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Subscribe to RSSObesity is threatening the world’s future food security, according to a study published Monday that calculated the weight of the global population at 316 million tons.
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said increasing levels of fatness around the world could have the same impact on global resources as an extra half a billion people.
In a report published in the journal BMC Public Health [PDF file here], the researchers estimated that 17 million tons of the global body mass was due to people being overweight.
Despite only making up five per cent of the world's population, the United States accounts for almost a third of the world's weight due to obesity, the researchers found.
In contrast, Asia has 61 per cent of the world's population but only 13 per cent of the world's weight due to obesity.
When working out is too much of a good thing
The study is published to coincide with the largest-ever United Nations conference, Rio+20, which will discuss sustainable development.
Using World Health Organization data from 2005, the scientists calculated the average global body weight at 137 pounds, but in North America the average was 178 pounds.
Get off your butt and exercise, orders your doc
One of the authors of the paper, Professor Ian Roberts, told the BBC: "When people think about environmental sustainability, they immediately focus on population. Actually, when it comes down to it, it’s not how many mouths there are to feed, it is how much flesh there is on the planet."
"If every country in the world had the same level of fatness that we see in the USA, in weight terms that would be like an extra billion people of world average body mass," he added.
Roberts said health campaigns and urban design that promotes walking or cycling were among the best ways to tackle the problem, which was primarily caused by sedentary modern lifestyles.
“We do not move our bodies so much but we are biologically programmed to eat,” he told the Daily Telegraph. "We often point the finger at poor women in Africa having too many babies. But we've also got to think of this fatness thing; it's part of the same issue of exceeding our planetary limits."
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Yikes!
Maybe it has to do with all the hormones we shoot into our livestock. Doesn't any body else wonder why girls are starting to hit puberty at 9 or 10 years old? I try to feed my kids as much organic food as possible. Hopefully that helps them later in life.
On a side note, I saw so many obese people at Six Flags this weekend I walked away thinking that I was skinny. Thank you fat people for making me feel better about myself.
Note how "China" is upheld as a model, since it has less than its share of weight.
I'm not a fattie myself, but I do understand the concept of "First They Came".
Not China, and not a model. The reference was to Asia. And as large a population as China has, remember India, and Russia. Yeah, and everything else, given it is the largest continent on the planet.
Hooray USA! First in something! :P
Between the food we waste here in US and all the extra food the overweight people eat, we can solve world hunger problems.
Give it a rest: I have the same doubt about our food. In addition to hormones, there are GMO and pink slime. We don't really know the influence to the complex chain reactions in our body.
It's not exercise, it's diet. There have been plenty of sedentary people in earlier decades and we didn't have a weight problem. Secretaries, doctors, teachers, store clerks, accountants, etc. There are fewer farmers and the like, but most of us have been living in cities for a very long time now. What's changed is what we eat and how much of it, especially how much of it. There's no such thing as portion control anymore.
EXCERCISE? To agree with AG99, you CANNOT run off two donuts every day. You literally can't run off what most people eat every day. Chances are unless you spend way more than a half hour a day excercising, you are going to be a very muscled overweight person who would just be even fatter if they didn't excercise, oh, and your arteries will still be clogged.
Simply pray to the gods to lose weight. It's not that hard!!!!~!!!!!!
When I was a child. I woke up and started running and I've been running ever since. Today's children wake up and sit down.
Just another thing to blame on the United States. I have come to the conclusion that a great deal of the rest of the industrialized world is green with envy, so they look for things to demonize us. When one issue is no longer relevant, they look for and often make up another. I would gladly cut off all aid to you, and leave all your countries leaving to your own devices. I suspect you would change your tune if that happened.
Just another thing to blame on the United States. I have come to the conclusion that a great deal of the rest of the industrialized world is green with envy, so they look for things to demonize us. When one issue is no longer relevant, they look for and often make up another. I would gladly cut off all aid to you, and leave all your countries leaving to your own devices. I suspect you would change your tune if that happened.
