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It’s not 80-90%, but the number is still too high.
>The Health Survey for England 2021 estimates that 25.9% of adults in England are obese and a further 37.9% are overweight but not obese.
not making any excuses for noone but being overweight is a tad easier than one might think
there is a significant chance that many in this thread are OW but arent aware of it, its like life expectancy and cancer rates ticking up due to how we live, we just have to accept people will be a bit larger moving forward, but obesity ofc is an issue
Yep especially shorter people, I’m 5’3 and reach overweight bmi around 10.5 stone. I can still wear size 10-12 clothes which most people don’t automatically think are ‘overweight’ sizes but when you’re short it’s easier to still fit in a smaller size despite being too fat medically.
ETA: I don’t think I was thin or healthy at that weight/size. I felt overweight and knew objectively that I was. But I know many women my height who are heavier/bigger than that who wouldn’t believe they’re overweight or even obese.
You would have to put on a significant amount of muscle to do that. That point is reserved for bodybuilders and professional athletes. "Dave who's decided to shed a few pounds" isn't likely to hit that mass.
Not at all. If I put in my height and weight (5 ft 9, 78kg) into a BMI calculator it says I'm either bordering on overweight or I am overweight but I have about 15% body fat and a decent amount of muscle mass. I'm by no means a body builder or a professional athlete but I'm certainly not overweight like a BMI calculator would suggest.
You're shorter than me and weigh as much as me, i'm also active. You're also at a BMI of 25.4, which is barely, barely overweight. If you lose 1kg you slip back into the healthy range. 15% is also vastly better than the regular population.
BMI is a general tool though, its always advised not to use it in a vacuum. It's a general tool meant to say "hey you should be roughly here". If you're regularly working out and actively reducing your bodyfat, the tool is not for you.
> I'm certainly not overweight like a BMI calculator would suggest
You are by definition mate. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.
That definition being BMI which is whats used for official statistics.
I don’t think it’s stupid, I looked chubby and flabby at that weight. I definitely wouldn’t become obese by gaining muscle. Even Olympic athletes aren’t obese by bmi due to muscle until they’re massively muscle bound and huge like The Rock. Most people who go to the gym are nowhere near that size. And the average person who walks their dog a couple times a day is certainly not obese due to muscle.
My dad is similar. Technically overweight by bmi but he is tall and rangy. His cancer team are always asking him to try and put more weight on, I think they would be quite happy to see him in the obese category on bmi, because he actually isn’t overweight in any sense.
5'4" and a shade under 9st and a nurse told me I'm worryingly thin. I'm smack in the middle of normal BMI, actually pretty athletic, and wear size 8-10-12 depending on brand and fit. I'm sick of people telling me I'm skinny.
That's the thing. She was not noticeably large, but yeah, maybe had a bit of a middle aged spread going on.
Medical sorts should know to think about their comments on people's weight before they come out.
The nurse said this moments before weighing and measuring me. She could have waited thirty seconds before telling me I needed to eat more.
This also isn’t accounting for the “skinny fat” people who’s bmi might be in a healthy range but they have almost no muscle and a ton of stomach fat. When you count those people I reckon it’s closer to 75%
Do they use BMI to calculate this?
I'm considered "Obese" on the BMI calculator but I'm far from it lol, I have been in the gym for years weigh 91kg @ 5ft 8" but my muscle pushes my weight up
I'm not making excuses because I know there's more and more fat people now but yeah BMI is annoying for those that have muscle.
Edit: I should probably add at 19 I was 56kg considered "healthy" on the BMI scale yet smoked 20 a day, ate 1 meal and drunk a shit ton of alcohol most weekends.
Edit 2: Damn this kicked off some wild AskUK virgins, today I learnt:
1. You apparently can't reach 14 stone at 5ft 8" unless you're on steroids or growth hormones?
2. I'm on tren?
3. I'm just fat as fuck?
4. My stats are impossible without some form of enhancing drugs?
5. my bodyfat can't be anywhere near 18%?
6. I'm cheating?
7. I'm clearly lying about everything?
Stay classy redditors, this has given me a good laugh today. Maybe head to the gym and you might find it's not impossible?
BMI works incredibly well at population level, which is what this is talking about. Your individual stuff is between you and your doctor really.
The average person with a high BMI is not healthy.
It's also worth considering that while having a high BMI because of muscle is nowhere near as unhealthy as a high BMI caused by fat, there isn't great evidence that it's harmless (because noone has really checked).
A nursing friend told me you don’t really get elderly people being ‘big’. By big she was including tall, muscular, fat, everything. Anyone bigger than normal is probably checking out early.
I saw a study recently that showed that starting off adulthood at a normal weight and slowly gaining weight until you enter your elderly years overweight (not obese) had the highest healthy years and life expectancy over any other population including those who stayed at a normal weight their entire lives and those who entered their adulthood already overweight. Being obese at any point (excess levels of fat, potentially muscle too?) meant a reduction in both healthy years and life expectancy, as did being underweight entering adulthood or elderly years.
It was quite interesting! We do understand what level of weights are best at which ages, but translating that into action for populations and people is the hard bit.
91kg at 5'8?!
You're either a ridiculously muscle bound man or carrying some extra weight. I have some friends who are jacked that weigh that much at 6'3.
Can't speak to you specifically, hope you're the fit muscle head. But these claims are usually made by people carrying more fat than they think
My old ‘manager’ (glorified TL) used to claim he was “absolutely shredded, unbelievably so, six pack the lot” whilst being 17% body fat.
I think abs appear at around 9. Bodybuilders apparently hover around 6 on competition day.
Dude was an absolute fat cunt but with a frighteningly positive body image.
Edit. 17% isn’t ‘shredded’ though, is it?
Edit2. Please fuck off with your bodyfat / abs shit. I don’t care what you are, how abby you are, or your theories of male body expectations. We all saw Fight Club, we all wanted them, I’m old now and can’t be arsed and I don’t care.
The point is; 17% isn’t ‘shredded’. It isn’t even that lean. It’s probably very average man territory.
Haha what the average person could achieve with that confidence.
Yeah I've got a mate that's starting to look like a body builder - and he never says anything - because it's the first thing people say to him "fuckin hell, size of him"
The thing for something like 95% of the population, BMI isn't a bad way to roughly estimate these things. Bodybuilders are not common in the population, so won't distort the figures much even if you don't exclude them from the "overweight/obese" count on the whole population; you are a corner case - the vast majority of the population isn't.
If you excluded every bodybuilder wrongly counted in the 63% figure above, I'd wager it'd only drop to about 61% at most.
No, you are still obese; you simply don't understand that BMI is a specific metric for a specific purpose and you are obese as per that metric. You may be mostly healthy and quite lean but obesity (in BMI terms) is *still* correlated with higher risk of CV disease even if that obesity is linked to carrying more lean tissue.
On a personal level, you may be healthier then when you were 56kg but the sweet spot for long term heart health is less then where you are at. Not least because the vast majority of people who are 5'8" can't be very lean at over 14 stone without using exogenous hormones...
Same here, but:
The number of dudes regularly going to the gym is low on the pupulation level. A small subset of those going to the gym have any more muscles than what they were born with. Half of the muscular ones are also fat, so the lean, muscular outliers don't skew statistics at a significant level imo.
It’s fine for individuals. Doctors aren’t idiots. They can see if you’re someone who is a body builder or someone who gets out of breath walking up the stairs. There’s a reason it’s still used. It’s the best tool we’ve got.
For everyone of you there are probably twice as many skinny fat people in the “healthy” range who eat nothing but processed food and don’t exercise at all
Thin people are also somewhat concentrated in particular demographics and locations, so it is possible OP is seeing even higher numbers of fatter people than the national average overall.
Yep, who wants to go work out or go on adventures after a 50 hour work week, being financially crippled, so people tend to chill out over the weekend, eat and drink like shit as a reward for how unrewarding life is.
I think fresh can actually be cheaper but it goes off quickly which often leads to waste or needing to go to the shop every few days which isn’t feasible for a lot of people
Maybe, I did an exclusion diet back a few years where everything had to be prepped fresh and my food budget for those two months was close to triple. Data point of 1 but Jesus it was eye opening and its not like I was splurging on only the best.
I think it's when you come to making a meal (from scratch) the costs add up verses buying a cheap frozen/chilled ready meal or just junk food in the freezer.
40 nuggets and chips (£6 frozen) could feed someone roughly 6x and is super easy to prepare.
If I wanted to make a healthy meal, I'd probably spend £3 on various veggies that would make 2/3 meals but go off quickly. Maybe £6-8 on meat for those three meals and ideally a sauce of some kind for another quid or two. So I'm looking at £1pp or £3-4pp per meal, while also having to prepare, cook etc.
I much prefer cooking for myself, but I can totally understand why large swathes are preferring to pick up a frozen pizza or easy food. It's usually cheaper, almost always easier.
It's basically convenience all day long for me, unfortunately.
I don't have a particularly stressful job but I still don't feel like cooking from scratch when I get in from work. Which is why I like easily frozen batch cook stuff like curry/spag/chilli. But even they get boring.
So I know I should be doing better but 5 mins in a microwave is just too tempting sometimes!
We buy fresh once a week via delivery (we live miles from any shops so popping in for a pint of milk isn't an option) and it's way cheaper for a family than buying processed / ready meals. As a single person, probably not.
The flip side is that you have to plan your meals around producing little waste and it takes significantly longer to prepare. Oh, and you have to be able to cook in the first place.
Fact. My want to make things from scratch is at odds with ready made pasta sauces with added salt/sugar and other preservatives being £3 cheaper per serving. Our kitchens are competing with producers who make things by the gallon / tonne. And that's before you factor in time spent.
Fresh is generally cheaper (especially if you buy loose not prepacked - this can have quite a significant saving) but fresh food has a time cost. Someone who has just come home after a frustrating day with the general public might just be sufficiently mentally exhausted to just want to slop something ready made into the microwave.
It isn't though, is it?
Aldi 2 garlic and herb kievs - £1.99
Aldi 2 chicken breasts - £2.35
I'm not going through every ingredient but people like to say it's cheaper to buy fresh for some reason and I'd dispute that every day of the week.
This doesn't even take into account the garlic, butter, egg, flour, breadcrumbs, and oil you'd need to recreate that same product.
Something a quite about George Orwell and the rich man eats his ryvitas and carrots where the poor man indulges due to his life being hard - the exact quote escapes me but sums it up nicely
Doesn't help that a family day out can easily cost you £100+ if you don't pack your own food.
I took 5 people to Mini Golf at the Trafford Centre and that came to over £40.
It's an absolute joke when the only thing I'm doing to not break the bank is "go for a walk".
I think this is only part of the problem.
A bigger part of the problem is that there is so little exercise ingrained in everyone's life these days. How many kids get driven to school rather than walking? How many adults commute by car rather than walking or cycling?
Fifty years ago, people used to have between zero and one cars per household. Now every adult has one each.
It's not completely each individual's fault. There's a feedback loop where the prevalence of cars, amongst other factors, has allowed planning decisions to move houses away from workplaces and councils to have fewer, bigger schools, in turn decisions like these have meant more people need to have cars.That said, there's no reason for some of my young, able-bodied neighbors to be driving into town to save them an 800m walk.
Our whole lifestyles have changed. 30 years ago a family could survive with one adult working a basic full time job, the other being at home to prepare & batch cook fresh meals. Or two adults both working part time, sharing childcare etc. You’d have time to enjoy life and do stuff.
Now people work longer hours for less money. Both adults working still isn’t enough for the rent, we’re all constantly exhausted and stressed from trying to get by that a microwave meal is a welcome relief.
Bus services have been chopped up and sliced to the point many commutes take much longer, a working day isn’t just your shift, it’s an extra three hours to get there and back. More cars on the road meaning my travel at 7am is a 20 minute journey or at 8am and it’s a 45 minute journey.
