9 ms·

"I completely blame the food. Even eating absolute junk in Europe I noticed I lost 5 or 6 pounds over 2 weeks." I don't. Certainly it doesn't help and, of cou

by rsync 6y ago

"I completely blame the food. Even eating absolute junk in Europe I noticed I lost 5 or 6 pounds over 2 weeks." I don't. Certainly it doesn't help and, of course, Americans should eat much better than they do, but ... I think the most important factor is that our built and cultural environment are constructed to make us obese. If one does not live in a modern city center one barely ever walks. Most Americans sit all day - at a desk or in a car. Further, many Americans are 1-2 generations removed from "the farm" and are still heavily influenced by habits like "three square meals per day" that made great sense on the farm and make no sense at all in the city. We're bad at being urban. I contrast us with people I see who are good at being urban. The old Chinese women in the park doing Tai Chi every morning. The 70+ woman I saw running (running!) to get the bus in Zurich. The Spanish people I lived with who sort-of ate one big meal every day at 14:00 ... We'll get there ...

opportune 6y ago
I agree that there is a big cultural factor here. I wish people focused on this more. So many people want to look at correlations like income:BMI that don’t generalize to other countries or cultures. Really what they expose are cultural and societal idiosyncrasies, much more than they expose that “cheap food is not healthy”. Of course, that is less appealing to an epidemiologist because the cause and effect is less clear and has much greater implications than recommending more exercise.
offtop5 6y ago
>We'll get there ... You can also write an article for the Huffington Post arguing it's impossible to ever lose weight. I'm not calling for fat shamming, but you can't be both obese and healthy. You can't really be obese ( over a certain point anyway) and be happy. When I was over 300 pounds every day was an experience in pain. But it's considered rude even for doctors to say you need to lose weight. I was fortunate enough that an alternative medicine provider told me to just lose weight. And that said, I'm even reluctant to make the argument above since there's a lot of really angry people who will try to misconcue it and call me a monster or something. But I've been morbidly obese, and I'm in shape now ( still trying to lose that last 10 pounds ) . Life is better now in every single way.
- rchaud 6y ago
  > You can't really be obese ( over a certain point anyway) and be happy. When I was over 300 pounds every day was an experience in pain. So if that's the case, why does it matter what the Huffington Post says? I'm not morbidly obese, so perhaps I've missed the pro-obesity PR. A fashion magazine might give a cover to an obese model once a year, but the other 11 months all seem to have the same rail thin models that have dominated since the '80s. Same goes for TV and movies. Producers wouldn't hire a fat guy to play Mark David Chapman, it'd be an easier sell to get a fit actor and have him balloon up to that desired weight. The only obese poeople of renown in our society are older politicians and the rich, i.e. people that do not care about meeting society's beauty standards.
  - rubycon22 6y ago
    >but the other 11 months all seem to have the same rail thin models that have dominated since the '80s People used to see those and aspire to be like them and improve themselves. Something changed over the last decade or more, and now no one wants to do any better than they currently are. They are despairing in content with themselves.
    - e7ry33g4ff6 6y ago
      >Something changed over the last decade or more, and now no one wants to do any better than they currently are. They are despairing in content with themselves< People still aspire to be attractive they just don't feel the same social pressure to chase it that they used to. Personally I don't see the problem for the USA, if people are happy being unhealthy then let them be unhealthy. If this was Europe I could see a public cost argument but US businesses are already starting to charge more to people who are inconveniently obese so I don't see why it's a real concern.
      - ayyy 6y ago
        > Personally I don't see the problem for the USA, if people are happy being unhealthy then let them be unhealthy. They're not happy. They're suffering and helpless. That's the problem.
Delk 6y ago
