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Why Americans are so fond of strange diets instead of eating some simple balanced food and not caring much? Raw, carnivore, paleo, whatever. Here in Europe, we

Why Americans are so fond of strange diets instead of eating some simple balanced food and not caring much? Raw, carnivore, paleo, whatever. Here in Europe, we tremble in horror about the though that somebody can consume "raw milk", and there's a market for it. And, simultaneously, the same people have some issues with harmless blue cheese!

ethbr1 2y ago
For the same reason that management consultants are fond of the Next Big Thing: $$$$. Pushing a new diet drives a ton of revenue. Advertising, TikTok, talk content, experts, books, etc. There's a financial reason Dr. Oz was always on about some batshit crazy new one.
kragen 2y ago
One reason is that, about 50 years ago, a global obesity pandemic began in the US, and nobody knows why exactly, but it seems to have something to do with their diets. Since then, it has become a worldwide public health crisis, responsible for a few percent of all death and disability. It's a bit later at affecting Europe, but it's happening there too. So people are trying all kinds of things to see if they can get better. Another reason is that for about 300 years people in Europe who did things that made their neighbors tremble in horror† had to flee for their lives, and a lot of them fled to parts of America including Argentina and the US. Consequently the US is rather full of people who are inclined, culturally or possibly genetically, to put whatever crazy ideas they happen to believe into actual practice rather than following tradition or majority opinion. Diet fads in the US go back at least 200 years. Myself, I dropped 17 kg on a carnivore diet starting a couple of years ago, and I've kept it off on a much more mixed diet since then. ______ † Quakers, Puritans, Anabaptists, Old Believers, Jews, etc.
- cogman10 2y ago
  70 years ago meat was strictly rationed and 50% of calories came from victory gardens. If the thesis is that obesity came from removing saturated fat from the diet, why is it that there wasn't problems with obesity during WWII when saturated was strictly rationed out of the general populations diet? I mean, FFS, magazines sold magic powders to woman to help them become fatter. (Being too skinny was seen as unattractive). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden?wprov=sfla1
  - kragen 2y ago
    > If the thesis is that obesity came from removing saturated fat from the diet That thesis is clearly wrong, though there are still people who believe it. If you want to spend ten minutes getting better informed, you can read a chapter-length thorough rebuttal at https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-saturated-fat-diets/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-.... Reading the sources it cites will take you longer than that. But the very simple explanation is that it is well known that traditional diets that do not produce high levels of obesity include many different levels of both fat intake and saturated-fat intake. Whatever is unique about the modern industrial obesogenic diet of ultra-processed foods, it isn't that it contains uniquely low levels of saturated fats.
    - cogman10 2y ago
      I apologize, I misread your initial argument. I thought you were defending the canavore diet, the subject of the article went through (there are definitely comments in this comments section making that claim). The research behind ultra processing has legs from what I've read. My none expert take is that it has more to do with the fact that portion sizes are larger and caloric density is higher. It doesn't take long to find videos of people from all over the world visiting the US and commenting on how much food is served. That also jives with why drugs like semaglutide work so well at reducing weight.
      - kragen 2y ago
