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Comment by jpr | Hacker News Reader

So what's your advice for the time being? Keep on shoving cheeseburgers to our pieholes?

Or perhaps look at the way people eat in other countries outside of America where most people aren't obese and compare notes.

Yay America bashing! Let's compare notes with Somalia (or <insert starving nation here>)!

edit: The idea that "America == Bad" and also " !(America) == Good" is a fallacy that seems to get up-voted way too often here (and celebrated in way too many other places).

There are a lot of things the US do very well, it's a wonderfully entrepreneurial country and is at the forefront of research and technology. But like everywhere not all is perfect and food is not something where the US shine.

As a european who went to university in Rochester and has lived for quite some times in different countries Asia and Europe. I can say that I've never seen any countries where food habits was as bad as in Rochester... Of course, there were some good restaurants in Rochester, there were farmer markets but all of the restaurants at the university served greasy unhealthy food (I couldn't stand the food there and actually lost 10 pounds in 6 month because after 3 weeks I got tired of all the food served there and just didn't feel like eating much).

Now, Rochester might be extreme, it is after all the home of the "Garbage Plate" but really it was shocking and while all of this is anecdotal, the statistics do show that US has a very high number of obese...

It's not America bashing if it's accepted truth - it's indisputable that this country suffers from an obesity epidemic far worse than anywhere else in the world.

And this is not due to starvation - there are plenty of developed nations where people have access to all the food they desire, yet do not suffer the same health problems we do.

The poster's point is valid - there are obviously many nations out there that are developed and wealthy, where food is not in shortage, where paleolithic diets aren't widely practiced, where cheeseburgers aren't the standard food, yet they do not have many of the same problems that are prevalent in the US. This seems to suggest that paleo is far from the only way to maintain your health.

Wow, really dude? Paleolithic or fast food? Nice.

You know, a cheeseburger made with quality ingredients is a pretty good meal. Carbs, protein, calcium, fibre... Just don't have it all the time. And a cheap cheeseburger might as well be a donut, nutritionally.

Carbs, protein

I recently started to dismiss comments that include statements like "all carbs you need, all protein you need" etc. as not only useless, but actually harmful.

The source of carbs, fats, proteins is way more important than the fact that a certain amount of nutrients is present in a certain food.

If all a human needed was a certain amount of nutrients, it would be possible to be perfectly healthy on a diet of table sugar for carbs, industrially extracted vegetable oils for fats, some amino acid pills for proteins and a multivitamin complex. I think we can all agree that this would not work well.

Agreed - that's why I was sure to mention, quality ingredients. Lean meat, not reconstituted scraps for example.

Cheeseburgers would probably be a useful source of energy when you're performing marathon runs.

This is what I hope to do when I am ready to do a marathon.

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