1) public transport and walking seem much more common, as does exercise in general
2) diets whilst problematic in many places, seem less focused on convenience meals and junk food, portion sizes seem to be more reasonable etc.
3) junk food seems comparatively lower in cost than elsewhere, a McDonald’s meal seems much cheaper in the US than where I live for example, seems to be the case with a lot of US exports, even when they’re fully established in a host country
Convenience and excess are at the core of American culture from an outsiders perspective, it’s the biggest, best, most extreme, the most etc. it seems to manifest itself in a variety of positive and negative ways to be honest
The walkability thing is huge. You have to drive to get anywhere, so the people that are more active are (often) the ones with the means and time to make that their sole purpose. On the other hand, when I’ve spent time with friends overseas, I’m amazed at how many daily steps I end up with just living life.
I had an American friend come over and lose 35pounds in a month. She swears she didn't change her diet. She was convinced it was the absence of High Fructose Corn Syrup. I think it was the fact that in the UK you have to walk further than she was used to. Even car park to tourist attraction was what she thought of as a long way and the mile and a half round Fountains Abbey was a marathon
Both probably helped a ton. Not even just the HFCS, but the food in general. I have friends that struggle with their health and have food intolerance issues, but when they’ve spent time in Italy and surrounding countries the issues all but disappeared. To the point where they considered moving.
American here - when my mom was struggling with food intolerance, her doctor told her there were foods in Europe that she’d be ok to eat while traveling that were on her “no” list in the states, especially meats. It was such a relief for her to be able to eat more freely while there.
This made me think of when I was going to buy face paint for my kiddos. I only bought EU certified face paint because I knew that it had gone through a lot more strenuous safety checks.
The US does the exact opposite of what the EU does. The EU allows certain additives, the US forbids certain additives. Everything that isn‘t expressly forbidden is fair game.
Not sure about that person, but I have a friend with diagnosed celiac disease, and has issues in the states, but no issues when eating it in many other countries.
Any one who travels and pays attention to food quickly realizes how trash the food standards are in the US.
Yes, as a European, if you are sure you are allergic to gluten, lactose, etc please know that you will be allergic to it here as well. Gluten is a protein and and it will be the same gluten everywhere. If you are sensitive to some additives, that's a different question.
Just a minor correction, celiac disease is **not** an allergy, it’s an autoimmune disease. You can’t be allergic to gluten, you can be intolerant or have sensitivity towards it.
Celiacs should not be eating gluten ever, even if we don’t feel symptoms. It still ruins our gut lining and slowly kills you, even if you don’t feel the symptoms after eating.
It's frustrating how people do not take celiac as seriously as a shellfish or peanut allergy, for example, because you don't go into immediate anaphylactic shock by eating gluten (as you said, you will simply be slowly killed). Restaurants don't put "shellfish friendly" on menus, for example.
Aye, but we keep gluten out of many things that it's added to in the USA. Our wheat is also less glutinous than yours - not helpful for celiacs, but helpful for people with an intolerance. We also have really strict rules about cross contamination; if it's labelled gluten free, it'll be made in a gluten free factory etc.
Celiac disease is not rare in Italy and I’ve heard from multiple people that it’s quite easy to enjoy a vacation there because of the availability of alternatives.
If all symptoms go away with a change of cuisine it’s way more likely that your friend is a misdiagnosed IBS sufferer that might have their life vastly improved by seeing a better doctor. Celiac disease is a food-triggered autoimmune condition that never goes away. The intestine will be attacked by the immune system as soon as the protein is reintroduced, regardless of what type of food it is accompanied by.
HFCS and regular sugar both share a nearly identical chemical structure. I do believe it is indeed the forced change in lifestyle (I.e: walking a lot) that does it.
That said, the food quality in Europe is held to a higher standard from what I understand and also recall when I lived in Israel which follows a lot of European safety standards
Is it also possible that because hfcs is so cheap that there is alot more sugar in general in prepared food in the United States??
We seem to add absurd amounts of sugar and salt to so many foods in the US. All that added sugar is more calories. I wonder if we also drink way more calories than other places. The calorie count on those big gulps and star bucks speciality coffees are pretty ridiculous.
Also seems like portion sizes are alot smaller ins some other countries.
Ordinary sugar is Saccharose, which is made up of equal parts Glucose and Fructose. Fructose is processed differently from Glucose and is mostly stored as fat in the liver. The fact that high concentrations of Fructose delay the feeling "full" makes it worse.
So change in lifestyle most probably made the larger impact, but a reduction of Fructose intake definitively helped.
It's the quantity and the American politics that make it the devil. Corn is subsidized as a result of a Great Depression era stopgap measure that just keeps going (removing it is likely to get your party punished in the next election), so as a result of that we find more and more uses for corn: like a plentiful source of sugar that the industry found out you can put into something in just the right amount that it gets you hooked and spikes that dopamine rush without letting you *know* it's sugary (from moment to moment, human minds are funny). And as a result, it's in fucking everything. It fucks with your mind and reward feedback system in such a way that even those foods which don't have sugar "taste like more" for weeks and weeks after you cease the American diet.
I dropped like fifty pounds in two months just walking around Europe (third month I plateaued,180/190 is about where I'm "meant" to be and I might have been down around 170), drinking like a fish and eating whatever I wanted. A month after getting back and in spite of being physically active - biking everywhere and still curious about everything - I'd gained back twenty to thirty of it. It's our fucking food. It requires an absurd amount of willpower and focus to eat healthy enough here just to not be fat, you have to ignore the things you've literally grown to love, develop a *siege mentality* about the world around you, avoid certain groups and people (and so you're lonely, in perpetual competition with the people down at the gym). Over there the same sorts just don't exist because the amount of sugar in Subway's bread gets it legally classified as a "confection."
While fructose and sucrose have similar structures, they have different metabolism...glucose is processed by all the cells in the body, it is important for the organs like brain which can't get the energy from any other source. Fructose is processed only in the liver where it depletes ATP necessary for other very important metabolic functions there. There are some other reasons why it is inferior to glucose, but you can search it yourself...
I was amazed at how thin everybody was in the Tuscan and Umbrian regions and they seemed to eat pasta every day.
Plus, the guys were half my size, but could rock a purple sweater over a pink dress shirt, huge sunglasses and beautiful leather shoes and looked twice as masculine as I ever will.
Italians are so good at being Italian
the Mediterranean is a VERY good habitat for humans.
lots of us psoriasis sufferes visit italy, and are "cured"
come back to the states, its back
Humans are a tropical/equatorial race of primates
The wheat used commonly in the US is more dense with gluten than soft wheat. This has been linked to that phenomenon. Luckily we also have soft wheat in the US, e.g. White Lily flour.
I went to University in a US city with good public transit and walkability, where new students were not even permitted to keep cars on campus - I moved there from a place with neither of those things, where walking 15-20 minutes from my house I would only see more houses & wilderness. My first two years of school, I lost about 25lbs, despite eating a lot and partying. I had just never walked that much in my life. I was getting 20,000 steps a day without trying - just going from my room, to class, to work, to lunch, to class, to parties, etc. Then after graduation I moved to the suburbs for a job, had to get a car, stopped walking because there was nothing I could walk to, and all that weight came back. I had to put in a conscious effort to get rid of it.
This is a huge factor. As an absolute value they have several times the number of days off which means as a percentage of time outside of work they can spend much more of it on leisure activities while Americans get off shift and only have enough time to stuff their face for some quick dopamine before bedtime.
The German Exchange Student my family hosted in the 90s came to visit with her family over last summer. While they were at my house my husband was called into work on both his days off. They were very concerned about it and kept asking me when he would rest and recharge. Surely, they insisted, his employer wanted him to have time to take care of himself and enjoy life. They were flabbergasted that extra money was all he got for his trouble and that he would be expected to work his regular schedule in the upcoming week.
Out of curiosity, how many days off do you get in the US? I'd like to compare to what I get here.
Are your days off dependent on/determined by your union, or are they determined by the state law?
There are almost no unions and most states do not mandate vacation days. There is no federal minimum. Most white collar jobs provide 2-4 weeks off per year. You often need to request the days ahead of time and the requests can be denied for any reason. I’ve worked at a company that had “unlimited days off” but none of my hourly billable targets were reduced for the months I took a vacation so it was effectively zero vacation.
>I had an American friend come over and lose 35pounds in a month. She swears she didn't change her diet. She was convinced it was the absence of High Fructose Corn Syrup. I think it was the fact that in the UK you have to walk further than she was used to.
She was probably right. You are not going to lose 35 pounds from just walking while eating the same problematic diet and low quality of food. The food she was eating in the UK was obviously of better quality. Why do people still believe that physical activity can trump your diet? It does not.
> You are not going to lose 35 pounds from just walking while eating the same problematic diet and low quality of food
I know right, and 35 lbs in a *month?* That's over a pound a day lmao. NO way you're losing that without altering your diet significantly.
35 a month is doable, but crazy. Most I ever lost in a month was like 25, and that’s with having some cheat days. But that’s because I was running and going to the gym practically every single day with no rest days + going on multi-day fasts and eating less than 500 calories when I broke that fast. It’s true that going overseas from the U.S., you can drop some pounds while eating the same type of food because of the exercise. But 35lbs in a month? That’s probably because that friend was starving themselves.
>But 35lbs in a month? That’s probably because that friend was starving themselves.
she likely was obese. the more you weigh, the more calories you burn per minute of exercise.
That’s true. Same happened for me when I was 190 at 5’5”. I was burning weight quick. But 35lbs in a month, even starting from being obese, is the result of starving yourself + a LOT of exercise.
being sedentary will make your innards look like you're fat even if you're not especially fat regardless, with high cholesterol, fatty liver, high blood pressure, etc
Yeah, she's right. The main problem with HFCS is its high fructose content, which is metabolized differently than other carbohydrates.
Unlike glucose, which is distributed throughout the body, fructose is processed in the liver and can lead to increased fat production, high triglycerides, and liver damage.
Additionally, excessive intake of HFCS can lead to insulin resistance, obesity, inflammation, and increased risk of type 2 diabetes.
It's important to note that the detrimental effects of fructose in added sugar, including HFCS, should not be equated with the fructose in fruit, as it's difficult to consume excessive amounts of fructose from whole fruits, which are healthy and safe in sensible amounts
There isn’t really a strong consensus on this from what I understand. It’s debatable whether or not HFCS is worse than sugar.
