More People On Earth Now Obese Than Underweight, Says Study (statnews.com)

An anonymous reader writes: According to a new study published in the Lancet, obese people now outnumber the underweight population for perhaps the first time in global history. Majid Ezzati, an environmental health researcher at Imperial College London who led the study, analyzed data from 1975 to 2014 across 19.2 million adults from 186 countries. They found that over the 40-year-span, the proportion of obese men worldwide more than tripled, to roughly 11 percent, and the proportion of obese woman more than doubled, to about 15 percent. Researchers estimate 18 percent of men and 21 percent of women worldwide will be obese by 2025. What some may consider more surprising is that more than 25 percent of the world's severely obese men and almost 20 percent of the world's severely obese women are American. However, the rapid rise of obesity in developing nations is most concerning as it's more difficult for obese people to modify their diet and have access to medication.

Comments

This is a good thing.

[BitterOak]

Although obesity may seem like a problem in developed countries, the fact that there are more obese people than underweight people in the world means that starvation is much less of a problem than it used to be. We now have enough food to feed the world. This is a good thing. Better to be a bit chubby than die of starvation which in some parts of the world, people used to do.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, the poorest people are the fattest. That sounds counter-intuitive, but believe me it's true.

Re:This is a good thing.

[gstoddart]

In the US, the poorest people are the fattest. That sounds counter-intuitive, but believe me it's true.

That's because a Big Mac is cheaper to buy than groceries. Soda is cheaper than bottled water. And that orange crap Americans think is cheese is also dirt cheap.

The problem is the affordable food is complete and utter garbage, and mostly filled with high fructose corn syrup so farmers can keep getting paid to grow a crop which is causing everybody to get fat and diabetic.

Eating nutritious food which hasn't been processed to death is now expensive.

Maybe you should ponder why what you say is true instead of just acting all smug about it.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously starvation can make a person thin.

But, once food is easily available, genetics plus things like stress, exhaustion, lack of sleep, and lack of opportunities for physical exercise become major factors in determining a person's weight.

In a simple model where stress causes overeating and poverty causes stress, it's easily plausible that poverty would cause people to be overweight.

Re:This is a good thing.

[PmanAce]

You have things backwards. Poor people eat cheap food, which is cheap for a reason, because it isn't good for you. Fast food, while cheap, makes you fat. Lazy people also eat cheap food because the society which they live in encourages laziness and having no time. Ever wonder why cancer rates are up? You are what you eat isn't just a cute little moniker.

Re:This is a good thing.

[PmanAce]

I'm just curious, is your BMI over 25?

Re:This is a good thing.

[negRo_slim]

Processed food last longer on the shelf and requires little to no preparation. Simple as that.

Re:This is a good thing.

[frovingslosh]

That's because a Big Mac is cheaper to buy than groceries.

Really? The problem that I have with such a comment is that you supposedly can't buy a Big Mac with food stamps. So if you are poor then groceries, even nutritious ones, are free, and Big Macs are not. Maybe it is more about being lazy than poor (not that I don't admit that there is a strong correlation). Of course, being lazy can lead to obesity in other ways too.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Kohath]

You know what's cheap and unprocessed? Eggs. Flour. Butter. Tap water. Bulk rice. Bulk beans. Whole chickens. Cheap cuts of beef and bones suitable for soup. Onions. Whatever the vegetables the store has on special this week. Bananas.

Someone who can cook a meal can make nutritious, unprocessed food cheaper than they can buy processed food. Recipes are free.

But it takes work. So nevermind. Just complain instead. It's all everyone else's fault.

Re:This is a good thing.

[alvinrod]

While this is certainly true in many places, if you live in the Southern U.S. it's pretty easy to get access to cheap and fresh produce year round. However that does require people to have the time and disposition to cook their own meals. Too many people would just rather scarf down a burger or toss something in the microwave instead of doing some cooking and make the mistake of thinking that a potato still counts as a vegetable after being thinly sliced and fried in oil. Soda is probably the worst offender for most people. A 20 oz. bottle has somewhere between 200 - 300 calories (pretty much all of it from sugar) and I'm sure everyone has known someone who comes close to the daily recommended calorie intake from soda alone.

Re:This is a good thing.

[korgitser]

It's not that starvation is less an issue than before. Check out the kids malnutrition issue in, yes, the USA in the years since the crisis for example. You don't need to go looking for it in Africa or wherever you expect to find your favourite hellhole.
We do indeed have enough food in the world to feed everybody, but we have a serious distribution issue. Pretty much the same dynamics here as in the whole 1% vs. 99% issue, classic inequality stuff, if not so finely defined nevertheless.
And the thing is, in a (purely) capitalist society we will never fix this. Once everyone has food available, the prices will fall and profits will bottom out, which is not something the industry will be looking forward to. There needs to be a scarcity to drive up the prices. On the other side of the same coin, revolutions and riots all around the world are heavily correlated to food prices, up to the point you could almost single this out as the only cause for masses on the streets.
So, yes, i might eat myself into the Mustard Tiger on them cheeseburgers, but this will not help someone on the other side of the world.

Re:This is a good thing.

[blindseer]

Ever wonder why cancer rates are up?

No, not really. Cancer rates are up because of all the ways for people to die cancer is one that we haven't figured out yet. Modern farming has allowed us to avoid starvation. Finding out how to make heat and light from coal and oil has made it much less likely to die of food poisoning, freezing, and bumping into wild animals at night. Modern medicine has kept us from dying from industrial accidents, wars, infections, heart attacks, diabetes, and on and on. Electricity, electronics, and school systems educate the masses on nutrition, how to safely cross a street, first aid, and more. The only thing left that we have not found out how to keep from killing us is cancer.

Basically we are now living long enough that our chances of having cancer kill us is growing. I recall hearing somewhere that the chances of a male dying from cancer is about 50%. I'm not sure if this was in the USA, world wide, some other nation but that stuck with me.

You are what you eat isn't just a cute little moniker.

With all we know now on what can cause cancer I doubt it's what we eat that causes this.

Re:This is a good thing.

[AcidPenguin9873]

But it takes work.

It takes time. Time is not free. Especially if you're poor and are working a bunch of hours/jobs to pay rent, utilities, afford some sort of food.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except cancer is coming at earlier and earlier ages. What you eat impacts your body's ability to care of itself. Cancer is natural. Everyone likely has cancer at all points during their life. Cancer is simply some cells growing too much. However your body can handle that, except when it's overwhelmed or doesn't have the resources to deal with it. So yes, what you eat and do can directly impact your natural ability to keep cancer under control. Look at the cancer rate studies on nurses. Simply working the night shift instead of the day shift massively increases their chances of getting cancer. Society is getting sicker and sicker.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are tons of places in the southern and midwest USA which have no access to fruits and vegetables. The towns are too small, poor, and far from the major roads for distributors to bother stopping by. However all the bad food does get restocked as it doesn't need to be delivered in a timely manor. I don't remember the name, but there's a documentary about this.

Re:This is a good thing.

[guises]

It's not that simple. That's part of it, but it's also predatory food manufacturers - people who are concerned about their health can be squeezed for more money than those who don't care. Take just one example: Frito-Lay makes two types of potato chips which are distinguished from one another only by their calorie-content and target market, baked and fried. The difference in cost to manufacture these is trivial, and the volume for both is high enough that neither could be considered a niche product (with it's associated overhead). Yet on the store shelves, the fried product gets sale after sale while the baked one rarely goes on sale and is subsequently more expensive to the customer.

It's simply a matter of charging more to people who are willing to pay more, but this means that healthy eating is out of the price range of some people.

Re:This is a good thing.

[AthanasiusKircher]

It takes time. Time is not free.

While I absolutely agree with you that finding the time when working multiple jobs is hard for poor people, the effort and skills are another major barrier.

If you have a $10-20 crockpot and a refrigerator (or better, a freezer), you can easily make meals by dumping a few ingredients together with 15 minutes prep on the weekend or day off. 4-8 hours later you come back, and you have meals for the week. It's no harder to microwave or reheat on the stovetop than a frozen processed meal or canned dinner, but often a lot cheaper. Instead of taking 5 minutes extra to drive to the fast food place, take 5 minutes to cut up some fruit or veggies or prep a quick sidedish to eat with your bulk meals you prepped in advance.

It takes a bit of work and planning, as well as a little knowledge about how to make a regimen like this work... But it doesn't have to take more than a few minutes per day and can save significant money. (A $20 family dinner from a fast food joint looks good until you realize you could often feed your family all their meals for half that with some planning.)

Re:This is a good thing.

[SQL Error]

And also, as death rates from cancer go down, the number of incidents goes up, because you survive to get it again. My father got cancer, was treated, made a full recovery, lived to enjoy his retirement another decade, but eventually died from a different type of cancer.

Re:This is a good thing.

[frovingslosh]

Someone who can cook a meal can make nutritious, unprocessed food cheaper than they can buy processed food.

But you don't cook for yourself or even for your family if you are lazy and it is easier to get that fattening Big Mac or use the phone to "make pizza" rather than use the stove.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Zontar The Mindless]

I recall the first time I visited an Australian grocery store. This was in a small town in NSW. I was shocked--you could *smell* the fresh vegetables as soon as you walked in the door. The whole place smelled almost like a garden. When you went near the meat department, you could *smell* the fresh meat. And the food was... beautiful. *Everything* looked and smelled like, I dunno... Heaven, maybe.

I walked around in stunned, wide-eyed, slack-jawed silence for a while. Finally, I turned to my Australian companion and said, "Wow, I didn't know a town this size would have a... um... boutique grocery. I'm impressed." She just laughed and said, "'Boutique?' Nup, it's a bog-standard chain grocery. Pretty much the same as any Wooley's shop Australia-wide, at least in all the places I've lived. Can you see now why I complained about all the grocery shops in the States while we were there?" Me: "You mean... this is *typical* here?" She: "Yup. Very."

I still remember that moment. It was like a light turned on in my brain.

American grocery stores SUCK. Even the boutique-y ones.

Re:This is a good thing.

[AbRASiON]

Actually the way the BMI scale works, being underweight on it, isn't necessarily as bad a thing as being overweight.
The _vast_ majority of people who live an extremely long life (exceeding 90 years) are generally very thin people.

Re:This is a good thing.

[hambone142]

One can purchase a Papa Murphy's take and bake pizza with an EBT card. They even state it on their window signs. It is much cheaper to cook a meal for a family than to buy fast food but it takes effort.

Re:This is a good thing.

[sociocapitalist]

Although obesity may seem like a problem in developed countries, the fact that there are more obese people than underweight people in the world means that starvation is much less of a problem than it used to be. We now have enough food to feed the world. This is a good thing. Better to be a bit chubby than die of starvation which in some parts of the world, people used to do.

You're assuming equal distribution of food which is not accurate. There's still plenty of starvation in the world.
https://www.wfp.org/hunger/sta...

So yes, there is enough food to feed the world - but most of it is consumed and wasted by the (relative) wealthy.

Re:This is a good thing.

[ctrl-alt-canc]

It depends. If obese and underweight people are unevenly distributed in the world, this could severely affect the Earth rotation rate.

Re:This is a good thing.

[just another AC]

And tap water is free.

The real problem is that poor people are too stupid to take care of themselves.

Tell that to the people of Flint.

Sometimes the poor get screwed by the system

Re:This is a good thing.

[dbIII]

What is the Asian supermarket situation like in the US? In some other parts of the western world it's a dirt cheap way to get ingredients. If you are prepared to give up meat (but not dairy) for a while it can be very cheap.
A problem for some would be that while a 25kg bag of rice is a very cheap way to buy rice it's a bigger lump sum than an overpriced supermarket 500g packet of rice (or a cheeseburger).

Re:This is a good thing.

[serviscope_minor]

It is much cheaper to cook a meal for a family than to buy fast food but it takes effort.

It takes effort, time and knowledge.

Re: This is a good thing.

[hackwrench]

Bananas are actually real cheap and you can find quite a bit of other fruit that goes on sale for $.99 a pound.
Most grocery stores in my area sell bananas for around $.60 and Aldi used yo sell them for less than $.30 but recently upped the price to around $.45

Re:This is a good thing.

[RogueyWon]

This is a myth. I can - and sometimes do - walk into my local supermarket here in the UK and buy ingredients (meat and veg) which will allow me to cook for three nights for the price of a single pre-prepared meal. I can do so because I avoid the upmarket "branded" groceries, avoid scammy organic and free-range stuff and the more expensive and exotic items. I don't do this very often. Why not? Because cooking from fresh takes longer, generally doesn't taste as good (unless you are a really good cook) and, to be frank, I can afford not to have to eat like that these days.

Modern agriculture has made the raw ingredients for cooking cheaper relative to incomes than they have been at any point in history. Because farms and supermarkets are businesses, they have found ways to charge more for some of them - see above comments on premium, organic and free-range brands - but you can still buy the basics dirt-cheap if you want to.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Strider-]

you can easily make meals by dumping a few ingredients together with 15 minutes prep on the weekend or day off

A lot of the working poor are working 2 or 3 jobs, just to make rent and utilities. They don't get weekends or days off. This is what happens when people can't make a living wage at 40 hours/week.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Mashiki]

One can purchase a Papa Murphy's take and bake pizza with an EBT card. They even state it on their window signs. It is much cheaper to cook a meal for a family than to buy fast food but it takes effort.

Here in Ontario(Cdn), well I can buy an x-large peperoni pizza for $9.05 with tax(13%). There's no way I could buy the food, let alone the ingredients to make that for less then $25. I mean I've lived on $20-40/week for just food before, it's tough but you can do it.

Re:This is a good thing.

[dbIII]

you could *smell* the fresh vegetables as soon as you walked in the door. The whole place smelled almost like a garden

As an aside that's by deliberate design which is why the potatoes etc that don't smell as strongly are not as close to the main entrance.
Being a place where frozen water doesn't drop out of the sky all that often helps as well. It was cold last night. I may have to shut one of the windows tonight.

Re:This is a good thing.

[dbIII]

With all we know now on what can cause cancer

There are many causes of cancer because it's uncontrolled cell growth due to damage and eating the wrong stuff causes some of them. It's like a lottery and the more "tickets" you buy the more chances there are of it happening. Asbestos in the lungs for instance increases the chances massively due to cell damage and later growth with every breath, so a tiny chance with every breath adds up to near certainty over time. Certain chemicals in some of the charred fatty stuff that tastes so good also cause some damage with a tiny chance every time you consume them of the damaged cells becoming cancerous.

The only thing left that we have not found out how to keep from killing us is cancer

There is a lot of other stuff but cancer is a pretty huge category of problems. Curing cancer is probably in the same ballpark as curing every single virus then going after the prions.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Maxo-Texas]

Cancer incidents, among children, in the 1st world, has been rising since the 1970s.

Here's a nice graph for UK.

http://healthandenvironmentblo...

The incidence (not survival) of every major cancer variety except bladder cancer went up from 1971 to 2003.

Rising pseudo-estrogens, declining nutrient levels in raw vegetables, declining nutrient values in various raw meats, and sharply declining nutrient values in processed foods contributed. Lack of adequate sleep was also a factor.

It's true for men too.

Several factors.
1) Cost cutting. You can compare the list of more expensive foods to cheaper foods and the more expensive foods are made of food while the cheaper foods are made of weird stuff. For example: Soy sauce can be "Soy + water + salt" or "soy and corn protein, caramel coloring, high fructose corn syrup, salt, yada yada yada". They make some franken food that looks like and sort of tastes like real food but which is much cheaper.

2) Burned out soil. While we raise the amount of fruits and vegetables we get out of a plot of soil- the nutrients are being leached out by over farming. We are losing topsoil in the U.S.

3) Use of anti-biotics, cages resulting in unhealthy bloated animals.

4) Water. Lots and lots of water. Ham and chicken can be as high as 32% water now. It's not really as cheap as it seems since the water boils off in cooking so a pound of chicken has the nutrition of 2/3 of a pound of chicken.

5) Non-GMO fruit and vegetables bred for high shelf life with higher cellulose content than fruit and vegetables used to have. For humans, cellulose is not a nutrient.

it doesn't matter so much once you hit the last 15 years of your life. it might make a difference of a year or two. but for kids, it can have a huge effect. Especially the psuedo-estrogens.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Alioth]

I'm not really convinced that it's a *monetary cost* issue. A Big Mac Meal here costs I think £5. However, I can make a more filling, better tasting, and more nutritious meal out of vegetables for about £2, less than half the cost of a Big Mac meal (and less than the cost of any microwave TV dinner, they typically come in at £2.50 to £3.50)

What a Big Mac is, is convenient. Many people (especially the working poor) are not merely money poor but time poor as well. You can buy and finish that Big Mac meal in about half the time it takes to just prepare and cook my healthy £2 meal at home. I also live on a small island where fresh food is a bit more expensive since the majority of our farming is livestock. Fresh vegetables are probably 10% cheaper in Eire and the UK.

The other thing is there can be a big price difference between prepacked and not prepacked foods. For instance, at my local supermarket, if you buy loose vegetables instead of prepacked, you will save:
* about 10% on bulkier items like carrots and potatoes
* about 20% on things like broccoli, beans etc.
* about 50% on tomatoes
* about 70% on things like garlic, ginger, chilis etc.

and it only takes about 5 seconds longer to select vegetables and put them in a bag versus picking a bag of pre-packed.

I don't buy it that buying fresh is too expensive. However, I do accept that many people are under pressure and don't want to cook and go for convenience. I do that too. I don't always cook because sometimes I just want to use the time to do something else.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It takes effort, time and knowledge."

Exactly, and the working poor are often working multiple jobs with very little down time. Total time is the single biggest factor for these people. Take a few generations of this and the knowledge is also lost. Trying to frame this as "lazy" is fundamentally dishonest, and ideologically based.

