Who is responsible for what we choose to eat?

It's your own fault , you are responsible nobody forces it down your throat , I have a tiny food budget but you won't see me eating junk food and sorry to tell you that 5 fruits and vegetables most likely won't change anything either .

Lol obese people get a lot of slack. Of course five a day want make you not obese if your eating loads of other junk. A lot of people on mfp are obviously overweight and on a weight loss journey. I thought it would be interesting to see what you guys thought.

I guess next question would be "So if we are ultimately responsible and we all know that. why is there such a problem with obesity?" *confused face*

I guess I could visit a few fast food places and ask some people to get a well rounded answer. Doubt they'd want to
Answer though. Lol.

It's your own fault , you are responsible nobody forces it down your throat , I have a tiny food budget but you won't see me eating junk food and sorry to tell you that 5 fruits and vegetables most likely won't change anything either .

Lol obese people get a lot of slack. Of course five a day want make you not obese if your eating loads of other junk. A lot of people on mfp are obviously overweight and on a weight loss journey. I thought it would be interesting to see what you guys thought.

I guess next question would be "So if we are ultimately responsible and we all know that. why is there such a problem with obesity?" *confused face*

I guess I could visit a few fast food places and ask some people to get a well rounded answer. Doubt they'd want to
Answer though. Lol.

Like I said, being healthy is not hard, just inconvenient... one might actually have to plan ahead and prepare a meal themselves... it's just easier to go through the drive-thru.

It's not hard so there a lot of people struggling with there weight due to Convience?
Could it really be that simple!

I think people tend to grossly oversimplify on this topic, so I'll just throw in a few things that often seem to be lost.

As to healthy food actually being just as inexpensive as bad-for-you food, that's simply not true when you're looking at actual caloric content per dollar spent. Yes, most people could afford either when you just look at the total bills, but people living at or below the poverty line (or even a little above depending on location) really have to get the most bang for their buck. Say you've got three kids and a few bucks to feed them on for several days. You could afford fresh produce and all sorts of healthy things, but you aren't going to be buying nearly enough food for everyone in terms of calories consumed. You can choose to get four apples or ten boxes of macaroni and cheese for the same three dollars; which of those is going to feed your family for more than one meal and which is going to get people closer to the caloric intake they need?

As to consumers having to just say no and make the right choices, that's all well and good, but it's ludicrous to claim that food companies and advertisers have absolutely no power over those choices. Billions upon billions of dollars are spent annually on ads, and the reason is that they work. Even though they're not shoving that food in someone's mouth, they are making it very difficult for consumers to sort out what's true and what isn't. Take a look around this very site and you'll have no difficulty finding people who are honestly unaware of what a proper diet or these seemingly easy choices look like. And these are people who are focused on figuring that stuff out. Most people simply do not have the ability or inclination to really delve into whether what they're being told is true; they trust that they are being given accurate information. And yet somehow it's their fault that they believe what a large and well-known company told them; and still, some people (for whatever reason) see it as unfair to tell the companies that they have to at least be open and honest about their products. It's ridiculous.

I've got nothing against personal responsibility, but I do see something wrong with blaming someone who is set up to fail for failing. There are so many factors working against people making healthful choices or even having the ability to follow through on those decisions. It's easy to get all high and mighty about people "refusing to take responsibility" but it is not nearly that simple an issue and it does not do anything positive for anyone to pretend that it is.

Apathy. If it's a priority in your life, you'll take responsibility.

Yes, that's true, but it's not going to be particularly effective if you have no clue what you're doing. The increasingly-massive diet industry is wholly supported by people who think they're taking responsibility and doing the right thing and failing miserably as a result. But they don't know that they are doing anything wrong. I can think of a number of people who have been both obese and dieting for the entirety of the many years I've known them. They really do care; it really does crush them that they feel fat and disgusting and worthless. They really do live and breathe weight loss and dieting, voraciously reading every book and magazine, watching every show, throwing money at every new guru on the scene. And they reason that they're the ones at fault because "well, those people couldn't say it if it wasn't true."

So it's not apathy, it's poor education. But it's not necessarily all on the individual because there is a ton of deliberate and focused effort and lots and lots of money put into creating that education.

Ah, since they are gullible it must not be all their fault?

People are responsible for themselves. I will also say that good eating habits start early, and if you are fed only junk from the time you are a year old, it can be very, very hard to start eating better as an adult. So, parents are definitely to blame as well.

We have 100% of the power over what we eat - as adults. Children, however, are more limited in their choices and this is where parents need to step up.

To question anyone beyond yourself upon the choices either to eat or not eat is futile. No one but yourself if putting the food in your mouth.

Overly simplistic. Who is to blame for making a poor choice when knowing before hand that the options are "bad, terrible or worse"?
Single mom, working two jobs and two kids, has 2-3 hours to get kids, feed them, get some rest and be ready for the second shift.
Option 1: take trip to grocery store, buy chicken/veggies, go home, cook chicken/veggies, struggle to force kids to eat knowing that all their school friends talk about the Mcmeal and the little toy they got with it. $$, 1.5 hrs time.
Option 2: drive through MC donalds, go home, eat Mcmeal. $$, 30 mins time, no struggle to get kids fed, plus an extra 45 mins of quality time with the kids.

I know, no one is pointing a gun at her head but i can get a good idea that 2-3 out of five days a week she'll take option 2.

I do not want the government to make choices for me, however i would hope that a little common sense from government regulation and food industry corporations would help create/provide a level playing field in which both the healthy and the unhealthy options are offered somewhat equally (cost/availability/etc).
Even if the capitalistic nature of the industry would prevent that from happening, i at least would hope that they would stop preying on the lack of education of people and spreading misleading statements regarding nutrition.

Now we're blaming working mothers? Research on families in which both parents work refutes such stereotypes of so called latchkey kids and their negligent parents. Studies document that children get at least as much time and care from those working moms today as earlier generations got from stay at home moms. Why do women keep getting blamed by obesity theorists? and no, bottle-fed babies do not become obese adults more often than those that are breast-fed.

Ultimately we are but companies have now made food readily available and taste amazing so we have gotten fat. If food was natural we would likely be thin because everything wasnt processed to taste so good to us and to consume so easily.