Obesity. A worldwide problem?

[FusedMass]

The Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has come up with a new report that most of the states from all states having the highest obesity rates are from the Midwest and the South, as per a recent report.

A total of 30 states were found by the group with highest rates of obesity, 12 amongst which were realizing more than 30%. Also, Illinois was one state at the 29th position for 27.1% rates. The team holds responsible the negligence of the government and health authorities for such high rates.

Seeing Colorado, which was though holding the lowest rank in terms of rates of the disease, was also showing 20.7%, executive director Jeffrey Levi says that it is all happening because of low investments to adopt curing ways.

Also, another main reason why the number of obese people is increasing is returns on health and savings being gathered. Currently, 17% of children are found to be the victims of obesity in America with a third of all adults going through the same.

The report revealed the previous day by the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raises concerns for high risks of diabetes and heart disease as well. It is being suggested that it is time one and all become vigilant.

How to solve it?

Mod Edited: We're discussing the global obesity epidemic here. Not just focusing on Americans.

[Drakain]

Obesity exists in American because of High Fructose Corn Syrup. I'm not a conspiracy theory guy, and I don't think there's a group of people whose plan it is to make American's fat to control them. However, the economics are clear here: it's a cheap substitute to sucrose, people love the way it tastes, and it suppresses leptin, which makes you eat more. Food is one of the big exports left to the U.S. It's metabolizes into fat, it's in 90% of the food we it and at the portions we eat it it's poison.

[DEATHETERNAL]

"We" can't solve it. There is no way to force individuals to stop being super fat when they clearly choose to be so now. The only way to "solve" this is for individuals at the individual level to decide they don't want to be obese and that isn't happening.

[Fuzzzie]

This can be extended to the whole world. Just applying it to Americans is an attempt to bash imo.

[Lyriok]

This can be extended to the whole world. Just applying it to Americans is an attempt to bash imo.

Agreed.

It's a unfortunate problem everywhere.

[Drakain]

"We" can't solve it. There is no way to force individuals to stop being super fat when they clearly choose to be so now. The only way to "solve" this is for individuals at the individual level to decide they don't want to be obese and that isn't happening.

This perpetuates the problem because it refuses to acknowledge that there might be a reason other than personal responsibility for a recent phenomenon. Babies aren't obese because they eat too much and don't exercise enough - it's because they're consuming a substance in nearly everything they eat that metabolizes directly into fat. Obesity in babies in Japan correlate exactly to when Japan started receiving high fructose containing substances from the United States. Obesity has been on the rise in the United states since the late 1960s - exactly the time fructose from corn entered our diets. The chemistry is very clear - this stuff metabolizes into fat and it suppresses the hormone that encourages you to stop eating.

[Badpaladin]

This can be extended to the whole world. Just applying it to Americans is an attempt to bash imo.

It's a bigger problem here than pretty much anywhere else, though.

[Fuzzzie]

It's a bigger problem here than pretty much anywhere else, though.

It's more publicized in the US, but the issue persists in other nations and continents as well. The question is... Does america have an obesity problem.. I'm saying most of the 1st world does.

[mizeri]

cant make people take responsibility for there own bodies by making up rules and banning stuff.

[Drakain]

cant make people take responsibility for there own bodies by making up rules and banning stuff.

Which is why asbestos is still used in construction, right? Irresponsible cancer victims!

[Nengal]

Obesity is a first world problem. Obesity is, in the majority of times, the result of laziness, greed, and/or apathy. I am sure children in Uganda would love to have the problem of too much food to eat. Or feeling uncomfortable because they ate far too much at dinner.

[Hanto]

America does, but the world itself does as well. We're not alone, the world in general is lazy and indulges in fatty foods on a regular basis. We just hear more about it here.

[jbombard]

Whenever I have visited other countries, while obesity exists and appears to be on the incline everywhere, no country I have visited has had problems with obesity on the scale that I see it in America.

[Drakain]

Obesity is a first world problem. Obesity is, in the majority of times, the result of laziness, greed, and/or apathy. I am sure children in Uganda would love to have the problem of too much food to eat. Or feeling uncomfortable because they ate far too much at dinner.

Obesity is frequently a result of behavior. That doesn't explain the unusual and significant increase in obesity across all ages types in the United States.

[Nanotech]

Which is why asbestos is still used in construction, right? Irresponsible cancer victims!

Well, as much as I might agree with your general stance on this issue, I don't think this is a fair comparison. Asbestos is not something you deliberately ingest, in fact many cancer victims didn't have any inkling they were in any danger from it. Obesity and dietary issues on the other hand are highly publicized, pretty much everyone at this point knows that eating too much, eating too much of certain foods/drinks has a direct link to obesity, yet most people still do nothing. I'm not arguing against the fact that food producers need to be a helluva lot more responsible with what they put in our food, but there is a MUCH larger personal responsibility component here than in the asbestos case.

[Fuzzzie]

Using my magic mod powers to change the tile and actually have a discussion of obesity without the stereotyping of Americans in general.

It's a good discussion topic, but I feel it will be derailed by just focusing on the US.

[Nengal]

Obesity is frequently a result of behavior. That doesn't explain the unusual and significant increase in obesity across all ages types in the United States.

