- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
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.
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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!)
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
and RFK wants to regulate HFCS… I don’t know how to feel about this, that’s… good? I guess?
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.
When I bring my rice and veggy curry to lunch I become a spectacle for everyone. Because they are all either ordering fast food, not eating, or just eating junk and snack food. This is a huge problem, why am I spectacle for doing something so basic?
There are actually microaggressions from people to me just because I eat healthy.
People hate being reminded that the conveniences they enjoy are unhealthy/unethical/etc. All it takes is somebody else choosing differently to trigger defensiveness and denialism. Rather than making changes to their own life they choose to ridicule those who are making better decisions.
Go Vegan :)
The reason people don’t like vegans is because they interject themselves into conversations that are only tangential to the topic.
Diet
Health
Respond to comment about making healthy/ethical decisions and people’s defensiveness about it.
Yeah that seems ‘tangentially’ related. You sound like the guy the commenter was describing.
Doesnt matter if you dislike vegans. Stop abusing animals 💁🏼♂️
there is no reason to believe this person abuses animals. don’t make spurious accusations.
Already have :)
Hella righteous brother 😎👉👉
Some previous coworkers I had were blown away by a pear that I brought as part of my lunch. A pear!!!
edit: duh, not pair
I was really confused for a second thinking, “a pair of what” then I realized you meant pear!! Lol. English is fun
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Every time I visit Germany, I eat and drink a ton. I’ll lose about 5 lbs that week just from the higher quality food and walking convenience.
5 lbs is literally just a hydration and glycogen difference. You tend to have about 5 lbs of glycogen of which each pound is holding 2 lbs of water so 5 lbs is within normal fluctuations. Carb and fat profile of diet and a lack of gluconeogenesis can have you eat the same amount of calories while “losing” weight. Additionally, the amount of salt that you retain from your food can have a significant difference. If you’re going from a high salt diet to a low one, you could expect to lose water weight.
That’s interesting. Germans certainly aren’t known for their healthy food when you look at the prevalence of cured meats and things like currywurst.
contrary to conventional wisdom, quality of food isn’t really considered a primary instigator of the obesity epidemic. rather, environmental factors such as poverty, failures in education/access to diet information, and car-centric urbanization are proven to be much bigger factors in the ongoing health crisis.
in other words, america could be totally healthy eating the exact same food if we built society around people living healthy lives, but that is far from the primary goal for a country living under capital.
I slightly disagree.
If I suddenly started eating 15000 kcal of mostly sugar and fat each day, it would have a detrimental impact on my health. Regardless of my education or income.
So to me it seems like the effect is in reverse. If we changed society to make it easier for people to make healthier choices, then the general health would improve. But the actual improvement would come from calorie intake, food quality and activity levels.
But I absolutely agree that having limited access to healthy food, and living in a area where walking could be unsafe makes it incredibly hard to be healthy.
that’s the difference between primary and secondary causes, individual cases and epidemics.
while you may be able to imagine an instance where food quality is a primary factor in an individual’s wellbeing doesn’t challenge the empirical evidence that overall the epidemic affecting massive swaths of people is borne primarily out of a context of low income, low education and urbanization.
Well, the smugness is impressive. I’ll have to give you that.
You specifically said: “in other words, america could be totally healthy eating the exact same food if we built society around people living healthy lives, but that is far from the primary goal for a country living under capital.”
I just disagree with this statement. I don’t think we could eat the exact same diet in a different society and expect food-related health issues to significantly improve.
So where on the list of causes would you place calorie intake, food quality and inactivity? Secondary? Tertiary? Completely unrelated?
me: in other words, america could be totally healthy eating the exact same food
you: I don’t think we could eat the exact same diet
notice the key difference in language. makes 100% of the difference. i choose my words with care.
So, I’m I to assume that you wanted to say that calories are more important than food quality?
Sure. I agree with that.
Regarding your careful choice of words. If you wanted to make a convoluted post in order to smugly debate some random person on the internet, then you have done an excellent job and I congratulate you sir.
If you are trying to actually communicate clearly then you have some improvements to make.
At least the Germans have time to take care of themselves, but quite a bit of the food is processed too.
Where do you normally eat?
I have noticed the general public is now very tolerant of sweet drinks. I know that is not the only problem. I was never allowed soda or coffee or sweet tea growing up, so don’t have much of a tolerance for them now. But when I try popular coffees (pumpkin spice this or vanilla chai that) or cocktails at most restaurants, I am surprised that people don’t send them back and ask for less sweetener.
As an infrequent treat, I can understand it. But if you are drinking that much sugar on a daily basis, it must seriously screw with your system. I am sure lots of people are drinking a huge amount of calories and don’t register how different that is from past generations.
