what percent of obesity cases are the result of lifestyle choices?

[balo]

4 minutes ago, robblok said:

Plus those bubble tea's (lates rage) are not an American thing but full of sugar.

 

Its easy to blame the USA and partly its true but just partly. 

I agree Thais love sugar, but sugar alone is not creating obesity, it's the whole lifestyle package, eating too much and moving too little. 

[fredwiggy]

Just now, robblok said:

My point was more that its not JUST American fast food. Most countries have their fast foods and as more income came available people started to eat more bad foods. Not just American fast food.

 

I am sure it contributes but can't say its just that. When i go to a Thai market I always see them deep frying all kinds of stuff. Plus those bubble tea's (lates rage) are not an American thing but full of sugar.

 

Its easy to blame the USA and partly its true but just partly. 

 

I think for a large part is because more money is available and certain bad foods are just cheap no matter where they come from.

True. I go to 7-11's and I see 3 diet drinks to a couple hundred that have sugar. I noticed that when I first came here and I thought to myself, How do they burn all this sugar off, working at the farm all day?

[robblok]

8 minutes ago, fredwiggy said:

True. I go to 7-11's and I see 3 diet drinks to a couple hundred that have sugar. I noticed that when I first came here and I thought to myself, How do they burn all this sugar off, working at the farm all day?

I was guilty of liking sweet stuff too i slowly got rid of it. But it was hard at first. Now i just make sure i never drink it. Once i get a taste i want more of it. Just loved the mango juice and other juices and blueberry syrup with soda. That was actually one of the worst things in my diet. 

[fredwiggy]

12 minutes ago, robblok said:

I was guilty of liking sweet stuff too i slowly got rid of it. But it was hard at first. Now i just make sure i never drink it. Once i get a taste i want more of it. Just loved the mango juice and other juices and blueberry syrup with soda. That was actually one of the worst things in my diet. 

When I first came here in 2015 and met my wife to be. I took her to Kanchanaburi, which was on my list of places, and I had my first Mango smoothie. To explain how good that was after we had a bike ride on rental bicycles in the heat would be impossible. She had a Strawberry one and I had a taste also. So good and healthy as just fruit, ice and soymilk.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 7/2/2020 at 2:34 PM, BigStar said:

That, but more than that. There's also the pigging out on too much rice & noodles and dumping sugar on everything that isn't already saturated with sugar. Dishes that might have been healthy, or at least innocuous, are made unhealthy. Not too surprising in view of the fact that Thailand has long been a big sugar producer and sugarcane farmers form a powerful political lobby.

 

But never mind. It's clearly stated in the Bible of TVF Nutrition, and has always been a cherished given, that obesity everywhere is due to American fast food, even in villages that have no fast food outlets. Oh--or in India, too. ???? Works in well with the general anti-Americanism.

The only chubby in my wife's family was her, and she was the one making food for the farang. I didn't see any fatties in the village.

Could be down to them all working for a living, and not sitting in an office all day.

IMO obesity is more to do with inactivity than food per se, though if one doesn't do much to burn calories and eats loads of calories they gonna get really fat.

Even farmers get fat now because they drive tractors and ride motorbikes instead of doing anything much that is hard physical work.

[thaibeachlovers]

16 hours ago, fredwiggy said:

When I first came here in 2015 and met my wife to be. I took her to Kanchanaburi, which was on my list of places, and I had my first Mango smoothie. To explain how good that was after we had a bike ride on rental bicycles in the heat would be impossible. She had a Strawberry one and I had a taste also. So good and healthy as just fruit, ice and soymilk.

Sugar is sugar is sugar. Doesn't matter where it comes from. Sugar from fruit is just as fattening as sugar from an ice cream unless one does physical exertion to burn the calories. Problem is most of us don't do any physical work any more.

[robblok]

1 hour ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Sugar is sugar is sugar. Doesn't matter where it comes from. Sugar from fruit is just as fattening as sugar from an ice cream unless one does physical exertion to burn the calories. Problem is most of us don't do any physical work any more.

Not completely true, with fruits you usually get fibers and vitamins too. Nobody should stop eating fruits and worry about sugars. Its different if you drink fruit juices as its far easier to drink 10 oranges then to really eat them. 

[BigStar]

19 hours ago, balo said:

It was in 2012, not 16 years ago.