Re:This is a good thing.

[a_claudiu]

Maybe medicine is having something to do with this also. Being able to cope and live with diseases which in the past killed you like diabetes made the gene pool weaker. Now even sterility became a hereditary disease thanks to In vitro fertilisation.

Re:This is a good thing.

[jabuzz]

Don't know where you live but here in the E.U. it's a legal requirement that the tap water is safe to drink. In fact it is in general purer than spring water.

That said the idiots who think otherwise do make it much cheaper for me to keep a supply of bottled water for emergencies.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Attila Dimedici]

There is some truth to that. However, in my experience, the poor who are working multiple jobs to support their families also cook to feed their families (because it is enough cheaper to be worth the extra time).

That being said, I am sure that a significant number of the poor who eat fast food (or other over processed food) rather than cooking do so because of time. However, there are also a significant number of the poor who eat fast food for the same reason they are poor, because they are lazy. It is really important to keep in mind that the poor in developed countries are divided into two groups: those who are working hard to get out of poverty (some of whom will succeed, some of whom will not) and those who will remain poor because they are too lazy to try (perhaps convinced that there is no point in working hard because even if they do they will not escape poverty). It is as much a mistake to assume that people are poor through no fault of their own as it is to assume that they are poor because they are lazy (or for some other failure on their part). One should judge people on an individual basis.

Re:This is a good thing.

[TheRaven64]

I'm not sure about pepperoni, but I can buy everything I need to make a huge pizza (enough for two people to eat and feel that they probably don't need any other food for the day) with lots of vegetables on top for between £2-5, depending on the quality of the cheese that I use.

If you're on a tight budget, then a scone-based pizza is a very cheap way of producing a meal. The base is milk and self-raising flour, both of which are cheap (and often you can get milk very cheaply if you buy some that's going to go off tomorrow). You can make a reasonable tomato base from a tin of chopped tomatoes - squish them a bit in the tin and then reduce them in a pan until they're about half the size that they were and maybe add a small squirt of barbecue sauce for a little bit more bite. Coat with whatever vegetables you can get cheaply. If you sprinkle with some dried herbs and maybe some sesame seeds (again, you can pick these up very cheaply if you get them when they're reduced - they keep for ages) then you get a slightly more interesting flavour.

I ate quite a lot of these when I was a student. Making enough for myself and a few housemates worked out at about £1-2/person and left us all feeling very full at the end.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Drethon]

Where I am a living wage runs about $12 an hour with a 40 hour job. No cable TV, cheap prepay cell phone, low quality rental house yes but one can afford to live. This all is of course assuming no health issues, that one is a major issue with surviving on a low wage.

Re:This is a good thing.

[thinkwaitfast]

One of the reasons I eat so well, is that I am so poor and cannot afford luxuries like soda or fast food. It as been over three years since the last time I drank a soda (dr. pepper. I remember it because I had no refrigerator to store it). My last fast food was over a year ago and was on a cross country road trip).

I think one of the reason is that I grew up in a mostly 1st gen immigrant neighborhood and truly poor know how to eat well for cheap.

Re:This is a good thing.

[thinkwaitfast]

I quit my $120k/yr job and now live in poverty and my stress has dropped to almost nothing compared to what it once was.

Re:This is a good thing.

[JoeMerchant]

This is progress, yes, but people are still dying of starvation and malnutrition related disease - even in the "first world."

Now that food science has made the resources sufficiently plentiful, it seems high time to develop the political/economic science to distribute them better.

Re:This is a good thing.

[JoeMerchant]

Do you want those eggs from factory chickens, or "free range birds"? Is that flour GMO and pesticide free? How many residual growth hormones are in that butter? What's the ammonia/chlorine/heavy metal content of that tap water?Whole chickens are cheap because they are raised in factories pumped full of antibiotics and hormones, genetically selected for fast growth (check how long it takes to grow a "roaster" chicken today vs. 1965). Beef and bones run the same antibiotic/growth hormone problems already mentioned above. Commercial bananas are a monoculture crop that is teetering on the edge of global failure, again.

I'll give you bulk rice and beans, onions and local vegetables - that is still a cheap and healthy diet for people who have the time and resources to cook them, but you need to be careful how you do it if you're not supplementing with protein from actual meat.

The farm bureau has been tracking "national food day" for many years, that day of the year when the average family has earned enough money to pay for their average food requirement for the year - if I recall correctly, it used to be out in March or April in the 1950s and I think it has pushed back to mid January now. That's a clear marker of economic progress in the delivery of quantity calories, but fails to account for the quality of those calories and the healthiness of how they get delivered. If you shop around today and only buy food with the same healthy quality as was "average" in the 1950s, you'll probably be paying the average family income until June or July to get that food.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Nidi62]

Where I am a living wage runs about $12 an hour with a 40 hour job. No cable TV, cheap prepay cell phone, low quality rental house yes but one can afford to live. This all is of course assuming no health issues, that one is a major issue with surviving on a low wage.

Where I live $12/hr got me a decent apartment, cable, internet, and let me actually eat decent. Of course I didn't have a car note (my car was paid off), wasn't dropping $100 at they club every weekend, or things like that.

Re:This is a good thing.

[JoeMerchant]

But driving is fun, it makes people feel powerful and rich, classless and free (but, to quote John Lennon: they're still f-ing peasants as far as I can see) in comparison, chopping vegetables in the kitchen makes people feel like their peasant parents - better to go have some kid "serve them" fries than to peel their own potatoes.

I've seen a few (precious few) TV/movie portrayals of super-rich/powerful characters who take the time to cook their own food - simple ingredients in a simple (elegant/expensive, but simple) kitchen. If the media would reinforce this more, and playboy spies in exotic sports cars less, it might help to shape perception of cooking as something desirable for everyone, and not just the assigned task of the servant class.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Jason Levine]

It is much cheaper to cook a meal for a family than to buy fast food but it takes effort.

This is where "cheap, but bad for you fast-food" wins out over "healthy home cooked meals", unfortunately. Some families have both parents working - sometimes multiple jobs per parent. In addition, you might have a single parent house. So "free time" to cook meals is nonexistent. It might not be healthy, but stopping at McDonald's to feed the kids or using a microwave meal (loaded with sodium because apparently that's the only spice frozen meals use) before going to your second job gets the kids fed for many people. It might result in more health issues later, but it's a matter of having to deal with current fires and having no time to prevent future ones.

Re:This is a good thing.

[arobatino]

Better to be a bit chubby than die of starvation which in some parts of the world, people used to do.

Last I checked, some still do. That food's not distributed evenly.

Re:This is a good thing.

[arobatino]

In the US, the poorest people are the fattest. That sounds counter-intuitive, but believe me it's true.

When food is scarce, being fat is a status symbol. Same principle applies to smoking, since tobacco costs money (even ignoring the health damage). They are no longer status symbols in the US, but still are in poorer countries, so in those countries the well-off are more likely to be fat and smoke.

Re:This is a good thing.

[thinkwaitfast]

My last house had no kitchen. All I had to cook with was a hotplate (fry, stirfry, sauces), slow cooker (full meals, soup, bbq ribs ) and rice cooker (rice, pasta, soup), yet was able to cook good healthy meals from raw ingredients in less time than it would have taken to drive to macdonalds and back. Including cleanup. And all that I had was a dorm refrigerator.

I'd write a book on how to do it, but there are a thousand youtube videos.

Re:This is a good thing.

[thinkwaitfast]

I make pizza all the time. I buy 50lb bags of flour at costco. $16, good for 50 pizzas. I use spaghetti sauce and buy in large cans. One can costs $1 and will make three pizzas. Mozzarella cheese is $14/kg, and use about 500g. Pepperoni is another $1.

$1+$.30+$4+$1.50 = $7 (ultra conservatively)

Re:This is a good thing.

[thinkwaitfast]

I make pizza all the time. I buy 50lb bags of flour [webstaurantstore.com] at costco. $16, good for 50 pizzas. I use spaghetti sauce and buy in large cans. One can costs $1 and will make three pizzas. Mozzarella cheese is $14/kg, and use about 500g. Pepperoni is another $1 [walmart.com]. $1+$.30+$4+$1.50 = $7 (ultra conservatively) Also note this is a lot more cheese and pepperoni than you'll get on any frozen pizza. The primary cost is the cheese and if I used the same amount of cheese as a frozen pizza, the cost would go down to about $4/pizza and still be a lot better.

Re:This is a good thing.

[thinkwaitfast]

I had both parents working and not only had to cook my own meals, but meals for the whole family from around the age of ten And we almost never ate out or ate premade meals. And it takes literally a couple of minutes to make a healthy meal. 1 chicken($7)+2 cans of green chili($2)+1 onion ($1), throw everything in a slow cooker at 6am, turn on low, by 6pm you will have the best chicken you've ever tasted.Serve with tortillas ($0.20 each) or rice.

Re:This is a good thing.

[jdavidb]

Eating nutritious food which hasn't been processed to death is now expensive.

It has always been expensive. That is why life has previously been so nasty, brutish, and short.

Re:This is a good thing.

[jangstrom]

BMI is not a worthless model for the average person. It provides a tool and scale for understanding approximately appropriate weights for individuals aiming to be of reasonable size and fitness.

With this model they go to world class Athletes with 5% body fat and tell them they are fat because they should weigh xyz, but they weight is abc because of muscle mass.

You and I both know this isn't likely to happen with a world-class athlete. When I hear people talking about how BMI is junk, I assume they are a fat person trying to justify why the medical community is wrong about how overweight they are. As if the average person should be compared to a world-class athlete in any metric. Anyways, there are folks within the medical and statistical communities who do understand the limitations of BMI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... That being said, there is a strong correlation between disease and those who are rank as either overweight or obese on the BMI scale: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bo....

Re:This is a good thing.

[nephilimsd]

And a working stove, a paid electric / gas bill, and a host of other hidden costs that may not be affordable to those on the lower end of the income pool.

Re:This is a good thing.

[PPalmgren]

I personally think time is only part of the problem. It takes motivation, and motivation is treated like a magic word in our society. If we take that word and try to quantify it, instead of treating it as 'you either have it or you dont' then we can start to see a clearer picture.

If we look at motivation like a currency, a currency that gets used up when you do things you don't want to do and accrued during moments of rest or happiness, we can see people living more somber lives are less likely to have the motivation left to do things to make their situation better. Even worse, when we factor in the psychological factor and factor that in as a capacity factor, we see that the 'motivation piggy bank' of the depressed is extremely small and/or has a hole in the bottom.

When viewing motivation through this model, its easier to see how to improve a situation. The answer isn't to 'get up and do it,' its to find the things that are draining motivation, find more things that could increase a person's capacity to be motivated, or change activities the person is doing so there's a better balance of positives to negatives. In school, mental health isn't a primary topic and is rarely discussed at all, so most children and many adults do not know how to understand themselves or what they're going through. Giving people strategies like this to work on bettering themselves on step at a time, rather than having them staring at the peak of the mountain when they're only just at the base of it.

Re:This is a good thing.

[religionofpeas]

That's because a Big Mac is cheaper to buy than groceries.

And a hamburger is even cheaper than a Big Mac. And with the money you save, you can buy some vegetables.

Re:This is a good thing.

[religionofpeas]

It takes 15 minutes to make dinner.

Re:This is a good thing.

[religionofpeas]

Going out to eat, or getting take out takes about as much time (if not more) as preparing your own food.

Re:This is a good thing.

[guises]

That's not exactly apples to apples. They're comparing prepared food from a restaurant to ingredients from a grocery store. There's another point to be made about that, it's not a useless comparison, but it's got very little to do with what I was saying.

Re:This is a good thing.

[penguinoid]

Cancer is simply some cells growing too much. However your body can handle that, except when it's overwhelmed or doesn't have the resources to deal with it.

No, your body can't "handle" cancer. There's just a lot of failsafes, such as cell duplication limits, cell overcrouding regulation. If you're unlucky, you get a mutation that breaks these failsafes, yet doesn't kill the cell nor alter the cell's exterior proteins to the point the immune system could recognize them as foreign. Of course, lots of things can contribute to this, including stress.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Mashiki]

You have weird food prices over there. By my calculation, here in Denmark/Europe, and can make a pizza for about half of what it would take to buy one. Excluding time and electricity.

That's because unlike Europe/Denmark Canada is a large place with a small population, and prices start climbing higher the moment you cross out of cities and in the rest of the country. When I was living and working out in Northern Alberta, milk was $9/4L, bread was $7/loaf, pre-cut cold meats(ham, mock chicken, etc) were around $10 for 150g. Box of cereal(small) was between $9 and $18. Container of laundry detergent(3L) was around $26. That was all in town, the next nearest city to me was 5 hours away...one way.

Someone mentioned down thread about a 50lbs bag of flour for $16? Not a chance here, that's around $30 in my neck of the woods today.

Re:This is a good thing.

[toddestan]

So you can make your own pizza slightly cheaper by purchasing the ingredients in bulk? Doesn't that prove his point? And I won't even get into the fact your price is US dollars and his was in Canadian dollars, which by itself will wipe out most of the difference.

Re:This is a good thing.

[gzuckier]

Except cancer is coming at earlier and earlier ages. What you eat impacts your body's ability to care of itself. Cancer is natural. Everyone likely has cancer at all points during their life. Cancer is simply some cells growing too much. However your body can handle that, except when it's overwhelmed or doesn't have the resources to deal with it. So yes, what you eat and do can directly impact your natural ability to keep cancer under control. Look at the cancer rate studies on nurses. Simply working the night shift instead of the day shift massively increases their chances of getting cancer. Society is getting sicker and sicker.

No it isn't, http://www.cancerresearchuk.or...

Re:This is a good thing.

[gzuckier]

But it takes work.

It takes time. Time is not free. Especially if you're poor and are working a bunch of hours/jobs to pay rent, utilities, afford some sort of food.

and if you grew up in world where the norm is to eat food-like industrial products and nobody cooked from scratch, it would take a big internal decision to start doing that.

Re:This is a good thing.

[gzuckier]

you can easily make meals by dumping a few ingredients together with 15 minutes prep on the weekend or day off

A lot of the working poor are working 2 or 3 jobs, just to make rent and utilities. They don't get weekends or days off. This is what happens when people can't make a living wage at 40 hours/week.

and of course the "food desert"; it's not optimally profitable to site supermarkets in the impoverished parts of town, if you invest the same money in siting it in the wealthy suburbs you make more profits. the small food stores which are situated in the inner city have higher prices, plus they can't afford to have such a high percentage of perishables, which will perish if nobody happens to buy them that day. if people don't have a car making a trek to a supermarket is a major task, not something to do every day on the way home, so buying perishables is again not in the cards.

Re:This is a good thing.

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Yes all poor people are lazy. So says someone who's never lived in poverty.

Literally not what they said. Reading comprehension is your friend.

Americans Are Gorging Themselves on Cheap Meat

[walterbyrd]

Somewhat related:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/03/us-increase-meat-consumption-europe-less-meat-sustainability

Re:Anti-American retards most upset

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of fat whales in Europe too, not just America.

Re:News for Nerds

[negRo_slim]

Yes people that frequent /. are heavy users of technology and more often than not lead sedentary lifestyles and therefore are very likely to be dealing with obesity.

"i want to go to America..."

[turkeydance]

"where even the poor people are fat."

Re:"i want to go to America..."

[__aaclcg7560]

In some parts of the world, being fat equals being wealthy.

not news if you've ever been to WalMart

[frovingslosh]

Pound for pound there are a lot more obese people.

cultural changes caused it - needs a cultural fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm old enough (58) to have seen some cultural shifts which seem related to this. I don't think it is anything so simple that you can blame it all on a few things, but it seems to me that these cannot possibly be helping:

** When I was a school child, there were no video games or internet. When you wanted to play, you got some friends together and had a pickup game of baseball or you rode your bikes around town or did some other outdoor activity. We were physically active on a daily basis, while now the normal entertainment is to sit still and play games. There's nothing wrong with games, but every hour spent doing that is one hour not spent running around outside burning calories.

** Sugar based sodas were consumed in moderation, or often, not at all. There were no "64 Oz Big Gulps", and no one ever drank sodas in my school. Your choices were milk or water. Parents rarely let children consume sodas.

** There was less acceptance of overweight people, more social shaming. I won't say that was a good thing - shaming people can cause long term emotional harm and hurts in other ways. But one byproduct of this is that no one wanted to be "that fat kid". (My school had just one fat kid, where now childhood obesity is systemic, and I see 3rd graders who look... morbidly obese).

Now I'm nearing 60 and still normal weight. I have an easier time going up multiple flights of steps than, I would estimate, around 2/3 of the people who are in their 20's, because I'm carrying 50, 100, sometimes even 200 pounds less than they are at the same height.

I think the solution needs a cultural shift back towards valuing healthy eating and exercise. There are no shortcuts. The culture has to value this, or it won't happen.

The blame for this

[Kohath]

Obviously Western Civilization and Capitalism are to blame for this.

Re:The blame for this

[thinkwaitfast]

When I was a kid, going out to eat was a once a year experience (my grandmother's birthday) and it meant going to Red Lobster where there was always a 45 minute wait. It seems people today not only don't know how to cook, they don't want to know.

The food supply is extensively contaminated...

[teslabox]

Wall Street sells us "imitation food" because the family farm doesn't scale. The most obesogenic of these so-called foods is "biodiesel", aka "vegetable oil".

For better health, we should all eat less biodiesel. Corn oil, soybean oil, rapeseed oil, grapeseed oil, linseed oil, and all other predominately unsaturated oils should only be used to power diesel engines.

The Obesity Epidemic: Evidence of a Crime Against The Public’s Health

Re:The food supply is extensively contaminated...

