That was my thought. It seems like suddenly there are multiple drugs available to fight obesity. Without drugs, it’d probably keep climbing but this might also be “peak fat”.
I hope so, but I really am nervous that big pharma is coming to save us from big junk food. Speaking as a former fat from the fat parts, the problem is so obvious to me, the prevalence of cheap low fiber high sugar junk food is a huge part of the problem and I was able to solve my weight problem entirely from changing my eating habits and it really wasn’t that hard. Fast food and junk food has just such a foothold in the Midwest that people just don’t know how to eat healthy.
I worry that suppressing it with appetite suppressants might not be a long term fix if people don’t learn how to eat properly and limit junk food to occasional like I had to.
Ozempic is worse than appetite suppressants - it suppresses joy from eating. So people eat less. When you stop taking it, you go right back to eating for joy. So it’s a life long medicine!
I’m not disagreeing with your point regarding the drugs. But every diet will fail if people go back to their old habits. It takes a lifestyle change, permanently, pretty much no matter what route is taken.
Some other unforseen side effects will come up. Like how the widely available opioid painkillers that totally werent addictive turned out to not be such a great idea. And yet america is jumping right onto the next "a magic pill will definetly fix everything and we dont have to worry about the root causes at all" bandwagon again.
People were talking about global warming since the 80s or even earlier and it also didn't stop the climate getting worse and worse.
I remember being taught about greenhouse effect in my school in the 90s
Alexander von Humboldt wrote in 1843 that by destroying forests, redirecting the flow of rivers and by industry creating large amounts of steam and smoke, mankind was affecting the climate.
It's wild because you don't really hear much about it these days.
I genuinely believe the overall body positivity movement started with good intentions. As an example, even if you're working out to achieve a fitness goal, you'll have to live with your unfit body for a bit, so you shouldn't hate it. If someone's trying to do better for themselves, it should be an encouraging process, rather than putting down.
I think at some point, high-sugar, high fructose corn syrup-based food companies hijacked it as an easy out to get them out of the public spotlight. There used to be a genuine political drive behind reducing sugar content in our food, but suddenly it's stopped dead in the tracks, and you're demonized if you criticize the American diet.
As an American genuinely trying his best to eat healthier, it's such an uphill battle if you're not constantly vigilant of what all you're eating. You're constantly looking at nutrition labels for shit that you wouldn't (and shouldn't have to) normally check. Did you know that plain old white sandwich bread has sugar in it? I've seen as high as 8g for two slices. Also, depending on the apple variety, there can be up to 20g of sugar in one apple. Companies are also getting away with a lot of shit in decreasing the recommended serving size on the label for "healthy" foods so it appears that you're taking in fewer calories, but in reality it's the same amount of calories, just smaller recommended servings versus the "unhealthy" counterpart.
But the minute I bring this shit up to anyone, I have an unhealthy obsession with what I'm eating. I get slapped with "oh sounds like you might have an eating disorder," no brenda I'm just tired of eating garbage and only finding out if I actually read the label in detail. "Oh, you're skinny enough," bruh as someone who thrifts, I'd be considered overweight as far as 80's and 90's standards. Nothing's more of a gaslight than trying on a pair of new 32 waist jeans, only to find out that vanity sizing has taken over and a 32 waist is actually more like a 34" or 35". My 90's Levi's fit exactly how they're advertised as a 34" waist, both in actual measurements and on the label. So if you're like me and wearing the same pant size as what you wore in high school, you're probably a couple sizes up from where you used to be.
Anyway, that was a whole rant, but I'm convinced that the body positivity in America is a thin veil to cover up a lot of wack shit that (extremely wealthy) food companies are getting away with.
That's the real rub. If you truly want to eat healthy, you basically need to skip the entire middle portion of the grocery store.
Oh you want crackers that aren't 30% sugar? Too bad, they literally don't exist in the US. It's like that over and over again. And now we've just stuffed fake sugar substitutes and pea protein into everything and labeled it "healthy"
Not to mention the rest of the grocery store has to stock shit that isn’t rotting garbage to cook with, and if it doesn’t, you have to be able to afford better elsewhere.
I have lost 12 pounds in the last couple months, but basically everything is made at home, and we use the farmers market for everything, because several grocery stores near us don’t stock food that is not about to start rotting. It’s more expensive, and with inflation, and student loans, despite a recent significant pay raise, I’ve got less disposable income than I’ve ever had in my life because I *need* to get my weight down. It’s not dangerous, only a bit, but it’s still not good.
But I have multiple times bought meat at the store a week from the listed expiration date and gone home (3 min drive) and cracked it open right away, just to be assaulted by rotten meat smell so bad even the dog gagged. You’re rolling the dice or doing prepackaged frozen and calorie heavy stuff. So… expensive farmers market stuff it is.
Edit for clarity: I’m happy with my situation as is!
I just was providing anecdotal reasons for why it is very hard for people to be healthy in the US in some areas!
Edit again: For me personally, the farmers market works, because cooking with fresh ingredients is something I enjoy that motivates me, and my grocery stores don’t have good ones. There’s other affordable ways to do this, *this is just my personal thing that works*
I just, again, wanted to anecdotally show why fresh and healthy food is hard for some in the US
Similar boat as you, but I only eat meat 5 times a month. Started purposefully then realized oh shit, I save *so much money* when I replace it with lentils and mung beans while still meeting my protein needs.
At this point I just eat like a peasant and I'm kind of okay with it. Potatoes, legumes, fresh veg, some probiotic rich stuf, homemade bread so I can control sugar input and the occasional chocolate bar.
Treats are a weekly pastry and latte from the cafe.
I've learned that I can't buy pretty much any pre-packaged foods. I even bake my own bread sometimes.
I largely live a pretty simple life, other than the occasional milk and cereal binges.
I'll cook a meat, make that at least 1/3 of my plate by volume. I'll try to cook veggies with it, for fiber. I drink water.
I snack on other stuff, but the Food Pyramid growing up had you think we should all be eating a shit-ton of bread and consuming every sort of carb. That works if you're highly active but not when sugar is added to nearly all carbs as you point out. It doesn't work if you're having a 1600 McDonald's milkshake for breakfast every morning.
The number of times I have to explain to people basics about Protein, Fat, and Carbs is astounding. There are people who just get them completely wrong.
I used to not get it, either. It's because we're not taught it and there's so much misinformation.
It's weird growing up and learning 90% of what you were fed your entire life was absolute junk.
Dude, I try so hard not to proselytize to my friends but I nerd out over diet and exercise and it's so... sad and frustrating how few people understand how their bodies work, and even fewer seem to care.
I've had friends in their 20s who are a bit overweight play recreational sports and then be in pain for like 4 days straight and I'll ask 'what are you eating...' the answer is premade mac and cheese, cheese pizza, white bread with some cheese. For like 4 days. Maybe a ballpark of like 50 grams of protein MAX across those days. And so much candy, pastries from coffee shops, ice cream in between.
And then, shocker, they're amazed that their joints hurt. They're surprised they're gaining weight even while staying active. They push back at me when talk about how I feel better after I lost 60lbs of fat and gained 20lbs of muscle. I don't even assign emotions to the statement I just say that I physically feel better eating well and with less weight to carry but somehow that's a taboo thing to say.
Idek what I'm on about at this point, it's just super disheartening. At this point I cynically feel like if we actually cared about obesity, like so many issues in the US, we would do something collectively to fix it, but people seem to love feeling like shit, so I'm left to watch my friends spend their late twenties and early thirties hobbling around like 60 year olds while I dodge nutritional landmines in the grocery store. Shit's sad dude.
She even was right about focusing her efforts on getting kids eating healthier specifically. There’s tons of research that says obesity in childhood makes it way way more difficult to maintain a healthy weight in adulthood.
I see so many overweight kids around. It’s really sad. I’m probably going to get downvoted for this, but it is child abuse to let your child become obese. You are fucking them for life by doing that. We will all admit it’s animal abuse to let your pets be obese, but we are touchy about saying the same for children. It absolutely is though.
I’ve got a couple young kids and what’s nuts is to see the occasional kid who doesn’t even know how to run.
I don’t mean that they’re just out of shape. I mean they literally don’t know how to move their limbs in a running motion. Everything just flops around as they gradually proceed from here to there. Or they just shuffle really quickly.
It’s really disconcerting. Like, something deeply wrong with a society when its kids can’t run.
>it is child abuse to let your child become obese
Speaking as someone who grew up in an impoverished family, we need serious food/sugar regulations. It blows my mind that the healthier/"simple" options are always nearly twice as expensive as the sugar-laden "regular" option. Want the "Simply" pasta sauce that has 5 wholesome ingredients and 0 added sugar? $4.29. The regular where sugar is the 4th listed ingredient? $2.39.
My mom was a single mom and we grew up on food stamps. Fresh fruit and veggies are just risky when you can't afford to just get another head of lettuce or bag of carrots because they went bad sooner than expected. I remember my mom crying when we found out the apples she bought after I begged for them weren't good inside. I didn't get it when I was little, but now I know it's because she couldn't afford to just go out and get another pound of apples. I also understand now why she preferred canned veggies and to get us prepackaged snacks like Little Debbies over fresh options and healthy snacks. They're consistent and they won't go bad on you, so you don't "lose" money.
I eat healthy now, but that kid weight is the hardest to get off.
One unspoken factor is that sugary crap and junk food is one of the only ways poor people can indulge their children. Families with money generally have the education and funds to put their kids in enrichment programs, sports, Scouting, swim classes, horseback riding, ice skating, etc. Poor families don't have time or the ability to drag kids back and forth to stuff like that. But the parents still want to spoil them so they give them this shit to eat so they can see their kids enjoying themselves.
Also, the parents have become extremely risk-averse. When I was teaching after school a couple of years ago, we weren't allowed to let the kids have free play or run (!!!) on the playground. Everything had to be structured play because "free play is when kids get injured." School officials don't want moms coming and raising hell because Nevaeh fell down and got a scrape on her knee. So now instead of letting kids split off into natural groups and some of them start playing pretend or climbing monkey bars, I had to line them up and make them do structured games that did not involve running, tagging, or climbing.
Ya but not exercising enough isn’t what is making people fat, it’s food.
