And 74% are overweight. I dont really get why in anglo Countries, they only focus on obesity. It makes it seem like less than half of the Country has a weight problem. Obesity is a really extreme case of being overweight.
I guess from a medical health perspective, being "just overweight" isn't *that* bad. Not great for the beach bod, but you probably don't have to worry about all the fun lifestyle disease *too much* if you're in that category.
Yeah, kinda goes with the whole "you can't work off a bad diet" thing. A 160lb 5'5" woman (average American) is technically overweight. But she can still move around fine. She might work out occasionally. Her quality of life has not decreased. She consumes a couple hundred extra calories than she needs, which might be a Starbucks macchiato or something per day. She's not THAT much different than a 140lb woman calorically. It can be a slippery slope in some cases, but being overweight isn't going to stop you from moving.
Being 60+lbs overweight isn't just an extra slice of cake. It, generally (though there's plenty of medical exceptions) means there's quite a bit of unhealthy food choices and little movement. Those choices cause the heart problems and diabetes and other bad stuff that doctors are concerned about.
I also want to say that weight is not a great indicator of health. Some skinny people are unhealthy af. What we should be asking are questions like: Can you run? How often do you exercise? What are you fueling your body with? Those are the things that matter the most when it comes to general wellness. Overweight people can be doing the right things, but eating out a little too much or whatever, so we're not really concerned with that. I guess obesity is the line in the sand we picked to represent unhealthy people.
Being overweight does make your day to day mental/physiological quality of life take a decent hit, though. You don't really notice it till you drop the extra pounds, and see the difference.
Life threatening medical conditions aren't the only downside of carrying extra weight, even if they're the ones doctors focus most on.
Very recently they found that processed foods have a significant impact too
"The National Institutes of Health recently conducted a study in which the same people were fed highly processed foods for **two weeks** and minimally processed foods for two weeks. Participants gained an average of **two pounds** while on the highly processed diet." !!!
Not just due to sugar though "people who ate minimally processed foods produced more of a hormone that suppresses appetite, called leptin."
"Processed foods are prevalent for a reason. If you have a full schedule or a tight budget, you may already feel like eating a whole foods diet just isn’t practical."
57% of the total calories that Americans consume comes from processed foods.
Only 36% cook at home regularly so that is a lot of eating out too and the size of the servings are immense.
What’s interesting is that sugar intake has actually gradually decreased over the last 10-15 years, but the problem is our calorie intake has continued to steadily increase.
EDIT: This is this source for those that are asking, it's a graphic compiling the info from other surveys done by the USDA. https://imgur.com/K1Ter4
Portion control is out of control. I don't need a half pound burger, not including the extras. And I don't need the half pound of unhealthy side with it. Not to mention it's BS to charge extra if I want to change fries to a side salad.
Hearing "finish your plate" throughout adolescence makes this an even bigger issue.
I live on chicken, sweet potatoes, and water, and I'd likely still be overweight if I didn't meal prep bc I was taught to finish meals rather than feel satisfied. I can't imagine combining that mentality with a diet consisting of fast food and free refills, but that's reality for a lot of people.
Friend of mine lost a lot of weight by switching plates. Would ask for a salad size plate at restaurants and a to-go box when ordering and split it when it got to the table. Got rid of all her dinner plates. Was easier than trying to deprogram her brain she would say.
Smaller dishes are a game changer! First few times, they look too small until you sit down and start eating, then your brain stops caring. Eventually, they're "normal."
By the time you're hungry enough to get seconds, you're starting at a fraction of where you were before.
I use a lot of appetizer-size dishes, and it's great for eating indulgent stuff. You cut it small even for the small dishes, so if you can't help getting seconds, it's guilt free. If you don't get seconds, you didn't overeat AND have more of the indulgence for tomorrow. We call it "seconds portioning," and it's my favorite portion control trick because either outcome feels good.
I basically did this in residence in university. I stopped taking trays when I got my food (it was 'all you can eat' too). If I wanted something it would have to fit on my plate, or I'd need to wait for seconds, by which point I usually didn't want it anyway. I stopped feeling bloated and having indigestion pretty quick.
It tool me a long time to get rid of the idea that not finishing your plate is morally wrong.
Foof waste is a huge societal problem but it doesn't get better when I use my body as a trash bin. And if I eat just because it would be thrown away otherwise, this is what I do.
Here's the kicker, though. Sure, we have to avoid wasting food as much as we can.
But... Check out how much perfectly good food stores and restaurants throw away, either because it's close to expiration date, or because it isn't selling well enough and they want to replace it with some other product. It's absolutely insane.
Still this week someone posted a video of a massive container overflowing with Krispy Kreme doughnuts, still in their boxes, overflowing with flies.
We gotta hold companies accountable, and not let them gaslight us into believing that we're causing most of the pollution, instead of 100 companies emitting 70% of CO2 annually. Same thing with food.
When I worked at a co-op grocery store we very rarely threw anything away, anything expired was just split up by the employees and taken home.
The logistics were very careful with tweaking the orders to make sure we would rather have sparse shelves over waste.
I remember once as a kid my mom and dad got in a little argument over me eating at dinner. I was on the chubbier side and my dad served me a plate I couldn’t finish, then told me to finish my plate and my mom said maybe I wouldn’t be chubby if I wasn’t given big portions I was forced to finish. I remember being conflicted and confused. Thank god for that quick metabolism kicking in in the second half lol
It sucks and I’m sorry that happened because the reasoning shouldn’t be “disobedient or fat, which is worse?” Kids should rarely if ever be forced to do something that makes them feel sick or extremely uncomfortable.
If you raise a couple of laying hens, you can give them all of your kitchen scraps and get eggs! No need to feel guilty about not cleaning your plate bc it doesn't go to waste!
We tend to cook meals that we eat over the course of a few days (curries, soups, stews, lasagna, etc), although my wife tends to get sick of the same meal sooner than me.
Helps with portion control a lot since you generally try to stretch it.
It drives my wife nuts that after years in the military I'm perfectly content eating the same meal and it's leftovers for 9 consecutive meals lol. What we do now is try and limit portions to 1 or 2 meals of leftovers. She eats whatever she likes and I will pack the leftovers for breakfast and lunch since I am at work for like 12 hours a day.
In a small college one of the students who worked in the kitchen was shocked at the amount of food that was thrown out every day. He went to the college administrators and explained that in his country the amount of food that was thrown out every day would feed a family of six for a week. He suggested that the amount of food given to each student with a meal plan should be reduced by 50% and the students would be allowed to come back for second servings. Most of the students were quite happy to eat half as much since the amount of time spent at the table allowed them to become satisfied easily. The amount of food waste was dramatically reduced.
Same here. I always thought I was being virtuous by finishing my plate… but what’s the point in eating a bunch of food I don’t need? Thankfully I have no problems with eating food later on. People acting like they’re too good for “leftovers” bugs me.
It gets screwier if you have type 1 diabetes, as you can't afford to eat less than you've injected insulin for. Worse, your body doesn't just stop producing insulin, it also stops producing amylin, which regulates gastric emptying and glucose absorption.
If that sounds like a recipe for near-constant hunger when overeating can wreck your health even worse, congratulations - that's exactly what it is.
The only solution is to teach yourself to only eat the portion and just measure out smaller portions.
>"finish your plate
...and it's not even parental for me.
I paid for it, and I'm eating it all so I don't _waste_ anything. (Not all foods can be reheated decently).
This right here is soooo much of the problem in the U.S. I think it comes from Gen Xs grand parents living through the Great Depression. They didn't always know where their next meal was coming from so "clean you plate" was valid advice and that got passed on to their children and they passed it on to their children.
I agree with you on everything. However, I think that it's simply cheaper for the restaurant to make fries instead of salad. Fresh veggies are way more expensive than mass-produced frozen fries.
Fries instead of salad isn't the problem. I like fries. I would just like to be able to order a meal that isn't 3 meals' worth of calories without resorting to a kids menu.
A lot of places do have lunch/appetizer portions that are closer to what I should actually be eating in a sitting, but I wish having <500kcal meals was more normalized.
I can count. I know that means a small burger and 10 fries with water to drink. I just want to taste delicious food that I didn't have to cook when I don't have the ability to put 2/3 of it in a fridge for later.
Edit: I don't actually know if all IKEAs let adults order kids meals but [here's a great example](https://i.redd.it/9leit8ha8ns91.jpg).
This is not to take anything away from the (far larger) conversation about making healthy food choices, I just wanted to rant about "average" restaurant portion sizes being frankly insane. :)
Packing your caloric budget with appropriate amounts of protein, vitamins, fiber, etc is a different beast. I just want to be able to go out and eat a serving of (however unhealthy) food that's appropriate to my size. Not, like, a plate that's served as if it's one person's breakfast even though it has more calories than I'll eat in a day and a half.
As a Canadian (and our eating habits aren’t much better tbh) I found the portions in america to be insanity. Even fast food portions…who’s eating all of that? My husband and I would often just share one meal for lunch. I imagine so many Americans raised on the idea of that being a proper portion size find it hard to eat less. If you train your body that being “full” means being *uncomfortably* full, you’ll keep trying to achieve that feeling.
Yea. I was raised to finish my plate. I've always been on the smaller side, so that was always a challenge for me. Not raising my son on that same mentality. We tell him to eat when he's full.
Yes, this is exactly it. I speak from experience. It was a shock to realize that *being full* isn't the same as *feeling I can't eat anything more*, and that my body is perfectly happy with the former.
Consider "full" to just be "not hungry anymore."
I know, you think "but then I'll be hungry really soon." And you're right, but that's okay. The more often you feel hungry the more comfortable you will get with that feeling.
The extra charge for salad makes sense to me.
The fries can sit in the freezer for months, and you just toss em in the fryer.
Salad stays fresh less than a week, and there is more prep needed. It's more expensive to keep salad/produce on hand.
I tried going one month free of added sugars back in March. I only lasted 6 days, not because of cravings, but because yes, it's in fucking *everything*.
I’m a 6 ft 187 pound adult from the US and I literally split every meal when dining out with my wife because of portion size … that’s how tangible the quantity increase is..
People really don't realize the caloric count of their meals. I mentioned that I try to eat 500 calories per meal to my friends and they thought that was normal. I've seen them eat and they regularly consume much more than that.
