That’s just br*tish “food”
Yes, let us come to a conclusion by comparing the obesity of one nation to the abundance of delicious food establishments of another.
In what is likely a touristy or well traveled section. Sometimes the difference includes how we do our transportation too, like more walking/biking. Maybe a difference in how often we rely on said restaurants too.
Fat isn’t unhealthy. Excess calories and absence of exercise is not healthy.
Also the U.K. population is unhealthy just like the U.S.
UK doesn’t have the highest rate of obesity in Europe, and is similar in levels to Germany. It’s a problem across Europe.
Yes! Fat by itself isn’t unhealthy.
The best example is Italy, it has the lowest obesity rate of Europe, (1) but also has the highest consumption of cooking oil of Europe (2)
BMI is also a bad measure of health. It only roughly estimates how statistically unhealthy someone would be if they were an american in the middle 20th Century. Bodies can be healthy at any size. Exercise helps.
That’s true to a point. Extra fat based weight is harmful that’s just a medical fat.
How much is too much for a specific individual can be somewhat variable, and body composition matters.
BMI as a tool can be clunky and not ideal at times, but if you’re more than 1 point off the healthy range and you’re not a body builder your health will be impacted (over time).
I’m overweight myself, but I don’t try to convince myself I’m in peak condition.
For country-level data, there is nothing wrong with BMI. There is at best a low single digit percentage of the population who is athletic enough that they’re BMI-overweight without actually being fat.
BMI isn’t perfect but it’s still a good tool to compare two large, similar populations.
And no, being morbidly obese is not healthy.
What’s crazy to me is that sumo wrestlers aren’t actually fat, they eat and exercise in a certain way that the fat only builds up on the outside, not in their heart or anything that would cause health problems. So it’s more accurate to say they have fat but are incredibly healthy.
Anon needs to learn that the UK isn’t representative of all of Europe
And does have an obesity problem!
Europe does have an obesity crisis, with nearly half of adults overweight. The UK is bad but not alone and not the highest.
But even then things are still not as bad as the USA. The obesity rate is about 23% in Europe compared to 36% in the US. Russia has an obesity rate of 30% skewing the European rate. For comparison other high European countries are Finland at about 29%, Malta at 29%, Croatia at 23%, UK at 20%, Germany at 19%. Lower rates are seen in Italy at 10% and Romania at 11%, but even those rates are not great - 1 in 10 people are obese and more are overweight.
So OP is right except the US is worse. Over a third of people are obese and many more are overweight - that is shocking even with how bad things are in Europe.
Where do you have those numbers from? I’d like to look up my country.
Europe does have an obesity crisis, and also nearly half of adults overweight.
Hm?
“overweight” is a serperate medical category to “obese”
Ok, but just like BMI, those categories include neither muscle nor bone mass.
That matters in the individual case, but not in the aggregate, unless we’ve any reason to assume americans have particularly dense BONES
I mean general guidence for parents was to force feed your child a gallon of milk every morning until like 2015 so they would grow up to have denser bones.
This is not satire btw.
Wtf are these numbers?! US is generally reported with just shy of 40% obesity rate, not 75%. And I cannot find ANY numbers for obesity on the WHO website for the US.
It’s cut off, that’s American Samoa which has a very large large population
10-40% (and rising) of the population being obese is indeed a crisis.
also nearly half of adults overweight
One thing worth pointing out is that the “overweight” category (BMI between 25 and 30) actually has lower all cause mortality than the “normal” category (BMI between 20 and 25:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37405977/#gid=article-figures&pid=fig-1-uid-0
I think that suggests that being merely “overweight” probably isn’t a significant health problem.
You’ve also got to consider that “obesity” is a single threshold. I’ve been to the US many times and there are WAY more morbidly obese people in the US, and some who are so fucking huge they would definitely turn heads in the EU.
Anon, did you look at the people?
We (Europeans) are just more active, including walking / cycling to work every day. Try it and see the difference.
i think it’s not just “activity”. lots of people in the US go to the gym a lot.
but what we have here in europe is integrating movements into everyday life. Like, when i drive anywhere in the city, it typically involves a 10 minute walk (to/from the subway/tram station). And i believe that does much more than going to the gym for 1 hour once a week. Because you stay moving daily, your body stays “awake” daily, instead of just waking up once a week and then falling back into slumber.
