Blaming individuals for obesity may be altogether wrong...

ryry_

I'll never stop thinking it's utterly hilarious that people are so convinced that 'obesity is a choice!' and 'eat less exercise more, the weight will come off!' is valid. i'm also convinced that most people who think this way have never dealt with being fat (not chubby or a couple extra pounds, i mean FAT.)

Um, that's exactly how it works... less calories in than calories out.

I think she's talking about the approach and not the physiology of it. There's a lot that goes on within out bodies that fights losing weight and a lot of unrealistic expectations that are put out by the media. People are often just told to cut calories, try to do so, and binge. And it's also significantly easier to lose weight than to keep it off. The majority of people who are obese have lost weight before, but have gained it back and more. You won't find many obese people who have never tried to lose weight. Small calorie deficit isn't often preached...just a calorie deficit.

I have been preoccupied with my weight almost all of my life and I had done an extensive amount of article reading and web research before I joined MFP. I thought it was totally cool to cut my calories down to 1300 even though I'm over 6 ft tall. It's a recipe for disaster but it's what we're told works. And I see so many women on the elliptical rather than strength training. I'm usually the only woman at my gym who is strength training. But I was spending hours on the elliptical before MFP before too because I knew I could lose weight that way. Keeping it off was another matter completely.

So I get it. The commonly preached "Calories in and calories out" approach is not particularly helpful the way it's currently being sold.

Sorry, but that's the science of weight loss. I didn't want to write a small novel, thus the short answer.

How is it being "sold"? If you eat more calores than you burn in a day, even with exercise, you'll gain weight.

It is less calories in vs. less out, sorry, but that's what it is. You don't even need to exercise to lose weight if you burn more than you take in.

It's up to the person to figure out what level of caloric intake they need. Who "told you" that you needed to cut to 1300 calories because "that's what works"? I mean come on, there is personal responsibility in this.

I agree and disagree.

Yeah, if you eat fewer calories than you burn you will lose weight.

However, our physiology can make this extraordinarily difficult to actually accomplish. It takes a significant and consistent act of will to do. It requires a fairly significant amount of knowledge and effort.

As I said, it's simple, but it's not easy. There simply has to be more we can do as a society to make this easier. If we don't, then the trend will never reverse.

Emma is, like myself, a public health student. I know where she's coming from here.

I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or not. The statement was "less exercise more, the weight will come off!' is valid"

Yes or no.

Of course it's valid.

We're talking about two different things here. One is the fact that if an individual consumes fewer calories than he or she expends, that individual will lose weight. Now let me copy and paste:

However, our physiology can make this extraordinarily difficult to actually accomplish. It takes a significant and consistent act of will to do. It requires a fairly significant amount of knowledge and effort.

And my response to that would be as a society increase the focus on personal responsibility and hard work. The very fact you are trying to point to different things in society is just gives people an excuse. What are you going to change?

TV isn't going anywhere
advertising isn't going anywhere
Cars aren't going anywhere
Video games aren't going anywhere
Fast Food/Restraunts aren't going anywhere
Diet Coke isn't going anywhere

Let's just have the govt set up voluntary weight loss internment camps where people can go and put on a plan for weight loss that is free where you are monitored and your intake/expenditure is controlled. Guess what, even if you did that, people would have a choice and that would be hard so people wouldn't do that either.

jonnythan

And my response to that would be increase the focus on personal responsibility and hard work. The very fact you are trying to point to different things in society is just gives people an excuse. What are you going to change?

Examining and understanding why things happen is a fundamentally different concept from giving people excuses.

Things happen for reasons. When those things are bad things that we want to change, we must understand the reasons if we are to address them.

We must be able to talk about those reasons in a logical, rational manner. Do you want to do that, or do you not want to do that?

_Emma_Problema_

In 1996 or 97, the obesity epidemic can be accounted for by a change in the definition of "obesity." When the CDC changed the definition, 30 million Americans who had been of normal weight now found themselves to be obese, all without gaining a pound.

Great point! Although I think it affected classifications for "overweight" more. And BMI has stuck regardless of the fact that they've found that having a BMI in the "oveweight" range is not actually associated with a greater risk of chronic illness (cancer, heart disease, etc) like having a BMI in the "obese" category is.

And a particularly interesting point is that 3 of the I think 5 physicians who were part of the decision to make the change were also on the board for Weight Watchers...DUN DUN DUNNNNNN!!!