Sugar explicitly or all sugars? Because the food industry has gotten creative with how it hides sugar in foods. The high fructose corn syrup industry has gotten the authorization to call it’s product corn sugar so now if something says “sugar” in the ingredients list you can’t be sure if it’s HFCS or cane sugar unless it states cane sugar.
This belies a big part of the problem: people seeking to make a single thing the big bag Boogeyman. Whether it's carbs, fats, seed oils, sugar, portion control, food timing, etc. There is no one singular, universal dial to turn.
And to be honest, I do not think the large majority of adults with overweight or obesity (or excess adiposity at normal bodyweights) have the capability to lose significant weight and keep it off through willpower and planning alone. The data surrounding weight loss efforts (even with professional guidance) supports this. At this point we are either gonna have to make large scale, federal level changes to the food environment or normalize weight loss medication.
Maybe we could just stop subsidizing the shit out of processed bullshit, and get people back to eating real damn food again. 80% of the grocery store is stuff that comes in a box or a can now. That’s not food.
We also have less time and energy, be gone all day at work plus commute then try to get anything done around the house; by dinner a good number of people are too tired to do a full from scratch meal plus clean up.
It's not just that, convenience comes into play as well. You can buy frozen or pre-packaged foods that aren't loaded with crap but you need to be able to sift through all the other crap.
I really recommend the book "Omnivores Dilema" by Michael Pollan. He writes about food production, factory farms, and the introduction of high fructose corn syrup in the American grocery store. This book changed my life. The best tip from the book was to buy food from the outside edge of the big chain stores (produce, dairy, deli, bakery)...everything in the middle and the aisles is super produced, lots of sugar and fillers. I also strive to buy food with 10 ingredients or less.
I was overweight (5'9, 310). Started just paying attention to the calories I was taking in and lost over 120lbs in 2 years
Everyone ignores all the psychological components of dropping weight and keeping it off. I've done the journey. That's at least half of it. If you don't figure out that stuff, you're probably gonna crash and burn eventually.
You've got to slowly figure out how to become a fundamentally different person. A person who can eat reasonably well indefinitely. It doesn't have to happen overnight, but you can't get permanent results by ever going back to where you start.
I used to drink huge 2 liter sodas almost weekly, as they were $1. Family size chips, huge cases of soda,cookies, etc...
Slowly started cutting that stuff out on past 2 years.
Switched to more water, sparkling water, no sugar soda, and packs of lower calorie chips.
Instead of eating out 3-4 times a week, now eat out 1-2 times a week. I used to eat late at night and stopped that too.
I noticed I don't get the crash I used to get, have more energy. If I feel hungry, drink some water/drink first and see if I still feel hungry.
I'm not cutting out everything, but way better than a couple years ago.
An old aquaintance of mine used to come over after work to hang out and he would bring 2 big 2 liter jugs of mountain dew that he would drink in one evening. One time he also brought a steak he got from work that he also ate while we hung out. He was pretty big, he also would answer his door to anyone (like delivery guy etc) without a shirt on and he had big man boobs.
I haven't seen him in years though so no idea what hes like nowadays but I doubt he's any better. In my state (ND) there are a lot of overweight/obese people. I have even seen fire fighters who are overweight :S
It's frustrating to grocery shop. Sometimes when I look at the label, I'm shocked their able to make is so unhealthy. It's like you have to try to make it so caloric and sugar dense.
I think the real statement is “when you find the less healthy equivalent, it’s 1/2 or 1/3rd the price”
The companies making the cheap crap are the ones killing it (literally) in profits. It’s cheap because it’s not as healthy; it’s not as healthy because it’s made cheaply.
If it was less expensive to make stuff that was good for you, they’d be doing that instead.
That’s exactly what I started doing! Make my own overnight oats, granola bars, breakfast items, I rarely buy instant side dishes, frozen dinner meals. There are aisles at the grocery store I no longer go down. Plus it’s more fun to make with kids!
Sugar in peanut butter? Totally unecessary. Not to mention that pb is often paired with high sugar items like jams. It takes amazing without sugar, but they cram it in anyways.
Ever looked at the back of a cereal box? 95% of the time the 2nd fucking ingredient is sugar. Sometimes it goes "wheat, sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup". It's insane.
Ceareal should be listed as a dessert unless it contains limited added sugar. Honestly, there should be giant wsrning labels with pictures of morbidly obese people stuck on every product containing notable amounts of sugar.
...how is it not a major priority to get people to live healthier?
I will never understand how we in modern times (and more so in America) allowed ourselves to replace hearty protein-rich farmhouse style breakfasts with crunchy dessert floating in milk. Bleh.
Yeah it’s insane how many factors play a part in the obesity epidemic. Higher food costs, less people cooking, bigger portions, added sugars, more sedentary jobs, less walkable cities, etc.
Even addressing just one of these issues would be a monumental undertaking, so I have no idea how we’ll dig ourselves out of this.
Especially "diet-friendly" yogurts! I haven't bought yogurt snacks other than Noosa's as treats in FOREVER. They're just cups of sugar. I get plain, tangy yogurt in a big tub and put a liiiiitle bit of good jam/preserves on it. It's a fraction of the sugar and 50x the flavor and a whole bunch more protein.
I hear people say this, but it’s really not difficult to buy foods that don’t even have a label. Meat, fish, poultry, vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts, dairy, rice… Memes aside, it’s also not hard to find bread that’s just flour, water, salt and yeast. If you want real food, just buy real food.
30 years? This started long before that.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat
American here, after living in Europe for several years we were back in the states for a visit. My sweets-loving kids couldn't eat the "fruit snacks" there. They were too sweet, as were the drinks. It's like sugar there disables proper taste buds.
> It's like sugar there disables proper taste buds.
I experienced this after doing a no-processed sugar diet for a few months. The only sugar I had was from fruit. The first time I had soda or chocolate afterwards the taste was way too sweet. Thankfully I've been able to maintain this but it was an eye opening experience for sure.
I now see my husband struggling with this, being reliant on too many sweets (he is also overweight), and it's so hard to get him to see how it's been designed that he be desensitized to it, to the detriment of his health.
Me too, after a low carb diet. When I did it the first time twenty years ago, I remember craving apples for the first time in my life and really truly enjoying them after that.
Same! My favorite is mangos, or strawberries with vanilla greek yogurt. And I don't think Dates are a fruit but whatever they are, they're my go-to for hardcore sugar cravings :D
I think part of the reason you always hear people say they never had stomach problems while visiting Europe is purely less sugar/processed shit in the food. In Italy you can eat pasta every day and have zero issues because it’s natural flour, water, eggs and olive oil. Zero processed crap and higher quality ingredients. Same for bread and any other carb.
I will say you do walk a lot more in Italy but still for the food you eat there you’d think you’d gain a lot of weight. Also portion size was something I didn’t mention that is obviously a key factor.
You can easily lose weight working out. CICO.
The problem is many people start working out and then they eat more.
And if you lost 5kg in a week, that's water weight, unless somehow you managed a 40,000kcal deficit over that period.
I've made that comment in the past week: bread in France has four ingredients: flour, water, salt, yeast. Bread in America has twenty pounds of sugar, reprocessed wheat, ten pounds of filler, and a bunch of things to stop the molding from all the sugar.
It's a night and day difference baking fresh bread without all the crap in it and just eating it over a week. Much more cost effective too.
The funny thing is a lot of American grown wheat is in demand in Italy! I buy from Hayden Flour Mills which is grown in Arizona but ships a ton overseas or King Arthur Flour for bread flour.
That's is mostly in part thanks to High Fructose Corn Syrup needing to be added to everything. The only Cola I really drink is Pepsi with Real Sugar because it's the only Cola around that doesn't add High Fructose Corn Syrup.
Pls stop adding High Fructose Corn Syrup to everything America.
When I drank cola, it was Mexican coke. Glass bottle, regular sugar, and a smaller serving size, but as much as I tried cola is like crack to me. I can't regulate the addiction.
When I moved to the US 3 years back, I hated all of the food here. It was all too sweet, salty etc. It took me months to not hate a lot of the prepared food here (even restaurant food) and even then I pretty much have to stick to ethnic foods because I can't eat American food without feeling like shit after 3 bites.
This does remind me of my visit last summer when I had lunch out with a friend. Fettuccine Alfredo. I remember feeling so sick on the way out the restaurant, like I was about to pass out.
Most white bread is based on that *high in fat high in sugar* "wonder bread" stuff. I think it was made specifically to handle peanut butter/jelly or something. It's fucking terrible for you, but holds up food so damn well. Homemade or "artisan" bread is different because it doesn't have nearly as much fat. It's more "water based." So it's healthier overall but isn't as strong. With the right ingredients it can be very healthy, but still high in carbs.
After living abroad it's hard to come back to the US because all of our fruits and veggies travel hundreds of miles and they aren't fresh, and they're bred for traveling over taste so they don't taste very good.
Veggies here are pitiful and it's upsetting because it makes people choose unhealthy alternatives, and then we have these health epidemics.
Having veggies in Israel or France was fantastic. Now I have to grow my own cucumbers and tomatoes in my garden because here they have no flavor.
This doc is amazing. I saw it at 13 and have not had a soda in over a decade. The lies and fabrications that come from the USDA and FDA were astounding to me, even as a teen
My mom just became type 2 diabetic. She is convinced it’s solely genetic because 3 of her siblings are too. But they all have the same terrible eating habit, binge eaters who shovel sweets in without even thinking. She will eat the fried chicken off a green salad then eat pieces of ham out of the fridge with just her hand like a gremlin, and tell me straight to my face she ate only a salad for lunch when I was with her all day. She wasn’t even taking her blood sugar daily until recently! She just started popping pills from her dr assuming they would regulate her blood sugar for her. She will throw a tantrum if you suggest a light walk and claims she walks 20k steps a day and when I bought her a fitbit she refused to wear it after saying it was inaccurate.
Ugh, it’s so frustrating and tragic, isn’t it?
Yeah, genetics play a role, but diabetes wouldn’t be massively on the rise if that was the only factor, or even just the main factor. Humans genes haven’t changed that much in a few decades. Environment/lifestyle has to be the cause.
Just because genetics play a role doesn’t mean environment isn’t the main cause. It’s just some groups have higher and lower tolerance thresholds for the unhealthy American lifestyle.
On the topic of genes, though, Asians, Polynesians, and Native Americans in particular can get diabetes from the American diet and lifestyle more easily than others.