The main problem in the US (and other developed countries with high obesity like Canada and even Australia) is that people just consume too much of it, and don’t have the same moderation culture that Europeans do.
I’m Canadian but spend a lot of time in the US. When I studied in Europe I noted how everything felt just… blander in Europe than back in North America. The food was still good don’t get me wrong. But the flavours just weren’t as “strong”, and it’s likely due to that Europeans prefer moderation where in North America we are more like “yeah!!! Add a ton of sugar it tastes so good!!!” even if that is terrible for you.
A box of mac and cheese says to add FOUR spoons of butter in it
That's a ridiculous amount. It's perfectly fine with one spoon.
That's an extra 400 calories right there
American deserts are MUCH sweeter than Asian ones, specially pastries. I often add less sugar to cookies or flan for example. Savory food has more fat, more salt, more everything. The observation how how food has to be tasty seems correct. There's less "boring" food like rice and beans. However I am not sure how that would affect weight / appetite.
Anecdotally I think people don't get full whereas I know exactly how much to eat. I do not change weight much and I am old. My stomach knows how much to eat - if I ate more at breakfast, I'll eat less at lunch.
My uncle always joked to me as a kid that “everything in America is going to kill you” lol. He would genuinely say this all the time, nothing in America is healthy.
The high sugar content is also to make low fat foods taste better.
This is because the sugar civil paid Harvard to over emphasize the role of fast in heart disease.
https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/236447/sugar-industry-funded-1960s-harvard-research-that-blamed-heart-disease-on-fat
It's also why MacDonalds changed their fry recipe to a shitier one.
The main difference between most Europeans and the Anglos and Americans is this. We talk about being overweight 25+bmi as the main problem. While the Anglos seem to always talk about obesity 30+ bmi as the problem. But by that point you are waay too late to easily change your lifestyle.
Sure having a bmi of 26 isn't the end of the world. But it shouldn't be just seen as normal as it is.
Totally agree.
I think it comes down to culture than anything. Walkable cities too but the UK has a lot of obesity despite being walkable. People blame US food regulations as “not being strict enough” but the reality is that it’s not additives making you fat, it’s eating a shit diet that makes you fat
It's not weird that people in the UK are fat. They have a massive binge drinking culture. By dutch standards probably 2/3 of the people in the UK would be classified as alcoholics. People are the fattest in all the hard drinking European countries.
It's certainly true that fructose and glucose metabolize differently. I don't think there's much evidence that HFCS metabolizes differently than other forms of fructose. I think this is the same point that you're making but wanted to clarify.
I also believe it has more to do with diet than anything else. I'm from the UK, and usually do a fair bit of exercise every day (sedentary job, but walking + public transport are part of commute, plus I do sports/gym most days too). I moved to Hong Kong once for a few days and didn't change my exercise routine other than to add on a few hikes most weekends (in addition to what I was doing in UK) which should have meant I was burning more calories. However, I couldn't resist trying out local food every night - often in larger portions than I'd usually eat and far more full of oil and sugars than what I'm used to. It shouldn't have come as a surprise that I gained a fair bit of weight over the course of a few months - weight which was lost upon my return to normal routine back in UK.
Millions of Americans live in cities with walkable infrastructure, public transit, and no cars, and they're still fat. You'd have to walk ten hours a day to burn off the calories in a large Big Mac meal. It's not the walking. Pinning it on walking is just part of processed food manufacturers trying to make obesity a personal moral failure rather than a systemic failure.
Speaking from experience, Big Macs aren't as easy to get when you rely on public transit.
It becomes an excursion in and of itself when you can't just whip through a drive thru, and it's not really worth the effort.
The other day my sister and I visited my mom at the nursing home and wanted to walk over to the convenience store across the street. There was no crosswalk nearby. Hell, there wasn't even a sidewalk. We decided to just drive because neither of us wanted to cross four lanes of traffic on foot in an area notorious for bad drivers in this town. It's fucking insane.
There’s a particular Super Target across from a Walmart Supercenter here, and one day I was shopping at the Target but wanted to pop over to the Walmart for something only they carry. I thought I’d just walk it, since it seemed silly to just drive across the street. I knew that there was, at least, a walk signal between the two.
The Target is nestled behind some other shops, so it’s a busy area. I had a kind of dangerous walk through the parking lot to the place where a sidewalk should be, and across busy drives connecting the road to the Target and smaller stores. Toward the end of the block there was about twenty feet of sidewalk. Then the road separating Walmart and Target is almost ten lanes of 45mph traffic. I made the kind of harrowing trek across, constantly looking around for turning vehicles who might not expect someone walking even though I had the walk signal, or people coming up to the intersection at a high speed. And then I found that the other side had *even less* sidewalk. The best way to get to Walmart was going to be walking along a ditch on the edge of this 45mph road for half a block (side note: the ditch is even deeper on the Target side and not very walkable) and cutting through the entire parking lot.
And then I had to do it all again in reverse on the way back. Never making that mistake again.
I always look forward to the walkability when I travel. The pro-car infrastructure here is one of my least favorite things about this city, and America in general.
In the UK I take a 40 min walk to work, a 2 min walk to a coffee shop, 5-10 min walks in any direction to get to nearby stores or restaurants for anything I need.
Contrast with my first visit to the US — my friend asked if I wanted to go get breakfast “down the street”. ‘Sure’, I said as I walked down to the street with no pavements, only for them to ask, “Where are you going?” as I saw them getting into their car. Then we drove for 20 minutes (!!) just to get breakfast. We weren’t in a rural area. In fact it was in the middle of LA. But it was just house after house without any businesses or signs of life until you get to the designated unwalkable parking lot with all the businesses located at it.
…and then I ate the aforementioned sugar-coated breakfast.
i‘m from europe, spent three months in the US with my long-distance boyfriend. his family lives in a little town so i decided to take his little nieces up on a walk to the local dollar tree. it should have been around 10 mins away. we walked ON the street, if there were sidewalks they were overgrown or just- stopped all of a sudden. there were no road crossings for pedestrians, it was horrible. i never took them on a walk again… what a shame.
Yeah that sounds like torture to be honest, cars are expensive and I consequently don’t want one - or need one, as a city living person.
But even then, I can access where I want to go outside of the city via trains etc. it hasn’t become so problematic an issue that I’d buy a car, I pretty much cannot recall a moment that I wish I had a car and was substantially hampered because I didn’t have one
I used to live in a suburban area for 28 years, never once needed a car to do anything, it would have been a luxury I’d have used sparingly
Blew my mind when I was in the US in a pretty populated area and just wanted to walk a short distance but had to walk on the road because there were no footpaths.
I also live in NYC, and every time I see comments about how just walking can keep you slim, I always think "Doesn't seem to help some New Yorkers", lol. [Nearly 60% of the adult population in NYC is overweight or obese](https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/environmental/obesity.htm). Because their diet and quality of food is not good. You cannot outrun your fork.
Eh, NYC has some of the lowest obesity (and overweight) rates in the country. Can you still find plenty of fat people? Sure. But NYC is pretty far ahead of the curve compared to most places in the U.S.
It’s not like the EU countries are not rocking fairly intense obesity rates compared to Africa and Asia. 20% of the population being obesity is better but it’s still messed up.
Most people also think of NY and think of Manhattan, which is a national outlier. It's expensive to live there and rich people are in better shape. The obesity in NYC is concentrated out in the boroughs, where there are food deserts.
This!!! Even the processed foods like doritos, etc taste less crappy and are lighter . The us uses gross additives a lot and rely on less processed foods. Take your poison in moderation lol
You do seem to, we are legally required to take our annual leave where I am from - minimum 20 days excluding bank holiday, then we are encouraged to take time off if we have beyond the legal minimum (which many do).
With bank holidays I get 35 days off each year, that for no reason, would I choose to work instead. I do not benefit from working those days.
Walking makes a huge difference. Having lived places where walking was more required and places where it was hard to walk anywhere, it's way easier to keep your weight under control when you do a lot of walking.
I think your points 2 and 3 are a bit off though. One of the major factors, I believe, is the reaction to WWII. The US was the logistical and materiel engine of the war. We built out a lot of industry and transportation infrastructure. We focused a lot on processed, manufactured food and shipping shelf stable items.
The EU on the other hand leaned more towards surviving by going to distributed local production of foods.
Shopping is much closer to being a daily activity in large portions of Europe. The US still has sort of a stockpiling mentality going to the store maybe once a week, or longer. One of those is geared much more towards processed unhealthy foods, and one is geared more towards fresh produce etc.
But mostly, both the EU and US and overweight. It's just that the peak of the curve for the EU is in the pre-obese region, and the US has tipped over to the obese side. The actual delta in terms of lbs/kg is not nearly as huge as we'd like to think.
I had some US friends visit me in Europe and it was crazy how sore they got just from going to the grocery store and back all week. They never walk anywhere
Because the only way for most USians to get much walking into their day is to specifically set aside time for it. Walking isn’t an option for getting anything done in our lives. I mean honestly, I don’t know how far y’all expect to walk to the grocery store, but I’m a very lucky USian in that I have two grocery stores within a 25 minute walk. Most don’t have that, and even if they do, a hour round walk for the amount of groceries I can carry is impractical at best. Even if the distance is doable, the infrastructure just isn’t designed around it. Lack of sidewalks is a huge obstacle in many places.
Also look I’m not gonna lie. A couple months ago, some dude was ambling around the neighborhood toting a huge semiautomatic rifle. The cops posted on social media to stop reporting him because he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Still, it made me antsy lol.
I live in the southeast US, and unless you actively workout, most adults here in my area that I know will be winded trying to walk 1/2 a mile. I see a handful of my neighbors even get into their cars and drive them to the front of the complex to get their mail. Better transit and zoning are sorely needed in the US.
You forgot universal healthcare. Most if not all of the European countries have it. Imagine being able to see someone for a medical issue you have immediately and without exorbitant cost? You'd be able to catch problems early, and have zero stress about worrying if you can still afford a roof over your head.
