Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
What got me thinking about this was an anti-American tirade a British golf-reporter went on against American fans - his name was Pete Willett, I believe. It was a bizarre article, that seemed to want to insult Americans for being attractive at the same time it described in 20 different ways how allegedly fat American Ryder Cup fans were - an American’s defense of the article contained the same self-hating nonsense, and a failure to call out hypocrisy where it should have been (“I mean, America DOES have an OBESITY PROBLEM”), especially because the real kicker was that, as is typical for British people calling Americans fat, the American Ryder Cup fans pictured in the article looked objectively fit and average weight, whereas Pete Willett was - surprise - the overweight one.
This got me thinking as to why this slander has become so beloved and highly regarded by anti-Americans the world over - to the point where Americans are always seen as the fat ones in the room, no matter how skinny or fit they are. So allow me to pose a question: is this hypocrisy, or do you seriously think the US is that proportionally more fat than “the rest of the world” - despite that being a logically unsound assertion, one that clearly stems from insecurity relating to American dominance in entertainment media (film, modeling, etc) throughout the 20th and 21st centuries?
For one, there are problems with obesity epidemiology in the first place, because weight is very hard to generalize to entire populations of people. The ‘weight’ variable is too fickle, because of the individual capacity to gain and lose weight over time.
On top of that, we’ve introduced indirect ways to measure it across entire, diverse populations, using height by white formulas as a proxy for a more direct measurement of body fat, which doesn’t accurately measure percentage of body fat, or body composition, at all.
On top of that, in the mid-90s, the WHO officially lowered the cutoff values for what’s considered overweight and obese overnight, to 25 and 30 respectively. The thing is, since this defines overweightedness and obesity at levels that are too low, the vast majority of athletes on any given high school or college sports team will have technically overweight or obese BMI’s. BMI only shows a mild correlation with mortality once someone reaches a BMI of at least 45, and less than 1% of Americans have a BMI that high.
Therefore, you have a dilemma, where the popular perception of the term “obese” doesn’t gel with how obesity is medically defined.
That introduction aside, then there’s the frustrating and kind of odd phenomenon that is obesity being so intrinsically linked to the concept of the American nationality at this point that it’s something “America exports”, even. The way people talk about fat people, you’d think they only, or mostly only, existed in America. What a logically sound claim! *sarcasm*
The verbiage used by people talking about obesity in this bizarrely nationalized way always outright insists that obesity is pretty much unique to America, and you can’t put forth an argument against this.
One, I think there’s been a bit of an attempt to intellectualize bias against Americans in these ways by creating subtly misleading datasets for quality of life, infant mortality rate, obesity etc…all they really need to do is cherry pick the pieces of data they want from the organizations they choose.
That’s the problem. A big issue is that no two ethnic groups have the same percentage of body fat per the same BMI, not within the US, and not outside of it.
The NHANES study, which surveys obesity in the US, over-samples African and Hispanic Americans and doesn’t bother to weight them for their actual proportions of the population. Since these two groups are phenotypically predisposed to being identified as obese under the current BMI cutoff values, this massively over-inflates the measured American obesity rate, which should be roughly comparable to countries like Canada and New Zealand. The real irony is that a Lancet survey found that White Americans have less body fat per BMI than do White Europeans (mostly those from the UK and the Netherlands were surveyed, I believe).
It doesn’t make sense that America’s measured obesity rate can be inconsistent with it’s self-reported obesity rate (25-27% according to the Gallup and Healthway Survey) by as much as 13+ percentage points. 3 Canadian provinces have higher self-reported obesity rates than any American state, and don’t try to tell me that the average white Canadian looks skinnier than the average white American…it just doesn’t really make sense.
Long story short is that I’m finding it increasingly hard to stomach a “stereotype” that is based on such obviously flawed logic, cheap insults, and blatant hypocrisy - another reason it’s so hard to stomach (aside from, uh, the blatantly insulting nature of it) is that it’s insisted upon like mad, you never stop hearing it, and it’s been used to impugn all sorts of things about American culture that are just over-the-top slanderous and contrary to certain axioms of American culture - there is, for example, no consistent data whatsoever that proves the US has larger portion sizes or sugar/calorie content in the average packaged food item than Canada or other comparable western countries do - this is just something that people started insisting MUST be the case, because look at how high America’s “obesity rates” are - and multiple surveys of vigorous physical activity show Americans (particularly American teens) to be some of the most vigorously active in the west…so pretending like America is this gluttonous, lazy society just doesn’t work.