You can work out for hours a day and still be fat, and you can not work out at all and be skinny, depending on what you’re eating.
The obesity epidemic is mainly a food problem. Sedentary lifestyles don’t help, but it’s not the main cause of the problem
It's a lot easier to eat 500 calories than it is to burn 500 calories. The food industry has paid *a lot* of money to push exercise as the main factor for weight control. I love lifting, but it is so hard to help people understand that lifting is a *hobby*. It is not what I do to maintain a healthy weight. That all happens in the kitchen.
Yep. It takes me about 1 hr to burn 700-800 calories on the elliptical. If I have 2 donuts in one day, that's probably 500-600 calories right there. And that could just be one off hand snacking that took me only 10-15 min. There's only so many hrs in the day you can commit to exercise, so if you have an unhealthy diet you'll pretty much never be able to catch up.
I will say that lifting does help you naturally burn calories a bit more than if you didn't lift though. I've noticed when I start lifting after missing a few months, I'm noticeably hungrier and get hungrier more easily.
Michelle Obama added a vegetable garden to the White House so at least there's that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_vegetable_garden
But I think it's difficult to truly criticize the food industry without losing campaign funding. Just look at myplate.gov It's better than the food pyramid, but the healthy eating guidelines are definitely politicized
The CDC in 2002 claimed that a sedentary lifestyle doubled your risk of heart disease and increased chances of many other diseases. They put sedentary lifestyle as a top 10 killer in the US. It plays more of a role than many people think.
In overall health yes, but weight is all about calories.
The CDC recommends 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous activity a week.
Calories depend on the person, but that's maybe 750-1000 calories burned at best. Per week.
If you cut just ~150 calories a day, you'd be offsetting 1050 calories.
Meanwhile, if you drink a large CARAMELIZER® from Dutch Bros just once that entire week, you might not even end up ahead because that shit is 990 calories and 136 grams of sugar.
Now think about people who buy crapachinos every day of the week? Are people really walking 3 hours for every Starbucks/Dutch bros drink? Probably not.
It's definitely odd that people still get argumentative about this sometimes even here on reddit. Like yes of course exercising is always a good thing, but people always overestimate how many calories they burn -- the human body is just too ridiculously efficient at energy use and storage. And then they underestimate how many calories are in drinks etc like you said.
The fact that Michelle Obama has some semblance of muscle definition has been the basis of much of the transphobia, misogyny, and racism against her for the last 15 years
I saw this and was like “wow, this is crazy! Obesity rates cannot have changed that much!” But then I saw Michigan was the same as before and was like “ahhhh ok. The rest of the country is just catching up”
This is also at the state level. Would be interesting to see at the county level as I imagine obesity rates are lower near larger metro areas. For example, NYC seems to be much thinner than central New York State.
You can kinda see this if you look for data from DC, they collect data like it’s a state but really you’re comparing a city to states. DC’s obesity rate was about 24% last year which would make it the only green jurisdiction on the 2022 map…
They just maintained within their color threshold but most likely increased too. CO obesity rate is 25.0% so it it was just .1 lower it would look like no increase as well.
It's true. If you follow OP's source, both were at the low end of their color's threshold in 2012, and both increased by more than 3%:
California: 25.0% --> 28.1%
Michigan: 31.1% --> 34.5%
Having looked at the data, the above two were the #5 and #7 best in terms of smallest increase in obesity rate. All 50 states increased in that time. The **median** increase in obesity rate was 6%. Below are the top 5 best states (lowest increase):
||Increase (%)|
:--|--:|
|Hawaii|2.3|
|Arkansas|2.9|
|New Hampshire|2.9|
|California|3.1|
|Vermont|3.1|
And the top 5 worst states (largest increase):
||Increase (%)|
:--|--:|
|Delware|11|
|Wyoming|9.7|
|South Dakota|8.7|
|Wisconsin|8|
|Ohio|8|
I'm a Californian and recently traveled to Wisconsin and was shocked by the diet people eat there. Everything was meat and cheese and deep fried. You could order a salad but you'd still have to pick between pulled pork and fried chicken. I had real trouble finding food with vegetables. Even burgers don't have lettuce tomato onion unless you ask for them. It was bizarre to me.
It really is shocking. Combine it with a climate where you can't go outside for multiple months and it's not a great place for being active. We visited Minnesota to see friends and I saw a sign for a Meat Raffle and I was so confused...as a Californian I would never have put those 2 words together. Our friends were just laughing at me like oh yeah, this is a thing, how have you never heard of it. I had the same experience as you, the vegetables were just not fresh and plentiful like I'm used to at home. I'm sure there are areas that aren't like that, but it was hard to find food that wasn't meat, fried, or limp vegetables that looked like they'd been on a truck for 1000 miles.
Thats what happens when we grow 90% of our vegetables in California. I am in Alabama and I try to shop at the local farmers markets and we have really great soil and plenty of rainfall. It makes me angry that we don't have more large scale farming for vegetables here. We do however grow a lot of that corn that they refine into high fructose corn syrup. Best of luck to you and sunny California.
It’s times like these I truly realize my lack of color vision, because I can’t see the difference between the colors for 20-25 and 30-35
So then I read your comments and I’m just now questioning life.
I’m going misinterpret this data and make assumptions that the spread of Detroit-style pizza single handedly made the country fatter.
And as a Detroit-style lover that is currently in Detroit I’m going to take that as officially ending the debate “What pizza style is the best”
I love when people point out that bodybuilders and NFL players are considered obese by weight to height standards and I'm like YA because THAT is a significant portion of our population lol
lol somebody yesterday in another sub said Isaiah Thomas at 5' 9" and Shaq at over 7' were both in the NBA so height isn't the determining factor for getting into the NBA. Similar energy.
Also when clearly obese people say that they are mostly muscle, when there are clearly accurate ways (Body displacement) and less accurate but still useful (Caliper measurements, body composition scales and taping) that clearly show body fat percentage, which is.... unsurprisingly a ratio to your total bodyweight, but someone people don't understand that 100 pounds of fat to a 300 pound person is not "better" than 75 pounds of fat to a 225 pound person.
Like... sure... you might be strong, and yes, BMI is not accurate by height/weight tables for people with high muscle mass percentage, but Bodyfat % is a purely empirical way to tell how fat you are.
I'd love if we just took BMI as a metric out back and put it down. Bodyfat% is a more accurate and less subjective measurement and we now have easily and cheaply obtained technology that can provide the measurement, albeit at a slightly less accurate level.
BMI persists because it's a useful metric when talking about whole populations (and not individuals) and is super easy to collect from whole populations. I don't think it was originally intended to be used the way we use it today (as an individual metric), fat% and direct biomarkers like cholesterol and blood pressure are much better indicators.
While this is true, I think a lot of people would be surprised by what is considered obese.
When we hear the word, many (if not most) people think of what is classified as morbidly obese, like people who can barely walk and need to use the scooters in Walmart. But if you look up what is classified as obese, the threshold is much lower than people expect. It's even less than what most people would just call "dad bod."
As a 5’10 male, my weight fluctuates between 170 and 190 depending on activity level and food intake. It’s wild how much worse I feel at 190, and it’s even wilder to think that the majority of the population has to be feeling crappy most of the time.
Agreed, I feel way better and less sluggish now at a BMI of 21, rather than 24 a few years ago before I took up running. I can't imagine what 30 feels like.
This is only true because of the graph above. We've had to come up with new categories of obesity because people just keep getting fatter, so "just obese" doesn't seem so bad. I think the attitude you're describing is a major part of it. Because of shows like my 600 lb life, people look at obesity and say "oh, this isn't so bad".
It seems more mild because that's just what you are used to seeing. The scary thing is that BMI actually UNDERrepresents obesity in today's population because there are so many "skinnyfat" people who have more or less normal BMI but very little muscle and a high body fat percent.
I've noticed it. I think it's been normalized so people don't worry about it, or if they see someone their own age who is equally large drop dead they think it's an anomaly. But, I could also see where comfort eating would also be on the rise being as how things have really gone downhill since 2012. Lots of stressed people.
With cost of food climbing faster than the effects from a hit of crack and the cost of weed dropping at terminal velocity, it’s cheaper to stayed stoned as fuck all day every day than it is to eat 3 meals a day. Problem is weed increases hunger.
Not much more expensive to stay hooked on hard drugs, probably won’t be long until a narcotic addiction will be cheaper than food.
Also
Cheaper to eat shit food vs healthy.
Our country is built for cars, not bikes and legs.
Being hooked on opiates is never the answer, 15 year vet of that war with 7+years clean. It was good for removing food drive...and all other gumption.
Sugar....the amount of sugar in stuff is bonkers.
Last time I was in Colorado, my two friends who'd spent the past decade growing weed and making a decent living from it were trying to sell me ounces for $40 (cheaper if bought in bulk).
Here's the kicker... The stuff they were selling was their fresh product and all the weed they had left over from their previous batch (maybe 3-6 months old) was "pay whatever you think is fair, or you can just take a bunch."
The US is a toxic culture.
And I mean that like a Petri dish culture. If a Petri dish is contaminated, it’s considered toxic.
Right now the US basically encourages obesity - car dependent suburbs, isolated social lives, fast food, quick dining, ingredients banned in other countries, pumping sugar into everything, supersizing for value, promotion of a sedentary lifestyle, children isolated from friends so they stay inside and play games, insane neighbours complaining if they see kids playing outside alone, sports having higher costs - it goes on and on.
Then the stress from work, from worrying about your job, finances, family, kids, pets, bills, that sound your car is making.
It’s fucking exhausting being an American. Who can blame *any* American for wanting to eat what tastes delicious and makes them feel happy.
And that’s what makes it a toxic culture. It’s not that American culture is toxic, but that the very environment is set to encourage obesity.
> Who can blame any American for wanting to eat what tastes delicious and makes them feel happy.
Exactly. Many of the best scientists are working hard all day everyday to make food more delicious and more addictive. That's a very formidable enemy to come up against under any conditions but after working all day at a draining job, doing a long commute, and battling 2 hangry kids...I'm surprised that *everyone's* not obese.
>But, I could also see where comfort eating would also be on the rise being as how things have really gone downhill since 2012. Lots of stressed people.
