7 ms·

90% of US has a poor diet, and 25% don’t exercise

anthk 5y ago
The US has/is: - Bad diet, with too much sugar/far/corn syrup. - Too dependant on cars, being a really bad place for a pedestrian. - Bad healthcare, health issues get stacked up over the years. - Too spread over, turning them back to the 2nd point.
lkbm 5y ago
I might not eat enough fruit according to the guidelines (not sure how they count fruits like bell peppers), but the "why is it important to eat fruit?" section of the USDA MyPlate website[0] doesn't list any benefits I don't get from vegetables. [0] https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/fruits https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/fruits
- nradov 5y ago
  It's kind of bizarre that the government is still recommending fruit juice. I mean I love it and drink a little bit myself, but based on what we know now about the effects of sugar it's barely healthier than soda pop.
  - commoner 5y ago
    > At least half of the recommended amount of fruit should come from whole fruit, rather than 100% fruit juice. Baby steps. They also recommend having at least half of the grains in a diet be whole grains.* For the best diet, both of these proportions should be as high as possible in most cases. * https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/grains https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/grains
  - itisit 5y ago
    It’s not bizarre when you consider pizza as a vegetable. [0] [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/pizza-still-a-vegetable-for-u-s-schools-1.1089258 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/pizza-still-a-vegetable-for-u...
  - throwawayciv651 5y ago
    Fruit juice means fresh fruit juiced without adding any sugar right? Some people refer to fruit juice as the ones you see in tetrapacks. Real fruit juice is very much different from soda pop.
    - lkbm 5y ago
      If we're just looking at sugar content, it's really not that different. Pepsi has ~11% more sugar than fresh apple juice: 25g of sugar in 285g of juice[0] = that's 37 grams in 355ml of juice[1] vs. 41 grams of sugar in 355ml of soda[2], which is 110.8% more than the juice[3]. The half gram of fiber probably makes it little better, but it's still a very sugary drink. [0] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=fresh+apple+juice+nutrition https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=fresh+apple+juice+nutr... [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=25*(355%2F240) https://www.google.com/search?q=25*(355%2F240) [2] https://www.pepsi.com/#!products/pepsi https://www.pepsi.com/#!products/pepsi [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=41%2F37 https://www.google.com/search?q=41%2F37
      - throwawayciv651 5y ago
        I might be remembering the details wrong, but I heard an actual doctor saying there is difference between fresh fruit juice and soda pop. I found this that seems like what the doctor said, but I'm not sure. Click on 'transcript' and read it. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/if-fructose-is-bad-what-about-fruit/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/if-fructose-is-bad-what-abo... Edit: Other than this, fresh fruit juice contains minerals, vitamins, antioxidants etc etc.
      - drekk 5y ago
        High fructose corn syrup is not the same thing as fructose, all other things being equal. Fiber also helps modulate the insulin response. Sugar isn't the enemy, if you're eating fruit you're getting a lot more than fructose from it. The problem is when people get a large % of their calories from nutritionally deficient food, like soda.
  - anthk 5y ago
    Fruits should be eaten as a whole, so fibers act along the sugars. Drinking just the fruit juice isn't too far from a Coke.
- commoner 5y ago
  Fruit and vegetable consumption is often researched as a single metric, so dietary recommendations tend to lump them together. The benefit of diversifying your diet (for example, by adding more fruits if you don't eat much of them) is to include nutrients that would otherwise be missing. Not just the macronutrients and micronutrients, but also other antioxidants such as polyphenols.[1] The UK NHS recommendation touches on this briefly:[2] > To get the most out of your 5 A Day, your 5 portions should include a variety of fruit and vegetables. This is because different fruits and vegetables contain different combinations of fibre, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antioxidants_in_food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antioxidants_in_food [2] https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/why-5-a-day/ https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/why-5-a-day/
- Noumenon72 5y ago