While it may be true that the American lifestyle is more sedentary, I don't think obesity can be entirely or even mostly explained by that. AFAIK diet generally affects weight more than exercise does; if your diet is energy-heavy, it's very difficult (without being an athlete) to exercise enough to consume as much as your energy surplus from the diet is. I don't have any references or numbers to back that up, but that's what I've understood from what I've read in papers and heard from some people who apparently did the math. With that said, physical activity has lots of benefits beyond just weight loss, and it would be worth it to make one's lifestyle non-sedentary in any case.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
  It's really that baseline metabolic burn is pretty high, you have to work a lot to double the number of calories you burn, but it's easy to eat double your metabolic needs
  - xnyan 6y ago
    >easy to eat double your metabolic needs Or more! When I started losing weight, my target was 1600 kcals a day. I learned that I was eating 1600+ calories __every single meal__, plus snacks. Pasta is the devil y'all.
    - kaybe 6y ago
      I found this pasta made purely from peas or beans in the shop. They are a bit harder to eat but fill you up much faster and feel lighter in the stomach. (And they have less carbs and more protein.) If you like pasta I can recommend trying this.
    - belorn 6y ago
      The sum of kcals is not as easy as that, In take is the kcal of the food times the digestion factor. The kcal out is the metabolic need, which depend on factors such as fat building vs energy usage, which in turn is influenced by stress but also things like dieting. This is why counting calories can be an ineffective strategy for some while for others it is a good match.
prawn 6y ago
Were you travelling in Europe? I typically lose weight while travelling because I'm walking more and have fewer snacks around. This includes months in the US last year where pace and timing of a lot of our driving meant we ate fast food a bit. It was hot so we couldn't stash chocolate/ice cream, we didn't have access to a fridge so we didn't scoff leftovers, etc. We mostly lived out of a cooler and cooked on fires. We walked around exploring cities/towns where many residents would not have though. The number of mobility scooters and the like is incredible.
- FemmeAndroid 6y ago
  I lived in Europe for multiple years and then moved to the US. I gained a lot of weight. This had to do with both less of an effective culture of walking and public transit in the city I lived in the US. And also the quality and availability of relatively healthy, tasty foods at a reasonable price. I’ve also had the same experience on shorter (few month) stays in Europe, while still working a 9-5.
asveikau 6y ago
As a formerly obese American, I need to say you are both right. The food ingredients in this country are, on average, garbage. With careful shopping you can get around this but it does take effort and vigilence. Cultural expectations around both diet (especially portion size) and exercise (I cite the walking thing a lot too) are also bad. It takes effort to avoid those hazards. I think both of these and probably a few other factors are a terrible combination that compliment each other in a bad way.
- brewdad 6y ago
  Portion sizes are a huge factor. My wife tried a few new recipes this week. All of them said they serve 4. We are a household of two adults and one almost adult and didn't eat half of what she prepared (they all tasted great). That said, I'm 30 lbs heavier than I was a decade ago. I know WHAT I need to do (exercise more, drink less), it's just been hard to get back into better habits.
thatfrenchguy 6y ago
> Further, many Americans are 1-2 generations removed from "the farm" and are still heavily influenced by habits like "three square meals per day" that made great sense on the farm and make no sense at all in the city. Meh, Americans snack all the time. French people are anal about their meal structures and times and we’re not fat.
- llsf 6y ago
  I concur. I am French living in US. And I do not snack at all. I only have 3 meals a day. And I try hard to get a lighter dinner (dinners here are generally too big for me). I don't like to go to parties with an empty stomach, because of the poor choice of food there (chips, salsa, cake, cookies, etc.). If I go with an empty stomach, I know I would not resist, and I would feel sick and bloated later, high on sugar & salt, and dehydrated with alcohol. Just don't snack.
  - keithnz 6y ago
    portion size is generally way way way too big in the US. I always put on weight when I visit the US.
  - heyoni 6y ago
    One time I went to a restaurant in upstate New York and I swear to god, I ordered the chicken and an entire roasted chicken arrived on a plate! The mashed potatoes came in a second plate and I spent the first 15 minutes laughing at how ridiculous it all was. Oh, and my meal without drinks was like $16.
