this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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What Americans do you know? Everyone I know eats all of those things every single day.
Turns out there's more than just those 6 people in America.
The American diet is uniquely awful. Your social group is likely to include people in a similar socioeconomic position to you. If that means those people are eating lots of vegetables and clean fats then congratulations, you're doing pretty well.
That does not describe the diet of most Americans. It's rich in refined carbohydrates, "dirty" fats, processed meat, and very few vegetables, and the primary vegetable is the potato,, which is also essentially just another carbohydrate. It's better than deep fried flour, but not by much.
Pizza, all things considered, is fine, practically healthy, compared to the cheeseburger and fries that makes up the typical lunch for many Americans.
Most of the food we have easy, cheap access to is arguably addictive, high carbohydrate, low in nutrient, and generally just bad for you.
Which is why we have an obesity crisis and some of the worst rates of diabetes in the world.
This has been a complaint of mine, and my friends/family for a long time. You can't get healthy snacks, and if you can, they're expensive. I can get a payday candy bar, which is peanuts mixed with candy and a shit load of sugar and additives for - I guess they're about a dollar now. But if you want a small bag of peanuts without any of the other shit, it costs 3x more money. Seriously, what the fuck is that about? I can give a dozen other examples, but I'm sure you get it already.
And then if you look for less or no salt, you might be looking at even more of a premium, or at least have it be harder to find
We're talking about the more than half of America that is fat and sometimes diabetic.
Those people are less healthy than people who eat no processed food
Ed. Updated to make it more clear I'm not claiming most Americans are diabetic
I do not believe you that more than half of Americans are diabetic. That's just preposterous.
Easy enough to check. Looks like 11.6%. Higher than the 6.2% of EU diabetics, but hardly "half of America".
EDIT: Looking more closely at the European numbers rather than simply the average is super interesting. Turkey has basically US numbers for diabetes. Ireland at 3.2% has comparatively no diabetes. For all this talk about the "Mediterranean diet" and olives being a superfood, Spain and Portugal have very high diabetes numbers. I guess we should be talking about the "Greek diet" instead.
They mostly talk about Italy and France as living longer than current nutrition models expect
The Greek diet that science cares about is the post war Greek poverty diet. Not much food, mostly whatever they could grow in their community, and pull from the sea
So fish, octopus, olives, leafy greens, tomatoes
It's not an easy diet to follow.
I think dessert is a big part of Spanish culture. Idk anything about Portuguese culture though.
Dessert is definitely not a big part of Spanish culture, there are a select few small deserts that are offered everywhere, but not that far off a yoghurt, spanish usually just have a coffee after food (a small espresso shot maybe some milk, but that's all)
So is this article lying?
https://spanishsabores.com/7-incredibly-delicious-spanish-desserts/
It's about 12% only a few percent more than the rest of the world. Obesity is another story tho.
I really meant the obesity rate. I know that doesn't equal diabetic, but it's on the pathway
I should change it to "and/or"
Yeah, obesity is a rising epidemic worldwide. European and Asian countries are importing American fast food restaurants & food options, and our exercise habits are changing drastically as we all become more computer-bound. The USA does have a bigger issue with obesity now though than most European and Asian countries (if not all of them). It's sad, because it's totally preventable, even with all of the shitty options existing.
A lot of the people that are considered medically obese aren't what you'd actually consider obese, meaning they're not extremely fat. At 25% body fat a man is considered obese, even if he's a skinny looking gamer. As far as raw data goes, bodybuilders often get categorized as overweight or obese too. Any medical records that use BMI will show a muscular person as overweight. Anyways, what I'm getting at is that the data doesn't accurately reflect what sort of condition many people are actually in, but being actually overweight and fat is becoming a lot more common now. Look at Chunk from The Goonies movie. He was considered very fat when I was a kid, but he just looks like an average kid now. We really need to push each other to turn over a new leaf... or eat one.
And pretty surely along with a lot of sugar and other bad shit. Anyone outside the US very easily sees how much crap is in your food, and how fat and unhealthy a disturbing amount of people are. Eating cheap in most of the world is usually pretty healthy, but in the US the accepted quality of fast food is very low so eating cheap usually becomes just eating that. And then there's high-fructose corn syrup in almost everything, which isn't the case anywhere else. And really weird shit like sugar in peanut butter, what the fuck?
Those are all choices though. Yes, they're available and people definitely buy them, but those aren't the only choices. Right next to the Jiffy peanut butter are some natural peanut butter options that don't even include emulsifiers to keep the oils from separating. Just like fast food burgers. Yes, you can do yourself a disservice and go to McDonald's, or you can go to the local Mediterranean kitchen right next door and get a semi healthy gyro for less money. Some areas do have limited options though, and I'm glad I don't live in those areas. It can also become a challenge when you're on a road trip.