There is a lot of money to be made from making people feel bad about their bodies. There sure is.

Hezzietiger1

I've been overweight since I was 11 years old... I now weigh less than I did at 11 years old. Obesity is a choice. Once I made the choice to accept that I have the power to choose fit over fat, I overcame. Still losing. The fitness weightloss industry is worth billions.. now the government can tap into that $. End of story.

LaurenAOK

And if "eat less, exercise more" really worked, then obesity rates wouldn't be increasing, as the CDC has been telling people that for decades!

I disagree with this particular statement. In 99% of cases, "eat less, exercise more" does work. Just because the CDC has been recommending it doesn't mean people have actually been doing it. I know plenty of overweight people who know they could probably lose weight if they ate healthier and started exercising, but most won't give it a try because they think it's too hard.

I do agree with the article to an extent, though. There are certainly outside factors that influence obesity. I think there's a balance between individual responsibility and other factors. In my opinion, people should be doing as much as they can on the "individual responsibility" end of it - as for the factors outside our control, there's not much we can do about that.

RGv2

Sorry, in today's day and age, it doesn't take that much effort to gain the knowledge. You're making a case for laziness now.

I'm not "making a case" for anything.

I'm trying to explain why things are the way they are. You can't deny that obesity rates are increasing. You also can't deny that many people try to lose weight and fail.

How do we explain these phenomena? The answer to the first is that it is becoming easier and cheaper and more delicious to eat a lot of calories. The answer to the second is that, while simple, losing weight for a lot of people is extraordinarily hard.

Don't disagree, so why isn't everyone obese then? I have all of the access to all of the cheap delicious calories?

So it's the fast food joints fault? It's losing weight itself fault for "being too hard"?

Coddling commence...

You're not understanding my point at all.

What, if anything, do you think we should do (as a society) about obesity?

I say nothing, I don't see it as a societal issue. People can take responsibility for themselves the same way I, and many others on this site did.

We went from cals in vs. cals out doesn't work to here? I think you were looking for someone to get going so....

BogQueen1

Commenting to read more at home.

_Emma_Problema_

Oh. One of those. Yea. No time for the games. Save the world yourself.

Will do! I'm on it! Hence why I'm going to Columbia's public health school next fall and studying the social determinants of health. I'm on it!

You go back to yelling at people on the boards because it makes you feel good about yourself.

jonnythan

I say nothing, I don't see it as a societal issue.

Take a look at health care costs associated with obesity-related diseases like diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure.

Now take a look at how much the US spends per person per year on health care.

Now take a look at your insurance premiums.

It is a societal issue. We literally all share the costs.

_Emma_Problema_

I say nothing, I don't see it as a societal issue.

Take a look at health care costs associated with obesity-related diseases like diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure.

Now take a look at how much the US spends per person per year on health care.

Now take a look at your insurance premiums.

It is a societal issue. We literally all share the costs.

^THIS

If you are so self-absorbed that you don't care a bit about the welfare of others, then care about how much money the govt is spending on healthcare for preventable disease. I mean, the govt also spends ludicrous amounts on defense but that's another conversation completely.

ryry_

And my response to that would be increase the focus on personal responsibility and hard work. The very fact you are trying to point to different things in society is just gives people an excuse. What are you going to change?

Examining and understanding why things happen is a fundamentally different concept from giving people excuses.

Things happen for reasons. When those things are bad things that we want to change, we must understand the reasons if we are to address them.

We must be able to talk about those reasons in a logical, rational manner. Do you want to do that, or do you not want to do that?

I defintely do. And I think as a society there have definitely been steps forward. McDonald's for example. Having calorie counts right on the menu. It has definitely impacted what I would order and how much after knowing the calorie counts. Having similar information on websites is also great. People still need to make the decision.

It is ironic that literally every step forward and great invention has been made to make our lifes easier, but also more prone to obesity if we maintain the status quo. I'm honestly not sure what as a society we can do, because soon you won't even need to excercise to look for the controller because it will be motion and voice activated. The way I see it, its education, and then the person seeing it through.

If you were the ultimate authority and free reign to change...what would you do?

ETA: And I think my prior comment about the attitude of our society stands. Above all else weight loss is a mental game. I believe if we had a "blue collar" and "No excuses, get it done" attitude shift in our society towards this topic it would have the biggest effect. It's the one constant i see in the people who are successful in weight loss / maintencance.