[DNS-and-BIND]

Funny, I thought vegetable oil had been used by humanity for thousands of years. But now it gets slapped with a scary-sounding label like "biodiesel"? Oh my God, what's wrong with it? EVERYBODY PANIC!!!

I also love how you throw in the baffling term "obesogenic" without defining it, as if everyone should know it. I'm sure everyone knows what it means where you hang out, where vegetable oil is considered a toxic poison from Wall Street (ZOMG!) but the rest of us have not suffered the normalization of deviance you have. The longer the weirdness goes on the more insiders become accustomed to it. People on the outside see it as abnormal but within the circle it becomes accepted as everyday practice.

And no shit the family farm doesn't scale. That's why we don't have famines any more, and if one does occur, it is a problem of distribution not production.

Re:The food supply is extensively contaminated...

[teslabox]

If you had read the link, you would have known that humanity traditionally used linseed oil to preserve wood. But after the paint industry figured out how to use petroleum distillates for their stains, linseed Oil magically transformed itself into flaxseed oil, and was marketed as "essential".

Obesogenic is a regular word that is found in the dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com...

Re:The food supply is extensively contaminated...

[thinkwaitfast]

Out of the 36,000 total farms in New York State, 32,700 are small farms according to the 2011 census

There were 1,921,058 small farms in the US in 2009, which translated to 90.1% of the total farms in the US at that time

http://smallfarms.cornell.edu/...

Soda Pop

[fustakrakich]

That's what's dong it. And it rots your teeth too.

What an astounding accomplishment

[DNS-and-BIND]

I know this thread is going to be full of We Hate Americans - it's already started. But I just think this is really amazing. For the entirety of human existence, food has been a huge problem. Hunger was always, at most, a year or two away. Starvation is the best way to kill huge numbers of humans at once. Malnutrition, or control of food, is one of the best ways to keep them in line. Ever seen those fiftyish/sixtyish Chinese ladies who are all so short? It's because their growth was stunted as children because their government didn't provide enough for them to eat. Even without shitheads starving people to death for political reasons, lack of enough food was always a concern.

Now, we not only have solved the food problem, but we have gone too far the opposite direction. Wow! People have too much food. Food is too cheap. But that's not all, they don't just have too much food, they have the wrong kind of it! It's not just the quantity, it is the diversity and free choice that is causing all the problems. Who would have even imagined such an outcome? Did any of the visionary Sci-Fi authors of the 20th century see this coming? Because this is more earth-shattering than landing a probe on a comet (but I have been educated by the media and now understand that the shirt the spokesman was wearing when he made the announcement WAS more important than any scientific achievement humanity might have accomplished that day). Moreover this food is available just about anywhere. It tastes delicious as well, something people today barely realize, if ever.

One of my minor hobbies is making old or ancient recipes straight from manuscripts or books, as close as I can. Something I've noticed is how much they really aren't that good. They're edible, to be sure, and they get you full and they're nutritious because they're always made from scratch. But they just ain't that good. There is almost always some simple optimization that would make them taste much, much better. I'm not saying the people of old didn't enjoy their food, because they did. It's a universal human condition, whether you're eating oeufs au plat Meyerbeer prepared by a separate entremettier, rotisseur and saucier; or a bowl of oat porridge with pig fat. A lot of people ridicule McDonald's hamburgers or Applebee's entrees in the boil-in bags. But damn, that food is super-tasty. Far better than kings used to eat. It's never spoiled, either, and if it is you send it back and get a fresh one...something else we never take note of.

Yeah, unhealthy food causes disease and cancer. We all know. But this is a new, thrilling problem to combat. It's *the right kind of problem*. It's like being confronted with what to do with too much money. How can we make healthy food taste just as good or better than that fast food crap? Surely society's great minds are going to work on this one. I don't know though...I get the idea too many people out there just enjoy hating fatties, Wal-mart, Applebee's, trailer parks, and Monsanto far too much to ever think that maybe things should be better. Imagine a day when McDonald's goes out of business because people can pick more delicious foods from public orchards. A microwave burrito that is more nutritious than fresh blueberries. A boil-in bag that makes fresh spinach look like a twinkie. It can happen, if we want it to happen.

Re:What an astounding accomplishment

[__aaclcg7560]

But I just think this is really amazing.

I recently came across this factoid: the world population doubled twice in the 20th century, but it won't even double in the 21st century as old people will outnumber young people.

Re:What an astounding accomplishment

[SQL Error]

Did any of the visionary Sci-Fi authors of the 20th century see this coming?

Isaac Asimov wrote a short story - 2430 A.D. - wherein all the problems of hunger and war and disease and poverty had been solved, and as a result the world population was 15 trillion. Quietly horrifying.

Re:What an astounding accomplishment

[AthanasiusKircher]

One of my minor hobbies is making old or ancient recipes straight from manuscripts or books, as close as I can. Something I've noticed is how much they really aren't that good. They're edible, to be sure, and they get you full and they're nutritious because they're always made from scratch. But they just ain't that good. There is almost always some simple optimization that would make them taste much, much better.

As someone who also tends to make old recipes or experiment with traditional techniques myself, I can point out a number of problems with old and ancient recipes. Many are bland, because spices were expensive. And access to a wide variety of ingredients was seasonal and often only for the very rich. These recipes can be improved by "modernizing" them with accessible ingredients. Same thing with recipes whose ingredients have changed over time -- so-called "heirloom" varieties of vegetables, fruits, and even old varieties of grains can make a huge difference in flavor and texture. Just subbing in a food that has the same basic name today may not be getting at the original flavors at all. And of course tastes change over time and in different cultures.

A lot of people ridicule McDonald's hamburgers or Applebee's entrees in the boil-in bags. But damn, that food is super-tasty.

They're "tasty" because they're generally engineered to be a completely unnatural mixture of flavors our bodies are adapted to be attracted too, since those flavors were often rare in the past... And consuming them could be important to survival. Now the artificial combinations and availability of those flavors results in overeating and excessive calorie consumption.

I cook and bake a lot of things in fairly traditional ways, I bring them to parties or serve them to guests, and inevitably people are blown away by the flavors, which vastly exceed the quality and satisfaction from a McDonalds hamburger or boil-in-a-bag meal. I've taken a simple loaf of plain bread prepared in a traditional manner with only natural (sourdough) yeast, fresh whole-grain flour, salt, and water, with long traditional fermentation... And I've seen people just rip apart the plain loaf and eat it without accompaniment... Because it's so damn good compared to what they usually eat. Traditional simple fresh ingredients, old-school prep. Result is often: Wow.

I have nothing against fast food's achievements in terms of packing calories in cheaply and quickly. But the idea that traditional foods are all crap, and we should bow to the "super-tasty" Big Mac as if it were some amazing culinary achievement? I think you may just not have eaten enough traditional GOOD food prepared from good ingredients.

Re:What an astounding accomplishment

[KGIII]

There are reprints and some originals to be had, if you're interested. The Boston School of Cookery made an excellent cookbook but it's quite a bit more than just a cookbook. It includes directions like "over a low fire" or "with a medium coal bed."

Re:What an astounding accomplishment

[jan_koch]

I know this thread is going to be full of We Hate Americans - it's already started.

The overwhelming feeling I get is not hate, but sympathy.

Re:What an astounding accomplishment

[dbIII]

Thankfully that's an extrapolation error. The "green revolution" of increased food production was in full swing when Asimov was writing his early stuff and Asimov was paying more attention to science than most so noticed. The reduction in family sizes due to prosperity was not so obvious until later. Those European immigrant families with ten children making it to adulthood due to the first generation of prosperity were still alive when Asimov started writing and the smaller second generations were not so obvious.

Re:What an astounding accomplishment

[Feral Nerd]

I know this thread is going to be full of We Hate Americans - it's already started .....

People crack jokes about Americans because they are perceived as a nation of hamburger eating overweight people who know very little about what happens outside of their community (which is far from being a universal truth, there is no shortage of ignorant people outside of the USA and the USA is not the only country with an obesity epidemic) just like the British are perceived as being aristocracy loving tea drinkers who cook food a dog wouldn't eat (and yet they cook fantastic steaks, drink lots of coffee and my experience is that most of them have little reverence for the aristocracy and some of them even want to abolish the monarchy), the French are perceived as being perennially rude (having been there I can assure you they are not all rude all of the time in fact they are pretty polite most of the time, even Parisians) and the Germans are often perceived as tight fisted conservative disciplinarians (which some of them are but most of them are not, keep in mind that the Germans pioneered the modern nudist movement which is not what I'd call a conservative idea). People in some portions of the world hate Americans because their government props up homicidal dictators who oppress these same people in the name of regional stability and the security of oil production but that kind of dislike comes with the territory if you want to be a superpower so Americans should not be surprised about this kind of blow-back.

Re:What an astounding accomplishment

[thinkwaitfast]

Less than 13% of US oil comes from the middle east.

Re:What an astounding accomplishment

[__aaclcg7560]

You might want to check into the definition of factoid.

Considering my source for the factoid was Slashdot, I used the word properly. ;)

Re:What an astounding accomplishment

[LunaticTippy]

Holy cow. Earth has 148,300,000 sq km of land, at the current highest density on Earth, Mumbai, of 29,650 people per sq km that is only 4.4 trillion.

Imagine every bit of dry land packed up like Mumbai and then triple it.

I confess doing the math expecting to show that 15 trillion is not that bad, but goddamn if it is that bad!

Re:What an astounding accomplishment

[gzuckier]

I know this thread is going to be full of We Hate Americans - it's already started. But I just think this is really amazing. For the entirety of human existence, food has been a huge problem. Hunger was always, at most, a year or two away. Starvation is the best way to kill huge numbers of humans at once. Malnutrition, or control of food, is one of the best ways to keep them in line. Ever seen those fiftyish/sixtyish Chinese ladies who are all so short? It's because their growth was stunted as children because their government didn't provide enough for them to eat. Even without shitheads starving people to death for political reasons, lack of enough food was always a concern.

Now, we not only have solved the food problem, but we have gone too far the opposite direction. Wow! People have too much food. Food is too cheap. But that's not all, they don't just have too much food, they have the wrong kind of it! It's not just the quantity, it is the diversity and free choice that is causing all the problems. Who would have even imagined such an outcome? Did any of the visionary Sci-Fi authors of the 20th century see this coming? Because this is more earth-shattering than landing a probe on a comet (but I have been educated by the media and now understand that the shirt the spokesman was wearing when he made the announcement WAS more important than any scientific achievement humanity might have accomplished that day). Moreover this food is available just about anywhere. It tastes delicious as well, something people today barely realize, if ever.

One of my minor hobbies is making old or ancient recipes straight from manuscripts or books, as close as I can. Something I've noticed is how much they really aren't that good. They're edible, to be sure, and they get you full and they're nutritious because they're always made from scratch. But they just ain't that good. There is almost always some simple optimization that would make them taste much, much better. I'm not saying the people of old didn't enjoy their food, because they did. It's a universal human condition, whether you're eating oeufs au plat Meyerbeer prepared by a separate entremettier, rotisseur and saucier; or a bowl of oat porridge with pig fat. A lot of people ridicule McDonald's hamburgers or Applebee's entrees in the boil-in bags. But damn, that food is super-tasty. Far better than kings used to eat. It's never spoiled, either, and if it is you send it back and get a fresh one...something else we never take note of.

Yeah, unhealthy food causes disease and cancer. We all know. But this is a new, thrilling problem to combat. It's *the right kind of problem*. It's like being confronted with what to do with too much money. How can we make healthy food taste just as good or better than that fast food crap? Surely society's great minds are going to work on this one. I don't know though...I get the idea too many people out there just enjoy hating fatties, Wal-mart, Applebee's, trailer parks, and Monsanto far too much to ever think that maybe things should be better. Imagine a day when McDonald's goes out of business because people can pick more delicious foods from public orchards. A microwave burrito that is more nutritious than fresh blueberries. A boil-in bag that makes fresh spinach look like a twinkie. It can happen, if we want it to happen.

marx said capitalism is a great engine that would be able to provide for the needs of everyone in the world, but would fail in the task ot apportioning it fairly,

Re:What an astounding accomplishment

[gzuckier]

One of my minor hobbies is making old or ancient recipes straight from manuscripts or books, as close as I can. Something I've noticed is how much they really aren't that good. They're edible, to be sure, and they get you full and they're nutritious because they're always made from scratch. But they just ain't that good. There is almost always some simple optimization that would make them taste much, much better.

As someone who also tends to make old recipes or experiment with traditional techniques myself, I can point out a number of problems with old and ancient recipes. Many are bland, because spices were expensive. And access to a wide variety of ingredients was seasonal and often only for the very rich. These recipes can be improved by "modernizing" them with accessible ingredients. Same thing with recipes whose ingredients have changed over time -- so-called "heirloom" varieties of vegetables, fruits, and even old varieties of grains can make a huge difference in flavor and texture. Just subbing in a food that has the same basic name today may not be getting at the original flavors at all. And of course tastes change over time and in different cultures.

A lot of people ridicule McDonald's hamburgers or Applebee's entrees in the boil-in bags. But damn, that food is super-tasty.

They're "tasty" because they're generally engineered to be a completely unnatural mixture of flavors our bodies are adapted to be attracted too, since those flavors were often rare in the past... And consuming them could be important to survival. Now the artificial combinations and availability of those flavors results in overeating and excessive calorie consumption.

I cook and bake a lot of things in fairly traditional ways, I bring them to parties or serve them to guests, and inevitably people are blown away by the flavors, which vastly exceed the quality and satisfaction from a McDonalds hamburger or boil-in-a-bag meal. I've taken a simple loaf of plain bread prepared in a traditional manner with only natural (sourdough) yeast, fresh whole-grain flour, salt, and water, with long traditional fermentation... And I've seen people just rip apart the plain loaf and eat it without accompaniment... Because it's so damn good compared to what they usually eat. Traditional simple fresh ingredients, old-school prep. Result is often: Wow.

I have nothing against fast food's achievements in terms of packing calories in cheaply and quickly. But the idea that traditional foods are all crap, and we should bow to the "super-tasty" Big Mac as if it were some amazing culinary achievement? I think you may just not have eaten enough traditional GOOD food prepared from good ingredients.

note also that edible industrial products are engineered deliberately to be non satiating; they stimulate the appetite, but do not satisfy it so "you can't eat just one". http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02...

Food stamps

[huckamania]

In Belgium they have an egg and milk fund that every family with children gets every month. You can't use it to buy processed foods.

In the United States of America, food stamps (well, credit cards now) can be used to buy processed foods. It's too demeaning to have any proper controls and limit things to rice, flour, sugar, eggs, milk, etc. The big food manufacturers love it, the poor love it and changing it back to the basics (remember government cheese), will be next to impossible to do.

I've noticed that there is a correlation to the people who use food credit cards that they usually have two carts with free food and another with beer and yet more crap that isn't free. Usually they are in front of me in line and yes they are usually fat pushing obese.

I have three kids. I like the way Belgium does it better. The rich have always had a really good deal in the US, because taxes are based on non-investment income (why Warren Buffet still pays a lower percentage in taxes then his secretary). Now the poor also have a good deal. The middle class get jack all in this country. Poor kids get free breakfast and lunch and free after school programs (50$ for my kids). Poor families get free phones, free cable, free housing, free food, etc. But being poor is based on reported income. So there are literally millions in this country who get all the free stuff and can still drive around in a brand new mega truck cause they don't report their income.

More and more are gaming the system and for some getting on the government dole is the new American dream. And in instead of doing anything about this, the government keeps rolling out more and more programs for the fraudsters. I blame the baby boomers and their offspring, of which I am neither.

Re:Food stamps

[gstoddart]

But being poor is based on reported income. So there are literally millions in this country who get all the free stuff and can still drive around in a brand new mega truck cause they don't report their income.

So, it's pretty much the same as rich assholes and corporations keeping their money in offshore accounts?

Or is it OK when you're rich to not report your income?

If it's good enough for Apple, Microsoft, and Google ... or any of those rich people who can afford a shady accountant to hide the money, it must be fine for the poor folks.

Isn't hiding your money and dodging taxes the American way?

Re:Food stamps

[dbIII]

That's because the "small government" dream is not having enough people to catch fraudsters, especially at the big donor end of town. It's never been about spending less taxpayers money. The problem is those who really would die without help are being tarred with the same brush as those who are well off but gaming the system, plus many between the two extremes.
Of course there is no quick fix.

Re:Food stamps

[JoeMerchant]

I agree on all points, and add that: the poor have free time in which to game the system, the rich have paid advocates who spend all their time gaming the system, the middle class are too busy working to take the time to game the system.

Our grocery store periodically mails out $5 unrestricted coupons (just buy $30 or more of _anything_ during a two week time window), and we regularly spend $500 a month in that store, but we don't have the spare time and energy to remember to grab the coupon off the refrigerator half the time before it expires. This is our life - we have enough money to meet our needs, but not enough time to take advantage of complex schemes.

Re:Food stamps

[arobatino]

There are perfectly legal ways for the rich to pay zero taxes. Only ordinary working stiffs have to break the law by either not reporting income or cheating on deductions. Your tax system at work.

Re:Food stamps

[Whorhay]

Stereotyping bad, or at least not always representative of reality.

There are definitely poor people who sit around slacking all day getting by on welfare programs. But most of the poor people I know are busier than the middle class people I know. Many poor people work more than one job while still dealing with all the same crap the middle class does. I think of how tired I am when I get home from work and how I really don't want to bother fixing dinner. The idea of fixing a meal and then heading off to another job would frankly make me seriously consider turning to crime.

If we limited SNAP benefits to just simple raw ingredients it might in convenience the welfare queens out there. But I can't help but think that it'll make life that much more miserable for an even larger block of people that is the working poor.

Re:Food stamps

[JoeMerchant]

Of course there are working poor who are even more time-poor than the middle class, it's hard to characterize a whole society of hundreds of millions of people in a 25 word or less sound bite.

