Memoir of Growing Up Fat Forces France to Look in the Mirror
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
By all means, I don't see shaming as the sign of a healthy society and I hope for people never to have to suffer humiliation or belittling, but there should be, in my opinion, a certain level of acknowledgment that being overweight has dire consequences for not only one's health on the middle to long term, but also terrible side-effects in terms of public health and the economy at large.
As we're spending dozens of billions caring for diabetes, cholesterol, hypertension, heart attacks and the myriad of other diseases that correlate heavily with the lack of exercise and an unhealthy diet, we're neglecting research, schools and the social fabric that used to make France a great country to live in.
The ultimate irony is that we used to have a formula that worked just fine to gift us with one of the highest life expectancies in western societies a few decades ago, before we decided that Burger King, Coca Cola, Subway, McDonald's and KFC really were what we had been missing for so long.
Is that how you perceive the United States right now? People tripping over themselves to accommodate diverse opinions and points of view with an irrational excess of mutual respect?
It sounds like you're describing a caricature of a Unitarian Sunday school, or some other thing that represents pretty much the opposite of Trump's America.
pretty much the opposite of Trump's America
“pretty much half of America while Trump just happens to be president for a couple of years, by some odd quirk of an electoral process”
ftfy
Just because 51% of America’s assholes suddenly came out of the woodwork and voted for a jerk, doesn’t mean the other 49% of America’s assholes disappeared.
Both sides have their albatrosses.
Second, if you have the image of obesity related deaths being a sudden heart attack and dropping dead that same day, you'd be wrong. Diabetes, cancer, heart disease (within the spectrum of which a heart attack is only one likely consequence and sits alongside angina, strokes etc), these are long drawn-out declines that many obese people will suffer.
Third, accommodating obese patients requires significant specialist equipment, all of which places a burden on the system which would not be present if obese persons were not present. Specialized ambulances, MRI machines, gurneys, hoists, widened doorways etc.
“Obese men rack up an additional $1,152 a year in medical spending, especially for hospitalizations and prescription drugs, Cawley and Chad Meyerhoefer of Lehigh University reported in January in the Journal of Health Economics. Obese women account for an extra $3,613 a year. Using data from 9,852 men (average BMI: 28) and 13,837 women (average BMI: 27) ages 20 to 64, among whom 28 percent were obese, the researchers found even higher costs among the uninsured: annual medical spending for an obese person was $3,271 compared with $512 for the non-obese.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/04/30/obesity-no...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080204212858.h...
People over the age of 65 are less than 15% of the population in the US as a reference.
Further, a lot of those obese people still live into their late 60s, 70s, 80s. We've gotten better and better - at a high cost - at keeping them alive despite the consequences of the obesity.
> “France is a very rules-based society,” Ms. Saguy said. “There are rules about eating in France, about mealtimes, and you need to follow the rules.”
I would call that BS. French people eat whenever they want and nobody cares really. That being said, my personal experience is that French (and Europeans in general) are still much more conscious of what they eat than Americans, which is probably why they are thinner. I was surprised while living in the US to see even very educated people feed their kids with junk food and sodas.
However, this is gradually changing. More and more people eat junk food (e.g. Mac Donald's is extremely popular in France) thanks to food corporations propaganda and lobbying. Not surprisingly, obesity rates are increasing. Small relief, obese people won't be discriminated against when we're all fat.
I think there are simpler explanations. I imagine people like the way it tastes plus it's extremely cheap and takes very little time to prepare.
It's true to some extent but not the end of the story. For one thing, water is cheaper and more easily available than sodas.
As for marketing:
http://fastfoodmarketing.org/fast_food_facts_in_brief.aspx
"In 2012, fast food restaurants spent $4.6 billion in total on all advertising, an 8% increase over 2009. For context, the biggest advertiser, McDonald's, spent 2.7 times as much to advertise its products as all fruit, vegetable, bottled water, and milk advertisers combined."
In the past in Europe, was fast food actually slow, expensive, and not that tasty?
On the other hand, i am a bit skeptical about the "you're fine no matter how you are" mentality in the US regarding obesity. It is a health issue, so it's great not to blame people but saying "you can stay like this for how long as you want" is also a bit weird imho...
As a once-fat guy, it's truly frustrating to read this. If there's one thing I could drill into people observing this problem, it's that different things are hard for different people.
For myself, losing weight (and keeping it off long term) is by a distance the hardest thing I have ever done. I've done a reasonable range of challenging, willpower-requiring things, and I've been fairly successful academically, professionally, and as a father. The difficulty of any of the things I've done in my life pales in comparison to the challenge of stopping myself overeating (particularly sugary foods).
I make no claims that I gain weight more easily than others, but I am quite positive that I want food a lot more than most - similarly, I feel no need to drink to excess, while for others it's a challenge that ends their lives. I don't advocate normalisation of fatness, but I do wish people could manage to avoid being so unpleasant to people who are struggling.
