[PheonixPharts]

To be clear, as an ex-smoker, I do believe we have agency in the cases where patterns are disruptive. Smoking tobacco got in the way of a range of activities, and I had to put in a serious effort to curb this behavior. Certainly drinkers who find their drinking interferes with other things are able to change their habits. Though even this is probably more environmental than not. I haven't smoked in 20+ years but I also no longer know any smokers. I'm not sure I would be a non-smoker today if smoking rates were closer to what they were in the 1950s. Similarly I have known people with problematic drinking behavior and their ability to stop has always been strongly correlated with having good reasons to stop.

However, for the smaller things that "aren't good for you" in a less immediate sense, I don't think we have as much control over our behaviors as we'd like to believe.

Another example is obesity. Many people still chalk this up to a "moral issue" where people are making "poor choices", but that doesn't seem like a good explanation for why we live in an obesity epidemic. I personally don't think people in 2024 are dramatically less "moral" than they were in 1990.

My personal pandemic realization was that I'm far more of a node in a network of cells in a vast social organism that is humanity than I am an individual actor.

[BeetleB]

> Another example is obesity. Many people still chalk this up to a "moral issue" where people are making "poor choices", but that doesn't seem like a good explanation for why we live in an obesity epidemic.

I'm going to add to the noise and give a "simple" answer: Prosperity and availability.

Years ago I read an interview with an applied mathematician who did a lot of research on how food impacts the body - from a math perspective. He said that many things impact a person (and society's) weight. You've got the type of diet (carbs/proteins/fat/fiber). You've got the components of the food (stuff in nutrition labels). You've got genetic factors. You've got parasites. Health issues like hypothyroidism. And more.

But they don't impact you equally. When looking at the contributions of each factor to the rise of obesity, one item stood out clearly:

The production (or rather, overproduction) of food. It's really that simple. As the decades go on, we produce more food per capita than in the past. Some of it, of course, is wasted. But otherwise, the food has to go somewhere. And that somewhere is us.

From what I've read, in the 1960's, the average plate size was 75% of what it is today. Most people don't measure the amount of food they put in a plate. They eyeball how "full" the plate appears. Increase the plate size, and you increase your food consumption. When I switched to smaller plates, I still feel satiated - I'm likely still overeating.

In the US, finding smaller plates (that are not flat, and not bowls) is not easy. I had to resort to visiting Chinese/Korean/Japanese stores to buy them. Presumably they still use smaller plates in those countries.

How often do you feel hungry? Not craving hungry but stomach pangs hungry? I was very thin when young and was known to eat little. Hunger pangs were part of daily life (and not a sign of malnourishment). You eat breakfast, and you should get hungry by the time you eat lunch, and so on.

I now go months before I feel any such thing. I often skip lunch altogether. Part of it is due to slowing metabolism, for sure. But the reality is I'm eating quite a bit for breakfast and random snacks.

I grew up in other countries. Portion sizes at restaurants in the US are huge. For a long time I avoided eating at such places because it was just too much food. I often would have enough leftovers for another meal. People who consume a whole entree are likely eating way too much.

And that problem exists everywhere. In other countries, the standard Pepsi can was 330ml, and you could easily buy 220ml ones. In the US, it's gotten hard for me to find a chilled 350ml can when I'm on the go. Regular grocery stores don't carry them. Now most gas stations/convenience stores don't either. You get 500ml bottles/cans. Ever read the nutrition label on them? 500ml bottles are listed as 2.5 servings. People consuming them are consuming a lot.

I've mostly switched to the 220ml cans for soda. It's extremely rare that I drink one and think to myself "That really wasn't enough. I need to drink more!"

Tic Tac boxes are larger in the US than in many other countries.

The nearby Target only has "supersize" chocolates at the checkout register. You want a smaller portion size? You need to buy a whole box.

I won't even get into cookies. They're huge in the US.

Milk shake type drinks are both huge and loaded. In many countries, the portion size is small (e.g. 250ml), and they have the good sense not to put ice cream in it!

Desserts, in general, are crazily loaded. Any dessert that's over 350 calories is too much. Dessert is supposed to be a "sweet extra", not a whole meal. I'm looking at a popular chain's milkshake calories. The lowest is 680. The highest is 1160.

Often, when you get a dessert item from a restaurant, you are consuming the calories of 1-2 meals just from the dessert alone.

I won't even talk about cheesecakes!

