Obesity, what needs to be done?

But that is not a problem in the US, if you wanna be fat, be fat; and if you die because of it, then you die.

Thanks for the compliment and, yup this is ultimately what I want to address in this thread, that and what solutions we can find to reduce obesity rates.

On a personal level, Personal Responsibilty is very sound advice.

Problem I have with Personal Responsibility rhetoric is when people use it as a thought terminating cliche. As a way to avoid discussions, by oversimplifying issues.

1. People need education on calories and nutrients. It needs to be more than just a section in a high school health book. I am shocked at how many people do not understand calories and limits on caloric intake depending on height and current weight.

2. Stop calling "big" "beautiful" and instead stigmatize it openly again. Fat shame. Use adjectives such as "ugly," "disgusting," "gross," "nasty," and so forth to describe obesity. Stop putting fat people in commercials and in lead roles on television. Don't make ballet cartoons for little girls in which the ballerina is a fatty.

3. Exercise routines need to be taught in schools, and students need to be held accountable for doing them, and teachers need to be held accountable for enforcing them.

Being obese should have a negative social stigma associated with it. Just like smoking, or drinking too much. If one can call out a friend on their smoking, one should be able to point out a friend's unhealthy weight imo.

And if my friends would never think of calling me out on getting obese, then they aren't friends worth having imo. Elvis had a lot of "friends" like that lol.

@appariti0n: being obese already has a negative social stigma.

Honestly it seems people forgot about being a kid in school,

were fat kids treated well in your school? They were certainly not in mine.

Even when you are a grown up, people don't usually try to interact with fat people, they are generally avoided. Not sure If this is a country thing and I have not lived in countries were obesity is common. But At least where I have lived, even adults will sometimes mock fat people.

And I am not even mentioning dating, specially for women.

I would say there is absolutely nothing wrong with being respectful and sensitive about obesity. It's truth that you shouldn't allow people to say it's healthy as it's deceiving, but why be mean and add stress to people that are already eating too much to deal with negative emotions?

At some point, people need to hold themselves accountable. There‘s certain problems the government can’t fix. Your health is one of them. What you put in your face, how much you put in your face, and the number of calories you burn each day is a personal decision. Calories in vs calories out will solve the problems of 99.999999% of obese people. And there are absolutely ways to eat in a calorie deficit even if you only consume fast food every day.

I know we live in a world where folks try to blame others for their problems. That mindset doesn’t work here. Racists, homophobic, greedy Republicans didn’t make you eat that king size Snickers bar while laying on the couch watching Netflix. YOU did that…

All I can say is…..it’s really really important to keep in good shape. I know some people are overweight or obese. That’s fine god bless ‘em. But please understand that being fit means staying out of the hospital or avoiding illnesses that may be unnecessary. I know it’s tough to lose the weight, but what worked for me was just cutting out the sodas as a start.

I still ate a lot, but it was my first step.

The biggest one, and the hardest one will be cutting out carbs. Almost all cooking, be it European, Asian, wherever has a large emphasis on carbs. Rice in Asia, pasta in Italy, potatoes in the US are all major staples that are high in carbs.

@eoten: I understand. I love carbs myself, and prefer no meat. Carbs are my go to. But hear me out: it’s the minor changes that count. So if you stay active on days you can’t exercise, do the little things, it could work. For example, I try to make it a habit to hand water my garden. That in itself is exercise. I do have a pool, so I make it a habit to brush the floors. It keeps my physical strength in check like weight training.

Also, I’m not perfect. I am on triglyceride medication, precisely because I eat too much pita bread. It has no cholesterol but the starch is being converted to sugar. Luckily my blood sugar is 5.6 which is on the good side.

I know my brother whose 33 years old always sees commercials for food and is like "Oh I like burger on TV with fries and soda". Funny thing is all he thinks about is food like what's for lunch and dinner every day. He has down syndrome and is extremely overweight like 180 pounds and he used to weight 150-160 when he was in his a teenager and his 20's. He hates walking but his doctor told him to walk every day. What's interesting is he is not diabetic but can die cause of people with Down Syndrome not having long lives.

