Summary
A new Lancet study reveals nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, a sharp rise from just over half in 1990.
Obesity among adults doubled to over 40%, while rates among girls and women aged 15–24 nearly tripled to 29%.
The study highlights significant health risks, including diabetes, heart disease, and shortened life expectancy, alongside projected medical costs of up to $9.1 trillion over the next decade.
Experts stress obesity’s complex causes—genetic, environmental, and social—and call for structural reforms like food subsidies, taxes on sugary drinks, and expanded treatment access.
Not really surprising when all food is so processed and pumped full of all kinds of bullshit, from high fructose corn syrup to preservatives to you name it.
Fun anecdote - I moved to Europe from the states a year back, and lost almost 20 pounds in that time without explicitly doing anything different. Just from the better food quality, and walking more in daily life (walkable cities and good public transportation!)
How is walking more not something different?
Well, I meant as in, without actively changing anything, like going to the gym more or whatever. Just passive environmental changes.
I took it to mean that they didn’t go out of their way to walk more, it was simply the better option to get around and so they just did that instead of driving a car. After moving from a car-centric city to one with a metro I totally get it and I do go for walks just for fun.
It’s not just about whether or not you can do something but about how available that thing is. Going for a walk can suck real bad in North America, surprisingly. Things like shitty food being the cheaper option, in a country racing to get its working class to be as disproportionately impoverished as possible, can make it hard to justify getting better quality stuff, too.
Yea it sucks walking next to 6 lanes of high speed traffic and basically no noise restrictions on cars. Once I moved somewhere that I could walk to the grocery store down quiet, tree lined streets most of the way, it became my preferred way. The built environment influences how you travel a lot.
The problem with the car thing is that there is noise reduction on cars. It’s the tires that are making most of the noise you hear from regular cars so even electric vehicles will make more noise than you’d think. It’s always wild to me that my aftermarket muffler isn’t as huge a difference in disruption as you’d think(it’s also not a high-pitch, obnoxious one). Either way I still keep it quiet at night or near pedestrians, and where I live now I’m glad that I basically never need to drive.
I’m real happy to hear that you live somewhere much more compatible with being a human being!
Yes, but there is also little enforcement on extremely loud exhausts and excessive engine revving. People should not be subject to noises loud enough to require hearing protection on a regular basis. Some studies are also finding that car noises in general generate stress responses in humans and long term exposure inreases the chance of some health conditions.
You could also argue road speed and road design should factor in to a noise reduction plan at a city planning level. Cities could enforce lower speeds in certain areas to reduce noise. If the city insists on funneling cars in a certain area they could also be responsible to install sound barriers, maybe even a thin tree line to help buffer noise near residential or certain commerical areas.
Absolutely, though as someone who notices louder exhausts I gotta say that, as much as they stand out, they’re really quite rare. It’s the never-ending drone of tires on pavement, loud cooling fans, heavy diesel trucks, and whatever other clattering and clanging that make up the bulk of the noise. The main street where I live goes pedestrian in the summer and I remember just how much noise a late-ish model Honda Civic made as it drove across it slowly one day even though it’s engine was essentially silent. The contrast between the peaceful pedestrian street and this single, “very quiet” sedan was startling. I already had sorta known but that moment is really where I decided that there’s no such as thing as a “quiet” car.
Our school busses have gone electric, though, and city busses are rapidly being replaced with hybrids that are quiet when they sit or need to accelerate. Those have reduced a lot of noise, and that’s super nice, but again they’re not the bulk of the noise. Removing the worst offenders but keeping the “quiet” cars doesn’t actually help beyond making us feel like we did something. We gotta start making main, commercial streets pedestrian only year-round. We gotta start being aggressive about making public transit accessible. We gotta start building on a human scale.
Indeed that’s what I meant, no intentional going for walks, just organically more walking as taking the train and walking is more convenient than driving almost every time.
And they bought different food too lol. You can buy clean vegetables, proteins and fresh non sugar bread in America. (Not that sliced sugar wonder bread shit). They just apparently chose the junk food (which is wildly available no question about that) when it was put in front of them.
When in a grocery with less of the junk (theres still junk in UK and EU Groceries), they chose better stuff.