Sorry, I know it's distracting from your overall point. Of course, environment matters. If you happen to have a lot of junk food at home, it's hard not to eat it. If you go to stores that have your favorite snack by the counter, it's hard not to buy. These do play a role. But as the researcher said, it's secondary/tertiary.

But to anyone trying to figure out why it's so hard to lose weight:

1. Get smaller plates.

2. Try to reduce food intake so you feel hungry at least once per day (I achieve this for a while, and then drop the ball). Don't feel bad if for a long time you're having only 2 (or even 1) meal per day. It'll take a while before your body will feel hungry.

3. Drink soda in the smallest 220-250ml cans/bottles. Prefer Izze over Pepsi/Coke. And prefer Spindrift over all (it's OK that Spindrift is over 300ml!)

4. Avoid foods that trigger cravings. The usual offenders are fried/salty foods. If you get soda cravings, track whether you just ate some fried/salty food. If you want an extreme experiment, try eating really bland foods. You'll notice you probably never get a soda craving.

[Izkata]

> From what I've read, in the 1960's, the average plate size was 75% of what it is today. Most people don't measure the amount of food they put in a plate. They eyeball how "full" the plate appears. Increase the plate size, and you increase your food consumption.

Don't forget parents making their kids eat everything on their plate so they don't waste food. It was so normal and common in the 90s (and maybe earlier) it became a stereotype.

[throw46365]

> Don't forget parents making their kids eat everything on their plate so they don't waste food. It was so normal and common in the 90s (and maybe earlier) it became a stereotype.

Normal much earlier than the 90s. In the 80s this was “there are starving kids in Africa so you can’t waste your food”.

In the late 70s I went to a primary school where children were not allowed to go out to play at lunchtime if they didn’t clear their plates and eat the pudding/dessert/whatever. Compelled eating, with almost no choice in meal.

They had been doing that since the 1940s, when state-provided school dinners became law, and all through rationing, when really only children got “more than enough” food.

In the UK, rationing lasted so long after the war that many first time parents in the 70s and into the eighties had experienced life under rationing during their childhood.

In my parents’ case, they both had memories of rationing starting, and my father was in his mid twenties when it finally ended.

During the rationing era, food waste and getting more food than you were entitled to were crimes punishable by imprisonment, and wasting food remained a major social faux pas until the 90s.

[klondike_klive]

In the 80s it was common for parents to invoke the starving Ethiopians to make their kids eat up. A generation before that it was the starving Biafrans.

[throw46365]

5. You can’t eat it if you don’t buy it. It’s easier to just not walk down that aisle in the supermarket, to not start looking at certain displays etc., than it is to not eat food that you’ve bought. It’s easier to not go to KFC than to eat less at KFC.

There is an excellent pizza restaurant one minute’s walk from my house, which does takeaway food. When I moved here I made a commitment to never order a takeaway from it, and in 18 years I never have.

I have no sugar in my house. In terms of sweet food I never buy more than I would feel was acceptable to eat in a day or so, and I go five or six days between shopping trips.

Aside from odd occasions in a pub, I haven’t had a fizzy drink with sugar in it for fifteen years, and I do not buy even the sugar free stuff to keep in the house.

6. You probably don’t need to eat red meat very often. Cutting back and finding alternatives will improve your diet.

7. Vegetables fill you up. Find at least one you like. Learn how to cook it. Then make it your longer term goal to find five more.

8. Only add salt when cooking —- if at all. And then less than you think you need. Herbs add flavours that can replace salt, and you can learn that by not buying salt for a while.

None of these habits are clever or pious. They all rely on the fact that I am an idiot with lifelong ARFID and little to no moral courage or willpower, and this means impactful decisions need to be taken where they are the easiest, and bigger changes need to be spread out over years.

[devilbunny]

> Only add salt when cooking —- if at all. And then less than you think you need. Herbs add flavours that can replace salt, and you can learn that by not buying salt for a while.

Unless you have salt-dependent hypertension (and most people, even those with hypertension, do not), there is very little to be gained from leaving salt out. Things should not taste salty, necessarily, but salt improves the flavor of just about everything. Buy a tube of frozen creamed corn and it tastes like paste. Add salt and it's sweet. The caloric content has not changed; your taste perception has.

When recipes state "season to taste", they're telling you to put salt in. No amount of herbs can replace salt. Small amounts of salt will take the burned flavor away from bad coffee (it mitigates your perception of bitter flavors to make them more pleasant-bitter rather than bitter-bitter). Your natural thirst mechanisms will deal with the rest.