But as several links citing medical resources have shown, the negative stigma only causes stress, which in turn only makes the obesity worse.

The first step to reducing someone's obesity needs to be to make them love their body in spite of their ailment. Only after that, they can work on improving it.

Yup at some point they do. But a personal level will only change one person in a number over 1 billion.

We are working against how we have evolved here, unfortunately. And some societies fail to account for human nature well, indirectly discouraging both healthy eating and exercise. The differences in how societies are run is why Obesity rates vary heavily from country to country, even among those with similar economic status. Oftentimes cultures which adopted the personal responsibility mantra, do worse than those that don't. A society where people can thrive is not necessarily a society where people do.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that as a collective, we need to take care of our bodies better. But there are a lot of barriers in the way. Due to a myriad of reasons. Countries that have eliminated those barriers tend to do a lot better than those that don't. Barriers range from economic, to logistical, to psychological. The question is not why the person is fat (which is usually a high intake of calories and low exercise), but why the person engages in behaviours that result in them getting fat in the first place.

When I lost weight, Personal Responsibility didnt even cross my mind. I didnt take personal responsibilitly, I just decided I no longer wanted to bloody my hands every time I ate. I also decided that cars are making me miserable, so I went biking instead.

But it was quick to see why the path I chose to tread was travelled by so few. Society is set up in a way to make these decisions really difficult. Vegan food is really rare, in order to get the nutrients you need, you likely need to order ingredients online, and good luck if eating at resturaunts. Cooking plant based food is also not taught in school (unlike actual junk food). The roads for cyclists and pedestrians are the very definition of an afterthought where I live. Now that winter is coming, there is usually no lighting on the bicycle and pedestrian paths, so you are cycling in the pitch dark, worse yet, the light coming from cars is blinding which makes it even harder to see. The path for bikes are also very poorly maintained filled with potholes. Where I live, convenient, but unhelathy living is prioritized over actually living a helathy life. And this is a problem, and part of the reason Obesity is particularly bad where I live.

@Maroxad: Is the government trying to promote a healthy cooperation between drivers and cyclists where you live?

@pillarrocks: i noticed it after I couldn’t eat. Had my tonsils out and they tell you no food with texture. So I had broth for like two weeks.

Then I began to notice every commercial is for food.

Quite the opposite right now, from what I can tell from Swedish Online discussions. The drivers are getting increasingly hostile towards cyclists, usually as a kneejerk response to the green party urbanizing Stockholm and phasing out the privately owned car.

Where I live in particular it is particularly bad. Cycling is the definition of an afterthought, and to commute to work every day I have to cross a high speed road. Even on safer roads, most drivers also ignore the rule that cyclists go first, so it is not common for me to wait several minutes to cross when I commute to work.

A driver literally just threw me some profanities earlier today while I was cycling home.

@mrbojangles25: Your posts are always so goddamn reasonable. Doesn't that get exhausting?

:)

@judaspete: He is definately one of the most intelligent members on this board.

Even when I disagree, I still think his opinions are well reasoned enough, that I don't take issue with them.

Oddly enough, red states tend to have higher rates of obesity.

That’s because red states know how to cook. That’s about all they get right. Some have some good music too I guess.

amen, btw when are you coming back to SW?

Idiots.

Granted I live someplace where dedicated roads for cyclists were made years ago. But still noticed a slight improvement over the years. Drivers no longer have to pass me if I can maintain the speed limit. The city overall still have a long way ahead though.

It is a shame you experience it like that. If the speed limit is above 40kmh, cyclists shouldn’t be forced to share the road with cars imo.

Fasting.

Assuming you fit the right medical criteria and do it wisely, one of the best things can do for your body.

But it's hard to do. Esp if you're addicted to junk food, which lets face it, we all are.

I love food to much to do this. :P

It's also a great way to slow down your metabolism and put your body into a "conserve energy" mode which burns less fat, and puts you in a position of having less energy for things like exercise. And yes, the metabolism does that. Fasting is a terrible way to lose weight, and you're unlikely to actually lose much unless you intend on actively going into a state of starvation.

