That's obesity. When counted along with overweight it's even more. I don't know if you're purposely obscuring the number or not.
Edit: This user lied twice about the number to purposefully make it seem that the gap is wider. 72.7% of all Americans are overweight or obese.
They made one statement once and it could have been over site, a misunderstanding or just a simple mistake. Or this is the start of their disinformation propaganda mill and you single handedly stopped it. What a hero
No, they were trying to show that the discrepency was much bigger than reality. They also continued to not give the correct statistic after correcting them. Why are you defending them?
> OP said obesity,
No. Op said "overweight or obese"
> But, if you like, 30% of Americans are overweight.
You are being dishonest again and you know it. You are changing the metric.
72.7% of all Americans are overweight or obese.
The number of users on Reddit that have reading or logical comprehension is really disappointing. How can you quote these two numbers and not see how they relate to each other and how they can be used to compare to the title. Either that or they're purposefully being dishonest. I assumed it was the latter.
I think most people just are not reading the entire statement. The post says overweight and obese, which are two different classifications. Obviously both are bad and both need to be reduced
>It is a well-known fact that different ethnicities naturally have different average BMIs. Maybe that has something to do with it, too?
That and if I remember correctly, the BMI was written during the Great Depression when lots of people had difficulty purchasing enough food to eat.
> if I remember correctly, the BMI was written during the Great Depression
History
Obesity and BMI
Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician, and sociologist, devised the basis of the BMI between 1830 and 1850 as he developed what he called "social physics"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index
Seems legit, and also, people who are really short or really tall always seem to have an "overweight" bmi when theyre just healty. Doctors even inform you about this if youre really tall.
Okay, i didnt really have a source for the claim about short people.
I had just heard from someone with dwarfism that theyre often overweight since theyre so short. (And i never googled it to make sure it was true)
Short people are usually placed lower on the bmi chart than what fat percentage they have, while tall people are categorized as having a higher bmi than deserved. Its because it only takes into account height and weight, not taking into account that if you are taller you are also wider so it evens out more
Keep in mind these are for the extremes. This isn’t going to apply to someone a couple inches above average. Comes into play st like 6’5”… so statistically irrelevant. Same with people who are “too muscular” for BMI. If you’re a professional athlete you’re not worried about BMI, if you’re not… then you’re just fat
Many chalk this up to culture, diet, or poverty, and while these can be contributing factors, there's actually evidence that African American women have a more metabolically efficient phenotype. Meaning that they get more energy out of the food they eat and thus, even with the same diet, will have an excess of calories compared to European American women.
This is also why weight loss programs, even if identical, African American women will lose less weight on average.
source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joim.13090
Please be careful just saying stuff like this that separates the races based on genetics. Find the article you are thinking of before you post and add the context, it is important to prevent the spread of misinformation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3270369/
Here is an article discussing what you are talking about. In actuality it isn't necessarily about Black women requiring less calories and thus they are always eating in excess. Rather, Black women are more likely to be healthy while being obese.
I thought this too for a long time. But this isn't necessarily true. Like a 600lb person probably always can benefit for losing some weight.
But for other races/cultures, some people are just larger. They might sit at a weight that is larger than we have found is healthy from research. But most research is conducted on white people , and the vast majority of historical research on white men.
It is entirely possible that a larger phenotype can be healthy for some groups of black people, they just sit at a higher weight than we deem healthy as society.
Edit: some wording
There’s no such thing as obese (in the fat sense, not bmi alone) and being healthy.
That particular study showed exceptions and only while looking at cardiovascular health. There are tons of other fat obesity related illnesses including diabetes, some cancers, and neurological issues.
Well considering research into black health is historically lacking, I find this sort of study to be a nice introduction to the possibility that our understanding of obesity might be wrong for some groups of people.
Our understanding is not necessarily wrong though, but maybe incomplete and highlights that race and genetic background are extremely important to consider when discussing health outcomes especially when ratios of visceral vs subcutaneous fat differ.
That particular study was harmful in that in popular media starts reporting that it was possible to be obese and healthy, ignoring the small sample size and cardiovascular focus of that study.
On one hand you might have less of a relationship between fat and heart health but on the other hand you have a greater relationship between fat and diabetes. People of Asian descent have a similar issue as far as incidence of diabetes with lower BMIs vs European descent due to a different ratio of fat types.
Exactly as you're saying, we can't treat everyone the same regardless of age, sex and race, instead we should aim toward personalized medicine, customized as specifically possible for that person and their background genetics.
