And before anyone posts any rude comments, consider that some research shows that overweight people are both nicer and less likely to be depressed than thin people. And while obesity isn't healthy, being slightly overweight may increase your lifespan.
Please don't post stuff like this. This is almost worse than disparaging overweight people. While it's not okay to shame others or make fun, it is absolutely imperative that people take their health seriously. It has gone as far to create movements like HAES, which is destructive and dangerous to people's mental and physical well-being. Please be more responsible regarding topics like this when you're given a platform of leadership.
I know exactly what I'm talking about. Trying to stop others from insulting, while sincere, is essentially fruitless. It will happen regardless, and it's best to ignore those people. But to propagate misleading information is irresponsible and unfair. There's no measurement of "nicer", besides opinion. To compare it to the opposite end of the spectrum is just furthering the viewing of people as one vs the other or separate. It's akin to saying, "Before you go making racist comments, be wary that ____ people are typically better people than their ______ counterparts." In no way is that helpful or constructive.
You might want to be more respectful of differing viewpoints and also the fact that the Quizmaster said that research shows this. He wasn't stating his opinion.
"Some" research, he said. And didn't quote a source, though I'm sure such a study exists. Not that that means anything, results of studies can so easily be distorted due to bad methodology, misinterpretation or miscommunication (intentional or not), giving the false impression that the findings are proven facts or that there's a scientific consensus on the subject.
So yeah, super vague, and even if it wasn't, it should be taken with a massive grain of salt.
I think if overweight people (I am one) think that they should live overweight and expect people to be entirely respectful and/or just expect them to ignore that, they should really start to get in shape more than people who understand the downsides of being overweight. Unless you're an obese snowflake, chill down dude.
Where do you get that overweight people are less likely to be depressed? Almost every fat person I know is depressed to some degree. The research I've done watching Jim Jeffries stand-up suggests that the secret to happiness is being very good looking.
Being slightly overweight almost certainly doesn't increase your lifespan. The most likely explanation for the findings presented in the linked article is that being overweight is the norm nowadays, especially for older people, so a normal BMI is very often the result of inability to gain/maintain weight as a result of chronic diseases, associated with a higher risk of death (Alzheimer's disease, severe COPD, cancer etc.).
Being a bit plump can be good when you're a bit older (mainly for women), because it can prevent some of the older age illnesses such as osteoporosis. But yeah, then there are the heart diseases and cancer, so better not get too plump
That's quite possibly true @georgekotz. I am not entirely satisfied with this explanation though. Consider this. If an overweight person gets sick and loses weight, they may fall into the normal range. But if a normal range person gets sick and loses weight, they could become dangerously underweight.
Speaking of older people, it's amazing to me now to see elderly people overweight. When I was a kid, "little old lady" wasn't a saying, it was the steadfast rule. Very old men and women alike were very small and thin without exception.
This study removed people with diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, which are all associated with high BMI. They would be left with a subset of people with high BMI who happen to have healthier genetics. In other words, in their study they removed people, disproportionally with high BMI, with normal DNA and left all people with normal DNA who have proportionally lower BMI. This stood out to me because similarly questionable methods have been done to claim long-distance runners are less healthy.
Another question I had was which BMI was used- at the time of death, at a certain age, say 45, or an average throughout life? People tend to lose weight as they get sick, is my concern for how to fairly compare BMI.
You are misreading the study. They didn't remove people with diabetes, etc... Obviously that would make the data worthless. And of course they didn't measure BMI at time of death. That would be silly. If you read the study, you will see that the authors are not, in fact, complete idiots.
I visited Louisiana several years ago and I remember what kind of food people ate, so I just went for all the southern/midwestern states. Got them all fairly easily.
Midwest is also often used to refer to the Great Plains states, meaning North Dakota, Iowa, and to some extent Oklahoma and Missouri could also fall into this category.
Missouri, Iowa, and North Dakota (!) are in the South?? While I know Missouri is on the edge, they are all Midwest. They would be great plains if you add that category, but the categories usually referred to are Northeast, South, Midwest, and West.
Indiana is an honorary member emeritus of the South; certainly the distal and middle phalange of the middle finger of the South, Mercatorially speaking.
Yes, southerners would be so much healthier if they served poutine, Chicago-style pizza, or cream cheese on bagels washed down with sugary, creamy, coffee drinks instead of shrimp and grits with turnip greens and sweet tea.