It also matters how much sugar is in food and drinks!
Yup, a child size soda is the size of a small child. That adds up.
Do you see Abby supersized soda bucketa?
carne et lacte vivant
from caesar’s report about the brits: they live off meat and milk
And yet the number of people obese in the USA is almost double that of the UK.
Walkable areas go a long way
It’s the corn syrup more than the fried food honestly. The number of people who drink soda all day is wild.
And a car enforced society zeor active tranaport
This dude (Gen Z american living in the UK) talks about it in this vid (amongst other things) he walks to the grocery store walks home, cycles to work etc as jet says, he could own a car but doesn’t need one.
And honestly us Brits are pretty fucking lazy when it comes to walking compared to a lot of Europe too
I once had a conversation with a bariatric surgeon about weight loss. She was convinced that exercise was the key to sustainable weight loss. I disagreed, saying I thought diet was far more important, noting that most americans ate like trash. She seemed a bit offended that I was disagreeing with her, a doctor specializing in weight loss, about this topic. She was more understanding when I told her that I’d lost a lot of weight simply by cutting out soda. Her look then morphed to something akin to confused horror as I told her that, as a child, I had consistently drank an average of 6 cans of soda per day, every day, and I estimated that this was pretty standard for everyone I knew growing up.
Hey, are you me!? I tore through 12 packs of Dr. Thunder as a child like a mfer. Then finally lost 85-90 pounds in my late 20s or so.
The number of people I know in America who “can’t” drink just water and have to have some syrup flavored drink instead is astounding. Dude, you’re complaining about your weight. Maybe cut back on the sugar for one drink per day.
Depending on the region the soda may actually be healthier, we have looped right back to people avoiding water because it’s dangerous but instead of parasites it’s pollution and parasites.
Note I do drink water but only from my fridge with a high quality filter, tap water is a coin flip and if I can taste anything other than water I’m assuming it’s contaminated.
You can buy bottled water. It is still cheaper than soda.
Coin flip on them still being tap water from a warehouse two blocks away. You are greatly overestimating how safe water is in the US even if it does vary from state to state. Also it isn’t necessarily cheaper, I saw a 2 litre of soda for a buck fifty at a Walmart in rural Idaho an equivalent water on the other side of the isle was three bucks, not even factoring in coupons and whatnot.
The US is quite literally unraveling at the seems but the rich and powerful don’t want to do anything about it.
Coin flip on them still being tap water from a warehouse two blocks away.
Source? Because I doubt this very much. Bottled water, much as the companies selling it to you would like to say otherwise, is a commodity. And as a commodity, it benefits from economies of scale. Coca-Cola, eg, is going to bottle all of their water in a few massive bottling facilities across the country. Generic brand grocery store water is going to follow the same logic - the store will either own or contract out their water bottling to a company with just a handful of facilities across the country which specialize in bottling water. Is it just tap water? Yes. But the bottling facility chooses the tap water they use carefully - after all, no one is going to want to buy water that has too much sulfur or calcium. And while they’re at it, they’re going to make sure the tap water is actually safe to drink. Sure, multinational corporations would like to actively kill you so they can make money on your funeral expenses - but they hate getting sued even more. And if you poison 10,000 people with unsafe drinking water, that’s a hell of a class action lawsuit - which is why corporations have armies of lawyers dedicated to ensuring that this doesn’t happen.
saw a 2 litre of soda for a buck fifty at a Walmart in rural Idaho an equivalent water on the other side of the isle was three bucks
I just checked. A gallon of water on Amazon is $1.37. And that’s with the convenience of being delivered straight to your door within 2 days. At basically every grocery store I’ve gone to, water is about $1 per gallon. I don’t doubt that there are some places where this is true - but I’ve never seen it.
I will also note that neither I nor no one I know has ever been noticeably affected by drinking either tap water or bottled water. To the best of my knowledge, the problem of toxic drinking water only exists in a few places in the US, and those places are well documented.