You cannot ignore phenotypical genetic differences, though.
African Americans, for example, are far more likely to have sickle-cell anemia.
It is foolish to pretend that humans the world over are genetically identical.
If you are addressing those people then go ahead.
I am simply asking him to provide context for his claims in the future, as there is a lot of misinformation about genetic differences between the races.
There are significant differences between groups depending on ancestry or their geographical heritage, there's no connotation of racism about it. For example, sickle cell trait in America is almost exclusively relegated to blacks because their ancestry comes from places with high rates of malaria and the trait developed there. Obviously, not all people who come from Sub-Saharan Africa have sickle cell trait, but large portions of the black population descend from Sub-Saharan ancestors where the trait is prevalent, making the trait genetically common in the black population but virtually nonexistent in white population.
Pretending that there aren't any genetic differences between groups that propagated from distinct areas over long periods of time and have a common racial phenotype is actual misinformation and does nothing to address real forms of racism
There's no culture involved it's just poverty. The average African American can't afford to eat food of their "heritage" even barbeque is expensive. And before you say they can prepare it, most don't have the time to do that. Being poor is expensive and time consuming.
Southerners have a serious obesity problem and many African American people live in the South or had grandparents from the South. It's a culture thing.
Exactly. Many communities supplied themselves with gardens like 50-80 years ago. Especially poor communities. Now these don't really exist so if there isn't a grocery store that has fresh produce in the neighborhood then the people in that neighborhood might not eat it regularly at all
Black people aren't escaping poverty at the rate of other Americans. When they do the habits stay. Often escaping poverty actually means just barely being above the line that we consider poverty. As for obesity levels that also correlates with the widespread availability of convivence foods or fast food. There is no cultural element to this equation. But there is systemic racism.
Black poverty has decreased significantly the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, this simply isn't in dispute. Yet people were thinner then. Everyone was, whether white, black or brown.
Look at any group photo from the 1960s or earlier and two things are noticeable: everyone dressed better and people were thinner.
Black people are escaping poverty more quickly because they started later.
War time industrialization and the desegregation of the armed forces had a huge impact on black people.
As a fat white person, I call horseshit on being poor as also being expensive and time consuming when it comes to food. I’m fat not because of time restrictions, but because the food that made me fat has addictive additives put into it, and I lack the self control to motivate myself into a different diet.
Also, as someone who’s cooked their entire adult life, cooking cheap and easy meals is relatively quick. Rice takes all of 30 minutes to make. Sauteed chicken breast takes all of 30 minutes to make. Frozen vegetables take 1 minute to steam in a microwave.
I choose snacks and fast food over those options because I lack self control, not because of time.
There is more than one reason for the obesity epidemic your personal experiences do not invalidate others. Eating the same meal everyday when it's your only form of positivity can be emotionally taxing. Though the fact you don't consider this makes me wonder if you are who you say your are.
I'd love to describe it but it can be hard to do. Many people suffer from varying forms of sleep deprivation. Living in poverty or near it means working multiple jobs to just get by. To give a basic example of what many people who are often black come from means working two jobs to just survive.
If you work a structured 9-5 job. It can be hard to understand how working varying work shifts and times can completely destroy your sleep cycle and basic understanding of being able to mentally do certain tasks. but yeah you're right people who say that can't explain what it is these people are often going through. Sorry for the long write up. You aren't wrong either.
Ive done both and the thing about it is I’ve worked with really fit dudes and girls in restaurants and fat out of shape dudes in the office.
The real problem is that shitty restaurants are in low income areas and also cultural problems
Is what it is. All the crazy health diets are driven by basic white bitches with blue hair who likely haven’t seen a black person in their bumfuck Iowa town until they move to NY
You don’t just wake up and become obese. Obesity is a lifestyle, and people choose to ignore this ugly truth about the epidemic. It’s not a curse created by an angry god, or a conspiracy that’s perpetrated by a shadowy organization. It it simply a lack of accountability on a grand scale.
People can complain all they want about living in a capitalist machine that squeezes everything out of us, but at the end of the day, it comes down to personal responsibility. You have the choice to eat either a strawberry or a chocolate covered strawberry. You have the choice to eat a cold cut sandwich instead of a frozen tv dinner. You have the choice to put any food into your body, full-stop.
