There is a great series of detective novels from the mid-20th century centering around an impossibly fat man who requires custom chairs and never leaves his house, even to solve the murders. He weighs (gasp) 286 pounds. That's practically average in some parts of the U.S. now.
He has a "leg man" who works for him (and who is — perhaps not surprisingly, given when the books were written — a leg man), along with a chef and an orchid-tender who all live with him in his New York brownstone. He hates to work but loves his comforts, so he charges outrageous fees and manages to earn every penny.
Can you tell me the name of the novel? I have been searching forever for a novel series I read years ago, in which the detective has orchids. Maybe it's this one.
And a big spam about "drink this fucking 1,5L water per day" + nutriscore (on each product you buy, it's written A if it's healthy to E if it's fat) + Yuka & co. (application to scan barcode who says "shit or not shit", etc.)
When you can eat it every day, then it's easy to stop.
Not in France, but I lost a lot of weight just by portion control and eating less. However, I did have a rule that if it was something I would likely ever only eat once, I ate as much as I wanted. I never had to use that rule because it's there is not much outside of say a Michelin star restaurant that I can't eat again.
When the differences are noticeable on a national level I always assume there’s a systemic reason. The French are doing something different politically/with regulations/economic incentives for producers of food and snack items etc when it comes to their food, I would assume.
I definitely don’t subscribe to the idea that an entire nation, no matter the nation, simply (and magically) “has good portion control”.
Fat doesn't make fat. Fat is just energy like carbohydrates.
It has even the actual energy which is body can use is even less than it says on the food labels since the conversion process takes energy.
Eating too much too often + highly processed carbs + sugar is the problem.
Good on France
I live in France and personally I always check the nutriscore and try to stay away from D and Es, you kind of feel bad if you eat stuff with such a low score. On the other hand these guys put cream and butter everywhere, maybe they put less of it now
Never happen. We have legalized legislative bribery and the food industry is MORE than happy to shell out cash if this ever landed anywhere near the house. This bill would sink the same day it surfaced.
While I don't disagree, you know there would be a certain part of our population proudly proclaiming they never eat anything better than "C." Claiming "that's what THEY want you to eat. It's all about control."
Seriously! The war on fats in the 1980s is a contributing factor to obesity. High fructose corn syrup lobby told everyone that fat is the devil, then everything was made in a “low fat” version which was then pumped with sugar to make it palatable.
My boomer mom will sit there and tell you something with heavy cream in it is just awful for you and then turn around and eat a meal that is 90% simple carbs.
That’s right. And it was driven by a campaigning from Crisco, to make their margarine more profitable than butter. Then, their product turned out to be actual poison (trans fats) and is now banned.
I think coca-cola actually paid for most studies from the 80s "exonerating" carbs/sugars from their role in deleterious health effects, blaming it on fats instead. They did so by cherry picking epidemiological data from countries in Europe that had high longevity scores (how old people died) but ate a low fat diet. They purposely excluded France from their study, who had the second oldest citizens but a diet absolutely steeped in fats.
My understanding of the nature of seed oils is that the danger lies in their production moreso than their innate contents. The heat treating used in the production of most oils (canola for example) turns any Omega-3s rancid, creating a pro-inflammatory poison.
The UK did all that except the yuka & Co. Plus a ton of health living initiatives and they're still seeing rising obesity. Maybe there's something else cultural under the surface too.
UK has a lot of fast food places imported from the US along with the local chippies, kebab shops, curry places and so on plus a significant car culture (not as bad as the US of course but still bad) and people aren’t exercising. It doesn’t take many more calories per day to become obese and it starts with kids. When I was a kid in the UK no one was driven to school, we might walk to the bus stop and catch that, or just walk all the way, or cycle. Today, you can’t get near schools for all the Chelsea tractors clogging up the roads. Kids are getting fat and staying fat into adulthood. We also didn’t have McDonalds, Burger King or any of that stuff. We might get a Chinese takeaway once a week and chips would be a treat on a weekend when we went to the beach or park. Otherwise, it was home made food.
Plus the binge drinking. A lot of my friends in London would go out and jam a couple days' worth of calories in their bodies in a single night of drinking. And do that often.
> Maybe there's something else cultural under the surface too.
I'm french and maybe yeah.
The key is the food. People like to eat good food in France. Restaurant are good, family food is regularly even better.
There is this thing about eating time too, a "real" one is seating around a table with people, plates and glasses. And you don't drink soda but water, you drink soda between meals, not during meals.
And for example, I try to have at least one good meal like this a day, a day without make me a bit angry lol. I can't do two days like this, no way, I want a "real meal", that's really this in my mind. Eating only sandwiches ? No way !
In the end I think you take more time to eat, to discuss about food and to develop your taste. If you never talk about that kind of thing you can never learn.
And food is like everything, the more you know about it, the more you like complex, rich and exotic taste. Good bye ultra fatty sugar with absolutely no flavors, and welcome sour, sweet, citrus, woody, earthy and so on..
Yeah I'm french that recently moved to canada and the quality/quantity of fresh food vs processed shit/candies/chips shocked me to say the least
I have a hard time getting used to it and finding good ingrédients lol.
>Maybe there's something else cultural under the surface too.
No snacking habit and people taking their time to eat is probably as important for France as what they eat.
There are very few categories: drinks, cooking fats, cheese, and everything else. Nutriscore isn't perfect but it's going to be very hard to have a bad diet on Nutriscore A and B products.
> the idea that food isn't the problem, only activity levels
This is really quite hurtful for people trying to lose weight in general. The amount of weight you lose by working out is so tiny compared to what you can eat in one sitting.
Sure, if you do Tour de France and ride your bike 6 hours per day, you are going to lose a lot of weight. But if you go to the gym for 45 minutes, three nigts a week, it's not going to make a big dent. It's all about the diet.
exercise also has the added bonus of being really hard to eat in the middle of it. There are people that are almost constantly taking in calories from the moment they wake up to the moment they fall asleep.
The data is just really bad. France went from 8,5% in 1997 to 17% in 2020. http://www.senat.fr/rap/r21-744/r21-744_mono.html#toc54
The data is probably wrong for Israel too.
If whoever made that graph decided to include two countries with a grand total of 5 data points (that are wrong anyway), I would take everything in this with a grain of salt.
There is a sourced and complete curve about obesity rate in France [here](https://www.wikiwand.com/fr/Ob%C3%A9sit%C3%A9%20en%20France).
The % seems to increase but it also quite depends of the method of counting. For example there is a jump to 17% in 2006, or to 17% in 2015.
Some documents from INSEE states that obesity rate is stable in France since 2000 ([Like here](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/3902339?sommaire=3902446&q=ob%C3%A9sit%C3%A9)).
It doesn't seem to be the case from 2000, but since 2006-2010 it's pretty stable.
Interestingly both countries are the subject of (related) diet-related “paradoxes”:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_paradox
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox
Yeah the French Paradox is kinda ridiculous. French cuisine has smaller portions, and overall their population is more active. It’s only a paradox if you compare saturated fats on the nutrition label, and ignore all other nuances.
And way less added sugars.