The only middle-class I know who have time to game the system are single earner partnerships; unfortunately, I am in a single earner partnership where the non-earning partner has more time sucking responsibilities at home with the kids than the money earner does with work, so we don't get to game the system too much.

Re:Food stamps

[gstoddart]

And you racist a-holes call India a corrupt country!

India is a corrupt country. America is an unjust society.

These two things are independent of one another.

Re:Food stamps

[Blaskowicz]

Define healthy foods?
Some actually are nasty (fat-free foods) and some are great but if you only ever eat the same thing that's going to be bad no matter what.

Also, let's say you've been donated food already (by a charity or family), or dumpster dived a great lot of it today, then it wouldn't make sense to buy over again what you have e.g. vegetables when there is scavenged vegetables already for dinner. Better buy side things like mayonnaise, condiment, onions, oil etc. and yes beer.
Next time you might have all the side things but badly need the main things so you won't buy what you bought last time.

Micro-managing seems rather stupid. Why not jail the poor? (like U.K. circa 19th century)

Also, the rich don't get their tax breaks on fake-money cards that don't buy beer or cigars.

Re:Food stamps

[mjtaylor24601]

The problems with taxing muni bonds at the normal progressive tax rates is that wealthy people or institutional investors no longer have any incentive to finance public works...The problem with taxing long-term capital gains at the normal progressive tax rates is that wealthy people or institutional investors no longer have any incentive to invest in ownership stakes in those corporations

Isn't that like saying "The problem with taxing employment income at the normal progressive tax rates is that people will have no incentive to get a job"? Just because you tax one thing at a slightly higher rate than something else (or at a higher rate than has been done historically) doesn't mean it won't still be the better than the alternative options. Would that actually be the case for stocks or municipal bonds? I have no idea. But I'd say it's hardly a foregone conclusion.

Re:Food stamps

[gzuckier]

In the US, our farm subsidies, which sound like a good idea, are in fact assigned in such a fashion that they are primarily for big agribiz, rather than bailing out small farms that are out of luck. As a result, the actual business of big agribiz is to harvest subsidies, and the result is that a lot of corn is produced as a waste product. this stuff has to be gotten rid of somehow; we feed it to animals who normally don't eat corn, we make it into alcohol and dispose of it in gasoline, we burn it in stoves, we make it into packing peanuts, and we feed it to people in every way possible, including of course the famous high fructose corn syrup. Which means that that stuff and the edible industrial products which contains it is always going to be cheaper than real food.

Re:Food stamps

[gzuckier]

Well, there's always two ways you can err, false negatives and false positives. Meaning if you are majorly concerned about helping the deserving, more cheats will collect; if you are more concerned about stopping the cheats, some deserving will not. It's tempting, however, to feel that people who take the latter position are just cheap bastards.

Re:News for Nerds

[OrangeTide]

If the definition of obese is a BMI over 30. The average slashdot user is probably American and probably between the ages of 26-44, then it would be pretty reasonable to argue that typical (average) slashdot user is likely obese.

We could probably drill down on the details and make vegas style odds on if the first post of the next article is obese.

Re:cultural changes caused it - needs a cultural f

[Anonymous Coward]

The largest cultural shift to happen in your time frame has been two-income households and on top of that most people are working longer hours than ever before.

That means less time to cook nutritious meals, less time to monitor what the kids are doing, and less time for recreation.

This notion of a qualitative shift within a few generations is asinine. There's a reason energy drinks happened within this generation. People are tired and harried.

Re:News for Nerds

[ShaunC]

I hate to confirm the bias, but I'll readily admit that I'm contributing to the problem. I don't know about "obese," but I could stand to lose 10 pounds, by which I really mean 20 pounds, and only at losing 30 pounds would I approach unhealthily skinny. I keep up some active hobbies like fishing and vegetable gardening (and eating fish and vegetables), but my work and my play tend to keep me seated in front of computers most of the day. As a result I weigh more than I'd like.

Re:The problem is the perception of obesity

[__aaclcg7560]

If 30% of more of your body mass is fat, you are one fat motherfucker.

So is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

http://www.docshop.com/2008/04/08/arnold-schwarzenegger-is-obese-problems-with-body-mass-index-bmi-calculations

Re:cultural changes caused it - needs a cultural f

[blindseer]

Even though you are more than a decade older than me I will say I have seen similar trends.

Before air conditioning we'd see more people go to a swimming pool to cool off. If not that then people would at least sweat off some calories.

Before computers and video games people would be more likely to go outside to play. This has some overlap with the air conditioning thing since people are also just as likely to read a book or play a board game inside as opposed to going out in the heat. Even when outside people will play with electronics rather than go climb a tree.

It's not just soda that makes us fat, it's fruit juices, breakfast cereals, and so many other sweet foods that got cheaper. Also with more money it's easier to treat yourself to something sweet than if you don't have as much money. I say this is true even of the "poor" since poverty in the USA is not like poverty in other places. Even the "poor" in the USA can afford a candy bar once in a while. It's a cheap and easy to get treat.

The trend to do less biking, hiking, and exploring is because of a (IMHO, highly irrational) fear of injury, abductions, and so forth that parents have of their children. At a young age my brothers and I asked our parents if we could walk the two miles home from school to avoid the lengthy ride on the bus. The bus would drive in a big loop and we were the last to get dropped off. If the weather was nice we'd walk. Few parents would let their children do that today out of a fear that their kids could get run over, kidnapped, molested, or get lost.

I will agree that there has been a shift in the public acceptance of being overweight. I don't watch a lot of TV but I do notice that there are more heavy actors on TV than I recall before. When there were fat characters in the past their weight was usually seen as a flaw or somehow an aspect of the character. Now we have obviously overweight people on TV but their weight is rarely mentioned.

Not really

[rsilvergun]

I gave up soda pop and believe me, it helped, but only about 5lbs worth. The trouble with Americans is that junk food is a cheap pleasure in a world that doesn't give out many pleasures to the poor. At the end of a long, miserable day it's hard to say no to a cheeseburger, fries and a chocolate shake. The fact that I can get all that for $6 bucks (no tip, it's fast food) is just icing on the cake (there's a pun in that somewhere). It doesn't help that vegetables are expensive and unsubsidized and that just about everything has added sugar...

Re:Not really

[thinkwaitfast]

doesn't give out many pleasures to the poor

Can you list some of those pleasure so that I can know what I'm missing?

Re: Not really

[rsilvergun]

Vacations. Travel. Nice homes. Nice schools. Clean drinking water ( if you live in Flint, Mi). Retirement. Economic security. Savings. Healthcare. Moderately priced hobbies (model rail roads, scrap booking, golf, cycling). An evening out with the missus once a week. Should I go on?

Re:News for Nerds

[whipslash]

News for Nerds.... Stuff that Matters

Food isn't too cheap

[rsilvergun]

nutritious food is too expensive. Also companies are modifiying our food supply to make it addicting and encourage overeating (it's not an accident that eating chips goes well with soda pop). Plus people are turning to junk food to cope with the misery in life and to get a quick boost to get them through a long day.

When you look at wealthy folk they're rarely overweight. It's poor people getting shafted by a bad system. That's where the hate is coming from...

Re:Food isn't too cheap

[Livius]

nutritious food is too expensive.

The poster is saying that that is a challenge that can be overcome.

It would take some will and leadership, so probably not, but in theory it can be overcome.

Re:Food isn't too cheap

[Alioth]

Nutritious food is not expensive. I can make a nice, satiating dinner using fresh ingredients for less than the cost of a microwave TV dinner, and less than half the cost of a McDonald's Big Mac meal. You can save quite a lot of money on fresh ingredients if you don't buy them pre-packed (pre-packed in these parts is 10% more expensive for bulky stuff like carrots, 50% more expensive for things like tomatoes and 70% more expensive for small items like chilis and garlic). It takes about 5 seconds longer to hand pick at the supermarket rather than get the pre-packed package.

Re:Food isn't too cheap

[thinkwaitfast]

nutritious food is too expensive.

No it is not.

Not so fast

[EEPROMS]

I recently read an article that showed the method most western governments use to measure who is over weight is actually not that accurate. In fact many professional sports people or gym junkies would be classified as overweight based on the measurement systems used. Trying to define who is overweight with a single measurement doesn't work due to lifestyle and genetic variations.

Re:Not so fast

[AnotherBlackHat]

Has the method (however flawed) changed in the last 20 years?
Because the percentage of people who are obese has gone up in that time.

Re:Not so fast

[Daemonik]

No, the BMI gauge is a simple weight / height squared calculation.

Re:Not so fast

[serviscope_minor]

I recently read an article that showed the method most western governments use to measure who is over weight is actually not that accurate.

Define: not that accurate.

What you do is take a single variable measurement (height doesn't vary). Not only that but it has to be one that more or less everyone has access to and is pretty much impossible to do wrong (i.e. not waist measurement). That leaves... weight.

So, take weight, height, apply a simpe calculation (or lookup table) and hreshold the result. That's BMI. It's actually pretty good, very good when you look into it deeper. Obviously it's never going to be perfect.

First, the thresholds for obese are set with a high precision and low recall. I.e. if it says you're obese, you very likely are, if it says you're not, then you still might be. People have crunched the numbers and come up with statistics. If it says you're obese, statistically, there's a 5% chance it's wrong.

In fact many professional sports people or gym junkies would be classified as overweight based on the measurement systems used

I looked up a bunch of sports people last time this came up (footballers, tennis players, swimmers, and a few others) and none of them came up as overweight. So, actually plenty of professional athletes come up as normal.

Secondly, it really doesn't matter. If you're a pro athlete, you'll have better tools available to you than BMI. So, fine, don't use it. If you're into serious lifting (and you have to be WAY serious to get an "obese" BMI) then... you have better tools available to you.

For the remaining 95% of the population, BMI is just fine.

It's silly to discount something that's 95% accurate on average and applies least well to the people who have the best ability to use something better.

Re:Not so fast

[dbIII]

It's just a measure that is not being applied correctly if applied to "sports people or gym junkies". It's a rough metric that was never designed to take people with large amounts of muscle into account. They already know they are healthy so the BMI figure was never intended to apply to very fit people.

Re:Not so fast

[EvilAlphonso]

It is a rough statistical measure for a population. Like all rough statistical measures, they can tell you something at the population level but still fail at the individual level, a bit like Asimov's psychohistory.

For example, my BMI is 32.9... omg, I must be Fatso McFatty as that's way in the obese range of BMI! I'm 42 years old, that's dragging me back down to the moderate risk from high/very high. My body fat level is currently at 20%, according to both fat calipers and body measurements. That is smack in the middle of average for a man. My target is somewhere below 15%. Based on those numbers, at my current muscle mass:

• at 0% body fat (aka dead), to go back down to a BMI of 26.5, which is the higher band of "minimal risk" for someone my age, but still overweight according to BMI.
• at 5% body fat (strict minimum for survival), my BMI would be on the top half of the overweight range
• at 10% body fat (the bf% of "cut" athletes on photoshoots), my BMI would be close to the border between the overweight and the obese ranges
• at 15% body fat, my BMI would be in the obese range

I am anything but a "professional sports person" or a gym junkie. My physical activity level isn't that high... I jog 3x a week, before going to the office. I lift 3 times a week, after work. I'm still pretty much a noob on both activities. I do watch my calorie intake

Re:Not so fast

[serviscope_minor]

but still fail at the individual level,

I never claimed otherwise. It's got a 95% recall rate for obesity predictions in adult men (99% for women). You're one of the 5%, and unlike the 5% which apparently makes up about 80% of posters on this thread you've done the correct thing and based it off a more accurate measurement.

Aslo, if you hit the gym and lift 3 times a week, that puts you in a pretty rarified category of people already. So, er, yay you?

Re:Not so fast

[EvilAlphonso]

unlike the 5% which apparently makes up about 80% of posters on this thread you've done the correct thing and based it off a more accurate measurement.

I guess we can both venture a guess about the reason for the 80% of the posters in the thread not using a more accurate measurement. ;)

I started using more precise measurements because BMI never gave a coherent result for me after age 11... at my lowest weight as a teenager, it put me on the higher end of normal. I looked like a walking skeleton with large legs and I had no endurance... I had explosive acceleration but couldn't run a 100m or walk for more than 15 minutes. As soon as I looked healthier or more balanced, with better endurance, my BMI would hit overweight.

I had to start lifting because 20+ years as a console jockey was taking its toll on my health. My posture started getting shittier every year, I was starting to get pain in my lower back, neck and my shoulder all the time. The pain in the back, neck and shoulder went away after a week of lifting, and they come back when I stop lifting (after a few weeks). So that's one of the things that keeps me lifting on a regular basis, the other one is that I can literally see the difference on the scale and the fat calipers every week where I stick to the program. If I end up getting a few more month of linear gains with my current training (beginner gains FTW), there will be no body fat percentage where I'm not in the obese range according to BMI. Once I hit the limit of the beginner gains, I'll do a first cut before switching to maintenance.

I'm still far from being seriously into lifting tho... I'm not doing a 5 or 6 days split routine, I'm not chugging supplements and/or pre/post workouts (or worse!). I don't even want to think about doing that, I'm drawing the line at tracking micro/macro nutrients and calories. You should see some of the "seriously into lifting/fitness" people I have met in my life. :)

I do get that the vast majority of the general population prefers watching entertainment from their sofa rather than exercising or sleeping in rather than jumping out of bed at 4:30 am for a short jog before commuting to work, heck I was one of them. And I also get that the few who try to exercise tend to give up after a few weeks because it wasn't the silver bullet that was sold to them. However, I am surprised that the same applies to our demographic... it's not rocket brain surgery, there's loads of published research on the health benefits, there's loads of data you can collect/analyse to better understand or use the most important machine in your life. I would expect nerds to be all over that shit and publish howto/hacks.

Re:Not so fast

[serviscope_minor]

I started using more precise measurements because BMI never gave a coherent result for me after age 11...

Sounds like you're out at the edge. That's the thing with population based measurements. BMI isn't the only one. The automatic blood pressure machines (oscillometry based ones) are also population measure based devices, unlike the old-school stethoscope based techinque which is faffier, harder to learn but more accurate. I happen to know one person for whom the automatic machines give wildly inaccurare results. They work perfectly for me though.

My posture started getting shittier every year, I was starting to get pain in my lower back, neck and my shoulder all the time. The pain in the back, neck and shoulder went away after a week of lifting, and they come back when I stop lifting (after a few weeks)

Weights are the best thing for my back. One thing I found helped is doing side arm lifts one side at a time. The large asymmetry means you need to put a lot more work into stabilising your spine, and I found that very helpful for posture. You'll almost certainly need to drop a weight though to keep good form.

I'm not chugging supplements and/or pre/post workouts (or worse!). I don't even want to think about doing that, I'm drawing the line at tracking micro/macro nutrients and calories.

Yeah life is too short. I like a good bit of exercise, but I can't be bothered with the "serious" stuff that some people insist on putting in. I don't bother with any of the technical things like fitbit because I basically know if I've not gone for a run, I don't really need a device to tell me.

rather than jumping out of bed at 4:30 am for a short jog before commuting to work, heck I was one of them.

I still am. I need too much sleep for that, plus I'm a night owl. I get most productive in the evening, often late.

. However, I am surprised that the same applies to our demographic... it's not rocket brain surgery, there's loads of published research on the health benefits, there's loads of data you can collect/analyse to better understand or use the most important machine in your life. I would expect nerds to be all over that shit and publish howto/hacks.

We're built to avoid exercise if possible. It's a great strategy if you're hunting on the planes in Africa in order to survive. Not so much for a modern lifestyle. Also people are great at rationalising away things. I did when I started putting on weight: I found all sorts of reasons why stuff didn't fit properly any more. Eventually I figured it out and am now sorting it out.

Here's a scary thought

[rsilvergun]

I think I'll leave everyone with. One of the aspects of our food supply nobody every talks about is that we use oil byproducts to replenish soil. That's how we're able to grow so much food. Anyone want to guess what's going to happen when our oil supply dwindles...?

Re:Here's a scary thought

[dbIII]

Yes people have been worrying about that for a while. A frequently used feedstock is gas so it doesn't quite link in to peak oil, there's a bit more gas around than the ultra-convenient liquid oil (not gas, not shale, not tar) that the peak oil problem is about.

Re:Here's a scary thought

[EvilAlphonso]

It depends what you want to replenish... normally nitrogen is the oil-derived fertilizer component. It can be however be obtained through pretty much anything, in a less direct cycle. Pretty much everything organic that decomposes will produce ammonia while being broken down. Bacteria in the soil will then process the ammonia to nitrogen. The process is slower than with chemical nitrogen, which is presented as a compound that is directly available to the plants. Alternatively, you can also plant legumes or a cover crop of clover in the area as they will scrub nitrogen from the atmosphere and fix it in the soil. It is also a slower process than the chemical based fertilizer.

Re:Here's a scary thought

[gzuckier]

I think I'll leave everyone with. One of the aspects of our food supply nobody every talks about is that we use oil byproducts to replenish soil. That's how we're able to grow so much food. Anyone want to guess what's going to happen when our oil supply dwindles...?

Indeed. we have accomplished the miracle of taking the food supply from being solar powered to being fossil fuel powered.

Re:It's simple

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Hmm... your post made me hungry.

I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[germansausage]

I visit the USA several times a year. I come from a place where obesity is much less common, and much less extreme. These are my observations of the USA. I don't want this to sound like I'm hating on Americans, because some of you are super nice. This is just what I've seen.
 
The obesity axis runs diagonally, northwest to south east. People in Seattle are not much bigger then people around here. People in Mobile were appallingly huge. My theory is this correlates with biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast.
 
It also correlates with escalators. In Seattle most people were walking up the escalators, In Mobile nobody walked up escalators.
 
