- Registrado
- 7 de Mar, 2022
@unwieldy_object All good answers above, but I'll throw in my perspective as a European who has lived a good part of his life in the US.
As mentioned, your likelihood of encountering these people depends a lot on the local environment. Social class is important. On the bottom rung of society are the inner-city homeless. Homeless people are not usually fat, for a variety of reasons: drugs, the privations of the street, etc. The level of society directly above is where you'll find the majority of deathfats - poor, but they have somewhere to live and they have enough money to feed their addiction, which is food and sugary drinks. That's the best way to think about it, in my opinion - the super-obese are like drug addicts, but instead of fentanyl, they use junk food. I'll return to that point shortly.
This is also tied to geography. Here is a map showing level of obesity by state:
People in states such as Hawaii and Massachusetts, which are very well off, are skinnier on average. Image-obsessed California and D.C. also are less obese. The South and the Midwest are fatter, and West Virginia, Oklahoma and Louisiana are the three fattest states. This red/dark red part of the country contains many of its poorest areas.
So income plays a part, but I don't think that's the whole story. There's also a cultural aspect. I think if you grow up in a small town in West Virginia say (no offense to anyone from there), and you don't have much education or many prospects and your entire view of the world is limited to West Virginia, and since your childhood you've only had access to ultra-processed, highly-fattening food, and maybe there wasn't that much else in your childhood that you actually enjoyed that much, then perhaps fate is kind of nudging you down the path towards morbid obesity.
In the big cities, you do see some, but not as many. In the Bay Area and NYC, where I've spent the most time, you definitely do see really, really fat people now and then, but they're comparatively rare. Take from that what you will.
The real key though is market forces. Capitalism advances more rapidly and in more extreme ways in the US than in any other part of the world, and this is where I want to bring up drugs again, because I think there's actually a lot of similarities here with widespread addiction to opioids. Pharmaceutical companies started tinkering with chemicals to create substances that mimic the effects of opium on the human body, and then sold these as painkillers and made a huge profit. Ultra-processed food is designed also to be addictive, finding the perfect balance of sugar, fat, carbs and all the other foodstuffs humans naturally crave, and mass-producing them so they can be sold as cheaply as possible.
This is also tied to geography. Here is a map showing level of obesity by state:
People in states such as Hawaii and Massachusetts, which are very well off, are skinnier on average. Image-obsessed California and D.C. also are less obese. The South and the Midwest are fatter, and West Virginia, Oklahoma and Louisiana are the three fattest states. This red/dark red part of the country contains many of its poorest areas.
So income plays a part, but I don't think that's the whole story. There's also a cultural aspect. I think if you grow up in a small town in West Virginia say (no offense to anyone from there), and you don't have much education or many prospects and your entire view of the world is limited to West Virginia, and since your childhood you've only had access to ultra-processed, highly-fattening food, and maybe there wasn't that much else in your childhood that you actually enjoyed that much, then perhaps fate is kind of nudging you down the path towards morbid obesity.
In the big cities, you do see some, but not as many. In the Bay Area and NYC, where I've spent the most time, you definitely do see really, really fat people now and then, but they're comparatively rare. Take from that what you will.
The real key though is market forces. Capitalism advances more rapidly and in more extreme ways in the US than in any other part of the world, and this is where I want to bring up drugs again, because I think there's actually a lot of similarities here with widespread addiction to opioids. Pharmaceutical companies started tinkering with chemicals to create substances that mimic the effects of opium on the human body, and then sold these as painkillers and made a huge profit. Ultra-processed food is designed also to be addictive, finding the perfect balance of sugar, fat, carbs and all the other foodstuffs humans naturally crave, and mass-producing them so they can be sold as cheaply as possible.
