[jbrun]

As a Canadian and a French citizen, America definitely has this puritan streak of trying to be the best person you can be - or the purest you can be. Work harder, drink less, exercise more, etc.

My French grandparents lived until they were 100, were perfectly content, had 8 kids, ate great food during long meals and drank lots of wine. I don't think they jogged a day in their lives.

[bachmeier]

> America definitely has this puritan streak of trying to be the best person you can be - or the purest you can be. Work harder, drink less, exercise more, etc.

That might describe some parts of America, but it's definitely not universal. The German immigrants that formed the generation before me were drinking more and exercising less. They were also farmers, so they didn't need to exercise.

I would argue that it's the heavy influence of immigrants from all over the world that caused the self-help obsession. Those who came here weren't a random sample from their home countries. Immigration was itself a form of self-help.

[Baeocystin]

It's been known for a long time that immigrants in the US perform better across most every metric than the native population.

Sometimes this is seen by policy-makers as indicative of a problem with the native population. Sometimes this is cast as immigrants taking over.

The reality is rather straightforward, imo. The type of person willing and able to uproot themselves from their parent culture and set their sails for new opportunity is a huge selection event, in and of itself. It's no wonder that the most driven percentage of humanity turns out to be the most successful.

(This is also why I think the US would only benefit from much less restrictive immigration policy, but that is a discussion for another thread.)

[jbrun]

Yeah, probably true. My background is Jewish European and there is an obvious streak of self-improvement in that culture (or at least, there used to be....)

[dominotw]

> I don't think they jogged a day in their lives.

i don't think they were sitting all day eating highly processed food either.

[markbeare]

Exactly

[lumost]

It is curious why we haven't figured out the difference between a "healthy" french/mediterranean/home cooked meal and a tv dinner yet.

Obviously something gets lost in the macro nutrients/vitamin content - but I don't think I've seen a formal study of why they are different.

[handrous]

Portions are the #1 culprit as far as food goes, I'd say. There may be a bunch of other factors, but I'd expect that they're secondary to that.

I'm also very curious how much better US health would be if we could wave a magic wand and replace all sugary drinks with water. 64oz of sugar-water with a meal is a lot, but not uncommon thanks to free refills and helpful waiters always topping everyone off. Lots of people have way more than that on an average day, too. I'm sure it wouldn't fix (anywhere near) everything, but I bet that single factor is an awful lot of the cause of dietary-related illness rate differences between the US and other countries. The others have soda too, but it doesn't flow as freely and cheaply as here[0], and enormous cups/bottles of the stuff multiple times a day isn't common most places.

[0] With some exceptions—I understand Mexico, for example, consumes lots of sugary soda.

[lumost]

If portions are the problem then processed food should be fine, why is it that processed food always comes in larger portions?

Why do consumers often think that the smaller portion is more filling when eating a properly proportioned french meal than the equivalent calories from McDonalds?

[handrous]

Guesses:

Some of it's food culture. Giant portions are normal so you don't think twice about piling your plate high. Norms (and, yes, judgement/shaming) about consumption affect patterns of same. Snacking, even heavy snacking, between meals, is common. This may be suppressed elsewhere by stronger "you eat at meal times—if not exclusively, then nearly so" norms, and snack-availability that's about what you'd expect, given those norms.

Some people think our commonly-accessible "good" food (fruits, veggies, not from specialty stores, just the main produce section of normal grocery stores) are a lot worse than what's normal in some other, healthier countries. I don't have enough experience to claim anything definitive on this, but what experience I do have does support it. If "good" food doesn't taste as good as elsewhere, or if getting something as good as others' normal produce requires special shopping and much higher prices, maybe one tends to reach for umami-bomb fat+starch garbage, which is both kinda-addictive and not very filling.

A lot of our standard cooking is tied up heavily with giant portions. We even seem to do this with imported cuisines, for whatever reason. Not-especially-good food in giant portions. Heaping plates of mediocre pasta+sauce as our image of Italian food, Mexican food with bottomless chips & salsa (and huge, cheese-slathered plates for the entrees), that kind of thing. I guess that's more of the food-culture thing.

I doubt any of these are all of the reason, and maybe none of them are correct at all.

[vorpalhex]

There is a theory (and I want to stress that it's theory, not fact) that many processed foods may not trigger our indicators of satiety. Some foods trigger satiety better than others, and we have pretty good evidence that a lot of sugars don't cause satiety.

On the other hand, foods like rice, potatoes, etc do.

