Fatness leads to inactivity, but inactivity does not lead to fatness.

[polarmystery]

I'm glad I have good genetics through my mother.

 

[Deeko]

So let me get this straight: there are millions of dollars being spent to try to convince us to eat unhealthy food, millions more spent on every type of media (TV, magazines and the internet) that are trying to get us to change our lifestyle, family interactions, and the like, and still millions more spent at producing the cheapest food in bulk at the cost of all the vitamin & nutrient content. There are literally billions of dollars and countless man hours spent by countless corporations trying to get us to do things that turn out to be unhealthy, far more today than ever before in history.

And somehow this is all 100% my fault?

Now don't get me wrong: these corporations aren't actively trying to be evil and this isn't some silly conspiracy theory crap, it's just the natural fall out of capitalism in the technological era. But it would be silly to ignore the fact that there are ENORMOUS powers working to get us to do things very counter productive to our health. Of course it's ultimately my hand that puts the food in my mouth, but it is ridiculous to ignore the social, psychological and economic forces that guided it there. So again I must repeat that none of this absolves the individual for responsibility for their own health - it has always been that way and always will be - but the attitude that this is "easy" or "simple" or the attitude that fat people are just "weak willed" is completely inappropriate.

If you eat it? YES. It is 100% your fault. Or, if you're a child whose parents control what you eat, its 100% their fault.

Haven't parents been saying for years "If so-and-so jumped off a bridge, would you do it?" Just because a commercial tells you to buy their unhealthy food, doesn't mean you have to buy it, no matter how many billions of dollars they spent producing and advertising it.

It is a sad, sad world we live in that people think its the big, bad TV/Food Corp's fault that they actively choose to gorge themselves on unhealthy crap.

 

[Deeko]

I highly recommend Brikis - and anyone else that thinks corporate America in the digital age - is to blame for our diet woes needs to watch this video.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

People with your mindset really set back any progress of the public understanding obesity. Did you know that genetics can determine the precision of the body's hunger response? There are quite a few people who have a dysfunctional or "broken" hunger response, being hungry even when they have taken in enough calories. Others have blunted thermogenic ability. Some individuals can waste calories through heat loss rather than store it as fat while others store energy almost immediately as fat. You don't understand the whole picture. Don't think you do and don't make rash generalizations that everyone who is fat feels hunger exactly like you and just decides to eat a ton and sit around a lot.

People with the broken hunger response aren't eating broccoli, asparagus, lettuce, or other little to no calorie vegetables to fill up though are they? If they were they wouldn't be fat.

Every obese person I know simply doesn't eat healthy and doesn't excercise. 99% of the time it is a case of nurture over nature. Parents really screw their kids up bad with their god awful habits.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

It may be 100% the person's fault for what they eat, but if advertising didn't work to get people to do something they otherwise wouldn't do, billions and billions and billions of dollars wouldn't be spent on it either.

Used to, to be fat you had to eat like a fat person. Now, you just have to eat like pretty much everyone else.

 

[skace]

Deeko, you and Brikis are both right. Technically it is the person's fault, technically. But we aren't trying to assign blame, we are trying to solve a problem and if the problem is that the average person doesn't know what is good or bad for them and relies on some level of marketing then we need to split blame up. It's easy to point fingers and say "you are too stupid to eat well", however, at the same time society is killing itself. When 60% of your population is obese, who the fuck do you high 5? Society as a whole should want to be healthy and productive not deceive itself into illness.

And as easy as people think it is to eat healthy, I grew up poor and raised on hotdogs and mac & cheese. It took me a long time to fix all of my habits and a lot of will power. And I have more will power than the average person, I'm also disgustingly self conscious. I don't think all of my qualities are things that I'd want the average person to uphold just to stay in shape.

Success should be demonstrated not by whether a person can get in shape, but how easy it is for the average person to be in shape. And in an advanced civilization, I would expect this 'problem' to be incredibly easy to solve.

 

[brikis98]

Lets look as just soda consumption, and it's increase over this time frame.

"Daily calories from soft drinks and fruit drinks nearly tripled between 1977 and 2001, rising from 2.8 percent to 7 percent. This translates to a change from 50 calories to 144 calories in soft drinks, and to an increase in calories from fruit drinks from 20 calories to 45 calories."

