S/o why are we so fat?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"So schools are supposed to prevent children from being fat, as well as educate them in academic subjects? Isn't anything the parents' job nowadays? You'd like the schools to serve as fat camps as well?

No it is not the job of the schools."

Of course it is. Why do you think we adopted universal free education in this country? It wasn't just to educate people in academic subjects; it was to form good citizens to benefit our society and shore up our democracy.

In any event, I'll throw in another culprit, which is how our food is grown and processed in this country. It isn't easy to eat really clean food - food that hasn't been genetically modified, hasn't been processed with chemicals. Think about cooking oil - the molecular structure changes when it is made through a warm pressed vs. cold pressed method, which is the cheapest and most common way to do it. So even people cooking from scratch made be using oil that has been processed in a way that our bodies are not used to. Same with so many other ingredients. Grain fed vs. grass fed beef differ nutritionally. My theory is that we're not getting the nutrients we need, which makes us crave more/eat more food in general. Couple that with the wide-scale availability of foods that we know are not good for us but we want anyway, and it is really hard to maintain a normal weight.

Schools can serve healthy food, talk about nutrition, and run kids for hours, but when the kid comes to school with a Coke in one haget calories in this kidnd a bag of Cheetos in the other (bought by a parent at the hot dog stand down the street), the whole "healthy food" message is diluted.

I don't get it why American schools serve any food to begin with. It really amazes me. I am an immigrant and went to school in Europe. There was no kitchen in my school. Some students ate snacks during recess (that they brought from home or purchased in neighboring stores) but most children didn't eat anything. You ate before you go to school and then when you get home. It's not like you anybody starved though there were very few (like 1 per 30) overweight children.

My kids get on the school bus at 8:30 am and off about 4 pm. I can't imagine not feeding them for 7.5 hours...

But why? What would happen if they didn't eat for 8 hours?

Low blood sugar, inability to concentrate, irritability. Get a clue. I teach Pre-K and can't imagine my kids not eating for eight hours. What a nightmare.

Well, sure, that's because they are eating Cheerios and frozen waffles for breakfast. Even the "healthy" varieties of these foods seriously lack good nutrition.

My kids eat eggs, sausage, tomato and homemade bread with lots of real butter for breakfast. Washed down with a huge cup of full-fat raw milk. They are sturdy and healthy and run hard all day long. No blood sugar crashes. Not irritable. And they often don't eat anything again until mid afternoon, and sometimes nothing until dinner.

Ditto but my son would crash at 12. He refuses lunch at school because there is not enough food. He is skinny as a rail and I am constantly reading runners magazines to find more and better ways to get calories in this kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't get it why American schools serve any food to begin with. It really amazes me. I am an immigrant and went to school in Europe. There was no kitchen in my school. Some students ate snacks during recess (that they brought from home or purchased in neighboring stores) but most children didn't eat anything. You ate before you go to school and then when you get home. It's not like you anybody starved though there were very few (like 1 per 30) overweight children.

But don't you guys go to school that is within walking distance from home and you go home for lunch and a nap?

"You guys", who? Germans? Greeks? Czechs? Italians?

I know from subsequent posts that this person was in Eastern Europe, but I don't think they ever specified where exactly.
I grew up in West Gemany (Berlin) in the 70s/80s. We definitely had school lunches, and they were much better than the ones my kids are getting in FFX County schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just know one thing. I have been living in US for 4 years. I gained 85 pounds. I just fell in love with the crap food here and went hard on it. Now I am trying to lose all these weight. But it is tough. I weighed -8 lbs this morning but boy I am having a hard time dieting.

The problem in the US is that the food is extremely cheap. Try getting fat in Norway where a meal in McDonald's is $20. You need to make $500k to be fat there.

[Anonymous]

Car culture. We drive instead of walk. I gained 25 lbs (fat, same as when I was 9 months pregnant except I'm no longer pregnant) after getting a car to drive DC to and from school, charter - far from metro. Now I joined a gym and do my 4 miles on the treadmill, whereas pre-car, I got it in just doing errands and living life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just know one thing. I have been living in US for 4 years. I gained 85 pounds. I just fell in love with the crap food here and went hard on it. Now I am trying to lose all these weight. But it is tough. I weighed -8 lbs this morning but boy I am having a hard time dieting.

My cousin is half Japanese, half German. What a combination, huh? Anyway, she moved here about 10 years ago. When she moved here, she was a size 4-6 I would estimate. Now she's a size 20. In her words, "Your country has made me fat."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just know one thing. I have been living in US for 4 years. I gained 85 pounds. I just fell in love with the crap food here and went hard on it. Now I am trying to lose all these weight. But it is tough. I weighed -8 lbs this morning but boy I am having a hard time dieting.

The problem in the US is that the food is extremely cheap. Try getting fat in Norway where a meal in McDonald's is $20. You need to make $500k to be fat there.