It’s widely remarked upon, for example, that Americans receive tons of Olympic medals - that a wide variety of sports and recreational pursuits are beloved in American schools and society (wrestling, football, soccer, gymnastics, baseball, basketball, cheerleading, surfing, skateboarding, lacrosse, ice hockey), that America produces the most winning boxers and UFC fighters, has produced myriad health movements (gluten free, farm-to-table, the vegan craze), manages to have a world-beating Women’s soccer team, and has a notoriously prolific dieting and health industry…to start.
It seems more cartoonish and culturally inaccurate to me to suggest that Americans eat fast food every day, and never get exercise - it ignores and subverts all of these incontrovertible truths about American society. The UK has a much more historic national cuisine that strikes me as much more starch-heavy, that, combined with fast food culture and the higher per capita consumption of alcohol, leads me to scoff at people claiming the US is so superlatively unhealthy in this way - sorry, I don’t buy it.
It seems that cultural insecurity connected to the prolificness of the American film, modeling, and beauty industries throughout the 20th century largely created a need for a more insulting image that anti-Americans could hold on to - this sloppy, false assertion that the 330M strong American nation was statistically, proportionally more “fat” compared to any other major country became a very good way to dent American soft power worldwide - which was so heavily connected to the perceived attractiveness of the American nationality not too long ago. Fat America still manages to produce the largest share of the world’s models, movie stars, and porn stars though. Weird…how?
Has anyone else felt this way? I’m just kind of frustrated that there’s such an insulting image of Americans that is propped up by one misleading WHO data set, which is easily perpetuated via confirmation bias. What makes it all the more worse is that there’s no logic to the idea that America is more proportionally overweight than other comparable nations like the UK or Australia, and obesity epidemiology has no survey methods that are globally standardized enough so that these deliberations become kind of futile and nebulous anyways.
Last edited by ginnygingin; 07-14-2021 at 12:09 AM..
This is gonna get interesting!
Will people be able to sustain a sensible conversation about this, or will it devolve into a poo-flinging ****-show?
Just glad to know someone read it all. Did you? Does it make sense? I was kind of tired when I wrote it and was trying to get out a lot of thoughts really fast.
Some of the stuff sounds a bit arrogant. I apologize. Yet and still, I ran in to at least 10+ earnest insistences and insults related to Americans and weight today and I just could not stomach it. It was the most hypocritical, ridiculous nonsense.
So I wanted to open a discussion on this topic even though it stresses me out tbh.
It's pretty late here so I'm too tired to type up a lengthy response, but in short, yes, I agree with your premise that there's hypocrisy surrounding the quickness to "jump on the bandwagon" and paint all Americans as obese/lazy.
You made some really good points here.
I'll definitely check this thread tomorrow morning whilst sipping my coffee to see which direction it's gone.
Not another newbie trying to cause discord between the Americans and British.
Pete Willets article does not represent the views of the British nation, and was condemned by his own brother Danny Willets who is a professional golfer.
The article was written five years ago in 2016, and was in response to his experiences at the Ryder Cup, however the Ryder Cup itself has a very charged atmosphere and stupid things are sometimes said.
Finally most British people have a positive view of Americans, and this is backed up by polls.
As for studies, there are lots of studies showing that the British are actually healthier than their US counterparts, however I suspect you have already seen them, possible under another username, as a seem to recall this same nonsense about BMI being spouted in another thread.
As for the British diet, it has changed radically over the years, with lower alcohol consumption among young people and a massive increased in both Vegetarian and Vegan diets, whilst British food is increasingly international, as is the produce sold at Supermarkets (Grocery stores), whilst restaurants, food markets and street food also reflect this internationalism.
One in three evenings meals in Britain are now meat free, as are one in five meals sold at supermarkets.
I also think you will find, as pointed out previously that the British, Australians and many other nations play a lot of sport, and far more international sport than the US does.
Last edited by Brave New World; 07-14-2021 at 02:12 AM..
As for studies, there are lots of studies showing that the British are actually healthier than their US counterparts, however I suspect you have already seen them, possible under another username, as a seem to recall this same nonsense about BMI being spouted in another thread.
