It’s the American fast food diet. Pollan studied several regional "diets’ and pretty muc, world wide they all work- except the American fast Food diet.
That’s too much sugar, fat and salt.
No doubt other nations have McDonalds, but they go there as a treat, not five times a week. Eating at McDs’ or Jack in the Box, or whatever once a month is fine. Eating fast food several times a week is not. And sure, when i am on a long road trip, i will hit a McDs. Nice clean restrooms.
McDonalds also sucks the kids in with their Playspace and such, conditioning them to like McDs crap.
Lets looks at the top Japan fast food chains:
Sure there are a couple burger chains there, but “beef bowls” are the big thing, and you can see Japanese from all walks of life slurping those for lunch.
There are 650 calories in 1 bowl (17.5 oz) of Yoshinoya Beef Bowl with Vegetable, regular. 20g grams fat. And it is pretty damn filling.
A Big Mac combo is about 1300 calories, with a lot of fat 52 grams- and salt.
One possible reason is that flame retardant chemicals in furniture and carpeting may cause obesity. Apparently they are phasing these toxic chamicals out, but they were in lots of stuff for decades. And there’s still lots in people’s houses. Studies on rats show a link between fire retardant chemicals and obesity. Also some other health issues like autism.
Anyway, I don’t think other countries had the same chemicals in their furniture.
Apparently there are not as many flame-retardant chemicals in the furniture in Colorado, because I rarely see fat people in Colorado. I did notice, when driving cross-country and stopping at a fast-food place in Kansas, that almost everyone I saw in that restaurant was pretty hefty, and I assumed the skinny people were all brown-bagging it or jogging during their lunch hour.
Also, to refute someone down below, I have always free-fed my pets, cats and dogs, meaning there is always food in their bowl or if there isn’t, and they ask, I will put food in there. Never had a fat pet. One of my kittens might be getting there, but he’s still a kitten and doesn’t have to be put on a diet until he turns into a cat (in July).
Of course this is pet food. If my dog had unlimited access to, say, bacon, he probably would be a fat dog.
This is interesting. AIUI, the primary ignition source for furniture fires over the years has been cigarettes - and the solution that Big Tobacco pushed for was loading up furniture with flame-retardant chemicals.
So it seems cigarettes are giving smokers cancer and making the rest of us fat. :smack:
I’ll float this as an observation made by a non-American (but one who has visited often and had American colleagues and friends) - I have no cites, so don’t bother to ask; but I think most people get through the day using some sort of emotional crutch. Some people smoke; me, I like a drink; other people prefer other little treats; and some people comfort eat.
Now, the US has/had, at least from my point of view, a funny relationship with alcohol - rather a puritanical one. Same thing for drugs historically? If you take out a couple of those emotional crutches and make them unavailable, then are you not making people more reliant on those that are left - notably comfort eating?
I would never suggest that this could be anything more than a contribution to the overall effect. But as I look at the list the OP provided, some things catch my eye. A lot of middle eastern states (no alcohol) are fat. European countries (we properly like a drink) less so.
Yeah, there are loads of exceptions to what I’m seeing as a “pattern” - call it pareidolia - maybe it is.
Just a thought. And BTW I think this thread is full of excellent ideas and provides a fascinating historical aspect tp the issue.
One idea is that some places simply have more obesogenic environments than others.
The “built environment” seems to affect whether a place has an obesogenic environment. This includes things like whether there is high population density, good public transit, good pavement (for walking and bicycling), and mixed use communities that put homes, work, and leisure destinations close to each other. Access to recreation facilities might also a factor. Whether an environment is obesogenic is also influenced by the “food environment,” that is, changes to the food supply, including what types of food are sold in the area, the prevalence of fast food restaurants, and the frequency with which people eat out. Researchers are also looking into advertising’s effect on obesogenic environments. All of these things may be factors. There may not yet be a GQ answer to why America is generally generally more obesogenic than other developed countries or what’s causing other countries to get fatter too. However, the reasons for the disparity in the obesogeneity of environments isn’t entirely clear and more research is needed.
interesting thought.
Me? I’m a laborer by choice and preference. I eat a pretty calorie dense breakfast. Lunch is usually salad with an ounce or two of turkey, an ounce (about) of cheese, an ounce of cranberry raisins, and an ounce of vinegar based dressing. Anything else makes me sleepy and makes it hard to work. Dinner is something usually small, maybe healthy maybe not, but not the biggest meal of the day.
I’m not a health and fitness fixated person, I just eat what makes me feel physically good and I’ve mostly figured it out.
I think most Americans have lost an accurate perception of what a ‘normal’ portion size of any given food is. This is mostly due to advertising showing people with big eyes stuffing their faces with giant cheeseburgers accompanied by a large portion of fries and a giant, sugary soft drink.
When I first tried the Weight Watchers program, I was shocked by what I thought were the tiny portions of food. In fact, they were what was normal for how much I should weigh, and after a couple of days I realized that I wasn’t hungry all the time like I thought I would be. Hunger and cravings being too completely different things, of course. I easily lost 40 pounds over the course of a year and didn’t feel the least bit deprived.
I think it was a perfect storm situation. The obesity epidemic can be traced back to the 1980s and 1990s. In the 1960s, something like 5% of children were fat and 20% of adults. Now about 20% of kids are overweight and 33% of adults. What changed in the US during that time?
