US slowly wakes up to obesity crisis the most shocking thing for me to read is not exactly (or wholly) US-related: "The United Nations says the global total of overweight individuals rivals, for the first time, the number who are underweight. " Yikes...
Why does that surprise anyone, the level of crap that we sell for food here in the US is truly something to behold (McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's, Dominoes, you name it)
Overheard at a McDonalds recently...."I'll take 2 Big Mac meals, supersized, a Quarter Pounder with cheese and a hot apple pie. And oh yeah.....A Diet Coke"
It was a he, and it's not like he got it to go for somebody else. He sat down and polished it off right there. Me and my brother were astonished to say the least.
Yawn. This is only a big deal for the professional scolds. And could people kindly MYOB when at McD's or other eating establishments.
When I was in high school and early college, I used to get a 20 piece chicken mcnugget, large fry, and 1 or 2 cheeseburgers. I miss those days. I'm skinny, too. But I do think the overall point is a good one. We as a society do share the cost of people's foolish decisions. Obesity is bad for everyone.
Michael Jordan is overweight and The Rock is obese. The standards of what is overwight in this country are rcrazy low because of lobbying by the the dieting, exercise and food lobbies. In fact the standards were lowered in 2000 http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/72/5/1074 And yet we are living in a time where people are living longer and the rate of cancers treated vs detected has increased.
BMI can be inaccurate when applied to individuals, but it is largely accurate when applied to large demographics. How many of those 25+ % of people who are considered obese do you think fall into the Micheal Jordan or The Rock mold?
But the heart disease and diabetes have become less lethal due to new advances in pharmacuticals. As for depression, it is more diagnosed then ever before due to the advance in popularity of psych medicine. And I have a hard time that being a fat ass is the major reason why the majority of people off themselves.
Just recently I happened to be at a youth soccer tournament where the surrounding area is best described as working class. Since I don't eat fast food, and I am conscientious about my eating habits, I headed to the local supermarket (Food 4 Less) to pick up some healthier type snacks. While the produce section did not have the quality and variety that you'd find in a place like Whole Foods, I was able to locate some passable apples (I bought two Gala, one Granny Smith). I then headed for the aisle where the nuts are located, looking for plain, natural raw almonds. Blue Diamond seems to be the largest almond grower, and they had the almond market cornered at this place. Chocolate covered almonds, chili-flavored almonds, honey-dipped almonds, barbeque almonds, caramel almonds, salted and roasted almonds, salted, roasted and barbequed, well, you get the picture. But the Blue Diamond tin with the green label, raw almonds, uhh, no. I asked one of the clerks about it, and he just shrugged. Seems like there's not a great demand for the basic foodstuff, i.e., raw almonds, in this neighborhood. But when I returned to the tournament, with the mainly middle and upper-middle class families there, I noticed that the snack bar offerings had an incredible array of all sorts of snacks, from chips, to Gummy Bears, to burgers, cheese burgers, onion cheese burgers, onion with mushroom cheeseburgers, French fries, chili French fries, chili cheese French fries, and practically every soda invented by man. No fresh fruit. No salads. Glad I went to Food 4 Less.
Which in turn drives up medical and insurance costs. And I'm sure it would be difficult to get hard data on how many clinically obese people commit suicide, I'd bet the numbers might be far greater than you think. Dont' get me wrong, I too think the government standards to define obesity are out of whack, but you've got to admit....obesity is a pretty major and serious problem in this country.
rather than comparing overall weight to height, comparing your waist measurement to height would be a better reflection. People with extra muscle mass don't tend to have big stomachs to go with it. Mind you, while some will clearly just be muscular, unless there is a tendency for people to be considerably more muscular than before, it's fatties driving the percentage up. The same problem exists here too. More and more people are having to squeeze out of the closet and admit they are obese. It's pretty sickening to see the amount of fat kids around these days. When I was a nipper fat kids were a rarity. Every PE class would have one fat kid struggling round the cross country course, but it was almost always just one. Now there are loads of fat kids, and what's more they are getting fatter. You see kids of about 10 with rolls of fat, with the fat starting to sag down. You never saw kids that bad in the past. Simply too much cheap crap food given to kids to keep them quiet. At least schools here are starting to take the lead by banning junk food from school dinner menus (all because of a documentary by TV chef Jamie Oliver to try and get schools to do just that). The kids moaned like hell at first, because many of them had never eaten anything except junk food in their lives, but after a few weeks of grumbling they seemed happy about it.
My brother-in-law is a P.E. teacher in a middle school in L.A. Over the last 7-8 years he's seen an amazing rise in obese, out-of-shape kids. It used to be that when he had the class run one mile, there was a group of at least 10 kids who could run under eight minutes, another 10-15 who could go under ten minutes, and then the rest jog-walk and walk. Now he's lucky to get 4-5 who can go under nine minutes, maybe another 8-10 under ten minutes, and then everyone else walks, with many not finishing the mile. Kids I know that are on very competitive teams, ages 10-12, tell similar stories. These kids are the ones of course who run six and even sub-six minute miles, but aside from the soccer kids there ain't a whole lot of other kids who can run an entire mile, let alone run a competitive time. This is America in the 21st century. Yikes!!!
Recommended reading. We eat very healthy, but, in the end, people make their own choices about what to eat. There's a lot of unhealthy food out there and a lot of unhealthy eating habits. And a lot of money to be made. Food companies make a lot of money giving people processed not-necessarily-healthy food that is convenient, cheap, and plentiful. (Eating healthy takes time, money, and energy.) Pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money giving people medicines to help ease the symptoms of their unhealthy lifestyle choices. ... So my health insurance keeps going up.
This is not a crisis. A crisis is when someone has a loaded gun pointed at your head and is threatening to kill you. This is simply another issue, like the national debt or things like that. And it's not a uniquely US issue either. Anywhere that you find wealth, you will find this issue.
Actually, it only adds 20% - 40% of the cost to insurance. At least that's what some economists have found when trying to figure out how much an individuals' risk factors add to their cost of health insurance. Granted that's still a big chunk of money not as much as some people think it would be.
are you kidding with stuff like this? i mean, O.M.G. no offense, but someone pointing a loaded gun at you is a personal crisis, whereas another type of crisis might affect millions upon millions of people - in my fair opinion, this is definitely a crisis if only because waaaaaaay too many people are passing these sloppy life habits on to their children at decreasingly lower ages (sometimes back even to the womb) - now, schools barely try to act like they are ever choosing nutrition over cost convenience and nobody gives a crap
Only thanks to improved technology, not because of better nutrition. One of the best ways to determine the quality of nutrition in a country is the average body height of the population. America is as far as I know the only developed country in the world, where the average height of the people decreases, while in other western countries it's increasing rapidly since WW2. However, the problem of obesity also exists in Europe, we are just one or two decades behind, but without radical (and probably unpopular) law changes, the problem will become as big as it is in America. In my opinion extremely unhealthy food should be banned or at least taxed heavily, because to me it isn't better than cigarettes. Also healthy food has to be subsidized so that it becomes cheaper. The lower class is the most obese one because unhealthy food is cheaper than healthy. Another problem are parents who overfeed their kids, there must be a law that forces them to visit courses about healthy nutrition, if they still feed their kids unhealthy food they have to be fined and in extreme cases the child must be taken away. Some of these suggestions are already dicussed in Germany and could be realized, I'm not sure how practicable they would be in America, though.
20-40% is a HUGE chunk of money when it's the lower income, non-insured that are obese and driving health care costs skyward. Of course those costs get passed down to you and me.