[throwup238]

> Sorry, I know it's distracting from your overall point. Of course, environment matters. If you happen to have a lot of junk food at home, it's hard not to eat it. If you go to stores that have your favorite snack by the counter, it's hard not to buy. These do play a role. But as the researcher said, it's secondary/tertiary.

After reading I can't help but think environment is the major component in this system. Why don't you have a bunch of junk food at your house? Why don't you like those sugar bomb milkshakes and cookies? Why don't you like those restaurant portion sizes that you can take home afterwards? Why haven't you increased your food intake?

To me the answer is obviously your environment (or at least, your past environment). I too immigrated to the US and all the nutritional recommendations from the USDA never made a single difference to us or any of the immigrant families we were friends with. We came with our own developed food cultures that were hundreds of years old and each family educated their children and helped them develop their sense of taste. "We can make it better at home" is a common refrain when talking about going out to eat and we look at all junk food as either downright revolting or a rare guilty pleasure that we usually regret afterwards.

[BeetleB]

> To me the answer is obviously your environment (or at least, your past environment).

Well, if you encompass everything in the environment, then yes, it depends entirely on the environment :-)

No, I don't think it's particular to the culture in the US. Or rather, it's not the culture that made us produce more food per capita over time. It's the fact that we produced more food per capita that made the food cheap that made Americans consume more (both more healthy food and junk food - both are bad).

And you see it in other countries where the economy allowed for cheaper food (whether via import or domestic production). They experience significant weight gains as well, typically regardless of the prevailing food culture.

> "We can make it better at home" is a common refrain when talking about going out to eat and we look at all junk food as either downright revolting or a rare guilty pleasure that we usually regret afterwards.

You project too much. Prior to my coming to the US, I ate junk food - both outside and at home. My like/dislike of junk food didn't change in the US - it's been fairly consistent both prior and after. What has changed is the portions.

As I said, portion size is primary. The ingredients/quality is secondary/tertiary.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

> I won't even talk about cheesecakes!

I really hope you (or anyone else!) weren't going to saying anything bad about cheesecakes. This is a perfect food given to humanity like a divine gift. As far as I know, and do not correct me, is that its nutritional content adapts exactly to what your body requires at the time of eating. It is a perfect food. And also delicious. I am not biased.

[poincaredisk]

>From what I've read, in the 1960's, the average plate size was 75% of what it is today. Most people don't measure the amount of food they put in a plate. They eyeball how "full" the plate appears.

This is also why food plates are often quite small in places with open buffet (hotel breakfasts, events with catering)

[HKH2]

When people add sugar to bread, you should be able to see that processed sugar is a big problem.

[BeetleB]

I always wondered about that when glancing at the ingredients, but I've never made my own bread. Did people in the past make bread without sugar?

[nerdbert]

> Did people in the past make bread without sugar?

They do it in the present.

Greetings from Europe. I hold in my hand a loaf of cheap (€1.20) supermarket bread, which tastes perfectly pleasant. The little supermarket on my street moves a full shelf of this every day.

The ingredients are:

- Wholewheat flour

- Water

- Wheat gluten

- Yeast

- Malt flour (barley, wheat)

- Rye sourdough powder

- Salt

- Sesame seeds

- Poppy seeds

- Polenta

- Rapeseed oil

I have experienced the bread in the USA and it tastes like a light cake. The sugar makes it cloying to my taste. I guess it's all about what you're used to. But yes, bread without sugar is a very normal thing, and I wouldn't want sugar in mine.

[hollerith]

The "Malt flour" in your bread is probably mostly sugar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malt#:~:text=modifying%20the%2....

Also, it is pretty easy to buy bread not containing sugar in the US.

[ahartmetz]

Malt flour contains 6-20% of sugar according to a German source I've found, so together with its low rank in the ingredient list, it's not a whole lot of sugar.

[throwup238]

The standard (legally mandated) French baguette recipe is water, flour, salt, and yeast.

[rrr_oh_man]

> Did people in the past make bread without sugar?

Yes. I made flatbread in the pan yesterday from water, flour, and some spices.

[HKH2]

Sugar is unnecessary but it does help the yeast so you won't need to use as much, but when there's enough sugar for bread to taste sweet you might as well eat cake.

[gnicholas]

Sourdough has no sugar, for one thing.