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Comment by kortilla | Hacker News Reader

> Off the top of my head, fast food advertisments should be made illegal

This is ridiculous. Nearly everyone I know who is overweight eats hardly any fast food.

What I do see is lots of snacking throughout the day on high carb things (chips, breads, etc) and just way too many calories due to large serving sizes in both regular “slow food” restaurants and meals made at home.

Fast food meals if you skip the sugared soda tend to be closer to proper per meal calorie targets than sit down restaurants because of how cheap they are.

At sit down restaurants the price is higher to support a wait staff and lower throughput so they compensate with ridiculously huge portions.

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You are right that I should not have singled out fast food. Included would be grain based desserts, soda, alcohol and maybe others. Grain based desserts and soda together make up 12% of caloric intake alone[0] and serve almost no nutritional value while providing little satiety.

Another point, while I did say that "The entire point of those ads to get people to eat fast food" what I really meant is that they make people want to eat in general[note 1]. What this means is that fast food ads can be harmful even if they do not cause the viewer to buy fast food. What this does is contribute to a culture of consumption which is part of what I meant when I said "The only way to solve this problem for the whole population [...] is to change society and how it views unhealthy food." I did not mention sit down restaurants because they generaly do not advertise. My suggestion was "off the top of my head" and not fully thought out. I'm glad you made your comment because I did not express my reasoning clearly.

[0]https://epi.grants.cancer.gov/diet/foodsources/top-food-sour... page 77

[note 1] That is, the "point" of the fast food ads collectivly are to generate a demand for fast food from the point of view of the advertisers, but the effect, while more pronounced for fast food, generates a general demand for caloric intake.

> I did not mention sit down restaurants because they generaly do not advertise.

They do in the US. TV adverts are littered with ads for national chains (Olive Garden, Buffalo Wild Wings, Red Robin, etc).

Media that allows more targeted local stuff (Facebook, billboards, newspaper, Google maps, etc) is plastered with ads for local sit down restaurants. If anything these ones advertise even more because they don’t have an established mindshare.

Apparently one major issue with fast food is the hyperpalatability.

For example, when I visited my family in the states, I ate two double cheeseburgers at a fast food joint at 1000+ calories per burger, and I figured I could probably eat two more in that sitting without issue.

In other words I ate 2000+ calories in a few minutes and could have kept going. Even one burger has more calories than I eat in a single meal.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t eat 15 medium sweet potatoes (1000 calories) in one sitting.

But why would you do that? I think it's just calorie density and behavior. You might just as well have eaten a bucket of ice cream as fast as you could. I.e. before your rising blood sugar has a chance to stop you.

Though I do think the public would be better off if they replaced the bread with lettuce or something. It seems like they're willing to do that anywhere I've gone.

It doesn't help that these calorie dense food are hyperengineered to trigger our hunger more. A personal prohibition seems to be the only way to tackle this.

> I ate two double cheeseburgers at a fast food joint at 1000+ calories per burger

Where was this? A double quarter pounder BLT at McD with standard toppings is 830 calories. A McDouble is half that.

I know there are people out there that could eat 2 double quarter pounders, but I doubt any of them are at a healthy weight - except for professional eaters and possibly teenage boys.

One, along with fries, is enough to fill me up for practically the whole day. I think fast food gets a bad rap. It’s calorie dense but with all of the fat it keeps you pretty darn full.

Compare that burger with a few candy bars or not all that much soda…

Yeah, this doesn’t pass the smell test. I love cheeseburgers and would be borderline sick after two double quarter pounders.

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