4 ms·

Being overweight/obese will kill more people than COVID, and will still be killing people when COVID is eradicated. But the government is not doing a ban of HF

by ixacto 5y ago

Being overweight/obese will kill more people than COVID, and will still be killing people when COVID is eradicated. But the government is not doing a ban of HFCS by executive order.

sharken 5y ago
Which is why it's baffling that gyms are closed for five months straight where I live. And taxes on soft drinks are very low, which adds to the problem. So many problems that could be fixed with a bit of common sense by the politicians.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  The people going to the gyms will find other ways to exercise. The people sitting at home obese are not impacted by closing gyms. If you want to prove me wrong, find some kind of report of what number of obese and morbidly obese people do weekly gym visits in the best of times? If you want to see how the sugar tax works, look at the rollout, fallout, and repeal of the sugar tax in Chicago. It didn’t go so well. It’s easy to call things common sense, but many of these arguments fall apart under closer inspection.
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    Here ice skating rinks are closed (outdoor-only ones are open to a maximum of four 12 year olds on the entire rink at once, it's fucking absurd). I've not skated in seven months. My weight is stable thankfully because I spent 400 bucks buying a VR system and beat saber, not all my (mostly younger) skating fellows can afford that luxury. Running is out of the question, and gym at home is awfully boring. Point is, do not just assume people will "find other ways to exercise". Sports centers should be considered health necessities, not recreational, in the context of the current pandemic.
    - brianwawok 5y ago
      Well, exercise isn’t how you control weight. Weight control is just eating less calories than you burn. Exercise less, eat less, and your weight stays the same. Trust me I love exercise. I am a running nut. I do anything I can to help bike trails get made. But keeping skating rinks close to stop the spread of a pandemic seems pretty reasonable, and I would support it.
      - scrollaway 5y ago
        Rinks are extremely safe. They are air conditioned, filtered. In Belgium, there have been zero recorded infections from the rinks across all of last year when they were still open - limited attendance, masks, etc. For comparison, swimming pools are open. Their showers aren't, though. Something about it not being safe, so instead people don't soap up before getting into the pool. It's gross, idiotic and all in the name of COVID. There's a lot of these absurdities going on, it's pretty easy to find them if you look. It happens, of course.. but it is demoralizing. I'd invite you to consider how you would feel if your local government closed everywhere in the country where you could run. Closing off not just your sport, but your psychological break from the world. Your mental pillar. Back in winter when the lakes froze, our equivalent of the parks service decided people skating outdoors, on lakes, was a COVID risk and forbade it. Even some of our official experts called it an absurd move. And no, exercising less has had a pretty bad effect on my body, regardless of what I eat. My core and leg muscles are not doing well after 7 months not getting their daily routines on the ice, and I simply don't burn passively as much as I used to, despite doing what I can at home. To be honest, as someone who struggled with weight most of my entire life and only got it under control after two decades thanks to those rinks, I find it pretty off-putting the way you're implying how simple it is to control weight. Maybe for you it is, but one look at obesity rates unveils the truth for most people.
  - ixacto 5y ago
    Finding other ways to exercise can be difficult when it is cold and rainy out. I'm a month past having my 2nd dose of Moderna vaccine, covid is not really an issue anymore apart from people still being afraid of it/antivaxxers.