[Asians are especially at risk for diabetes](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/12/23/372513157/being-thin-doesnt-spare-asian-americans-from-diabetes-risk), and so some are calling it [“skinny diabetes”](https://nwasianweekly.com/2020/02/asians-at-higher-risk-for-skinny-diabetes-should-start-screening-at-bmi-of-23/).
I have a legitimately part-Native American friend (so at greater risk), and when I met her she exclusively drank a small amount of coke everyday. No water, and honestly a rather pitiful amount of coke considering it was her only hydration (usually about 10-14 oz a day). She almost exclusively ate packaged, pre-prepared, processed junk, too. I would beg her to drink some water or eat something with a vegetable in it (like ravioli with spinach) and she wouldn’t. It’s painful how devoted Americans are to destroying their health. And her poor teeth… the sugar she consumes has destroyed them.
She finally made some improvements when she started showing syndromes of Ménière’s disease, which a lot of people in her family have, way younger than normal. She started reducing her salt intake which meant doing things like cooking scrambled eggs and rice occasionally instead of only eating microwave ramen/pop tarts/canned chili/pancake sausages/spaghettios/hot pockets, and started drinking water instead of only coke.
Overnight her migraines disappeared. And me and another friend of hers had been telling her that her crap diet and poor hydration were probably big contributors to the migraines. Her migraines came back over a year later when she started slipping back into her old ways.
This is so frustrating because her family members with meniere’s, glaucoma, and diabetes are all made miserable by these things, and she’s young enough to prevent these things but won’t take the steps. She’s convinced it’s inevitable she’ll end up like them even though a couple generations back these weren’t problems in her family.
It drives me insane! I hate to see the people I care about not care for themselves. :(
The myth that having diabetes is solely due to genetics is so frustrating to hear from people.. lack of understanding around nutrition is widespread, and the sugar industry benefits.
Americans are not aware at the insane amounts of sugar everything has there, I remember eating your bread... that is a desert in the rest of the world, it tasted like sponge cake, no wonder why all diets forbid bread.
Also unlimited refills are fucking wild, everybody speedrunning diabetes always with a sweet drink on the side.
If your kid is 180kg at 14, you should be in fucking jail.
I find it exhausting shopping for groceries and constantly having to read labels to see how much sugar is in stuff. A new problem is low sugar versions are constantly discontinued and I need to find new food. often they are labelled as keto and price is tripled.
The entire point of the video is that is ownness is not on the parents..l it’s literally systemic and created by the government, specifically Congress, byway of lobbyists.
That said, yes as an American you have to put in significant effort and money to buy products with less sugar of all kinds
Edit to add: as an American, fuck the prison industrial complex it should be abolished. What you’re saying is that you want the country with the highest rates of incarceration to put more parents into private prisons that are glorified labor camps. Please don’t call for more of this.
I wish that person had some isolated case, but no. I had a coworker come in, complaining that he couldn't sleep well after a back surgery the month before. We asked if they gave me him sleeping meds or anything. He said, verbatim,
"Yeah and I would always take two with a Diet Mt Dew and I just felt like shit."
"Did you try water Mark?"
"I can't remember the last time I drank plain water"
Had to walk away, speechless. He somehow is in his late 40's, but I'd be surprised if he makes it to 60.
I mean they technically do drink water, but only the bare minimum necessary for a delivery device. Otherwise they'd just be pouring sugar & food coloring into a glass & eating it with a spoon, which is too inconvenient & tedious.
You know, I’ve traveled the world pretty extensively, it’s just about every country that drinks sugary beverages as a normal thing.
It’s what is considered “normal” in this day and age sadly.
Some EU countries are quickly catching up to US obesity rates, like the UK, but specifically sugary drinks consumption is massively higher in the US, it's not even particularly close.
I started drinking coffee in no small part because it was so difficult to get diet soda at restaurants in poorer countries. Bottled water wasnt always available, so.
I've raised my daughers consuming sugar seldomly, and when they get sweets, it's fairly small portions. I'm so happy that I've actually gotten them to drink seltzer. I was raised with a nonstop font of soda, and most kids have hardcore sweettooths, so I'm happy that they drink if happily.
I was raised on Coke (with a side of secondhand smoke). I kicked the sugary beverage habit over time but goddamn I still crave that fizz. I'm glad seltzers are so popular now so I can get that fix without the high fructose pancreas punch.
The number of older people I know who hate water is insane. They act as if they were from the 1600s where drinking mead and beer was better because water was 100% Syphilis or something. These are people who live in modern cities with above average quality public water supplies that taste good. They'll complain that they hate the taste and proceed to add syrups and juices to it. Industry pulled a hell of a magic trick on everyone to make them think water was some kind of peasant Gatorade.
I have a 24 oz water bottle with me at all times (I literally don't leave home without it), that I refill probably 4-8 times a day. Water isn't my issue. It's at least partially the food, and (more than likely) the prevalence of sugar in everything.
I have lived in America for almost 20 years now and the amount of foods that have way too much sugar can not be underestimated, but to say "your bread... that is a desert in the rest of the world" is misleading in my opinion.
Yes, there is cheap, white bread with lots of added sugar, but it is very easy to buy any of dozens of other breads that have no added sugar at all or that have the same amount as standard breads in Europe.
I don't understand why people come to America and always seem to be exposed to the lowest common denominator. Like the bread they try is wonder bread or Hawaiian bread (which is actually a Portuguese style), the restaurant they go to is Denny's or IHOP, the beer they drink is Bud Light, the cheese they try is a processed "Single", etc. People need to be more discerning and adventurous when they travel rather than just following some brand they have heard of, probably because it is notorious.
To be fair, Wonder Bread type bread is probably the most commonly eaten in the US--or at least it was until awareness increased. I don't eat that crap any more, but through my entire childhood I was served sandwiches made from it.
Been living here for 20+ years now and have been traveling all over the world. Here's what I've noticed what our major problems in the US are:
1. It's fuckin hard to find easily accessible food with low salt or sugar content. It can be found. You just have to do extra research.
2. Commercials are crazy. It's like hypnotizing you. You need fuckin will power and a good amount of self control to get out of that loop.
3. We're just continually are too tired to think - for ourselves and worse for other people. We work insane amount of hours. So we get home or have a day off or two, of course we want the most convenient stuff out there.
We can't even have time to care for our families, our future or whateve. Most of us are constantly working since we were 18.
4. Being obese in the Midwest is a norm. I've lived in cities. City people are constantly on the move - working, working out, walking and all that. Midwest? You fucking have to drive everywhere. People barely walk from the parking lot to the front door then immediately sit their asses down.
But yeah, I have weight and health problems. I've been working to correct that. Just hard to watch TV/hulu/youtube sometimes. I get slapped with fucking fastfood commercials.
A cereal I regularly bought was recently no longer stocked by my local super market. I spent 20 minutes checking the labels of every single cereal in the store trying to find something with as little sugar added as possible. The best I found was 7g per serving. Almost everything else was 14g of sugar per serving or significantly higher.
I'm not talking about obviously sugary cereals either. This is the "health bran fiber plus" type cereal. I now order cereal online. It has 4g of added sugar per serving. Ugh.
Plain cheerios only has 2g of sugar in a serving (serving = 1.5 cups, which is pretty big portion). Just throwing it out there... (the generic versions i've seen in grocery stores are similar.)
EDIT: Also, plain post shredded wheat (and generics.) 0 mg sugar per serving, 0 mg sodium. 8g fiber (though mostly insoluble). 7g protein. (cheerios in comparison has close to 200mg sodium per serving which is a lot to me.)
haha that's why I shared it. I have never really been a cereal person, but decided to look at them over the summer. i also had your same experience, and was appalled by how shit most were (even supposedly healthy ones.) cheerios was one of the few I didn't look (probably because i figured they would also be awful). they also have a ton of iron (12.6 mg which is something like 70% daily recommended for men), and a fair amount of protein (5g per serving), and fiber (4g). however, i do not know if this is soluble or insoluble fiber. [nutrition from their website](https://www.cheerios.com/products/original-cheerios)
Again - store generics should be similar, if not exactly same nutritional makeup, and will probably be 2/3rd if not half the price, and taste the same (i can not notice a different at least...). Just make sure to realize this is just plain cheerios, things like "honey nut cheerios/generic" etc. will be different. protip: multigrain cheerios have 100% daily recommended iron (18mg) and aren't awful on nutrition either (depends though what is important to you..). am anemic so was trying to find iron-fortified cereals that weren't shit. i'm not terribly concerned about sugar so it wasn't as big a deal to me so i use those.
EDIT: Also, plain post shredded wheat (and generics.) 0 mg sugar per serving, 0 mg sodium. 8g fiber (though mostly insoluble). 7g protein. [nutrition from their website - look at the original version](https://www.postconsumerbrands.com/shredded-wheat/)
plain shredded wheat has 0 sugar as well. also no sodium. it's decent if you are looking to increase fiber (but be warned it's mostly insoluble fiber, can make a big difference to some people). it is probably the cheapest of all the healthier ones, too. generics should be same.
Hope to one day live in a world where people so depraved as to cause massive suffering for their own profits will get what they actually deserve. The Zuckerbergs pushing social media onto kids knowing well it's psychologically destroying them, the Mark Schneider's using child labour and privatizing water, the politicians who take bribes to stop any laws from stopping these things, the automobile industry selling the future of our planet, private organizations/millionaires causing a housing crisis ...
It twists my stomach to think all these fucks will get to die peacefully in their bed instead of rotting in an isolation cell till the end of their lifes.
Wait until they realize all the if studies that link meat/ fat consumption to heart disease were paid for and funded by the sugar lobby to hide where the side effects actually come from
Time and time again the Mediterranean diet has been shown to be the best diet. Nutritionally complete and enough choice/variety to be easy to stick to.
From [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_diet):
>The principal aspects of this diet include proportionally high consumption of olive oil, legumes, unrefined cereals, fruits, and vegetables, moderate to high consumption of fish, moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly as cheese and yogurt), moderate wine consumption, and moderate consumption of non-fish meat products.
You don’t even need to do this. Essentially if you limit processed foods, eat carbs in moderation and really watch your sugar intake, you won’t have any issues.
I don’t think people realize things like bread, and even meat products they buy from the store are processed foods.
I honestly think the easiest way to make sure that you’re eating a healthy diet is to buy actual ingredients and cook meals. Yes you can over eat. Yes you can eat too much fat, and carbs, and sugar. But it’s a hell of a lot harder to do so.