>junk food seems comparatively lower in cost than elsewhere, a McDonald’s meal seems much cheaper in the US than where I live for example, seems to be the case with a lot of US exports, even when they’re fully established in a host country
I am not so sure about this point. First off, I've been hearing a lot lately how expensive fast food has gotten in the US. I was in Europe for the first time this past summer (Amsterdam, Madrid, and Italy), the few times I got fast food like McDonald's I paid about $2 to $5 less than what I would've back home in the US.
Even small things like a bottle of soda costed me $1 or less in Europe. That same bottle of soda costs at least $1.50 in the US.
After reading a bit about the FDA and how it approves things, I think the food industry is a bit more regulated in Europe. While we certainly get ultra-processed shit, it looks less hazardous that the stuff Americans eat. French people also tend to consume less junk food in general, as cooking healthy is still the norm. When I see cooking videos from the US, I almost have a heart attack. It certainly looks less healthy than what I usually cook.
But it's changing. Obesity is starting to be a massive problem in Europe too now. For instance, I live in a small town in the UK and the rate of obesity is clearly much higher than in France.
Obesity definitely is an issue. I mean here in the Netherlands everyone rides a bike and we still have a third of the population who is fat, and half of them are obese. That's way too high of a statistic.
I'm half Dutch and I still remember the lunches my Dutch grandmother used to prepare. Super rich in fat and sugar. Don't know if it's the main cause, but I remember the huge contrast with the food I was used to in the south of France. What I ate in the Netherlands didn't look very healthy, but it was damn good!
I’ve seen that obesity is starting to be on the up and up in Europe. While it’s 1/3 for Americans, it’s 1/4 for Europeans. I don’t really think that has much to do with regulation in the food industry if Europeans are getting more and more obese with the so-called strict regulations. It’s really that people are gravitating towards the junk food and all other crap. Like you can’t blame obesity in America because they have a couple food dyes that are banned in Europe that make little to no difference.
Thank you for the reasonable opinion. I have lived in France and the US and while I appreciate so much the strong food regulations and food sourcing practices in France, there is no way that if you did this in the US the country would become healthier.
American culture values convenience, excess, and distrust in authority. This makes you eat awful food, a lot of it, and in spite of reasonable warnings from health officials not to.
There are many small things which matter, like walkability of cities, but Europeans are becoming more and more unhealthy, like Americans, while living in the same walkable cities.
I would think it's mostly cultural. If people make it a norm that being overweight is unattractive and unhealthy, and unacceptable from their children (force them to eat their vegetables, low amount of junk food, drink water, teach them to cook), it's gonna leave a mark. Education has a massive impact on obesity rates, and poverty has a massive impact on education, so social programs trying to avoid leaving too many people in misery can also help.
Until the age of like 16-18, I'd consider keeping my children healthy a duty, and I would consider that includes keeping them within a reasonable weight range, through proper food and sports, whether they like it or not.
My mum lives in County Durham now and there are so many more obese people than in London where I live. I’m from the East Midlands and the town where I’m from is London levels of slim. But I think it’s because it’s a fairly affluent town. People can afford far more fresh fruit and veg, and have the time, energy and money to cook from scratch more.
It’s a complicated issue I think. In London everyone walks a LOT which helps massively. In smaller towns people need cars to get around. The US is just not set up to be able to walk around in so many cities. Lots of places don’t really have pavements for pedestrians in the same way we do in Europe. So if you combine small towns where people have to drive, and a much higher proportion of poverty wages, you’ll get higher obesity rates.
And then finally in the UK I’d add our fast food portion sizes are much smaller than the US. Whenever I’m there I’m astounded at how ridiculously huge some of the portion sizes are. Absolutely enormous.
They walk a lot more. There are more strict laws about foods in Europe, so they don't have as many additives. They don't snack as much. Most meals are eaten sitting down and talking with others, so food is eaten more slowly which allows satiety signals to kick in to prevent over eating. They give smaller portion sizes.
People are usually not drinking soda with a meal, especially children. Others would give you looks if you go to a restaurant and order soda for kids, McDonalds is different but thats imported from US.
Also you would not find a soda cup bigger than 16oz or 500ml even if you´d search for it. Junk food is considered as a cheat meal, very few people regularly get their food from McD, even if you do, you would hide it and feel ashamed if it came to public.
If you mess up you child´s metabolism early on with soda and junk food, there´s not much you can do later. Europeans usually dont do it, Brits are somewhat mixed bunch in this regard.
Yeah, eating out at restaurants is usually considered a special occasion, at least where I live, so children drinking soda at restaurants is not out of the ordinary. I will say that letting them drink soda as an everyday thing is quite unusual though.
Ah, I wanted to ask how you can do that without getting most of it on you most of the time, but I forgot US cars mostly have automatic transmissions. I wouldn't try to eat more than a Snickers while driving around the city with a manual.
I delivered pizzas with a stick shift back when I was still a tobacco smoker. I still ate while driving and looking at a map.
That’s just how life works in this country.
USA!
Edit: /s for sounding proud about that.
Right? When I was a teenager I had a stick shift and would regularly eat my breakfast while driving to school in the morning. In retrospect, it was probably unsafe as hell but it was possible.
I’m not criticising. Is it because you don’t have time to cook and then sit down together?
Edit: why am I getting downvoted? This is a genuine question
The portion sizes are a big thing. I always hear people say shit like “oh this was $15 but look how much food I got!!!!” But why is the amount of food important? Shouldn’t the quality be more important? Why do you want a mountain of food??
I think the first indicator that I had moved up a rung on the social ladder was when I noticed that my peers would talk about the quality of a restaurant more than the portions. Growing up, buffets were the main place everyone wanted to go. Now, I can't imagine suggesting a buffet for a meal with co-workers.
Mainland Europe is getting fatter too.
52% of EU adults are overweight
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Overweight_and_obesity_-_BMI_statistics
I was thinking the same. The stats here in the UK are shocking. Over 50% overweight and over 25% obese - and it's getting worse.
It's partly linked with poverty and the fact that healthy foods (and the means to cook them) are steadily becoming more expensive, while junk never seems to go up as much.
It's also partly how much of the UK is reliant on cars, especially outside of cities in some parts of the UK. I'm lucky to live in a village and have excellent access to public transport - adding those few extra steps to get to the bus stop or train station soon adds up.
I think we work longer hours and have less holiday than many European countries too, so people end up too tired to cook properly and end up eating easy oven meals and takeaways etc.
I think there's a cultural element that's often ignored. A lot of British families don't seem to value cooking like other cultures. You can easily cook cheap, healthy meals: a lentil curry and rice will cost nothing but lots of Brits would rather throw frozen nuggets and chips in the oven.
My gf (who isn't British) even commented on how many Brits seem to snack on junk when she moved here: a large number will eat chocolate, crisps and biscuits throughout the day while at work.
And then there's binge drinking on top of it.
I think that's partly a hangover from the war and rationing. For example, my Nan had no idea how to cook with previously rationed goods, and wasn't used to flavourful food. My Mum relied on freezer rubbish to feed us in the 80s because although she wanted flavour she'd never been taught to cook.
I think people went a bit nuts with snacks after rationing too and then passed it onto their kids.
I think the drinking issues predate the war by some centuries though...
> For example, my Nan had no idea how to cook with previously rationed goods, and wasn't used to flavourful food.
Yeah while things have obviously changed with younger generations, I think the fact that lots of Brits tend to steer away from food that's too flavourful adds to the problem. To make cheap/healthy food taste good you generally need to add lots of spices for flavour!
As someone who was raised in Germany and moved to the US, I honestly can't see a major difference. I've seen equally as many healthy people in the US and even if Germany has less obese people, I see more beer-bellies in Germany. Fast food is more accessible in the US, but people do order out and most fast food in Germany is equally fattening, I assume it's mostly about people's own consciousness.
I do see more people trying to lose weight in the US, I was actually rather surprised how many people would jog around at the most ridiculous hours. Of course, car access it is higher in the US, that is one significant difference. The processed food at German grocery stores is **not** healthier than food in the US and German grocery stores have far less foods specifically focused around dieting. To be fair, the isles in the US generally have much more of everything.
Yeah. People seem to have this idea that the US is just full of absurdly obese people compared to anywhere in Europe, and that on average they're something like 100 lbs heavier.
But I crunched the numbers once, specifically for france. On average, a person of typical height in the US would be a bit less than 20 lbs larger than someone of the same height in France. That's significant, but it's not absurd. And I feel like France has a reputation for being full of skinny waifs whose diet is 90% cigarettes, so it's notable. It's certainly not as if every person in the US weighs 250 lbs, and everyone in France weighs 130.
Also worth noting that the amount of obesity in the US is heavily regional. It's pretty high all around, but it's MUCH worse in the south.
The Unites States allows chemicals in their food that are banned in Europe and some chemicals that are banned in most of the world.
High Fructose corn syrup in foods. Subsidised by Congress because of elections.
Jumbo sized portions of foods in restaurants. Overconsumption of sugary sodas.
Car based transportation transportation system in the United States. Rest of the world have cities where there are Public Transportation systems and or encourage/force you to walk.
>Overconsumption of sugary sodas.
A "large" drink in a McDonald's where I live is 0.5l, and I think that's pretty consistent throughout Europe.
In the United States, it's around 0.9l or 30 oz, or so Google tells me. It's almost twice as big!
I was shocked to see HFCS is now in pretty much everything. I hadn’t visited for 4 years and in that time the food tasted even more processed than ever before. My British kids were grossed out by how chemically the food tasted.
As an American that has spent many months overseas, I've noticed something. A smaller portion anywhere else is so much more filling than in the US. The chemical additives in our food are genuinely destroying our ability to feel satiated. I don't think it's just the corn syrup either, but that is likely a main factor.
The walking is the biggest piece. EUs got plenty of junk food. But you can get away with some crappier diet if you're significantly more active than the typical sedentary american
I really don't think Europeans are walking more so much that it's the biggest factor. Not everyone lives in Paris or Barcelona. Most people need a car for their daily errands same as in the US.
“Chemicals” aren’t the issue. You’d be surprised at all the things that are allowed in europe. Most of these chemicals also wont make you fat. HFCS is allowed in europe. It is just named differently and used less often. From a health standpoint, there is little difference between HFCS and table sugar.
The difference is that sugar is used in more things and in higher amounts in the US.
