I lived in Germany and Indonesia. It’s easier for me now back in the US than ever to eat healthy.
I can buy pre-chopped Cole slaw, diced peppers / onions, etc. Whole Foods is best in class (Alnatura doesn’t come close)
While to me, the layman, it seems health regulation in general in Europe is more conservative about what can be put on the body / be consumed, I think it’s mostly Americans don’t want to eat healthy. And the portion sizes here are insane (just look at the evolution dinner plate. 1960s plates at an antique sale only pass for salad plates)
There's a massive amount of junk food and ultra-processed food in grocery stores, even though (rough estimate) 50% of floorspace is "raw" food. (Fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, fish.)
Processed food tends to have more sugar (high fructose corn syrup) than other countries. The same brand in the US vs another country will have more sugar.
Cultural momentum: Everywhere you go there's unhealthy food.
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Speaking from personal experience, junk food is just plan addictive and satisfying. It's not like alcohol or other drugs where you can just abstain; you gotta eat and we all get hungry.
I think there is argument to be made that the path of least resistance is very different in the US, Europe and Asia. I think maybe by living abroad you have adapted by default to a path (shaped by the environment) to eat more healthy.
In the US I heard there is now parity in terms of quality products, but maybe culture takes some time to adapt to such environments.
I agree that when it comes to portion size and whole foods, Europe makes it easy to follow by example. FWIW, I ate healthy in the US before because I rock climbed and needed to maintain a very lean mass. If I wanted to cut weight in Indonesia, it was easy: just eat their portion size, and I'd come in below maintenance.
What I've seen consistently amongst the non-healthy eating Americans is that they argue:
1. Dieting requires them to be hard on themselves and they're focusing on self-love, which they struggle with
2. They deserve a daily treat. They look forward to it, it brings meaning, etc
3. The taste of their food is super important to them, such that they can't imagine repetitively eating (meal-prep) or eating cleanly (no added sugar, monitoring sodium)
Here's some advice on all 3, and I don't even ask you to buy my supplements :)
1. Practicing a healthy diet is self-love
2. A daily treat is not what breaks your diet. Have _a piece_ of chocolate, sweets or snacks now and then. If you (still) lack the self-control to not eat the whole package, help yourself out by repackaging in daily-compatible portions. Meaning is not gained by consuming anyway.
3. Taste preferences are in big parts a matter of habit. Also prepping doesn't necessitate you eat the same thing for a week. You can freeze a lot of things for longer and thaw them in a mixed manner.
Imo the issue is that people seem to lack a combination of knowledge, time to prep or motivation. Lack of knowledge could be solved with information campaigns, lack of time/motivation is a consequence of people having to spend so much of their time doing a dayjob just to get by, embedded in a culture that puts no value on thriving humans.
> 3. The taste of their food is super important to them, such that they can't imagine repetitively eating (meal-prep) or eating cleanly (no added sugar, monitoring sodium)
They're saying this without irony? Or by "important" do they mean "the way I like it"?
In North America there are a lot of "food deserts" especially in poorer neighbourhoods. "Healthy" foods become a class marker. Distribution of higher quality food is through more upscale grocery stores.
Same goes for walkability in neighbourhoods. To live in a place that has transit accessibility, green grocer and bakery you can walk to -- that's not possible for the vast majority of North Americans because it exists only in urban areas that have gentrified beyond the reach of most people.
When I moved to Toronto in the mid-90s it was possible for a middle-income earner to rent or live in a home adjacent to some of the corridors in the city that offer this (e.g. Roncesvalles/High-Park, Spadina/Chinatown, College&Clinton, etc) and you could see a higher diversity of people living near the stores and in the neighbourhoods off them. As a person in my early 20s making not very much money, I could make it work. That is now no longer possible, the city has become a wealthy fortress. I imagine the same for parts of Brooklyn&NYC, Chicago, SF, Vancouver etc.
The food deserts thing gets tired. It's a social media trope at this point. I lived in poorer neighborhoods growing up, and those who wanted to eat healthy made it happen. It just took more work, which is the point. Corner stores that stocked fresh fruits and veggies would just have them rot on the shelves due to no one purchasing them. It's consumer preference.
Almost nowhere in the US walks to go to the grocery store. Exceedingly small portions of major cities. Where I live in Chicago is quite walkable, but the vast majority of my neighbors load up the car for the vast majority of their shopping trips. There are pockets of course, but they are rare.
My neighborhood also happens to be much more fit than the national average - obesity is somewhat rare to see. The correlation is with wealth. Why there is such a correlation is much more interesting, and it likely is not as simple as people want to believe.
