![[email protected] - Come chat about anything related to the USA](https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/18531349-e79a-4078-8bf4-a2e889f9bcf0.webp){kind=link}
Got a burning question you want to ask someone from the US like “Why is the imperial system superior” or “Why is Texas”? Join us over at [email protected] ([email protected] for the mbin users) and find out the definitive answer. You can also just chat if you don’t have questions, because this is the land of the free and there are no laws 🇺🇸🦅 (there are actually, please be nice)
Why do you think that the US has such a problem with obesity? I’ve heard people say it’s because of fast food but every other country has fast food. Is there some kind of different standard for food there? Is the food way cheaper? Is it just a culture thing?
Honestly, there are many reasons… Poverty is a huge factor. Highly processed foods are usually the cheapest and most convenient option. And sometimes a soda can be cheaper to purchase than water. Also, school budgets are usually funded by property taxes, so areas in poverty have significantly degraded educational programs and facilities.
The poor education levels mean that people rarely learn about the impacts of high sugar diets on the body. People will feed their child a high sugar diet starting as early as a 2 years old. I’ve seen a document where a woman was feeding their toddler Mt dew out of a baby bottle…
Advertising techniques play a big role here too. Foods labeled as nutritious are actually just pumped full of sugar. Foods like yogurt, “bread”, granola bars, cereals, or anything with a sauce in it.
On top of all that, Americans have an extremely sedentary lifestyle. From sitting in cubicles to sitting in cars, then finally to the couch. The most walking people do is from the parking lot to the store/building they are going to.
What’s crazy is that when I was a kid, the poor were generally healthier. Diets for poor people included a lot of beans and rice, and not much else, and rich people’s diets consisted of richer foods, with sauces, butter, etc… Poor people often worked labor intensive jobs which kept them fit, while rich people sat at desks and then lazed by the pool after work. Now poor people tend to eat fast food quite a bit more often than people with more money, and the upper class are generally more likely to engage in fitness routines.
I’d like to add that people think eating fat makes you fat, so there are a ton of products marketed as low fat but are full of sugar instead. In some cases the low fat product is worse for you than the regular one.
Yeah that’s crazy. To me high sugar diets being the cause of obesity seems like common knowledge. It seems like these educational failings must be at some level intentional considering the US does better than other countries on education that have better obesity ratings and are also more impoverished to me. But I’m just going based on numbers I just looked up here. The added sugar in absolutely everything in North America seems like more of the culprit here to me. I live in Canada and our rating is about one in four where the US is close to 50 percent. I feel like we have similar issues with our food but that’s a significant difference in obesity. Our cities and towns are designed to be more walkable for sure, but we still don’t compare to places like Europe.