( http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/17/health/webmd/main644191.shtml )

That alone could account, in some cases, for a majority of the weight gain. Most people I know that are obese easily drink a liter or soda before lunch. going back even further would only increase this %, drinking calories is bad unless you want to bulk, but you know this. Telling someone that's obses if they stop drinking soda and they'll drop 30 lbs and they will just laugh at you, they either wont believe you(choosing ignorance) or wont be able to stop drinking soda. I know it's hard to just stop but it's possible. I was drinking over a liter of soda a day at one point now I'll have less than 24oz month which in the 60's and 70's would be about average to slightly above average.

Correlation does not equal causation. Repeat that to yourself a few times.

Increased soda consumption could be the a cause of obesity... But it could also be the result of it. How can that be? One possible explanation can be found in Good Calories, Bad Calories and is nicknamed the "carbohydrate hypothesis". I recommend actually reading the book, but here's my crappy, inaccurate, super-condensed paraphrasing of it: when fat metabolism is working properly, you eat X calories and store them as fat. During the day, you mobilize the X calories from this fat to use as energy and your weight remains the same. The problem happens when eating/drinking too many highly processed carbs which mess with insulin levels and the body's ability to metabolize fat. As a result, you store X calories from the soda, but can only mobilize some smaller number X - Y of those calories. The result? You get hungry because you don't have enough calories to get through the day. So you eat/drink more, store more fat, can't mobilize all of it, get hungry again, and so on. In other words, becoming fat is actually the cause for eating more and not the other way around. As soda became more and more available and a more regular part of lifestyle, the havoc it wreaks on fat metabolism could explain the increase in soda consumption. Is the carbohydrate hypothesis correct? We'd need to do lots of studies to know. But the point is that you are assuming causation from correlation when many other explanations are equally possible.

And looking back at it historically 50 years ago people walked a lot more than they do now.

Out of curiosity, got any stats that prove that? I actually suspect people consciously spend far more time exercising (especially jogging) today than 50 years ago, but I don't know the numbers for sure.

 

[kalrith]

Out of curiosity, got any stats that prove that? I actually suspect people consciously spend far more time exercising (especially jogging) today than 50 years ago, but I don't know the numbers for sure.

I would say that a small portion of the population is exercising more than ever. If you go to the gym or look at the streets, there are lots of people walking, jogging, cycling, etc. However, I think those people are in the vast minority. When I look at the people who are spending time exercising (the minority) and compare them to the people at Walmart or the mall (the average), I see a huge disparity in obesity.

What I'm saying is that a portion of our society is becoming quite health conscious and trying to eat right and exercise. That portion of our society is at a healthy weight. However, the vast majority is likely doing less physical activity than 50 years ago and definitely less than 100-200 years ago. I don't have sources to back that up, but that's what I've seen through observations and a study of history.

My guess is that the healthy are becoming healthier, and the fat are becoming fatter. Those who want to eat healthily and exercise have more at their disposal than people did 20-30 years ago. Unfortunately so many more people are taking advantage of the increase in fast food and TV at their disposal than the healthy alternatives.

 

[Pantlegz]

Out of curiosity, got any stats that prove that? I actually suspect people consciously spend far more time exercising (especially jogging) today than 50 years ago, but I don't know the numbers for sure.

People do spend more time jogging, or consciously exercising, now than they have in the past, mostly because jobs have become less physical. I don't have any stats but when I said that I was thinking about people walking from store to store or even walking from their house to the store maybe a few miles. Or walking around stores, anymore if you want to you can hop in the electric shopping cart and let it wheel your fat ass around the store. I know I've seen more than enough fat lazy people doing that that were perfectly capable of walking.

I'm not trying to say there is just one cause to obesity and I'm sure there's more than one solution. But there are a good number of people that choose to be fat. Not saying they want to be fat but their lifestyle and and amount of calories they intake makes them that way. And that's ok, as long as they're not making excuses as to why they're fat. When I was fat you know what my reason was? Because I've been lazy, I need to do something about it. Not I'm fat because bla bla bullshit...

 

[brikis98]

If you eat it? YES. It is 100% your fault. Or, if you're a child whose parents control what you eat, its 100% their fault.