There are some good alternatives to high carbs more available now though. I've replaced rice in meals with riced cauliflower which reduces carbs and significantly reduces calorie intake with only a minor change in flavor that is mostly hidden by any seasonings I add to it. I've even began replacing potatoes with it as well. Some alternatives may taste slightly "off" but that's more of it tasting slightly different than being inherently better or worse. But once you start to eat that stuff more often, the high carb foods are the ones that start to taste "off."

At some point, you start to see the stuff high in carbs and sugars as being gross. Haven't you ever wondered how skinnier people who eat better can look at a doughnut and think "eew?" At some point, they actually started viewing those foods that way. It takes work to get to that point if you're so used to eating things that are bad for you. And you'll be so far out of your comfort zone that you may have to actively seek out recipes or foods you wouldn't have otherwise considered, but that all falls in with the "personal responsibility" aspect of it. These things cannot be forced.

etc...

https://www.clinicaladvisor.com/home/topics/diet-and-nutrition-information-center/study-dispels-myths-intermittent-fasting/

Intermittent fasting is on par with traditional calorie-restricted diets for weight loss, the researchers found. Some studies have shown that intermittent fasting improves cardiometabolic risk factors such as blood pressure, levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, insulin resistance, and hemoglobin A1c HbA1c , while other studies show no benefit on these parameters.

The authors conclude that intermittent fasting is generally safe, producing few gastrointestinal, neurologic, hormonal, or metabolic effects, the researchers noted.

The study also dispelled some myths about intermittent fasting. “The main myth is people are going to feel weak and not be able to concentrate during fasting. We’ve shown it is the opposite: they actually have a better ability to concentrate,” Dr Varady said, adding the increased energy may be an evolutionary response to the need to seek food during lean times.

Additionally, current research shows that intermittent fasting does not harm metabolism. “With any diet, as you lose weight, your metabolism, like your calorie needs, will go down because they’re correlated tightly with your muscle mass. As you lose weight, people tend to lose a little bit of muscle. But fasting doesn’t tank your metabolism at all. We’ve shown that it is the same that would happen with traditional dieting,” Dr Varady said.

The review outlines areas for future research on intermittent fasting. “We really do need long-term data to see if people can do intermittent fasting for the long term,” Dr Varady said. “I get lots of emails from people saying that they have been on the diet for 10 to 15 years, and it reversed their type 2 diabetes, and they lost 60 pounds, and it was the only diet they could stick to. That is always nice to hear, but we need actual data to support that.”

https://khni.kerry.com/news/blog/does-intermittent-fasting-work-a-science-based-answer/

etc...

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-11-08/can-intermittent-fasting-help-you-live-longer.html

etc...

etc..

Saying fasting doesn't help lose weight isn't "rumors." It's based on it's own studies supported by doctors and medical journals that have pitted typical calorie restricted diets against fasting and showed no real difference between the two. There are clinical trials showing this. It's not a "rumor." Believe what you want, that's exactly why the idea of forcing solutions onto people is ridiculous.

@eoten: theres a LOT of people make good money selling you these junk foods. Not just the junkfood factories, but all those doctors...they ain't getting rich off healthy people. Those trillion dollar pharmaceuticals selling all sorts of drugs after these same people get sick from eating these junk foods. Even the FDA is makinv money.

Welcome to capitalism. You need to look out for yourself. Things might look nice on the surface, but it's really a jungle out there.

You can make food more healthy by messing with it genetically, but that doesn't prevent mankind and their issue with gluttony. Food isn't the problem, it's self-control and exercise.

It's neither gluttony, nor a grand conspiracy by doctors.

People seem to live more and more in binary mode. Self control and discipline are no doubt fundamental but that doesn't mean that addiction isn't real and that it isn't exploited for profit by corporations.

We have rules for drugs, alcohol, medicine, hell even for food, so it doesn't bother me at all to legislate on stuff such as the amount of salt, fat or whatever can help us fight this as a society.