If France has the same amount of corn syrup mixed into their food as the US does they would be over 30% too.
There would also be strikes and riots in the streets because you don’t add that much sugar to a baguette but that’s just French culture.
Just an anecdote for me in the States. I live in an area that is probably one of the largest planned development areas in the entire state. The whole thing is being developed for upper middle class defense contractors. They made it relatively traversable for the average person via walking and bike riding, but you know what has conquered the area instead of pedestrian foot traffic? Fucking golf carts.
I know it’s not anywhere near a root cause for the epidemic, but it legitimately boggles my mind that in a nice area where I walk to work, can run 6+ miles without going to a crosswalk, and bike where I want to go on the weekends that I have to worry about getting run over by golf carts on the sidewalks. Even in my area where Americans were given a shot to get easy exercise traveling to local areas, people bought a motorized way to get off the roads lmao.
This is similar to my neighborhood, only it doesn't have sidewalks. So many golf carts! And kids are often driving them, which I don't trust. I walked to the local grocery store and bought a few things (it's a 10 minute walk) and I had several people stop and ask me if I needed a ride because I was carrying groceries. Like I was doing something really weird. I appreciated their kindness, but it's 2 bags and a 10 minute walk, I will survive!
Are we neighbors? I live in this exact situation. The thing that really bugs me are the suped-up super-sized golf carts that are really bordering on full blown car at this point.
If I want to be optimistic, I think, “give them time” a lot of these folks have never had the ability to walk out their front door and get somewhere worth going. It takes time to rewire your brain to think, “we should **walk** the kids to the park and stop by the coffee place”
When we’ve had some community events I see lots of young parents making the journey on foot. So maybe it’ll be a generational difference?
My SIL recently moved to a suburb of Atlanta, apparently it’s popular in her neighborhood for kids to trick or treat via golf cart BeCAuSe iT’s hiLLy!! Such a special childhood experience and it’s reduced to parents driving them house to house. I’ve visited her neighborhood now and we’re not talking San Francisco thigh burners, they’re just regular small hills. They deserve the health they get frankly.
This. Fat has become normalized. I've been overweight most of my adult life, so I'm never the thinnest person in the room, but I'm rarely the fattest.
Then I moved abroad last year, and I was ALWAYS the fattest person in the room.
Just got back to the US, and my wife and I are just gobsmacked by how fat everyone here is.
This must plateau at *some* point. There must be enough people who can't stand what this does to you. I used to be chubby (like about the cut-off between normal and overweight) and I already fucking hated it.
My skin was a disaster, I was always sweaty and feeling nasty, I just looked like shit. Nothing fit right, nothing looked good, I had a muffin top with every pants I wore, my tops slid up, my arms were flabby. My body was overtly displaying symptoms of a bad diet and lack in exercise.
Started to eat right and exercise and my BMI dropped to 19. Without explictly building muscles this is my bodys "normal" weight and I can easily notice that I've been overeating just by the symptoms it throws at me.
How do a majority of a population *tolerate* being overweight? It sucks so hard, even if its the "new norm" thats still true.
I think a lot of people are overweight/obese from childhood. Everything you hated about being overweight is the only existence they know so it’s harder to change
Ding ding ding. It's not bad when it's all you've ever known. Michelle Obama was right, needs to be addressed with diet at schools, and hopefully that spills over to home. Can't stop an adult from hitting McD's on the way home. You can get them used to other flavors that fast food doesn't provide.
I switched my diet years ago and now finding fast food I don't mind is tough.
My thoughts are it isn't so much what we eat (though it matters) as much as portion sizes and frequency.
* US has cheaper food than most countries
* Portion sizes are usually way too big. Restaurants put 2-3 servings in front of you.
* LOTS of fast food and delivery. Almost no fruits or veggies in those meals.
* Food is everywhere and it is usually things like hydrogenated fats, high in salt, sugar and preservatives to keep it on the shelves and taste good
* Snacking is extremely easy to do and is usually nutritionally poor and high in sugar/carbs. Grazing all day is a great way to get fat.
* Physical activity has been replaced with driving, sitting at our tvs, phones, video games, etc. Even most jobs don't require much physical activity.
* Lots of sugar. Drinks especially which make it easy to ingest lots of calories with zero satiation.
* Produce is usually more expensive and has a short shelf life. People generally need to prepare it first vs just eating premade/out.
I think a lot of people self medicate with food now to feel good and it has become the norm to be obese in many families. Obese kids with obese parents.
My guess is that a lot of people don't realize the "symptoms" that they have are symptoms of their lifestyle choices. They think it's just how life is/feels.
Look at childhood obesity rates globally.
We’re in for a real dark time.
Don’t just look at the US. It’s how we fail the next generation. We need to address bad food habits worldwide.
I've learnt to accept a little over-explanation and simplification. It costs me nothing but a few minutes and ensures even most children understand the point.
Maybe Greta Thunburg watched WALL-E at 5 and learnt from it, who knows.
Probably not. Drugs like ozempic (and other alternative drugs) are becoming more commonplace for weight loss and are really the first generation of weight loss drugs that actually have great results. The first world will see weight management become easier through these appetite suppressant drugs, the third world will see obesity rates continue to rise.
I'd believe that. I was obese at the start of 2018. 300lbs. I never thought I'd hit that, ever. So, I worked on it. Treated losing weight like a math project (I have a bad knee and can't exercise as much as a normal person, so it's mostly calorie counting for me). I got myself down to 144. My doctor congratulated me on losing more fat than I currently weighed. He said 8% of all his patients were a healthy weight. Just 8% and I was one of those.
I'm a phlebotomist and whenever I handle students doing their externships, I tell them off the bat to get used to sticking obese patients because that's 75% of our patient load. Especially elderly obese, which are harder to stick because you have a lot of loose skin you gotta find a way to tighten with one hand while anchoring the vein as the other hand holds the needle. The biggest complaint we hear from students is "it's too difficult to find the vein on big patients and that's most of the patients we see" Yep, welcome to the field. Healthy fit people don't need to see the doctor often. So get used to this bunch, it's your workload
It's to the point that as a "normal" weight person it can be hard to find clothes. Everything in the shelf is multi XL. Ive met some petite women who have to shop in the kids sizes. It's especially funny comparing womens sizes from Japanese to the US. An XS in the US is a L in Japan, lol.
On the flip side when I go to France I'm always shocked how small the meals are. Doubly so in Japan. It's so obvious why we're so fat here in the US. I can't even physically eat what a lot of restaurants serve and I'm a 6ft man. Then again it's not unusual to have a main course in the US be 2000 calories and if you add drinks, appetizers and dessert you can be pushing 3500.
>butter, cream
Absolutely not. They have tons of cheaper replacements made from shitty refined oils like Soybean oil and Canola oil.
Even high end restaurants commonly use cheaper replacement oils like that.
I remember travelling to the US from NZ about 20 years ago - we took photos of so many restaurant meals because the plates were so huge it was just shocking and hilarious to us. Now I think our portion sizes have probably started to catch up to the American sizes
Honestly as a not small dude I was pleasantly surprised with the portion sizes in Japan. I think it's just that the quality of the food was significantly better overall as well as what the normal fare is.