    - namdnay 6y ago
      I agree that portions are ridiculous, but do Keep in mind that in most lower-end restaurants the customer expectation is to have enough for a doggy bag
      - bambataa 6y ago
        Doesnt that just mean you are going to have two or three unhealthy meals instead of one?
ashtonkem 6y ago
I personally think that body composition is 80% food and 20% work. Yes, driving cars everywhere is not great. But we’re also more obese than other car dependent cultures, so it’s not a satisfactory answer to say that it’s entirely about being sedentary.
wyclif 6y ago
When I came to the Philippines I was shocked by the large number of obese people here. I thought it would be like China because that was my only reference point in SE Asia. Relatively speaking, it's not as bad as the States or the UK but it's getting there. If you look back only a few generations, you'll see what happened here: they were colonized by the US and adopted Western-style processed food and soft drinks. Also, car ownership is a new thing for most families. Before WW2 this was not the case, and thus there was far less obesity.
- chestertn 6y ago
  Western style != American style. Philippines was part of the Spanish crown and had Spanish customs. Plenty of European (Western) countries have balanced diets and healthy lifestyles.
  - Talanes 6y ago
    They were under American rule more recently, and were only given their Independence without a fight after agreeing to preferential trade on importing American products.
    - chestertn 6y ago
      I didn't argue about that. I just said that before American rule they were ruled by Spaniards.
  - wyclif 6y ago
    Sure, for you and I it's not equivalent. But for them, it might as well be. People simply did not eat large amounts of packaged, processed food only a few generations ago, like people do everywhere in the west, including the EU.
    - chestertn 6y ago
      I just complained about the use of "western diet" as a catch-all epithet for unhealthy, processed food.
lambda_obrien 6y ago
I barely walk, but I've been losing weight like mad because I've been cooking at home everyday now, not eating fast food, and not drinking soda. Look at the ingredients for any premade foods, even the ones that bill themselves as healthy, they are mostly sugars and carbs and sauces containing HFCS. Also, the caloric density is insane, one "meal" can be upwards of 1500 or 2000 calories if you ignore their "suggested serving" which is unrealistic to what people eat. Also, exercise accounts for maybe a hundred or two calories a day for the average person who isn't into marathons or something, so the only true way to lose weight is to decrease what you eat. It's not lack of exercise, that's the way these corporations try to blame you for being lazy so you forget their food is garbage that's making you fat.
- Aa9C4xPz43Gg7k6 6y ago
  Only in US there's this serving size bullshit that requires effort to figure out how much you're actually eating.
  - lambda_obrien 6y ago
    Exactly, that's why we're fat as fuck. We don't have the same culinary habits as most of the world. I ate a cookie for lunch today: it was 500 calories.
novok 6y ago
It really is the food. America was as car dependent in the 70s as they were in today, but if you look at photos then, you'll notice how uncannily THIN everyone was. If you dig more into it, you'll find the obesity crisis started around the late 70s with a change in dietary guidelines and medical guidelines saying basically 'fat & meat bad' and 'carbs good' along with the widespread introduction of vegetable oils, leading to too much insulin and other hormonal effects slowly increasing diabetes & obesity in our population. Also food companies honing on what obesogenic combos of food lead to people to eat more, buy more and thus get better sales. Read "The Obesity Code" if you want a more detailed description with a lot of links to papers and studies for more info. [0] [0] I said this yesterday too in another article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25767604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25767604
- coredog64 6y ago
  What’s the percentage of food spend in the 70s vs today? If I read the USDA charts, it’s about 13% for the decade of the 70s, declining to under 10% today. So I would expect that as food gets significantly cheaper, people consume more of it.
  - jt2190 6y ago