        Caloric density is also pretty high in traditional diets like those of the Hadza, the Inuit, the French, the Argentines, and the Italians, but those produce low levels of obesity. So that can't be it. Those diets also don't include semaglutide. Large portion sizes are real, but they are downstream of whatever is unnaturally increasing US appetites. Restaurants, housewives, and househusbands in the US don't serve 1500-kcal meals because they're in some kind of conspiracy to fatten your kids up for slaughter. They serve them because people complain if they don't. The "ultra-processed" meme is clearly pointing at something critical, but it can't itself be the answer, because it's ontologically incoherent. As the post I linked above says: > I’ve previously found [this meme] frustrating – it reeks of a sort of unreflective technophobia. What part of processing makes food bad? How does mere contact with a machine turn food from healthy to unhealthy? What food counts as “processed” or “not processed”? Is ground beef processed, since you grind it? Are scrambled eggs processed, since you scramble them? Is bread processed, since wheat doesn’t grow in loaves? Is water processed, since it goes through water processing facilities? Is the Eucharist processed, even though the processing only changes its metaphysical essence and not its physical properties? Everybody I ask acts like the answers to these questions are obvious, but everyone has different answers, and nobody can tell me their decision procedure. So, is it corn? Missing micronutrients? Industrial polysaccharide thickeners? Fungicides like propionate? Nanoparticles of titanium dioxide? Antinutrients like phytate and citrate reducing bioavailability of polyvalent-cation micronutrients? Some combination? Lots of people have promising hypotheses but nobody knows. Anybody who claims to know is either lying or insane, often both.
- atemerev 2y ago
  The latter explanation is interesting, thank you. Experimentation is fine.
  - kragen 2y ago
    In your grandparent comment you said experimentation makes you tremble in horror. The experimentation in question is with raw milk, so not even a particularly extreme sort of experimentation, since that's what all milk was for thousands of years. It's difficult to imagine what sort of experimentation you think is fine if that's not it.
    - atemerev 2y ago
      Well, “for thousands of years” is not an argument. People were living without brushing their teeth for thousands of years. There was no modern medicine for thousands of years. Children were routinely dying from infections for thousands of years. There’s this little thing called “progress”.
cogman10 2y ago
Because there's a fairly large swath of American popular culture that has sprung up to "nuh uh" every perceived standard or best understanding. "Avoid saturated fat" "nuh uh our ancestors were alpha males that ate nothing but raw meat and black coffee, we must have evolved for that diet!" People fall for it because people like eating meat and there's enough bad studies to cherry pick to support that position. It's not unlike a family member of mine who falls for every woo scam because whatever is being peddled from drum circles to breathwork makes them feel good so of course they spend $3k to become a "professional sound bath instructor". American culture is increasingly distrusting experts and worshipping flim flam artists because they make a compelling podcast or YouTube video.
chneu 2y ago
Because Americans glorified meat consumption back when the industrial revolution happened. Meat was traditionally was a rich person food. Once meat prices plummeted, if you were "someone" you ate meat. It became a status symbol. You can see it in TV advertisements too. Once meat consumption took off in the US there was a proliferation of antidiarrheals, antacids, and other medications to deal with the symptoms of a high meat diet. You can see it on TV advertisements. Kind of interesting. Even today, a high meat diet is a status symbol in the US.