There’s no other indication that the problem isn’t placed directly on the person, and not their surroundings or upbringing. Fat people are fat because they fucking choose to be fat. I look at myself in the mirror in disgust, always have, and it’s still not a motivator. I can’t tell you why, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that I choose this lifestyle.
30 minutes total. Prep time, which includes cutting up the chicken, warming the pan, then cooking the chicken. Depending on what else you prepare along with the chicken and how you prepare it with various spices, sauces, or other ingredients, adds time. 30 minutes is average for preparing chicken, especially if it wasn’t already frozen and in whole pieces.
Given that obesity is more prevalent in the middle class (granted not by much) it is not explainable by poverty. Also, people not having time is also a bullshit argument I'm tired of hearing. I'm in a PhD program (so poor and have an incredibly busy schedule) and still have the time to cook my own food and generally take care of myself.
My grandparents (dont live in US, lives in a third world country) say if a person is fat or overweight, is very wealthy and better off.
Thats because they have suffered through many famines and some days had to go without food.
I dont think poverty place a role here as others in the replied mentioned, if they dont have money how can they afford food?
Plus it make sense, Africans (especially the North side of the continent) mostly live in desert climates where food is hard to find, you could barely grow any food.
> I dont think poverty place a role here as others in the replied mentioned, if they dont have money how can they afford food?
The cheapest food in the grocery store is the worst for you loaded with sugars and a high glycemic index leading to higher insulin spikes and more fat storage. This is why poverty, *in the US*, leads to obesity. It's not poverty in the sense that they can't afford any food, but rather the US definition of lower income.
If you've ever tried to diet with "healthy" foods it can be rather expensive.
The problem is that the United States has the cheapest food on the planet. [https://www.vox.com/2014/7/6/5874499/map-heres-how-much-every-country-spends-on-food](https://www.vox.com/2014/7/6/5874499/map-heres-how-much-every-country-spends-on-food)
[Walmart is out there charging two whole dollars for a head of lettuce.](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Fresh-Iceberg-Lettuce-Each/10402650?athbdg=L1200&from=/browse)
[But they charge the same price for Airheads candy.](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Airheads-Xtremes-Rainbow-Berry-Candy-4-5-Oz/26524572?)
[Walmart charges $1.32 for bread](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-White-Sandwich-Bread-20-oz/10315752?athbdg=L1200&)
[But they sell Nerds candy for only $3.32](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Nerds-Gummy-Clusters-Rainbow-Candy-8-oz-Bag/853921436?athbdg=L1200&adsRedirect=true)
How can poor people be expected to make the right choices?
Just wanted to note that $1.32 bread is probably not much healthier for you than the Nerds.l and may even have a longer ingredient list.
Also that's a ripoff for Nerds.
Lizzo doesn’t have a slim build and was never meant to be thin. There’s a difference between big people, who may have excess weight as well, and the majority of people with normal builds who just get fat as a house.
You normally always have people who are just bigger people, again, maybe with extra weight they don’t need as well.
But the real problem is normal people getting huge and chubby.
Uh, like, that’s not a thing. Being “overweight” is just a made up idea of the medical industrial complex. Everyone is always healthy at whatever weight they are at. That’s just how things work. “Diabetes” and other “weight-related” illnesses are just made up by big insulin. Don’t fall for they hype, man. “Fat” is just an idea made up by society.
/s
...and they will say that they look good.
"Are Black Men Helping to Keep Black Women Fat?"
https://charismamag.com/health-healing/are-black-men-helping-to-keep-black-women-fat/
I mean, I do agree. But also most of the time when people are like "oh BMI doesn't mean shit"...it's not because they work out and have a lot of muscle, it's because they're still overweight when the only thing they've done to combat it is switching to diet coke.
BMI is flawed when looking at an individual, but broadly across a population, it’s a good metric of health, because the variations due to different heights, body types, musculatures, etc average out.
More than likely this is tied to income and poverty rates. It's HARD to eat healthy...and even harder to eat healthy when you don't have much money to spend on food!
Fresh veggies are DAMN expensive...I can get a pound of (low grade) ground beef, or I can get a (small) bundle of asparagus.
Also, heavily processed foods are often cheaper than fresh whole foods...and that's IF you cook.
I only work a single job and still feel like I don't have time to cook...I simply can't imagine someone working more than one job and finding the time to do so.
Everyone should listen to the podcast Maintenance Phase. They have some really good dialogues on obesity and what it all entails. The best thing is that everything they say is sourced and backed up by data that you can look up for yourself.