    Portions are now massive. McDonalds, once upon a time, had small and large sizes of french fries; the little white paper pouch or the red cardboard sleeve. Today I believe they have two even larger sizes. The smallest size of soda doesn’t even exist any more. Other restaurants have retired round plates and serve meals on platters.
  - lostcolony 6y ago
    Are rich people on average fatter than thin people? After all, they can afford more food, so presumably they consume more of it. Spending has dropped because there are such large subsidies to cheap carbs, and that is the bulk of many people's diets. A steak and veggies is no cheaper than it was 40-50 years ago, but we're eating far more refined junk with additives because it is cheap and convenient.
venkats 6y ago
I live in China, I can assure you there are plenty of obese chinese people here in the major cities I've been to. It's not as bad as the US, and the culture is more aggressively against it, but it's not uncommon. Obesity is a problem that most developing nations are facing. You can buy junk food anywhere. > If one does not live in a modern city center one barely ever walks. Most Americans sit all day - at a desk or in a car. As opposed to someone in China, where we must do such extraneous physical activities like order take-out delivered to our place less than 15 minutes, then order a masseuse to come give us a massage and finally order a bottle of wine to top the night off, all without needing to get out of bed.
snicker7 6y ago
Walking burns like, what, 5 kcal/minute (generous)? If non-Americans walk on average 20 more minutes a day (generous), that's like 100 kcal per day. Or about 7kg at 15 kcal/kg basal metabolic rate, not taking into account for increased appetite.
- KAMSPioneer 6y ago
  While you have a good point, I want to nitpick a little: As an American who recently moved to Europe, I don't think 20 minutes of walking per day is being generous. COVID-related measures aside, I find I add about 20min/day of walking easily, and more if I need to do something (e.g. buying groceries). Now, in the US I own a car and here I do not -- but in my Midwestern town I am totally obligated to own and operate a car. Here in Europe I get along fine with walking, riding a bike, and using public transport.
Hnrobert42 6y ago
Vietnam has the lowest adult obesity rate yet is the 8th most sedentary population. The only thing I see that accounts for this is the lack of cheap, processed foods. The Vietnamese diet is largely prepared at home from scratch. Sugar is not crammed into every effing thing you eat the way it is in the U.S.
harha 6y ago
I actually lost weight when I moved from Switzerland to the US. The food just all felt somehow gross, so I didn’t eat much (also the options on campus were incredibly limited, apart from these horrible undergraduate dining halls there were few normal choices and most only served food for around 2 hours - the food at the supermarket also felt strange)
- torgian 6y ago
  I’m curious, how did the food in the supermarket feel strange? I eat mostly fruits, veggies and meats. Pretty much 80% natural foods. But I live in east Asia now so it’s easier to do that and with more variety. But, I don’t recall American supermarkets food feeling strange. Unless you mean the processed stuff?
  - harha 6y ago
    The processed food I avoided mostly, though I do that in Europe as well. For the rest of it: might just be my perception to be honest, my impression was that the fruits and vegetables tasted very watery with little flavour, as if they were grown in the most efficient way to bring them to market quickly. Same for the meat, was kind of floppy and the cheese just didn't taste like much. There were some good things from farmers markets, but at absurd prices. I see differences in Europe as well, e.g. I think the quality in Switzerland is better than Germany and Austria. In Spain and France I was able to get really good food, probably because it's closer to where it is produced. Again this might be my perception, didn't do a blind tasting. Unless the food is specially prepared to be stored (like fermented food, cheese, etc.), I don't think the highly industrial production, refrigeration and long transportation is doing the quality any favours.
    - Izkata 6y ago
      This isn't the first time I've heard this, and a quick Google search with the right keywords brings up: https://www.greenoptimistic.com/fruit-vegetables-taste-europe-america/ https://www.greenoptimistic.com/fruit-vegetables-taste-europ... https://www.treehugger.com/why-doesnt-american-produce-taste-good-europes-4858067 https://www.treehugger.com/why-doesnt-american-produce-taste... The key point seems to be that we prioritize the looks, which unintentionally affects taste.