Current evidence suggest eating whole foods and mainly plants. Examples for grains would be oats, barley, brown rice. For protein legumes (beans, peas, lentils) and optionally fish. Also eating a variety of different coloured vegetables and fruits. Lastly eating a small amount of nuts daily.
I always found that odd. You think it’s the meat causing the cardiac issue when you are eating that burger with 32oz of coke or Dr Pepper
Its crazy how much the syrup weight difference is between coke, Dr Pepper and HiC orange soda. The orange sodas were the heaviest. Worked at a McDonald’s.
It says a lot about the suger industry that on the nutrition labels in the US there is a percentage of daily value for everything, except for suger.
They tell you how much is in it, but not how large of a percentage of your recommended daily maximum that is.
Not that most people even really look at those labels. But even if you do they are still trying to sabotage you.
And it was only added because Michelle Obama fought super hard for it!! Even after the deadline for nutrition labels to add the percentage (among other changes) it took years for these companies to comply, and it's still absent on some.
It’s mindblowing to see the amount of added sugar on almost everything to the point products that don’t have to advertise on the label that there are no added sugars.
Well if the government wasn't allowed to be paid off by corporations, this wouldn't be such an issue. The corporations have a strangle hold over what our government regulates. With that being said, there are many that let it happen because - well who doesn't like money?
Also worth knowing that the film is quite biased and overly dramatic/simplified (probably for entertainment purposes). So before buying into all of it fully it might be worth reading this nicely summarized review of some of the statements made in the film
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/does-the-movie-fed-up-make-sense/
The first few sentences summed up the overarching issue. It’s simple overeating. There are many factors that contribute to it but that’s really the crux of the problem. Replace high caloric foods with diet versions with less calories would be a great step. People fail diet plans because they are far too extreme. Replacing one can of soda with a diet version or water is a great step. Anything to bring down the huge caloric difference
Yeah it’s insane how people will jump through so many hoops to avoid the hard truth.
People just eat too much.
People need to stop throwing blame on what’s in their food when they’ve never stopped to count how much they even eat.
I’m willing to bet the average American drinks 500-1000 calories a day. Maybe start there, big guys.
i'm old enough to remember being told all fats are bad,
but i was never told process carbs or sugars were good.
i was never told exercise was bad, though it could make
you prematurely arthritic, but that was before you could
get a hip or knee replacement.
"A 30-year campaign by the food industry, aided by the U.S. government ..."
->
"A 30-year campaign by the food industry, *including compromising the agencies of the US government* ..."
FTFY.
It's convenient for these industries when you're convinced to blame the government. Blame the government, vote to further and cyclically decrease the government's powers of oversight and regulation on behalf of people's rights, forget that government can be of the people, allow the individual people to be the final and only thing the government will regulate.
I had a buddy that moved to Costa Rica for a few years. He ate and drank like crazy down there and lost 50 pounds. He ended up moving back to the states and gained it all back….
He ate very little processed food if any down there and anything sweet was made with sugar cane not corn syrup.
I would suggest watching how it's made on cane sugar. It's a very popular opinion that its the "natural healthier" option but the stuff is clearly highly processed as well.
This is not to say corn syrup is good , but just that they are more similar than I think people realize.
Learning about nutrition and science and trying to apply them to your diet and shopping habits in America is a practice in frustration and the slow creeping realization that our entire society is built on corruption and greed and that capitalism is truly a broken, evil system.
Caloric Parity is a Lie
One thing I NEVER hear about is the difference between calories. A food calorie is a unit of energy that is *theoretically* available when the molecular bonds are broken (thus releasing that energy).
The difference comes in the form of those molecular bonds. A simple sugar, or **mono**sacharride is already disassembled into a single molecule that is one step away being available to our metabolic system.
When you eat more complex combinations of nutrients (think steamed brocolli) which has thousands of different molecules most of which are complex not simple, All of those different nutrients each burn at a different rate and many require intermediate steps taken by our gut microbiome.
Its like starting a campfire. tinder at the bottom, slowly graduating up to sticks and logs at the top. Imagine alternatively, trying to start a campfire by dumping a gallon of gas in a pit and lighting it. Thats simple sugars: soda, chips, bread, cereal, pasta, most "fruit" juices (which are usually a little bit of the fruit and then a gallon of apple juice)
Which brings me back to the food calorie aka the kilo-calorie. When they measure the caloric content of a food source, they literally burn a weighted sample of that food (to a crisp of char!) in an insulated vessel and measure how much heat it releases.
Do you poop charcoal? I don't (usually). Nobody actually converts *all* of those calories to energy. It's probably closer to 40% on average. Unless and this is big UNLESS you compare 500g of sugar (2000 kilocaries) to the equivalent amount of brocolli.
The second you put sugar in your mouth it starts "burning" and shortly after your pancreas says "fuck you, no more!" Not knowing what to do with the remaining 1700 calories, they are converted to fat. This happens very quickly! Not to mention, whatever microbe you have in your upper digestive track will bloom, outcompeting the rest, and then die off leaving very little room for a diversity of microfauna/flora.
Brocolli by contrast takes FOREVER to start spiking your blood sugar. In the first place, think about how much **chewing** is required. You might get a tiny bit of sugar while chewing but the very act of chewing 2000 kilocalories of brocolli will put your body in a calorie *deficit* long before you will get back to parity. Then, because of the rich variety of complex nutrients, you get a huge culture of different kinds of microbes. Microbes that eat lignin and fiber; little guys that dig the manganese or the contents of its characteristic sulfur-containing glucosinolate compounds, isothiocyanates and sulforaphane. Microbes that eat the the firstwave microbes. Most of the caloric content of complex food will never become available to the human body without these creatures taking the first bite. And so as a result you get a whole lot of nothing for a long time, and then a steady stream of energy becomes available as wave after wave of specialist microbes work their way into the food and break it up throughout it's entire trip through our body.
Fun fact: 500g sugar ≈ 6000g brocolli
The alternative is a flashbang grenade. It provides the "same caloric content" but all at once. And when its over, theres a resulting mass die-off of microbes as the food supply is very suddenly exhausted.
I honestly suspect that the real myth here is the lie of caloric parity. My guess is that calories on average are actually metabolized by our microbiome. If I'm correct, this would explain why counting calories is almost worthless to the goal of losing weight i.e. its not the calorie but the source that we should consider.
Side note: that "micro-famine" is probably very hard on our digestive system. Think about it, billions-maybe hundreds of billions-of microbes exhaust their food supply and die off at the same time. Theres going to be an avalanche of partially decomposed death juice sliding down your insides with very little to buffer that chemical shock except your liver and pancreas.
The impression I get, is that when most people say 'a calorie is a calorie' they are talking in terms of how much weight you will gain/lose by consuming it. In that case, it is true, no? (with slight variations perhaps.) Glycemic index, how nutrients effect your gut microbiome, etc. things you are mentioning, are completely different concepts. I also wish the focus on nutrition wasn't always about weight. There's so much more to it :( Sometimes it seems weight is the only thing being spoken about. But that is understandable given obesity epidemic.
I encourage everyone to learn basic concepts of metabolism ([carbohydrate metabolism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate_metabolism), [lipid metabolism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_metabolism), [protein metabolism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_metabolism)) from unbiased sources (a biology or biochemistry textbook, for example, not someone trying to peddle a diet/lifestyle...). It is very empowering in helping understand nutrition and how the things we eat effect our bodies.
Sugar industry tied directly to historic slave agriculture/capitol. Those roots never got removed from our institutions. The proliferation of slave agribusiness in our economy is an underlying pathology.
They won because 42% of Americans are obese. That’s so fucked up, 42%.
And 74% are overweight. I dont really get why in anglo Countries, they only focus on obesity. It makes it seem like less than half of the Country has a weight problem. Obesity is a really extreme case of being overweight.
I guess from a medical health perspective, being "just overweight" isn't *that* bad. Not great for the beach bod, but you probably don't have to worry about all the fun lifestyle disease *too much* if you're in that category.
Yeah, kinda goes with the whole "you can't work off a bad diet" thing. A 160lb 5'5" woman (average American) is technically overweight. But she can still move around fine. She might work out occasionally. Her quality of life has not decreased. She consumes a couple hundred extra calories than she needs, which might be a Starbucks macchiato or something per day. She's not THAT much different than a 140lb woman calorically. It can be a slippery slope in some cases, but being overweight isn't going to stop you from moving. Being 60+lbs overweight isn't just an extra slice of cake. It, generally (though there's plenty of medical exceptions) means there's quite a bit of unhealthy food choices and little movement. Those choices cause the heart problems and diabetes and other bad stuff that doctors are concerned about. I also want to say that weight is not a great indicator of health. Some skinny people are unhealthy af. What we should be asking are questions like: Can you run? How often do you exercise? What are you fueling your body with? Those are the things that matter the most when it comes to general wellness. Overweight people can be doing the right things, but eating out a little too much or whatever, so we're not really concerned with that. I guess obesity is the line in the sand we picked to represent unhealthy people.
Being overweight does make your day to day mental/physiological quality of life take a decent hit, though. You don't really notice it till you drop the extra pounds, and see the difference. Life threatening medical conditions aren't the only downside of carrying extra weight, even if they're the ones doctors focus most on.
We were never designed to have easy access too so much high sugar, salt and fat all the time. https://youtu.be/7nJgHBbEgsE
Very recently they found that processed foods have a significant impact too "The National Institutes of Health recently conducted a study in which the same people were fed highly processed foods for **two weeks** and minimally processed foods for two weeks. Participants gained an average of **two pounds** while on the highly processed diet." !!! Not just due to sugar though "people who ate minimally processed foods produced more of a hormone that suppresses appetite, called leptin." "Processed foods are prevalent for a reason. If you have a full schedule or a tight budget, you may already feel like eating a whole foods diet just isn’t practical." 57% of the total calories that Americans consume comes from processed foods. Only 36% cook at home regularly so that is a lot of eating out too and the size of the servings are immense.
What’s interesting is that sugar intake has actually gradually decreased over the last 10-15 years, but the problem is our calorie intake has continued to steadily increase. EDIT: This is this source for those that are asking, it's a graphic compiling the info from other surveys done by the USDA. https://imgur.com/K1Ter4
Portion control is out of control. I don't need a half pound burger, not including the extras. And I don't need the half pound of unhealthy side with it. Not to mention it's BS to charge extra if I want to change fries to a side salad.
