that is militantly in favor of moderation. It’s our great innovation, as Americans: the ability to be extremely angry about minuscule modalities.
- dnprock 6y ago
  I agree. The moderation camp exists. They're just not as loud. :) I like your characterization of Americans: extremely angry about minuscule modalities. :)

bilekas 6y ago

> I'm French ... I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" This really needs so much attention and focus given the ungodly delicious amount of butter French people cook with.

Melting_Harps 6y ago

> I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). As biologist with a background in Agriculture and Culinary: they exist, most farm to table restaurants in the US just have a small footprint in overall ecosystem. I spent most of my culinary career within them, ranging from Vegan to vegetation to seasonal based omnivore option. I also worked and ran kitchens in Agrotourisms in Europe and I'm familiar benefits with the Mediterranean diet, Spain having now surpassing Japan in Life expectancy, and diet is a significant contributor to it. > I think sugar is the main problem (not fat) and I'm not convinced calory count is key. We did not evolved to eat processed sugar, which is not easily found naturally in the environment. Agreed, and even that is not always so cut and clear as having extra CNV of the amalayse gene (like I do) can be super beneficial, which leans to the need of the Biohacker space (of which I'm a part of and is comprised mainly of many dissatisfied Health Scientists) to play with diet and the epigenetic effects of it, as that has been woefuly neglected for decades in Medicine and Scientific journals but a mainstay in the Biohacker community that has become mainstream due to influencers. As a kid I never understood the allure of sweets/desserts because of the CNV in my saliva is already breaking down the sugars in my mouth and makes super sweet things always taste a bit like the after taste of bitter chocolate or coffee--none of which I like. I always liked eating fruit, especially tart or sour ones more as a desert and only found out later in Life why that was. the study of how a palette is formed is a very interesting and entirely negated study in my opinion. > This implies to know/learn how to cook (not so hard but this is easier when the local/family culture allowed you to learn passively). Agreed! The best thing to do is to learn to cook with local, fresh organic products and help solidify a local food supply chain and relationship with your local farmers! This has a compound effect throughout the entire community and many communities are open vacant lots to community garden spaces. > It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar added. (Or I didn't look at the right place, once again this is not judgemental). It's there, its just found at higher end stores and outlets, ironically it costs more to deliver a product with less sugar and additives; but even Walmart has been a big player in the Organic produce Market. There is one next to my gym and I often went in to buy a pre-workout snack or a kombucha and there was always something I could eat without spiking my glucose levels. > Generally speaking, it is easy to find online high-level cooking courses, but hard to learn the basics of how to cook your onions or tomatoes in different ways in everyday life, or make an healthy meal with what's left in the fridge; this could be interesting to have. Agreed. Its an undervalued art and craft, in Boulder (one of the most concentrated 'foodie' places in the entire US) there are classes offered via a business that offers Learning Kitchen experiences where professional chefs from the surrounding area are commissioned on a topic/recipe/menu and teach paying members of the community on how to do things via interactive cooking. Its a very cool model that I think should be expanded on. I'd love to be able to work with some of my old team members in the Industry especially if it could help offset my expenses and help me fund other projects in my Life; online learning could be a bridge or a primer, but cooking is ultimately a craft you learn by repeated instruction and correcting hand positioning (re-enforced with lots of cuts, burns, scrapes) that makes it more like going to the gym than watching a lecture on a subject. You can learn online, I know I did watching Michelin Star chefs on Saturday Kitchen on the BBC before making the return into culinary in Europe, having only ever worked in catering while I was attending University as it inspired me to experiment with different techniques. I'm now retired from Kitchens but want I want to create a food docu-series, as I feel now is a critical time in Restaurants after having been so impacted due to COVID, that many may not make it. > ban every processed food, sauce, appetizer.... If you would not eat a spoon of every single ingredient of some food, don't eat it. - ban all added sugar, except (real) honey in reasonable proportions. I'm not for banning anything, just using it in moderation and having people have a solid understanding on what it does to you metabolically and its impacts on health. Japanese and Italian cuisine are the two pillars my culinary repertoire and sugar is a vital component of Japanese recipes that simply cannot be substituted. I've tried stevia and honey but it just doesn't work, a proper tare is sweetned with sugar not just for taste and lush sheen and gloss when used to grill, but also as the precursors for the bacteria to ferment that takes place over years to give it a unique and umami loaded taste that defines Japanese cuisine. And pasta and bread, carbohydrates, are just processed long-linked sugars and I can never give those up despite seeing and personally experienced the benefits of keto and carnivore diets in my friends. I'd throw including intermittent fasting and meditation/yoga in that equation as well and you have a solid foundation for how to be healthier and more productive in Life that I found via Biohacking methods, cooking and farming professionally. I also have the genetics for longevity on both sides of my family: my grandparents all made it to their late 90s, and my grandmother on my maternal side hit 99.7 before passing due to non health related issues, so I'm hoping that with this information guiding my behaviour I can make it to 150 years of age.

