Getting Britain and America fit.

America and Britain, two countries united (or divided) by a common language... and a serious fitness problem. 30.5% of Americans are obese. 64% are overweight. For Britain, 24% of our adults are obese, and we have comparable numbers of the overweight, myself included. Childhood obesity in America reached 19.6% of children in 2008. Again, Britain has similar problems.

Both countries seem to have similar issues. Do they come about for the same reason? Or, are their problems separate? Once this is identified, what can one or both nations do to solve their waistline problem?

edited 10th May '11 11:43:27 AM by GameChainsaw

I couldn't give you definitive statistics or anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if a contributing factor is both our first world economies and the fact that lots of what used to be physical jobs are being replaced by automation. We also have a much higher yield of jobs that involve sitting at a desk and being sedentary while working.

What Barkey said.

There's also the value of commodity goods. Cheap things which are not good for health.

As for what can be done to solve it? I have no clue.

Make more ergonomic and more active office sittings. Remove wheeled chairs, or whatever those are called, so that people have to actually stand up to go check the printer or something, in particular in the IT field. Instead of "dumb chairs" (like dumb TV), have those autoexercise chairs with vibration, movable/pushable parts, or an itching system that forces you to stand up every certain amount of time. Or do the converse: integrate laptops and other devices with exercise machines such as walkbands. Promote walking to/from job or using bikes, of course. This means roofing some streets and avenues so that people can actually use them to go take the bus or pick their bike while there's raining or extreme UV. Have dedicated restroom floors or buildings where people can go take a nap, like those I've seen in some colleges. And all that is only in the workplace; much more stuff can be done at school.

The only problem with several of those notions is that they would damage worker productivity and thus company profits.

It may be more advisable to encourage people to exercise more (and more effectively) from a young age, if they cannot exercise in work. Therefore, exercise in the home or in one's leisure time.

More walking tracks and exercise areas. Even more sidewalks. More localization so people have a reason to get out and walk.

Designing our cities to rely on automobiles has a cost.

Make cooking classes mandatory in school. You can make a much healthier meal at home than from eating out, and cheaper.

Better education for food prep/food budgeting so that the use of unhealthier fast food/pre made stuff is reduced.

I'm starting to think cooking class should be mandatory in late primary.

Thats elementary for the yanks.

Getting rid of corn subsidies would help a little, but I don't think there are any magic bullets.

Mandatory cooking classes are not a good idea. We already have mandatory health classes which don't seem to help much. Plus there's not enough resources in school to teach other subjects as it is.

edited 10th May '11 12:14:06 PM by storyyeller

^^ This. I had one term of cookery classes per year in Year 7 until Year 9 and it was, in a word, terrible. I learnt nothing of importance and doubt I could cook a proper meal from scratch.

^^Anything can be messed up if its done incompetently. British language classes are a national joke. Doesn't make mandating learning a foreign language at a young age a bad idea.

edited 10th May '11 12:27:25 PM by GameChainsaw

Eleven years of Welsh classes and I know very little of it.

You-kay! You-kay! You-kay!

Genetic engineering.

/Thread

Reprogram bodies that are used to storing as much fat as possible for a harsh winter. Or get Americans to actually need the high calorie diet by making them work hard on farms.

Make healthy food cheaper. Right now Drunkscriblerian and I are eating nothing but pasta with a bechamel sauce because meat and veggies are so goddamn expensive.

That too. When I Got kicked out by my grandparents moved to Huntington, I went from eating fresh, organic, healthy-as-fuck stuff with lots of garden veggies to stocking up on ramen noodles and hamburger helper. :/

How expensive is fruit and veg roughly for your guys in the US?

That's because all they teach is random facts instead of making you do or practice anything.

Ian: Unless you live in a rural area (or a large city that can afford to import a lot), pretty damn expensive.

You can buy a six-pack of boxed pasta for the rough price of two apples in my town. ;_;

edited 10th May '11 1:49:01 PM by Diamonnes

Could you give a rough figure at all? (It would be great help to my visualisation )

edited 10th May '11 1:50:17 PM by IanExMachina

I can get a pound of pasta for under a dollar, but veggies run from $2/lb to $5/lb. Same goes for meat. Right now the cheapest I can get is chicken, and that's almost $3/lb.

Where do you live? San Francisco? I've rarely seen chicken or beef prices (and I'm not talking ground) above $2-3 a pound in Colorado for non-super special cuts.

Especially if you factor in the sales and coupons the grocery stores throw in just about every week.

Rural town in the NW corner of Washington. Drunkscriblerian and I bitch about food prices quite regularly.

Obesity is hard to defeat in the Anglophone world, just because American food is really designed to kill you. It actually does taste great, but that doesn't change that fact.