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Comment by silicon2401 | Hacker News Reader

That's a condescending and unfounded response. Some people can take heroin and not have issues, but that doesn't make heroin safe by any means. You're in a small minority of Americans and not representative of the average person.

> The organization estimates that 3/4 of the American population will likely be overweight or obese by 2020.[13] According to research done by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, it is estimated that around 40% of Americans are considered obese, and 18% are considered severely obese as of 2019. Severe obesity is defined as a BMI over 35 in the study. Their projections say that about half of the US population (48.9%) will be considered obese and nearly 1 in 4 (24.2%) will be considered severely obese by the year 2030.[14][15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States

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Americans aren't fat because of Starbucks and McDonalds. Those things are just food. Americans are fat because they eat too many calories and don't get enough exercise: https://www.businessinsider.com/daily-calories-americans-eat...

At age 2-3, my parents fed me traditional Bangladeshi meals of chicken or beef curry stewed in heavy amounts of canola oil. My 2 year old, meanwhile, lives on McDonald's chicken nuggets. There's no way the former is better for you than the latter.

That traditional bangladeshi meal doesn't sound like it's loaded with sugar like a lot of starbucks and mcdonalds, which is one distinct difference. another major difference is that the traditional bangladeshi meal sounds full of fiber and nutrients, which is also very different from a lot of starbucks and mcdonalds food.

If you're a robot with 100% dietary discipline, yes you can maintain the same weight whether you're eating purely lettuce, potato chips, or curry. But the average human will have a harder time sticking to their proper calories if they subsist on high-sugar, low-fiber, low-nutrient fast food compared to bangladeshi curry. I'm not talking about theory, I'm talking about real-life humans, and as evidence for my statement you can read the wikipedia page I linked containing data about the prevalence of overweightness and obesity in the US.

Where did the food that your parents gave you come from?

There is no simple reason for WHY people in the US overeat and underexercise. But one facet involves the disruption of rituals and tradition around food. It's still progress by some means that a mother doesn't need to spend as many hours preparing meals for a household, and can instead e.g. work. But I believe we should generally dial back a bit how convenient and neutral it has become to eat. We're quite disconnected from our food.

Speaking of rituals and tradition around food, the portion control at a place like McDonalds is probably way better than meals served in many American homes. When I was growing up, it didn't matter if I was full, I wasn't leaving the dinner table until I 'cleaned my plate'. It took a while to unlearn that.

So much of American attitudes toward food are a result of our last great famine -- the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Back then, parents made their children "clean their plate" because tomorrow there may be no food at all.

This also extends to our fondness for processed food. Processed food may be bad for you, but it's easier to store and ship, keeps for longer, and tastes better when it reaches your plate. It provided greater food security at a time when massive crop loss still loomed in recent memory.

> Americans aren't fat because of Starbucks and McDonalds. Those things are just food. Americans are fat because they eat too many calories

Food is made out of calories, though...?

I agree that there is an obesity problem (although I am not an American), but I am not so sure that demonizing french fries, Chicken McNuggets and hot chocolate from age 4 will have the desired effect.

E, to answer the question below: because my personal experience from being a child and caring for a child is that anything that is demonized by the parents becomes extremely attractive.

Why do you think that?

My anecdotal experience is the same as well. Stingy parents have led to a lot of spending from kid as they become young adults with moeny for the first time.

Anecdote: My son had a close friend growing up whose parents didn't allow candy in the house. Every time a friend's birthday party came around, he would eat himself sick on sweets.

Eventually he learned some restraint but there was a solid 5-6 years there where my son's friend could not be around sweets without ruining his day. Better education combined with a bit of modeling moderation by his parents, might have saved him a lot of miserable evenings.

Demonizing those foods (demonize sounds intense) helps build healthy eating habits instead defaulting to fast food.

In response to your edit, there's a lot of gray space between demonizing and letting kids have at it. I was raised on homemade, simple foods and despite loving junk food, I have no problem eating healthy stuff because that's how I was raised. If anything, certain junk food was encouraged, but because the focus was always on a traditional understanding of healthy foods, it was easy to adapt as my personal understanding of "healthy" changed. So we shouldn't demonize anything, but we should definitely teach kids that there's not really any benefit to junk food; if you really have to eat it, make it a treat once in a while but learn to appreciate healthy options.

@rayiner: what a weird thing to say. Are you saying that all foods are equal, that the way you eat doesn't affect your health, thinking and environment in any substantial way?

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