Exactly! Crappy Processed Food in the US is ridicuously cheap, hello, McDonalds and their $1 burger. "Good, Healthy" food in the US will set you back some dollars. People spend at Whole Foods in one trip, what they would spend in 5 trips to Giant and 100 trips to McDonalds or Dominos. You do the Math

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This. I go for years without working out and my BMI is usually 20-22. I just eat less.

If you don't work out at all, this may be your BMI based on your weight/height ratio, but your fat percentage is probably much higher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just know one thing. I have been living in US for 4 years. I gained 85 pounds. I just fell in love with the crap food here and went hard on it. Now I am trying to lose all these weight. But it is tough. I weighed -8 lbs this morning but boy I am having a hard time dieting.

My cousin is half Japanese, half German. What a combination, huh? Anyway, she moved here about 10 years ago. When she moved here, she was a size 4-6 I would estimate. Now she's a size 20. In her words, "Your country has made me fat."

No, her lack of self control made her fat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This. I go for years without working out and my BMI is usually 20-22. I just eat less.

If you don't work out at all, this may be your BMI based on your weight/height ratio, but your fat percentage is probably much higher.

I doubt it, but even it is - so what? She probably looks good and fits into nice clothes. If you want sculpted body, yes, you need to exercise. If you want to be merely thin and attractive, you don't.

[Anonymous]

I moved to the US when I was 20. I was between a size 0 and 2. I won't say that it was easy to be thin in europe, but it was definitely "easier." I walked everywhere, fast food was virtually non-existent and/or expensive. Grocery stores don't carry 50 varieties of crackers. However, even though I eat like a pig here (totally my fault) I don't smoke pack/day or drink 10 cups of coffee. I don't know what would be worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just know one thing. I have been living in US for 4 years. I gained 85 pounds. I just fell in love with the crap food here and went hard on it. Now I am trying to lose all these weight. But it is tough. I weighed -8 lbs this morning but boy I am having a hard time dieting.

My cousin is half Japanese, half German. What a combination, huh? Anyway, she moved here about 10 years ago. When she moved here, she was a size 4-6 I would estimate. Now she's a size 20. In her words, "Your country has made me fat."

No, her lack of self control made her fat.

Her cousin here. She grew up in Germany and took public transportation and walked everywhere. Suddenly she was put down in the middle of Sprawlanta where she became (like every other person there) totally dependent on cars. I'm sure that didn't help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just know one thing. I have been living in US for 4 years. I gained 85 pounds. I just fell in love with the crap food here and went hard on it. Now I am trying to lose all these weight. But it is tough. I weighed -8 lbs this morning but boy I am having a hard time dieting.

My cousin is half Japanese, half German. What a combination, huh? Anyway, she moved here about 10 years ago. When she moved here, she was a size 4-6 I would estimate. Now she's a size 20. In her words, "Your country has made me fat."

No, her lack of self control made her fat.

Her cousin here. She grew up in Germany and took public transportation and walked everywhere. Suddenly she was put down in the middle of Sprawlanta where she became (like every other person there) totally dependent on cars. I'm sure that didn't help.

I agree, but I see she also adopted the American mentality to blame everyone but herself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This. I go for years without working out and my BMI is usually 20-22. I just eat less.

If you don't work out at all, this may be your BMI based on your weight/height ratio, but your fat percentage is probably much higher.

I doubt it, but even it is - so what? She probably looks good and fits into nice clothes. If you want sculpted body, yes, you need to exercise. If you want to be merely thin and attractive, you don't.

Because it is about the health of your heart, not what you look like in nice clothes. Risk of health related diseases can be just as high for thin people with a very sedentary lifestyle.

[Anonymous]

Why do people focus on weight rather than health? We've been told for so long that the BMI is indicative of something significant they lots of people believe it, and then when people express concern about the health problems of Americans, they focus on what is likely the wrong thing.

Studies show that weight loss is almost never maintained (yes, I know you did it, and how very awesome of you), but better health habits can be if they're detached from weight loss as a goal. So rather than talking about how to get people to lose weight, we should be talking about how to get better food to people, how to get people to be more active, how to make them better rested, and so on.

Maybe it would even make them lose weight.

Those of you who equate weight and health, why not focus on the activities you think will make people lose weight rather than focusing on the end result?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This. I go for years without working out and my BMI is usually 20-22. I just eat less.

If you don't work out at all, this may be your BMI based on your weight/height ratio, but your fat percentage is probably much higher.

I doubt it, but even it is - so what? She probably looks good and fits into nice clothes. If you want sculpted body, yes, you need to exercise. If you want to be merely thin and attractive, you don't.

Because it is about the health of your heart, not what you look like in nice clothes. Risk of health related diseases can be just as high for thin people with a very sedentary lifestyle.

Interesting. And you are going to live forever because you exercise?