Me personally, I go very low on carbs. Except for half of November and whole December which is open season. I also exercise frequently, 3 runs a week and do weights and core 2 times. When the sea allows I also go for 30 minutes swims on the weekend.

One thing I've learned is that what you eat is more fundamental than doing exercise. But once the exercise starts feeling good you'll have a tendency to eat better because it makes exercising more pleasant. There's nothing worse than going for a 20k run and halfway almost shitting your pants because of what you ate.

Food addiction is fucked. I know some people who use food as a way to hide personal issues, mental issues. Even in more fortunate cases, people took years of fighting it until they manage to beat it. It's not as simple as saying "I won't eat" because your brain will trick you into it. That as effective as telling some one with a broken leg to go for a run.

Regulating salt is ridiculous. It's too easy to add it to yourself, and I need more salt than the average person.

@uninspiredcup: Fasting is all well and good, but it is ultimately for one person. Not the whole of society. Which is what this thread is concerned with. Obesity kills 2.8 million people every year. Making it the 5th leading risk for global deaths in the world.

The question this thread is trying to ask is what should we do as a society, to help people lose weight. Telling people to go diet, or take personal responsibility or whatever, is clearly not working. Furthermore, obesity is extremely costly to society, especially those who employ Universal Healthcare.

But that doesnt mean we are doomed. Some western countries have taken it upon themselves to put in means that people will meet at least some basic healthcare requirements. We have seen various appraoches. such as discouraging car use, regulating food are 2 things that we have seen with some success.

What we need is more action like that, and less rhetoric like what I listed in the second paragraph.

Are you implying that Scandinavians have much greater self control than americans and british people?

Not really. We do infact regulate our food a lot better, especially bread

No one is saying that fasting and exercise don't help. But a person fasting and exercising will only help one individual. We need much larger solutions.

Which interestingly enough, is also what the doctors say we need to do. We need to stop treating it as a personal issue and more as an epidemic.

And the only of the 6 solutions that would force anything on anyone is the one that would regulate fast food companies. Everything else is about providing opportunities. And barring the one with Cultured Meat, all of them have been tested and shown to work.

• Allowing people to commute via biking and walking has empiracically demonstrated to lead to greater health. WHich is why Suburbs are hit especially hard with Obesity, there is a known correlation with walkability and obesity.
• Veganism is considered one of the best diets in the world for a reason. As of now, being a vegan is faced with a lot of challenges. Ranging from stigma, to lack of education (the foods we were taught to make in school were all SAD diet crap)
• The cultured meat stuff is purely hypothetical however GMO's modified to increase their nutritional value and reduce trans fats is not exactly a new concept.
• The United States held a competition back in the 50s, called the Chicken of Tommorow. All modern broiler chickens (the ones we eat), are decendants from the winner of that competition. Prior to this competition chickens were too small to be economically viable to eat food, chickens might be eaten after they start having issues laying eggs. And whether you like it or not. We need to move away from the SAD diet. It is extremely unhealthy for us. On a personal anecdote, moving away from the SAD diet alone was pretty much enough for both me and a friend, to go from obese to healthy weights.
• Several European Countries started regulating fast food, and provided positive results. Again, this is a tried and true method.
• Fortifying food is pretty common here in europe. This is done to make our foods healthier. Vegan foods in partiuclar are often fortified with B12, and sometimes calcium and protein. Until Dairy Farmers sued them, to curb competition.

Why do you constantly argue against tried and true methods? Societies that are doing nothing, or trying to pin it all to the individual are not getting results. Those that are doing something, like the above mentioned, are getting results however. Personal Responsiblity rhetoric might have carried weight if we saw roughly equal numbers across equally economically developed countries. But that is not the case at all.

Edit: Again, there is nothing about this topic telling others how to live their lives. This thread is about empowering everyone, so even the poor and poorly educated, have the same opportunities as rich and well educated people. Obesity rates could be cut down quite a bit, if everyone had the same opportunities.