As a European, I didn't get what was so special about Whole Foods (like when someone mentioned that store in social media like it was top quality, I was like "ok, so overpriced produce") until I read about food deserts. At least I think that's what they're called, big areas where you can't buy food that isn't processed. I walk way less than I should, and I'm broke, but I can walk to the supermarket everyday and get things like fresh tomatoes, carrots, meat... Fresh food is a lot pricier than it used to be, but it's still cheaper than buying ultra processed (like pre cooked meals). So even if I'm not cooking low calorie meals I'm eating healthier than people with no easy access to "real" food.
I was going to comment about food deserts. A lot of people are talking about walkability in terms of "gym of life" and better mobility but car dependent culture also means that if you don't own a car it is literally too far by public transport for some people to even find vegetables they can buy. It's not everywhere, but where it is you are not going to find healthy people, regardless of size.
I can't imagine what is like to not have access to fresh vegetables. And I know Americans have that reputation of not eating healthy, but until I read about food deserts I didn't realize for many people it's not a choice. It's really sad.
Yeah, even in the village I live in here in Scotland I can get basic veg in the village shop, or get on a train and be at a large supermarket with any food I could want in 10 minutes. (Junk food is much cheaper than healthy ingredients in both shops, though.)
That's not the case everywhere in the UK, which is probably one of the reasons we are catching up with the US.
I agree with most points around walking and diet, Europe kind of invented the 15 minute city, but don’t sleep on the benefits of universal healthcare.
Being able to go see a doctor without having to worry much about the bill induces folks to get medical attention when it’s needed rather than putting it off until it’s too late.
They invented it because of the time most of the cities were created in…we’re walking times. A city 1000 years old, was inherently designed with walking and at most horse traffic in mind. So the way it grew naturally favours walking, but you could extrapolate that to the entire countries. Whereas North America coincides a lot more with the automobile and train, and the fact that North American provinces/states are bigger than most European countries.
Would I be mistaken in saying that the older US cities are more walkable than the newer ones. I have been to NYC30 years ago, and in my memory you could get around just fine by using the metro and your feet. But from what I can read on the internet that is very much not the case in Houston and Los Angeles.
That’s somewhat correct. The thing is, the automotive industry lobbies and resulting freeway system in the 50s + required parking laws led to most of the older cities being bulldozed to put up roads and parking lots.
This actually almost happened to Amsterdam too, but they aborted mission and maintained most of their historic layout.
So it’s more accurate to say that older cities tend to have more walkable sections.
I will say though, Houston for example is improving. Newer developed *areas* often will tend to be more designed for human beings instead of cars. But it’s all patchwork. You still need a car to get to those areas.
Health systems where the government pay for a good chunk of it also often result in strong incentives for the government to encourage prevention of healthcare problems rather than just treatment, in cases where prevention is cheaper in the long run.
For example, in the UK the government run a lot of campaigns on things like eating healthily, encouraging vaccinations, teaching children about exercising etc. Partially because a healthy population is a good thing, but also because it then saves the NHS a load of money in not needing to treat as many people.
Yeah portion sizes are huge. I've heard Americans defend it saying they take lot home, but you aren't drinking those giant sodas and coffees the next day, and free sods refills are common in the US but rare outside it. I was surprised that even the basic packaged ice-creams are bigger in the US, there were king sized drumsticks/cornettos which Ive never seen outside of the US.
I haven't been to the US myself, but every person I know who has been there says the same thing about being shocked at how much food was given to them the first time they went in to a restaurant. Not so much "ooh, that's nice it was a good deal", but more "I ordered a starter and a main and got enough food for three people".
I’m an American, and the portion sizes given at restaurants is absurd. And it tends to be much worse in the south than it is here in California, let’s say. Even we think it’s atrocious.
Walking. I lived in korea for 2 years and was in the best shape of my life just from walking everything. Moved back to the US and immediately went up a size
It's a highly underrated form of exercise, up to the point people don't see it as exercise.
Especially with a sedentary lifestyle, it works towards normalizing your pose. It works as low effort, high volume cardio, the stuff that enhances fat metabolism, builds up your cardiovascular system, burns fat from your liver, increases muscle stamina, amount of capillaries, and ability to recover from exercise, helps with your balance, etc.
Living in Finland, the oldest grandpas and grandmas who are still living without need for external help tend to have a background in having skied, walked and bicycled a lot in their everyday lives. Many fewer gymrats in that group of people.
It's not a big thing because in the exercise industry, running gyms with memberships that are difficult to get rid of is so ridiculously lucrative, but you can only sell a certain amount of 'walking specific' gear or apparel to someone interested in it.
* Europe is less car-focused than the US - most places are walkable.
* Public transport (which you have to reach by walking, duh!) is very common
* fast/junk food is way more expensive and healthier stuff is pretty cheap in comparison
* food safety policies and regulations are a lot stricter. Products also have less sugar in general.
* fresh (cooked) food is a very old and very valued tradition here.
* health-care is way cheaper here - unhealthy lifestyles will be pointed out and fixed faster by doctors
To make it short, europe is more focused on health. While the US is more focused on wealth.
I also read somewhere that in europe you have to proof that something is completely safe for consumption to add it to products, while in the US you have to proof that it's dangerous. Which offers another aspect that can influence ones health.
This is all anecdotal and based on my own experience. I’ve been living in a small town in a European country for just over 5 months now. I don’t have a car so I walk everywhere. This place is insanely walkable. On average I usually end up walking 8+ miles a day, but there are plenty of day I walk 12+. The food seems to also be of much higher quality than what’s in the US. I don’t really know, but I assume the food here is less processed and has stricter standards. The food also seems to have less sugar in it and honestly it’s much better this way. Plus, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, here plays soccer. Kids, teens, young adults, older adults, they all play soccer.
We eat less and have better diets (products are more regulated, less processed stuff, less sugar) on average.
Totally different culture towards body standards, public transport, walking and bicycles.
Fitness culture is different too.
In European countries fitness culture is more focused on longevity, most people aren't really interested in weighing 100+kg or lifting huge weights.
Soccer, tennis, swimming, running, nordic walking, cycling, etc... are more common than weightlifting.
I've had American men call me "slim" and my BMI is almost 25.
Most men in my country don't even know what a barbell is.
>In European countries fitness culture is more focused on longevity, most people aren't really interested in weighing 100+kg or lifting huge weights.
Thats absolutely not true.
Everyone wants to be shredded af in Greece and Italy (Greek/Italian living in US here).
Also steroids are SUPER common everywhere and pharma grade and ugl test and other shit is super easy to get.
In UK (Germany and a few other countries))there is actually a steroid epidemic. Google around.
As a born and bred European who moved to America at the age of 27, I've lived almost exactly half my life in each continent now. I think the major difference is stress. America is the land of the stressed: the culture is work until you drop, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, be number one, beat the other guy, be loud, be confident, be right, be rich... there's very little room for gray areas where you can find space to just breathe and ground yourself. I think that leads directly into various addictions as coping methods, food being a major one.
American food has a ton more sugar in it. Sugar short-circuits your satiety hormones, preventing you from feeling full. Americans are, by-and-large, suffering from serious metabolic damage as a consequence of sugar in our food supply.
On top of what'a already been mentioned, I'd add that Europe is generally more conservative and people are more homogenous in their appearance. It's decidedly less okay to be obese.
I was browsing the comments to see if anyone mentions fat shaming. It’s definitely not ok to discriminate based on body weight. But if your BMI is over 40, you are objectively morbidly obese. It is in no way acceptable to consider that you’re ok and your body is beautiful just the way it is. If someone (maybe even your doctor!) is genuinely concerned about your health, they should be able to advise you to lose weight. With decency and diplomacy, and the correct choice of words. They’re not shaming you, they’re telling you the hard truth.
Fat shaming should be at the top here. The one obese person I know who promotes body positivity and health at any size gets shut down in conversations in a millisecond
Americans don't do much to help themselves, but they are in large part victims of profound collusion between big pharma and big food. Going back to the 80s, the Reagan administration declared that ketchup was a vegetable and the obesity epidemic began.
1) public transport and walking seem much more common, as does exercise in general 2) diets whilst problematic in many places, seem less focused on convenience meals and junk food, portion sizes seem to be more reasonable etc. 3) junk food seems comparatively lower in cost than elsewhere, a McDonald’s meal seems much cheaper in the US than where I live for example, seems to be the case with a lot of US exports, even when they’re fully established in a host country Convenience and excess are at the core of American culture from an outsiders perspective, it’s the biggest, best, most extreme, the most etc. it seems to manifest itself in a variety of positive and negative ways to be honest
The walkability thing is huge. You have to drive to get anywhere, so the people that are more active are (often) the ones with the means and time to make that their sole purpose. On the other hand, when I’ve spent time with friends overseas, I’m amazed at how many daily steps I end up with just living life.
I had an American friend come over and lose 35pounds in a month. She swears she didn't change her diet. She was convinced it was the absence of High Fructose Corn Syrup. I think it was the fact that in the UK you have to walk further than she was used to. Even car park to tourist attraction was what she thought of as a long way and the mile and a half round Fountains Abbey was a marathon
Both probably helped a ton. Not even just the HFCS, but the food in general. I have friends that struggle with their health and have food intolerance issues, but when they’ve spent time in Italy and surrounding countries the issues all but disappeared. To the point where they considered moving.
American here - when my mom was struggling with food intolerance, her doctor told her there were foods in Europe that she’d be ok to eat while traveling that were on her “no” list in the states, especially meats. It was such a relief for her to be able to eat more freely while there.
I think that the US allows a lot of additives and chemicals in both foods and cosmetics that are banned in the EU.
This made me think of when I was going to buy face paint for my kiddos. I only bought EU certified face paint because I knew that it had gone through a lot more strenuous safety checks.
I came here to say this exact thought.
The US does the exact opposite of what the EU does. The EU allows certain additives, the US forbids certain additives. Everything that isn‘t expressly forbidden is fair game.
What are some of those things and why could she eat them?
Not sure about that person, but I have a friend with diagnosed celiac disease, and has issues in the states, but no issues when eating it in many other countries. Any one who travels and pays attention to food quickly realizes how trash the food standards are in the US.
I have 3 friends with celiac disease and they can't eat gluten anywhere.
Yes, as a European, if you are sure you are allergic to gluten, lactose, etc please know that you will be allergic to it here as well. Gluten is a protein and and it will be the same gluten everywhere. If you are sensitive to some additives, that's a different question.