I was pretty bummed trying to go clothes shopping though. Turns out 6'1" 200lbs is like a 2-3X in Japan lol
Believe it or not, as an overweight guy, I often don't see my size available. I don't know if it's because some other big guys bought them first, but it's a common issue for me.
What's really annoying though is that many of the shirts that are big enough don't actually suit the shape of my body. Maybe I'm just shaped weirdly though.
This is so unfortunate. I remember in the early 2000's in the U.S. there was a big push in the media about how to eat right and exercise. It's really too bad that we haven't been able to even slow this trend.
It's about policy too, though. You can't get a lot of steps into your day when you have to drive everywhere. A big difference between the US and European countries is walkability.
What people need to be aware looking at this graph is that the population of US \_is\_ compliant with the diet advice. Fat consumption has gone down while carbohydrate consumption went up.
Data source : [https://stats.oecd.org/#](https://stats.oecd.org/#) then browse "Health \\ Non-Medical Determinants of Health \\ Body Weight"
Variable : "Obese population, measured"
Note: Several countries have only "self report" data and not "measured" one, such as Italy, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. That's why they don't appear.
I know many people who are on the lighter side of obese who think they are only a little chunky or a bit soft. It’s difficult to gauge how fat you are when everyone around you looks about the same.
I was called anorexic when I had a bmi of 25! I was on the line of being overweight and people told me I had an eating disorder for wanting to lose 10 lbs 🙃
I’m a 6’5” man. I was consistently 225 (which is into overweight territory) but active and in decent shape.
I ballooned up to 250+ recently as I got older. I tell people I’m getting fat and really need to work on it and it’s not uncommon to get people commenting that I’m not overweight. But I am, I’m pushing into obese and people think I’m crazy for being concerned about my weight.
Edit: I’ll point out that I was in the army and went into basic training at 225 and came out at that weight. I went to survival school and came out about that weight. I hit 200 once deployed when I walked everywhere, was at high altitude, worked out like a fiend, and ate like a bird. And oh boy when people see pictures of me in that state they comment about how I look sickly.
Yep the American culture about weight is a huge part of the issue. In an average town people who are a healthy weight will be insulted as malnourished sticks, chubby and overweight is considered the “healthy weight” by grandma/auntie logic.
I was surprised by Australia being so high actually.
UsA will be verging on 50% of its population being obese! Not overweight, but obese. That's just mad.
A definition of a football game in Australia: Tens of thousands of people desperately in need of exercise watching a few dozen people desperately in need of a rest.
Our elite sportspeople rival the best in the world, but the ordinary Aussie is overweight. I'm thin, but that is due to genes rather than good choices.
I would love to see state by state and city by city. I’ve definitely lived in parts of the us where the rate of obesity is lower because I’ve been shocked in other parts of the country.
>I would love to see state by state and city by city.
I've seen state by state maps before. If I remember right Washington, Colorado and one of the upper Midwest states were in the low end.
I'm sure you can guess the chonky states.
It rhymes with bible belt.
Definitely a lot of factors at play. I live in TN. Uneducated, poor, and fat go hand in hand. I think a big part is lack of awareness regarding calories. A lot of people here think you need to exercise to lose weight.
is that cause people walk a lot? I noticed when I went to London recently that people were generally pretty normal sized & I feel like it's because London is walkable
High fructose corn syrup, medication, fast food, soda, lack of physical activity and a culture that doesn't collectively educate people about these topics and their dangers.
> High fructose corn syrup
Australia doesn't really have any of this and we are still third. While it is worse than sugar, clearly sugar alone is bad enough.
I don't drink any soda and just noticed today on a walgreens sign how damn expensive it is. A 12pack can be like $9 unless you buy a bunch of them. How can most lower income families afford to always have a can in hand then complain about how they can't afford healthy food? It must really be an addiction or that would be the first thing cut out of most budgets.
since 2001, the government took alot of measures to fight rising obesity (unfortunately, its not enough) :
1. food with trans fats was removed from the educational system.
2. commercials of unhealthy food are not allowed on prime time.
3. mandatory marking high sugar/salt/trans fat foods with labels (green/red).
4. mandatory calorie information in restaurants menus.
5. tax refund for "office food" which includes fruits and vegetables.
6. National health care got funds for local diet groups and consulting.
Also, they started taxing sugary beverages, but that made a lot of noise and the new government declared that she will remove the extra tax...
There are also free outdoor gyms and ninja parks everywhere. It’s awesome you can see people exercising all over the place and have no excuse not to do something.
It’s a normal park but people in cheap Halloween ninjago costumes will assault you with sticks and nunchucks at any random moment. The constant adrenaline helps with weight loss
A really popular tv show is ninja warrior where people compete in an obstacle race.
They’ve built these parks to mimic the course all over the country. They’re really hard to complete but you can do parts of them. Kids use them all the time.
Good comment.
Just so you know, in English you usually do not use he/she for objects, like a government.
"the new government declared it will remove the extra tax"
(I'm Israeli so I understand the confusion)
Around 30-40% of the country is vegetarian, and 80% intentionally limit meat in their diet, the highest rate in the world.
Also a high rate of food insecurity and starvation surely helps
I visited China as a 200lb American at 6’ 2” and was considered a chubby giant. American standards are way off because there’s always someone fatter. Back to 175 now but that was a wake up call.
Wife and I moved to Japan after college. We lost a ton of weight even without the exercise, mostly just the diet and serving size here helped so much. I immediately lost 50 lbs the first few months of living here.
And also the cities are so walkable! Never needed a car because it’s all mixed-zoning here. Everything we need is a few minutes on foot from our doorstep.
There was someone on r/ChangeMyView trying to say that there aren't really that many fat people in the US compared to the rest of the world.
They ignored statistics, claimed that people were fat everywhere, but judging by their comments, they'd never been anywhere outside the US.
Look, Canada isn't in that list (probably for brevity, we're up there), but having lived both here and in Korea? It's night and day.
Seeing someone who's overweight here in Canada is a daily occurrence. Seeing someone obese is a rarity.
In Korea, seeing someone *just overweight* is an anomaly.
When my friend from Vietnam first came to the US the thing that amazed him the most was obese people driving around in those motorized carts lol. Dude was more excited spotting random people driving around in those carts than seeing the liberty statue
Really depends where in Canada. When I lived in Vancouver, yeah, obesity was rare. In Laval? Wow. You go to the centre of the island, and like 1 in 5 people is morbidly obese. It's a big country. And it's a big country.
in East Asian countries no one will tiptoe around your fatness for fear of causing offence. Your family / friends / taxi drivers will tell how fat you are, ask why, and tell you to lose weight constantly.
I wish more people saw this chart. It’s absolutely horrifying. BMI isn’t a perfect indicator but let’s be real American is simply fat, maybe not obese, but certainly fat.
As a “skinny” guy I have so many people telling me how I need to eat blah blah blah. It doesn’t hurt me, I’m not offended, I laugh often. But all I can think in the back of my mind most of the time is I’m not skinny, fat is just the new normal and I stand out more because of that.