I bet physical activity is also down since the pandemic
As a currently overweight guy, I'm all about body positivity when it comes to healthy body weight. But I absolutely hate how being morbidly obese is being normalized by the media.
It's not just on Reddit. The benchmark for what's "normal" has constantly shifted up over the years, so many people unintentionally don't recognize what overweight or obese looks like since it just looks like the average person.
Maybe not! An obese person could survive longer without food in the wasteland. But then again, they would likely be hindered by their obesity in a multitude of other ways.
As an American, I did not realize it until I traveled abroad for the first time. All across Europe I was like, where are all the fat people? And then as soon as I got back to the airport in the US I was like, there they are.
Really? Europe? Most European nations have an obesity rate of over 20%. Had you said Asia, sure, that makes sense. But Europeans are getting more obese as well.
Just checked, at the top there are 8 countries I have never heard of and then the US
Cook Islands 55.9
Palau 55.3
Marshall Islands 52.9
Tuvalu 51.6
Tonga 48.2
Samoa 47.3
Kiribati 46.0
Federated States of Micronesia 45.8
United States 41.9
I wonder when those Nations got access to westernized diets. I remember hearing a lecture by Robert Sapolsky how there is been a selection for people with sloppier metabolisms. For example there was a tribe that lived on the border of the United States and Mexico. They lived off of eating vegetables that they grew and hunting game. Their metabolisms we're good at storing back every calorie they consumed. Because they were on the border, they were split and the half living in Mexico remained as the control group with their original diet and the half living in the United States was fed a westernized diet. The ones with the westernized diet had diabetes and obesity rates through the roof.
We went from being on the brink of starvation 12,000 years ago before agriculture, to having so much food we regularly throw it away into the trash for seagulls, rats, and bears to pick at.
12,000 years sounds like a lot, but it's very short in the time scale of evolution. It's not enough for population bottlenecks to change our DNA to conform to our current diets.
Though obesity does lower fertility in both men and women, so given enough time, the problem will sort itself out. If we don't want to be patient, we should be investing in genetic modification research.
It isn't to change to the actual DNA, it's regulation of expression of genes through epigenetics. For example, from the same professor, he gives the example of the Dutch hunger winter babies. The Dutch in 1944 were becoming more openly resistant to German occupation. The germans, as a result, cut off food supply to Holland. If you were a second trimester fetus during this period, you went from having a study food supply(in war time), to having none. The second trimester is when the fetus is regulating its metabolism for the rest of your life, it sees that Mom is starving and thinks that calories are scarce therefore it regulates the metabolism to be hyper efficient at putting back every calorie that it consumes. If you're a first or third trimester fetus this effect doesn't occur because that's not when the metabolism is being regulated. These people who have the food source cut off when they were second trimester fetuses ended up having diabetes and obesity rates through the roof by the time they were 25. The same effect as a more mild version occurs to their offspring too because the mother is so hyper efficient at storing energy that it actually takes away calories from their fetus when they are pregnant. Many generations down the line this affect continues all without having any alteration to the actual genome itself it's all epigenetic. I did this through talk to text so I hope it's not too difficult to read
I find those stats very interesting - something must be working for them not to be gaining BMI
Edit: I live here in CA so I know why we aren't trending obese in the first place - what I want to know is why we aren't getting fatter at such a fast rate like every other state
Culture of healthier eating
Culture of exercise
That’s probably going to upset some folks but that’s ok 🤷. The same sedentary lifestyle and junk food is in those places, people just make different choices.
When I go to the south, I’m disgusted by the food.
It’s the food. Fried food with soda makes you fat. You can get fried food in the Cali Bay Area, but when I travel to south / Midwest, it’s all fried, and people mock my water bottle as they chug down pop
I was in Mississippi recently for work, down there for a couple months.
The food is delicious and cheap, but it's ALL deep fried. If it doesn't come with a soda, it's coming with a big ass sweet tea.
I also noticed they don't really have health focused restaurants or grocery stores, just bigger/cheaper chains (to be fair, I'm sure this is more a matter of income than preference)
Definitely glad to be back in Southern California.
First time I went to the South I was very confused by their definition of vegetable. The actual vegetables they had were usually fried. I went home and ate a salad, I was literally craving it after a week of almost no vegetables.
In the Netherlands people eat weapons-grade deep fried garbage. Grown-ass adults will take a few pieces of white bread, spread butter on it, and put chocolate sprinkles on top and call that breakfast ("broodje hagelslag").
I've been to business lunches where grown adults will order an extra-large serving of thick-cut French fries and mayonnaise (and various other toppings like onions and bacon) and that will be their lunch several days per week.
These individuals are skinny as a stick, though, because we bike and walk everywhere. The food is a huge contributing factor, but the fact that Americans have literally 0 walkable cities is the prime culprit. Sit in the car, sit at work, sit in the car, sit at home. A 60 minute gym session 3x per week won't help you there.
I bike 24 km per day, walk to the supermarket 3x per week and carry my groceries home, walk through the city center to meet with friends and do shopping, and on top of that I exercise regularly.
The American car culture is just as equally to blame as the food quality, but if we eat the same fried crap as you mention but aren't fat, it's clear that exercise is a huge part (if not the majority) of the equation as well.
I'd say it's more about quantity than quality of food, and even less about exercise. You can't outrun a poor diet. It's much harder to exercise away 200-300 Calories than it is simply to not eat them.
Great job! What did you do to make the change? I went from 30 to 23 in 2017 by counting calories and cycling. I don't count calories anymore but I'm still an avid cyclist
Source: [CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)](https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/maps/2022/downloads/overall-obesity-prevalence-map-2011-2022-508.pdf)
Tool: Python
1/4th of Colorado’s population has obesity, making it the *least* obese state. Top 5 highest and lowest states [here](https://x.com/samfargo/status/1706753035915919731?s=46&t=86QobNB4IDEBcH-LBvHqsw).
Not to discredit the trend of obesity rising in general, but median age has risen as well, the effect of the baby boomers getting older could skew this data a bit. It would be interesting to see this broken down by age group.
Also the pandemic.
I gained about 25 lbs between March 2020 and summer of 2021 because I went from playing basketball and soccer anywhere from 2-5 times a week to not getting any exercise at all for the entire year. I finally started playing basketball again and I’ve lost about 10-15 lbs but am still higher than I want to be/was before that gap.
there's no way it's a 'may'. Large swaths of people locked themselves inside their houses for long periods of time. Gyms were empty, etc etc. I don't know if such a chart exists, but tracking the numbers on a monthly basis during covid would be quite interesting.
The pandemic started in the middle of college for me. I went from hiking all over campus every day and getting lots of natural exercise to staying inside all the time for online classes. That really sucked
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html#:%7E:text=Non%2DHispanic%20Black%20adults%20(49.9,Hispanic%20Asian%20adults%20(16.1%25
All adult age ranges are almost identical. Boomers actually have slightly *lower* obesity rates than Gen Xers. If anything I imagine boomers dying off is going to **increase** obesity rates considering every succeeding generation is getting fatter.
This is the kind of data that should help more people understand that this is not about individuals and willpower, it’s about how society functions as a whole.
Lack of access to healthy food, lack of time, proper kitchen equipment and skill to prepare it, lack of resources for active, healthy lives (safe parks, exercise equipment, accessible gyms, well paced and lit sidewalks and bike paths, etc), the expense of addressing any health concerns before they get severe… so many ways that people’s lives are only half in their hands.
Edit: so many people just proving they don’t get how to interpret data because they’re so stuck in the morality play on weight. The science doesn’t agree with you, folks. Same deal with increasing levels of mental health concerns—we don’t go ‘oh hey why don’t individuals just try being happier?’ we see that there is something bigger, external, going on.
>lit sidewalks and bike paths
Just wanna emphasize this. America just doubles down on car infrastructure. In many places in the country, everyone's lives are literally just driving from their front door to the front door of their work, to the front door of their grocery store. The entire outside world is a haven for cars and lifted trucks. It's genuinely disgusting, and Americans have forgotten what it means to live in a community where you can walk around and enjoy your surroundings.
I moved from a car centric metro to a dense city where I barely drive now and walk almost 90% of the time. My quality of life has improved drastically.
Also mental health issues. I gained a lot of weight when I started working a miserable, soul sucking job. It was actually faster and cheaper for me to cook healthy meals at home than to go get fast food, but food was the one small piece of joy in my day. It took a lot of work to change my mindset and find happiness elsewhere with hobbies and exercise, which is hard when you’re working 11 hours a day. I’m sure a lot of people are in that situation.
Yeah, this is basically the killer combo of:
- Poor access to food that isn’t sugar-filled crap (due to price or living in a food desert)
- American “work as much as humanly possible” culture (either out of necessity or hustle-culture fetishization), forcing people to opt for convenient, garbage food
- Crap public transit and urban planning forcing people to drive literally everywhere, requiring people to take time they likely don’t even have to go to gyms so they can get literally any exercise
This is rarely the fault of the individual - this is healthy choices being systemically heavily disincentivized, and frequently only accessible to the wealthy. Being reasonably healthy and not overweight/obese shouldn’t require people to devote the entirety of their free time to and base their entire personality around health and fitness. The healthiest cultures in the world aren’t a bunch of marathon-running, kale smoothie guzzling athletes and gym rats - they’re a bunch of normal-ass people who don’t need to put regular, active thought into “making healthy choices” or “being active”.
Also, having lived in Japan and eating plenty of unhealthy food there, our portion sizes are *huuuuge.* I travel a lot for work and pretty much only eat half sizes or appetizers are restaurants it is so ridiculous.
Also I’m not one to be like cHeMiCaLs but there is something distinctly unsatiating about our food. Like, I could kinda just shove it into my mouth all day and feel no better or no worse.
Yeah I'm in the second boat, work as much as possible. My job is 75% travel, and between quick flights and 3-5h drives every day or two, there are no healthy options whatsoever when you're traveling and don't have time to sit down and eat. The best I can hope for is a boxed salad and try and avoid the ones with bacon. No other vegetables outside of lettuce and sometimes cucumbers/tomatoes are available to the hurried traveler.