Same goes for the poor inner ring suburbs where I lived in my 20's in a different state. Very high rates of obesity. In the rich outer suburbs obesity levels were visibly less.
It's far cheaper to meal prep and make your own food from base ingredients. It doesn't need to be fancy. When I grew up poor (working class) this is how we made it work. By buying staples in bulk and buying other items opportunistically on sale. We didn't even own a car for most of that time - and the nearest grocery store was at least 3 miles away. It simply wasn't an option to exist off of junk food since it was too expensive.
Eating junk is easier and more convenient. It feels good in the immediate moment and is low-effort. It's the default, and the environment around you encourages it. Add in lack of any peer pressure and it being normalized by those around you and I believe that explains nearly everything. Lack of walkability certainly hurts, but it's not a primary driver anywhere I've lived.
> the path of least resistance is very different in the US, Europe and Asia
My theory is that in US compared to Europe, you are going to need the path of least resistance more often. If you are working two part-time jobs with variable hours and schedules to make ends meet, then you are going to reach for the easy & fast food options. Whereas if you have the stability of 40 hour work weeks, regular schedule and social safety nets - regardless of the total income - then you have the time and mental energy to eat healthier.
Another data point for here. Not from the USA, I find the ingredients pretty good and we cook a lot at home, and we avoid anything super packaged, so yes, you could claim Americans don’t have a culture of eating appropriately
This is no joke. I picked up a 3 pound package of garden variety 80/20 ground beef last week and it was over $20. Maybe I just don't buy it often enough to notice, but that seems far higher than even a few months ago. I would have expected to buy a modest cut of steak for that price.
First, pre-cut isn't that much more expensive. Second, cutting is an accessibility thing now? A kitchen knife and 5 minute YouTube video should have anyone being to chop/dice without much trouble. And once they learn they will only get faster/better at it allowing them to use whole veggies adding more variety.
Yes, it's a boon esp. for old people who live alone, have mobility or sight issues, and don't trust themselves to hold a knife. It's also a convenience thing, but as you said, the general population can cut things just fine and won't suffer much without it; which isn't the case for this growing demographic.
Whole Foods fresh vegetables prices are comparable to elsewhere, same with some dairy. However, everything else carries a premium and for budget minded people you need to avoid it.
The pre-chopped coleslaw mix is like 3 bucks for a huge bag. 1 pound of pre-sliced frozen peppers I think is $2. Some of it depends on where you’re shopping, I’m sure this stuff would be 50-100% more at Whole Foods the next town over.
Tons of Americans want to eat healthy but don't have the energy/time/access. It's easy to cook healthy for yourself if you're single, have a good work/life balance, and have a grocery store nearby. There are a lot of Americans who eat fast food on the go because it's their only option (or they haven't been educated on how to get healthy food quickly). Others have lives where job and family responsibilities sap so much energy that by dinner time ordering a pizza is pretty tempting.
If you start looking around at the world you will likely start to notice an inverse correlation between those with “little free time due to working three jobs” and the amount of junk they feed their families.
Turns out that if you care enough and have the work ethic to grind out that sort of living to better your family, you also tend to care what kind of foods they eat.
There are of course seasons in everyone’s lives - but this observation has held generally true no matter the demographic or geographic location I’ve lived around.
I was obese - there is no intended judgement here for folks who struggle with it. I did for the better part of my adult life. The social tropes are simply unhelpful.
Consumer preference is a scapegoat. You can also make nicotine-free cigarettes, and people have tried, but they just don't sell. Of course consumers prefer the stuff that feels better. They have to.
The abundance of "fat free" and "low fat" products. A huge increase of "protein heavy" and "low calory/sugar" products.
All these tell that people do have a preference towards buying healthy stuff, given the choice. It's not their fault that they have been misled by the media/scientists in some of those cases.
Goodluck getting a healthy salad delivered outside of a major metropolitan area. In my city of a quarter million (not huge, not small) the options are pretty much limited to two or three places that only offer high caloric salads
Yes, and the reason is that few people want them.
There isn't a cabal conspiracy to forgo the profits from offering healthy options. They just dont sell.
My issue with organic stores in Germany is that they offer the exact same stuff you can get in a regular supermarket, just smaller, less flavorful and more expensive. My pet theory is that a lot of people here just don't really enjoy food, so when they have kids or simply some extra disposable income, their idea of "eating better" would be to have the same bland plate of spaghetti, just with organic pasta and organic sauce.
Organic tends to have more variability in quality. So sometimes you get really good stuff, sometimes you get really bad stuff. I’ve read that pesticides penetrate a quarter inch into most foods so there’s no way to wash them off. Given that, I try not to buy non-organic food to keep my son from getting a lot of pesticide exposure.