A much bigger percentage of black people are overweight compared to white people. (Is this poverty related?).
 
You all drink way too much coke cola. I met people who drank 2 or three cans of soda per day at work and then drank it with every lunch and dinner.
 
Food servings in some restaurants are stupid big. Plates of spaghetti that two of us couldn't finish. 24 ounce prime rib. (really)
 
Most appalling thing I saw was whole families of fat people which is super rare here. Like mom and dad both 250 lbs plus and then 2 or 3 huge fat kids. Around here if your ten year old was 150 lbs the child welfare people would be all over you.

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[Daemonik]

There's a reason for the huge serving sizes, that is hard to back away from now. After the Great Depression and the austerity of WWII, restaurants started offering larger meals as a value proposition to attract customers. Now it's just expected and it's really difficult to tell people who are accustomed to 24oz steaks that they have to pay nearly the same amount for a 12oz. They'll just feel you're trying to scam them.

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[dinfinity]

that is hard to back away from now.

Such bullshit.
The Great Depression and WW2 occurred more than two generations ago, and the countries hit hardest by WW2 obviously don't share the same problem.

No, the problem simply lies in the mentality of 'bigger is better'. Many of the other developed countries just do not share that same (weirdly nationalistic) mindset.
Take cars, for instance. Even on Last Week Tonight (which could be considered a 'liberal' show), they mock small 'European' cars. That, to me, is a sign of how pervasive the mindset is.

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[Daemonik]

Make a restaurant and advertise that you have portion sizes 1/2 everyone elses, see how long you stay in business. It's an ingrained mindset that's carried over for yes, two generations.

Also this?:

No, the problem simply lies in the mentality of 'bigger is better'.

Well duh-huh, that's exactly what I said. Larger sizes were presented as being more value for the buck when eating out, so to American minds, BIG = VALUE.

As for the countries hit hardest by WWII? Again, duh-huh, they were hit hard by WWII. They didn't have the immediate economic boom the US did afterwards, have tended to be more protectionist towards traditional culture (In the face of otherwise omnipresent Americanism) and have different perceptions of value.

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[dbIII]

biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast

Wow, I just looked that up - in the land of Kellog that's still the way to start the day?

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[Gryle]

It is, but it's not as popular as it used to be. Biscuits-and-gravy is popular mostly with the rural crowd in the Deep South areas of the US, though I've also seen it in Tennessee and the eastern portions of Texas and Tennessee. Outside of that geographic area, you'd probably have to find a Southern-style chain like Waffle House or Cracker Barrel to get it.

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[thinkwaitfast]

No, the problem simply lies in the mentality of 'bigger is better'.

This is hardwired into the human brain. Studies show that even babies understand bigger is better.

http://www.livescience.com/116...

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[painandgreed]

No, the problem simply lies in the mentality of 'bigger is better'. Many of the other developed countries just do not share that same (weirdly nationalistic) mindset. Take cars, for instance. Even on Last Week Tonight (which could be considered a 'liberal' show), they mock small 'European' cars. That, to me, is a sign of how pervasive the mindset is.

Well, let's be honest, for a restaurant, bigger is better. As a customer, I have been to places where I ordered a dinner and wasn't full afterwards. I can tell you that I never went back to that place again. People will rarely avoid a place because they were given too much food. Even if they don't eat it they'll just take it home. It's death for a restaurant to risk having people leaving feeling they didn't get enough to eat. If nothing else, most will pad out a dinner with bread or a starch.

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[DavidHumus]

A friend of mine was in the American South about 20 years ago with his girlfriend and, when they both ordered the same dish at a restaurant, his portion was much larger than hers. When they asked about it, the waitress told them that "the men around here expect a good-sized meal."

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[thinkwaitfast]

It's much nicer to be outside and active when it's 10C @95% humidity than 38C and 95% humidity.

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[dinfinity]

You must be an American.

In Europe, taking home leftovers from a restaurant is very uncommon. I'm not necessarily saying that is a good thing, but it probably helps in keeping the portions smaller. In any case, pretty much all the restaurants I've been to did not have oversized portions (save for maybe some Chinese/Indonesian restaurants). Especially the fancy restaurants tended to have quite small portions.

So no, it is not 'death' for a restaurant to risk having people leaving feeling they didn't get enough to eat. Not in Europe, at least.

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[dinfinity]

Studies show that even babies understand bigger is better.

Fallacy: Loaded statement.

It is also bullshit. It's 1 study, not 'studies'. Furthermore, it does not show that 'bigger is better' and the onus is on you to prove that it does..

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[dinfinity]

Make a restaurant and advertise that you have portion sizes 1/2 everyone elses, see how long you stay in business.

I've been to NY and have eaten there at plenty of restaurants with normal portion sizes. There goes your hypothetical.

Well duh-huh, that's exactly what I said.

It's not. You focused solely on food ("restaurants started offering larger meals as a value proposition"), I focused on the broader American (again, weirdly nationalistic) mindset of bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger skyscrapers, bigger portions, bigger everything.

The whole WW2 thing is a red herring as it has no influence on aforementioned mindset. WW2 or not, that mindset is part of American culture.

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[gzuckier]

I visit the USA several times a year. I come from a place where obesity is much less common, and much less extreme. These are my observations of the USA. I don't want this to sound like I'm hating on Americans, because some of you are super nice. This is just what I've seen. The obesity axis runs diagonally, northwest to south east. People in Seattle are not much bigger then people around here. People in Mobile were appallingly huge. My theory is this correlates with biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast. It also correlates with escalators. In Seattle most people were walking up the escalators, In Mobile nobody walked up escalators. A much bigger percentage of black people are overweight compared to white people. (Is this poverty related?). You all drink way too much coke cola. I met people who drank 2 or three cans of soda per day at work and then drank it with every lunch and dinner. Food servings in some restaurants are stupid big. Plates of spaghetti that two of us couldn't finish. 24 ounce prime rib. (really) Most appalling thing I saw was whole families of fat people which is super rare here. Like mom and dad both 250 lbs plus and then 2 or 3 huge fat kids. Around here if your ten year old was 150 lbs the child welfare people would be all over you.

in my youth in canada, american visitors used to be really easy to distinguish, "corn fed" is the adjective that comes to mind; "beefy" is another. at the time i attributed it to the constant marketing of food they experienced, and the constant availability of food everywhere, both still rare in canada at the time. it was possible to go places where there wasn't food for sale; or drive down streets where there weren't places to get a snack everywhere; TV didn't have mcdonalds ads every 20 minutes. of course, canada has moved on and now it's all about food, just as much as the US.

Re:I'm a Stranger Here Just Lookin Around

[painandgreed]

Yep, that's the American culture. Of course, that is pretty much where you go in and order one entree for your entire dinner which is pretty standard, not counting the occasional appetizer. Some restaurants, tending towards the nicer ones, will even charge a plate fee if one person orders one and you try to share which can go up to the cost of another entree. Newer trend is for small plates, and then we can just order one or two at a time till we're full.

Re:cultural changes caused it - needs a cultural f

[Evtim]

Remember how it went - when forming the football teams one gets the fat kid, the other gets the weird kid. Notice there is only one representative of those groups. I am in my early forties; back in primary school we were 36 kids in the class. We had 1 fat boy and 2 fat girls and that was that...

Re:News for Nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

"News for Nerds.... Stuffed with Matter"

FTFY Fatties!

The "obese" live longer than the "underweight".

[EzInKy]

http://www.everydayhealth.com/...

"I observed the obesity paradox in a published study I conducted while studying at the Mayo Clinic. We looked at 226 people who experienced a heart arrest in the community and were resuscitated. What we found was that people that were slightly overweight (BMI from 25-30) had the highest 5-year survival at 78 percent. People who were underweight had a significantly lower survival at 67 percent, similar to people considered morbidly obese."

The redefinition of what is "overweight" by lowering the ideal BMI did more to harm the validity of scientific analysis than any pseudoscience postulation ever could. Overweight people live longer than underweight people. You twiggie admirers can go hump yourselves.

Re:The "obese" live longer than the "underweight".

[serviscope_minor]

Overweight people live longer than underweight people.

Many diseases cause people to become very underweight. What do the statistics look like when you remove people who are underweight because of an illness?

Re:Ug, here we go

[Zontar The Mindless]

Bananas are just sugar.

Please don't spout half-truths.

"The good: This food is very low in Saturated Fat, Cholesterol and Sodium. It is also a good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin C, Potassium and Manganese, and a very good source of Vitamin B6.

The bad: A large portion of the calories in this food come from sugars."

Also note the sugar in bananas is not quite the same thing as the white stuff people put in their coffee or sprinkle on their breakfast cereal.

Re:We have (had) WIC

[EvilAlphonso]

Belgium sounds nice. I wish I lived there...

It isn't, I grew up there and left for good in 2001. It is a tax paradise if your money isn't coming off your own work... if you let out properties for non-commercial use, the revenue will be taxed on 140% of a fictive annual rent (what the rent on a similar place would have been on the 1st of January 1975). If you flip properties every 5 years and a day or land every 8 years and a day, the profit is tax free.

On the other hand, if you do work... the tax rates are insane: 25% on revenue below the poverty line (8680 per year), 30% on the next slice (up to 12360), 40% on the next slice (up to 20600), 45% on the next slice (up to 37750), 50% from there on. The employer also has to pay 35% extra on top of your gross salary. Then they wonder why so many people moonlight.

FTFY

[AnthonywC]

"What some may consider more unsurprising is that more than 25 percent of the world's severely obese men and almost 20 percent of the world's severely obese women are American."

Can see individual muscle fibers but I'm obese

[Maxo-Texas]

You could use me as an anatomy model. You can see individual fibers of the muscles on my body move independently.

I'm technically obese.

Just saying- we have a lot of fit people these days who are classified as obese.

Re:Can see individual muscle fibers but I'm obese

[serviscope_minor]

Me too! My belly is covered in massive wobbly muscle fibers. Technically I'm obese too. Clearly measures of obesity are wrong and stupid.

Re:Can see individual muscle fibers but I'm obese

[Maxo-Texas]

If your BMI is over 29.9, they don't care if it's fat or muscle. You are obese.

The only way to really judge obesity is with a density test.

% body fat is a much better method than BMI.

At their peak physical condition, actors Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone were technically âoeobeseâ per the BMI measure.

Re:Can see individual muscle fibers but I'm obese

[dbIII]

I'm technically obese.

Only by the BMI which was never meant to be anything other than a rough guide for people who are not physically fit.

Re:Can see individual muscle fibers but I'm obese

[serviscope_minor]

If your BMI is over 29.9, they don't care if it's fat or muscle

Who is this "they" of which you speak. The medical profession judges it on body fat percentate. It is well known that BMI correlates well with body fat percentage such that if your BMI says you're obese, it's correct for 95% of the male population (99% accurate for women).

Flipping that, if a doctor knows someone has an obese level BMI, then they judge the person as very likely to be obese (95% chance), because that's the statistically sound thing to do. If you rock up to a doctor's office looking like Hulk Hogan (walrus tasch optional) then they're not going to accuse you of being obese based just on BMI.

% body fat is a much better method than BMI.

Sure, I'd never claim otherwise. However weighing scales are cheap, readily available and actually present in many people's homes. Body fat percentage machines not so much.

At their peak physical condition, actors Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone were technically aoeobesea per the BMI measure.

I know and every slashdotter and his dog is one of the super special snowflakes for which BMI doesn't work unlike 95% of the population.

And here's plenty of elite athletes which are squarely in the normal category:
https://science.slashdot.org/c...

Re:Can see individual muscle fibers but I'm obese

[Maxo-Texas]

Oh i get it. This is slashdot. You didn't bother reading the actual article so you don't understand the context for my comment. The article we discussed is based on BMI. And estimates at that. Here: From the study. Background Underweight and severe and morbid obesity are associated with highly elevated risks of adverse health outcomes. We estimated trends in mean body-mass index (BMI), which characterises its population distribution, and in the prevalences of a complete set of BMI categories for adults in all countries. This despite the fact that problems with BMI have been known for decades. http://www.webmd.com/diet/how-... Further, BMI does not take into account age, gender, or muscle mass. Nor does it distinguish between lean body mass and fat mass. As a result, some people, such as heavily muscled athletes, may have a high BMI even though they don't have a high percentage of body fat. In others, such as elderly people, BMI may appear normal even though muscle has been lost with aging. Take for example, basketball player Michael Jordan: ''When he was in his prime, his BMI was 27-29, classifying him as overweight, yet his waist size was less than 30,'' says Michael Roizen, MD. That's one reason some experts think waist circumference can be a better overall health measurement than BMI. So they estimated trends based on something that doesn't take into account age, gender, or muscle mass. It may not be true for slashdotters generally, but it's always been true for me. Despite low body fat and the ability to play ultimate frisbee or downhill skill 6 to 8 hours a day, I was always "obese" by BMI measures so I hold the measure in disdain. At best, the study merits looking in deeper with measurements that are accurate and reliable. Anyway.. of for a mini-vacation so we are probably done here.

Re:Can see individual muscle fibers but I'm obese

[serviscope_minor]

I understand the context of your comments, I think the criticisms of BMI you're quoting from WebMD are poorly informed and show a bad understanding of statistics. You can download papers showing that BMI is about 95% accurate for adult men and 99% accurate for adult women when it comes to prediction of obesity.

See those numbers? 95, 99%. It really doesn't matter what the flaws are, those numbers are accurate enough to extract population trends.

The point about Michael Jordon is just cherry picking an example from the 5% of errors and saying "see see one of the 5% it gets wrong!!! It's wrong!!!". 95% means (a) it's not perfect so cherry picked counter examples abound and (b) it's more than good enough for trends.

No diagnostic tool is 100% accurate. There are NO exceptions. One which is 95-99% accurate has utility. If you're going to criticise BMI, you need to address why something 95% accurate has no utility. Cherry picking examples of failure does not change the population statistics.

Further, BMI does not take into account age, gender

The BMI number itself is independent of all those things, yes. The thresholds for overweight, obese, etc do in fact take into account all of those things. There's different charts for men and women and different charts for kids.

Nonetheless, if you're looking at trends, seeing BMI increasing indicates that the population is getting heavier. Either we're getting fatter, or getting more muscular. I wonder which it is. I opt for the latter because that seems much more likely.

That's one reason some experts think waist circumference can be a better overall health measurement than BMI.

I'm surprised only some experts thing waist is better than BMI, given that's really rather well established. But secondly, so? Why stop there? Doing a full floatation test is more accurate than waist size. Big woop. Waist size is great if and ONLY if you do it properly. And that means working out precisely where your waist is (under all the fat if you have plenty), pulling it tight but not so tight etc etc that it displaces the fat and so on. If you do it right it's better than weight. But it's harder to measure accurately and repeatably. Waist measurement is easy to fuck up. Weight, not so much.

So they estimated trends based on something that doesn't take into account age, gender, or muscle mass.

BMI changing means the population is on average getting heavier. Have any of the following happened to a significant degree (hint: these statistics are available online easily):
* Has the gender balance of the population changed significantly.
* Has the age demographic of the surveyed significantly
Since the answer to both of those is "no", then neither of those accout for the change in BMI.

What's left is either people getting more muscular or people getting fat. Which do you think it is?

You may or may not wish to use known statistics about the accuracy of BMI.

Re:News for Nerds

[ArmoredDragon]

Most people use the World Health Organization metric of a BMI of 30 to define obesity, but it's kind of a load of crap because it assumes that everybody is the same age and gender, both of which have different ranges for what is probably healthy and what isn't. What's best is if you figure out what weight percentile you reside in for your age and gender. This calculator for example:

http://halls.md/body-mass-inde...

If you're at 45 then you're in good shape. If you're 50 or above, then you will probably benefit from weight loss, but not necessarily. Believe it or not you can be obese by every definition and still be perfectly healthy. I dropped a lot of weight myself (about 90 lbs) because I have kidney disease caused by an immune disorder (IgA nephropathy) and being at a light weight reduces the burden on my weakened kidneys, meaning they'll last longer. (Light weight includes not having a lot of muscle mass either, as more muscle means more creatinine, which is fine for healthy people but bad if your renal system is compromised.)

Also I think the #1 thing anybody can do for fat loss is to remove all sugar from their diet. Most sugars found in sodas, candy, pastries, etc, has high amounts of fructose (and no, HFCS isn't alone here, ordinary cane sugar and even fruit based sugars contain basically the same amount) which is well documented to give you a caloric load without triggering the release of leptin in your blood to signal fullness. It also raises your LDL (bad) cholesterol and triglycerides (also bad.) Using that theory worked pretty well for me.

The rising rate of obesity *may* be because sugar has lowered in price over the last few decades, so now more people can afford more of it than in the past. It's one of those things that used to be a rich man's luxury, along with salt.

Supersize me

[ITRambo]

Supersize me worked better than expected. Thanks, McDonald's.

Re:News for Nerds

[ITRambo]

Your post was informative and insightful. If I had mod points, I'd give one to you.

Re:Ug, here we go

[AthanasiusKircher]

Wow. This is just chock full of bogosity.

the vegetables on special don't keep. When you're working poor you usually have two jobs and pull 60/hr a week. Getting to the store every day isn't happening.

You know what does keep? Frozen veggies. I see them in every value grocery store. Generally cheap and frozen at peak flavor. Or buy the ones on special and freeze yourself if you can't use them immediately.

Bananas are just sugar. That's why they're cheap.

No they're cheap because they are grown in countries where labor is cheap and companies have fought to control those labor prices and keep workers' pay as low as possible. And only one exact same genetic variety is common for those cheap bananas, meaning they all ripen at the exact predictable rate, allowing vastly better large economies of scale in transport. But they aren't a great health food -- still better than most fast food of junk food.

