Why can't Americans lose weight? Obesity rate projections?

BTW, it's not just Americans that are fat bastards nowadays. I first started going to China back in the 90's. I just came back from a 3 week trip last month and I was struck by how many more fat people (especially young kids) I saw than what I used to see. The Chinese have as much food to eat as Westerners do AND they don't do any excercise at all. They are gonna be some fat f***s.

It's the suburban lifestyle. For some reason that I find absolutely incomprehensible, the average American prefers to live in a place where anything they do requires them to drive somewhere. On top of this, they demand that every place that they drive to has parking available for them within a 30 second walk from the door. People get in their car from an attached garage and park in a deck inside of the building that they work in so that they can literally complete their entire hour commute without ever going outside.

Not sure why so many enjoy this, but it seems to be the American dream.

They have enough support of for their decisions to eat, which drives people's decisions for everything. Support comes from culture, other people of that size, immediate emotional/physical satisfaction and desire, and a sufficient abscence of opposing support, or intellectual support for the decision to stay thin in whatever situations.

in an article i read about a year ago the obesity projections for the USA are.

lowest projection 39%

middle projection 44%

highest projection 51%

using the middle projection in 2018

colorado will be the only state with an obesity rate under 30%

mississippi, louisiana, arkansas and oklahoma will be over 60%

the healthcare cost for the obesity problem will be $345 billion.

90% of young adults 17-34 wont be able to meet the minimum standard to get into the military, both height to weight and scoring the minimal amount on the physical test's (it is already at 75% of 17-34 year olds cant get in mostly due to being obese) also due to criminal records and disabilities, but obesity is the main problem.

childhood obesity will climb even faster than the overall obese population, I dont remember the # but it will be much higher than now and will set up the next generation to be even more obese, meaning no end in sight for the obesity problem which will get larger.

and the stats i gave are for obesity not just overweight, if you count overweight we the USA are already at 69% the 2nd most overweight country with mexico being 1st.

Next generation, obesity will start to go down.

Why?

Our bodies will adapt.

This generation we're in a situation where when we were in development our expedicted environment was one of moderate food intake. The environment now is one of lots of fat, sugar, CALORIES always available. It's a mismatch.

It usually takes 2 generations or so before the remnants on the genetic code are gone. It takes 2 generations or so before predicted environment can be altered.

In 2 generations, the babies will be adapted so that the predicted environment matches the actual.

tryingto wrote:

Next generation, obesity will start to go down.

Why?

Our bodies will adapt.

This generation we're in a situation where when we were in development our expedicted environment was one of moderate food intake. The environment now is one of lots of fat, sugar, CALORIES always available. It's a mismatch.

It usually takes 2 generations or so before the remnants on the genetic code are gone. It takes 2 generations or so before predicted environment can be altered.

In 2 generations, the babies will be adapted so that the predicted environment matches the actual.

I'm no geneticist or evolutionary biologist, but I'm pretty sure that it takes longer than two generations to see the sort of change you are talking about.

Lobstah chowda wrote:

2) Lousy diets. No time to cook at home so people eat out. McDs is convenient.

I hear everyone saying this, but I think that if people were to plan out their meals a little better they would find that it is false. I live in downtown Chicago where food prices are not known for being super cheap; however, I can make it pretty easily on $100-120 a month. That's $4 a day or less. I guarantee you will be spending more than that if you are eating fast food or premade dinners.

Food portion sizes (especially at restaurants) are absolutely ridiculous. Everything, including food, seems to be getting bigger and bigger these days. A "mini meal" at McD's consists of a double cheeseburger (or chicken snack wrap), small fries and drink. Doesn't sound that mini to me. I went out to breakfast last week and the pancakes were the size of a very large plate. Of course, there are a lot of factors that play into obesity rates, but the amount of food people consume in one sitting is shocking.

Because only 5% exercise regularly and less than 1% run. Sad but true.

Can't fix the fat ones now. Start with the children in elementary and teach the importance of health to them at a young age, it will take many years but things can turn.

The western diet causes obesity. Not only Americans have problems with obesity. Populations that move from their natural, indigenous diets (or something similar) to the western diet of refined carbohydrates and spare oils have problems with obesity. The only way to beat it in America (because we aren't going back to an indigenous diet without this) is knowledge. It's poignant that people in the US think that white bread is traditional, when the shit wasn't invented until two hundred years ago. If I hear one more conservative, uneducated American tell me that he wants "real bread" when handed whole bread, I'll flip out. In a place where "real bread" or "real rice" is an unnatural refined grain, health cannot happen. M. Pollen wrote a book or two about all this shit.

Simple wrote:

In a place where "real bread" or "real rice" is an unnatural refined grain, health cannot happen. M. Pollen wrote a book or two about all this shit.

HAHHA awesome.

My thoughts on this are that people can exercise but dont do it nearly often enough. I know one 300lb guy who counts dance lessons couple times a week as exercise. a 8-10min/mi pace shakeout run like many LetsRun guys like us do on our recovery days when doubling or something is probably still much higher intensity than all the other crap Americans think is exercise in day to day activities.

Not a Suburbanite wrote:

It's the suburban lifestyle. For some reason that I find absolutely incomprehensible, the average American prefers to live in a place where anything they do requires them to drive somewhere. On top of this, they demand that every place that they drive to has parking available for them within a 30 second walk from the door. People get in their car from an attached garage and park in a deck inside of the building that they work in so that they can literally complete their entire hour commute without ever going outside.