[1] https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/satiety-new-diet-weapon (soft ref, appropriate grain of salt)

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27125637/

[KptMarchewa]

Because it is. It's relatively easy to consume 2000 calories in one sitting in McD, while few people have the stomach to stomach the same amount of calories in salad, without sugary drinks.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

I am not operating off any data here, and as far as I can tell neither are you so that seems fair, but it is quite possible that our conception of what is "filling" or "satisfying" is intrinsically tied to the cost of the meal. Processed food and fast food are cheaper and we know it, so if we get less of it, it is possible that that fact alone makes it less satisfying.

[handrous]

> Processed food and fast food are cheaper and we know it, so if we get less of it, it is possible that that fact alone makes it less satisfying.

Food pricing, especially at chain restaurants and fast-food joints, tends to support this. It's not uncommon to pay 20% more for double the food, either because larger sizes aren't much more expensive than smaller ones, or thanks to "combo" meals. Restaurants seem to be optimizing for total sales, not margin on individual items, based on how they price—in many cases their entire menu seems to exist only to make the "combo meal" look like a good deal, but of course it may be more food than you really wanted.

To say nothing of the phenomenon of all-you-can-eat buffets...

[tyjaksn]

I would add that the ease with which we can access food is also a main culprit.

[handrous]

Right—I suspect one factor is that we have/had a weaker and looser food-culture than many countries, which fact has been exploited by companies to wedge food (so, food sales) into more situations and parts of our day, badly eroding whatever weak norms there had been.

Way, way more stores having very late or even 24/7 hours than before has probably further disrupted any norms and culture we had about when & where to eat—not just for the shoppers who have those wares available more hours of the day, but I'm thinking especially of the workers—believe it or not, young'uns, but as recently as the early 2000s almost everything in the US but certain districts of major cities were shut down and dead by a reasonable hour.

Another, possibly minor factor: I have a suspicion we have more waking hours per day, on average, than Americans did 50 years ago. You can't eat (snack) when you're sleeping, even if food's available.

[munk-a]

TV Dinners are absolutely loaded with salt, sugar and hard fats so they taste good while being frozen. If I cook a delicious meal and then chuck it into the freezer for three months it will taste like crap because freezing is not an effective method to preserve taste and texture, to make it palatable after an extended period of time I need to add flavour enhancers like sugar (it's addictive and works on anything), sodium (it enhances flavours directly and salt is a common craving) and hard fats (ones that won't break down as quickly when frozen.

I think America really has figured out the difference and that information is pretty easily accessible - but if you're working twelve hours then you'll grab the five dollar TV dinner and just ignore the downsides.

[rusk]

I don’t think the accepted wisdom is that pre packaged meals are bad vs what you cook yourself it’s the quality that matters. It processed foods vs non processed foods. You can get posh TV dinners that are good for you but you pay for them. The cheaper stuff manufactured at scale is almost certainly going to be using cheaper/substituted ingredients because that’s just how business works. You’re going to be missing the macros you mentioned, as well as fibre and you’ll be taking on a lot of dodgy fats and sugars and typically many other additives used to flavour and preserve the food. What you get with home cooked dinners is control over your ingredients. Of course you could just eat ketchup and chips and you’re not going to be seeing a benefit but it’s hard to go wrong with rice, fish and a few vegetables for example.

There’s various other confounding factors such as how and when you eat, and ultimately your relationship with food.

There is plenty of research linking processed food with health risks.

[vorpalhex]

I think you are correct here in terms of the base argument but wrong for the origin.

You don't make food cheaper by reducing the quality of ingrediants since decent ingredients are still really cheap. You make food cheaper by making it more preserved.

A lot of food cost is in waste and spoilage. Cheap foods are typically things that handle well and don't perish easily.

You accomplish this by adding more fat, more salt, and heavily processing food. You strip all the bacteria and cultures from it and you can get a tv dinner to last a decade if it's packaged well.

On the other hand, gourmet food is all prone to spoilage. Squeaky cheese curds, fresh pasta, homemade tortillas, etc.

[adolph]

> "healthy" french/mediterranean/home cooked meal and a tv dinner

Opportunity knocking, are you listening?

[908B64B197]

Traditional French food (and furthermore, cuisine from Quebec and Louisiana) is far from healthy.

[munk-a]

The traditional french cuisine of Quebec was eaten by folks that regularly canoed hundreds of miles up and down rivers so they had an immense amount of physical activity to counter that out - an amount quite beyond what you'll get sitting at a desk job these days.

