Comparing Europe and the US on food choices is probably not the best choice, nutritional choices vary quite a bit in Europe. I live in Spain, and I guess I’m spoiled as I get freshly made “menu” at most local restaurants for a about 15-20$ a day… two plates, drink and espresso for desert. You get to choose the meal, usually about 5 plates for first and second, usually divided into veggies / salads / carbs and followed by a protein second. The fact we walk to the restaurant <i>15+ mins </i> , eat in about 30 mins, and having light breakfast and dinners helps balance our nutrition. We consumed little if any processed food, with the exception of the sausages, jamón, and salamis which we get at our local butcher, made the night before or the weekend. Since jamón is cured in salt, so no added sugar… again, we might consume this once a week, or less. Southern Europe is very similar in this regards. Our meats, we choose freshly butchered <i>24h</i>, or some specific pieces might require some aging, but it’s all clearly agreed and ordered days in advanced. The drawback is, you need to plan your meals, food last little, so we usually buy what will be consumed that evening, or afternoon.
Lots of comments on how processed foods are bad here. They are bad but it is also the frequency of eating/snacking itself. It is not healthy to constantly stimulate your insulin multiple times a day with high protein/carb foods whether processed or retained in nature's package. That goes for whole foods and processed foods, except processed foods are just a lot worse. Constantly elevated insulin is not how we evolved for millions of years. Insulin resistance can precede T2D by years and years before there is a flag raised by elevated hba1c. You should be able to eat 2 or 1 nutritionally dense whole foods meal(s) per day not crave snacks constantly. Eat until you naturally feel full and do not want to eat anymore. I quit all processed foods and 1 or 2 meals in a 4-6 hour window is normal, I've never felt better. Snack cravings are addictive cravings, not real hunger. Snack cravings can also indicate you are overresponding with insulin and crashing your blood sugar after the spike from snacking. So processed foods are bad but it's how you deliver them to your body constantly is where the damage gets done IMO.
My mom continues to buy heavily processed food. My dad periodically tries to nag her about eating healthier, but she takes that as a personal attack. She does eat veggies and fruit, but she also likes rice a roni (as do I- it tastes great, but I don’t buy it myself).<p>If you want to eat healthfully on the go, it generally means that you have to bring food along and ideally cook it, too. It is hard to do.
They did a lot more than just that: <a href="https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-how-cigarettes-invented-everything-104634493/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...</a>
Just watch a kid watching YouTube Shorts and TikTok. They're immediately fed with Skittles, Oreo, Mentos, Lays, Coca-Cola, Pepsi marathon of product placement. It's good for your investment portfolios and retirement though.
Your plate should be full of food from the outside edges of the grocery store. If it’s primarily full of food from the isles then you are eating wrong. There are exceptions (rice, oats etc) that are in the isles.
The article is basis a precis of the book refereed to at the end of the article: "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" by Michael Moss [1]. It's well worth reading.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Sugar_Fat:_How_the_Food_Giants_Hooked_Us" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Sugar_Fat:_How_the_Food_G...</a>
Have not read the article, but I think "Big Tobacco" is something of a scapegoat for a larger pattern, and basically they were just unlucky enough to produce one of the most harmful products (recognized as such once the health bills started coming due).<p>(edit - I may add the product probably wouldn't be so harmful if people kept their consumption to under five cigarettes a day.)
Yeah?<p>You can still drink diabetes in a can or choose your liter size from Coca Cola or Pepsi or Faygo within 15 feet of a building entrance in Texas.<p>No sin taxes either. But yeah, just tobacco companies and their…spin offs?<p>Many of todays unhealthy foods are actually the fault of generic laziness and over work under paid conditions in the US. But sure, tell me more about how the Washington Post did a great job publishing Bezos’s dick pics in the name of…well, clickbait gonna clickbait