This whole "blaming fast food for obesity" thing really needs to stop.

[The Gnome King]

It is partially to blame. Simply by existing and selling tasty junk food they make they are part of the problem. Much of the time it is (but isn't necessarily, there will always be self-defeating fat people) a mixture of clever marketing and weak-willed "victims". Stressed out parents go there to buy a quick meal for their kids with the marketed "healthy options" or other such excuses at the back of their mind to appease their conscience. Then they buy a meal with a diet coke and think "oh what the hell, I may as well have a sundae, I deserve it".

It's not just fast food. If someone regularly eats regular McDonalds meals and lets themselves get fat, the odds are that they buy shitty supermarket food too. You know, stocking their trolley with fat free noodles, sugary tomato sauce, coke, hormone-fed cage chickens, "lite" ice-cream, falling for every health-related marketing gimmick even when they half know it's probably BS, and maybe throwing in a bag of frozen vegetables to make themselves feel better.

There are fast food restaurants here that actually sell vegetables, but you actually have to go look for them because they're not shoved in front of your face via corporate marketing campaigns, and perhaps *gasp* even step out of your car to buy it and maybe even persuade your children to eat that unfamiliar food that doesn't even have a toy or a colorful box or a sugary drink with it. I didn't even like McDonalds at first when I was a kid. I ate the fries, kept the toy, had like two bites of the burger, and coke tasted gross to me.

And if you're not American I assume your country offers health care.

Imagine how hard it is here when you don't even have that.

I'm a vegan who wouldn't eat at McDonalds to save my life but for chrissakes people... try to imagine yourself in the shoes of a poor, urban mother for a moment.

And if you're under 22 years old, nevermind that. Just go on thinking people choose to suffer in life.

 

[WanderingFool]

BUT IT'S IN MY GEEEEEEENES

*eats bacon sandwich*

This, actually.

Not that its actually true, but people want a reason and a effigy to blame, rather than face the fact its their own damn fault.

yes that was his joke...


you deserved that

[in a sarcastic, shocked expression] REALLY!? I didnt realize that...

Did you perhaps stop to think that if the joke was so facepalm obvious, I would have known that ahead of time? Maybe you need it more than me...

 

[thePyro_13]

Fast food enterprises encourage the sort of behaviour and eating habits that lead to obesity, they are not innocent, only part of a larger problem.

Even if all the fast food retailers discovered today, obesity would still continue to grow. Even worse now that many foods are masquerading as diet and healthy(or worse "all natural"), they remove the fats that people are aware about and then double the ones that people don't realise are bad for them.

The fact that places in America serve litre drinks with a meal designed for one is really scary. I'm glad they're not sold like that in Australia, because I know people would actually buy them.

This is nothing like guns, no one murders you with fast food. I'd rather take a guy in a knife fight(read: run away) than get shot(can't outrun boolet).

It is a social problem, but fast food defiantly multiplies the problem.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

I eat McDonalds at least 4 times a week (since I work there). I still weigh...
*goes to check*
110lbs. Wow, I gained 3 pound in the past year.
Still weight next to nothing though.

 

[Nieroshai]

Because there must always be a villain. It's never within one's own power, it must be someoone else's fault. I hate society sometimes. Hey I readily admit: I'm overweight because I don't get enough exercise!

 

[Yokai]

Yeah, and we shouldn't blame cigarettes for cancer...I mean its the people who are smoking, it isn't the cigarettes!

McDonalds et. al. have engineered their food to be quite unhealthy (because it is cheaper) and then for decades they lied about that. In much the same way that cigarette companies lied about the health risks associated with smoking. Then, when they got called on it and people started to catch wise, both cigarette companies and fast food companies started targeting young people who don't yet realize that the hype is just hype.

Fast food restaurants are not solely to blame. But they share part of the responsibility. Also part of the responsibility is socioeconomic. There are neighborhoods filled with low income people where there are no decent grocery stores with healthy foods and the cheapest food around is McDonalds. If you are trying to feed your family on minimum wage, and McD's is there and no healthy food options are...and maybe you only graduated high school, and not a very good one...and you never actually got taught that McDonalds is a liar...and you get their ads saying they are healthy. Well, you may not have the tools to realize you are being deliberately hoodwinked.

It is easy to say, "Oh it is that fat person's fault" -- but doing that only allows us to ignore the larger structural issues that has lead to a wave of obesity in the US on a mass scale. And that obesity generally being related to poor education and poverty. I grew up in a decent neighborhood in San Francisco that had no fast food restaurants at all in it. Then when I moved to a poor neighborhood in Oakland there were fast food restaurants and liquor stores everywhere...and there was no organic grocery store and fresh healthy vegetables were not easy to comeby...unless maybe you had a car. But if you took your hoopty car to the nice neighborhoods to go shopping (if you could afford the overpriced products at Whole Foods) you'd probably get harassed by the police for being in the wrong neighborhood.

Health isn't just an individual thing. There are also larger forces at work.

Well said, sir.

 

[Flig]

I'm sorry, but when you enter into discussions you should really be prepared to cite your sources.

