There is no incentive to stop obesity. The rich charge enough for health insurance to make profit on these taxpayers who then die before collecting any social security. Perfect citizens.
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But once you pay farmers to grow corn, they have to sell it somewhere. Hence HFCS, and corn oil, and corn gas, and ofc corn corn, and… The then-head of NIH Francis Collins was once asked what single thing Americans could do to be healthier - he said to eat better, especially less sugar, and Congress could remove the farming subsidies, or at least expand them from beyond corn & soybean to include fruits & vegetables. They laughed in his face. Ain’t nobody got time for 'dat!
The single worst part of it all is that those subsidies were put into place when a huge fraction of aspiring volunteer soldiers were turned away in WWII due to “malnutrition”. Thus the campaign was born to literally fatten up America. It worked!!! And it will continue to work… forever, bc once you create a voting block, ending it or even redirecting (towards a healthier end for us all, but lower profits for Monsanto in the short term) seems next to impossible. It actually is a good argument against socialism, at least in the USA where the government is so enormously susceptible to special interest groups (although there are even better arguments against capitalism so I don’t mean to say that it PROVES that socialism is bad, just that it is one example of its misuse, when the government is in charge of something and also the government is stupid; and before anyone says it, yes this situation is an argument against both at the same time:-P).
An excellent documentary about it, most of what I’m saying here is from part 4: https://www.hbo.com/the-weight-of-the-nation/season-1. I know, filmmakers can be… uninformed some(MANY MANY)times, but this was done as a joint venture between the FDA and NIH, so this is highly credentialed. Also trigger warning; it will make you very very sad watching this, bc facts in this era of end-stage capitalism tend to do that, so if you do not want to see things like mothers feeding their 300 pound 10-year old an enormous meal of pasta - literally killing them right before your eyes, slowly and painfully - then… well, I did warn you at least.
It actually is a good argument against socialism, at least in the USA where the government is so enormously susceptible to special interest groups (although there are even better arguments against capitalism so I don’t mean to say that it PROVES that socialism is bad, just that it is one example of its misuse, when the government is in charge of something and also the government is stupid; and before anyone says it, yes this situation is an argument against both at the same time:-P).
Sounds like an argument for market socialism, to me. You get a free market and employee owned and operated companies like co-ops instead of corporations run by psychopaths.
Whole grains are pretty good for you, nowhere near as bad as something like white bread. That’s like corn on the cob vs HFCS.
I had a hard time arguing against Sam’s Club muffins for breakfast.
For less than $6, I can have nine 710 calorie muffins. But the cost to my health to eat that much pure sugar with extremely little nutrition and like zero protein?
But that’d breakfast for 9 days for less than $7 (including tax.)
People who say eating healthy is cheaper if you’re willing to spend the time have never been to Sam’s Club.
How about two eggs, a tortilla, some hot sauce, and a banana?
I’m the wrong person to answer this. I react badly to eggs (just know it’s gastrointestinal and unpleasant) and I have oral allergy syndrome (specifically bananas).
Love hot sauce though!
Jesus Christ a 710 calorie muffin?!?
I’m in Canada. I get a muffin from Loblaw’s it’s around 450 calories which is still excessive but where the hell are they hiding another 250 calories?!
I have no idea. It’s monstrously large so that might be why.
I was buying them and eating half of one for breakfast but with like no protein and no redeeming qualities beyond “not hungry” and “taste good” I knew it wasn’t a real option. But my point here wasn’t “this is what I do,” my point was, “people are being disingenuous when they pretend it’s not a real option many people are taking.”
I work 12 hour shifts. I do meal prep of curries or stews and that makes a good, cheap meal, but the storage required to freeze 3 meals worth of meal prep for 4 days of work… plus the time it consumes in making and properly cooling and storing those meals… it’s not a luxury many people have. Convenience options are very appealing for many reasons and there’s this place where “I have to spend at least a day a week planning for work, preparing and putting away food in order for it to be healthy” yoyos around to, “I don’t make enough to buy healthy convenience food.” If I had kids I’d never be able to prep like I do. Hell, it’s difficult as it is!
Just at a guess, people who say that surely must be factoring in medical healthcare costs, to deal with the consequences of obesity and such.
I eat two packets of quaker oatmeal for breakfast. That’s 300 calories a morning. The box i buy from costco floats around $15 or so for 52 packets. Thats an entire months worth of breakfast and with less calories than your muffins, which means im able to achieve my daily calorie deficit easier (trying to hit 1600 every day - been doing a good job of it for the last 3 months).
I do a yogurt Smoothie (130 cals) and a cup of black coffee for first breakfast, then a carnation breakfast essentials or a muscle milk protein shake for second breakfast.
It hits my protein goals (super important- I have a very physically demanding job) but it costs more than eating garbage (or pure carbs which I can’t afford to do for my health).