You're an idiot. Everyone dreams of going to bed with a full stomach, that makes biological sense. The problem is that many Americans take this many steps further, by going to bed with a full enough stomach for two people. You and I, this entire country, does not make up the entire world. If we have the means to, we need to be responsible about things. Given the lack of intelligence in your post, and frankly the arrogant bravado you said it in, I doubt you contribute much to an American society.
-Signed,
An environmental engineer
It's easy if you find something you love to do, like jogging or bicycling.
Ruken: Not really. Assume two dounts at 300 calories each: 600 calories. Someone my weight burns about 100 calories a running-mile. There's no way I can run 6 miles a day. Even if I could do it, my joints wouldn't. Much better not to eat the donuts.
I'm with AG99, and before you say 6 miles isn't much - remember that this isn't including anything else. I'm 5'7" and 145 lbs and it takes about 30 minutes of running for me to burn off a can of pop. I may have one once a week or so, but it's just not worth daily consumption (health-wise). It's a slow process, but I've weaned myself off quick breakfast foods like Poptarts and switched to carrots/celery + hummus.
Alex Le--are you sure you're running? Put on a heart rate monitor and tell me it takes you more than 30 minutes to burn off 160 kcal. I'm 120 lbs and burn at least 300 kcal in 30 min (and I'm a slow runner!). Heavier people who aren't used to running will burn even more kcal than that, because their bodies are less efficient.
It boils down to: both. You need exercise, you need a healthy diet.
I was overweight and I lost about 100 lbs. I can tell you it's not just the raw calories making people heavy. Some foods are high fat, high calorie but we should eat them. A good example is the calorie rich nut. Sometimes I would eat over my diet limit of 1000 calories in nuts, but I would LOSE weight instead.
Refined flours and sugar, artificial colors, high sodium foods, add not only to fat weight but also adds to WATER weight. Try eating for 2 days only fresh fruits and veggies. You'll lose about 5 lbs just in URINE.
The US diet is absolute poison and it shows.
@Ruken:
Yep. You are right in that you should chose some exercise you really like to do and do it. But you don't have an obesity problem strictly because people aren't running around doing a sport. You have it because if we exercised 24 hours a day, we'd STILL find a way to have a diet to exceed its benefits.
The Bloomberg approach is stupid, too. Banning stuff. What needs to happen is the alternative has to become available and people have to BUY it. If I look around, I can see a Dunken Donuts about every square mile. What I can't find is a quick drive in place to buy something like raspberries or walnuts every square mile. People who care will go out of their way to eat better, but really, that comparisson shows our culture more than anything.
We're number ONE, we're number ONE! Gushing with Merkan pride;-)
The addiction to carbs, chemicals, and hormones has poisoned the US food supply and Monsanto is striving to screw the rest of the world a$ well.
Of course, if you look at the US, we are too fat as a nation, but the headline is not really that bad if you look at it in real numbers per person. 17,000,000 * 2000 = 34,000,000,000 pounds overweight total / 7,000,000,000 people = 4.8 pounds overweight per person.
It is still not great, but it does not sound so bad now, does it?
But wait! I'm an American and it is my RIGHT to stuff my face and be a burden on the health system! It's my right to take up two seats on an airplane and not have to pay for the second seat. It's my right to eat three people's worth of food while others starve because I am an American!
If you disagree then you are discriminating against me because it is not my fault! I am an American!
Not much excuse for anyone starving to death is there?
Everyone should watch the cult movie "Muffin Man" ... this will give you an idea of what our rampant obesity will look like in 30 years:
http://www.MuffinManTheMovie.com
It has always bordered me that we have so many overweight people here in america, but yet we have people who go to bed hungry. We have children who only have a decent meal in school. We have elderly that have to eat pet food so they can afford their meds,,,,, people all over the world still starve to death on a daily basis,,,,there is fundamentally something wrong with this picture,,,I don't have the answers, but I think we should at least start a serious discussion.
Funny how this all started when we switched from sugar to high fructose corn syrup.
Sugar will make you feel full and you will stop drinking - HFC is not recognised by your body so you won't get that "full" signal sent to your brain.
