Why isn't there a fight against unhealthy food like is for drugs?

[NuclearEnergy]

Color me crazy, but it seems things like fast food can be just as deadly when consumed in large amounts. I only say this because I was at a McDonalds drive through the other day and I see this family of 4 walking to the restaurant from the parking lot. The mother and father looked fairly large, and their son. Oh that poor poor boy. He was at least 9 years old and looked like he weighed around 250 lbs. There is nothing wrong with eating fast food every now and then, like on the go in such instances like I do sometimes. But I would not be shocked to find some people have that 3-5 times a week. So why isn't there campaigns like we have against the issues with things like tabaco? (I can't spell it right. it's late and i dont feel like using spell check lol) Did you know that in some cities they are starting a McDonalds delivery service? It's not McDonalds doing it, but it is some other company. Like wtf is wrong with America!

[Amarok]

Color me crazy, but it seems things like fast food can be just as deadly when consumed in large amounts. I only say this because I was at a McDonalds drive through the other day and I see this family of 4 walking to the restaurant from the parking lot. The mother and father looked fairly large, and their son. Oh that poor poor boy. He was at least 9 years old and looked like he weighed around 250 lbs. There is nothing wrong with eating fast food every now and then, like on the go in such instances like I do sometimes. But I would not be shocked to find some people have that 3-5 times a week. So why isn't there campaigns like we have against the issues with things like tabaco? (I can't spell it right. it's late and i dont feel like using spell check lol) Did you know that in some cities they are starting a McDonalds delivery service? It's not McDonalds doing it, but it is some other company. Like wtf is wrong with America!

What about the proposed laws against saturated fat and sugar content and what about the proposals for removing junk food from schools

[Homeless Nutter]

Color me crazy [...]

No, I'd rather color you uninformed and biased.

1. War on drugs has been an utter failure. Why the f*ck would anyone want another misguided, politically motivated effort like that to be undertaken? How desperate are you for a totalitarian state to babysit you?

2. There is no clear distinction between "healthy" and "unhealthy" food. Fast food restaurants use the same ingredients as most restaurants. The main difference is the price of the products - poor people can't stuff their faces everyday with butter, sugar and salt served generously in upscale establishments. If they did - they'd get just as fat and unhealthy as McDonalds customers often are. And many rich people - especially old ones - are fat and unhealthy, it's just that there are fewer of them and you don't get to see them waddle around your local high-street.

3. Our scientific knowledge of the reasons for obesity is still very limited. It's nothing like tobacco, where studies show 2000% the lung cancer rate among smokers, compared to non-smokers. Best studies we have show differences around 30%-50% and are usually uncontrolled and based on self-reporting, because you can't hold people in a lab for years, making sure they eat only hamburgers, or only kale. That's why there's still a debate and why there are so many different approaches to nutrition - many of those being just fad diets and quackery, trying to make a buck among all the misinformation.

4. How is McDonalds delivery different from all the other fast-food delivery already available? Do you think pizza is healthy? Or curry? Newsflash for you - most food will make you fat, if you inhale enough of it, especially if you don't lead an active life. 

5. There IS a "war against unhealthy food" going on. It's just that nobody's putting people in jail, as there is no clear science to assign the blame. But there is plenty of fat-shaming in the media and on the internet and plenty of snobs, who can afford personal chefs, dietitians, trainers and liposuction surgeons, telling the unwashed masses what they are doing wrong - which mainly comes down to "you people are too poor".

[paulpablo]

I would have thought the reason for obesity is not enough moving and burning energy and consuming too much food.

In particular foods with a lot of salt sugar and fat. Added to that metabolism.

I think the first post makes a good point.
I try and eat as healthy as I can but I've been told that even when I buy veg from the shops now it doesn't have as much nutrician in as it should because of how they farm veg these days.
Plus the countless other ways farms and supermarkets save money and increase produce.

[Aegon]

Well sugar has lobbyists. The fast food giants have lobbyists. Why do you think?

[Homeless Nutter]

I would have thought the reason for obesity is not enough moving and burning energy and consuming too much food. In particular foods with a lot of salt sugar and fat. Added to that metabolism.

Simplistic thinking is simplistic. How do you explain things like Atkins diet, where you can eat all the fat you want, do no exercise and still lose weight? How does salt make you fat? I'm not saying it doesn't - but can you explain how that works? Sure - it's said, that it causes heart disease, but again - that's not really an established fact and still has nothing to do with obesity. You can be thin and have heart problems. People used to say, that eggs raise your cholesterol levels and yet some of the cultures that consume huge amounts of eggs - like the Japanese - seem to have very low rates of heart disease.