The US is quite literally unraveling at the seems but the rich and powerful don’t want to do anything about it.
Ah, yes, the doomer rhetoric. Wouldn’t be Lemmy without it. This is the worldview of the terminally online. Go out into the real world, and you’ll see most people are doing pretty okay. Sure, they have worries and challenges - but almost everyone is clothed, fed, housed, and drinking clean water. The economy is getting a bit worse, but most people still have jobs and can afford the basic necessities. Try going to an actual developing nation with an actual non-functioning government, and there you’ll find… well you’ll actually find that people are still doing mostly okay. Because at the end of the day, people are generally resilient and will find solutions to problems the government fails to solve. A good, functioning government can help out a lot, and I’d certainly prefer that the US government was better… but the US isn’t some kind of failed state. That’s just doomer nonsense.
And not just soda. Corn syrup is everywhere. So much of our food is crazy sweet.
Even your bread is full of sugar.
Legally, it’s cake
I used to work with a morbidly obese lady that kept a 2 litre of mountain dew at her desk at all times. She’d come in every Monday with 2 of them. It was wild to me.
There’s another major reason tbh, cheap shite is unhealthy for you but very quick and easy to cook
And there’s more people in USA that live under the breadline, where they’re working stupid long shifts for stupid low pay - because there is not anything better available for them
Something I noticed when visiting the US. I went to one of their Wendy’s to try it out, and ordered a small chicken burger. It was very dry and bland, not really that good, yet I looked up the nutritional info and apparently this small burger alone was over 1200kcals??
I’m fairly sure it was the bun that did that as I doubt they raise some kind of super chicken with an energy density similar to petrol.
Anyway, surprise surprise I ended up with heartburn afterwards.
Edit: people always talk about the percentage of people who are obese in these discussions, but have you noticed just how big obese people can get in the states?
Genuinely, almost every day I was there I caught myself accidentally stopping and staring because I’d just seen someone fatter than I thought humanly possible. Like so big that I couldn’t understand how their flesh didn’t just tear and fall off their skeleton.
It helps when everywhere in that mile radius (and more) is considered walking distance in much of Europe, but Americans would rather drive.
Walling that mile ain’t going to negate that much unhealthy food.
Nah, every american I’ve known who left America either immediately lost weight, or maintained despite eating 10x more and less healthy food.
I lost weight on a diet of fried food, meat, and fried noodles, I’ve seen other people lose weight eating ice cream 2-3x a day
I fucking promise you we don’t prefer to drive, it’s the only option we have. Our government fucked us
Facts. One time we were talking about how cool it would be to live really close to a mall as a kid.
Then we realized that our local mall has no pedestrian crossings or even sidewalks, so you’d still have to get adults to drive you even if you were across the street.
I mean, yes that’s absolutely true, but many Americans really do prefer to drive even short distances. When I lived in North Carolina people regularly drove to the other side of the parking lot to eat, shop at different stores, meet up with friends, etc. I asked several people why they didn’t walk, and every single one said they hated walking and would drive or re-park if it was further than a few seconds walk.
Having recently moved to Europe, I occasionally miss the convenience of driving but overall it’s so much better.
Just getting to chill on my commute and not have to worry about traffic is so nice.
When it’s very cold or rainy it would be nice to drive to the store. I do miss being able to buy a week+ worth of groceries and loading up the trunk
Overall this is still way better.
I mean, you are allowed to own a car in Europe, just saying.
Of course, if you live in a dense city with barely any parking spots and roads that are impossible to drive through on work days, practicality may be limited.
I mean obviously.
I’m only here for school so I won’t be going through the expense or licensing to get a car
If I moved permanently I might get a car, but it’s just a convenience
But…you are (supposed to be) a democracy. So you fucked yourself for 100 years?
Special interest groups with lots of money fucked us, unfortunately.
Sounds delicious!
Wait, what is pea pure?
Misspelling of puree (or pureé), most likely referring to the UK’s mushy peas,which are ubiquitous in chip shops over there
I think I’m the only Northerner who hates those. Curry sauce though…
mushy peas
They walk more. That’s it. That’s the secret.