@Steve-2570999 - What a bunch of garbage. Your body can not tell any difference between HFC and sugar and neither one of them has anything to do with the mechanism that tells your body when you are full. Please stop spreading this nonsensical crap around and take some time to actually read and educate yourself. If you want to blame anything for the skyrocketing rate of obesity in this country than blame computers and game consoles. Before they came along children actually went outside to play and got some exercise. Parents would actually go outside and do something physical instead of sitting in front of their computers blathering on to their "friends" in their latest Facebook post about the completely trivial, uninteresting, and unimportant activities of their day. If people actually got off their asses instead of spending their lives in front of a computer screen or TV set maybe people would not be so obese.
As for the article, whileIhave no doubt that Americans are on average more obese than Asians, you can not simply look at body weight. Most Americans are much larger framed as well as taller than you average Asian. As a result, a perfectly fit average American is going to weigh more than a similar Asian. BMI is an equally flawed measure of fitness because it does not take into account body type. Someone with broad shoulders and a large build is going to weigh more than someone who is slightly built, even if they are the same height and at the same level of fitness. I had a friend in the military who was constantly going through nonsense about his weight. The guy was short but had extremely broad shoulders and a solid build. By the standard height/weight charts he would register as being obese. Every year when we went through our physicals he had to go have a body fat test done to prove he was not overweight. Not only was he not overweight, he had 3% body fat, which is very low.
As I said, I have no doubt that the average American is more obese than pretty much any other nationality in the world. but the number that needs to be looked at is body fat percentage, not simplistic height/weight ratios or BMI.
HFCS is a problem but not quite like steve says. Both sugar and HFCS tell your body to produce insulin which both makes you hungry AND produces fat cells (and once you have a fat cell you have it for life, they get bigger and smaller but don't go away). The problem with HFCS is how much of it is in our foods, seriously there is tons! and it's because, in part, our government subsidizes corn which makes it such a cheap filling for foods that manufacturers just load it up. Also, excersice is important but with a crap diet you will still be fat. I can burn about 400 calories on my morning workout (1.5h) but a grande Starbucks latte I bet has more calories than that
The movie, "King Corn" was pretty informative.
All the "published" data, on HFCS, is not the whole story. The unpublished data is where the truth is! Animal trials, using HFCS, are the best indicator. Animals have not been taught to read or listen to the propaganda, therefore they are not biased. Animals will eat an amount of HFCS, equal to an adult serving, ONCE! They WILL NOT consume it again by choice. You never hear about the data that does not fit the accepted model, in any situation!
Keep in mind that fructose is metabolized by the liver and it gets assaulted with high fructose.
"The foundation of healthy pH balance is in drinking plenty of alkaline water. The easiest way to supercharge the alkalinity of your water is by drinking Xtreme X20 EVERYDAY" You can transform your water into a highly alkaline beverage that helps to neutralize acid in your body and trigger the release of excess fat and improve your overall health." If you would like to have more information on this life changing way to lose weight and defy any illness just in box me on face book.
TRANSFORM YOUR WATER .... TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE.
...and 90% of those figures lie in the US alone
Because too many people choose to live that way. But you really don't have to.
(Links don't work, go to you tube, search for DDP Yoga Transformation, look for Arthur.)
Here's someone that chose not to.
There aren't that many things the U.S. is first in these days, but we seem to be number one on this list.
This is shocking. There are many thin and in-shape people in the U.S. too, though, but they don't seem to bring the averages down enough to compensate.
The problem with the concept of an average here is that I can live 150 pounds overweight but I can't live 150 pounds underweight.
That's a good point. The average would be above normal weight if you had any appreciable percentage of people over it and when many of those people are WAY over it further skews the numbers.
I've seen the breakdown by state and it's not too surprising; fatter folks in the deep fried south leaner folks in states that tend to be higher in outdoor recreation and healthier lifestyles, and the rest in the middle mostly overweight from being sedentary and too many calories. I always knew the U.S. was at the top, but 5% of the world's population and 1/3 of the world's weight really blew me away.
This article is pretty misleading. US doesn't make up 1/3rd of the world's weight. That would be ridiculous if you think about it. 5% of population and 33% of weight? That would mean Americans weight more than 6X people outside of the U.S.