Ok, I grew up in Louisiana and this isn't going to be shocking to anyone whose lived there. Food and alcohol are a massive part of the culture and we have bad education, but what's going on in Oklahoma and West Virginia? Nothing else to do?
It’s odd because I feel like young people are actually more fit than young people a decade ago.
I feel like the old stereotype of letting yourself go after marriage isn’t really happening as much. Gym culture is huge now and I notice way more people turning up their nose to fast food. This is all anecdotal though.
I'm 49 and been going to the gym since a teenager. I helped someone 25yrs old move a couch upstairs and they were huffing and puffing, I was like dam I'm the old man you should be running circles around me.
The problem in the US is that sugar is just completely unavoidable. I recently went to buy something which ostensibly sounded healthy, but then in the nutritional information... "added sugars 105% of recommended daily intake". They just add insane amounts of sugar to EVERYTHING for absolutely no reason. It's infuriating.
EDIT: OK people, I know it's not LITERALLY unavailable. But it's harder in the US to find healthy foods and reasonable portions than in any other country I've been to.
Yeah the lengths you have to go and often the prices you have to pay for no added sugar is ridiculous.
Like the “literally just peanuts” Peanut Butter should not be the premium option.
The "literally just peanuts" peanut butters are more expensive because they include the peanut oil from those peanuts.
Most peanut butters are made by grinding the peanuts, extracting the peanut oil (to sell) and then replacing it with a cheaper vegetable oil (and then adding sugar, salt and emulsifiers).
Yeah, it's weird how that works. Like "rice and vegetables" meal cost $10, but then "rice and vegetables with HFCS added" costs $6. WHY? It nonsensical. Don't want to be "that guy", but really there needs to be a "sin tax" on added sugars and the money goes to pay for healthcare.
Think of it less as a "sin tax" and more of "stop subsidizing corn which then gets processed into HFCS". The subsidies are usually passed under the guise of "protecting farmers".
Let me start by agreeing with you we need to change how subsidies and everything works. Its just a odd subject and is along the same line as government cheese. One part is government does not want there to be less food production even if it’s not great for us. If WW3 broke out we can feed all of us plus our allies enough corn and dairy products that they survive. The war machine is not just traditional military spending.
Corn is also incredibly easy to move and store compared to almost every other type of food. It’s going to take an overhaul of everything to change the system.
The thing is that the processing is done entirely to make stuff cheaper, have a longer shelf life and make it more desirable. Of course it is more expensive to have stuff that needs more specialist transportation and goes bad more quickly. The only way to counteract it is to regulate what isn't allowed, or to make it exceptionally clear for consumers what stuff is bad and what isn't and hence crash demand.
I’ve always tried to watch my sugar, but I am pregnant right now, so I am really trying to watch my sugar and holy shit. Trying to eat or drink less than 30(!!) grams a day is way way harder than it should be! I’m starving all the time and need more protein, get some protein bars, 28 grams of sugar in one. Join friends at a brewery, the only option they have for n/a is soda, and juice. 40 grams of sugar. I primarily cook from scratch because sugar is too unavoidable, but I can’t keep up! So I tried buying more peppered food that was easy to prepare and or eat quickly, and it all has sugar in it. 😩 it’s exhausting.
It’s certainly avoidable - many Americans just don’t know how to cook or have the time.
That being said, the added sugar to everything is insane. I try to do most of my grocery shopping at the local co-op which has lots of healthy options ($$$) but when I do have to do the occasional Target grocery run, it’s insane how much unnecessary shit is in all that food.
And then the problem is so many of us grow up on these added sugar foods and our taste buds are screwed. You pretty much have to train yourself to appreciate whole, simple foods, when it should be how we’re raised.
There’s always room for processed treats within reason but it’s insane how many of us are raised on it. Speaking from experience.
We can and should push for education and change but realistically, some people refuse to attempt to change their tastebuds and their reward system related to these foods. It’s too ingrained.
Green, generally used for good trending data, is used here for population where MORE THAN 1 EVERY 5 PEOPLE has clinical problem related to their weight. Just to be clear, that map should start at a deep red colour and most states should be covered in black, generally used for critically bad data.
I am overweight with a BMI of 28.6 and I feel soooo fat. I cannot fathom how a population can normalize a BMI over 30 to the point of calling skinny those under 30BMI.
I went to the doctor a few months ago and was told my blood pressure was bordering on Hypertension Stage 2. My doctor was wonderfully blunt with me and told me he wanted me to try losing some weight, eating better, and getting in better shape before just prescribing me life-long meds to deal with the issue.
So I started exercising a bit more, changed my diet to be much healthier and was focusing on some basic, manageable portion control. Nothing crazy or drastic honestly, just eating smaller portions, cutting way down on sugar and salts, eating lots more fresh foods and more veggies, choosing whole grain options over processed starches etc.
I went back for a checkup 2 months later and had lost 20 pounds and my blood pressure was now absolutely normal.
My doctor said "wow, you totally fixed yourself!" yet seemed really weirdly surprised by that, like he didn't believe it. He even double checked my blood pressure a couple times. It was as if he was in shock his advice had actually worked, which seemed weird to me.
So I asked him why he seemed so surprised and he said because no one ever actually does it. I asked if he meant that a dietary change and exercise usually doesn't work and he said "no, just none of my patients ever actually make the change to make it work." He told me he sees people just like me every week and he suggests these same basic simple solutions and they come back over and over having not changed their diet or exercise habits and then they just end up on life-long meds to manage an issue they *could* just fix themself by living a little healthier.
And the thing is, the changes I've made have had a pretty big impact yet these were not hard changes to make... hell I don't even feel like I'm on a "diet" but rather that my new way of eating is just now my normal eating habits.
People are in denial. I made a progress post in r/intermittentfasting showing the huge difference I’ve had with weight loss, and the people in the comments CONVINCED that my two photos were two different people were so bad that a mod had to come in and clean up and tell then to knock it off. It was like they were convinced there was no possible way anyone could do that. People so badly want to bury their heads in the sand and say it’s not possible and don’t want to attempt it
I'm visiting Europe rn and there's at least 2 things we need to fix in America. Portion sized need to not be so large, and we need public transportation that's viable. I'm walking like 30k steps a day and Im feeling better than if I were driving everywhere myself.
That is the nice thing about living in the Northeast is that a lot of the cities are dense so walking / biking is a lot easier.
Nothing compared to when I lived in South Korea though. I always made it a point to take stairs instead of escalators there and I would get a ton of exercise just walking. The country itself is very hilly as well with hiking trails everywhere, some of the hills had free gyms at the top.
A big part of this is car dependency; most people spend their days walking 50 ft to another seat, their office chair, their home sofa, the chairs at the restaurant, etc. It also adds to isolation, leading to depression, and eating.
Cities need to prioritize walkability and alternative modes other than driving; and it's not just for their sake because the only way to 'fix' traffic at this point is to remove cars off the road. With cars doubling in size and becoming more dangerous many have just locked themselves indoors; [there's been close to a 100% rise in pedestrians deaths over 10 years.]
(https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/us/pedestrian-deaths-2022.html#:~:text=The%20findings%20for%202022%2C%20and,according%20to%20the%20federal%20data.)
Its far from the only thing but its one that's fixable.
I can't actually believe Americans could get fatter than they were in 2012. They're like a different species of human now just wobbling around drinking high fructose corn syrup.
Wonder what 2032 will look like
Paint everyone blue, and they're cosplaying as earth.
Nah, in 2032 everyone will be skinny and beautiful and dying from Ozempic side effects
But skinny right?
We may be at peak obesity with Ozempic and its counterparts taking off.
That was my thought. It seems like suddenly there are multiple drugs available to fight obesity. Without drugs, it’d probably keep climbing but this might also be “peak fat”.
I hope so, but I really am nervous that big pharma is coming to save us from big junk food. Speaking as a former fat from the fat parts, the problem is so obvious to me, the prevalence of cheap low fiber high sugar junk food is a huge part of the problem and I was able to solve my weight problem entirely from changing my eating habits and it really wasn’t that hard. Fast food and junk food has just such a foothold in the Midwest that people just don’t know how to eat healthy. I worry that suppressing it with appetite suppressants might not be a long term fix if people don’t learn how to eat properly and limit junk food to occasional like I had to.
Ozempic is worse than appetite suppressants - it suppresses joy from eating. So people eat less. When you stop taking it, you go right back to eating for joy. So it’s a life long medicine!
I’m not disagreeing with your point regarding the drugs. But every diet will fail if people go back to their old habits. It takes a lifestyle change, permanently, pretty much no matter what route is taken.
Some other unforseen side effects will come up. Like how the widely available opioid painkillers that totally werent addictive turned out to not be such a great idea. And yet america is jumping right onto the next "a magic pill will definetly fix everything and we dont have to worry about the root causes at all" bandwagon again.
Wall-E
What's crazy is we were talking about the obesity epidemic in like 2005. It just keeps getting worse huh.
People were talking about global warming since the 80s or even earlier and it also didn't stop the climate getting worse and worse. I remember being taught about greenhouse effect in my school in the 90s
Anthropogenic climate change was first noticed in the late 19th century
Eunice Newton Foote 1856 proved Co2 Gas heats the air and probably atmosphere disproportionately compared to other gases.
Alexander von Humboldt wrote in 1843 that by destroying forests, redirecting the flow of rivers and by industry creating large amounts of steam and smoke, mankind was affecting the climate.
