Is America overweight? If so, why?

Miscellaneous Current Events
21

I haven’t personally been to Europe, so you’ll have to blame my friend’s testimony to me if this is incorrect, but he said there really aren’t any restaurants open late into the night

If your friend meant late by American standards, what may have happened is that he tried getting into the restaurants before they opened, not after they closed. Seriously, European restaurants not open until late?

To the OP, yes, Americans are fatter than Europeans, and in places there is a notable disparity. However, there is certainly a trend it Europe, and it’s upwards.

I don’t think it has anything to do with lack of availability in Europe, because just like cigarettes and alcohol (which Europeans consume more of) fatty foods are an inferior good. But comparing the wealthier areas of Europe and America there’s still a lot more obesity in the latter.

There are certainly economic explanations that are relevant, but I also think culture is a big part of the picture. Overeating just isn’t frowned upon in the States like it is in Europe.

22

“As a way of explaining the American-European disparity you stated that cheap food makes people overindulge in it. This was the extent of your argument. This argument is nonsense since in America it is the people to whom food is more expensive who overindulge in it.” - Marko

No, cheap calories means all else equal people will consume more and over indulgence is possible. It does not say who will and will not buy more either on an individual or classified basis, only that more will be consumed overall. Also you are failing to differentiate: calories are cheaper on a 1:1 basis. Food is a different subject. As an example, the rich can eat a lot more shrimp than the poor as shrimp are relatively expensive but they have a lower calorie content than most foods on a per gram basis. So while cost of calories can go down the cost of food as a general category will also trend down but there will still be expensive food with low calorie content and inexpensive food with high calorie content. And further, food consumption vis a iv type and amount is driven by factors other than availability. Lower the cost of carrots all you want, I’m not eating the things. I hate the taste. On the same basis, lower the cost of McDonald’s hamburgers all you want, I’m not eating the things. I hate the taste.

What we have in the US is a state of affairs where it is possible to over indulge in calorie consumption and the factors present lead to the poor being the primary over indulgers, likely because of behavioral issues and the types of food they buy being lost cost/high calorie salty sugary stuff as opposed to low cost/low calorie, high cost/low calorie, and high cost/high calorie content foods. Over eating is the cause of obesity. Who over eats and why is dependent on factors those people face both on an individual and group level.

23

Culture may have something to do with it.

24

The US has high protective tariffs on sugar imports, along with billions in subsidies for corn production, which made the American food industry shift to corn syrup as a sweetener. Corn syrup and it’s effects on the metabolism are suspected of being the one of the main causes of the obesity epidemic. The Euros can just use sugar instead of corn syrup, and are not as obese. Remember that for the next time somebody mentions obesity rates in Sweden to make some point about socialism. Mexico imports a lot of processed US foods and is the second fattest nation in the world.

25

hope someone will like this: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=2676

BMI is pretty decent measure in large scales, but sure, it has some serious flaws, so it’s not the only method.

26

It is true. The more wealthy may just simply spend more time educating themselves on how and what to eat.

Has anyone considered the consequences of subsidized corn in our country? It’s one of the reasons cheap foods end up being high caloric foods, with low nutrients.

27

“The US has high protective tariffs on sugar imports, along with billions in subsidies for corn production, which made the American food industry shift to corn syrup as a sweetener. Corn syrup and it’s effects on the metabolism are suspected of being the one of the main causes of the obesity epidemic.”

No, it isn’t. Or to be more precise: No, only people who have near zero clinical skills and near zero abiliy to read and interpret research suspect that.

28

I think engaging in bodily hyperinflation is a rational behavior, for the following reasons:

  1. Overeating helps counter the feelings of depression that come with knowing the future of the economy. Look what John Williams warns http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMp22y9OUHA

  2. Inflationary policies encourage a high time preference. I’d rather stuff my face now before the food riots start.

  3. Unlike gold, the goverment can’t confiscate one’s fat hoard.

29

The criticism goes both ways Xahrx(directed back at you). Also there has been plenty of studies regarding the link between High-fructose corn syrup, and obesity and heart disease. Many studies favor the side of High-fructose corn syrup influencing these factors in a negative way.

Ofcoarse, in your argumentative zeal, can choose to pretend that such research activities never took place, or that the whole world, including the scientists who did the studies, do not correctly interpret their own papers.

30

It seems like some people are able to stop being fat. So it isn’t deterministic.

People are mean to fat people, generally, so it can’t be an ideal or cultural construct. In fact, people seem to be obsessed with diet books and gyms are readily available, too.

Some people in all economic classes of people are able to avoid it. So it isn’t reduced to class.

There are countries with similar GDP, and far fewer fat people. It’s not the ‘wealth’. Japan and South Korea have about 3 percent obesity.

