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Obesity has become the most common form of malnutrition in the majority of countries (english.elpais.com)

submitted 2 years ago by boem@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

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[+] penquin@lemm.ee 159 points 2 years ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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[-] Duranie@literature.cafe 119 points 2 years ago

Something I haven't seen other commenters bring up that can have a huge impact, is the overall lifestyles people are living.

The unhealthiest years of my life were when I was working 2 jobs and struggling to keep a roof over mine and my 3 kids heads. Stress and depression were huge problems and money was tight, so sometimes the little bit of dopamine or serotonin from eating a "treat" were the highlights of the day. Add to that, the guilt of not being around to cook regular meals for my kids lead to 1) making large amounts of food on my one day off that could be eaten as leftovers throughout the week or 2) easy convenience foods (frozen pizzas, boxed Mac and cheese, etc) that the kids could make when I wasn't around.

Fast forward many years - my kids are adults taking care of themselves and I'm down to 1 good job that offers financial stability. My diet and health have completely changed. I actually have the time and energy to cook and plan better.

I'm not saying this to shift blame or responsibility, but to bring a different experience. When I hear (hopefully well meaning) people suggest "just cook healthier meals" it strikes me about the same as "stop eating avocado toast and you could afford a house."

[-] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 61 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Lack of free time to cook healthy food with a busier and more expensive life with salary raises that don't keep up with inflation or layoffs for many people definitely doesn't help. Healthy food ends up costing twice as much, if not more than unhealthy food. It's a multi-faceted problem and should be treated as such.

[-] TurtleJoe@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years ago

I don't think healthy food is necessarily more expensive, at least not if you know what you're doing. My personal experience is actually the opposite.

The problem, as you mentioned is the time, and the emotional and physical labor of figuring out something the whole family will want to eat and cooking it. Those things are all expenditures in their own ways, but not financial.

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[-] Shadywack@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years ago

Well said, that's what we call canard advice. Unhelpful advice that's obvious to everyone and does no fucking good to say whatsoever. You can cook more when your primary financial needs are met, so you can just work 40 hours in a week. That and the RTO mandates going around are robbing people of a significant chunk of time yet again ontop of overemployment. When you have to work a 10 hour day and commute an hour plus each direction, then come home and "cook" something, it usually translates to heating up frozen shit and then wishing you weren't miserable.

Been there and done that, fuck hustle culture.

[-] dexa_scantron@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago

Yep. My boomer dad: "When I was a kid, we walked everywhere! Nobody walks anymore!" Also my dad: "I'm afraid to drive into Portland because my truck might get stolen."

[-] NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world 57 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The healthy food options are also usually twice the cost too.

[-] lonerangers1@lemmy.world 62 points 2 years ago

ditch all the sugar drinks and drink plane old water, like out the toilet.

Rice and beans can be made in 1000 different ways. $1/lb uncooked.

Eating out is almost never a healthy option.

Healthy and expensive don't correlate in my outlook. I spend less eating better. Factor in not eating out and my pockets are fat, but not my ass.

[-] someguy3@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Too many people think eating healthy means broccoli needs to be 100% of your calories.

[-] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago

I prefer plain water myself. Not your bougie plane water.

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[-] Speculater@lemmy.world 16 points 2 years ago

Here we go again, giving no accountability. Yes, healthy food is more expensive, but that doesn't mean fat people didn't eat themselves fat.

The Internet will bend over backwards to ignore the algebra of calories. Base metabolic rates are basically identical between all humans. The lie of a "fast metabolism" is not why some people are skinny.

People are fat because they consume more calories than they burn. Blaming someone else doesn't fix it.

"Oh gosh, I don't drink soda and rarely eat treats, why am I still fat?" Because you eat too much for your daily expenditure.

[-] SkyeStarfall 13 points 2 years ago

This would make sense... If it was exactly the same everywhere with a similar level of convenience.

But it's not, America is much much worse than Europe on this, and rich countries in Europe don't exactly have less convenience than the US. How else would you explain it other than a systemic difference? American brains are not fundamentally different to European ones.