@Maroxad: isn't it funny, global warming and obesity are almost identical 1for1 the same thing. The fatty in denial whos un willing to face the facts, still stuffing his face with steaks and twinkies, meanwhile he's prediabetic heading for uncontrolled blood sugar and full on diabetes. The doctors (scientists) keep warning the fatties to take their health seriously but the fatty keeps on ignoring, still in denial. It's almost a perfect analogy. Ooff.

Personal responsibility indeed, both in obesity and global warming. It looks like the world is going to need a serious lifestyle change if we're going to make any real gains.

What do you think, should we start shaming the fatties who can't help themselves?

Food is indeed the primary problem. A diet is the biggest factor here. Exercise can make a healthy person fit. But eating well can make said person get a healthy BMI in the first place.

Ultimately, both personal responsibilty (for the individual), and societal action (for the collective) are needed to solve this.

And yeah, people tend to blame too much on one or the other. People blaming their genetics or solely the government are wrong, but so are the people blaming "Personal Responsibility". We will need both. But we see a huge difference in countries that take the situation seriously and don't just handwave the issue under Personal Responsibility

All these countries are very well off, yet we see a large difference, and personal responsibility alone can not account for the difference here (especially since Personal Responsibility isn't all that enshrined as a virtue in Nordic Countries).

Personal Responsibility is great personal policy. But it cannot be used to fix issues that extend beyond one person.

All in all, you did a great post as usual :)

Provide some data to back up your arguments.

He is right that fasting doesnt do that much.

https://www.healthing.ca/wellness/food/intermittent-fasting-study-weight-loss#:~:text=Intermittent%20fasting%20isn't%20an,a%20period%20of%20one%20year.

Edit. Crap, brain whoopsie on my response to him. I meant to say that no one in their right mind argues fasting is the solution here, and that dieting and exercise can only help one person.

Done.

Maroxad prior to the comfort we now inhabit where we are shoving carbs, chemicals, anti-biotics, sugars and all kinda shit into our bodies, fasting was something societies did regularly. It was (and generally for religious purposes up until today) the norm. Our bodies are explicitly built for it in mind. We weren't built to reg ram sugar and carbs down our throats. It's essentially a drug legal and normalized.

Don't even fast, just remove carbs and sugar solely and prepare for a meltdown.

The definition of "fasting" is also wishy-washy. There are different forms of fasting that can be combined with dieting, exercise or non-exercise. Hours, days etc...

For many, even just going to bed, sleeping counts as a fast state.

And as you posted information tends to be contradicting.

-

For the record as well, I have fasted. For 17 days and (now and again) intermitted combined with no carb meats.

The first 3-5 days are the hardest. You are essentially going into cold turkey mode. It's like having the flu with mind fog.

After about the 4-6th day, your energy does return and you feel better than you did shoving all the crap in your body prior. Lit doing exercise was before with more energy. Which is why I know Eton was talking crap.

Edit- And that was for the entire 17 day duration btw. Simply went back to food because I was surrounded by people eating crap in my face constantly. Can go much, much longer than 17 days and go about your bussiness.

But generally intermitted combined with low-carb is the better route.

SOunds to me like a change in diet more than anything

In that case, I can relate.

The hardest week of going vegan was the first week. After that, I could happily chow down anything my new diet offered me. But it was more that the food was unfamiliar rather than weakness on my end.

The SAD diet, that you and I moved away from for 17 days, is definately garbage. And we definately need to move away from it. We should definately encourage people to eat healthier stuff. But the question is... how do we do that?

Former cook here, and you see the SAD philosophy echoed by a lot of famous chefs (Thomas Keller, Anthony Bourdain, etc), and the goal of food prep--from fancy restaurants to the cheapest processed food--is to cram as much fat, sugar, and salt in to the food as possible.