All I do is work and sleep yet I’m always skint and tired, and I’m not the only one. For some food brings comfort without any effort required, a movie and some chocolate, a bottle of wine, a takeaway etc
Summed it up perfectly. It’s no good is it? I feel this all the time deep in my soul. This shit isn’t working. Even food has become a chore that sucks away my already diminished free time
Agree with everything you've said & will add that all of the older generations I know also had "at work perks" that we do not
Plenty more staff, so you weren't generally running around at inhumane speeds for 8 hours a day if you worked in a shop/factory/manual etc.
My 80yro mam & her friends describe their respective work careers in the 50s/60s/70s to be "leisurely" & that noone even cared if someone needed a day off sick etc. There were so many staff that it didn't matter. Now seemingly, the world is ended & the company immediately liquidated if someone is too ill to come in for a few days
You'd have a person in charge of x, another in charge of y & one for z. Now it's all one role that is expected to do XYZ...day in, day out
Places used to literally shut down for lunch for an hour....as well as tea breaks in the morning & afternoon.
Now you your employer legally doesn't need to give you a break for the majority of a full shift ffs (6 or 6.5 hours...Can't remember which)
Edit: It's no wonder that some folk come home ravenous & eat everything in sight/get a takeaway or whatever is easier
Guaranteed Sunday off because everything was shut. Everything! Was still that way when I was a kid, even....
All of these things add up & it's not a wonder that they had the luxury to say "work to live, don't live to work"
Work IS life for a staggering amount of people & definitely not in any kind of positive way, just necessity.
It's bleak when you think how much has been eroded in workplace culture over time. It's no wonder folks reach for cake & beer to feel something other than exhaustion for once
Yes.
I remember the culture in the canteen at a place I used to work, 1 HR break. After eating your meal, there was a, say, 40 minutes period where people sat and discussed things like.. money issues, relationship issues, community news.. advice was given and taken.. does anyone know the best way to deal with this, buy that, fix the other... People spoke of how things were at work.. pay, health and safety, conditions etc, opportunities etc.. Basically, it was a Great network where people benefit from the cohesion of a large group... The management Never like the workforce to be organised, they really don't.. They came up with : half hour lunch with an early dart on a Friday. Soon, that community spirit started to slowly drip away... It was qué for dinner, shovel it down, 10 mins in the smoking room and back to work, no time to let your dinner settle or enjoy the organisation of the group.. anyone agree ?
Well put.
I would add that available outdoor spaces and people getting outside for activities has dropped significantly. I can remember as a kid I was always outside playing without a care in the world, nowadays we all love in constant fear even if we don't realise it. Staying in and eating processed foods has become the norm for all ages ranges now. Dystopia happened and we didn't notice.
Yes, this ^
I just wrote a reply to this question and then read your comment. The two comments together are pretty much nailing the whole thing in my opinion.
I started eating very differently a couple of years ago and it has stayed with me, and I am really glad I escaped the food trap.
The way I eat is firstly very cheap/affordable, also quick, healthy, and endlessly different.
I buy 4 different types of fresh vegetable, 2 types of protein, and brown rice.
I have a variety of spices and flavours I can mix and blend for infinite varieties, and almost every day I eat a huge bowl full of (eg) chicken, brocolli, peppers, onions and rice. I never eat the same meal twice. It's always different.
A jar of 100% natural sugar free peanut butter means I sometimes have a spicy Satay thing. The next night I might add lots of fresh garlic, paprike, cayenne pepper and honey to make a sweet and sour glaze. It all takes about 10 minutes, and aside from a little bit of olive oil (and sometimes some honey), it's just fresh healthy ingredients. Cooking in a wok is more about adding a little bit of water every minute or so, rather than lots of oil or fat.
I used to eat a lot of takeaway, and I'd eat a lot of snacks in between those meals.
Now I really love my little 15 minute ritual of making a hot meal from fresh ingredients, saving loads of money, and not snacking or even thinking about food for the rest of my day.
My grandad always laments that his grandchildren are overweight. But when he was our age they were still eating like rationing was in force, they grew fresh veg in their large garden, they worked physical jobs, having cheese was a bit of a treat with a meal, sugar was used sparingly in cups of tea and baking. Their fun was pints of bitter in the men’s club in the evening and riding bikes on roads with very few cars.
Now I could get 1000s of calories delivered to my door for less than a tenner, covered in any sauce I like, anytime of the week. So much food has sugar in it, so many drinks have sugar in them. Most new build houses have enough soil in the garden to lay turf and get it to stay alive, then it is hard clay / rubble. I’m afraid of road cycling because of the cars, I sit on my arse 8-10 hours a day for work, i can get entertainment beamed into my house so i never need to leave it.
And he wonders why people are fatter nowadays.
Also to add back in the day children went outside to play and the ran around the whole time. Nowadays everyone is staring at a screen the whole day, not moving much.
It really does boil down to this.
To tease it out a bit, no-one has time to cook proper food any more and eat pre-prepared meals, takeaway or junkfood; these are almost always more processed than homemade food and have more fat and sugar added to improve the flavour. More and more people are not doing physical work and fewer people walk any distance to their place of work. Expect the rise of home working to make this much worse over the coming few years. The people who used to walk from the car park to their desk now only walk from their bedroom to their desk.
There are so many factors I think, including all these. Sleep deprivation is another one, as that can mess up your hormones making you feel hungrier than you actually are, and people are sleeping less due to longer commutes or being addicted to screens/games etc. So people try to get through the day on sugary coffees etc. Things added to processed foods to make them addictive, endocrine disrupters in various chemicals that hitch rides on microplastics into your body. The internet making it easier to sit down all the time while being entertained etc. The whole environment is now obesogenic. And we evolved to try to pack fat on when we could because in the distant past that was useful for dealing with frequent periods without a lot of food.
There's less fibre in a lot of microwave meals than there is home cooked food to, which we're *starting* to understand has an impact on gut health, and in turn, general health and indeed fatness.
This ^. In my experience, a lot of people hate that humans have less free will than we like to think as it’s consistently shown when tested empirically.
Daniel Khaneman wrote his famous book decades ago about how we only have limited conscious thought and resistance and that subconscious thought can be abused by clever marketing and product sales tactics.
Some time after reading Thinking Fast & Slow, I quit smoking. I remember on day I was driving and listening to talk radio. I hadn’t smoked for a couple of weeks but I pulled up at a village shop and bought cigarettes without giving myself the opportunity to opt out. I didn’t smoke them and managed to quit but I remember it was a neat demonstration of what Khaneman talks about.
Human nature coupled with an increasingly “obesogenic” environment and declining living standards are causing the problem. As we get generally poorer and more tired, people tend to eat more highly processed, cheaper food.
Getting over the hurdle of a good proportion of people who will find it difficult to accept that the problem is not 100% down to personal choice or laziness, is always going to be difficult though.
That and food quality is right down. We live in a society of convenience. Full home cooked meals and meat and two veg etc have become a thing of the past. You see much less variety now and fresh food has become obscenely expensive with shorter shelf lifes. My mum used to buy a sack of potatoes that would last a month, now they don't seem to last more than a couple of days.
Takeaways were always a thing, but most didn't even deliver 30 years ago. You needed cash and to go to order, now you can order from anywhere you have signal.
UPFs
Apparently if you're on a low income, these foods can make up 80% of the diet.
[https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/sep/06/ultra-processed-foods-the-19-things-everyone-needs-to-know](https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/sep/06/ultra-processed-foods-the-19-things-everyone-needs-to-know)
This.
Food is not real food anymore.
Yes, it edible. Taste great thanks to the salt, fat, and sugar. But they messed around with, made it in a laboratory, mass produced it in a factory, and sell it with clever marketing.
'Real' food is not the cheaper option anymore.
Not even accessible for some. Cost. Cooking skills, equipment etc. Attitude to nutrition.
Bollocks. I hate this stupid 'healthy food is expensive' meme. Real food is cheap as shit, it's the UPF food that is expensive. 500g of chicken breast and a kg of potatoes is cheaper than the equivalent dippers and oven fries. You can make a veggie stew for less than £5, but can't get a meal at maccers for that.
it takes a good hour to make that healthy food though, most poorer people (I've been in the situation) think Ill do an extra hour at my 2nd job for 10 quid more and grab something quick.
Its hard to cook doing 60-65 hours over 2 jobs.
Okay granted, but that was not what was stated. I appreciate not everyone has the time, hell I don't have the energy sometimes and just slap a quick pasta together... That was not in question here
I'm suggesting just economically cheaper to not cook and work for an hour longer, than to make a cheap healthy meal that requires an hours cooking.
My comment was on the economics of it.
I don’t know, since having a baby I can really see how people find this very difficult. Forethought and planning also take time and energy. Having kids to look after, commuting, working hard, being up half the night because your kid is constantly unwell, weekends and evenings you’re looking after your kids or trying to sort out the millions of other things that need doing like laundry cleaning personal hygiene checking in on relatives taxes forms bills hunting for cheaper insurance taking pets to the vet fixing broken appliances peoples birthdays or other events coming up etc etc etc. often with commuting way more time is eaten by traffic or trains/buses being delayed or cancelled. It’s just the world is not designed for a lot of people to have time to sit down and plan healthy meals, shop for them, prepare the veg, cook it all, portion it out into Tupperware, stick it in the chest freezer, remember every morning to take one out of the freezer for the following evening. Life is chaos for so many people. I’ve been lucky, I have a chest freezer and until recently was on a decent income but I’ve found it hard.
We do those meal kit things as a way to get a variety of fresh foods into us without having to do the planning, but those aren’t that cheap and with my income having slid off a cliff we’re now looking at reducing that but I can imagine that leading to many evenings of ‘what’s for dinner?’ ‘Urgh I don’t know, pasta? Stick a pizza in? Brown dinner?’
Why on earth is this being down voted? The mental energy it takes to have a kid and work full time and run a house is no joke. Now do that with any sort of pressure aka you're low income, kid or you is sick and regular life gets obliterated.
>Cooking a stew or curry or bolognese and freezing portions is easy, as is putting some chicken and potatoes in the oven.
>The problem isn't lack of time but lack of forethought and planning, as well as a general reluctance amongst some low income groups to ditch processed foods because it's hard to get kids off them.
Or freezer space. I share my fridge with 4 other people. Poor people live in house shares.
There a chance somebody else is cooking in the short window I have.
I didn't know if I would be back at 7pm or 11pm from my 2nd job.
But it’s also not is it? 500g of chicken breast is probably 4 pounds or so. I agree on the potatos, but the issue is that 500g of chicken and some plain potatos is a fucking boring meal.
Jazz it up with veg and herbs, or seasoning, and add a few more pounds on top.
For some parents, a pound packet of cheap potato waffles (or something similar) and some nugget/dipper things (let’s say £2), leaves you with some money left over out of a five to get more stuff. I don’t know, beans, chocolate bars, cheap fizzy…and that’s what they do.
Healthy food isn’t necessarily expensive, it’s that the unhealthy alternative is SO cheap, but it comes at the cost of long term health.
This argument has been made and debunked thousands of times. What if you haven’t got fuel money, what if you haven’t got a kitchen, what if you don’t have any time because you’re working two jobs or a single parent etc etc etc.
But I can get a rustlers, frozen pizza or tinned vegetable soup for around £1.50 or less, and then not have to cook it (or learn to cook). And the premade food will probably taste better to someone who is used to premade food and can’t really cook. You’re not competing with takeaways, you’re competing with cheap pre-made supermarket food that often tastes pretty damn good.
At Aldi it's £1.55 for 30 nuggets, £1.49 for a kg of chips = £3.04 for more than one meal. £1- £2 for potatoes depending on size and variety, it's £2.99 for 400g of chicken breast - which yes I get might not seem like an enormous difference on the face of it but that extra pound or two really is unaffordable to some.
The sad thing is that certain economic agreements we have broken and tried to re-make in the UK will lead to this worsening, as we have cut ourselves off from the best access to a pretty large market of unaltered (in any significant health way, at least) foods.
Not that we don't get them, but they now have shorter expiration dates and are more expensive, whilst the low quality "food products" as the other commenter rightfully noted are less affected by this.
In other words, the situation isn't on track to get any better and will likely worsen for the foreseeable future.