I don’t really know. I would guess it is stress based. Either something that accumulates very early or people who don’t know how to cope with it properly. Mixed with soda and junkfood being available for school kids. On top of this, everything being made of high fructose corn syrup because of heavy subsidization to agriculture. I’m sure one of these by itself doesn’t account for obesity, but all of them together probably does.

31

Okay, enlighten me. Don’t just write “no, it isn’t”, say something. Corn syrup is fine? I don’t claim to know, I judged from like one article.

32

“The criticism goes both ways Xahrx(directed back at you). Also there has been plenty of studies regarding the link between High-fructose corn syrup, and obesity and heart disease.”

No, there aren’t.

“Many studies favor the side of High-fructose corn syrup influencing these factors in a negative way”

As before, no, they don’t. Intake of HFCS is correlated with obesity, which is no surprise because it’s a relatively cheap calorie. It does not cause obesity anymore than any other macro nutrient or particular food stuff causes obesity. Correlation does not equal causation, and quite frankly I have yet to see more than a couple of studies, if even that many, that look at fructose intake in context of a normal diet that has such findings. Studies that use rats as opposed to humans and which look at fructose intake in isolation and/or with megadosing find some negative associations. Since no one is sucking down 3500 kCal of HFCS as their only dietery intake, much less fructose alone, the applicability of such studies is questionable at best.

Here’s a fairly nice review of some of the research. The author is more charitable than I would tend to be.

Bottom line is there are no magic ingredients in HFCS and the fructose content isn’t even that frigging high, the ratios of fructose to glucose in most HFCS is relatively the same as in honey or sucrose. The fructose is high relative to other corn syrups, not high relative to anything else out there. And, good golly, regardless of the fructose content it still only gives 4 cKal per gram like every other carbohydrate. What you do have on your side of the argument, to be blunt and honest, is a bunch of studies linking obesity to high twinkie-like food products and soda consumption, which is not a surprise, and both make use of HFCS. However, it would be just as easy to get fat on high oatmeal consumption on a calorie per calorie basis.

Here’s a nice analysis of the inner workings of one of the studies that supposedly proves how evil HFCS is, and a choice quote:

http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=19

“The bottom line is that there is no valid reason for HFCS to be any different than sucrose in the way that it affects your body. They are both nearly identical in their composition, containing roughly half fructose and half glucose. They are both nearly identical in the way they are metabolized by your body. There is no practical difference between the two as far as your body is concerned. Now, I’m not saying that you should go out and consume all the HFCS that you want. The point is that there is nothing uniquely “bad” about HFCS compared to regular sugar. HFCS is not uniquely responsible for weight gain as some people would have you believe.”

There are more than a few of these analysis on the web and in journals. Bottom line is there is nothing unique about HFCS in terms of ingredients, relative concentrations of component sugars, etc., that would make it substantially different from any other processed carbohydrate on the market. The problem is people are eating a ton of it and ton of everything else relative to what they used to because calories are cheap and portion control isn’t in our genetics, and are also more sedentary because it’s not in our genetics to push ourselves just for the heck of it. The alarmism about HFCS is more bullshit peddled by the It’s-Not-Your-Fault-Your-Fat crowd, it’s the evil fat… Oh wait, that was the 80s. It’s the evil carbs… Oh wait, that was the 90s. It’s the evil HFCS… I wonder what it will be next? Maybe the paleo trend will really catch on and then anything to do with organized agriculture will the reason so many people are ballooning up so nicely. But, bottom line, qhen you actually read the research as opposed to just the abstracts presented by some dipstick online, who is usually selling something, there is precious little research showing HFCS is responsible for anything but delivering 4 kCal per gram of energy, just like every other digestible carbohydrate in existence.

So maybe, just maybe, HFCS isn’t the problem and sucking down mega amounts of anything relative to actual caloric requirements just isn’t that great of an idea. In any event, and as before with the weight training thread, I’m done arguing bullshit. If you want to believe in magic, be my guest. It’s your life.

33

See the above post, Nero. If HFCS is evil then one would have to explain why sucrose and honey both aren’t evil, as their relative ratios of sugar components are near identical. When someone presents you ‘evidence’ that HFCS is bad for this or that reason, read the studies themselves if you can. Also if you’re of a mind to advance yourself in this area get hold of the book Studying a Study, or Studying the Studies. I forget the exact title, but it gives a nice overview of how to read and evaluate research so you’re not easily taken in by bullshit. You can find studies, especially if you rely solely on abstracts as many internet ‘Doctors’ and ‘specialists’ do, to ‘prove’ damn near anything no matter how contrary to reality. Studies are conducted by human beings who are always imperfect, and sometimes even have specific agendas, and simple chance alone dictates that some studies no matter how well constructed and carried out will have anomalous results. Which is all great and wonderful for peddlers of BS who can then latch on the 4% of studies in this or that body of research to ‘prove’ their pet theory. In the end it’s the body of research that counts and which always has to be evaluated knowing that some of it is dead wrong.

