The stunning rise of costly obesity in America

Discussion in 'Health Care' started by LafayetteBis, Jul 10, 2019.

  1. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Economically, HealthCare is not a business. That is, HC is not something you'd like to have. But it is something people would like to have in order to live longer, which is a perfectly natural desire.

    Neither should it be a business, as it is in America. Good healthcare requires very expensive talents* and therefore means. Moreover, unlike present Healthcare today in America one should not have to go to an ER to get healthcare. By then, in most cases it is Far Too Late in the process. Healing is out of the question far too often.

    I've lived in France for quite some time. The visit to my GP costs (in Euros) about $25. Yours in the US costs somewhere on average $200. (From here.)

    So the consequences of obesity is not just an idle-question. It is also an expensive question just in terms of the cost of developing competent physicians* for treatments.

    The country is on a Eating Binge. Yes, obesity is skyrocketing in America and bringing with it its inevitable ailments.

    From here:The Stunning Rise of Obesity in America - excerpt:

    [​IMG]

    Lord knows what happened in 1980 to spike the chart aggressively upward. (Except for the fact that Reagan was elected and I don't see how that could have any possible affect on average weight in America.)

    Nonetheless, amongst both sexes the weight trend is clearly there. I am not sure what can be done about it.

    Aside from taxing obesity and asking everyone to come in for a weighing when they submit their tax declarations, which is clearly out-of-the-question.

    The article linking the above infographic is well worth a read ...

    *The necessary talents for treating obesity (and general healthcare) are very costly. From here:
     
  2. PrincipleInvestment

    PrincipleInvestment Well-Known Member

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    Lolz ... increase SNAP benefits / eligibility w/o nutritional requirements / restrictions. Then allow fast food chains to accept EBT cards. Cry about obesity afterwards? :omfg: Ironically the morbidly obese collect SSDI and those that do get free health care. :no: Wanna cry? Research the stats on obese non taxpayers and how much ACA spends addressing obesity related disease.
     
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  3. Moonglow

    Moonglow Well-Known Member

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    Eat at Chick-Fil-A they are a christian based fast food place for fat people.
     
  4. Moonglow

    Moonglow Well-Known Member

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    Is that why the Trump budget cut the SNAP program but gave farmers a kewl 32 billion over two years for help?
     
  5. PrincipleInvestment

    PrincipleInvestment Well-Known Member

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    Participation in SNAP is down, and Pelosi's politburo allocates funding. Farm subsidies are a waste right? Famine isn't "really a thing" and foreign dependence on food couldn't ever become a problem. :roll: Subsidized obesity isn't being facilitated by Trump's admin. and neither is dependency on ACA. Newsome's just given health care to illegals ... how many are obese?
     
  6. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Useless Blah-Blah-Blah ....
     
  7. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Cut the BS, will you?

    Acute Obesity is common throughout the US, and NOT JUST related to those on welfare.

    You are uselessly barking up the wrong tree about a subject that is extremely important because IT AFFECTS LIFESPAN!
    [​IMG]
     
  8. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I wonder....

    [​IMG]

    fat was considered evil, sugar was considered good (the government sure got that wrong)

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
  9. PrincipleInvestment

    PrincipleInvestment Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, while you're whining about the health care costs you might consider that the sooner they die, the sooner they stop costing you money. It's only the impoverished obese who burden taxpayers. Middle class fatties pay for their own health care.
     
  10. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Blah, blah, blah from the Rabid Right ...
     
  11. PrincipleInvestment

    PrincipleInvestment Well-Known Member

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    Ha, ha, ha to the speechless left. :lol: If Kamala & Co. have their way, all the rotund righties will have to drop their private health care plans and make you pay for their gastro bypasses and insulin. :;):
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
  12. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    @LafayetteBis The problem isn't "eating binge", it's drinking aswell. A lot of people drink soda and don't drink water. Candies, chips, cookies are a problem aswell, but for me soda is the king of the problem for obesity.
    We could consider also that in a lot of already cooked meal, there is more sugar than necessar, even sugar when it's not necessar.

    I think it's more and more difficult to eat correctly in developped countries. A lot of vegetables and fruits sold are barely tasty and I can get it why people don't eath them. They're aswell extremly expensive.
    The cheapest food are often aswell the most unhealthy.

    Unfortunatly, to escape obesity, you have to cook things yourselves, sometimes even grow them yourselves, or to pay expensive prices.
     
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  13. Old Man Fred

    Old Man Fred Well-Known Member

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    What happened is extremely obvious.

    It was the perfect storm of a sedentary lifestyle and processed foods.

    In the 70's large numbers of women began to enter the workforce. Companies like Kraft Foods began running ads specifically targeting women along the lines of "who's cooking dinner for your family while you're at work?" From there we've made the march inevitably towards prepared meals.