What the article ACTUALLY says is that Americans make up 1/3rd of the "obese weight". Say if you are over 200 pounds you are obese and you weight 250 pounds. That would be 50 pounds of "obese weight".
Don't get me wrong, that is still an atrocious statistic, but I think the scientists who wrote the article didn't make this evident and the author of this NBC article is not a scientist and misinterpreted it or made it misleading.
Mayor Bloomberg is right on !!
We need to save dumb America from a caloric demise.
America is about free will.
Who is, we?
Your an idiot. Bloomberg can kiss my azz
Talk about bipolar: you've got the anorexics and bulimics on one side of the scale, and the fatties weighing down the other ... the two groups should get together (online) for a share-and-care support network. ASAP. Seriously.
Come to my house and I'll give you my excess, (fat, that is.)
This phrasing is quite misleading.
"Despite only making up five per cent of the world's population, the United States accounts for almost a third of the world's weight due to obesity, the researchers found.
In contrast, Asia has 61 per cent of the world's population but only 13 per cent of the world's weight due to obesity"
If you take the average weight per person multiplied by the populations of asia and north america, the total weight doesn't come close. roughly 94 billion lbs to 584 billion lbs. I am curious as to what is numerically meant by "the world's weight due to obesity"
They must be counting just obesity, so that would be the weight above the healthy weight, though it would have been good if they stated that and what criteria they used for the "healthy" baseline if they did do that.
Agreed Guy. This is terrible journalism and NBC should be ashamed of this clear sensationalism. "Weight due to obesity" is very ambiguous. It really means that its weight over obese levels. Like if you are obese if you are over 200lbs and you weight 250lbs that would be 50 lbs of "weight due to obesity".
hisgfsdsdfgsdf
Holy ham fat, Batman! We're going to knock the world off orbit!
The first time in the history of the world that not everyone is starving to death, and someone finds fault with it. I'm not saying that being overly fat is a good thing, but it shows that we are not starving anymore. I would bet, that by-in-large (pun intended,) that more people have died by starvation than those who are overweight. Does anyone want to take that bet?
So, I did the math. 17,000,000 x 2,000 = 34,000,000,000 lbs. 34,000,000,000 divided by 7,000,000,000 people is 4.85 lbs each. Gee, let's talk about the obesity problem now. Funny how reality works out. Yes, I realize that we still have starving people that the wind could literally blow away; and yes, many are far too much overweight, but the average 4.85 lbs. doesn't scream emergency conditions to me.
I would happily donate an extra 5 lbs. to the anorexic fashion model who looks so pathetic that she could be the poster child for starving children. I chose the fashion model, because her condition of skinniness is voluntary. Ugly, but voluntary. Worried? Let me donate an extra 10 to the starving children, I can afford that, too. Sad, and involuntary situation. Does it help? No, and who is going to force me to donate anything? Let alone my fat? Is someone going to come to my home, take my groceries from my cabinets (against my will) and give them to someone else? I don't think so. (BTW, I donate to my local food pantry, this isn't about my generosity or lack of.)
We need to keep perspective on such reporting. It does make a difference.
The emergency condition is here, your averaging math is meaningless. We are 1/20 of the world but 1/3 of the obese. That's quite a statistic.
If the averaging math is meaningless, then so is this whole report. It provided the statistics.
Further, what is/can anyone do about it? Not a darned thing. Someone may order someone else to lose weight, but they have about much power over anyone as a single insect. So I guess the answer to the article is: deal with it. If you don't like it, too bad.
I unintentionally changed some lives a while back.
Walking thru the supermarket, I turned down the isle where the candy is. Completely blocking the isle were a mother (300+ lb) and her 12(?) year old daughter (~200 lb). Neither were over 5' tall.
I guess the look in my eye, after looking back and forth between the two (and having to back up out of the isle) made mama feel a bit self conscious. It could have been my jaw dropping, too.
Nice role modeling there ma.
Toomany, statistics are easily manipulated. They can make them say whatever spin they want on it.