One possibility is people are eating less nutritious food causing their bodies to crave more food to make up the difference.
Another possibility is companies have gotten better at hitting people's reward centers to drive more consumption and thus profits.
Another is simply less active lifestyles. Such as the removal of many gym classes and the emergence of video games. Shopping online vs walking around a mall.
Etc.
I doubt that peoples' capacity for willpower has changed, but that the exercise of that capacity has. There's a lot less personal discipline than there used to be, across the board, and the less you exercise your personal discipline, the harder it is when you try to.
Just to add, being fat takes significantly more calories than being thin. So, you really need a lot of excess food production before large scale obesity is even possible.
And we do have excess food production. We can feed the whole planet. Food supply isn't the problem, distribution and affordability is the problem.
So, that is my purely layman stab at it. I wouldn't even know where to begin doing quality research on this.
http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.A904?lang=en
India for example seems low by comparison, but the rate is still up more than 20% since 1975. 18.5% for adults in 1975 vs 21.8% in 2016. Even Ethiopia the lowest country in the world is over 20.6 vs 17.7%.
> but the rate is still up more than 20% since 1975. 18.5% for adults in 1975 vs 21.8% in 2016
Nitpick: a rise of 20% on that 18.5% would make it 22.2%
Edit: I'm also not sure why the 20% marker seems to be your cutoff for "having an obesity problem". Ethiopia's famous famine went from 1983-85, yet their obesity rate for '85 is 18.7%. That seems to be an awful thin line to walk, where 18.7% marks a famine and 20% marks obesity problem.
Similarly, the Second Congo War went from 1999 to 2003 and almost 4 million people died, mostly from famine.. yet throughout that, the Democratic Republic of the Congo maintained obesity rates above 20% in your link.
For comparison US obesity rate in 1950 was 10% and considered a problem at the time now it's 35%. North Korea might not be twice that, but it seems like every other functioning country is.
PS: Ops yea, just used 18 not 18.5. But it is over 15% increase.
I'm getting tired of this new fad of dismissing someone's comment by demanding evidence for it.
You say this so matter-of-factly but it's actually quite a claim. I think people are right to call you on it.
I understand there is a general feeling that past generations "made do with less" and "had greater moral fiber" and so on, but I'm also a little suspicious of that kind of thinking.
I made no claim about greater moral fiber, but if you think that past generations didn't "make do with less", you're now making an extraordinary against-the-grain claim. So, "give us a citation proving why you should be suspicious of that comment". See how annoying that is?
Secondly, if not trying to to convince someone else, nobody needs evidence for ideas they already believe.
But since you were making a strong claim, asking for evidence means giving you the chance to show that you have convincing reasons for your opinion.
Of course, if you don't have evidence, that's fine, too. Just don't expect to change anyone's mind.
Cool, it's easy: then provide some, please. Provide some citations for it rather than just accepting the common knowledge, since common knowledge is often wrong.
> asking for evidence means giving you the chance to show that you have convincing reasons for your opinion.
No. Asking someone for more information, or asking someone to round out the idea more is giving the chance to show convincing reasons. Asking bluntly for a citational proof is mere dismissal.
1. Companies are motivated to increase profits. [1]
2. Increasing consumption is one way to increase profits. [2]
3. Generally applicable techniques for increasing easily measurable business statistics have been developed and improved. [3]
4. Consumption is one such statistic. [4]
5. People are more likely to eat food they enjoy, even if they know it's unhealthy. [5]
Thus it is plausible that companies have found ways to increase consumption by "hitting people's reward centers".
6. People get fat when they eat more. [6]
Therefore this plausible statement provides an explanation for increased obesity.
I hope this is enough evidence for you. Note that I don't think citations are the be all and end all of evidence. They are a useful tool in academic discussion, but in more informal settings, appealing to common knowledge is usually enough, unless it's that common knowledge itself that is under doubt.
When you eventually provide evidence for your claim that people exercise their willpower less, I won't require citations for everything. I'd like to see a well-reasoned argument, however.
[1] Henry Hazlitt, "Economics in One Lesson", pp. 141: The Function of Profits
[2] Elementary mathematics: if you make a certain profit on each item sold and consumed, increased consumption increases profit.
[3] e.g. https://www.mv-research.com/research/pricing
[4] If you keep books on your sales, you have already measured it.
[5] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278431915...
[6] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2009/10/14/ajcn.2009...
It doesn't say much for 'being easy' when you have to pad out your list of six with two non-citations, two irrelevant citations, and a difficult-to-source one.
> When you eventually provide evidence for your claim that people exercise their willpower less, I won't require citations for everything.
"When I give you evidence, you won't require evidence"?
> I hope this is enough evidence for you.
It's worth noting that I didn't demand evidence for the original claim; I only demanded it as an illustrative point to people that were demanding it of me.
You also didn't seem to be very interested in the book, since you couldn't find it on the internet: https://mises.org/system/tdf/Henry%20Hazlitt%20Economics%20i...
