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Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

Looking at the amount of processed food available in Japan, it is hard to think it is just the processed food that is to blame.

I think it is a cheap observation, such that I expect people to push back on me, but it is hard to ignore portion sizes. Will try and take a dive on some of the data around that. But a personal level, it is hard to grapple with the fact that I just got less food per place that I went.

And it is frustrating, as getting the food, I would want a large burger/sandwhich/whatever. But waiting a small amount of time after a small snack/meal works.

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In the US, portion size, calorie density, frequency of eating high calorie foods are contributing to people getting a lot fatter a lot faster than before. We now have instant gratification in food delivery services. Get anything you want without leaving home.

In fast food, people are eating a day's worth of food in one sitting. Triple burger, large fries, large drink. People are doing this once a day every day of the week.Then they go home and order more high calorie food with high calorie drinks and constant snacking.

It is amazing to see how much more obese people have gotten in the last decade, and the % of fat people has gone up a lot, too.

Restaurants of all types serve massive portions, and people eat it without thinking or realizing they are eating a day's worth of calories in one meal, and I haven't touched on the amount of fat, sugar, and sodium they are packing away.

The fact that people today have shorter lifespans than their parents should be sounding alarms everywhere, but there is nothing but silence.

> In fast food, people are eating a day's worth of food in one sitting. Triple burger, large fries, large drink. People are doing this once a day every day of the week.Then they go home and order more high calorie food with high calorie drinks and constant snacking.

The UK had a reality TV show called Secret Eaters where they signed up people to be monitored 24/7 by cameras and private investigators which tracked every single thing they put in their mouth and counted up the calories.

It was really informative to see how some people eat and it is not pretty. Even the people who didn't regularly eat fast food or go out to chip shops ate way more than is healthy with fatty sausages, fried things, and little fruit or vegetables, all in huge portions.

I'd love to see that happen with people that are keeping a food diary and see how much they're being honest with themselves.

Though their behavior would probably change if they knew they were being recorded.

Sedentary lifestyles are a huge factor too.

Many elite athletes devour ultraprocessed foods. Elite cyclists have pushed their performance limits by eating as much sugar as their digestive systems can handle. They eat sugar until they puke and it trains their guts to tolerate more sugar in the future.

Sugar and other simple carbs are quick burning fuel. You don't want to be flooding your blood stream with fuel when your body doesn't need it, but when it does, well, it's fuel, it gets into your system fast, and it makes you go.

These people you describe are experiencing very real eating disorders. Even if they aren’t counting calories, they are keenly aware that they’re destroying their body. They aren’t silent, they’re addicted.

Socially acceptable eating disorders are the foundation of multiple hundred billion dollar companies.

Every junk and fast food company in America sells food that does not satisfy you, is unhealthy for you, has a "taste" that is not easy to replicate at home but that has been scientifically curated to prevent you from reaching the satiation point when you are eating them (like Pringles, "Bet you can't eat just one", but it's all of the foods all of the time), has less nutrition year over year despite artificial vitamin supplementation, and is just a hair less expensive than cooking it yourself with better ingredients.

It's not an eating disorder to eat junk food in America.

It's a symptom of a larger society wide dysfunction that any person who lived in a sane world and was suddenly subjected to would consider demonic/evil/abhorrent/terrifying.

Don't blame the victims. Recognize the blight for what it is.

It’s both. I do recognize, and agree with most of what you’re saying. The junk food industrial complex is real.

But people have autonomy and if you took their burgers away tomorrow they’d riot.

> It's not an eating disorder to eat junk food in America.

It absolutely is a disorder to eat to the level you described in your previous comment.

Just because millions of people take part in it, and it’s socially acceptable doesn’t make the way Americans eat not an eating disorder. They’re also aware, not silent, or ignorant. Everyone knows junk food and eating until you want to throw up is bad for you.

And yes I fully understand there are people out there inventing ways to make food even more addictive. Fuck those people. Those are the worst people.

So you're saying ordering any food from a fast food restaurant is an eating disorder?

The average combo meal clocks in at nearly a thousand calories at a minimum at essentially every fast food restaurant in America even if you just drink water with it.

I get where you're coming from, but it is entirely too easy to not see the bigger picture and to blame the victims of the system. The system is fucked, it is fucked on purpose because that is profitable, most people are too stupid too ignorant or at least two uninformed to know about it and even more so do anything about it.