  It's probably fine to go without fruit, as your ancestors can't possibly have eaten it every day. However, I find that a diet too heavily focused on vegetables leaves me still wanting "dessert" even when my stomach feels full; fruit calms that feeling. Also fruit is great for slowing down a meal and for adding a lot of bulk relative to the calories inside.
  - lkbm 5y ago
    That makes sense. I do often find myself craving a dessert after eating what is otherwise a very satisfying meal. I should try fruit afterwards. A few years ago, whenever I felt too full from a big meal, I would eat a banana, which felt like it helped. (Alas, this morning I opened up the freezing while making a salad for breakfast and discovered that a housemate had left a massive ice cream cake in there, so I had no choice but to indulge.)
uejfiweun 5y ago
If you don't exercise, but also aren't gaining weight or losing shape, is it bad for your health? Asking for a, uh, friend.
- nradov 5y ago
  Overall a sedentary lifestyle has worse long term health risks than being slightly overweight. The worst effects tend to show up as you age. There's a hidden epidemic of sarcopenia among the elderly.
- michalf6 5y ago
  In my understanding you don't start with a "full health" and lose it over time, instead you can always get better or worse from the position you are in. So while you won't have some dramatic problems, you'll be missing out on how good you could feel all this time.
  - bdjidnnehr 5y ago
    While what you’ve said is true (according to my understanding), the older you get the more difficult it is to move the needle. It’s much easier to get into better health when you are 20 than it is when you are 60. Also the margin for error gets much more narrow as you age.
- stevenwoo 5y ago
  For women there is an issue of having low bone density that cannot be fixed after the mid twenties IIRC from reading an exercise physiology textbook. Your aerobic capacity that can be seen as an approximate proxy for general physical health can be maximized by your thirties and can stay close to that with maintenance until your 70's and beyond.
- hankman86 5y ago
  It’s definitely not good. Having a healthy weight means that exercising should come easy for you. And it’ll protect you from cardiovascular diseases, enhance your mood, boost your endorphins and sex hormones and turn you from skinny to toned.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
25% don't exercise? That's too low. Over 60%+ of adults are overweight or obese. Mind you, that doesn't stop you from exercising. But it seems highly unlikely only 1 in 4 doesn't exercise. This is why self reporting is bad.
- shishy 5y ago
  Aren't people who exercise (bodybuilding) generally considered overweight (defined as having a too high weight for a given height?) I noticed the same as you pointed out but figured that might help explain some of that difference
  - dpark 5y ago
    No. You have to have a ton of muscle to flip the bmi scale into overweight. Certainly professional bodybuilders will do that. Casual bodybuilders generally don’t. The set of bodybuilders who have enough muscle to put them into the overweight category is a tiny portion of the population. There is a larger portion of the population who has a lot of muscle and a lot of fat, but that’s still pretty small.
    - shishy 5y ago
      fair enough! those communities always seems bigger when you're surrounded by them... :)
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      BMI is just a very rough approximation used to fit body fat. Any amount of muscle can slip someone into the overwight category if they are already close. For a 5-10 male, the difference between dead center normal BMI and pre-obese is 20 lbs, not a crazy amount for a casual but consistent weightlifter. BMI 'works' because it just looks at the total population, and doest care if it doesn't fit edge cases.
      - dpark 5y ago
        > Any amount of muscle can slip someone into the overwight category if they are already close. Yeah, but that’s hardly the muscle at fault. If someone has 20lb of extra fat and 10lb of extra muscle, it seems a lot more honest to say the fat is why the person’s BMI is high. To be clear, BMI is definitely a very “rough and dirty” estimate. Certainly there are healthy people with a BMI classified as overweight.
Axien 5y ago
“25% don’t exercise”. It turns out 70% of people are liars.
imtringued 5y ago
Classic case of lack of willpower.
- throwawayciv651 5y ago
  Or money power, or doctor power. Many people go to a doctor only when things get worse because of the cost
hankman86 5y ago
I would have expected these numbers to be the other way around: 90% don’t exercise and 25% eat a poor diet. But I guess very little counts as exercising (like talking a walk).

