I would agree - for outcomes that are behaviourly driven I think it’s a good idea to examine 10s of thousands of lives and ask “what generally works and what generally doesn’t?” Ones own personal experience is a useful as a guidepost, but not nearly as useful as the collective experience of large groups.
Internet discussions of weight have a real shot at top 3 WOAT topics.
Somewhere after politics?
Way ahead imo.
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You’re the one who started this by conflating
“How do I talk to my obese friend about my COVID concerns for her?”
with
“How do I get my friend to stop being a fatass?”
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The answers to your many questions are out there.
Remember it’s spelled GOOGLE.
I made no such claim but thanks for proving my point.
I for one am shocked that scolding and “reason” can’t compete with billions of dollars of investment from companies that benefit from you literally eating yourself to death.
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I never said all fat Americans are the result of food deserts
And I find it difficult to believe your claim that all of Eastern Europe is free of obese people. Kind of makes it hard to take anything you say seriously.
One thing about the US that really hurts here is that their cities are, by design, not walkable or bikeable and have abysmal public transit. So there are definitely public policy opportunities to make communities that better support exactly the kind of behaviors you are advocating. Its probably more useful to support those policies than it is to pile guilt and shame on the poorest people in America.
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The issue in the US isn’t food deserts, although those have significant impact. The issue is the pervasive nature of advertising for junk food, the low price for junk food, and the insane convenience of getting junk food. If you look at the typical grocery store in the US 85% of the shelf space (at least) is devoted to selling shelf stable highly processed food that will probably be heavily regulated in a hundred years.
I very much do not live in a food desert and when I turn right onto the main road in the city I live in I pass half a dozen fast food places on the way to the grocery store .5 miles away. All of these places have maximum signage, yummy smells coming off them, and a product that is designed literally in a lab to be as addictive as possible.
We humans have been too successful in gathering food. Our brain has been shaped by evolution to seek out calories aggressively and we live in a world of infinite calories. In an economy that runs on getting customers addicted to ensure repeat business you’re going to see some really bad shit happen in this spot.
Eating a healthy diet in the US is a battle with your lizard brain which is not exactly cool with you selecting lower calorie options. The only effective thing I’ve found for controlling this without expending unsustainable levels of willpower is to aggressively avoid commercial areas except directly after meal times.
Basically cheap (in terms of $$ to create) filler calories + totally unregulated marketing = an obesity epidemic. We are way past the point that can be explained by genetics… and at every single weight level people have been shifted heavier than they otherwise would be by the food environment which is just ridiculously toxic.
We really should be actively limiting the number of fast food options (like they should probably live in the same kind of regulatory environment as strip clubs), preventing them from advertising like cigarette companies, and taxing them hard enough to make sure they aren’t all that cheap (the tax revenue to be spent on public health ldo).
We should also be setting limits on how much shelf space a grocery store can use on food that doesn’t meet certain nutritional standards and blocking junk food brands from advertising.
This is mostly an availability problem IMO.
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There’s definitely something to this but there has to be more to it. Even in the environment you describe (which I totally agree with BTW) some people manage not to eat fast food. I also pass by countless junk food options all the time. Why dont I eat it? I don’t think its willpower, and I also dont think its avoidance. It’s more habit and routine than anything. We’ve made it a lifestyle routine to buy groceries and cook food at home so that’s what we do.
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I think one problem you’re having is that you’re looking for a simple explanation (“Americans are just lazy!”) for a complex problem ("American rates of obesity and being overweight are climbing in aggregate, with distressing health implications. ").
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Yeah personal variation is huge from one human to another. There’s also huge environmental pressure for a wide range of behaviors to be present in any animal population. This is explicitly so that if some disaster happens some members of the population will survive. There also seem to be some people who are capable of consuming a typical American diet without any significant visible health problems.
At that level it really is genetic. The presence of these people doesn’t invalidate my theory IMO.
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A lot of it has to do with the mental health of poorer people. Just being poor puts a baseline stress level on you every day that’s higher than a lot of us experience. Add to that the burden of having to work long hours just to make ends meet, while taking care of a family – stress levels are significantly higher, and likelihood of depression skyrockets. Living in those conditions every day makes it much less likely that you’ll be able to make smart food decisions and have the energy to execute those decisions day in and day out. Throw in what @boredsocial said about the availability of “bad food” and the need for food companies to keep people from making good decisions in order to profit, and voila.
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Yeah I agree generally. Where I maybe differ a bit is I think that there are lots of people that can transition to a better lifestyle, although i acknowledge it is very hard and also very unfair (i.e. much easier for richer people). One problem is that we still have an abysmal public understanding of the path from one lifestyle to another. People either believe that it takes “no pain no gain” willpower approach, which almost never works, or people think it’s about finding “this one neat trick” that makes it easy, which literally never works.
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I would argue that this is true even for not poor people in the US. Our culture is built on overwork, and this means most of us are living an extra stressor or two away from what I call willpower bankruptcy.
Willpower bankruptcy (my term I haven’t seen it elsewhere) is what happens when I finally just do not give a fuck anymore. It usually resolves with me doing whatever it takes to get my dopamine levels back in line and stop hating the whole universe. Food is my go to dopamine delivery vehicle so this usually involves binging on something.
This is avoidable… but stress and burnout are the two things that trigger it the most. Most Americans live a lifestyle where there really isn’t a lot of reserve emotional control available.
If you say fuck it and eat an entire pizza once a week you gain a significant amount of weight over a year. If you do it once a week for a year it’ll calcify into a habit (Thursday night is pizza night!) and the dopamine rush you get out of it will diminish forcing you to find new dopamine sources. Rinse and repeat and before you know it you’re morbidly obese.
Oh and while you’re flailing around trying to find enough emotional control to stave off these mistakes the entire society is busy trying to get you to fail. Profits depend on you buying that next extra value meal after all. Don’t forget to buy fruit roll ups and lunchables for your kids or they’ll be cranky.
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Yep, totally agree. In my mind the public policy response should be twofold - lift people out of situations and circumstances that male it harder for them to have healthy lifestyles, AND advance better understanding of what a healthy lifestyle even looks like and how to go about having one.
Change fat to drugs and you could cut and paste a lot of this discussion into a right wing forum and it wouldn’t stick out.
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Yeah, this rings very true to me. I like beer. Alot! If I dont actively cultivate habits to limit my consumption I would certainly drink more than is healthy. But I dont pretend it’s a willpower issue - I dont rely on my inherent superiority to not drink the beer in the fridge when I feel stressed. Rather, I’ve made it a habit to instinctively exercise to relax instead of drink.