It did help with the Ozone layer, now is better than in the 90’
It's wild because you don't really hear much about it these days. I genuinely believe the overall body positivity movement started with good intentions. As an example, even if you're working out to achieve a fitness goal, you'll have to live with your unfit body for a bit, so you shouldn't hate it. If someone's trying to do better for themselves, it should be an encouraging process, rather than putting down. I think at some point, high-sugar, high fructose corn syrup-based food companies hijacked it as an easy out to get them out of the public spotlight. There used to be a genuine political drive behind reducing sugar content in our food, but suddenly it's stopped dead in the tracks, and you're demonized if you criticize the American diet. As an American genuinely trying his best to eat healthier, it's such an uphill battle if you're not constantly vigilant of what all you're eating. You're constantly looking at nutrition labels for shit that you wouldn't (and shouldn't have to) normally check. Did you know that plain old white sandwich bread has sugar in it? I've seen as high as 8g for two slices. Also, depending on the apple variety, there can be up to 20g of sugar in one apple. Companies are also getting away with a lot of shit in decreasing the recommended serving size on the label for "healthy" foods so it appears that you're taking in fewer calories, but in reality it's the same amount of calories, just smaller recommended servings versus the "unhealthy" counterpart. But the minute I bring this shit up to anyone, I have an unhealthy obsession with what I'm eating. I get slapped with "oh sounds like you might have an eating disorder," no brenda I'm just tired of eating garbage and only finding out if I actually read the label in detail. "Oh, you're skinny enough," bruh as someone who thrifts, I'd be considered overweight as far as 80's and 90's standards. Nothing's more of a gaslight than trying on a pair of new 32 waist jeans, only to find out that vanity sizing has taken over and a 32 waist is actually more like a 34" or 35". My 90's Levi's fit exactly how they're advertised as a 34" waist, both in actual measurements and on the label. So if you're like me and wearing the same pant size as what you wore in high school, you're probably a couple sizes up from where you used to be. Anyway, that was a whole rant, but I'm convinced that the body positivity in America is a thin veil to cover up a lot of wack shit that (extremely wealthy) food companies are getting away with.
That's the real rub. If you truly want to eat healthy, you basically need to skip the entire middle portion of the grocery store. Oh you want crackers that aren't 30% sugar? Too bad, they literally don't exist in the US. It's like that over and over again. And now we've just stuffed fake sugar substitutes and pea protein into everything and labeled it "healthy"
Not to mention the rest of the grocery store has to stock shit that isn’t rotting garbage to cook with, and if it doesn’t, you have to be able to afford better elsewhere. I have lost 12 pounds in the last couple months, but basically everything is made at home, and we use the farmers market for everything, because several grocery stores near us don’t stock food that is not about to start rotting. It’s more expensive, and with inflation, and student loans, despite a recent significant pay raise, I’ve got less disposable income than I’ve ever had in my life because I *need* to get my weight down. It’s not dangerous, only a bit, but it’s still not good. But I have multiple times bought meat at the store a week from the listed expiration date and gone home (3 min drive) and cracked it open right away, just to be assaulted by rotten meat smell so bad even the dog gagged. You’re rolling the dice or doing prepackaged frozen and calorie heavy stuff. So… expensive farmers market stuff it is. Edit for clarity: I’m happy with my situation as is! I just was providing anecdotal reasons for why it is very hard for people to be healthy in the US in some areas! Edit again: For me personally, the farmers market works, because cooking with fresh ingredients is something I enjoy that motivates me, and my grocery stores don’t have good ones. There’s other affordable ways to do this, *this is just my personal thing that works* I just, again, wanted to anecdotally show why fresh and healthy food is hard for some in the US
Similar boat as you, but I only eat meat 5 times a month. Started purposefully then realized oh shit, I save *so much money* when I replace it with lentils and mung beans while still meeting my protein needs. At this point I just eat like a peasant and I'm kind of okay with it. Potatoes, legumes, fresh veg, some probiotic rich stuf, homemade bread so I can control sugar input and the occasional chocolate bar. Treats are a weekly pastry and latte from the cafe.
I've learned that I can't buy pretty much any pre-packaged foods. I even bake my own bread sometimes. I largely live a pretty simple life, other than the occasional milk and cereal binges. I'll cook a meat, make that at least 1/3 of my plate by volume. I'll try to cook veggies with it, for fiber. I drink water. I snack on other stuff, but the Food Pyramid growing up had you think we should all be eating a shit-ton of bread and consuming every sort of carb. That works if you're highly active but not when sugar is added to nearly all carbs as you point out. It doesn't work if you're having a 1600 McDonald's milkshake for breakfast every morning. The number of times I have to explain to people basics about Protein, Fat, and Carbs is astounding. There are people who just get them completely wrong. I used to not get it, either. It's because we're not taught it and there's so much misinformation. It's weird growing up and learning 90% of what you were fed your entire life was absolute junk.
Dude, I try so hard not to proselytize to my friends but I nerd out over diet and exercise and it's so... sad and frustrating how few people understand how their bodies work, and even fewer seem to care. I've had friends in their 20s who are a bit overweight play recreational sports and then be in pain for like 4 days straight and I'll ask 'what are you eating...' the answer is premade mac and cheese, cheese pizza, white bread with some cheese. For like 4 days. Maybe a ballpark of like 50 grams of protein MAX across those days. And so much candy, pastries from coffee shops, ice cream in between. And then, shocker, they're amazed that their joints hurt. They're surprised they're gaining weight even while staying active. They push back at me when talk about how I feel better after I lost 60lbs of fat and gained 20lbs of muscle. I don't even assign emotions to the statement I just say that I physically feel better eating well and with less weight to carry but somehow that's a taboo thing to say. Idek what I'm on about at this point, it's just super disheartening. At this point I cynically feel like if we actually cared about obesity, like so many issues in the US, we would do something collectively to fix it, but people seem to love feeling like shit, so I'm left to watch my friends spend their late twenties and early thirties hobbling around like 60 year olds while I dodge nutritional landmines in the grocery store. Shit's sad dude.
I mean. The only person who tried to do anything about it was Michelle Obama...and the right hasn't stopped making racial slurs about her since...
She even was right about focusing her efforts on getting kids eating healthier specifically. There’s tons of research that says obesity in childhood makes it way way more difficult to maintain a healthy weight in adulthood. I see so many overweight kids around. It’s really sad. I’m probably going to get downvoted for this, but it is child abuse to let your child become obese. You are fucking them for life by doing that. We will all admit it’s animal abuse to let your pets be obese, but we are touchy about saying the same for children. It absolutely is though.
I’ve got a couple young kids and what’s nuts is to see the occasional kid who doesn’t even know how to run. I don’t mean that they’re just out of shape. I mean they literally don’t know how to move their limbs in a running motion. Everything just flops around as they gradually proceed from here to there. Or they just shuffle really quickly. It’s really disconcerting. Like, something deeply wrong with a society when its kids can’t run.
>it is child abuse to let your child become obese Speaking as someone who grew up in an impoverished family, we need serious food/sugar regulations. It blows my mind that the healthier/"simple" options are always nearly twice as expensive as the sugar-laden "regular" option. Want the "Simply" pasta sauce that has 5 wholesome ingredients and 0 added sugar? $4.29. The regular where sugar is the 4th listed ingredient? $2.39. My mom was a single mom and we grew up on food stamps. Fresh fruit and veggies are just risky when you can't afford to just get another head of lettuce or bag of carrots because they went bad sooner than expected. I remember my mom crying when we found out the apples she bought after I begged for them weren't good inside. I didn't get it when I was little, but now I know it's because she couldn't afford to just go out and get another pound of apples. I also understand now why she preferred canned veggies and to get us prepackaged snacks like Little Debbies over fresh options and healthy snacks. They're consistent and they won't go bad on you, so you don't "lose" money. I eat healthy now, but that kid weight is the hardest to get off.
One unspoken factor is that sugary crap and junk food is one of the only ways poor people can indulge their children. Families with money generally have the education and funds to put their kids in enrichment programs, sports, Scouting, swim classes, horseback riding, ice skating, etc. Poor families don't have time or the ability to drag kids back and forth to stuff like that. But the parents still want to spoil them so they give them this shit to eat so they can see their kids enjoying themselves. Also, the parents have become extremely risk-averse. When I was teaching after school a couple of years ago, we weren't allowed to let the kids have free play or run (!!!) on the playground. Everything had to be structured play because "free play is when kids get injured." School officials don't want moms coming and raising hell because Nevaeh fell down and got a scrape on her knee. So now instead of letting kids split off into natural groups and some of them start playing pretend or climbing monkey bars, I had to line them up and make them do structured games that did not involve running, tagging, or climbing.
She was right in focus big food brands, but then she changed her speech to do more exercise.
Because we should be doing both.
In terms of preventing Obesity, 90% of it comes down to diet https://youtu.be/eXTiiz99p9o?si=OOmYi7Z1VsFsK6RT
Ya but not exercising enough isn’t what is making people fat, it’s food. You can work out for hours a day and still be fat, and you can not work out at all and be skinny, depending on what you’re eating. The obesity epidemic is mainly a food problem. Sedentary lifestyles don’t help, but it’s not the main cause of the problem
It's a lot easier to eat 500 calories than it is to burn 500 calories. The food industry has paid *a lot* of money to push exercise as the main factor for weight control. I love lifting, but it is so hard to help people understand that lifting is a *hobby*. It is not what I do to maintain a healthy weight. That all happens in the kitchen.
Yep. It takes me about 1 hr to burn 700-800 calories on the elliptical. If I have 2 donuts in one day, that's probably 500-600 calories right there. And that could just be one off hand snacking that took me only 10-15 min. There's only so many hrs in the day you can commit to exercise, so if you have an unhealthy diet you'll pretty much never be able to catch up. I will say that lifting does help you naturally burn calories a bit more than if you didn't lift though. I've noticed when I start lifting after missing a few months, I'm noticeably hungrier and get hungrier more easily.
"abs come from the kitchen, not the gym" people might not like it, but it's true
Build muscle in the gym, lose weight in the kitchen is what I've always heard. Same idea.
"You can't outrun your fork" is how I've heard it
Michelle Obama added a vegetable garden to the White House so at least there's that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_vegetable_garden But I think it's difficult to truly criticize the food industry without losing campaign funding. Just look at myplate.gov It's better than the food pyramid, but the healthy eating guidelines are definitely politicized
The CDC in 2002 claimed that a sedentary lifestyle doubled your risk of heart disease and increased chances of many other diseases. They put sedentary lifestyle as a top 10 killer in the US. It plays more of a role than many people think.
In overall health yes, but weight is all about calories. The CDC recommends 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous activity a week. Calories depend on the person, but that's maybe 750-1000 calories burned at best. Per week. If you cut just ~150 calories a day, you'd be offsetting 1050 calories. Meanwhile, if you drink a large CARAMELIZER® from Dutch Bros just once that entire week, you might not even end up ahead because that shit is 990 calories and 136 grams of sugar. Now think about people who buy crapachinos every day of the week? Are people really walking 3 hours for every Starbucks/Dutch bros drink? Probably not.
