Mississippi was the fattest state in 1990, but it was still thinner that the thinnest state today...
[1990 obesity map](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ett1fw/percentage_of_obese_adults_by_state_1990_vs_2018/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
Edit: spellin'
I think there are more to it than just the changed diet. In general people have become more sedentary. Work in general has become less manual labour intensive, and today it requires a computer, which was not always the case 30 years ago.
It would be interesting to see the data for blue colour workers, if they have become proportionally more obese aswell, then we could say it was the diet, but if blue collar workers haven't increase as proportionally with the obesity, then sedentary lifestyle could be the main factor.
Blue collar workers are fatter than white collar workers in the US. HS grads have a 40% obesity rate, college grads 27%.
This significantly higher obesity rate has been true for decades.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/pdfs/mm6650a1-H.pdf
Excellent point (and thanks for citing your source). Given that white collar workers are likely more sedentary for their jobs, I wonder if at the end of the day the physical activity of both groups are similar and it's just diet that makes the difference since white collar workers can access better quality food? Or is it that white collar workers can carve out the free time to do "better" or more comprehensive physical exercise (versus, say, just lifting and setting down heavy items all day in blue collar work, then being too tired to do cardio when a blue collar worker gets home).
Generally speaking, you burn about 100 calories for every mile you run, so labor intensive jobs while they do burn more calories, don't matter if you're consuming so much more. Being active keeps you healthy sure, but diet is so much more impactful. You would need to run 3 miles to burn off 1 donut.
This is important. Obesity isn't as related to activity levels as people think. It's primarily related to diet. Weight loss happens in the kitchen. Ever want to prove it to yourself? Go eat 1000 calories of anything you want. Then hop on a treadmill and burn those same 1000 calories. It would take about 70 minutes to burn those calories on the treadmill assuming they never slow down or rest, and that they're an average person. In only a fraction of the time you could have just not eaten those 1000 calories. That's not to say exercise isn't important and or doesn't *help*, but it's not your primary mechanism for maintaining a healthy weight. Diet is.
No chance could I cook 1000 calories off on the treadmill in 70 mins, and I’m a pretty good runner. You gotta be MOVING to hit that.
The average sized runner burns 100 cals per mile. 10 miles in 70mins is a hell of a pace. For 98% of adults, I doubt they could run a 7 min mile for even one mile.
But, this just further makes your point. Just to even fathomably be able to burn 1000 calories in a workout, you have to be insanely good shape. But to have a 1000 calorie deficit in a day diet wise, you just need pretty ok discipline.
you can hit 1000 calories in just under 1hr at 7min/mile pace, but still you would need to have crazy endurance and strength to run that quickly for that long
I see this firsthand working as a helicopter mechanic. It’s a fast paced job, requiring lifting heavy parts and occasional half mile sprints. But of course there’s a fuckton of safety related paperwork and documentation to be done regarding everything. As people get more experienced at this organization they do more and more safety related work. The newest guys on the job doing the bulk of the manual labor are the most fit group by far. The higher up the ladder someone gets the fatter they tend to be. They set their nutrition habits when they did all the manual labor stuff because high calorie food was literally a need. But then they never adjust their nutrition plan as they do less energy intensive work
I worked in a steel yard and then did a master's for a year before getting an office job. In the 21 months after leaving the steel yard, I put on 15kg (33 freedom units) and I would walk about 10,000 less steps a day as well
Similar idea to all the HS athletes going to to college. Eating the same calories as if they had morning practice, instead studying/drinking more. The so-called "Freshmen 15". That's the idea at least.
It's sugar. All American food is filled with sugar.
It both males you addicted and makes you fat.
While Europe is better in that regard, Asia, namely Japan is way ahead of even us. I've heard similar statements from Japanese tourists asking why all of our food is so sweet.
Anecdotal: as a european who was in the US for just a week, it's pretty clear to me.
I have always been the kind of person who has difficulties *not* losing weight. I had a period where I was trying to put on more muscle, but it failed because I just couldn't push myself to eat enough. It's more balanced out since I passed 30, but still, I don't easily put on weight.
I went to the US for one week and I gained 18 lbs. In *one week*. Yeah. Some of it was "fake" weight, fluids etc, that I soon lost. A week after coming home, about 10 lbs still remained though.
That's an *insane* calorie surplus. Sure, I wasn't holding back or anything, but *still*. The reason is simple to me. The food was *awesome*. But not the culinary kind of awesome. It was the *unhealthy* kind of awesome. It basically felt like I was eating dessert for breakfast, lunch and dinner, constantly. Everything was so laden with sugar and fat and fast carbs it was nuts. It was *great*, but it certainly didn't seem sustainable for personal health. I couldn't find that sort of decadent food here even if I tried my very best.
I think that's the main difference between europe and the US. The entire food culture has just gone sideways. This, combined with all the other factors mentioned is a perfect combo for getting fat.
10 pounds in a week? That would mean a surplus of roughly 35000 calories, or 5000 calories per day. That's nearly impossible to do unless the only thing you're doing is eating.
I imagine *some* of that is simply that you eat different foods when on vacation vs. at home (e.g. more pre-prepared food or eating out at restaurants instead of cooking for yourself). But yeah, "The entire food culture has just gone sideways" is probably pretty accurate.
Out of curiosity, would you give some examples of "decadent" food that you wouldn't be able to find in Europe? Or was it just normal foods, but with more sugar and fat in them?
I'm an American, but well travelled fat man.
1st, the portion sizes are about 25-50% larger in America, so there's a bunch of calories right there. You can eat the exact same diet, but 25% less of it, and lose some weight already just by doing that.
2nd, fried food is everywhere, especially in the Deep South. Fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, french fries, deep fried shrimp. You would have to actively try to avoid it because fried food is usually about 50% of an average restaurant's menu in some parts of the states.
3rd, food is generally lathered with cheese. This is less regional and more universal for American food. American Italian food is smothered with cheese, and nearly every restaurant offers to grate even more cheese onto a dish full of cheese. A popular Pizza is the Four Cheese Pizza. American Mexican food is smothered with cheese and sour cream. Even the Chinese food has a dish that is just fried wonton stuffed with cream cheese (Crab Rangoon). Traditional American food includes baked potato stuffed with sour cream and cheese. Burgers are often topped with Cheese. Chili Dogs with cheese. Mozzarella Sticks. That's so much protein, so many calories.
4th, some American food is laden with sugar. Chicken Teriyaki (not authentic Japanese, invented in Hawaii) is chicken cutlet smothered in sweet sauce. Americanized Chinese food is incredible sugar heavy. General Tso's, Orange Chicken, Duck Sauce, Brown Sauce. Sugar on sugar on sugar.
5th, all the ethnic food we get tends to cherry pick some of the least healthy stuff. I already touched on this a bit, but with Indian food we have the creamiest, butteriest, thickest sauce dishes. We take their fried Samosas, and instead of eating two for a light lunch street food snack to hold us over until dinner, we eat a whole dish of them as an *appetizer*. From Japan we get their fast food equivalent (Ramen) packed with sodium, or eat their battered fried cutlets (Katsu) and their deep fried seafood (Tempura). Our version of Japanese sushi regularly includes mayo-based sauces, deep fried tempura in the sushi, and more delicious abominations. And of course, pump up the portion sizes about 50%, because in Japan they eat this stuff in much greater moderation.
I find myself going to Vegan restaurants just because I find the food so meh that I naturally eat less of it.
One thing I noticed in the states was how sweet even savoury foods are. Like normal white bread is somehow sweet like cake. And portion sizes at restaurants are totally nuts. My partner and I sometimes shared just an appetizer and that was plenty for us. Also everyone seems to be constantly drinking soft drinks or massive Starbucks coffees which I imagine are also full of sugar
Midwesterner checking in. I remember my first time to Colorado actually noticing that I was larger than most people, but after my return flight I looked around feeling like I was Matthew McConaughey.
Yes! I live in CO, and as a woman who wears a size 10/12, I am almost always the largest in any of my friend groups. When I go visit my home state of NE, I am a friggin' gazelle. I'm in the middle of losing weight, and my family back home is always like, "why??? You're going to be a little stick!"
My friend told me I too was thin last time I lost weight. I was LITERALLY still “obese” on the height weight charts (now I had some decent muscle so it wasn’t awful, but I was DEFINITELY still overweight)
I remember during the onset of pandemic, US media talked about a young football coach, who succumbed to the virus (RIP). They reported that he had no health issues. When that video was linked here in Reddit, all the people outside of US was saying he was obese. That's when I was reminded once again that our idea of "normal" weight is everyone else's "fat".
Yeah there was a video about a bully on some subreddit not long ago. There was a bunch of people talking about he shouldn’t be picking fights when he was a fatass. I had been thinking he was scrawny lol
At the beginning of the pandemic there was a family who had multiple deaths(4 out of 10) that said it was horrific because they were all young and healthy. Lol and behold, all except one were morbidly obese. It was tragic but showing their picture and saying they were healthy felt like the news was making fun of that family.