Whole Foods isn’t the only store providing vegetables or pre-cut vegetables.
Even my local Walmart has pre-cut vegetables.
It’s not an affordability issue either. It’s cheaper to buy the same number of calories from vegetables, fruits, and legumes than meat right now. Meat prices are unusually high and it doesn’t seem to be slowing consumption.
My consumption of beef is way down because of the cost. I'm almost exclusively buying poultry and pork now for meat. Occasionally I'll get something like a top round or flank cut if it's on sale.
Well, corn and potatoes are indeed vegetables, so there's that. And I think the only person who ever said ketchup was a vegetable with a straight face was Ronald Reagan 40 or 45 years ago.
"Eat your vegetables. They're good for you." shouldn't mean dipping your fries in ketchup. But that is what happens if you call corn and potatoes as vegetables.
Cause and effect is backward. The locations indicate where people are buying it. And cheap doesn't really add up either because if somebody wants the cheapest possible calories they would be buying rice, flour/pasta, potato...
I don't know why the problem is shied away from. It is because people are addicted to fast food and to their sedentary lifestyles. It's not the price or availability of good food, not the first order effect anyway.
You'll never be able to force "whole foods" sellers into unprofitable places and if you did by some miracle, you'll never be able to force people to buy it no matter how much money you gave them. Vegetables and grains and basics could be free and many obese food addicts will go buy a burger from a drive thru.
Cooking good food takes time. I can slap some pre-made burgers in a pan, throw some buns in a toaster and have a "meal" in 10 minutes. I can stop by fast food on the way and have the same meal (at only slightly more cost) in 5 minutes.
I typically spend more than an hour in the kitchen cooking every day, and then there is half an hour clean up after my family is done eating. I eat much better and healthier food, but it takes time. (If I'm having noodles I'm making them from scratch myself - I could save some time buy less of things like that and the cost wouldn't be much different if any - but even then the whole meal takes time).
I grew up in a poor neighborhood. Busy doing what, exactly?
This comment is so out of touch it must be a joke right? At least I hope so.
Far more time was spent in front of the TV than any other activity by far by my peers and their families. Moving to a more middle class area opened my eyes in how many other options people had to do with their time, and how much time and effort was spent maintaining their lifestyles.
Well, uh, working. The less you make per hour of work means the more hours you need to maintain a normal standard of living. Obviously there's variance in standards of living, but wealthier people don't typically work two or three jobs. Poor people do, I've met people who do. The reality is that at 12 dollars an hour, 40 hours is just not gonna cut it.
And it's a little more complicated than even just that. Another reality is that, at 12 bucks an hour, nobody is going to be giving you a steady 40 hours. You need extra shifts for buffers, and your shifts will be shorter.
Sure, working 50 hours a week across 7 days isn't technically more than 50 across 5 days. But it does certainly drain your will to live a lot more, from what I've seen.
Poor obese people aren't working so much they don't have time to cook.
And using numbers to support that idea doesn't work, it actually goes against you. A small (much smaller than most obese people will eat in one sitting) fast food meal costs about an hour of minimum wage! Buying stable calories in cereals where the time to buy and cook them can be amortized into many more servings can be amortized is actually cheaper and also takes less time.
In the US, obesity rates rise as income drops, but it continues to rise beyond the point at which income drops below a full time federal minimum wage income.
It's over-eating and under-exercising. I know this is hard for certain ideologies to accept because it means obesity is not inflicted upon victims against their will and beyond their control. If you really need to minimize their agency and responsibility for their choices you can call it addiction to food and addiction to sedentary lifestyle if it helps.
Fast food almost always takes longer than that unless you can literally drive through while driving home from work.
Also, you're comparing making noodles from scratch to a typical meal. I can do an asian style chicken/veggie/rice meal in < 30 minutes and have the kitchen mostly cleaned by the time the rice is done.
i said on the way for fast food. Since those places are eherywhere it is likely you can find one on the way when you were going and so the time cost to go is zero.
i agree you canecook faster than I normally do - a lot of meals benefit from simmering while the flavors blend.
Or you slap the burgers in a pan and serve it with some broccoli, and sliced fresh red peppers or other other quick healthy sides and have a balanced meal. The bun, fries and soda are the unhealthy part of a burger, anyways (assuming it's good quality meat).
This does not address what I wrote though because it is not what I was arguing against.
