Pizza, pasta, potatoes, protein – how Italian children became so overweight

drweevil

In 2004 I visited my family in Valencia, Spain. There was a local construction boom. There were family owned shops everywhere. Bakeries, fruit stands, etc. When I went back in 2014, it seems everything had changed. The shops were gone. The construction had slacked off. Instead there were now giant supermarkets and superstores. They were on the Euro now. My cousins blamed the EU for this. I'm assuming something similar happened in Italy, tho it is not mentioned in the article, which instead tends to blame the victims. When you replace the local food supply chain with prepared branded foods (Nutella, etc.), you get this. The EU has been great for European capitalists, but a detriment to the people in Europe. PS This was one of the major complaints of the long forgotten yellow-vests protests in France.

fco356pal

Pasta and other carbohydrate-rich foods are nowhere near as bad as sugar for children. In the Nutella filled pastry, it is not the bread that’s the problem. Sugar (particularly in beverages) and lack of exercise are the main contribution of child obesity increase worldwide. Don’t blame the potato.

bni

Article is good but with one puzzling flaw. They mention protein is one of the culprits, but nothing about why or how.

avree

Surely writing 374 lbs is easier than 26st 10lb.

thefz

...In the South. It's a culture thing.

BiraIgnacio

So the problem is not Pizza nor pasta nor potatoes nor bread nor protein but all the extra supper high calories, near zero nutrition things that go on top of them?

arprocter

https://archive.ph/Shj4X

RetroTechie

Nobody yet mentioned young-learnt habits: school cafeterias & snack machines. When I was young, in lunch breaks you'd head over to the school's cafeteria. And what they had there? "Gevulde koek", stroopwafel, snack-sized bags of crisps, various (sweetened) dairy products, and iirc bananas & apples too. No veggies or fibre-rich food in sight. So of course kids would go for the sugar-laden & salty snacks. For drinks, there were vending machines. My favorite was hot chocolate. Again: high in sugar (no "more or less sugar" option). Sometimes there were longer breaks due to a teacher falling ill or whatever. Then we'd head over to a supermarket nearby, and buy similar junkfood. Of course we'd bring sandwiches from home. But not everyone, and not always. Some kids would throw their sandwiches in a trash can, and proceed to buy the junkfood mentioned above. That school was 6 years of us kids' lives. Plenty of time to pick up unhealthy habits & bring those into adulthood. Wouldn't surprise me at all if most schools worldwide are still like that. Healthy diet choices for pupils is far from #1 priority for school management given all the other things they have to deal with. The fix would be to make healthier options the easy pick, and remove all junkfood offerings from schools' cafeterias. But good luck doing that nationwide under the watchful eye of junkfood multi-nationals.

teolemon

And meanwhile, the Italian food lobbies are blocking Nutri-Score adoption at the EU level

0xcde4c3db

We've been doing variations of "educate the general public about healthy dietary choices" for roughly as long as the obesity epidemic has been around. Shouldn't it have worked by now, if it were going to? As purportedly modern, scientific, data-driven societies, why do we keep engaging in this impotent self-flagellation?

dlahoda

This explains how sugars and fast carbs can be healthy https://youtu.be/n28W4AmvMDE?si=xEx29eVFgDEy2ktW Tldr; highly processed food looses vitamins(micro nutrient starvation) and starch/fiber are needed to slow absorption until it gets to bacteria producing drugs(barbiturate and precursors to neuromediators including), and give signals over vagus nerve to head. May be summary of few books from me too. Do not recall. Add on top chewing fibery food takes time, feeling full starts earlier of being full, and saliva ferments help to digest either.

NoPicklez

> He also worries restrictive diets could carry psychological risks for adolescents, whose relationship with food is still developing. As opposed to a relationship with food that causes overconsumption? Adolescents still form a relationship with food from a young age, hence why we're talking about young overweight people. I'd rather teach them about nutrition and potentially how to eat the same amount of food but that has much less calories. If their current diet reflects an overconsumption of calories then they may need to learn how to restrict through eating better foods. Because without a level of restriction of overall calorie intake they will continue to gain weight. Sometimes I feel we're reluctant to have a conversation around consuming less food when it comes to losing weight. In order to lose weight you need have some level of hunger and that's okay, we don't need to go and reach for something.

NoPicklez

I like how the article points out that it's the small bits of overconsumption (e.g. Nutella) each day that amount to obesity. Add in less physical activity and eating less fibrous foods like vegetables and you're multiplying that issue further. Overtime is a recipe for obesity. When it comes to losing weight its important to remember, its easy to gain fat, its a task to maintain fat and its hard to lose fat. Therefore a little calorie deficit requiring a little hunger and restraint is how you reverse it.