These states are POOR states. Being POOR means seeking CHEAPER food, and CHEAPER food is almost ALWAYS LESS healthy and MORE fattening.
Food stamp users, for example, cannot afford fresh fish and produce, they eat canned soup, TV dinners, McDonald's, sugary SODA POP, manufactured food like crackers, etc--all FAT promoting and most LOADED DOWN with SUGAR.
And 40 PERCENT of food stamp users are in JUST these SOUTHERN STATES.
Hogwash. Being poor doesn't cause obesity anymore than obesity causes poverty. Go to any grocery store, the cheapest food you can buy are fresh fruits and vegetables. Much cheaper than going to McDonalds. Going to McDonalds is EASIER than going shopping and preparing fresh meals. Soda and candy taste better than water and broccoli. Poverty and obesity are correlated because both are precipitated by the same mindset, people choosing what is easier (instant gratification) over what is better
Exactly, stg. Eating healthy is expensive no matter how you look at it, especially when you have a family. People try to refute this all the time, but you can't argue with the facts. Junk is cheap and it is convenient. Until those two are no longer true, this country will continue to be unhealthy overall.
Oh yes, those terribly unfortunate poor people, who are forced to use their welfare to overeat fast food at 150 calories/$1.
Vs those evil, rich, robber barons burning their money on food > 1-2,000 calories/dollar, like flour, potatoes, oatmeal, pasta, rice, lentils, nuts, etc.
Oh the humanity. Imagine if around the world, people were forced to eat things such as rice, flour, potatoes, and pasta. Imagine how obese they would all be!
To Loganite, regarding vegetables being cheaper, you are right. But I suggest doing an experiment I did a while back. Using google maps I dropped myself in a rural part of a southern state and then searched where the nearest grocery store/supermarket is.
A lot of rural communities are food deserts with only frozen and canned food and very little fresh food nearby. A lot had a Casey's store or the like, but few that sold vegetables. I read that dollar stores really wiped out grocery stores by selling packaged goods cheaper, cutting out the items that are high profit margins for supermarkets.
Being poor means not having access to healthy food = being overweight
No, they're not. Georgia is by far the most developed southern state (assuming you don't include Florida, which is in a class of its own). You simply assume that Georgians are both liars and obese because you know that some people in surrounding states are obese, and that's bigoted, biased, and wrong.
Have you actually been to Georgia, aside from Hartsfield-Jackson? Because if you had, you'd probably not make this assumption.
I was in Florida last year (as a European) and I was amazed in how unhealthy people from the USA live. They do everything by car, even when you only have to travel like 1km down the street. So many fast food restaurants. Almost no healthy fruit or vegetables for sale anywhere. (unlimited refil) Soda everywhere! No bikes/sidewalks. watching television all day instead of exercising. Etc. Etc.
While I agree with some of what you say, you are leaping to all kinds of conclusions. "Almost no healthy fruit or vegetables for sale anywhere" is demonstrably false, even though there are some urban areas where they are difficult to find. In one breath you say that Americans drive everywhere, and then go on to say that people can't find fresh fruit, even though there is fresh fruit within a few miles of probably 95% of the population. The problem is much more that people have been conditioned to do the easy thing, and cheap items are packed with extra refined sugars because it keeps people wanting more and more.
Also, go ahead if you want to stereotype a country of 300M+ people by visiting one state for, I'm going to guess, about 7-10 days tops, but does that make ANY sense at all? And people blame Americans for not understanding the world, while many people like you judge the US via limited exposure and what you see on TV. Think about the conclusions you've just drawn.
His point is not as valid as he meant it to be, im european myself and in every city there is atleast one market were you can buy fresh fruits and vegetables as well as in basically EVERY supermarket. When i went to The US I also felt the unhealthiness, one example is supermarkets were you can only buy prepared or packaged food and snacks with sugary drinks and candy. There is surely a BIG health gap between Europe and The US
I have been to Florida for 2 months (traveling around) and have been in New York City for a week. NYC was a lot better in my opinion. People were excercising and there were many places wher you could buy healthy food (salad bars and stuff). In Florida there was a fast food restaurant every couple hunderd meters. And where here in Europe even most fast food chains sell healthy food there was none to be found in Florida. Also every hotel which included breakfast only had stuff like bacon, muffins, waffles with syrup, chocolate pastrys, juice with sugar added, etc. I just felt unhealthy by being there. A place as big as Walmart had loads and loads of diffent kind of cookies, chips, soda's and what not but limmited healthy foods. Its all so different here in Europe. Now I am not saying we are better or saints ourselves but it was very noticable that there were are lot of obese people living in Florida while there are fewer overhere. I'm just saying that I understand why this is the case.
