The Uneasy Truth About Traveling While Fat

[mikeylikey]

Ahem. Anyway, even if there is, then why is the number of obese individuals increasing? Shouldn’t all those susceptible to obesity already be obese?

No, because

A) The prevalence of Highly Palatable + Nutrient Deficient Food didn't simply happen as a single discrete event in 1982. It started in the 40s and has gotten progressively worse through the present time and It Is Still Getting Worse today. I live in a rural community surrounded by actual farms where the small town grocer is in danger of being put out of business by the Dollar General that opened up several years ago. If that happens it will be a 30 minute drive to get fresh vegetables or meat. This is a common story in rural and urban communities alike. IOW this is not a static problem.

B) Individuals don't get fat overnight when the food environment changes. The genetically very lucky don't get fat at all, while the genetically screwed get fat almost immediately, and a lot of people in between the two extremes get fat slowly, thus titrating into the societal obesity percentage over time.

C) Delayed second-order effects. Crash diets and fad diets, many of which are shown to make people who try them fatter in the long run. Social stigmas which result in chronic low-grade eating disorders (like eating McDonalds in your car instead of going inside where people are). "Diet" versions of foods and sodas which like fad diets may do more harm than good in the long run. Bad habits learned in childhood. These things can take a long time, a generation or more, to get 'baked into the cake' if you will.

I don't think anybody is saying Highly Palatable Food is the only cause, either. But a gradual increase in aggregate obesity ###s over a period of time when the food environment has been steadily deteriorating is perfectly consistent with just about any reasonable causal coefficient you care to attribute to the food.

[hector]

I don't think anybody is saying Highly Palatable Food is the only cause, either. But a gradual increase in aggregate obesity ###s over a period of time when the food environment has been steadily deteriorating is perfectly consistent with just about any reasonable causal coefficient you care to attribute to the food.

Strong correlation between nationwide uptick in obesity and adoption of high calorie diets with LP.

[Philbert]

I really don’t think so; if the argument is that “highly palatable food” and access to it is the cause of obesity, then why didn’t everyone get obese at the same time?

It isn't and this is still a VERY silly question.

My point you entirely dodged is genetics play a large factor in who is susceptible and to what degree to "highly palatable foods". Just like some are more susceptible to the effects of drugs. This is not up for debate but fact. Which is why the class of recent appetizer suppressant drugs are such game changer for the obesity epidemic. They work with ZERO change to lifestyle.

Yes, everyone is responsible. AND it is not a level playing field. BUT understanding the relationship between "highly palatable food" and those that are susceptible to them will be necessary to address the issue on a population wide scale. Because fat shaming and telling people they don't have 'willpower' isn't working.

I mean, I still don’t think it’s a silly question.

Speaking of dodging, did you read the rest of my first post you took that quote from?

Irregardless, is there a genetic component that makes some people more susceptible to the “highly palatable food” than others? Sure, why not? I’ve read Pontzer’s book; humans are fat storing machines. Damn chimps, getting jacked when overfed… why I oughtta…

Ahem. Anyway, even if there is, then why is the number of obese individuals increasing? Shouldn’t all those susceptible to obesity already be obese? There’s that silly question again. Maybe you could answer it rather than dodging it.

And yes semiglutides and other similar drugs work because people don’t eat as much while they’re on them. I think they are a good thing.

Making sure I’m not dodging any more of your post… ah, yes, you are right, fat shaming and telling people to just have more willpower is not the answer. That’s like saying, “Eat less, move more.” While somewhat true, that ain’t gonna fix anything.

I think the whole bio/psyco/social/enviro theory of everything applies. Unless you change/fix/cure people’s hangups/neuroses about food, health, environment, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, then this ain’t gonna get better.

People have to be persuaded to buy it and try it. This is not instantaneous. The question is silly because it is like asking why there are any live pedestrians left to cross the street, considering cars were invented over a century ago, and drunk automobile driving was invented almost immediately afterward

[Brackish]

Also, why didn't everyone all at once get obese given the "highly palatable food"? Why has it taken so long in that environment for so many to become obese? Shouldn't the graph be essentially a Heaviside function? (I'm not sure if that pun is intentional or not...)

