How is there a severe obesity epidemic?!

So there seems to be a problem with Americans in the world today. Almost 70% are either overweight or obese.

How!? Why!?

That number seems almost unimaginable, until you go to the grocery store, or the superstore of your choosing (walmart, target...ect) and look around at all of the people. One can easily see that a frightening number of people are not close to a reasonable weight.

Personally, its shocking.

How can this happen? Is it cultural? Geographical? Genetic? Socioeconomic? Evolutionary? There are a list of reasons that go on a country mile, but I'm not buying it. The main reason...drum roll please...is LAZINESS

There is no good reason that an adult in America today can't be at a reasonable weight.(yes, i understand there can be extenuating circumstances) Its about time overweight people start taking responsibility for themselves and stop blaming this that and the other thing. Its time to get off the sofa and drop that gut. Even a minimal amount of light physical activity can have profound effects on the human body! Its remarkable how easily the body can lose weight.

Dont believe me? Well i was in the same boat as many Americans not so long ago, just over a year. 6' and over 300lbs because i was just plain lazy. Junk food, tv and sodas. Now I'm 220, stronger, more muscular, more fit, more endurance than ever.

But according to some height/weight charts, I would be considered obese, which certainly is not the case.

So what gives? I would love to hear some intelligent insight on this subject matter!

www.cdc.gov...
www.pbs.org...
www.jodohonline.com...

mods, move if needed

Advertising and consuming anything they put in front of us.Brain washing the masses.
Plain and simple.
Taking control of your life and ignoring all that crap is the key to overcoming this epidemic.

Its the diet, fatty foods are cheap. It's all people can afford.

reply to post by zonetripper2065


Yes, you nailed it. Income and the kind of foods available in the stores.

Yes , i went to the supermarket today and saw the same thing nearly everyone's fat and then i watch the little old ladys buying 2 min noodles to live on sad.
1%

Its probably a combination of many things. An abundance of bad food, laziness, advertising...I'm sure it all plays its part in creating this problem.

I've really no idea what we do to fix it but I'd imagine that proper parenting and teaching children to be active and raising them on good food would be a good place to start.

Of course when I was growing up we ate rubarb all the time and all it did was make me crave for a cheeseburger from Mcdonalds so maybe you can overdo it also.

Originally posted by zonetripper2065
Its the diet, fatty foods are cheap. It's all people can afford.

yep exactly, it`s the garbage that we are sold that is called food.
The "food" that we eat today is less nutritious than it was just 50 years ago. even the fruits and vegetables we eat are 30-50 percent less nutritious.
All the fat and artificial garbage that is in our food today leaves our bodies feeling malnourished and hungry so we eat more food.Eating more of the same fat filled artificial filled food just makes us fatter but does very little to make our bodies feel less malnourished.
I once read that modern america is the only society in the history of the world in which obese people suffer from malnutrition.
That almost seems like an oxymoron doesn`t it? using the words obese and malnutrition in the same sentence to describe a person.

Agreed, diet is everything, I lost 80lbs in less than a year by cutting out processed and refined foods from my diet, no exercise of any kind.

I only drink freshly ground coffee (black) and room temperature tea or water with freshly squeezed lemon juice, yummy. The sodas and other drinks are really bad these days, in more ways than one, best to avoid them altogether.

Stick with low glycemic foods and stay away from artificial anything,.especially the sugars, oh my, what toxins those have turned out to be.

Been reading up on the caramel coloring byproduct and cancer link now, my sister loved her DR Pepper, was probably the death of her.

ETA: It was the most difficult thing I've ever done, quitting those food stuffs, right up there with quitting cigarettes. I had no idea how addictive they are.

reply to post by Tardacus


Screwed up huh? I've switched to my self killed fish and game, local grown veggies and beer, lots of beer.

I'm going to add all the bad chemicals they add to the food such as high fruticoise corn syrup just to name one. I'm honestly thinking it is not so much as being lazy, but what we eat. I have seen heavier people than me have much more energy and move around a lot more than I do.

I have noticed that when I was able to buy leafy greens, and eat a large bowl of salad a day mainly made up of dark leafy greens minus the dressing that I actually lost weight fairly steadily without even moving around more than usual. I wasn't hungry. Not true with other foods. If I could constantly afford the everything to put in the salad that I like, then I would buy it.

I believe it is a combination of things.

You have some of the answer already FirerySnowman,

"But according to some height/weight charts, I would be considered obese, which certainly is not the case. "

They just change the definition of obese to include people who are just a little over weight and not tall enough, or what have you.

You won't be a healthy weight until you're skin and bones in the Fema camp.

This is how bad it is:

www.coolcrack.com...

Now don't tell me we see that nearly every day. And in 1885 you had to pay admission to see someone that large. Now just go nearly anywhere.

Cheap, addictive crap food.

We are killing ourselves with it.

Pre WW2, we spend a MUCH larger % of our income on food. And the meat was grassfed, and the milk was generally raw. And no aspartame or other artificial sweeteners. A coke was a treat. And the government had not yet told us to eat low fat and lots of carbs. You know, the food pyramid and all.

We can make that same choice now. Ditch the crap and eat Real Food. I did. But 99% won't. They are too addicted. Addicted to the food, and addicted to what you can spend the money on besides things like Real Food.

I am a European. I was brought up, first in rural India, then in southern France, then for the most time in my formative years, in the British countyside. There, our family grew our own food, mostly all kinds of fruits and vegetables and then the chickens, ducks, geese and rabbits we kept. We also kept goats for milk, butter and cheese. Chickens, ducks and geese gave us the fresh eggs we ate.
We expended most of our energy on the daily tending of the veggie gardens and feeding the animals. It was our purpose and our survival.