[-] Speculater@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago

Repeating my previous response:

I think diet is a part of it, but car culture and fast food is the biggest difference. Many developed European countries still rank much higher than the US in steps taken per day. Plus, fast food is usually a treat and not the default with a drive thru. It is back to the algebra of calories in the end.

[-] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago

In short, some Europeans live on easy mode when it comes to weight and fitness. Their portions are probably smaller, fast food less common. There are better social safety nets reducing sources of stress.

Perhaps the food industry hasn't achieved the level of regulatory capture as in the US and so sucrose / HFCS isn't added to things as much (idk I am guessing)?

Yeah it's all about the calories in vs out but there are clearly systemic issues that, once fixed, would help us greatly in the US.

Car culture is not quite accurate. It is more like, "the entire mode of existence of anything outside of downtown areas is designed around cars and is so ingrained in laws, infrastructure, city planning, etc. that it will take many decades of committed, relentless, focused, unopposed effort to undo."

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[-] SkyeStarfall 8 points 2 years ago

And these are systemic issues

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[-] littlebifi@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago

As an Europan I can tell you, that the food in de US often tasted sweet to me. It's like people in the US lost their taste buds for bitter and sour. There is no need to add sugar to every dish, especially bread. The other thing was the amount of fat in nearly everything. Salad? With a creamy sauce or tons of oil. Of course you have to add 400g meat AND a high calories cheese to it. Served with some sweet bread and it's basically a burger in disguise. We were told that California was the healthy and rich state. If that was the healthy food, I'm starting to believe all those images on social media of fat dripping dishes.

In the end we cooked ourselves most of the time and payed the horrific price.

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[-] lonerangers1@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago

I imagine it would be pretty easy to take the list of what people buy/eat and their health issues and see clearly what foods are causing what health problems.

I bet the average cashier would even be able to point out the worst products.

But never, ever, will that happen. Grocery store is full of dead animals and animal proteins and cancer look to go hand in hand. The other big one is sugar. People are hooked on it like cocaine.

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[-] Binzy_Boi@supermeter.social 130 points 2 years ago

I work on OpenFoodFacts, and the big issue is simply the amount of saturated fats and refined sugars there are in a lot of processed foods.

Like, sure, people have to be held personally responsible to some extent, but it should also be on the government to properly regulate how foods are advertised. I really appreciate the Nutriscore system that's being pushed for in Europe despite the flaws it has, and here in Canada they've been making some changes in how certain products are shown on shelves such as requiring labeling if they're high in sugar or fats and changing the previous confusing labels for energy drinks with a more easy-to-read Supplemental Food Facts label.

End of the day though, if something is still being labelled as being "healthy" when it really isn't, that's all it takes to fool the average consumer unfortunately. Stuff like Lucky Charms shouldn't be advertised to kids as "part of a complete breakfast", and it's absurd that a lot of "healthier" alternatives to certain foods are being advertised that way despite only being barely any better than the original product, like turkey bacon or veggie straws.

[-] Buffaloaf@lemmy.world 57 points 2 years ago

Like when Coke argued in court that no reasonable person would think Vitamin Water is actually good for you.

[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 21 points 2 years ago

Yes, but I don't remember if that was before or after Fox News successfully argued that no reasonable person would mistake them for a News Outlet

[-] Kethal@lemmy.world 24 points 2 years ago

Lobbyists have even polluted the ingredient label on the back. Now they can list a brand name as an ingredient, then list the ingredients of that. This lets them disguise the most prevalent ingredients if they're also part of the brand.

Water, oil, sugar, xantham gum, Bob's secret spice (enough sugar so that if the label were truthful, sugar would be the second ingredient instead of the third, cinnamon, nutmeg).

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[-] piefedderatedd@piefed.social 88 points 2 years ago

Just a few things come to mind :

Lobbyists stopping sugar taxes.
Big Pharma and health industry making tons of money.
European Union being very tolerant about pesticides.
Supermarkets putting candy close the counters where parents with kids are in queue.
Lots of people spending most of their time on mobile phones only exercising the muscles of their eyes.