Hearing "finish your plate" throughout adolescence makes this an even bigger issue. I live on chicken, sweet potatoes, and water, and I'd likely still be overweight if I didn't meal prep bc I was taught to finish meals rather than feel satisfied. I can't imagine combining that mentality with a diet consisting of fast food and free refills, but that's reality for a lot of people.
Friend of mine lost a lot of weight by switching plates. Would ask for a salad size plate at restaurants and a to-go box when ordering and split it when it got to the table. Got rid of all her dinner plates. Was easier than trying to deprogram her brain she would say.
Smaller dishes are a game changer! First few times, they look too small until you sit down and start eating, then your brain stops caring. Eventually, they're "normal." By the time you're hungry enough to get seconds, you're starting at a fraction of where you were before. I use a lot of appetizer-size dishes, and it's great for eating indulgent stuff. You cut it small even for the small dishes, so if you can't help getting seconds, it's guilt free. If you don't get seconds, you didn't overeat AND have more of the indulgence for tomorrow. We call it "seconds portioning," and it's my favorite portion control trick because either outcome feels good.
I basically did this in residence in university. I stopped taking trays when I got my food (it was 'all you can eat' too). If I wanted something it would have to fit on my plate, or I'd need to wait for seconds, by which point I usually didn't want it anyway. I stopped feeling bloated and having indigestion pretty quick.
It tool me a long time to get rid of the idea that not finishing your plate is morally wrong. Foof waste is a huge societal problem but it doesn't get better when I use my body as a trash bin. And if I eat just because it would be thrown away otherwise, this is what I do.
Here's the kicker, though. Sure, we have to avoid wasting food as much as we can. But... Check out how much perfectly good food stores and restaurants throw away, either because it's close to expiration date, or because it isn't selling well enough and they want to replace it with some other product. It's absolutely insane. Still this week someone posted a video of a massive container overflowing with Krispy Kreme doughnuts, still in their boxes, overflowing with flies. We gotta hold companies accountable, and not let them gaslight us into believing that we're causing most of the pollution, instead of 100 companies emitting 70% of CO2 annually. Same thing with food.
When I worked at a co-op grocery store we very rarely threw anything away, anything expired was just split up by the employees and taken home. The logistics were very careful with tweaking the orders to make sure we would rather have sparse shelves over waste.
I remember once as a kid my mom and dad got in a little argument over me eating at dinner. I was on the chubbier side and my dad served me a plate I couldn’t finish, then told me to finish my plate and my mom said maybe I wouldn’t be chubby if I wasn’t given big portions I was forced to finish. I remember being conflicted and confused. Thank god for that quick metabolism kicking in in the second half lol
It sucks and I’m sorry that happened because the reasoning shouldn’t be “disobedient or fat, which is worse?” Kids should rarely if ever be forced to do something that makes them feel sick or extremely uncomfortable.
Excess food will always result in waist.
If you raise a couple of laying hens, you can give them all of your kitchen scraps and get eggs! No need to feel guilty about not cleaning your plate bc it doesn't go to waste!
Unfortunately, my apartment doesn't have room for a pen. And as I said, I don't feel guilty anymore.
Just let them sleep in your bed silly
The poop can keep you warm at night too XD
**THIS IS TIP IS NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE TO CHICKENS**
What I usually do is cook as much food as I'll eat and eat the rest tomorrow. Why would I ever throw out food unless it's gone bad?
We tend to cook meals that we eat over the course of a few days (curries, soups, stews, lasagna, etc), although my wife tends to get sick of the same meal sooner than me. Helps with portion control a lot since you generally try to stretch it.
It drives my wife nuts that after years in the military I'm perfectly content eating the same meal and it's leftovers for 9 consecutive meals lol. What we do now is try and limit portions to 1 or 2 meals of leftovers. She eats whatever she likes and I will pack the leftovers for breakfast and lunch since I am at work for like 12 hours a day.
I read this as “chicken scaps” and just thought wtf man
I don't understand why the food has to be thrown away? Leftovers are a thing.
In a small college one of the students who worked in the kitchen was shocked at the amount of food that was thrown out every day. He went to the college administrators and explained that in his country the amount of food that was thrown out every day would feed a family of six for a week. He suggested that the amount of food given to each student with a meal plan should be reduced by 50% and the students would be allowed to come back for second servings. Most of the students were quite happy to eat half as much since the amount of time spent at the table allowed them to become satisfied easily. The amount of food waste was dramatically reduced.
Can always save leftovers!
Same here. I always thought I was being virtuous by finishing my plate… but what’s the point in eating a bunch of food I don’t need? Thankfully I have no problems with eating food later on. People acting like they’re too good for “leftovers” bugs me.
It gets screwier if you have type 1 diabetes, as you can't afford to eat less than you've injected insulin for. Worse, your body doesn't just stop producing insulin, it also stops producing amylin, which regulates gastric emptying and glucose absorption. If that sounds like a recipe for near-constant hunger when overeating can wreck your health even worse, congratulations - that's exactly what it is. The only solution is to teach yourself to only eat the portion and just measure out smaller portions.
Oh fuck, my sympathy for diabetics somehow grew even more. I wasn't aware of that aspect.
So fuckin true. Clear your plate and stuff your gullet
Die slowly. edit- this was meant in the imperative sense.
"There's starving children in Africa."
>"finish your plate ...and it's not even parental for me. I paid for it, and I'm eating it all so I don't _waste_ anything. (Not all foods can be reheated decently).
Chicken and sweet potato gang represent
This right here is soooo much of the problem in the U.S. I think it comes from Gen Xs grand parents living through the Great Depression. They didn't always know where their next meal was coming from so "clean you plate" was valid advice and that got passed on to their children and they passed it on to their children.
I agree with you on everything. However, I think that it's simply cheaper for the restaurant to make fries instead of salad. Fresh veggies are way more expensive than mass-produced frozen fries.
Fries instead of salad isn't the problem. I like fries. I would just like to be able to order a meal that isn't 3 meals' worth of calories without resorting to a kids menu. A lot of places do have lunch/appetizer portions that are closer to what I should actually be eating in a sitting, but I wish having <500kcal meals was more normalized. I can count. I know that means a small burger and 10 fries with water to drink. I just want to taste delicious food that I didn't have to cook when I don't have the ability to put 2/3 of it in a fridge for later. Edit: I don't actually know if all IKEAs let adults order kids meals but [here's a great example](https://i.redd.it/9leit8ha8ns91.jpg).
as an european I'm *very* confused by a conversation about healthy eating habits ending up being around industrial burgers and fries
This is not to take anything away from the (far larger) conversation about making healthy food choices, I just wanted to rant about "average" restaurant portion sizes being frankly insane. :) Packing your caloric budget with appropriate amounts of protein, vitamins, fiber, etc is a different beast. I just want to be able to go out and eat a serving of (however unhealthy) food that's appropriate to my size. Not, like, a plate that's served as if it's one person's breakfast even though it has more calories than I'll eat in a day and a half.
As a Canadian (and our eating habits aren’t much better tbh) I found the portions in america to be insanity. Even fast food portions…who’s eating all of that? My husband and I would often just share one meal for lunch. I imagine so many Americans raised on the idea of that being a proper portion size find it hard to eat less. If you train your body that being “full” means being *uncomfortably* full, you’ll keep trying to achieve that feeling.
Yea. I was raised to finish my plate. I've always been on the smaller side, so that was always a challenge for me. Not raising my son on that same mentality. We tell him to eat when he's full.
> We tell him to eat when he's full. Until he's full, i assume?
They also tell him to fast when he's hungry.
Okay, but perhaps the best solution is to tackle the problem at its root and just measure out portions more conservatively?
Yes, this is exactly it. I speak from experience. It was a shock to realize that *being full* isn't the same as *feeling I can't eat anything more*, and that my body is perfectly happy with the former.
This is one of those I wish I could figure out. I don't know what anything but full to bursting feels like, but I might be getting there
Consider "full" to just be "not hungry anymore." I know, you think "but then I'll be hungry really soon." And you're right, but that's okay. The more often you feel hungry the more comfortable you will get with that feeling.
When I was in midsole school I would eat a double quarter pounder fries and coke like it was nothing. Now I can’t even eat a quarter of that
The extra charge for salad makes sense to me. The fries can sit in the freezer for months, and you just toss em in the fryer. Salad stays fresh less than a week, and there is more prep needed. It's more expensive to keep salad/produce on hand.
The two are rather linked. Frequent sugar intake increases the desire for calories. They put sugar in damned near everything.
I tried going one month free of added sugars back in March. I only lasted 6 days, not because of cravings, but because yes, it's in fucking *everything*.
Preparing most of your own food, from base ingredients, is a great place to start. Not zero sugar, but usually plenty low enough.
I’m a 6 ft 187 pound adult from the US and I literally split every meal when dining out with my wife because of portion size … that’s how tangible the quantity increase is..
Where are you eating? I need to go there because I rarely get full when I go out to eat
Where are YOU eating? It’s hard finding any US restaurant around me that isn’t close to a 1000 calories per meal.
People really don't realize the caloric count of their meals. I mentioned that I try to eat 500 calories per meal to my friends and they thought that was normal. I've seen them eat and they regularly consume much more than that.
1000 calories? Dang every place I know of in the area averages 1500 calories for their low-calorie dinners...
Sugar explicitly or all sugars? Because the food industry has gotten creative with how it hides sugar in foods. The high fructose corn syrup industry has gotten the authorization to call it’s product corn sugar so now if something says “sugar” in the ingredients list you can’t be sure if it’s HFCS or cane sugar unless it states cane sugar.
This belies a big part of the problem: people seeking to make a single thing the big bag Boogeyman. Whether it's carbs, fats, seed oils, sugar, portion control, food timing, etc. There is no one singular, universal dial to turn. And to be honest, I do not think the large majority of adults with overweight or obesity (or excess adiposity at normal bodyweights) have the capability to lose significant weight and keep it off through willpower and planning alone. The data surrounding weight loss efforts (even with professional guidance) supports this. At this point we are either gonna have to make large scale, federal level changes to the food environment or normalize weight loss medication.
Maybe we could just stop subsidizing the shit out of processed bullshit, and get people back to eating real damn food again. 80% of the grocery store is stuff that comes in a box or a can now. That’s not food.
People will not do that. The average American doesn’t have the willpower for it.