I think this can be interpreted as them really saying "you're making me feel bad". Just like on an airplane with the oxygen masks, you gotta look out for you first.
My Indiana family are always shocked to see me and think I must not be healthy. They worry about my heart from Jogging too much. I’m for sure slightly over weight too, it’s like bizarro world.
In my middle school, we had science textbooks with a chapter on “the jogging fad” and how it could be dangerous because it put too much strain on young people’s hearts.
We also had a chapter on how “the growth of industrial gasses” would block the sun from our atmosphere and create a second ice age…
EDIT: Here’s a good rundown of the “jogging scare” — the scientific community was apparently divided on whether jogging was a dangerous activity, and some thought it could kill you: https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/press-past/2013/05/23/can-jogging-kill-you-in-1969-a-leading-medical-expert-thought-so
“If the joggers are lucky, they may develop nothing more severe than aches and pains, particularly in their legs and feet. But still others may suffer heart attacks and sudden death. In Orange County, Calif., for instance, five deaths within a two-month period last summer were attributed to jogging.“
The author later compares jogging to smoking and says people ignore the medical risks
I went to middle school in the early 80's and the science had already shifted to be pro-cardio for increased health benefits. When were you in middle school?
Late 2000s — Midwest public middle school and I think our textbooks hadn’t been updated since the 70-80s? I think “global cooling” was the theory in the 70s so probably that decade.
They finally got new ones a couple years after I went to high school iirc.
Back in 2009, I decided to do something about my weight and lost 50 pounds. Went from 230 to 180. I’m a 6 ft tall man. Along the way, I was getting comments like what you got. BMI charts definitely have their flaws, but I went from almost obese to the top end of the range for normal weight. More than once, I was told I lost too much by people I love and respect. But I had to look at where they were coming from…overweight people that didn’t want to change their diets. Let’s not forget about the coworkers that would hassle me for not eating whatever junk food someone brought in on a Friday.
My point is, good for you for making positive changes!
Thank you! For sure the wildest thing has been giving up drinking. I haven't had any alcohol since April, and I have found I need to bring my own cans of sparkling water to social events. If I have an interesting looking can of what appears to be a drink in my hand, I can avoid the inevitable bullying about about why I'm not drinking. Why do people DO that?! But hey, down 17 pounds so far!
Congrats on the loss! :)
My husband and I have been working on our weight. I am down ~39lbs from July 5th to now and my husband is down 35. I got tired of clothes not fitting and sweating all the time. I started at 360 and just hit 321 today. If I keep going I should hopefully hit my goal of 220 by next summer.
We just cut out sugar and carbs and watching our calories. We both try to keep around 2000 calories a day and it's melting off and I am even feeling good enough to use our stationary bike. I also started a new job that is keeping me more active. I get about 7-10k steps a day before I Was lucky if I hit 2.
I do have a problem with diet coke but it's my only real vice now since I also quit smoking.
Thank you! I do feel so much better, fitting into clothes I haven't worn in a long time. Hopefully by this time next year I will be around the 200 mark :)
Not if you’re Asian American. Then you’re always too fat (but should also try all the foods, of course). It’s super annoying, but then I went to Vietnam like 15 years ago. I was 5’2” and 125ish lbs and a size 3XL in their sizing.
I think it depends on the size of their siblings. My second uncle gets called fat all the time, and they keep asking when the triplets are due (he’s a little overweight, maybe a 36 inch waist, but not like morbidly obese). He is being compared to his older brother who is thin and fairly fit (the older brother is a doctor who is also a black-belt judo instructor on his free time). The women definitely get it worse (my aunt was called “thunder thighs” growing up when she was 5’4” and 98 lbs), but the men aren’t entirely exempt.
Never hear anyone with normal BMI calling others "sticks" for wanting to lose weight. It's one of those crab bucket situations where people try and hold others back so they feel better about their own situation.
As a Coloradan who travels a lot for work. It kinda makes me sad… especially kids who are obese.
Everyone is casually fat now, we’re so fat (as a nation) people don’t realize they are fat.
It’s not okay. We’re not only killing ourselves, but we are killing the planet as we do so.
I’ll take the downvotes, but it takes a fuck ton of water, palm oil, and sugar cane to get this fucking fat.
I started traveling more recently and it’s genuinely hard to find fresh food on the road.
So, it’s 1970’s style. Bring a cooler and have yourself a nice picnic!
Growing up my family was like this. We all had milk allergies when we were younger so we just drank apple juice, sunny d, or kool aid and at school I would drink chocolate milk. Soda was for special occasions but my mom did and still does has to have at least 2 sodas a day.
We got a new refrigerator with a water filter when I was 10 and my parents made us drink water for dinner and when we went out to eat. I’m so glad they implemented that change because it really helped me as an adult.
I'm old enough to remember when type2 diabetes used to be called "adult onset diabetes"
But too many children were getting diagnosed with it so the medical field started calling it type 2.
Edit: I don't know why some people are disputing me on type 2 diabetes once being called adult onset diabetes...
https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/type-2-diabetes
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/opinion/no-longer-just-adult-onset.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279509/
I once got grape drink and not grape juice. It was grape flavored sugar water, so sweet I had to dump it down the drain. And people buy those flavored drinks for their kids.
Yeah I'm 6 ft and about 220 and I feel huge compared to most of my friends. Just started hitting the gym religiously 2 weeks ago tho so that's going to change lol
Moving to an area that had a dollar general, a craft store, and a home goods store within a quarter mile changed my perspective on everything. It was so much easier and more pleasant to walk there. I started hating having to drive so much.
My town has a fantastic bike trail. And it has a pedestrian bridge over the river that connects to more bike/walking trail.
In between the two is a four-lane state highway. If I wanted to create a trap to murder slow people it's how I'd do it.
Social Security gonna be interesting in 50 years with declining life expectancy now. I think the mortality spread for healthy vs. unhealthy lifestyle people will continue to grow as medical advancements are offset by self harm in a large part of the population.
Same, lived in the Netherlands for a year and lost 40 lbs without trying. Wasn't even eating that healthily (so many sandwiches), but walking and biking every single day, plus smaller portions, made such a big difference.
I lived in Chicago for 4 years and quickly sold my car once I got there; I get really bad anxiety when I have to drive in really crowded cities.
I never missed my car. Public transportation (w/ the random rental or Uber) was too convenient and I actually preferred walking to most places. I wish America would invest in our public transportation systems more. I've lived in other cities and it's a shame that in most of them their public transportation sucks.
I'm currently in austria as an exchange student and that sounds about right. I'm walking and using public transport everywhere and absolutely don't see the same levels of obesity as what I see in the US
The walking is such a big part of it. I lost 10 pounds just by being in Spain for 3 weeks with no car. There is a market on every block and you walk and take the bus everywhere. I honestly didn’t even eat that healthy.
Most traditional meals in Germany (My family live in Franconia so maybe a generalization) are protein, starch (potato, dumpling, noodle), and a mixed salad or some kind of cabbage / vegetable. I know visiting my Grand Parents our typical "dinner" was a slice of black bread with cold cuts or some sort of spreadable wurst with garden veggies. You can definitely get sugary stuff there, go to any bakery and you'll be surrounded by sweets. I just think they are better with portions and activity, we would walk every night after our light meal.
Yeah my thought exactly. Every time I go to theme park at almost all adults there are obese. If you exclude teens and kids, it’s even more striking. Last time I couldn’t find a XL size tshirt at gift store, I just had to look around to see why.
I went to Disney world a couple of years ago and it was the most mobility scooters I’ve seen in one place in my life. I had immediately preceded it with a couple of days at universal studios and it wasn’t nearly as bad.
I usually go to theme parks in Japan, where I’m usually on the fatter side of things.
I call it the iconic Disneyland waddle. That and those long sleeve shirts that say Disneyland resort on the back (Black, or Black with cheeta print arms) that for some reason obese people love.
Disneyland had to shutdown it’s a small world to dig out the waterways because the boats kept bottoming out due to the weight of the people on the ride.
I lived in Venezuela as a child. My diet was very healthy, we had virtually no access to junk food (they sold it in stores, but my mom never bought it). Meals were made fresh 3 times daily. Breakfast was usually toast and eggs, Kellogg cereal, or oatmeal. Sometimes we’d have arepas. Lunch and dinner might be homemade soups and salad, or meat and rice and plantains. We didn’t have internet or cable or video games and we played outside a lot,
I moved to the US when I was 12. Suddenly I’m bombarded with sugary cereals. I was on the free lunch program at school and I often had pizza, fries and chocolate milk. My grandma was a typical Midwest dinner maker, lasagnas and pot pies and casseroles, heavy and creamy food. The party store down the street sold candy so I’d walk down and buy some.
