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The part about how food insecurity causes obesity is hard to understand. Its well documented that poverty leads to unhealthier food. Its obvious that poverty le

The part about how food insecurity causes obesity is hard to understand. Its well documented that poverty leads to unhealthier food. Its obvious that poverty leads to food insecurity. Still, wrapping ones head around how not having enough to eat leads one to be obese is tough to grok. Really emphasizes just how bad cheap is for you. The part about how 12 states have averages above 35%... didn't make sense to me if the national average is 42. Maybe I missed something.

jononomo 6y ago
Rice, beans, sugar, and bread are cheap foods -- if you are trapped in poverty then you will be eating a carb-heavy mostly plant-based diet and you'll probably also be consuming a lot of sugar. Carbohydrates are what lead to obesity. Cutting carbs out entirely is a healthy way to cut weight, but that would mean eating only meat, which is comparatively expensive. This is why poor people are fat.
- steelbrain 6y ago
  I don’t understand. There are entire nations (eg. Pakistan, Bangladesh) where meat is a delicacy and Rice and Wheat is what feeds the masses, the obesity ratio I’ve personally observed is nowhere near the US.
  - jononomo 6y ago
    India and Pakistan suffer from the lowest life expectancy in the world and diabetes is exploding. They do in fact have a fair amount of obesity, but the rate is not as high as it is in the west because it is overpowered by poverty, so they are on a low-calorie version of a poor diet. There is also much more manual labor happening in India, which keeps the weight off.
    - angio 6y ago
      There are rich countries like Japan and South Korea that consume between 8 to 12 times [0] as much rice as the US and have much lower obesity rates (almost a tenth) [1]. [0] https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/rice-consumption-per-capita/ https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/rice-consumption-per... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...
      - klmadfejno 6y ago
        8 to 12 times rice doesn't mean much if its substituted by a different carb, like bread or pasta. But the point holds. I've heard tell of Japanese doctors recommending people eat more rice as western diets begin to cause problems in Japan.
        angio 6y ago
        Good point, rice could be substituted by another carb, but OP was explicitly talking about low carb diets. South Korean maybe don't eat as much beard or pasta, but for sure they are not having a low carb diet, yet they are not fat.
        jononomo 6y ago
        Japanese also eat a fairly high amount of meat. But I also think you may be correct that rice is a less dangerous carb than wheat, which contains gluten. In South Korea obesity rates are in fact increasing and the fact that you should avoid eating a lot of rice if you want to stay slender is well-understood. In North Korea, on the other hand, white rice is more of a staple and yet obesity rates are not as high because the general poverty of the society as a whole is overpowering.
- Broken_Hippo 6y ago
  Calories is what makes you gain weight. Calories. Also, a note: not everyone can eat a meat-heavy diet. I cannot. I don't have a gall bladder - like many others - and cannot digest the fats well. Eggs are too much sometimes. Not only that, but you can eat perfectly healthy without actual meat. Low quality foods - meatless or not - generally have a lot of empty calories and aren't very filling, making it easier to gain weight.
  - jononomo 6y ago
    What makes a food "low quality" vs "high quality"? I would argue that the answer is the nutrient to calorie ratio. Many nutrients for few calories is good, but few nutrients for many calories is bad. By this analysis, plant-based food is "low quality" and animal-based food is "high quality". So if calories are what make you gain weight then it makes sense that people following a plant-based diet would gain weight compared to people following an animal-based diet because they will need to consume more calories to acquire the same amount of nutrients.
    - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
      But this isn't true, and your conclusion is false. It won't matter where you get calories if you need them: Calorie-dense, nutrient low foods can have a place in diet. Sometimes, folks just need calories (it used to be that some marathon runners loaded up on carbs before a race: I don't know if this is still true) And to be fair, I've lost weight - and kept it off - without eating meat. As have many, many others. Some of this is because nutrient-low foods don't make up a huge portion of my diet: Instead, it is beans and lentils and rice and a wide variety of vegetables with a bit of eggs and cheese and the occasional fake meat for textures and eating favorites. The main reason folks lose weight on meat-heavy diets is because they tend to eat less and therefore eat fewer calories. But there is more than one path to eating fewer calories. Lentils and beans tend and some vegetables tend to be rich in fiber, which keep you full longer and tend to mean you eat less. Not to mention that a plate full of vegetables and beans tends to have fewer calories than a plate of meat - and hold a variety of nutrients as well.
Spivak 6y ago
A calorie's a calorie's a calorie. The food being cheap doesn't suddenly make it more fattening. You can be skinny on a diet of birthday cake if you wanted to. * Not being sure that the next meal is coming means you have to pack on some lbs to reach the point where you can go a few days without a square meal. * The not actually getting the next meal makes you ravenously hungry when it comes even if on average you're overeating. It's why people with EDs aren't automatically skinny -- if you restrict and then binge you can/will gain weight.
- hirundo 6y ago
  There is a large difference in satiety between, say, 1000 calories of steak versus potato chips. This has a large effect on what you eat later, despite what you might want.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    1000% true! And your body isn’t stupid, it knows when you deny it things and makes you crave them.
    - EForEndeavour 6y ago
      If you agree that the above comment is 1000% true, do you also stand by your earlier claim that "a calorie's a calorie's a calorie"?
- Weebs 6y ago
  This actually isn't fully true, we don't digest all kinds calories equally. Generally speaking, yes, the most important factor in body weight is the total amount of calories consumed. Whether they are proteins, fats, complex carbs, or simple carbs, and when you consume them during the day, effects how much of that energy actually gets stored in the body. https://www.strongerbyscience.com https://www.strongerbyscience.com has an article somewhere on this, and it's not well tested yet, but we're starting to see some scientific evidence to back this up.
  - 6y ago
jononomo 6y ago
You're right about the stats not making sense. The first line states: "The U.S. adult obesity rate passed the 40 percent mark for the first time, standing at 42.4 percent" Then just a couple of paragraphs later: "Mississippi has the highest adult obesity rate in the country at 40.8 percent and Colorado has the lowest at 23.8 percent. Twelve states have adult rates above 35 percent." It is impossible for the national obesity rate to be 42.4 percent if no state has an obesity rate above 40.8 percent.
- jefftk 6y ago
  It's coming from different data sources, and they think the national (higher) numbers are more reliable. They explain on page 26: https://www.tfah.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/TFAHObesityReport_20.pdf https://www.tfah.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/TFAHObesityR...
GhostVII 6y ago
Maybe if you are poor, you are more likely to seek out temporary happiness at the cost of longer term consequences, because your life is generally more stressful. So if you worked another day at the job you hate you are more likely to go get a couple hamburgers from McDonald's than go home and eat some pasta for the same price because you enjoy it more. Poor people are also much more likely to smoke, another activity which trades short term happiness for longer term consequences.
qntty 6y ago
The state numbers are self reported, see my other comment.
moltar 6y ago
Cheap food is subsidized by the government due to lobbying of large and powerful industries. These foods (empty carbs, cheap vegetable oils) are extremely unhealthy for humans. If that’s all you can afford then you really have no choice.
username90 6y ago
Receiving food stamps are correlated with obesity. Very few countries have food stamps except USA. Poor people who don't get food stamps are healthier than poor people who do get them. So the problem isn't lack of money, it is that food stamps incentivise them to buy junk food instead of cooking on their own. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/05/the-messy-relationship-between-food-stamps-and-health/527820/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/05/the-messy...