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    Weights and exercise equipment was unobtainable in early 2020 in the UK I wanted to buy some just before the lockdown but my GF said it would be silly. Pull ups and some body weight exercise was the best I could do and honestly it wasn’t easy to keep going and I have found myself turning from a 6 day PPL to a couch potato especially during the 2nd lockdown. I still run 5K 3-4 times a week and did a 10K run every other week but it wasn’t enough to prevent weight gain and muscle loss over nearly a year of interruption due to lockdown. The biggest factor was also the lack of daily mobility I went down from 21K Aveo daily steps in 2019 to less than half of that in 2020 and early 2021. You’ll be surprised just how much you lose from really only having to walk from the bed to your desk in the living room or spare bedroom for a year.
  - totony 5y ago
    >The people sitting at home obese are not impacted by closing gyms. That's doubtful & I would need a report to substantiate this /s Clearly any hurdle you put in front of people wanting to better themselves is going to reduce the number of people that successfully implement that change. It might not be significant (that would be up to statistics), but it's way more grounded in common sense than saying that hurdles don't affect people.
- scarface74 5y ago
  Every study and simple math says the same thing. Exercise is the least effective way to lose weight. The amount of exercise you have to do just burn 500 calories is far more than most people will do. Besides, there are other ways to exercise. The last point, if you overeat anything you will gain weight.
  - Terretta 5y ago
    Exercise to burn calories is a proximate goal but not the ideal one. Calories burned during the exercise is, to your point, insufficient. Exercise to reset metabolism is a better goal. Takes about 6 weeks of very short HIIT sprints (4 minutes of high intensity interval training with 30 second intervals of anaerobic effort, along with 2 mins of warmup and 2 mins of cooldown) to shift metabolism into a rate that will burn extra kcalories at rest (an order of magnitude more a day than from the exercise itself). Note that this type of HIIT can make people feel ill. Use an HR monitor and work with your doctor. You also cannot hit the necessary level of effort using most gym equipment. You need full body climbers (best, recruits 95% of muscles, easy to hit anaerobic sprints) or full body ergo cycles or rowers (recruits 80% - 90% but harder to sprint above VO2 Max). The recalibration then also lasts 6+ months, and only needs 2 - 3 HIIT sessions a week to last indefinitely. // And still, yes, what doesn’t go in doesn’t have to get burned off.
    - voisin 5y ago
      > Exercise to reset metabolism is a better goal. “Reset metabolism” sounds like bro science to me. Do you have some form of backup for this concept? >Takes about 6 weeks of very short HIIT sprints (4 minutes of high intensity interval training with 30 second intervals of anaerobic effort, along with 2 mins of warmup and 2 mins of cooldown) to shift metabolism into a rate that will burn extra kcalories at rest (an order of magnitude more a day than from the exercise itself). Source?
      - Terretta 5y ago
        There are tons of academic and sports medicine white papers on HIIT. Google has more time than I do. My “five whys” guess would be it remains relatively obscure, because it’s not a thing trainers are trying to get casuals or ‘bros’ to do if they want recurring customers, because people hate it, because most people feel ill from HIIT done right, because doing it to the point of effectiveness relies on pushing beyond normal limits for 30 seconds at a time. You can add keywords for “tabata intervals” and branch out from the research in Japan on hockey training. As for metabolism shift, it’s the opposite of prevailing “bro” science that thinks the workout is the thing. On the contrary, look into BMR or basal metabolic rate and EPOC or post-exercise oxygen consumption.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  Soda doesn't make people fat. People eating too much food makes people fat. This isn't a social issue, this is an independent self restraint issue.
  - incrudible 5y ago
    I beg to differ, you can easily add 1000+ calories to your daily intake by just drinking soda all day. You will also likely become a diabetic. It does become a social issue when it comes to healthcare.
cercatrova 5y ago
As long as the corn lobby exists, HFCS will not be banned.
- atat7024 5y ago
  US still subsidizes corn!, this isn't going the other direction unless much more awareness occurs.