"Race to Nowhere", "The Case Against Homework" and "Stop Homework". Now where are your sources saying that homework isn't an utter waste of time?

There was suppossed to be more to that post, but I clicked the post button by mistake before finishing it.

All these arguments correspond to "The Case Against Homework" since it was the first one my google search showed.

I'm not going to take the time to read the whole thing, but I'm just going to take some arguements posited in the book's summary.

Does assigning fifty math problems accomplish any more than assigning five? Is memorizing word lists the best way to increase vocabulary?especially when it takes away from reading time? And what is the real purpose behind those devilish dioramas?

1. The point of homework is extra practice, and I can tell you from experience that when taking courses in pre-calculus and above, those 45 extra problems help hammer that stuff in.
2. Keeping with the obesity subject, reading is just as sedentary as memorization.
3. Eh, not really sure, but I don't think dioramas are making our kids fat.

The time our children spend doing homework has skyrocketed in recent years.

I'd really love to see these statistics...I'll Google that in a moment.

The truth, according to Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, is that there is almost no evidence that homework helps elementary school students achieve academic success and little evidence that it helps older students.

http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2006/09/homework_oped.html
I can't find the full paper, but that article summarizes it. Basically debunking what they say here, and giving you a source on my part.

Yet the nightly burden is taking a serious toll on America?s families. It robs children of the sleep, play, and exercise time they need for proper physical, emotional, and neurological development. And it is a hidden cause of the childhood obesity epidemic, creating a nation of ?homework potatoes.?

Again it says night, the only thing I do at night other than sleep and watch T.V./play video games is go to parties...and other activities, none of which are a true loss if my homework load is more than usual. Except maybe sleep, but I've never personnally lost sleep over anything other than procrastination on major projects when it came to homework.

Speaking of sleep, I'm going to get some, but hopefully I've given enough insight on my opinion. And that link goes to an article on a synthesis paper of well over 47 studies on the relationship between homework and achievement, the majority of which find a positive impact. If you want to continue this debate, I suggest messaging as this is getting a tad off-topic(which may be my fault), if not, oh well. I'll get back on this tomorrow.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Obseity isn't a disease or gene... it's a choice. Do i put down the mcdoubleburger and go eat something that could be considered somewhat nutrious and exercise... or do i eat a fucking DELICIOUS LUTHER


(btw i've had one, fucking deliciousssssssss)

ah amazing link, i love that show =]

OT: seriously..if you workout decent enough, have some occasional healthy food/don't over eat, you will be FINE. hell i used to have over 5000 calories of fast food a day when i used to workout all the time and i was fit as could be, but obviously you ratio it out depending on your habits

fast food is not to blame, your inability to stop eating when your full or lack of doing anything besides larding around is.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Does assigning fifty math problems accomplish any more than assigning five? Is memorizing word lists the best way to increase vocabulary?especially when it takes away from reading time? And what is the real purpose behind those devilish dioramas?

1. The point of homework is extra practice, and I can tell you from experience that when taking courses in pre-calculus and above, those 45 extra problems help hammer that stuff in.
2. Keeping with the obesity subject, reading is just as sedentary as memorization.
3. Eh, not really sure, but I don't think dioramas are making our kids fat.

i disagree with this not just from my own perception, at our school besides maybe 2 people, our top 50 kids (we had a graduating class of 600 in my school) hardly ever did homework, and if we did it was a project or such. hell in my calc III and diff equations class we will do 30-40 problems per assignment, that takes up a good 4-5 pages, which has done near jack shit comparing our average test score is a 54% in diff eq and 67% in calc III.

assigning more homework does nothing, explaining them CORRECTLY on the TEACHERS part is what makes the difference. i would always rather have a good teacher with hard tests than vise versa as the teacher gets the point across without having to assign hours upon hours of homework while the bad teacher can't even show a good example or two thus causing you to self teach which is a ridiculous situation for the average college student with 4 other classes to juggle at the same time.

Schools make people watch Supersize Me in health class. Well, they should also watch Fathead, which totally debunks everything that was said in Supersize me.

Supersize me was Vegan propaganda. No one should ever be forced to watch that shit. The reason fast food, TV and video games get blamed for obesity is because they're convenient scapegoats that are not PC and no one will defend them because of that. People fail to keep in mind that schools are assigning ungodly amounts of homework to students now, which is also majorly contributing to sedimentary lifestyles. Although PC states, and this is clearly bullshit, that teachers are above reproach and can never have their actions questioned.

I have no respect for educators at all. For every good one, there's 199 shitty ones who would be fired at any other job.

couldn't agree more. *applause*

 

[TheLaofKazi]

How about we blame every single factor that contributes to obesity? There are social, political, biological and personal forces at work here.

Personal responsibility is important. But if you look at the big picture, it's not just that, it's tons of things. Advertising, poor, conflicting and biased health information, poor parenting, many aspects of American culture, society, and many, many other things all play a role.

Of course, when you're trying to lose weight, blaming any of those things isn't going to help at all. When you are looking at the small, local and possibly more relevant picture, such as yourself, or maybe your close friends and family, blaming the aggressive advertising of fast food and soda companies isn't going to shit. But when you're thinking in the big picture, such as for an entire country, addressing such a problem is much more relevant. Youknowwhatimean?