jononomo 6y ago

Rice, beans, sugar, and bread are cheap foods -- if you are trapped in poverty then you will be eating a carb-heavy mostly plant-based diet and you'll probably also be consuming a lot of sugar. Carbohydrates are what lead to obesity. Cutting carbs out entirely is a healthy way to cut weight, but that would mean eating only meat, which is comparatively expensive. This is why poor people are fat.

steelbrain 6y ago
I don’t understand. There are entire nations (eg. Pakistan, Bangladesh) where meat is a delicacy and Rice and Wheat is what feeds the masses, the obesity ratio I’ve personally observed is nowhere near the US.
- jononomo 6y ago
  India and Pakistan suffer from the lowest life expectancy in the world and diabetes is exploding. They do in fact have a fair amount of obesity, but the rate is not as high as it is in the west because it is overpowered by poverty, so they are on a low-calorie version of a poor diet. There is also much more manual labor happening in India, which keeps the weight off.
  - angio 6y ago
    There are rich countries like Japan and South Korea that consume between 8 to 12 times [0] as much rice as the US and have much lower obesity rates (almost a tenth) [1]. [0] https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/rice-consumption-per-capita/ https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/rice-consumption-per... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      8 to 12 times rice doesn't mean much if its substituted by a different carb, like bread or pasta. But the point holds. I've heard tell of Japanese doctors recommending people eat more rice as western diets begin to cause problems in Japan.
      - angio 6y ago
        Good point, rice could be substituted by another carb, but OP was explicitly talking about low carb diets. South Korean maybe don't eat as much beard or pasta, but for sure they are not having a low carb diet, yet they are not fat.
        jononomo 6y ago
        Japanese also eat a fairly high amount of meat. But I also think you may be correct that rice is a less dangerous carb than wheat, which contains gluten. In South Korea obesity rates are in fact increasing and the fact that you should avoid eating a lot of rice if you want to stay slender is well-understood. In North Korea, on the other hand, white rice is more of a staple and yet obesity rates are not as high because the general poverty of the society as a whole is overpowering.
Broken_Hippo 6y ago
Calories is what makes you gain weight. Calories. Also, a note: not everyone can eat a meat-heavy diet. I cannot. I don't have a gall bladder - like many others - and cannot digest the fats well. Eggs are too much sometimes. Not only that, but you can eat perfectly healthy without actual meat. Low quality foods - meatless or not - generally have a lot of empty calories and aren't very filling, making it easier to gain weight.
- jononomo 6y ago
  What makes a food "low quality" vs "high quality"? I would argue that the answer is the nutrient to calorie ratio. Many nutrients for few calories is good, but few nutrients for many calories is bad. By this analysis, plant-based food is "low quality" and animal-based food is "high quality". So if calories are what make you gain weight then it makes sense that people following a plant-based diet would gain weight compared to people following an animal-based diet because they will need to consume more calories to acquire the same amount of nutrients.
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    But this isn't true, and your conclusion is false. It won't matter where you get calories if you need them: Calorie-dense, nutrient low foods can have a place in diet. Sometimes, folks just need calories (it used to be that some marathon runners loaded up on carbs before a race: I don't know if this is still true) And to be fair, I've lost weight - and kept it off - without eating meat. As have many, many others. Some of this is because nutrient-low foods don't make up a huge portion of my diet: Instead, it is beans and lentils and rice and a wide variety of vegetables with a bit of eggs and cheese and the occasional fake meat for textures and eating favorites. The main reason folks lose weight on meat-heavy diets is because they tend to eat less and therefore eat fewer calories. But there is more than one path to eating fewer calories. Lentils and beans tend and some vegetables tend to be rich in fiber, which keep you full longer and tend to mean you eat less. Not to mention that a plate full of vegetables and beans tends to have fewer calories than a plate of meat - and hold a variety of nutrients as well.

