Hacker News Reader

Comment by safety1st | Hacker News Reader

Applying Occam's Razor I think the main contributor for most people is probably American portion sizes. The average American eats around 3,600 calories per day, more than any other country, and way more than they need (2000-2500 unless you're regularly doing strenuous physical activity). Anecdotally a meal in America is just way bigger than in most other countries I've visited or lived in. Once you get accustomed to the larger portion size it's hard to dial it back down.

We don't need a complicated explanation, the simple factual explanation for Americans being the fattest people in the world is, they eat more calories than anyone else.

View on HN

> Applying Occam's Razor I think the main contributor for most people is probably American portion sizes.

That's not an answer, though. Or at least not a root cause.

Why are American portion sizes bigger?

Why do I need to eat more American food to be satiated?

In China, I'm regularly taken out to banquets, where people stuff themselves until they can't eat anymore. I do too. I still lose weight. Other places, we feast too. I'm then full for a long time.

In the US, I'm back to hunger pangs a lot more quickly.

Not sure about your individual situation, but I bet American businesses are better at engineering satiety than Chinese ones, because they've had more time to apply more expertise to it.

What does it mean to engineer satiety? An example is Doritos, they are a food which has been very effectively engineered to compel more consumption without making you full. More consumption and less satiety equals more revenue. Lots of American junk food is engineered with this principle in mind.

A roast duck with some rice and vegetables or something at a banquet will have much better satiety per calorie than Doritos and Hot Pockets, or most typical fast food meals, probably even fast casual meals etc.

In theory, I knew all of that... but I never quite put two and two together.

That's very insightful.

What I don't quite understand, though, is the lack of satiety even from American food not engineered like this. There's a big difference between basic foods like meats and vegetables between the industrial crops of the US and ones from local farms in less industrialized countries.

My hypothesis -- with zero evidence -- is that industrial foods are lower on some nutrient my body needs, and my body wants to eat to get enough.

Try a multivitamin perhaps?

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conserv...

Protein is notably declining across staples. Protein is not substitutable like carbohydrates. Meaning that your body will trigger you to eat until you get enough protein. Conversely, if you have an abundance of protein and the various micronutrients or vitamins your body can happily convert protein to carbohydrates via ketogenesis. One can subsist on a nearly complete protein diet so long as nutrient deficiencies causing diseases like scurvy are addressed. The same is not true of fat or carbs.

This is my observation as well. I lived for a few years with one of the lowest obesity rates in the world - Vietnam. The diet isn't necessarily that much more healthy - it's super carb heavy.

But portion sizes are very small. Workers doing heavy construction work will have a large bowl of pho for lunch. That's like 400-500 calories. They are super lean and muscular.

Vietnamese ppl can carry a lot of abdominal fat--visceral fat especially. bmi can be misleading for these people. and a lot of big stomachs there too. the thin limbs and short statures can create the false illusion of thinness

You can easily tell that’s there’s something wrong with that 3,600 calorie per day number.

3,600 calories per day is the maintenance weight for 350lbs man who exercises 1-3 days per week.

Depending on distributions there’s some wiggle room, but if the average calorie consumption were anywhere near that high you’d expect to be average weight to be about 150 lbs more than it is.

The body will metabolize the extra calories _for some time_, but eventually it will run out of coping mechanisms and it will give up, resulting in going up to 350lbs

That's why kids who grow up eating unhealthy can look healthy for a while, but eventually they look like their parents. And once the body is out of buffer, any extra calory goes straight into storage

If you eat more than your maintenance weight, you’ll gain weight. There’s not a long term coping period.

Basal metabolic rate does go down with age, but basal metabolic rate and total energy expenditure are mostly stable between 20-60. The basal metabolic rate of a 60 year old is about 120 calories less than that of a 20 year old. And actual maintenance calories are 200-300 lower for people with low to moderate exercise.

What happened is that the kid is either eating more, or is exercising less.

A normal 20 year old who isn’t an exercising a significant amount can’t regularly eat 3600 calories and maintain a healthy weight. That is to say, the average 20 year old with a healthy BMI who exercises 1-3 times per week will gain somewhere around 2 lbs per week eating 3600 calorie per day. They’ll gain less over time if they don’t start eating more as they get closer to 350lbs because their maintenance weight will go up.

also, metabolism and genes play a role, the latter which determines the former. people with good genes can increase metabolism to keep weight the same despite eating a lot more than needed, without becoming obese.

Biology is certainly a factor. BMR varies between individuals (even of the same weight and body composition). However it’s probably a smaller factor than the genetic influence on hunger and satiety.

And despite individual variation in BMR, I haven’t heard any evidence that some people have the ability to significantly ramp up their metabolism in response to consuming more calories.

obesity is common elsewhere too. not just an American problem; it is even common in Nigeria now. also even people with normal BMI can still have a lot of abdominal fat, as sometimes seen in south and east Asia.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com