[Broken_Hippo]

Sure. But it was also eaten by folks that stayed home all day. By store clerks and children and school teachers and grandparents and other normal, every day folks. Other folks on different traditional diets worked hard too.

[newfriend]

That's great for them. Is there something wrong with trying to be the best person you can be? Is a life of leisure and hedonism something to be celebrated, while a life of striving to achieve is looked down upon?

I think this is part of the reason the US has been so successful and innovative. Hard work and improvement are seen as virtues here. A life of sloth and mediocrity, avoiding work and relying on the government to provide for you was not seen as something good until recently. I hope the essence of America isn't lost forever: industry, innovation, and individualism.

[jbrun]

America is built mostly on immigrant work ethic, vast amount of arable land, no bordering enemies and the collapse of the european powers. Not sure america is that special, just lucky - right place, right time.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-under-pressu...

[newfriend]

Forgive me if I don't care about an opinion piece by someone who hates America.

> America is built mostly on immigrant work ethic

Isn't it interesting how many believe the US was solely built by immigrants, slaves, and natives. I wonder what American citizens did during this time?

> the collapse of the european powers

The US was already inventing and building in the 1800s, no collapse needed.

> Not sure america is that special, just lucky - right place, right time.

It's easy to ascribe luck to anything successful. You could say Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc were nothing special, just lucky - right place, right time, but I don't think that's true.

[deregulateMed]

You mentioned hedonism and an accomplishment... Having 8 kids.

While I love my kids, I don't consider it an achievement.

And hedonism seems great until you climb the hedonic treadmill. Your claim of the "content" life leaves lots to disect.

[perardi]

As a Canadian and a French citizen

If I may hazard a guess: Quebecois?

I lived in Toronto for a few years, with the occasional trip to Montreal. I definitely noticed a cultural difference between the provinces—Quebec was rather less stressed out, whereas Ontario is just as tight-assed Protestant as the Midwest. (Maybe more so. Can’t buy wine at a grocery store? Raw uncut Calvinism.)

[frosted-flakes]

You can buy most types of alcohol at grocery stores now. You have always been able to buy wine at some grocery stores like Zehrs or Loblaws, though it was in a separate store-within-a-store. LCBO and The Beer Store no longer have a duopoly on alcohol sales, but I think it was just fine when they did.

[randomdata]

Brewers Retail was a reasonable solution coming out of prohibition when it was jointly owned by all of Ontario's brewers, balancing their needs with the needs of consumers along with the needs of those still worried about the end of prohibition. However, it should have only been considered a short-term solution.

By the time mergers and acquisitions left it to be owned completely by foreign interests, all while Ontario's emerging craft beer scene were prohibited from inclusion, there was absolutely no excuse for it anymore. How the 2015 Master Framework Agreement got signed continues to boggle the mind.

Rural Ontario has allowed the sale of alcohol (all kinds) in grocery and corner stores since the 1960s. It is amazing how slow the rest of the province is to catch up. It took until the year 2000 for Toronto to fully let go of being dry.

[jbrun]

Definitely agree.

[throwaway675309]

Genetics are a powerful thing. Trying to be actively healthy is playing a statistical game, not all of us have the magical genetic sequences to somehow live to 100 in perfect health while drinking copious amounts of wine.

Furthermore some of us exercise not just for the sake of it, we do it to enable us to become better at activities that we enjoy. I enjoy being able to track my measurable improvement at sports such as tennis and badminton as a result of my going to the gym and work on high intensity interval training, anaerobics, etc.

[swiley]

Coincidentally I think the best self help book I've read was written by a Canadian. Maybe it's because he had the rest of the culture to contrast his ideas against.

[sparrc]

I guess, but that's just your personal anecdote largely based on your grandparents genetics and the fact that they probably weren't exceedingly overweight.

My (100% American) grandpa also lived to 100...he also never exercised and even smoked for 20 years or so. He ate whatever he wanted but didn't over-eat candy and snacks, which I think is the main issue lots of people have.

[dqpb]

American self-help isn’t about the simple practical things like jogging.

It’s more about motivational-life-coach-metaphysical-wealth-manifestation-secrets.

[bitwize]

In other words, multi level marketing indoctrination memes. It's why I avoid self-help, especially the slick charismatic gurus like Tony Robbins, and the "positive thinking" movement altogether.

[EvilEy3]

> My French grandparents lived until they were 100, were perfectly content, had 8 kids, ate great food during long meals and drank lots of wine. I don't think they jogged a day in their lives.

And? What's your point?

[iseethroughbs]

Americans jog, and then have a meal that is 20 different ways to process the same corn into various food-like substances.