Obesity in America

[KrazyHorse]

Since you and albie are both unemployed, why don't you fly up to visit him? Imagine that first moment as your eyes meet in the arrivals section of PHL...

[KrazyHorse]

What excuses? Doesn't mean much from a guy that can't even post his pic. I simply stated a fact.

Again: I've posted my pic on numerous occasions, and others have also posted my pic. Asher himself declared me 100% free of gayface. Now, stop trying to shift the attention onto others and off your soft, delicate features...

[DriXnaK]

I'm going to assume this is your attempt at wit. I might take you a little more seriously if you could at least come up with your own insults instead of regurgitating insults that Asher came up with over a month ago. Apparently originality isn't your thing. Post it and lets see.

[KrazyHorse]

Look, let's check the facts:

FACT: you have a confirmed case of gayface
FACT: I do not
FACT: you eat soylent green 4 times a day and soylent red once
FACT: I eat the best food that Manhattan's finest restaurants have to offer
FACT: the endless back-and-forth between albie and yourself is merely to determine who gets to bottom when you meet up
FACT: I have an illegitimate black baby. You know him as Mr. T

[Dinner]

How did I know DriX was unemployed after reading just a few of his posts? I'm sure I'm not the only one who guessed that one correctly.

[GePap]

The OP is nonsense, though the government does in fact play a huge role in the food system, by subsidizing cheap food. Without vast subsidies, much less corn would be grown in this country, as many farmers today grow corn at a price of production higher than what they get on the market, with a government check making up the difference. Corn is the main sugar source in the country (The US protects the American sugar industry, so white cane sugar is actually more expensive in the US than it should be). We also subsidize cheap protein from soy, and have regulations that allow for cheap mass produced meat by allowing for those mass animal feeding centers, which are some of the main consumers of that cheap corn and soy. We should not forget that this government policy of subsidizing cheap calories has allowed Americans to cut the percentage of their income that is spent on food significantly.

Our sedentary lifestyle, particularly the fact that you can do almost everything out of your car now, is crucial to understanding why so many Americans are fat, but the fact that the most economical food out there is also very high in calories is also a significant fact. For the poor, buying cheap food is important, and the cheapest things to buy in any supermarket, in terms of caloric bang for your buck, are the products made with that cheap corn and soy.

The market is flooded with cheap corn and soy, and then cheap meat fed on that cheap corn and soy. For companies to continue to make a profit in that environment, they either need find ways to have paying consumers (not poor people around the world without cash) consume more and more of the stuff, but there is only so much food that human beings can actually consume in a day- portion size at fast food restaurants has exploded, but there are limits to how big you can make the fries and soft drinks before people just walk away. So the other thing to do is move that corn and soy up the value-added chain by turning it into "meals", processed food-stuffs that are convenient, tasty, and allow you to charge far more than just trying to push the basic ingredients.

If the government stopped subsidizing cheap calories, I do think that the food system would change in ways that would help stem greater obesity, but the reality is that this would also mean that people would have to go back to spending larger portions of their disposable income on food, which of course will draw away money from other parts of the economy. Perhaps the case can be made, as so do, that our modern food system is tied to the inflation of health care costs, so that while people spend less of their income on food now due to cheap calories, the true costs of that is higher incidences of chronic disease, which means we more than pay for it by having to spend more and more on medicine to treat the effects of our cheap food.

[KrazyHorse]

We also subsidize cheap protein from soy, and have regulations that allow for cheap mass produced meat by allowing for those mass animal feeding centers

???

This is an interesting use of the term "subsidize"

[KrazyHorse]

Agro subsidies are of course bad, but their effect on obesity is disputable. Total subsidies excluding corn ethanol subsidies are 5-10 billion a year in the US. Total food spending in the US is 1-2 trillion a year.

There is a question of how much in the way of a distortion the agro subsidies cause in a market so much larger than the scale of the subsidies.

[DriXnaK]

If the OP was nonsense why did your entire post deal with government subsidies? Furthermore, KH is right, subsidies only have so much of an effect. To blame everything on subsidies and a more sedentary lifestyle is ridiculous. Yes, corn sugar/syrup added into food is a huge issue due to the exaggerated effect that it has on insulin. That being said, you can eat like **** and if you manage your calories correctly and work out you will still maintain a healthy body weight. That's not to say that that kind of living is healthy, but it doesn't support your theory that the main contributor is subsidies.

Furthermore, why do Americans have such a sedentary lifestyle in the first place? Go back to the OP where I talk about schools and the total lack of physical education now. Kids these days don't even know how to do a push up. Even if you took cars out of the picture and made people walk to work, you would barely dent obesity at all. If you don't dedicate a portion of the day to intense physical exertion, or have a strict caloric regiment, you're going to get fat. I'll say it again, much of the habits in terms of diet and exercise are a result of the public school system. It doesn't demand from students physically or mentally. Combine that with poor parenting and it's no wonder we have a crisis on our hands.

[giblets]

Americans generally have sedentary jobs, so their lives are sedentary by default. Sedentary forms of entertainment have vastly improved in recent decades. People generally pick what's best for themselves, so if they love eating and hate exercise and don't need to perform manual labor for a living they'll get fat. I guess we could try brainwashing people into loving exercise and hating junk food for their own good. Top down social engineering, that's how we'll defeat the socialists.

[DriXnaK]

All of which can be remedied with proper education early on in life and a culture that holds overweight people in disdain. It's ok to hate smokers, why not fat people too? Fat people are a drag on society.

[giblets]

Fat people are already looked down upon and feel bad about being fat. Mission accomplished.

[DriXnaK]

Obviously not since they're still fat. It's not culturally acceptable yet to call someone fat in public.

[giblets]

Send them to camps, sentence them to forced labor and put them on starvation diets.

[Kuciwalker]

All of which can be remedied with proper education early on in life and a culture that holds overweight people in disdain.

That is, of course, exactly what gribbler said in #115.