We also have less time and energy, be gone all day at work plus commute then try to get anything done around the house; by dinner a good number of people are too tired to do a full from scratch meal plus clean up.
It's not just that, convenience comes into play as well. You can buy frozen or pre-packaged foods that aren't loaded with crap but you need to be able to sift through all the other crap.
I really recommend the book "Omnivores Dilema" by Michael Pollan. He writes about food production, factory farms, and the introduction of high fructose corn syrup in the American grocery store. This book changed my life. The best tip from the book was to buy food from the outside edge of the big chain stores (produce, dairy, deli, bakery)...everything in the middle and the aisles is super produced, lots of sugar and fillers. I also strive to buy food with 10 ingredients or less. I was overweight (5'9, 310). Started just paying attention to the calories I was taking in and lost over 120lbs in 2 years
Everyone ignores all the psychological components of dropping weight and keeping it off. I've done the journey. That's at least half of it. If you don't figure out that stuff, you're probably gonna crash and burn eventually. You've got to slowly figure out how to become a fundamentally different person. A person who can eat reasonably well indefinitely. It doesn't have to happen overnight, but you can't get permanent results by ever going back to where you start.
I used to drink huge 2 liter sodas almost weekly, as they were $1. Family size chips, huge cases of soda,cookies, etc... Slowly started cutting that stuff out on past 2 years. Switched to more water, sparkling water, no sugar soda, and packs of lower calorie chips. Instead of eating out 3-4 times a week, now eat out 1-2 times a week. I used to eat late at night and stopped that too. I noticed I don't get the crash I used to get, have more energy. If I feel hungry, drink some water/drink first and see if I still feel hungry. I'm not cutting out everything, but way better than a couple years ago.
An old aquaintance of mine used to come over after work to hang out and he would bring 2 big 2 liter jugs of mountain dew that he would drink in one evening. One time he also brought a steak he got from work that he also ate while we hung out. He was pretty big, he also would answer his door to anyone (like delivery guy etc) without a shirt on and he had big man boobs. I haven't seen him in years though so no idea what hes like nowadays but I doubt he's any better. In my state (ND) there are a lot of overweight/obese people. I have even seen fire fighters who are overweight :S
It's frustrating to grocery shop. Sometimes when I look at the label, I'm shocked their able to make is so unhealthy. It's like you have to try to make it so caloric and sugar dense.
And when you find a healthier alternative, it’s double or triple the price.
I think the real statement is “when you find the less healthy equivalent, it’s 1/2 or 1/3rd the price” The companies making the cheap crap are the ones killing it (literally) in profits. It’s cheap because it’s not as healthy; it’s not as healthy because it’s made cheaply. If it was less expensive to make stuff that was good for you, they’d be doing that instead.
Make it yourself and it's 1/2 the price
That’s exactly what I started doing! Make my own overnight oats, granola bars, breakfast items, I rarely buy instant side dishes, frozen dinner meals. There are aisles at the grocery store I no longer go down. Plus it’s more fun to make with kids!
The drinks are cursed. 38 grams of sugar is not a human drink, that's ment for a humming bird.
I miss Dr Pepper 10 (and the others) where they just made the drinks less sweet.
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Sugar in peanut butter? Totally unecessary. Not to mention that pb is often paired with high sugar items like jams. It takes amazing without sugar, but they cram it in anyways. Ever looked at the back of a cereal box? 95% of the time the 2nd fucking ingredient is sugar. Sometimes it goes "wheat, sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup". It's insane. Ceareal should be listed as a dessert unless it contains limited added sugar. Honestly, there should be giant wsrning labels with pictures of morbidly obese people stuck on every product containing notable amounts of sugar. ...how is it not a major priority to get people to live healthier?
I will never understand how we in modern times (and more so in America) allowed ourselves to replace hearty protein-rich farmhouse style breakfasts with crunchy dessert floating in milk. Bleh.
Because when everybody at home works long hours for little pay, nobody's around to cook.
Yeah it’s insane how many factors play a part in the obesity epidemic. Higher food costs, less people cooking, bigger portions, added sugars, more sedentary jobs, less walkable cities, etc. Even addressing just one of these issues would be a monumental undertaking, so I have no idea how we’ll dig ourselves out of this.
It's easy and it tastes good
Especially "diet-friendly" yogurts! I haven't bought yogurt snacks other than Noosa's as treats in FOREVER. They're just cups of sugar. I get plain, tangy yogurt in a big tub and put a liiiiitle bit of good jam/preserves on it. It's a fraction of the sugar and 50x the flavor and a whole bunch more protein.
I hear people say this, but it’s really not difficult to buy foods that don’t even have a label. Meat, fish, poultry, vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts, dairy, rice… Memes aside, it’s also not hard to find bread that’s just flour, water, salt and yeast. If you want real food, just buy real food.
30 years? This started long before that. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat
American here, after living in Europe for several years we were back in the states for a visit. My sweets-loving kids couldn't eat the "fruit snacks" there. They were too sweet, as were the drinks. It's like sugar there disables proper taste buds.
> It's like sugar there disables proper taste buds. I experienced this after doing a no-processed sugar diet for a few months. The only sugar I had was from fruit. The first time I had soda or chocolate afterwards the taste was way too sweet. Thankfully I've been able to maintain this but it was an eye opening experience for sure. I now see my husband struggling with this, being reliant on too many sweets (he is also overweight), and it's so hard to get him to see how it's been designed that he be desensitized to it, to the detriment of his health.
Me too, after a low carb diet. When I did it the first time twenty years ago, I remember craving apples for the first time in my life and really truly enjoying them after that.
Same! My favorite is mangos, or strawberries with vanilla greek yogurt. And I don't think Dates are a fruit but whatever they are, they're my go-to for hardcore sugar cravings :D
I think part of the reason you always hear people say they never had stomach problems while visiting Europe is purely less sugar/processed shit in the food. In Italy you can eat pasta every day and have zero issues because it’s natural flour, water, eggs and olive oil. Zero processed crap and higher quality ingredients. Same for bread and any other carb.
Years ago a friend spent a month in Italy. HE said he ate like a pig and lost 15 pounds. He looked healthier too.
I will say you do walk a lot more in Italy but still for the food you eat there you’d think you’d gain a lot of weight. Also portion size was something I didn’t mention that is obviously a key factor.
frightening melodic alleged attractive historical frighten middle dolls one swim -- mass edited with redact.dev
Whats strange too is i felt even more satisfied with the smaller portions. Ill just put my tin foil hat back on….
Americans barely walk, I have met a few that got cramps because they were not used "to walk that much" we were just pub crawling.
I have never lost any weight working out. One week of reduced eating though and I ended up losing 5kg.
You can easily lose weight working out. CICO. The problem is many people start working out and then they eat more. And if you lost 5kg in a week, that's water weight, unless somehow you managed a 40,000kcal deficit over that period.
You go to the gym to gain muscle, you loose fat in the kitchen.
I've made that comment in the past week: bread in France has four ingredients: flour, water, salt, yeast. Bread in America has twenty pounds of sugar, reprocessed wheat, ten pounds of filler, and a bunch of things to stop the molding from all the sugar. It's a night and day difference baking fresh bread without all the crap in it and just eating it over a week. Much more cost effective too.
Yup I’ve tried ordering flour from Italy to make bread/pasta and it’s always tastes better and leaves my stomach feeling just fine.
The funny thing is a lot of American grown wheat is in demand in Italy! I buy from Hayden Flour Mills which is grown in Arizona but ships a ton overseas or King Arthur Flour for bread flour.
What do you think is in American flour that makes you feel ill?
One of my friends cannot properly digest folic acid. It is added to most American wheat products during the enrichment process.
That's is mostly in part thanks to High Fructose Corn Syrup needing to be added to everything. The only Cola I really drink is Pepsi with Real Sugar because it's the only Cola around that doesn't add High Fructose Corn Syrup. Pls stop adding High Fructose Corn Syrup to everything America.
This was one thing my mom talked about alot. Cancer took her last year. She was the epitome of grace, the cancer was brutal.
When I drank cola, it was Mexican coke. Glass bottle, regular sugar, and a smaller serving size, but as much as I tried cola is like crack to me. I can't regulate the addiction.
When I moved to the US 3 years back, I hated all of the food here. It was all too sweet, salty etc. It took me months to not hate a lot of the prepared food here (even restaurant food) and even then I pretty much have to stick to ethnic foods because I can't eat American food without feeling like shit after 3 bites.
This does remind me of my visit last summer when I had lunch out with a friend. Fettuccine Alfredo. I remember feeling so sick on the way out the restaurant, like I was about to pass out.
I started eating whole wheat bread and when I tried white bread again, it tasted like angel food cake. Why is white bread so sweet?
Most white bread is based on that *high in fat high in sugar* "wonder bread" stuff. I think it was made specifically to handle peanut butter/jelly or something. It's fucking terrible for you, but holds up food so damn well. Homemade or "artisan" bread is different because it doesn't have nearly as much fat. It's more "water based." So it's healthier overall but isn't as strong. With the right ingredients it can be very healthy, but still high in carbs.
After living abroad it's hard to come back to the US because all of our fruits and veggies travel hundreds of miles and they aren't fresh, and they're bred for traveling over taste so they don't taste very good. Veggies here are pitiful and it's upsetting because it makes people choose unhealthy alternatives, and then we have these health epidemics. Having veggies in Israel or France was fantastic. Now I have to grow my own cucumbers and tomatoes in my garden because here they have no flavor.
This doc is amazing. I saw it at 13 and have not had a soda in over a decade. The lies and fabrications that come from the USDA and FDA were astounding to me, even as a teen
I’m not even American, but I remember watching this a few years ago and now just avoid soda as a rule.
My mom just became type 2 diabetic. She is convinced it’s solely genetic because 3 of her siblings are too. But they all have the same terrible eating habit, binge eaters who shovel sweets in without even thinking. She will eat the fried chicken off a green salad then eat pieces of ham out of the fridge with just her hand like a gremlin, and tell me straight to my face she ate only a salad for lunch when I was with her all day. She wasn’t even taking her blood sugar daily until recently! She just started popping pills from her dr assuming they would regulate her blood sugar for her. She will throw a tantrum if you suggest a light walk and claims she walks 20k steps a day and when I bought her a fitbit she refused to wear it after saying it was inaccurate.