by rsync 6y ago

opportune 6y ago

I agree that there is a big cultural factor here. I wish people focused on this more. So many people want to look at correlations like income:BMI that don’t generalize to other countries or cultures. Really what they expose are cultural and societal idiosyncrasies, much more than they expose that “cheap food is not healthy”. Of course, that is less appealing to an epidemiologist because the cause and effect is less clear and has much greater implications than recommending more exercise.

offtop5 6y ago

>We'll get there ... You can also write an article for the Huffington Post arguing it's impossible to ever lose weight. I'm not calling for fat shamming, but you can't be both obese and healthy. You can't really be obese ( over a certain point anyway) and be happy. When I was over 300 pounds every day was an experience in pain. But it's considered rude even for doctors to say you need to lose weight. I was fortunate enough that an alternative medicine provider told me to just lose weight. And that said, I'm even reluctant to make the argument above since there's a lot of really angry people who will try to misconcue it and call me a monster or something. But I've been morbidly obese, and I'm in shape now ( still trying to lose that last 10 pounds ) . Life is better now in every single way.

rchaud 6y ago
> You can't really be obese ( over a certain point anyway) and be happy. When I was over 300 pounds every day was an experience in pain. So if that's the case, why does it matter what the Huffington Post says? I'm not morbidly obese, so perhaps I've missed the pro-obesity PR. A fashion magazine might give a cover to an obese model once a year, but the other 11 months all seem to have the same rail thin models that have dominated since the '80s. Same goes for TV and movies. Producers wouldn't hire a fat guy to play Mark David Chapman, it'd be an easier sell to get a fit actor and have him balloon up to that desired weight. The only obese poeople of renown in our society are older politicians and the rich, i.e. people that do not care about meeting society's beauty standards.
- rubycon22 6y ago
  >but the other 11 months all seem to have the same rail thin models that have dominated since the '80s People used to see those and aspire to be like them and improve themselves. Something changed over the last decade or more, and now no one wants to do any better than they currently are. They are despairing in content with themselves.
  - e7ry33g4ff6 6y ago
    >Something changed over the last decade or more, and now no one wants to do any better than they currently are. They are despairing in content with themselves< People still aspire to be attractive they just don't feel the same social pressure to chase it that they used to. Personally I don't see the problem for the USA, if people are happy being unhealthy then let them be unhealthy. If this was Europe I could see a public cost argument but US businesses are already starting to charge more to people who are inconveniently obese so I don't see why it's a real concern.
    - ayyy 6y ago
      > Personally I don't see the problem for the USA, if people are happy being unhealthy then let them be unhealthy. They're not happy. They're suffering and helpless. That's the problem.

Delk 6y ago

While it may be true that the American lifestyle is more sedentary, I don't think obesity can be entirely or even mostly explained by that. AFAIK diet generally affects weight more than exercise does; if your diet is energy-heavy, it's very difficult (without being an athlete) to exercise enough to consume as much as your energy surplus from the diet is. I don't have any references or numbers to back that up, but that's what I've understood from what I've read in papers and heard from some people who apparently did the math. With that said, physical activity has lots of benefits beyond just weight loss, and it would be worth it to make one's lifestyle non-sedentary in any case.

X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
It's really that baseline metabolic burn is pretty high, you have to work a lot to double the number of calories you burn, but it's easy to eat double your metabolic needs
- xnyan 6y ago
  >easy to eat double your metabolic needs Or more! When I started losing weight, my target was 1600 kcals a day. I learned that I was eating 1600+ calories __every single meal__, plus snacks. Pasta is the devil y'all.
  - kaybe 6y ago
    I found this pasta made purely from peas or beans in the shop. They are a bit harder to eat but fill you up much faster and feel lighter in the stomach. (And they have less carbs and more protein.) If you like pasta I can recommend trying this.
  - belorn 6y ago
    The sum of kcals is not as easy as that, In take is the kcal of the food times the digestion factor. The kcal out is the metabolic need, which depend on factors such as fat building vs energy usage, which in turn is influenced by stress but also things like dieting. This is why counting calories can be an ineffective strategy for some while for others it is a good match.

prawn 6y ago

Were you travelling in Europe? I typically lose weight while travelling because I'm walking more and have fewer snacks around. This includes months in the US last year where pace and timing of a lot of our driving meant we ate fast food a bit. It was hot so we couldn't stash chocolate/ice cream, we didn't have access to a fridge so we didn't scoff leftovers, etc. We mostly lived out of a cooler and cooked on fires. We walked around exploring cities/towns where many residents would not have though. The number of mobility scooters and the like is incredible.

FemmeAndroid 6y ago
I lived in Europe for multiple years and then moved to the US. I gained a lot of weight. This had to do with both less of an effective culture of walking and public transit in the city I lived in the US. And also the quality and availability of relatively healthy, tasty foods at a reasonable price. I’ve also had the same experience on shorter (few month) stays in Europe, while still working a 9-5.

asveikau 6y ago

As a formerly obese American, I need to say you are both right. The food ingredients in this country are, on average, garbage. With careful shopping you can get around this but it does take effort and vigilence. Cultural expectations around both diet (especially portion size) and exercise (I cite the walking thing a lot too) are also bad. It takes effort to avoid those hazards. I think both of these and probably a few other factors are a terrible combination that compliment each other in a bad way.

brewdad 6y ago
Portion sizes are a huge factor. My wife tried a few new recipes this week. All of them said they serve 4. We are a household of two adults and one almost adult and didn't eat half of what she prepared (they all tasted great). That said, I'm 30 lbs heavier than I was a decade ago. I know WHAT I need to do (exercise more, drink less), it's just been hard to get back into better habits.

thatfrenchguy 6y ago

> Further, many Americans are 1-2 generations removed from "the farm" and are still heavily influenced by habits like "three square meals per day" that made great sense on the farm and make no sense at all in the city. Meh, Americans snack all the time. French people are anal about their meal structures and times and we’re not fat.