Fair enough Jorissie. I'm not disagreeing that we have a food culture problem here in the US, but it's much more complex than just "Americans are unhealthy." Not sure what part of Europe you are from, but I live in a cold northern part of the US and I think you'd be surprised just how active people are, even in the face of a typical 5-6 months of winter. And honestly, it's hard to compare NYC and Florida, but they are clearly very different culturally.
As far as what you see in the stores, Walmart serves a price-conscious customer, so of course their products will be skewed toward the cheap and easy, which of course are less healthy. Having said that, the closest grocery store to my house IS a Walmart, and they have LOADS of fresh produce every day, and it's the very first thing you see when you walk in. As said before, it's easy to make generalizations, but there's nuance everywhere. I'm just encouraging everyone to look for it instead of jumping to those conclusions. :-)
And Eastmountain, I'm not sure where you were, but I can't think of a single supermarket in my area that doesn't have plenty of fresh produce. Maybe that says more about where I live, but I'm tempted to think that you weren't in a typical supermarket (we have plenty of convenience stores where it's ALL grab-and-go food and thus cater to people who care less about that thing or just want something cheap).
Eastmountain this is a lie... I have lived in, for example, Romania, Greece, California, and near Washington DC. The options for healthy eating were much more plentiful in the latter two than in the former. The UK doesn't get many points for health food, either. It depends a lot on where you live but of all the many European countries I've visited and/or lived in I never found groceries as well stocked with attractive and healthy food as I could get at Whole Foods, Wegman's, Harris Teeter's, or some of the local markets I would visit in California, except maybe in Sweden. They had some good stuff there. But most of the places I lived in Europe it was hard to find anything healthy to eat. The small markets near me in Ukraine and Belarus sold almost nothing but junk food. And I have also never been anywhere in the US where I saw as many fast food places as I saw in Rotterdam.
Then there was Georgia (the country)... I'm not sure how those people are still alive. I tried to eat some katchapuri (I think?).. it was basically a large *very* buttery croissant, hollowed out with an egg in the middle floating on literally half a stick of half melted butter. I removed as much of the butter as I could and still couldn't finish it. Made me sick. To find anything that disgusting in the USA you'd probably have to visit the Iowa State Fair. Other Georgian food was very tasty but almost all of it was extremely greasy.
Americans do (generally) consume too much sugar and too much fat and they don't get enough exercise. It's not complicated. Many European countries are catching up, though, and it's simply inaccurate to say that healthy options aren't available in the US. I always lose weight when I go back to the US because it's so much easier finding "diet," low fat, low calorie options there than anywhere else. Just look. They're there.
It depends a lot upon whereabouts in the country you are. Where I live in the UK there are some pretty healthy options... but that isn't necessarily the case if you go to a poorer area or somewhere other than a city. Of all the cuisines I have had in the different countries I have been to, my least favourite was probably Hungarian. But, it isn't a fair comparison. In Hungary all of my food was served by a hotel in an area without much tourism (at least not at that time of year). In all the other countries (except possibly Turkey but I don't remember that as I only went once at the age of 2) quite a lot of the food I ate was bought from a shop, where we could choose what to buy.
I disagree with the car shaming. Not everyone has time to walk 1+ kilometers. For families, keeping watch of kids walking is difficult, especially for little things like this that they could much easierly drive to and back.
I think the most interesting thing that stands out from this quiz is the geographic location of these states. Every one of them is east of Denver with a pronounced emphasis on what were Confederate states in the Civil War---at least half the list, I think.
Correlation doesn't imply causation. The correlation that really matters is the one with the poor states. Healthy food is more expensive than junk food.
Neither correlation is more important than the other. They are all the same...obesity, poverty, lack of education - none of them cause the other. If there is a correlation, it is because they are all often the result of the same mindset. They are all the result of a person CHOOSING what is easy or tastes or feels good (instant gratification) over what is more difficult, but will lead to long term happiness and well being.