Whoops. But makes your case even worse, as supermarkets have progressed more towards the healtheir stuff. Now, for example, besides the organic craze, there's a lot of catering to low carb.

 

19 hours ago, balo said:

Are you trying to tell me the obesity problem is the same in Thailand?

Obesity is obesity, pal. USA has much more of it of course but the blame can't be ascribed to the supermarkets offering no alternative, as you tried to claim. I also gave you a credible link giving the reasons for the high rate of obesity in the UK.

 

Hope we're all clear on that now. ????

 

 

[BigStar]

18 hours ago, robblok said:

I was guilty of liking sweet stuff too i slowly got rid of it. But it was hard at first. Now i just make sure i never drink it. Once i get a taste i want more of it. Just loved the mango juice and other juices and blueberry syrup with soda. That was actually one of the worst things in my diet. 

Children are turned into sugar addicts almost from birth. Baby food--full of sugar. Sweetened juice becomes a standard pacifier and the older they get the more they drink.

[Tony125]

1 hour ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Sugar is sugar is sugar. Doesn't matter where it comes from. Sugar from fruit is just as fattening as sugar from an ice cream unless one does physical exertion to burn the calories. Problem is most of us don't do any physical work any more.

You have no idea what your talking about, sugar is sugar ? No it's not, our bodies can burn Glucose in any cell in the body and will store that not used by the body as Glycogen which can easily be released for use (energy) if needed. Fructose can only be metabolised in the liver and if not used is stored in the body as fat. Much harder for the body to break down fat to burn as it will burn the readily available Glucose first. That's why marathon runners hit the wall ,the distance where they have burned off their Glucose stores for energy and now the body has to burn fat which is a lot harder. High Fructose Corn Syrup  (HFC) is loaded with Fructose which is basically added to many foods/drinks and is stored as fat.

https://nutrition.org/sugars-created-equal-lets-talk-fructose-metabolism/

 

https://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/sugar-metabolism.html#.Xv7CIigzbIU

 

Edited July 3, 2020 by Tony125
spelling

[BigStar]

19 hours ago, robblok said:

I think for a large part is because more money is available and certain bad foods are just cheap no matter where they come from.

Good point I'd thought to bring up when I noted that Thailand is one of the world's biggest sugar producers.

 

Sugar was once an extremely expensive commodity.

 

Contemporaries often compared the worth of sugar with valuable commodities including musk, pearls, and spices. Sugar prices declined slowly as its production became multi-sourced, especially through English colonial policy. . . . During the 18th century, sugar became enormously popular. Great Britain, for example, consumed five times as much sugar in 1770 as in 1710.[41] By 1750, sugar surpassed grain as "the most valuable commodity in European trade — it made up a fifth of all European imports and in the last decades of the century four-fifths of the sugar came from the British and French colonies in the West Indies."[41] From the 1740s until the 1820s, sugar was Britain's most valuable import.[42]

         --Wikipedia

 

So, if we could only do so on this forum, the ultimate blame really needs to be placed on "our lads," the Brits, along w/ the other Europeans. Portugal was early involved in the sugar trade, for example.

 

Production of sugar correlates with the production of cheap high-calorie high-carb foods in general:

 

"This study attributes obesity to only one cause: low food prices.It does not discuss relentless marketing of cheap 'junk' foods, nor does it discuss Consumer Price Index data on the relative cost of foods," she said, noting that the cost of fruits and vegetables has gone up more than the average food cost.

 

"The higher prevalence of obesity among people of lower income and education can be explained by greater consumption of low-cost, high-calorie foods."

    --Cheap Food Blamed for America's Obesity Crisis

[fredwiggy]

5 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Sugar is sugar is sugar. Doesn't matter where it comes from. Sugar from fruit is just as fattening as sugar from an ice cream unless one does physical exertion to burn the calories. Problem is most of us don't do any physical work any more.

