politics and food

From a recent article:


The average American man in the US now stands at 5-feet, 9 inches tall and weighs 196 pounds — up 15 pounds from 20 years ago.


For women, the average female today stands almost 5-feet, 4 inches tall and weighs 169 pounds. In 1994, her scale was at 152 pounds (a gain of 17 pounds).


According to the CDC, 33 percent of American adults are now overweight, 38 percent are obese, and 17 percent of children and adolescents are obese. Alongside this trend, we’ve seen rising rates of associated chronic diseases — like diabetes and heart disease.
Scott Kahan, director of the National Center for Weight and Wellness, said "In America, the unhealthiest foods are the tastiest foods, the cheapest foods, the largest-portion foods, the most available foods, and the most fun foods."


1) We eat out — a lot.

More than half of our food dollars are now being spent on restaurants and convenient on-the-go meals, on average. In 2015, for the first time, Americans spent more money eating away from home than they did on groceries.
Experts examined the nutrition content of more than 360 dinner entrees at 123 non-chain restaurants in San Francisco, Boston, and Little Rock between 2011 and 2014. The restaurant dishes contained 1,200 calories on average — about half of the 2,000 or 2,500 calories recommended for moderately active women and men in an entire day. [If you eat out, you probably need to eat fewer meals that day from the calorie overload for one meal.]


2) Portion sizes have gone up.

The average restaurant meal today is more than four times the size of typical 1950s fare, according to the CDC.

The average American’s total daily caloric intake grew from 2,109 calories in 1970 to 2,568 calories in 2010.


3) We guzzle sugary beverages on an unrivaled scale.

People who drink soda have more obesity, Type 2 diabetes, tooth decay, and other health problems compared with people who don't -- the research on this is clear. Americans remain the world leaders when it comes to per capita sales of soft drinks.
That said, one of the biggest public health wins of recent decades has been a slow shift away from soda in the United States. With more public awareness about the strong correlation between drinking sweet, fizzy drinks and obesity and tooth decay, sales of beverages like Coca-Cola and Pepsi have slumped.

But we are getting hoodwinked by other, equally sugary beverages that pretend to be healthier. While the soda category is shrinking, juice sales have held steady, and sales of energy and sports drinks have been growing.


4) Healthier foods often cost more.

Fewer than 10 percent of American adults ate enough vegetables in 2013. Fewer than 15 percent consumed the recommended amount of fruit.

There is a range of economic and social factors that make eating enough fruits and vegetables really hard.

Let’s start with cost: when it comes to how many calories you get per dollar, sugar, vegetable oils, and refined grains deliver a higher bang for your buck than fruits and vegetables. If your household income is low, you’re probably going for the cheapest, highest-calorie options.


5) When we do eat vegetables, they often include huge amounts of sugar, fat, and salt to make them taste better.


6) Too many of our meals are like dessert.

American breakfast is often nothing more than disguised dessert (such as pancakes covered with corn syrup and toast covered with jelly). We keep eating sugar throughout the day, hidden in foods and drinks.


7) We’re bombarded with ads for unhealthy food.

A 2006 report by the Institute of Medicine helped establish how the rise in obesity among kids corresponds to increasing marketing of unhealthy food and drinks to them.

In 2014, food companies spent $1.28 billion to advertise snack foods on television, in magazines, in coupons, and, increasingly, on the internet and mobile devices.

Almost 60 percent of that advertising spending promoted sweet and savory snacks, while just 11 percent promoted fruit and nut snacks. And advertising of sweet snacks increased 15 percent from 2010 to 2014.

But instead of promoting healthier foods, Harris says that companies have mostly reformulated their existing products to make them only slightly less unhealthy.

"The sugar in kids' cereals has gone from an average of 12 to 13 grams to 9 to 10 grams," says Harris [a gram weighs about the same as a dime, way too much sugar per serving to be healthy].

"But the cereal industry has products [that are] more healthy, and yet they don’t advertise them to kids. The healthy [more boring] cereals are advertised to parents, not kids."


To reverse these trends, health officials have begun experimenting with a number of different policies:


First and foremost is taxation [damn socialists!]. Taxes helped wean more people off cigarettes, and public health researchers think they may reduce consumption of fatty, sugary junk food.


US cities (Berkeley and Philadelphia) and several countries (including the UK, France, Hungary, Chile, and Mexico) are experimenting with taxes on junk foods like soda.

So far, the (very preliminary) research suggests the taxes may be helping to get low-income families off the sugary stuff — a win since those are the families most at risk of diet-related diseases.


Another tactic researchers argue should be widely tested is putting a warning label on sugary beverages -- the city of San Francisco may soon become the first US jurisdiction to do it. In 2015, it passed an ordinance that would require billboards advertising sugar-sweetened drinks to include this note:

"Warning: drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay. This is a message from the city and county of San Francisco." (The industry has challenged the ordinance in court and its implementation has been temporarily blocked.)


Nonprofits like Wholesome Wave have been working with government to offer fruit and vegetable subsidies for the poor, and even an experiment with produce prescriptions (which are essentially vouchers handed out by doctors for people with health problems related to their terrible diet).


Big food companies need to clean up their offerings, working with health experts to create alternatives that aren’t full of fat, salt, and sugar, and come in smaller portions.


A number of celebrities and even Olympic athletes have been working with nonprofit organizations and grocery stores to appear in colorful advertisements peddling healthier foods, including apples and tomatoes.


Transforming the food industry is one of the uphill battles that should be fought over the next few decades. [If we keep voting for politicians taking money from big food corporations, the needed changes will be much slower and more painful.]


From:
-
http://www.vox.com/2016/8/31/12368246/charts-explain-obesity
-

 

Here's the solution: Don't consume fast food, or prepared food, or food from big food companies. Find local growers and buy from them, and prepare you own meals from scratch.

Problem solved.

 

Better solution....DON'T EAT MORE THAN YOU NEED!!!!! Stop blaming everyone else for YOUR bad habits. Let US eat whatever we want. STOP punishing everyone else.

 

Really I like this OP.

Between all the prepared food and soda and smart phones:Americans are out of shape and fat compared to 20 years ago.


I'm below the national average I guess:5'9,183 lbs.

I ate 2 Empanadas,drank a Coke and had a Snickers bar earlier.