I am happy that an organisation like Foodwatch exists : https://www.foodwatch.org/en/foodwatch-international

[-] Speculater@lemmy.world 28 points 2 years ago

Normalized obesity
Healthy at every weight culture
Unacceptable to discuss personal accountability

I keep getting into it with people I mostly agree with. Yes, it's fucked up that we add HFCS to everything and that corporations have weaponized addiction, but we can fight back.

[-] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 15 points 2 years ago

Healthy at every weight culture

This one irritates TF out of me.

Too many people who are outright unhealthy being told they're ok.

Overweight kids lead to sick adults.

Good thing in Ontario we have ol' Dougie fixing out healthcare system by privatizing the fuck out of it /s

Surely Pierre Pollieve will save us all when he's elected! /s

FML we are so lost.

[-] Nurgle@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago

Yeaaaah you’re probably getting into it cause your points don’t really have much merit and that can be frustrating. Like a simple look at when the obesity epidemic took off should have saved me from having to write this comment.

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[-] SupraMario@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yep, way to many people over eat, and it has nothing to do with what's in the food, people are just super seditaty these days and eat constantly.

Clicking the downvote button doesn't magically make me wrong. There is a reason that you can eat straight Twinkies for a month and watch the calories and still lose weight. You're not smarter than physics.

[-] Wogi@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago

Bitching about down votes doesn't magically make you right. You're being downvoted because what you said is idiotic.

It has a lot to do with what's in the food. Sure, if you eat nothing but 1500 calories of Twinkies every day, when you were eating 3000 balanced calories, you'll lose weight.

That is about 12 Twinkies. Not even an entire box of Twinkies. And that's all you get to eat in a day.

It would be much easier to reduce calories if half of them were from vegetables and the other half from meat. Feeling hungry has a lot to do with why diets fail. You can't just apply physics to the human body and expect emotional and hormonal changes not to have an impact on the choices that human makes.

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[-] GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That's part of it but the deeper question is why are people more sedentary? Why do people eat more often?

What is it about our society that promotes eating more processed foods?

My feelings are that food for many people is a sedative for a stressful life. Sugar is a great drug to make you feel good temporarily.

Then there is very little quality education around good nutrition and cooking in the US. Most people just take what the learned from their parents and go with it. And if their parents weren't food smart then they probably will not be either.

there is a lot more to the obesity epidemic than just "stop eating so much"

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[-] Tedrow@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years ago

To be fair my eye and thumb muscles are jacked.

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[-] someguy3@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 years ago

US restaurant portions are humongous. I thought it was exaggerated until I passed through, God damn that's a lot of food.

[-] Speculater@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

My wife and I share an entrée and an appetizer here in the US because there's no way anyone is meant to eat our portion sizes. We tip well to not look cheap, but Jesus Christ I don't need a full rack of ribs and 5 lbs of french fries.

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[-] neptune@dmv.social 39 points 2 years ago

Capitalism has brought prosperity and wealth to rational actors across the entire globe!

[-] BigTrout75@lemmy.world 29 points 2 years ago

Yep we all eat too much. I started counting calories and found out that I was eating twice as much as I should have. It's not obvious and every place serves big portions.

[-] travysh@lemm.ee 12 points 2 years ago

I've been counting calories for the last few months, and that was my big realization as well. I could have easily put down a single meal at a restaurant which is my entire (or more) daily intake now.

More than anything it's just awareness.

[-] Obi@sopuli.xyz 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I'm counting calories too, it's not even the amount but it's that some foods are total calorie bombs. You can pretty easily ingest a day's worth of calories in a single meal at the restaurant without really feeling like you overate, but if I pay attention and select my foods properly I can feel like I ate plenty and be under 1500cal a day.

[-] Timecircleline@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 years ago

One of the subs I miss from Reddit was volume eating- it had tons of tips for low calorie high volume meals so you don't feel restricted

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[-] DrMango@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago

It's not just that we eat "too much" but also that we're eating too much non-nutritive foods. The United States has entirely too many so-called "food deserts" where people are unable to purchase healthy foods

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

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[-] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 years ago

But we can't seem to feed all children 3 meals a day in the US.

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[-] DerpyPoint@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

It's really frustrating, in my country not only are we the most obese in the region, we're also the most diabetic. A huge double whammy that's burdening the healthcare system

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this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024

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