It's hard to find "fit" people anymore. Walking around some grocery stores is mind blowing. I honestly feel bad for people. The "food" we have is shit and life is getting busier and busier.
Something I haven't seen other commenters bring up that can have a huge impact, is the overall lifestyles people are living.
The unhealthiest years of my life were when I was working 2 jobs and struggling to keep a roof over mine and my 3 kids heads. Stress and depression were huge problems and money was tight, so sometimes the little bit of dopamine or serotonin from eating a "treat" were the highlights of the day. Add to that, the guilt of not being around to cook regular meals for my kids lead to 1) making large amounts of food on my one day off that could be eaten as leftovers throughout the week or 2) easy convenience foods (frozen pizzas, boxed Mac and cheese, etc) that the kids could make when I wasn't around.
Fast forward many years - my kids are adults taking care of themselves and I'm down to 1 good job that offers financial stability. My diet and health have completely changed. I actually have the time and energy to cook and plan better.
I'm not saying this to shift blame or responsibility, but to bring a different experience. When I hear (hopefully well meaning) people suggest "just cook healthier meals" it strikes me about the same as "stop eating avocado toast and you could afford a house."
Lack of free time to cook healthy food with a busier and more expensive life with salary raises that don't keep up with inflation or layoffs for many people definitely doesn't help. Healthy food ends up costing twice as much, if not more than unhealthy food. It's a multi-faceted problem and should be treated as such.
I don't think healthy food is necessarily more expensive, at least not if you know what you're doing. My personal experience is actually the opposite.
The problem, as you mentioned is the time, and the emotional and physical labor of figuring out something the whole family will want to eat and cooking it. Those things are all expenditures in their own ways, but not financial.
Well said, that's what we call canard advice. Unhelpful advice that's obvious to everyone and does no fucking good to say whatsoever. You can cook more when your primary financial needs are met, so you can just work 40 hours in a week. That and the RTO mandates going around are robbing people of a significant chunk of time yet again ontop of overemployment. When you have to work a 10 hour day and commute an hour plus each direction, then come home and "cook" something, it usually translates to heating up frozen shit and then wishing you weren't miserable.
Been there and done that, fuck hustle culture.
Yep. My boomer dad: "When I was a kid, we walked everywhere! Nobody walks anymore!" Also my dad: "I'm afraid to drive into Portland because my truck might get stolen."
The healthy food options are also usually twice the cost too.
ditch all the sugar drinks and drink plane old water, like out the toilet.
Rice and beans can be made in 1000 different ways. $1/lb uncooked.
Eating out is almost never a healthy option.
Healthy and expensive don't correlate in my outlook. I spend less eating better. Factor in not eating out and my pockets are fat, but not my ass.
Eating out is almost never a healthy option.
This is a big deal people often don't realize. Even something as simple as an alfredo pasta will have way too much butter in it when you order it at a restaurant. (Why do you think it tastes so good?) An entire stick of butter for a single serving is quite common.
Not only is cooking for yourself significantly cheaper than ordering food, you are also significantly more aware of the calories you are putting into the food.
And that wouldn't even be so bad if we ate a reasonable portion of it. But cooking at home is preferable.
Too many people think eating healthy means broccoli needs to be 100% of your calories.
This is so fucking false its hilarious.
It's cooking -- cooking is cheaper. Cooking anything is cheaper than buying boxes.
Until you go on vacation to a "poor" country where it suddenly costs virtually nothing.
Are Avocados a conspiracy?
If you need to eat half as much it kind of works out though.
I spend about $12/day on ingredients, which is about the cost of a single meal at McDonald’s which is far less healthy. I don’t think that actually stands up when you look at the prices of cheap food (chicken, rice, beans, other legumes, potatoes) plus the costs of sides (fruits, vegetables).
I work on OpenFoodFacts, and the big issue is simply the amount of saturated fats and refined sugars there are in a lot of processed foods.
Like, sure, people have to be held personally responsible to some extent, but it should also be on the government to properly regulate how foods are advertised. I really appreciate the Nutriscore system that's being pushed for in Europe despite the flaws it has, and here in Canada they've been making some changes in how certain products are shown on shelves such as requiring labeling if they're high in sugar or fats and changing the previous confusing labels for energy drinks with a more easy-to-read Supplemental Food Facts label.
End of the day though, if something is still being labelled as being "healthy" when it really isn't, that's all it takes to fool the average consumer unfortunately. Stuff like Lucky Charms shouldn't be advertised to kids as "part of a complete breakfast", and it's absurd that a lot of "healthier" alternatives to certain foods are being advertised that way despite only being barely any better than the original product, like turkey bacon or veggie straws.
Like when Coke argued in court that no reasonable person would think Vitamin Water is actually good for you.
Yes, but I don't remember if that was before or after Fox News successfully argued that no reasonable person would mistake them for a News Outlet
You can have something packed with sugars that says "NO FAT!" on the label, and otherwise intelligent people will think it's healthy.
My brother-in-law eats a huge bowl of cold cereal every morning with skim milk... I drink a coffee with heavy cream or half and half and don't eat breakfast. He's a bigger guy that can't figure out how to lose weight and I'm not anymore.
Lobbyists have even polluted the ingredient label on the back. Now they can list a brand name as an ingredient, then list the ingredients of that. This lets them disguise the most prevalent ingredients if they're also part of the brand.
Water, oil, sugar, xantham gum, Bob's secret spice (enough sugar so that if the label were truthful, sugar would be the second ingredient instead of the third, cinnamon, nutmeg).
Just a few things come to mind :
- Lobbyists stopping sugar taxes.
- Big Pharma and health industry making tons of money.
- European Union being very tolerant about pesticides.
- Supermarkets putting candy close the counters where parents with kids are in queue.
- Lots of people spending most of their time on mobile phones only exercising the muscles of their eyes.
I am happy that an organisation like Foodwatch exists : https://www.foodwatch.org/en/foodwatch-international
- Normalized obesity
- Healthy at every weight culture
- Unacceptable to discuss personal accountability
I keep getting into it with people I mostly agree with. Yes, it's fucked up that we add HFCS to everything and that corporations have weaponized addiction, but we can fight back.
Healthy at every weight culture
This one irritates TF out of me.
Too many people who are outright unhealthy being told they're ok.
Overweight kids lead to sick adults.
Good thing in Ontario we have ol' Dougie fixing out healthcare system by privatizing the fuck out of it /s
Surely Pierre Pollieve will save us all when he's elected! /s
FML we are so lost.
- US restaurant portions are humongous. I thought it was exaggerated until I passed through, God damn that's a lot of food.
My wife and I share an entrée and an appetizer here in the US because there's no way anyone is meant to eat our portion sizes. We tip well to not look cheap, but Jesus Christ I don't need a full rack of ribs and 5 lbs of french fries.
Capitalism has brought prosperity and wealth to rational actors across the entire globe!
Yep we all eat too much. I started counting calories and found out that I was eating twice as much as I should have. It's not obvious and every place serves big portions.
I've been counting calories for the last few months, and that was my big realization as well. I could have easily put down a single meal at a restaurant which is my entire (or more) daily intake now.
More than anything it's just awareness.
I'm counting calories too, it's not even the amount but it's that some foods are total calorie bombs. You can pretty easily ingest a day's worth of calories in a single meal at the restaurant without really feeling like you overate, but if I pay attention and select my foods properly I can feel like I ate plenty and be under 1500cal a day.
It's not just that we eat "too much" but also that we're eating too much non-nutritive foods. The United States has entirely too many so-called "food deserts" where people are unable to purchase healthy foods
World News
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link