I, myself, and our whole family kept ourselves trim and all of us were very slim, and remain so into our mature years, 50 years later. We ate quality food.

I cannot understand obesity... It just seems impossible to gain so much excess weight, by eating too much for the equal amount of energy expended.

Yes, as somebody here stated: Laziness!
What is laziness?
Laziness is essentially a lack of interest and stimulus. It is also a lack of imagination and the will to design a life that is exciting and rewarding.
For the grossly obese, rewards are achieved by stuffing the gut with tasteless food that is so severly processed as to lack any semblance of nutrition.

So they keep stuffing the tasteless 'food' into the gut, until the body inflates itself to balloon proportions.

This is a very sad situation.

The problem really became evident to me when I moved to France. After a few years, going back home, I am always shocked by the obesity there, when I didn't notice it before.

I am from southern California too, which is more health conscious than some other parts of the country, but still, the idea of a "regular" weight there is very overweight compared to european standards!

I watched the living habits of my relatives and saw there are some that eat very healthy, but eat very large amounts. They are used to having their stomach feel "full" at the end of the meal, whereas in europe it is considered a sign that you have over eaten if you get to that point.

But also a lot of snacking in between meals goes on, and particularly, I think there is some emotional bingeing some do with food and are in denial about. I have a relative who is an athlete, and yet she is very overweight. This kind of confused us. She seemed to eat low calorie healthy food all the time and got a lot of exercise. She claimed it was genetic.

But staying with us, we would find whole cookie packages crumpled up behind the bed, or chip bags. She once described how her mom and her would sometimes have special moments when they would watch a movie and eat a whole batch of brownies together. This occasional bingeing she kept hidden, and I think she even made herself forget it at times.

She also had one of those personalities that comes off to others as being arrogant- she actually said to some french people "of course I know everyone wishes they were american...". Everyone experienced her as being extremely insecure and trying to compensate and protect herself. So when we found out about the secret bingeing, it just wasn't a surprise.

Most Americans will tell you- there is nothing worse than being "mothered" (or "nannied", same idea) it is practically a sin there... and yet food is the ultimate mothering experience and our attitudes towards it are representative of our feelings and needs in relation to maternalization. (why eating disorders are always considered linked to the relations with the mother).

In that view, it would indicate, that despite our boastful assertions that we need no mothering, no comforting, no help from others, we might be in denial about that.

It seems the more technology we get our hands on the more sedentary we become. Every bit of technology that comes out is aimed at making life "easier" for us. That basically means that we have to put less effort into accomplishing the task than it used to. While I love technology, I don't like laziness. We sit at our computers either at home or work (most of the time both), we eat our wonderfully cheap calories and artery cloggers, we watch TV, we don't do anything productive anymore. We've become a lazy and impatient species that is dependent on being waited on.

While I worked as a pharmacy technician it blew my mind how FAT everyone getting their medicine was. Everybody was on some sort of blood pressure medicine, cholesterol, diabetes, etc. There would be people coming through the drive-thru to pick up their heart medication yelling for me to hurry up as they stuffed french fries down their face with their grubby little fingers. Even our medicine is enabling these people to continue their laziness.

I'm just not a fan of fat people, because from my experience 90% of those people bring it upon themselves and have no intention of fixing the problem.

reply to post by fireysnowman29

Obesity is modern malnutrition.

The human body needs ninety nutrients to function but when foods do not contain the necessary nutrients a person will continue eating to satisify their need for them.

Obese people are actually starving for some nutrients, mainly microminerals absent from many processed foods.

There are a lot of local differences and I guess the core problem is the food.

I look at the USA and I see fat people.
I look at SA and I see lean people. (South Africa, was there for some holidays, it was spectacular!)
I look at us and I see overweight people.

The cause to me is the factor of preprocessed food in the daily nutrition.

Does it really happen that some processed fast-food in a fast-food-"restaurant" is a LOT CHEAPER than preparing some food for youself, with youknow peeling and cooking potatoes, cooking some vegetable like broccoli and fry some schnitzel?

How could that be? Who wants that? Why could some fast-food-burger-shop buy their meat and vegetables and bread so much cheaper than we could?

Another thing: the simple availability of "drive-thrus". This is nearly unknown here. You do have your odd fast-food-shop with its drive-through, but that is only the last escape on a saturday night right after leaving the last party - not something for doing every workday on the commute back to home! Really, that is not happening.

Okay, I guess, many of those things are memes, brought to us by media. But there seems to be a core of truth to it, right?

reply to post by fireysnowman29



People are spiritually starved and emotionally bankrupt. They stuff themselves with food until their stomachs rule the castle and enough is never enough. But no amount of food will ever compensate for what they really crave.

Unfortunatley, it's because we have websites like this, and instead of walking and talking, we're now typing and snacking. Driving 3/4 mile to the store, just to pick up some Dorito's and 4 cinnabuns! Cities that we're designed during the industrial revolution. Super awesome burgers at (insert your favorite here! no pun intended) Children having to be afraid of walking out they're front door because there are actual MONSTERS running around loose out there. Not ensuring our kids have to pass a physical fitness test, every year they are in school, at every academic level. Microwave Ovens. Manufactured, addictive foods (Twizzlers comes to mind!). Sticking with the concept of breakfast lunch and dinner (I will GLADLY give special dispensation for 'High Tea). Massively more potent strains of cannabis. Pay-per-View. I the gotta go, the box of 'Pizza Pods' I ave in the Microwave a ready .......

reply to post by ManFromEurope


I don't know...I have seen some fairly heft Germans powering down Beer, Sausage and White Asparagus covered in Butter soaked bread crumbs! LOL!

What I do like about Beer Gardens is that a person is expected to get drunk! LOL!

Split Infinity