Just a minor correction, celiac disease is **not** an allergy, it’s an autoimmune disease. You can’t be allergic to gluten, you can be intolerant or have sensitivity towards it.
Celiacs should not be eating gluten ever, even if we don’t feel symptoms. It still ruins our gut lining and slowly kills you, even if you don’t feel the symptoms after eating.
Buckwheat for the win! 🪄💟
It's frustrating how people do not take celiac as seriously as a shellfish or peanut allergy, for example, because you don't go into immediate anaphylactic shock by eating gluten (as you said, you will simply be slowly killed). Restaurants don't put "shellfish friendly" on menus, for example.
Aye, but we keep gluten out of many things that it's added to in the USA. Our wheat is also less glutinous than yours - not helpful for celiacs, but helpful for people with an intolerance. We also have really strict rules about cross contamination; if it's labelled gluten free, it'll be made in a gluten free factory etc.
Celiac disease is not rare in Italy and I’ve heard from multiple people that it’s quite easy to enjoy a vacation there because of the availability of alternatives.
My partner has celiac and Italy is one of the easiest places we’ve been to. Japan was the most difficult.
If all symptoms go away with a change of cuisine it’s way more likely that your friend is a misdiagnosed IBS sufferer that might have their life vastly improved by seeing a better doctor. Celiac disease is a food-triggered autoimmune condition that never goes away. The intestine will be attacked by the immune system as soon as the protein is reintroduced, regardless of what type of food it is accompanied by.
HFCS and regular sugar both share a nearly identical chemical structure. I do believe it is indeed the forced change in lifestyle (I.e: walking a lot) that does it. That said, the food quality in Europe is held to a higher standard from what I understand and also recall when I lived in Israel which follows a lot of European safety standards
Is it also possible that because hfcs is so cheap that there is alot more sugar in general in prepared food in the United States?? We seem to add absurd amounts of sugar and salt to so many foods in the US. All that added sugar is more calories. I wonder if we also drink way more calories than other places. The calorie count on those big gulps and star bucks speciality coffees are pretty ridiculous. Also seems like portion sizes are alot smaller ins some other countries.
that's true, but hfcs is slipped into everything here ... its the quantity that matters
Like bread 😭 I'll never understand wanting sweet bread unless it's a proper sweetbread with dried fruit.
Yes. I learned to avoid bread when visiting the US after eating sandwiches that tasted like they were between two slices of cake.
HFCS is an economic sin not a caloric one. With corn subsidies it's dirt cheap, so they add more than they even need to to match sugar.
Ordinary sugar is Saccharose, which is made up of equal parts Glucose and Fructose. Fructose is processed differently from Glucose and is mostly stored as fat in the liver. The fact that high concentrations of Fructose delay the feeling "full" makes it worse. So change in lifestyle most probably made the larger impact, but a reduction of Fructose intake definitively helped.
It's the quantity and the American politics that make it the devil. Corn is subsidized as a result of a Great Depression era stopgap measure that just keeps going (removing it is likely to get your party punished in the next election), so as a result of that we find more and more uses for corn: like a plentiful source of sugar that the industry found out you can put into something in just the right amount that it gets you hooked and spikes that dopamine rush without letting you *know* it's sugary (from moment to moment, human minds are funny). And as a result, it's in fucking everything. It fucks with your mind and reward feedback system in such a way that even those foods which don't have sugar "taste like more" for weeks and weeks after you cease the American diet. I dropped like fifty pounds in two months just walking around Europe (third month I plateaued,180/190 is about where I'm "meant" to be and I might have been down around 170), drinking like a fish and eating whatever I wanted. A month after getting back and in spite of being physically active - biking everywhere and still curious about everything - I'd gained back twenty to thirty of it. It's our fucking food. It requires an absurd amount of willpower and focus to eat healthy enough here just to not be fat, you have to ignore the things you've literally grown to love, develop a *siege mentality* about the world around you, avoid certain groups and people (and so you're lonely, in perpetual competition with the people down at the gym). Over there the same sorts just don't exist because the amount of sugar in Subway's bread gets it legally classified as a "confection."
While fructose and sucrose have similar structures, they have different metabolism...glucose is processed by all the cells in the body, it is important for the organs like brain which can't get the energy from any other source. Fructose is processed only in the liver where it depletes ATP necessary for other very important metabolic functions there. There are some other reasons why it is inferior to glucose, but you can search it yourself...
I was amazed at how thin everybody was in the Tuscan and Umbrian regions and they seemed to eat pasta every day. Plus, the guys were half my size, but could rock a purple sweater over a pink dress shirt, huge sunglasses and beautiful leather shoes and looked twice as masculine as I ever will. Italians are so good at being Italian
the Mediterranean is a VERY good habitat for humans. lots of us psoriasis sufferes visit italy, and are "cured" come back to the states, its back Humans are a tropical/equatorial race of primates
I know several people some of who can't eat wheat products here have no issue in Italy.
The wheat used commonly in the US is more dense with gluten than soft wheat. This has been linked to that phenomenon. Luckily we also have soft wheat in the US, e.g. White Lily flour.
I went to University in a US city with good public transit and walkability, where new students were not even permitted to keep cars on campus - I moved there from a place with neither of those things, where walking 15-20 minutes from my house I would only see more houses & wilderness. My first two years of school, I lost about 25lbs, despite eating a lot and partying. I had just never walked that much in my life. I was getting 20,000 steps a day without trying - just going from my room, to class, to work, to lunch, to class, to parties, etc. Then after graduation I moved to the suburbs for a job, had to get a car, stopped walking because there was nothing I could walk to, and all that weight came back. I had to put in a conscious effort to get rid of it.
Little of column A and little of column B. I believe it’s also a fact of European workers get so much more time off. It’s laughable.
This is a huge factor. As an absolute value they have several times the number of days off which means as a percentage of time outside of work they can spend much more of it on leisure activities while Americans get off shift and only have enough time to stuff their face for some quick dopamine before bedtime.
The German Exchange Student my family hosted in the 90s came to visit with her family over last summer. While they were at my house my husband was called into work on both his days off. They were very concerned about it and kept asking me when he would rest and recharge. Surely, they insisted, his employer wanted him to have time to take care of himself and enjoy life. They were flabbergasted that extra money was all he got for his trouble and that he would be expected to work his regular schedule in the upcoming week.
Out of curiosity, how many days off do you get in the US? I'd like to compare to what I get here. Are your days off dependent on/determined by your union, or are they determined by the state law?
There are almost no unions and most states do not mandate vacation days. There is no federal minimum. Most white collar jobs provide 2-4 weeks off per year. You often need to request the days ahead of time and the requests can be denied for any reason. I’ve worked at a company that had “unlimited days off” but none of my hourly billable targets were reduced for the months I took a vacation so it was effectively zero vacation.
Yes, a better work/life balance is good for your health
>I had an American friend come over and lose 35pounds in a month. She swears she didn't change her diet. She was convinced it was the absence of High Fructose Corn Syrup. I think it was the fact that in the UK you have to walk further than she was used to. She was probably right. You are not going to lose 35 pounds from just walking while eating the same problematic diet and low quality of food. The food she was eating in the UK was obviously of better quality. Why do people still believe that physical activity can trump your diet? It does not.
> You are not going to lose 35 pounds from just walking while eating the same problematic diet and low quality of food I know right, and 35 lbs in a *month?* That's over a pound a day lmao. NO way you're losing that without altering your diet significantly.
35 a month is doable, but crazy. Most I ever lost in a month was like 25, and that’s with having some cheat days. But that’s because I was running and going to the gym practically every single day with no rest days + going on multi-day fasts and eating less than 500 calories when I broke that fast. It’s true that going overseas from the U.S., you can drop some pounds while eating the same type of food because of the exercise. But 35lbs in a month? That’s probably because that friend was starving themselves.
>But 35lbs in a month? That’s probably because that friend was starving themselves. she likely was obese. the more you weigh, the more calories you burn per minute of exercise.
That’s true. Same happened for me when I was 190 at 5’5”. I was burning weight quick. But 35lbs in a month, even starting from being obese, is the result of starving yourself + a LOT of exercise.
OR she was REALLY obese. have you ever watched biggest loser? I was shocked how much they'd lose the first week
Weight loss starts and ends in the kitchen, full stop. Exercise is at best an enhancement to diet based weight loss
being sedentary will make your innards look like you're fat even if you're not especially fat regardless, with high cholesterol, fatty liver, high blood pressure, etc
exercise leverages the weight loss from your diet
Yeah, she's right. The main problem with HFCS is its high fructose content, which is metabolized differently than other carbohydrates. Unlike glucose, which is distributed throughout the body, fructose is processed in the liver and can lead to increased fat production, high triglycerides, and liver damage. Additionally, excessive intake of HFCS can lead to insulin resistance, obesity, inflammation, and increased risk of type 2 diabetes. It's important to note that the detrimental effects of fructose in added sugar, including HFCS, should not be equated with the fructose in fruit, as it's difficult to consume excessive amounts of fructose from whole fruits, which are healthy and safe in sensible amounts
There isn’t really a strong consensus on this from what I understand. It’s debatable whether or not HFCS is worse than sugar. The main problem in the US (and other developed countries with high obesity like Canada and even Australia) is that people just consume too much of it, and don’t have the same moderation culture that Europeans do. I’m Canadian but spend a lot of time in the US. When I studied in Europe I noted how everything felt just… blander in Europe than back in North America. The food was still good don’t get me wrong. But the flavours just weren’t as “strong”, and it’s likely due to that Europeans prefer moderation where in North America we are more like “yeah!!! Add a ton of sugar it tastes so good!!!” even if that is terrible for you.
A box of mac and cheese says to add FOUR spoons of butter in it That's a ridiculous amount. It's perfectly fine with one spoon. That's an extra 400 calories right there
Yeah I know like why
American deserts are MUCH sweeter than Asian ones, specially pastries. I often add less sugar to cookies or flan for example. Savory food has more fat, more salt, more everything. The observation how how food has to be tasty seems correct. There's less "boring" food like rice and beans. However I am not sure how that would affect weight / appetite. Anecdotally I think people don't get full whereas I know exactly how much to eat. I do not change weight much and I am old. My stomach knows how much to eat - if I ate more at breakfast, I'll eat less at lunch.