Your problem seems to be that you conflate evidence (something that gives you more information) with citations (a means to point to evidence someone else has already collected). When someone asks for evidence, they don't necessarily need citations. You could just refer to something they already know, and provide a logical argument from there. That is also why I didn't bother linking to a mathematics textbook for [2], since I'm pretty sure you have already been exposed to the necessary concepts.
Maybe that's the case in the lunch room in an academic department, but it's definitely not the case in internet forums. When someone demands evidence on a forum, they don't mean "walk me through it", they mean "show me the external source that supports it". They mean 'evidence' like a lawyer or a historian would use the term, not 'logical reasoning'.
Recently I weighed myself and found that I was 73.8 kilos. For my height, it is overweight. “Sacre bleu,” I thought (I sometimes think in French), “je suis Américain obèse.”.
I bought a scale and made an effort to eat less every day. After a few weeks I realised I had to change my diet — more rice and vegetables and lean meat, less eating out and having dessert with lunch every day...
This was a long, stressful period of eight or nine weeks wherein I managed to lose 7 kilos, filled with many reversals, changes of habit, and frank comings to terms with myself.
As somebody who has lost weight and kept it off for years, I agree that it comes at a price—I need to be conscious of how much I eat every day, and devote most of my calories to relatively "satisfying" food. Basically, it's the food equivalent of needing to live within a budget.
The total cost: maybe 10 minutes a day, and I have to be careful about certain indulgences. And I have to commit to this forever.
Not everybody would find this equally easy, and some people have complicating factors such as eating disorders.
My private theory—based on having "budgeted" what I eat for years—is that a lot of modern processed food is high in calories, very tasty, and not very filling. It can be surprisingly hard to fight this. I guess that this is what some people mean by a bad "food environment."
"My private theory—based on having "budgeted" what I eat for years—is that a lot of modern processed food is high in calories, very tasty, and not very filling. It can be surprisingly hard to fight this." <- Absolutely this. Policy-wise, there couldn't be a better place to start. Some would seem to advocate more shaming, marginalization, tough love, etc. and that's just absurd.
People need to realize that just because something says "healthy choice" or "light" on the package, doesn't mean it's good for you and chances are, if it's packaged and processed at all it probably isn't. Obese people don't need to go on starvation diets or hit the gym 5 hours a day, but they should be drinking water instead of soda, and purchasing food with as few ingredients listed on the package as possible, or better yet - no ingredients listed at all because it's not processed.
But, I'm told it is simple - for the vast majority of people who are overweight. Put fewer calories in than you use and the result is weight loss. Operate at a caloric deficit and the result is less weight. That is it.
Note: That is just weight loss and doesn't imply that it is healthy eating. Obviously, it should entail more, but I understand it is pretty simple physically. I was a fat kid but I got chicken pox at the age of 15 and have been the appropriate weight ever since then.
Unless someone asked for your opinion about their weight, why would you say anything at all?
If a majority where addicted to narcotics, you would get codeine-pride parades and house M.D. T-Shirts.
I have just moved to San Francisco from Paris and I have got to say that the large proportion of severely obese people is a little more than weird to me.
In case it is relevant I am 1.90m/6.2ft and weigh 72kgs/160 lb. I slowly gained weight until hitting 84 kgs/185 lb) and decided to lose it all. It took roughly one year (without any real effort other than reducing my rations and avoid junk food) but at my thinnest I was at 69kgs (152 lb). If anything, I should build some more mass.
It is very anecdotical, I am only mentioning this because it obviously colors my vision of weight.
I would note that many/most obese people have tried and failed to reduce their weight (or temporarily succeeded). So it's definitely seen as a highly negative trait.
There is a "body positivity" movement here that discourages people from feeling shame about their appearance. Some people see this as a negative thing, with potential health ramifications.
I'd also say that obesity in the US varies quite a bit based on geography and income bracket.
Meanwhile the Bay Area never seemed all that obese to me. Leave the Bay Area and all of a sudden you'll see a surprising number of people so fat they can only move around in a motorized wheelchair.
This isn’t a race or gender issue. This is a lifestyle issue. I know my opinion is politically incorrect, but this is what a lot of us are actually thinking. Even if we openly say the opposite.
Is it not possible that most people who are overweight are so predisposed? This would make it not a "lifestyle issue".
In fact, given all the societal and health problems associated with being overweight, I find it hard to assume that many people would be "actively choosing" that path.
And yes, many of us who dislike smoking do feel sympathy for smokers. Nicotine is addictive. This is why we spend money on public health programs to help people quit. Same with other kinds of drug addicts.
I feel sympathy for nicotine addicts, just as I do for the obese. It's hard to pin down exactly how, but society (meaning some combination of their parents, peers, education, and government) has failed them. Focus on genetic components to obesity isn't technically wrong, but it doesn't help anybody get better.