As far as "transmitting" obesity to your kids, I'm pretty convinced that the simplest explanation is not "genetics" per se, but rather that children tend to copy the (unhealthy) eating habits of their parents. After all it's the parents who usually buy the food and cook it for their kids. Furthermore, the eating habits tend to stay constant in adulthood: if you grew up eating fast food for every meal with your parents, it's likely you'll keep doing the same as an adult, simply because this is what your taste buds have been educated to consider tasty food. I made a (semi-serious) joke about mac'n'cheese being disgusting, but i'm sure that if my parents made mac'n'cheese for me as a little boy I'd probably like it as an adult.

Yeah, I think this is likely a better argument.

In the spirit of TacoBell (I liked the step function joke) "Why not both?"? They feed into each other. Mass availability of instant highly palatable food makes it easier to indulge in terrible habits. When donuts turned stale in 8 hours, you don't live off donuts and sweet cakes b/c constantly going to the bakery is a lot of work. When you can buy an amazing pack of donuts that last days/weeks, you have this crap around (and eatable) all the time. If you already went too often/had bad habits, the availability makes it easier to model this.

As to the step function I think it's simply that it takes time for crap habits to propagate. People who (under 1950's conditions) would be 5-10 lbs overweight (and maybe not even that given the insanely widespread smoking habits) stop smoking/smoke less and start modeling crappier behavior for their kids, but they aren't full on pod people overnight. Over time though (as pod people eating/life habits) become more standard more and more fatties are forming groups, aided and abetted by it being every easier to do this (b/c you can get infinite supplies of highly palatable crap that keeps forever).

This suggest that we need to attack at least 3 avenues: Eating Habits, Food Availability, Lifestyle (i.e. 9 hours a day of sitting followed by TV time is going to fucking kill you). I think we need to win on at least 2 of these to stem the tide, and possibly all 3. A real problem I have is balancing my vaguely libertarian beliefs with the fact that gov sugar/palatability mandates are probably a near-essential part of this.

One thing I can get fully behind without any political issues we have to fix school lunches. You simply cannot feed kids fucking terrible food that is both shit and bad for them for 13 years and then be all surprised pikachu when they eat like shit as adults. We spend way too much and get way too little. Given FdB's arguments in the Cult of Smart I'd be straight up comfortable firing 10% of teachers and a higher % of admin staff and using the money simply to provide decent food and a cleaner box to kill time in.

EDIT:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184 ... in-the-us/

I'm mostly not-joking: It looks like some good % of people went from smoking to being fatties and modeling terrible eating behavior. Now I'm wondering if you add in anti-depressant use (which also tends to make people obese) how much does less smoking + more pills explain 80% of the obesity crisis.

Yeah, again all this I think is a good take.

And amen, brother, about school lunches. It amazes me how crappy it is. My kids go to a small Montessori charter school, and they don’t have a cafeteria. The stuff they get from the district is terrible, and expensive—$3 per lunch. The breakfast is free for everyone since so many kids get free lunch, and it’s even worse—all sugar laden junk. They’ll get a boxes of raisins covered in a sugar glaze in the breakfast sometimes.

We send them with lunch everyday and spend less than $3 for both kids.

It's interesting to hear you say that. From the "other side of the fence", I see school lunches, because of the various federal mandates requiring them to meet very specific nutritional requirements, as much healthier than 90% of the stuff students have access to outside of school. To be clear - I am NOT saying what they are served is better than meals made from scratch because that would be silly. However, there are some pretty stringent requirements in place when it comes to what can and cannot be served in a public school cafeteria. For example, I used to run various clubs/activities for the middle school where I work. After those new food guidelines got put in place, it became almost impossible to run any sort of fundraiser that involved selling food products. Nothing you could purchase from any of the big box stores, short of something like apples or bananas (which aren't going to sell well for obvious reasons), was able to be sold during school hours. Heck, the "Doritos" and "Funyuns" that students can purchase as snacks from the cafeteria aren't, in my mind, anything close to the "real" ones you can buy at the store. I've tried them, and they taste like garbage in comparison.