I think you're missing the point that "fault" contains shades of gray. Here's a rather extreme analogy to show what I mean:

* If I held a gun to your head and threatened to kill you every day if you didn't eat junk food, is it 100% fault of you comply?
* Now, if instead of the gun I had a bat and just threatened to hurt you badly, is it your fault if you comply?
* Now if instead of a bat, I brought down the collective weight of psychological, economic and societal pressures upon you every minute of every day to convince you to eat junk food, is it your fault if you comply?

The reason companies spend millions of dollars on advertising, mass production and the like is because it works. It is incredibly difficult to refuse the lure of a dirt cheap burger, the boxed meal that takes seconds to prepare or that shiny ice-cold can of coke and more and more people every day are unable to fight it. This is why the rate of obesity continues to grow. Not because people's wills are getting weaker but because the pressure of the outside world is getting stronger. Worse yet, these problems tend to be self-perpetuating: once you've gotten fat, it's much easier to stay fat (or get fatter) than to lose weight. Food is psychologically and physiologically addictive, not quite as bad as something like cigarettes, but analogous in their central presence in one's lifestyle.

Just because a commercial tells you to buy their unhealthy food, doesn't mean you have to buy it, no matter how many billions of dollars they spent producing and advertising it.

Don't belittle it to being solely nan issue of TV commercials. It's every aspect of life. It's part of what you do with your friends and family. It's the way you celebrate important events. It's in every commercial and movie. It's an economic decision (crap food costs far less than healthy food); it's a scheduling decision (crap food is faster than healthy food); it's a political/moral decision (vegetarian, vegan, organic, local, etc).

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

We have Shrek telling kids they need to get up and play an hour a day. That's when he's not pimping happy meals and green twinkies to them. Who's fault is that?

 

[brikis98]

People do spend more time jogging, or consciously exercising, now than they have in the past, mostly because jobs have become less physical. I don't have any stats but when I said that I was thinking about people walking from store to store or even walking from their house to the store maybe a few miles. Or walking around stores, anymore if you want to you can hop in the electric shopping cart and let it wheel your fat ass around the store. I know I've seen more than enough fat lazy people doing that that were perfectly capable of walking.

Jobs have definitely become more sedentary, but I wonder if overall activity levels have dropped much. It's quite possible they have, but even there you have another issue of causation vs. correlation. Are people getting obese because they aren't active... or are people becoming less active because they are obese? Think of all the people that lose weight and talk about how much more energy they have during the day - this could easily imply that being fat makes you feel lazy & lethargic and not the other way around.

I'm not trying to say there is just one cause to obesity and I'm sure there's more than one solution. But there are a good number of people that choose to be fat. Not saying they want to be fat but their lifestyle and and amount of calories they intake makes them that way. And that's ok, as long as they're not making excuses as to why they're fat. When I was fat you know what my reason was? Because I've been lazy, I need to do something about it. Not I'm fat because bla bla bullshit...

No argument that some people are perfectly aware of the situation and happily let themselves become fat. However, for the man people who are fat today - and consequently labeled as lazy - had they lived 50-100 years ago, with no change in their will power, I would bet that far fewer of them would've been fat (you included). This means that external forces - differences in the food supply, economic conditions, the family unit & so on - are likely the primary driving factors behind obesity today. Ignoring this fact and merely assuming people get fat because they are lazy may be a big reason why we are having so much trouble stopping the obesity epidemic. We're looking in all the wrong places for causes and consequently coming up with all the wrong solutions.

 

[Pantlegz]

I think you're missing the point that "fault" contains shades of gray. Here's a rather extreme analogy to show what I mean:

* If I held a gun to your head and threatened to kill you every day if you didn't eat junk food, is it 100% fault of you comply?
* Now, if instead of the gun I had a bat and just threatened to hurt you badly, is it your fault if you comply?
* Now if instead of a bat, I brought down the collective weight of psychological, economic and societal pressures upon you every minute of every day to convince you to eat junk food, is it your fault if you comply?

The reason companies spend millions of dollars on advertising, mass production and the like is because it works. It is incredibly difficult to refuse the lure of a dirt cheap burger, the boxed meal that takes seconds to prepare or that shiny ice-cold can of coke and more and more people every day are unable to fight it. This is why the rate of obesity continues to grow. Not because people's wills are getting weaker but because the pressure of the outside world is getting stronger. Worse yet, these problems tend to be self-perpetuating: once you've gotten fat, it's much easier to stay fat (or get fatter) than to lose weight. Food is psychologically and physiologically addictive, not quite as bad as something like cigarettes, but analogous in their central presence in one's lifestyle.