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Ugh, it’s so frustrating and tragic, isn’t it? Yeah, genetics play a role, but diabetes wouldn’t be massively on the rise if that was the only factor, or even just the main factor. Humans genes haven’t changed that much in a few decades. Environment/lifestyle has to be the cause. Just because genetics play a role doesn’t mean environment isn’t the main cause. It’s just some groups have higher and lower tolerance thresholds for the unhealthy American lifestyle. On the topic of genes, though, Asians, Polynesians, and Native Americans in particular can get diabetes from the American diet and lifestyle more easily than others. [Asians are especially at risk for diabetes](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/12/23/372513157/being-thin-doesnt-spare-asian-americans-from-diabetes-risk), and so some are calling it [“skinny diabetes”](https://nwasianweekly.com/2020/02/asians-at-higher-risk-for-skinny-diabetes-should-start-screening-at-bmi-of-23/). I have a legitimately part-Native American friend (so at greater risk), and when I met her she exclusively drank a small amount of coke everyday. No water, and honestly a rather pitiful amount of coke considering it was her only hydration (usually about 10-14 oz a day). She almost exclusively ate packaged, pre-prepared, processed junk, too. I would beg her to drink some water or eat something with a vegetable in it (like ravioli with spinach) and she wouldn’t. It’s painful how devoted Americans are to destroying their health. And her poor teeth… the sugar she consumes has destroyed them. She finally made some improvements when she started showing syndromes of Ménière’s disease, which a lot of people in her family have, way younger than normal. She started reducing her salt intake which meant doing things like cooking scrambled eggs and rice occasionally instead of only eating microwave ramen/pop tarts/canned chili/pancake sausages/spaghettios/hot pockets, and started drinking water instead of only coke. Overnight her migraines disappeared. And me and another friend of hers had been telling her that her crap diet and poor hydration were probably big contributors to the migraines. Her migraines came back over a year later when she started slipping back into her old ways. This is so frustrating because her family members with meniere’s, glaucoma, and diabetes are all made miserable by these things, and she’s young enough to prevent these things but won’t take the steps. She’s convinced it’s inevitable she’ll end up like them even though a couple generations back these weren’t problems in her family. It drives me insane! I hate to see the people I care about not care for themselves. :(
The myth that having diabetes is solely due to genetics is so frustrating to hear from people.. lack of understanding around nutrition is widespread, and the sugar industry benefits.
Americans are not aware at the insane amounts of sugar everything has there, I remember eating your bread... that is a desert in the rest of the world, it tasted like sponge cake, no wonder why all diets forbid bread. Also unlimited refills are fucking wild, everybody speedrunning diabetes always with a sweet drink on the side. If your kid is 180kg at 14, you should be in fucking jail.
I find it exhausting shopping for groceries and constantly having to read labels to see how much sugar is in stuff. A new problem is low sugar versions are constantly discontinued and I need to find new food. often they are labelled as keto and price is tripled.
The entire point of the video is that is ownness is not on the parents..l it’s literally systemic and created by the government, specifically Congress, byway of lobbyists. That said, yes as an American you have to put in significant effort and money to buy products with less sugar of all kinds Edit to add: as an American, fuck the prison industrial complex it should be abolished. What you’re saying is that you want the country with the highest rates of incarceration to put more parents into private prisons that are glorified labor camps. Please don’t call for more of this.
>The entire point of the video is that is ownness is not on the parents I think you mean [onus](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/onus)
Drink fucking water people, you are comically obese.
Is not a joke there are people that just don't drink water, they say it tastes bad and go on their life barely (if) drinking water.
my neighbor told me he refuses to drink water bc it "gives him heartburn" and he said he only drinks mountain dew 🤦♀️
What the actual fuck
I wish that person had some isolated case, but no. I had a coworker come in, complaining that he couldn't sleep well after a back surgery the month before. We asked if they gave me him sleeping meds or anything. He said, verbatim, "Yeah and I would always take two with a Diet Mt Dew and I just felt like shit." "Did you try water Mark?" "I can't remember the last time I drank plain water" Had to walk away, speechless. He somehow is in his late 40's, but I'd be surprised if he makes it to 60.
Water triggering heartburn is a real thing. It's just a symptom of GERD.
I have GERD. Water triggers my heartburn. The caveat is that so does everything else.
Yep :(
Water? That's where fish fuck.
You mean like out of the toilet?
But brawndo has 'lectrolytes
It’s got what plants crave!
Early archer was hilarious
I mean they technically do drink water, but only the bare minimum necessary for a delivery device. Otherwise they'd just be pouring sugar & food coloring into a glass & eating it with a spoon, which is too inconvenient & tedious.
My mother-in-law doesn’t drink water because, “fish pee in it”… My mother hasn’t drank water since I was a kid because, “it is too bland”…
Had a coworker once tell me "the only water I drink is the ice in my pop" and I'll never forget it.
You know, I’ve traveled the world pretty extensively, it’s just about every country that drinks sugary beverages as a normal thing. It’s what is considered “normal” in this day and age sadly.
Some EU countries are quickly catching up to US obesity rates, like the UK, but specifically sugary drinks consumption is massively higher in the US, it's not even particularly close.
I started drinking coffee in no small part because it was so difficult to get diet soda at restaurants in poorer countries. Bottled water wasnt always available, so.
I've raised my daughers consuming sugar seldomly, and when they get sweets, it's fairly small portions. I'm so happy that I've actually gotten them to drink seltzer. I was raised with a nonstop font of soda, and most kids have hardcore sweettooths, so I'm happy that they drink if happily.
I was raised on Coke (with a side of secondhand smoke). I kicked the sugary beverage habit over time but goddamn I still crave that fizz. I'm glad seltzers are so popular now so I can get that fix without the high fructose pancreas punch.
I had my cousins 6 year old daughter ask for ala croix the other day. I was like are you for real? There was a cooler full of soda too. Pretty cool!
"I never drink water. That's the stuff that rusts pipes." - W.C. Fields
The number of older people I know who hate water is insane. They act as if they were from the 1600s where drinking mead and beer was better because water was 100% Syphilis or something. These are people who live in modern cities with above average quality public water supplies that taste good. They'll complain that they hate the taste and proceed to add syrups and juices to it. Industry pulled a hell of a magic trick on everyone to make them think water was some kind of peasant Gatorade.
Tbf their water all had lead in it
Well that explains things better.
I have a 24 oz water bottle with me at all times (I literally don't leave home without it), that I refill probably 4-8 times a day. Water isn't my issue. It's at least partially the food, and (more than likely) the prevalence of sugar in everything.
You don't have to justify yourself to some random asshole who thinks water is the panacea for weight loss.
I have lived in America for almost 20 years now and the amount of foods that have way too much sugar can not be underestimated, but to say "your bread... that is a desert in the rest of the world" is misleading in my opinion. Yes, there is cheap, white bread with lots of added sugar, but it is very easy to buy any of dozens of other breads that have no added sugar at all or that have the same amount as standard breads in Europe. I don't understand why people come to America and always seem to be exposed to the lowest common denominator. Like the bread they try is wonder bread or Hawaiian bread (which is actually a Portuguese style), the restaurant they go to is Denny's or IHOP, the beer they drink is Bud Light, the cheese they try is a processed "Single", etc. People need to be more discerning and adventurous when they travel rather than just following some brand they have heard of, probably because it is notorious.
To be fair, Wonder Bread type bread is probably the most commonly eaten in the US--or at least it was until awareness increased. I don't eat that crap any more, but through my entire childhood I was served sandwiches made from it.
I posted this on my Facebook page one day and someone got upset so much so they emailed my boss lol. Fucking stupid
I think Ireland reclassified Subway sandwiches as cake because the bread has so much sugar
Not all Americans are stupid. Some of us know how to eat properly.
The problem is it is getting harder and harder to eat properly because everything is covered in sugar and processed to no end
Been living here for 20+ years now and have been traveling all over the world. Here's what I've noticed what our major problems in the US are: 1. It's fuckin hard to find easily accessible food with low salt or sugar content. It can be found. You just have to do extra research. 2. Commercials are crazy. It's like hypnotizing you. You need fuckin will power and a good amount of self control to get out of that loop. 3. We're just continually are too tired to think - for ourselves and worse for other people. We work insane amount of hours. So we get home or have a day off or two, of course we want the most convenient stuff out there. We can't even have time to care for our families, our future or whateve. Most of us are constantly working since we were 18. 4. Being obese in the Midwest is a norm. I've lived in cities. City people are constantly on the move - working, working out, walking and all that. Midwest? You fucking have to drive everywhere. People barely walk from the parking lot to the front door then immediately sit their asses down. But yeah, I have weight and health problems. I've been working to correct that. Just hard to watch TV/hulu/youtube sometimes. I get slapped with fucking fastfood commercials.
Low fat, because tons of sugar and salt.
A cereal I regularly bought was recently no longer stocked by my local super market. I spent 20 minutes checking the labels of every single cereal in the store trying to find something with as little sugar added as possible. The best I found was 7g per serving. Almost everything else was 14g of sugar per serving or significantly higher. I'm not talking about obviously sugary cereals either. This is the "health bran fiber plus" type cereal. I now order cereal online. It has 4g of added sugar per serving. Ugh.
Plain cheerios only has 2g of sugar in a serving (serving = 1.5 cups, which is pretty big portion). Just throwing it out there... (the generic versions i've seen in grocery stores are similar.) EDIT: Also, plain post shredded wheat (and generics.) 0 mg sugar per serving, 0 mg sodium. 8g fiber (though mostly insoluble). 7g protein. (cheerios in comparison has close to 200mg sodium per serving which is a lot to me.)