Would I love to see school lunches go back to being made at school with locally sourced produce or even just being based on whole foods as opposed to stuff that comes in bags and just gets heated up? Heck yeah! That would be awesome. That being said, it's just not reasonable. My school system, which is a little baby one in comparison to most, has approximately 18,000 students. That's a big ask when it comes to procuring all of the food as well as finding, hiring, and retaining people that can actually cook to work in the school cafeterias for less than what you would make working at your local fast food joint.

[5hout]

It's interesting to hear you say that. From the "other side of the fence", I see school lunches, because of the various federal mandates requiring them to meet very specific nutritional requirements, as much healthier than 90% of the stuff students have access to outside of school. To be clear - I am NOT saying what they are served is better than meals made from scratch because that would be silly.

Yes, I am sure the food is healthy on a spreadsheet. So is a nutrient rich winter vegetable math (fuck you Alice Waters (this is beef grievancefrom like 20 years ago)). But, and I checked a few local HS menus to make sure I wasn't boomer-ing here, it's basically "carb + protein + a bunch of stuff 95% of kids aren't eating." For example the upcoming week at a local school is: Chicken and Rice Bowl/Chili Mac/Chicken BLT/BBQ Pull Pork/Honey Siracha Chicken Bites (each day also having a bunch of fruit/veg offerings).

My school system, which is a little baby one in comparison to most, has approximately 18,000 students. That's a big ask when it comes to procuring all of the food as well as finding, hiring, and retaining people that can actually cook to work in the school cafeterias for less than what you would make working at your local fast food joint.

I mean, TBFFFFFFFFF, I did propose a solution that fixes this objection. I'm perfectly willing to fire a bunch of teachers and admins to turn schools into safe, clean boxes to hold kids with decent food. I realize you may not agree

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

Would I love to see school lunches go back to being made at school with locally sourced produce or even just being based on whole foods as opposed to stuff that comes in bags and just gets heated up? Heck yeah! That would be awesome. That being said, it's just not reasonable. My school system, which is a little baby one in comparison to most, has approximately 18,000 students. That's a big ask when it comes to procuring all of the food as well as finding, hiring, and retaining people that can actually cook to work in the school cafeterias for less than what you would make working at your local fast food joint.

Why is that not reasonable ? It seems perfectly reasonable, it just requires money.

[alek]

It's interesting to hear you say that. From the "other side of the fence", I see school lunches, because of the various federal mandates requiring them to meet very specific nutritional requirements, as much healthier than 90% of the stuff students have access to outside of school. To be clear - I am NOT saying what they are served is better than meals made from scratch because that would be silly. However, there are some pretty stringent requirements in place when it comes to what can and cannot be served in a public school cafeteria.

I hear you. Here's part of the nutrition policy at my kids' school

"Please also note that we ask that some food items simply are never included as part of the food you send to school with your student(s):
Juice
Soda/carbonated drinks
Flavored milk
Potato/corn chips
Chocolate
Candy
Cookies/cakes
Pudding/Jell-o
Fast food"

Again, the breakfast is worse than the lunches. The breakfasts regularly contain 100% apple juice, pop tarts, those sugar coated raisins, pastries, slushies, and other similar things. It's never a hot breakfast.

The lunches are usually a little better than that, but considering the price, I find them very lacking. We've talked to the principal of the school about the food they get from the district, and she's not happy about it either. She's tried to get better quality breakfast and lunches, but the pushback she gets is, "It meets the federal requirements."

For example, I used to run various clubs/activities for the middle school where I work. After those new food guidelines got put in place, it became almost impossible to run any sort of fundraiser that involved selling food products. Nothing you could purchase from any of the big box stores, short of something like apples or bananas (which aren't going to sell well for obvious reasons), was able to be sold during school hours. Heck, the "Doritos" and "Funyuns" that students can purchase as snacks from the cafeteria aren't, in my mind, anything close to the "real" ones you can buy at the store. I've tried them, and they taste like garbage in comparison.