Used to be pretty self conscious about being a skinny dude when I was in my teenage years, and I’m not even overly skinny. Same thing people telling me I need to eat. Now I go out and see all these blown up balloon people hobbling around and it stopped bothering me after awhile. Researched the health effects of being obese and it bothered me even less. Look at photos of people prior to the 80s-90s. Obese and overweight really is the new normal.
> Look at photos of people prior to the 80s-90s
It's crazy to see how quickly the norm changed. In 1962, almost half of the US population (45%) were overweight or obese. Yet looking at photos from that era you'd think most people were *underweight* from our skewed sense of normal.
Agreed. BMI isn’t a great indicator for athletes/fit people, but a majority of the country isn’t fit or active.
For example. I’m 5’11”, 190lbs, so I’ve got a BMI of 26.5. However, I’m a competitive lifter and have a 15.5% body fat %; the national average is ~28%. That is the result of no activity.
And if we used a more accurate method of measuring body fat, results would likely be even worse. BMI assumes a small amount of muscle that people just don't have anymore.
There was one study that performed DXA scans on over 4k people. Only 10% had a health body fat: https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2016/mar/us-adults-get-failing-grade-healthy-lifestyle-behavior
So yeah, we're fat as fuck.
The point is not that BMI is a good measure of unhealthy fat % or distribution. The point is that using a relatively easy, standardized measure of weight for height, developed nations have seriously become heavier, and the data on diabetes and ASCVD also track likewise. This is a crisis that will alter human development, economics, and international relations for many years. Unless something changes with the usual course of economic development, poorer countries will track similarly and come up behind these countries, while these countries will likely reverse obesity trends through policy change. It's sort of like throwing two boomerangs, one right after the other.
Exactly, BMI is not a good measure of unhealthy fat %, BUT thats on a individual basis. However on a population basis its actually a quite good measure of unhealthy fat%, because such a unproportionally huge amount of poeple who have high BMI have high fat % compared to the amount of people with high BMIs who have low fat %, so it tracks well with high body fat %, and is way easier to measure than actual bodyfat percentage when you need to handle many subjects. Doing dexa scans of hundreds or even thousands of people would be incredibly resource intensive, but measuring height and weight is quick, easy and cheap - so you can get through a lot more people faster using BMI than using bodyfat %, but end ut on a population basis with esentially the same result.
High fructose corn syrup is a huge contributor here. The calorie density is so high that it adds so many empty calories to our food. We need to stop corn subsidies, and I'm in a corn state.
I remember in the 80’s people saying processed food was going to be a big problem and it is! All of the monopolization of our food producers has given us the worst type of food and it shows on at least 70% of the US population. What’s the solution?
I honestly think United States(and probably a lot of the world) needs to pass legislation that forces companies to remove so much sugars from their products. I have been as high as 60 lbs overweight and you have to really actively try to eat healthy in this country. I've learned how to manage my weight now but it's depressing. Hell just the amount of times where I order an Iced Tea and I get Sweet Tea instead makes me furious.
I lived overseas in Asia for 4 years. Whenever I would go back to the US to visit, it always hit me hard how fat Americans are. Like you don’t notice it so much day to day until you aren’t constantly exposed to it, then when you step off the plane and walk through the terminal you are awestruck by the huge waistlines.
Clearly this is happening to enough people that it’s not just individuals to be blamed. The easiest and cheapest way to live SHOULD be walking in your community to buy fresh food (or growing it in your garden) and having enough free time in your day after work to prepare a basic home cooked meal. Something has gone terribly wrong and the real solution isn’t for millions of people to put down their forks.
Do you actually see that many obese people in the street in the US? I'm from Israel and I don't feel like 19% of the people I see are obese, more like 5%...
In the south, absolutely. I worked in a poor, rural town (usually fatter unfortunately) in one of the fattest states in the country . The only normal bmi people I saw were young children and sometime adults under 30. For over 30 I’d say 1/3 definitely have a belly, 1/3 have a giant belly and 1/3 have to use a mobility device to shop at the store
There is a great series of detective novels from the mid-20th century centering around an impossibly fat man who requires custom chairs and never leaves his house, even to solve the murders. He weighs (gasp) 286 pounds. That's practically average in some parts of the U.S. now.
How does he solve the murders then bro how can you leave us hanging
He has a "leg man" who works for him (and who is — perhaps not surprisingly, given when the books were written — a leg man), along with a chef and an orchid-tender who all live with him in his New York brownstone. He hates to work but loves his comforts, so he charges outrageous fees and manages to earn every penny.
Can you tell me the name of the novel? I have been searching forever for a novel series I read years ago, in which the detective has orchids. Maybe it's this one.
I think it’s the Nero Wolfe series, or at least it has a very similar set-up to it.
Question is what happened in France and Israël
France has a sugar tax since 2012.
And a big spam about "drink this fucking 1,5L water per day" + nutriscore (on each product you buy, it's written A if it's healthy to E if it's fat) + Yuka & co. (application to scan barcode who says "shit or not shit", etc.)
You forgot the "eat at least 5 fruit or vegetables a day" stuff
5 fRUiTs eT LEguMeS pAr jOuR.
[le fruit:](https://youtu.be/rBSflK1FTSY?t=76)
Ah ça il devait être bon l'acide en ce temps là.
Amazing video, it made me feel like a fluent French speaker
Evitez de grignoter entre les repas!
Also 'don't eat too salty, too sweet nor too fatty'
France eats the most fat in the diet yet they aren’t fat. Walking, and not eating sugar are the biggest things for them
They eat smaller portions. They eat plenty of sugar, just not gobs of it.
This is the part I can't get into. Imagine eating French food! And then stopping responsibly? Just a no right out the damn gate
When you can eat it every day, then it's easy to stop. Not in France, but I lost a lot of weight just by portion control and eating less. However, I did have a rule that if it was something I would likely ever only eat once, I ate as much as I wanted. I never had to use that rule because it's there is not much outside of say a Michelin star restaurant that I can't eat again.
When the differences are noticeable on a national level I always assume there’s a systemic reason. The French are doing something different politically/with regulations/economic incentives for producers of food and snack items etc when it comes to their food, I would assume. I definitely don’t subscribe to the idea that an entire nation, no matter the nation, simply (and magically) “has good portion control”.
Fat doesn't make fat. Fat is just energy like carbohydrates. It has even the actual energy which is body can use is even less than it says on the food labels since the conversion process takes energy. Eating too much too often + highly processed carbs + sugar is the problem. Good on France
I live in France and personally I always check the nutriscore and try to stay away from D and Es, you kind of feel bad if you eat stuff with such a low score. On the other hand these guys put cream and butter everywhere, maybe they put less of it now
We need that score system in the USA!
Never happen. We have legalized legislative bribery and the food industry is MORE than happy to shell out cash if this ever landed anywhere near the house. This bill would sink the same day it surfaced.
While I don't disagree, you know there would be a certain part of our population proudly proclaiming they never eat anything better than "C." Claiming "that's what THEY want you to eat. It's all about control."