    Combined with the rise of the service industry, such as gardeners, the majority of Americans not performing manual labor, and entertainment, Americans have much less activity in their daily routine.
     
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  14. SEAL Team V

    SEAL Team V Banned

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    That life expectancy graph is very skewed against the U.S. You need to omit murder, suicide, drug/alcohol overdose, abortion and DUI deaths.
     
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  15. Political Master

    Political Master Newly Registered

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    So the point of this is to leave a good looking corpse? Its costly because we charge to much to eat healthy. We don't do proper exercise because no one does any real work any more, and gyms are now "health club and spa" just looking for money.
     
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  16. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    And as @FreshAir pointed out, sugar. Only it wasn't sucrose. Nope. The food industry is like every other industry, constantly looking for ways to cut 5¢, 10¢ from production costs. And the food industry found two important tricks that made them big bux: high-fructose corn syrup, which, believe it or not, costs less than plain old sucrose, and hydrogenated oil.

    High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is significantly harder for cells to metabolize than sucrose (but the food industry didn't care about that) but it also costs less than sucrose. So HFCS was substituted for sucrose in sodas, cookies, packaged foods like puddings, ice cream, and anywhere else that sugar was needed. Fructose fails to stimulate insulin secretion or leptin production, both of which help regulate body weight and food consumption. Thus, fructose in the diet can lead to excess energy intake and weight gain.

    But even before HFCS we had an invasion of hydrogenated oil. That is what Crisco is. And it was used in cookies, cereals, ice cream, cupcakes, and a long, long list of prepared foods that needed shortening, -and many that didn't. It did 3 things. First, it does not spoil, so you can leave Crisco on a shelf for months and years without it spoiling, and that extends shelf life, so the need for rapid marketing of foods and the problem of costly spoilage are alleviated if not eliminated. Secondly, it does not metabolize well at all. If Crisco doesn't rot on the shelf and cookies don't go moldy in the cupboard, they won't metabolize well either. Hydrogenated oil is also stored in the cell wall as fat. And third, being cheaper and saving on spoilage losses, it boosts profits for food producers.

    Now, add to that the exceedingly STUPID idea of putting soda vending machines in schools!

    Oh, and there's one more thing: agribiz now raises crops in depleted soils that offer nothing to benefit the crop, so chemical fertilizers are loaded into the soil to make up for absence of the standard farming practices that characterized millennia prior to the days of agribiz. Consequently, our food is actually a very poor source of nutrition today.

    All this constitutes the perfect fat storm.
     
  17. Old Man Fred

    Old Man Fred Well-Known Member

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    At least there's still one subject left all intelligent individuals can agree on
     
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  18. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    That was about the time that dietary fat was demonized, and carbs embraced.
    https://www.npr.org/sections/thesal...y-we-got-fatter-during-the-fat-free-food-boom

    This was published in 1977:
    http://zerodisease.com/archive/Dietary_Goals_For_The_United_States.pdf
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2019
  19. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    crank likes this.
  20. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That graphic is international in nature. Getting ALL those statistics that only you think should enter into the consideration would be Mission Impossible against such a large selection of countries.

    The infographic aptly describes not how people die but how long they live comparatively - and general healthcare has a lot to do with that particular outcome ...
     
  21. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    You're wrong across the board, sorry!

    Cooking from scratch using fresh ingredients is always cheaper than processed food. Every single thing added to or done to the raw ingredients of processed pre-packaged foods adds to its end cost. You might think you're getting a good deal when you buy some frozen meal with beef in it, but the cost of the raw beef is far cheaper by weight when bought fresh.

    When you add only IN-SEASON (always cheaper, and much fresher) fruits and vegetables, your food costs are as low as it gets. Assuming you have nil or only small quantities of meat once or twice a week. Brown rice, beans, lentils, in-season veg. That's the kind of diet the poorest people in the poorest Third World countries live on .. because it's the cheapest. Highly processed and packaged foods are strictly for the rich.

    The upshot of all that is that there's a different reason for First Worlders buying that crap. Here it is: LAZINESS.
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2019
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  22. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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  23. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    See my post above. It's much cheaper to eat healthy.
     
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  24. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I suppose if one ate nothing but banqet meals it would be cheaper as they are less then a buck, but the trade off is to ones health imo

    "Rib Shaped Patty"
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2019
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  25. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    yes, carbs are basically treated the same as sugar in the body, both raise insulin - a big part of the problem is all the snaking on carbs, it keeps insulin high all day long

    they saw the too much white stuff as bad eventually, but not the sugars in other foods like Fruit juices as an example
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2019

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