I can do my weekly shopping without having to get in the car. Because in Europe everything’s all mixed together rather than zoned into miles of endless residential, that you have to drive for 25 minutes in order to leave to get to the big shopping mall was it’s one million car parking spaces.
i walk 10 minutes (1.0 km) to the second-nearest grocery store (because that has cheaper and better-quality food) and i’m already living pretty far out on the city borders.
And also didn’t replace all the fat in their food with sugar processed from corn.
Fat doesn’t turn into fat when you eat it - it turns into sugars, which then turn into fat. Eating sugar just takes one step out of the process and makes your body work less (and therefore burn less calories) turning it into fat.
Portion sizes are a factor too!
I dont feel like they are. Traveling France and Italy a couple years back, I found myself not finishing meals much more regularly that I do in the states, Even though I was eating a bit more because I was walking 5+ miles a day.
Maybe i was in part over ordering due to language, or menu expectations. Maybe some of thw places I was in were touristy and over doing it to match ‘american portions’
But for instance, i got breakfast that was ‘oefs en cocotte de compagne’ at a café a couple blocks from the louvre, far enough to not be in the tourist trap surrounding area anymore.
It was massive- 4 shired eggs with a generous amount of mushrooms and gruyere, served with 4 pieces of toast. And I confirmed with the waiter that that was not a shared portion…
Jesus, I top out at half that and I’m an absolute lardass, les that I used to be but still
Nobody has ever had this kind of breakfast in France. Normal breakfast here is coffee and maybe the last of yesterday’s baguette.
France doesn’t really do restaurant breakfast, that dish is a main. Breakfast is coffee and a croissant if you’re having it outside the house, otherwise it’s brunch.
Yeah, I mean brunch checks out. It was like 11:00 it was still a huge serving of a verrry rich dish though.
You can’t outrun your diet.
It’s not that simple, if you are healthier with regular exercise your hunger is also better regulated and your diet will be better.
To me, no one really needs to be told that being fit and healthy is better than not being fit and healthy. It’s more that, as a society, we’ve been convinced over eating can be repaid with excersise, to sort of balance it out (an idea pushed by food lobby groups). I’m not saying that you disagree with any of that.
We evolved as persistence hunters. Being able to run off our winter fat reserves would’ve made us poor persistence hunters and we would’ve died out.
I mean, you can, but it takes a lot of running to expend the calories taken in with a pretty typical American diet, especially when you account for the increase in appetite exercise typically brings.
But it is possible. If you can burn 2000 calories on a single run, that’s a lot of room to maneuver to fit your macros while eating a significant amount of junk food.
you’d have to run over 3 hours to burn 2000 calories.
a 20m run usually burns like 200-300.
Depends on weight and speed, of course. According to the standard calculators floating around, a 200 lb (91 kg) person running a 10k in an hour is burning about 960 calories per hour. And that’s a casual/comfortable pace for runners.
People aren’t gonna be able to get off the couch and suddenly be able to burn 1000 calories per hour, but that’s probably a pace within reach for most people within a few months of training.
There are easier ways to control weight, but for people who enjoy running, those calories give a lot of flexibility in how to eat.
calories in, calories out. Use more than you eat and weight goes down. Eat more than you use and weight goes up. It’s an oversimplification, but it’s not wrong.
It’s very wrong, if only for the simple reason that not all calories are the same. Eating 1000 calories worth of protein will not have the effect as eating 1000 calories of HFCS.
Please stop parroting this piece of reductionist misinformation that is used to sell us ultra-processed foods.
What you said is an explanation of why what I said is an oversimplification. It’s an efficiency variable, just makes the math slightly more complicated, doesn’t change the formula.
We compensate with gym time, you can’t outrun a cheeseburger
Fast Food!
Ironically fast food applies a speed debuff
Not being able to outrun your diet is a really strange concept to me, and I’ve exclusively heard it in this thread, and multiple times in this thread. Dafuq?
You can’t rate world cuisine on England
I love how the post never mentions the country, but everyone just knows.
They did say fish and chips which is kind of an iconic British food.
Curry shops even moreso.
Absolute zero is a useful reference point.
Low key amazing comment