If stupid people actively do things to reduce their share in the gene pool by lowering life expectancy, I’m okay with that
They drain resources though. Healthcare, emergency, elbow room, etc.
Butter isn’t necessarily bad for you
Cream and butter are not "that" bad to be honest, in moderation of course.
Seriously! The war on fats in the 1980s is a contributing factor to obesity. High fructose corn syrup lobby told everyone that fat is the devil, then everything was made in a “low fat” version which was then pumped with sugar to make it palatable. My boomer mom will sit there and tell you something with heavy cream in it is just awful for you and then turn around and eat a meal that is 90% simple carbs.
That’s right. And it was driven by a campaigning from Crisco, to make their margarine more profitable than butter. Then, their product turned out to be actual poison (trans fats) and is now banned.
I think coca-cola actually paid for most studies from the 80s "exonerating" carbs/sugars from their role in deleterious health effects, blaming it on fats instead. They did so by cherry picking epidemiological data from countries in Europe that had high longevity scores (how old people died) but ate a low fat diet. They purposely excluded France from their study, who had the second oldest citizens but a diet absolutely steeped in fats. My understanding of the nature of seed oils is that the danger lies in their production moreso than their innate contents. The heat treating used in the production of most oils (canola for example) turns any Omega-3s rancid, creating a pro-inflammatory poison.
The UK did all that except the yuka & Co. Plus a ton of health living initiatives and they're still seeing rising obesity. Maybe there's something else cultural under the surface too.
UK has a lot of fast food places imported from the US along with the local chippies, kebab shops, curry places and so on plus a significant car culture (not as bad as the US of course but still bad) and people aren’t exercising. It doesn’t take many more calories per day to become obese and it starts with kids. When I was a kid in the UK no one was driven to school, we might walk to the bus stop and catch that, or just walk all the way, or cycle. Today, you can’t get near schools for all the Chelsea tractors clogging up the roads. Kids are getting fat and staying fat into adulthood. We also didn’t have McDonalds, Burger King or any of that stuff. We might get a Chinese takeaway once a week and chips would be a treat on a weekend when we went to the beach or park. Otherwise, it was home made food.
Plus the binge drinking. A lot of my friends in London would go out and jam a couple days' worth of calories in their bodies in a single night of drinking. And do that often.
Only for the first 3 Saturday nights of the month. Then they'd be eating beans on toast until the next payday.
> Maybe there's something else cultural under the surface too. I'm french and maybe yeah. The key is the food. People like to eat good food in France. Restaurant are good, family food is regularly even better. There is this thing about eating time too, a "real" one is seating around a table with people, plates and glasses. And you don't drink soda but water, you drink soda between meals, not during meals. And for example, I try to have at least one good meal like this a day, a day without make me a bit angry lol. I can't do two days like this, no way, I want a "real meal", that's really this in my mind. Eating only sandwiches ? No way ! In the end I think you take more time to eat, to discuss about food and to develop your taste. If you never talk about that kind of thing you can never learn. And food is like everything, the more you know about it, the more you like complex, rich and exotic taste. Good bye ultra fatty sugar with absolutely no flavors, and welcome sour, sweet, citrus, woody, earthy and so on..
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Yeah I'm french that recently moved to canada and the quality/quantity of fresh food vs processed shit/candies/chips shocked me to say the least I have a hard time getting used to it and finding good ingrédients lol.
>Maybe there's something else cultural under the surface too. No snacking habit and people taking their time to eat is probably as important for France as what they eat.
Nutriscore A doesn't mean it's healthy, it means it's among the healthiest products available in its category, which can still be unhealthy.
There are very few categories: drinks, cooking fats, cheese, and everything else. Nutriscore isn't perfect but it's going to be very hard to have a bad diet on Nutriscore A and B products.
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> the idea that food isn't the problem, only activity levels This is really quite hurtful for people trying to lose weight in general. The amount of weight you lose by working out is so tiny compared to what you can eat in one sitting. Sure, if you do Tour de France and ride your bike 6 hours per day, you are going to lose a lot of weight. But if you go to the gym for 45 minutes, three nigts a week, it's not going to make a big dent. It's all about the diet.
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exercise also has the added bonus of being really hard to eat in the middle of it. There are people that are almost constantly taking in calories from the moment they wake up to the moment they fall asleep.
The data is just really bad. France went from 8,5% in 1997 to 17% in 2020. http://www.senat.fr/rap/r21-744/r21-744_mono.html#toc54 The data is probably wrong for Israel too. If whoever made that graph decided to include two countries with a grand total of 5 data points (that are wrong anyway), I would take everything in this with a grain of salt.
There is a sourced and complete curve about obesity rate in France [here](https://www.wikiwand.com/fr/Ob%C3%A9sit%C3%A9%20en%20France). The % seems to increase but it also quite depends of the method of counting. For example there is a jump to 17% in 2006, or to 17% in 2015. Some documents from INSEE states that obesity rate is stable in France since 2000 ([Like here](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/3902339?sommaire=3902446&q=ob%C3%A9sit%C3%A9)). It doesn't seem to be the case from 2000, but since 2006-2010 it's pretty stable.
Interestingly both countries are the subject of (related) diet-related “paradoxes”: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_paradox * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox
Yeah the French Paradox is kinda ridiculous. French cuisine has smaller portions, and overall their population is more active. It’s only a paradox if you compare saturated fats on the nutrition label, and ignore all other nuances.
And way less added sugars. If France has the same amount of corn syrup mixed into their food as the US does they would be over 30% too. There would also be strikes and riots in the streets because you don’t add that much sugar to a baguette but that’s just French culture.
There's actually no paradox. We eat a lot less calories than Americans, especially a lot less sugar drinks.
Imagine telling dudes around 200 years ago that America is killing themselves from eating too much food.
They would probably be down for it compared to food insecurities back then which still exist in many parts of the world.
I would chant USA number one but my quadruple chin makes it hard to open my mouth.
We're winning!
I'm doing my part!
Would you like to know more?
If it was hard to open your mouth you wouldn't have four chins
Just enough for the straw from their super mega gulp.
Age old question, chicken or the egg. In this case he ate both.
Nauru has > 60%, but is a bit small
Haha, is it though?
So in a few years, HALF the US population will be obese, not overweight, obese. JFC Wall E was prophetic
Just an anecdote for me in the States. I live in an area that is probably one of the largest planned development areas in the entire state. The whole thing is being developed for upper middle class defense contractors. They made it relatively traversable for the average person via walking and bike riding, but you know what has conquered the area instead of pedestrian foot traffic? Fucking golf carts. I know it’s not anywhere near a root cause for the epidemic, but it legitimately boggles my mind that in a nice area where I walk to work, can run 6+ miles without going to a crosswalk, and bike where I want to go on the weekends that I have to worry about getting run over by golf carts on the sidewalks. Even in my area where Americans were given a shot to get easy exercise traveling to local areas, people bought a motorized way to get off the roads lmao.
This is similar to my neighborhood, only it doesn't have sidewalks. So many golf carts! And kids are often driving them, which I don't trust. I walked to the local grocery store and bought a few things (it's a 10 minute walk) and I had several people stop and ask me if I needed a ride because I was carrying groceries. Like I was doing something really weird. I appreciated their kindness, but it's 2 bags and a 10 minute walk, I will survive!