Don't belittle it to being solely nan issue of TV commercials. It's every aspect of life. It's part of what you do with your friends and family. It's the way you celebrate important events. It's in every commercial and movie. It's an economic decision (crap food costs far less than healthy food); it's a scheduling decision (crap food is faster than healthy food); it's a political/moral decision (vegetarian, vegan, organic, local, etc).

that's just it I don't and never have felt pressure to eat crap food. I ate it because I was lazy, I knew better but I didn't care. I don't buy the whole psychological/socical pressure argument. the economic part I will kind of agree on and time I'm going to call bullshit on. Anyone that doesn't have time to cook a meal either needs to be making enough money to pay someone to cook healthy for them or make time. Nothing you're doing with your life is more important than your health PEROID.

It may be slightly cheaper to eat a lower quality food but not in excess, if you can't afford healthy food how can you afford fast food daily? even eating off the dollar menu costs ~$5/meal. If you can't afford fast food then you're just eating very processed foods that might not be the best for you but you're not over eating and therfore not getting fat.

 

[Pantlegz]

We have Shrek telling kids they need to get up and play an hour a day. That's when he's not pimping happy meals and green twinkies to them. Who's fault is that?

Nobody's; Shrek isn't telling them to eat a box of twinkies a day or eat a happy meal every meal. On occassion they're ok and that's where self control comes in. Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to have it all the time. I have a soda machine at work but every time I get thirsty I don't get a soda but I will from time to time just for something different.

 

[Deeko]

brikis - obviously we are not going to agree on this, so there's no point in going in circles.

My question for you, then, is what do you propose to fix it? Make unhealthy food illegal? That seems like a pretty terrible, un-American solution. So what are the other options? One area I'd agree with you on negative corporate influence is in schools - the fact that schools have soda/candy machines is pretty awful, it basically trains kids that these things are acceptable. But that doesn't change what their parents will give them.

People inexplicably listen to "fad diets" and believe the hype that every 2-3 years there is a new ingredient in our diet that wasn't killing us before, but now it is. Maybe someone needs to organize a mass-produced/advertised campaign to re-educate society? But who? Food corporations won't do it - money is in the cheap, processed stuff.

 

[kalrith]

Maybe they could make unhealthy food commercials (or possibly all food commercials) illegal on TV like they did with cigarette commercials in the 80s (I think). I agree that changes should be made in the schools, and some schools are already doing that.

Unfortunately, as with all things, so much learning for kids is done right at home. If mom makes 5 lbs. of fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner, then no amount of education in school and removal of unhealthy food ads is going to keep the kids from being overweight.

 

[Deeko]

Maybe they could make unhealthy food commercials (or possibly all food commercials) illegal on TV like they did with cigarette commercials in the 80s (I think). I agree that changes should be made in the schools, and some schools are already doing that.

Unfortunately, as with all things, so much learning for kids is done right at home. If mom makes 5 lbs. of fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner, then no amount of education in school and removal of unhealthy food ads is going to keep the kids from being overweight.

I don't agree with the idea of making food commercials illegal. Doesn't seem right. However, I agree with your last part, which is what I alluded to at the end of my last post. So how do you re-educate the parents that are already "educated"?

 

[brikis98]

that's just it I don't and never have felt pressure to eat crap food.

If the salesfolks are doing their job correctly, you won't feel the pressure. It'll just seem "normal". Did you ever buy a namebrand food instead of the storebrand? Buy packaged food instead of raw? Did your friends ever invite you to a restaurant to celebrate something? Ever eat burgers, pizza and hot dogs when "tailgating"? Ever eat ice cream on a hot summer day? None of those are likely healthy activities but all are 100% normal. No "pressure" involved. It's just part of modern life.

time I'm going to call bullshit on. Anyone that doesn't have time to cook a meal either needs to be making enough money to pay someone to cook healthy for them or make time. Nothing you're doing with your life is more important than your health PEROID.

Wow, so many answers to this I don't even know where to begin. What about the MANY single parent households in this country (the number of which has increased dramatically in recent times)? You think the mother that works two jobs to feed her family has time to cook a big, healthy meal like a housewife from the 50's? Or do you think she'll just order pizza instead? How about the fact that kids today have far crazier schedules than before (sports, clubs, volunteering, etc) and rarely eat meals with their families? What about the full time student working a night job to pay for tuition (which has increased dramatically in the last few decades)? What about all the people that skip breakfast because they need to get to work/class early?

