Obesity
Obesity
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José Cruz: Fo- for example I think the statistics were saying one-in-three people are suffering from obesity in America. (Right) One-in-three. (Yeah) 33% of the population. Uh ju- holy cow, you know! And so, if you can re-imagine London what do you think the numbers would be in terms of obesity? One-in-five? One-in-ten?
Charlotte Alderdice: Uh, mm, I’m I’m really not sure. Uh definitely less than America, I’d say. Um but London. There’s probably quite a few, maybe, maybe one-in-ten. I- I’m really not sure. Um, uh it’s difficult to say. Again I’ve not been to London very much (OK) Um but, it’s not like I notice, like wow, everybody’s really overweight here, or anything like that. Um I’m also probably not a great example as someone else because uh, I’ve known quite a few people like who have um, like for- my sister for example she has a very fast metabolism and (Ah) no matt- You know like, she’s very very skinny always has been, yeah. (Mm mm) And you know I’ve had quite skinny friends in school. One of my friends was actually anorexic, so…
José: OK that’s a completely separate problem.
Charlotte: Yeah, So um, I haven’t had sort of much experience myself with (OK) a sort of…
José: But I- I (problem of obesity) can tell you, and you probably have seen enough American TV shows, (Mm) and seen enough footage of man-on-the street interviews on CNN or whatever and you’ve seen that this is true. That these (Yeah) statistics aren’t lying. What- how do you take that as someone that just doesn’t see that in their country or me I feel the same way. I am the way I am, my whole family is the way they are. We don’t have that problem. And then I see Americans either coming here, and they’re you know (Yeah) they display this problem or I see it on TV. I mean I can say my part. I want to hear yours first .
Charlotte: I think, I don’t know, I’m just… it sort of makes me think like, what are the food standards like In America. Like are there regulations on how much salt and fat goes into the food and like how much processed stuff is is being served. I- obviously there is this sort of, I think it’s quite famous worldwide that American portion sizes in restaurants are notoriously large. I think uh…
José: You ever been to America?
Charlotte: No, I haven’t. (OK Mm hmm) I’ve uh, I’ve never been abroad until now.
José: Oh that’s right you said that. OK.
Charlotte: Yeah unless you count Shanghai. Where I was there for one day because my flight was cancelled. (Ha)
José: Ah, let’s say it counts. (OK) That would be cool. Let’s sa- “I’ve been to China.” (Yeah) You can now- Now you can say I’ve been to China. (OK) Um yeah. You- you’ve hit pretty much the um, the nail on the head in a lot of different ways. All of the portion- Number one: (Mm) portion sizes, but you also mentioned about salt and fat. (Yeah) That’s not really the problem. (OK) Um the there’s a lot of research from the 70s that said fat is the problem. We have to remove fat from our our diet. So there was a- an effort to replace butter with margarine. (Right) To go to low-fat diets and to go with like, go to 2% milk or skim milk as opposed to whole milk. And the processes that were required to actually create that kind of processed food was actually what contributed to a lot of the the unhealthiness (Oh well. OK) and especially the heart disease that was occurring in North Americans and probably a lot of Europeans. (Yeah) Margarine is terrible for you. (Mm) Butter is healthier for you. And then more research started to come out that showed that fat was actually a pretty important part of your diet. (Oh yeah) If you didn’t get enough fat that actually led to um um certain problems themselves. But what happened was to replace your psy- your hormonal or or psychological need to- fat tastes good. That’s why olive oil tastes good, that’s why a good steak tastes good. (Mm) To replace that the uh processed food industry replaced it with sugar. (Ah) And so you started getting way more sugar. You started getting sugared water. Have you had those in here in Japan?
Charlotte: No I’ve never, I’ve really never understood that.
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Obesity
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José Domingo Cruz
Canadian
Vancouver, British Columbia
Charlotte Alderdice
Scottish
Northeast Scotland
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I was surprised that one in three people in the United States is obese. It is said to be equivalent to 33% of the population. I was worried about the obesity rate of Japanese people, so I searched on the internet. The internet said that the obesity rate of Japanese people was about 20%. Japanese people seem to have a low obesity rate in the world. Certainly, as I wrote in the article, there is an image of American portion sizes in restaurants are notoriously large.
However, gluten-free products are increasing recently in japan. Gluten-free is a health food that does not use flour. It is said to have come from the United States. I also saw on TV that Americans eat healthy meals such as chia seeds on a daily basis. There, I wondered whether the high-calorie or low-calorie one is the mainstream in the United States.
I think I need moderate amounts of salt and sugar. Eating a hamburger that is considered unhealthy every day is bad for you. On the contrary, even if you eat only what is said to be good for your health, your diet will be biased. So I think the best health is to change what you eat every day, not something similar every day.
I was a little surprised that the number of obesities in America. I have thought that the number of men of corpulent habit is much larger like 50% or more. Above all, it deserves that obesity is one of the biggest social problems in America in the point view of eating habits. They usually eat high fat food, hamburgers, fried potato, and so on. This is a big cause of this problem. However, not only the people in America, we, in Japan, have to have conscious for our own eating habits. These days, our food practice has changed gradually. The number of fast food restaurants has been increasing and we have become to eat that kind of food more and more. In addition, we can get good sweet food easily at convenience stores. I am sure that we get calory and obesity in surplus. On the other hand, there are many kinds of zero calory food, cola, sports drink, chocolates and then. Some people who on a diet may eat them to forget hungriness. However, I think that eating them in surplus is not good for our health. It is because some of them have many kinds of food additives. So, in my opinion, we have to adjust calory intake and enjoy eating high fat food and sweet moderately.