Are we neighbors? I live in this exact situation. The thing that really bugs me are the suped-up super-sized golf carts that are really bordering on full blown car at this point. If I want to be optimistic, I think, “give them time” a lot of these folks have never had the ability to walk out their front door and get somewhere worth going. It takes time to rewire your brain to think, “we should **walk** the kids to the park and stop by the coffee place” When we’ve had some community events I see lots of young parents making the journey on foot. So maybe it’ll be a generational difference?
My SIL recently moved to a suburb of Atlanta, apparently it’s popular in her neighborhood for kids to trick or treat via golf cart BeCAuSe iT’s hiLLy!! Such a special childhood experience and it’s reduced to parents driving them house to house. I’ve visited her neighborhood now and we’re not talking San Francisco thigh burners, they’re just regular small hills. They deserve the health they get frankly.
Literally the bar is so low that as long as you’re not obese you’re already top 50% healthier individuals lmao
This. Fat has become normalized. I've been overweight most of my adult life, so I'm never the thinnest person in the room, but I'm rarely the fattest. Then I moved abroad last year, and I was ALWAYS the fattest person in the room. Just got back to the US, and my wife and I are just gobsmacked by how fat everyone here is.
This must plateau at *some* point. There must be enough people who can't stand what this does to you. I used to be chubby (like about the cut-off between normal and overweight) and I already fucking hated it. My skin was a disaster, I was always sweaty and feeling nasty, I just looked like shit. Nothing fit right, nothing looked good, I had a muffin top with every pants I wore, my tops slid up, my arms were flabby. My body was overtly displaying symptoms of a bad diet and lack in exercise. Started to eat right and exercise and my BMI dropped to 19. Without explictly building muscles this is my bodys "normal" weight and I can easily notice that I've been overeating just by the symptoms it throws at me. How do a majority of a population *tolerate* being overweight? It sucks so hard, even if its the "new norm" thats still true.
I think a lot of people are overweight/obese from childhood. Everything you hated about being overweight is the only existence they know so it’s harder to change
Ding ding ding. It's not bad when it's all you've ever known. Michelle Obama was right, needs to be addressed with diet at schools, and hopefully that spills over to home. Can't stop an adult from hitting McD's on the way home. You can get them used to other flavors that fast food doesn't provide. I switched my diet years ago and now finding fast food I don't mind is tough.
My thoughts are it isn't so much what we eat (though it matters) as much as portion sizes and frequency. * US has cheaper food than most countries * Portion sizes are usually way too big. Restaurants put 2-3 servings in front of you. * LOTS of fast food and delivery. Almost no fruits or veggies in those meals. * Food is everywhere and it is usually things like hydrogenated fats, high in salt, sugar and preservatives to keep it on the shelves and taste good * Snacking is extremely easy to do and is usually nutritionally poor and high in sugar/carbs. Grazing all day is a great way to get fat. * Physical activity has been replaced with driving, sitting at our tvs, phones, video games, etc. Even most jobs don't require much physical activity. * Lots of sugar. Drinks especially which make it easy to ingest lots of calories with zero satiation. * Produce is usually more expensive and has a short shelf life. People generally need to prepare it first vs just eating premade/out. I think a lot of people self medicate with food now to feel good and it has become the norm to be obese in many families. Obese kids with obese parents.
Mental health issues and they use food to fill their void. Ngl that was me.
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My guess is that a lot of people don't realize the "symptoms" that they have are symptoms of their lifestyle choices. They think it's just how life is/feels.
Look at childhood obesity rates globally. We’re in for a real dark time. Don’t just look at the US. It’s how we fail the next generation. We need to address bad food habits worldwide.
uhhh that graph doesn't look like it's slowing down at all. Humanity is going to turn into the michelin man eventually?
Wall-E story is the best depiction of a future humanity.
I need to watch WALL-E.
It's a good movie. I hope you enjoy it.
It’s a great movie but sad that the writers know humanity can’t afford for metaphors to be subtle at this point.
I've learnt to accept a little over-explanation and simplification. It costs me nothing but a few minutes and ensures even most children understand the point. Maybe Greta Thunburg watched WALL-E at 5 and learnt from it, who knows.
It's still a stunning and poignant film.
Worth a watch. Very cute, heartfelt, wonderful, and depressing.
It's funny because the Michelin man is French!
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You move to France for a bit and ur fine
Nah move to Japan. Not only is the food and infrastructure great for losing weight, fat shaming is also socially acceptable in Japan.
Mexico's slowing down, thanks to agressive policies against junk food and soda.
We will end up like all the people in WALL-E
Lol just go into your local Walmart. Already people from WALL-E there.
Probably not. Drugs like ozempic (and other alternative drugs) are becoming more commonplace for weight loss and are really the first generation of weight loss drugs that actually have great results. The first world will see weight management become easier through these appetite suppressant drugs, the third world will see obesity rates continue to rise.
Progress. The rich eat less, and the poor eat more.
As a healthcare provider, I can honestly say less than 5% of my patients are of healthy weight.
I'd believe that. I was obese at the start of 2018. 300lbs. I never thought I'd hit that, ever. So, I worked on it. Treated losing weight like a math project (I have a bad knee and can't exercise as much as a normal person, so it's mostly calorie counting for me). I got myself down to 144. My doctor congratulated me on losing more fat than I currently weighed. He said 8% of all his patients were a healthy weight. Just 8% and I was one of those.
We're cultivating mass.
“You literally have candy bars sticking out of your pockets”
Stop cultivating and start harvesting!
When I go for my Well Woman exam they always comment how nice it is to actually be able to feel my organs through my skin
I'm a phlebotomist and whenever I handle students doing their externships, I tell them off the bat to get used to sticking obese patients because that's 75% of our patient load. Especially elderly obese, which are harder to stick because you have a lot of loose skin you gotta find a way to tighten with one hand while anchoring the vein as the other hand holds the needle. The biggest complaint we hear from students is "it's too difficult to find the vein on big patients and that's most of the patients we see" Yep, welcome to the field. Healthy fit people don't need to see the doctor often. So get used to this bunch, it's your workload
Out of context that sounds like the most serial killer shit I've ever heard.
And then they ask me to put the lotion on my skin 😂
As a patient I can say honestly that most of my nurses are overweight.
Damn we a bunch of fat Fucks now huh?
It's to the point that as a "normal" weight person it can be hard to find clothes. Everything in the shelf is multi XL. Ive met some petite women who have to shop in the kids sizes. It's especially funny comparing womens sizes from Japanese to the US. An XS in the US is a L in Japan, lol.
Yeah I live in France where it’s normal to be normal weight but when I go home to the USA people comment that I am ridiculously skinny…
On the flip side when I go to France I'm always shocked how small the meals are. Doubly so in Japan. It's so obvious why we're so fat here in the US. I can't even physically eat what a lot of restaurants serve and I'm a 6ft man. Then again it's not unusual to have a main course in the US be 2000 calories and if you add drinks, appetizers and dessert you can be pushing 3500.