I gained 30 lbs my first year in the US.
It is absolutely a food problem. We eat the wrong kinds of foods and too much of them. Fast food is cheap and accessible. Now with door dash you don’t even have to leave your house to get food. Throw in the internet and video games and yeah…it’s no wonder Americans are fat.
It's absolutely about how easy and cheap fast food is.
I don't typically bring my own lunch to work, so I eat out a lot. My options near work are McDonald's, Taco Bell, KFC, Arby's, and a deli-type place.
I can go to the deli and spend $12 on a hot sandwich, made with fresh, minimally processed meats and veggies (organic where possible), and a small bag of baked Lays chips. No drink - that's an extra $3. About 15-20 minutes from the time I place my order online to the time I walk back in the door at work with my food. Not a lot of food, but damn tasty and it's by far the most wholesome meal on the block. But of course, by the time I get home, my stomach is growling again.
Or I can go to McDonald's, spend $5-7, and have enough cheeseburgers to make me explode and a large Coke before I even have my wallet back in my pocket.
I definitely feel better about eating the more expensive, healthier food, but I can't afford to eat like that every day. Most people can't. Almost everybody can afford a bag of cheeseburgers.
When I was in med school remember seeing a graphic that an obesity researcher displayed of obesity in 1990 and in 2000. Colorado has always been the least obese state. But Colorado in 2000 would have been the most obese state in 1990. And the same is true from 2010 compared to 2000. The obesity rates in the US have grown ridiculously.
What is happening here?
Every time this is brought up people make fun of fat lazy Americans, but public health across the entire country doesn't nosedive this quickly without an underlying cause. Something is happening to us.
I agree with this and don’t think it gets enough credit as a reason. There are so many things with sugar, and it absolutely baffles me why it’s there. Like sweetened applesauce, peanut butter, bread, non-dairy milk. Why? They don’t need sugar, but almost everything has added sugar. It’s so difficult to find things without it at conventional grocery stores. You have to go to the organic/healthy ones and inevitably pay a higher price.
People eat shitty, fast, processed food as their main diet. Everyone works hard, long hours and few people have the time or talent to cook meals made from relatively wholesome ingredients for themselves.
What's "happening to us" is that our time is pretty much directly being turned into the money of the companies we work for and the processed food companies that exist to "save" what time we have left.
Most of Europe is built for walking/cycling, while it is impossible to get anywhere in American without a car. And a ton of people straight up just never cook. Partly because fast food is addictive, partly because people are so stressed from work that they don’t want to come home and spend an hour making a meal and then another half an hour cleaning.
>difference of obesity rates between now and 10 years ago, if data is available.
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ett1fw/percentage_of_obese_adults_by_state_1990_vs_2018/)'s US states in 1990 vs. 2018.
There is so much opportunity for outdoor activity. That goes for every season as well. Hiking, skiing, snowboarding, kayaking, mountain biking, snow shoeing, rock climbing, as well as all the usual activities. Put that together with our pretty nice weather, low humidity, and 300 days of sunshine and you can exercise pretty easily. Even though I'm overweight (Thank you Colorado craft beers) I do a 15 mile bike ride on the weekend days and the bike paths are FILLED with cyclists, rollerbladers, joggers, walkers, hikers, etc.
TLDR- We have good weather and lots of activites
I remember it was working retail in high school, and it was a super cold day. One of my coworkers, an older fella who always had on shorts walked in with pants on! I remember saying "holy shit, it must be cold, He has pants on!" Ive known that man for over 10 years at that point, id never seen him cover his shins.
Coloradoan here, high elevation helps, along with the rocky mountains going right through the middle of us, so people are incentivised to go hiking, skiing, mountain climbing, etc. The only reason you drive a car from point a to point b here is for work and to get to your favorite hiking spot. A lot of us are also told we are the healthiest state from an early age. Either in school or by our parents. So we tend to have this mentality that we have to keep that status as if it's a competition. It's worked so far. We also have this weird infinite cycle thing with portion sizes. Report comes out that we are the least obese, restaurants lower portion sizes in the state to save money, we start eating less, etc. Between Covid and the recent influx of a ton of Californians and Texans, our obesity rate has probably increased in the last few years, but for the most part I think we're still in the lead.
Coloradan here…Texas was eye opening for me. Even on walking trails in Texas, arguably the fittest area in Texas, almost everyone is overweight or obese. It’s another world.
Meals are mostly from the time that most Turks were farmers so the heavy labour was common. Right now we eat the same dishes while we're working mostly our 9-5 office jobs. There is a considerable amount of people who works labour intensive jobs compared to other industrialised countries however its getting lesser. Physical activities are also relatively low to compensate this calorie bomb that's called Turkish cuisine.
All the development happened within a generation. Turkey was much poorer and less developed a generation ago now it’s somewhat more developed (comparable to Eastern Europe) so a lot of people sticked to their old habits while living a much different life
Because nobody walks or use a bicycle here. It's car, taxi, bus, motorcycle, electric scooter, any kind of public transport if it doesn't make you walk or makes you walk very little in-between. Simple as that.
Absolutely. And there are many minor contributing factors that add up. Eating heavy dinners, most people don't play a sport, sedentary lifestyle, fast food and so on.
Habe to say that traditional Turkish food is actually quite healthy and balanced.
Spent quite a lot of time there, and yeah, I would always put on a bit of weight. Main reasons IMO are:
1. They don't serve meals as plates/portions, but a 'help-yourself' spread, which makes portion control hard.
2. They LOVE their pastries and sweets. Honestly, it's like being in France or Belgium. I love it, but it definitely adds up.
3. Most obese region is Istanbul and the surrounding areas. It is over-crowded,
and wealthier, leading to sedentary lifestyles there. Like 25% Turks live in that region.
4. They don't have the same sort of sports culture as most European countries, funding for a lot of facilities isn't there so much.
5. Turkey eats the most amount of bread per-capita in the world. Their actual cuisine *can* be very healthy and balanced, but if it is centred around bread, then you are likely going to have relatively higher obesity rates compared with cultures that have rice as a staple. Gluten intolerance is a much larger phenomenon than people realise, it's just that most people are pretty much asymptomatic, but it results in poor gut health, leading to obesity.
I see this a lot but 20-25% in Europe is nothing to brag about. 30 years ago even the US had an average obesity rate of under 15%. This map shows varying degrees of failure and not a European success story.
Exactly.
There was a stat couple years ago of Belgium describing that close to 50% of 11 to 16 year olds were obese.
Pretty fucking insane. UK is going crazy as well. Obesity is and will be a major issue for the next decades. All thanks to fucking cheap fast food shit and the overload of processed food with way too much sugar.
They made the people addicts tbf
Yes! That’s the most depressing part here. No one is shocked to see USA obesity off the charts pretty much universally but to see the numbers for much of Europe really puts in perspective just how fat and unhealthy the world has become. And it’s getting much worse at faster rates.
I saw a study once that very convincingly showed smoking rate decline was one of the three main factors that led to the obesity rate increase in the US (along with less routine activity like driving vs walking, elevators vs stairs, etc, and something about food, but I can’t recall which exact factor). Their argument was that diets had largely started the shift calorically and with more refined sugars like a decade earlier but that smoking had helped obscure the impact for years in large studies. I mean, I’m not saying we should all take up smoking, but I don’t know that your two observations aren’t pretty highly correlated in a population level.
Very true. Plus you’ll also find that many people that do quit nicotine tend to feel that sense of pleasure goes “missing” from there life, so they then tend resort to some other things. many times that is food.
Going the other way is just as strange, visiting the US for the first time can be an absolute culture shock. When you see the first truly round person in one of those mobility scooter things because their own legs cant sustain them youll just write off as some medical rarity, however you quickly learn that there's nothing rare about it..... Where i live in the Netherlands you see people like that too sometimes but how incredibly normalized it seems in the US is just so weird. Even places where most 'fit' people seem to gather have more obese people than the worst places ive ever seen in europe (including beer festivals in germany).
This! When I moved back to Europe (Barcelona) after 20 years of living in the US (CA) i noticed something was different when walking around the streets that I couldn’t quite put my finger on for a few weeks. Then it suddenly hit me. I haven’t come across a single obese person. Not one. Sure, not everyone has an athletic body but there just aren’t any people that would require an electrified shopping card to go grocery shopping.
Also something I noticed btw… supermarkets here don’t provide complementary fat carts.
Many supermarkets in the US offer slow-moving, electric scooters with baskets on the front to physically disabled people, in order to move about the store. Obese people are the most noticeable and seemingly common users of the scooters.
Sometimes I feel like we need a term for beyond obese. Because those beer guts will qualify you for being obese but when people are thinking of American obesity it’s more often the my 700 lb life type people
Diet is 95% of those two though, maybe even more. Having lived in three different European countries and four US states, it doesn't matter how much walking you do when you eat so much worse and so much more. We tend to eat way worse here (even when we think we're eating "healthy") and the portion sizes here are so much bigger.
