I remember the first time I ever spoke to a Japanese person. Our conversation turned to global politics and society; whereupon he said,
“Why are so many Americans fat? We don’t have such fat people in Japan.” Seriously, USians, that is your international reputation. Most funny furrin’ folks are simply too polite to tell you to your big-mouthed fat faces.
America is not so much a big country, but more like a big business. There is a lot of money to be made in obesity for a lot of people and companies: healthcare, pharma, sugar, hfcs, fastfood, supermarkets etc.
It's in America's interest to keep people fat, keep prisons full, keep hospitals full, charge people for as much as they can, and fleece them out of their money. Of course everyone has to keep up the pretense that the opposite is true, and many may even believe it. But ask yourself this: do you trust their words or their actions?
One historical reason is the effectiveness of lobbying by large food conglomerates and other corporations, which heavily influenced the development and accuracy not only of dietary advice and how it was communicated, but also produced lopsided incentives for dietary research. Similarly, product packaging and food advertisement standards are generally more lax in the United States than elsewhere, and the social tolerance of markets and corporations is perhaps also greater.
One piece of the puzzle: Processed vegetable fats are far cheaper to produce in the first instance than animal fats. Furthermore, they are more shelf-stable—thus, friendlier to long BigCorp supply chains.
Alleged health “experts” who tell you that canola (rapeseed) or soy oils are “healthier” than butter or lard mean only that they are healthier for distribution logistics involving large warehouses and many middlemen.
Hydrogenated vegetable oils will blow you up whale-sized, and give you heart disease. Implications are left as an exercise to the reader.
Because MC is everywhere and MC is life! I'm from Europe and people there getting more fat too.
Cultural imperialist weaponry. If America doesn’t bomb your country to rubble, they will invade it with McDonald’s and other anti-culture.
They want to take over the world, and are too fat and lazy to maintain their stockpile of atomic weapons.
Americans are also very lazy and they just pay a few bucks to get finished meal, than cook meal by yourself.. ???
Well, it would be impractical for everybody to cook individual meals every time they needed to eat. This raises the atomization of society—worst in America, and accelerating with each generation. Moreover, it raises the division of labour. The latter inevitably leads to discussion of sex roles.
To date, I have met exactly one American woman under the age of 40 who excelled in the kitchen, and genuinely enjoyed cooking for others. And she was not fat! Actually, she was a bit too skinny.
(
N.b., the kitchen was not the only place where she excelled.)
very controversial
OK
I've read a study about people getting fat is because they don't just eat MCdonalds but simply because they are happy. Americans are not all fat but most of those that are unhappy people are skinny - Studies shows that when a person is not a jolly as some, they end up growing with the wrong crowd and not so happy.
Translation:
Grinning idiots.
If you're tall enough to stand out in a crowd, you're probably aware of your tallness – maybe even self-conscious about it. But imagine that you're in a room full of basketball players. Suddenly, you don't seem so tall anymore.
Forsooth, the American cow is oblivious amidst its herd. So too in every other way.
First of all both women in the picture have no class or style showing off their private parts like that. When you're going out make sure your pants are the right size! :D
Killjoy. (At least as to the one on the left...)
It's not the fat that's making you fat, however that sounds. It's mostly carbohydrates that give you energy which you are unable to burn. The math is very simple: you consume 2000 calories a day and burn 2200 = you're getting lighter and thinner. Also, you need fats to be healthy, it's just that fried food tends to have more calories in the same size meal, so people lose control of how much they're eating.
Actually, it’s not so simple. Different foods are metabolized differently.
I eat a diet heavy in meat and dairy fats, very low in sugar, moderately high in complex carbohydrates. On that, I am anything but fat. But if I were to eat a McBurger-and-soda diet measured at a nominally equal number of Calories, then I have no doubt that I would blow up like an American.
(Technical aside: Lowercase-c “calories” is the base unit; uppercase-C is actually kcal. Use the uppercase C in these conversations.)