No, sugar from food isn't wasted, empty calories. Everything besides meat has sugar. natural sugar that your body needs. Your body processes all sugar the same way, but with fruit and vegetables it breaks down slower because there is fiber there. refined sugar is probably the biggest way to get fat. You can be a couch potato that never exercises and still be lean, IF you don't eat more calories than your body needs. I've known many people. including a friend from 1965, and all he does is walk. Never used weights besides the few times I tried to get him interested. He stayed the same weight all of his life until recently, that he has a belly. But, he's a big drinker, and it finally caught up to him. But now, he still weighs less then 160lbs. He eats fairly healthy, but the beer is the extra calories that gave him his 63 year old belly. You can read this if you want some more info......................https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2016/08/natural-vs-refined-sugars-what-is-the-difference

[balo]

5 hours ago, BigStar said:

can't be ascribed to the supermarkets offering no alternative, as you tried to claim.

But I can compare supermarkets in the US with supermarkets in the EU.  Especially compared to my local supermarkets in Norway. And I can tell you its a big difference!  
Obesity problems you will find everywhere.  But it is possible for big chains to offer healthier food , they just need to make an effort and "teach" unhealthy people how to change their bad habits.  
 

[BigStar]

5 hours ago, balo said:

 But it is possible for big chains to offer healthier food , they just need to make an effort and "teach" unhealthy people how to change their bad habits. 

Big chains in the USA offer plenty of healthy food, as I told you. Continually denying that fact won't change it. Are you done?

 

Nor is it their responsibility to teach people anything. As a citizen of a nanny state, you know exactly whose responsibility that is.

[balo]

5 hours ago, BigStar said:

ig chains in the USA offer plenty of healthy food, as I told you. Continually denying that fact won't change it. Are you done?

I think you must be trolling, you keep telling me there are no differences, I keep telling you there is.  Yes I've been to Walmart and Vons.  

[fredwiggy]

36 minutes ago, balo said:

I think you must be trolling, you keep telling me there are no differences, I keep telling you there is.  Yes I've been to Walmart and Vons.  

Where I lived in Texas there are HEB'S, Albertsons, Walmart, Whole Food markets and more. All carry a lot of healthy varieties of food and is where I shopped. Especially Whole Foods which is a chain of Health Food Stores and big.

[robblok]

4 hours ago, balo said:

I think you must be trolling, you keep telling me there are no differences, I keep telling you there is.  Yes I've been to Walmart and Vons.  

Might be a matter of finding your way in the US. It took me a while before i knew where i needed to shop for what i liked in Thailand. 

[cdemundo]

On 6/19/2020 at 8:18 PM, 4reaL said:

I

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 4, 2020 by cdemundo
Do I really care?

[balo]

4 hours ago, robblok said:

Might be a matter of finding your way in the US. It took me a while before i knew where i needed to shop for what i liked in Thailand. 

Of course, you will always find what your'e looking for, if you look hard enough.  My experience is only from Las Vegas, the entertainment city. Plenty of restaurants with any food you could ask for.  But if you want to live cheap you eat junk food and go shopping in the cheapest supermarkets.

My point was there is a difference between the supermarkets in the US and Europe , with for instance the selection of bread compared with what I'm used to.  Too much sugar added, no delivery of daily fresh bread, you need to find a bakery for that. The prepacked meat are probably just fine, nothing wrong with the selection. But it's the processed food I don't like. 

 

Edited July 4, 2020 by balo

[fredwiggy]

Just now, balo said:

Of course, you will always find what your'e looking for, if you look hard enough.  My experience is only from Las Vegas, the entertainment city. Plenty of restaurants with any food you could ask for.  But if you want to live cheap you eat junk food and go shopping in the cheapest supermarkets.

My point was there is a difference between the supermarkets in the US and Europe , with for instance the selection of bread compared with what I'm used to.  Too much sugar added, no delivery of daily fresh bread, you need to find a bakery for that. The prepacked meat are probably just fine, nothing wrong with the selection. But it's the processed food I don't like. 

 

Which is why I mentioned HEB, Albertson's and Whole Food Market, just for Texas. I lived in Texas 32 years, and you can get every kind of healthy food there. Whole Foods has a huge bread section with all kinds of healthy bread. The whole store is health oriented, per the name. HEB is a regular chain, but it has just about anything you could need in healthy foods, from cereals, bread, meats, fish, many fruits and vegetables from around the world, and packaged food that isn't sugar laden. of course they still have all the regular junk people love to eat. New Jersey, where I'm from , also has a huge selection of stores that carry healthy foods, as does New York state and Florida, all states where I either lived or visited a lot.