Oh, and your belief that health is the most important thing is nice... but that's not accurate to the way people really assign priorities on a day to day basis. Health is easy to ignore until it fails, which usually doesn't happen until much later in life. That's why most people are always trying to get back in shape and to lose weight, rather than pro-actively trying to maintain or increase their fitness and maintain weight.

It may be slightly cheaper to eat a lower quality food but not in excess, if you can't afford healthy food how can you afford fast food daily? even eating off the dollar menu costs ~$5/meal. If you can't afford fast food then you're just eating very processed foods that might not be the best for you but you're not over eating and therfore not getting fat.

Fast food isn't the primary source of cheap food. Go walk through a supermarket. Compare the price per calorie of all the packaged products to the fresh veggies, fruits & meats. Our economics are setup so that it is MUCH cheaper to buy the bag of chips than a salad, the wonder bread is cheaper than whole grain (and even that is still loaded with lots of processed crap), the soda is cheaper than water, the candy is cheaper than fruit and so on. And that, of course, doesn't even take into account how much easier & faster it is to microwave the prepackaged meal than to make one from scratch.

 

[skace]

My question for you, then, is what do you propose to fix it? Make unhealthy food illegal? That seems like a pretty terrible, un-American solution.

Well the obvious answer would be to make food that tastes good, kids like, easy to prepare and is healthy for them. Obviously this is practically like a miracle food, but I mean I think that's the general direction we should be heading. We've created incredibly delicious and incredibly unhealthy foods, why don't we try to up the ante a bit.

 

[Kipper]

If you eat it? YES. It is 100% your fault. Or, if you're a child whose parents control what you eat, its 100% their fault.

Haven't parents been saying for years "If so-and-so jumped off a bridge, would you do it?" Just because a commercial tells you to buy their unhealthy food, doesn't mean you have to buy it, no matter how many billions of dollars they spent producing and advertising it.

It is a sad, sad world we live in that people think its the big, bad TV/Food Corp's fault that they actively choose to gorge themselves on unhealthy crap.

...Except Brikis didn't say that. He did say that everybody is ultimately responsible for their own health (meaning that we are responsible for dealing with the OUTCOMES), but various socioeconomic variables have a great deal of input into what decisions we make. You seem to believe that all decisions are made in a vacuum, which is patently false - ESPECIALLY food decisions. How the hell are consumers supposed to differentiate between oatmeal and a sugary cereal which says "helps support your child's immunity," or for that matter wade through the hundreds of health claims on every single product? Is "low fat" the same as "cholesterol-free?" Is "sugar-free" better than "fat-free?"

Your analogy is horrible because it is patently obvious to anybody that jumping off of a bridge will result in certain death. The choice of food is far less clear and is cloaked in multiple layers of health claims, advertising, confusing information (and misinformation) and branding. You're a fool if you don't think that the blitzkrieg of advertising that food processors unload on the media markets every year doesn't influence decision-making. This doesn't even begin to address the social justice issue of access to food, or culturally-appropriate food, for that matter, which is an entirely different can of worms entirely.

Blaming the victim has never been a productive strategy and never will be. This cultural obsession with finger-pointing gets us absolutely nowhere and prevents the development of a coordinated response to this societal problem. from the fact that we have only begun to scratch the surface with regards to obesity-related costs to society (heart disease, kidney disease, joint disease, diabetes, cancer, mental health, economic productivity, premature death, increased carbon footprint).

You're absolutely right that individuals are responsible for their health, but they are only 100% responsible when it comes to dealing with the OUTCOMES. That is, to say that nobody but they can lose the weight. That means they need to be motivated. Can you explain to me exactly how blaming someone is supposed to motivate them?

 

[Kipper]

Maybe they could make unhealthy food commercials (or possibly all food commercials) illegal on TV like they did with cigarette commercials in the 80s (I think). I agree that changes should be made in the schools, and some schools are already doing that.

Unfortunately, as with all things, so much learning for kids is done right at home. If mom makes 5 lbs. of fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner, then no amount of education in school and removal of unhealthy food ads is going to keep the kids from being overweight.

