The REAL Reason America is Obese | 9 Studies Compare Europeans to Americans

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Are Europeans Healthier Than Americans?

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References

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3383030/
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23490037/
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32129-3/fulltext
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/115/1/211/6396017
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/article/household-availability-of-ultraprocessed-foods-and-obesity-in-nineteen-european-countries/D63EF7095E8EFE72BD825AFC2F331149
https://academic.oup.com/edrv/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1210/endrev/bnac005/6532493?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Timestamps ⏱

0:00 – Intro
2:17 – Life Expectancies
3:31 – Obesity Comparisons
4:27 – Healthcare Differences
5:54 – Ultra-Processed Foods
8:09 – Join Thrive Market Today to get 30% Off Your First Order AND a Free Gift Worth up to $60!
9:23 – Banned Ingredients & Capitalism
10:45 – Processed Food Advertising (psychological effect)
12:20 – Prevalence of Processed Food (% of calories from processed food)
14:02 – Walkable Cities
15:58 – Diet to Follow

If you were to take someone from Europe that has never seen an American before and you drop them off in America unfortunately one of the first things they’d probably notice is that people are a lot bigger there’s a much higher prevalency of obesity but we cannot just

Take a word for it we need to look at the data this video is going to be a comprehensive look at if Europeans are truly healthier than Americans and either way what are the environmental factors and the food factors even advertising factors and food availability factors that influence this

That we might be able to get a grasp of now we’re going to look at a data side so we look at all the data and then we’re going to look at a more sort of environmental side but in short is Europe healthier than the United

States in short yes it is but we need to unpack this a little bit more because there’s a lot of nuance like for example the GDP the gross Dom domestic product for America per capita is about $70,000 whereas there’s some countries in Europe that are down below $25,000 per capita

Right so huge socioeconomic differences that we have to account for so for the sake of this video we’re going to get rid of the outliers of Europe and we’re going to look at mainly Western Europe okay so it’s more similar socioeconomic status and similar GDP so to open this

Off let’s look at a study that was published in social science and medicine and there’s a chart that has popped up on the screen right now and it’s a pretty easy to read chart the black bar is the United States and the other bar is Europe now you can see the instance

Of disease and the instance of like risk factors is significantly higher in pretty much every single category metabolic Health category that is there the only one that Europe is worse in is the number of smokers as a risk factor and even that could be different because

This data could be a little bit older and people are smoking less and less so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at this chart and say wow America is in a bad shape compared to Europe but we do need to unpack it a little bit more we need to understand life

Expectancy as well because back in 1975 if you looked at America versus Europe an average 50-year-old person in 1975 was expected to live another 27.3 years whereas in 1975 a European that was 50 years old was expected to live a little over 26 more years so in essence

Back in 1975 things were great in America people were healthy and they enjoyed their freedom and they were eating good food that was probably more wholesome right less processed stuff but then flashed forward to 2005 and the tables turn in 2005 an average 50-year-old American was expected to

Live 31 more more years and an average 50-year-old European was expected to live 32 more years so it flip-flopped Europeans started Living longer having better life expectancy however a thoughtful acknowledgement to the fact that even the US the life expectancy is increasing but life expectancy might continue to increase we might even have

Better life expectancy now but that does not mean that the quality of life is good that comes with like the Advent of medical care and all these other things and you know the pioneering that’s happening too so now we need to unpack the Obesity side of the equation though see back in

1975 about 15% of Americans were obese in 1975 about 10% of Europeans were obese then in 2005 that bumped up to about 30% of Americans being obese it doubled and in Europe it went from 10% to 12% it went up 2% versus doubling in America okay but now the most recent

Data we have is around 2020 and Americans are at about 41% obesity and Europe is at about 177% obesity so although Europe is gaining a little bit of momentum there not nearly anything like the US right 41% obesity compared to 17 but now is where things get super interesting I hope that you’re

Still on this video because now is where we can unpack a lot of other stuff I have a chart that’s on the screen right now and I want to explain this chart to you an ideal situation for this chart would be on the left side of the chart