BeachIron

Oh. One of those. Yea. No time for the games. Save the world yourself.

Will do! I'm on it! Hence why I'm going to Columbia's public health school next fall and studying the social determinants of health. I'm on it!

You go back to yelling at people on the boards because it makes you feel good about yourself.

Yea. You're 22. You will, or will not, eventually learn that the only people you can really help are the ones that want to be helped. I'm all very impressed with the fact that you're about to start a public health curriculum. Here's to hoping that you'll try and wind your way through all of the social science crap that you're about to be exposed to. If you want to start seeing real change then tell people the truth. Stop blaming sugar, fast food, mean people, and the rest of the other nonsense and start telling people that they have to eat less and exercise more. That's what so many of us on here are doing. And yes, I will continue to say the same thing, over and over again, "eat less and exercise more." Why? Because it works. Look around.

jonnythan

Mandatory calorie content on all prepared food.
Mandate that insurance must cover nutritional counseling.
Mandatory health education at several grade levels.
End corn subsidies.

Those are just a few quick hits off the top of my head. It boils down to the individual but there are things we can do to decrease obesity rates.

jonnythan

Oh. One of those. Yea. No time for the games. Save the world yourself.

Will do! I'm on it! Hence why I'm going to Columbia's public health school next fall and studying the social determinants of health. I'm on it!

You go back to yelling at people on the boards because it makes you feel good about yourself.

Yea. You're 22. You will, or will not, eventually learn that the only people you can really help are the ones that want to be helped. I'm all very impressed with the fact that you're about to start a public health curriculum. Here's to hoping that you'll try and wind your way through all of the social science crap that you're about to be exposed to. If you want to start seeing real change then tell people the truth. Stop blaming sugar, fast food, mean people, and the rest of the other nonsense and start telling people that they have to eat less and exercise more. That's what so many of us on here are doing. And yes, I will continue to say the same thing, over and over again, "eat less and exercise more." Why? Because it works. Look around.

I'm not 22.

Throwing your hands up in the air and saying oh well helps no one.

I appreciate her attitude here a great deal more than I appreciate yours. It's people like Emma who effect actual change.

BeachIron

Oh. One of those. Yea. No time for the games. Save the world yourself.

Will do! I'm on it! Hence why I'm going to Columbia's public health school next fall and studying the social determinants of health. I'm on it!

You go back to yelling at people on the boards because it makes you feel good about yourself.

Yea. You're 22. You will, or will not, eventually learn that the only people you can really help are the ones that want to be helped. I'm all very impressed with the fact that you're about to start a public health curriculum. Here's to hoping that you'll try and wind your way through all of the social science crap that you're about to be exposed to. If you want to start seeing real change then tell people the truth. Stop blaming sugar, fast food, mean people, and the rest of the other nonsense and start telling people that they have to eat less and exercise more. That's what so many of us on here are doing. And yes, I will continue to say the same thing, over and over again, "eat less and exercise more." Why? Because it works. Look around.

I'm not 22.

Throwing your hands up in the air and saying oh well helps no one.

I appreciate her attitude here a great deal more than I appreciate yours. It's people like Emma who effect actual change.

Did you read a damn thing I wrote? Or are you just going off again?

ryry_

Mandatory calorie content on all prepared food.
Mandate that insurance must cover nutritional counseling.
Mandatory health education at several grade levels.
End corn subsidies.

Those are just a few quick hits off the top of my head. It boils down to the individual but there are things we can do to decrease obesity rates.

Interesting. I would submit that every single one of those things could happen tommorow and it would have no effect.

Health education early on might have some influence. Curious if anyone has stats on the introduction of sex education and the decline of teenage pregancies? (not meant to be sarcastic)

What is line of thinking for the corn subsidies?

ryry_

Oh. One of those. Yea. No time for the games. Save the world yourself.

Will do! I'm on it! Hence why I'm going to Columbia's public health school next fall and studying the social determinants of health. I'm on it!

You go back to yelling at people on the boards because it makes you feel good about yourself.

Yea. You're 22. You will, or will not, eventually learn that the only people you can really help are the ones that want to be helped. I'm all very impressed with the fact that you're about to start a public health curriculum. Here's to hoping that you'll try and wind your way through all of the social science crap that you're about to be exposed to. If you want to start seeing real change then tell people the truth. Stop blaming sugar, fast food, mean people, and the rest of the other nonsense and start telling people that they have to eat less and exercise more. That's what so many of us on here are doing. And yes, I will continue to say the same thing, over and over again, "eat less and exercise more." Why? Because it works. Look around.