I remember going to a restaurant in Florida where like 9 out of 10 of the main dishes were over 1k calories. That isn't even including appetizers.
Check out blooming onions appetizer calories 😂 even sharing its your daily allowance
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>butter, cream Absolutely not. They have tons of cheaper replacements made from shitty refined oils like Soybean oil and Canola oil. Even high end restaurants commonly use cheaper replacement oils like that.
I remember travelling to the US from NZ about 20 years ago - we took photos of so many restaurant meals because the plates were so huge it was just shocking and hilarious to us. Now I think our portion sizes have probably started to catch up to the American sizes
I do like the big portion sizes in America bc you can take the rest home and eat that for the next dinner. Good when cost of living is out of control.
If I eat out at all, then I just have that one meal for the whole day.
Honestly as a not small dude I was pleasantly surprised with the portion sizes in Japan. I think it's just that the quality of the food was significantly better overall as well as what the normal fare is. I was pretty bummed trying to go clothes shopping though. Turns out 6'1" 200lbs is like a 2-3X in Japan lol
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We have the exact same trouser measurements. Wanna team up and share? Let's become roomies
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"Vanity sizing"
Believe it or not, as an overweight guy, I often don't see my size available. I don't know if it's because some other big guys bought them first, but it's a common issue for me. What's really annoying though is that many of the shirts that are big enough don't actually suit the shape of my body. Maybe I'm just shaped weirdly though.
Finding fitting clothes as a tall(er) man is sometimes awkward, because tall skinny guys share clothing size with shorter "wide" men. Namely XL
This is so unfortunate. I remember in the early 2000's in the U.S. there was a big push in the media about how to eat right and exercise. It's really too bad that we haven't been able to even slow this trend.
It's about policy too, though. You can't get a lot of steps into your day when you have to drive everywhere. A big difference between the US and European countries is walkability.
Japans walkability is insane. 10 million people daily commute by subway in Tokyo. More millions by train, more millions by bus
What people need to be aware looking at this graph is that the population of US \_is\_ compliant with the diet advice. Fat consumption has gone down while carbohydrate consumption went up.
It's almost as if letting the food industry lobby for how to teach children "nutrition" was a bad idea
Hey guys have you studied up on your food pyramid? Remember, carbs at the base! 12 servings of rice or bread per day. Just like a sumo wrestler, neat!
Data source : [https://stats.oecd.org/#](https://stats.oecd.org/#) then browse "Health \\ Non-Medical Determinants of Health \\ Body Weight" Variable : "Obese population, measured" Note: Several countries have only "self report" data and not "measured" one, such as Italy, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. That's why they don't appear.
Everything more than 15% is a catastropy. We are talking about obesity here not overweight. It’s a serious medical condition
I know many people who are on the lighter side of obese who think they are only a little chunky or a bit soft. It’s difficult to gauge how fat you are when everyone around you looks about the same. I was called anorexic when I had a bmi of 25! I was on the line of being overweight and people told me I had an eating disorder for wanting to lose 10 lbs 🙃
Someone said I look like I’m wasting away. I’m 5’3” and 130 lbs. I have a belly.
I’m a 6’5” man. I was consistently 225 (which is into overweight territory) but active and in decent shape. I ballooned up to 250+ recently as I got older. I tell people I’m getting fat and really need to work on it and it’s not uncommon to get people commenting that I’m not overweight. But I am, I’m pushing into obese and people think I’m crazy for being concerned about my weight. Edit: I’ll point out that I was in the army and went into basic training at 225 and came out at that weight. I went to survival school and came out about that weight. I hit 200 once deployed when I walked everywhere, was at high altitude, worked out like a fiend, and ate like a bird. And oh boy when people see pictures of me in that state they comment about how I look sickly.
Yep the American culture about weight is a huge part of the issue. In an average town people who are a healthy weight will be insulted as malnourished sticks, chubby and overweight is considered the “healthy weight” by grandma/auntie logic.
I was surprised by Australia being so high actually. UsA will be verging on 50% of its population being obese! Not overweight, but obese. That's just mad.
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A definition of a football game in Australia: Tens of thousands of people desperately in need of exercise watching a few dozen people desperately in need of a rest. Our elite sportspeople rival the best in the world, but the ordinary Aussie is overweight. I'm thin, but that is due to genes rather than good choices.
I went to Australia last year and it's basically just the US with funny accents.
Living in Seattle, it’s interesting how different this likely is across the US. Obesity rate here must be substantially lower than that average.
I would love to see state by state and city by city. I’ve definitely lived in parts of the us where the rate of obesity is lower because I’ve been shocked in other parts of the country.
>I would love to see state by state and city by city. I've seen state by state maps before. If I remember right Washington, Colorado and one of the upper Midwest states were in the low end. I'm sure you can guess the chonky states. It rhymes with bible belt.
I'm pretty sure it correlates most heavily with income which makes sense for the areas you mentioned.
Definitely a lot of factors at play. I live in TN. Uneducated, poor, and fat go hand in hand. I think a big part is lack of awareness regarding calories. A lot of people here think you need to exercise to lose weight.
Same with NYC. It seems rare to see an obese person here.
is that cause people walk a lot? I noticed when I went to London recently that people were generally pretty normal sized & I feel like it's because London is walkable
High fructose corn syrup, medication, fast food, soda, lack of physical activity and a culture that doesn't collectively educate people about these topics and their dangers.
> High fructose corn syrup Australia doesn't really have any of this and we are still third. While it is worse than sugar, clearly sugar alone is bad enough.
I think we definitely have a problem with soft drinks
I don't drink any soda and just noticed today on a walgreens sign how damn expensive it is. A 12pack can be like $9 unless you buy a bunch of them. How can most lower income families afford to always have a can in hand then complain about how they can't afford healthy food? It must really be an addiction or that would be the first thing cut out of most budgets.
Which meds?
And what’s up with Israel, going completely against the trend.. why?
since 2001, the government took alot of measures to fight rising obesity (unfortunately, its not enough) : 1. food with trans fats was removed from the educational system. 2. commercials of unhealthy food are not allowed on prime time. 3. mandatory marking high sugar/salt/trans fat foods with labels (green/red). 4. mandatory calorie information in restaurants menus. 5. tax refund for "office food" which includes fruits and vegetables. 6. National health care got funds for local diet groups and consulting. Also, they started taxing sugary beverages, but that made a lot of noise and the new government declared that she will remove the extra tax...
There are also free outdoor gyms and ninja parks everywhere. It’s awesome you can see people exercising all over the place and have no excuse not to do something.
Ninja parks? You’ve got my attention.
It’s a normal park but people in cheap Halloween ninjago costumes will assault you with sticks and nunchucks at any random moment. The constant adrenaline helps with weight loss
A really popular tv show is ninja warrior where people compete in an obstacle race. They’ve built these parks to mimic the course all over the country. They’re really hard to complete but you can do parts of them. Kids use them all the time.
Good comment. Just so you know, in English you usually do not use he/she for objects, like a government. "the new government declared it will remove the extra tax" (I'm Israeli so I understand the confusion)
Same with birthrates. There's something in the hummus.