Would I love to see school lunches go back to being made at school with locally sourced produce or even just being based on whole foods as opposed to stuff that comes in bags and just gets heated up? Heck yeah! That would be awesome. That being said, it's just not reasonable. My school system, which is a little baby one in comparison to most, has approximately 18,000 students. That's a big ask when it comes to procuring all of the food as well as finding, hiring, and retaining people that can actually cook to work in the school cafeterias for less than what you would make working at your local fast food joint.

I think this is exactly the problem. We, society,



should be doing exactly what you think we do with respect to school food. As you know, the food served in schools sometimes constitutes the vast, vast majority of food that a student will eat that day. We should be doing better.

[alek]

People have to be persuaded to buy it and try it. This is not instantaneous.

Exactly! Thank you. I'm glad that you agree with me that it's not the food in and of itself, rather it's the choices that people make, for whatever reasons, over time, about that food.

The question is silly because it is like asking why there are any live pedestrians left to cross the street, considering cars were invented over a century ago, and drunk automobile driving was invented almost immediately afterward

Oh, nevermind. You don't get it I guess.

By the way, that's a silly analogy. A much better one, I think, is about drug use, or alcohol use. I think even @Dodge may have brought it up earlier. Once all the illicit drugs hit the streets, why didn't everyone who is susceptible to drug addiction instantly become addicted to the illicit drugs? Once alcohol hit the streets, why didn't everyone susceptible to alcoholism instantly become alcoholics?

People have to be persuaded to buy it and try it. This is not instantaneous.

So people have the option to choose, and they make choices.

The arguments being made for the food, in and of itself, causing obesity is like when those teens sued McDonald's for making them fat 20 years ago.

"I have no agency! I have no power to make my own choices! It's all their fault! It's not my responsibility! I didn't know that eating massive amounts of highly-caloric dense foods devoid of fiber and nutrients will likely cause me to over consume calories and thus gain weight!"

[mikeylikey]

considering cars were invented over a century ago, and drunk automobile driving was invented almost immediately afterward

[mikeylikey]

People have to be persuaded to buy it and try it. This is not instantaneous.

Exactly! Thank you. I'm glad that you agree with me that it's not the food in and of itself, rather it's the choices that people make, for whatever reasons, over time, about that food.

So people have the option to choose, and they make choices.

The arguments being made for the food, in and of itself, causing obesity is like when those teens sued McDonald's for making them fat 20 years ago.

This is kind of a strawman. Obviously bad food doesn't jump out from behind a shrubbery and cram itself down your throat. No one is saying that.

What I think is happening here is you aren't being very rigorous about the difference between people and "people".

The individual makes choices from the alternatives presented to him, based on a complex interplay between his conscious rational preference hierarchy and a bunch of unconscious psychological factors. These choices are not determined by the environment but they are influenced by it. Different individuals have different thresholds for how long they will continue to make the "right" choices in a shitty environment.

Now take a whole bunch of individuals and drastically change the environment in which they are making some repeated choice. What is going to happen? Of course you will observe a change in the collective decision making. That the discrete individuals in this population are personally responsible for their own choices, while technically true, us uninteresting and irrelevant to an observer looking for connections between the environment and the observed collective outcomes.

Individuals make choices, statistics don't.

Our society has gradually shifted the set of available alternatives people have with regards to their food, and that shift is a/the sine qua non cause of the obesity epidemic. Choices made within the environment are proximate cause for individual persons becoming obese.

People SHOULD drive defensively. If you go around town and remove all the stop signs, people SHOULD be careful anyway. But it would be idiotic not to expect a spate of accidents. Each individual accident might be the fault of the driver(s) but the NUMBER of accidents is the fault of the stop sign taker-awayer, no?

"I have no agency! I have no power to make my own choices! It's all their fault! It's not my responsibility! I didn't know that eating massive amounts of highly-caloric dense foods devoid of fiber and nutrients will likely cause me to over consume calories and thus gain weight!"

Again with the caricature. Nobody in this discussion has advocated a position like this.

[Brackish]

It's interesting to hear you say that. From the "other side of the fence", I see school lunches, because of the various federal mandates requiring them to meet very specific nutritional requirements, as much healthier than 90% of the stuff students have access to outside of school. To be clear - I am NOT saying what they are served is better than meals made from scratch because that would be silly.

