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Comment by Hnrobert42 | Hacker News Reader

The US obesity epidemic probably has more to do with the sugar content of processed foods than with laziness. As you note, people in general are lazy. Vietnam has the lowest rate of adult obesity yet is the 8th most sedentary population in the world.

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Agreed. I'm of the belief that Americans aren't obese because they're lazy or because they're gluttons; instead, I believe it's the food that's killing us. Processed food especially.

When I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, I had to switch to a low-cab diet (which cut out a huge swath of processed foods), and I dropped from 170 lbs. to 150 lbs. in a few weeks. And I wasn't trying to lose weight—it just came off.

> Vietnam has the lowest rate of adult obesity yet is the 8th most sedentary population in the world.

I'd like to see a citation for this claim and how it was measured. People in Vietnam seemed much more up and active than people in America and they're much slimmer despite drinks there being sweeter than pure syrup in America.

Here's a link to similar https://saigoneer.com/vietnam-news/10653-vietnam-among-the-m...

I was a little skeptical myself. "data from the step-counting app Azumio Argus" - they counted steps. I can see how they might walk less as everyone gets around by motor scooter there which often involves less walking that using a car as you can normally park the thing at your destination rather than schlepping around looking for a car park. But I wouldn't really call them sedentary - they are quite a hard working bunch on average.

thats nonsense. The slimmest and fittest I ever was, was when I ate the most processed food in my life. I was cycling from my hometown in bavaria to nice in france. So I just had to eat all this garbage from the supermarket but it got burned immediatly. Funny that he gets downvoted he expressed his point in a very friendly way. I will just say it plainly: fat people are lazy. thats the reason they are fat. You can eat as much sugar and refined food as you want as long as you move around enough.

> fat people are lazy. thats the reason they are fat.

Probably, but not vice versa (I'm not). So you need to be lazy and eat a lot of garbage to become obese.

haha lol you are right. its just one of the reasons.

try not being lazy when your hormone system has been fried with food that is literally illegal to sell in Europe, from early childhood;

https://www.thedailymeal.com/travel/american-foods-banned-ot...

or being told that common healthy foods we enjoy in Europe, Australia etc are dangerous and to be avoided;

https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/oysters-and-vib...

so the government is responsible that you are fat? that sounds like an excuse lol

Age is also a factor -- when I was younger I could eat two large pizzas at one point without a problem. Now a couple slices and I feel like junk. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I find the sugar argument to be a strawman.

Maybe ignorance/functional illiteracy of knowing how to read a nutritional label is a slightly more sound argument. Food deserts are a legitimate issue too. However, simply not caring is quite prevalent.

It's also legitimately hard to find foods without mass amounts of sugar. Just look at spaghetti sauce. Sugar is everywhere.

I come from a family that was borderline of the definition of "extreme poverty" within the U.S.

This is a really poor argument.

Aldi spaghetti sauces have ~10g sugars compared to a bottle of coke having ~65g sugars. Look into how many people are using Aldi's spaghetti sauces vs how many people are guzzling coke.

Is over sugarized shit literally everywhere in the U.S.? Yes.

Can you genuinely not find anything without? No.

It is not hard. It's really, really not. As somebody else mentioned, lobbying in the U.S. e.g. the Food Pyramid was an obvious disaster that did nothing good for the situation.

However, that can't be a coverall excuse.

I think the problem is the amount of processed carbs rather than sugar on its own. Sugar is addictive but not in the concentration you'd get in a pasta sauce (in a can I assume).

IIRC most western countries are vastly over-caloried, and have a roughly inverse relationship between BMI and income too.

Processed carbohydrates are harmful, however sugar is particularly harmful in its effects on the hormonal system, insulin resistance, concentration, dental decay (and tooth growth in children), psychology of child, irratibility etc. Humans are simply not designed to consume such vast amounts of industrial grade sugar in such quantities.

You can literally throw sugar canes into a juicing machine and it has less sugar content than a can of coca cola

Have any good reads (articles/books) on the harmfulness of sugar? It sounds interesting to read about, but Google gives a billion results.