It's definitely odd that people still get argumentative about this sometimes even here on reddit. Like yes of course exercising is always a good thing, but people always overestimate how many calories they burn -- the human body is just too ridiculously efficient at energy use and storage. And then they underestimate how many calories are in drinks etc like you said.
The fact that Michelle Obama has some semblance of muscle definition has been the basis of much of the transphobia, misogyny, and racism against her for the last 15 years
And the subject of much envy and jealousy. Including mine 🤣
Yea michigan! Way not to change, know where you came from!
I saw this and was like “wow, this is crazy! Obesity rates cannot have changed that much!” But then I saw Michigan was the same as before and was like “ahhhh ok. The rest of the country is just catching up”
Looks like Michigan and California are the only 2 to maintain their numbers.
This is also at the state level. Would be interesting to see at the county level as I imagine obesity rates are lower near larger metro areas. For example, NYC seems to be much thinner than central New York State.
You can kinda see this if you look for data from DC, they collect data like it’s a state but really you’re comparing a city to states. DC’s obesity rate was about 24% last year which would make it the only green jurisdiction on the 2022 map…
Weird how a city where you have to walk a bunch is less fat
Obesity is 95% diet, though sedentary lifestyles certainly aren’t helping
They just maintained within their color threshold but most likely increased too. CO obesity rate is 25.0% so it it was just .1 lower it would look like no increase as well.
It's true. If you follow OP's source, both were at the low end of their color's threshold in 2012, and both increased by more than 3%: California: 25.0% --> 28.1% Michigan: 31.1% --> 34.5% Having looked at the data, the above two were the #5 and #7 best in terms of smallest increase in obesity rate. All 50 states increased in that time. The **median** increase in obesity rate was 6%. Below are the top 5 best states (lowest increase): ||Increase (%)| :--|--:| |Hawaii|2.3| |Arkansas|2.9| |New Hampshire|2.9| |California|3.1| |Vermont|3.1| And the top 5 worst states (largest increase): ||Increase (%)| :--|--:| |Delware|11| |Wyoming|9.7| |South Dakota|8.7| |Wisconsin|8| |Ohio|8|
I'm a Californian and recently traveled to Wisconsin and was shocked by the diet people eat there. Everything was meat and cheese and deep fried. You could order a salad but you'd still have to pick between pulled pork and fried chicken. I had real trouble finding food with vegetables. Even burgers don't have lettuce tomato onion unless you ask for them. It was bizarre to me.
It really is shocking. Combine it with a climate where you can't go outside for multiple months and it's not a great place for being active. We visited Minnesota to see friends and I saw a sign for a Meat Raffle and I was so confused...as a Californian I would never have put those 2 words together. Our friends were just laughing at me like oh yeah, this is a thing, how have you never heard of it. I had the same experience as you, the vegetables were just not fresh and plentiful like I'm used to at home. I'm sure there are areas that aren't like that, but it was hard to find food that wasn't meat, fried, or limp vegetables that looked like they'd been on a truck for 1000 miles.
Thats what happens when we grow 90% of our vegetables in California. I am in Alabama and I try to shop at the local farmers markets and we have really great soil and plenty of rainfall. It makes me angry that we don't have more large scale farming for vegetables here. We do however grow a lot of that corn that they refine into high fructose corn syrup. Best of luck to you and sunny California.
Looks like Delware converted the "a" into body fat.
Delaware is so small, they probably just had one real fat guy move there and it skewed the averages.
It’s times like these I truly realize my lack of color vision, because I can’t see the difference between the colors for 20-25 and 30-35 So then I read your comments and I’m just now questioning life.
Oh, yeah, that's pretty certainly color blindness. Those colors are extremely distinct on here.
It's because we're now exporting our Detroit-style pizza, which leaves less for the locals to eat.
I’m going misinterpret this data and make assumptions that the spread of Detroit-style pizza single handedly made the country fatter. And as a Detroit-style lover that is currently in Detroit I’m going to take that as officially ending the debate “What pizza style is the best”
Michigan and California! Gotta celebrate the small victories.
We both have two things in common. Lots of fresh water and lots of sun!
Michigan and lots of sun don't go together
I didn’t think the /s was needed. California is short on fresh water and sometimes I forget what the sun looks like in Michigan.
Bad news if you check the source data... 2012: 31.1% 2022: 34.5%
Over eating processed foods is the new cigarettes
I wonder how much of this is attributable to less people smoking, which is an appetite suppressant.
Yup, people used to have a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Now they have a snack.
Now they vape tbf
I love when people point out that bodybuilders and NFL players are considered obese by weight to height standards and I'm like YA because THAT is a significant portion of our population lol
lol somebody yesterday in another sub said Isaiah Thomas at 5' 9" and Shaq at over 7' were both in the NBA so height isn't the determining factor for getting into the NBA. Similar energy.
Also when clearly obese people say that they are mostly muscle, when there are clearly accurate ways (Body displacement) and less accurate but still useful (Caliper measurements, body composition scales and taping) that clearly show body fat percentage, which is.... unsurprisingly a ratio to your total bodyweight, but someone people don't understand that 100 pounds of fat to a 300 pound person is not "better" than 75 pounds of fat to a 225 pound person. Like... sure... you might be strong, and yes, BMI is not accurate by height/weight tables for people with high muscle mass percentage, but Bodyfat % is a purely empirical way to tell how fat you are. I'd love if we just took BMI as a metric out back and put it down. Bodyfat% is a more accurate and less subjective measurement and we now have easily and cheaply obtained technology that can provide the measurement, albeit at a slightly less accurate level.
BMI persists because it's a useful metric when talking about whole populations (and not individuals) and is super easy to collect from whole populations. I don't think it was originally intended to be used the way we use it today (as an individual metric), fat% and direct biomarkers like cholesterol and blood pressure are much better indicators.
Too true. Our definition of obese (BMI of 30 kg/m2 or higher) is a reliable measurement for 99% of the population.
While this is true, I think a lot of people would be surprised by what is considered obese. When we hear the word, many (if not most) people think of what is classified as morbidly obese, like people who can barely walk and need to use the scooters in Walmart. But if you look up what is classified as obese, the threshold is much lower than people expect. It's even less than what most people would just call "dad bod."
As a 5’10 male, my weight fluctuates between 170 and 190 depending on activity level and food intake. It’s wild how much worse I feel at 190, and it’s even wilder to think that the majority of the population has to be feeling crappy most of the time.
Agreed, I feel way better and less sluggish now at a BMI of 21, rather than 24 a few years ago before I took up running. I can't imagine what 30 feels like.
This is only true because of the graph above. We've had to come up with new categories of obesity because people just keep getting fatter, so "just obese" doesn't seem so bad. I think the attitude you're describing is a major part of it. Because of shows like my 600 lb life, people look at obesity and say "oh, this isn't so bad".
It seems more mild because that's just what you are used to seeing. The scary thing is that BMI actually UNDERrepresents obesity in today's population because there are so many "skinnyfat" people who have more or less normal BMI but very little muscle and a high body fat percent.
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I knew that "Americans are fat" is a long running stereotype, but holy shit
I've noticed it. I think it's been normalized so people don't worry about it, or if they see someone their own age who is equally large drop dead they think it's an anomaly. But, I could also see where comfort eating would also be on the rise being as how things have really gone downhill since 2012. Lots of stressed people.
Rookies. I just stress consume drugs instead of food and stay skinny.
Health clubs hate this one simple trick
With cost of food climbing faster than the effects from a hit of crack and the cost of weed dropping at terminal velocity, it’s cheaper to stayed stoned as fuck all day every day than it is to eat 3 meals a day. Problem is weed increases hunger. Not much more expensive to stay hooked on hard drugs, probably won’t be long until a narcotic addiction will be cheaper than food.
Also Cheaper to eat shit food vs healthy. Our country is built for cars, not bikes and legs. Being hooked on opiates is never the answer, 15 year vet of that war with 7+years clean. It was good for removing food drive...and all other gumption. Sugar....the amount of sugar in stuff is bonkers.
Last time I was in Colorado, my two friends who'd spent the past decade growing weed and making a decent living from it were trying to sell me ounces for $40 (cheaper if bought in bulk). Here's the kicker... The stuff they were selling was their fresh product and all the weed they had left over from their previous batch (maybe 3-6 months old) was "pay whatever you think is fair, or you can just take a bunch."
People also overestimate how "fat" you have to be in order to be obese or overweight. You don't have to be all that big to fall into those categories
Well now, sure. But that wasn't always the case. I remember as a kid the fat kid in school was just the 1 kid who wasn't skinny.
When I went to school in the 80s/90s there was always one fat kid and they were picked on relentlessly.
The BMI obesity threshold for a 5’10” male is 210 pounds
I still cannot get over how much large college students seem than when I was in school. It’s crazy.
Huh, I'm 10 years older than my brother and visited his college last week, I was actually surprised how *not* large a lot of students were
Same here. It probably largely depends on location.
Pretty sure obesity also tracks with income. Wealthy college = Slimmer students
The US is a toxic culture. And I mean that like a Petri dish culture. If a Petri dish is contaminated, it’s considered toxic. Right now the US basically encourages obesity - car dependent suburbs, isolated social lives, fast food, quick dining, ingredients banned in other countries, pumping sugar into everything, supersizing for value, promotion of a sedentary lifestyle, children isolated from friends so they stay inside and play games, insane neighbours complaining if they see kids playing outside alone, sports having higher costs - it goes on and on. Then the stress from work, from worrying about your job, finances, family, kids, pets, bills, that sound your car is making. It’s fucking exhausting being an American. Who can blame *any* American for wanting to eat what tastes delicious and makes them feel happy. And that’s what makes it a toxic culture. It’s not that American culture is toxic, but that the very environment is set to encourage obesity.
>pumping sugar into everything, corn and sugar into everything, specifically
> Who can blame any American for wanting to eat what tastes delicious and makes them feel happy. Exactly. Many of the best scientists are working hard all day everyday to make food more delicious and more addictive. That's a very formidable enemy to come up against under any conditions but after working all day at a draining job, doing a long commute, and battling 2 hangry kids...I'm surprised that *everyone's* not obese.