ethbr1 2y ago

For the same reason that management consultants are fond of the Next Big Thing: $$$$. Pushing a new diet drives a ton of revenue. Advertising, TikTok, talk content, experts, books, etc. There's a financial reason Dr. Oz was always on about some batshit crazy new one.

kragen 2y ago

One reason is that, about 50 years ago, a global obesity pandemic began in the US, and nobody knows why exactly, but it seems to have something to do with their diets. Since then, it has become a worldwide public health crisis, responsible for a few percent of all death and disability. It's a bit later at affecting Europe, but it's happening there too. So people are trying all kinds of things to see if they can get better. Another reason is that for about 300 years people in Europe who did things that made their neighbors tremble in horror† had to flee for their lives, and a lot of them fled to parts of America including Argentina and the US. Consequently the US is rather full of people who are inclined, culturally or possibly genetically, to put whatever crazy ideas they happen to believe into actual practice rather than following tradition or majority opinion. Diet fads in the US go back at least 200 years. Myself, I dropped 17 kg on a carnivore diet starting a couple of years ago, and I've kept it off on a much more mixed diet since then. ______ † Quakers, Puritans, Anabaptists, Old Believers, Jews, etc.

cogman10 2y ago
70 years ago meat was strictly rationed and 50% of calories came from victory gardens. If the thesis is that obesity came from removing saturated fat from the diet, why is it that there wasn't problems with obesity during WWII when saturated was strictly rationed out of the general populations diet? I mean, FFS, magazines sold magic powders to woman to help them become fatter. (Being too skinny was seen as unattractive). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden?wprov=sfla1
- kragen 2y ago
  > If the thesis is that obesity came from removing saturated fat from the diet That thesis is clearly wrong, though there are still people who believe it. If you want to spend ten minutes getting better informed, you can read a chapter-length thorough rebuttal at https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-saturated-fat-diets/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/10/for-then-against-high-.... Reading the sources it cites will take you longer than that. But the very simple explanation is that it is well known that traditional diets that do not produce high levels of obesity include many different levels of both fat intake and saturated-fat intake. Whatever is unique about the modern industrial obesogenic diet of ultra-processed foods, it isn't that it contains uniquely low levels of saturated fats.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    I apologize, I misread your initial argument. I thought you were defending the canavore diet, the subject of the article went through (there are definitely comments in this comments section making that claim). The research behind ultra processing has legs from what I've read. My none expert take is that it has more to do with the fact that portion sizes are larger and caloric density is higher. It doesn't take long to find videos of people from all over the world visiting the US and commenting on how much food is served. That also jives with why drugs like semaglutide work so well at reducing weight.
    - kragen 2y ago
      Caloric density is also pretty high in traditional diets like those of the Hadza, the Inuit, the French, the Argentines, and the Italians, but those produce low levels of obesity. So that can't be it. Those diets also don't include semaglutide. Large portion sizes are real, but they are downstream of whatever is unnaturally increasing US appetites. Restaurants, housewives, and househusbands in the US don't serve 1500-kcal meals because they're in some kind of conspiracy to fatten your kids up for slaughter. They serve them because people complain if they don't. The "ultra-processed" meme is clearly pointing at something critical, but it can't itself be the answer, because it's ontologically incoherent. As the post I linked above says: > I’ve previously found [this meme] frustrating – it reeks of a sort of unreflective technophobia. What part of processing makes food bad? How does mere contact with a machine turn food from healthy to unhealthy? What food counts as “processed” or “not processed”? Is ground beef processed, since you grind it? Are scrambled eggs processed, since you scramble them? Is bread processed, since wheat doesn’t grow in loaves? Is water processed, since it goes through water processing facilities? Is the Eucharist processed, even though the processing only changes its metaphysical essence and not its physical properties? Everybody I ask acts like the answers to these questions are obvious, but everyone has different answers, and nobody can tell me their decision procedure. So, is it corn? Missing micronutrients? Industrial polysaccharide thickeners? Fungicides like propionate? Nanoparticles of titanium dioxide? Antinutrients like phytate and citrate reducing bioavailability of polyvalent-cation micronutrients? Some combination? Lots of people have promising hypotheses but nobody knows. Anybody who claims to know is either lying or insane, often both.
atemerev 2y ago
The latter explanation is interesting, thank you. Experimentation is fine.
- kragen 2y ago
  In your grandparent comment you said experimentation makes you tremble in horror. The experimentation in question is with raw milk, so not even a particularly extreme sort of experimentation, since that's what all milk was for thousands of years. It's difficult to imagine what sort of experimentation you think is fine if that's not it.
  - atemerev 2y ago
    Well, “for thousands of years” is not an argument. People were living without brushing their teeth for thousands of years. There was no modern medicine for thousands of years. Children were routinely dying from infections for thousands of years. There’s this little thing called “progress”.

cogman10 2y ago

Because there's a fairly large swath of American popular culture that has sprung up to "nuh uh" every perceived standard or best understanding. "Avoid saturated fat" "nuh uh our ancestors were alpha males that ate nothing but raw meat and black coffee, we must have evolved for that diet!" People fall for it because people like eating meat and there's enough bad studies to cherry pick to support that position. It's not unlike a family member of mine who falls for every woo scam because whatever is being peddled from drum circles to breathwork makes them feel good so of course they spend $3k to become a "professional sound bath instructor". American culture is increasingly distrusting experts and worshipping flim flam artists because they make a compelling podcast or YouTube video.

chneu 2y ago

Because Americans glorified meat consumption back when the industrial revolution happened. Meat was traditionally was a rich person food. Once meat prices plummeted, if you were "someone" you ate meat. It became a status symbol. You can see it in TV advertisements too. Once meat consumption took off in the US there was a proliferation of antidiarrheals, antacids, and other medications to deal with the symptoms of a high meat diet. You can see it on TV advertisements. Kind of interesting. Even today, a high meat diet is a status symbol in the US.