I'm not 22.

Throwing your hands up in the air and saying oh well helps no one.

I appreciate her attitude here a great deal more than I appreciate yours. It's people like Emma who effect actual change.

Come on now Johnnythan. Really? Do you know how many times you have posted content almost identical to Beachiron's post?

etoiles_argentees

just copying one of my ole posts again...

Ohhhhh...

Cliffs:
When your body cannot store any more fat in it's existing cells, it creates new fat cells.
You cannot get rid of fat cells once your body has created them.
Thin people don't have as many fat cells in your body, therefore it is harder for thin people to gain weight.


You might find this interesting. :

While I'm not keen on the entire set - point theory, I do think genetic inheritance plays a very important part in the body returning to a "comfortable" weight. I really think weight is due to a combination of both genes and environment. After reading articles like the following I can't help but wonder if dieting is just too hard for some. My thinking (at the moment ) leans towards the possibility that people who relapse are just tired of the struggle to maintain the constant vigilance. Maybe it's due to a shifting of values where remaining thin is no longer a top priority in life, or counting calories and thinking about food becomes too time consuming and starts taking away from someone's life instead of adding to it. It's nice to be free from analyzing your options every time you eat something, to be able to eat something because that's what you "want", and not what you "should" have.


I'm sure there are many reasons, just throwing some possibilities out there

May 8, 2007
Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside
By GINA KOLATA

It was 1959. Jules Hirsch, a research physician at Rockefeller University, had gotten curious about weight loss in the obese. He was about to start a simple experiment that would change forever the way scientists think about fat.

Obese people, he knew, had huge fat cells, stuffed with glistening yellow fat. What happened to those cells when people lost weight, he wondered. Did they shrink or did they go away? He decided to find out.

It seemed straightforward. Dr. Hirsch found eight people who had been fat since childhood or adolescence and who agreed to live at the Rockefeller University Hospital for eight months while scientists would control their diets, make them lose weight and then examine their fat cells.

The study was rigorous and demanding. It began with an agonizing four weeks of a maintenance diet that assessed the subjects’ metabolism and caloric needs. Then the diet began. The only food permitted was a liquid formula providing 600 calories a day, a regimen that guaranteed they would lose weight. Finally, the subjects spent another four weeks on a diet that maintained them at their new weights, 100 pounds lower than their initial weights, on average.

Dr. Hirsch answered his original question — the subjects’ fat cells had shrunk and were now normal in size. And everyone, including Dr. Hirsch, assumed that the subjects would leave the hospital permanently thinner.

That did not happen. Instead, Dr. Hirsch says, “they all regained.” He was horrified. The study subjects certainly wanted to be thin, so what went wrong? Maybe, he thought, they had some deep-seated psychological need to be fat.

So Dr. Hirsch and his colleagues, including Dr. Rudolph L. Leibel, who is now at Columbia University, repeated the experiment and repeated it again. Every time the result was the same. The weight, so painstakingly lost, came right back. But since this was a research study, the investigators were also measuring metabolic changes, psychiatric conditions, body temperature and pulse. And that led them to a surprising conclusion: fat people who lost large amounts of weight might look like someone who was never fat, but they were very different. In fact, by every metabolic measurement, they seemed like people who were starving.

Before the diet began, the fat subjects’ metabolism was normal — the number of calories burned per square meter of body surface was no different from that of people who had never been fat. But when they lost weight, they were burning as much as 24 percent fewer calories per square meter of their surface area than the calories consumed by those who were naturally thin.

The Rockefeller subjects also had a psychiatric syndrome, called semi-starvation neurosis, which had been noticed before in people of normal weight who had been starved. They dreamed of food, they fantasized about food or about breaking their diet. They were anxious and depressed; some had thoughts of suicide. They secreted food in their rooms. And they binged.

The Rockefeller researchers explained their observations in one of their papers: “It is entirely possible that weight reduction, instead of resulting in a normal state for obese patients, results in an abnormal state resembling that of starved nonobese individuals.”