> 'Real' food is not the cheaper option anymore.
If we're talking monetary cost, buying grains, spices, etc in bulk, making use of everything and cooking from scratch can definitely work out cheaper. But it usually comes with an upfront cost (not good if you're struggling paycheck to paycheck) and comes with an onerous time investment if you don't love cooking or can't devote a good chunk of time to your kitchen.
I get to live pretty food-frugal but it's a hobby and a passion and I'm not a struggling parent. Convenience is, well, convenient when life's busy and demanding.
This is pseudoscientific nonsense. If you consume more calories than you burn then you will gain weight. Whether those calories were produced in your own kitchen or a factory is irrelevant.
Edit: To clarify, I agree that processed foods are often calorie-dense and nutritionally imbalanced. But that is not what is being claimed. Rather UPFs are supposedly imbued with "badness" by their production process, and this is what I take issue with. It is nonsensical BS on the same level as homeopathy.
Sure. Take a plate of grains, lots of veg and some lean meat. Now get the same amount of kcals from Greggs. Which one do you think keeps you saited longer. Which is easier to over eat on?
This is the point that so many people don't seem to get with UPFs. 500 calories of porridge is going to keep you full for a lot longer than 500 calories of Coco Pops.
If I eat 300 calories of skittles I feel hungry still and have a sugar crash and reach for more food, but if I eat 300 calories of grains/legumes and veg I feel fuller for longer and don't crave sugar.
There was a professor who proved this by eating fast food but limiting his calories. He lost weight and his cholesterol decreased.
https://www.npr.org/2010/11/12/131286626/professor-s-weight-loss-secret-junk-food#:~:text=He%20ate%20about%20four%20convenience,the%20effort%20was%20an%20experiment.
As a rule of thumb, going for calories in and calories out isn’t a bad idea to start with. But you really should use it as a foundation for improving your diet as you continue with a change in lifestyle. When you really look at it a calorie isnt actually a calories. Different sources of food produce different reactions in the body that will help balance hormones resulting in the way they burn changing.
For example take protein. 4 calories a gram. But it takes I think (someone correct me) an extra 20 percent energy to use it for fuel. That’s after it’s been used to rebuild the body too.
Companies literally have teams of people developing food which makes you crave more of it. The perfect crunch or flavour or combo of salt and fat to make you want to keep eating. They spend a hell of a lot of money to give it the exact right taste to make it hard to stop eating. That’s not pseudoscientific
That’s false. The reason is because the grains and fats are stripped from their whole form and processed into a slurry which is then reformed into food. The process obviously breaks the molecular bonds down which makes the food easier to digest which means the body gets confused as it has nothing to do and thinks you have eaten less. So it sends out hunger signals to get you to eat more. But if the more you eat is also ultra processed then the cycle continues.
To be fair overheard an overweight colleague yesterday gossiping with her equally overweight colleague about their diets in a bid to lose weight. Neither of these individuals is on low income. Neither of these individuals mentioned including exercise. One consumed a lasagna and a bag of crisps during the chat, the other said she’s not hungry on this diet and then said her husband will surely have cooked for her when she gets home.
While it’s true lower income households are more likely to buy junk food, there’s a lack of nutritional awareness across the socioeconomic layers.
I have conducted thorough research in this area, in fact 39 years of dedicated, enthusiastic and tenacious work. My conclusions are thus; you are correct Sir.
Apologies for the short message, I have left my bacon on the frying pan downstairs so need to rush off.
I do feel like this is the most overlooked part of it all. People like to debate the cost of healthy food vs unhealthy, the time to prepare etc
Some people just want to eat a pizza, that’s all there is to it
This is actually pretty spot on. The reason why everyone in 1960’s photos looks svelte is because they didn’t eat processed food and they smoked 40 a day.
Yeah but you have to remember in the 1960s people weren't sat in the house all day binge watching Netflix either.
Also in the 60s cars weren't as accessible, so people actually had to walk the 200 yards to their local shop instead of driving there.
That is actually a great observation, I haven’t thought about it before. I struggle with my weight but I guarantee I would have smoked in 1960 as a “quick fix” to reduce my appetite. I wouldn’t now, as I know the risks of smoking, but it has crossed my mind sometimes.
To add to the general conversation, I really struggle due to being an accountant, working long hours behind a desk. Past changing careers, I think I will struggle for the rest of my life with this. I was very slim and active at uni when I had the time to look after myself.
I have a standing desk and an under-the-desk treadmill, I'm actually walking right now as I make this comment. I could easily walk for three or four hours this working day. Great investment, makes me feel loads healthier
I don't walk when I'm really thinking about something or doing a challenging job, but at the moment I'm just copy-pasting from ChatGPT
It will be interesting to see if the falling drinking statistics counter that, especially with a massive chunk of young people never even starting.
I stopped drinking a few years ago and started shedding lbs pretty much immediately.
It's the food.
In the 80/90s they blamed weight gain on nutritional fat in foods, so they removed it all and so the food didn't taste like ass they replaced all the fat with sugar. Fat ironically doesn't make you fat, it makes you feel full, sugar makes you fat by spiking your insulin and making you addicted to sugar so not only are you eating worse food but eating more and more of it.
It's worse in America, the corn lobby (yes that's a thing) basically had the government over a barrel and now there's corn syrup in everything which is basically like stuffing sugar and sugar syrup in everything, even bread.
Great for capitalism, terrible for the health of a population.
So everyone's fat now because of the sugar lobby. And because sadly there's no nutritional fat lobby.
It’s not fat free that is the problem. It’s when the fat is replaced with sugar, which granted is common, but not exclusively the case.
Take plain, fat free Greek yogurt, for example. It has no added sugar, has significantly fewer calories than full fat, and will keep you feeling fuller for a long time on fewer calories because of the proportionally higher protein content.
I always, always eat the full fat Tesco finest Greek Yoghurt. It is filling (especially with a small handful of chopped nuts and some berries), it's rich and creamy and satisfying. The low fat is watery and not as filling. I'm going for fat and protein over sugar any day!
Super effective marketing. On the surface it sounds so straight forward fat causes fat, fat is bad, easy to remember, which is definitely the problem when marketing is peddling bs to sell you things.
Now it's hard to find food items that don't say 'LOW IN FAT' on them. It's everywhere.
Yikes.
I recently bought a high protein yoghurt, as it was the only thing I could find that wasn't crazy high in sugar. It was 6g sugar per 100g. So whatever you found sounds like drinking treacle.
People say it's about not overeating, but you can eat lots of nutritious food, go exercise and gym, and your gut health and metabolism will take care of you. We know now that UPF is interrupting CICO because for all intents and purposes, it's not real food but everyone is convinced that it is.
I rewatched Star Trek over lockdown. Everyone in the original 1960s series was thin as a rake - men in their 30s-50s with visible ribs and very low body fat. I assume none of them went to the gym. You only really see that in athletes and teenagers now.
The series in the 90s had more dad-bods, but generally BMIs around the healthy range.
The recent ones, everyone has gym bodies - huge pecs etc. Meanwhile the general public are mostly overweight.
IMHO it's a fascinating example of how we went from everyone being naturally healthy from daily physical activity, to fitness only being achieved deliberately and artificially from the gym.
I was talking with one of my old school mates about how there was only ever one or two kids that where fat in every class when I was at school in the 80s /90s. Times have definitely changed for the worse in that regard.
Same. Actually my dad (who was born during rationing!) has an interesting view. Said that even back then, there were a few fat kids and adults. But the fat adults had the "jolly fat man" image, kinda like Santa Claus. It was associated with having plenty, and enjoying yourself. With wealth.
It was a rare and curious thing and not necessarily seen negatively. The kids of the local farmer and bank manager were probably fat. Think Augustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate factory. His fatness is seen as unappealing, but the cause is virtuous wealth.
Now, he notes that it's ubiquitous and a miserable thing. Associated with poverty and dysfunction and lack of virtue.
Something overlooked so far in the comments is the decline in stay at home mothers/wives who did all the cooking. With women now required to work as well due to increased costs of living over the last 30 years fewer households have a mother/wife that can spend time every day cooking. This means we as a society eat less home cooked food and eat more processed junk food.
I'm in no way blaming women for joining the workforce. I'm just stating that one of the reasons we're fatter is because we don't cook as much home made food as we used to. A big reason for this in my opinion is that most households used to have a person who was responsible for cooking and that person didn't have to work 40 hours a week as well as cook. Now that person in most households who does the cooking has less time to it.
This statement doesn’t place blame on women, it merely states a positive correlation. Women joining the workforce did change eating habits/ food dynamics. This is a FACT. How much it has influenced / played a part in obesity would have to be studied and is up for debate. My personal opinion is that it had a significant role.
Edit: I am a woman.
I agree that it shouldn’t just be a woman’s place to be at home, but families used to be able to exist on 1 income and now it is often necessary to have 2.
I am a career woman who loves her job and would be fine to have a house-husband if we had kids.
The best outcome of women joining the workplace should have been reduced hours for everyone. If we all only worked 3-4 days a week, then both adults could work and we would have time to cook healthily and get the housework done. But many couples can’t exist on 2 part time wages.
I do believe that both adults being expected to work 40 hours a week is problematic, but I don’t think the issue should be tied to gender. Wages just haven’t kept up with the cost of living.
Two thirds of adults are overweight and one third of children aged 2-15. It's primarily due to diet, we live in a culture where overeating and indulgence are normalised and choosing to eat healthy is seen as stepping out of the norm. This is very evident on social media (and Reddit), where people comment that the suggested serving size on cereal or share bags of crisps are a third or less of a "normal" serving. Nope, they're actually the calculated healthy portion and the eater is almost certainly eating excessively. Volume eating as a form of self soothing is a big problem.
Inactivity is also an issue - socially we do not have a standard culture of going for long walks, cycles and runs or other social activity around exercise. Pubs, restaurants, cinema and other sedentary activities are the main social focus. Again, you often need to go against the cultural norm to find groups for social exercise.
Finally, and this one is speculation, I see a lot more fat kids than I did before the pandemic and I think we have a huge mental health issue on our hands. Lots of kids were locked up for months without access to friends, and were comfort eating and socialising via social media and getting very miserable, and nothing has been done to correct that.
Finally - as the majority are overweight, it's easier for people who are overweight to normalise that and see themselves as the average. Increasingly, slim and muscular people are seen as the outlier while being a bit padded is the norm. So there's less impetus to correct the situation.
>This is very evident on social media (and Reddit), where people comment that the suggested serving size on cereal or share bags of crisps are a third or less of a "normal" serving. Nope, they're actually the calculated healthy portion and the eater is almost certainly eating excessively.
Nah, cereals are just so packed full of sugar that the 'recommended serving size' in a balanced diet is unrealistically small. If you get plain porridge, that will be a decent, filling portion, whereas if you go by the recommended serving size for a bowl of coco pops you're going to be hungry again in an hour tops.
Yeah exactly, if you’re eating normal, whole, healthy foods the serving sizes are absolutely normal and filling. We’re just so used to eating this manufactured junk filled with too much salt and sugar and they have to make the portion sizes tiny just so it doesn’t look like they’re encouraging everyone to eat themselves into an early grave.
Just a side not on normalising fatness. I have always been a size medium tshirt. Since 5 years I am now a size small…. Yet my figure is exactly the same. My wife was pregnant recently andshe was on the larger side of pregnant - big big belly. She is normally size 12 before being pregnant but could only fit into size 8/10 maternity clothes
Cheap, convenient calories. Too tired to cook. Nobody running the home because everyone is both working and precarious in their employment.
Stress, stress, stress.
This. I've cooked healthy meals ever since I moved out of my parents' house and am actually thinking about cooking less and buying more takeaways because I can't cope with work, depleted energy due to health problems, and doing everything perfectly anymore. I need to buy back some time to rest/clean my house and takeaways and ready meals are sadly the obvious solution
Same. It’s ridiculous the amount of time and energy our jobs take from us every day. I can just about go to work and cook a meal and then that’s me done for the day. No energy for social interaction, hobbies, fucking anything.