Unless they want to make a claim that something like raw broccoli, raw grass fed beef, raw beans are substantially different in the eu. That wasn’t my experience, it’s just more prominent
Like, if you eat processed chips and cookies in America or the EU it’s still junk
Things like shitty food being the cheaper option, in a country racing to get its working class to be as disproportionately impoverished as possible, can make it hard to justify getting better quality stuff, too. Does help that the culture is also pretty bad around that stuff so maybe going to Europe was the moment they were finally taken out of the toxicity of their local community.
Yeah but you’re missing the fact that their shitty junk food is still miles better than the shitty junk food here.
Look at something that is sold in both places and check the ingredients list. The one I’m Europe will have less ingredients and more real food in general, the American one will have a ton of chemicals and other shit
I acknowledged that. I’m highlighting that when presented with that option, the above commenter chose to eat American junk
If you eat 1k calories of excess sweets, it’s the same the world over.
Yes, calories-wise it’s the same, but it’s far worse biologically in the US where the sweetener is predominantly high fructose corn syrup. Not all sugars have the same effect.
Fructose has to be
porridgeprocessed through the liver and causes much higher incidence of non-fatty liver disease, insulin resistance, uric acid causing gout, etc. leading to higher rates of metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. When someone is ill from these sorts of diseases, they’re less likely to exercise or move around, and will tend to want to eat more convenient comfort foods, which only amplifies the obesity issue.Many of the countries that consume the least amount of fructose per capita are in Europe (Germany, Poland, Greece, Portugal, Finland, etc.)
The article is about obesity, which CICO is the chief, immediate topic of significance. Long term organ damage from different sugar sources is a good topic, but not proximal to obesity in the near term.
Eat too many calories, get bigger. Easy to do when the grocery is packed with junk, but good food is available (and affordable) in both places.
Discussion on food deserts and time-to-prepare are also critical, but again I think present in both continents.
Yes, I covered that. For example, people who are ill tend to exercise and move less. So calories-out (CO) goes down = people get fatter.
So it’s definitely directly relevant.
It’s also now fully accepted to be fat or overweight. Online dating has become pretty weird to me. I’m a pretty athletic guy, so i’m looking for someone that is also a bit sporty and healthy.
Curvy on tinder has become just a blanket statement for not very skinny to wow, you look like walking must really suck. It’s a very small percentage that is super athletic, a small percentage that is just “normal” and the rest just fat. I’m not trying to shame people but reading shit like: i’m not skinny and i’ll never be is fucking sad to me. My dad is fat and his life is fucking garbage, and it’s getting worse the older he gets. I honestly forsee a shitty future for a lot of overweight people today.
Ugh, you just described my experience exactly. I’m mildly autistic and so online dating is my primary method since it’s easy for me to misinterpret or not understand the initial stages of the courting process. A lot of my interests are also very male dominated too. Therefore most of the women on dating apps that are interested in me either have kids (I don’t want any and even had a vasectomy) or are overweight since the more in shape women in the same spaces are “more desirable” and have everyone coming to them.
I’d say 90%+ of my partners have weighed more than me while being a lot shorter. Don’t know if I have ever had to worry about my hoodies being stolen since they can’t fit them.
P.S. I know that phrasing sounds problematic and is not how I view people or women as individuals. Game Theory does apply when it comes to dating though, and in the abstract that is one of the things that is going on.
The design of our cities and culture in north america definitely doesn’t help. Sit in your metal box and drive to the front door (or drive thru and don’t even leave the car), sit at a desk all day unless you’re in the trades, go home and sit down to consume netflix/youtube/games, order fast food delivered to your door.
Sure nobody is forcing people to live like this but parts of our society certainly feels like it is encouraged. People look at me funny and friends have questioned me if I park and walk into a business with a drive thru, even though I usually get faster service that way
The individuals make the collective, most Americans are making these choices everyday. There is not some boogeyman forcing Americans to live a certain way, they love their unhealthy sedentary lifestyle and will actively fight you to defend it, with guns.
The infrastructure that makes it impossible or dangerous to walk or ride a trolley into town to have dinner was built with lobbyist persuasion 50 years before I was born. Most of us cannot afford to buy into the narrow islands of places built for humans in north America.
But you can afford a car, or better yet a giant truck or SUV which most Americans choose to drive in, fucking please. And the infrastructure got funded and put in place by people, and then used by those people. Individuals make the collective, you are not isolated from the world you live in, your actions and choices shape the world you live in everyday, and they matter. Businesses and corporations get big because of the people funding and supporting them, they are not isolated and neither are you.