Spinning statistics? Sounds a lot like politics!!!!
All 17 million tons can be seen almost on a daily basis at WalMart in the spandex department.
Roberts said health campaigns and urban design that promotes walking or cycling were among the best ways to tackle the problem, which was primarily caused by sedentary modern lifestyles.
This would be key. However it's nearly impossible, especially for American cities. There is no bigger waste of natural resources and a lifestyle that is more negative to the human body on earth that compares to the American lifestyle.
Everything is built so far apart and spread around that it's impossible to get groceries or stroll on down to the convenience store without getting in the car. The problem is rooted in our spread out suburban designs. For some reason, everyone who wants a house out here needs a quarter acre to an acre of land to themselves and a 2 or 3 car garage attached to their house. This is a waste of space and resources. Not only for the farmland we have to clear for all these homes but the water it takes to make all those lawns outpaces the water needed to raise our most abundantly produced domestic crop. And all the fuel we go through just getting around is all going to become a strain very soon on our supply chain.
What I think happened before the suburban boom mid-last-century was someone with a lot of power thought to himself "this country is f*cking huge! We'd never use up all this land."
Well, now we're paying the price for laziness. Leaving our big ass houses to get into our big ass cars with big ass people driving them to go places to spend big money on things you don't really even need.
Some of us fat people really do try to lose the weight and keep it off but find it keeps coming back. I do not eat a lot of food, much less a lot of carbs or junk food but still am fat. Maybe this is God's way of making us less appealing so we will have fewer children as there are going to be too many people in the world if we keep reproducing at the rate we have been.
Karen, this is not God's way of making you or anyone less appealing. Your body is dehydrated at the cellular level which is causing your metabolism to be unstable, making it difficult to lose weight and or keep it off. Chronic dehydration is the root cause of many painful degenerative diseases, asthma, allergies, hypertension, excess body weight, some emotional problems, etc.
"YOU CAN LOSE WEIGHT EFFORTLESSLY AND NATURALLY, WITHOUT STRICT DIETING"
EDUCATING PEOPLE TO A BETTER YOU!
Emily - that may not be the reason, because I am well-hydrated. I drink water constantly throughout the day and still can't lose weight. I watch my diet and exercise & the weight just won't come off.
Baloney!! I was a WW lecturer for the original program and I can't tell you how many people, including me when I started as a member, said the same thing. Unless you have some cockeyed medical condition, you and everyone else who wants to lose weight, can lose weight. The operating words "wants to." Just for your info, I lost 100 lbs...kept it off for 5 yrs and then put it back on. Went back to WW and lost 104 lbs and have now had it off for over 35 yrs. You have to be willing to change your lifestyle not just lose weight.
Maybe go for a daily walk or take up some type of sport activity that you like. And I am not talking about a half mile walk. A lot of people go for a couple hundred yard walk and think they went for a walk. That's hilarious. Build up to three to four miles at the minimum.
I agee with you MO's. I tried for years and years. Finally hit up WW (more than a couple of times). Something finally clicked. I've lost 125 and have kept it off for 7 years so far. I still watch what I eat and calculate the points in my head, it's just the way I'm wired now. It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle......and yes, I STILL EAT CHOCOLATE and pretty much any kind of dessert I want. It was a struggle though, and will always be a struggle. You have to do it for yourself.
And how much did this stupid little study cost? Dems and their nanny state
and Republicans and their drive to make "Pizza" A Vegetable in our public schools. Maybe they should have stopped when they make KETCHUP a vegetable.
This isn't a democrat or republican issue. This is an AMERICAN ISSUE and is basically an epidemic in this country.
A democratic congress in TN made Ketchup a vegetable in the late 70's.
The truth is that state congresses do this because of waste. They had to serve a vegetable in the hamburger lines in schools and it usually got thrown away. By making ketchup a vegetable, they could serve a hamburger, fries and ketchup and conform to the guidelines.
The same is true where they have declared pizza as containing a vegetable.
Face it, kids don't want to eat right. I wasn't ever that picky as a kid but most of my classmates were. I think it's better that kids eat something at lunch than put stuff on their plates that is going to end up in the garbage can.
