Speaking of the economy, I’m not sure how all the obese people afford not only Disney but the cost of an electric scooter rental.
Yeah, but the general populace has been conditioned over time (marketing and advertising) to value convenience + low cost over nutrition. I’m sure there’s an economist somewhere with a neat graph showing a time trend of cost and nutrition going down while convenience and calories going up. Presto - Fatties!
A lot of Electric Scooters are paid for by insurance, just get your doctor to sign off - it’s quite a racket actually.
I’m always surprised at how much I spend at the grocery store. I’ll get enough food to feed me for four days, dinner only, and I’ll spend $25. And it’s not like I’m buying the fancier truffles.
Another thing is convenience. The last thing I want to do when I get home from work is cook.
We’ve been to Disney Land or World, whichever is in Orlando, a couple of times the last few years and have noticed a proponderance of very obese persons there, that above and beyond the norm in most other public venues. We mused over why at the time, although I think it goes beyond just the economy or America getting larger in general.
The weight and people walking on the left side were the two things that really stood out. The left walking thing is probably easily enough explained by the number of international visitors. The weight, still not sure as to why Disney is such a draw.
Wow. And I can’t even afford arthritis medicines.
Not around L.A. The cops I’ve seen are always very fit, without exception. I guess the LAPD actually holds them to their fitness standards.
The biggest fat-shock I ever had was when I returned to the U.S. from a vacation to Italy. Practically nobody in Italy is fat or even a little overweight (don’t confuse the fat Italian-American stereotype with actual Italians… the stereotype definitely applies to the former only). As soon as I hit the airport - I believe Dallas is where we landed - I couldn’t believe the sheer volume of the natives. They were truly monstrous in comparison to what I had been seeing the past few weeks.
Just goes to show that when you see it all the time, you get used to it and your perception shifts so that it’s not nearly as noticeable. But come to the U.S. from a place full of normal-sized people and it will hit you like a ton of bricks.
Try returning from a visit to Asia…! 
you must not have been looking very hard.
Like ZipperJJ said, you’re seeing what you want to see.
Once Europe has caught up to the U.S., what will they have left to feel superior about?
This is so true! I’m always surprised when people claim otherwise too. It’s the boxed and frozen convenience foods, cookies, and chips that are expensive! And a meal at a fast food place for my family of four costs probably 4 times as much as a regular home cooked meal.
I guess it must be true that people just don’t realize it, but I don’t understand how someone with the most basic level of intelligence can’t see that they can get 5 pounds of carrots for about a buck, or an 18 oz bag of Doritos for 3 or 4 bucks and still believe that healthy food is expensive.
A coworker of mine went to disney a few weeks ago and while not obese I wouldn’t call him thin. He was fretting over all the amount of walking he’d have to do and concerned about it being ‘too much’. He also has absolutely no concept of what healthy food is, “well, yes my mcmuffin has cheese but it has egg, and I only ate half anyway, cause i’m on a diet”. he says that’ often while I eat my oatmeal with almonds.
As for the perception aspect, I could agree with a lot of the statements. I notice abroad that everybody is more attractive and thin. I notice in some towns mainstreets when there are no minorities in a crowded bar (creepy). Don’t really pay attention to the obese or thin anymore.
As for the overweight. I just get frustrated that with the wide range of sizes stores need to cover I can never find pants that fit me. Granted I’m a size 31-34… probably a size 30 but my thighs are too muscular to get jeans up over them, hah. I saw ‘ultra slim fit’ dress pants at macy’s by calvin klein and got excited. They didn’t have my size, but went up to a size 38. Too funny.
I think Disney caters to very large people, maybe that’s why there are so many of them there?
That’s interesting, since both of those articles are focusing on childhood obesity. I don’t know what Italians do with their kids, but when I think about it I don’t remember seeing a lot of children out and about - I spent most of the time there in Rome and Florence, where I saw lots and lots of normal-weight adults and pretty much no fat ones. It was not just my imagination.
ETA: those articles are also from 2010-2011 and my visit was in 2004. So if fat kids are just now becoming a problem there, it wouldn’t have been present when I was there.
For sheer calories the Egg McMuffin is the better option. 1/2 of an Egg McMuffin is 150 calories. I’m not denying the sat fat and sodium contents are problematic but you can’t really use this story as evidence that your friend eats too much.
Losing weight is easy enough; keeping it off is damn near impossible. I’m always teetering on the brink between overweight and obese. I can do everything right for five months straight and it takes a week of emotional eating to undo all that progress. But I keep trying, because at least I’m trying, and staying in the same place beats gaining more weight.
And meal plan. And shop for groceries. And clean up after I’ve done all of the cooking. And be faced with more of the same food the next day (I’ve never liked leftovers) that I’ll need to cook again and clean up after again.
I recently went a month without take out, restaurants*, and/or processed food. It was miserable. I’d come home at the end of the day and stare at the kitchen with malice.
I may have seen one “chubby” asian person a day in China, never saw someone I would consider obese that was asian. Did see fat westerners.
My in-laws have a house in Colorado ski country. Colorado is already one of the thinnest/fittest states (can’t remember the cite, but I read it on the internet, so it must be true) and we usually remark about how when we visit, fat people are a rarity.
Another places I rarely see fat people: Trader Joe’s.
They do cater to overweight people. If you need a seat belt extender for one of their rides the “cast members” will quickly and discretely get one and set it up for you. No fuss, no muss and no embarrassment. Just Google “fat friendly Disneyworld.” I’m overweight now but I was even fatter when I went to Disneyworld twice in 2000. There were a lot of people on scooters (mostly overweight people) but the majority of folks were of healthy weight.
Did this. Spent two weeks in Japan last fall, noticed just one single fellow who was obese. Came back to USA, and it was pretty much the opposite here.
I think certain places and forms of entertainment tend to be magnets for fat people. DisneyWorld is one of them. Ten years ago my sister said the same thing about Wisconsin Dells.
Go to a national park and visit the drive-in scenic overlooks, and that’s where you’ll find anyone who doesn’t feel like walking, including most overweight folks. Want to escape? Take a half-mile walk up a trail, and you’ll leave 90% of the crowd behind.
Here’s from my experience at a point when we had no income: poor-people food is very heavy on the starch. If you’re getting help from a food bank, you’re being given a lot of bread and pasta and potatoes–nutritious enough, but heavy stuff. The main veggies besides potatoes are carrots and celery. You’re also being given ground beef, stew meat, sausage, baloney, and cheese–high fat and low cost. And quite a lot of food comes in cans.
When I didn’t have much of a choice about what to eat, I did not lose weight. I did crave Frosties from Wendy’s more than I ever have in my life (I don’t even go to Wendy’s!), which I think was a side-effect of stress.
(It’s true that there are beans and lentils and whatnot as well, which are extremely cheap, but that didn’t work for us, since my daughter is severely allergic to most plant-based proteins. So my experience is skewed on that point.)
Exactly. The fatter the general population gets, the more fat people convince themselves that they are of a normal weight.
And I just love the well Marilyn Monroe was a size 12 comment that gets thrown about. Marilym Monroe weighed 118 lbs and was 5’ 5 1/2" tall according to her autopsy report. I’ve seen some of her clothing. It’s really small. She would have to gain at least 50 lbs to be the size 12 of today.
As far as I am concerned, people can be any weight they want to be, but please stop with the denial regarding how fat you are.