3 ms·

The point I was trying to convey is that the "western diet" is causing obesity. Not whether it's the fat, the sugar or something else that's causing it.

• jrockway 15y ago
  Why do you think it's the specific components of the food and not the behavior the sellers of that food encourage? Here's my theory. It takes 15 minutes for your body to realize it's full. Fast food chains encourage you to eat a lot of calories in a short period of time; it's what they advertise and it's the kind of product they deliver. This means that if you eat fast food, you are going to eat many more calories than you "want" before you realize you're satiated. If you take a McDonald's meal and turn it into a regular-sized meal with respect to calories, it's unlikely that you are going to get fat. Similarly, if you eat 2000 calories of spinach in one sitting times three meals a day every day, you're going to get fat. The problem is that the body doesn't want to eat 2000 calories of spinach in one sitting, but it does want to eat 2000 calories of cheeseburger and soda in one sitting. In other words, McDonalds makes money because they can sell people more calories than they need. This, in turn, makes their customers gain weight. (There are some details here, about how much easier it is to digest fat and carbohydrates than protein. But even if you eat a lot of protein, you'll still gain weight. Hell, that's what people who intentionally want to gain weight eat, they just eat a lot of it.)
  • rdouble 15y ago
    It would be impossible to eat 2000 calories of spinach even in one sitting. that would be close to 50 pounds of spinach.