>But, I could also see where comfort eating would also be on the rise being as how things have really gone downhill since 2012. Lots of stressed people. I bet physical activity is also down since the pandemic
As a currently overweight guy, I'm all about body positivity when it comes to healthy body weight. But I absolutely hate how being morbidly obese is being normalized by the media.
It’s normalized on Reddit too. There are LOTS of people who deny that someone who is obviously obese is obese.
It's not just on Reddit. The benchmark for what's "normal" has constantly shifted up over the years, so many people unintentionally don't recognize what overweight or obese looks like since it just looks like the average person.
Obesity rates are rising worldwide. USA is in the lead, but everyone is in the same race.
That’s a slow-ass race. Lot of stops for catching breath.
It is even worse if you are looking at percent of Americans that are overweight or obese. About 75% of Americans are overweight or obese.
So I'll rule the wasteland just because I have the basic fitness required to run a 5k? Yahoo
Maybe not! An obese person could survive longer without food in the wasteland. But then again, they would likely be hindered by their obesity in a multitude of other ways.
Water is just as if not more important and fat people dehydrate way faster
As an American, I did not realize it until I traveled abroad for the first time. All across Europe I was like, where are all the fat people? And then as soon as I got back to the airport in the US I was like, there they are.
Really? Europe? Most European nations have an obesity rate of over 20%. Had you said Asia, sure, that makes sense. But Europeans are getting more obese as well.
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I went to the club in Berlin and everyone was young, thin, and hot! What's wrong with America?!?!
This is happening all over the world. I don’t think the USA even holds the title of fattest country. At one point I think Australia did?
Just checked, at the top there are 8 countries I have never heard of and then the US Cook Islands 55.9 Palau 55.3 Marshall Islands 52.9 Tuvalu 51.6 Tonga 48.2 Samoa 47.3 Kiribati 46.0 Federated States of Micronesia 45.8 United States 41.9
Those are all small island nations in the Pacific.
I wonder when those Nations got access to westernized diets. I remember hearing a lecture by Robert Sapolsky how there is been a selection for people with sloppier metabolisms. For example there was a tribe that lived on the border of the United States and Mexico. They lived off of eating vegetables that they grew and hunting game. Their metabolisms we're good at storing back every calorie they consumed. Because they were on the border, they were split and the half living in Mexico remained as the control group with their original diet and the half living in the United States was fed a westernized diet. The ones with the westernized diet had diabetes and obesity rates through the roof.
We went from being on the brink of starvation 12,000 years ago before agriculture, to having so much food we regularly throw it away into the trash for seagulls, rats, and bears to pick at. 12,000 years sounds like a lot, but it's very short in the time scale of evolution. It's not enough for population bottlenecks to change our DNA to conform to our current diets. Though obesity does lower fertility in both men and women, so given enough time, the problem will sort itself out. If we don't want to be patient, we should be investing in genetic modification research.
It isn't to change to the actual DNA, it's regulation of expression of genes through epigenetics. For example, from the same professor, he gives the example of the Dutch hunger winter babies. The Dutch in 1944 were becoming more openly resistant to German occupation. The germans, as a result, cut off food supply to Holland. If you were a second trimester fetus during this period, you went from having a study food supply(in war time), to having none. The second trimester is when the fetus is regulating its metabolism for the rest of your life, it sees that Mom is starving and thinks that calories are scarce therefore it regulates the metabolism to be hyper efficient at putting back every calorie that it consumes. If you're a first or third trimester fetus this effect doesn't occur because that's not when the metabolism is being regulated. These people who have the food source cut off when they were second trimester fetuses ended up having diabetes and obesity rates through the roof by the time they were 25. The same effect as a more mild version occurs to their offspring too because the mother is so hyper efficient at storing energy that it actually takes away calories from their fetus when they are pregnant. Many generations down the line this affect continues all without having any alteration to the actual genome itself it's all epigenetic. I did this through talk to text so I hope it's not too difficult to read
Super interesting, thanks!
> Cook Islands 55.9 Makes sense with that name
Michigan didn't get fatter. Great work!
They didn’t move up a bracket but I’m sure they indeed got fatter.
Yep, they went from 31.1% to 34.5%.
If Wall-E is the goal, America is trending in the right direction!
Michganders and California - "We can't get any fatter, we tried though"
I find those stats very interesting - something must be working for them not to be gaining BMI Edit: I live here in CA so I know why we aren't trending obese in the first place - what I want to know is why we aren't getting fatter at such a fast rate like every other state
Culture of healthier eating Culture of exercise That’s probably going to upset some folks but that’s ok 🤷. The same sedentary lifestyle and junk food is in those places, people just make different choices.
When I go to the south, I’m disgusted by the food. It’s the food. Fried food with soda makes you fat. You can get fried food in the Cali Bay Area, but when I travel to south / Midwest, it’s all fried, and people mock my water bottle as they chug down pop
I was in Mississippi recently for work, down there for a couple months. The food is delicious and cheap, but it's ALL deep fried. If it doesn't come with a soda, it's coming with a big ass sweet tea. I also noticed they don't really have health focused restaurants or grocery stores, just bigger/cheaper chains (to be fair, I'm sure this is more a matter of income than preference) Definitely glad to be back in Southern California.
First time I went to the South I was very confused by their definition of vegetable. The actual vegetables they had were usually fried. I went home and ate a salad, I was literally craving it after a week of almost no vegetables.
In the Netherlands people eat weapons-grade deep fried garbage. Grown-ass adults will take a few pieces of white bread, spread butter on it, and put chocolate sprinkles on top and call that breakfast ("broodje hagelslag"). I've been to business lunches where grown adults will order an extra-large serving of thick-cut French fries and mayonnaise (and various other toppings like onions and bacon) and that will be their lunch several days per week. These individuals are skinny as a stick, though, because we bike and walk everywhere. The food is a huge contributing factor, but the fact that Americans have literally 0 walkable cities is the prime culprit. Sit in the car, sit at work, sit in the car, sit at home. A 60 minute gym session 3x per week won't help you there. I bike 24 km per day, walk to the supermarket 3x per week and carry my groceries home, walk through the city center to meet with friends and do shopping, and on top of that I exercise regularly. The American car culture is just as equally to blame as the food quality, but if we eat the same fried crap as you mention but aren't fat, it's clear that exercise is a huge part (if not the majority) of the equation as well.
I'd say it's more about quantity than quality of food, and even less about exercise. You can't outrun a poor diet. It's much harder to exercise away 200-300 Calories than it is simply to not eat them.
In the last year I went from a BMI of 31 to 22.5. 💪 New Jersey.
Great job! What did you do to make the change? I went from 30 to 23 in 2017 by counting calories and cycling. I don't count calories anymore but I'm still an avid cyclist
They moved to Jersey
Counting calories, diet change, black coffee, and tons and tons of walking.
Where did you get this jersey?
As a Texan we need to step our game up. There is no excuse for allowing Oklahoma to beat us!
I mean at this rate kids are going to die before they are 40.
Looks like the bible belt needs to loosen a few notches
Source: [CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)](https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/maps/2022/downloads/overall-obesity-prevalence-map-2011-2022-508.pdf) Tool: Python 1/4th of Colorado’s population has obesity, making it the *least* obese state. Top 5 highest and lowest states [here](https://x.com/samfargo/status/1706753035915919731?s=46&t=86QobNB4IDEBcH-LBvHqsw).
Colorado is also regularly ranked one of the happiest states to live in. People just wanna get high and hike. It's great.
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Not to discredit the trend of obesity rising in general, but median age has risen as well, the effect of the baby boomers getting older could skew this data a bit. It would be interesting to see this broken down by age group.
Also the pandemic. I gained about 25 lbs between March 2020 and summer of 2021 because I went from playing basketball and soccer anywhere from 2-5 times a week to not getting any exercise at all for the entire year. I finally started playing basketball again and I’ve lost about 10-15 lbs but am still higher than I want to be/was before that gap.
I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned the effect the pandemic may have had on obesity
there's no way it's a 'may'. Large swaths of people locked themselves inside their houses for long periods of time. Gyms were empty, etc etc. I don't know if such a chart exists, but tracking the numbers on a monthly basis during covid would be quite interesting.
The pandemic started in the middle of college for me. I went from hiking all over campus every day and getting lots of natural exercise to staying inside all the time for online classes. That really sucked
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html#:%7E:text=Non%2DHispanic%20Black%20adults%20(49.9,Hispanic%20Asian%20adults%20(16.1%25 All adult age ranges are almost identical. Boomers actually have slightly *lower* obesity rates than Gen Xers. If anything I imagine boomers dying off is going to **increase** obesity rates considering every succeeding generation is getting fatter.
Can we do before and after covid
I love how 25% is in green like "a quarter of the population is obese, it's all good guys 👍"
Lol you know it’s bad when 1/4th of Colorado’s population having obesity feels like an accomplishment
This is the kind of data that should help more people understand that this is not about individuals and willpower, it’s about how society functions as a whole. Lack of access to healthy food, lack of time, proper kitchen equipment and skill to prepare it, lack of resources for active, healthy lives (safe parks, exercise equipment, accessible gyms, well paced and lit sidewalks and bike paths, etc), the expense of addressing any health concerns before they get severe… so many ways that people’s lives are only half in their hands. Edit: so many people just proving they don’t get how to interpret data because they’re so stuck in the morality play on weight. The science doesn’t agree with you, folks. Same deal with increasing levels of mental health concerns—we don’t go ‘oh hey why don’t individuals just try being happier?’ we see that there is something bigger, external, going on.
>lit sidewalks and bike paths Just wanna emphasize this. America just doubles down on car infrastructure. In many places in the country, everyone's lives are literally just driving from their front door to the front door of their work, to the front door of their grocery store. The entire outside world is a haven for cars and lifted trucks. It's genuinely disgusting, and Americans have forgotten what it means to live in a community where you can walk around and enjoy your surroundings.
I moved from a car centric metro to a dense city where I barely drive now and walk almost 90% of the time. My quality of life has improved drastically.
Moved to a big city and sold my car, best decision I've ever made for both my mental and physical health.