I'm not even going to go into how metabolism plays into all this, because that seems to be just a trendy word people use, when they talk about diet, with no understanding what it means.

I think the first post makes a good point.

How so? The OP is talking about the "unhealthy food", like there's some kind of magical stuff, that makes you fat - mostly used by McDonalds, apparently - while other food doesn't. You yourself said, that eating "too much food" (whatever that means) makes you obese - so which is it?

I try and eat as healthy as I can but I've been told that even when I buy veg from the shops now it doesn't have as much nutrician in as it should because of how they farm veg these days.

LOL... Yeah - that sounds like non-scientific horse-sh*t. Who told you that? Some hippy, trying to sell you some "organic" nonsense? How do "they" farm veg these days, that makes it different from the same varieties of plants cultivated in "ye olden times"?

Plus the countless other ways farms and supermarkets save money and increase produce.

Again - what are those ways and how do they cause obesity? I'm not saying it's impossible - I'm just saying you're providing no evidence, just hear-say and old wives' tales. Just like most people do, when they talk about nutrition.

People like simple answers, even if they're unconfirmed, or just plain wrong. There's a lot more to the way our bodies manage fat, than what you are suggesting - like the amount of sleep we get, the frequency of meals, hormones and more. Fight against "unhealthy foods" is essentially fight against windmills.

[brewer]

Fast food was developed by the government as a subtle way of population control. 

What's wrong with America? Not enough government involvement in our personal lives.

[The Grand Nudger]

I try and eat as healthy as I can but I've been told that even when I buy veg from the shops now it doesn't have as much nutrician in as it should because of how they farm veg these days.

LOL... Yeah - that sounds like non-scientific horse-sh*t. Who told you that? Some hippy, trying to sell you some "organic" nonsense? How do "they" farm veg these days, that makes it different from the same varieties of plants cultivated in "ye olden times"?

That ones actually true, but it's partially offset by the fact that we have access to more food.  The average american has greater access to nutrition, but only because the average american consumes an inordinately larger amount of food by mass.  Veggies as grown and marketed are, effectively, water balloons.  They're sold by weight, the weight is water, and the producer wants them in-space and out-of-space asap...so the hormones and cultural practices applied mostly serve the purpose of increasing the speed and uptake of held weight-in-water of any given piece of produce, necessarily diluting it's nutritional density while simultaneously increasing it's market value.  Additionally, ripe produce is not as transportable and gives the middlemen and points of sale less time to "sell it or smell it". So what we have on the shelves, are less-than ripe water baloons. Tomatoes, for example, are picked stone green for transport at the height of their mass before they ripen and become susceptible to disease and rot and pests, and then gassed red for sale. They taste like watery shit because, at that point in their life, there just isn't much else to them.

Plus the countless other ways farms and supermarkets save money and increase produce.

Again - what are those ways and how do they cause obesity? I'm not saying it's impossible - I'm just saying you're providing no evidence, just hear-say and old wives' tales. Just like most people do, when they talk about nutrition.

People like simple answers, even if they're unconfirmed, or just plain wrong. There's a lot more to the way our bodies manage fat, than what you are suggesting - like the amount of sleep we get, the frequency of meals, hormones and more. Fight against "unhealthy foods" is essentially fight against windmills.

This one could be true as well, depending on what Paul is trying to say.  In addition to the above, supermarkets have massive incentives to stock their shelves with non-perishable processed goods.   Producers have massive incentives to peddle those products, since they represent the majority of produced mass on-farm. The actual produce is only a small portion of the plant, and the produce good enough to make it to produce shelves a vanishingly small percentage of that. The rest has to be marketable, or else the producer couldn't afford to (or shouldn't..even if they could) produce that product. Supermarkets stock their shelves with unhealthy shit because it tastes good, sure..but also because it's cheaper for them to stock their shelves with that. They;d rather sell you canned sauce than a ripe tomato....and they know you'll buy it, so that's what they do.

[paulpablo]

I'm at work so can't reply very extensively.

It wasn't a hippy who told me about farming and veg having less nutrients in. It was in one of those weekly magazines they sell. Science weekly or whatever, I can't remember the title.
It really depends on where you live though, I live in the U.K. Nigerians I know say fruit and veg tastes much better and is more nutritious and easily grown naturally over there.

I'm skeptical that someone can lose weight by doing no exercise and eat as much fat as they want but from what I recall it's due to eating less carbs. I knew a woman who did that diet and it worked but she didn't go crazy with eating fat and she still excersised.

[Sal]

... So why isn't there campaigns like we have against the issues with things like tabaco?...

Such regulations have failed utterly for alcohol in the past, and are failing for "soft" drugs like hashish.
Education is your best bet, IMO, about calories in foods and whatnot.