The US has/is: - Bad diet, with too much sugar/far/corn syrup. - Too dependant on cars, being a really bad place for a pedestrian. - Bad healthcare, health issues get stacked up over the years. - Too spread over, turning them back to the 2nd point.

lkbm 5y ago

I might not eat enough fruit according to the guidelines (not sure how they count fruits like bell peppers), but the "why is it important to eat fruit?" section of the USDA MyPlate website[0] doesn't list any benefits I don't get from vegetables. [0] https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/fruits https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/fruits

nradov 5y ago
It's kind of bizarre that the government is still recommending fruit juice. I mean I love it and drink a little bit myself, but based on what we know now about the effects of sugar it's barely healthier than soda pop.
- commoner 5y ago
  > At least half of the recommended amount of fruit should come from whole fruit, rather than 100% fruit juice. Baby steps. They also recommend having at least half of the grains in a diet be whole grains.* For the best diet, both of these proportions should be as high as possible in most cases. * https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/grains https://www.myplate.gov/eat-healthy/grains
- itisit 5y ago
  It’s not bizarre when you consider pizza as a vegetable. [0] [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/pizza-still-a-vegetable-for-u-s-schools-1.1089258 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/pizza-still-a-vegetable-for-u...
- throwawayciv651 5y ago
  Fruit juice means fresh fruit juiced without adding any sugar right? Some people refer to fruit juice as the ones you see in tetrapacks. Real fruit juice is very much different from soda pop.
  - lkbm 5y ago
    If we're just looking at sugar content, it's really not that different. Pepsi has ~11% more sugar than fresh apple juice: 25g of sugar in 285g of juice[0] = that's 37 grams in 355ml of juice[1] vs. 41 grams of sugar in 355ml of soda[2], which is 110.8% more than the juice[3]. The half gram of fiber probably makes it little better, but it's still a very sugary drink. [0] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=fresh+apple+juice+nutrition https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=fresh+apple+juice+nutr... [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=25*(355%2F240) https://www.google.com/search?q=25*(355%2F240) [2] https://www.pepsi.com/#!products/pepsi https://www.pepsi.com/#!products/pepsi [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=41%2F37 https://www.google.com/search?q=41%2F37
    - throwawayciv651 5y ago
      I might be remembering the details wrong, but I heard an actual doctor saying there is difference between fresh fruit juice and soda pop. I found this that seems like what the doctor said, but I'm not sure. Click on 'transcript' and read it. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/if-fructose-is-bad-what-about-fruit/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/if-fructose-is-bad-what-abo... Edit: Other than this, fresh fruit juice contains minerals, vitamins, antioxidants etc etc.
    - drekk 5y ago
      High fructose corn syrup is not the same thing as fructose, all other things being equal. Fiber also helps modulate the insulin response. Sugar isn't the enemy, if you're eating fruit you're getting a lot more than fructose from it. The problem is when people get a large % of their calories from nutritionally deficient food, like soda.
- anthk 5y ago
  Fruits should be eaten as a whole, so fibers act along the sugars. Drinking just the fruit juice isn't too far from a Coke.
commoner 5y ago
Fruit and vegetable consumption is often researched as a single metric, so dietary recommendations tend to lump them together. The benefit of diversifying your diet (for example, by adding more fruits if you don't eat much of them) is to include nutrients that would otherwise be missing. Not just the macronutrients and micronutrients, but also other antioxidants such as polyphenols.[1] The UK NHS recommendation touches on this briefly:[2] > To get the most out of your 5 A Day, your 5 portions should include a variety of fruit and vegetables. This is because different fruits and vegetables contain different combinations of fibre, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antioxidants_in_food https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antioxidants_in_food [2] https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/why-5-a-day/ https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/why-5-a-day/
Noumenon72 5y ago
It's probably fine to go without fruit, as your ancestors can't possibly have eaten it every day. However, I find that a diet too heavily focused on vegetables leaves me still wanting "dessert" even when my stomach feels full; fruit calms that feeling. Also fruit is great for slowing down a meal and for adding a lot of bulk relative to the calories inside.
- lkbm 5y ago
  That makes sense. I do often find myself craving a dessert after eating what is otherwise a very satisfying meal. I should try fruit afterwards. A few years ago, whenever I felt too full from a big meal, I would eat a banana, which felt like it helped. (Alas, this morning I opened up the freezing while making a salad for breakfast and discovered that a housemate had left a massive ice cream cake in there, so I had no choice but to indulge.)