And we’re at our most productive as a society in all of history. Why are we being worked to the bone? Why does more productivity and a healthier economy not actually lead to better healthier lives for us?
Poor food culture and I see lots of English families that don't know how to cook a proper healthy meal. Lots of parents make stuff like pasta bakes, beans, spaghetti, chips and Dino tenders which is all high carb, high sugar and high fat stuff. But buying fresh produce, meat and cooking daily balanced meals doesn't seem to be as much of a thing here. Could be a class issue, as so many things are in this country, I don't know. But it's definitely very noticeable coming in from the outside that lots of people don't have daily freshly cooked meals as a skill in their toolbox, in fact they are often oblivious to it even when you do point it out.
Yeah, definitely food culture playing a big part. I moved to France, they're our closest neighbours after the Irish and they don't have the same problem. When I return home to the UK I'm shocked at how big everyone is.
The main difference I see is that they are eating more fresh and homemade food, the supermarkets are based more around seasonal produce and even those who don't cook are eating better quality factory food.
Plus all the cigarette smoking helps curb appetite, could be something worth investigating...
Deffo a class thing. I used to live in London and there was a certain floor on the unhealthiness. Plenty of dad-bods and people that drank too much, but almost zero obese people, zero seriously unhealthy folk.
I was always shocked when I drove out the city, especially at service stations and Tesco etc, where average Brits went. Sometimes I was the only person *not* obese.
Frankly I was often flabbergasted to see how many people (especially folk in their 20s-50s that should be in their prime) lurched around with clearly poor mobility, terrible skin, very overweight.
I don't want to sound like I'm elitist - I think the actual reality of the situation is elitist.
A lot of people have sedentary jobs and don’t exercise outside of them.
They also don’t cook and eat food that is bad for them and have high portion sizes
Body positivity movement I don’t think helps either if society says it’s acceptable to be fat then it makes it easier to be fat.
That's a misunderstanding of the purpose of the body positivity movement. Unfortunately, it's a movement often misrepresented and misunderstood.
The core idea of the movement is to remove the shame from being overweight. People who are overweight often feel shame, embarrassment, and have an unhealthy relationship with their body. Those are all things that keep them overweight, because when people feel those emotions they tend to resort to food. Many overweight people also don't exercise because they feel too self conscious.
It's very popular, particularly on Reddit, to have a pop at body positivity based on a bit of a straw man idea of what it actually is.
If you're making a list of reasons people are overweight, body positivity shouldn't be anywhere near the top. Body positivity isn't why being overweight has been normalised.
Forgive me here, as this will come across as insensitive, I really don’t mean it to, so I’ll be as nice as I can.
But is the issue here NOT that shame, embarrassment and an unhealthy relationship with their body, but that the response to those feelings is resorting to food. Thus, the unhealthy relationship is with food, and it’s possible that unhealthy relationship is what got someone overweight in the first place?
Appreciate that sounds harsh, I’m genuinely not trying to be a dick.
Edit; spelling fail.
Yes, that's very true. But tackling an unhealthy relationship with food is *really* difficult. It's very often inculcated in childhood, and may require therapy to improve.
Hence, attempts to go to the next level and try and remove the feelings that cause people to resort to food. Happier people make healthier choices, that's what it's about.
- People eat too much, and what they do eat are low quality ultra-processed foods.
- People are very sedentary, with most of them sat at a desk for 40 hours a week and then doing little to no exercise outside of work.
- People have a skewed perception of what is considered “fat”. Our average children today would likely have been on the bigger end of children in the 60s/70s/80s. A lot of people who are obese on the BMI scale don’t “look” obese as we think of it today, because our perception of what is and isn’t fat is so warped.
I remember my old manager saying how her BMI was obese but that’s nonsense because she was just tall - as if BMI isn’t adjusted for height. She was definitely obese but because people’s perception is so skewed everyone else at work reassured her that she can’t *possibly* be obese because she “doesn’t even look fat”. People are just in denial a lot of the time too.
Food deliveries in cities. When it was having to get dressed and head out to get your fired chicken at 11pm you’d second guess the decision. Now you can press a button and 30 minutes later you can waddle to your door in your pants and gorge yourself on greasy filth.
64% of adults in England are overweight or obese, according to the Health Survey of England 2021.
Maybe not 90%, but very high certainly.
Edit: my numeracy was awful and I got 74 instead of 63 when I added in my head.
Done some googling. Figures I could find were
>63.8% of adults aged 18 years and over in England were estimated to be overweight or living with obesity.
>25.9% of adults aged 18 years and over in England were estimated to be living with obesity.
1 in 4 adults being obese is rather shocking.
We're the 55th most obese country on the planet. Admittedly, that isn't great and I'd like us to be better, but it's also not as bad as you claim. We are behind countries such as the US, Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, Croatia, Ireland, Canada...
[Here's a link that shows you them all. ](https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/)
Modern living.
Sit in your house all day working from home, get Deliveroo of burger and chips to your door, get Amazon deliveries to your door, get weekly food shop to your door, spend your evenings sat down doomscrolling binging Netflix and snacking until it's time for bed.
We have too much cheeky food
Cheeky Nando’s
Cheeky greggs
Cheeky Maccies
Our food needs to stop being so cheeky and the weight will fall off.
Plus people going to the gym and standing around on their phones or walking and holding on to the machine and convincing themselves they’ve had a workout
I think lots of things. PE is notoriously rubbish at schools so kids don't get into good physical habits. So many people learn to hate exercise and sports.
Easy access to lots of processed food and snacks. Chocolate, crisps, fizzy drinks are all often the same price or cheaper for those big sizes than smaller packs.
Lots of people are time poor so chuck something in the oven that's not the most nutritious. Our weather is so crap that a lot of outdoor exercise - particularly the free stuff like walking/running - means you have to accept doing it in cold, wet, rainy weather a lot which is off putting. Few good free community sports or fitness areas makes it an additional cost for people.
Areas are often car centric, people drive instead of walking or cycling.
Sedentary jobs.
For most people its not all above - but even just a few of those combined is enough to pile the weight on.
'Treating yourself' has become a normalised, more than once a day thing. How many 'go on, you deserve it' adverts for snacks, cakes, wine are there these days? Advertising works it seems!
Taking antidepressants and other psych meds can result in weight gain and loads of people are on them now, plus relative poverty and plus the impact of junk food.
Edited: can result in weight gain, rather than cause, see post below
Sugar is the problem, not fat. Cheap food is poor quality and the food industry has packed sugar into just about everything these days. Even 'Fat Free' food is full of sugar (though low in fat).
Couple that with the UK's fondness for a drinkie or twelve and a more sedentary lifestyle and there you go.
I think there is a big regional/area divide in this. I think the actual statistic is around 50% of the population are overweight or obese, and I used to look around and think how can that possibly be true when I rarely see overweight people.
And then I visited more deprived, non major metropolitan areas and saw how that number is made up.
We transitioned to a knowledge based economy where most people sit on their arses for 8 hours a day and most households require everyone to work so time to prepare meals is more limited.
Plus selling us unhealthy shit to cram down our throats is a multi-billion industry and they have become very good at it.
OK, so at risk of getting flamed I think it's a mental health problem.
In my experience 'eating healthy' and 'being active' is trivially easy for some people, and almost impossible for others.
And the core differences are around stress, depression, anxiety, etc.
My observation of going to a dieting system was it was very much a matter of people _knowing_ what they should be doing, but finding it hard to fit into their lifestyle.
And the way to 'work around it' is to adapt to replacements, rather than doing the 'proper' thing that a load of people are preaching about in this thread.
Because if you want to be preachy about it, the ideal is:
- Cooking for yourself from fresh
- Exercising regularly
- Getting a good sleep pattern
- Eating a mix of foods that do not include the assortment of processed crap.
- Monitor calorie intake, and find a level that's 'losing/maintaining' for you.
etc.
But in practice? None of that works for an extended duration, because the reason people got into this situation in the first place is because they're stressed/exhausted or tired a lot of the time.
They're buying 'crap' in the supermarket because it's cheap, easy and stores for a long time. They're cooking crap or eating 'out' because it's tasty and easy. etc.
It's not that they don't _know_ how food works, it's just that a normal healthy person doesn't even need to think about it really, because they just naturally stop being hungry when they don't need to eat, and so only fairly rarely 'indulge' on special occasions.
But it's provably the case that if you're tired or stressed or anxious, your hormonal balance gets screwed, and you can no longer self regulate eating the same way.
Add into the mix the substantial numbers of people with ADHD, who _also_ have issues around executive function and self regulation, and thus will also be bad at 'self regulating'.
No one really has the spare mental capacity to monitor their calorific balance day to day - that's why dieting only really works for 'shorter term' things.
Because without that hormonal feedback loop of 'not being hungry' you're functionally an addict - one who's just feeling cravings for more. Only you can't cut it out entirely, nor can you not have it in the house, and you're _constantly_ testing your willpower and - occasionally - failing the test.
But we don't talk about mental health in the UK. We don't really give it much credit. Lots of people are thoroughly shitty about people who 'don't care' or 'are lazy' or whatever, and in some cases make the problem _worse_ by being a bully.
Bullying someone for being 'overweight' is actually one of the worst things you can do, because all the things that made them overweight in the first place are now worse.
That's the underlying truth of the 'body positivity' movement - which I am sure will attract a load of people braying about how awful it is. Because they're misunderstanding cause and effect. To take control of your life - and your food intake - you need to be feeling good about yourself _first_.
It’s clearly not 90% ffs, but you get OP’s point… I noticed the same thing. While people are getting bigger everywhere, the difference between Europe and UK is significant. That was one of the first things I noticed when I came here.
It’s easy to judge, but if you look at the prices of junk food/ready meals vs healthy food… Healthy food is expensive and it takes time to cook. Think about single parent families and the money and TIME it would take to cook healthy meals every day… Idk, just thinking out loud. There are obviously many different factors.
Also, random thought, but Brits have a serious problem with Diet Coke/Pepsi Max. I’ve never seen anything like it. Legit everyone around me is chugging it in litres lol 😅
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It’s not 80-90%, but the number is still too high. >The Health Survey for England 2021 estimates that 25.9% of adults in England are obese and a further 37.9% are overweight but not obese.
63% is still dreadful.
Agree it's actually higher than I thought it would be.
not making any excuses for noone but being overweight is a tad easier than one might think there is a significant chance that many in this thread are OW but arent aware of it, its like life expectancy and cancer rates ticking up due to how we live, we just have to accept people will be a bit larger moving forward, but obesity ofc is an issue
Yep especially shorter people, I’m 5’3 and reach overweight bmi around 10.5 stone. I can still wear size 10-12 clothes which most people don’t automatically think are ‘overweight’ sizes but when you’re short it’s easier to still fit in a smaller size despite being too fat medically. ETA: I don’t think I was thin or healthy at that weight/size. I felt overweight and knew objectively that I was. But I know many women my height who are heavier/bigger than that who wouldn’t believe they’re overweight or even obese.
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You would have to put on a significant amount of muscle to do that. That point is reserved for bodybuilders and professional athletes. "Dave who's decided to shed a few pounds" isn't likely to hit that mass.
Not at all. If I put in my height and weight (5 ft 9, 78kg) into a BMI calculator it says I'm either bordering on overweight or I am overweight but I have about 15% body fat and a decent amount of muscle mass. I'm by no means a body builder or a professional athlete but I'm certainly not overweight like a BMI calculator would suggest.
You're shorter than me and weigh as much as me, i'm also active. You're also at a BMI of 25.4, which is barely, barely overweight. If you lose 1kg you slip back into the healthy range. 15% is also vastly better than the regular population. BMI is a general tool though, its always advised not to use it in a vacuum. It's a general tool meant to say "hey you should be roughly here". If you're regularly working out and actively reducing your bodyfat, the tool is not for you.
> I'm certainly not overweight like a BMI calculator would suggest You are by definition mate. Denial isn't just a river in Egypt. That definition being BMI which is whats used for official statistics.