One factor is that more women were entering the workforce. There simply wasn’t someone at home to cook, so more families became reliant on fast food. At the same time, social pressures led to over-scheduling children. When you have to drop Jeb at his soccer game, take Jenny to her karate class, whip back to watch Jeb’s game, run back to pick up Jenny, etc., fast food is more doable. So are convenience foods at supermarkets. And in the 80s, restaurant portions started increasing, as has been noted.
At the same time, we were getting incrementally more exercise. Nobody in my childhood neighborhood “worked out.” But they moved more. Cable TV wasn’t widely available. With fewer options, people turned off the TV, and of course, there were no cell phones, iPads, and other sedentary amusements. Furthermore, children got more active play time and commonly walked or rode bikes to neighborhood parks and friends’ houses or to the town pool.
And I do think food became the drug of choice for a lot of stressed people. You may run ragged 18 hours a day, but by God, you have that Dove bar to look forward to. Hell, you’re worth it: have two.
I don’t know how this compares with other countries. And I certainly don’t want to return to the Fifties or Sixties, when other social pressures kept people constrained and in some cases, oppressed. Life is better. But we’re fatter.
I also think there is an attitude that ‘eating’ is something to do.
‘Lets go out and have a bite to eat’.
‘Let’s get a coffee’.
‘Let’s go for a drive in the country, see the forests, ansd stop somewhere for something to eat’.
In my experience (mainly with my son’s partners family, as well as my own time in Japan and South Korea as well as Taiwan), Asians have a cultural aversion to overweight people. Perhaps this is a broad brush, but what my son’s partners Chinese family thinks is ‘fat’ is often not considered fat by most westerners (including Canadians, Europeans and the rest). They don’t seem to really like the ripped, muscle bound look either, but they definitely seem to have quite a distaste for fat people, and they use things like fat shaming among family and close friends quite often.
Anyway, I think several in this thread have identified why American’s are so fat, comparatively speaking. Portion size has gotten ridiculous…I mean, I love to eat, but I almost never can finish the food when I go to a restaurant and generally, the friends I go with eat it AND some appetizers to start. Plus an enormous soda to boot (I generally get iced tea, unsweetened…and it’s sometimes hard to even get that, as they sweeten the stuff now without telling you). So, portion size, sugar in everything and sedentary life styles are the main culprits, IMHO anyway.
I heard what might be an urban legend the other day at work that I haven’t bothered to verify. There is a drive in place called Sonic that a lot of my cow-orkers go to. Supposedly they put sugar in the ice. Now, I don’t know if it’s true or not…but in the US, that is actually plausible. It COULD be true.
I’ve read that fat-shaming can somehow make obesity worse - that being said, even if it’s wrong, fat-shaming no doubt still provides powerful incentive to lose weight.
But body positivity can also make obesity worse by making people think that fat is normal or average.
I wonder if emotional eating has a cultural component? By that I mean eating to satisfy/comfort/numb, etc. emotional issues and not to satisfy actual hunger or provide fuel for the body. I think it could be possible that the myriad forces at work that shape U.S. culture have a particularly insidious side effect of widespread emotional eating in response to particular social stimuli and the private feelings they provoke.
Social gatherings, for the most part, revolve around food. I am acutely aware of this, as I have dietary restrictions that often leave me out of the festivities. I have adapted by seeking out social gatherings that revolve around playing music. But those are not so common.
There’s no need to malign Canada. Our northern neighbor ranks much higher on the list of fatty fat fatness:
*"The 2017 Obesity Update by the OECD placed Canada among its most overweight countries, with 25.8 per cent of the population aged 15 and over considered obese.
Only South Africa, the U.K., Australia, Hungary, New Zealand, Mexico and the U.S. had higher rates."*
With lots of good calorie dense foods to consume, plenty of computer games/cellphone activities to keep us inactive and anti “fat shaming” initiatives, USers have every incentive to gain weight.
I just toured a new hospital in our area. It was proudly pointed out by the guide that each inpatient room has a scale capable of weighing patients up to 600 pounds (more than that and you’d need to wheel them over to the bariatric unit, which can handle people weighing up to a half ton).
Glad I looked into this thread. Now I’m definitely going to treadmill tonight.
When did parents become horrified by the idea of not toting around snacks for their toddlers at all times? Not ever being allowed to be hungry between meals from birth surely has not helped anyone.
Cite that this is actually “one of the key reasons”?
ISTM far more likely that the real key reasons are that Japan has a far healthier traditional diet which people still relish and cherish, in addition to a built environment much more conducive to incidental exercise.
Fat-shaming does not seem to have any actual statistically-supported correlation with reduced obesity levels, AFAICT. For instance, the UK is the most fat-shaming society in the world, and also (as senoy and Jackmannii noted above) has one of the highest obesity rates.
Yeah, it’s really not cultural attitudes toward obesity that seem to be most determinative of obesity rates, but rather the cultural norms about eating and exercise in the society they live in.
US cultural norms in those areas, starting around the 1950s, have been disproportionately shaped by industries wanting to sell us more food and cars. This is why, as remarked above, US commercial food portions are so “supersized”, and also why so few US communities have really useful public transit systems or walkable/bikeable commutes even in areas that are densely populated.