It's hard to find "fit" people anymore. Walking around some grocery stores is mind blowing. I honestly feel bad for people. The "food" we have is shit and life is getting busier and busier.
Something I haven't seen other commenters bring up that can have a huge impact, is the overall lifestyles people are living.
The unhealthiest years of my life were when I was working 2 jobs and struggling to keep a roof over mine and my 3 kids heads. Stress and depression were huge problems and money was tight, so sometimes the little bit of dopamine or serotonin from eating a "treat" were the highlights of the day. Add to that, the guilt of not being around to cook regular meals for my kids lead to 1) making large amounts of food on my one day off that could be eaten as leftovers throughout the week or 2) easy convenience foods (frozen pizzas, boxed Mac and cheese, etc) that the kids could make when I wasn't around.
Fast forward many years - my kids are adults taking care of themselves and I'm down to 1 good job that offers financial stability. My diet and health have completely changed. I actually have the time and energy to cook and plan better.
I'm not saying this to shift blame or responsibility, but to bring a different experience. When I hear (hopefully well meaning) people suggest "just cook healthier meals" it strikes me about the same as "stop eating avocado toast and you could afford a house."
Lack of free time to cook healthy food with a busier and more expensive life with salary raises that don't keep up with inflation or layoffs for many people definitely doesn't help. Healthy food ends up costing twice as much, if not more than unhealthy food. It's a multi-faceted problem and should be treated as such.
I don't think healthy food is necessarily more expensive, at least not if you know what you're doing. My personal experience is actually the opposite.
The problem, as you mentioned is the time, and the emotional and physical labor of figuring out something the whole family will want to eat and cooking it. Those things are all expenditures in their own ways, but not financial.
Well said, that's what we call canard advice. Unhelpful advice that's obvious to everyone and does no fucking good to say whatsoever. You can cook more when your primary financial needs are met, so you can just work 40 hours in a week. That and the RTO mandates going around are robbing people of a significant chunk of time yet again ontop of overemployment. When you have to work a 10 hour day and commute an hour plus each direction, then come home and "cook" something, it usually translates to heating up frozen shit and then wishing you weren't miserable.
Been there and done that, fuck hustle culture.
Yep. My boomer dad: "When I was a kid, we walked everywhere! Nobody walks anymore!" Also my dad: "I'm afraid to drive into Portland because my truck might get stolen."
The healthy food options are also usually twice the cost too.
ditch all the sugar drinks and drink plane old water, like out the toilet.
Rice and beans can be made in 1000 different ways. $1/lb uncooked.
Eating out is almost never a healthy option.
Healthy and expensive don't correlate in my outlook. I spend less eating better. Factor in not eating out and my pockets are fat, but not my ass.
Eating out is almost never a healthy option.
This is a big deal people often don't realize. Even something as simple as an alfredo pasta will have way too much butter in it when you order it at a restaurant. (Why do you think it tastes so good?) An entire stick of butter for a single serving is quite common.
Not only is cooking for yourself significantly cheaper than ordering food, you are also significantly more aware of the calories you are putting into the food.
And that wouldn't even be so bad if we ate a reasonable portion of it. But cooking at home is preferable.
Too many people think eating healthy means broccoli needs to be 100% of your calories.
This is so fucking false its hilarious.
It's cooking -- cooking is cheaper. Cooking anything is cheaper than buying boxes.
Until you go on vacation to a "poor" country where it suddenly costs virtually nothing.
Are Avocados a conspiracy?
If you need to eat half as much it kind of works out though.
I spend about $12/day on ingredients, which is about the cost of a single meal at McDonald’s which is far less healthy. I don’t think that actually stands up when you look at the prices of cheap food (chicken, rice, beans, other legumes, potatoes) plus the costs of sides (fruits, vegetables).
I work on OpenFoodFacts, and the big issue is simply the amount of saturated fats and refined sugars there are in a lot of processed foods.
Like, sure, people have to be held personally responsible to some extent, but it should also be on the government to properly regulate how foods are advertised. I really appreciate the Nutriscore system that's being pushed for in Europe despite the flaws it has, and here in Canada they've been making some changes in how certain products are shown on shelves such as requiring labeling if they're high in sugar or fats and changing the previous confusing labels for energy drinks with a more easy-to-read Supplemental Food Facts label.
End of the day though, if something is still being labelled as being "healthy" when it really isn't, that's all it takes to fool the average consumer unfortunately. Stuff like Lucky Charms shouldn't be advertised to kids as "part of a complete breakfast", and it's absurd that a lot of "healthier" alternatives to certain foods are being advertised that way despite only being barely any better than the original product, like turkey bacon or veggie straws.
Like when Coke argued in court that no reasonable person would think Vitamin Water is actually good for you.
Yes, but I don't remember if that was before or after Fox News successfully argued that no reasonable person would mistake them for a News Outlet
You can have something packed with sugars that says "NO FAT!" on the label, and otherwise intelligent people will think it's healthy.
My brother-in-law eats a huge bowl of cold cereal every morning with skim milk... I drink a coffee with heavy cream or half and half and don't eat breakfast. He's a bigger guy that can't figure out how to lose weight and I'm not anymore.
Lobbyists have even polluted the ingredient label on the back. Now they can list a brand name as an ingredient, then list the ingredients of that. This lets them disguise the most prevalent ingredients if they're also part of the brand.
Water, oil, sugar, xantham gum, Bob's secret spice (enough sugar so that if the label were truthful, sugar would be the second ingredient instead of the third, cinnamon, nutmeg).
Just a few things come to mind :
I am happy that an organisation like Foodwatch exists : https://www.foodwatch.org/en/foodwatch-international
I keep getting into it with people I mostly agree with. Yes, it's fucked up that we add HFCS to everything and that corporations have weaponized addiction, but we can fight back.
Healthy at every weight culture
This one irritates TF out of me.
Too many people who are outright unhealthy being told they're ok.
Overweight kids lead to sick adults.
Good thing in Ontario we have ol' Dougie fixing out healthcare system by privatizing the fuck out of it /s
Surely Pierre Pollieve will save us all when he's elected! /s
FML we are so lost.
Capitalism has brought prosperity and wealth to rational actors across the entire globe!
Yep we all eat too much. I started counting calories and found out that I was eating twice as much as I should have. It's not obvious and every place serves big portions.
I've been counting calories for the last few months, and that was my big realization as well. I could have easily put down a single meal at a restaurant which is my entire (or more) daily intake now.
More than anything it's just awareness.
I'm counting calories too, it's not even the amount but it's that some foods are total calorie bombs. You can pretty easily ingest a day's worth of calories in a single meal at the restaurant without really feeling like you overate, but if I pay attention and select my foods properly I can feel like I ate plenty and be under 1500cal a day.
It's not just that we eat "too much" but also that we're eating too much non-nutritive foods. The United States has entirely too many so-called "food deserts" where people are unable to purchase healthy foods
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