uejfiweun 5y ago

If you don't exercise, but also aren't gaining weight or losing shape, is it bad for your health? Asking for a, uh, friend.

nradov 5y ago
Overall a sedentary lifestyle has worse long term health risks than being slightly overweight. The worst effects tend to show up as you age. There's a hidden epidemic of sarcopenia among the elderly.
michalf6 5y ago
In my understanding you don't start with a "full health" and lose it over time, instead you can always get better or worse from the position you are in. So while you won't have some dramatic problems, you'll be missing out on how good you could feel all this time.
- bdjidnnehr 5y ago
  While what you’ve said is true (according to my understanding), the older you get the more difficult it is to move the needle. It’s much easier to get into better health when you are 20 than it is when you are 60. Also the margin for error gets much more narrow as you age.
stevenwoo 5y ago
For women there is an issue of having low bone density that cannot be fixed after the mid twenties IIRC from reading an exercise physiology textbook. Your aerobic capacity that can be seen as an approximate proxy for general physical health can be maximized by your thirties and can stay close to that with maintenance until your 70's and beyond.
hankman86 5y ago
It’s definitely not good. Having a healthy weight means that exercising should come easy for you. And it’ll protect you from cardiovascular diseases, enhance your mood, boost your endorphins and sex hormones and turn you from skinny to toned.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

25% don't exercise? That's too low. Over 60%+ of adults are overweight or obese. Mind you, that doesn't stop you from exercising. But it seems highly unlikely only 1 in 4 doesn't exercise. This is why self reporting is bad.

shishy 5y ago
Aren't people who exercise (bodybuilding) generally considered overweight (defined as having a too high weight for a given height?) I noticed the same as you pointed out but figured that might help explain some of that difference
- dpark 5y ago
  No. You have to have a ton of muscle to flip the bmi scale into overweight. Certainly professional bodybuilders will do that. Casual bodybuilders generally don’t. The set of bodybuilders who have enough muscle to put them into the overweight category is a tiny portion of the population. There is a larger portion of the population who has a lot of muscle and a lot of fat, but that’s still pretty small.
  - shishy 5y ago
    fair enough! those communities always seems bigger when you're surrounded by them... :)
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    BMI is just a very rough approximation used to fit body fat. Any amount of muscle can slip someone into the overwight category if they are already close. For a 5-10 male, the difference between dead center normal BMI and pre-obese is 20 lbs, not a crazy amount for a casual but consistent weightlifter. BMI 'works' because it just looks at the total population, and doest care if it doesn't fit edge cases.
    - dpark 5y ago
      > Any amount of muscle can slip someone into the overwight category if they are already close. Yeah, but that’s hardly the muscle at fault. If someone has 20lb of extra fat and 10lb of extra muscle, it seems a lot more honest to say the fat is why the person’s BMI is high. To be clear, BMI is definitely a very “rough and dirty” estimate. Certainly there are healthy people with a BMI classified as overweight.

Axien 5y ago

“25% don’t exercise”. It turns out 70% of people are liars.

imtringued 5y ago

Classic case of lack of willpower.

throwawayciv651 5y ago
Or money power, or doctor power. Many people go to a doctor only when things get worse because of the cost

hankman86 5y ago

I would have expected these numbers to be the other way around: 90% don’t exercise and 25% eat a poor diet. But I guess very little counts as exercising (like talking a walk).