Source is the cover of the wikipedia page on "Obesity in America" statistics are very similar to the ones on the CDC's website.

This must end, and this must stop. Obesity in the United States is becoming an epidemic, I see it all over the place, and I'm in one of the least afflicted states.

What can we do to reverse this trend and fix it, short of a miracle medicine that regulates fat and calorie intake artificially? What can families, individuals, and the government do?

It's almost like being fat is becoming normal here(and I don't mean compared to a super model, I mean honest to god fat) I don't have a six pack or anything, I just stay in decent aerobic shape, and everywhere I go in public I see huge people everywhere I go that I can't picture ever being able to run, even if their lives depended on it, much less other strenuous activities.

edited 27th Sep '11 11:49:18 AM by Barkey

...tax the shit out of fast food?

Can't think of a way to do it that isn't blatantly authoritarian and/or involves taking serious potshots at the economy, since the American economy is built around people making shitty choices...

Yeah, that's the problem.

It's just that I consider myself of "normal" fitness and shape, a little on the skinny side muscle wise if anything. I just did a walk around the mall and was like "Hmm, none of the people in the food court look like they could run for their lives if this place was suddenly erupting in flames. Something is wrong."

You could try selling healthy food at cheaper prices, but considering how much that sort of food costs to import and keep fresh (never mind the powerful farming lobby in some states) you'd have one hell of a job of it.

Well, taxing is sort of working around a bigger root issue here, in that America subsidizes a lot of things that probably shouldn't be subsidized. If you made fast food more expensive, people would still eat nothing but shitty corn chips and drink soda full of corn syrup.

I am also gonna throw coconut oil out there.

Mostly because I am enjoying some excellent coconut ice cream right now.

But also because vegetable oil is terrible.

There are non-authoritarian solutions, but you can only apply them to kids. After all, adult fatties wouldn't sign up.

You could double the hours of physical education, or add a mandatory extracurricular sport. And you could make these kids exercise like crazy. Those that don't make the cutoff scores could be made to take remedial PE.

edited 27th Sep '11 12:00:28 PM by SavageHeathen

Even if you exercise them like crazy, if you don't fix their diets, they'll all be dying early from heart disease.

Yeah, I eat horribly and in huge quantities, but I also run 6 miles a day. Health issues in my future? Sure. But no fitness issues.

Anyhow, I'm not sure that's the solution Savage. I think finding some way to unentrench the corn subsidies in the US is the main solution.

You can still have your fries, but what you fry them in can make a load of difference. Horse fat is a good alternative to vegetable oil, for one.

Honestly, I just wish we could make something that gives things a salty taste without having so much actual damn salt in it.

Yeah, I don't think the PE classes would necessarily help. Destroying farm subsidiaries is about as likely as getting UHC passed tomorrow, though, so...

Corn syrup is an easy fix, it's being shoved in everything as a cheap sweetener because corn is subsidized.

The last time corn was this cheap and overproduced, it was made into corn Whiskey (the most profitable use it could be put to), and Americans had a "drinking epidemic". Whiskey breaks instead of coffee breaks. Whiskey with every meal.

Corn syrup is actually double-subsidized, because of corn subsidies and sugar quotas (which corn syrup counts for). Replace the corn subsidies with a corn reserve the government buys and stores for high-demand/low production scenarios (which is what we used to have in the US), and you have a system without all the toxic incentives of the current one.

edited 27th Sep '11 12:03:42 PM by deathjavu

The other thing is that enforced exercise programs still have to start somewhere, so in the strict sense, it's more authoritarian than just affecting prices, since someone will be actually ordering children at school to do their exercise.

But even then, the remaining problem is how shitty the American education system is. The children who often have the greatest obesity rates also usually have the least access to good schools.

Remember, thanks to the subsidies, the cheap food is generally going to be the shittiest.

I could stand to lose about twenty pounds. I can still run for my life, though.

There's some talk about how, when our diet improved due to farming methods and the Industrial Revolution and all that stuff, that our diet went from slightly better than starving, to a surplus. We then ended up getting taller on average, as we had teh extra calories and good stuff to reach our DNA-coded maximum height.

But our diet never shifted back to 'maintenance mode', on average. So we grew outwards, and end up with a plethora of obesity-related problems.

Considering that our recommended caloric intake is ~2000 or so daily (depends on gender), and the USA takes in an average of what, 3700 or so now? (I can't imagine eating that much in a day!) Every 3500 extra calories is a pound of fat. Doing the math on that, that's 3.4 pounds of weight gain a week - more if your metabolism is slower, less if it's faster, and some other factors.

Basically, don't eat more than you need. Once my metabolism slowed down, it took me about two years to realize that I was eating what I used to and needed to cut back. Now I'm holding steady - just need to either cut back a bit more or exercise so I start to lose weight.

I guess the easiest way to do it would be to make Medicare prices scale with health habits, and implement law to make the same true of private insurance, but that can go wrong in so many ways it's not even funny...