llsf 6y ago
I concur. I am French living in US. And I do not snack at all. I only have 3 meals a day. And I try hard to get a lighter dinner (dinners here are generally too big for me). I don't like to go to parties with an empty stomach, because of the poor choice of food there (chips, salsa, cake, cookies, etc.). If I go with an empty stomach, I know I would not resist, and I would feel sick and bloated later, high on sugar & salt, and dehydrated with alcohol. Just don't snack.
- keithnz 6y ago
  portion size is generally way way way too big in the US. I always put on weight when I visit the US.
- heyoni 6y ago
  One time I went to a restaurant in upstate New York and I swear to god, I ordered the chicken and an entire roasted chicken arrived on a plate! The mashed potatoes came in a second plate and I spent the first 15 minutes laughing at how ridiculous it all was. Oh, and my meal without drinks was like $16.
  - namdnay 6y ago
    I agree that portions are ridiculous, but do Keep in mind that in most lower-end restaurants the customer expectation is to have enough for a doggy bag
    - bambataa 6y ago
      Doesnt that just mean you are going to have two or three unhealthy meals instead of one?

ashtonkem 6y ago

I personally think that body composition is 80% food and 20% work. Yes, driving cars everywhere is not great. But we’re also more obese than other car dependent cultures, so it’s not a satisfactory answer to say that it’s entirely about being sedentary.

wyclif 6y ago

When I came to the Philippines I was shocked by the large number of obese people here. I thought it would be like China because that was my only reference point in SE Asia. Relatively speaking, it's not as bad as the States or the UK but it's getting there. If you look back only a few generations, you'll see what happened here: they were colonized by the US and adopted Western-style processed food and soft drinks. Also, car ownership is a new thing for most families. Before WW2 this was not the case, and thus there was far less obesity.

chestertn 6y ago
Western style != American style. Philippines was part of the Spanish crown and had Spanish customs. Plenty of European (Western) countries have balanced diets and healthy lifestyles.
- Talanes 6y ago
  They were under American rule more recently, and were only given their Independence without a fight after agreeing to preferential trade on importing American products.
  - chestertn 6y ago
    I didn't argue about that. I just said that before American rule they were ruled by Spaniards.
- wyclif 6y ago
  Sure, for you and I it's not equivalent. But for them, it might as well be. People simply did not eat large amounts of packaged, processed food only a few generations ago, like people do everywhere in the west, including the EU.
  - chestertn 6y ago
    I just complained about the use of "western diet" as a catch-all epithet for unhealthy, processed food.

lambda_obrien 6y ago

I barely walk, but I've been losing weight like mad because I've been cooking at home everyday now, not eating fast food, and not drinking soda. Look at the ingredients for any premade foods, even the ones that bill themselves as healthy, they are mostly sugars and carbs and sauces containing HFCS. Also, the caloric density is insane, one "meal" can be upwards of 1500 or 2000 calories if you ignore their "suggested serving" which is unrealistic to what people eat. Also, exercise accounts for maybe a hundred or two calories a day for the average person who isn't into marathons or something, so the only true way to lose weight is to decrease what you eat. It's not lack of exercise, that's the way these corporations try to blame you for being lazy so you forget their food is garbage that's making you fat.

Aa9C4xPz43Gg7k6 6y ago
Only in US there's this serving size bullshit that requires effort to figure out how much you're actually eating.
- lambda_obrien 6y ago
  Exactly, that's why we're fat as fuck. We don't have the same culinary habits as most of the world. I ate a cookie for lunch today: it was 500 calories.

novok 6y ago

It really is the food. America was as car dependent in the 70s as they were in today, but if you look at photos then, you'll notice how uncannily THIN everyone was. If you dig more into it, you'll find the obesity crisis started around the late 70s with a change in dietary guidelines and medical guidelines saying basically 'fat & meat bad' and 'carbs good' along with the widespread introduction of vegetable oils, leading to too much insulin and other hormonal effects slowly increasing diabetes & obesity in our population. Also food companies honing on what obesogenic combos of food lead to people to eat more, buy more and thus get better sales. Read "The Obesity Code" if you want a more detailed description with a lot of links to papers and studies for more info. [0] [0] I said this yesterday too in another article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25767604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25767604