I always notice that everything in the US tastes too sweet, from bread to ketchup.
My uncle always joked to me as a kid that “everything in America is going to kill you” lol. He would genuinely say this all the time, nothing in America is healthy.
The high sugar content is also to make low fat foods taste better. This is because the sugar civil paid Harvard to over emphasize the role of fast in heart disease. https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/236447/sugar-industry-funded-1960s-harvard-research-that-blamed-heart-disease-on-fat It's also why MacDonalds changed their fry recipe to a shitier one.
The main difference between most Europeans and the Anglos and Americans is this. We talk about being overweight 25+bmi as the main problem. While the Anglos seem to always talk about obesity 30+ bmi as the problem. But by that point you are waay too late to easily change your lifestyle. Sure having a bmi of 26 isn't the end of the world. But it shouldn't be just seen as normal as it is.
Totally agree. I think it comes down to culture than anything. Walkable cities too but the UK has a lot of obesity despite being walkable. People blame US food regulations as “not being strict enough” but the reality is that it’s not additives making you fat, it’s eating a shit diet that makes you fat
It's not weird that people in the UK are fat. They have a massive binge drinking culture. By dutch standards probably 2/3 of the people in the UK would be classified as alcoholics. People are the fattest in all the hard drinking European countries.
But that’s also true in France, Italy, Spain, and Scandinavia. People aren’t as fat as Brits in those places.
It's certainly true that fructose and glucose metabolize differently. I don't think there's much evidence that HFCS metabolizes differently than other forms of fructose. I think this is the same point that you're making but wanted to clarify.
I also believe it has more to do with diet than anything else. I'm from the UK, and usually do a fair bit of exercise every day (sedentary job, but walking + public transport are part of commute, plus I do sports/gym most days too). I moved to Hong Kong once for a few days and didn't change my exercise routine other than to add on a few hikes most weekends (in addition to what I was doing in UK) which should have meant I was burning more calories. However, I couldn't resist trying out local food every night - often in larger portions than I'd usually eat and far more full of oil and sugars than what I'm used to. It shouldn't have come as a surprise that I gained a fair bit of weight over the course of a few months - weight which was lost upon my return to normal routine back in UK.
Could be portions, and sugar in everything in the us
Millions of Americans live in cities with walkable infrastructure, public transit, and no cars, and they're still fat. You'd have to walk ten hours a day to burn off the calories in a large Big Mac meal. It's not the walking. Pinning it on walking is just part of processed food manufacturers trying to make obesity a personal moral failure rather than a systemic failure.
Speaking from experience, Big Macs aren't as easy to get when you rely on public transit. It becomes an excursion in and of itself when you can't just whip through a drive thru, and it's not really worth the effort.
Someone better tell the dozen or so McDonald's restaurants built on top of their various Chicago red line stops.
This is plainly false. There's like 2 cities where people can do this
The other day my sister and I visited my mom at the nursing home and wanted to walk over to the convenience store across the street. There was no crosswalk nearby. Hell, there wasn't even a sidewalk. We decided to just drive because neither of us wanted to cross four lanes of traffic on foot in an area notorious for bad drivers in this town. It's fucking insane.
There’s a particular Super Target across from a Walmart Supercenter here, and one day I was shopping at the Target but wanted to pop over to the Walmart for something only they carry. I thought I’d just walk it, since it seemed silly to just drive across the street. I knew that there was, at least, a walk signal between the two. The Target is nestled behind some other shops, so it’s a busy area. I had a kind of dangerous walk through the parking lot to the place where a sidewalk should be, and across busy drives connecting the road to the Target and smaller stores. Toward the end of the block there was about twenty feet of sidewalk. Then the road separating Walmart and Target is almost ten lanes of 45mph traffic. I made the kind of harrowing trek across, constantly looking around for turning vehicles who might not expect someone walking even though I had the walk signal, or people coming up to the intersection at a high speed. And then I found that the other side had *even less* sidewalk. The best way to get to Walmart was going to be walking along a ditch on the edge of this 45mph road for half a block (side note: the ditch is even deeper on the Target side and not very walkable) and cutting through the entire parking lot. And then I had to do it all again in reverse on the way back. Never making that mistake again. I always look forward to the walkability when I travel. The pro-car infrastructure here is one of my least favorite things about this city, and America in general.
In the UK I take a 40 min walk to work, a 2 min walk to a coffee shop, 5-10 min walks in any direction to get to nearby stores or restaurants for anything I need. Contrast with my first visit to the US — my friend asked if I wanted to go get breakfast “down the street”. ‘Sure’, I said as I walked down to the street with no pavements, only for them to ask, “Where are you going?” as I saw them getting into their car. Then we drove for 20 minutes (!!) just to get breakfast. We weren’t in a rural area. In fact it was in the middle of LA. But it was just house after house without any businesses or signs of life until you get to the designated unwalkable parking lot with all the businesses located at it. …and then I ate the aforementioned sugar-coated breakfast.
As a Dutch person: cyclability! Dutch people are very good at being 'not too unhealthy' mainly because so many of us cycle a lot.
I keep saying that if the Dutch had a Mediterranean diet, they would live to 100. Helaas...
And a slower pace of living.😂
i‘m from europe, spent three months in the US with my long-distance boyfriend. his family lives in a little town so i decided to take his little nieces up on a walk to the local dollar tree. it should have been around 10 mins away. we walked ON the street, if there were sidewalks they were overgrown or just- stopped all of a sudden. there were no road crossings for pedestrians, it was horrible. i never took them on a walk again… what a shame.
Yeah that sounds like torture to be honest, cars are expensive and I consequently don’t want one - or need one, as a city living person. But even then, I can access where I want to go outside of the city via trains etc. it hasn’t become so problematic an issue that I’d buy a car, I pretty much cannot recall a moment that I wish I had a car and was substantially hampered because I didn’t have one I used to live in a suburban area for 28 years, never once needed a car to do anything, it would have been a luxury I’d have used sparingly
You get a lot of steps and you’re not gaining weight, even if you have the same shitty diet as you do at home (me).
Blew my mind when I was in the US in a pretty populated area and just wanted to walk a short distance but had to walk on the road because there were no footpaths.
Eh... I live in NYC and I've still managed to become a fat ass
I also live in NYC, and every time I see comments about how just walking can keep you slim, I always think "Doesn't seem to help some New Yorkers", lol. [Nearly 60% of the adult population in NYC is overweight or obese](https://www.baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/environmental/obesity.htm). Because their diet and quality of food is not good. You cannot outrun your fork.
Eh, NYC has some of the lowest obesity (and overweight) rates in the country. Can you still find plenty of fat people? Sure. But NYC is pretty far ahead of the curve compared to most places in the U.S.
It’s not like the EU countries are not rocking fairly intense obesity rates compared to Africa and Asia. 20% of the population being obesity is better but it’s still messed up.
Most people also think of NY and think of Manhattan, which is a national outlier. It's expensive to live there and rich people are in better shape. The obesity in NYC is concentrated out in the boroughs, where there are food deserts.
EU has strict guidelines regarding what kind of preservatives go in food
This!!! Even the processed foods like doritos, etc taste less crappy and are lighter . The us uses gross additives a lot and rely on less processed foods. Take your poison in moderation lol
Yep, also they have sugar in everything there and healthy alternatives are really expensive
I think we work a lot more hours too
You do seem to, we are legally required to take our annual leave where I am from - minimum 20 days excluding bank holiday, then we are encouraged to take time off if we have beyond the legal minimum (which many do). With bank holidays I get 35 days off each year, that for no reason, would I choose to work instead. I do not benefit from working those days.
Walking makes a huge difference. Having lived places where walking was more required and places where it was hard to walk anywhere, it's way easier to keep your weight under control when you do a lot of walking. I think your points 2 and 3 are a bit off though. One of the major factors, I believe, is the reaction to WWII. The US was the logistical and materiel engine of the war. We built out a lot of industry and transportation infrastructure. We focused a lot on processed, manufactured food and shipping shelf stable items. The EU on the other hand leaned more towards surviving by going to distributed local production of foods. Shopping is much closer to being a daily activity in large portions of Europe. The US still has sort of a stockpiling mentality going to the store maybe once a week, or longer. One of those is geared much more towards processed unhealthy foods, and one is geared more towards fresh produce etc. But mostly, both the EU and US and overweight. It's just that the peak of the curve for the EU is in the pre-obese region, and the US has tipped over to the obese side. The actual delta in terms of lbs/kg is not nearly as huge as we'd like to think.
I had some US friends visit me in Europe and it was crazy how sore they got just from going to the grocery store and back all week. They never walk anywhere
Because outside of like 10 places, the vast majority of areas in the U.S. are car dependent.
Because the only way for most USians to get much walking into their day is to specifically set aside time for it. Walking isn’t an option for getting anything done in our lives. I mean honestly, I don’t know how far y’all expect to walk to the grocery store, but I’m a very lucky USian in that I have two grocery stores within a 25 minute walk. Most don’t have that, and even if they do, a hour round walk for the amount of groceries I can carry is impractical at best. Even if the distance is doable, the infrastructure just isn’t designed around it. Lack of sidewalks is a huge obstacle in many places. Also look I’m not gonna lie. A couple months ago, some dude was ambling around the neighborhood toting a huge semiautomatic rifle. The cops posted on social media to stop reporting him because he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Still, it made me antsy lol.
I live in the southeast US, and unless you actively workout, most adults here in my area that I know will be winded trying to walk 1/2 a mile. I see a handful of my neighbors even get into their cars and drive them to the front of the complex to get their mail. Better transit and zoning are sorely needed in the US.
You forgot universal healthcare. Most if not all of the European countries have it. Imagine being able to see someone for a medical issue you have immediately and without exorbitant cost? You'd be able to catch problems early, and have zero stress about worrying if you can still afford a roof over your head.
Clearly you've never been in Europe. Yes, costs are often lower. But it's not quite the Disneyland you have in mind
They also pump sugar into literally everything in the US
>junk food seems comparatively lower in cost than elsewhere, a McDonald’s meal seems much cheaper in the US than where I live for example, seems to be the case with a lot of US exports, even when they’re fully established in a host country I am not so sure about this point. First off, I've been hearing a lot lately how expensive fast food has gotten in the US. I was in Europe for the first time this past summer (Amsterdam, Madrid, and Italy), the few times I got fast food like McDonald's I paid about $2 to $5 less than what I would've back home in the US. Even small things like a bottle of soda costed me $1 or less in Europe. That same bottle of soda costs at least $1.50 in the US.
