America is doomed

I hope I am not misinterpreted for what I'm about to say, but I have to agree with the OP when he says that food chain restaurants are creating bigger portions each day and I think that in itself makes it harder for people to estimate accurately the amount of food they need to sustain themselves without gaining weight.

Yes, people need to take full responsibility for what they eat and shifting the blame to the big companies doesn't really fix anything. The problem is, we are wired to eat what's in front of us and underestimate how much we really eat, so if we live in an area where one normal serving can actually contain enough calories to sustain one adult for 2 days, how many of us is well informed to see that? How many of us would choose to eat just half of it and not eat anything else the rest of the day?

I have only been the the US once and was appalled at the gigantic servings in fast food restaurants. I mean, do companies think that US people hungrier and thirstier than people in my country? Because they certainly serve smaller portions and the mega portions are nowhere to be seen here. I can attest that.

So is it possible to be healthy and eat what's right for you in the US? Absolutely. But in my opinion, it's got to be a lot harder to eat the right amounts of food when the servings are so disproportionate with people's actual requirements to sustain a healthy diet. I hope this made sense.

You made perfect sense, and I agree, the food industry and restaurants make it difficult to judge reasonable portion sizes. Before I started tracking my food late last year, I didn't really know how many calories I was eating, and had only the vaguest idea of my macro content. The information is available to those who seek it and then make it part of their daily lifestyle, but those people, like us on MFP, are a small minority.

Like someone said a page or two ago, companies try to provide what will sell. Companies don't care if their products are healthy, they care only about selling what people can be tempted to buy. (The exception would be companies making specialty products marketed as healthy.)

And still you miss the point that no one is obligated to be healthy. Being fat isn't equivalent automatically unhealthy; that means you can't accurately claim that there is a "correct" portion size to anything, especially since individual needs vary so widely. Who cares how many calories anyone eats in a day? Food is not a moral decision. We are not doomed when the latest research determines that weight has less to do with health and more to do with lifestyle, yet no one measures the life habits for statistics. When about 70% of the population has a BMI under 30 and is low risk for health issues with low mortality.

America is actually doing fine. Only 1/3 is obese, and that's not even taking into consideration whether or not those who are obese are healthy. Or whether or not they are obese due to illness or if they are or ever were able-bodied. That's not taking into consideration any health factors other than a few vague charts that show there are correlations between weight and certain illnesses, and even then that many illnesses are more likely induced by hereditary and lifestyle reasons than just weight.

Eat anything, whatever. Watch your weight or don't. But don't condemn others, let alone a whole country, based on your own internalized size prejudices.

For the record, Americans don't eat fast food everyday. Some of us don't at all because it's expensive vs. cooking at home. There is no right or wrong size to be, only habits suggested to improve or maintain function per individual over time, but also keeping in mind that all bodies wear down mechanically and die eventually, larger ones just tend to wear out a little faster.

This whole thread is just elitist and hateful and completely ignoring the facts in favor of shock factor to shame Americans (specifically) and their supposed (*cough* stereotyped *cough*) lifestyle.

I do not support hate speech.

Sorry dear, but you seem to have a huge chip on your shoulder, and I can't agree with you. Obese people are walking time bombs--for themselves it's true. When you're younger it's not such a big deal, but as you get older, the weight puts stress on joints, circulation. etc. You cannot make it the norm to be obese, by the way this is quoting an obese person on TV. Once it becomes easier to live this way (read huge portions, bigger chairs, golf carts to scoot around in, instead of walking, etc etc), more people become so. Everyone has a "right" to be obese, but that doesn't make it a good thing to do.

I hope I am not misinterpreted for what I'm about to say, but I have to agree with the OP when he says that food chain restaurants are creating bigger portions each day and I think that in itself makes it harder for people to estimate accurately the amount of food they need to sustain themselves without gaining weight.

Yes, people need to take full responsibility for what they eat and shifting the blame to the big companies doesn't really fix anything. The problem is, we are wired to eat what's in front of us and underestimate how much we really eat, so if we live in an area where one normal serving can actually contain enough calories to sustain one adult for 2 days, how many of us is well informed to see that? How many of us would choose to eat just half of it and not eat anything else the rest of the day?

I have only been the the US once and was appalled at the gigantic servings in fast food restaurants. I mean, do companies think that US people hungrier and thirstier than people in my country? Because they certainly serve smaller portions and the mega portions are nowhere to be seen here. I can attest that.

