Obesity Nation: Why Are Americans So Fat?

Americans eat too many low nutritional value/high caloric content foods, exercise too little if at all, and use food as a pacifier to compensate for life’s frustrations. They too easily excuse their poor physical condition, perhaps not realizing just how gross they look. Yet they worship at the feet of what passes for commercial (and unrealistic) beauty. Go figure.

Americans eat more processed foods than any other country. By processing foods, the body doesn’t have to work as hard to digest the food energy out of it. Add the socially acceptible sedentary work habits of americans and you have people who collect additional pounds of stored food energy. If americans ate more raw-harder to digest-foods and added more movement to their lives, they could lose more weight.

Pun intended – It’s a big problem that I think is largely due to:
1. Fastfood restaurants with they’re fried foods and low nutrition content.
2. Processed/manufactured low nutrition, high sugar food that is subsidized by our Government because they’re mainly owned by corporations. 3. We’re bombarded by food, junk/snack food and sodas everywhere we go with vending machines,mini-marts in gas stations, marketing, etc…
4. The size of our dining plates have actually increased to 12″ to 15″ today from 8″ to 9″ before 1960. We’re taught to fill our plate and clean it.
5. Technology: Kids just don’t play outside as much because they have all these gadgets to play with.
6. Crime: Another reason kids don’t play outside as much because there are so many pedaphiles or kidnappings in the consciousness.
7. PE taken out of the schools as well as music don’t form good habits and care for health and community.
8. Politicians that are influenced by corporations. Write to them and let’s take back our county. Regulate all this excessive marketing and junk war against us and our kids. Stop subsidizing junk food.

I like the quote that said “Only the rich can afford to eat well.” When you are stuck in a dead end job making minimum wage without hope of ever being promoted, why should you care what you look like or how much you weigh? Your life sucks, so why not eat to be happy until you die from it?
The middle class was once pretty fit, despite working sedentary jobs. The lower class has been fat since it became cheaper to eat crap than real food. Opps, now there’s no middle class, everyone’s poor, only the rich can afford to eat well….

Who is to say that what industry feeds beef/chicken to make them put on more bulk does not also affect our bodies and causes us to want to eat more and causes our brain to continue to want to eat and we as human beings bulk up just as livestock. The effect of what livestock eats does not stop when they are slaughtered and we buy that meat at the store. What industry feeds them is still in the product. Just as monosodium glutamate tenderizes our food it also has been shown to affect our stomachs when we eat the food that monosodium glutamate was sprinkled on. That’s why people ask if monosodium glutamate is used on the food. Think about what industry feeds our livestock. Why wouldn’t it also affect us?

Why are we getting so fat? Are you kidding me? Have you looked at the ingredients on our foods lately? With all the additives and preservatives, its no wonder. Head of the list? MSG. It is a known flavor enhancer, but also causes weight gain. Take this and all the other crap out of our food and you will see a healthier America. This won’t happen, too many food company lobbyists in Washington, paying off our leaders to let them put anything they want in our food, and we can’t stop them. Money talks you know.

It is absolutely untrue that only rich people can afford to eat healthy foods.
Example cheap/healthy foods:
* Bag of brown rice in bulk
* Chicken breast/thigh
* Oatmeal is very cheap and healthy
* Eggs are very high quality protein at a low price
Weekly lunch: Turkey Sandwich
* $5 Loaf of bread (at the highest)
* $10 Turkey
* $5 Cheese
* $2 Lettuce
* $2 Tomato
$24/7 days = $3.42 for lunch every day!
People that buy lunch at McDonalds usually pay about the same amount for a cheap unhealthy meal.
In the end it just amounts to the fact that Americans don’t put a high priority on staying in shape. People don’t like being fat, but they love the taste of fastfood even more.

a turkey and cheese sandwich in bread isn’t healthy at all
also, someone said that raw foods are harder to digest, takes more energy to digest,
that is totally wrong
lrn2 nutrition

Many Americans are lazy and hate to perform any labor task. Next time your office is rearranged, pay attention to those doing the work. They’re probably young and in-shape.
I can’t speak for the rest of the nation, but food is very expensive in Boston. Whole Foods, Shaws, Star Market, Hannaford, all very expensive. I make it a point to shop out of the city whenever I can. Unless you cook a food for lunch, making your own food is expensive. Cold-cuts are expensive. I don’t have much time to cook and plan meals.
If we went back in time, one would notice that house wives are preparing lunch and wholesome foods for the husband and children.
The problem I think can be broken down into the following elements:
1) City procured food is expensive; couple this with the time it takes to actually cook and prepare meals and I can understand why many opt for the convenience of fast food.
2) A majority of women no longer plan quality meals for the family.
3) Processed food is not as wholesome as a from-scratch meal.
4) Many people work long hours and just don’t have an interest in making meals after work.
5) Fewer people exercise for any substantial length of time. Walking around the business plaza IS NOT EXERCISE!
6) Many jobs are now sedentary in nature. Jobs involving manual labor are looked down upon and generally not very well paying unless it is a specific skilled labor.
Case in point: Take a tour of a large construction job sometime. If you’re lucky enough to find one with Americans performing the labor, you will notice that MOST of the men are in relatively good shape. Although I have no way of proving it, I would guess that the proportion of in-shape/out-of-shape would be closer to America 40 years ago.
Do yourself a favor and get off your lazy a$$.

I agree with what Dan wrote: “Any food (in particular fast food) can become addictive because eating makes us feel happy (which most likely has to do with chemicals in the brain). As a result, people often use food, not to satisfy their hunger, but to “escape” stress and sadness. Plus, like drug addiction, people become dependent on food as their source of escape, and they need more and more food to experience the same “high” as before.”
I am almost 60 years old and still struggle with my weight. I’m an accomplished person. I’m not lazy, stupid, or gross as some people suggest. Society is still treating the symptom: overeating and lack of exercise. It’s a mind thing, which has not been adequately addressed. I believe it’s because no one knows how.