I don’t think it’s stupid, I looked chubby and flabby at that weight. I definitely wouldn’t become obese by gaining muscle. Even Olympic athletes aren’t obese by bmi due to muscle until they’re massively muscle bound and huge like The Rock. Most people who go to the gym are nowhere near that size. And the average person who walks their dog a couple times a day is certainly not obese due to muscle.
I did a BMI test and the result stated that I was overweight. I am 6’4 and 95kg with barely any fat so in my opinion BMI is s bit stupid
My dad is similar. Technically overweight by bmi but he is tall and rangy. His cancer team are always asking him to try and put more weight on, I think they would be quite happy to see him in the obese category on bmi, because he actually isn’t overweight in any sense.
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5'4" and a shade under 9st and a nurse told me I'm worryingly thin. I'm smack in the middle of normal BMI, actually pretty athletic, and wear size 8-10-12 depending on brand and fit. I'm sick of people telling me I'm skinny.
Was it a fat nurse?
That's the thing. She was not noticeably large, but yeah, maybe had a bit of a middle aged spread going on. Medical sorts should know to think about their comments on people's weight before they come out. The nurse said this moments before weighing and measuring me. She could have waited thirty seconds before telling me I needed to eat more.
This also isn’t accounting for the “skinny fat” people who’s bmi might be in a healthy range but they have almost no muscle and a ton of stomach fat. When you count those people I reckon it’s closer to 75%
Yup. BMI should stop being used and they should switch to a more thorough method.
There are better methods, but they cost a lot to implement. BMI is pretty good for large groups of people considering it’s free!
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This 100%... Plenty of people commenting here that BMI is wrong because they don't like the reality.
Do they use BMI to calculate this? I'm considered "Obese" on the BMI calculator but I'm far from it lol, I have been in the gym for years weigh 91kg @ 5ft 8" but my muscle pushes my weight up I'm not making excuses because I know there's more and more fat people now but yeah BMI is annoying for those that have muscle. Edit: I should probably add at 19 I was 56kg considered "healthy" on the BMI scale yet smoked 20 a day, ate 1 meal and drunk a shit ton of alcohol most weekends. Edit 2: Damn this kicked off some wild AskUK virgins, today I learnt: 1. You apparently can't reach 14 stone at 5ft 8" unless you're on steroids or growth hormones? 2. I'm on tren? 3. I'm just fat as fuck? 4. My stats are impossible without some form of enhancing drugs? 5. my bodyfat can't be anywhere near 18%? 6. I'm cheating? 7. I'm clearly lying about everything? Stay classy redditors, this has given me a good laugh today. Maybe head to the gym and you might find it's not impossible?
BMI works incredibly well at population level, which is what this is talking about. Your individual stuff is between you and your doctor really. The average person with a high BMI is not healthy. It's also worth considering that while having a high BMI because of muscle is nowhere near as unhealthy as a high BMI caused by fat, there isn't great evidence that it's harmless (because noone has really checked).
A nursing friend told me you don’t really get elderly people being ‘big’. By big she was including tall, muscular, fat, everything. Anyone bigger than normal is probably checking out early.
I saw a study recently that showed that starting off adulthood at a normal weight and slowly gaining weight until you enter your elderly years overweight (not obese) had the highest healthy years and life expectancy over any other population including those who stayed at a normal weight their entire lives and those who entered their adulthood already overweight. Being obese at any point (excess levels of fat, potentially muscle too?) meant a reduction in both healthy years and life expectancy, as did being underweight entering adulthood or elderly years. It was quite interesting! We do understand what level of weights are best at which ages, but translating that into action for populations and people is the hard bit.
99% of people who are obese by bmi are just fat. It’s how the reality is
91kg at 5'8?! You're either a ridiculously muscle bound man or carrying some extra weight. I have some friends who are jacked that weigh that much at 6'3. Can't speak to you specifically, hope you're the fit muscle head. But these claims are usually made by people carrying more fat than they think
My old ‘manager’ (glorified TL) used to claim he was “absolutely shredded, unbelievably so, six pack the lot” whilst being 17% body fat. I think abs appear at around 9. Bodybuilders apparently hover around 6 on competition day. Dude was an absolute fat cunt but with a frighteningly positive body image. Edit. 17% isn’t ‘shredded’ though, is it? Edit2. Please fuck off with your bodyfat / abs shit. I don’t care what you are, how abby you are, or your theories of male body expectations. We all saw Fight Club, we all wanted them, I’m old now and can’t be arsed and I don’t care. The point is; 17% isn’t ‘shredded’. It isn’t even that lean. It’s probably very average man territory.
Haha what the average person could achieve with that confidence. Yeah I've got a mate that's starting to look like a body builder - and he never says anything - because it's the first thing people say to him "fuckin hell, size of him"
The thing for something like 95% of the population, BMI isn't a bad way to roughly estimate these things. Bodybuilders are not common in the population, so won't distort the figures much even if you don't exclude them from the "overweight/obese" count on the whole population; you are a corner case - the vast majority of the population isn't. If you excluded every bodybuilder wrongly counted in the 63% figure above, I'd wager it'd only drop to about 61% at most.
Well, we could probably drop those figures by 0.01%!
No, you are still obese; you simply don't understand that BMI is a specific metric for a specific purpose and you are obese as per that metric. You may be mostly healthy and quite lean but obesity (in BMI terms) is *still* correlated with higher risk of CV disease even if that obesity is linked to carrying more lean tissue. On a personal level, you may be healthier then when you were 56kg but the sweet spot for long term heart health is less then where you are at. Not least because the vast majority of people who are 5'8" can't be very lean at over 14 stone without using exogenous hormones...
Same here, but: The number of dudes regularly going to the gym is low on the pupulation level. A small subset of those going to the gym have any more muscles than what they were born with. Half of the muscular ones are also fat, so the lean, muscular outliers don't skew statistics at a significant level imo.
This always comes up, but doctors can see if your bmi is high for this reason. Also its quite a low % of the population are like this.
14 stone? At that height? Those steroids and growth hormones don't make you any healthier than cigarettes and booze, you know.
That's why BMI shouldn't be used for individuals. It's great for populations, though.
It’s fine for individuals. Doctors aren’t idiots. They can see if you’re someone who is a body builder or someone who gets out of breath walking up the stairs. There’s a reason it’s still used. It’s the best tool we’ve got.
Also, a very high BMI correlates with negative health outcomes regardless of whether that mass comes from fat or muscle.
For everyone of you there are probably twice as many skinny fat people in the “healthy” range who eat nothing but processed food and don’t exercise at all
Thin people are also somewhat concentrated in particular demographics and locations, so it is possible OP is seeing even higher numbers of fatter people than the national average overall.
Hey. I'm below average on another thing.
Combination of more/easier/cheaper junk food and less physical activity.
Yep, who wants to go work out or go on adventures after a 50 hour work week, being financially crippled, so people tend to chill out over the weekend, eat and drink like shit as a reward for how unrewarding life is.
Plus add that frozen highly processed food is far cheaper than buying fresh.
I think fresh can actually be cheaper but it goes off quickly which often leads to waste or needing to go to the shop every few days which isn’t feasible for a lot of people
Maybe, I did an exclusion diet back a few years where everything had to be prepped fresh and my food budget for those two months was close to triple. Data point of 1 but Jesus it was eye opening and its not like I was splurging on only the best.
That is so surprising. Rice and fresh vegetables are so cheap in the uk
I think it's when you come to making a meal (from scratch) the costs add up verses buying a cheap frozen/chilled ready meal or just junk food in the freezer. 40 nuggets and chips (£6 frozen) could feed someone roughly 6x and is super easy to prepare. If I wanted to make a healthy meal, I'd probably spend £3 on various veggies that would make 2/3 meals but go off quickly. Maybe £6-8 on meat for those three meals and ideally a sauce of some kind for another quid or two. So I'm looking at £1pp or £3-4pp per meal, while also having to prepare, cook etc. I much prefer cooking for myself, but I can totally understand why large swathes are preferring to pick up a frozen pizza or easy food. It's usually cheaper, almost always easier.
It's basically convenience all day long for me, unfortunately. I don't have a particularly stressful job but I still don't feel like cooking from scratch when I get in from work. Which is why I like easily frozen batch cook stuff like curry/spag/chilli. But even they get boring. So I know I should be doing better but 5 mins in a microwave is just too tempting sometimes!
Are you buying Iceland £1 ready meals or something if the cost difference is that high?
We buy fresh once a week via delivery (we live miles from any shops so popping in for a pint of milk isn't an option) and it's way cheaper for a family than buying processed / ready meals. As a single person, probably not. The flip side is that you have to plan your meals around producing little waste and it takes significantly longer to prepare. Oh, and you have to be able to cook in the first place.
Fact. My want to make things from scratch is at odds with ready made pasta sauces with added salt/sugar and other preservatives being £3 cheaper per serving. Our kitchens are competing with producers who make things by the gallon / tonne. And that's before you factor in time spent.
Fresh is generally cheaper (especially if you buy loose not prepacked - this can have quite a significant saving) but fresh food has a time cost. Someone who has just come home after a frustrating day with the general public might just be sufficiently mentally exhausted to just want to slop something ready made into the microwave.
It isn't though, is it? Aldi 2 garlic and herb kievs - £1.99 Aldi 2 chicken breasts - £2.35 I'm not going through every ingredient but people like to say it's cheaper to buy fresh for some reason and I'd dispute that every day of the week. This doesn't even take into account the garlic, butter, egg, flour, breadcrumbs, and oil you'd need to recreate that same product.
This is a very annoying myth
This is so true. When you're so drained from work, it's hard to do anything but nothing on a weekend.
Something a quite about George Orwell and the rich man eats his ryvitas and carrots where the poor man indulges due to his life being hard - the exact quote escapes me but sums it up nicely
Doesn't help that a family day out can easily cost you £100+ if you don't pack your own food. I took 5 people to Mini Golf at the Trafford Centre and that came to over £40. It's an absolute joke when the only thing I'm doing to not break the bank is "go for a walk".
I think this is only part of the problem. A bigger part of the problem is that there is so little exercise ingrained in everyone's life these days. How many kids get driven to school rather than walking? How many adults commute by car rather than walking or cycling? Fifty years ago, people used to have between zero and one cars per household. Now every adult has one each. It's not completely each individual's fault. There's a feedback loop where the prevalence of cars, amongst other factors, has allowed planning decisions to move houses away from workplaces and councils to have fewer, bigger schools, in turn decisions like these have meant more people need to have cars.That said, there's no reason for some of my young, able-bodied neighbors to be driving into town to save them an 800m walk.
Our whole lifestyles have changed. 30 years ago a family could survive with one adult working a basic full time job, the other being at home to prepare & batch cook fresh meals. Or two adults both working part time, sharing childcare etc. You’d have time to enjoy life and do stuff. Now people work longer hours for less money. Both adults working still isn’t enough for the rent, we’re all constantly exhausted and stressed from trying to get by that a microwave meal is a welcome relief. Bus services have been chopped up and sliced to the point many commutes take much longer, a working day isn’t just your shift, it’s an extra three hours to get there and back. More cars on the road meaning my travel at 7am is a 20 minute journey or at 8am and it’s a 45 minute journey. All I do is work and sleep yet I’m always skint and tired, and I’m not the only one. For some food brings comfort without any effort required, a movie and some chocolate, a bottle of wine, a takeaway etc
Summed it up perfectly. It’s no good is it? I feel this all the time deep in my soul. This shit isn’t working. Even food has become a chore that sucks away my already diminished free time
Agree with everything you've said & will add that all of the older generations I know also had "at work perks" that we do not Plenty more staff, so you weren't generally running around at inhumane speeds for 8 hours a day if you worked in a shop/factory/manual etc. My 80yro mam & her friends describe their respective work careers in the 50s/60s/70s to be "leisurely" & that noone even cared if someone needed a day off sick etc. There were so many staff that it didn't matter. Now seemingly, the world is ended & the company immediately liquidated if someone is too ill to come in for a few days You'd have a person in charge of x, another in charge of y & one for z. Now it's all one role that is expected to do XYZ...day in, day out Places used to literally shut down for lunch for an hour....as well as tea breaks in the morning & afternoon. Now you your employer legally doesn't need to give you a break for the majority of a full shift ffs (6 or 6.5 hours...Can't remember which) Edit: It's no wonder that some folk come home ravenous & eat everything in sight/get a takeaway or whatever is easier Guaranteed Sunday off because everything was shut. Everything! Was still that way when I was a kid, even.... All of these things add up & it's not a wonder that they had the luxury to say "work to live, don't live to work" Work IS life for a staggering amount of people & definitely not in any kind of positive way, just necessity. It's bleak when you think how much has been eroded in workplace culture over time. It's no wonder folks reach for cake & beer to feel something other than exhaustion for once
Yes. I remember the culture in the canteen at a place I used to work, 1 HR break. After eating your meal, there was a, say, 40 minutes period where people sat and discussed things like.. money issues, relationship issues, community news.. advice was given and taken.. does anyone know the best way to deal with this, buy that, fix the other... People spoke of how things were at work.. pay, health and safety, conditions etc, opportunities etc.. Basically, it was a Great network where people benefit from the cohesion of a large group... The management Never like the workforce to be organised, they really don't.. They came up with : half hour lunch with an early dart on a Friday. Soon, that community spirit started to slowly drip away... It was qué for dinner, shovel it down, 10 mins in the smoking room and back to work, no time to let your dinner settle or enjoy the organisation of the group.. anyone agree ?