coredog64 6y ago
What’s the percentage of food spend in the 70s vs today? If I read the USDA charts, it’s about 13% for the decade of the 70s, declining to under 10% today. So I would expect that as food gets significantly cheaper, people consume more of it.
- jt2190 6y ago
  Portions are now massive. McDonalds, once upon a time, had small and large sizes of french fries; the little white paper pouch or the red cardboard sleeve. Today I believe they have two even larger sizes. The smallest size of soda doesn’t even exist any more. Other restaurants have retired round plates and serve meals on platters.
- lostcolony 6y ago
  Are rich people on average fatter than thin people? After all, they can afford more food, so presumably they consume more of it. Spending has dropped because there are such large subsidies to cheap carbs, and that is the bulk of many people's diets. A steak and veggies is no cheaper than it was 40-50 years ago, but we're eating far more refined junk with additives because it is cheap and convenient.

venkats 6y ago

I live in China, I can assure you there are plenty of obese chinese people here in the major cities I've been to. It's not as bad as the US, and the culture is more aggressively against it, but it's not uncommon. Obesity is a problem that most developing nations are facing. You can buy junk food anywhere. > If one does not live in a modern city center one barely ever walks. Most Americans sit all day - at a desk or in a car. As opposed to someone in China, where we must do such extraneous physical activities like order take-out delivered to our place less than 15 minutes, then order a masseuse to come give us a massage and finally order a bottle of wine to top the night off, all without needing to get out of bed.

snicker7 6y ago

Walking burns like, what, 5 kcal/minute (generous)? If non-Americans walk on average 20 more minutes a day (generous), that's like 100 kcal per day. Or about 7kg at 15 kcal/kg basal metabolic rate, not taking into account for increased appetite.

KAMSPioneer 6y ago
While you have a good point, I want to nitpick a little: As an American who recently moved to Europe, I don't think 20 minutes of walking per day is being generous. COVID-related measures aside, I find I add about 20min/day of walking easily, and more if I need to do something (e.g. buying groceries). Now, in the US I own a car and here I do not -- but in my Midwestern town I am totally obligated to own and operate a car. Here in Europe I get along fine with walking, riding a bike, and using public transport.

Hnrobert42 6y ago

Vietnam has the lowest adult obesity rate yet is the 8th most sedentary population. The only thing I see that accounts for this is the lack of cheap, processed foods. The Vietnamese diet is largely prepared at home from scratch. Sugar is not crammed into every effing thing you eat the way it is in the U.S.

harha 6y ago

I actually lost weight when I moved from Switzerland to the US. The food just all felt somehow gross, so I didn’t eat much (also the options on campus were incredibly limited, apart from these horrible undergraduate dining halls there were few normal choices and most only served food for around 2 hours - the food at the supermarket also felt strange)

torgian 6y ago
I’m curious, how did the food in the supermarket feel strange? I eat mostly fruits, veggies and meats. Pretty much 80% natural foods. But I live in east Asia now so it’s easier to do that and with more variety. But, I don’t recall American supermarkets food feeling strange. Unless you mean the processed stuff?
- harha 6y ago
  The processed food I avoided mostly, though I do that in Europe as well. For the rest of it: might just be my perception to be honest, my impression was that the fruits and vegetables tasted very watery with little flavour, as if they were grown in the most efficient way to bring them to market quickly. Same for the meat, was kind of floppy and the cheese just didn't taste like much. There were some good things from farmers markets, but at absurd prices. I see differences in Europe as well, e.g. I think the quality in Switzerland is better than Germany and Austria. In Spain and France I was able to get really good food, probably because it's closer to where it is produced. Again this might be my perception, didn't do a blind tasting. Unless the food is specially prepared to be stored (like fermented food, cheese, etc.), I don't think the highly industrial production, refrigeration and long transportation is doing the quality any favours.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    This isn't the first time I've heard this, and a quick Google search with the right keywords brings up: https://www.greenoptimistic.com/fruit-vegetables-taste-europe-america/ https://www.greenoptimistic.com/fruit-vegetables-taste-europ... https://www.treehugger.com/why-doesnt-american-produce-taste-good-europes-4858067 https://www.treehugger.com/why-doesnt-american-produce-taste... The key point seems to be that we prioritize the looks, which unintentionally affects taste.