The problem with obesity is that once you become obese, getting back in shape is non-trivial.

Thus, extra effort (drastically increased PE) would be needed to make kids avoid obesity in the first place. Prevent them from growing into lard balls to begin with, then give subsidized gym to the working classes if you need to. We live in an image-conscious enough society: If they arrive to young adulthood relatively in shape, they'll work out to stay fuckable.

The problem with removing subsidies is that it might result on not having cheap food at all, and crappy food beats no food. I'm all for scrapping corn subsidies, but unless pretty much the same investment went to subsidize healthy food, there'd be serious problems. History has shown that the proles need abundant cheap stuff to munch.

Government is nosy and puritanical enough: Letting them systemmatically monitor our vices to determine how much we get taxed is a fundamentally bad idea.

edited 27th Sep '11 12:11:39 PM by SavageHeathen

Crappy food doesn't do the proles much good. I'd rather subsidize decent food for them than the shit they're stuck with now.

And that assumes far too much personal responsibility, Savage. By your logic, obesity wouldn't even exist now, because everyone wants to look good for mating already. There has to be some actual incentive, past "don't you want ass?"

Also, education is broken as it is. Spending less time on learning and more time on physical activity may not help in that regard...

I should think "you weigh too much" isn't that intrusive. You have to get on the scale every visit to the doctor's, anyhow. That's too much simplification, however. It definitely makes sense to tax you more for healthcare if you're overweight/smoke/do drugs/drink/etc., because those things do, in fact, put you at risk for higher-cost medical care...

edited 27th Sep '11 12:13:34 PM by USAF713

I think we could fix dietary issues easier than adjusting health care premiums due to weight. Some overweight people are that way due to some other medical condition, and not due to dietary faults.

HFCS and corn subsidies can go die in a fire, for all I care.

^ First sentence; dead on. If I'm pinching pennies, I shouldn't end up with a cart full of second-rate heavily-processed crap. Since I pinch pennies often, I typically end up with that second-rate crap. Hey, if eating healthy was cheaper than it is now, i think tons more people would default to doing it.

edited 27th Sep '11 12:15:37 PM by pvtnum11

Somewhere along the lines I got lucky because I hate feeling full. It makes me sluggish and useless. The only time I'll eat anything that counts as a meal is if I've been doing manual labor all day. I hate eating meals to the point where I am happy to graze all day. For instance: it took from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm to eat my breakfast sandwich. I know I don't eat the healthiest things, but at least my body's doing some damage control for me. Not that I'm overweight - I'm on the skinny side for my height an frame - but I could be.

The ridiculous amounts of sugars manufacturers put in our food is definitely a good place to start. What would be better than getting restaurants and factories to change their processed food methods, and even pressing exercise, would be getting people to cook their own meals more often. It doesn't take much effort to toss a roast in the oven and forget it. It really won't take much out of your day to cook some pasta and toss it in olive oil and whatever. Yes, you do have time to do it. If you don't, either there is something drastically wrong or your life needs restructured a bit. The decrease in processed foods - and the high levels of sugars, salts, and preservatives that go with them - would go a long way.

edited 27th Sep '11 12:15:59 PM by Bur

Make a healthy caloric level per pound standard, varying across food types. Overtax foods that go beyond it to fund health care.

Manufacturers would drop the sugar content to manageable levels in a heartbeat.

edited 27th Sep '11 12:17:26 PM by SavageHeathen

Slow-cookers are a gift from the gods. Toss in some stuff, set to whatever, forget about it for a few hours. Tasty meal awaits you. It's even better if you use the plastic liners for the pot, so you don't even have to do any dishes!

That's actually rather brilliant, I must say.

edited 27th Sep '11 12:19:18 PM by USAF713

ATM I need to gain weight (and also I live outside the US)

But you do see a lot of fat people and I always wonder if they noticed or not, or if you just wake up one day and can't see your toes.

While you're intent is pretty good Savage, it's rather hypocritical to say "The government is too nosy and controlling" and then turn around and talk about government mandated gym class for everybody.

Diet isn't the answer, exercise isn't the answer, they both are.

Just as much as I hate all the obesity around in the US now, I hate that it seems rarer and rarer that anybody takes the time to do a little exercise. It's like if you were to approach most Americans on the street and ask them if they can do 10 pushups, most of the answers would be "I don't know."

If you don't know, you have a fucking problem, and you need to drop and try to do 20 or something. A fit body is a fit mind.

You don't need to go to a gym or anything to stay in shape, I don't even have a gym membership anymore. Just take 20 minutes out of the hours most Americans spend parked in front of the fucking TV or PC to do some crunches and pushups. Hell, do it during the fucking commercials. If you're too lazy to even consider that, you might as well do the world a favor and jump in front of a train.

edited 27th Sep '11 12:33:48 PM by Barkey

Improving our abysmal health education would be a good start.

Keep Big Gov out of my Ben & Jerry's >:(