Whole Chickens aren't cheap when you count the calories in them. They seem cheap because the weight of the skin and bones is part of the cost.

Whole chickens are amazing things, and you can often get 3 meals of more out of them for a family. The bones and skin are the most essential parts, providing flavor in the form of fat that can be rendered for sauteing things and collogen and other elements that can be harvested for a tasty stock. First roast your chicken. Eat much of the meat for meal 1. Then pick off the remaining meat and simmer the bones and skin for stock. Refrigerate and skim fat. Make chicken and veggie soup next day. Meal 2. Use and remaining chicken bits, fat, etc. And simmer bones again (what the French call remoullage) for a second stock to be used to cook rice or beans or some other thing. Meal 3. Labor intensive, yes. But lots of cheap meals.

Cheap cuts of beef aren't. They don't really exist anymore. Even 80/20 pink slime is $3/lb in a lot of places.

Buy large packs in bulk when on sale or special. Freeze if you can't use right away. Don't ever use store-bought ground beef. Buy a cheap meat grinder instead.... It's simple, fast, and tastes so much better.

But perhaps more important: if you're poor, stop trying to eat so much meat! It's nutritious, but think of it more as a small flavorant or garnish in most meals, rather than the centerpiece. Buy the cheapest toughest cuts and use in stew, etc.

Onions aren't food. They're a garnish.

Actually, they have quite a bit of nutrients, though not very concentrated. They do provide a lot of fiber, like many veggies. When I was low on money, I often ate at least an onion per day in soup or stew or whatever... Good for bulking up the food and making it both flavorful and more filling.

Like lettuce they're cheap because their complete lack of nutritional value means they're cheap to grow.

Again, completely wrong. Iceberg lettuce has no nutrition, and it's cheap because it can be stored long, which makes for better distribution and economies of scale. Other leaf lettuce is more nutritious but also often more expensive. Better to go with spinach of another darker green (frozen, if you need really cheap).

Eggs are up to $3/dozen for the off brand. They also don't keep long if you're not buying the fancy ones. Those are $4.39/dozen.

Eggs have become expensive of late. But I have no idea what you're talking about "not keeping long." Even cheapest eggs generally keep at least a couple weeks or more.

Flour and butter are basically junk food. Flour especially. Why do you think they make donuts and cheap bread with it?

Whole grain flour has a lot more nutrients. Why do they fortify white flour? To replace the nutrition that was removed. But yeah, flour shouldn't be a central component of nutrition --yet it can provide a lot of

Re:Ug, here we go

[just another AC]

Methinks he doth protest too much...

the vegetables on special don't keep. When you're working poor you usually have two jobs and pull 60/hr a week. Getting to the store every day isn't happening.

So buy them once a week, do a bulk cookup and freeze it. That's what I do.

Bananas are just sugar. That's why they're cheap.

So the fact they are an awesome source of vitamins and minerals (particularly potassium) means nothing? Diet is about more than fat/carb/protein.

Whole Chickens aren't cheap when you count the calories in them. They seem cheap because the weight of the skin and bones is part of the cost. Cheap cuts of beef aren't. They don't really exist anymore. Even 80/20 pink slime is $3/lb in a lot of places. Onions aren't food. They're a garnish. Like lettuce they're cheap because their complete lack of nutritional value means they're cheap to grow.

High protein tends to be slightly lower calorie compared to complex carbs per weight. Again what's your point? It is a cheap PROTEIN source (relative to other protein sources.

As per onions, they are good for fibre and cholesterol. Again diet is about more than fat/carb/protein. They have other benefits too: http://www.nutrition-and-you.c...

Eggs are up to $3/dozen for the off brand. They also don't keep long if you're not buying the fancy ones. Those are $4.39/dozen. Flour and butter are basically junk food. Flour especially. Why do you think they make donuts and cheap bread with it?
 

I will take your argument on off brand eggs on board (even though I have seen no evidence personally of it).
Flour and butter are not junk food. Just because they are used to make donuts... They also are used to make fresh pasta, GOOD bread (no preservatives), and it and similar grains have been the basis for many cultures go to foods for hundreds of years.
They are also showing saturated fat is good for you, and butter can provide this along with some cheap calories (as that was your argument against chicken).

That leaves bulk rice and beans. For beans you better know what to buy and how to cook them or you're going to get sick. I forget why. I suppose I'll give you rice though.

rice... a staple food for about 20% of the planet's population. It's a pretty good option with endless ways to use it.

beans... they are a very safe food if they are cooked. They can be cooked in any way, but baking and boiling are the two easiest (and most intuitive) ways. They are also really good nutritionally.
Canned baked beans are always a staple everyone should have in their cupboard. A cheap healthy option that doesn't go off, and can be pulled out when you haven't managed to get to the shops.

So you have picked one easily worked around bad point about some cheap foods, and have thrown in the towel.

The Feds changed the definitions adversely

[zephvark]

...y'all might bear in mind, here, that the government deliberately changed the definition of what "overweight" is, specifically in order to describe more people as overweight. Now, I'm not saying that people haven't gotten heavier. You look at an old black'n'white movie and everyone looks practically gaunt. But, the statistics have been meddled with by changing the definitions.

The federal government plans to change its definition of what is a healthy weight, a controversial move that would classify millions more Americans as being overweight. ...old article, just first one up. This change was, in fact, made. So, instant "fat epidemic", courtesy of the government's fat fingers on the scales.

Re:The Feds changed the definitions adversely

[wonkey_monkey]

And y'all might bear in mind that this study was conducted by scientists in London (that's in England) and looked at the change in BMI of populations around the world. Any choice of definitions doesn't change the real statistical conclusion of the study, which is that people are getting fatter.

Re:Ug, here we go

[Kohath]

I like how chickens aren't cheap because they only have nutrients and not enough calories. And then flour is bad because it has calories.

But the absolute best part is "onions aren't food".

Re:cultural changes caused it - needs a cultural f

[Daemonik]

** When I was a school child, there were no video games or internet. When you wanted to play, you got some friends together and had a pickup game of baseball or you rode your bikes around town or did some other outdoor activity. We were physically active on a daily basis, while now the normal entertainment is to sit still and play games. There's nothing wrong with games, but every hour spent doing that is one hour not spent running around outside burning calories.

When you were a kid, you played on playground equipment that was barely safer than just handing kids a box of razor blades. Nobody asked just why Mr. Johnson always had a pocket full of candy and liked to watch the children play all day. You would have killed your parents to get your hands on one of the video games we have now, you just didn't have a choice and can feel nostalgic about it.

** Sugar based sodas were consumed in moderation, or often, not at all. There were no "64 Oz Big Gulps", and no one ever drank sodas in my school. Your choices were milk or water. Parents rarely let children consume sodas.

And a lot of those kids grew up and said "I'm not going to be MY parents, here baby, have all the soda you want!" Besides, mommy and daddy are too busy working 24/7 to maintain our lifestyle to actually pay attention to you.

** There was less acceptance of overweight people, more social shaming. I won't say that was a good thing - shaming people can cause long term emotional harm and hurts in other ways. But one byproduct of this is that no one wanted to be "that fat kid". (My school had just one fat kid, where now childhood obesity is systemic, and I see 3rd graders who look... morbidly obese).

Congrats, you made fat people feel horrible and caused years of mental therapy and possible physical violence, but as long as they put down a hamburger mission accomplished I guess. You must feel proud. Not like anorexia is any kind of problem at all. Or like overeating can be caused by emotional trauma like hazing.

Now I'm nearing 60 and still normal weight. I have an easier time going up multiple flights of steps than, I would estimate, around 2/3 of the people who are in their 20's, because I'm carrying 50, 100, sometimes even 200 pounds less than they are at the same height.

We invented elevators and escalators because stairs suck, and now we shame people for using them.

We did it, guys!

[rebelwarlock]

We beat world hunger! We beat the over loving shit out of it.

Re:We did it, guys!

[Pseudonymous Powers]

We beat world hunger! We beat the over loving shit out of it.

Yes, it took a few millennia, but at long last civilization has achieved its original goal!

Now we can finally start dismantling all these eyesore cities. Good work, everyone. Now let's shut it down and retire.

Re:Ug, here we go

[sociocapitalist]

a. After a 60 hour work week plus dealing with the kids you didn't want to have (but couldn't stop yourself from having because a substantial portion of our electorate is trying to keep you from affordable birth control options because little hussies like you should have to have kids in exchange for sex) you're in no shape to clean. You live in a cheap, shitty apartment. That means bugs, and lots of them. I'm not the first one to make this observation. It was made in a rather famous essay kicking around google from a single mom with bad teeth who lived homeless for sometime because the bad teeth kept her from getting a job.

b. Cheap junk food and TV are the only pleasures the 1% let the working poor have. They don't get vacations or even time off. They're kids are miserable because so are they. They're poor education means enjoying literature is beyond them and the lack of birth control and a social safety net means they have to be careful with sex.

We here in America like punishing people. We just do. Well, not all of us, but the ones that do vote. And the ones that vote make the rules. So there you go.

You overstate things. I was born to a pair of mentally ill parents and grew up in a home for children funded by the state. A lot of the other kids there made worse choices than I did, and the consequences for them were worse than for the bad decisions I made. As it turns out, I have a good life and most of them do not.

Choices and decisions when we are young have a huge effect on us the rest of our lives - something that American children just do not seem to be taught; perhaps because their parents aren't teaching them this, as they themselves didn't learn it until much too late (if ever).

There is still chance and opportunity in the US and how people end up is a question of the decisions they make more than just what the 1% 'allows'. That this decision making process seems to be broken in much of the US is a societal problem but cannot be blamed on the 1% but on our own parents (or caregivers, whatever).

Birth control is freely available in most parts of the US, if not all (walk into a planned parenthood if nothing else - walk out with free condoms). Getting it and using it are choices that people make.

Spending your time watching garbage on TV vs. that same time at a (shitty probably) part time job to build up some cash to pay your way through school (or to pay for dental work) is a decision. I, with no parents and no family to support me, managed to make this happen - so can others, if they chose.

I do think that there are things that need to be fixed - tax dodges for the very rich who throw everything into 'family directed charity organizations', tax dodges for corporations who shift their profits offshore to avoid paying tax in the place where they make their real profits, usurious interest rates on credit cards and other debt that traps the unwary and this ridiculous system of student loans being a few of them. But even so, success in America is still possible and at the end it depends on the decisions that we as young people make, one way or the other.

Who is surprised ?

[aepervius]

"What some may consider more surprising is that more than 25 percent of the world's severely obese men and almost 20 percent of the world's severely obese women are American" I am surprised that the rate is not higher. Who ever is surprised that it is at least 20%/25% has not visited the US in the last 10 years or has not been able to compare to other countries. I have flown all over the world. But when I am in the US, it is always shocking me with abandon.

Re:Who is surprised ?

[thinkwaitfast]

20% of Norway is obese. One in six children is overweight or obese. One in five adults is obese.

http://www.fhi.no/eway/default...

Re: News for Nerds

[hackwrench]

This study can't be used to come to that conclusion. 1975 is well after the 'Chew Mrs. Goldfarb, Chew" song's era. Was I the only person who saw that in a video in history class?

You had the point and missed it

[aepervius]

"But it takes work. So nevermind. Just complain instead." people which are in the poorer job often work multiple job or longer hours and are far more tired or have no time to cook. Really I knew a few people working minimum wage job and they came back at 20h-21h with feeding 1 or 2 kids and in such case what would you do ? Remember as study showed over and over they can't get food reserve long in advance so food and essential stuff is bought on the last moment when it is needed with the money at hand. This means doing the grocery AND preparing the food which can and will take a long time if you add vegetables compared to a macdo which takes 15 minutes if you are in city. I timed myself, the easiest meal I prepare are 15 minutes vegetables preparation included, 15 to 20 minutes buying included. That's 30 minutes over a long day. And that's an easy to make meal but making the same over and over and you get mad. The more complicated one can take upward an hour with half of it washing and preparing various ingredients. I am betting that you have a enough money to buy stuff once per week in advance in nice enough quantity like I do. But some people don't. Look. It is not stupidity or lazyness which somestimes drives people to macdo or similar junk food. But simply the lack of time overall, because they already got physically and mentally drained by the terrible low wage job they got.

Re:You had the point and missed it

[religionofpeas]

Buying all your food for 1 week at a time takes less money and time than getting a little bit every day. All it requires is the ability to plan ahead, and put a little bit of money away until you have enough. The problem is that most poor people are wired for instant gratification. That's how they get poor and stay that way.

Re:Ug, here we go

[AthanasiusKircher]

I like how chickens aren't cheap because they only have nutrients and not enough calories. And then flour is bad because it has calories.

Yeah, I don't think you can expect logic in a post so full of misinformation. Or even a simple thought, like -- why not combine the two? Chicken and dumplings, anyone? Or chicken and homemade bread? Biscuits? Classic combos of nutritionally dense with cheaper calories.

It's almost like he came to the conclusion that cooking was impossible for the poor a priori, so the only rational choice must be a McDonalds double cheeseburger, a bag of potato chips, and a box of Little Debbie snack cakes.

Re: News for Nerds

[hackwrench]

Karo Corn Syrup manufacturer would have you know that their corn syrup is not "high fructose corn syrup.

Re:cultural changes caused it - needs a cultural f

[Anonymous Coward]

you're fat.

Re:cultural changes caused it - needs a cultural f

[serviscope_minor]

** There was less acceptance of overweight people, more social shaming.

There are subtler and more powerful forces in play. Humans on the whole don't like to be the odd one out. We also judge ourselves on how we compare to others. If you're a fat bloke in a slim part of the world you stand out. There's no shaming, finger pointing, whispers behind the back etc, but you still stand out. Likewise if you're a skinny guy in a fat part of the world you ALSO stand out.

Few people like standing out.

Nice one

[Hognoxious]

What some may consider more surprising is that more than 25 percent of the world's severely obese men and almost 20 percent of the world's severely obese women are American.

Surprised that it's not higher?

Re:News for Nerds

[serviscope_minor]

Most people use the World Health Organization metric of a BMI of 30 to define obesity, but it's kind of a load of crap because it assumes that everybody is the same age and gender,

First you're incorrect: BMI is segmented by gender. Second it's not a load of crap: the thresholds are set such that if it says you're obese, there's a 95% chance you are (statistically), but if it says you're not you still may be.

If you crunch the numbers, it works for 95% of the population.

It's kind of funny that on every other thread people complain about special snowflakes, yet on a fat thread, half of the posters here are the 5% of special snowflakes apparently.

PS statistical marginalisation is not "a load of crap".

Re:The problem is the perception of obesity

[serviscope_minor]

Yeah yeah and everyone who has an obese level BMI is a special fucking snowflake world champion bodybuilder.

Re:Ug, here we go

[dbIII]

For beans you better know what to buy and how to cook them or you're going to get sick. I forget why.

With dry red kidney beans there is "phytohaemagglutinin" that causes diarrhoea if they are not soaked for hours and then brought up to a boil for ten minutes or more. That's potentially a problem with using a slow cooker which is otherwise ideal for beans and may take hours on high to get up to a boil. I was thinking about slow cooking beans in a solar cooker while camping but that is the showstopper:

http://www.medic8.com/healthgu...

Canned beans are a different story but much more expensive (though cheaper than a lot of other things).

A lot of asian food is very cheap to cook but it's a learning curve for most people in the west. If someone has poor reading skills and nobody to show you how to make the stuff it's not likely to happen - plus the stuff that tastes the best isn't any better for you than high fat stuff from the west.

Re:Ug, here we go

[dbIII]

Also note the sugar in bananas is not quite the same thing as the white stuff people put in their coffee or sprinkle on their breakfast cereal.

It's actually worse for you (fructose) but there is nowhere near enough of it to matter unless you eat multiple large bucketfulls of them daily. Even blended down to liquid that would be a challenge.

Re:Diet and medication

[jandersen]

it's more difficult for obese people to modify their diet and have access to medication.

Why is this?

If only we knew. As anyone who has followed the news about health and medical research in the last decade or two will know, we are beginning to realise that this is a very complicated issue. On the face of it, it seems so simple: you eat more than you burn -> you get fatter. However, that doesn't address the question of why people eat more than they need, and especially why it turns out to be almost impossible for most to stop doing it.

I think a major factor is that we live in an environment where calories are far too easily and cheaply available, especially in the form of ultra-highly processed foods. I think most people have experienced this in some way: if it is inconvenient to get something to eat, you simpy ignore your beginning hunger, sometimes for a surprisingly long time. I noticed this with myself recently: when I work in the office, I generally want a snack about 1 hour after I had my last meal, but when I was digging my garden last weekend, I went on for something like 4 hours, forgetting my lunch and all. I got hungry, of course, but it was just not convenient at the time. So, one lesson to take away from this is: make sure you are not bored, if you want to lose weight.

The other thing, that I think many people don't fully realise is that there is a sometimes large difference between not feeling hungry and feeling full: most people stop feeling acute hunger after a few mouthfuls, but they keep going until the stomach is physically full, which is sometimes a very long way down the line. A good trick for losing weight is to start with a small portion - what feels like far too little, no doubt - and then wait for at least 30 minutes before eating more; in the meantime, do something that will take your mind off eating.

Finally, it matters a lot what we eat for our main meals and how we prepare and serve it. Learn to enjoy cooking, learn to enjoy eating vegetables, choose to spend the time it takes to enjoy cooking and eating; all of this is easily possible for most people, I think. If you have the time to watch TV or play computer games, then it is only a matter of priorities; if you don't have time for leisure, then you have a much more fundamental problem in your life and should probably seek a way out as a matter of some urgency.

Re:News for Nerds

[butzwonker]

I guess you've already answered your question.

