Conspiracy Theories

[benji]

Mild rant, but sometimes I feel like the United States is rigged against people who want to eat healthy/lose weight

Obviously, we all have access to healthier food options, but it does seem like our country really pushes, promotes and markets food that doesn’t satisfy you, and isn’t nutrient dense, so you just feel like you need to eat more because you never feel full.

Also eating healthy here is kind of a privilege because fruits and vegetables are not cheap and they don’t often last very long in the refrigerator so you have to keep buying them.

I’ve even noticed criticism when I started eating healthier and trying to reduce my portion sizes, eating fruits and vegetables and chicken and really trying to reduce my sugar intake. A lot of people didn’t see this as a normal way to eat, but rather an “extreme” way to eat. Anyway, I know there’s not really a question in here it’s just something that I’ve been thinking about and wondered how others feel.

Yes this is a whole public health issue. It’s great to see people finally waking up to this. For so long it’s been labelled as an individual problem, which of course our own responsibility plays a part in it but when you’re constantly bombarded in a system that’s actively working against you it makes it extremely hard. I wish more people would understand what Social determinants of health are. It really explains this and other problems in our world as well. How our physical environments, income, education, social environments plays a HUGE role in our health outcomes.

I also learned recently that newer/better refrigerators keep produce fresh longer. Yet another way that having more money makes it easier to be healthy (and in the long run, also saves you money).

I just hate how it feels like such an inconvenience to eat healthy. Not even just an inconvenience to yourself, but to everyone else. I was committing myself to cutting back on sugar and carbs, and I was going to eat over at a friend's house while her parents were in town. They asked if I ate something (don't remember what it was) and I told them that I wasn't keen on breaking my good streak of eating healthier, but I still wanted to hang out. The whole time I was there, her Mom was all passive aggressive and cold with me about the dinner. I even brought over some stuff to make some kabobs and offered to get/cook some for everyone else. And yes, I told them I would do this before coming as not to infringe on their meal plan.

Pepsi apparently was really pushing Mountain Dew in some of the poorer areas of the states (it has twice as much sugar as Coca-Cola apparently) and when this film was made, all of these kids (like Larry in the clip) basically ended up with really rotten teeth before they turned 15. Babies were being fed Mountain Dew in bottles. There's a community dentist who has an RV (funded by Pepsi after he appealed for them to do something) trying to help them, but Pepsi won't stop marketing to the community or provide funding for education on sugar consumption.

It's totally abhorrent and literally criminal that food companies are allowed to get away with this.

I took a class on the ethics of food in college and they explained that obesity is extremely common in lower-income areas here in the US because there literally isn’t healthy food available. Plus, fast/processed food can be cheaper than buying meat & produce & takes less time, and time is extremely valuable to people who have to work long hours or do manual labor. A documentary we watched for the class was A Place At The Table (free on youtube) & i do think it’s worth a watch

Sometimes? Try all the time. Our entire system is based on the idea of getting you addicted to something then taking all your money for it. Food tastes so good because they want you to over-consume. They get all your money and if the price is your life, meh. They don't care.

I don't think "they hate us". They don't care. There is just way more money to be made in a society that consumes more and more. And when you have giant corporations running advertising, lobbying, etc.. the cards are stacked against you for sure.

Unlike overweight people, food companies need to grow. Their investors insist on it to the tune of at least 4% annually or more. That means they have to sell more to customers, and there's no better customer than an addict. So they advertise with food porn, they pump the "craveability" of their products. They also lobby for looser food standards, they create messaging to attack competing (healthier) food interests.

It's all because they have to grow. Who knows, your 401K or pension fund may be tied up with these folks. But it just requires extra vigilance and personal fact-finding to overcome all this to regain and maintain your health.

I agree it’s 100% possible to eat healthy here but there are a lot of ifs-

-If you don’t live in a food dessert which is surprisingly common in this country -If you can afford fresh produce and meats which are definitely more expensive than say ramen and and boxed Mac and cheese - both of which will feed a full meal to you for less than a dollar and less than 10 minutes of prep, I’m not sure I could get much more than a single banana for a dollar where I live -If you have a solid education on or understanding of nutrition -If you have enough time in your day to prepare non-processed food

That is where the deck is stacked against Americans - especially poor Americans - making OPs claim pretty accurate.

Remember that pretty much every living adult grew up in this food environment. Is it truly a choice if this is the only culture you’ve ever known? We’re multiple generations into this shit now.