• Why do those cookies at that bakery taste better than your homemade cookies? Because they're cramming a whole lot more butter into it. You'd probably balk at the amount if you saw.
• How come that lobster was so tasty? Because it was literally poached in melted butter.
• That 150-dollar Wagyu beef ribeye? It's about half fat by weight before we even touch it, then seared in a half stick of butter and with a lot of salt.
• Why does that meal you just ate at Chipotle have so much more flavor than the stuff you make? Because it's loaded with 3x as much salt and flavor enhancers.
• Why does a Twinkie or a Poptart, despite being made of pure shit, still actually kind of taste good? Because it is loaded with fat and sugar.

The problem is not that we use these techniques in certain restaurants where we treat ourselves occasionally, the problem is that SAD has become the standard for all prepared food and that carries over into our home-cooked meals as well.

I don't know how we transition away from it. It would require a complete overhaul of our agricultural system for starters. We'd have to move away from corporate corn, soy, and grain farming, grow more vegetables.

People would need to be educated, and encouraged to emphasize vegetables more than grains and fat. A total reduction in animal protein would also be required; a whole chicken might feed a family of four in one night with some leftovers; that would need to be extended to a few days, for example (grill the chicken, portion the meat for a few meals, boil the carcass and turn into soup, etc.).

I always do my best to share my knowledge with people, any time I cook or talk about food I always try to go through the recipe lol. Or try to get people involved, if they want to. I imagine it can get annoying but I feel people really need this skill. It's like...balance your checkbook, live within your means, check your oil and tire pressure in your car, and know how to cook lol. Life skills haha.

We'd also need to get better about work-life balance. Cooking does not need to be a half-day ordeal--the majority of my meals take <30 mins to prepare--but people would need time to shop, prepare, cook, and then eat.

There's just too many factors at play here. I feel an improvement to the American way of eating would be better served as a byproduct of something more significant changing (improved wages and a better work-life balance, specifically), as opposed to something planned and intentional.

Remember when COVID happened and everyone was stuck at home. What did a lot of us do? Make sourdough! Got into pickling! Learned to cook!

Amazing what you can do with a little extra time.

I'd have to agree with Maroxad on this one. Your experience may be linked more with a change in diet, cutting out things that were bad than the fasting itself. Carbs are very difficult to cut out since it's everywhere and in almost everything. A reduction is about the most you could hope for.

LOL this is an odd topic in Political Gamers. Eating healthy and exercise. Though the food that is healthy costs more than the junk and people are more sedentary than in the past.

That's because the junk is less expensive to mass produce, and therefor cheaper. Corn being the cheapest thing to mass produce in the US is why you see it and many of it's byproducts in so much of those cheap foods and drinks. Think of how many drinks are loaded with "corn syrup" which is less healthy and harder to metabolize, resulting in more health problems than regular cane sugar. Alternatives are always going to cost more.

Eat sugar only for weekends.

Not necessarily.

Tackling the obesity crisis, has been a common point of political discussion, at least over here. Part of that is because Obesity is a drain on our Universal Healthcare finances. Some swedish politicians going so far as to wanting to put extra taxes on fat people. Which I think we both can agree is going too far.

The politicians who put out effective models are those that didnt seek to punish people being fat, but rather, providing opportunities for everyone to exercise and eat healthy.

When I made this thread, I asked myself whether to put this in OT to focus on the personal issues, or PG to focus on the Systemic issues. However, OT would be a bit of a captain obvious, so I decided to put it in PG instead, where much more interesting discussions on systemic issues could be had.

The question more specifically, how do we get people to eat less junk and exercise more? I kinda regret the name I chose for this thread.

Edit:

You partially answered the healthy eating costs. That is definitely part of it, but there are more. Now, why is junk food cheaper? Subsidies, sadly. There is also the issue of visibility to consider.

Here in Sweden we have two solutions for sedentary lifestyles. One of of them, is to phase out cars in cities, which is an ongoing process and stirring quite a culture war between the liberal north and and the more conservative south. The other solution is that a lot of corporations now have a mandatory hour of exercise every week. Because I bike to work, I am exempt from this. I already get 80 minutes of exercise every day through commuting to work alone.