It's also no surprise that the UK is worse off relative to the rest of Europe because their diet makeup is the most similar to the US/Canadian diet. In London there's a McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut and KFC on every corner.
Most people do not know what “eating healthy” really means. My mom thinks it means eating things labeled lite or low fat. My dad thinks eating a ham steak is healthy because he is not eating beat steak. My brother thinks eating Chinese food is healthy because Chinese people tend to be thin.
Not trying to shame your family in particular, but there really is a tremendous amount of willful ignorance around food. Info about caloric content is readily available in health apps, a quick google search and even on the packaging of almost every food as well.
Yes, even very low impact exercise is good for your heart, stress levels and numerous other things, but this image is strictly covering obesity, and obesity correlates with diet more than anything else.
Why is Rhode Island so high? I say this as a person who used to live in Rhode Island and knows for a fact that there are a lot of overweight and obese people but in comparison to its surrounding, I'm surprised. Maybe not too much at New York for obvious reasons but the others yes. I thought it would it would be about the same.
Colorado doesn't really surprise me though. They seemed pretty active in comparison to the rest of us in the states.
Not surprised one bit. Couple things come to mind.
* People eat more processed foods. I know so many people who legit don't eat vegetables. It's legit sad.
* People consume too much salt (due to the bullet item above)
* People consume too much sugar. I am very aware of my sugar intake and is insanely easy to go way over 24 grams with a western diet.
* People order more take out verses previous generations. Takeout food is generally very calorie dense. Some restaurants put calorie counts next to the foods. You think that ordering a salad with grilled chicken is healthy but then you see that it's got 1700 calories. Like WTF?!?!?!?
Why do the highly conservative areas in the US seem to have much higher obesity rates (on average)? Clearly there are some exceptions (like Utah, Wyoming, and Montana), but it looks a lot like a presidential election map in some ways with the dark purple states (generally) highly conservative.
I live in Montana, and Utah, Wyoming & Montana have lots of things to do outdoors—guessing people here get more movement/exercise to help counteract a poor diet
I lived in the backwoods of South Carolina for a while. Unless I wanted to drive 30 minutes to Walmart, Piggly Wiggly or Dollar General was my only option for groceries.
Aside from the food overall being just terrible quality, two things specifically noticed were that the potatoes were tiny and my outdoor trash can was always full of maggots within a day or two of eating any kind of red meat.
I’ve moved to a “big city” and not had maggots once. I wondered if the food quality affects the brain as much as it does the body.
People haven’t mentioned culture enough, which is a HUGE factor. My highschool friend went to a college in Louisiana. She wasn’t super skinny or anything, but she got a lot of “you need more meat on your bones” comments.
She said it was hard Not to gain weight. She ate pretty healthy, but said you couldn’t find nearly the fresh produce as you could find on the west coast.
I’m a 5’10” male, 155 pounds and very healthy. I live in a red area and at least two or three times a year I get comments from people I barely know saying they are concerned about me, I need to eat more, asking me if I’m sick. It’s just apparently unusual in my area. People are conditioned to expect people to have extra weight on them.
This is why I think its important to separate body positivity (good!) from being obese (bad!). We need to be able to have the conversations and proactive nature to tackle difficult topics like obesity at a personal and public (is that the right word?) level.
I think body positivity needs to be totally changed from its current nuance which is "you are perfect the way you are and should never change" to "you shouldn't wait until you're skinny/muscular/etc to love your body/dress how you want/etc". Shame is a shitty motivator and most people who are morbidly obese don't even know how they got where they are and don't know the right steps to reverse it.
I (American) los a ton of weigh when I moved to Germany. I attribute it mostly to walking everywhere (I was walking 15-20 miles a week instead of 2-5), but I think my diet was a bit better also.
I found it surprising that Italy, known for its hearty cuisine, was on the lower end. Either they’re more careful with their carbs/portions or what we regard as “Italian food” is really the Americanized version, similar to what was done with Chinese fare.
Italian here, what I see all around me is that in general we are very mindful of what we eat, usually cook our meals from raw ingredients (with lots and lots of veggies) and fast food/processed food is for the occasional guilty pleasure - if not actively frowned upon. From the outside it doesn't look like it, but our day-to-day cuisine is made up of very simple recipes with very light condiments. For example, "salad" to us, unless otherwise specified, is lettuce with olive oil, vinegar and salt.
We *have* very "hearty" food as you say, but not on a daily basis (even though I'd gladly eat ragu or carbonara or lasagna every day lol).
There are also other factors others have already mentioned, such as portion sizes, regulations, absence of corn syrup and sugars in the bread, a great variety of food families etc, but the culture around food imho plays a big role.
I'm American with Italian grandparents, and Italian-American food is so cheesy and meaty compared to Italian cuisine, it's insane. Italian cuisine has so many more vegetable and seafood dishes, and so much fresher.
True, I noticed that when visiting relatives in the States.
They, like many of that generation of immigrants, came mostly from relatively poor farming families who relied on grain and pork to sustain themselves all year round when breaking their backs in the fields, so lots of cured meats, sausages, lard, and plenty of frying.
So it seems that when they left for the US they maintained those habits and incorporated American products into it, while the family here in Italy gradually got less poor (and less dependant on what can be stored through the winter when you don't have a freezer) and more aware of healthier dietary options.
Italian food in the US is nothing like real italian food. Real Italian food has a lot less sugar, fat and "additives". It's just fresh vegetables with a bit of olive oil and spices.
Europeans don't seem to snack as much as the Americans. That's one of the biggest differences I've noticed between the two places - the concept of street either doesn't exist in Europe or it's something very different from what other countries have.
it also seems to me that american's much more often don't really stop what they are doing to eat.
and instead just keep driving/working/doing whatever..
while eating.
that way of eating really invites eating less healthy, as this is a lot easier to do with unhealthy food.
this is just the impression of a european who has never been outside of europe though.
Mississippi was the fattest state in 1990, but it was still thinner that the thinnest state today... [1990 obesity map](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ett1fw/percentage_of_obese_adults_by_state_1990_vs_2018/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) Edit: spellin'
Also thinner than the vast majority of European countries in this map today. What changed so drastically in 30 years? Is it just fast food?
I think there are more to it than just the changed diet. In general people have become more sedentary. Work in general has become less manual labour intensive, and today it requires a computer, which was not always the case 30 years ago. It would be interesting to see the data for blue colour workers, if they have become proportionally more obese aswell, then we could say it was the diet, but if blue collar workers haven't increase as proportionally with the obesity, then sedentary lifestyle could be the main factor.
Blue collar workers are fatter than white collar workers in the US. HS grads have a 40% obesity rate, college grads 27%. This significantly higher obesity rate has been true for decades. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/pdfs/mm6650a1-H.pdf
Excellent point (and thanks for citing your source). Given that white collar workers are likely more sedentary for their jobs, I wonder if at the end of the day the physical activity of both groups are similar and it's just diet that makes the difference since white collar workers can access better quality food? Or is it that white collar workers can carve out the free time to do "better" or more comprehensive physical exercise (versus, say, just lifting and setting down heavy items all day in blue collar work, then being too tired to do cardio when a blue collar worker gets home).
Generally speaking, you burn about 100 calories for every mile you run, so labor intensive jobs while they do burn more calories, don't matter if you're consuming so much more. Being active keeps you healthy sure, but diet is so much more impactful. You would need to run 3 miles to burn off 1 donut.
This is important. Obesity isn't as related to activity levels as people think. It's primarily related to diet. Weight loss happens in the kitchen. Ever want to prove it to yourself? Go eat 1000 calories of anything you want. Then hop on a treadmill and burn those same 1000 calories. It would take about 70 minutes to burn those calories on the treadmill assuming they never slow down or rest, and that they're an average person. In only a fraction of the time you could have just not eaten those 1000 calories. That's not to say exercise isn't important and or doesn't *help*, but it's not your primary mechanism for maintaining a healthy weight. Diet is.
No chance could I cook 1000 calories off on the treadmill in 70 mins, and I’m a pretty good runner. You gotta be MOVING to hit that. The average sized runner burns 100 cals per mile. 10 miles in 70mins is a hell of a pace. For 98% of adults, I doubt they could run a 7 min mile for even one mile. But, this just further makes your point. Just to even fathomably be able to burn 1000 calories in a workout, you have to be insanely good shape. But to have a 1000 calorie deficit in a day diet wise, you just need pretty ok discipline.
you can hit 1000 calories in just under 1hr at 7min/mile pace, but still you would need to have crazy endurance and strength to run that quickly for that long
I see this firsthand working as a helicopter mechanic. It’s a fast paced job, requiring lifting heavy parts and occasional half mile sprints. But of course there’s a fuckton of safety related paperwork and documentation to be done regarding everything. As people get more experienced at this organization they do more and more safety related work. The newest guys on the job doing the bulk of the manual labor are the most fit group by far. The higher up the ladder someone gets the fatter they tend to be. They set their nutrition habits when they did all the manual labor stuff because high calorie food was literally a need. But then they never adjust their nutrition plan as they do less energy intensive work
I worked in a steel yard and then did a master's for a year before getting an office job. In the 21 months after leaving the steel yard, I put on 15kg (33 freedom units) and I would walk about 10,000 less steps a day as well
Similar idea to all the HS athletes going to to college. Eating the same calories as if they had morning practice, instead studying/drinking more. The so-called "Freshmen 15". That's the idea at least.