[balo]

1 minute ago, fredwiggy said:

Whole Foods has a huge bread section with all kinds of healthy bread.

Yes I am sure the selection is better in other US cities.  Maybe they even have a branch in Vegas. 

What I missed most in Vegas was a local bakery around the corner, like you will find in Paris, London and Oslo. Small local bakeries , where you can smell the freshness. 

[fredwiggy]

8 minutes ago, balo said:

Yes I am sure the selection is better in other US cities.  Maybe they even have a branch in Vegas. 

What I missed most in Vegas was a local bakery around the corner, like you will find in Paris, London and Oslo. Small local bakeries , where you can smell the freshness. 

Vegas is a place where you go when you want to lose money and gain weight. It's oriented towards money spenders who love buffets, drinking, gambling and seeing live shows. Sin city.

Edited July 4, 2020 by fredwiggy

[BigStar]

  

10 hours ago, balo said:

I think you must be trolling, you keep telling me there are no differences, I keep telling you there is.  Yes I've been to Walmart and Vons.  

I didn't say there are no differences. But those differences don't actually matter because people are quite free to choose healthy food in the USA, and, contrary to your false belief, it's not inconvenient to do so--though a foreigner, as robblok has said, may need some time and patience to discover that fact in those huge markets. And one will need to inquire at the front desk where the local farmers' markets are located or other smaller more specialized stores. Yeah, it's all just overwhelming, ain't it?

 

Of course, if one has a preconceived bias, as most Europeans and Brits do, then selective perception makes that process even more difficult.

 

Nor do the supposed differences in the supermarkets affect the rates of obesity except that cheap fattening food is probably even cheaper in the USA. Moreover, the pace of life may make the prospect of cooking healthy food for oneself even more tiresome. Not to deny laziness, of course.

 

1 hour ago, balo said:

Too much sugar added, no delivery of daily fresh bread, you need to find a bakery for that.

Finding bread with little sugar added is doable in supermarkets over there. Fresh that day, possibly, but huge supermarkets are generally getting deliveries at night. But you see there's no obesity catalyst in that fact: on the contrary, as noted below.

 

46 minutes ago, balo said:

Yes I am sure the selection is better in other US cities.  Maybe they even have a branch in Vegas.

Oh, Whole Foods has 3 branches there. About as many people live permanently in Las Vegas as in Oslo, and they lead ordinary real lives. No, Vegas isn't just tourists. 

 

46 minutes ago, balo said:

What I missed most in Vegas was a local bakery around the corner, like you will find in Paris, London and Oslo. Small local bakeries , where you can smell the freshness. 

Bread just begging for oil, butter, and cheese, tempting one to pig out on useless carbs & calories. Merely promoters of greater obesity, those, which undercuts your point. ????

 

In sum, one can easily choose to eat healthy foods in the USA if one so chooses. Nor has it ever been inconvenient to find such food if one looks for it. No, the supermarkets themselves aren't responsible for eating habits conducive to obesity.

 

[Tony125]

1 hour ago, balo said:

Of course, you will always find what your'e looking for, if you look hard enough.  My experience is only from Las Vegas, the entertainment city. Plenty of restaurants with any food you could ask for.  But if you want to live cheap you eat junk food and go shopping in the cheapest supermarkets.

My point was there is a difference between the supermarkets in the US and Europe , with for instance the selection of bread compared with what I'm used to.  Too much sugar added, no delivery of daily fresh bread, you need to find a bakery for that. The prepacked meat are probably just fine, nothing wrong with the selection. But it's the processed food I don't like. 

 

I've never been to Vegas but I lived in Boston,  Massachusetts all my life and there are many large chain supermarkets and small ones where you can buy healthy foods. Whole Foods , Stop and Shop, Costco, Walmart ,Organically grown markets and local farmer's markets ,ect and many of the big chains have fresh breads from nearby bakeries delivered daily. Boston is well known for it's fresh seafood such as cod, clams ,scollops , muscles , oysters and number 1 lobsters.

[thaibeachlovers]

On 7/3/2020 at 10:32 PM, balo said:

But I can compare supermarkets in the US with supermarkets in the EU.  Especially compared to my local supermarkets in Norway. And I can tell you its a big difference!  
Obesity problems you will find everywhere.  But it is possible for big chains to offer healthier food , they just need to make an effort and "teach" unhealthy people how to change their bad habits.  
 