Blaming overweight Americans for their overweightness just lets you personally feel better about yourself while doing nothing to actually identify or solve the problem.

> So you're saying ordering any food from a fast food restaurant is an eating disorder?

No. I explicitly said “ It absolutely is a disorder to eat to the level you described in your previous comment.” Because you previously said,

> … Triple burger, large fries, large drink. People are doing this once a day every day of the week. Then they go home and order more high calorie food with high calorie drinks and constant snacking.

What you described here is textbook disordered eating.

> Blaming overweight Americans for their overweightness just lets you personally feel better about yourself while doing nothing to actually identify or solve the problem

> most people are too stupid too ignorant or at least two uninformed to know about it and even more so do anything about it.

And I’m victim blaming?

It’s hilarious and ironic that you both decided to place these two sentences next to one another, and also felt the confidence to attack my character for using the term eating disorder. Take a look in the mirror.

As someone who lives in Japan I can attest that portion sizes are smaller, and seasoning is much less rich and sweet than it is in the USA - this checks out for me.

As someone that often eats one large meal a day, I appreciate large portion sizes ar restaurants. If its the only thing I eat that day, a 3000 calorie meal is what I need.

There have been experiments that control for portion size, processed food still spikes glucose more, etc.

Isn't that some of what this article was challenging?

I don't believe so, I felt it was we know it does just not why yet.

I mean, that is the headline. The thrust of the article was that a lot of the common things people offer for why don't have any real evidence. All we seem to have is that people eat more calories when doing processed foods.

Specifically, the RCT showing that people eating ultra processed foods eat an average of 500 more calories per day is what I was looking at. Seems to basically align far more heavily with it being the volume of food than it is other qualities. Though, my memory was stronger in what that paragraph claimed.

Japanese people are much smaller so explains smaller portions.

But I am too surprised how processed (but tasty) their convini food is.

I honestly think stress and work obsession along with sedentary lifestyles has a lot more to do with anything health related than ultra processed foods.

Very true, someone that has time to make a meal from scratch is clearly not stressed, has money and time. Maybe not all, but from a category view, there are so many factors on those two different worlds that affect health, that focusing on just food is crazy.

Plenty of stressed and work obsessed people in Japan too, and yet the obesity rate is tiny.

What’s special about Japan in this context?

They do have a particularly high life expectancy.

https://data.who.int/countries/392

And don't have the obesity problem we have

This is a lagging indicator though, right? I wonder how the diets of Japanese people ~50 years ago compare to the Americans of today.

Good health outcomes compared to other first world countries?

Japan isn't special IMHO, but overweight rate is on the low side.

Now, trying to understand why is can of worm (social pressure and bullying probably plays a role for instance, which have other adverse effects possibly worse than just being overweight)

I went to Japan recently and one of the most striking things to me was how easy it was to walk to places. Their infrastructure astounded me because it was set up with people in mind and not car companies.

I wouldn’t be surprised if keeping moving contributed more to not dying than diet specifics.

My understanding (albeit only gathered from blogs/YouTube videos/Google Maps) is that the biggest difference is parking. On-street parking is mostly not allowed, free parking at businesses is mostly limited to car-centric ones like mechanics and dealerships, and you can't register a car without proving that you have a place to park it. Tens of millions of Japanese people living in less-dense areas have no problem with that, but in Tokyo it's prohibitively expensive for the average person due to land cost. This means that even in suburban areas, roads are narrower and everything is closer together.

When I worked in Japan for a year and lived in the company subsidized dormitory, a coworker half-joked that it cost more to house his car in a payed parking spot than it did to house himself in the dorm.

When my grandfather passed away the deed for his Manhattan parking spot was far more valueable than the five bedroom home I grew up in.

I think this can be seen in cities with walking-to-work culture (often metro/underground).

Although I've wondered if cause is enforced exercise or just selection (people that move to a large city to work have a demographic).

Possibly nothing. Was just recently able to observe it directly.

Much lower rate of obesity. Like 5% instead of 40% (US).

You cannot imo use Japan as an argument for anything. There are so many unique and localised factors at play in Japan, that it could be something as obscure as incredible self limiting eating due to fear of social stigma.

Japan is a basket case.

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