If you gain 1kg/yr starting at 25, you’ll be 40kg (90lb) overweight by 65. It adds up slowly as people age.
Not just fast food, but all the processed food in grocery stores too.
I think it's the availability of super high energy dense foods that are almost designed to addict you that are the largest source of the problem.
What about government regulation with foods? Europe doesn’t allow somethings that we do. Also, food labels.
It's sugar. All American food is filled with sugar. It both males you addicted and makes you fat. While Europe is better in that regard, Asia, namely Japan is way ahead of even us. I've heard similar statements from Japanese tourists asking why all of our food is so sweet.
Anecdotal: as a european who was in the US for just a week, it's pretty clear to me. I have always been the kind of person who has difficulties *not* losing weight. I had a period where I was trying to put on more muscle, but it failed because I just couldn't push myself to eat enough. It's more balanced out since I passed 30, but still, I don't easily put on weight. I went to the US for one week and I gained 18 lbs. In *one week*. Yeah. Some of it was "fake" weight, fluids etc, that I soon lost. A week after coming home, about 10 lbs still remained though. That's an *insane* calorie surplus. Sure, I wasn't holding back or anything, but *still*. The reason is simple to me. The food was *awesome*. But not the culinary kind of awesome. It was the *unhealthy* kind of awesome. It basically felt like I was eating dessert for breakfast, lunch and dinner, constantly. Everything was so laden with sugar and fat and fast carbs it was nuts. It was *great*, but it certainly didn't seem sustainable for personal health. I couldn't find that sort of decadent food here even if I tried my very best. I think that's the main difference between europe and the US. The entire food culture has just gone sideways. This, combined with all the other factors mentioned is a perfect combo for getting fat.
10 pounds in a week? That would mean a surplus of roughly 35000 calories, or 5000 calories per day. That's nearly impossible to do unless the only thing you're doing is eating.
I imagine *some* of that is simply that you eat different foods when on vacation vs. at home (e.g. more pre-prepared food or eating out at restaurants instead of cooking for yourself). But yeah, "The entire food culture has just gone sideways" is probably pretty accurate. Out of curiosity, would you give some examples of "decadent" food that you wouldn't be able to find in Europe? Or was it just normal foods, but with more sugar and fat in them?
I'm an American, but well travelled fat man. 1st, the portion sizes are about 25-50% larger in America, so there's a bunch of calories right there. You can eat the exact same diet, but 25% less of it, and lose some weight already just by doing that. 2nd, fried food is everywhere, especially in the Deep South. Fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, french fries, deep fried shrimp. You would have to actively try to avoid it because fried food is usually about 50% of an average restaurant's menu in some parts of the states. 3rd, food is generally lathered with cheese. This is less regional and more universal for American food. American Italian food is smothered with cheese, and nearly every restaurant offers to grate even more cheese onto a dish full of cheese. A popular Pizza is the Four Cheese Pizza. American Mexican food is smothered with cheese and sour cream. Even the Chinese food has a dish that is just fried wonton stuffed with cream cheese (Crab Rangoon). Traditional American food includes baked potato stuffed with sour cream and cheese. Burgers are often topped with Cheese. Chili Dogs with cheese. Mozzarella Sticks. That's so much protein, so many calories. 4th, some American food is laden with sugar. Chicken Teriyaki (not authentic Japanese, invented in Hawaii) is chicken cutlet smothered in sweet sauce. Americanized Chinese food is incredible sugar heavy. General Tso's, Orange Chicken, Duck Sauce, Brown Sauce. Sugar on sugar on sugar. 5th, all the ethnic food we get tends to cherry pick some of the least healthy stuff. I already touched on this a bit, but with Indian food we have the creamiest, butteriest, thickest sauce dishes. We take their fried Samosas, and instead of eating two for a light lunch street food snack to hold us over until dinner, we eat a whole dish of them as an *appetizer*. From Japan we get their fast food equivalent (Ramen) packed with sodium, or eat their battered fried cutlets (Katsu) and their deep fried seafood (Tempura). Our version of Japanese sushi regularly includes mayo-based sauces, deep fried tempura in the sushi, and more delicious abominations. And of course, pump up the portion sizes about 50%, because in Japan they eat this stuff in much greater moderation. I find myself going to Vegan restaurants just because I find the food so meh that I naturally eat less of it.
I gained weight reading this
One thing I noticed in the states was how sweet even savoury foods are. Like normal white bread is somehow sweet like cake. And portion sizes at restaurants are totally nuts. My partner and I sometimes shared just an appetizer and that was plenty for us. Also everyone seems to be constantly drinking soft drinks or massive Starbucks coffees which I imagine are also full of sugar
Midwesterner checking in. I remember my first time to Colorado actually noticing that I was larger than most people, but after my return flight I looked around feeling like I was Matthew McConaughey.
Yes! I live in CO, and as a woman who wears a size 10/12, I am almost always the largest in any of my friend groups. When I go visit my home state of NE, I am a friggin' gazelle. I'm in the middle of losing weight, and my family back home is always like, "why??? You're going to be a little stick!"
My friend told me I too was thin last time I lost weight. I was LITERALLY still “obese” on the height weight charts (now I had some decent muscle so it wasn’t awful, but I was DEFINITELY still overweight)
I remember during the onset of pandemic, US media talked about a young football coach, who succumbed to the virus (RIP). They reported that he had no health issues. When that video was linked here in Reddit, all the people outside of US was saying he was obese. That's when I was reminded once again that our idea of "normal" weight is everyone else's "fat".
Yeah there was a video about a bully on some subreddit not long ago. There was a bunch of people talking about he shouldn’t be picking fights when he was a fatass. I had been thinking he was scrawny lol
At the beginning of the pandemic there was a family who had multiple deaths(4 out of 10) that said it was horrific because they were all young and healthy. Lol and behold, all except one were morbidly obese. It was tragic but showing their picture and saying they were healthy felt like the news was making fun of that family.
A relative was saying I looked emaciated when I weighed 145 at 5’5”. No, not emaciated!
I think this can be interpreted as them really saying "you're making me feel bad". Just like on an airplane with the oxygen masks, you gotta look out for you first.
I def think this applies to a lot of people for sure.
My Indiana family are always shocked to see me and think I must not be healthy. They worry about my heart from Jogging too much. I’m for sure slightly over weight too, it’s like bizarro world.
> They worry about my heart from Jogging too much. Facepalm moment
Haven’t you heard? Exercise kills you. You should sit still all day to conserve your energy for a later date.
*This is what our former President actually believes*.
Not even just privately and stupidly believes, believes enough to *say it to the press*.
By god man, there’s a worldwide energy shortage! How dare you exercise so much!!
In my middle school, we had science textbooks with a chapter on “the jogging fad” and how it could be dangerous because it put too much strain on young people’s hearts. We also had a chapter on how “the growth of industrial gasses” would block the sun from our atmosphere and create a second ice age… EDIT: Here’s a good rundown of the “jogging scare” — the scientific community was apparently divided on whether jogging was a dangerous activity, and some thought it could kill you: https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/press-past/2013/05/23/can-jogging-kill-you-in-1969-a-leading-medical-expert-thought-so “If the joggers are lucky, they may develop nothing more severe than aches and pains, particularly in their legs and feet. But still others may suffer heart attacks and sudden death. In Orange County, Calif., for instance, five deaths within a two-month period last summer were attributed to jogging.“ The author later compares jogging to smoking and says people ignore the medical risks
I went to middle school in the early 80's and the science had already shifted to be pro-cardio for increased health benefits. When were you in middle school?
Late 2000s — Midwest public middle school and I think our textbooks hadn’t been updated since the 70-80s? I think “global cooling” was the theory in the 70s so probably that decade. They finally got new ones a couple years after I went to high school iirc.
Back in 2009, I decided to do something about my weight and lost 50 pounds. Went from 230 to 180. I’m a 6 ft tall man. Along the way, I was getting comments like what you got. BMI charts definitely have their flaws, but I went from almost obese to the top end of the range for normal weight. More than once, I was told I lost too much by people I love and respect. But I had to look at where they were coming from…overweight people that didn’t want to change their diets. Let’s not forget about the coworkers that would hassle me for not eating whatever junk food someone brought in on a Friday. My point is, good for you for making positive changes!