So is it possible to be healthy and eat what's right for you in the US? Absolutely. But in my opinion, it's got to be a lot harder to eat the right amounts of food when the servings are so disproportionate with people's actual requirements to sustain a healthy diet. I hope this made sense.

You made perfect sense, and I agree, the food industry and restaurants make it difficult to judge reasonable portion sizes. Before I started tracking my food late last year, I didn't really know how many calories I was eating, and had only the vaguest idea of my macro content. The information is available to those who seek it and then make it part of their daily lifestyle, but those people, like us on MFP, are a small minority.

Like someone said a page or two ago, companies try to provide what will sell. Companies don't care if their products are healthy, they care only about selling what people can be tempted to buy. (The exception would be companies making specialty products marketed as healthy.)

And still you miss the point that no one is obligated to be healthy. Being fat isn't equivalent automatically unhealthy; that means you can't accurately claim that there is a "correct" portion size to anything, especially since individual needs vary so widely. Who cares how many calories anyone eats in a day? Food is not a moral decision. We are not doomed when the latest research determines that weight has less to do with health and more to do with lifestyle, yet no one measures the life habits for statistics. When about 70% of the population has a BMI under 30 and is low risk for health issues with low mortality.

America is actually doing fine. Only 1/3 is obese, and that's not even taking into consideration whether or not those who are obese are healthy. Or whether or not they are obese due to illness or if they are or ever were able-bodied. That's not taking into consideration any health factors other than a few vague charts that show there are correlations between weight and certain illnesses, and even then that many illnesses are more likely induced by hereditary and lifestyle reasons than just weight.

Eat anything, whatever. Watch your weight or don't. But don't condemn others, let alone a whole country, based on your own internalized size prejudices.

For the record, Americans don't eat fast food everyday. Some of us don't at all because it's expensive vs. cooking at home. There is no right or wrong size to be, only habits suggested to improve or maintain function per individual over time, but also keeping in mind that all bodies wear down mechanically and die eventually, larger ones just tend to wear out a little faster.

This whole thread is just elitist and hateful and completely ignoring the facts in favor of shock factor to shame Americans (specifically) and their supposed (*cough* stereotyped *cough*) lifestyle.

I do not support hate speech.

Sorry dear, but you seem to have a huge chip on your shoulder, and I can't agree with you. Obese people are walking time bombs--for themselves it's true. When you're younger it's not such a big deal, but as you get older, the weight puts stress on joints, circulation. etc. You cannot make it the norm to be obese, by the way this is quoting an obese person on TV. Once it becomes easier to live this way (read huge portions, bigger chairs, golf carts to scoot around in, instead of walking, etc etc), more people become so. Everyone has a "right" to be obese, but that doesn't make it a good thing to do.

It doesn't matter if it's a "good thing to do." All bodies wear down over time. Yes, just due to basic physics, more weight and pressure on joints and bones will wear down faster than someone lighter. That doesn't mean it's okay to tell them to change to become a body that is going to break down but just a little more slowly just because. They already know that's an option, but people prioritize their life choices based on what they believe is best for them at the time.

I'll also try to ignore the classist, discrimanatory bs here, too. Let's just forget that there are exponentially higher rates of obesity in towns or parts or cities that are predominately inhabited PoC, that have lower ranking education systems, that have higher poverty rates. Let's ignore that fat is often better than not eating at all, and when mac n cheese is 3 for $1, and meat is $5 per pound, and you're a single mother with mouths to feed, fat doesn't sound so bad. Let's ignore that YOU with your resources and education and even online support community would have hypothetically made a "better" decision. "Better," as if you have any place judging that for others in the first place.

Let's ignore the fact that BMIs under 30 are not considered a health risk except for the vague assumption that they may become even fatter, which the pretty even obesity rates suggest isn't happening.

Let's just pretend that weight isn't about vanity in this country. That everyone can afford the time to lose weight and the "right, better" foods to get to where they are socially "acceptable" even though many are unemployed and working multiple jobs and sometimes even in school on top of that. They'll just put aside more time and energy to lose weight because.

Also, let's stigmatize fat bodies and call them a "ticking time bomb" just because that's what we've been told. Without much evidence to back it up because no one is researching the underlying causes of diseases that have a CORRELATION (=/= CAUSATION) with higher weights, even though they still exist in smaller people, too, and in not particularly smaller percentages.