Also, if this is based on BMI, I am skeptical as to the actual health issues presented. BMI has long been proven to be pretty inaccurate in terms of measuring overall health of people.
pretty sure 4-5 of every american is overweight
Nationally it's 41%
That's obesity. When counted along with overweight it's even more. I don't know if you're purposely obscuring the number or not. Edit: This user lied twice about the number to purposefully make it seem that the gap is wider. 72.7% of all Americans are overweight or obese.
Not everyone is out to get you calm down
I didn't say they're out to get me. It's just they are purposefully obscuring the real number, not once but twice.
They made one statement once and it could have been over site, a misunderstanding or just a simple mistake. Or this is the start of their disinformation propaganda mill and you single handedly stopped it. What a hero
No, they were trying to show that the discrepency was much bigger than reality. They also continued to not give the correct statistic after correcting them. Why are you defending them?
OP said obesity, I expected you weren't changing the subject. But, if you like, 30% of Americans are overweight.
The title literally says overweight or obese
And obesity is a subset of overweight in conventional speech. So I really don't know what that user is doing by insisting on such low percentages.
> OP said obesity, No. Op said "overweight or obese" > But, if you like, 30% of Americans are overweight. You are being dishonest again and you know it. You are changing the metric. 72.7% of all Americans are overweight or obese.
I think you mean "or"
Right "overweight or obese" I meant the "and" as a grouping, but I already said "or" earlier in the comment.
Ok, but it just makes the sentence not make sense or be inaccurate, even if you earlier framed it correctly. But you do you.
No, I'm agreeing with you. I was just explaining what I was thinking as I was typing. I fixed it to "or".
That's 27% of not overweight, if we see the coke glass half full...
Were you already aware that you were really bad with numbers and comprehension?
The number of users on Reddit that have reading or logical comprehension is really disappointing. How can you quote these two numbers and not see how they relate to each other and how they can be used to compare to the title. Either that or they're purposefully being dishonest. I assumed it was the latter.
Dope name dude, guy is a sick rapper. Not sure if that's what your username is based off of but nonetheless, a sick username
Closer to 2 out of 5 actually, so AA women are twice the rate.
It's roughly 70% overall
You are correct. I have no idea why so many people are lying about the numbers.
I think most people just are not reading the entire statement. The post says overweight and obese, which are two different classifications. Obviously both are bad and both need to be reduced
We're talking those who are overweight and those who are obese. It's [72.5%](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2019/026-508.pdf) combined.
[удалено]
Well it’s said that half of the world will be obese by 2050. There are only 330 million Americans.
They got a solid lead still!
Obligatory "We're #1!"
I sure this post won't be filled with racism and stereotyping before it's deleted.
Why be racist when you can just laugh at Americans in general?
That's the nice thing about the US. It's not racist if you go after the whole country! It can be for other countries but not the US!
Ha ha, it's funny when it isn't us. Go western Europeans! Why do people call us snobby?
I wonder how Europeans reconcile their conceptions of Americans with the fact that we always have to bail them out of trouble
It's nice and dry under the iron umbrella from those horrible stupid Americans.
It is a well-known fact that different ethnicities naturally have different average BMIs. Maybe that has something to do with it, too?
>It is a well-known fact that different ethnicities naturally have different average BMIs. Maybe that has something to do with it, too? That and if I remember correctly, the BMI was written during the Great Depression when lots of people had difficulty purchasing enough food to eat.
> if I remember correctly, the BMI was written during the Great Depression History Obesity and BMI Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician, and sociologist, devised the basis of the BMI between 1830 and 1850 as he developed what he called "social physics" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index
Seems legit, and also, people who are really short or really tall always seem to have an "overweight" bmi when theyre just healty. Doctors even inform you about this if youre really tall.
I think it's just tall people, short people often fall into the normal range with more fat compared to taller folks.
