Obesity in America Continues to Expand

[Aeternitas]

TUESDAY, Aug. 23 (HealthDayNews) -- Obesity rates continue to climb in every state except Oregon, and government policies and actions offer little hope of reversing the trend, according to a new report Tuesday from the Trust for America's Health. The report, F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America, 2005, found that Mississippi is the heaviest state, while Colorado is the least heavy.
More than 25 percent of adults in 10 states are obese -- Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana and South Carolina.

http://www.kfor.com/Global/story.asp?S=3756093

Currently, about 119 million, or 64.5%, of US adults are either overweight or obese.
According to projections, 73% of US adults could be overweight or obese by 2008, Trust for America's Health warned.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4183086.stm

[Perun]

hehehehhe

"Look, we're Americans: optimistic, addicted to the quick fix, constantly on the hunt for the new and exotic. It's much easier for us to accept a guy with a big white beard hawking his own custom blend of saw palmetto and squirrel dandruff than it is to hear a real doctor telling us to lay off the Big Macs, get off our fat asses and take a walk every decade or so."
--Dennis Miller

[trinacria]

I have to say that the obesity epidemic in America is absolutely and wholly disgusting. I, for one, think that exercise should be MANDATORY. No iffs, ands or (huge American) but(t)s about it.

[Strengthandhonour]

I think the problem is that Americans dont have enough spare time. So they get home tired from work and are to laizy to go run for an hour. Same with kids, they just sit around and watch tv and play games.

[Carnyx]

They eat/drink too much (too calorific stuffs) and do not do enough exercises. The american man just doesn't walk (enough), he uses his car, take the bus, ...

[trinacria]

Originally Posted by Strengthandhonour

I think the problem is that Americans dont have enough spare time. So they get home tired from work and are to laizy to go run for an hour. Same with kids, they just sit around and watch tv and play games.

Enough spare time? America has so much spare time it's sickening. We have so much spare time all we don't know what to do with ourselves but eat! Due to advancements in the appliance field of inventions, our housework is cut in half, we work in sedentiary positions behind desks, and fast food restaurants are a dime a dozen.

Disgusting.

[ÅnÐReS]

Originally Posted by Perun

"....get off our fat asses and take a walk every decade or so."
--Dennis Miller

I thought the average New Yorker walks about 2 kilometers per day.
But on the other hand, it seems to be true that, in smaller areas, Americans use the car to go almost everywhere; but i could say the same thing about a very high proportion of adults in my city.

[trinacria]

Originally Posted by ÅnÐReS

I thought the average New Yorker walks about 2 kilometers per day.
But on the other hand, it seems to be true that, in smaller areas, Americans use the car to go almost everywhere; but i could say the same thing about a very high proportion of adults in my city.

Yes, very true Andres. It's speculated, and I have actually read in The New Yorker that New Yorkers (meaning borough of Manhattan) walk a lot and thus are thinner than their outerborough counterparts. If you actually take a look around Manhattan you will see that the people there are much more fit than those in the rest of New York. In Manhattan, everything is in walking distance.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/download...003obesity.pdf

Quite interesting. It says that obesity rate in Manhattan is 7% whereas in other boroughs its 15%. I believe it. There is much more information like this on the net.

However fit Manhattan may be, there is still a huge epidemic in the U.S.A.

[bocian]

Most of it has to do with high in fat and genetically modified diet. Anyone who comes from Europe almost always, and very quickly, gains weight. This isn't from eating fast food, it's simply because of eating the crap they call food here. How is it that when I go to Poland, doing nothing but drinking and eating-- lose weight, only to return here, physically work my sorry ass off (no workout necesssary) only to gain weight? This has happened repeatedly with almost everyone I know.

That said, people don't walk as much.

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

Originally Posted by bocian

Most of it has to do with high in fat and genetically modified diet. Anyone who comes from Europe almost always, and very quickly, gains weight. This isn't from eating fast food, it's simply because of eating the crap they call food here. How is it that when I go to Poland, doing nothing but drinking and eating-- lose weight, only to return here, physically work my sorry ass off (no workout necesssary) only to gain weight? This has happened repeatedly with almost everyone I know.

That said, people don't walk as much.

Please pay attention to Bocian. I have seen this happen to Europeans myself. It is something called "high fructose corn syrup". American industry has put it into every food. This is especially true of drinks and fast, prepared snacks. Look on the label before you eat anything. High fructose corn syrup is slammed by the liver into glycogen and turned loose in the bloodstream. The brain picks up on this immediate upsurge in glycogen and secrets insulin. Insulin turns this excess glycogen into fat--that is FAT! Meanwhile, your liver loves this conversion. What I am saying is called addiction. You become addicted to high fructose corn syrup. This is why once you start drinking sweet drinks, you can't get enough of them--they actually make you high.

Think about this: High fructose corn syrup. It is cheap and even used as a filler in solid form. Who, which country, has the largest reserves of corn? Which country has so much corn they store it and still pay farmers not to grow too much? Hint: this country is not Mexico but north of Mexico. With so much surplus corn laying around, it is as cheap as it can be. We feed it to animals and with what is left, we turn it into syrup and let the big corporate food companies put it into everything. Do big companies care if you get fat? No, other big companies then sell you diet pills.

Believe me, there is a reason this fat-thing started in America.