Severely curtailing marketing to children seems like a logical first step. If an argument can be made for restrictions on marketing of tobacco and alcoholic beverages, then I really don't see how nutritionally deficient food is a huge leap. Schools should be off-limits to advertising - I don't care how much companies wail and moan. Schools are educational institutions, not free-trade zones. Most people would object to children being subject to high-pressure marketing tactics - having huge billboards with product logos on them plastered all over the school or on educational materials is really no different. If you ask me, though, where things need to really start is at the grassroots level with a basic return to having control over what you eat and what goes into your body. No national legislation can fix that.

Legislators, can, however, help reset the economic incentives of our food system to align for production of more healthful crops and make food more truly reflect its inherent costs. We subsidize big agricultural producers of corn, wheat, rice, and cotton to the tune of billions of dollars every year. This works its way into the supply chain and forms the basis for cheap meat, sugar, and processed calories. If the tables were turned so that produce was on more equal footing with the cheap grains, I wonder what the outcome would be? At the very least, it would probably increase availability and cost of lower-calorie produce, helping to ameliorate the economic pressure that can fuel weight gain. Is it a magic bullet? No, but THERE ARE NO MAGIC BULLETS with obesity. It's like a brick in a wall. One brick is not a wall, but a hundred; a thousand; now you're talking.

 

[Deeko]

...Except Brikis didn't say that. He did say that everybody is ultimately responsible for their own health (meaning that we are responsible for dealing with the OUTCOMES), but various socioeconomic variables have a great deal of input into what decisions we make. You seem to believe that all decisions are made in a vacuum, which is patently false - ESPECIALLY food decisions. How the hell are consumers supposed to differentiate between oatmeal and a sugary cereal which says "helps support your child's immunity," or for that matter wade through the hundreds of health claims on every single product? Is "low fat" the same as "cholesterol-free?" Is "sugar-free" better than "fat-free?"

Your analogy is horrible because it is patently obvious to anybody that jumping off of a bridge will result in certain death. The choice of food is far less clear and is cloaked in multiple layers of health claims, advertising, confusing information (and misinformation) and branding. You're a fool if you don't think that the blitzkrieg of advertising that food processors unload on the media markets every year doesn't influence decision-making. This doesn't even begin to address the social justice issue of access to food, or culturally-appropriate food, for that matter, which is an entirely different can of worms entirely.

Blaming the victim has never been a productive strategy and never will be. This cultural obsession with finger-pointing gets us absolutely nowhere and prevents the development of a coordinated response to this societal problem. from the fact that we have only begun to scratch the surface with regards to obesity-related costs to society (heart disease, kidney disease, joint disease, diabetes, cancer, mental health, economic productivity, premature death, increased carbon footprint).

You're absolutely right that individuals are responsible for their health, but they are only 100% responsible when it comes to dealing with the OUTCOMES. That is, to say that nobody but they can lose the weight. That means they need to be motivated. Can you explain to me exactly how blaming someone is supposed to motivate them?

*yawn*. "blaming the victim". This is sad & absurd.

People are responsible for their own health, and their own diet. Period. If you're following what a cereal box says, and you're getting fat, very simple logic says you should try something else. Its not like you make a diet choice at birth and you're stuck with it forever.

Also, I've never been of the school of thought that ANY particular food is "evil" and needs to be eliminated from your diet at all costs. Eat that sugary cereal if you want - in moderation. You can get fat on broccoli if you try hard enough. And regardless of your cute little tirade about the poor, defenseless American being "blitzkrieged" (ha, who is making the horrible analogy now, what a pathetic invocation of Godwin's law) - the consumer DOES 100% control how much they eat, regardless of your stance on how we choose what to buy.

As for your question posed at the end - its a matter of phrasing, if you want to be that sensitive about it. If you're talking to an obese person who holds your ever-prevalent 21st century stance of "blame everyone but me", rather than telling them "Its your fault you're fat", phrase it "its entirely within your power to change". Does that make you feel better?

edit: And for the record, the analogy you chose to attack was hardly "my analogy". It is a phrase that has been used by parents all over the country for some time now, when a child says "its ok, tommy is doing it!" or, more relevant, "but Pepsi says this is healthy!" It was obviously apt usage of a common phrase, whether you like it or not.

