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~50% of Americans are morbidly obese - which is a relatively recent phenomenon. Why have people for thousands of years and still in many other countries not ha
by onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
~50% of Americans are morbidly obese - which is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Why have people for thousands of years and still in many other countries not had this constant insatiable hunger that you speak of?
The American lifestyle leads to a ~50% morbidly obese rate - not human nature.
Morbidly obese rates throughout all human history were <10% until pretty recently.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago> Why have people for thousands of years and still in many other countries not had this constant insatiable hunger that you speak of? What makes you think they didn't? Maybe they just didnt have enough food to satisfy themselves and were constantly uncomfortably hungry.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoSo ~30% of people in Europe are constantly starving compared to Americans? Europeans can, generally, afford to eat.
- SJC_Hacker 3y agoEuropeans have better public transit and more walkable/bikable cities. The portions at restaraunts are also more reasonable. Not the 1500 calorie abominations (half the calorie budget for an active man) you get in the US
- tpmoney 3y agoEuropean obesity rates are also on the rise. the US might have gotten there first, but lets not pretend that we're alone on this hill.
- jrockway 3y agoYeah, I mean, we're not resource constrained anymore. It's easy to not gain weight when there are literally no calories available. You also don't contribute much to the economy and you're miserable all the time. Certainly the wide availability of food, most of it not particularly healthy, isn't helping much. Jobs where you sit in front of a computer all day aren't helping much. But I think it's impossible to give those things up at this point.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoBecause for thousands of years people had to worry more about starving than overeating. And America may have gotten their first, but obesity rates are skyrocketing in nearly the entire Western (and many parts of the Eastern) world. I wholeheartedly agree with you that obesity is a modern problem, but if your solution is somehow "we should redesign all American cities so you can bike to work so we can all be like the Netherlands" or "we should all grow our own food", well, that's not really a solution.
- ThrowawayR2 3y agoIt takes only moment to search on Google to find many, many news articles indicating that obesity is rising quickly in Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world.
- red-iron-pine 3y agountil the last ~100 years or so people regularly starved or died of famine & drought. if they could have been fat, they would have, but they couldn't get enough to eat to stay alive.