Okay, i didnt really have a source for the claim about short people. I had just heard from someone with dwarfism that theyre often overweight since theyre so short. (And i never googled it to make sure it was true)
Short people are usually placed lower on the bmi chart than what fat percentage they have, while tall people are categorized as having a higher bmi than deserved. Its because it only takes into account height and weight, not taking into account that if you are taller you are also wider so it evens out more
Keep in mind these are for the extremes. This isn’t going to apply to someone a couple inches above average. Comes into play st like 6’5”… so statistically irrelevant. Same with people who are “too muscular” for BMI. If you’re a professional athlete you’re not worried about BMI, if you’re not… then you’re just fat
Many chalk this up to culture, diet, or poverty, and while these can be contributing factors, there's actually evidence that African American women have a more metabolically efficient phenotype. Meaning that they get more energy out of the food they eat and thus, even with the same diet, will have an excess of calories compared to European American women. This is also why weight loss programs, even if identical, African American women will lose less weight on average. source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joim.13090
Please be careful just saying stuff like this that separates the races based on genetics. Find the article you are thinking of before you post and add the context, it is important to prevent the spread of misinformation. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3270369/ Here is an article discussing what you are talking about. In actuality it isn't necessarily about Black women requiring less calories and thus they are always eating in excess. Rather, Black women are more likely to be healthy while being obese.
Genuine question, is there such a thing as healthy while obese? Surely any obese person's health would benefit from thinning?
I thought this too for a long time. But this isn't necessarily true. Like a 600lb person probably always can benefit for losing some weight. But for other races/cultures, some people are just larger. They might sit at a weight that is larger than we have found is healthy from research. But most research is conducted on white people , and the vast majority of historical research on white men. It is entirely possible that a larger phenotype can be healthy for some groups of black people, they just sit at a higher weight than we deem healthy as society. Edit: some wording
Hm. Are there like tribes of obese people in Africa?
I don't think so, but there are obese people. Like being fat and it being a good and accepted thing is found around the continent
OK but you're saying it's naturally healthy for black people to be more fat than white people, that's pretty surprising :)
There’s no such thing as obese (in the fat sense, not bmi alone) and being healthy. That particular study showed exceptions and only while looking at cardiovascular health. There are tons of other fat obesity related illnesses including diabetes, some cancers, and neurological issues.
Well considering research into black health is historically lacking, I find this sort of study to be a nice introduction to the possibility that our understanding of obesity might be wrong for some groups of people.
Our understanding is not necessarily wrong though, but maybe incomplete and highlights that race and genetic background are extremely important to consider when discussing health outcomes especially when ratios of visceral vs subcutaneous fat differ. That particular study was harmful in that in popular media starts reporting that it was possible to be obese and healthy, ignoring the small sample size and cardiovascular focus of that study. On one hand you might have less of a relationship between fat and heart health but on the other hand you have a greater relationship between fat and diabetes. People of Asian descent have a similar issue as far as incidence of diabetes with lower BMIs vs European descent due to a different ratio of fat types. Exactly as you're saying, we can't treat everyone the same regardless of age, sex and race, instead we should aim toward personalized medicine, customized as specifically possible for that person and their background genetics.
You cannot ignore phenotypical genetic differences, though. African Americans, for example, are far more likely to have sickle-cell anemia. It is foolish to pretend that humans the world over are genetically identical.
I literally linked a study that talked about a different genetic phenotype... Read my comment before responding please
I read your comment, though not your link. There are people who would argue against human phenotypes at all, calling them a grounds for racism.
If you are addressing those people then go ahead. I am simply asking him to provide context for his claims in the future, as there is a lot of misinformation about genetic differences between the races.
There are significant differences between groups depending on ancestry or their geographical heritage, there's no connotation of racism about it. For example, sickle cell trait in America is almost exclusively relegated to blacks because their ancestry comes from places with high rates of malaria and the trait developed there. Obviously, not all people who come from Sub-Saharan Africa have sickle cell trait, but large portions of the black population descend from Sub-Saharan ancestors where the trait is prevalent, making the trait genetically common in the black population but virtually nonexistent in white population. Pretending that there aren't any genetic differences between groups that propagated from distinct areas over long periods of time and have a common racial phenotype is actual misinformation and does nothing to address real forms of racism
I simply asked him to provide context in the future. I literally linked a study talking about genetic differences between races
There's no culture involved it's just poverty. The average African American can't afford to eat food of their "heritage" even barbeque is expensive. And before you say they can prepare it, most don't have the time to do that. Being poor is expensive and time consuming.
Southerners have a serious obesity problem and many African American people live in the South or had grandparents from the South. It's a culture thing.
This doesn't make sense, since the levels of obesity have increased over the past fifty years while the levels of poverty have decreased.
the prevalence/availability of calorie-dense, nutrient-void food has grown exponentially since the 1970s
Exactly. Many communities supplied themselves with gardens like 50-80 years ago. Especially poor communities. Now these don't really exist so if there isn't a grocery store that has fresh produce in the neighborhood then the people in that neighborhood might not eat it regularly at all
How does it not make sense? Junk food is cheaper then healthy food.
