I’ve found that 9 out of 10 calls for “individual action” to solve a societal ail is only solvable by regulating large companies and industry. Most of the time, the companies themselves are the ones funding the campaign for individual action and awareness. ReMEMbEr tO ReCYcLE!
“Yeah, we should keep shaming parents for childhood obesity! Now, let’s go on with more stimulus for High Fructose Corn Syrup…” 🙄
You don’t have to eat the thing. Try eating the healthier thing.
Lol said like someone who doesn’t understand kids.
Also changing education, so people stop thinking they need to eat only lettuce and tomatoes to be healthy.
This meme is art
It’s so expensive and time consuming to eat healthy, even more expensive if you want quality ingredients.
Meanwhile, junk food is quick, cheap, and tastes “better” because they just pack it full of sugar or have no regard for nutrition.
There’s really little incentive to eat healthy unless you’re making a conscious decision to be healthier.
Beans and rice is cheap as hell, easy to make, and it’ll last for a week or two depending on storage options.
I’m really tired of the expensive angle on healthy eating. It literally takes 20 minutes of research to get around that issue.
Yep it’s total bullshit. What people are really saying is they’re too lazy to prepare foods. Stir fry is cheap. Soup is cheap. Beans (refried, chili, black bean, etc.) & rice is cheap. All healthy.
Making lentil tacos tonight. Again, filthy cheap. Stupid simple. But tons of protein, complex carbs, fiber, vitamins, and minerals.
It gets much more efficient time-wise when you meal prep. Every improvement requires “conscious effort.” we’re just accustomed to bad habits because nobody taught us better.
Edit: I was a bit harsh on the laziness accusations. People are products of their environment generally and there are fair points regarding societal pressures. The body tends to take the path of least resistance and, well, this is the outcome.
People are “lazy” because it’s takes 2-4 incomes to support a household instead of one. Everything is rushed for a reason. Convenience isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity for many people, especially the hardest working.
The majority of healthy eating working class families are eating healthy because they have a retired grandmother or grandfather helping out cooking old school dishes etc. isolated small households with two working parents are going to feel compelled to get cheap and quick food otw home from work.
Man… My wife and I I support my mother, our 2 young kids, and my sister under a 2-income. These kids don’t go to daycare or school yet (which we plan on homeschooling) so no breaks. People definitely can make time but oftentimes have their priorities out of whack. No cooking contribution and a net-negative in terms of chores, mind you.
Yes, it’s easy to order quick food and we’ve all been there. I won’t lie and say we don’t occasionally. I completely get that. But I truly believe it’s a matter of bad habits across generations as opposed to being that confined on time. Besides, you’re going to lose all that time in less productivity / efficiency, especially when you’re sick more frequently and have to go to urgent care or hospital because of a poor diet.
Untrue. Americans get paid like crazy for the jobs they do. In Canada, the average income and CPI ratio is so much lower than in America and we have a fraction of the obesity problem.
I never liked this suggestion. Sure, dry beans and rice are cheap. When we tried to make beans, they came out tasteless and gross no matter what we tried. No matter what recipe we followed, they never tasted good. Rice is also cheap, especially when bought in bulk, but there’s only so many seasoning or sauce sauce combinations until I’m sick of eating the same thing. Even if it’s every other day, there’s no way I’m eating the same thing. We did that with overnight oats because they are cheap and easy to prepare ahead of time. We did it so much, it makes me gag now and I’ll never touch it again. On top of all that, I’m tired of cheap eating being reduced to the simplest possible foods imaginable and acting like people will eat them every or most days.
they came out tasteless and gross no matter what we tried.
You tried wrong then, buy dried beans, leave them on water overnight, change the water, put them on the pressure cooker with new water for 20-30 minutes(the bean should easily be crushed between your palate and tongue if not, add more time)
open the lid, the water must barely cover the beans(remove or add water), low the fire and start adding chopped tomatoes and onions, SALT(salt is probably the most important ingredient, start with a little bit, add until the water tastes salty but edible) thyme and turmeric, same process as the salt, not too much just enough that the water tastes good, leave in a slow fire for 5-10 minutes(more if you want the beans extra soft),
bonus: extra taste secret, chop bacon and fry it with little oil, put it in with the oil, but don’t put much, max two oil spoons in, do it when you put the tomatoes and onions.
Serve with rice, or add more water and make a soup.
Oatmeal: boil the oatmeal in water with cinnamon until it’s cooked, then wait for cooling, put in the blender with milk, add fruits, and some drops of vanilla extract. Put in refrigerator, enjoy.
acting like people will eat them every or most days.
People do eat them everyday, rice+any grain+meat+salad+etc
You know how many tasteless and even gross things that came from animals and plants humans have learned to eat? Boil it, fry it, use every seasoning available until it tastes good.