I think that's a facile explanation, loganite. Some people have very limited funds, which limits access to quality food. Second, although it's true that, yes, at a given moment, choosing McDonald's over a salad is a personal choice, there are so many factors that create the kind of person (or culture) where that's the prevailing decision. I tend to think lack of quality education is the origin point for the other issues, but it's become a weird cycle, so now it's really hard to get good education because of the poverty. I also think people lacking the things society prizes tend to shun those things (e.g., "intellectual elitism") as a defense mechanism. When something is not realistically attainable, it's more satisfying to insist that your way is really the right way. America has mostly abandoned the South, which is why Southern culture is so important to people there. For many of them, it's all they have.
jmellor, see my comment above - limited funds (poverty) is not the issue. Go into any grocery store in the US, the least expensive foods are fresh fruits and vegetables. Raw ingredients are also less expensive than processed foods or restaurant foods, on average, but take time and effort to prepare. I intentionally avoided placing blame on why people make the choices they do, but was merely pointing out the problem of our society's increasing love affair with instant gratification. Choosing what is easy, feels good, tastes good now, etc. over something that is more difficult, takes work, doesn't feel or taste good now, etc. but produces a long lasting benefit.
It isn't 'instant gratification'. It's the fact that poorer people are more likely to work longer hours and more intense jobs, leaving them with little time and energy to prepare meals. Also, you have to take into account that, with electricity costs soaring, it may in some cases be actually cheaper to buy pre-prepared (and often unhealthy) food than to cook things like fresh vegetables yourself.
I still can't get over the fact that there's places where 4!!!! out of 10 people are obese. that's beyond scary and those people should be ashamed of themselves.
I'm surprised Hawaii isn't on this list. I feel like I see many obese people in Hawaii everyday, and it is in Oceania, and many countries in Oceania are in the top 20 most obese countries.
Hawaii is evidently on the 10 LEAST obese states (see other quiz), along with 9 other blue states. This most obese list consists of 10 red states, where health care, education, science, etc. are not priorities.
So yeah, super vague, and even if it wasn't, it should be taken with a massive grain of salt.
Another question I had was which BMI was used- at the time of death, at a certain age, say 45, or an average throughout life? People tend to lose weight as they get sick, is my concern for how to fairly compare BMI.
Food stamp users, for example, cannot afford fresh fish and produce, they eat canned soup, TV dinners, McDonald's, sugary SODA POP, manufactured food like crackers, etc--all FAT promoting and most LOADED DOWN with SUGAR.
And 40 PERCENT of food stamp users are in JUST these SOUTHERN STATES.
Enough said.
And eating crackers doesn't make you fat.
CICO. Take responsibility for what you put in your mouth, and your health.
Vs those evil, rich, robber barons burning their money on food > 1-2,000 calories/dollar, like flour, potatoes, oatmeal, pasta, rice, lentils, nuts, etc.
Oh the humanity. Imagine if around the world, people were forced to eat things such as rice, flour, potatoes, and pasta. Imagine how obese they would all be!
Or, it's as simple as it always has been- CICO.
A lot of rural communities are food deserts with only frozen and canned food and very little fresh food nearby. A lot had a Casey's store or the like, but few that sold vegetables. I read that dollar stores really wiped out grocery stores by selling packaged goods cheaper, cutting out the items that are high profit margins for supermarkets.
Being poor means not having access to healthy food = being overweight
Have you actually been to Georgia, aside from Hartsfield-Jackson? Because if you had, you'd probably not make this assumption.
Also, go ahead if you want to stereotype a country of 300M+ people by visiting one state for, I'm going to guess, about 7-10 days tops, but does that make ANY sense at all? And people blame Americans for not understanding the world, while many people like you judge the US via limited exposure and what you see on TV. Think about the conclusions you've just drawn.
As far as what you see in the stores, Walmart serves a price-conscious customer, so of course their products will be skewed toward the cheap and easy, which of course are less healthy. Having said that, the closest grocery store to my house IS a Walmart, and they have LOADS of fresh produce every day, and it's the very first thing you see when you walk in. As said before, it's easy to make generalizations, but there's nuance everywhere. I'm just encouraging everyone to look for it instead of jumping to those conclusions. :-)
Americans do (generally) consume too much sugar and too much fat and they don't get enough exercise. It's not complicated. Many European countries are catching up, though, and it's simply inaccurate to say that healthy options aren't available in the US. I always lose weight when I go back to the US because it's so much easier finding "diet," low fat, low calorie options there than anywhere else. Just look. They're there.
Another thing contributing to American obesity is portion size.
Here is a better explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV6ZENGko1I
4 out 10 people obese... that's so sad