I agree part of the reason people buy junk food and fast food rather than "whole food" is because the real or perceived effort required to turn it into something they will eat. Or they don't know how to make things that can compete on taste and satisfy their food addiction like those fast foods. It's not because they are time-poor either. They are just addicted to this sedentary "lazy" lifestyle. 30 minute drive to get fast food and eat it while watching TV or tiktok for the next hour or so beats making food and cleaning up for an hour.
Plenty of ways to automate the kitchen and also cook fast and easy meals. I can spend 20 minutes on the kitchen and have food for a week. 2-3 minutes of reheating per meal
When it seems like a lot of people don't want to do something that is obviously good for them but, instead, opt for things they know kill them slowly, that probably means addiction is somewhere in the mix.
lol, Alnatura is the worst. I’d prefer any Netto, Späti, or even the small shops in a gas station, anytime. Alnatura is a para-religious “anthroposophical” shop and everything you buy has low quality due to adverse selection and is overpriced by 3x
I run tech for a reverse logistics business buying overstock from Costco/Target/Walmart and we’re building a similar system for recognizing and pricing incoming inventory. I sent an email a few days ago to see if you might be open to chatting.
It would be great to compare notes or explore ways to collaborate. Totally understand if things are busy!
For the never-ending text file for todos and work journal, I've found great success with org-mode, especially since deadlines automatically end up in my calendar with org-agenda. The outline format of org-mode is quite nice and it took all of 1 day to learn the key commands for making / manipulating the outline, creating links, and cycling through TODO states (using Doom emacs made the start super easy since I already know vi and didn't have to also learn the text editing commands).
I've also found the concept of an "inbox" from the Zettelkasten method very helpful. Anytime something comes up that's not yet in my system, I add it to the inbox for later processing (org-capture on my computer, and beorg on my phone). This way, note entry doesn't require a full context switch. I then just make sure to regularly drain my inbox.
I don't use emacs currently for anything but org-mode but I'm far happier with this than I was with a never ending `.md` file.
Like many things in Software the question is why do you want to hide them?
One way to do it is to archive[0] it which will move it into a local _archive file.
Another way which I'm currently using is to periodically manually archive tasks into a tree of folders and files by date then category (and sometimes subcategory) which allows me to publish an HTML or PDF file of everything from say 2023 for a particular client.
Computer Networking: A Top-down Approach, Jim Kurose
I read this about 2 years into my study of CS. I found the design of the internet, at times intentional and very often emergent / working around constraints, absolutely fascinating. I couldn’t help feeling that algorithms were things I could pull off the shelf but protocols were something I’d need to be able to design well throughout my career.
Come here to recommend this excellent networking book and it's much better than the Tanembaum's one. If you are in networking field you owe yourself to read this book and the latest 8th edition is the best version yet because the authors have removed the chapter on multimedia networking and focusing more on SDN. Heck, any aspiring textbook writer should read this book as a golden reference on how to write a proper textbook.
I'm probably C2 comprehension, C1 speaking in German. I self-taught to high B2 (based off placement into that level in a Goethe Institut Intesivkurs) in 15 months of 2 hours a day. I studied 1-2 hours per day on average and did not miss a single day.
2 hours a week to B1 in German as an English speak seems totally impossible. I was probably B1 in 6 months at the level of study I described. I studied 5 years of Latin prior to starting so the case system wasn't an additional learning curve. Your pace honestly seems standard.
I moved to Germany as well and self taught German to a high B2 level in the 15 months before moving. That was enough where I was able to be conversationally fluent within 3 months of arrival
When I self taught, I primarily used Assimil and Pimsleur daily for the first six months. After completing those programs, I continued with the daily study (that’s the most important part!) and used Easy German the YouTube channel, watched a bunch of German shows, and worked on speaking just by narrating / describing random things and looking up words as needed.
For me it was most important to get books in my field in german, read them slowly and learn all the buzzterms and experssion. Some books you can read without really understanding them, e.g. some best selling paper back without any weight too it. I haven't worked in Germany but it's a perfect country to learn by reading books
This is why I always like to have a `status_history` or `audit` table. You don't have to have event sourcing to still want a trail of who changed what in the system when.
I read Kurose’s book in college and recommend it as the perfect book for this topic. As a neophyte at the time, I remember really drilling into the details of TCP and just being in awe of how well thought out the whole system was. This book laid such a good foundation for my career as a software engineer.
I can buy pre-chopped Cole slaw, diced peppers / onions, etc. Whole Foods is best in class (Alnatura doesn’t come close)
While to me, the layman, it seems health regulation in general in Europe is more conservative about what can be put on the body / be consumed, I think it’s mostly Americans don’t want to eat healthy. And the portion sizes here are insane (just look at the evolution dinner plate. 1960s plates at an antique sale only pass for salad plates)
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