Yes, I am sure the food is healthy on a spreadsheet. So is a nutrient rich winter vegetable math (fuck you Alice Waters (this is beef grievancefrom like 20 years ago)). But, and I checked a few local HS menus to make sure I wasn't boomer-ing here, it's basically "carb + protein + a bunch of stuff 95% of kids aren't eating." For example the upcoming week at a local school is: Chicken and Rice Bowl/Chili Mac/Chicken BLT/BBQ Pull Pork/Honey Siracha Chicken Bites (each day also having a bunch of fruit/veg offerings).

My school system, which is a little baby one in comparison to most, has approximately 18,000 students. That's a big ask when it comes to procuring all of the food as well as finding, hiring, and retaining people that can actually cook to work in the school cafeterias for less than what you would make working at your local fast food joint.

I mean, TBFFFFFFFFF, I did propose a solution that fixes this objection. I'm perfectly willing to fire a bunch of teachers and admins to turn schools into safe, clean boxes to hold kids with decent food. I realize you may not agree

You're probably correct with the information you accessed, but did you happen to look at the specific nutritional information for those mains? I guarantee you that "BBQ Pull Pork" nutritional information looks nothing like something similar you could get "on the outside". For one, any of the carbs being served are required to be whole grains, or at least a percentage of them are. Can't remember the details because it's been a while since I looked over the 6" binder (not joking) that lists all of the nutritional requirements for food(s) sold in school. In addition to the carbs being whole grain, the mains are also going to contain way less fat, added sugars, and sodium than you're going to find with "real food". That's why most of it doesn't taste all that good. I used to love school lunch pizza. The stuff they're serving today? Probably have to pay me to eat it. It tastes like tomato sauce on cardboard with a nice little coating of plastic on the top.

I mean, you can give it a shot. But I'm willing to bet that it won't quite work out like you think it will in the long run. I wish parents/community members had more opportunities to see what it's really like on a daily basis in schools these days. I think most would be in for a rude awakening. Tell you what, I'll back your fire administrators/teachers plans if you back my petition to have all adults be required to teach in a public school for a minimum of one year after they graduate from college. Deal?

[Brackish]

It's interesting to hear you say that. From the "other side of the fence", I see school lunches, because of the various federal mandates requiring them to meet very specific nutritional requirements, as much healthier than 90% of the stuff students have access to outside of school. To be clear - I am NOT saying what they are served is better than meals made from scratch because that would be silly. However, there are some pretty stringent requirements in place when it comes to what can and cannot be served in a public school cafeteria.

I hear you. Here's part of the nutrition policy at my kids' school

"Please also note that we ask that some food items simply are never included as part of the food you send to school with your student(s):
Juice
Soda/carbonated drinks
Flavored milk
Potato/corn chips
Chocolate
Candy
Cookies/cakes
Pudding/Jell-o
Fast food"

Again, the breakfast is worse than the lunches. The breakfasts regularly contain 100% apple juice, pop tarts, those sugar coated raisins, pastries, slushies, and other similar things. It's never a hot breakfast.

The lunches are usually a little better than that, but considering the price, I find them very lacking. We've talked to the principal of the school about the food they get from the district, and she's not happy about it either. She's tried to get better quality breakfast and lunches, but the pushback she gets is, "It meets the federal requirements."

For example, I used to run various clubs/activities for the middle school where I work. After those new food guidelines got put in place, it became almost impossible to run any sort of fundraiser that involved selling food products. Nothing you could purchase from any of the big box stores, short of something like apples or bananas (which aren't going to sell well for obvious reasons), was able to be sold during school hours. Heck, the "Doritos" and "Funyuns" that students can purchase as snacks from the cafeteria aren't, in my mind, anything close to the "real" ones you can buy at the store. I've tried them, and they taste like garbage in comparison.

