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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

A bit missing from these studies are my parents' generation. My father grew up in hard times during the Depression, my mother grew up in WW2 ravaged Europe and spent some years with severe food shortages. Neither had any sort of obsessive relationship with food.

Ok, 2 people is not data. But this happened to tens of millions of people. As I understand it, that generation was less obese than later generations.

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Interesting, same here but my parents are likely your generation. Grew up in 70s-80s communist Eastern Europe, lots of food shortages from government obsession with self-sufficiency. Stories of waiting in line for 3 hours for a maybe loaf of bread.

No sort of unusual relationship with food, especially compared to mine—I grew up with all the food I wanted and I stuff my face with pointless garbage every 30 seconds.

My mother wasn't in the eastern bloc, but would recount that many times her "breakfast" was a carrot. I have family letters where they'd list their rations and various struggles to obtain food. Things were bad throughout Europe for many years.

I think your folks may have these issues if healthy food was "expensive" but sugary processed foods would be "cheap" and plentiful. By expensive/cheap, you can substitute waiting in line for price.

Rice and beans are a complete diet. Potatoes and milk are a complete diet. Frozen vegetables fried with spices are tasty, nutritious and very fast to prepare. Porridge, aka oats with milk or water is also dirt cheap and nutritious.

I spent an unfortunate length of time watching my pennies when it came to my foodbudget, in a western country. Being poor sucks but healthy food isn't expensive unless you mean prepared, ready to eat expensive food.

Will power consumes mental energy. Fighting the urge not to consume the cheap sugary food all around you is not something many people have the resources to do - especially the poor, who are under stress and therefore have fewer cognitive resources to devote to willpower. Drop the politics and think about things logically - then reintroduce your emotion. If you manage it you will be outraged at the disgusting setup of modern society.

If one is very poor, one cannot afford money to get prepared food and forced to prepare food themselves no matter how weak is the will power. And that will be much healthier. The problem is that in Westen societies such extreme poverty is rare and people can afford junk food and advertisements heavily inclines them to get it.

The problem is also that it is easy to buy some cheap bad food while not saving up for rent/car/school payment. In other words, even though we can't afford our lifestyle, food dolllars are the first dollars, and we go into debt for the rest. So we can over spend on convenient food while still being broke.

Perhaps the diet of the poor changed over time. Maybe it is cultural ?

My parents immigrated to the US and in the 70's we ate mostly beans, rice, tortillas, and less desirable cuts of meat. While I recall often feeling hungry, that "poor-man's diet" is relatively healthy. Sodas and snacks have always felt like an unnecessary luxury and yet is likely available in most present day poor households.

Side note: These days I deny myself breakfast until I have 2 to 3 billable hours of consulting completed. I can do this because, paradoxically, feeling hungry is not associated with a distracting obsession for food.

Beans, rice, and tortillas are all calorie-dense low-nutrient foods. They don’t really make a complete or balanced diet; for that you meed to add a lot of vegetables. It’s obviously better than eating just ramen and soda, but that’s a low bar.

Rural peasants in Mexico, whose diet is mostly tortillas, have short stature and relatively low life expectancy, like rural peasants in most parts of the world, who also get most calories from starchy staple foods.

Beans really stand out from rice and tortillas in terms of nutrition. They have much higher protein content, and I believe they have some other good stuff going for them besides macro nutrients.

You’re right, I should clarify/restate more generously: beans are great, and beans + corn or beans + rice is a pretty good diet if it’s the only thing you can afford and the alternative is starvation. I’m sure you could survive for a good long time on mostly those alone, supplemented by occasional meat and a bit of vegetables.

They aren’t going to provide everything the body needs though, and a more varied diet would be better.

Yes, this is what I have seen in Belarus as well until recently. Typically it was people with higher income who became overweight. For example, my grandmother lived through German occupation during 19941-1944 in a small village. For 3 years pretty much the only source of calories for her was potato with occasional fish and mushrooms. She never became overweight and died aged 92. My father (her son) have never experienced any food shortages and was always relatively well feed. Yet he became significantly overweight when he became 50 years old and 20 year later he continues to struggle with that.

But then starting about 10 years ago the pattern that I have been observing on the streets started to change. Now it is more common to see over-weighted young people from low income families.

Odd - I'd have to search, but your anecdotes are at odds with other anecdotes I've read about Soviet immigrants hoarding food due to being accustomed of the frequent shortages despite the fact food was plentiful in America.

Hoarding food is not the same as eating the hoarded food. (I mean they might do both, but hoarding as a reaction to potential future shortages is not an insane one)

We regularly had to stop my grandma from eating spoiled food. She wasn't obese or ate too much, but this is not healthy.

mm hmm. and when "real" americans do it, it's called prepping.

It sounds like that would be a much more interesting comparison.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/8323035/The-Kitchen-...

> American soldiers had more food than anyone

While that was true, my father (8th Air Force in England) said the food was still poor and only crew flying the next day got eggs. Steak and tomatoes was the first thing they'd eat arriving back in the states.

> Virtually every part of the globe acquired a taste for Coca-Cola and Spam.

But I don't like spam.

My girlfriend grew up poor, in a country that is one of the world's poorest, yet between the two of us I'm the one that obsesses over food.

It may make a difference that your grandparents grew up before the sharp increase in daily calories consumed post-1960. One thing that sometimes gets neglected is that food was just way more expensive and so were normal portions.

And to add to that: most people's appetite starts to decline sometime in adulthood.

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