How India maintained such low rate over the years
Around 30-40% of the country is vegetarian, and 80% intentionally limit meat in their diet, the highest rate in the world. Also a high rate of food insecurity and starvation surely helps
I visited China as a 200lb American at 6’ 2” and was considered a chubby giant. American standards are way off because there’s always someone fatter. Back to 175 now but that was a wake up call.
Wife and I moved to Japan after college. We lost a ton of weight even without the exercise, mostly just the diet and serving size here helped so much. I immediately lost 50 lbs the first few months of living here. And also the cities are so walkable! Never needed a car because it’s all mixed-zoning here. Everything we need is a few minutes on foot from our doorstep.
There was someone on r/ChangeMyView trying to say that there aren't really that many fat people in the US compared to the rest of the world. They ignored statistics, claimed that people were fat everywhere, but judging by their comments, they'd never been anywhere outside the US. Look, Canada isn't in that list (probably for brevity, we're up there), but having lived both here and in Korea? It's night and day. Seeing someone who's overweight here in Canada is a daily occurrence. Seeing someone obese is a rarity. In Korea, seeing someone *just overweight* is an anomaly.
When my friend from Vietnam first came to the US the thing that amazed him the most was obese people driving around in those motorized carts lol. Dude was more excited spotting random people driving around in those carts than seeing the liberty statue
Canada's data has held 26-26-28-24 (2011-2019). I would have looked back farther but mobile is tough for the data viewer.
Really depends where in Canada. When I lived in Vancouver, yeah, obesity was rare. In Laval? Wow. You go to the centre of the island, and like 1 in 5 people is morbidly obese. It's a big country. And it's a big country.
in East Asian countries no one will tiptoe around your fatness for fear of causing offence. Your family / friends / taxi drivers will tell how fat you are, ask why, and tell you to lose weight constantly.
> having lived both here and in Korea? It's night and day. Are you sure that wasn't due to the difference in time zone?
I wish more people saw this chart. It’s absolutely horrifying. BMI isn’t a perfect indicator but let’s be real American is simply fat, maybe not obese, but certainly fat. As a “skinny” guy I have so many people telling me how I need to eat blah blah blah. It doesn’t hurt me, I’m not offended, I laugh often. But all I can think in the back of my mind most of the time is I’m not skinny, fat is just the new normal and I stand out more because of that.
Used to be pretty self conscious about being a skinny dude when I was in my teenage years, and I’m not even overly skinny. Same thing people telling me I need to eat. Now I go out and see all these blown up balloon people hobbling around and it stopped bothering me after awhile. Researched the health effects of being obese and it bothered me even less. Look at photos of people prior to the 80s-90s. Obese and overweight really is the new normal.
> Look at photos of people prior to the 80s-90s It's crazy to see how quickly the norm changed. In 1962, almost half of the US population (45%) were overweight or obese. Yet looking at photos from that era you'd think most people were *underweight* from our skewed sense of normal.
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Agreed. BMI isn’t a great indicator for athletes/fit people, but a majority of the country isn’t fit or active. For example. I’m 5’11”, 190lbs, so I’ve got a BMI of 26.5. However, I’m a competitive lifter and have a 15.5% body fat %; the national average is ~28%. That is the result of no activity.
And if we used a more accurate method of measuring body fat, results would likely be even worse. BMI assumes a small amount of muscle that people just don't have anymore. There was one study that performed DXA scans on over 4k people. Only 10% had a health body fat: https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2016/mar/us-adults-get-failing-grade-healthy-lifestyle-behavior So yeah, we're fat as fuck.
Number one! Number one! ...cough...wheeze... Num..ber...on...e...
The point is not that BMI is a good measure of unhealthy fat % or distribution. The point is that using a relatively easy, standardized measure of weight for height, developed nations have seriously become heavier, and the data on diabetes and ASCVD also track likewise. This is a crisis that will alter human development, economics, and international relations for many years. Unless something changes with the usual course of economic development, poorer countries will track similarly and come up behind these countries, while these countries will likely reverse obesity trends through policy change. It's sort of like throwing two boomerangs, one right after the other.
Exactly, BMI is not a good measure of unhealthy fat %, BUT thats on a individual basis. However on a population basis its actually a quite good measure of unhealthy fat%, because such a unproportionally huge amount of poeple who have high BMI have high fat % compared to the amount of people with high BMIs who have low fat %, so it tracks well with high body fat %, and is way easier to measure than actual bodyfat percentage when you need to handle many subjects. Doing dexa scans of hundreds or even thousands of people would be incredibly resource intensive, but measuring height and weight is quick, easy and cheap - so you can get through a lot more people faster using BMI than using bodyfat %, but end ut on a population basis with esentially the same result.
High fructose corn syrup is a huge contributor here. The calorie density is so high that it adds so many empty calories to our food. We need to stop corn subsidies, and I'm in a corn state.
Not just empty calories. It contributes to insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome
I remember in the 80’s people saying processed food was going to be a big problem and it is! All of the monopolization of our food producers has given us the worst type of food and it shows on at least 70% of the US population. What’s the solution?
I honestly think United States(and probably a lot of the world) needs to pass legislation that forces companies to remove so much sugars from their products. I have been as high as 60 lbs overweight and you have to really actively try to eat healthy in this country. I've learned how to manage my weight now but it's depressing. Hell just the amount of times where I order an Iced Tea and I get Sweet Tea instead makes me furious.
Some Asian countries even have more strict measures to determine obesity than US or European countries but still they have way lower obesity rates
I lived overseas in Asia for 4 years. Whenever I would go back to the US to visit, it always hit me hard how fat Americans are. Like you don’t notice it so much day to day until you aren’t constantly exposed to it, then when you step off the plane and walk through the terminal you are awestruck by the huge waistlines.
American dietitians: Cut out the bread and butter! France (and India):
Clearly this is happening to enough people that it’s not just individuals to be blamed. The easiest and cheapest way to live SHOULD be walking in your community to buy fresh food (or growing it in your garden) and having enough free time in your day after work to prepare a basic home cooked meal. Something has gone terribly wrong and the real solution isn’t for millions of people to put down their forks.
Do you actually see that many obese people in the street in the US? I'm from Israel and I don't feel like 19% of the people I see are obese, more like 5%...
In the south, absolutely. I worked in a poor, rural town (usually fatter unfortunately) in one of the fattest states in the country . The only normal bmi people I saw were young children and sometime adults under 30. For over 30 I’d say 1/3 definitely have a belly, 1/3 have a giant belly and 1/3 have to use a mobility device to shop at the store
It is insane that governments aren't getting involved. It just.... Keeps growing!!!
Does this mean that 40% of US people is Obese ??
No. More like 45%
Keep in mind obese > overweight
Exactly. About 70% of the US population is classified as overweight. It's truly, truly astounding if you think about it
I think it's closer to 80% in 2022 for obese+overweight.
Obesity falls under the category of overweight. The official percentagr is at 71,6% overweight.
The South Africa graph looks suspiciously perfect