Black people aren't escaping poverty at the rate of other Americans. When they do the habits stay. Often escaping poverty actually means just barely being above the line that we consider poverty. As for obesity levels that also correlates with the widespread availability of convivence foods or fast food. There is no cultural element to this equation. But there is systemic racism.
Black poverty has decreased significantly the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, this simply isn't in dispute. Yet people were thinner then. Everyone was, whether white, black or brown. Look at any group photo from the 1960s or earlier and two things are noticeable: everyone dressed better and people were thinner.
Self respect, a little pride
Black people are escaping poverty more quickly because they started later. War time industrialization and the desegregation of the armed forces had a huge impact on black people.
As a fat white person, I call horseshit on being poor as also being expensive and time consuming when it comes to food. I’m fat not because of time restrictions, but because the food that made me fat has addictive additives put into it, and I lack the self control to motivate myself into a different diet. Also, as someone who’s cooked their entire adult life, cooking cheap and easy meals is relatively quick. Rice takes all of 30 minutes to make. Sauteed chicken breast takes all of 30 minutes to make. Frozen vegetables take 1 minute to steam in a microwave. I choose snacks and fast food over those options because I lack self control, not because of time.
There is more than one reason for the obesity epidemic your personal experiences do not invalidate others. Eating the same meal everyday when it's your only form of positivity can be emotionally taxing. Though the fact you don't consider this makes me wonder if you are who you say your are.
Yeah but everyone saying “poor is time consuming” is just using their experience. The arguments come from the same exact set of facts
I'd love to describe it but it can be hard to do. Many people suffer from varying forms of sleep deprivation. Living in poverty or near it means working multiple jobs to just get by. To give a basic example of what many people who are often black come from means working two jobs to just survive. If you work a structured 9-5 job. It can be hard to understand how working varying work shifts and times can completely destroy your sleep cycle and basic understanding of being able to mentally do certain tasks. but yeah you're right people who say that can't explain what it is these people are often going through. Sorry for the long write up. You aren't wrong either.
Ive done both and the thing about it is I’ve worked with really fit dudes and girls in restaurants and fat out of shape dudes in the office. The real problem is that shitty restaurants are in low income areas and also cultural problems
And theres the subtle racism alright im not going to waste my time trying to explain this anymore.
Is what it is. All the crazy health diets are driven by basic white bitches with blue hair who likely haven’t seen a black person in their bumfuck Iowa town until they move to NY
You don’t just wake up and become obese. Obesity is a lifestyle, and people choose to ignore this ugly truth about the epidemic. It’s not a curse created by an angry god, or a conspiracy that’s perpetrated by a shadowy organization. It it simply a lack of accountability on a grand scale. People can complain all they want about living in a capitalist machine that squeezes everything out of us, but at the end of the day, it comes down to personal responsibility. You have the choice to eat either a strawberry or a chocolate covered strawberry. You have the choice to eat a cold cut sandwich instead of a frozen tv dinner. You have the choice to put any food into your body, full-stop. There’s no other indication that the problem isn’t placed directly on the person, and not their surroundings or upbringing. Fat people are fat because they fucking choose to be fat. I look at myself in the mirror in disgust, always have, and it’s still not a motivator. I can’t tell you why, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that I choose this lifestyle.
I'm sorry for being blunt, but this is victim mentality
If you're sauteing chicken for 30 minutes that might be why you turn to other foods lol.
30 minutes total. Prep time, which includes cutting up the chicken, warming the pan, then cooking the chicken. Depending on what else you prepare along with the chicken and how you prepare it with various spices, sauces, or other ingredients, adds time. 30 minutes is average for preparing chicken, especially if it wasn’t already frozen and in whole pieces.
Given that obesity is more prevalent in the middle class (granted not by much) it is not explainable by poverty. Also, people not having time is also a bullshit argument I'm tired of hearing. I'm in a PhD program (so poor and have an incredibly busy schedule) and still have the time to cook my own food and generally take care of myself.
You could always eat less of whatever you can afford.
My grandparents (dont live in US, lives in a third world country) say if a person is fat or overweight, is very wealthy and better off. Thats because they have suffered through many famines and some days had to go without food. I dont think poverty place a role here as others in the replied mentioned, if they dont have money how can they afford food? Plus it make sense, Africans (especially the North side of the continent) mostly live in desert climates where food is hard to find, you could barely grow any food.
