HFCS in basically everything + driving everywhere instead of walking + no time / money to work out or cook healthy food = obesity epidemic.
That my hypothesis anyway. Many other countries have one or more of these issues, but it seems like America is the only one that has the full combination.
I can’t understand why certain things are considered in any way “better” than old tech.
Tachometers and speedometers, for example. These used to be plain rotating wires, hooked (respectively) up to the engine prior to the transmission, or to the driveshaft. Aside from the step-down gears (for the instrument cluster dials), that’s all what they were. So if your tach or sped no longer worked, you knew that in 99% of the cases it was a broken cable, and that’s invariably all that it was. You replaced that for a dollar or five, and you were on your way.
Now with electronics, the problem scope of a non-functional tach or sped has expanded to thousands of potential points of failure and potentially equally as much in costs in order to effectively repair.
This doesn’t sound “better” in any shape or form. It just sounds like more ka-ching for the auto companies, as well as a better way to monetize your behavioural use of the vehicle through its computerized Black Box that has an always-on cellular connection to the manufacturer’s mothership.
It's better for the manufacturer because it's cheap, sadly. A screen is way cheaper than dials these days. I don't know why luxury cars got them first though. Digital dashboards look cheap as fuck
Yeah that era was great because you got aux, Bluetooth, and a touch screen, but all the important stuff still had physical buttons and the car didn't come with internet by default
New Yorkers remain the lowest in obesity, who would have guessed that walking literally everywhere and burning the same amount as your resting rate leads to a recommended 2500 calorie diet making you not gain weight? What do you mean obesity is simply solved by just eating less and actually has not much to do with the foods in question? But my fitness magazines have to sell me their new juice only diet!
Spoiler, diets are hard (calorie restrictions, not fad trash). Humans have spent millions of years evolving in an environment where every meal could be the last for days. You are biologically wired to crave and eat everything in sight, even more so the rare and useful sugar and sodium. In high amounts, these lead to higher calorie intake, obviously these are overdosed consistently. But you are still fighting millions of years of evolution, with only ~150 years of dietary knowledge and the ability for any person of any class to eat at any time. You are programmed to fail.
Adding to the topic though, numerous studies and almost all data shows sugars, refined or not, do fuck all to the obesity cause. They are a byproduct of larger problems.
Not true. Within an average day (pending weight and mass overall as well as heart rate) someone walking 15k+ steps a day could easily come close to matching their daily resting rate. An hour of exercise, yes trivial. But simply just not being sedentary will easily get you to needing 3500-4000 calories just to maintain. Of course that's only 1000-1500 more than a man needs on average, and with how easily replaced it is by bad food choices, yes it could also seem trivial. But if maintaining consistency, it could be the difference between success and failure.
I don't think sugars are an issue because they magically create fat, I think they're an issue because they have a ton of calories and make us crave more food.
But other countries have sugar, so like you said, that walking sure helps a ton. I have a friend that likes to alternate between living in their home town, and New York. It's wild to see how much their weight changes every time they move back.
HFCS is just a scary word. HCFS is just a form of sucrose and believe it or not can containe slightly less or slightly more fructose than regular sucrose 50/50. HCFS 42 is 42% fructose (less than regular sugar) or 55% fructose, slightly more than regular sugar.
HCFS is only bad because it made sugar cheap, but it shouldn't to be blamed directly.