> There's a large factor on satiety which is how hungry, or even happy, you feel at the moment.
Satiety is a measure of how hungry you will feel. It doesn't make sense to call hunger a factor. I agree that we need to measure the quality of the food correctly, and I suggested a way to do it.
The correlation between office work and obesity too small to call it a direct result.
I believe the obesity epidemic is caused by three things:
1) R&D in the food industry that optimizes for profit, where profit is maximized by creating foods that are irresistible.
2) Technology driving the price of food to near zero.
3) More women in the workforce leads to fewer domestically prepared meals. These meals are replaced commercially created meals (lunchables, mcdonalds) thus #1 applies more often.
#2, #3 are good things. The best fix is to design a system where profits are maximized by making tasty foods that with the constraint that the foods don't incorrectly inform our biochemical hunger feedback mechanism.
> 1) R&D in the food industry that optimizes for profit, where profit is maximized by creating foods that are irresistible.
The problem is, what is irresistible for someone who makes two meals a day is different than what is irresistible for someone in a different diet, lifestyle or even mood.
While I was busting my ass inside an stressful office until 10:00 PM without eating, I wanted to get home and sink my teeth in a pepperoni pizza as fast as possible while watching TV. Nowadays I'm on a different lifestyle and, mind you, I woke up craving for squid, for some reason (the body talks). I went downtown, bought fresh squid, cooked a risotto myself with the things I like. A low fat, low sodium, high protein, Zinc and Selenium rich meal - the exact opposite of pizza, but satisfied me just as much today.
You're saying the food industry optimizes for irresistible (crunchy, fiberless, fat and sugar rich) food and there's no way around this formula. I'm saying they are only selling what hungry, depressed and stressed people are craving to eat.
Good pizza and good squid risotto aren't polar opposites: they are both full of carbs and contain almost the same amount of sodium. Pizza probably has more vitamins due to the tomato sauce.
My contention is that pizza doesn't have to be junk food, it just is most of the time in the US. Choose a better restaurant or make your own.
What I'm comparing is the satisfaction hit you get from having a greasy pepperoni pizza delivered and devoured in 20 minutes and eating something completely different depends totally on lifestyle and mood.
What the OP was implying is that fast/junk food is inherently irresistible and that's why more people are obese. What I'm saying in turn is that it's today's lifestyle which makes people find it irresistible and that nothing else satisfies.
I know what you were saying, I was going off topic, because as an Italian and a food enthusiast, I'm tired of hearing pizza being described as junk food. That's all. :)
Even mass-produced pizza doesn't have to be junk food ... but when you sit down and eat a whole pie, you're going to be over-doing it regardless of how healthy the ingredients were.
Why do you think pizza is bad for you? I incorporate pizza in my diet frequently. The main limiting factor with it for me is keeping carbs down, but as someone else pointed out: a risotto is also carb heavy; that rice is pretty much all carbs.
Pizza can be massively unhealthy if you buy from somewhere that's full of sodium and soaked in grease, but there are plenty of ways of making pizzas that are fine to eat every day even.
Heck, squid works just fine on a thin pizza base too, as do mussels and prawn if you want a nice seafood mix.
You're saying the food industry optimizes for irresistible (crunchy, fiberless, fat and sugar rich) food and there's no way around this formula. I'm saying they are only selling what hungry, depressed and stressed people are craving to eat.
Well yes, but solving problems like depression, stress, and overly-long working hours is much tougher than just blaming food executives.
> 3) More women in the workforce leads to fewer domestically prepared meals.
This is unfortunately true, as in it will take probably another 20 to 30 years for the majority of Western men to realize that they can cook, too, and that cooking is not only a "woman's job". Coming from a family where both my parents worked full-time jobs and where my dad was actually cooking tastier meals than my mum it surprised me when I grew up and saw that in other families the husband wouldn't approach the kitchen even if he would be starving to death.
Otherwise I cannot really understand why a majority of people have starting seeing cooking a healthy meal as a "waste of time". This is something so ingrained in our well-being, I'd say is almost quintessential to who we are as a species, that it baffles me when I see so many people relying only on pre-processed food that comes packaged in cardboard boxes.
I'm a pretty good cook, and when I was a single guy, I assure you my excess of body fat came from some of my awesome home cooking rather than TV dinners. The biggest problem is everything being oriented around "family size" being 4+ but actual real world sitting at the table tonight and eating probably averages about 2 on long term average due to other committments etc. There are four members of my immediate family but tonight I eat dinner alone, and I need a individual portion size not "family size".
You're right, because it's generational. My dad only knows how to make "Kraft Dinner" and hot dogs. I love cooking and most other males my age (30s to 40s) do as well. The advent of cooking competition tv shows and celebrity chefs has really catapulted this sentiment into mainstream society.
> 2) Technology driving the price of food to near zero.
Got any source for that?
I worked for 3 years in a European Union Scientific project (FP7) of Rural Development and Agriculture in 6 countries (Germany, Czech Republic, UK, France and Bulgaria). The findings we got (including direct interviews with farmers, Eurostat data and other panel data) contradict your claim.
Specially if we consider that one of the main requirements of food is land (either for crops, trees or pasture for animals), and if anything, fertile land is getting more expensive.
Download Table 7 (Food expenditures by families and individuals as a share of disposable personal income), and you will see a steady march from 24% of disposable income to 9%.
As a quick data point, corn was $1.32/bu. in 1970. Adjusted for inflation, that would be close to $8 today. Current price is $5.16. That does indicate a downward trend in prices, and I expect you will see similar trends for other food commodities.
Have you ever thought what the people at the food industry eat? Do the C levels at General Mills and Mars eat all that cereal and candy? Do the McDonalds people eat at McDonalds? What are the diets of leaders in the food industry vs the diets of leaders in technology?
Donald Thompson looks like he might have a BMI above Larry Page.
Also not sure how the price of food is near zero? Are you implying that the cost now is near zero because I don't have to go out and kill a cow, nor do I have to farm and scavenge? So cost as in physical cost? Because breakfast and lunch today were not near zero and I have noticed the cost of milk and eggs going up, not down.
Satiety is a measure of how hungry you will feel. It doesn't make sense to call hunger a factor. I agree that we need to measure the quality of the food correctly, and I suggested a way to do it.
The correlation between office work and obesity too small to call it a direct result.
I believe the obesity epidemic is caused by three things:
1) R&D in the food industry that optimizes for profit, where profit is maximized by creating foods that are irresistible.
2) Technology driving the price of food to near zero.
3) More women in the workforce leads to fewer domestically prepared meals. These meals are replaced commercially created meals (lunchables, mcdonalds) thus #1 applies more often.
#2, #3 are good things. The best fix is to design a system where profits are maximized by making tasty foods that with the constraint that the foods don't incorrectly inform our biochemical hunger feedback mechanism.
My plan attempts to address this problem.