Are people in America fooling themselves or is all the health data pumped out by the government a pile of lies?
According to a recent Consumer Reports survey, 9 out of 10 Americans said that they eat a healthy diet with the recommended servings of fruit and vegetables!Well maybe if potato chips, fries, and sugary fruit drinks count as fruit and vegetables. The survey also showed that only 11% of Americans thought of themselves as overweight, when government statistics show that 68% of Americans are classified as obese.
So how do we explain such a vast discrepancy between reported reality and people’s perceptions? Participate in the poll and comments below.
Oh no. They got it wrong by four years. The world will end in 2016, not 2012!
By the way, never watched the movie and don’t believe it.
oops I said yes. I meant to say no but I didn’t pay attention to the question
Wow! We have a lot of delusional countrymen (and women) don’t we? As a player on the front lines, I can say with a high degree of certainty that 90% is not even close.
As a Body Image Fitness Programmer with years’ of fitness training experience, I’ve learned to be careful about how I structure questions with clients. Can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who “work out”, but very few are working out regularly – a HUGE gap.
There’s a big difference between asking a question like “do you eat a healthy diet?” versus “how often do you eat a healthy diet?”.
It appears to me that the consumer reports data didn’t consider this important differentiation in questionning (although I haven’t read the full report to be certain).
Live fit. Be real. Julia (:
Missing the point. Sure, a potato IS in fact a vegetable…it is that french fries are fried in grease that makes them bad. Just like a baked potato is good for you, unless you load it with sour cream, cheese and butter!!! Be careful what you add to your fruit and veggie “servings” because it could be making them unhealthy.
Maybe their version of healthy isn’t the same as yours. My parents think I eat unhealthy because I eat full fat cheese, yogurt. I think eat unhealthy because they eat lots of bread, white pasta, hidden sugar foods, very few veggies. Maybe low calorie food works for those of you who are sedentary, but I starve on a low fat diet, which doesn’t seem healthy to me.
Is cold pizza healthy? No.
Is Frozen Lunch healthy? No.
Is Diet Soda healthy? No.
Is Medicine make you healthy? No.
Is Cheese Healthy? No.
Is beef healthy? No.
Nobody is eating freshly cooked low calorie food everyday.
I would believe 95% American are not eating healthy food.
Most republicans are accomplished necromancers, So give it time. I’m sure by 2016 you’ll get your wish. Bwahahahahaa…
Oh my gosh….90% of Americans are definitely not eating healthy. Perhaps they are eating pears and salads, but that doesn’t mean they have a healthy diet. I have personally seen several people boast of having a super healthy diet. Greens covered in grease, salads loaded with dressing, veggies smothered in butter. Eating a whole pizza is not healthy. Eating a box of mac and cheese and fatty beef is not healthy. I get so frustrated seeing this and it makes me feel sad for these people who are down right fibbing to themselves!
And many people see themselves as a healthy weight and will say so. I have noticed many obese people truly believing they are a healthy weight. I do not understand why American’s are like this now.
The Food Guide Pyramid clearly identifies potatoes as a root vegetable, to be consumed and counted amongst vegetables consumed each week, within a formula of how many green, yellow, red, purple, white, etc. to consume each week.
Food Guide Pyramid also, again, clearly identifies 100% juice as an option for fruit in a day.
The problem isn’t perception – it’s the damn Food Guide Pyramid definitions of what constitutes a healthy item in various categories.
Ronald Raygun told me ketchup is a vegetable. I miss voting for that man.
Potatoes don’t count as one of your five a day in any format. No, not at all…
Also smoothies and/or fruit juice can only count as one of your five a day, something which a lot of folks don’t know.
Only 11% thought of themselves as overweight? Hum. I wonder who was surveyed. If it’s the folks I see walking about on the sidewalks, at schools, and in the malls and stores, then something isn’t right because a good 50% are overweight or obese. Maybe even as high as 75%. Perhaps people who are “pleasingly plump” are answering “no” to the question of “Are You Overweight?” because in comparison to the people around them they are thinner.
As for what we eat, if they are anything like my family, their idea of good eating is simply not to eat too much of “it” even if the “it” is loaded with fat and calories.
Preparation of a food does not render it not within its category of food, thus, while no longer “healthy” due to preparation method, french fries are still indeed a root vegetable due to their being potatoes.
Also, again, just because your preconceived notion of a cheeseburger as being something dripping with grease, thus not qualifying as “healthy” – ground beef is readily available in options that are leaner than what everyone automatically considers healthy-lean meat (chicken, fish, etc.)….cheese is available in reduced and fat-free versions. So, yes, a cheeseburger can be considered healthy.
You’re also failing to look at the broader picture – the messags consumers are bombarded with from both industry and experts.
The notion that one needs to eat in moderation, can include sweets (and should), etc. from the experts and then the parallel, we have the moderate portion of cookies right here for ya sucker, the 100-calorie pack!
The message from the government, health experts (whom are beholden to both government and industry), and industry itself promotes the falsehood that everything in “moderation” is just fine and dandy and needed — because no one specifically defines “moderation” to explicitly make it that moderation isn’t a daily thing.
LOLOLOLOLOL! hahahahaha..
Ok, seriously? Most of those people are lying…on the survey, or to themselves, or both. I refuse to believe that they just “don’t know” that french fries don’t count as a vegetable, or don’t realize what “lean” protein is. Here’s a clue–it’s not that cheeseburger.
potato chips, french fries, and ketchup all count as vegetables! duh!
i dont think that they are always right in the terms of eating food stuff. for better understanding they need keep a track of eating routine.
It’s okay…They can’t hurt you…Chill. And coming from someone with the username “berzerker”, that speaks for itself…
Get them to track their diet for a week and actually compare it against the serving recommendations of the food guide. I bet they would be extremely surprised. Then add up all the totals of the food they ate. Add up the grams of fat, CHOs, Protein, and calories. Do a basic nutrient intake analysis. Compare it against the Government recommendations. Again I am sure they will be extremely surprised to find out they don’t eat healthy.
More like, HELL no. Are you kidding??? People can talk themselves into thinking anything is “healthy”…My husband considers pizza a healthy food because it’s “nutritionally complete”. Give me a friggin’ break. And this whole country is a bunch of lardos, so of course most people think that they’re OK compared to the REALLY fat people. Our idea of what’s “normal” is so skewed.