 

[Ellen of Kitten]

Shouldn't the blame for obesity be given to the people who chow down on 3 Big Macs all at once or feed their kids excessive amounts of greasy food a day? Fast food isn't in the very least deadly so long as you eat in moderation or exercise often enough. Why can't people ever hold themselves accountable for anything?

The quality of your diet can seriously effect the quality of your body. Yes, eating a meal that totals 1300 calories (and no redeeming value in nutrition for that matter) can seriously effect how your body manages weight. 1300 calories in one meal; real food, real meals and real portions are in the 400 to 800 range. You can eat three meals a day and still get under 2000 cals. However eating one fast food meal, say, upsized in some way, and yeah, you'll get fat.

Watch Super Size Me. Watch as a fit man on a diet of fast food rapidly declines in health, and fitness.

Is fast food to blame for obesity? Not entirely. It's certainly part of the problem though. Some people have faulty thyroid levels, and their metabolism is plain crap. For these people, fast food is double bad, and can certainly be the direct cause of rapid weight gain.

Poor food quality (those packed meals at the store that cost about a buck or two, loaded with sodium and calories) are only good for keeping people alive, and not dying from starvation. They are not a healthy sustainable form of nutirition. But between all the junk food, cheap food, and fast food, people just keep getting fatter and fatter.

 

[Arizona Kyle]

BUT IT'S IN MY GEEEEEEENES

*eats bacon sandwich*

This, actually.

Not that its actually true, but people want a reason and a effigy to blame, rather than face the fact its their own damn fault.

yes that was his joke...


you deserved that

[in a sarcastic, shocked expression] REALLY!? I didnt realize that...

Did you perhaps stop to think that if the joke was so facepalm obvious, I would have known that ahead of time? Maybe you need it more than me...

NO... but i really wanted to use that today XD

 

[Astoria]

But don't you see, it has to be the fast food's fault otherwise fat people might haved to take responsibity for their own actions! /sarcasim

Yes places like McDonalds throw adds in your face all the time and are everywhere but anyone with reasonable self control can resist it or at least go for the healthier options. I think that anyone who blames fast food for them being fat is just looking for an easy way out and isn't seriously about losing weight. There's always people who can help you and really its not just what you eat that makes you fat but also how much you eat and how much of it you work off.

 

[Callate]

Yes, people should show more self-control, but fast-food franchises aren't entirely blameless either. There's a reason it's cheaper to get fries and a soft drink with your burger, and it isn't a heartfelt desire to provide their customers with a better deal. Especially if you're relatively poor, it's a lot cheaper to get full on corn syrup and fried starch than it is on salad, or even hamburger. No one offers free refills on milk or even orange juice in the dining area, either.

You might also notice that the relatively healthier franchises don't tend to offer drive-through options, and those that do don't tend to offer healthier options in a manner that someone can easily consume mid-commute.

Some of these things have definitely been considered by the marketing and design teams, too. When they cease to be ignorant of the repercussions of their decisions, they have to shoulder some of the responsibility.

 

[WendelI]

Totally my fault I'm eating this cheese burger... *Nom nom nom nom*

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

This thread is basically an advertisement for Mcdonalds.

I'm so getting 3 big macs.

Ask them if they'll deep fry them for you.

 

[Aetera]

It's not the food, but the portions that need to be changed. That, and you can't lose weight by just dieting. You need to exercise.

 

[lucky_sharm]

I believe the argument is that, in particular in poor neighborhoods; fast food is readily available. Good food is not. Meaning, fresh produce isn't exactly readily available in most inner-city neighborhoods. Fast food IS always readily available. And, that is a problem.

I'm a 5'9" 130lb male. I'm also a vegan. My cholesterol level is appx 120 every time I get it checked. What's yours? What is the average poor person's cholesterol who has to dine at McDonalds every day?

And what do cardiologists say about cholesterol levels above 150 in general?

Issue is; people DO hold themselves accountable for things. It's just much easier to hold yourself accountable if mom and dad have upper-upper/middle class jobs and can feed you fresh produce and/or get your health care provided for by an insurance company - wait, you are OVER 22 and pay for your own health insurance and health care costs, right?

If not... might want to go a bit easier on those people who don't have the same entitlements... er, I mean, advantages, that you have.

In my experience in life people do the best they can with what they're given. I was very, very fortunate to have upper-middle class white parents.

I'll bet you were, too.

Even if you do live in a poor neighborhood, is it really so difficult to go out for a jog or just stay active in general? And please, save your guilt prodding and your life story, especially. What does health care have anything to do with staying in shape, or what jobs that your parents had?

The so called "average poor person" isn't being forced to eat at McDonalds. But, okay, let's say they really do. Does that stop them from taking maybe half an hour to exercise? Does it mean that they have to overeat? If all it took were fresh produce and health insurance to stay in shape then everybody would be pretty healthy, but that certainly isn't the case here, is it?

 

[IronicBeet]

It's not my fault, I have a thyroid condition!

Ooh, I'm just so mad I could eat 4 baconators!