Would I love to see school lunches go back to being made at school with locally sourced produce or even just being based on whole foods as opposed to stuff that comes in bags and just gets heated up? Heck yeah! That would be awesome. That being said, it's just not reasonable. My school system, which is a little baby one in comparison to most, has approximately 18,000 students. That's a big ask when it comes to procuring all of the food as well as finding, hiring, and retaining people that can actually cook to work in the school cafeterias for less than what you would make working at your local fast food joint.

I think this is exactly the problem. We, society, should be doing exactly what you think we do with respect to school food. As you know, the food served in schools sometimes constitutes the vast, vast majority of food that a student will eat that day. We should be doing better.

I agree 100%. Unfortunately, that would require lots and lots of money. And when it actually comes down to it, I don't think people actually care about anyone's kids other than their own. Because everyone, at least under our system, would have to foot the bill in the form of basically doubling current property taxes in order to fund something like that. I don't want to get into the whole public school thing because as a teacher and a parent, I'm aware of all of its shortcomings, and I really don't have any solutions that are workable because they would require a vast majority of people, including those without kids, to "get with the program" and decide to actually do something useful to help/fix/whatever the public school system in the U.S. Instead, everyone wants to dump a bunch of money on things that have no real bearing on the kids' day to day lives or future academic success (looking at you Common Core), which can largely be predicted based solely on where that student lives, and call it good. I hate to say it, but I'm just trying to ride out my last 14 years so I can go get a real job somewhere else.

[5hout]

I mean, you can give it a shot. But I'm willing to bet that it won't quite work out like you think it will in the long run. I wish parents/community members had more opportunities to see what it's really like on a daily basis in schools these days. I think most would be in for a rude awakening. Tell you what, I'll back your fire administrators/teachers plans if you back my petition to have all adults be required to teach in a public school for a minimum of one year after they graduate from college. Deal?

I HARD accept. IDK if you'd count my sub'ing time (1.75 years iirc, but idk how many hours? iirc something like 10k-12k net at 85/day). Holy shit do we need more community involvement in the schools. Less paid teachers, many admin staff replaced by volunteers. Parents with knowledge teaching business classes instead of completely useless fucks. Heck, let's go back to old school MSU/Land Grant and require students to volunteer their time cleaning/maintaining buildings and grounds (I think Japan does this as well, even now). 10 hours a week cleaning will shut the fuck up a lot of complaints. EVERYONE NEEDS A shitty job to remember why school/learning is important.

Dude, it's unfair to get me this excited unless you're gonna drive over and finish off what you started.

I'll check the macros thing later. That might explain part of the division between "good sounding on paper"/"complete ass tasting".

[alek]

I agree 100%. Unfortunately, that would require lots and lots of money. And when it actually comes down to it, I don't think people actually care about anyone's kids other than their own. Because everyone, at least under our system, would have to foot the bill in the form of basically doubling current property taxes in order to fund something like that. I don't want to get into the whole public school thing because as a teacher and a parent, I'm aware of all of its shortcomings, and I really don't have any solutions that are workable because they would require a vast majority of people, including those without kids, to "get with the program" and decide to actually do something useful to help/fix/whatever the public school system in the U.S. Instead, everyone wants to dump a bunch of money on things that have no real bearing on the kids' day to day lives or future academic success (looking at you Common Core), which can largely be predicted based solely on where that student lives, and call it good. I hate to say it, but I'm just trying to ride out my last 14 years so I can go get a real job somewhere else.

I'm not disagreeing with anything you say here, at all. I just wish it were different; my kids' school is supposed to be moving to a different facility, hopefully with a cafeteria, and I hope that they make their own food there.

[alek]

This is kind of a strawman. Obviously bad food doesn't jump out from behind a shrubbery and cram itself down your throat. No one is saying that.

I may be reading things differently, or my perception of what people are saying is off, but I think that's what people are saying when they blame "highly palatable food". That could totally be a blind spot for me, no doubt.

What I think is happening here is you aren't being very rigorous about the difference between people and "people".

Maybe.

The individual makes choices from the alternatives presented to him, based on a complex interplay between his conscious rational preference hierarchy and a bunch of unconscious psychological factors. These choices are not determined by the environment but they are influenced by it. Different individuals have different thresholds for how long they will continue to make the "right" choices in a shitty environment.

