I guess I just mean, I don’t want to toss ideas out at random. The rural urban link is kind of weak, imo, and could be explained by things like work, demographics, activity, food culture, disability, who knows…
Agree broadly that food is an issue but I don’t know if, compared to 1970 or 1990s that people everywhere lack access to any fruits, vegetables, proteins, and wheat bread. I also don’t think people are lacking dietary education these days, especially compared to 50-70 years ago.
Again, everybody is fat these days, and nobody was fat before.
If I eat 2000 calories a day, I will weigh about 170. If I eat 2000 calories a day, plus an apple, I will weigh about 175-180, everything else being equal. I will never get to 250 pounds from eating 2000 calories a day plus an apple.
Also, three sandwiches doesn’t sound that different from three slices of pizza.
Aren’t all of those things part of the rural/urban link? I think all I am calling out on this specifically is the death of small grocery stores and the subsequent impact on health. I don’t think there is much that is controversial about suggesting that Dollar General offers cheaper lower quality food than the store it replaced. It is just a more extreme version of what happened across America where our food options have changed, with the difference being the economics of a full service grocery store now only work in population centers.
Sure, and again, I am not trying to suggest rural America is doing anything wrong. When I go on road trips I see a lot more of the obesity problem as everything is just more extreme, and it feels like a huge opportunity if we could find a way to fix it.
I get what you’re saying, but I’m not sure that it’s the case of what happens. I think it’s a lot of people are eating an amount that keeps them at equilibrium plus an apple. It’s not a fixed 2000 calories plus an apple.
This is getting pedantic and probably isn’t useful, but I’d suggest that 2-3 slices of frozen pizza probably aren’t that different from a sandwich. Their crusts are pretty thin compared to a fresh takeout pizza and the toppings are somewhat sparse in my experience. Nutritionally, I’m not seeing a lot of difference. It will depend on the specifics of what kind of sandwich you’re eating. My suspicion is the pizza isn’t the issue so much as the soft drinks that go with it or the snack food.
I guess I’m complaining that you are tossing out possible issues without proving anything specific.
Like maybe it is megastores that have replaced grocers, but maybe it’s not because corner-stores are also just loaded with junk food, because junk food is simply what people like.
IIRC frozen pizza is worse than a sandwhich or even fresh pizza since they often contain more sodium to stay fresh longer and to give it flavor long after it was baked.
Actually, my real point is that it seems like we are fat and unhealthy and through modern medicine have found ways to counteract these things to keep people alive, but the result is that it is all very expensive and it is not very clear that people are happier. If you are a politician and want to sell the public on this, ie “Make America Great” again, this seems like something that is consistently overlooked as part of that.
But I get it - there is always backlash at any suggestion that we fix this by banning big gulps or taxing junk food. It is a sensitive topic with people, because I think there is an underlying addiction issue with our foods today that is not well understood or recognized. My only real suggestion is that we need to educate people better on nutrition, and put incentives in place to make healthier foods available to all. This is for both rural communities and the food deserts that exist in many urban areas. That is where the obesity problem is at its worst.
I agree with the notion that it is an addiction, or at least something that closely parallels addiction.
And I kind of hope we implement things like soda-bans and extreme junk-food taxes, similar to smoking, out sheer disgust with ourselves.
And I don’t disagree with incentives or education, but I just expect it wouldn’t help much.
When I want food, I tend to just buy staples from the nearest cornerstore. Unfortunately, the cornerstores only have white-bread, milk, and junkfood. Also lotto, slots, cigarettes, and some other drugs. I don’t think they’re going out of their way to be unhealthy, it’s just there’s more demand to satisfy addictions.
The production of calories is cheap. Technology allows the production of an enormous glut of calories, that is more food than we could ever possibility eat. Historically that is an anomaly.
Our system of food delivery from producers to consumers rewards higher profits on the cheapest food sold at the highest margin.
Marketing clouds decision making by the consumer by equating taste and psychological reward with the benefits of healthy food (taste’s great, less filling).
Human biology is easily fooled by using sweet, salt, fat to mask quality.
Obesity is the unintended consequence of our for profit system. Unintended but not unknown, all the producers know they are making crap. Since the weight (heh) of the choice is on the consumer the producers do not care beyond their quarterly earnings.
Can’t remember where I read it - baby food in the US has a lot of added sugar. When a producer was asked why, they said it wasn’t the babies that desired the extra sugar it was the parent. The parent would sample the food and if it wasn’t sweet enough, would switch to another brand that was sweet enough (for their tastes). The baby never stood a chance.
When you “over-consume” calories, the aggregate macro-nurrient profile matters a great deal.
Say you over-consume 100 calories every day.
100% from fat = 97% gets deposited as fat
100% from carbohydrates = c77% deposited as fat
100% from protein = c70% deposited as fat
The reason for this is the way your body processes the food internally (requires energy to break down into glucose and fatty acids). It requires more energy to break down carbohydrates and protein than it does fat.
So a higher-fat diet (pizza slice) along with excess calories will add on more fat weight vs a higher protein and lower fat diet (ham and cheese with tomato slices)
Why? You still have a calorie surplus. Why did it add pounds when you were 5 lbs lighter and not 5 lbs heavier? Presuming of course that increase in weight was not muscle mass?
Imo, this a roundabout way of saying, the point of capitalism is to give people what they desire. And what people desire is to eat 500 doughnuts everyday. I broadly agree with that, but there’s no moral to the story.
Maybe you’re trying to say something subtle about gross margin, but I guess I’d need numbers?
Not sure where you got your numbers but here is a quote from Harvard medical -
“Why does body fat build up? It’s a myth that eating fat makes you fat, and in fact, it can be the opposite. “Many natural foods high in healthy mono- and polyunsaturated fats can make you feel fuller faster because fats are slow to digest,” says Dr. Apovian. She points out that the highly touted Mediterranean diet, which was recently ranked the healthiest diet, contains 40% to 50% fat.”
Pizza is basically a variation on a sandwich. I think depending on what kind you get it could be anywhere between a basic ham and cheese sandwich or something like a sandwich out of dumps, dives and diners where they stick a pound of bacon or two on their BLTs or a giant Reuben or a croque monsieur in Switzerland. I just took a quick look and it seems like half a frozen pizza isn’t too far off of a ham and cheese sandwich for calories. I did see what some of the others were saying for salt. I think it was something like 1600 mg of salt which is pretty close to your daily limit for the whole pizza.
I think the argument is that at some point your increasing metabolic energy demand as you gain weight hits equilibrium with 2000 calories plus an apple.
That article has nothing to do with fat deposition though.
Its just about “how satiated you are” if you eat more fat vs less fat. Their “conclusions” are fine (fat slows down the rate of gastric emptying thus making you feel fuller for longer which can help with calorie control).
Thats correct as well. But they don’t really go into the thermodynamics of what happens if you “do overeat” in terms of macro-nutrients.
Addendum:
The numbers come from nutrition textbooks that I have read. Its the estimate of the energy loss of converting the food you eat into glucose, followed by fat deposition. Here is a link to some published studies on the carbohydrate link (de novo lipogenesis):
