People eating unhealthy food is partially related to their situation, it could be mental, it could be physical, or simply convenience.

The main thing is to have some form of exercise that people can do and that caters to their energy levels. Granted not everyone can, not everyone wants to. And sometimes, it’s not feasible.

I wrote this in another post; growing up I would eat 5000-10000 (spring vs winter) calories a day and never could get past 125, but I also had gym and track in school, swimming practice, martial arts classes, and a military style torturous daily workout… every day. And I would still go ride bikes with my friends on the street or play tag or whatever. In the winter I would shovel the snow, which would probably be considered child abuse these days. Now I’m not saying do everyone should do that. I even toned down how much I did when I started college but I still practiced to be able to do a triathlon. It’s a shame I broke my leg before being able to try one.

I would eat breakfast, two school lunches, have snacks, eat when I got home, and have second supper. I could easily eat a dominos pizza to by myself (probably did a number on my gut since I learned I can’t eat wheat) and wash it down with some soda.

Now I bring this up because I worked in education briefly and ate lunch with the kids during lunch duty; I can tell you if anyone was as active as I was, I would need at least four lunches to make through the day. Sure it was the healthy lunch implementation, but I the result that I saw was that kids were lethargic and sure it made the classes easy to do since everyone was so docile but I think that was a terrible way to go about it. And I tried their “healthy” lunches out intentionally; if it we’re not for drinking a whole pot of coffee a day, I wouldn’t make it through the 14 hour day (school, after school, and commute).

Also, it’s been so hot this year that my only exercise was mowing the lawn before feeling cooked. I wouldn’t mind going to a pool but it’s more of a hot tub. YMCA has an inside pool but I can’t afford $95 a month. I can’t run anymore because of the metal. And my two bicycles collect dust since I have to go to a trail or a park for biking unless I want to be roadkill, even then I can only do that maybe two to three months out of the year because of how hot it gets.

Even recognizing that people have dietary restrictions is a great start. I can’t eat wheat or lentils, and certain fruits.

Quality, cost, and availability of food is very high on the list. And I’ll be honest, food in America is some of the worst I’ve eaten and it’s even worse lately; I’ve had MREs that tasted better than frozen food that I used to eat as a kid in the US. Mmmm, textured soy protein and emulsifiers.

I felt great and lost weight in Japan, Korea, Ireland, European countries. I was 165 pounds when I got back from Japan. I’m back to 200ish. Sigh. I don’t eat out much and generally cook at home. The issue for me is that meat and dairy have become expensive. And eating rice and beans and vegetables barely gets me by to do daily tasks.

And none of the countries I’ve mentioned are perfect by any means but there is a bigger focus on food health and safety instead of spin the wheel for today’s recall! It’s like I can eat all the raw fish, beef, eggs, raw pork in Germany lol, shellfish and so on but this last year has been wild for food recalls. I mean ice cream? Can’t even trust lettuce or a pepper.