America has a severe lack of accountability and responsibility, somehow it is always someone else’s fault no matter what. No surprise it has become the unhealthiest and most obese nation in existence.
Affording the materialism which is creating the problem as described above is part of the problem, not the solution you think it is lmao.
You are right. Which sword should I fall on for corrupt lobbying by the ruling class when my grandparents were children?
Co-worker of mine visited Ethiopia for like 2-3 weeks. He said he actually ate more than he usually does while there and still lost 15lbs. Our food is a huge problem in the US. It’s better for business to keep us unhealthy.
Oh, I can totally believe it. Ethiopian food is so damn filling, while not being insanely calorie dense like a lot of what we’re used to in the US. Beans and veggies are filling but not calorie dense, so just adding more of those, even cheap canned ones to your diet can make it much easier to lose weight. I had a buddy that lost almost 30lbs in college literally just by replacing a meal with a can or two of green beans and hot sauce every day for a couple of months. He’s managed to keep it off too, as it helped him realize just how much more his hunger was sated by a couple 60cal cans of beans vs some huge 800 calorie meal from Taco Bell, which was his preferred junk food of choice at the time. Fun fact, it also works extremely well on overweight dogs, minus the hot sauce.
I had the opposite experience. I got fat while eating nothing but stone soup! We just put in some onions and celery for flavor, and potatoes for bulk. Add some bacon and a ham hock, and melt in cream cheese to thicken it.
I understand the corn syrup and additives causing weight gain but can someone please explain to me how putting food in a blender would make it worse for you? Ultra processed - what does it even mean. Reshaping food doesn’t make it have more sugar/carbs and what not. Just the shit added to it does right?
For example, what makes ground beef not considered ultra processed? If someone puts other things into it, it can get worse for you, but is eating ground sirloin really any worse for you than non-ground sirloin, I can’t see how it could be.
Not an expert but I think ultra processed food has two main aspects, one is additives and preservatives. And the other is our body doesn’t need to process it as much to digest it. If you eta rice/bread your body has to break that carbohydrates into glucose which takes energy. Now if you directly take suger/glucose then eating the same calories would be a lot more plus calories since your body doesn’t need to work hard to process it. Furthermore it has more pure calories per same weight, so you end up consuming more to feel full compared to eating something not as calories dense.
“Body doesn’t work as hard to process it”, would this in theory mean that more tender foods would be less work to break down, so a crock pot would actually be a poor method to cook your food long term?
Again I’m not an expert on this. But the problem is think comes from sharp change in the type of food within few generations. Since we have started cooking food more and more we have gotten weaker jaw and bad teeth with results. But something that happened over a long time, vs something that happened within last 100 years has a different health impact.
Nope I’m going to call you the expert that told me that all foods slow cooker are now worse for me. Kidding. But thanks for the thought, someday maybe I’ll look more into whether breaking down food so they are easier to eat and having weaker jaws would be bad long term. I would have figured not having hard foods would be better for your teeth though, maybe it is worse for your gums not needing to be as sturdy over time? Thoughts for food I suppose.
Like with most things in life, variety is the key. Everything in moderation. Eat fruits, vegetables like carrots, celery, etc (raw). Chewing action has benefits. Sometimes cook things till they’re really soft, sometimes enjoy a bit of chewy meat. If you have variety in your habits it should be ok.
and RFK wants to regulate HFCS… I don’t know how to feel about this, that’s… good? I guess?
No. I refuse to blame those foods for people being fat.
I’m an amateur endurance cyclist, and during peak summer riding, I can eat junk food all day (literally from 5 am to midnight, multiple times an hour) and still end up in a calorie deficit.
It’s actually really hard to gain weight when you’re active, and those junk foods are very common with anyone who does endurance sports (or really any sport that requires high-calorie input over a sustained period). This is why sports nutrition products are basically pure sugar with some electrolytes sprinkled in there.
The problem is that people are eating junk food (jet fuel for our bodies) as if they were athletes. If you’re sitting on your ass all day and pounding back 4000 calories of junk food, yeah, you’re going to be fat.
Now, are those healthy foods? Absolutely not. But if you view food as fuel and nutrition, you can have a healthy relationship with “junk food”, too.