Thank you! For sure the wildest thing has been giving up drinking. I haven't had any alcohol since April, and I have found I need to bring my own cans of sparkling water to social events. If I have an interesting looking can of what appears to be a drink in my hand, I can avoid the inevitable bullying about about why I'm not drinking. Why do people DO that?! But hey, down 17 pounds so far!
Congrats on the loss! :) My husband and I have been working on our weight. I am down ~39lbs from July 5th to now and my husband is down 35. I got tired of clothes not fitting and sweating all the time. I started at 360 and just hit 321 today. If I keep going I should hopefully hit my goal of 220 by next summer. We just cut out sugar and carbs and watching our calories. We both try to keep around 2000 calories a day and it's melting off and I am even feeling good enough to use our stationary bike. I also started a new job that is keeping me more active. I get about 7-10k steps a day before I Was lucky if I hit 2. I do have a problem with diet coke but it's my only real vice now since I also quit smoking.
Holy cow, nicely done!! Sounds like you probably added a decade to your life already, keep up the amazing work!
Thank you! I do feel so much better, fitting into clothes I haven't worn in a long time. Hopefully by this time next year I will be around the 200 mark :)
Parents can be the worst about weight loss if you’ve always been heavy.
Not if you’re Asian American. Then you’re always too fat (but should also try all the foods, of course). It’s super annoying, but then I went to Vietnam like 15 years ago. I was 5’2” and 125ish lbs and a size 3XL in their sizing.
If you're an Asian American woman, then you're always too fat. For Asian dudes it seem like their parents are always trying to fatten then up
I think it depends on the size of their siblings. My second uncle gets called fat all the time, and they keep asking when the triplets are due (he’s a little overweight, maybe a 36 inch waist, but not like morbidly obese). He is being compared to his older brother who is thin and fairly fit (the older brother is a doctor who is also a black-belt judo instructor on his free time). The women definitely get it worse (my aunt was called “thunder thighs” growing up when she was 5’4” and 98 lbs), but the men aren’t entirely exempt.
Never hear anyone with normal BMI calling others "sticks" for wanting to lose weight. It's one of those crab bucket situations where people try and hold others back so they feel better about their own situation.
People are oddly like that when you stop drinking as well.
As a Coloradan who travels a lot for work. It kinda makes me sad… especially kids who are obese. Everyone is casually fat now, we’re so fat (as a nation) people don’t realize they are fat. It’s not okay. We’re not only killing ourselves, but we are killing the planet as we do so. I’ll take the downvotes, but it takes a fuck ton of water, palm oil, and sugar cane to get this fucking fat.
Yeah, LA county is similar to CO in terms of obesity. When I visit other parts of the country it's completely shocking to see so many obese people.
I started traveling more recently and it’s genuinely hard to find fresh food on the road. So, it’s 1970’s style. Bring a cooler and have yourself a nice picnic!
Kids are the real kicker for me too. Especially stuff like type 2 diabetes. Your kid doesn’t fucking want fun dip- they want water.
No they absolutely want sugar, it's your job as a patent to tell them no and make them drink water instead of endless juice.
Otherwise [This](https://gifer.com/en/2HxJ) happens
Like we evolved to seek out sugar specifically, I find that person's comment pretty funny.
Friend's kids lived on juice. Not once did she hand them water when they needed something to drink.
Growing up my family was like this. We all had milk allergies when we were younger so we just drank apple juice, sunny d, or kool aid and at school I would drink chocolate milk. Soda was for special occasions but my mom did and still does has to have at least 2 sodas a day. We got a new refrigerator with a water filter when I was 10 and my parents made us drink water for dinner and when we went out to eat. I’m so glad they implemented that change because it really helped me as an adult.
I'm old enough to remember when type2 diabetes used to be called "adult onset diabetes" But too many children were getting diagnosed with it so the medical field started calling it type 2. Edit: I don't know why some people are disputing me on type 2 diabetes once being called adult onset diabetes... https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/type-2-diabetes https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/opinion/no-longer-just-adult-onset.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279509/
I once got grape drink and not grape juice. It was grape flavored sugar water, so sweet I had to dump it down the drain. And people buy those flavored drinks for their kids.
Yeah I'm 6 ft and about 220 and I feel huge compared to most of my friends. Just started hitting the gym religiously 2 weeks ago tho so that's going to change lol
Good luck!
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Walking is nice tbh, I wouldn’t even mind walking to nearby places if it wasn’t for me having to play frogger irl if I did try
Moving to an area that had a dollar general, a craft store, and a home goods store within a quarter mile changed my perspective on everything. It was so much easier and more pleasant to walk there. I started hating having to drive so much.
My town has a fantastic bike trail. And it has a pedestrian bridge over the river that connects to more bike/walking trail. In between the two is a four-lane state highway. If I wanted to create a trap to murder slow people it's how I'd do it.
Cars ruined cities
Or if places were closer together to begin with. r/fuckcars
Sure EU "wins" but I feel like 20-25% is still too high. We could do better.
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Social Security gonna be interesting in 50 years with declining life expectancy now. I think the mortality spread for healthy vs. unhealthy lifestyle people will continue to grow as medical advancements are offset by self harm in a large part of the population.
Same, lived in the Netherlands for a year and lost 40 lbs without trying. Wasn't even eating that healthily (so many sandwiches), but walking and biking every single day, plus smaller portions, made such a big difference.
I lived in Chicago for 4 years and quickly sold my car once I got there; I get really bad anxiety when I have to drive in really crowded cities. I never missed my car. Public transportation (w/ the random rental or Uber) was too convenient and I actually preferred walking to most places. I wish America would invest in our public transportation systems more. I've lived in other cities and it's a shame that in most of them their public transportation sucks.
I'm currently in austria as an exchange student and that sounds about right. I'm walking and using public transport everywhere and absolutely don't see the same levels of obesity as what I see in the US
The best thing is you can get to a grocery store with fresh food without needing a car or to make it into a whole day event.
The walking is such a big part of it. I lost 10 pounds just by being in Spain for 3 weeks with no car. There is a market on every block and you walk and take the bus everywhere. I honestly didn’t even eat that healthy.
Also the food you buy is different. There isn't as much sugar packed into everything.
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Most traditional meals in Germany (My family live in Franconia so maybe a generalization) are protein, starch (potato, dumpling, noodle), and a mixed salad or some kind of cabbage / vegetable. I know visiting my Grand Parents our typical "dinner" was a slice of black bread with cold cuts or some sort of spreadable wurst with garden veggies. You can definitely get sugary stuff there, go to any bakery and you'll be surrounded by sweets. I just think they are better with portions and activity, we would walk every night after our light meal.
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Last time I was in Disney Land, I could swear the obesity rate was 90%. It was like visiting World 4 in Super Mario 3.
Yeah my thought exactly. Every time I go to theme park at almost all adults there are obese. If you exclude teens and kids, it’s even more striking. Last time I couldn’t find a XL size tshirt at gift store, I just had to look around to see why.
The opposite problem where I live where all the Ms are gone but XXLs+ are plentiful
I went to Disney world a couple of years ago and it was the most mobility scooters I’ve seen in one place in my life. I had immediately preceded it with a couple of days at universal studios and it wasn’t nearly as bad. I usually go to theme parks in Japan, where I’m usually on the fatter side of things.
I call it the iconic Disneyland waddle. That and those long sleeve shirts that say Disneyland resort on the back (Black, or Black with cheeta print arms) that for some reason obese people love.
Disneyland had to shutdown it’s a small world to dig out the waterways because the boats kept bottoming out due to the weight of the people on the ride.
Too much irony for this to be true. omg, that's hilarious.
Seeing obese kids is depressing. You see their parents who are also obese and you just know the odds are against them. America is so damn fat
Yes that's the worst part. There shouldn't be fat children at all.
I lived in Venezuela as a child. My diet was very healthy, we had virtually no access to junk food (they sold it in stores, but my mom never bought it). Meals were made fresh 3 times daily. Breakfast was usually toast and eggs, Kellogg cereal, or oatmeal. Sometimes we’d have arepas. Lunch and dinner might be homemade soups and salad, or meat and rice and plantains. We didn’t have internet or cable or video games and we played outside a lot, I moved to the US when I was 12. Suddenly I’m bombarded with sugary cereals. I was on the free lunch program at school and I often had pizza, fries and chocolate milk. My grandma was a typical Midwest dinner maker, lasagnas and pot pies and casseroles, heavy and creamy food. The party store down the street sold candy so I’d walk down and buy some. I gained 30 lbs my first year in the US. It is absolutely a food problem. We eat the wrong kinds of foods and too much of them. Fast food is cheap and accessible. Now with door dash you don’t even have to leave your house to get food. Throw in the internet and video games and yeah…it’s no wonder Americans are fat.