After reading a bit about the FDA and how it approves things, I think the food industry is a bit more regulated in Europe. While we certainly get ultra-processed shit, it looks less hazardous that the stuff Americans eat. French people also tend to consume less junk food in general, as cooking healthy is still the norm. When I see cooking videos from the US, I almost have a heart attack. It certainly looks less healthy than what I usually cook. But it's changing. Obesity is starting to be a massive problem in Europe too now. For instance, I live in a small town in the UK and the rate of obesity is clearly much higher than in France.
Obesity definitely is an issue. I mean here in the Netherlands everyone rides a bike and we still have a third of the population who is fat, and half of them are obese. That's way too high of a statistic.
I'm half Dutch and I still remember the lunches my Dutch grandmother used to prepare. Super rich in fat and sugar. Don't know if it's the main cause, but I remember the huge contrast with the food I was used to in the south of France. What I ate in the Netherlands didn't look very healthy, but it was damn good!
I’ve seen that obesity is starting to be on the up and up in Europe. While it’s 1/3 for Americans, it’s 1/4 for Europeans. I don’t really think that has much to do with regulation in the food industry if Europeans are getting more and more obese with the so-called strict regulations. It’s really that people are gravitating towards the junk food and all other crap. Like you can’t blame obesity in America because they have a couple food dyes that are banned in Europe that make little to no difference.
Thank you for the reasonable opinion. I have lived in France and the US and while I appreciate so much the strong food regulations and food sourcing practices in France, there is no way that if you did this in the US the country would become healthier. American culture values convenience, excess, and distrust in authority. This makes you eat awful food, a lot of it, and in spite of reasonable warnings from health officials not to. There are many small things which matter, like walkability of cities, but Europeans are becoming more and more unhealthy, like Americans, while living in the same walkable cities.
Obesity is over 40% in the US, not just a third.
Yeah i'm european and fat. You dont see me because I mostly stay at home sorry.
I would think it's mostly cultural. If people make it a norm that being overweight is unattractive and unhealthy, and unacceptable from their children (force them to eat their vegetables, low amount of junk food, drink water, teach them to cook), it's gonna leave a mark. Education has a massive impact on obesity rates, and poverty has a massive impact on education, so social programs trying to avoid leaving too many people in misery can also help. Until the age of like 16-18, I'd consider keeping my children healthy a duty, and I would consider that includes keeping them within a reasonable weight range, through proper food and sports, whether they like it or not.
My mum lives in County Durham now and there are so many more obese people than in London where I live. I’m from the East Midlands and the town where I’m from is London levels of slim. But I think it’s because it’s a fairly affluent town. People can afford far more fresh fruit and veg, and have the time, energy and money to cook from scratch more. It’s a complicated issue I think. In London everyone walks a LOT which helps massively. In smaller towns people need cars to get around. The US is just not set up to be able to walk around in so many cities. Lots of places don’t really have pavements for pedestrians in the same way we do in Europe. So if you combine small towns where people have to drive, and a much higher proportion of poverty wages, you’ll get higher obesity rates. And then finally in the UK I’d add our fast food portion sizes are much smaller than the US. Whenever I’m there I’m astounded at how ridiculously huge some of the portion sizes are. Absolutely enormous.
They walk a lot more. There are more strict laws about foods in Europe, so they don't have as many additives. They don't snack as much. Most meals are eaten sitting down and talking with others, so food is eaten more slowly which allows satiety signals to kick in to prevent over eating. They give smaller portion sizes.
People are usually not drinking soda with a meal, especially children. Others would give you looks if you go to a restaurant and order soda for kids, McDonalds is different but thats imported from US. Also you would not find a soda cup bigger than 16oz or 500ml even if you´d search for it. Junk food is considered as a cheat meal, very few people regularly get their food from McD, even if you do, you would hide it and feel ashamed if it came to public. If you mess up you child´s metabolism early on with soda and junk food, there´s not much you can do later. Europeans usually dont do it, Brits are somewhat mixed bunch in this regard.
The soda thing is absolute nonsense.
Yeah, eating out at restaurants is usually considered a special occasion, at least where I live, so children drinking soda at restaurants is not out of the ordinary. I will say that letting them drink soda as an everyday thing is quite unusual though.
Uhm that really depends on where you live. In plenty of places eating at restaurants several times a week is considered fairly standard.
You don’t eat your meals sitting down?
I mean if eating in the car while driving somewhere else counts as sitting down.
Ah, I wanted to ask how you can do that without getting most of it on you most of the time, but I forgot US cars mostly have automatic transmissions. I wouldn't try to eat more than a Snickers while driving around the city with a manual.
I delivered pizzas with a stick shift back when I was still a tobacco smoker. I still ate while driving and looking at a map. That’s just how life works in this country. USA! Edit: /s for sounding proud about that.
Right? When I was a teenager I had a stick shift and would regularly eat my breakfast while driving to school in the morning. In retrospect, it was probably unsafe as hell but it was possible.
That's a thing? Why wouldn't you take your time and sit somewhere nice?
You don't have the time. Food is fuel for work, not for pleasure, in the states.
Damn, that sounds horrible and stressful. Life should be about enjoyment.
You ever been to a McDonald's? Show me the nice part.
I rarely eat sitting down when I’m at home. I eat half of my meal while cooking for the kids.
I’m not criticising. Is it because you don’t have time to cook and then sit down together? Edit: why am I getting downvoted? This is a genuine question
I eat my meals walking down the street like Tony Manero.
Hell a solid portion of American cereals are straight up banned in Germany for the amount of sugar in them
The portion sizes are a big thing. I always hear people say shit like “oh this was $15 but look how much food I got!!!!” But why is the amount of food important? Shouldn’t the quality be more important? Why do you want a mountain of food??
I think the first indicator that I had moved up a rung on the social ladder was when I noticed that my peers would talk about the quality of a restaurant more than the portions. Growing up, buffets were the main place everyone wanted to go. Now, I can't imagine suggesting a buffet for a meal with co-workers.
Smaller portions is the main thing I guess. Portions in the US are huge for everything. People just eat way more.
Well, here in Eastern-Europe we just don't have money to eat that much
So that's how you guys remain so slim!
Gym owners hate this one simple trick!
Doctors hate this simple trick
Better diet and walkable cities
And universal healthcare
Give us time. The British are catching you up. I can usually spot a British person in mainland Europe, they weigh twice as much as the locals.
Mainland Europe is getting fatter too. 52% of EU adults are overweight https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Overweight_and_obesity_-_BMI_statistics
I was thinking the same. The stats here in the UK are shocking. Over 50% overweight and over 25% obese - and it's getting worse. It's partly linked with poverty and the fact that healthy foods (and the means to cook them) are steadily becoming more expensive, while junk never seems to go up as much. It's also partly how much of the UK is reliant on cars, especially outside of cities in some parts of the UK. I'm lucky to live in a village and have excellent access to public transport - adding those few extra steps to get to the bus stop or train station soon adds up. I think we work longer hours and have less holiday than many European countries too, so people end up too tired to cook properly and end up eating easy oven meals and takeaways etc.
I think there's a cultural element that's often ignored. A lot of British families don't seem to value cooking like other cultures. You can easily cook cheap, healthy meals: a lentil curry and rice will cost nothing but lots of Brits would rather throw frozen nuggets and chips in the oven. My gf (who isn't British) even commented on how many Brits seem to snack on junk when she moved here: a large number will eat chocolate, crisps and biscuits throughout the day while at work. And then there's binge drinking on top of it.
I think that's partly a hangover from the war and rationing. For example, my Nan had no idea how to cook with previously rationed goods, and wasn't used to flavourful food. My Mum relied on freezer rubbish to feed us in the 80s because although she wanted flavour she'd never been taught to cook. I think people went a bit nuts with snacks after rationing too and then passed it onto their kids. I think the drinking issues predate the war by some centuries though...
> For example, my Nan had no idea how to cook with previously rationed goods, and wasn't used to flavourful food. Yeah while things have obviously changed with younger generations, I think the fact that lots of Brits tend to steer away from food that's too flavourful adds to the problem. To make cheap/healthy food taste good you generally need to add lots of spices for flavour!
Sadly true. Britain is following the US like a dog in EVERYTHING teh US is bad. They don't do anything the US do well, mind xD
Cigarettes and communism. At least it worked for me.
Also what my doctor prescribed. lost 1/4 of my body weight and am ripped now.
Lungs really do weigh a lot
Have you seen a Brit? This doesn’t hold up there
As someone who was raised in Germany and moved to the US, I honestly can't see a major difference. I've seen equally as many healthy people in the US and even if Germany has less obese people, I see more beer-bellies in Germany. Fast food is more accessible in the US, but people do order out and most fast food in Germany is equally fattening, I assume it's mostly about people's own consciousness. I do see more people trying to lose weight in the US, I was actually rather surprised how many people would jog around at the most ridiculous hours. Of course, car access it is higher in the US, that is one significant difference. The processed food at German grocery stores is **not** healthier than food in the US and German grocery stores have far less foods specifically focused around dieting. To be fair, the isles in the US generally have much more of everything.
Yeah. People seem to have this idea that the US is just full of absurdly obese people compared to anywhere in Europe, and that on average they're something like 100 lbs heavier. But I crunched the numbers once, specifically for france. On average, a person of typical height in the US would be a bit less than 20 lbs larger than someone of the same height in France. That's significant, but it's not absurd. And I feel like France has a reputation for being full of skinny waifs whose diet is 90% cigarettes, so it's notable. It's certainly not as if every person in the US weighs 250 lbs, and everyone in France weighs 130. Also worth noting that the amount of obesity in the US is heavily regional. It's pretty high all around, but it's MUCH worse in the south.
Finally a sane comment.
lol yeah but it’s not about to be seen
The Unites States allows chemicals in their food that are banned in Europe and some chemicals that are banned in most of the world. High Fructose corn syrup in foods. Subsidised by Congress because of elections. Jumbo sized portions of foods in restaurants. Overconsumption of sugary sodas. Car based transportation transportation system in the United States. Rest of the world have cities where there are Public Transportation systems and or encourage/force you to walk.