34

First off it’s not evil. This isn’t a matter of ethics. Second, if you actually read any studies, you would know that HFCS does not set off an insulin response. It is argued that without that there is less of a suppression of apatite.

FYI Xahrx your general tone is easily perceived as antagonistic. It’s clear that your more concerned with arguing and being correct. Your zeal is in argumentation. Furthermore there are plenty of nutritionists and dietitians who would be happy to disagree with you.

What this means is we have to choose whether to trust them, or to trust you. Being rude doesn’t help you in this case.

35

How many of these must we read?

36

Xahrx. Now that you say it like that, the corn syrup stuff sounds a lot like the the kind of alarmist fads that come and go, especially in the realm of nutrition, that declare one evil substance to be the cause of an entire problem. These theories always provide a quick fix solution and relieve us from personal responsibility. I can’t judge the studies, so I don’t know, but I’m guessing that corn syrup isn’t specifically evil. Not more than sugar.

It did provide a nice explanation for why Americans are so much fatter than Europeans though. Why do you think that is?

37

A quick skim of the replies shows a dearth of the points I think need to be made:

  • Our Prosperity Makes Staying in Shape a Conscious Effort
    Americans have more access to better food, in variety, price, and quality, than any other country on the planet. We also have more access to convenience, technology, leisure, et cetera…this is not a formula for being thin…but it is a symptom of the prosperity economic freedom brings.

    Since we don’t have to walk or bike to work, we can choose among hundreds of kinds of microwave dinners to eat, we have more entertainment choices that allow us to stay glued to chairs, and so on, we need to consciously try to stay in shape, where others are kept leaner by circumstances.

    It is an embarrassment of riches, a bragging point. Only because the socialist countries, whose governance depends on greed and jealousy, cannot compete do they try to spin it as “decadence”.

  • Our Obsession with Being Thin Makes Us Fatter
    A calorie restriction diet convinces your body it’s suffering a famine. This resets its target store of body fat to more than it was, AND slows the metabolism. When you finally quit the unhealthy part of the diet, where your body is being forced to lose mass, you will therefore tend to gain MORE weight than you did before.

    The very people who make up the largest part of the “over weight” crowd are being suckered time and again into increasing their own obesity, by trying to get rid of it with weight loss diets.

    The fact that “obese” is marked at a laughable 25 pounds “over” or so doesn’t help. If only those people around 25 pounds overweight were satisfied with themselves, they wouldn’t end up 100 pounds overweight after years of failed weight loss diets boost their body’s target fat levels.

  • The Claims of Obesity are Insanely Exaggerated, Anyway.
    Oh NOES! Twenty percent of our gradeschool children are “obese”!!! Wait…if you do the math, that means EIGHTY PERCENT ARE NOT! Why the hell are we teaching children an unhealthy obsession with restricting their own diets, when the vast majority of them are not overweight in the first place?

    This will, of course, just contribute to future obesity.

  • Thank the Nanny State
    On top of all of this, we have the government:

    • as one of the top pimps of the weight loss diets that end up increasing obesity,
    • and the lazy welfare class that sits around watching reality TV instead of finding a job,
    • subsidizing the very foods IT CLAIMS contribute to obesity, like sugar beets and corn,
    • and imposing through regulation the harmful “commodities” markets that reduce crops from a complex system of different options, to a bureaucratic set of grading that ignores quality of taste and nutrition, over quantity…giving us flavorless, huge tomatoes, apples, chicken, et cetera, that lack nutritional worth.

What we need is for these obsessive-compulsive control freaks in the political class to butt the hell out, and attend to their own issues, instead of making ours worse by trying to coercively “fix” them.

38

“First off it’s not evil. This isn’t a matter of ethics. Second, if you actually read any studies, you would know that HFCS does not set off an insulin response. It is argued that without that there is less of a suppression of apatite.” - Nero

If you had read the first link I posted and any of the studies, you would know this statement is dead wrong. Fructose does not not illicit an insulin or leptin response. Fructose is not the only ingredient in HFCS. Once more, and for the last time because I truly tire of people who can’t fucking read, studies of fructose in isolation are of limited applicability to reality because in reality fructose is never fucking found in isoltation to any large degree.

“FYI Xahrx your general tone is easily perceived as antagonistic. It’s clear that your more concerned with arguing and being correct. Your zeal is in argumentation. Furthermore there are plenty of nutritionists and dietitians who would be happy to disagree with you.” - Nero

I am correct.

