Obesity in America

[Al B. Sure!]

http://www.naafaonline.com/dev2/

National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance

[KrazyHorse]

Are you a member?

[DriXnaK]

He will be soon if he keeps up his "training."

[GePap]

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.

Well, total spending takes into account what is spent up the value added chain, no?

You take a few cents worth of corn and soy, process it , and make it into a few dollars worth of some microwaveable meal.

[KrazyHorse]

Well, total spending takes into account what is spent up the value added chain, no?

You take a few cents worth of corn and soy, process it , and make it into a few dollars worth of some microwaveable meal.

Uh....that is not a multiplicative process, gepap. Doubling the cost of one set of inputs doesn't double the cost of the output.

That is, unless your rules of economics work substantially differently than the ones I'm used to.

[GePap]

Uh....that is not a multiplicative process, gepap. Doubling the cost of one set of inputs doesn't double the cost of the output.

That is, unless your rules of economics work substantially differently than the ones I'm used to.

Where did I say that doubling the cost of inputs doubles the cost of outputs?

I am talking about prices at the market which consumers pay, which I assume are what is measured when they say that Americans spend a trillion on food. Take a frozen dinner that a person might pay $3.50 at the store..the cost of the agricultural inputs are a very small portion of it, and the more its based on corn and soy, the smaller that share they represent, as opposed to the cost of all the industrial inputs necessary to turn corn and soy into whatever you ended up with. My point is that we live in an agricultural system in which we flood the initial food market with a lot of stuff that is really only edible after heavy processing.

A lot of the commodity corn grown in the country is actually inedible to human beings unless you process it. That is a different system from say one of farmers producing foodstuff that could be eaten with minor preparation at home. The government subsidies and policy make a huge difference in what farmers grow, and that influences the choices made up the entire chain of processing that our food goes through before most of it gets to us. In that sense, a relatively small distortion of the market at the beginning will have an impact much larger than you might imagine once you measure the final size of the market, after you figure in all the industry that goes into our food.

[Pekka]

Finns are fat pieces of **** as well. Why? I don't know, but the cheap food is usually the bad food. Yeah, you can make good meals at home about the same price but that requires an effort. You have to learn how to cook. I think I'm a decent cook, but that's because I'm strict with the nutrition I'm getting due to health issues and especially because I don't want cancer again and diet is one of the things you can do. I've always more or less trained and have been working out, very seriously at some points of my life.

Again I'm back into it, serious work outs, but for results, it's about rest and nutrition as well. I think that the science of good health is pretty simple. However, a lot of BS is thrown around by the market of "lose weight" and "miracle diets" and whatnot. This is all pure crap. Losing weight is not difficult in terms of what one needs to do. It requires discipline and motivation and support.

As to obesity, yeah, kids get fat, they drink sodas, well these days there's sodas with no sugar and very few calories but what they have used as supplements, I don't even want to know. I'm thinking cancer again.

I think it's mostly mental. Obesity is a problem of mental lack of discipline. The schools in here go about it in ways that no kid will be interested in hearing about things. Young adults in here usually just eat pure crap because they don't have much money nor do they like to make their own real food. They just get fat.

[KrazyHorse]

Where did I say that doubling the cost of inputs doubles the cost of outputs?

I am talking about prices at the market which consumers pay, which I assume are what is measured when they say that Americans spend a trillion on food. Take a frozen dinner that a person might pay $3.50 at the store..the cost of the agricultural inputs are a very small portion of it, and the more its based on corn and soy, the smaller that share they represent, as opposed to the cost of all the industrial inputs necessary to turn corn and soy into whatever you ended up with. My point is that we live in an agricultural system in which we flood the initial food market with a lot of stuff that is really only edible after heavy processing.

A lot of the commodity corn grown in the country is actually inedible to human beings unless you process it. That is a different system from say one of farmers producing foodstuff that could be eaten with minor preparation at home. The government subsidies and policy make a huge difference in what farmers grow, and that influences the choices made up the entire chain of processing that our food goes through before most of it gets to us. In that sense, a relatively small distortion of the market at the beginning will have an impact much larger than you might imagine once you measure the final size of the market, after you figure in all the industry that goes into our food.

Good God. Stop trying to comment on economic issues when you're unable or unwilling to apply even the smallest amount of critical thought to what you say.

If raw inputs are only a small part of the final cost of food then relatively large changes in the costs of the raw inputs will provide small changes to the final cost of outputs, and will likely provide a small distortion in the choices consumers make.

If the unsubsidized corn in a soft drink costs 2 cents while the subsidized corn costs 1 cent then the difference in final price is STILL only 1 cent.

[Al B. Sure!]

Sorry, Gepap but it only takes a quick google search to see the research that indicates the subsidies do not have a significant role in propagating obesity.

[Arrian]

Sage advice from His Rushness:

What have I told you about diet and exercise? Exercise is irrelevant.... "How do you know all this?" One of the reasons I know what I know is that I know liberals, and I know liberals lie, and if Michelle Obama's gonna be out there ripping into "food desserts" and saying, "This is why people are fat," I know it's not true. "Rush, do you really believe that? It's that simple to you, liberals lie?" Yes, it is, folks. Once you learn that, once you come to grips with that, once you accept that, the rest is easy. Very, very simple. Now, my doctor has never told me to restrict any intake of salt, but if he did, I wouldn't. I'd just spend more time in the steam or the sauna sweating it out.

FACT!

-Arrian

[Lorizael]

Wow.

[DriXnaK]

Actually, exercise isn't necessarily irrelevant, but compared to diet it's small time. Exercise is really nothing more than a way to achieve a goal: i.e. increasing strength, increasing muscle mass, increasing stamina, etc. If you're looking to lose weight and decrease your body fat percentage, diet is 90% of the equation. All exercise does is help to increase your caloric deficit and keep you healthier. The reality is you can get a low body fat percentage without ever even stepping into a gym. It's not necessarily healthy, but it's completely doable. Exercising allows you to eat more without going over your calorie deficit and it allows you to accomplish physical goals, whatever they may be. So in that sense, he's not really wrong if that was what he was going for.

[Al B. Sure!]

What about people with more muscle mass burn more calories with the same activity level?

[DriXnaK]

Well in your case Al B, since you have none, that's not an issue for you. Also, I said diet is 90%. That means there's a 10% there that exercise contributes to. Furthermore, the extra calories you burn with more muscle mass is completely negligible compared to diet.

[giblets]

I think what Rush was saying was more along the lines of "everything liberals say is a lie". Now we just need a liberal who says he's right.