 

[Pantlegz]

If the salesfolks are doing their job correctly, you won't feel the pressure. It'll just seem "normal". Did you ever buy a namebrand food instead of the storebrand? Buy packaged food instead of raw? Did your friends ever invite you to a restaurant to celebrate something? Ever eat burgers, pizza and hot dogs when "tailgating"? Ever eat ice cream on a hot summer day? None of those are likely healthy activities but all are 100% normal. No "pressure" involved. It's just part of modern life.

There's nothing wrong with any of that, in moderation. Tailgating once or twice a month or going out for ice cream are all perfectly ok. As long as you don't do it every day. I don't follow my diet to a T, I cheat and I treat myself on occasion. but it's just that a treat and not routine which is where it becomes an issue.

Wow, so many answers to this I don't even know where to begin. What about the MANY single parent households in this country (the number of which has increased dramatically in recent times)? You think the mother that works two jobs to feed her family has time to cook a big, healthy meal like a housewife from the 50's? Or do you think she'll just order pizza instead? How about the fact that kids today have far crazier schedules than before (sports, clubs, volunteering, etc) and rarely eat meals with their families? What about the full time student working a night job to pay for tuition (which has increased dramatically in the last few decades)? What about all the people that skip breakfast because they need to get to work/class early?

They need to get their priorities straight, it's that simple. I work full time, go to school full time have 2 kids half the time. play football and go to the gym 2 days a week each. And I still have time to cook most of my meals, If I miss a meal it's because I don't have food in the house not that I don't have time to cook it. This rarely happens. And people don't need a big home cooked meal, they just need to watch what they're eating. And it's not that hard for the single mom to buy healthy food and take some time to teach the kids to prepare simple meals. Again, this is no excuse in my mind.

Oh, and your belief that health is the most important thing is nice... but that's not accurate to the way people really assign priorities on a day to day basis. Health is easy to ignore until it fails, which usually doesn't happen until much later in life. That's why most people are always trying to get back in shape and to lose weight, rather than pro-actively trying to maintain or increase their fitness and maintain weight.

Exactly that's 90% of the problem people put their health off until it's too late. This is what we need to focus on correcting imo.

Fast food isn't the primary source of cheap food. Go walk through a supermarket. Compare the price per calorie of all the packaged products to the fresh veggies, fruits & meats. Our economics are setup so that it is MUCH cheaper to buy the bag of chips than a salad, the wonder bread is cheaper than whole grain (and even that is still loaded with lots of processed crap), the soda is cheaper than water, the candy is cheaper than fruit and so on. And that, of course, doesn't even take into account how much easier & faster it is to microwave the prepackaged meal than to make one from scratch.

It may be slightly cheaper but that doesn't mean you have to buy the cheapest thing in the store, if people wouldn't buy as much there would be less of it. I would much rather pay an extra 50 a week to eat better foods and be healthier and I think anyone that can afford it should do the same. If you can't afford it, then buy the cheaper food and don't buy enough to eat 7000 calories a day.

I know there are may sides to this argument and I may not be hitting all of them but in general society needs to change its outlook on health and stop accepting and coming up with excuses for people being over weight. It's not acceptable.

 

[brikis98]

My question for you, then, is what do you propose to fix it? Make unhealthy food illegal? That seems like a pretty terrible, un-American solution. So what are the other options? One area I'd agree with you on negative corporate influence is in schools - the fact that schools have soda/candy machines is pretty awful, it basically trains kids that these things are acceptable. But that doesn't change what their parents will give them.

If I knew a sure-fire solution, I'd be out there making millions off of it, and not wasting time arguing on a message board

Seriously though, there isn't going to be some magic bullet that fixes everything. A proper solution - if we ever find one - will probably require changing many aspects of our lives. One big part will be education: teach kids & parents how to cook, encourage families to eat together and help school administrators get decent food in the cafeterias. Another part may involve stricter food labeling and advertising laws. If you are going to call it "bread", it should primarily be made of flour, salt, water & yeast. Otherwise, it should be called "bread substitute". More regulation of health claims on labels and in commercials and of the supplement industry. Another aspect may be to stop the government form subsidizing corn products. As Kipper said, it would be much better if fresh fruits, veggies, and naturally fed animals (e.g. grass feed beef) were as affordable as all the processed crap.