No there aren’t - there are sloppy assertions made by Internet posters, pop-science journals, and tabloids that assert negative things incessantly about America’s collective health (as if such a thing for 330 million diverse people exists) based solely off of the “measured obesity rate” - but there are not studies that prove “British people are healthier than Americans.” Such a suggestion comes across as laughable to me. Read what I said.
I’ve seen one or two articles that try to assert America is “statistically unhealthy” when it comes to diet or exercise, by beginning with the premise that Americans must be because of a given “obesity rate”. So they essentially make statistical assumptions about the health of the US based off of the “obesity rate”, which I’ve already skewered well enough above.
It’s all confirmation bias.
I can point to studies relating to rates of vigorous exercise (all 3 Lancet ones and one independent study), all of which put the UK well below the US, the Tufts university study on portion size and calorie count, the eclipsing of American childhood obesity rates by Great Britain, higher per capita consumption of alcohol, higher smoking rates, and the much poorer performance of the NHS when it comes to healthcare outcomes across cardiovascular disease, stroke, and cancer survival rates when compared to the US.
I am not asserting that there are meaningful differences between the two when it comes to “health” generalized to entire nations, because I believe that’s an exercise in futility, trying to determine that, but you need to be agreeable enough to admit that in kind. There are any number of ways you could frame a given country as unhealthy or healthy.
I’m not hearing any nonsense about how Britain is a more fit society - the only widely participated-in sports seem to be soccer and rugby - compare that to the sheer number of sports available at even the poorest of American schools.
And I’m beyond hearing that British people have healthier diets. No. I’m sorry. And I’m not about to stoop to cheap anecdotes.
Quote:
I also think you will find, as pointed out previously that the British, Australians and many other nations play a lot of sport, and far more international sport than the US does
What does the last part mean?
One, I think it’s quite clear that the academic sporting culture is much more robust in the US than it is in either the UK or Australia, and when it comes to rates of vigorous exercise (a directly measured thing), that pans out: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...-hour-day.html
In this survey, American teens were surveyed as being the FOURTH MOST ACTIVE IN THE WORLD, Britain came in at 29th. Australian teens were surveyed as some of the least vigorously active in the world, below even Britain. There was another edition of this survey that came out with American teens being some of the most vigorously active in the world (placing 1st) back in 2012, with the UK placing as the 12th most active in the survey.
I’m not sure why this cognitive dissonance exists - it’s common knowledge to anyone living in the US that American teens play tons of sports at school and colleges are known here for their hugely robust and diverse sporting culture - this is commented on all the time when people discuss the differences in American and European schooling - and yet at the same time, you and others want to sit here and pretend like Americans “don’t exercise” and are “fat”…generalized to all 330 million people, of course. All I’m thinking when I hear that is “wow…don’t exercise? Fat? Compared to who?” Perhaps a country with less of the high-adiposity African or Mestizo phenotype?
Oh, and you pretend Soccer, maybe Rugby, combined with, I don’t know, Field Hockey participation in the UK can match. I don’t think so. Look at the kind of attention high school and college wrestling draws in the Midwest.
How about you go up to one of those high school or college wrestlers or basketball players, or maybe one of the wrestling and basketball coaches, and tell them that their country is fat and unhealthy and lazy and that British people are just so much more active?
For a place like Paulau or…the UAE, those assumptions might make sense. Given what we know about American sporting culture, I’m beside myself that people think they can even begin to impugn that Americans are lazy compared to the entire western world. Seriously, what?!
Last edited by ginnygingin; 07-14-2021 at 02:46 AM..
Another thinly disguised anti-British post I see. The FACT is the USA IS statistically the fattest nation on the planet, does this mean that everybody there is fat? No of course not but denying that there is a (excuse the pun) massive problem in the US is just burying your head in the sand. As for sports participation, well personally I always imagined that people in the UK tend to be more sporty BUT if course neither me or the original poster really knows.
Another thinly disguised anti-British post I see. The FACT is the USA IS statistically the fattest nation on the planet, does this mean that everybody there is fat? No of course not but denying that there is a (excuse the pun) massive problem in the US is just burying your head in the sand. As for sports participation, well personally I always imagined that people in the UK tend to be more sporty BUT if course neither me or the original poster really knows.
This is exactly the type of disgusting hypocrisy I’m describing.
The US is not “statistically the fattest nation on the planet”, what utter nonsense, as I soundly disputed in my post.