I(M) am an actually healthy weight (I believe I’m almost exactly average for my height and build for a man in the 60s or 70s), but my brain has absolutely been hijacked by sugar, and I can tell. Even avoiding over sweetened stuff for months and months I will still get cravings and having something I know a European would find sickeningly sweet I find is very similar to how junkies describe a relapse.
Despite all of that, I refuse to give in. I enjoy the freedom having a relatively healthy body gives me. Makes finding a partner with a similar mindset and goals hard though. It’s worse than a Thanos snap, 3/4 of the population just gone.
Tell me about it. The discipline it takes to not consume something the general public has been consuming as the norm is a struggle sometimes, but tasting the flavors I otherwise wouldn’t notice from something not deathly sweetened is a plus. As well as better teeth. My parents also restricted sweet drinks to family trips and parties growing up, and I don’t think I can thank them enough.
I like the edge off my coffee but I just use stevia, which is fine if you don’t use a lot and get that tongue numbing sensation. Those novelty coffees are utterly disgustingly sweet, and its all sugar. I can’t imagine drinking them, but I guess if everything you eat and drink is sweet, you wouldn’t notice it.
Makes your breath smell bad. I noticed this as a teenager and never drank sodas since.
I’m the opposite. I wad told sugar was poison, so I avoided it as a kid. But now as an adult I love getting a sugary pop or whatever. My sweet tooth has definitely come in late
To be fair, I don’t think many of us would recognize someone who is a BMI of 26 as “overweight.” It technically is, but you’ve probably seen people regularly that are “technically” overweight but would never realize it. You yourself might be (and, statistically, are likely to be) overweight according to BMI and not realize it.
The really staggering thing is obesity. From 1960 until about 1992, it was between 15-20%. By 2000 it was 30%. These days it’s getting close to 45%.
That’s the thing 40 years ago you would realize that they were overweight.
Actually 40 years ago a higher percentage of Americans were “overweight,” so it’s unlikely it would seem more obvious then vs now. The difference is that now many more people are obese, but being obese is fairly noticeable unlike being overweight.
The percentage of people who are in the just-above-normal category of “overweight” has remained very steady and within a narrow band over the years, i.e., it’s been consistently between roughly 31-34% for almost seven decades. It was 32.9% last year. That’s why in my comment I noted that the real concerning thing about the study isn’t really the amount of people who are overweight; it’s the amount of people who are obese and morbidly obese.
Maybe…but two things:
If the number of obese people is lower, then what are the people who aren’t mildly overweight? They are healthy weight. So even if the percentage of mildly overweight people stay the same, the day to day comparison is with a bigger group of healthy weight people, so they probably were more recognizably overweight.
Secondly, with less really obese people you wouldn’t get desensitized to seeing fat all the time, which makes mildly overweight people seem more normal. Somebody with a BMI of 26 and about 15lbs overweight would have been more likely to be described as “plump” or “husky” back then. But when crowds are full of people that are 50+ lbs overweight, that 26 BMI seems downright healthy.
This is all speculation. I can’t remember how I perceived overweight vs obese people back in the 80’s.
Well, you may be right. I’m not going to try to divine cultural sentiment from 40 years ago or whatever. I just think the study collapsing a relatively stable category (people who are “overweight”) with people who are obese and morbidly obese kind of hides the news. Sure, it makes for a splashier headline “75%!!” But the increase in obesity and morbid obesity is actually more dramatic when the “overweight” category is taken out of the focus.
Yup. I was talking to a guy whose doctor told him that he needed to lose weight. He didn’t look big - he’s tall, but apparently his bmi was 30.
I’ve always had a scale and I’ve always used it. My weight now is less than my weight in hs. I was 130.
Someone with bmi 26 is absolutely overweight o.O
Yes, technically, they are. But it’s unlikely you would see someone with a bmi of 26 walk by you on the street and think “that guy is overweight.”
This guy has a BMI of 26. If he had clothes on, few people are going to assume he’s overweight, even though technically he is:
I’ve got about 10lbs on this guy. I’m obese. I know it. I’m ashamed of it. My body knows it and tries telling me every day I need to lose 30lbs.
If you or anyone else is actually interested in getting yoked, a great place to start is the fitness wiki. It does a good job of condensing everything down and lists various effective routines which will do a good job of getting you looking the way you want.
Fitness influencers specialize in baffling people with bullshit. The recipe to getting in good shape is really simple. Follow an established routine, adjust your diet (the does not have to be drastic, you only need subtle changes) and improve your sleep. You could lift 40 minutes two days per week, walk 30-60 minutes another two days per week and you’d look and feel like a new person in a year
This is the more important part, even if you don’t look unhealthy, if you are overweight there are health conditions that become more likely and it is likely poor lifestyle and diet is influencing it. Just because you don’t look unhealthy doesn’t mean you are perfectly healthy. Even people who are a healthy weight and exercise regularly could benefit from removing processed, oilly and sugary foods from their diets. People who eat amazingly healthy might not be getting as much exercise as they should. Our bodies require high quality nutrition and movement to stay in shape and most of us aren’t meeting those needs between lifestyle choices, work, finances, and education.
