Five reasons why Americans are overweight
There is not one, but two stereotypes about Americans at once. This is a complete man, chewing chips and washing them down with Coca-Cola, lying on the sofa in front of the TV, and a slender fan of a healthy lifestyle, perhaps a vegan, who runs marathons and gets to work by bicycle.
There are indeed a lot of overweight people in the United States. According to the Institute for Health Metrics, 160 million Americans are overweight: almost 75% of all men and more than 60% of women (with a body mass index of more than 25, that is, for a woman with a height of 163 cm, weight more than 64 kg would be excessive). Among young people under 20 and children - 30% (in 1980 - only 19%).
This research paper, published in the journal The Lancet, explores the increase in body weight per year 33 (1980-2013) worldwide. During this time, the proportion of overweight people on the planet has increased from 20% to 30%.
At the same time, the fitness industry in the United States is a huge and profitable business. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of books on nutrition. The number of sports clubs is growing. In 2016, there were 36,5 thousand of them, which is 5,5 thousand more than in 2012. In 2016, 64 million Americans regularly ran. And half a percent of all US residents have completed a marathon at least once. According to one study, approximately 3% of the population has an exercise addiction.
And these things are interconnected. On the one hand, the demand for a healthy lifestyle creates supply. On the other hand, in the US there are so many factors that contribute to excess weight and unhealthy lifestyles, it takes a lot of knowledge, willpower, support and infrastructure to counter them. And if there are enough internal and external resources for this, then they should be enough for the marathon. And maintaining balance in an advertising-saturated environment, including social media, can be difficult.
Frightened by depression, the American state is creating conditions under which high-calorie foods should be available to everyone at all times. Large agricultural enterprises, having received serious government support and using the latest technologies at that time (Ford tractor, pesticides, crop rotation, etc.), built a powerful industrial-agrarian system. Productivity is constantly increasing. From 1948 to the 170s alone, it grew by 3800%. And today, 2000 calories of food are produced per US resident (with a daily consumption rate of 2500 - XNUMX).
More and more food is being produced, it is becoming cheaper, and portions are increasing. In the United States, it is customary for restaurants to serve such large portions (sometimes containing more than a thousand calories) that they even provide cardboard boxes to take home what is not eaten. And in addition to breakfast, lunch and dinner, in the United States it is also common to chew snacks - chips, cookies, salted nuts, candy. (Although malnutrition is also a problem here. About 40 million Americans do not have enough to eat at least sometimes).
Most of the flour, sweet, fatty, salty in the diet of Americans
And it’s not just about quantity, but also about the quality of food. Americans eat a lot of bread. Hamburgers, cheeseburgers, sandwiches, pizza - in almost every restaurant. Even an ordinary sandwich with sausage and cheese will have not one piece of bread, but two.
They also drink a lot of sugary carbonated drinks, which can contain up to 10 spoons of sugar per serving. Even the desserts are too sweet for our taste. If you decide to remove sugar from your diet, I recommend immediately go to the departments of cereals and vegetables. It is very difficult to find recycled foods that do not contain sugar.
By the way, the American diet remained stable until the 1980s and contained a lot of vegetables and fruits, but 40 years ago the proportion of flour, sugar and fats sharply increased. The colorfully wrapped food products, "engineered" with fat and protein from soy, sugar from corn, added dyes and other chemicals, are cheap and readily available. But vegetables and fish in the USA are quite expensive and are not sold everywhere. In some poor areas, children may not even know what broccoli or a tomato looks like.
Junk Food Advertising
There are a lot of high-quality advertisements for hamburgers, chips, sugary cereals and the like on American channels. Every year, the American food industry spends $10 billion on direct advertising alone, and another $20 billion on indirect advertising, such as toys in children's packages at McDonald's. And it works.
Psychologists explain this by the fact that the evolution of modern man took place under conditions of acute food shortage. When a person sees a piece of meat, his mindset is triggered: he needs to eat his fill - it is unknown when another mammoth will turn up. In addition, carbonated drinks are advertised by such slender girls that doubts creep in about their negative impact on the figure.
Lack of physical activity
In the United States, with the exception of a few cities - Washington, New York, San Francisco, etc. — public transport is very poorly developed. Even pedestrian paths are not everywhere. Most Americans go everywhere - to work, to the store, to kindergarten - by car. Fewer and fewer workers even leave their offices for lunch—it’s customary here to eat right at your desk.
According to the Center for Disease Control, 80% of Americans do not achieve the minimum amount of physical activity (2.5 hours of moderate-intensity exercise and an hour and 15 minutes of vigorous exercise) per week. But if you work 8 hours or more, spend 1.5-2 hours in the car, and do household chores in the evening, then finding time to go to the gym or jog is very difficult. And 1 hour of even the heaviest exercise will not save you if a person practically does not move for 23 hours.
Strange approach to baby food
In the US, it seems to be a common irrational belief that children are naturally capable of eating only sweet flakes, cheese pizza, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, so-called “chicken nuggets” (pieces of chicken meat ground with bone particles, lived and connective tissue), french fries, and peanut butter and jam sandwich. And all this is washed down with sweet drinks, juice or chocolate milk.
This diet can be seen in the children's menu of restaurants, on children's parties, in school canteens and at home in many Americans. Many Americans believe that when children grow up, their taste buds will change in favor of a healthier diet.
It can not be said that Americans are not aware of the benefits of fruits and vegetables for children. Here is the whole campaign under the slogan "Eat your vegetables" (Eat your veggies!). Like, we know that vegetables are tasteless, and children will not eat them, but we must either force them, or buy them, or somehow slyly hide them in macaroni and cheese. And not only vegetables, but, at times, even dried fruits are served as if we are talking about fish oil. Dried plums are sold in the US, wrapped like candy. Say, how else can you get the child to eat fruit?
The idea that a child, as soon as she has grown a sufficient number of teeth, can be accustomed to regular - “adult” - food, and that vegetables and fruits are not only healthy, but also tasty - from my experience of communicating with Americans, is perceived as revolutionary. It was this approach to nutrition in France that became the biggest discovery of the American journalist Pamela Druckerman, author of a book about French education. She even called the book “French Children Don’t Spit Food.”
But what did they feed children before they came up with “chicken nuggets”? Why teach children to eat pizza and hot dogs from childhood, so that they then struggle with this habit all their lives? And, by the way, it is easier for immigrants in the United States to resist advertising and offers of unhealthy food - we have not been accustomed to it since childhood.
Bee Wilson, in her book “The First Piece,” writes that after the Second World War in the United States, under the influence of manufacturers and advertising, the approach to children's food completely changed - from healthy and very simple, with a minimum of taste - to useless, with a high content of sugar and salt.
However, in the United States, awareness that something is wrong with baby food is growing. Former first lady Michelle Obama launched an active campaign to improve the diet of school cafeterias. One relatively new initiative that I really like is school gardens, where children grow and then consume their own vegetables.
And these are just the reasons that affect everyone in one way or another, perhaps with the exception of closed communities and unique cases. And there are others that also affect millions: lack of sleep, often due to working night shifts, frequent travel or working overtime; cultural norms where excess weight is welcomed in certain places, but is not always conducive to health; lack of knowledge about basic nutrition; a side effect of medications, the habit of looking for “rescue” from emotional problems in food, and the like.
The original column is published on the website. Ukrainian service "Voices of America".
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