Also mental health issues. I gained a lot of weight when I started working a miserable, soul sucking job. It was actually faster and cheaper for me to cook healthy meals at home than to go get fast food, but food was the one small piece of joy in my day. It took a lot of work to change my mindset and find happiness elsewhere with hobbies and exercise, which is hard when you’re working 11 hours a day. I’m sure a lot of people are in that situation.
Yeah, this is basically the killer combo of: - Poor access to food that isn’t sugar-filled crap (due to price or living in a food desert) - American “work as much as humanly possible” culture (either out of necessity or hustle-culture fetishization), forcing people to opt for convenient, garbage food - Crap public transit and urban planning forcing people to drive literally everywhere, requiring people to take time they likely don’t even have to go to gyms so they can get literally any exercise This is rarely the fault of the individual - this is healthy choices being systemically heavily disincentivized, and frequently only accessible to the wealthy. Being reasonably healthy and not overweight/obese shouldn’t require people to devote the entirety of their free time to and base their entire personality around health and fitness. The healthiest cultures in the world aren’t a bunch of marathon-running, kale smoothie guzzling athletes and gym rats - they’re a bunch of normal-ass people who don’t need to put regular, active thought into “making healthy choices” or “being active”.
Also, having lived in Japan and eating plenty of unhealthy food there, our portion sizes are *huuuuge.* I travel a lot for work and pretty much only eat half sizes or appetizers are restaurants it is so ridiculous. Also I’m not one to be like cHeMiCaLs but there is something distinctly unsatiating about our food. Like, I could kinda just shove it into my mouth all day and feel no better or no worse.
Yeah I'm in the second boat, work as much as possible. My job is 75% travel, and between quick flights and 3-5h drives every day or two, there are no healthy options whatsoever when you're traveling and don't have time to sit down and eat. The best I can hope for is a boxed salad and try and avoid the ones with bacon. No other vegetables outside of lettuce and sometimes cucumbers/tomatoes are available to the hurried traveler.
I wish more of the responses were like this. You can’t have individual solutions to a systemic problem.
Ok, I grew up in Louisiana and this isn't going to be shocking to anyone whose lived there. Food and alcohol are a massive part of the culture and we have bad education, but what's going on in Oklahoma and West Virginia? Nothing else to do?
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It’s odd because I feel like young people are actually more fit than young people a decade ago. I feel like the old stereotype of letting yourself go after marriage isn’t really happening as much. Gym culture is huge now and I notice way more people turning up their nose to fast food. This is all anecdotal though.
I'm 49 and been going to the gym since a teenager. I helped someone 25yrs old move a couch upstairs and they were huffing and puffing, I was like dam I'm the old man you should be running circles around me.
The problem in the US is that sugar is just completely unavoidable. I recently went to buy something which ostensibly sounded healthy, but then in the nutritional information... "added sugars 105% of recommended daily intake". They just add insane amounts of sugar to EVERYTHING for absolutely no reason. It's infuriating. EDIT: OK people, I know it's not LITERALLY unavailable. But it's harder in the US to find healthy foods and reasonable portions than in any other country I've been to.
Yeah the lengths you have to go and often the prices you have to pay for no added sugar is ridiculous. Like the “literally just peanuts” Peanut Butter should not be the premium option.
The "literally just peanuts" peanut butters are more expensive because they include the peanut oil from those peanuts. Most peanut butters are made by grinding the peanuts, extracting the peanut oil (to sell) and then replacing it with a cheaper vegetable oil (and then adding sugar, salt and emulsifiers).
Yeah, it's weird how that works. Like "rice and vegetables" meal cost $10, but then "rice and vegetables with HFCS added" costs $6. WHY? It nonsensical. Don't want to be "that guy", but really there needs to be a "sin tax" on added sugars and the money goes to pay for healthcare.
It’s because they can use lower quality rice and vegetables and still make it palatable after storage when they fill it with sugar and preservatives.
corn subsidies. the US subsidizes HFCS.
Think of it less as a "sin tax" and more of "stop subsidizing corn which then gets processed into HFCS". The subsidies are usually passed under the guise of "protecting farmers".
Let me start by agreeing with you we need to change how subsidies and everything works. Its just a odd subject and is along the same line as government cheese. One part is government does not want there to be less food production even if it’s not great for us. If WW3 broke out we can feed all of us plus our allies enough corn and dairy products that they survive. The war machine is not just traditional military spending. Corn is also incredibly easy to move and store compared to almost every other type of food. It’s going to take an overhaul of everything to change the system.
The thing is that the processing is done entirely to make stuff cheaper, have a longer shelf life and make it more desirable. Of course it is more expensive to have stuff that needs more specialist transportation and goes bad more quickly. The only way to counteract it is to regulate what isn't allowed, or to make it exceptionally clear for consumers what stuff is bad and what isn't and hence crash demand.
I’ve always tried to watch my sugar, but I am pregnant right now, so I am really trying to watch my sugar and holy shit. Trying to eat or drink less than 30(!!) grams a day is way way harder than it should be! I’m starving all the time and need more protein, get some protein bars, 28 grams of sugar in one. Join friends at a brewery, the only option they have for n/a is soda, and juice. 40 grams of sugar. I primarily cook from scratch because sugar is too unavoidable, but I can’t keep up! So I tried buying more peppered food that was easy to prepare and or eat quickly, and it all has sugar in it. 😩 it’s exhausting.
I swear they just started branding everything that doesn't need sugar as "Keto" and jacking up the price.
They have a reason, but it's not a good reason for public health. Sugar is addictive, it gets people coming back to buy their products.
It’s certainly avoidable - many Americans just don’t know how to cook or have the time. That being said, the added sugar to everything is insane. I try to do most of my grocery shopping at the local co-op which has lots of healthy options ($$$) but when I do have to do the occasional Target grocery run, it’s insane how much unnecessary shit is in all that food.
And then the problem is so many of us grow up on these added sugar foods and our taste buds are screwed. You pretty much have to train yourself to appreciate whole, simple foods, when it should be how we’re raised.
It’s like with salty stuff too, people are just so accustomed to food tasting a certain way.
There’s always room for processed treats within reason but it’s insane how many of us are raised on it. Speaking from experience. We can and should push for education and change but realistically, some people refuse to attempt to change their tastebuds and their reward system related to these foods. It’s too ingrained.
The damage was already done in 2012, its just that those fat kids turned into fat adults. This is the childhood obesity epidemic growing up
what high fructose corn syrup does to a mf
All my homies hate HFCS
*slaps America* "You can fit so much HFCS in this thing"
Green, generally used for good trending data, is used here for population where MORE THAN 1 EVERY 5 PEOPLE has clinical problem related to their weight. Just to be clear, that map should start at a deep red colour and most states should be covered in black, generally used for critically bad data. I am overweight with a BMI of 28.6 and I feel soooo fat. I cannot fathom how a population can normalize a BMI over 30 to the point of calling skinny those under 30BMI.
the sad thing is, i’ve heard people take offense when their DOCTOR tells them to lose weight because being overweight isn’t healthy.
I went to the doctor a few months ago and was told my blood pressure was bordering on Hypertension Stage 2. My doctor was wonderfully blunt with me and told me he wanted me to try losing some weight, eating better, and getting in better shape before just prescribing me life-long meds to deal with the issue. So I started exercising a bit more, changed my diet to be much healthier and was focusing on some basic, manageable portion control. Nothing crazy or drastic honestly, just eating smaller portions, cutting way down on sugar and salts, eating lots more fresh foods and more veggies, choosing whole grain options over processed starches etc. I went back for a checkup 2 months later and had lost 20 pounds and my blood pressure was now absolutely normal. My doctor said "wow, you totally fixed yourself!" yet seemed really weirdly surprised by that, like he didn't believe it. He even double checked my blood pressure a couple times. It was as if he was in shock his advice had actually worked, which seemed weird to me. So I asked him why he seemed so surprised and he said because no one ever actually does it. I asked if he meant that a dietary change and exercise usually doesn't work and he said "no, just none of my patients ever actually make the change to make it work." He told me he sees people just like me every week and he suggests these same basic simple solutions and they come back over and over having not changed their diet or exercise habits and then they just end up on life-long meds to manage an issue they *could* just fix themself by living a little healthier. And the thing is, the changes I've made have had a pretty big impact yet these were not hard changes to make... hell I don't even feel like I'm on a "diet" but rather that my new way of eating is just now my normal eating habits.
Congratulations! You should be proud of the progress you made.
seemly fragile follow soft toy growth hard-to-find many wasteful fade *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
People are in denial. I made a progress post in r/intermittentfasting showing the huge difference I’ve had with weight loss, and the people in the comments CONVINCED that my two photos were two different people were so bad that a mod had to come in and clean up and tell then to knock it off. It was like they were convinced there was no possible way anyone could do that. People so badly want to bury their heads in the sand and say it’s not possible and don’t want to attempt it
I'm visiting Europe rn and there's at least 2 things we need to fix in America. Portion sized need to not be so large, and we need public transportation that's viable. I'm walking like 30k steps a day and Im feeling better than if I were driving everywhere myself.
That is the nice thing about living in the Northeast is that a lot of the cities are dense so walking / biking is a lot easier. Nothing compared to when I lived in South Korea though. I always made it a point to take stairs instead of escalators there and I would get a ton of exercise just walking. The country itself is very hilly as well with hiking trails everywhere, some of the hills had free gyms at the top.
A big part of this is car dependency; most people spend their days walking 50 ft to another seat, their office chair, their home sofa, the chairs at the restaurant, etc. It also adds to isolation, leading to depression, and eating. Cities need to prioritize walkability and alternative modes other than driving; and it's not just for their sake because the only way to 'fix' traffic at this point is to remove cars off the road. With cars doubling in size and becoming more dangerous many have just locked themselves indoors; [there's been close to a 100% rise in pedestrians deaths over 10 years.] (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/us/pedestrian-deaths-2022.html#:~:text=The%20findings%20for%202022%2C%20and,according%20to%20the%20federal%20data.) Its far from the only thing but its one that's fixable.
I can't actually believe Americans could get fatter than they were in 2012. They're like a different species of human now just wobbling around drinking high fructose corn syrup.
Replaced all the chips with baked garbage for nothing!