Eventually, more than 50 people lived at the hospital and lost weight, and every one had physical and psychological signs of starvation. There were a very few who did not get fat again, but they made staying thin their life’s work, becoming Weight Watchers lecturers, for example, and, always, counting calories and maintaining themselves in a permanent state of starvation.

“Did those who stayed thin simply have more willpower?” Dr. Hirsch asked. “In a funny way, they did.”

One way to interpret Dr. Hirsch and Dr. Leibel’s studies would be to propose that once a person got fat, the body would adjust, making it hopeless to lose weight and keep it off. The issue was important, because if getting fat was the problem, there might be a solution to the obesity epidemic: convince people that any weight gain was a step toward an irreversible condition that they most definitely did not want to have.

But another group of studies showed that that hypothesis, too, was wrong.

It began with studies that were the inspiration of Dr. Ethan Sims at the University of Vermont, who asked what would happen if thin people who had never had a weight problem deliberately got fat.

His subjects were prisoners at a nearby state prison who volunteered to gain weight. With great difficulty, they succeeded, increasing their weight by 20 percent to 25 percent. But it took them four to six months, eating as much as they could every day. Some consumed 10,000 calories a day, an amount so incredible that it would be hard to believe, were it not for the fact that there were attendants present at each meal who dutifully recorded everything the men ate.

Once the men were fat, their metabolisms increased by 50 percent. They needed more than 2,700 calories per square meter of their body surface to stay fat but needed just 1,800 calories per square meter to maintain their normal weight.

When the study ended, the prisoners had no trouble losing weight. Within months, they were back to normal and effortlessly stayed there.

The implications were clear. There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body’s metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed.

That, of course, was contrary to what every scientist had thought, and Dr. Sims knew it, as did Dr. Hirsch.

The message never really got out to the nation’s dieters, but a few research scientists were intrigued and asked the next question about body weight: Is body weight inherited, or is obesity more of an inadvertent, almost unconscious response to a society where food is cheap, abundant and tempting? An extra 100 calories a day will pile on 10 pounds in a year, public health messages often say. In five years, that is 50 pounds.

The assumption was that environment determined weight, but Dr. Albert Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania wondered if that was true and, if so, to what extent. It was the early 1980s, long before obesity became what one social scientist called a moral panic, but a time when those questions of nature versus nurture were very much on Dr. Stunkard’s mind.

He found the perfect tool for investigating the nature-nurture question — a Danish registry of adoptees developed to understand whether schizophrenia was inherited. It included meticulous medical records of every Danish adoption between 1927 and 1947, including the names of the adoptees’ biological parents, and the heights and weights of the adoptees, their biological parents and their adoptive parents.

Dr. Stunkard ended up with 540 adults whose average age was 40. They had been adopted when they were very young — 55 percent had been adopted in the first month of life and 90 percent were adopted in the first year of life. His conclusions, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1986, were unequivocal. The adoptees were as fat as their biological parents, and how fat they were had no relation to how fat their adoptive parents were.

The scientists summarized it in their paper: “The two major findings of this study were that there was a clear relation between the body-mass index of biologic parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that genetic influences are important determinants of body fatness; and that there was no relation between the body-mass index of adoptive parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that childhood family environment alone has little or no effect.”

In other words, being fat was an inherited condition.

Dr. Stunkard also pointed out the implications: “Current efforts to prevent obesity are directed toward all children (and their parents) almost indiscriminately. Yet if family environment alone has no role in obesity, efforts now directed toward persons with little genetic risk of the disorder could be refocused on the smaller number who are more vulnerable. Such persons can already be identified with some assurance: 80 percent of the offspring of two obese parents become obese, as compared with no more than 14 percent of the offspring of two parents of normal weight.”

A few years later, in 1990, Dr. Stunkard published another study in The New England Journal of Medicine, using another classic method of geneticists: investigating twins. This time, he used the Swedish Twin Registry, studying its 93 pairs of identical twins who were reared apart, 154 pairs of identical twins who were reared together, 218 pairs of fraternal twins who were reared apart, and 208 pairs of fraternal twins who were reared together.

The identical twins had nearly identical body mass indexes, whether they had been reared apart or together. There was more variation in the body mass indexes of the fraternal twins, who, like any siblings, share some, but not all, genes.

The researchers concluded that 70 percent of the variation in peoples’ weights may be accounted for by inheritance, a figure that means that weight is more strongly inherited than nearly any other condition, including mental illness, breast cancer or heart disease.

