As well as a massive car-centric society. I can’t even walk to Jack in the Box at 10pm to get a shit burger, but I can drive thru with a car. That’s part of the problem.
If you make something easier to do, it’s more likely to be done. This is why gun control is needed, make it harder to get a gun, less gun death; snacks at the checkout means more buying of snacks; driveways and parking lots and drive thrus mean more car use.
This is only tangentially related, but I just wanted to share a random anecdote.
I ordered a mobile pickup order at my local Taco Bell with their app. Since it’s nearby, I walked there and I had selected in store pickup. I walked inside and waited for a few moments. The manager comes out and this interaction happens.
Manager: “Inside was supposed to be closed. Idk who unlocked the door but you have to go through the drive through”
Me: “Oh uhh I already paid for an in store pickup through the app.”
Manager: “You have to go through the drive through.”
Me: “Uhhh…can I walk through the drive through? I walked here.”
The manager looks at me in total disbelief that someone would do that. “You don’t have a car???”
Me: “I mean I just walked here.”
Manager: “Ok hold on I’ll get your order.”
Lol. She looked at me like she had never heard of anyone walking some place to get some food lol. Granted I live literally a 5 minute walk from there which is probably not really the norm.
European countries have access to those same ultra processed foods and yet their consumption and the obesity rates are dramatically lower. I think there are factors beyond simple availability that we should look at fixing.
Once upon a time people worked 9-5 with a commute somewhere under twenty minutes - so somewhere in the realm of nine hours of employment before home tasks like cooking and cleaning started happening. I believe most millennials and under work at least ten and a half hour (and the number of people trying to juggle multiple jobs has gone way up).
The ultra processed and fast foods are generally the default option when you are so fully drained by a sedentary employment and craving chemical joy to deaden the depression of existence. Millennials have eschewed alcohol and tobacco like no other generation and sugar is the only chemical fulfillment they can find so it becomes a spiral of comfort food into physical pain into inability to seek other enjoyment into comfort food.
I’d hesitate to ascribe the obesity epidemic to a single cause due to the exceptions that prove the rule.
Is it? There’s primitive cultures that eat every kind of weird diet you can imagine, and they’re all thin and fit. It’s still kind of a mystery why exactly we can’t handle eating even a fraction like the historical Inuit, and just the processing itself shouldn’t change much.
Because ultra processed foods don’t fill us up but taste incredibly good. Technically the problem is overeating, but it’s a lot easier to overeat ultra processed foods.
I mean, which foods even count as ultraprocessed isn’t well defined. It’s not an ingredient, it’s not a technique. OP was trying to find a problem for their solution, you’re right, but lack of exercise is just as big of a suspect if not bigger.
They’re engineered to be very appealing for sure, but do you have a link for the not filling us up bit? That one’s new to me.
You’re trying to find a problem for your solution.
The obesity epidemic actually due to the increased availability of ultra processed foods.
As well as a massive car-centric society. I can’t even walk to Jack in the Box at 10pm to get a shit burger, but I can drive thru with a car. That’s part of the problem.
If you make something easier to do, it’s more likely to be done. This is why gun control is needed, make it harder to get a gun, less gun death; snacks at the checkout means more buying of snacks; driveways and parking lots and drive thrus mean more car use.
This is only tangentially related, but I just wanted to share a random anecdote.
I ordered a mobile pickup order at my local Taco Bell with their app. Since it’s nearby, I walked there and I had selected in store pickup. I walked inside and waited for a few moments. The manager comes out and this interaction happens.
Manager: “Inside was supposed to be closed. Idk who unlocked the door but you have to go through the drive through”
Me: “Oh uhh I already paid for an in store pickup through the app.”
Manager: “You have to go through the drive through.”
Me: “Uhhh…can I walk through the drive through? I walked here.”
The manager looks at me in total disbelief that someone would do that. “You don’t have a car???”
Me: “I mean I just walked here.”
Manager: “Ok hold on I’ll get your order.”
Lol. She looked at me like she had never heard of anyone walking some place to get some food lol. Granted I live literally a 5 minute walk from there which is probably not really the norm.
European countries have access to those same ultra processed foods and yet their consumption and the obesity rates are dramatically lower. I think there are factors beyond simple availability that we should look at fixing.
Once upon a time people worked 9-5 with a commute somewhere under twenty minutes - so somewhere in the realm of nine hours of employment before home tasks like cooking and cleaning started happening. I believe most millennials and under work at least ten and a half hour (and the number of people trying to juggle multiple jobs has gone way up).
The ultra processed and fast foods are generally the default option when you are so fully drained by a sedentary employment and craving chemical joy to deaden the depression of existence. Millennials have eschewed alcohol and tobacco like no other generation and sugar is the only chemical fulfillment they can find so it becomes a spiral of comfort food into physical pain into inability to seek other enjoyment into comfort food.
I’d hesitate to ascribe the obesity epidemic to a single cause due to the exceptions that prove the rule.
Is it? There’s primitive cultures that eat every kind of weird diet you can imagine, and they’re all thin and fit. It’s still kind of a mystery why exactly we can’t handle eating even a fraction like the historical Inuit, and just the processing itself shouldn’t change much.
Because ultra processed foods don’t fill us up but taste incredibly good. Technically the problem is overeating, but it’s a lot easier to overeat ultra processed foods.
I mean, which foods even count as ultraprocessed isn’t well defined. It’s not an ingredient, it’s not a technique. OP was trying to find a problem for their solution, you’re right, but lack of exercise is just as big of a suspect if not bigger.
They’re engineered to be very appealing for sure, but do you have a link for the not filling us up bit? That one’s new to me.