There are probably dozens of other things that need to happen, but they tend to have a common trend: they help alleviate the MANY external factors that are contributing to obesity. Of course, as I've said each time, ultimately people will still need to take responsibility for their own health, but we should make it as easy as possible for them instead of just calling them "lazy slobs."

People inexplicably listen to "fad diets" and believe the hype that every 2-3 years there is a new ingredient in our diet that wasn't killing us before, but now it is. Maybe someone needs to organize a mass-produced/advertised campaign to re-educate society? But who? Food corporations won't do it - money is in the cheap, processed stuff.

It isn't that surprising that people buy into fad diets. How the hell should they know what is healthy and what works? Is a bowl of cereal healthy? Are fats bad for you? Should you avoid carbs? How much omega 3 should I eat? Is red meat unhealthy? The average person has no idea. Hell, even the researchers can't agree on it. So is it surprising that so many people make bad choices as a result? We often recommend counting calories on this message board, but the average person usually has no idea that this is necessary or how to do it successfully. 50 years ago, no one had to bother with such work: the food supply was generally better and portion control happened naturally. Nowadays, it's much harder.

As I said earlier, education will be essential to helping set people straight and really, the only organization that can do such a re-education on a mass scale is the government. However, they've failed at this pretty spectacularly so far, and in some ways have probably made the problem worse with the misguided low fat, moderate exercise and food pyramid campaigns. I don't know how much of this has to do with the influence of various lobbies, incompetence or just the desire to spend money elsewhere, but hopefully they won't be able to ignore it much longer: obesity is likely the single biggest threat to American lives, killing orders of magnitude more people than drugs & terrorism combined.

 

[Kipper]

*yawn*. "blaming the victim". This is sad & absurd.

People are responsible for their own health, and their own diet. Period. If you're following what a cereal box says, and you're getting fat, very simple logic says you should try something else. Its not like you make a diet choice at birth and you're stuck with it forever.

Also, I've never been of the school of thought that ANY particular food is "evil" and needs to be eliminated from your diet at all costs. Eat that sugary cereal if you want - in moderation. You can get fat on broccoli if you try hard enough. And regardless of your cute little tirade about the poor, defenseless American being "blitzkrieged" (ha, who is making the horrible analogy now, what a pathetic invocation of Godwin's law) - the consumer DOES 100% control how much they eat, regardless of your stance on how we choose what to buy.

As for your question posed at the end - its a matter of phrasing, if you want to be that sensitive about it. If you're talking to an obese person who holds your ever-prevalent 21st century stance of "blame everyone but me", rather than telling them "Its your fault you're fat", phrase it "its entirely within your power to change". Does that make you feel better?

edit: And for the record, the analogy you chose to attack was hardly "my analogy". It is a phrase that has been used by parents all over the country for some time now, when a child says "its ok, tommy is doing it!" or, more relevant, "but Pepsi says this is healthy!" It was obviously apt usage of a common phrase, whether you like it or not.

Your belief that all decisions are made in a vacuum is patently absurd. So is your implied belief that advertising doesn't matter. I am merely pointing out that social influences such as advertising and media misinformation greatly influence consumer choices (obviously), suggesting that people may not be making their choices with full understanding of what the consequences are. You or I may be able to look at a cereal shelf and distinguish the better options, but assuming that everybody is equipped to do so is a grave error at best. This also assumes that: such healthful options are readily accessible, which they may not be (but that is a different discussion entirely). It assumes implicitly that individuals can afford those choices, the capability to access healthcare services, that they are educated enough to make the correct choices, and that the etiology of the poor decision making is not secondary to any prevailing stressor. For example, I regularly work in a population of mostly men with multiple medical comorbidities, not to mention problems with housing, money, and possibly mental illness/substance abuse. Their health tends not to be a priority. Your position would be that their problems are their own fault entirely and nobody else's, correct?

The belief that individuals are solely responsible for their own fate is consistent with prevailing American belief in the "American Dream," so your viewpoint is understandable. But where it fails is in its attempt to overly simplify what is in fact a far, far, more complex problem than many of us realize. Your position also forces you to take the stance that two-thirds of the American public has somehow decided to become irresponsible about their health in the last thirty years, which is a bit of a difficult position to take.

And your "blame the individual" position does nothing but worsen the problem, not make it better. You see it as a personal problem, I see it as a social problem. One way of thinking contributes nothing to solving the problem, the other at least offers suggestions. The choice isn't hard to make here.