It’s impossible to stop obesity without destroying the entire sugar industry.
Flat out false, and I wish people would stop saying that. Including the part about grains.
Do you know what the fittest, lowest body fat, endurance athletes consume in mega doses? Sugar and carbs.
Is it an ideal diet? Not at all. But it’s fuel, and it works when you need it to.
People are fat because they aren’t justifying their caloric intake. They just shovel it in, even when they’ve exceeded the 1800 calories needed to just sit on their ass all day.
There is no obesity if you’re active (excluding actual medical reasons like thyroid dysfunction or perscribed steroids).
Blaming “the industry” is as lazy as not wanting to be active.
Grain consumption, in case you weren’t aware, is a keystone trait among the healthiest people in the world (“Blue Zones”). Grain consumption is also high in vegans, who happen to also have low (healthy) BMI.
You’re missing the point. We live in an environment that reinforces obesity, see also car-centric lifestyle which is an infrastructure problem. It’s not like humans “wanted” to be active before, it’s just that their activity was easily covered by work and travel without needing extra time and effort PLUS they may have already been at/near a caloric deficit just eating what was available to them.
Also I am not fully weened off sugar, but honestly I find a lot of things unpalatable due to the sugar content (like milk chocolate). I would be perfectly fine if sweet on its own wasn’t a primary flavor anymore. That and it’s at the point where you need to assume that there’s a significant amount of sugar in basically everything. For example, Ireland classifies Subway’s bread as cake due to the sugar content.
Sugar is cheap (and can be put in higher concentrations than in the past), and it makes sense to make unhealthy food cheap. I also wouldn’t look at the opioid epidemic or similar problems and say “only personal problems here”.
Do you know what the fittest, lowest body fat, endurance athletes consume in mega doses? Sugar and carbs.
I work a physical job 8 hours a day. Doing even more exercise on top of that would be a good way to get injured.
Still fat though, because I habitually over eat high calorie food and drink lol
Hardest exercises are the fork put downs and table push aways
It’s not impossible, it just requires incentive. I’ve dropped 30 pounds this year by eating better (and much less) despite having a basket full of Hostess products sitting on the shelf and 2 liter bottles of sodas in the fridge. We just need to WANT to stop pigging out at every meal. For me, it was my cholesterol going through the roof of the skyscraper at my check-up this year (I was over 800! I think 150 is supposed to be the highest you go without being in danger) and generally being uncomfortable after every meal. Groceries get a lot cheaper when you’re only eating half as much, and allows me to afford buying better quality foods.
ah, yes, more ketobro science. Fat is good, despite having twice the calories of sugar!
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You’d think being able to easily get up off the sofa would be enough of an incentive
The fast-food and medical insurance industrial complexes couldn’t be more giddy.
Finland is quite fat and we have universal healthcare
Not if we do what we committed to at the Paris climate summit
lol good one
We’ve been warned about this since the at least the 80s maybe earlier. Then when it became more common (still not common I don’t think) that the food pyramid is a sham it explained by school lunches when I was younger didn’t usually seem all that balanced after I thought about it as an adult.
Couple that with cities that aren’t designed to be walkable and its dangerous to bicycle and it just doesn’t look good.
But hey, schools are probably going to get to serve chocolate, whole and 2% milk again due to winning arguments like “…fortifying nutrients of whole milk…Protein helps build and repair Santa’s muscles” and “…scientists, experts built the Titanic, and amateurs built the ark.” So, that’ll help, right?
Chocolate milk is the least of the problems. And whole milk should be served because fat is fine for you and 2% and skim just replace the fat with sugar for the taste.
But milk is pretty much inconsequential. There are so many other issues like you mentioned. Zero city walkability, poor nutritional education, food is rarely made fresh and with high quality ingredients, we have too many preservatives, too much sugar, and too many chemicals.
It won’t get better until we fix so many issues.
In which countries is sugar added to skimmed milk? It is not in Sweden - skimmed and semi-skimmed are purely the result of removing fat from whole milk.
The united states. Our sugar industry lobbied hard for the government to tell everyone that fat is bad for you and funded false studies saying so.
So low-fat and fat-free foods became the norm and to make up for the lack of flavor, companies added loads of sugar to everything and got people addicted to it.
Schools in Japan only have whole milk (except in cases of students with allergies or the like) and are doing far better on obesity. Whilst I drink milk probably once every few months and could mostly not care if I never had it again, I don’t think milk is the right place to look.
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OK but do you see the absurdity of the arguments? Jesus.