[ÅnÐReS]

Originally Posted by Dr. Solar Wolff

Please pay attention to Bocian. I have seen this happen to Europeans myself. It is something called "high fructose corn syrup". American industry has put it into every food. This is especially true of drinks and fast, prepared snacks.

That explains why i felt like the Walmart i've been to in the US - while i visited a part of it some years ago - smelled like sweets. From what i remember, that Walmart was like a 100% exact copy of the one there is in my city, except for the smell. Although maybe it smelt that way because probably many people were eating while doing their shopping, but i can't remember that much.

[bocian]

Originally Posted by Dr. Solar Wolff

Please pay attention to Bocian. I have seen this happen to Europeans myself. It is something called "high fructose corn syrup". American industry has put it into every food. This is especially true of drinks and fast, prepared snacks. Look on the label before you eat anything. High fructose corn syrup is slammed by the liver into glycogen and turned loose in the bloodstream. The brain picks up on this immediate upsurge in glycogen and secrets insulin. Insulin turns this excess glycogen into fat--that is FAT! Meanwhile, your liver loves this conversion. What I am saying is called addiction. You become addicted to high fructose corn syrup. This is why once you start drinking sweet drinks, you can't get enough of them--they actually make you high.

Think about this: High fructose corn syrup. It is cheap and even used as a filler in solid form. Who, which country, has the largest reserves of corn? Which country has so much corn they store it and still pay farmers not to grow too much? Hint: this country is not Mexico but north of Mexico. With so much surplus corn laying around, it is as cheap as it can be. We feed it to animals and with what is left, we turn it into syrup and let the big corporate food companies put it into everything. Do big companies care if you get fat? No, other big companies then sell you diet pills.

Believe me, there is a reason this fat-thing started in America.

The worst is the meat. It simply tastes like cardboard. This is especially noticable for a Pole since our diet is very high in meat. When one returns home everything tastes different--from steaks to pork cracklings to lard. Even the smell is different, especially during cooking. This of course is due to the fact that the animals they slaughter here are mutants fed with worst possible crap imaginable.

The milk doesn't taste like milk and it makes one feel like shit. Vegetables are so awful that if I ate a cucumber and a tomato blindfolded, I don't know if I'd be able to taste the difference.

I try to eat organic as much as possible, but it's expensive, and to be quite honest doesn't taste much better than the fake stuff. The only good vegetables I have eaten here are straight from someone's private garden.

There are many Mormon farmers in my area, and when possible I try to buy meat from them.

One really has to taste the difference to see what they're missing out on.

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

Originally Posted by bocian

The worst is the meat. It simply tastes like cardboard. This is especially noticable for a Pole since our diet is very high in meat. When one returns home everything tastes different--from steaks to pork cracklings to lard. Even the smell is different, especially during cooking. This of course is due to the fact that the animals they slaughter here are mutants fed with worst possible crap imaginable.

The milk doesn't taste like milk and it makes one feel like shit. Vegetables are so awful that if I ate a cucumber and a tomato blindfolded, I don't know if I'd be able to taste the difference.

I try to eat organic as much as possible, but it's expensive, and to be quite honest doesn't taste much better than the fake stuff. The only good vegetables I have eaten here are straight from someone's private garden.

There are many Mormon farmers in my area, and when possible I try to buy meat from them.

One really has to taste the difference to see what they're missing out on.

Meat, milk and vegetables are seperate stories in the USA. To see the difference you must go to rural Mexico and eat at a country hotel, for instance. There, everything is home-grown, no hormones, no feed lots, everything picked when it is ripe, not green. It makes a big difference. Even the bread tastes different.

[Perun]

Well just the other day I read an interesting article from Skeptical Inquiry about the obesity epidemic in America.

You can read the article here:
http://www.livescience.com/scienceof...3_obesity.html

The fact is that obesity is only the latest in a long list of public health threats that have been overstated by a sensationalist news media (and, to a lesser degree, by the medical community). The dire warnings and hype surrounding West Nile virus, ebola, flu, anthrax, Mad Cow disease, and even AIDS, to name just a few, all far outstripped any reasonable public health threat.

[Perun]

Originally Posted by Dr. Solar Wolff

Please pay attention to Bocian. I have seen this happen to Europeans myself. It is something called "high fructose corn syrup". American industry has put it into every food. This is especially true of drinks and fast, prepared snacks. Look on the label before you eat anything. High fructose corn syrup is slammed by the liver into glycogen and turned loose in the bloodstream. The brain picks up on this immediate upsurge in glycogen and secrets insulin. Insulin turns this excess glycogen into fat--that is FAT! Meanwhile, your liver loves this conversion. What I am saying is called addiction. You become addicted to high fructose corn syrup. This is why once you start drinking sweet drinks, you can't get enough of them--they actually make you high.

Think about this: High fructose corn syrup. It is cheap and even used as a filler in solid form. Who, which country, has the largest reserves of corn? Which country has so much corn they store it and still pay farmers not to grow too much? Hint: this country is not Mexico but north of Mexico. With so much surplus corn laying around, it is as cheap as it can be. We feed it to animals and with what is left, we turn it into syrup and let the big corporate food companies put it into everything. Do big companies care if you get fat? No, other big companies then sell you diet pills.

Believe me, there is a reason this fat-thing started in America.

I completely agree with this. Finding decent tasting and healthy food in America is next to impossible. Strange considering in Europe you can have great tasting food and still be healthy.