As high up as possible so that is the goal because what this chart demonstrates is the life expectancy of a country over how much money they spend on health care now look at the United States the United States has one of the lower life expectancies with a ridiculous amount of money spent on

Healthcare that shows based on this data how inefficient that is and how much it’s not working where you have some countries that have relatively low life expectancy but they’re not spending ridiculous amounts on Healthcare they’re spending very little and this to give an extreme example look at Mexico in the

Bottom left Mexico not spending much money on Healthcare at all and poor life expectancy but of course a lot of things factor in right you’ve got crime you’ve got drinking water you’ve got all kinds of things when you look at the big picture in the collective data we have a

Poor life expectancy in the United States and we spend a lot of money and then you look at something like Japan for instance so this is very important to take note of but now we need to move into the other category why is this happening what is the big deal here why

The first thing we need to address is ultr processed foods okay we’re going to talk about which countries have the highest intake of ultra processed foods and the lowest we’re going to talk about that in a second but let’s get something out in the open the Altra processed

Foods as much as people will come to their defense when you consider how much Americans eat of these Altra processed foods there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a problem when you have hyper palatable foods that light up your brain like the 4th of July or let’s just say

Christmas trees because we’re talking about Europe too what’s going to happen it’s going to make you want to eat more now a lot of the evidence is now suggesting that as this is becoming an ongoing problem over multiple Generations genetics are playing a role too obesity genes are something that clearly geneticists and

Scientists are trying to figure out okay but the alra processed foods might have been where this all started now I know it would be impossible to just say hey I’m never going to touch an alter processed food again it’s just part of our life but we need to understand the

Advertising structure we need to understand what is pushed and what is really driven home as what we should be spending our money on I remind you that no matter what no matter what you vote with your dollars okay so in the US it is capitalism love it leave it like it

Hate it doesn’t matter bottom line is that in a capitalistic Society we are going to vote with our dollars and if we have more advertising budget for processed foods and Hyper palatable garbage that’s going to hit more people and more people are going to see that

More people are going to buy that and whether they’ve been tricked into buying it or not they’re buying it and that is buying the vote for that food right so what happens then well that creates a demand that means that more companies are going to make that it becomes a

Problem so it does start with you in a certain way if more people can start voting with their dollars and buying more Wholesome foods and buying less Ultra processed foods it can be a GameChanger before I get into a lot more of the details on this today’s video

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A free $60 gift with your first purchase so that link down below the European Union bans a lot of ingredients they ban and have a lot more food regulations Now in America we like our freedom like we like the fact that we have flexibility there and make no

Mistake like a lot of Europeans are envious of some of the Liberty that we have here but one place where Europe is doing it right is they have a little more control over the garbage that goes into the Food Systems the food supply they ban the things like titanium

Dioxide they ban the things that have the literature behind it to suggest that it might not be good love it or hate it that can definitely be a good thing and it’s a contributing factor here in the United States it takes a lot longer to ban substances we’re a slow moving beast

And a lot of times there’s push back because again there’s nothing against capitalism in this particular sense but this is what happens right we have this situation where there’s going to be money that supports things and there’s going to be lobbying it’s the way that it is because it’s a slow moving

Bureaucratic nightmare with a lot of bureaucratic red tape so in order ban something you might potentially piss off a lot of people and you might potentially piss off a lot of money and that means that things have to be delicately handled not to say that doesn’t happen

In Europe but it’s a big issue here we should really be focusing on now one of the biggest things is the psychological piece the European Union a lot of countries ban advertising of food on children’s networks regardless because kids minds are malleable and it’s not the time to be bombarding them with food

Signals okay now check this out some European countries don’t even allow advertising of ultra processed foods to kids in the first place if you turn on Nickelodeon Disney any kids channel at all that’s almost all the commercials you’re going to see is hyper processed ultr processed food it’s just not the

Way that personally I think it should be but it is the way it is here and that clearly does make a difference there was a study published in journal Pediatrics that was quite fascinating okay they found that kids had an increase in appetite simply by seeing a celebrity

