Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Obesity is a major problem across Europe increasingly [0]. Britain is nearly as obese as the US now for example.

Australia and New Zealand have similar obesity problems as the US and Canada.

Europe is just catching up to the mistakes the US has made since the 1980s. Some nations are faring better due to their culture (strongly ingrained behaviors) holding back the mistakes, such as eg France.

[0] WHO report: Europe can reverse its obesity “epidemic” | https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/03-05-2022-new-who-repo...

"The report, launched at a press event on 3 May and presented at the European Congress on Obesity, reveals that in the European Region, 59% of adults and almost 1 in 3 children (29% of boys and 27% of girls) are overweight or living with obesity. Obesity prevalence for adults in the European Region is higher than in any other WHO region except for the Americas."

While Europe is not immune (and obesity is rising), I suspect the EU will have a much more pro-active attitude towards stemming the rise.

It's hard to find data, but America had an early, meteoric rise in obesity starting in the 90s (after a slow rise in the 80s) that I believe is far worse than what Europe saw. Europe is catching up, however, and I imagine there's at least some "americanization" of food to be blamed here.

One little data point. Until like 10 years ago you never got sauces with your food (except fast food), and especially not in your salads here.

Now there's a full sauce menu everywhere and I suspect coleslaw defeats the point of having a salad completely.

Particularly the way coleslaw is presented in the US. You can make a perfectly delicious and healthful coleslaw without mayonnaise or cream (or sugar!)

I just looked at the ingredients of a premade coleslaw (Safeway). The second and third ingredients are mayonnaise and sugar respectively.

Mayo in the US is poison, you couldn't pay me to eat it.

I think it's the rise of transported from afar cheap vegetables. Since they are more sturdy, they are cheaper, it's more lucrative (and budget friendly when cooking at home) to get bland supermarket tomatoes and make a salad with them, by adding sauce.

Locally sourced vegetables can be much more flavourful, reducing the need for additional sauces. I always enjoy making a "tomato, cucumber, olive oil" salad and watch foreigners coming to Bulgaria ask "oh wow what sauce did you use" and I go - none, that's how those veggies are supposed to taste.

But you only get those kind of supplies by going to a bazaar/market and pick them out individually yourself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com