Let's stigmatize weight even more than we do alcohol (which is poison. No, really. That's why it makes you act funny) and more than we do tobacco, even though the later are more directly proven to have an immidiate effect on health and function. Yet there is no war on tobacco. The first lady is not proposing a war on alcohol. Just these images of headless, fat bodies that we used to see as people.

Yet somehow we are more doomed by fat.

Somehow you seemed to have missed the war on tabacco---it's over by quite a while. I can't agree with you saying it's healthy to be fat. I would also imagine that the figures are skewed since alot of overweight (could say fat) people don't go regularly to the doctor. Someone in my own family, a nurse at that, said "I need to go to see the doctor, but he's just going to tell me I need to lose at least 20lbs bfore we even start, so there's no use going". So there are no statistics on these people, and finally when they do go they find out they are diabetic, or worse.

Well, now you are going into the other direction of extreme with this. The problem with that type of study is we don't know why exactly the slightly reduced rate of mortality happened. The whole media hoopla and misinterpretation of studies and statistics applies here too. It could very well be that the "normal to thin range" has a higher percentage of other diseases which predispose people to being thinner and maybe a greater proportion in this category were seriously ill, smokers, or younger rash behavior leading to accidental deaths, there was obviously a greater proportion of eating disorder people in this group (this also shortens lifespan and causes improper nutrition), there may be more 'stressed' people in this group, etc, etc.

Plus then you have to look at the biases in this "overweight" range. It also captures the more fit people who are more likely to not die early: athletes, weekend warriors, whos muscle mass may easily push them into the "overweight" category. It also captures more who had a HISTORY of being very physically active and now are still active but put on some weight because of reduced activity. Maybe this group is also more economically well off on average and typically eat richer foods, happier, and less stressed and worry and improper nutrition is more common in the "normal" group. Maybe this group has a higher percentage of people who are exercising and trying to eat healthy on a long term basis to get rid of that stubborn weight, and the "normal" group has more sedentary people who don't. Its also well known if you start into old age with higher muscle mass, this is strongly correlated with increased (and mobile/active) lifespan. So it really does not follow that being "overweight" gives you any advantage in and of itself, unless maybe you have one of the situations above.

Being in the "overweight" category and exercising regularly gives large health advantages over just being normal weight and not. This is the reason why exercise is so important, and its not just a calorie focus that people should take in losing weight, but adding moderate exercise as well. If all you do is get out of the obese range and have regular exercise...that is absolutely huge in benefit. The difference from going into reg. exercising "overweight" to reg. exercising "normal" is not completely clear, and the advantage is much less than getting out of "obese" range down into "overweight". There are still definite advantages, including lowered joint pressure, probability of arthritis later in life and cardiovascular load.

A lot of what you said still supports the fact the WEIGHT is not an accurate marker of health so much as HABIT is. People in the overweight category tend to still be healthy when compared to people of lower BMIs. Women especially tend to do well with a BMI of about 27, which is cool, because in America, the average BMI is about 27.5. Women have been historically depicted as being of higher body fat percentage, from Venus to Desdemona to Sif to Echo. Yet we have been reprogrammed to believe this is wrong, these women are fat and unhealthy and unpleasant to look at now. Women with higher BMI are more likely to recover from long term illnesses. People with a higher BMI, specifically higher body fat percentage, are more likely to survive physical trama like a car accident. Of the Americans who are obese, only 5% are considered super obese.

Chronic illness has a lot more to do with hereditary conditions than weight, and if diet comes into play, it seems refined sugar is the biggest culprit for correlation to illness, not fatty and greasy foods like pizza (as was mentioned before). Uncontrolled sugar intake is correlated with (triggering predispositions for) higher rates of diabetes, cancer, and inflammatory diseases.

It has nothing to do with getting small. Even someone fat as can be who starts eating healthier, even if at maintance, will see improved health. HOWEVER, that still doesn't make it anyone's concern but an individual's to decide how they want to live their lives. You can't tell by looking at someone how healthy they are.

Case and point, my 140 lb 21 y/o self walked into a clinic with head rushes and was diagnosed with stress, told to sleep more, because I'm a healthy weight and had low BP and that's good or something. Then I DIED, was REVIVED, and finally actually diagnosed for my problems. Fat people get the reverse treatment. "You're sick because FAT." Yet no one really does in-depth research of weight and health beyond vague correlations and assumptions, and no one brings up statistics of how unhealthy many normal BMI people are. And yet we're not just judging books by their covers, supposedly. It's all about "health," apparently, but no one is actually trying to measure health...? Sounds sketch.