by ixacto 5y ago

Being overweight/obese will kill more people than COVID, and will still be killing people when COVID is eradicated. But the government is not doing a ban of HFCS by executive order.

sharken 5y ago

Which is why it's baffling that gyms are closed for five months straight where I live. And taxes on soft drinks are very low, which adds to the problem. So many problems that could be fixed with a bit of common sense by the politicians.

brianwawok 5y ago
The people going to the gyms will find other ways to exercise. The people sitting at home obese are not impacted by closing gyms. If you want to prove me wrong, find some kind of report of what number of obese and morbidly obese people do weekly gym visits in the best of times? If you want to see how the sugar tax works, look at the rollout, fallout, and repeal of the sugar tax in Chicago. It didn’t go so well. It’s easy to call things common sense, but many of these arguments fall apart under closer inspection.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Here ice skating rinks are closed (outdoor-only ones are open to a maximum of four 12 year olds on the entire rink at once, it's fucking absurd). I've not skated in seven months. My weight is stable thankfully because I spent 400 bucks buying a VR system and beat saber, not all my (mostly younger) skating fellows can afford that luxury. Running is out of the question, and gym at home is awfully boring. Point is, do not just assume people will "find other ways to exercise". Sports centers should be considered health necessities, not recreational, in the context of the current pandemic.
  - brianwawok 5y ago
    Well, exercise isn’t how you control weight. Weight control is just eating less calories than you burn. Exercise less, eat less, and your weight stays the same. Trust me I love exercise. I am a running nut. I do anything I can to help bike trails get made. But keeping skating rinks close to stop the spread of a pandemic seems pretty reasonable, and I would support it.
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      Rinks are extremely safe. They are air conditioned, filtered. In Belgium, there have been zero recorded infections from the rinks across all of last year when they were still open - limited attendance, masks, etc. For comparison, swimming pools are open. Their showers aren't, though. Something about it not being safe, so instead people don't soap up before getting into the pool. It's gross, idiotic and all in the name of COVID. There's a lot of these absurdities going on, it's pretty easy to find them if you look. It happens, of course.. but it is demoralizing. I'd invite you to consider how you would feel if your local government closed everywhere in the country where you could run. Closing off not just your sport, but your psychological break from the world. Your mental pillar. Back in winter when the lakes froze, our equivalent of the parks service decided people skating outdoors, on lakes, was a COVID risk and forbade it. Even some of our official experts called it an absurd move. And no, exercising less has had a pretty bad effect on my body, regardless of what I eat. My core and leg muscles are not doing well after 7 months not getting their daily routines on the ice, and I simply don't burn passively as much as I used to, despite doing what I can at home. To be honest, as someone who struggled with weight most of my entire life and only got it under control after two decades thanks to those rinks, I find it pretty off-putting the way you're implying how simple it is to control weight. Maybe for you it is, but one look at obesity rates unveils the truth for most people.
- ixacto 5y ago
  Finding other ways to exercise can be difficult when it is cold and rainy out. I'm a month past having my 2nd dose of Moderna vaccine, covid is not really an issue anymore apart from people still being afraid of it/antivaxxers.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  Weights and exercise equipment was unobtainable in early 2020 in the UK I wanted to buy some just before the lockdown but my GF said it would be silly. Pull ups and some body weight exercise was the best I could do and honestly it wasn’t easy to keep going and I have found myself turning from a 6 day PPL to a couch potato especially during the 2nd lockdown. I still run 5K 3-4 times a week and did a 10K run every other week but it wasn’t enough to prevent weight gain and muscle loss over nearly a year of interruption due to lockdown. The biggest factor was also the lack of daily mobility I went down from 21K Aveo daily steps in 2019 to less than half of that in 2020 and early 2021. You’ll be surprised just how much you lose from really only having to walk from the bed to your desk in the living room or spare bedroom for a year.
- totony 5y ago
  >The people sitting at home obese are not impacted by closing gyms. That's doubtful & I would need a report to substantiate this /s Clearly any hurdle you put in front of people wanting to better themselves is going to reduce the number of people that successfully implement that change. It might not be significant (that would be up to statistics), but it's way more grounded in common sense than saying that hurdles don't affect people.
scarface74 5y ago
Every study and simple math says the same thing. Exercise is the least effective way to lose weight. The amount of exercise you have to do just burn 500 calories is far more than most people will do. Besides, there are other ways to exercise. The last point, if you overeat anything you will gain weight.
- Terretta 5y ago
  Exercise to burn calories is a proximate goal but not the ideal one. Calories burned during the exercise is, to your point, insufficient. Exercise to reset metabolism is a better goal. Takes about 6 weeks of very short HIIT sprints (4 minutes of high intensity interval training with 30 second intervals of anaerobic effort, along with 2 mins of warmup and 2 mins of cooldown) to shift metabolism into a rate that will burn extra kcalories at rest (an order of magnitude more a day than from the exercise itself). Note that this type of HIIT can make people feel ill. Use an HR monitor and work with your doctor. You also cannot hit the necessary level of effort using most gym equipment. You need full body climbers (best, recruits 95% of muscles, easy to hit anaerobic sprints) or full body ergo cycles or rowers (recruits 80% - 90% but harder to sprint above VO2 Max). The recalibration then also lasts 6+ months, and only needs 2 - 3 HIIT sessions a week to last indefinitely. // And still, yes, what doesn’t go in doesn’t have to get burned off.
  - voisin 5y ago
    > Exercise to reset metabolism is a better goal. “Reset metabolism” sounds like bro science to me. Do you have some form of backup for this concept? >Takes about 6 weeks of very short HIIT sprints (4 minutes of high intensity interval training with 30 second intervals of anaerobic effort, along with 2 mins of warmup and 2 mins of cooldown) to shift metabolism into a rate that will burn extra kcalories at rest (an order of magnitude more a day than from the exercise itself). Source?
    - Terretta 5y ago
      There are tons of academic and sports medicine white papers on HIIT. Google has more time than I do. My “five whys” guess would be it remains relatively obscure, because it’s not a thing trainers are trying to get casuals or ‘bros’ to do if they want recurring customers, because people hate it, because most people feel ill from HIIT done right, because doing it to the point of effectiveness relies on pushing beyond normal limits for 30 seconds at a time. You can add keywords for “tabata intervals” and branch out from the research in Japan on hockey training. As for metabolism shift, it’s the opposite of prevailing “bro” science that thinks the workout is the thing. On the contrary, look into BMR or basal metabolic rate and EPOC or post-exercise oxygen consumption.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
Soda doesn't make people fat. People eating too much food makes people fat. This isn't a social issue, this is an independent self restraint issue.
- incrudible 5y ago
  I beg to differ, you can easily add 1000+ calories to your daily intake by just drinking soda all day. You will also likely become a diabetic. It does become a social issue when it comes to healthcare.

cercatrova 5y ago

As long as the corn lobby exists, HFCS will not be banned.

atat7024 5y ago
US still subsidizes corn!, this isn't going the other direction unless much more awareness occurs.