And I know, I really should move north :P

Yup, those extra sugars, butters and such make food more addictive, resulting in food addiction. Which is a very big issue in modern society. Food addiction is a serious health issue often ignored.

And you are right about that. I treat myself occationally to fake meat. But overall, my diet resembles a traditional nordic/japanese/tradchinese diet hybrid. With the fish replaced for obvious reasons.

Education as you bring up is a huge key. Here in sweden, we are usually taught how to make SAD food in school. Traditional Nordic food is usually neglected leading to a lack of visibility. I would hope the Sweden Democrats would stand for traditional meals, but somehow I doubt it. They seem more concerned with punishing criminals than they are returning us to our actually healthy traditions.

Since I am a vegan, you can probably guess I know how to cook. Us vegans have to cook in order to get by, since none of the resturaunts will provide vegan food around here. But man, you make a great cook. Teaching your recipees to. Now i regret not making a thread on the OT board. :P

And yeah, better wages and work life balance could give people more opportunties. Which is why I think obesity is as bad as it is. Most people simply lack the opportunties to better their lives in any meaningful ways, especially the people working 3 jobs. My weight loss was attributed to me swimming against the flow. But I could only swim against the flow because I have stable internet and a one really bad bicycle path that can take me to my job. From what I hear, roughly 20 million americans do not have access to broadband, these people are usually among the more poor. And as a result, these people had nowhere near the same opportunties as I did for learning how to cook better. Nor do they have the opportunity to order food online like I depend on.

its not, especially nowadays. Theres too many fatties out there sadly, and this needs to change.

One point you said is 100% true is how expensive healthy food costs compared to the junk food, even worse is how farmers often plow over these crops just because they can't get it to market or they're "below grade". Healthier food will always be more expensive though, especially with all the fatties who prefer mcds over a salad.

You don't need broadband to order food or learn how to cook. You're trying to segway a discussion about food into yet another misinformed rant about how terrible life is in a country you've never been to. 20 million may seem big to a tiny AF country like yours, but in the US it's a tiny fraction of the population and no, it's not due to being poor. The lowest income families live in larger cities where it's more accessible. It's people who choose to live in very small towns, or away from people entirely. It costs money to string cable and fiber optic across millions upon millions of square miles of very sparsely populated countryside just to reach the occasional house or two, which wouldn't generate enough revenue to cover even the maintenance of those lines.

Again you read something nonsensical online, without context, and filled in the blanks with your own imagination rather than following up with any actual research on the subject to arrive to a conclusion so far from the truth. You couldn't be a more ignorant person.

And again, I will reiterate you do NOT need broadband to use the internet, find recipes, or learn better eating habits.

You do realize that education, and access to information. Play a MAYOR role in healthy eating right? The link between Education and Health has been demonstrated over and voer again.

https://societyhealth.vcu.edu/work/the-projects/why-education-matters-to-health-exploring-the-causes.html

4 US states even specifically made efforts to make healthy eating more widely available and all 4 states saw reduced obesity rates. They are Minnesota, Montana, New York and Ohio. How did they achieve this? By making healthy food more available. It's almost... like... food accessability plays a major role here.

Hell, I have even personal anecdotes to go with here, since learning recipes online was key in my part in losing weight, you are trying not only to argue against my own personal experience, but also what has been overwhelmingly demonstrated in academic research. Your contrarianism is so obviously false. It makes me wonder why you even bother.

The fact of the matter is, information on how to cook healthy food is not available everywhere especially since SAD food has been normalized to the point, where going on any other kind of diet is referred to as a diet, while SAD diet isnt. People will cook what they know, and quite frankly, SAD diet is what is taught, while information on DASH, Nordic and Plant Based (Vegan/Vegetarian) diets usually have to be looked up online since there is little to no information on them otherwise. And yes, even in sweden, access to information on the Nordic Diet is practically buried here.

And for the record, this thread concerns a global issue. Not a single country. It may surprise you to hear, but not everything is about the US. Generally speaking, I tend to avoid making threads about US politics, since everyone else here covers that country well enough. I prefer to focus on global issues.