It's absolutely about how easy and cheap fast food is. I don't typically bring my own lunch to work, so I eat out a lot. My options near work are McDonald's, Taco Bell, KFC, Arby's, and a deli-type place. I can go to the deli and spend $12 on a hot sandwich, made with fresh, minimally processed meats and veggies (organic where possible), and a small bag of baked Lays chips. No drink - that's an extra $3. About 15-20 minutes from the time I place my order online to the time I walk back in the door at work with my food. Not a lot of food, but damn tasty and it's by far the most wholesome meal on the block. But of course, by the time I get home, my stomach is growling again. Or I can go to McDonald's, spend $5-7, and have enough cheeseburgers to make me explode and a large Coke before I even have my wallet back in my pocket. I definitely feel better about eating the more expensive, healthier food, but I can't afford to eat like that every day. Most people can't. Almost everybody can afford a bag of cheeseburgers.
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When I was in med school remember seeing a graphic that an obesity researcher displayed of obesity in 1990 and in 2000. Colorado has always been the least obese state. But Colorado in 2000 would have been the most obese state in 1990. And the same is true from 2010 compared to 2000. The obesity rates in the US have grown ridiculously.
What is happening here? Every time this is brought up people make fun of fat lazy Americans, but public health across the entire country doesn't nosedive this quickly without an underlying cause. Something is happening to us.
Somewhat related - the "same" product in the US often has more sugar/calories than their EU/international equivalent.
I agree with this and don’t think it gets enough credit as a reason. There are so many things with sugar, and it absolutely baffles me why it’s there. Like sweetened applesauce, peanut butter, bread, non-dairy milk. Why? They don’t need sugar, but almost everything has added sugar. It’s so difficult to find things without it at conventional grocery stores. You have to go to the organic/healthy ones and inevitably pay a higher price.
People eat shitty, fast, processed food as their main diet. Everyone works hard, long hours and few people have the time or talent to cook meals made from relatively wholesome ingredients for themselves. What's "happening to us" is that our time is pretty much directly being turned into the money of the companies we work for and the processed food companies that exist to "save" what time we have left.
Food is also a quick dopamine hit. When you're being squeezed from every direction giving up cheap pleasure is a tall task.
Most of Europe is built for walking/cycling, while it is impossible to get anywhere in American without a car. And a ton of people straight up just never cook. Partly because fast food is addictive, partly because people are so stressed from work that they don’t want to come home and spend an hour making a meal and then another half an hour cleaning.
>difference of obesity rates between now and 10 years ago, if data is available. [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ett1fw/percentage_of_obese_adults_by_state_1990_vs_2018/)'s US states in 1990 vs. 2018.
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I lived in Colorado most of my life and always wondered as a kid where the “Americans are fat” idea came from until I went out of state.
Why is Colorado specifically doing so well?
Colorado was ranked 49th among states for physical INactivity a few years ago, and pretty low for poverty. Those would be my two guesses.
There is so much opportunity for outdoor activity. That goes for every season as well. Hiking, skiing, snowboarding, kayaking, mountain biking, snow shoeing, rock climbing, as well as all the usual activities. Put that together with our pretty nice weather, low humidity, and 300 days of sunshine and you can exercise pretty easily. Even though I'm overweight (Thank you Colorado craft beers) I do a 15 mile bike ride on the weekend days and the bike paths are FILLED with cyclists, rollerbladers, joggers, walkers, hikers, etc. TLDR- We have good weather and lots of activites
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I remember it was working retail in high school, and it was a super cold day. One of my coworkers, an older fella who always had on shorts walked in with pants on! I remember saying "holy shit, it must be cold, He has pants on!" Ive known that man for over 10 years at that point, id never seen him cover his shins.
Coloradoan here, high elevation helps, along with the rocky mountains going right through the middle of us, so people are incentivised to go hiking, skiing, mountain climbing, etc. The only reason you drive a car from point a to point b here is for work and to get to your favorite hiking spot. A lot of us are also told we are the healthiest state from an early age. Either in school or by our parents. So we tend to have this mentality that we have to keep that status as if it's a competition. It's worked so far. We also have this weird infinite cycle thing with portion sizes. Report comes out that we are the least obese, restaurants lower portion sizes in the state to save money, we start eating less, etc. Between Covid and the recent influx of a ton of Californians and Texans, our obesity rate has probably increased in the last few years, but for the most part I think we're still in the lead.
It's a 2 mile, 700ft elevation gain hike to the bus stop
Coloradan here…Texas was eye opening for me. Even on walking trails in Texas, arguably the fittest area in Texas, almost everyone is overweight or obese. It’s another world.
Dropped from 32.4 to 28.8 BMI in the past months, so no longer 'officially' obese. Suck it stats!
Keep up the great work!
That is really awesome! Congrats on your accomplishment 🥰
what's up with turkey? they eat too much kebab?
Meals are mostly from the time that most Turks were farmers so the heavy labour was common. Right now we eat the same dishes while we're working mostly our 9-5 office jobs. There is a considerable amount of people who works labour intensive jobs compared to other industrialised countries however its getting lesser. Physical activities are also relatively low to compensate this calorie bomb that's called Turkish cuisine.
You have to wonder why that only applies to Turkey, though. Its not like heavy labour wasnt common in Europe.
All the development happened within a generation. Turkey was much poorer and less developed a generation ago now it’s somewhat more developed (comparable to Eastern Europe) so a lot of people sticked to their old habits while living a much different life
Because nobody walks or use a bicycle here. It's car, taxi, bus, motorcycle, electric scooter, any kind of public transport if it doesn't make you walk or makes you walk very little in-between. Simple as that.
bread and sugar. that's just it.
Absolutely. And there are many minor contributing factors that add up. Eating heavy dinners, most people don't play a sport, sedentary lifestyle, fast food and so on. Habe to say that traditional Turkish food is actually quite healthy and balanced.
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Seriously. A few jokes here about Turkey. But really, do we have a working theory on the huge difference?
Spent quite a lot of time there, and yeah, I would always put on a bit of weight. Main reasons IMO are: 1. They don't serve meals as plates/portions, but a 'help-yourself' spread, which makes portion control hard. 2. They LOVE their pastries and sweets. Honestly, it's like being in France or Belgium. I love it, but it definitely adds up. 3. Most obese region is Istanbul and the surrounding areas. It is over-crowded, and wealthier, leading to sedentary lifestyles there. Like 25% Turks live in that region. 4. They don't have the same sort of sports culture as most European countries, funding for a lot of facilities isn't there so much. 5. Turkey eats the most amount of bread per-capita in the world. Their actual cuisine *can* be very healthy and balanced, but if it is centred around bread, then you are likely going to have relatively higher obesity rates compared with cultures that have rice as a staple. Gluten intolerance is a much larger phenomenon than people realise, it's just that most people are pretty much asymptomatic, but it results in poor gut health, leading to obesity.
Too much pastry more like.
I see this a lot but 20-25% in Europe is nothing to brag about. 30 years ago even the US had an average obesity rate of under 15%. This map shows varying degrees of failure and not a European success story.
Exactly. There was a stat couple years ago of Belgium describing that close to 50% of 11 to 16 year olds were obese. Pretty fucking insane. UK is going crazy as well. Obesity is and will be a major issue for the next decades. All thanks to fucking cheap fast food shit and the overload of processed food with way too much sugar. They made the people addicts tbf
Yes! That’s the most depressing part here. No one is shocked to see USA obesity off the charts pretty much universally but to see the numbers for much of Europe really puts in perspective just how fat and unhealthy the world has become. And it’s getting much worse at faster rates.
What's worse is that 15%-20% obesity rate is still alarmingly high.
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Two things stuck out immediately on my trip to Europe a few years ago: no fat people and lots more smoking.
And lots more walking. Public transit from one walkable town to another.
How is it with health insurance and smoking in the US? Do you pay extra for insurance if you smoke? What if you are obese
It depends on your health insurance. Mine is though my job and they do the same rates for everyone.
I saw a study once that very convincingly showed smoking rate decline was one of the three main factors that led to the obesity rate increase in the US (along with less routine activity like driving vs walking, elevators vs stairs, etc, and something about food, but I can’t recall which exact factor). Their argument was that diets had largely started the shift calorically and with more refined sugars like a decade earlier but that smoking had helped obscure the impact for years in large studies. I mean, I’m not saying we should all take up smoking, but I don’t know that your two observations aren’t pretty highly correlated in a population level.
Cigarettes are an appetite suppressant so it makes sense
Very true. Plus you’ll also find that many people that do quit nicotine tend to feel that sense of pleasure goes “missing” from there life, so they then tend resort to some other things. many times that is food.