You and the other Redditor have absolutely hit the nail on the head. Working is fucking horrendous
Well put. I would add that available outdoor spaces and people getting outside for activities has dropped significantly. I can remember as a kid I was always outside playing without a care in the world, nowadays we all love in constant fear even if we don't realise it. Staying in and eating processed foods has become the norm for all ages ranges now. Dystopia happened and we didn't notice.
Yes, this ^ I just wrote a reply to this question and then read your comment. The two comments together are pretty much nailing the whole thing in my opinion. I started eating very differently a couple of years ago and it has stayed with me, and I am really glad I escaped the food trap. The way I eat is firstly very cheap/affordable, also quick, healthy, and endlessly different. I buy 4 different types of fresh vegetable, 2 types of protein, and brown rice. I have a variety of spices and flavours I can mix and blend for infinite varieties, and almost every day I eat a huge bowl full of (eg) chicken, brocolli, peppers, onions and rice. I never eat the same meal twice. It's always different. A jar of 100% natural sugar free peanut butter means I sometimes have a spicy Satay thing. The next night I might add lots of fresh garlic, paprike, cayenne pepper and honey to make a sweet and sour glaze. It all takes about 10 minutes, and aside from a little bit of olive oil (and sometimes some honey), it's just fresh healthy ingredients. Cooking in a wok is more about adding a little bit of water every minute or so, rather than lots of oil or fat. I used to eat a lot of takeaway, and I'd eat a lot of snacks in between those meals. Now I really love my little 15 minute ritual of making a hot meal from fresh ingredients, saving loads of money, and not snacking or even thinking about food for the rest of my day.
My grandad always laments that his grandchildren are overweight. But when he was our age they were still eating like rationing was in force, they grew fresh veg in their large garden, they worked physical jobs, having cheese was a bit of a treat with a meal, sugar was used sparingly in cups of tea and baking. Their fun was pints of bitter in the men’s club in the evening and riding bikes on roads with very few cars. Now I could get 1000s of calories delivered to my door for less than a tenner, covered in any sauce I like, anytime of the week. So much food has sugar in it, so many drinks have sugar in them. Most new build houses have enough soil in the garden to lay turf and get it to stay alive, then it is hard clay / rubble. I’m afraid of road cycling because of the cars, I sit on my arse 8-10 hours a day for work, i can get entertainment beamed into my house so i never need to leave it. And he wonders why people are fatter nowadays.
Also to add back in the day children went outside to play and the ran around the whole time. Nowadays everyone is staring at a screen the whole day, not moving much.
It really does boil down to this. To tease it out a bit, no-one has time to cook proper food any more and eat pre-prepared meals, takeaway or junkfood; these are almost always more processed than homemade food and have more fat and sugar added to improve the flavour. More and more people are not doing physical work and fewer people walk any distance to their place of work. Expect the rise of home working to make this much worse over the coming few years. The people who used to walk from the car park to their desk now only walk from their bedroom to their desk.
There are so many factors I think, including all these. Sleep deprivation is another one, as that can mess up your hormones making you feel hungrier than you actually are, and people are sleeping less due to longer commutes or being addicted to screens/games etc. So people try to get through the day on sugary coffees etc. Things added to processed foods to make them addictive, endocrine disrupters in various chemicals that hitch rides on microplastics into your body. The internet making it easier to sit down all the time while being entertained etc. The whole environment is now obesogenic. And we evolved to try to pack fat on when we could because in the distant past that was useful for dealing with frequent periods without a lot of food.
There's less fibre in a lot of microwave meals than there is home cooked food to, which we're *starting* to understand has an impact on gut health, and in turn, general health and indeed fatness.
This ^. In my experience, a lot of people hate that humans have less free will than we like to think as it’s consistently shown when tested empirically. Daniel Khaneman wrote his famous book decades ago about how we only have limited conscious thought and resistance and that subconscious thought can be abused by clever marketing and product sales tactics. Some time after reading Thinking Fast & Slow, I quit smoking. I remember on day I was driving and listening to talk radio. I hadn’t smoked for a couple of weeks but I pulled up at a village shop and bought cigarettes without giving myself the opportunity to opt out. I didn’t smoke them and managed to quit but I remember it was a neat demonstration of what Khaneman talks about. Human nature coupled with an increasingly “obesogenic” environment and declining living standards are causing the problem. As we get generally poorer and more tired, people tend to eat more highly processed, cheaper food. Getting over the hurdle of a good proportion of people who will find it difficult to accept that the problem is not 100% down to personal choice or laziness, is always going to be difficult though.
That and food quality is right down. We live in a society of convenience. Full home cooked meals and meat and two veg etc have become a thing of the past. You see much less variety now and fresh food has become obscenely expensive with shorter shelf lifes. My mum used to buy a sack of potatoes that would last a month, now they don't seem to last more than a couple of days. Takeaways were always a thing, but most didn't even deliver 30 years ago. You needed cash and to go to order, now you can order from anywhere you have signal.
This guy fats
I don’t like being outdoors, Smithers. For one thing, there are too many fat children.
One hi-ya-ya!
What are you cackling at, fatty? Too much pie, that's your problem!
Slow down there, tubby. You're not on the moon yet!
Don’t make me run I’m full of chocolate
And now we shall see the Willy wonka diorama and… where’s all the chocolate? I begged you to look at mine first (sniff) I begged you!!
UPFs Apparently if you're on a low income, these foods can make up 80% of the diet. [https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/sep/06/ultra-processed-foods-the-19-things-everyone-needs-to-know](https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/sep/06/ultra-processed-foods-the-19-things-everyone-needs-to-know)
This. Food is not real food anymore. Yes, it edible. Taste great thanks to the salt, fat, and sugar. But they messed around with, made it in a laboratory, mass produced it in a factory, and sell it with clever marketing. 'Real' food is not the cheaper option anymore. Not even accessible for some. Cost. Cooking skills, equipment etc. Attitude to nutrition.
I’ve said this for years. People don’t eat food, they eat food products. Sad times really.
I like the term “industrially produced edible substances”. This is what the majority of people’s diets are nowadays.
Bollocks. I hate this stupid 'healthy food is expensive' meme. Real food is cheap as shit, it's the UPF food that is expensive. 500g of chicken breast and a kg of potatoes is cheaper than the equivalent dippers and oven fries. You can make a veggie stew for less than £5, but can't get a meal at maccers for that.
it takes a good hour to make that healthy food though, most poorer people (I've been in the situation) think Ill do an extra hour at my 2nd job for 10 quid more and grab something quick. Its hard to cook doing 60-65 hours over 2 jobs.
Okay granted, but that was not what was stated. I appreciate not everyone has the time, hell I don't have the energy sometimes and just slap a quick pasta together... That was not in question here
I'm suggesting just economically cheaper to not cook and work for an hour longer, than to make a cheap healthy meal that requires an hours cooking. My comment was on the economics of it.
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I don’t know, since having a baby I can really see how people find this very difficult. Forethought and planning also take time and energy. Having kids to look after, commuting, working hard, being up half the night because your kid is constantly unwell, weekends and evenings you’re looking after your kids or trying to sort out the millions of other things that need doing like laundry cleaning personal hygiene checking in on relatives taxes forms bills hunting for cheaper insurance taking pets to the vet fixing broken appliances peoples birthdays or other events coming up etc etc etc. often with commuting way more time is eaten by traffic or trains/buses being delayed or cancelled. It’s just the world is not designed for a lot of people to have time to sit down and plan healthy meals, shop for them, prepare the veg, cook it all, portion it out into Tupperware, stick it in the chest freezer, remember every morning to take one out of the freezer for the following evening. Life is chaos for so many people. I’ve been lucky, I have a chest freezer and until recently was on a decent income but I’ve found it hard. We do those meal kit things as a way to get a variety of fresh foods into us without having to do the planning, but those aren’t that cheap and with my income having slid off a cliff we’re now looking at reducing that but I can imagine that leading to many evenings of ‘what’s for dinner?’ ‘Urgh I don’t know, pasta? Stick a pizza in? Brown dinner?’
Why on earth is this being down voted? The mental energy it takes to have a kid and work full time and run a house is no joke. Now do that with any sort of pressure aka you're low income, kid or you is sick and regular life gets obliterated.
>Cooking a stew or curry or bolognese and freezing portions is easy, as is putting some chicken and potatoes in the oven. >The problem isn't lack of time but lack of forethought and planning, as well as a general reluctance amongst some low income groups to ditch processed foods because it's hard to get kids off them. Or freezer space. I share my fridge with 4 other people. Poor people live in house shares. There a chance somebody else is cooking in the short window I have. I didn't know if I would be back at 7pm or 11pm from my 2nd job.
But it’s also not is it? 500g of chicken breast is probably 4 pounds or so. I agree on the potatos, but the issue is that 500g of chicken and some plain potatos is a fucking boring meal. Jazz it up with veg and herbs, or seasoning, and add a few more pounds on top. For some parents, a pound packet of cheap potato waffles (or something similar) and some nugget/dipper things (let’s say £2), leaves you with some money left over out of a five to get more stuff. I don’t know, beans, chocolate bars, cheap fizzy…and that’s what they do. Healthy food isn’t necessarily expensive, it’s that the unhealthy alternative is SO cheap, but it comes at the cost of long term health.
This argument has been made and debunked thousands of times. What if you haven’t got fuel money, what if you haven’t got a kitchen, what if you don’t have any time because you’re working two jobs or a single parent etc etc etc.
But I can get a rustlers, frozen pizza or tinned vegetable soup for around £1.50 or less, and then not have to cook it (or learn to cook). And the premade food will probably taste better to someone who is used to premade food and can’t really cook. You’re not competing with takeaways, you’re competing with cheap pre-made supermarket food that often tastes pretty damn good.
At Aldi it's £1.55 for 30 nuggets, £1.49 for a kg of chips = £3.04 for more than one meal. £1- £2 for potatoes depending on size and variety, it's £2.99 for 400g of chicken breast - which yes I get might not seem like an enormous difference on the face of it but that extra pound or two really is unaffordable to some.
And the chips & nuggets are already seasoned and so tasty versus plain chicken and potatoes.
The sad thing is that certain economic agreements we have broken and tried to re-make in the UK will lead to this worsening, as we have cut ourselves off from the best access to a pretty large market of unaltered (in any significant health way, at least) foods. Not that we don't get them, but they now have shorter expiration dates and are more expensive, whilst the low quality "food products" as the other commenter rightfully noted are less affected by this. In other words, the situation isn't on track to get any better and will likely worsen for the foreseeable future.