wait_a_minute 6y ago

It is not actually that hard to do, we just have a rushed culture that ends up encouraging people to pick the fastest option. A lot of us are too lazy to cook properly.

ryeguy 6y ago

Calorie count _is_ the key. This is incredibly well established in studies. Weight loss does not occur without caloric deficit, no matter what you eat. Likewise, weight loss will occur in caloric deficit even when eating what people would consider "junk", including sugar. See The Twinkie Diet, for example: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/... Avoiding food because "we didn't evolve to eat" is not sound science, either.

emmelaich 6y ago

I find that the Wholefoods and big Walgreens stores have the best natural healthy food for the least amount of money.

phs318u 6y ago

Irrespective of ingredient choices, another thing that differentiates commercial food (non home-cooked) in the USA vs just about everywhere else, is portion sizes. Your portions are huge.

antonvs 6y ago

> standard meat-with-vegetable "Standard" in the countries I've lived in would include a starch. Part of your reaction may just be to cultural differences in what's considered a standard meal. Your "2 cents" is nothing more than an expression of the food culture you grew up with. There are many other amazing food cultures around the world - even in parts of the US, although you don't find them in the chain stores and chain supermarkets.

charliebrownau 6y ago

Spot on Gdebel Food in USA has extra bacon sugar oil corn crap If you get a chance before SHTF or 2030 Visit Japan Food is cheap and healthy When you goto japan , be sure to buy a JR pass 2-4 weeks before you leave

garfieldnate 6y ago

One interesting and also really annoying phenomenon about going to another country is that it can be really difficult to find what you want to eat in the grocery store. I think the grocery stores in each country have to categorize and organize goods by how people use them, which differs in each country, and when you mix that in with goods actually missing, the experience can be really frustrating. It is not unusual for ex-pats to swear that something is not sold in the country, only to find out that they were looking in the wrong section. For example, in Germany I've known ex-pats to complain that there is no sweetened condensed milk, but I found it at Rewe next to the coffee (do Germans put it in coffee? Sounds good, I guess). At Rewe the peanut butter is next to the jelly, where I would expect it, but at Real it's in the "American foods" section :D I would expect any store that sells yoghurt in the US to have non-sweetened yoghurt, too. Just keep looking :) Dairy products are also sorted differently in each country.

kaybe 6y ago
> do Germans put it in coffee? Yes. What do you do with it?

m3kw9 6y ago

Yes eating out is mostly unhealthy. Anyone who have tried to recreate restaurant dishes at home, you will know how much extra salt, sugar, fat is needed to get that similar tasting profile.

dreamcompiler 6y ago

The American processed food industry uses very cheap ingredients that inherently taste awful, but they get us to eat them by adding salt, sugar, and fat, all of which Americans are semi-addicted to. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/26/172969363/how-the-food-industry-manipulates-taste-buds-with-salt-sugar-fat https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/26/172969363/ho...

resfirestar 6y ago

As an American who has traveled a lot, I think a large part of the problem here is Americans’ over reliance on restaurants for food. You can rightly criticize the processed, sugary, or fried foods that many people habitually cook, but to claim that Americans don’t know how to make plain foods or have access to the ingredients is ignorance: every proper grocery store sells good proteins, fresh vegetables, and unprocessed grains, and they do it because it’s profitable, because people do largely cook pretty standard meals at home (and as others noted, your yogurt example is wrong). But regardless of how healthy our cooking is, why is it so rare for Americans to eat a home cooked lunch, and so strikingly common to meet people who never cook their own dinner when compared to other countries? Your country has on average healthier foods than we do (not sure by how much once you account for the dishes people actually order), but the portions at restaurants are still too big. People are healthier in France because they cook most of their meals at home, not because the restaurants give them a proper diet. If we all started eating like the French do we’d probably have a more balanced diet, but we’d still be fat if we ate at restaurants all the time.

justaguyonline 6y ago
You took the post from right under by fingers. The Rise and Fall of American Growth by Robert J. Gordon makes the exact same point but gets there via analysis of where Americans are spending money for food. Since the 70s we've more than doubled the fraction of our income we spend eating outside of the home.[1] This tracks with the rise in adult obesity in America and is a divergence from trends in other developed countries like France. [1] Chapter 10