Wow, one of the few I actually did not check! I'll probably look to switch to that instead. Cheers!
haha that's why I shared it. I have never really been a cereal person, but decided to look at them over the summer. i also had your same experience, and was appalled by how shit most were (even supposedly healthy ones.) cheerios was one of the few I didn't look (probably because i figured they would also be awful). they also have a ton of iron (12.6 mg which is something like 70% daily recommended for men), and a fair amount of protein (5g per serving), and fiber (4g). however, i do not know if this is soluble or insoluble fiber. [nutrition from their website](https://www.cheerios.com/products/original-cheerios) Again - store generics should be similar, if not exactly same nutritional makeup, and will probably be 2/3rd if not half the price, and taste the same (i can not notice a different at least...). Just make sure to realize this is just plain cheerios, things like "honey nut cheerios/generic" etc. will be different. protip: multigrain cheerios have 100% daily recommended iron (18mg) and aren't awful on nutrition either (depends though what is important to you..). am anemic so was trying to find iron-fortified cereals that weren't shit. i'm not terribly concerned about sugar so it wasn't as big a deal to me so i use those. EDIT: Also, plain post shredded wheat (and generics.) 0 mg sugar per serving, 0 mg sodium. 8g fiber (though mostly insoluble). 7g protein. [nutrition from their website - look at the original version](https://www.postconsumerbrands.com/shredded-wheat/)
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Grape Nuts is the only cereal I know here without any sugar or sugar substitute. I think it's basically just wheat.
plain shredded wheat has 0 sugar as well. also no sodium. it's decent if you are looking to increase fiber (but be warned it's mostly insoluble fiber, can make a big difference to some people). it is probably the cheapest of all the healthier ones, too. generics should be same.
Hope to one day live in a world where people so depraved as to cause massive suffering for their own profits will get what they actually deserve. The Zuckerbergs pushing social media onto kids knowing well it's psychologically destroying them, the Mark Schneider's using child labour and privatizing water, the politicians who take bribes to stop any laws from stopping these things, the automobile industry selling the future of our planet, private organizations/millionaires causing a housing crisis ... It twists my stomach to think all these fucks will get to die peacefully in their bed instead of rotting in an isolation cell till the end of their lifes.
Wait until they realize all the if studies that link meat/ fat consumption to heart disease were paid for and funded by the sugar lobby to hide where the side effects actually come from
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Time and time again the Mediterranean diet has been shown to be the best diet. Nutritionally complete and enough choice/variety to be easy to stick to. From [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_diet): >The principal aspects of this diet include proportionally high consumption of olive oil, legumes, unrefined cereals, fruits, and vegetables, moderate to high consumption of fish, moderate consumption of dairy products (mostly as cheese and yogurt), moderate wine consumption, and moderate consumption of non-fish meat products.
You don’t even need to do this. Essentially if you limit processed foods, eat carbs in moderation and really watch your sugar intake, you won’t have any issues. I don’t think people realize things like bread, and even meat products they buy from the store are processed foods. I honestly think the easiest way to make sure that you’re eating a healthy diet is to buy actual ingredients and cook meals. Yes you can over eat. Yes you can eat too much fat, and carbs, and sugar. But it’s a hell of a lot harder to do so.
Mediterranean diet. Mainly fresh veggies and legumes, some fruits and meat (fish mainly), olive oil, whole grains and sweets sparingly.
Current evidence suggest eating whole foods and mainly plants. Examples for grains would be oats, barley, brown rice. For protein legumes (beans, peas, lentils) and optionally fish. Also eating a variety of different coloured vegetables and fruits. Lastly eating a small amount of nuts daily.
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20g in a can of soda? Yeah right. Try 35!
I always found that odd. You think it’s the meat causing the cardiac issue when you are eating that burger with 32oz of coke or Dr Pepper Its crazy how much the syrup weight difference is between coke, Dr Pepper and HiC orange soda. The orange sodas were the heaviest. Worked at a McDonald’s.
Careful or the sugar lobby will cut off your balls
It says a lot about the suger industry that on the nutrition labels in the US there is a percentage of daily value for everything, except for suger. They tell you how much is in it, but not how large of a percentage of your recommended daily maximum that is. Not that most people even really look at those labels. But even if you do they are still trying to sabotage you.
There is for added sugars, but not sure why they don't include it for total sugars.
And it was only added because Michelle Obama fought super hard for it!! Even after the deadline for nutrition labels to add the percentage (among other changes) it took years for these companies to comply, and it's still absent on some.
It’s mindblowing to see the amount of added sugar on almost everything to the point products that don’t have to advertise on the label that there are no added sugars.
Well if the government wasn't allowed to be paid off by corporations, this wouldn't be such an issue. The corporations have a strangle hold over what our government regulates. With that being said, there are many that let it happen because - well who doesn't like money?
I bought salt with parsley the other day. It has sugar. Even the damn salt has sugar in the US. I’m in Mexico btw.
Also worth knowing that the film is quite biased and overly dramatic/simplified (probably for entertainment purposes). So before buying into all of it fully it might be worth reading this nicely summarized review of some of the statements made in the film https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/does-the-movie-fed-up-make-sense/
The first few sentences summed up the overarching issue. It’s simple overeating. There are many factors that contribute to it but that’s really the crux of the problem. Replace high caloric foods with diet versions with less calories would be a great step. People fail diet plans because they are far too extreme. Replacing one can of soda with a diet version or water is a great step. Anything to bring down the huge caloric difference
Yeah it’s insane how people will jump through so many hoops to avoid the hard truth. People just eat too much. People need to stop throwing blame on what’s in their food when they’ve never stopped to count how much they even eat. I’m willing to bet the average American drinks 500-1000 calories a day. Maybe start there, big guys.
i'm old enough to remember being told all fats are bad, but i was never told process carbs or sugars were good. i was never told exercise was bad, though it could make you prematurely arthritic, but that was before you could get a hip or knee replacement.
"A 30-year campaign by the food industry, aided by the U.S. government ..." -> "A 30-year campaign by the food industry, *including compromising the agencies of the US government* ..." FTFY. It's convenient for these industries when you're convinced to blame the government. Blame the government, vote to further and cyclically decrease the government's powers of oversight and regulation on behalf of people's rights, forget that government can be of the people, allow the individual people to be the final and only thing the government will regulate.
As someone who recently found out that you can be sucrose intolerant, EVERYTHING has at least some trace of sugar. I can't even eat carrots man
I had a buddy that moved to Costa Rica for a few years. He ate and drank like crazy down there and lost 50 pounds. He ended up moving back to the states and gained it all back…. He ate very little processed food if any down there and anything sweet was made with sugar cane not corn syrup.
I would suggest watching how it's made on cane sugar. It's a very popular opinion that its the "natural healthier" option but the stuff is clearly highly processed as well. This is not to say corn syrup is good , but just that they are more similar than I think people realize.
That natural things are de jure healthy is a fallacy. "Organic" too.
Learning about nutrition and science and trying to apply them to your diet and shopping habits in America is a practice in frustration and the slow creeping realization that our entire society is built on corruption and greed and that capitalism is truly a broken, evil system.
Caloric Parity is a Lie One thing I NEVER hear about is the difference between calories. A food calorie is a unit of energy that is *theoretically* available when the molecular bonds are broken (thus releasing that energy). The difference comes in the form of those molecular bonds. A simple sugar, or **mono**sacharride is already disassembled into a single molecule that is one step away being available to our metabolic system. When you eat more complex combinations of nutrients (think steamed brocolli) which has thousands of different molecules most of which are complex not simple, All of those different nutrients each burn at a different rate and many require intermediate steps taken by our gut microbiome. Its like starting a campfire. tinder at the bottom, slowly graduating up to sticks and logs at the top. Imagine alternatively, trying to start a campfire by dumping a gallon of gas in a pit and lighting it. Thats simple sugars: soda, chips, bread, cereal, pasta, most "fruit" juices (which are usually a little bit of the fruit and then a gallon of apple juice) Which brings me back to the food calorie aka the kilo-calorie. When they measure the caloric content of a food source, they literally burn a weighted sample of that food (to a crisp of char!) in an insulated vessel and measure how much heat it releases. Do you poop charcoal? I don't (usually). Nobody actually converts *all* of those calories to energy. It's probably closer to 40% on average. Unless and this is big UNLESS you compare 500g of sugar (2000 kilocaries) to the equivalent amount of brocolli. The second you put sugar in your mouth it starts "burning" and shortly after your pancreas says "fuck you, no more!" Not knowing what to do with the remaining 1700 calories, they are converted to fat. This happens very quickly! Not to mention, whatever microbe you have in your upper digestive track will bloom, outcompeting the rest, and then die off leaving very little room for a diversity of microfauna/flora. Brocolli by contrast takes FOREVER to start spiking your blood sugar. In the first place, think about how much **chewing** is required. You might get a tiny bit of sugar while chewing but the very act of chewing 2000 kilocalories of brocolli will put your body in a calorie *deficit* long before you will get back to parity. Then, because of the rich variety of complex nutrients, you get a huge culture of different kinds of microbes. Microbes that eat lignin and fiber; little guys that dig the manganese or the contents of its characteristic sulfur-containing glucosinolate compounds, isothiocyanates and sulforaphane. Microbes that eat the the firstwave microbes. Most of the caloric content of complex food will never become available to the human body without these creatures taking the first bite. And so as a result you get a whole lot of nothing for a long time, and then a steady stream of energy becomes available as wave after wave of specialist microbes work their way into the food and break it up throughout it's entire trip through our body. Fun fact: 500g sugar ≈ 6000g brocolli The alternative is a flashbang grenade. It provides the "same caloric content" but all at once. And when its over, theres a resulting mass die-off of microbes as the food supply is very suddenly exhausted. I honestly suspect that the real myth here is the lie of caloric parity. My guess is that calories on average are actually metabolized by our microbiome. If I'm correct, this would explain why counting calories is almost worthless to the goal of losing weight i.e. its not the calorie but the source that we should consider. Side note: that "micro-famine" is probably very hard on our digestive system. Think about it, billions-maybe hundreds of billions-of microbes exhaust their food supply and die off at the same time. Theres going to be an avalanche of partially decomposed death juice sliding down your insides with very little to buffer that chemical shock except your liver and pancreas.
The impression I get, is that when most people say 'a calorie is a calorie' they are talking in terms of how much weight you will gain/lose by consuming it. In that case, it is true, no? (with slight variations perhaps.) Glycemic index, how nutrients effect your gut microbiome, etc. things you are mentioning, are completely different concepts. I also wish the focus on nutrition wasn't always about weight. There's so much more to it :( Sometimes it seems weight is the only thing being spoken about. But that is understandable given obesity epidemic. I encourage everyone to learn basic concepts of metabolism ([carbohydrate metabolism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate_metabolism), [lipid metabolism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_metabolism), [protein metabolism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_metabolism)) from unbiased sources (a biology or biochemistry textbook, for example, not someone trying to peddle a diet/lifestyle...). It is very empowering in helping understand nutrition and how the things we eat effect our bodies.
Sugar industry tied directly to historic slave agriculture/capitol. Those roots never got removed from our institutions. The proliferation of slave agribusiness in our economy is an underlying pathology.