Re:cultural changes caused it - needs a cultural f

[dbIII]

Looking back at photos the "fat kid" wasn't that by current standards either. And that was with baked goods at the school canteen dripping with fat (cream buns, sausage rolls etc). No carbonated drinks though, which I suspect are a very major part of the cause.

Re:The problem is the perception of obesity

[dbIII]

Yes, muscle is heavy so the BMI is not for athletes or bodybuilders.

Re:Interesting correlation

[wonkey_monkey]

Citation needed.

Are animals getting fatter as well?

Re:how do they define obese?

[wonkey_monkey]

No, what they're doing is doing statistics on BMI, and using some arbitrary thresholds.

Yes, and there's nothing wrong with that. Because the conclusion of this study is that obesity is on the increase:

They found that over the 40-year-span, the proportion of obese men worldwide more than tripled, to roughly 11 percent, and the proportion of obese woman more than doubled, to about 15 percent.

The fact that there are more fatties than skinnies isn't actually that significant, but it makes for good headlines to drive home the immensity (ahem) of the problem.

Just say after me: overweight

[m76]

It's not a damn disease, you calorie intake was significantly more than you need for extended periods of time. That's it.

Just call it what it is, and stop sugarcoating the truth.

The climate change people are wrong!

[Coisiche]

It's not that the sea levels are rising! Oh no, it's because all the extra weight is make the ground sink.

Re:Ug, here we go

[jandersen]

the vegetables on special don't keep.

Eh? My wife and I go to the local veg market once a week. We buy things like cabbage (some will keep for months, especially the hard types), roots (carrots, swedes (rutabaga in the US) etc - they keep for at least week), onions (keep for a month or more), etc etc. Plus potatoes and other starchy veg, which keep for ages too.

[Eggs:] They also don't keep long if you're not buying the fancy ones.

What nonsense is this? Eggs were evolved as little packets of nutrients that had to stay fresh for long enough that the developing fetus inside could nature without much of an immune system - in an environment where bacteria are abundant; of course they can keep. In the supermarkets in UK they not even kept in cold store - they are out on the shelves in ambient temperatures. We buy them and keep them for as long as it takes to use 15 or 30; the worst I have seen happen is when I forgot one egg for months in the fridge - it had dried out so the shell was only half full.

Onions aren't food

Tell my Chinese wife that - we eat one or two onions as a vegetable dish on most days. Peel, chop and stir-fry for a couple of minutes, so they lose the hotness. Brilliant.

Flour and butter are basically junk food. Flour especially. Why do you think they make donuts and cheap bread with it?

Wheat flour contains protein and vitamins as well as starch - read the label. Cheap crap like donuts is cheap because flour is cheap, especially in bulk; they become crap because the factories cut costs in the production - that doesn't mean that donuts have to be crap. And cheap bread is crap because of what the factories to make it cheap - read about The Chorleywood Bread Process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process) for example. You can take poor quality wheat, add emulsifiers and other stuff to increase your profit margin, and the result is crap, but cheap. Again, anyone with an oven and the will to learn can make a good, healthy bread cheaply.

That leaves bulk rice and beans. For beans you better know what to buy and how to cook them or you're going to get sick. I forget why. I suppose I'll give you rice though.

Beans (dry): soak them overnight, cook until they are nice and soft - often something like 1 hour. 15 minutes is enough to denature the protein that is poisonous, and some beans are not poisonous at all - like chickpeas. Just cook them all, that's all you need to stay safe. It is probably the cheapest and healthies kind of dried food you can find anywhere. Add spices and vegetables (onions, garlic, tomatoes etc) to make them tasty.

Cheap junk food and TV are the only pleasures the 1% let the working poor have.

No - the limiting factor is not money, but education and planning. Buying and preparing a crappy ready-meal from frozen often takes 30 - 50 minutes in the oven, the same time it would take to prepare and cook a bunch of vegetables with a little bit of meat. Or beans, which require a minimum of planning: soak them overnight, cook them when convenient, use them following day. As for the pleasure part: there is far more pleasure in preparing and eating a good meal than there ever will be in eating junk food and watching mind numbingly stupid entertainment.

But you are right about "the 1%" wanting it to be this way - the rich get rich because the poor and the middle class allow them to keep them trapped in this situation. A lot of companies and their rich owners would be in trouble if people at the bottom of society stopped buying all the cheap crap they don't need and stopped wasting time and energy on idiotic television. Read 1985 again - it may have been a story about Communism gone wrong, but you find the same mechanisms at work in today's capitalism.

Re:Ug, here we go

[Hognoxious]

Don't do red kidney beans in a slow cooker, then. *eyeroll*.

Re:Diet and medication

[Hognoxious]

Gut bacteria can't magically produce digestible calories out of thin air.

If they could, Monsanto would have patented them.

Minority Reservation

[ketomax]

We need reservation (Quota) for the underweight people now.

Re:News for Nerds

[Hognoxious]

people that frequent /. are heavy users of technology

I see what you did there.

Define "more"

[tomxor]

In terms of number or quantity?

If it's the former then I retract my question as I am outnumbered :P

Re:News for Nerds

[Big Hairy Ian]

I think the problem with BMI is because it doesn't take muscle mass into account that 5% you're on about is largely made up of athletes and other sporty types who are apparently obese. Of course none of this really matters because nobody develops eating disorders because they've been erroneously labeled as obese especially not children.

Only one explanation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fat people are eating skinny people. None of us are safe.

Re:cultural changes caused it - needs a cultural f

[thinkwaitfast]

People have a choice. They can go back to farming and growing or raising your own food. I did. It's not expensive, but you no longer have money for various wants and you have to budget your money carefully. I know many others who did also.

Re:Diet and medication

[jandersen]

There are other issues with weight gain and weight loss that have more to do with simplistic "just eat less" advice.

Absolutely - I had hoped that I already expressed this in my opening sentence: "If only we knew. As anyone who has followed the news about health and medical research in the last decade or two will know, we are beginning to realise that this is a very complicated issue. ".

But in practical terms, here and now, what can we do to somehow address this very complex issue through modification of our behaviour? That was what I was talking about, but it is unfortunately true that will-power alone is rarely enough. As for gut flora - this is one of the things we can to some extent influence through what we eat. Too little is known about this, but one thing that seems clear is that a varied diet containing more vegetables and less meat contributes a more diverse gut flora, whereas a diet high in ultra-processed food causes a gut flora poor in species; this is probably significant.

So I guess that means...

[MitchDev]

...on average, world hunger is no longer a problem?

Re:News for Nerds

[William Baric]

It's true muscle mass matters. At its peak, Arnold Schwarzenegger had a BMI of 33, while having very little fat. But let's be honest, very few people have the kind muscle mass to let them win the title of Mr. Universe. Pretty much everyone who uses the argument of muscle mass is just in denial and trying to find excuses.

Also, that kind of muscle mass is almost as bad for health as fat.

Re:News for Nerds

[Jason Levine]

BMI isn't a great indicator for whether someone is overweight or not. A few years back, I got serious about weight loss. I was at 255 and really not feeling good. I watched what I ate (did a Weight Watchers-style thing) and eventually got down to 175. For the first time, I wasn't overweight as far as BMI was concerned. I was normal weight. Everyone who saw me, though, told me that I looked too skinny. (The first time in my life I had ever heard those words referencing me.) Sure enough, I had bones sticking out everywhere. I've found that my ideal weight is about 190. BMI-wise, that's still overweight, but it's good for me.

Re:Diet and medication

[Anne Thwacks]

Interestingly, there are reports that small furry mammals from parts of the world where there are no people are also becoming overweight. Which suggests that it is probably pollution causing it, rather than gut bacteria.

I blame the plastics that mimic female sex hormones, but it could be the huge quantities of birth control hormones themselves.

Or any number of other things. I am not always right!

Also, do not discount the fact that a load of idiots think size eight is healthy for grown women, when the optimum weight for healthy women is size FOURTEEN!. It is probably due to the fact that the fashion industry is run by gays and women, who think boys are attractive - MEN are indeed healthier when thin - probably because they do not need to feed babies with their own body fat.

(These are UK sizes. I dont know how to convert them to US sizes, but Google can probably tell you).

Re:Diet and medication

[William Baric]

The most common cause for overeating is stress and other psychological problems. Food is a way to alleviate stress. Regarding the example you gave, working in an office is stressful, gardening is not.

In comparison to life in the 70s, our lives are now extremely demanding and so extremely stressful. That's why we're becoming obese.

Re:Ug, here we go

[Nidi62]

Cheap cuts of beef aren't. They don't really exist anymore. Even 80/20 pink slime is $3/lb in a lot of places.

Buy large packs in bulk when on sale or special. Freeze if you can't use right away. Don't ever use store-bought ground beef. Buy a cheap meat grinder instead.... It's simple, fast, and tastes so much better.

At the Sam's Club by me you can get 93/7 ground beef for $3 a pound. At a grocery store 93/7 usually runs over $6 a pound. At $3 per pound savings after buying 15lbs (3 packs) you've already saved the cost of a yearly membership, so anything after that is pure savings. I usually take a 5lb pack, quarter it up, put it in bags and freeze it. That and a $13 bag of frozen chicken breasts usually lasts me and my wife about 3 weeks.

Re:Ug, here we go

[dbIII]

Don't do red kidney beans in a slow cooker THE WRONG WAY by being impatient about it being slow is the very simple answer.

Re:Ug, here we go

[JoeMerchant]

I see this "choices you made in the past put you where you are now" attitude a lot, especially in political debate. This is, of course, true - and it is also true that choices (or circumstances) of your parents, their parents, etc. also influence your starting point and therefore your chances of "a good life."

What I think is lacking in today's "American Dream," is the ability for anyone - regardless of present circumstance - to pick themselves up and realistically turn their life around to achieve "middle class" or better status within the next 10 years. Too many people are too held down by poverty to realistically do anything about it before they die, and this can happen to them before they even reach the age of high school graduation.

If you have to work 40+ hours a week to keep a safe roof over your head with decent clothing and food to eat, there's no realistic capacity to also pay for a valuable education that opens doors to a better job. I'm not saying that a higher education should be a requirement for a decent paying middle class job, high school or equivalent should be enough, but it mostly isn't. Throw in a couple of children, part time jobs that require travel expenses to/from work and have dynamic/unpredictable schedules, medical expenses and the other realities of living poor and the idea of night school becomes less and less realistic.

I'm not saying that it's impossible, people hit the lottery every week, and get other fortunate breaks much more often, but it's not something that people can just "put their mind to" and make happen on any kind of realistic/regular basis.

Re:News for Nerds

[serviscope_minor]

that 5% you're on about is largely made up of athletes and other sporty types who are apparently obese

Perfect! The 5% it gets wrong already know better. If you know better, ignore it. If you don't know better, the accuracy is much better. That's like the most benign possible failure mode.

Of course none of this really matters because nobody develops eating disorders because they've been erroneously labeled as obese especially not children.

So... telling professional athletes who know better that they might be obese gives a small percentage of children eating disorders so we should drop it rather than tell the 60% of the adult population who are obese that they are obese and ignore the massive number of health problems that it causes.

Oh please won't somebody think of the children!

Seriously?

Re:News for Nerds

[Wycliffe]

I hate to confirm the bias, but I'll readily admit that I'm contributing to the problem. I don't know about "obese," but I could stand to lose 10 pounds, by which I really mean 20 pounds, and only at losing 30 pounds would I approach unhealthily skinny. I keep up some active hobbies like fishing and vegetable gardening (and eating fish and vegetables), but my work and my play tend to keep me seated in front of computers most of the day. As a result I weigh more than I'd like.

I think you're confirming that modern society today is too concerned about being overweight and not concerned enough about being underweight. I'm in the same boat as you. I would be underweight if I lost 30 pounds but I have no desire to lose 30 pounds. Every once in a while you hear about a nasty strain of flu that is killing the "ultra healthy". My suspicion is that these "ultra healthy" are actually getting killed by not having enough reserve to help them thru their sickness. There are obviously plenty of obese people but I don't think someone with 10-20 pounds of "reserves" should even be considered fat. We are designed to have reserves and it's unhealthy not to have some. You'll be thankful for those reserves if you ever get seriously ill and can't eat for a week or two. Moreover, there are plenty of other factors more important than weight. I know "overweight" people that regularly exercise and underweight people that sit in front of their computers 24/7 eating nothing but doritos and mountain dew. I would guarantee that the overweight person who regularly exercises has better overall heart, lung, and body health than the skinny person who doesn't exercise.

Re:Diet and medication

[cayenne8]

Maybe conditions are better than they were last week when they were showing videos of those starving Kenyans.

Hmm...well, perhaps all those flies in those videos are more calorie dense than we all thought...

;)

OK...

[MitchDev]

in 'Murica they like to blame fattening foods and processed foods and sugar for obesity, what do they claim in other countries?

Re:The problem is the perception of obesity

[__aaclcg7560]

Yeah yeah and everyone who has an obese level BMI is a special fucking snowflake world champion bodybuilder.

How about the opposite extreme: skinny third grade girls being called obese by their school. More special snowflakes?

http://www.inquisitr.com/1266298/school-sends-girl-home-with-fat-letter-skinny-third-grader-considered-overweight/

Re:News for Nerds

[Bengie]

I'm not sure what the Universal definition is, but at one point I looked up a medical definition as defined by the USA government, and I was obese because I was 20lb over wight and 6' tall. According to my wellness teacher at State Uni, who has been involved with a lot of ground breaking weight and health research, 10lb over is the same as 1lb under. I would rather error on the side of caution and be a bit over weight.

Earth Orbit?

[ripvlan]

Does this mean that Earth will now have a larger mass and we'll fly out of orbit? We could get the whole population to Mars by starting a national campaign to eat more twinkies and drink Coke !!!

Seems cheaper than building a rocket for "5" people and would stimulate the world economy to boot !! everyone wins!!

Re:Ug, here we go

[dbIII]

In case you misunderstood - a real slow cooker only takes time to get to the boil. A solar oven may never get there but still may get close enough to do potatoes or rice but not red kidney beans.

Thankyou

[bagofbeans]

You made the main point I was going to make, but also:
1. You have to do the main dough prep a day or 2 before, with a food processor and a fridge that many people don't have access to
2. It's actually a good focus for an evening getting a few people involved in the toppings
3. Pizzas are much better veggie only (but not vegan - need the cheese). That was a surprise to me too
4. Having done the above, you realise that the ingredients used by chain pizza places are cheap and nasty. Down to the fake cheese
5. To quote Ed Goldberg on the top 3 places to get pizza in USA: 1- Italian-family-run in NY. 2- Other in NY. 3- There is no 3.

Re:Diet and medication

[thinkwaitfast]

address the question of why people eat more than they need

Why single out humans? Other animals do this too. You know, maybe its just hardwired into the brain. Occam's razor and all.

Gaslighting

[RogueWarrior65]

IMHO, the clothing manufacturers are behind this. They have been secretly gaslighting us for the past 10 years by cutting clothes just a little bit smaller and labeling them the same as before in order to save money. Example: Levi's 505 and 550 jeans are now cut for emaciated hipsters when they should have left them alone and made a new number.

Re:The problem is the perception of obesity

[serviscope_minor]

How about the opposite extreme: skinny third grade girls being called obese by their school. More special snowflakes?

Oh I see, schools being morons is apparently the fault of BMI. On every other thread, schools are such idiots. But on this thread, it's the BMI, not schools.

Firstly, BMI is well known to be less accurate for kids. However, there are very, very few kids posting to this thread. Secondly, I plugged that girl's numbers into the NHS BMI calculator and it gave her as "healthy weight".

http://www.nhs.uk/Tools/Pages/...

So, try again bucko!

Re:The problem is the perception of obesity

[__aaclcg7560]

Oh I see, schools being morons is apparently the fault of BMI. On every other thread, schools are such idiots. But on this thread, it's the BMI, not schools.

I was the proverbial fat kid at school. Therefore my parents must be fat and it was their fault. So the principal hauled them into his office to yell at them, and discovered that two skinny people gave birth to a bowling ball (I weighed ten pounds and the doctor told my mom to expect twins). Therefore I must have a medical condition. Repeated blood tests from third to seventh grades failed to find any abnormalities. Therefore I was fat for no obvious reasons and that didn't make any sense. The word "genetics" wasn't used when I went to school in the early 1980's. After my mother passed away ten years ago, I discovered pictures of several relatives in the early 1900's who were taller and wider than I am. The giant gene skipped generations.

Secondly, I plugged that girl's numbers into the NHS BMI calculator and it gave her as "healthy weight".

That's for the UK. In America, BMI is used as a club to fat shame body builders to skinny kids.

Re:Anti-American retards most upset

[tripleevenfall]

We consume a lot, there's no question about that. But we also produce more than any other country does, and the dollars we export in exchange for the food we import does more to feed the world than any sort of foreign aid we could organize would.

Re:News for Nerds

[Coren22]

They found that over the 40-year-span, the proportion of obese men worldwide more than tripled, to roughly 11 percent, and the proportion of obese woman more than doubled, to about 15 percent.

60%? Where did you get 60%, it appears that TFS says 15% of women and 11% of men, not exactly anywhere near 60%.

Re:The problem is the perception of obesity

[serviscope_minor]

That's for the UK. In America, BMI is used as a club to fat shame body builders to skinny kids.

That doesn't make BMI wrong.

Re:It's a 100%

[Nidi62]

As my old doc used to say, if a man lives long enough he will get prostate cancer. It's inevitable.

Except most men develop prostate cancer so late in their lives and it moves so slowly that it doesn't get a chance to kill them. They usually die of something else first.

Re:News for Nerds

[Big Hairy Ian]

They found that over the 40-year-span, the proportion of obese men worldwide more than tripled, to roughly 11 percent, and the proportion of obese woman more than doubled, to about 15 percent.

60%? Where did you get 60%, it appears that TFS says 15% of women and 11% of men, not exactly anywhere near 60%.