Edit: add the salt before, when you put them on the pressure cooker, not with the tomatoes and onions, that way the taste gets inside the bean when its pressure cooked.
So look for a recipe then. Chicken is cheap as hell. Pasta is cheap as hell. Rice is cheap as hell. Veggies are cheap as hell. Recipes will tell you how to cook it and make it taste good.
Chicken cheap as hell? Where tf you shoppin at?
There’s nothing more expensive and time consuming than being laid up in the hospital with cancer/heart disease/diabetes.
Missing the point that, you can’t convince kids with that argument.
I do feel that parents share a responsibility. Then again, the parents are often also fat, so the cause might go deeper than overfeeding the kid
I reccomend reading Ultra-Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken. It explains how modern food is designed to be over consumed. Mind blowing book.
I have no idea what you’re trying to communicate with this picture.
Isn’t this what Michelle Obama tried to do? What would you (or anyone else wanting to pitch in) suggest for policies?
the my plate shenanigans was just replacing high calorie density foods with low density foods but obfuscated by using volume as a measurement.
they did nothing to address food deserts.
Let’s be real here…we changed policy to enable obesity. The body positivity movement made it OK to be fat…Now over 75% of Americans are fat.
We did this one to ourselves.
If by policies you mean neoliberal economics, then you’re correct.
The body positivity movement did jack shit compared to economic factors, so it frustrates me to no end when people talk about it more than the incentives to be unhealthy. Shaming and blaming not only doesn’t work to dissuade unhealthy behavior, it makes societal failures into personal problems, refocusing the conversation away from the real culprits.
We hang ourselves, but capitalism gives us the rope and few alternatives.
The body positivity movement did jack shit compared to economic factors
I really disagree with that. No one is forcing you to go out and eat a 1500-2000 calorie super value meal for lunch. McChicken and small fries is reasonable and cheaper if you really hate yourself.
Part of it is addiction to sugars and carbohydrates. Sugar strongly stimulates the reward centers in our brain, so companies pump everything with it to hook customers. People eat that shit to deal with stresses, often caused by other economic externalities, and eat too much of it thanks to low nutritional value. Some children are both obese and malnourished, because their food is so shitty. Companies don’t care about the health consequences; they only make stonks go up.
Body positivity doesn’t necessarily say being overweight is good, just that you don’t need to hate your body if you’re overweight. Shame can easily turn maladaptive, so not dwelling on self hatred is often a good idea. People do take it too far, as health consequences of obesity are real, but that isn’t representative of all body positivity. Body positivity isn’t always good, and isn’t always bad. Black and white simplistic thinking will often lead you astray.
The body positivity message is “others shouldn’t shame you for your body”. You may still decide you want to change your body through whatever means are available to you. And the policies the meme refers to are about regulation on food production and distribution.
I mean, it is the fault of the person buying the food. Healthy families don’t eat fast food 5 times a week, and they don’t shop in the middle aisles for all of their food. That being said, most Americans don’t know how to cook or feed themselves properly and that’s a failure of the education system. Well, it would be a failure if it wasn’t part of the actual plan to dumb down Westerners.
Edit: holy shit, some of these comments. Yall are fucked. Eat a goddamn vegetable and look up a recipe once in a while, why don’t ya?
One big issue is that many poor families don’t have much time to cook. Yeah, there are things that can be prepared quickly and in bulk for later, but that’s harder than some frozen meal or fast food. There’s many socio-economic factors at play that need to be addressed.
I handle all the meal prep for my wife and I. You’re not wrong about the middle isles, we hardly touch them anymore, we go from produce to meat to dairy/eggs and don’t go much further in save for the occasional party. It’s several hours out of my Sunday to make sure we both have enough meals to get through Friday, she’s kind of helpless in the kitchen and depends on having something to quickly heat up.
This arrangement works for us.
I have no fucking clue what we’ll do when we’re feeding a child. A kid, who if is anything like me, will be incredibly picky to the point of regurgitation when something with an off texture touches their lips. I work nights, and my wife works days. We’re both sensitive to carbs, which as adults is manageable but kids actually do need some.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ll figure it out. But we’re fortunate enough to have decently paying jobs. We earn more than most do at our age, and when it becomes important we’ll have access to childcare that most Americans don’t.
Someone on even the median income in our area is going to struggle to eat the way we do. Someone working two jobs is going to really struggle to not hit the drive through several times a week. Someone feeding children is going to struggle even further.
My point is, you’re fucking dense.
People need cheap food. Cheap food isn’t healthy. People need food that doesn’t take much time. Fast food also isn’t healthy. Sure, there’s a decent size of the population hitting the drive through exclusively due to laziness. That’s not everyone, I’d argue it’s not even the majority.
I get it, it’s easy for you to stay home and cook when you’re single living in your mom’s basement, most of us moved out around college.
“the middle aisles” is a great way to phrase grocery habits