Finally – this is what I have been thinking for years. High Fructose Corn Syrup is what is making our children fat. It is cheaper than cane sugar. How do they fatten cows? Corn! Why did we start growing so much corn? We paid the American farmers to grow corn to save them from going bankrupt and we paid them to grow corn. We had to do something with it so we use it instead of sugar. Coca Cola, and most sweets in the past used cane sugar for sweetner. Now it is cheaper to use corn syrup. How do you make a cake from scratch? You use cane sugar. What is in a cake, cookies, cereal, and anything you buy at the store? High Fructose Corn syrup! We are the cows being fed by the corn!

The use of high fructose corn syrup came about due to the excessive tax on cane sugar. So again, thank the government.

Americans are getting fatter, cause good nutrition is for the rich. Most people don’t know how bad McDonald’s food is for you or how it’s manufactured. They look at the very low initial cost and yummy taste and buy the hamburger instead of fixing meals themselves.
Americans are also too fast paced, rushed, impatient to fix food themselves. Many don’t want to eat what doesn’t taste good. The very foods that will keep Americans healthy (vegetables) fit that bill.
Americans also eat far too much processed and tainted non-organic food.
It’s really not rocket science as to why Americans are so fat, but they don’t want to do anything about it.

And what the hell is wrong with these parents?! Did you hear that kid in the video? “I’ve never tried watermelon before.” How pathetic! They don’t even know what fruits and vegetables look like or what the name of them is. I find this pathetic and sickening that’s it’s gotten this bad in the USA

Sorry, eggs were supposed to be in the next sentence. Other countries with less income have healthier people — it doesn’t cost much to grow a garden. Healthy foods do not need to be expensive. If you spend on the basics in life, you have everything you need.

I will say that it is up to every American to be accountable for thier own wieght. Supper Size does not help.Fast food places will make you food that put wieght and makes you more hungry. Corporate America does research to make food that will make you more hungry so you spend more money and they get richer.Americans get fatter and Corperate get richer.

People are fat because they eat easy food. They go to the store and buy pre-cooked things. Everything is ready made and ready to eat. Stop making excuses. You eat like that because is convenient. My co-worker and I shop in the same grocery store and she buys everything pre-cooked. The labels show green veggies and it says healthy so she gets it. People seem to thing that the frozen food they see in the market is for every day. I too buy pizza and lasagna and those delicious burritos and other stuff but for me is just emergency food.. I only eat than like once a month or so… Most people have a dozen excuses for their bad behavior.. Remember this words: You eat like pig… You’ll look like one! You are looking at the new divide… Fat people are becoming to pariah of society.

Its all a big joke.I work in a rehab center.Most of the patiens that come in there are obese poeple,with knee rplacementes,hipreplacements,bonefractures all caused by beeing FAT.Ask there home activities.None…but sitting ,eating and sleeping.A young man that weight 600 pounds ,trying to tell me :I DONT EAT THAT MUCH:but had a big bag of goodies sitting in the corner and suckt up 4-6 large soft drinks a day.Most are wheelchair bound just because they are to FAT and there huge legs just cant support the rest of the body weight.I hear all kinds of exuses about why they FAT.there is no excuse.Stop eating by god and start moving around.They eat junkfood because they poor?yeah right.they have enough money to buy the junkfood.Would be a lot cheaper to buy the food and fix it yourself.But no body wants to cook anymore,so just go to Mc Donalds or all the other fast food places.Spend a fortune and just get fatter.I was Fat.Lost all my weight after I took a good look in the mirrow.Im very active now and eat right.I feel better and are very healthy at age 51.I am doing weightlifting so I can move around all those Fat poeple that come to oure rehab center.I tryed to find an excuse about the weight i had gained.There is no excuse unless there is a medical reason.

Well there are a lot of reasons..

First, America has an overwhelming surplus of corn. And this has led to corn syrup, corn starch, high fructose corn syrup, etc. all being pumped into everything imaginable. Second, there’s other equally toxic chemicals like BHT, sodium nitrate, food dyes, etc. If anyone in American born after 1985 lives to 2035 without spending at least 1 year with an OBESE BMI, you’ll have to avoid this crap altogether.

But to do that? You’ll have to breastfeed, because EVERY baby formula on the market is infested to the brim with every chemical imaginable. And then you’ll send your kids off to kindergarten… But first they must get their first dosage of MERCURY. Don’t worry, they will get loads more of these special dosages later on. ;) Those annual flu shots, the Hep. B shots, those random “epidemics” like Avian Flu, Swine flu, etc.

Don’t bother trying to “eat” healthy while shopping at ghettos like Trader Joe’s or Wal*Mart, because Organic or Processed there is nothing truly organic anymore.

If you want to survive without becoming a fattened calf ready for slaughter, grow your own vegetables, grow your own wheat, grow your own fruits, grow EVERYTHING.

The world is a greedy corporate cesspool ran by mongrels that hunger for money.
They don’t give one crap about you, your kids, or anyone. They care about the $$$.
Everything in the stores is plastered with “HEALTHY”, “VITAMINS”, “MINERALS”, “____ FREE”, but that is just flashy $@*# to get you idiots to buy more of their crap. Look at the INGREDIENTS and you’ll see two paragraphs of garbage.

POP-TARTS for breakfast? MMMMmm Gotta love those seven ingredients of 28g of sugar, per pastry. Only 2.5 the average of a bowl of Fruit Loops or Lucky Charms! Want some Cheerios? Enjoy that modified corn starch! EAT HEALTHY??? EAT FATTENING!

Enjoy your cesspool foods. ;)