“What this means is we have to choose whether to trust them, or to trust you. Being rude doesn’t help you in this case.” - Nero

As I’ve said many times, I really don’t give a flying fuck about rude vs polite. There is correct and incorrect, and little else matters to me when it comes to arguments on the internet. And if people insist on incorrect when correct is obvious, rudeness is what they deserve. For example here’s a quote from the linked article with some emphasis:

"So, is fructose really the poison it’s painted to be? The answer is not an absolute yes or no; the evilness of fructose depends completely on dosage and context. A recurrent error in Lustig’s lecture is his omission of specifying the dosage and context of his claims. A point he hammers throughout his talk is that unlike glucose, fructose does not elicit an insulin (& leptin) response, and thus does not blunt appetite. This is why fructose supposedly leads to overeating and obesity.

"Hold on a second…Lustig is forgetting that most fructose in both the commercial and natural domain has an equal amount of glucose attached to it. You’d have to go out of your way to obtain fructose without the accompanying glucose. Sucrose is half fructose and half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is nearly identical to sucrose in structure and function. Here’s the point I’m getting at: contrary to Lustig’s contentions, both of these compounds have substantial research showing not just their ability to elicit an insulin response, but also their suppressive effect on appetite [3-6].

"But wait, there’s more. In studies directly comparing the effect of fructose and glucose preloads on subsequent food intake, one showed no difference [7], while the majority have shown the fructose preload resulting in lesser food intake than the glucose preload [8-10]. A recent review of the literature on fructose’s effect on satiety found no compelling case for the idea that fructose is less satiating than glucose, or that HFCS is less satiating than sucrose [11]. So much for Lustig’s repeated assertion that fructose and fructose-containing sugars increase subsequent food intake. I suppose it’s easier to sensationalize claims based on rodent data.

"In the single human study I’m aware of that linked fructose to a greater next-day appetite in a subset of the subjects, 30% of total daily energy intake was in the form of free fructose [12]. This amounts to 135 grams, which is the equivalent of 6-7 nondiet soft drinks. Is it really that groundbreaking to think that polishing off a half-dozen soft drinks per day is not a good idea? Demonizing fructose without mentioning the dose-dependent nature of its effects is intellectually dishonest. Like anything else, fructose consumed in gross chronic excess can lead to problems, while moderate amounts are neutral, and in some cases beneficial [13-15]."

FYI, Nero, your failure to read a cited source that directly addresses a point you wanted to make even before you made it shows you either: can’t read; won’t read; are more interested in perpetuating bullshit about HFCS than in actually reading a contrary view for which there is a metric fuckton of evidence to support. In the above quote from the review I linked to, and as I stated in my own post, one has to study fructose in isolation and/or under conditions of megadosing to get the results you’re claiming Now, I find little point in being polite to someone who raises a point already addressed and in so doing reveals they never bothered to even read a post in full before responding to it. The cited page had an extended video on the argument against HFCS made by a Dr. Lustig and a fairly thorough review of his claims with cited research to back up that review. Neither of which you bothered to watch/read, obviously.

And this is why I’m not interested in arguing the point further. So let’s find common ground. I agree that if a person eats nothing but massive amounts of HFCS and this is their sole source of calories, and they have a metabolism that is very rat-like, they will have health problems and likely poor body composition. Because when the research is considered in context, that’s what it proves. Nothing more or less.

Now, since it’s obvious you care not a whit to read what I post and link to, and since I’ve likely already read whatever the hell it is you’re going to post or link to, how about we just drop the matter? Whether you agree or not, I am. I just found i precious that you brought up the lack of insulin response when that point was already and explicitly dealt with on a pro - con basis in the link I provided. It’s rare you find proof positive that someone you’re arguing against is full of it, I’m sure you understand my desire to point it out and savor it a bit.

“How many of these must we read?” - Filc

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=high+fructose+corn+syrup+insulin+response"

Enough so that you can demonstrate an understanding of their applicability to normal adults under every day conditions, which you clearly have not. If you Google HFCS alarmism you will find many reviews making the exact points I have made, and you will find none of the alarmist pages can or will address the isolation/megadosing issues, nor will they ever seem to realize that rats aren’t humans either. This is because when you address those issues you discredit their pet studies and are left with nothing but a sweetener. Not exactly high drama.

39

xahrx, are you confusing me with another poster?

40

He is. It’s worth nothing that the only person here dramaticizing anything is Xahrx. Though this is typical of his behavior. Self restraint is virtue we cannot all enjoy.

The only point you raise Xahrx is that you argue that it’s still a controversy. Which leads me back to my prior point. Of the two parties arguing, your side is the one shouting.