It’s never too late, I managed to lose 20lbs simply not going after seconds on my tasty pasta dinners. Took like 6 months but my stomach got used to it. Granted, this last week has been hella tempting to stress eat, but just seeing progress is enough to keep me going. Just get the ball rolling and be happy with really subtle losses. Like, impossible to notice day to day loses.
Where can I learn more about these tasty pasta dinners that you speak of? :-)
We’re talking about losing weight, not bulking up!
Yeah. I was actually fifteen pounds lighter this time last year. It’s been a rough year. I cut out all bread, pasta, cheese, and beer, and walked an average of 15 miles a week.
It’s really mostly about doing something sustainable. I tried keto once and lost 20lbs only to regain it immediately after. Portion control seems to be working better for me since I will still eat whatever I want during the day (helps that my diet is mostly normal food I cook and not processed)
with men, the issue is that there is a lot built up internal fat around the inner organs BEFORE you even get to see fat thats visible from the outside. so yeah, i bet the guy is medically considered overweight even though he doesn’t look like peter griffin. this is why when women gain weight you can tell immediately and for men it takes a while. both is unhealthy though
i hate being wrong on the internet :D
point taken!As usual it is a matter of education and normalisation. I’m a rock climber and am surrounded by shredded people a lot of the time. I’m sitting at around 18-20% body fat which is high for the sport but I am considerably leaner than the guy in your photo.
I can absolutely tell that he is overweight (even with clothes) but that’s because I have invested a lot of time into learning about health and fitness and spend most of my time with people who have a ‘healthy’ BMI. If all you see are overweight and obese people every day then of course you will look at this guy and think he looks perfectly healthy (which he might well be but that’s another discussion).
Yeah right now I weigh 170, I’m in pretty good shape (would be in better shape if I didn’t injure my foot and could start running again). But for me 180 is overweight? Even if that’s just fat that means my muscles become less visible. Hell it feels like my thighs are bigger now after getting in shape that when I was 180. And I started to look really skinny when I got down to 165.
I’m sure people would keep calling me skinny at 180. What we need are easier ways to measure body fat percentage. Because it is true that holding onto lots of fat for a long time is what’s bad for you.
The easiest way to check on body fat percentage right now is just to take weekly pictures of yourself in your underwear. You can see the muscle vs fat pretty well.
Under-educated overweight people with guns. Everything’s gonna be alright.
The shitty US labor laws (piss poor working conditions) are one of many problems associated with obesity.
Don’t worry congress is going to make Obese 50% body fat in response to the crisis…
i love personal anecdotes where someone makes sure to call everyone but them stupid and fat. eating proper meals takes time and money, which a great many people do not have, and large portions of the population do not have even live in areas with fresh food. ever heard of a food desert?
also the BMI system is based entirely on white Irish men of a specific height who lived like a hundred years ago.
also also, being ‘fat’ does not always mean you’re unhealthy, and being ‘skinny’ does not always make you healthy.
🤔
Can confirm. 3/4 of my body is fat while the rest of it is skinny AF.
Social/environmental - life is fucking terrible and I have to take anxiety meds to survive it without panicking and breaking down. My last meds made me hungry CONSTANTLY. Sadly, I didn’t know it was the meds until about 3 months ago. New med calms the anxiety and doesn’t make me starving all the time.
I am not built for modern society.
I am not built for modern society.
No one is. Modern society wasn’t even built for you. We are just means to an end under capital.
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Sometimes they are tho.
Probably the real reason why McDonald T-rump got voted for again.
genuinely curious wtf you mean with this lol. like i’m not following at all.
In 1990 half were overweight or obese? That’s the real news, I would have thought much lower.
Why is that the news? Using NHANES data for standardized numbers, in 1990 it was roughly 44% of Americans. That’s lower than 1980 (~47%), 1970 (~48%), and 1960 (~46%). Did you think Americans were unusually thin in 1990 or something?
The 1990s are actually when the numbers jump. By 2000, it’s 65%. 2010, it’s 68%. And in 2020 to the most recent yearly data (2023), its 74%.
People were thinner in the 1930s. We should figure out what their secret was and copy it.
Oh, don’t worry. We are.
Private prisons stock has increased, so it looks like its part of the plan.
They still give processed foods like crisps and cookies, but the calorie intake provided is too low to support an obese diet. And cholera spreading through overcrowded, for-profit prisons should also encourage rapid weight loss.
Do they get scones and blackcurrant squash?
No, unless Nestlé buys the genetics of the squash and scones and has exclusive selling rights to it
Is that better or worse?
