Whoa whoa. Healthy food does not have to equal Whole Foods. There are plenty of healthy options at your local Wal Mart if you don't want to pay for the WF caché. Fatty food tastes better. Portion size all around is crazy. You eat out a lot, before you know it you're gonna be tubby.
Intellectually lazy response. The easy way out is just to knee-jerk blame "evil corporations", "profits" and "lobbying". Got any facts to back your statement up? same questions I asked of txpratt
I think this is it here. I do not eat healthy by any stretch but I try to stay away from hfcs as much as I can. ie. I have not had a soda with hfcs in over a year. I am 40+, thin and not muscular and not gay.
It's not really a lazy response. If you want to read up on how they've affected US foods in the past 20 years, do it yourself. Stop being lazy.
Processed foods/fast foods make it more convenient for the current lifestyle of most Americans, where time is money. Nobody has the time/energy to get in the kitchen and cook meals any more. And it's actually more expensive to eat processed foods/fast foods than it is to buy fresh food and cook it yourself - fact.
I think certainly overeating has something to do with it. I also think it is not quite that simple. One problem is our lifestyle. It is largely sedentary. You sit at a desk all day long, then sit in traffic and by the time you get home, you just want to lie down on the sofa and veg. Our schedules are generally so hectic that food is just catch as catch can...usually something fast, which tends to be really unhealthy. Another problem is that so much of our food supply in based in processed foods. If your body doesn't have to work as hard to break it down, then fewer calories are expended in digestion. This leads to a bad outcome. I am not an expert. These are just a few guesses on my part.
You sum it up perfectly. To maximize profits, the American food industry has created an infinite number of processed foods that are very addictive because of taste. They add carbs and fat to fine tune the flavor so that people can't stop themselves. If you compared the daily diet of the average person in the 1920s to what we eat today, it would be very bland, tasteless and repetitive. They didn't have the calorie-dense, flavor-enhanced food choices we have today. While the evolution started earlier, it accelerated in the early 70s and the pedal has been on the metal ever since. txppratt, you hit the nail on the head. The junk food industry (which includes, but is not limited to fast food) is a very competitive, well-oiled machine. They won't give up market share without a major fight. Eating right costs more and takes more time. The food industry has made the bad choices easy, quick and convenient, which is what Americans want. For the most part, we don't like taking time to prepare food and eat properly. Vegetables and non-simple carbs take longer to cook, don't taste as good and are often more expensive than the calorie-dense, processed, yummy choices Americans prefer. It's a vicious circle. Education and knowledge is the way out. The more people know about what they are eating and doing to themselves, the more likely behavior changes. Call me a pessimist. IMO, changing the tide is a lost cause, but maybe the obesity epidemic can be flatlined and not get worse.
Just watch supersize me and food inc. Blame the powers that be, but also blame yourselves. With that said America has some of the healthiest individuals on Earth (ie. Tony Horton)...It's a land of abundance and accessibility, just depends on which fancies one chooses to indulge in.
Well, private farming hasn't been economically viable since Appomattox, so ADM, ConAgra and Monsanto probably aren't going anywhere.
1.The fact that most households have two working adults and nobody has the time or the energy to make a home cooked meal. Which leads to: 2. Fast Food and the ever increasing portion size. Which leads to: 3. Monster HFCS laden drinks to go along with our huge meals. 4. Most forms of entertainment (TV/Video Games/ the Internet) - Kids and adults spend way too much time being sedentary. Often gulping down our large fast food meals. 5. Or junk food which makes spend millions of dollars for that perfect taste and texture to make them irresistible. Bonus: The pharmaceutical industry. When my uncle had a heart attack 30 years ago he lost weight and and started exercising to stay alive. (He's still alive today). 10 years ago a different uncle had a heart attack. He never lost weight and everything is controlled via medication. Though 20 years older the former's quality of life is better than the latter's. Why change your life when you can just pop a pill. The sad part is I'm guilty of all of those things and that's why I'm obese. Two interesting notes about 1985. 1. New coke was introduced and quickly "classic coke" was reintroduced with the important change of sweetener from cane sugar to HFCS. 2. The introduction of the NES. Others argue the key year is 1977 . 1. HFCS became more commonplace in the late 70s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usda_sweeteners.svg 2. Atari
Their seeding policies aren't what bothers me about them, even though they do rip off the farmers.. it is the only option. It's the genetically modified seeds which basically produce insecticides within the seed to keep the crops safe, and them lobbying the US Gov't so crops grown like this aren't known to the public. If they were I bet people would not buy them.
There is zero evidence GMOs are unsafe or cause obesity. Yes, it's due overeating, but why are people overeating? I like the hyper palatable food theory. The idea is processed food affects your brain and setpoint.
Like it or not, this is the American system. Businesses (especially "big business") will do whatever is necessary to maximize their profits. The profit motive isn't "evil", it's amoral. Capitalism and freedom have some downsides and the food industry doesn't care how it's behavior affects the rest of us.
Computers, tv, and video games. It's not just a kids issue. That leads to more time sitting at home and the best companion are snacks. The cheapest snacks are full of carbs and sugars. Is the divorce rate still going up? That's an issue too. Single parent households means less money, so they buy those cheaper snacks. It also means they are too stressed out from life to do anything but sit at home snacking, as a result, their kids do the same. Finally, every thing is getting easier and more convenient. Which, again, results in less energy spent and more time/access to bad foods.