Here are some more mainstream sources. All "official" output on these subjects are heavily regulated and lobbied by corporate interests however. Further problem is that western culture is far too heavily empirical, whereas axiomatic/rationalist viewpoints on nutrition are often true and logical - it's just that nobody has paid the $$$ to "prove" them in a non-replicable study. However, my axiomatic broscience is frowned upon in the empiricist cult of the silicon valley so I have only linked to fairly establishment sources here. Still good for the basics

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/tooth-decay/

"Tooth decay is damage to a tooth caused by dental plaque turning sugars into acid."

https://www.nhs.uk/change4life/food-facts/sugar

https://www.health.com/condition/type-2-diabetes/high-blood-...

The problem here is broken nutritional epistemology and lack of education. Remember that as recently as the early 1970s, it was broadly promoted, almost as a nootropic. In my home town in Australia it was common to add spoonfuls of sugar over breakfast cereal, Nutella and Milo (chocolate milk drink) were promoted as healthy sports foods for children, and a tablespoon of sugar (I know!!) was promoted as a good way to fix hiccups. My mother was ostracised by the other mothers at my school (in the early 00's, not the 70s) for not giving me Nutella, Chocolates, Lollies etc in my lunch.

I'm not making excuses here - it's more that unless you come from a privileged or niche background, especially before the internet, you would think this is normal. Imagine as a woman going to your GP doctor for a checkup in the 1980s and having them suggest you start eating spoonfuls of pure refined white sugar to help you control your appetite. Similar modern examples include the popularity of "Bubble tea" which should almost be regarded as a poison

It's not that its hard to find non-sugar food - it's hard to KNOW that's what you're meant to do, even in the most educated first world countries.

https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/19710510.jpe...

What’s so bad about bubble tea? Never had it, but I thought it was just iced tea with some starch in.

It's pretty sweet and the bubbles are starchy I think (tapioca?), but not an expert.

It's not the bubbles themselves, just that oftentimes they're loaded with added sugar and other sweeteners.

It's irrelevant that a bottle of coke has more here. My argument is even if you're being good and skipping candy/soda...etc that just the normal food you eat is loaded with the stuff. White bread, most cereal, sauces...goes on and on. There are items without it, but it's more expensive and certainly hard to say no to the sugary stuff even when we knows it's bad.

I'll cede that I misspoke when I said it couldn't be found at all, but it certainly takes more effort.

Exactly, this is why I really really hate it when people say "Poor people should cook themselves" as if they wouldn't if they had the time or energy to. If you work minimum wage all day, especially with kids, cooking from scratch is a chore and a half.

The stuff you buy off the shelves is either cheap or healthy, rarely both.

It is not just Sugar, it's also the fact that most Americans live on a diet full of industrially refined sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil, strange chemical preservatives, flavouring agents, artificial sweeteners to avoid the sugar, and "no fat' products that achieve this in strange way. For instance,

It's further complicated by the fact that there is no functional epistemology of nutrition in the US; previous attempts to create one such as the "Food Pyramid" were heavily financed by food lobbying groups and are now distrusted. This leads to things like people deciding that carbohydrates are universally bad because removing deep fried potatos from their diet makes them feel better; or people swearing by vegetarianism because for the first time since childhood they stopped eating "Meat.jpg" like you find in hotdogs etc. Or people swearing by low fat diets because they stopped eating icecream deep fried in margarine.

There is also no underlying national food tradition; I live in South East Asia and in this country there is a strong tradition of eating steamed rice and steamed chicken as a staple food, as well as steamed eggs and seafood (shellfish, pan fried fish,etc) This means that with no nutritional knowledge the diet here is considerably better than the average person in the US.

Don't take my word for it (how bad sugar is). Go to an expert: Dr. Robert Lustig, Endocrinologist at UCSF. "Sugar, the Bitter Truth" [0]. He'll describe the metabolic pathways of sugar. Key take-away: fructose is processed by the liver, and much of its calories is turned to fat.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

It can be hard to avoid though especially in the US. I was amazed at the difficulty there of just getting a loaf of bread without sugar mixed in. In Europe they don't usually have sugar.

The sugar in American bread is ostensibly to allow yeast to ferment quicker than they would on flour alone, to impart bread-y flavors, not for sweetness. This shortens processing time.

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