Not sure why so many enjoy this, but it seems to be the American dream.

This is the answer. I moved to europe a year ago and the lifestyle is so much more moderate here. More walking, less food, less booze, less salt, a lot less processed food. Here it is cheaper to buy organic vegetables than a tv dinner.

Anti-obesity edicts won’t work

by Bob Barr

as published in The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Monday, October 04, 2010 at 9:00 AM

Obesity has found a new nemesis. Beware the OECD.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was formed five decades ago in Paris, France. The United States is one of 33 nations belonging to this international body; but just what the OECD does that benefits or even affects the average American has, until now, been difficult to say. Its mission is high-sounding enough, to be sure; to “bring together the governments of countries committed to democracy and the market economy . . . to raise living standards, maintain financial stability,” and other entirely laudable goals.

To this exciting list of goals can now be added another – to save the world from obesity; to shrink an overweight industrialized world; to strike a blow for skinniness! Yes, the OECD has entered the fray to battle obesity everywhere, but in the United States especially.

The new anti-obesity manifesto is laid out in a recently-published study by the OECD, entitled “Obesity and the Economics of Prevention – Fit Not Fat.” The opus will provide grist for discussions at an international conference of health ministers in Paris later this week. And Uncle Sam will likely come under withering caloric fire.

The reason the U.S. will be the brunt of many OECD jokes this week is that, according to the authors of the obesity study, America can lay claim to the dubious honor of being the fattest nation around; more obese, even, than our ancestral home, the United Kingdom, and far pudgier than our primary economic adversaries on the world stage – China, Russia, India, Germany, Japan and Brazil. Interestingly, our neighbor to the south – Mexico – is only slightly less obese as a nation than we are; so its citizens apparently are not rushing across our border simply to gain weight.

An almost certain champion of the OECD study will be Michelle Obama, who is leading the all-American calories crusade from her pulpit as First Lady. It is also likely the OECD missive will be made required reading for top civilian and military officials at the Pentagon, where a recent study, “Mission: Readiness,” concluded that obesity has become a serious national security concern. This particular study was prepared by a group of retired flag-grade officers, and painted a dim picture of America’s youth, because of soaring rates of obesity.

Of course, most advocates for a healthier populace, from the First Lady to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, turn to government to pull our fat out of the fire, so to speak. Congress is under increasing pressure to pass a multi-billion dollar “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act” to set new federal benchmarks for thinner kids and throw beau coup of dollars to help solve the problem. Mayor Bloomberg’s solution is less costly to New York’s taxpayers, but far more draconian; he believes in simply passing laws outlawing foods or ingredients he deems unhealthy.

Farmers and producers of vegetables, which contribute little if any to the “obesity epidemic” against which all these national and international forces are arrayed, just can’t seem to get much traction as an alternative to the fattier foodstuffs most people find more tasty. Expensive ad campaigns and placing vegetable vending machines in schools and other locations just doesn’t seem to work. On the other hand, even though trans fats are banned in New York City, donut connoisseurs still find ways to smuggle Krispy Kremes in from New Jersey.

What the folks in Washington, in New York, and at the OECD don’t seem to get is that governments are and always will be ill-suited to be guardians of our diets. Good eating habits start at home; with good parenting and with strict parenting. Fewer two-parent households and less-educated parents tend to lead to fatter kids. Unless that situation is rectified, all the legislation and studies in the world won’t significantly shrink America’s waistline.

I think it's an inevitable outcome of many facets of the "American Way".

Something is skewed about how we value cost savings to the penny. Consumers are convinced to pay less in exchange for inferior quality, or pay a little more for much higher quantities. The unquenchable desire to save a few pennies at every transaction makes us lose sight of what it really costs us.

At the movies, do you buy the small coke/popcorn for $5, or do you buy the unlimited re-fill tubs of coke/popcorn for 6$? In absolute terms, buying the right size is actually cheaper, but one can't help feeling ripped off considering the marginal cost involved. Same thing for all you can eat buffets -- who limits themselves to one-trip?

Whatever happened to skilled professions, like the short order cook, the baker, and the butcher? Short order cooks were replaced by high school students earning minimum wage, pushing timer buttons. Fresh bread hot from the oven was replaced by mass-produced, highly refined, bleached, and bromated, low-substance, sponge-bread. And fresh meat was replaced by packaged and preserved meats, or appear in prepared canned and frozen foods.

Because Americans are earning much less than their parents or grandparents, most households can only survive on two-incomes. This leaves limited time to get food preparation right, and leaves you susceptible to convenient the refined sugar, refined flour, packaged and preserved solutions brought to you buy large industries and corporations, who care more about their bottom line, than your bottom.

The institutional substitutes for yesterday's healthier foods, while appearing to cost less money and time, are simply not the same quality, and provide us with calorie rich, and nutrient poor diets.

While it's easy to say (and not wrong) it's simply a lack of not eating right, and exercising, due to lack of time, and sedentary lifestyles, the cause has many roots deeply ingrained in our culture, combining to form a multi-faceted attack on our waistlines, not to mention our brains.

Projections: Health Care nightmare, as demand exceeds supply. Americans will try to come to Europe, for healthier living, and better healthcare, but will be increasingly denied access, as Europeans band together to keep the "illegals" out.

well said-

Another problem- that WAS breakfast. I'm sitting here after eating my oatmeal with blueberries and blackberries with one cup of black coffee.

That's why I have 140 lbs on my 5'8" body.