Supermarkets exist to make money. Funny that you think they are educational institutes. Caveat emptor.

[thaibeachlovers]

6 hours ago, fredwiggy said:

Whole Foods has a huge bread section with all kinds of healthy bread.

As I understand it bread/ wheat is just as bad as sugar healthwise.

Want to get healthy/ slim- give up red meat, bread, sugar, eat lots of vegetables and a little chicken and fish, just like the Thais used to do when it was rare to see an obese Thai ( except for Miss Jumbo competitors ).

[fredwiggy]

8 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

As I understand it bread/ wheat is just as bad as sugar healthwise.

Want to get healthy/ slim- give up red meat, bread, sugar, eat lots of vegetables and a little chicken and fish, just like the Thais used to do when it was rare to see an obese Thai ( except for Miss Jumbo competitors ).

I understand how to get lean. I've been lean since I was 17. Bread is grain, and grains are healthy additions to your diet plan. There are breads that have too much sugar and those that don't. Eating whole grains makes you feel fuller, satisfied, so you'll eat less. Red meat isn't bad either, just some have higher fat content, and should be avoided if you need to lose body fat.Meat isn't easy to digest for some also. It is very high in B vitamins, zinc, iron and selenium. Grass fed organic beef is healthier than others. But chicken and fish have less fat so if you need to lose weight, eating more of those is better.

[robblok]

13 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

As I understand it bread/ wheat is just as bad as sugar healthwise.

Want to get healthy/ slim- give up red meat, bread, sugar, eat lots of vegetables and a little chicken and fish, just like the Thais used to do when it was rare to see an obese Thai ( except for Miss Jumbo competitors ).

Whole wheat bread is not that bad, normal bread can be bad especially if sugar is added. I never had to drop bread to get lean. Its more about quantity then anything else. Even now while im dropping weight like drazy (not sure why it goes so well this time) i still take 4 slices of 711 bread with cheese and ham toasted in my contact gril. (toasting bread makes the insulin peak less but i just do it for the taste). So those 4 slices with old dutch cheese and ham + an apple are my breakfast.

[jvs]

5 hours ago, fredwiggy said:

I understand how to get lean. I've been lean since I was 17. Bread is grain, and grains are healthy additions to your diet plan. There are breads that have too much sugar and those that don't. Eating whole grains makes you feel fuller, satisfied, so you'll eat less. Red meat isn't bad either, just some have higher fat content, and should be avoided if you need to lose body fat.Meat isn't easy to digest for some also. It is very high in B vitamins, zinc, iron and selenium. Grass fed organic beef is healthier than others. But chicken and fish have less fat so if you need to lose weight, eating more of those is better.

Like you i have never been overweight,when i was working out a lot i was 6 kilos above what i weigh now and i weigh the same as when i was 16.

I have not read all the responses but i know for a fact you do not wake up one morning and realize you are 25 kilos overweight.

If i gain 1 kilo i feel it and decide to skip a few meals.

I am not poking at people here but to me it really is very easy not to gain weight.

Eating healthy is of course a good thing but even if you eat too much healthy food  of course it will make you

fat also.

[BigStar]

7 hours ago, fredwiggy said:

Bread is grain, and grains are healthy additions to your diet plan. There are breads that have too much sugar and those that don't. Eating whole grains makes you feel fuller, satisfied, so you'll eat less.

Really depends on the diet plan. In some diet plans you simply choose the bread calories over other calories that may come weighted with more nutritional benefits. Why would anyone do that? Well, 'cause they like the taste better. In fact, TVF Nutritionists typically defend with religious fervor the diet they enjoy most. I understand that. ????

 

Argument would be futile. I'll merely point out that it may not be quite the settled science one may wish to believe. A couple of dissenting voices:

 

https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/whole-grains

 

https://www.marksdailyapple.com/why-grains-are-unhealthy/

 

This is amusing; I like "Wheat built the Pyramid":

 

https://www.marksdailyapple.com/7-reasons-to-love-wheat/

 

That some poster here would be interested in giving up bread or reducing his intake of grain calories is about as likely as a meteor destroying planet Earth in the next 30 days. I'll throw this out there just for skipping stones:

 

https://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-to-quit-grains/