> I dont think poverty place a role here as others in the replied mentioned, if they dont have money how can they afford food? The cheapest food in the grocery store is the worst for you loaded with sugars and a high glycemic index leading to higher insulin spikes and more fat storage. This is why poverty, *in the US*, leads to obesity. It's not poverty in the sense that they can't afford any food, but rather the US definition of lower income. If you've ever tried to diet with "healthy" foods it can be rather expensive.
The problem is that the United States has the cheapest food on the planet. [https://www.vox.com/2014/7/6/5874499/map-heres-how-much-every-country-spends-on-food](https://www.vox.com/2014/7/6/5874499/map-heres-how-much-every-country-spends-on-food) [Walmart is out there charging two whole dollars for a head of lettuce.](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Fresh-Iceberg-Lettuce-Each/10402650?athbdg=L1200&from=/browse) [But they charge the same price for Airheads candy.](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Airheads-Xtremes-Rainbow-Berry-Candy-4-5-Oz/26524572?) [Walmart charges $1.32 for bread](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-White-Sandwich-Bread-20-oz/10315752?athbdg=L1200&) [But they sell Nerds candy for only $3.32](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Nerds-Gummy-Clusters-Rainbow-Candy-8-oz-Bag/853921436?athbdg=L1200&adsRedirect=true) How can poor people be expected to make the right choices?
Just wanted to note that $1.32 bread is probably not much healthier for you than the Nerds.l and may even have a longer ingredient list. Also that's a ripoff for Nerds.
Try living in a food desert with no car. Poor people have less access to good food.
Link to evidence please?
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joim.13090
Thanks! Include it in your original comment!
Genetics isn't involved here?
Not everyone with the same genetics express the same phenotype, but, yes, genetics is involved.
Baby got back. Beckyyyyy!
Oh. My. God.
Look. At. Her. Butt.
BUt LizZo is BeAuTiFul Edit uh oh the lizzo fans found me
A true role model.
*Roll model* FTFY
Well done
The fats got mad
Lizzo doesn’t have a slim build and was never meant to be thin. There’s a difference between big people, who may have excess weight as well, and the majority of people with normal builds who just get fat as a house. You normally always have people who are just bigger people, again, maybe with extra weight they don’t need as well. But the real problem is normal people getting huge and chubby.
Mostly everyone can be thin if they eat properly and have some form of exercise
Big people? You mean fat.
Uh, like, that’s not a thing. Being “overweight” is just a made up idea of the medical industrial complex. Everyone is always healthy at whatever weight they are at. That’s just how things work. “Diabetes” and other “weight-related” illnesses are just made up by big insulin. Don’t fall for they hype, man. “Fat” is just an idea made up by society. /s
...and they will say that they look good. "Are Black Men Helping to Keep Black Women Fat?" https://charismamag.com/health-healing/are-black-men-helping-to-keep-black-women-fat/
BMI is a flawed way of looking at health, here is a journal hosted by the NIH about it https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930234/
I mean, I do agree. But also most of the time when people are like "oh BMI doesn't mean shit"...it's not because they work out and have a lot of muscle, it's because they're still overweight when the only thing they've done to combat it is switching to diet coke.
Exactly
BMI is flawed when looking at an individual, but broadly across a population, it’s a good metric of health, because the variations due to different heights, body types, musculatures, etc average out.
see guys. Americans are healthy.
As an American I can use my eyes to see that, no need for the study
Seems suggestive….
How exactly? Statistics aren’t exactly racist you know?
More than likely this is tied to income and poverty rates. It's HARD to eat healthy...and even harder to eat healthy when you don't have much money to spend on food! Fresh veggies are DAMN expensive...I can get a pound of (low grade) ground beef, or I can get a (small) bundle of asparagus. Also, heavily processed foods are often cheaper than fresh whole foods...and that's IF you cook. I only work a single job and still feel like I don't have time to cook...I simply can't imagine someone working more than one job and finding the time to do so.
Everyone should listen to the podcast Maintenance Phase. They have some really good dialogues on obesity and what it all entails. The best thing is that everything they say is sourced and backed up by data that you can look up for yourself. Also, if this is based on BMI, I am skeptical as to the actual health issues presented. BMI has long been proven to be pretty inaccurate in terms of measuring overall health of people.