How dare you talk about a “massive problem in the US” when the UK is as obese, plainly. You are the one burying your head in the sand. What a hypocritical, nasty comment.
Even going with the current ridiculous obesity index, the US is not the fattest nation on it.
Are you capable of engaging in intelligent discussion at all? You ignored everything I wrote.
You can’t just ignore all the logic and data in a person’s post to insist on widely debunked and deliberately insulting “stereotypes”.
No one who knows anything about sporting culture in the US would think that people in Britain were more “sporty”. No one. And I’ve offered data concerning rates of vigorous exercise that shows Britain routinely falling far below the US every time.
You’ve offered nothing but bland insistences that British people play sports more, accompanied by hypocritical and inaccurate assertions that America was “the fattest country in the world”. Do you you use your brain? Of course not. That’s logically unsound and not true at all, but it satisfies your anti-American inferiority complex, so you’ll parrot it. Anyone who has lived in the two countries would know that is laughably backwards.
And the gall of you to complain about anti-Britishism if someone calls out British hypocrisy over calling Americans fat all the time. You proved my point with your very post.
That’s fine, keep thinking this, we’ll keep winning more Olympic medals, beating you at women’s soccer, producing proportionally more models than you, and you can keep wondering where all the fit and skinny Americans keep coming from like an utterly clueless hypocrite.
For the record, nothing I said was at all aggressive, or insulting of British people, but you keep vindicating my entire original post by - uh - being a hypocrite when it comes to matters of obesity and unhealth in America and the rest of the world.
There’s massive irony in you declaratively stating that Americans were so much fatter than British people based off of a sloppy comparative index via an indirect method of survey, but when I post a survey that involves direct measurement of activity rates of teens per country that shows America on top and Britain on the bottom, you say “no one really knows, but I think British people are more sporty”. Seriously, what an utterly obnoxious instance of arrogance and projection.
Last edited by ginnygingin; 07-14-2021 at 03:02 AM..
Another thinly disguised anti-British post I see. The FACT is the USA IS statistically the fattest nation on the planet, does this mean that everybody there is fat? No of course not but denying that there is a (excuse the pun) massive problem in the US is just burying your head in the sand. As for sports participation, well personally I always imagined that people in the UK tend to be more sporty BUT if course neither me or the original poster really knows.
The US is one of the fattest nations.
In terms of the UK it has taken action and has plans to hep reduce obesity.
The sugar tax in relation to soft drinks has now seen most drinks become sugar free, and there is now a junk food advertising ban before 9 pm.
There are now proposals to extend the sugar tax to food and a salt tax, and this is coupled with further plans to increase physical education in schools.
Anyone who has been to the US and UK knows that the US has far larger food portions at restaurants and eateries, and this is coupled with free refills, which is something you rarely get in the UK. Americans will also take uneaten food home with them in a doggy bag, a practice that is not normal in the UK or indeed Europe.
All this nonsense attacking other countries, is some form of defence certain formers use, however in reality you will find two things, the first being it's better to actual try to think of some ways of solving the problem rather than deny it and attack others and secondly most people outside of the US really don't care about such issues, indeed it's none of our business.
Last edited by Brave New World; 07-14-2021 at 03:55 AM..
Another thinly disguised anti-British post I see. The FACT is the USA IS statistically the fattest nation on the planet, does this mean that everybody there is fat? No of course not but denying that there is a (excuse the pun) massive problem in the US is just burying your head in the sand. As for sports participation, well personally I always imagined that people in the UK tend to be more sporty BUT if course neither me or the original poster really knows.
Dude…come on. You have to be self-aware enough to know that this post proves the thesis posed by the title of the thread.
I’d say this is another case of American self-criticism being taken advantage of by various anti-US groups out there. So yes, it’s very hypocritical. The pharmaceutical and insurance industries in the US were the ones most responsible for the changing of the BMI cutoff values and the institution of BMI in the first place…there’s a lot of money to be made from the so-called “obesity epidemic” that doesn’t really exist.
It’s common for average weight to increase by a couple pounds every couple generations, about, and I do think that the expansion of sentient lifestyles means that that has been more concentrated in the higher BMI range since the 1970s, but yea, the idea that the average weight has increased so much that “40% of Americans are obese” just doesn’t pan out. We just define obesity in stricter terms than we used to.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