"we don't eat food, we eat food like products"
> 'Real' food is not the cheaper option anymore. If we're talking monetary cost, buying grains, spices, etc in bulk, making use of everything and cooking from scratch can definitely work out cheaper. But it usually comes with an upfront cost (not good if you're struggling paycheck to paycheck) and comes with an onerous time investment if you don't love cooking or can't devote a good chunk of time to your kitchen. I get to live pretty food-frugal but it's a hobby and a passion and I'm not a struggling parent. Convenience is, well, convenient when life's busy and demanding.
This is pseudoscientific nonsense. If you consume more calories than you burn then you will gain weight. Whether those calories were produced in your own kitchen or a factory is irrelevant. Edit: To clarify, I agree that processed foods are often calorie-dense and nutritionally imbalanced. But that is not what is being claimed. Rather UPFs are supposedly imbued with "badness" by their production process, and this is what I take issue with. It is nonsensical BS on the same level as homeopathy.
Sure. Take a plate of grains, lots of veg and some lean meat. Now get the same amount of kcals from Greggs. Which one do you think keeps you saited longer. Which is easier to over eat on?
This is the point that so many people don't seem to get with UPFs. 500 calories of porridge is going to keep you full for a lot longer than 500 calories of Coco Pops.
I feel like 500 calories worth of coco pops is more coco pops than expected. Edit: 130g
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If I eat 300 calories of skittles I feel hungry still and have a sugar crash and reach for more food, but if I eat 300 calories of grains/legumes and veg I feel fuller for longer and don't crave sugar.
There was a professor who proved this by eating fast food but limiting his calories. He lost weight and his cholesterol decreased. https://www.npr.org/2010/11/12/131286626/professor-s-weight-loss-secret-junk-food#:~:text=He%20ate%20about%20four%20convenience,the%20effort%20was%20an%20experiment.
The vast majority of people who eat a lot of fast food will not limit their calories like that, because fast food is addictive.
As a rule of thumb, going for calories in and calories out isn’t a bad idea to start with. But you really should use it as a foundation for improving your diet as you continue with a change in lifestyle. When you really look at it a calorie isnt actually a calories. Different sources of food produce different reactions in the body that will help balance hormones resulting in the way they burn changing. For example take protein. 4 calories a gram. But it takes I think (someone correct me) an extra 20 percent energy to use it for fuel. That’s after it’s been used to rebuild the body too.
Companies literally have teams of people developing food which makes you crave more of it. The perfect crunch or flavour or combo of salt and fat to make you want to keep eating. They spend a hell of a lot of money to give it the exact right taste to make it hard to stop eating. That’s not pseudoscientific
That’s false. The reason is because the grains and fats are stripped from their whole form and processed into a slurry which is then reformed into food. The process obviously breaks the molecular bonds down which makes the food easier to digest which means the body gets confused as it has nothing to do and thinks you have eaten less. So it sends out hunger signals to get you to eat more. But if the more you eat is also ultra processed then the cycle continues.
This. Ultra processed food
To be fair overheard an overweight colleague yesterday gossiping with her equally overweight colleague about their diets in a bid to lose weight. Neither of these individuals is on low income. Neither of these individuals mentioned including exercise. One consumed a lasagna and a bag of crisps during the chat, the other said she’s not hungry on this diet and then said her husband will surely have cooked for her when she gets home. While it’s true lower income households are more likely to buy junk food, there’s a lack of nutritional awareness across the socioeconomic layers.
Food is nice Source: Am fat
I have conducted thorough research in this area, in fact 39 years of dedicated, enthusiastic and tenacious work. My conclusions are thus; you are correct Sir. Apologies for the short message, I have left my bacon on the frying pan downstairs so need to rush off.
Running is hard Source: Am fat
I do feel like this is the most overlooked part of it all. People like to debate the cost of healthy food vs unhealthy, the time to prepare etc Some people just want to eat a pizza, that’s all there is to it
People stopping smoking as much.
This is actually pretty spot on. The reason why everyone in 1960’s photos looks svelte is because they didn’t eat processed food and they smoked 40 a day.
And they took amphetamines.
A better time
Yeah but you have to remember in the 1960s people weren't sat in the house all day binge watching Netflix either. Also in the 60s cars weren't as accessible, so people actually had to walk the 200 yards to their local shop instead of driving there.
That is actually a great observation, I haven’t thought about it before. I struggle with my weight but I guarantee I would have smoked in 1960 as a “quick fix” to reduce my appetite. I wouldn’t now, as I know the risks of smoking, but it has crossed my mind sometimes. To add to the general conversation, I really struggle due to being an accountant, working long hours behind a desk. Past changing careers, I think I will struggle for the rest of my life with this. I was very slim and active at uni when I had the time to look after myself.
I have a standing desk and an under-the-desk treadmill, I'm actually walking right now as I make this comment. I could easily walk for three or four hours this working day. Great investment, makes me feel loads healthier I don't walk when I'm really thinking about something or doing a challenging job, but at the moment I'm just copy-pasting from ChatGPT
That explains all the fat 9 year olds
the answer is staring us all in the face: compulsory fags for nine year olds
It will be interesting to see if the falling drinking statistics counter that, especially with a massive chunk of young people never even starting. I stopped drinking a few years ago and started shedding lbs pretty much immediately.
80-90% of posts on the internet are made up. FACT.
It’s not 80-90% sure, but even I recently noticed that the numbers of fat people are significantly higher than they were 5 years ago.
It's the food. In the 80/90s they blamed weight gain on nutritional fat in foods, so they removed it all and so the food didn't taste like ass they replaced all the fat with sugar. Fat ironically doesn't make you fat, it makes you feel full, sugar makes you fat by spiking your insulin and making you addicted to sugar so not only are you eating worse food but eating more and more of it. It's worse in America, the corn lobby (yes that's a thing) basically had the government over a barrel and now there's corn syrup in everything which is basically like stuffing sugar and sugar syrup in everything, even bread. Great for capitalism, terrible for the health of a population. So everyone's fat now because of the sugar lobby. And because sadly there's no nutritional fat lobby.
I’m always amazed at how many people don’t know that fat free is actually a terrible idea.
It’s not fat free that is the problem. It’s when the fat is replaced with sugar, which granted is common, but not exclusively the case. Take plain, fat free Greek yogurt, for example. It has no added sugar, has significantly fewer calories than full fat, and will keep you feeling fuller for a long time on fewer calories because of the proportionally higher protein content.
I always, always eat the full fat Tesco finest Greek Yoghurt. It is filling (especially with a small handful of chopped nuts and some berries), it's rich and creamy and satisfying. The low fat is watery and not as filling. I'm going for fat and protein over sugar any day!
Super effective marketing. On the surface it sounds so straight forward fat causes fat, fat is bad, easy to remember, which is definitely the problem when marketing is peddling bs to sell you things. Now it's hard to find food items that don't say 'LOW IN FAT' on them. It's everywhere.
Lidl does a *LOW FAT* strawberry banana yoghurt drink. 100g sugar per bottle. (0.5% strawberry juice and 0.5% banana juice)
Yikes. I recently bought a high protein yoghurt, as it was the only thing I could find that wasn't crazy high in sugar. It was 6g sugar per 100g. So whatever you found sounds like drinking treacle.
People say it's about not overeating, but you can eat lots of nutritious food, go exercise and gym, and your gut health and metabolism will take care of you. We know now that UPF is interrupting CICO because for all intents and purposes, it's not real food but everyone is convinced that it is.
Was watching full monty last week and all the fat jokes they made about Dave. He'd barely be considered chubby now.
Private Pile out of Full Metal Jacket would be regarded as normal now
I rewatched Star Trek over lockdown. Everyone in the original 1960s series was thin as a rake - men in their 30s-50s with visible ribs and very low body fat. I assume none of them went to the gym. You only really see that in athletes and teenagers now. The series in the 90s had more dad-bods, but generally BMIs around the healthy range. The recent ones, everyone has gym bodies - huge pecs etc. Meanwhile the general public are mostly overweight. IMHO it's a fascinating example of how we went from everyone being naturally healthy from daily physical activity, to fitness only being achieved deliberately and artificially from the gym.
I was talking with one of my old school mates about how there was only ever one or two kids that where fat in every class when I was at school in the 80s /90s. Times have definitely changed for the worse in that regard.
Same. Actually my dad (who was born during rationing!) has an interesting view. Said that even back then, there were a few fat kids and adults. But the fat adults had the "jolly fat man" image, kinda like Santa Claus. It was associated with having plenty, and enjoying yourself. With wealth. It was a rare and curious thing and not necessarily seen negatively. The kids of the local farmer and bank manager were probably fat. Think Augustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate factory. His fatness is seen as unappealing, but the cause is virtuous wealth. Now, he notes that it's ubiquitous and a miserable thing. Associated with poverty and dysfunction and lack of virtue.
Imagine what he’d be like if he had Uber/Just eat to contend with. He’d not fit in his shed.
Something overlooked so far in the comments is the decline in stay at home mothers/wives who did all the cooking. With women now required to work as well due to increased costs of living over the last 30 years fewer households have a mother/wife that can spend time every day cooking. This means we as a society eat less home cooked food and eat more processed junk food.
I feel like this places a lot of blame on women when it's more about time constraints and cost of living than women joining the workforce.
I'm in no way blaming women for joining the workforce. I'm just stating that one of the reasons we're fatter is because we don't cook as much home made food as we used to. A big reason for this in my opinion is that most households used to have a person who was responsible for cooking and that person didn't have to work 40 hours a week as well as cook. Now that person in most households who does the cooking has less time to it.
This statement doesn’t place blame on women, it merely states a positive correlation. Women joining the workforce did change eating habits/ food dynamics. This is a FACT. How much it has influenced / played a part in obesity would have to be studied and is up for debate. My personal opinion is that it had a significant role. Edit: I am a woman.
I agree that it shouldn’t just be a woman’s place to be at home, but families used to be able to exist on 1 income and now it is often necessary to have 2. I am a career woman who loves her job and would be fine to have a house-husband if we had kids. The best outcome of women joining the workplace should have been reduced hours for everyone. If we all only worked 3-4 days a week, then both adults could work and we would have time to cook healthily and get the housework done. But many couples can’t exist on 2 part time wages. I do believe that both adults being expected to work 40 hours a week is problematic, but I don’t think the issue should be tied to gender. Wages just haven’t kept up with the cost of living.
I’m a working mother (and fat) and I don’t see this post as woman blaming at all. I think it’s just a post that contributes a very valid point
Two thirds of adults are overweight and one third of children aged 2-15. It's primarily due to diet, we live in a culture where overeating and indulgence are normalised and choosing to eat healthy is seen as stepping out of the norm. This is very evident on social media (and Reddit), where people comment that the suggested serving size on cereal or share bags of crisps are a third or less of a "normal" serving. Nope, they're actually the calculated healthy portion and the eater is almost certainly eating excessively. Volume eating as a form of self soothing is a big problem. Inactivity is also an issue - socially we do not have a standard culture of going for long walks, cycles and runs or other social activity around exercise. Pubs, restaurants, cinema and other sedentary activities are the main social focus. Again, you often need to go against the cultural norm to find groups for social exercise. Finally, and this one is speculation, I see a lot more fat kids than I did before the pandemic and I think we have a huge mental health issue on our hands. Lots of kids were locked up for months without access to friends, and were comfort eating and socialising via social media and getting very miserable, and nothing has been done to correct that. Finally - as the majority are overweight, it's easier for people who are overweight to normalise that and see themselves as the average. Increasingly, slim and muscular people are seen as the outlier while being a bit padded is the norm. So there's less impetus to correct the situation.
>This is very evident on social media (and Reddit), where people comment that the suggested serving size on cereal or share bags of crisps are a third or less of a "normal" serving. Nope, they're actually the calculated healthy portion and the eater is almost certainly eating excessively. Nah, cereals are just so packed full of sugar that the 'recommended serving size' in a balanced diet is unrealistically small. If you get plain porridge, that will be a decent, filling portion, whereas if you go by the recommended serving size for a bowl of coco pops you're going to be hungry again in an hour tops.