And this guy was going on about accuracy

Re:Diet and medication

[mrchaotica]

Right. Instead, they reduce the proportion of calories that are digestible. In other words, fat people and skinny people both eat "too much" (in terms of theoretical chemical-energy calories), but the skinny person shits more of them out instead of absorbing them.

Re:News for Nerds

[ArmoredDragon]

First you're incorrect: BMI is segmented by gender.

No, it's not. The world health organization only gives one number for each weight classification threshold, not two. That is less than 18.5 is underweight, >25 is overweight, >30 is Obese 1, >35 is Obese 2, >40 is Obese 3 or also called morbidly obese. There is no distinction between male and female, period, and the formula for calculating BMI doesn't take into account male or female.

Second it's not a load of crap: the thresholds are set such that if it says you're obese, there's a 95% chance you are (statistically), but if it says you're not you still may be.

When they calculated these numbers, they didn't come up with i.e. >25 for overweight for males, they actually came up with 26.4 for males and 25.8 for females. They also came up with obese at 32.1 for females and 31.1 for males. By the way, did you notice how those numbers obviously don't scale linearly? Another thing this ignores is that it's actually healthier to slowly gain weight as you age. This is why the percentile figure is a better guideline. Oh and by the way, 18.5 BMI is well below a safe threshold for being underweight for males who shouldn't be under 20.7. It is unsafe for females as well, but only just barely, and again, due to rounding they chose that number.

They chose 25 and 30 respectively, for both males and females, because they round nicely and are easier to remember, but still remain problematic unless you happen to be just the average person at the average age. However if you're just trying to get a quick measurement on the spot and you don't have a calculator on hand, 25 is ok.

In fact, I recently had a new appointment with a doctor I hadn't seen in the past, and I told him I was aiming for 161lbs, (BMI of 23.235) and he didn't understand why I was making the effort because he had just calculated my BMI at 25.8, which he said is perfectly healthy. (I explained to him my renal impairment immediately afterwards and he agreed that it would probably be a good idea.)

Re:News for Nerds

[JackieBrown]

I have the same thing. 250 dropped to 160. People would ask me if I was sick before congratulating me on my weight loss.

Then I would hear that I was too skinny.

I think it is because the average person is overweight so healthy looks skinny now.

Re:News for Nerds

[kaatochacha]

Honestly, I've never heard of a strain of flu killing off the "ultra healthy".

Re:Diet and medication

[Shadow IT Ninja]

Actually, there is a school of thought that what you are suggesting, about distracting yourself, is counterproductive. The idea is that, when you wait until you are very hungry before eating, you tend to eat much more than if you eat on a regular schedule. So, the move away from strictly following a schedule for meals, as people did in the past, is one of the factors in the increase in obesity.

It's important to acknowledge uncertainty because it keeps people from sticking with bad advice too long. We should find a way to express the level of confidence that any particular piece of dietary is correct. Similarly, such advice should estimate the percentage of the population that it applies to. For example, we know that USDA recommendations on salt only apply to, at most, 20% of the population. The USDA knew this when they established the recommendation but they assumed the other 80% would not be harmed by a low salt diet. Since then, many small studies have shown that some people have the opposite reaction than expected. Their blood pressure goes up on a low salt diet. This phenomenon is called "inverse salt sensitivity" by some researchers and "reverse salt sensitivity" by others (if you search the literature, you need to use both terms or you will miss some references.) We don't know what percentage of the population this represents because no exact definition has been agreed on and no really large studies have been done. Salt may relate to obesity as well. Some references claim that high salt in foods increases obesity because it makes food taste better and so people will eat more. Others point out that salt, itself, is one of the few specific things, besides calories in general, which will trigger a craving. So people eating food with a low salt content may keep eating, to satisfy a salt craving, well past the point when they have satisfied their need for calories. It may be that both these things are true but for different people or even the same people at different times. These are things which need to be sorted out and the first thing you need to do to gain knowledge is to admit what you don't know.

Re:Ug, here we go

[Blaskowicz]

So buy a freezer? buy a slow cooker? (buy a $1000 set of clothes to get a job interview and then a job)
I forgot.. buy a meat grinder? I didn't know that was cheap, and it takes room.

Just kidding!
Bulking up, flavouring, greasing up, proteining.. mmmm, those are nice things indeed! Although the latter word isn't a real word.

Re. the freezer : if you're poor it's possible to have one, but you would likely depend on your Land Lord having chosen to include one. Small kitchen fridges (waist height) with a freezer do exist and the freezer is real sometimes, albeit small. Just enough room for an ice cream, a pizza and the shit ton of frost that's in there. I'm sure I could do what I saw my grandma do : she cooks vegetable soup then freezes it.

The self-powered slow cookers / crock pots I see on image search look like greatly useful piece of kit. On this continent they're likely uncommon (and if you're poor : are you going to put it on the stove? on the floor?)

I don't know the fuck why but beans are like 5x more expensive than canned beans here, so canned beans it is and there isn't much need for cooking.

One issue that's a bit sad is many people will be a single 20-something then 30-something, or a single mom with one or two kids etc. and thus doing a three-meal chicken (or just two meals) isn't much practical.

Re:News for Nerds

[OrangeTide]

It's a general guide for people of average activity levels. Also BMI is not a good metric for general health, as there are more dimensions to health than can be represented by a single number.

If you're an athlete with 5% (or less!) body fat, then BMI is a totally meaningless number. But BMI is really easy data to capture compared to other metrics for physical health, and it can be a useful tool for statistics over large populations (no pun intended).

If people perceive you as "skinny", remember their opinions are relative. They are possibly just used to seeing people who are overweight and anyone approaching historic average has "their bones sticking out". Of course there is a some range of individual variation, but it's not quite as wide as other species of animals. Example in other species: greyhound dog versus shar-pei, a you can see the ends of ribs in a healthy greyhound, and the entire rib in a malnourished greyhound. but never in a healthy shar-pei. Humans don't vary quite so much as dogs.

Horsemen

[HeckRuler]

We kicked the shit out of that horseman and threw him on top of Pestilence. Now we're coming for you DEATH!

Sadly War seems to linger around, although we've shrunk him down quite a bit.

Re:Diet and medication

[Immerman]

Also, don't forget the fact that we're flooding the world with antibiotics - probably a fair amount of them end up in rainwater along with all the birth-control pseudoestrogens. And we know regular antibiotic exposure contributes to weight gain, even if we don't yet understand why.

Re:Diet and medication

[Immerman]

Exactly: In the wild it's usually a constant struggle to get sufficient calories, and difficult to get too many, so more calories=good is probably hard-wired into our instincts right up there with sex. What's changed is the difficulty of getting food.

Of course there's also the fact that processed foods typically have a much higher calorie-to-nutrient ratio than anything natural (not to mention calorie-to-volume). Thanks to selective breeding even fresh from the farm food is much more calorie rich than in eons past - wild game is FAR less fatty than even a well-trimmed modern steak, for example. Meanwhile our satiation triggers mostly don't care about calories.

Re:The problem is the perception of obesity

[vilanye]

Seriously?

BMI on athletes and body builders is invalid and applies to a tiny fraction of people. A normal person with 30%+ BMI? The OP was right, but mean about it.

At one point I was 50 pounds overweight, gained it all in college.

I lost it all in 4 months by changing my diet to a healthy one( for example oatmeal/eggs in the morning a very healthy smoothy for lunch - berries, pomegranate, acai, beet, kale, lemon and other juices- and chicken/fish beans/brown rice/quinoa and a large salad with good lettuces and lots of different vegetables and fruit with nothing else for desert - I spend less than $100 a week on food for 2 people) and without any exercise. I still had my daily blue Full Throttle as my only vice. I did it during winter and where I live it is too cold and icy to go running.

I cut out lots of sugar and simple carbs, very little pasta and potatoes and no sodas. Once a month I would have a grilled chicken salad and fries with no soda at Wendy's as my "cheat" meal.

I kept it up and am maintaining a healthy weight and am out running a few times a week now that it is warmer.

Who defines what is obesity

[MoarSauce123]

I always wonder who determines when a person is obese or not. Is it a definition cooked up by health and life insurances? Or is there any substantial scientific research done? I wonder because both my grandparents would have easily fit into the obese category and they lived to be 96 and 98, respectively.

Re:cultural changes caused it - needs a cultural f

[gzuckier]

The largest cultural shift to happen in your time frame has been two-income households and on top of that most people are working longer hours than ever before.

That means less time to cook nutritious meals, less time to monitor what the kids are doing, and less time for recreation.

This notion of a qualitative shift within a few generations is asinine. There's a reason energy drinks happened within this generation. People are tired and harried.

remember when you couldn't change the channel without getting out of your chair? if you gave people the option of perfect health until 100 years of age, but they would have to give up the remote, which do you think they would choose? i'm not even sure which i would choose.

Re:cultural changes caused it - needs a cultural f

[gzuckier]

Looking back at photos the "fat kid" wasn't that by current standards either. And that was with baked goods at the school canteen dripping with fat (cream buns, sausage rolls etc). No carbonated drinks though, which I suspect are a very major part of the cause.

absolutely, sugary drink are a major source of excess calories. time was, of course, when a normal soda was 6 ounces. now the norm is to guzzle down 4 times that. and that's led to every other kind of sugary drink, crapuccinos etc.

Re:Ug, here we go

[sociocapitalist]

I see this "choices you made in the past put you where you are now" attitude a lot, especially in political debate. This is, of course, true - and it is also true that choices (or circumstances) of your parents, their parents, etc. also influence your starting point and therefore your chances of "a good life."

What I think is lacking in today's "American Dream," is the ability for anyone - regardless of present circumstance - to pick themselves up and realistically turn their life around to achieve "middle class" or better status within the next 10 years. Too many people are too held down by poverty to realistically do anything about it before they die, and this can happen to them before they even reach the age of high school graduation.

If you have to work 40+ hours a week to keep a safe roof over your head with decent clothing and food to eat, there's no realistic capacity to also pay for a valuable education that opens doors to a better job. I'm not saying that a higher education should be a requirement for a decent paying middle class job, high school or equivalent should be enough, but it mostly isn't. Throw in a couple of children, part time jobs that require travel expenses to/from work and have dynamic/unpredictable schedules, medical expenses and the other realities of living poor and the idea of night school becomes less and less realistic.

I'm not saying that it's impossible, people hit the lottery every week, and get other fortunate breaks much more often, but it's not something that people can just "put their mind to" and make happen on any kind of realistic/regular basis.

People can certainly pick themselves up and turn their lives around - if they haven't made too much of a mess of it already (which is generally based on the choices that they have made that put them wherever they are now).

My experience has been that the vast majority people "held down by poverty" in the US are actually held down by the limitations they set on themselves. There are social services throughout the country that just don't exist in third world countries. Education is free through high school. Free food. Free housing. Free medical care. None of this is available to the poor in third world countries.

Now if you take an Indian (the kind from India), generally speaking, and you put them in the US and you give them the advantages that an American gets just by being born in the US - they'll take those advantages and run with them and while they'll start with nothing they will generally succeed at building a life for themselves. It's a question of attitude and knowing what life is like when social services aren't available. They'll scrimp and they'll save and they won't spend 100 dollars on sneakers or spend their evenings watching serials or sports. They'll work that 40+ hours a week and then on top of that they'll go to school or open a small side business of their own. When that fails they'll do it again and again until it works.

Even in the situation you describe the overall situation you are describing is a major success story for most of the world. Those two kids that you 'threw in' were choices - either the choice of not using protection (again something that is freely available in the US that is often not available at all in other parts of the world) or the choice made to have those children. Choices again.

My father in law is from a third world country. His village still has no electricity even now and running water only in the sense that there are streams (no plumbing). He and his older brother were living alone in a town away from the family from when they were 11 and 13, respectively. They shared an apartment and leaved on what their parents could spare after paying for their not free education and the costs of feeding a family of nine. Today my father in law is a licensed doctor here in France - a country he didn't even speak the language of when he came here. His older brother is a genetic researcher and professor fi

Re:Ug, here we go

[JoeMerchant]

Of course you can "hindsight" every choice every person ever made and point out places where their life _might_ have gone easier or better had they done the other thing.

What I dislike most about life in the USA is the extreme element of risk-reward that goes into so many life choices. Starting from an impoverished background and pursuing a medical doctor degree is a very high risk undertaking in the US, even if you have all the aptitudes for it. PreMed programs are arbitrarily difficult, they flunk out huge percentages of capable candidates just because the numbers allowed to progress up the ladder are strictly limited. Many "respected" schools are very expensive, so now they offer you loans: take out a huge debt on the chance that you get a good paying job later to pay it off. Most business has always been a matter of luck + connections - without the connections you need to be very lucky to succeed, with them you have a better chance but still can fail even if you make all the best choices (given the information available when you start.) The safer businesses (franchises, etc.) require you to be quite wealthy, and put that wealth at risk, just to start.

There is plenty of chaos in the US economy, enough that some poor people become rich and some rich people become poor, often with little connection to the "wiseness" of the choices that they have made.

Re:Ug, here we go

[sociocapitalist]

Of course you can "hindsight" every choice every person ever made and point out places where their life _might_ have gone easier or better had they done the other thing.

What I dislike most about life in the USA is the extreme element of risk-reward that goes into so many life choices. Starting from an impoverished background and pursuing a medical doctor degree is a very high risk undertaking in the US, even if you have all the aptitudes for it. PreMed programs are arbitrarily difficult, they flunk out huge percentages of capable candidates just because the numbers allowed to progress up the ladder are strictly limited. Many "respected" schools are very expensive, so now they offer you loans: take out a huge debt on the chance that you get a good paying job later to pay it off. Most business has always been a matter of luck + connections - without the connections you need to be very lucky to succeed, with them you have a better chance but still can fail even if you make all the best choices (given the information available when you start.) The safer businesses (franchises, etc.) require you to be quite wealthy, and put that wealth at risk, just to start.

There is plenty of chaos in the US economy, enough that some poor people become rich and some rich people become poor, often with little connection to the "wiseness" of the choices that they have made.

Do you have the possibility of going to India for awhile?

Re:Ug, here we go

[JoeMerchant]

Do you have the possibility of going to India for awhile?

In no way am I comparing the US to other countries and their current state of opportunity or fairness... mature places like Europe have incredibly entrenched wealth/ownership much moreso than the US, emerging markets like India/China still have crushing poverty for the majority of the population like the US hasn't seen for 100+ years. This is more a statement of where we are vs where we could (should) be going.

Still, emerging markets like India also offer incredible opportunity for building wealth - if you have enough to invest/risk, you can be making 4x the gains there that you might for equivalent investments in the US today.

Re:Ug, here we go

[sociocapitalist]

Do you have the possibility of going to India for awhile?

In no way am I comparing the US to other countries and their current state of opportunity or fairness... mature places like Europe have incredibly entrenched wealth/ownership much moreso than the US, emerging markets like India/China still have crushing poverty for the majority of the population like the US hasn't seen for 100+ years. This is more a statement of where we are vs where we could (should) be going.

Still, emerging markets like India also offer incredible opportunity for building wealth - if you have enough to invest/risk, you can be making 4x the gains there that you might for equivalent investments in the US today.

I'm not talking about building wealth. I'm talking about gaining perspective and adjusting one's attitude to fit the realities of life as opposed to the sense of entitlement that we westerners are born with.

That person of the family of four who wants to go to night school but 'cannot' should go live in India for a year and then we'll see if they still think that they 'cannot' do night school back wherever they come from even given the inconveniences that they face.

Re:Ug, here we go

[JoeMerchant]

Do you have the possibility of going to India for awhile?

In no way am I comparing the US to other countries and their current state of opportunity or fairness... mature places like Europe have incredibly entrenched wealth/ownership much moreso than the US, emerging markets like India/China still have crushing poverty for the majority of the population like the US hasn't seen for 100+ years. This is more a statement of where we are vs where we could (should) be going.

Still, emerging markets like India also offer incredible opportunity for building wealth - if you have enough to invest/risk, you can be making 4x the gains there that you might for equivalent investments in the US today.

I'm not talking about building wealth. I'm talking about gaining perspective and adjusting one's attitude to fit the realities of life as opposed to the sense of entitlement that we westerners are born with.

That person of the family of four who wants to go to night school but 'cannot' should go live in India for a year and then we'll see if they still think that they 'cannot' do night school back wherever they come from even given the inconveniences that they face.

I consider a sense of entitlement part of the human condition, and not an altogether good one. I think that humanity as a whole needs to get stronger perspective on what they are doing to their planet and adjust their expectations of what the Earth should be giving us - this guy stood up and published a book along those lines: http://eowilsonfoundation.org/... basically what I ranted in a blog about a few years back: https://5050by2150.wordpress.c...

Still, even if we do scale back our expectations of what the Earth should be giving us, I don't think for a minute that those of us who are not "untouchable" should be grateful for our standing, or that the untouchables should be grateful to be alive as humans at all... Those who are more fortunate should share, better than they do today, with those who are less fortunate. From the perspective of an already highly fortunate westerner, the sad perspective of the last 30 years is that we have been sharing less and less, not more and more. It's an extremely complex picture, nothing one person can realistically communicate to another in its entirety, but the high level trends seem clear enough from where I stand.

Re:The problem is the perception of obesity

[__aaclcg7560]

Yeah, the reason you are a fucking fat ass is genes, not because your fat fucking ass is planted all day and you constantly shove high fat food in your fat fucking mouth.

Uh, no. I was fairly active and ate the same kind of foods that my parents ate. When I got into my teens, I rode my bike 36 miles each week. As a young adult, I rode my bike 100 miles per week to a restaurant job three towns over.

I learned about genes in the early 80's in school. Where did you live? The south?

Silicon Valley. My parents were skinny ass rednecks from Idaho.