P.S. I think one of the reasons I have never been a picky eater was that my parents cooked at home and we had a huge garden most of the year. We were exposed to a wide variety of food and we expected to at least taste a sample of whatever was served.
1981 - Reagan was barely in office.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2517/did-the-reagan-era-usda-really-classify-ketchup-as-a-vegetable
Pizza a Vegetable:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45306416/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/t/pizza-vegetable-congress-says-yes/
I agree w/you John that kids don't want to eat right. Like you, I was never that picky. However, if I didn't eat was served for lunch, then I didn't eat. My school district and certainly not my parents ever gave me the kinds of choices children get today. I am betting you were probably raised in a similar way.
Same w/me. My parents always cooked at home and we also had a huge garden. As a native iowan.. I was forced to work in every day int he summer.
Thanks for the posts John.
To me, proper diet first begins at home with the parents and then with our schools.
I don't believe in letting kids eat junk just because that's all they eat. This is coming from a young person, who not that many years ago wouldn't eat a lot of vegetables, or meat. Okay, I still don't eat meat, but that is by choice now, as I am a healthy vegetarian now and make sure to get a mix of protein in my diet through legumes, grains such as quinoa, and the occasional egg or tofu. But...the only vegetable I will not eat at this point is green peppers! I eat brussel sprouts, spinach, cabbage, cauliflower, lima beans...all those things that I didn't eat as a child, I eat now. In fact, spinach has become one of my favourite foods. My parents didn't serve junk. If we didn't eat what was there, that was that. Perhaps something like an apple later if we were hungry, but my mom was not about to make macaroni and cheese, pizza or other 'kid food'. And guess what? I did end up eating some of what I didn't want to eat. Kids will eat when they are hungry, I know that it worked for me. I'm only 21, I remember this. I always felt somewhat nauseous helping out at lunchtime when I worked in the daycares, because I would see kids with things like white-bread butter sandwiches and a pudding cup for lunch. YUCK X 10 000.
The first step to effective weight loss... if you are like most people, you would love to lose some weight or excess body fat. TRANSFORM YOUR WATER-TRANSFORM YOUR BODY. The cause of so much obesity in society today is traced to "Your Body's many cries for Water" Dr. F. Batmanghelidj, MD. You are not sick you are thirsty... People are overweight because they are eating instead of Drinking properly mineral rich, alkaline water that effectively hydrates their body, or no water at all. Our body's are dehydrated at the cellular level. We are not made up of food, sodas, beer, coffee, tea, etc., we are made up of at approximately 70% water, we are created from dirt(minerals). "You can trace every sickness(obesity included) every disease and every ailment to a mineral deficiency." Dr. Linus Pauling (Two-time Nobel Prize Winner)
IS YOUR BODY RUNNING ON EMPTY?
YOU MUST HYDRATE: MINERALIZE: REVITALIZE: METABOLIZE.
Advertize much?
"Despite only making up five per cent of the world's population, the United States accounts for almost a third of the world's weight due to obesity, the researchers found." Well, isn't THAT special! I can testify that Missouri is a BIG part of America's disproportionate weight statistic. The people here are disgustingly fat. I guess I should thank all the fat people, though. They help keep me thin by constantly ruining my appetite. So, to all you blubber butts out there, thanks for being so gross looking.
All you need to do is look at what people eat here in the US. Go to a ball game; go to a fast food restaurant; go to practically any social event; the food is horrible at each of these places. In many cases there aren't ANY healthy alternatives. You are better off packing your own healthy lunch.
Add the above to the fact that the majority of Americans are inherently lazy. It starts at an early age now; i.e. children are too lazy to walk to the bus stop and take the bus to school. They have their mommy take them in the car. Then, when they come home from school, also avoiding walking a little by having mommy pick them up, they then grab a snack and sit in front of a computer and play video games for hours instead of going outside and playing some sport or getting some type of exercise. Then people wonder why children are lardasses by the time they are 10 and wind up with childhood obesity.