That had been previously associated with a food even if that food wasn’t present give you an example let’s just say hypothetically completely Michael Jordan I don’t know if kids still know who Michael Jordan is these days but either way let’s say Michael Jordan was holding Hostess cupcakes and was doing a

Lot of advertising for Hostess cupcakes in this study if kids were to see Michael Jordan even without a Hostess cupcake they would get hungry we can’t be doing that to kids and that’s the European Union is much more strict on that not to mention childhood obesity is

15% higher in the US than it is in Europe so that speaks for something too now let’s talk about the prevalence of processed food in first place so there was a study published in public health and nutrition okay it took a look at various countries and the amount of

Ultra processed foods okay first first it looked at 19 European countries grouped all together when it looked at these specific 19 European countries it was about 26% of their dietary intake came from ultra-processed Foods it’s not good but it’s not as bad as it could be

Portugal was only 10% okay now you think about Portugal you think about what they stand for and you think a lot of people are moving to Portugal yeah I mean they’re all about Whole Foods and the region that they’re in there’s a lot of that same with kind of Spain right right

Okay UK had the highest European levels of processed food at about 50% and you think about it that kind of makes sense right they’re somewhat of an island it’s cold probably not a lot of farming that can be done in certain ways so there’s a

Lot of import and a lot of canned food and a lot of processed food and that’s kind of the way that is in some cases but it’s also very developed very fastpaced and it has a lot of kind of American influence either way like there’s a lot of that kind of vibe but

Then you go to America and it’s over 57% 57% of the calories that are consumed in America come from not just processed food but ultr processed food and no matter which way you spin it Ultra processed foods are not a good thing at least not when almost 60% of

Your calories are made up of them if you occasionally have a poptart because you want to have breakfast with your kid on a Sunday fine but if 60% of your diets is Pop-Tarts that’s a problem right now let’s address another thing now this isn’t something that we can go out and

Fix but it’s something that we can address internally and make changes European cities were built a long time ago before cars so we’ve got a lot of smaller blocks and the cities are walkable and cyclable so it’s easy to make that happen even when you adjust for outliers Europeans are more active

Just on the daily even if they’re not exercising as intensely as as we might be in America there’s also better public transportation which says well that’s Transportation no it still influences people to walk because you’re getting off at a bus stop and you’re having to walk okay there’s a lot of reasons why

That could work now in America it’s different because our cities are built differently they’re built most of them after cars so it made sense that they would be further and they would be less walkable but there was a study that was published in indicine reviews that found

That walkable cities had about a 43% instance of obesity whereas non-w walkable cities were about a 53% that doesn’t have anything to do with anything other than the fact that looking at a pure demographic of a walkable City versus non-w walkable City just by the nature of a city being

Walkable there was a 10% less risk of being obese but it gets really sketchy when you start looking at other papers and you realize that there’s a 30 to 50% increase risk of diabetes in a non-w walkable City because activity plays a really big role right activity plays a

Role in the shortterm metabolic impact and glucose homeostasis right trying to modulate glucose so with this you need to keep in mind non-exercise activity thermogenesis Park further from the grocery store entrance walk around the mall more ingrain walking into your life rather than having it be an artificial

Sort of addendum to your day this way you’re living more in that European lifestyle and the kind of diet you may want want to follow is one that is limiting the alter processed foods and living more like a country like Italy or maybe Greece or Spain or Portugal right

What does that Mediterranean diet look like even though there’s a good amount of carbohydrates they’re walking more one thing that we can do in America though is pave away for a lot of research and we have started to understand how important protein is and there’s a lot of European research and

American Research that’s demonstrating that one thing that we can do better now to increase our health span is increase our protein intake whether you’re plant-based or animal based or both onerous that protein needs to be the staple if you fill up on the good quality protein and you get most of your

Nutrition from that less of your percent of calories can come from those whopping numbers of ultra processed foods it’s the best way that we can stick it to the advertising for Ultra processed food is to create a buffer between us and Them by filling up with good quality protein

And walking more I’ll see you tomorrow