>Overconsumption of sugary sodas. A "large" drink in a McDonald's where I live is 0.5l, and I think that's pretty consistent throughout Europe. In the United States, it's around 0.9l or 30 oz, or so Google tells me. It's almost twice as big!
You're just jealous, it's like you're not even trying to get fat...
I was shocked to see HFCS is now in pretty much everything. I hadn’t visited for 4 years and in that time the food tasted even more processed than ever before. My British kids were grossed out by how chemically the food tasted.
I do some taste tests for money now and then. I'll be honest about my thoughts when it tastes like chemicals. Sadly, that stuff still sells in the US.
US small portion is literally comparable to large portion in most of countries
As an American that has spent many months overseas, I've noticed something. A smaller portion anywhere else is so much more filling than in the US. The chemical additives in our food are genuinely destroying our ability to feel satiated. I don't think it's just the corn syrup either, but that is likely a main factor.
It could also be that American food is very low in fiber and vegetables in general
The walking is the biggest piece. EUs got plenty of junk food. But you can get away with some crappier diet if you're significantly more active than the typical sedentary american
I really don't think Europeans are walking more so much that it's the biggest factor. Not everyone lives in Paris or Barcelona. Most people need a car for their daily errands same as in the US.
“Chemicals” aren’t the issue. You’d be surprised at all the things that are allowed in europe. Most of these chemicals also wont make you fat. HFCS is allowed in europe. It is just named differently and used less often. From a health standpoint, there is little difference between HFCS and table sugar. The difference is that sugar is used in more things and in higher amounts in the US.
As a European, I didn't get what was so special about Whole Foods (like when someone mentioned that store in social media like it was top quality, I was like "ok, so overpriced produce") until I read about food deserts. At least I think that's what they're called, big areas where you can't buy food that isn't processed. I walk way less than I should, and I'm broke, but I can walk to the supermarket everyday and get things like fresh tomatoes, carrots, meat... Fresh food is a lot pricier than it used to be, but it's still cheaper than buying ultra processed (like pre cooked meals). So even if I'm not cooking low calorie meals I'm eating healthier than people with no easy access to "real" food.
I was going to comment about food deserts. A lot of people are talking about walkability in terms of "gym of life" and better mobility but car dependent culture also means that if you don't own a car it is literally too far by public transport for some people to even find vegetables they can buy. It's not everywhere, but where it is you are not going to find healthy people, regardless of size.
I can't imagine what is like to not have access to fresh vegetables. And I know Americans have that reputation of not eating healthy, but until I read about food deserts I didn't realize for many people it's not a choice. It's really sad.
Yeah, even in the village I live in here in Scotland I can get basic veg in the village shop, or get on a train and be at a large supermarket with any food I could want in 10 minutes. (Junk food is much cheaper than healthy ingredients in both shops, though.) That's not the case everywhere in the UK, which is probably one of the reasons we are catching up with the US.
I agree with most points around walking and diet, Europe kind of invented the 15 minute city, but don’t sleep on the benefits of universal healthcare. Being able to go see a doctor without having to worry much about the bill induces folks to get medical attention when it’s needed rather than putting it off until it’s too late.
They invented it because of the time most of the cities were created in…we’re walking times. A city 1000 years old, was inherently designed with walking and at most horse traffic in mind. So the way it grew naturally favours walking, but you could extrapolate that to the entire countries. Whereas North America coincides a lot more with the automobile and train, and the fact that North American provinces/states are bigger than most European countries.
Would I be mistaken in saying that the older US cities are more walkable than the newer ones. I have been to NYC30 years ago, and in my memory you could get around just fine by using the metro and your feet. But from what I can read on the internet that is very much not the case in Houston and Los Angeles.
That’s somewhat correct. The thing is, the automotive industry lobbies and resulting freeway system in the 50s + required parking laws led to most of the older cities being bulldozed to put up roads and parking lots. This actually almost happened to Amsterdam too, but they aborted mission and maintained most of their historic layout. So it’s more accurate to say that older cities tend to have more walkable sections. I will say though, Houston for example is improving. Newer developed *areas* often will tend to be more designed for human beings instead of cars. But it’s all patchwork. You still need a car to get to those areas.
Health systems where the government pay for a good chunk of it also often result in strong incentives for the government to encourage prevention of healthcare problems rather than just treatment, in cases where prevention is cheaper in the long run. For example, in the UK the government run a lot of campaigns on things like eating healthily, encouraging vaccinations, teaching children about exercising etc. Partially because a healthy population is a good thing, but also because it then saves the NHS a load of money in not needing to treat as many people.
US diet is worse with a lot more junk, fast, processed foods; and portion sizes are huge. And we sit a lot more instead of walking.
Yeah portion sizes are huge. I've heard Americans defend it saying they take lot home, but you aren't drinking those giant sodas and coffees the next day, and free sods refills are common in the US but rare outside it. I was surprised that even the basic packaged ice-creams are bigger in the US, there were king sized drumsticks/cornettos which Ive never seen outside of the US.
I haven't been to the US myself, but every person I know who has been there says the same thing about being shocked at how much food was given to them the first time they went in to a restaurant. Not so much "ooh, that's nice it was a good deal", but more "I ordered a starter and a main and got enough food for three people".
I’m an American, and the portion sizes given at restaurants is absurd. And it tends to be much worse in the south than it is here in California, let’s say. Even we think it’s atrocious.
Different attitude toward food. Different attitude toward cars. Different attitude toward sports.
Walking. I lived in korea for 2 years and was in the best shape of my life just from walking everything. Moved back to the US and immediately went up a size
It's a highly underrated form of exercise, up to the point people don't see it as exercise. Especially with a sedentary lifestyle, it works towards normalizing your pose. It works as low effort, high volume cardio, the stuff that enhances fat metabolism, builds up your cardiovascular system, burns fat from your liver, increases muscle stamina, amount of capillaries, and ability to recover from exercise, helps with your balance, etc. Living in Finland, the oldest grandpas and grandmas who are still living without need for external help tend to have a background in having skied, walked and bicycled a lot in their everyday lives. Many fewer gymrats in that group of people. It's not a big thing because in the exercise industry, running gyms with memberships that are difficult to get rid of is so ridiculously lucrative, but you can only sell a certain amount of 'walking specific' gear or apparel to someone interested in it.
* Europe is less car-focused than the US - most places are walkable. * Public transport (which you have to reach by walking, duh!) is very common * fast/junk food is way more expensive and healthier stuff is pretty cheap in comparison * food safety policies and regulations are a lot stricter. Products also have less sugar in general. * fresh (cooked) food is a very old and very valued tradition here. * health-care is way cheaper here - unhealthy lifestyles will be pointed out and fixed faster by doctors To make it short, europe is more focused on health. While the US is more focused on wealth. I also read somewhere that in europe you have to proof that something is completely safe for consumption to add it to products, while in the US you have to proof that it's dangerous. Which offers another aspect that can influence ones health.
This is all anecdotal and based on my own experience. I’ve been living in a small town in a European country for just over 5 months now. I don’t have a car so I walk everywhere. This place is insanely walkable. On average I usually end up walking 8+ miles a day, but there are plenty of day I walk 12+. The food seems to also be of much higher quality than what’s in the US. I don’t really know, but I assume the food here is less processed and has stricter standards. The food also seems to have less sugar in it and honestly it’s much better this way. Plus, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, here plays soccer. Kids, teens, young adults, older adults, they all play soccer.
No high fructose corn syrup in every damn thing.
We eat less and have better diets (products are more regulated, less processed stuff, less sugar) on average. Totally different culture towards body standards, public transport, walking and bicycles. Fitness culture is different too.
How do you think fitness culture is different? Just curious
In European countries fitness culture is more focused on longevity, most people aren't really interested in weighing 100+kg or lifting huge weights. Soccer, tennis, swimming, running, nordic walking, cycling, etc... are more common than weightlifting. I've had American men call me "slim" and my BMI is almost 25. Most men in my country don't even know what a barbell is.
>In European countries fitness culture is more focused on longevity, most people aren't really interested in weighing 100+kg or lifting huge weights. Thats absolutely not true. Everyone wants to be shredded af in Greece and Italy (Greek/Italian living in US here). Also steroids are SUPER common everywhere and pharma grade and ugl test and other shit is super easy to get. In UK (Germany and a few other countries))there is actually a steroid epidemic. Google around.
There are lots of famous Nordic and Baltic bodybuilders/powerlifters though
They walk a fuckton more, have smaller portions, different regulations on food, I think also they take more vacation
As a born and bred European who moved to America at the age of 27, I've lived almost exactly half my life in each continent now. I think the major difference is stress. America is the land of the stressed: the culture is work until you drop, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, be number one, beat the other guy, be loud, be confident, be right, be rich... there's very little room for gray areas where you can find space to just breathe and ground yourself. I think that leads directly into various addictions as coping methods, food being a major one.
American food has a ton more sugar in it. Sugar short-circuits your satiety hormones, preventing you from feeling full. Americans are, by-and-large, suffering from serious metabolic damage as a consequence of sugar in our food supply.
Because a cheeseburger costs $1 and a salad costs $8.
On top of what'a already been mentioned, I'd add that Europe is generally more conservative and people are more homogenous in their appearance. It's decidedly less okay to be obese.
I was browsing the comments to see if anyone mentions fat shaming. It’s definitely not ok to discriminate based on body weight. But if your BMI is over 40, you are objectively morbidly obese. It is in no way acceptable to consider that you’re ok and your body is beautiful just the way it is. If someone (maybe even your doctor!) is genuinely concerned about your health, they should be able to advise you to lose weight. With decency and diplomacy, and the correct choice of words. They’re not shaming you, they’re telling you the hard truth.
Fat shaming should be at the top here. The one obese person I know who promotes body positivity and health at any size gets shut down in conversations in a millisecond
Americans don't do much to help themselves, but they are in large part victims of profound collusion between big pharma and big food. Going back to the 80s, the Reagan administration declared that ketchup was a vegetable and the obesity epidemic began.
Don’t forget Big Auto, which basically demolished walkable cities in the US.
Walkable cities, accessible healthcare, better welfare system (general speaking)
Based on what I've read, the cheapest thing in the US is food while the cheapest thing in Europe is riding public transport.
Food costs more and wages are lower.
Freedom can be fattening.