Many adults are too lazy to exercise at all. They seem to be afraid they are going to burn a couple of calories if they walk up a flight of steps instead of taking the escalator. Many things are done the easy way to avoid any type of exercise. Then, they later would rather have liposuction or their stomach clamped and sit around on their butts instead of eating right and going for a walk! Pretty sad, really. I know there are exceptions with some people, but for many its simply eating right, eating less, moving more and burning more calories than you eat. Simple as that.
I see fat people, including kids, everywhere I go and it is disgusting; they just plain eat too much and don't exercise or are not active enough. The kids are fat because their parents are fat, they eat too much. Some people are so fat they struggle to just walk with some using the mobile carts in stores because they are so fat. Many must be very uneducated or just stupid and don't give a damn because they don't realize what that fat is doing to they internal organs and the diseases that are a result of too much fat. And for all those fat people that say diets don't work for them, nonsense, they are too lazy to follow the diet and just want to eat and stay fat.
I grew up in the 50's. Back then obese people were relatively rare, maybe 1/30 or 1/40.
However, back then most mothers did not work at a job. They worked at home and cooked the meals and made lunch for the kids and dad. Now, women must work in order for the family to support itself so fast food becomes a way of life.
Certainly this not the whole problem, but maybe part of it.
Go to Whole Foods some time and compare the people with those at Walmart. Whole Foods tends to be expensive, but the people who patronize it care about what they eat.
That's why Whole Foods is affectionately called "Whole Paycheck". ;-)
There is an easy fix to this - Soylent Green
The problem is simply that Americans are lazy fat asses who eat too much and exercise too little. Fat people do not have the self discipline nor the simple intelligence to solve their weight problem. They are raising a generation of fat children who will grow up to be lazy fat asses. Ultimately obesity will be the number one killer of Americans.
It may have something to do with modern food additives, hormones and what not. I can say I do not watch my diet that closely. I try to eat some vegetables, some whole grains and cook at home most of the time. I do not buy organics, or don't actively try to any how. The beef I use at the house is the same stuff everyone else buys at the grocery store. I eat fast food a couple times a week, worked for Dominos Pizza for 8 years and had pizza more than 4 times a week during that period. I do not exercise weekly other than cleaning the house, garage, yard work, playing with the kids. I do not make time for organized exercise. I am 42, maybe 10-15 lbs above ideal which fluctuates, and not real active in sports. For my lifestyle, diet and habits, I would be hard pressed to blame obesity on what is in our foods. For me, its more about how much I eat and and my activity level, instead of what someone else is putting in my food. Don't eat more than your body needs and move around more than you sit down, its pretty simple. Oh, and I have lost 90% of my thyroid gland, am on hormones for the rest of my life and my doctor explained to me that a gland problem only really contributes to an increase of weight by 10-15 lbs, more than that isn't due to your gland problem.
It is time to start taxing obesity. Airline fairs should be doubled requiring two seat. Anyone over 300 pounds shouldn't be allowed to fly as they are dangerous projectile in turbulence. And why not health taxes? How about a $100 premium per medical visit if you are obese?
I have no problem with fat people on the airplane, as long as passengers would be seated from the front to the rear of the plane in descending order of fatness. There's a lot to be said for the benefits of a great squishy cushion of fat in the front, in the event the plane were to hit the ground or a mountainside head-on.
Yes. I was on a flight recently and sitting behind a huge lady (who actually had a death grip on her mega jug of coke) and I was seriously afraid the seat back was going to break when we were taking off. That seat was reclining way beyond what it would normally do. She smelled pretty bad too...
I think there are a few reasons for the problem. First of all cheap food isn't healthy and healthy food isn't cheap. The fast food industry has been a large contributor to this thing. I think a lot of people would eat better if there were convenient healthy options, but there don't seem to be very many. Also, since obesity has become so "popular" there doesn't seem to be the shame associated with it there once was. I went to a water park yesterday and there were fatso's everywhere in various states of undress, I couldn't believe it. I had a friend growing up that was overweight and the popular kids and I made fun of him immercifully until sure enough he decided to lose the weight and try to get laid. Without the help of bullies like us he would still be miserable.