Spivak 6y ago

A calorie's a calorie's a calorie. The food being cheap doesn't suddenly make it more fattening. You can be skinny on a diet of birthday cake if you wanted to. * Not being sure that the next meal is coming means you have to pack on some lbs to reach the point where you can go a few days without a square meal. * The not actually getting the next meal makes you ravenously hungry when it comes even if on average you're overeating. It's why people with EDs aren't automatically skinny -- if you restrict and then binge you can/will gain weight.

hirundo 6y ago
There is a large difference in satiety between, say, 1000 calories of steak versus potato chips. This has a large effect on what you eat later, despite what you might want.
- Spivak 6y ago
  1000% true! And your body isn’t stupid, it knows when you deny it things and makes you crave them.
  - EForEndeavour 6y ago
    If you agree that the above comment is 1000% true, do you also stand by your earlier claim that "a calorie's a calorie's a calorie"?
Weebs 6y ago
This actually isn't fully true, we don't digest all kinds calories equally. Generally speaking, yes, the most important factor in body weight is the total amount of calories consumed. Whether they are proteins, fats, complex carbs, or simple carbs, and when you consume them during the day, effects how much of that energy actually gets stored in the body. https://www.strongerbyscience.com https://www.strongerbyscience.com has an article somewhere on this, and it's not well tested yet, but we're starting to see some scientific evidence to back this up.
- 6y ago

jononomo 6y ago

You're right about the stats not making sense. The first line states: "The U.S. adult obesity rate passed the 40 percent mark for the first time, standing at 42.4 percent" Then just a couple of paragraphs later: "Mississippi has the highest adult obesity rate in the country at 40.8 percent and Colorado has the lowest at 23.8 percent. Twelve states have adult rates above 35 percent." It is impossible for the national obesity rate to be 42.4 percent if no state has an obesity rate above 40.8 percent.

jefftk 6y ago
It's coming from different data sources, and they think the national (higher) numbers are more reliable. They explain on page 26: https://www.tfah.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/TFAHObesityReport_20.pdf https://www.tfah.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/TFAHObesityR...

GhostVII 6y ago

Maybe if you are poor, you are more likely to seek out temporary happiness at the cost of longer term consequences, because your life is generally more stressful. So if you worked another day at the job you hate you are more likely to go get a couple hamburgers from McDonald's than go home and eat some pasta for the same price because you enjoy it more. Poor people are also much more likely to smoke, another activity which trades short term happiness for longer term consequences.

qntty 6y ago

The state numbers are self reported, see my other comment.

moltar 6y ago

Cheap food is subsidized by the government due to lobbying of large and powerful industries. These foods (empty carbs, cheap vegetable oils) are extremely unhealthy for humans. If that’s all you can afford then you really have no choice.

username90 6y ago

Receiving food stamps are correlated with obesity. Very few countries have food stamps except USA. Poor people who don't get food stamps are healthier than poor people who do get them. So the problem isn't lack of money, it is that food stamps incentivise them to buy junk food instead of cooking on their own. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/05/the-messy-relationship-between-food-stamps-and-health/527820/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/05/the-messy...