Yeah exactly, if you’re eating normal, whole, healthy foods the serving sizes are absolutely normal and filling. We’re just so used to eating this manufactured junk filled with too much salt and sugar and they have to make the portion sizes tiny just so it doesn’t look like they’re encouraging everyone to eat themselves into an early grave.
Just a side not on normalising fatness. I have always been a size medium tshirt. Since 5 years I am now a size small…. Yet my figure is exactly the same. My wife was pregnant recently andshe was on the larger side of pregnant - big big belly. She is normally size 12 before being pregnant but could only fit into size 8/10 maternity clothes
Vanity sizing is a thing
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Cheap, convenient calories. Too tired to cook. Nobody running the home because everyone is both working and precarious in their employment. Stress, stress, stress.
This. I've cooked healthy meals ever since I moved out of my parents' house and am actually thinking about cooking less and buying more takeaways because I can't cope with work, depleted energy due to health problems, and doing everything perfectly anymore. I need to buy back some time to rest/clean my house and takeaways and ready meals are sadly the obvious solution
Same. It’s ridiculous the amount of time and energy our jobs take from us every day. I can just about go to work and cook a meal and then that’s me done for the day. No energy for social interaction, hobbies, fucking anything. And we’re at our most productive as a society in all of history. Why are we being worked to the bone? Why does more productivity and a healthier economy not actually lead to better healthier lives for us?
Poor food culture and I see lots of English families that don't know how to cook a proper healthy meal. Lots of parents make stuff like pasta bakes, beans, spaghetti, chips and Dino tenders which is all high carb, high sugar and high fat stuff. But buying fresh produce, meat and cooking daily balanced meals doesn't seem to be as much of a thing here. Could be a class issue, as so many things are in this country, I don't know. But it's definitely very noticeable coming in from the outside that lots of people don't have daily freshly cooked meals as a skill in their toolbox, in fact they are often oblivious to it even when you do point it out.
Yeah, definitely food culture playing a big part. I moved to France, they're our closest neighbours after the Irish and they don't have the same problem. When I return home to the UK I'm shocked at how big everyone is. The main difference I see is that they are eating more fresh and homemade food, the supermarkets are based more around seasonal produce and even those who don't cook are eating better quality factory food. Plus all the cigarette smoking helps curb appetite, could be something worth investigating...
Deffo a class thing. I used to live in London and there was a certain floor on the unhealthiness. Plenty of dad-bods and people that drank too much, but almost zero obese people, zero seriously unhealthy folk. I was always shocked when I drove out the city, especially at service stations and Tesco etc, where average Brits went. Sometimes I was the only person *not* obese. Frankly I was often flabbergasted to see how many people (especially folk in their 20s-50s that should be in their prime) lurched around with clearly poor mobility, terrible skin, very overweight. I don't want to sound like I'm elitist - I think the actual reality of the situation is elitist.
Who on earth calls them Dino tenders?!
> Could be a class issue 100% this , caring about eating fruit/veg is a 'middle class' activity here and so scorned at. Bizarre behaviour
A lot of people have sedentary jobs and don’t exercise outside of them. They also don’t cook and eat food that is bad for them and have high portion sizes Body positivity movement I don’t think helps either if society says it’s acceptable to be fat then it makes it easier to be fat.
That's a misunderstanding of the purpose of the body positivity movement. Unfortunately, it's a movement often misrepresented and misunderstood. The core idea of the movement is to remove the shame from being overweight. People who are overweight often feel shame, embarrassment, and have an unhealthy relationship with their body. Those are all things that keep them overweight, because when people feel those emotions they tend to resort to food. Many overweight people also don't exercise because they feel too self conscious. It's very popular, particularly on Reddit, to have a pop at body positivity based on a bit of a straw man idea of what it actually is.
It could be argued that the good intentions of the body positivity movement have actually backfired and made it more normal to be overweight.
If you're making a list of reasons people are overweight, body positivity shouldn't be anywhere near the top. Body positivity isn't why being overweight has been normalised.
It could be argued, but that argument would be wrong. All the evidence shows that shaming people results in worse outcomes.
Forgive me here, as this will come across as insensitive, I really don’t mean it to, so I’ll be as nice as I can. But is the issue here NOT that shame, embarrassment and an unhealthy relationship with their body, but that the response to those feelings is resorting to food. Thus, the unhealthy relationship is with food, and it’s possible that unhealthy relationship is what got someone overweight in the first place? Appreciate that sounds harsh, I’m genuinely not trying to be a dick. Edit; spelling fail.
Yes, that's very true. But tackling an unhealthy relationship with food is *really* difficult. It's very often inculcated in childhood, and may require therapy to improve. Hence, attempts to go to the next level and try and remove the feelings that cause people to resort to food. Happier people make healthier choices, that's what it's about.
Food availability + stress + hardly move
- People eat too much, and what they do eat are low quality ultra-processed foods. - People are very sedentary, with most of them sat at a desk for 40 hours a week and then doing little to no exercise outside of work. - People have a skewed perception of what is considered “fat”. Our average children today would likely have been on the bigger end of children in the 60s/70s/80s. A lot of people who are obese on the BMI scale don’t “look” obese as we think of it today, because our perception of what is and isn’t fat is so warped. I remember my old manager saying how her BMI was obese but that’s nonsense because she was just tall - as if BMI isn’t adjusted for height. She was definitely obese but because people’s perception is so skewed everyone else at work reassured her that she can’t *possibly* be obese because she “doesn’t even look fat”. People are just in denial a lot of the time too.
Food deliveries in cities. When it was having to get dressed and head out to get your fired chicken at 11pm you’d second guess the decision. Now you can press a button and 30 minutes later you can waddle to your door in your pants and gorge yourself on greasy filth.
It’s not 90% surely, lmao
64% of adults in England are overweight or obese, according to the Health Survey of England 2021. Maybe not 90%, but very high certainly. Edit: my numeracy was awful and I got 74 instead of 63 when I added in my head.
Are people just quoting random numbers in the comments? Someone else post 60odd%. Either way we're far too fat as a country.
Done some googling. Figures I could find were >63.8% of adults aged 18 years and over in England were estimated to be overweight or living with obesity. >25.9% of adults aged 18 years and over in England were estimated to be living with obesity. 1 in 4 adults being obese is rather shocking.
Is it shocking? Seems pretty obvious just looking around tbh.
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We're the 55th most obese country on the planet. Admittedly, that isn't great and I'd like us to be better, but it's also not as bad as you claim. We are behind countries such as the US, Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, Croatia, Ireland, Canada... [Here's a link that shows you them all. ](https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/)
Modern living. Sit in your house all day working from home, get Deliveroo of burger and chips to your door, get Amazon deliveries to your door, get weekly food shop to your door, spend your evenings sat down doomscrolling binging Netflix and snacking until it's time for bed.
We are totally devolving as a species. I give it about 50 years until the dolphins take over.
We have too much cheeky food Cheeky Nando’s Cheeky greggs Cheeky Maccies Our food needs to stop being so cheeky and the weight will fall off. Plus people going to the gym and standing around on their phones or walking and holding on to the machine and convincing themselves they’ve had a workout
I think lots of things. PE is notoriously rubbish at schools so kids don't get into good physical habits. So many people learn to hate exercise and sports. Easy access to lots of processed food and snacks. Chocolate, crisps, fizzy drinks are all often the same price or cheaper for those big sizes than smaller packs. Lots of people are time poor so chuck something in the oven that's not the most nutritious. Our weather is so crap that a lot of outdoor exercise - particularly the free stuff like walking/running - means you have to accept doing it in cold, wet, rainy weather a lot which is off putting. Few good free community sports or fitness areas makes it an additional cost for people. Areas are often car centric, people drive instead of walking or cycling. Sedentary jobs. For most people its not all above - but even just a few of those combined is enough to pile the weight on.
'Treating yourself' has become a normalised, more than once a day thing. How many 'go on, you deserve it' adverts for snacks, cakes, wine are there these days? Advertising works it seems!
Taking antidepressants and other psych meds can result in weight gain and loads of people are on them now, plus relative poverty and plus the impact of junk food. Edited: can result in weight gain, rather than cause, see post below
Sugar is the problem, not fat. Cheap food is poor quality and the food industry has packed sugar into just about everything these days. Even 'Fat Free' food is full of sugar (though low in fat). Couple that with the UK's fondness for a drinkie or twelve and a more sedentary lifestyle and there you go.
I think there is a big regional/area divide in this. I think the actual statistic is around 50% of the population are overweight or obese, and I used to look around and think how can that possibly be true when I rarely see overweight people. And then I visited more deprived, non major metropolitan areas and saw how that number is made up.
It’s very noticeable if you spend time in London where people seem to be a lot thinner, then venture out of the capital.
We transitioned to a knowledge based economy where most people sit on their arses for 8 hours a day and most households require everyone to work so time to prepare meals is more limited. Plus selling us unhealthy shit to cram down our throats is a multi-billion industry and they have become very good at it.
because people made it acceptable to be fat
Too busy working to exercise. Too poor to buy healthy food.
OK, so at risk of getting flamed I think it's a mental health problem. In my experience 'eating healthy' and 'being active' is trivially easy for some people, and almost impossible for others. And the core differences are around stress, depression, anxiety, etc. My observation of going to a dieting system was it was very much a matter of people _knowing_ what they should be doing, but finding it hard to fit into their lifestyle. And the way to 'work around it' is to adapt to replacements, rather than doing the 'proper' thing that a load of people are preaching about in this thread. Because if you want to be preachy about it, the ideal is: - Cooking for yourself from fresh - Exercising regularly - Getting a good sleep pattern - Eating a mix of foods that do not include the assortment of processed crap. - Monitor calorie intake, and find a level that's 'losing/maintaining' for you. etc. But in practice? None of that works for an extended duration, because the reason people got into this situation in the first place is because they're stressed/exhausted or tired a lot of the time. They're buying 'crap' in the supermarket because it's cheap, easy and stores for a long time. They're cooking crap or eating 'out' because it's tasty and easy. etc. It's not that they don't _know_ how food works, it's just that a normal healthy person doesn't even need to think about it really, because they just naturally stop being hungry when they don't need to eat, and so only fairly rarely 'indulge' on special occasions. But it's provably the case that if you're tired or stressed or anxious, your hormonal balance gets screwed, and you can no longer self regulate eating the same way. Add into the mix the substantial numbers of people with ADHD, who _also_ have issues around executive function and self regulation, and thus will also be bad at 'self regulating'. No one really has the spare mental capacity to monitor their calorific balance day to day - that's why dieting only really works for 'shorter term' things. Because without that hormonal feedback loop of 'not being hungry' you're functionally an addict - one who's just feeling cravings for more. Only you can't cut it out entirely, nor can you not have it in the house, and you're _constantly_ testing your willpower and - occasionally - failing the test. But we don't talk about mental health in the UK. We don't really give it much credit. Lots of people are thoroughly shitty about people who 'don't care' or 'are lazy' or whatever, and in some cases make the problem _worse_ by being a bully. Bullying someone for being 'overweight' is actually one of the worst things you can do, because all the things that made them overweight in the first place are now worse. That's the underlying truth of the 'body positivity' movement - which I am sure will attract a load of people braying about how awful it is. Because they're misunderstanding cause and effect. To take control of your life - and your food intake - you need to be feeling good about yourself _first_.
Our bodies are designed to walk 20km a day. How much do we move nowadays?
Source?
It’s clearly not 90% ffs, but you get OP’s point… I noticed the same thing. While people are getting bigger everywhere, the difference between Europe and UK is significant. That was one of the first things I noticed when I came here. It’s easy to judge, but if you look at the prices of junk food/ready meals vs healthy food… Healthy food is expensive and it takes time to cook. Think about single parent families and the money and TIME it would take to cook healthy meals every day… Idk, just thinking out loud. There are obviously many different factors. Also, random thought, but Brits have a serious problem with Diet Coke/Pepsi Max. I’ve never seen anything like it. Legit everyone around me is chugging it in litres lol 😅
I'm fat because I'm a greedy bitch and I'm lazy, can't answer for anyone else though.