The results did not mean that people are completely helpless to control their weight, Dr. Stunkard said. But, he said, it did mean that those who tend to be fat will have to constantly battle their genetic inheritance if they want to reach and maintain a significantly lower weight.

The findings also provided evidence for a phenomenon that scientists like Dr. Hirsch and Dr. Leibel were certain was true — each person has a comfortable weight range to which the body gravitates. The range might span 10 or 20 pounds: someone might be able to weigh 120 to 140 pounds without too much effort. Going much above or much below the natural weight range is difficult, however; the body resists by increasing or decreasing the appetite and changing the metabolism to push the weight back to the range it seeks.

The message is so at odds with the popular conception of weight loss — the mantra that all a person has to do is eat less and exercise more — that Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at the Rockefeller University, tried to come up with an analogy that would convey what science has found about the powerful biological controls over body weight.

He published it in the journal Science in 2003 and still cites it:

“Those who doubt the power of basic drives, however, might note that although one can hold one’s breath, this conscious act is soon overcome by the compulsion to breathe,” Dr. Friedman wrote. “The feeling of hunger is intense and, if not as potent as the drive to breathe, is probably no less powerful than the drive to drink when one is thirsty. This is the feeling the obese must resist after they have lost a significant amount of weight.”

This is an excerpt from Gina Kolata’s new book, “Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss — and the Myths and Realities of Dieting” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

Correction: May 12, 2007
An article in Science Times on Tuesday about the role of genes in weight gain misstated the publication date for an article in the journal Science describing the biological controls over body weight. The article was published in 2003, not 2000.


*Lots of comments after this article at the New York Times if you're interested - most not as depressing as this article and a few by readers that are maintaining a large loss of weight.

*To be honest though, I think in certain cases obesity might be related to viruses, microbes, bacterium, and such. adenovirus -36? Methyl markers aren't the only way genes are turned on or off. Promoters and repressors that regulate how much a gene expresses itself into mRNA? and then translating into a protein?

jonnythan

Oh. One of those. Yea. No time for the games. Save the world yourself.

Will do! I'm on it! Hence why I'm going to Columbia's public health school next fall and studying the social determinants of health. I'm on it!

You go back to yelling at people on the boards because it makes you feel good about yourself.

Yea. You're 22. You will, or will not, eventually learn that the only people you can really help are the ones that want to be helped. I'm all very impressed with the fact that you're about to start a public health curriculum. Here's to hoping that you'll try and wind your way through all of the social science crap that you're about to be exposed to. If you want to start seeing real change then tell people the truth. Stop blaming sugar, fast food, mean people, and the rest of the other nonsense and start telling people that they have to eat less and exercise more. That's what so many of us on here are doing. And yes, I will continue to say the same thing, over and over again, "eat less and exercise more." Why? Because it works. Look around.

I'm not 22.

Throwing your hands up in the air and saying oh well helps no one.

I appreciate her attitude here a great deal more than I appreciate yours. It's people like Emma who effect actual change.

Come on now Johnnythan. Really? Do you know how many times you have posted content almost identical to Beachiron's post?

I'm talking about what we can do as a society to help lower obesity rates.

At an individual level, it's all about whether you have the motivation and willpower.

JUDDDing

Mandatory calorie content on all prepared food.
Mandate that insurance must cover nutritional counseling.
Mandatory health education at several grade levels.
End corn subsidies.

Those are just a few quick hits off the top of my head. It boils down to the individual but there are things we can do to decrease obesity rates.

Interesting. I would submit that every single one of those things could happen tommorow and it would have no effect.

Health education early on might have some influence. Curious if anyone has stats on the introduction of sex education and the decline of teenage pregancies? (not meant to be sarcastic)

What is line of thinking for the corn subsidies?

I agree. And I think, in the US, in my experience, 1, 2 and 3 are already in place.

Any packaged food is labeled. Any fast food is labeled or the data is easily available - on request or on the website.

Maybe you have REALLY crappy insurance that won't cover it, but all of mine for 15 years have (3 different companies). Just a normal referral.

My kids have had a mandatory health class that covers healthy eating and food prep from kindergarten on up (I'm only aware as far as 9th grade so far). I can't imagine that my state is particularly progressive in this area.

I agree with 4 - mostly from an "ethanol is wasteful" and a general distaste for government influence on free markets perspective - but I doubt it would really make a difference for anything short of the resulting tax burden.