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Comment by jjallen | Hacker News Reader

I'm American living in Europe. There is sugar in every packaged food here too just FYI.

And not just in the country I live in, it's basically everywhere in grocery stores.

So sugar is not the only culprit.

I'm an American in Europe, and really, what I've noticed here is it's natural sugar in stuff, whereas in America it's HFCS. I can't help but wonder if that's part of the difference. I list 5-10kg easily without watching what I ate (and drank much more cause there's nothing else to do of an evening in Ireland), while keeping the same activity level or slightly less. There's something different in the food, and I can't help but think real sugar and lower levels of it is a key thing.

This is going to be an extremely challenging thesis to explain the phenomena, as HFCS and sucrose are effectively chemically identical once they hit the stomach.

Yes, but HFCS is cheaper. Cheaper means it ends up in more products. Cheaper means more gets consumed.

I mentioned in another comment above that circa 2003-ish the NYT Sunday mag ran an opinion piece that proposed that gov subsidies of corn were contributing to the obesity crisis. Lower corn prices === lower price for HFCS === more HFCS in more products === more products at lower prices === more sweetener calories being consumed.

Our gut microbes aren't evolved for this type of diet.

Sugar is negligibly expensive. It's just so cheap. In a wealthy region such as W. Europe, I can't even see the price differential mattering.

When you're manufacturing at scale pennies add up. If not, then how else do we explain the rise in the use of HFCS?

"Lower" is far more important than "real".

It IS _natural_ sugar in stuff, not HFCS. You are right about that.

So that is one difference.

But let's look at the other differences between W. Europe (this is the Europe I am thinking of at least).

1.There are ZERO local national restaurant chains in this country. Zero Chipotles, zero In-n-outs. The only national food chains are McDonald's and Burger King.

2. There are zero drive-thru restaurants. Not even starbucks. So food is not as easy to get.

3. There are fewer restaurants in general.

4. When you do go out to a restaurant the portions are smaller. I haven't weighed two things, but my best estimate is about 1/3 less. For instance, where I live, the local burrito "chain" of two locations, the burritos are about one-third smaller while the portion of chips that come with it is 60-70% smaller.

5. The food here costs more when going to a restaurant. There is no way to get a full meal for less than $10. A Mcdonald's combo meal is $15-$19. So food costs twice as much. Mcdonald's portions are not way smaller than the US, but every other restaurant's are. Because a meal is 50-100% more expensive and you get smaller portions, food is actually 3x the cost. This, obviously, has the effect of people eating less.

6. A greater percentage of people live and work in cities in Europe than the States [citation needed; would love to know the actual number]. So they probably burning 100-200 more calories a day because of this.

7. There are also zero billboards for any industry. So way less food advertising to go along with that.

These are the differences I think that make the biggest difference. There is simply less of an emphasis on food too.

But portion size, which is culture, and amount of physical activity are what I personally believe make the biggest difference.

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