Last time I was in East & SE Asia to visit family, it felt like all we did was eat and I shockingly LOST weight. But we ate very little that was processed and even the rare meal at an international fast food chain tasted fresher. We walked a lot and grazed more instead of having large meals that tend to make you sedentary afterwards. Amongst my friends who do a lot of international traveling, we've even noticed that bread overseas doesn't give us issues like it does here. Whether that's because glycophosphates are restricted in a lot of the EU & Asia or the fact bread tends to be made slower instead of with rapid rise yeasts and conditioners, so that the enzymes have a chance to breakdown problematic proteins. Who knows? All I know is across the board, we all experience a reduction in gastric distress and/or sinus issues when eating bread overseas. American mass-produced bread is an atrocity. My BF used to camp in the in-field of a NASCAR race twice a year with his boys, spring and fall. A package of hamburger buns was forgotten in a cabinet after the spring race. They sat in that RV the rest of spring, all summer, and until right before Halloween. Not a spec of mold, they didn't harden, and they otherwise appeared as fresh as the day they were bought.

Our food system was perverted by WWI and WWII. Chemicals used in warfare became pesticides and herbicides. The loss of thousands of able-bodied men made the rise of ever larger farm machinery necessary and the factories were already prepared to make huge equipment after making war machines. Plus long before the US entered both wars, we were feeding everyone at home and abroad. Figuring out how to preserve food to send to the frontlines became the basis of our shelf-stable and hyper-palatable processed foods. If you watch "The Food That Made America" series you find out things like Cheetos are a direct result of wartime food production, or at least the excesses of it.

Tinfoil hat time: I'm convinced we are being farmed for our illnesses. Healthcare is ~18% of the GDP. 90% of those expenditures are chronic health care issues like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. There is ZERO financial benefit for corporations and the government if people start eating better and stay healthy. They need us all the stay just this side of the grave and using as much medication and services as they can squeeze out of us to keep those stock prices up and the tax revenue rolling in.

USA seems to have something in their food supply that makes people sick. Whenever I'm online I hear people talking about difficult to lose weight because of their pcos, adhd etc. Either people don't have these as much as in the rest of the world or something is in the food because people don't grow to 500 lbs elsewhere (except countries that heavily import food like Samoa). Between the food supply, the love of cheese and being car centric, it's an uphill battle. That CAN be won but it's harder than it should be.

Responding to your "tinfoil hat time": What's your take on those new weight loss drugs? After all they 1) lower people's appetite (therefore overall consumption) and 2) will reduce incidence of weight related diseases with negative impact on pharma's sales.

It absolutely is rigged. You’re not imagining that. While in other societies the food is already reasonably healthy and reasonably inexpensive, ours is packed with unnecessary sugars, dyes, preservatives, and the government subsidizes the least healthy food to make it more affordable.

In other countries you can walk to most of your basic needs. That’s simply not a thing in 90% of America. You have to tack on extra time in the day to exert excess calories (go to the gym) which is really insane when you think about it.

And that gets to my last point: time. Americans are chronically stressed and overworked. Beyond the issues of lack of paid vacation, sick time, or parental leave, we also work very long hours with long commutes. It makes it extremely difficult to cook healthy food when you get home, and bring healthy food with you to work. We also don’t generally get lunch breaks.

All of this creates a society where the default is obesity. You have to do extra work and use up your precious free time to actively do things to avoid obesity. Other countries are not like this.

This is why my husband and I are not living in the US when we retire. We’ve been traveling the world together for 10 years, and there’s not a lazier, unhealthier country in the world. Junk food and chemicals are everywhere and we don’t have pedestrian friendly cities. The Blue Zones show on Netflix explains it all.

i agree! everything here seems designed to keep us unhealthy and overweight. Would not be surprised if it’s by design, healthcare industry and diet industry make billions off treatment

Because being unhealthy generates more money for corporations and all this country seems to care about is profit.

Sugar sells. Preservatives help sell sugar for cheaper. America=capitalism. Capitalism will kill us all. So yes. America is rigged against us being healthy.

It is. The US has been intentionally carved up so you don't know your neighbors, are scared to go out and walking is a bad word. The food is high calorie and low nutrition and those that eat decently are chastised. Its time to take back your society.

The United States is rigged against many, many good things. All in the name of Capitalism.

At the very bottom of the page I found this abhorrent disinformation:

Well, yes, you do have to keep buying fresh fruits and vegetables. They’re fresh. And odds are, they keep longer with refrigeration. That’s going to be true anywhere in the world.