The frugality of the average citizen with their earnings, the apathy towards what is consumed, the permeation of slick marketing techniques to lull those who do care what they eat into a false sense of security, and the dependency of time. It's much, much faster and cheaper to feed a family of 4 with happy meals and whoppers than it is to buy chicken from the grocery store and prepare it with vegetables.

We're brought up to consume consume consume in the U.S. from the moment we're born from a social and a media standpoint. It's almost like a competition - Let's see who can get the most stuff. Why make $30k a year when you can make $100k and buy more STUFF? Bigger STUFF. Better STUFF.

It isn't, go to college and get a degree so you can better yourself or learn for the good of mankind, it's go to college so you can get more stuff than you'd be able to get later without going to college.

Our expectations of the required quality of life for us to survive has been increasing exponentially since the industrial revolution. And it's all a sham centered around our own American Exceptionalism.

-Is how america specifically differs from the rest of the world in the respect of our diets for food and material goods. (There's a lot of overlapping and linking between the two)

[aquzuqa]

People aren't fat because of any food or bad food not regulated they are fat because they choose to be. Eat a carrot and jump on a treadmill.

[Drakain]

Well, as much as I might agree with your general stance on this issue, I don't think this is a fair comparison. Asbestos is not something you deliberately ingest, in fact many cancer victims didn't have any inkling they were in any danger from it. Obesity and dietary issues on the other hand are highly publicized, pretty much everyone at this point knows that eating too much, eating too much of certain foods/drinks has a direct link to obesity, yet most people still do nothing. I'm not arguing against the fact that food producers need to be a helluva lot more responsible with what they put in our food, but there is a MUCH larger personal responsibility component here than in the asbestos case.

I didn't make my point very well, then. Fructose isn't something that you may deliberately ingest either, at least insofar as inhaling asbestos constitutes deliberate. You're right - dietary and obesity issues are highly publicized, but they're publicized in the least helpful and potentially most destructive way. It's in almost everything you eat.

You hear really bad dietary advice all the time that's 'healthy' and people eat it up (heh) because they're ignorant. I had someone suggest that I should drink a glass of orange juice rather than a diet coke. I asked them why, and they said "well, juice is healthier because it's made out of fruit." I won't go into the particulars of that discussion, because he was wrong. Juice is terrible for you unless it contains pulp, and even then it's not very good for you. You may as well drink a sugared soda.

People think diet is a function of calories. You'll hear things like "Oh, I just ate a cookie, that was 100 calories! Now I have to run a mile!"

Bullshit. Stop and think about that a moment. If I run a mile then I've effectively removed 100 calories from my body? That's now how your body works. You're body isn't a flame heating water a degree, it's a chemical factory.

When you eat something, it's broken up and subject to a number of chemical reaction depending on what it is. I just so happens that fructose has a particularly bad metabolic pathway in the human body. It's broken down in the liver, like a poison. It metabolizes into glycogen if glycogen isn't abundant in the liver. If glycogen is abundant it metabolizes in to fat. When you look at the dietary information you may see fat as one of the entries, but that number doesn't include fructose because fructose is classified as a carbohydrate.

The fact is we evolved to consume fructose only in the presence of high fiber, and fiber blocks it's uptake so only a fraction of the fructose made it into the body, anyway. In small amounts your body can handle it just fine. But when it's in every meal and it's being completely absorbed you're essentially overloading your body with fat. Fructose metabolism also produces a lot of waste, too. It's terrible for you but people don't know to look through their food and look for it and ask themselves "wait, does this have fructose in it?" It's pervasive. Even our meats are the result of fructose poisoning because we feed fish, poultry, and cows corn feed. It's really shocking.

[Nanotech]

Well, it might feel like nation bashing to you, but to me the title should be "Obesity, a first world problem." I'll tell you when I lived in the US I gained a LOT of weight. There were many factors behind this and I'm by no means absolving myself of some personal responsibility in this but the major ones were 1. different quality of food than I was used to, everything was a lot more processed and "sugarized" and 2. no public transportation almost anywhere I lived, being forced to use the car to go pretty much any place.

At home I used to walk or ride a bike pretty much anywhere. Even when I took public transportation to some more far-off places I'd be forced to move,stand,walk a decent amount. When I lived in Texas, Virginia and Florida I was stared at by people when I'd walk around the neighborhood for evening strolls, some of the neighborhoods didn't even have a sidewalk for crying out loud. In Texas I got stopped by the police while walking around my neighborhood trying to get some exercise because they thought I looked suspicious since noone walks around those parts.

The odd thing is that I felt a lot less fat because I was surrounded by obese people pretty much everywhere in the US. Out of about 20-30 acquaintances I had in Texas while going to school, 6 had had gastric bypass surgeries and were under 30 years old. I wasn't even the odd fat chick, I was probably even under average weight. When I moved back home in Europe it hit me just how goddamn fat I'd gotten. I had an inkling I got bigger but it never hit me just how much fatter I was until I found myself in a society full of people without weight problems. I felt like a whale my first few months back home. I was even too embarrassed to go to the local gym at first. The only thing that was different was that I ate a lot more fresh food. Not LESS food, just less processed junk that was so cheap in the States. I lost about 15 lbs in the first month or two without actually leaving the house much or exercising.

Now this is obviously just one person's story and is in no way meant to show some large societal trend. But make of it what you will.