Do you see Abby supersized soda bucketa?
Anon needs to learn that the UK isn’t representative of all of Europe
Europe does have an obesity crisis, and also 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 43% in the US. Russia has an obesity rate of 30% skewing the European rate. For comparison other high European countries are Malta at 33%, Croatia at 31%, Ireland at 29%, Greece at 29%, UK at 27%, Germany at 21%. Lower rates are seen in Italy at 18% and France at 10%, 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. It is certainly not projecting.
Edit: sorry the US obesity rate is 43% not 36%. Other figures updates to 2022 figures.
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.
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.
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?
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
“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.
And does have an obesity problem!
Egypt beat us? Pick up that fork soldier, we can’t let them win!
I recently tried to compare data on morbid obesity, but most countries don’t even have a rate, or only include the data as a sub- 1% share of the obesity.
And the US it’s 9.5%
As in, 30% of the US has a BMI between 30 and 40, and 10% is over 40.
Wait, what is pea pure?
mushy peas
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…
Another anecdote telling - real butter doesn’t make you fat.
It does if you eat enough of it
As a general rule sugars are more of an issue than fats, because fats sate hunger while sugar does not. Butter doesn’t make you fat because you don’t eat enough of it to
It’s very difficult to over-eat saturated fat because absorption requires bile, and there is a limited amount in the gall bladder. My understanding is that eating more than you can absorb results in it going right through you.
Yeah sure… The long-standing obesity rates in southern states has nothing to do with butter being the baseline sauce on everything
It probably has to do with margarine being the base ingredient for butter.
<insert that weird 90s auntie video of margarine butter recipe>Oh and also, the choice to inhale tobacco smoke(and make others do so) in your free time, rather than exercise the muscles near fatty regions.
And yet the number of people obese in the USA is almost double that of the UK.
It’s the corn syrup more than the fried food honestly. The number of people who drink soda all day is wild.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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??
Fried food hides a lot of fat and carbs in the fried breading. There are a lot of calories in that crunchy matrix.
Walkable areas go a long way
I live in the fattest province in Canada, who is also compared to the rest of the world one of the fatter countries. But going to Tennessee and Texas, man… it’s a different beast down there. Obesity is such an issue that it makes you think something is gravely wrong down there. Idk if it’s the culture or the infrastructure or the food or what but it’s not good.
It’s probably the sugar and rampant allergies to exercise.
Yes
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.
Sounds delicious!
That’s just br*tish “food”
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. Or play frogger across several lanes
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
Notice how anon never mentions seeing any fat people tho…
Can’t speak for all of Europe, but I was in Germany for a couple weeks and I saw just as many fat people there that I see at home in America.
according to wikipedia the united states are 42.9% obese and germany 24.2%, what may instead be happening is either not being accurate in your headcount or that in germany obese people go outside more than in america or that maybe obesity is distributed differently, potentially similarly in both countries but you were only for example in rural areas in america but only in urban areas in germany
Or perhaps they were in a touristic area which had lots of Americans.
Check the actual calculation. In a study I saw about the most obese cities, the calculation was number of restaurants per square mile. So nothing to do with actual obesity.
Restaurants per square mile? That’s an obscenely stupid metric for measuring obesity.
The trend for obesitas in Europe has been steadily climbing. I read that in the Netherlands the adults have over 50% overweight
Been to Seoul. Every place there gives you tons of side dishes that you cant possibly eat all. People are still very very thin there on average. Ofc, cant judge whole country by one city. But maybe city’s landscape helps them keep themselves in shape.
Yeah but aren’t the side dishes like seaweed salad and kimchi?
Depends on a place and an order. Some places give just kimchi and radish. Some other places have bunch of stuff to the main course.
All of which are some variation of pickled veggies
Dont think that dried small fish in oil, bunch of boiled meat and a some different types of sausages are all pickled veggies.
I should’ve had made some food pictures to prove my point.
Not necessary, Wikipedia has a pretty extensive article on this, including a long list of dishes that are commonly served.
Yes, not all of these are vegetables, and not all are of them pickled, but the vast majority is.
You’re still describing low carb super foods…
“I visited europe” goes to the uk
The uk is somehow actually less european than the caucasian countries and kazakhstan which everyone criticizes for pretending to be european.
The idea that the UK has less in common with France than France does with Kazakhstan is hilarious.
Bravo!