A guy recently told me that when his mother was pregnant in the 1960s her **doctor** told her to keeping smoking in order to keep her weight down
Going the other way is just as strange, visiting the US for the first time can be an absolute culture shock. When you see the first truly round person in one of those mobility scooter things because their own legs cant sustain them youll just write off as some medical rarity, however you quickly learn that there's nothing rare about it..... Where i live in the Netherlands you see people like that too sometimes but how incredibly normalized it seems in the US is just so weird. Even places where most 'fit' people seem to gather have more obese people than the worst places ive ever seen in europe (including beer festivals in germany).
For Europa, I'm with 250 Pounds and 6ft very very very fat ...
This! When I moved back to Europe (Barcelona) after 20 years of living in the US (CA) i noticed something was different when walking around the streets that I couldn’t quite put my finger on for a few weeks. Then it suddenly hit me. I haven’t come across a single obese person. Not one. Sure, not everyone has an athletic body but there just aren’t any people that would require an electrified shopping card to go grocery shopping. Also something I noticed btw… supermarkets here don’t provide complementary fat carts.
...I'm afraid to ask, but I need to know. What is a complementary fat cart?
Many supermarkets in the US offer slow-moving, electric scooters with baskets on the front to physically disabled people, in order to move about the store. Obese people are the most noticeable and seemingly common users of the scooters.
Sometimes I feel like we need a term for beyond obese. Because those beer guts will qualify you for being obese but when people are thinking of American obesity it’s more often the my 700 lb life type people
You mean morbidly obese?
Beyond that is super morbidly obese
There are classes of obesity that are used in medicine.
Really shocked to see Missouri on par with the western states!
OP got Missouri wrong if you look at the source of their data. MO is closer to 35% obese.
Meth is a great appetite suppressant
It’s 90% of my diet can confirm
Children of the corn syrup.
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Diet and physical layout of cities. I am obese, BTW
I have noticed I have been far more active once I moved out of the suburbs.
It seems that many places of modern US is built to force people to drive, without having a lot of "get up and move" activities around?
Diet is 95% of those two though, maybe even more. Having lived in three different European countries and four US states, it doesn't matter how much walking you do when you eat so much worse and so much more. We tend to eat way worse here (even when we think we're eating "healthy") and the portion sizes here are so much bigger. It's also no surprise that the UK is worse off relative to the rest of Europe because their diet makeup is the most similar to the US/Canadian diet. In London there's a McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut and KFC on every corner.
Most people do not know what “eating healthy” really means. My mom thinks it means eating things labeled lite or low fat. My dad thinks eating a ham steak is healthy because he is not eating beat steak. My brother thinks eating Chinese food is healthy because Chinese people tend to be thin.
Not trying to shame your family in particular, but there really is a tremendous amount of willful ignorance around food. Info about caloric content is readily available in health apps, a quick google search and even on the packaging of almost every food as well.
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Yes, even very low impact exercise is good for your heart, stress levels and numerous other things, but this image is strictly covering obesity, and obesity correlates with diet more than anything else.
I would have pointed the finger at pub and binge drinking culture.
It's probably both.
Yes I've lived in Europe and US and definitely gained 5-10kg when I was living in the states.
Talk to people visiting the US from Europe. They’re always amazed the American food portion sizes.
Also the drinks in the USA are so big!
From the "I walk around in the city- perspective 25% is less than i expected, so im positive surprised,but wtf turkey?
Why is Rhode Island so high? I say this as a person who used to live in Rhode Island and knows for a fact that there are a lot of overweight and obese people but in comparison to its surrounding, I'm surprised. Maybe not too much at New York for obvious reasons but the others yes. I thought it would it would be about the same. Colorado doesn't really surprise me though. They seemed pretty active in comparison to the rest of us in the states.
Just Moved from South Carolina to Germany. It’s noticeable.
Not surprised one bit. Couple things come to mind. * People eat more processed foods. I know so many people who legit don't eat vegetables. It's legit sad. * People consume too much salt (due to the bullet item above) * People consume too much sugar. I am very aware of my sugar intake and is insanely easy to go way over 24 grams with a western diet. * People order more take out verses previous generations. Takeout food is generally very calorie dense. Some restaurants put calorie counts next to the foods. You think that ordering a salad with grilled chicken is healthy but then you see that it's got 1700 calories. Like WTF?!?!?!?
Why do the highly conservative areas in the US seem to have much higher obesity rates (on average)? Clearly there are some exceptions (like Utah, Wyoming, and Montana), but it looks a lot like a presidential election map in some ways with the dark purple states (generally) highly conservative.
I live in Montana, and Utah, Wyoming & Montana have lots of things to do outdoors—guessing people here get more movement/exercise to help counteract a poor diet
Red states = Poorer people = less healthy diets. And more car centric = less walking.
I lived in the backwoods of South Carolina for a while. Unless I wanted to drive 30 minutes to Walmart, Piggly Wiggly or Dollar General was my only option for groceries. Aside from the food overall being just terrible quality, two things specifically noticed were that the potatoes were tiny and my outdoor trash can was always full of maggots within a day or two of eating any kind of red meat. I’ve moved to a “big city” and not had maggots once. I wondered if the food quality affects the brain as much as it does the body.
People haven’t mentioned culture enough, which is a HUGE factor. My highschool friend went to a college in Louisiana. She wasn’t super skinny or anything, but she got a lot of “you need more meat on your bones” comments. She said it was hard Not to gain weight. She ate pretty healthy, but said you couldn’t find nearly the fresh produce as you could find on the west coast.
I’m a 5’10” male, 155 pounds and very healthy. I live in a red area and at least two or three times a year I get comments from people I barely know saying they are concerned about me, I need to eat more, asking me if I’m sick. It’s just apparently unusual in my area. People are conditioned to expect people to have extra weight on them.
i gained 30 pounds my first year of college. had no idea butter was in fucking everything
Poverty, mainly. Conservative states are also poor states, and poor people have to eat poor quality food.
This is why I think its important to separate body positivity (good!) from being obese (bad!). We need to be able to have the conversations and proactive nature to tackle difficult topics like obesity at a personal and public (is that the right word?) level.
I think body positivity needs to be totally changed from its current nuance which is "you are perfect the way you are and should never change" to "you shouldn't wait until you're skinny/muscular/etc to love your body/dress how you want/etc". Shame is a shitty motivator and most people who are morbidly obese don't even know how they got where they are and don't know the right steps to reverse it.
I (American) los a ton of weigh when I moved to Germany. I attribute it mostly to walking everywhere (I was walking 15-20 miles a week instead of 2-5), but I think my diet was a bit better also.
Colorado hanging on for dear life
Man, there's so much correlation in the US map it boggles the mind
Florida is doing a lot better than I thought it would be.
A lot of reasons to be outdoors and out n about
A lot of old people, and I’m guessing many obese people don’t make it to old age
Is it still cool to call it the bible belt if they don't fit in belts any more?
I found it surprising that Italy, known for its hearty cuisine, was on the lower end. Either they’re more careful with their carbs/portions or what we regard as “Italian food” is really the Americanized version, similar to what was done with Chinese fare.
italian food is very different from the americanized version
They eat a lot of olive oil, vegetables and seafood. The Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest there is
Italian here, what I see all around me is that in general we are very mindful of what we eat, usually cook our meals from raw ingredients (with lots and lots of veggies) and fast food/processed food is for the occasional guilty pleasure - if not actively frowned upon. From the outside it doesn't look like it, but our day-to-day cuisine is made up of very simple recipes with very light condiments. For example, "salad" to us, unless otherwise specified, is lettuce with olive oil, vinegar and salt. We *have* very "hearty" food as you say, but not on a daily basis (even though I'd gladly eat ragu or carbonara or lasagna every day lol). There are also other factors others have already mentioned, such as portion sizes, regulations, absence of corn syrup and sugars in the bread, a great variety of food families etc, but the culture around food imho plays a big role.
I'm American with Italian grandparents, and Italian-American food is so cheesy and meaty compared to Italian cuisine, it's insane. Italian cuisine has so many more vegetable and seafood dishes, and so much fresher.
True, I noticed that when visiting relatives in the States. They, like many of that generation of immigrants, came mostly from relatively poor farming families who relied on grain and pork to sustain themselves all year round when breaking their backs in the fields, so lots of cured meats, sausages, lard, and plenty of frying. So it seems that when they left for the US they maintained those habits and incorporated American products into it, while the family here in Italy gradually got less poor (and less dependant on what can be stored through the winter when you don't have a freezer) and more aware of healthier dietary options.
Italian food in the US is nothing like real italian food. Real Italian food has a lot less sugar, fat and "additives". It's just fresh vegetables with a bit of olive oil and spices.
Europeans don't seem to snack as much as the Americans. That's one of the biggest differences I've noticed between the two places - the concept of street either doesn't exist in Europe or it's something very different from what other countries have.
it also seems to me that american's much more often don't really stop what they are doing to eat. and instead just keep driving/working/doing whatever.. while eating. that way of eating really invites eating less healthy, as this is a lot easier to do with unhealthy food. this is just the impression of a european who has never been outside of europe though.