Studies previous to over a decade ago slammed whole milk, which is why it was removed in the first place. Only until the last 10 almost 15 years have studies shown correlation with whole milk actually fighting child obesity though no conclusions as the actual ‘why’ have yet been found. Theories in both the biggest meta-analysis study (in English anyway) and some of the latest theorize it may be an indicator of the parents diets that they provide to their kids or it could be that kids simply eat more without whole milk. One study in particular attempted to figure this out by weighting the parents’ BMI’s on a point scale but was unable to really pull a substantial conclusion from it. Take your example of Japan where I think we can agree without me finding any analytics on their diet that it is different enough nutritionally from the US that it is an important distinction, except for a fairly short teen fad, what 7 years ago? Maybe it was a couple of years longer ago.
But all of that is beside the point. What I was trying to show is the absurdity of Congress’ oversight of nutrition in the school systems. The GOP pushed this forward strictly at the behest of diary lobbyist and in particular a Pennsylvania conglomerate. In their statements, they never mentioned any actual studies and in-fact shat on ‘experts’ multiple times because they have no idea. The entire Santa bullshit from Virgina Foxx sounds almost exactly like a Got Milk? commercial in the 80s with definite the exact same key words.
People aren’t obese because of milk…
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Not me! I am the 50%!
Oh Beese!
Not with the new weight loss drugs they won’t.
These have outcomes that may not be ideal and the results do not persist if you stop taking them.
If know a lot of people on these. A good percentage of them are using it as a cheat code to continue their existing patterns. A couple have used it to assist in behavior modification. They seem to have better outcomes.
We’ll see how people are doing in the long run.
The recipe for weight loss is simple. Changing a lifetime of behavior is not. I speak from experience.
I think these drugs are the new gastric bypass surgery. For some they will see results but they will go back to their preferences before long. For a smaller group, long term behavior change will occur.
Fingers crossed that there are no longer term health problems from these because so many people I know are on them.
I think the next generation of these will be better…
I have a friend on ozempic (for diabetes). It really seems like it’s impossible for him to just use it to continue his excessive eating habits, because it suppresses his appetite and he just doesn’t eat much anymore. He still eats garbage, but much less.
That is my thing. As soon as they stop, the habit is still there but the inhibition will be gone (I say this as a lifelong person who has issues with over eating).
But that’s wrong? The habit of eating garbage food is still there but the habit of overeating is gone.
I have an ileostomy (like a colostomy). When I first got it, I could only eat small amounts of food. I lost 60 lbs. If was wondeful. I’d eat small meals forever and reach my healthy weight.
Well, a few months later my body could easily tolerate more. And I ate more. Gradually at first then more. It wasn’t more than six months before I was back to my weight before the operation.
A few months of imposed restriction did not alter a lifetime of habit.
I thought this was something I did wrong and researched it. Turns out it’s how the majority of people behave.
Yep. If you are not willing to make the changes to your habits around eating and exercise as well as work on your mental well being then you will not see the long term changes you are looking for.
I think for many people it’s no so much that they want to regain the weight, it’s just they don’t know how to make the changes that they need to make to lose the weight and keep it off. And I think the biggest change that people need to make is looking at their mental health and how that is contributing to their long term weight gain.
You are correct and I’m not aware of anyone I know on the drugs receiving this type of therapy. This is in stark contrast to gastric bypass surgery where in Canada you wait a year, receive counseling before and after the surgery and people still often end up back where they started a couple years later despite it probably being much harder on them physically than cessation of a drug. You can see why I am concerned.
but the habit of overeating is gone
It’s only gone as long as they stay on the drug. Unless they make an effort to change their lifestyle and eating habits while they’re on the drug, nothing will change. For people who have immediate health issues due to their weight, then a drug like that makes sense. But for fat people trying to lose weight, I don’t think it’s sustainable.
I’m fortunate to be of a healthy weight and I’ve never had to worry about obesity. However, I do consciously make choices to eat less even when my body begs me to eat more. I feel like it would be much harder to develop that “skill” if I was on a drug like ozembic. The point is to learn to say “no” when my body is begging me to say “yes”.
Honestly though, that does not seem far away from most diets. That’s the thing, it’s somewhat easy to lose weight. But to stick it out long term? Close to impossible for most. An absurd amount gain all of it back sooner or later.
By far and the best way not to struggle with obesity is not to get obese. Because when you’re there, the rest of your life will be a struggle.
By 2030 we will know one way or the other. By then they’ll also be cheap and generic.
It’s just the natural conclusion to ineffective politicians who refuse to pass any food health laws.
And when they do pass them everyone gets pissed because “mommy state” and corporate interests find a way to get rid of it anyway: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drinks_portion_cap_rule
It’s not just politicians. The entire system is broken.
Good thing I’m attracted to fat people
Are you a phat phux?
I’m doing my part!
By 2030? Fuck, I can get there by the end of next year if I put my mind to it. Rest of you are a bunch of damned slackers.
This applies to the most of the first world too.