Now take a whole bunch of individuals and drastically change the environment in which they are making some repeated choice. What is going to happen? Of course you will observe a change in the collective decision making. That the discrete individuals in this population are personally responsible for their own choices, while technically true, us uninteresting and irrelevant to an observer looking for connections between the environment and the observed collective outcomes.

Individuals make choices, statistics don't.

Our society has gradually shifted the set of available alternatives people have with regards to their food, and that shift is a/the sine qua non cause of the obesity epidemic. Choices made within the environment are proximate cause for individual persons becoming obese.

I'm totally onboard with all of this. That's why I really like Layne's saying about it may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility.

People SHOULD drive defensively. If you go around town and remove all the stop signs, people SHOULD be careful anyway. But it would be idiotic not to expect a spate of accidents. Each individual accident might be the fault of the driver(s) but the NUMBER of accidents is the fault of the stop sign taker-awayer, no?

Now this analogy I like!

"I have no agency! I have no power to make my own choices! It's all their fault! It's not my responsibility! I didn't know that eating massive amounts of highly-caloric dense foods devoid of fiber and nutrients will likely cause me to over consume calories and thus gain weight!"

Again with the caricature. Nobody in this discussion has advocated a position like this.

I was caricaturizing(?) the teens.

[mikeylikey]

This is kind of a strawman. Obviously bad food doesn't jump out from behind a shrubbery and cram itself down your throat. No one is saying that.

I may be reading things differently, or my perception of what people are saying is off, but I think that's what people are saying when they blame "highly palatable food". That could totally be a blind spot for me, no doubt.

Unless I have been very wrong, this discussion has been about why People (plural) are fat. And Highly Palatable Food is a good candidate for the first mover, with respect to why People (plural) are fat.

Your Mom is fat because she has no self control.

Both things can be true.

[Philbert]

This is kind of a strawman. Obviously bad food doesn't jump out from behind a shrubbery and cram itself down your throat. No one is saying that.

I may be reading things differently, or my perception of what people are saying is off, but I think that's what people are saying when they blame "highly palatable food". That could totally be a blind spot for me, no doubt.

Unless I have been very wrong, this discussion has been about why People (plural) are fat. And Highly Palatable Food is a good candidate for the first mover, with respect to why People (plural) are fat.

Your Mom is fat because she has no self control.

Both things can be true.

To flesh this out a little further, your mom is fat because she has no self control, but your grandmother also has/had no self control, and was not fat when she was the age your mom is now. The difference is the type of food readily available. You also have a second cousin, with no self control, who is not fat, and the difference is genetics
And this points to what you can do if you want to be thin with no self control, like your grandmother, instead of fat with no self control, like your mom:
Change your personal food environment to look more like what your grandmother grew up in. Obviously this will require you to exercise some self control, but you should be sufficiently motivated to do so after watching your mom die a slow and miserable death as sugar loving bacteria ate her, toes first.
Nothing in this post is meant to imply anything about alek's body habitus, or any of his female relatives, specifically.

[alek]

This is kind of a strawman. Obviously bad food doesn't jump out from behind a shrubbery and cram itself down your throat. No one is saying that.

I may be reading things differently, or my perception of what people are saying is off, but I think that's what people are saying when they blame "highly palatable food". That could totally be a blind spot for me, no doubt.

Unless I have been very wrong, this discussion has been about why People (plural) are fat. And Highly Palatable Food is a good candidate for the first mover, with respect to why People (plural) are fat.

Your Mom is fat because she has no self control.

Both things can be true.

To flesh this out a little further, your mom is fat because she has no self control, but your grandmother also has/had no self control, and was not fat when she was the age your mom is now. The difference is the type of food readily available. You also have a second cousin, with no self control, who is not fat, and the difference is genetics
And this points to what you can do if you want to be thin with no self control, like your grandmother, instead of fat with no self control, like your mom:
Change your personal food environment to look more like what your grandmother grew up in. Obviously this will require you to exercise some self control, but you should be sufficiently motivated to do so after watching your mom die a slow and miserable death as sugar loving bacteria ate her, toes first.

