What are your thoughts on fat acceptance?

[paulpablo]

I do have it easier than others because I only have one daughter and even when I'm working over 80 hours a week I still live with my parents.

But I know people with many kids who work many hours and they're not harmfully obese, the few people who I know who are obese to the extent they can't walk or have trouble moving have chosen very poor diets instead of eating healthy.

And I think it's difficult to talk about people being obese because according to the bmi scale what counts for obese also covers rugby players and other athletic people who might not be unhealthy.

But to cut a long story short the only people I know who are harmfully obese, like they can't even walk properly, have diabetes and so on, they definitely chose that as a lifestyle.

I'm not American so I don't know what it's like in the poor areas there.
Over here even poor areas have a local Tesco and can get cheap boil in the bag veg, tinned veg, water from the taps.

[The Grand Nudger]

Allow me to suggest a subtle restatement.  We didn't, as a country, collectively choose that "lifestyle" (god I wish people would cut this shit out....).  

Rather, the total field of choices available constrain us in ways that contribute to it's emergence.  Some of us are better positioned than others...some of us are luckier (genetic jackpot).  Most of us could, conceivably, be healthier or do something about whatever needs improving with our health.  I need to go to the dentist.  There are always reasons, however, that we don't, particularly on average (and what else could we be speaking of when talking about demographics this large)...do what we could do™...in a vacuum.

Ultimately, it will always boil down to a "well, I would do this or that better". "I have the time". Fine. You do, they don't. It beggars belief to imagine that you, in a sea of human beings...are so fundamentally different from them as that your personal difference and experience would somehow be indicative of theirs. Go get more like me. Go get access to that food. Make the time. Educate yourself. A charitable view of humanity would suggest that a great many of us -have- tried to emulate your example...and it's not the pinnacle, but for whatever reason could not maintain it. I doubt that a charitable view of this slice of humanity is going to arise from shaming, however, or the constant insistence on lifestyle deficiencies in the absence of predictable outcomes to known situations. If those people were in your shoes, in your position...do you imagine that they would choose differently than you have, differently than I have?

Personally, I find that my socio-economic peers eat what I eat, generally. We're buddies, we have dinner parties and cookouts.....you know, a balance between the wives and the hubbys. We like couscous too..in fact, my little group is probably every single person that uses the "ethnic/specialty" foods aisle at the grocery store, lol.

(I slip away to the neighbors for carnitas too often...but shh, don;t tell the folks at the tofu party that.... )

[Neo-Scholastic]

I'm not American so I don't know what it's like in the poor areas there.

Well, I do live in a poor area of America. There's a couple of Aldi's and Food 4 Less stores. It's only called a 'food desert' because yuppie types won't shop in those kinds of places.

The way I see it is it's all about choices. A bag of Cheetos costs $4.00. You can buy a whole frozen hen for less. A $16 ten-pound bag of rice will last more than a month and frozen vegetables are inexpensive and every bit as healthy as fresh. But if you go into low-income housing, and I've been in a lot, the stove and cabinets are covered with grease from constant frying and the cabinets are stuffed with chips and cookies.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's not what a food desert is, at all...............?

Food deserts are associated with poor food access as racially and socioeconomically discriminatory policies and patterns of development such as redlining have resulted in uneven distribution of resources including supermarkets.[5] Researchers are interested in understanding the relationship between these affected areas and policies, but in varying capacities. They have employed a variety of methods to assess food access including: directories and census data, focus groups, food store assessments, food use inventories, GIS technology, interviews, questionnaires and surveys measuring consumers food access perceptions.[6] For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Access Research Atlas provides an interactive map that identifies areas of low food access in low income urban and rural areas.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

Yeah, you know that USDA./..always peddling yuppie shit.....

-and here's a direct link to their spiffy map..play with it!
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/f...atlas.aspx

All of that green.....is the place where people are starving in the middle of the most bountiful breadbasket in the world.

[paulpablo]

I'm not American so I don't know what it's like in the poor areas there.

Well, I do live in a poor area of America. There's a couple of Aldi's and Food 4 Less stores. It's only called a 'food desert' because yuppie types won't shop in those kinds of places.

The way I see it is it's all about choices. A bag of Cheetos costs $4.00. You can buy a whole frozen hen for less. A $16 ten-pound bag of rice will last more than a month and frozen vegetables are inexpensive and every bit as healthy as fresh. But if you go into low-income housing, and I've been in a lot, the stove and cabinets are covered with grease from constant frying and the cabinets are stuffed with chips and cookies.

I did not know you had Aldi in America.

They sell really nice tinned chickpeas, I used to go in there and buy them 15 tins at a time, 33p each.

That's probably the most boring statement I've made on this forum.

[The Grand Nudger]

Haha, nah man, there's a thread for food.  Bush's (of baked bean fame) is actually in the business of hummus, over here.  They got wise and started calling it bean dip.  Good food is slowly finding it's way to the poor peoples aisles as awareness increases.

---

Found a way to condense my position into a single sentence.

When you combine a stunning overabundance of bad choices with the human animal...misery is the inevitable result.  

[Aroura]

2. Junk food is literally made from junk .....

Errr ..... do you understand the meaning of the word literally in this context ?

Yes. Junk. Garbage. Trash.
It is made of things that would otherwise be garbage, if not made into junk food. Junk food is made, at least partly, of literal junk.
Literally is correctly used in this context.

Did you just try for a clever semantic response, i stead of reading the whole post? I explained that some foods would otherwise be thrown out, waste produce and byproducts, are instead processed into "food". Companies make money by turning this garbage into junk food. That's one reason why it is so cheap.

If you disagree with me on whether or not companies do this, fine, but in the context I used the word, it is LITERALLY correct.

[Jackalope]

fatties

I'm picking on you even though others have done the same thing.

That word. SMFH. Yeah, it's popular, but it's demeaning, and it's part of the shaming that we're discussing here. IMO, if you are against shaming, using that work is as counterproductive as using "faggot".

[The Grand Nudger]

fatties

I'm picking on you even though others have done the same thing.

That word.  SMFH.  Yeah, it's popular, but it's demeaning, and it's part of the shaming that we're discussing here.  IMO, if you are against shaming, using that work is as counterproductive as using "faggot".

I have a habit of using inflammatory language for effect.   The best argument against racism for example, imo, is twelve straight hours of old whites using the word. I;m glad you;re disgusted by my use of the term. Who isn't, or didn't notice..if you had to guess?

[Jackalope]

Someone mentioned mental illness, along with other health conditions, and that it would only result in so much weight gain. I have to point out that is not true.

You're absolutely correct.

I made the comment earlier that I gained over a hundred pounds as a result of taking a prescription drug to treat a mental health issue. The weight gain started when I started taking the drug, and it stopped when I ceased taking it. This is a drug that is absolutely known for many patients putting on massive amounts of weight. You feel hungry all of the time. Imagine that: it doesn't matter if you ate an hour ago, your body is constantly sending the trigger that you're hungry and must eat.

Once on, that weight is hard as fuck to take off. If I cared to illustrate (I don't) that point, I'd post my calorie intake and exercise logs as well as a chart of my weight over a period of months where my weight inexplicably was all over the charts, up, down, flat, you name it. I had lost 40lbs prior to that, on a nice steady curve before the chaos hit. Literally nothing about my calorie intake or exercise routine explained it. I was eating the same thing every day - same breakfast, same lunch, with rotating dinners, everything made from scratch, no added sugar, no unhealthy snacks - I mean *none*, never, nada, zilch. All balanced, healthy foods.

Recent medical research also supports that once gained, weight becomes very difficult to impossible to take off.