Pretty much what I think.

Nothing in this post is meant to imply anything about alek's body habitus, or any of his female relatives, specifically.

No worries; no offense taken.

[KyleSchuant]

Would I love to see school lunches go back to being made at school with locally sourced produce or even just being based on whole foods as opposed to stuff that comes in bags and just gets heated up? Heck yeah! That would be awesome. That being said, it's just not reasonable. My school system, which is a little baby one in comparison to most, has approximately 18,000 students. That's a big ask when it comes to procuring all of the food as well as finding, hiring, and retaining people that can actually cook to work in the school cafeterias for less than what you would make working at your local fast food joint.

Japan manages it.

Parents can expect to pay around 250 yen (US$2.50) per day for kinder and elementary school students, and anywhere from around 300-450 yen ($3-$4.50) for junior high and high school.

https://www.japanesefoodguide.com/japan ... ool-lunch/
https://education.jnto.go.jp/en/school- ... e-schools/

The articles don't mention that this is means-tested, so that poor parents pay nothing. I'd also note that while the school-provided lunches are almost universal in primary schools, this drops off in high schools.

Note too that Japan spends less per capita on both health and education than does the US (or my own Australia).
US healthcare spending USD10,477 per capita, Japan 4,554, Australia 5,191
US education spending USD15,500, Japan 10,700, Australia 14,100

Japan spends less money and gets better health and education outcomes than we do in the Anglosphere. So unfortunately it's not just a matter of spending more money. In fact, if we look dispassionately at the figures, past a certain point spending more money seems to make things worse...

Note that even if Japan provided the lunches for free to the entire population not just students, at USD4.50 a day 190 days a year that'd be USD855 more. Students aren't more than a quarter of the population so it'd be more like USD200-250. I'd expect US/Australia's education and healthcare budgets to go up by more than this each year just from inflation, even if they were frozen in real terms.

We usually think spending more money is the thing to do. It's a very Anglosphere ideal. But sometimes it's a matter of spending the money better...

Obviously there'd have to be a transition period. If you're not used to good fresh fresh it'll be hard to stomach. So the culture would have to change. And just as obviously the useless administrators will resist any useful change, as they instinctively realise it'll lead to their unemployment. So it'd take time. But that's alright. The Anglosphere took fifty years to get fat, if it takes fifty years to get healthier I think we'd be doing well.

In the meantime I'll keep making my kids' school lunches.

I'm perfectly willing to fire a bunch of teachers and admins to turn schools into safe, clean boxes to hold kids with decent food. I realize you may not agree

Yes. And abolish parent-teacher association meetings, that'll save on paying some teacher overtime, give money aside for decent school lunches, and reduce teacher burnout and turnover.

EVERYONE NEEDS A shitty job to remember why school/learning is important.

And to teach them to treat people doing shitty jobs with respect.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

I think that more money might be needed, but it's how you spend it that is tricky. As far as school lunches are concerned I think one of the main problems is that subsidies by the state are allowed to be redirected to food corporations (I think its called "commodity processing") who in turn provided schools with processed foods.

Simply said: your kids are going to eat government sponsored dino nuggets.

Actually I think that the main place where money should be spend is in funding political campaigns: the moment that those campaigns stop being funded by private interests, then the rules will change. If McDonalds is funding the politicians that make the rules then you're going to eat that big mac. And you're going to love it. And your kids too. Enjoy.

Also as far as treating people with hard and/or low paying jobs (isn't it a paradox how hardest jobs always pay the lowest, anyways I digress) I've never done any such job and I've never disrespected anyone doing such a job. Simply because I was taught basic human decency by my parents. I'm pretty sure if I disrespected a fast food worker in front of them I would have earned a nice, fully deserved, tight slap. I'm not convinced that making people work such a job will improve their behavior. I'm pretty addicted to watching those horrible videos in which people freak out at fast food employees, and I've noticed that a respectable proportion of the people who freak out, throw food and hurl insults don't seem to be wealthy, white collar workers. If anything some of the people who throw sandwiches at the person behind the counter probably have worked in a similar job at one point of their life.