As a nation, we're getting steadily heavier - WHY?

Its a lot of factors to the weight problem in America one is technology ,computer, t.v ,video games .second ignorance ,a lot of people were not taught the importance of healthy choices and to stay active mainly because the parents were not taught so the don't teach there kids and generation after generation we deal with obesity. Then we have the money making side of America a lot of money is made in the food industry. fast food, all you can eat buffets free refills In other country when you order a drink you get very little ice so I think you tend to drink less but here they load your cup with ice and you get refill after refill and all that adds up to a lot of dead calories . and another reason I believe for some is poverty I have experienced that one myself sometimes you cant afford to eat healthy .you tend to got to the market and get what you can get . I also believe that stress play a part in the obesity problem as well. and sometime your family just don't have knowledge of how to help you as a child because I started gaining weight at a young age at 15 I was 155 and my grandmother tried to help me not to gain but it just didn't help me . she tried to compare me other family members as i got older a gained more by the time I was 20 i was 190-200 went up to 215 and know I'm finally losing the weight at 34 just learning about calorie intake and the importance of staying active I'm married with six kids and know i have that knowledge to pass on to my children . so its a lot of things.

The average American has gained about one pound each year since the mid-1990s. The average American man weighed 194.7 pounds in 2006, up from 181 pounds in 1994. The average American woman weighed up 165 pounds, up from 154. Two thirds of us are overweight or obese. ~ Face The Facts USA

Curious why people think this is. I can think of many, many reasons. I feel, as a nation, we have just gotten lazier and lazier and technology underlies a lot of it. Add that to poor diets (which is also stems in part from technological dependance = laziness and just lack of caring) and to a greater societal acceptance and bam!

What do you think?

Never been to the states, but from what I have been told, your portions are just far too big

in my case, it's because muscle is more dense than fat, so in the past year I've gained a pound and lost 3 pants sizes.

Everything is bigger in America. The large size pop from Mcdonalds in France is the U.S's small.
Most Americans don't know what proper portion sizes are. I didn't until I started MFP

also this
Big Mac in Spain is 10% smaller then in US. Portions in restaurants are usually half the US size...

People also walk and bike many places in Europe and Asia. We drive down the driveway to get the mail......We drive around the gym parking lot to get the closest spot to the gym...... We have little motorized chairs at the gorcery store (supposed to be for disabled or injured) so fat people can ride around and buy more cookies and ice cream.

(stepping off soap box)

Fear of dietary fat consumption based on bad science, a food pyramid based on bad science, subsidising agriculture, politics and commercial interests overriding good health.

You are eating too much nutrient poor rubbish supported by recommendations that have no basis in fact.

Follow the money, there is no profit to be made in a healthy population.

Rampant diabetes and statins are a logical result of this madness.

Gluttony and sloth? Less so.

bam.

Generally speaking, I think it's largely due to how inexpensive and readily available unhealthy foods are. Most grocery stores aren't open late night, but Wendy's and McDonald's are. That and most people have (and need) a car to get around and do things. There's not a lot of walking or biking going on to do chores or errands.

Believe it or not, I don't think it comes down to sloth or gluttony. It comes down to people acting like humans are supposed to act: choosing the easiest course of action to accomplish a goal. Technology and the food industry capitalize on that fact on a daily basis, which encourages us to be lazy. If we all had no choice but to farm for our food, we might not be obese.

Eta: Forgot to mention how fitness and exercise have been commoditized. Almost all of us have to pay for a space in which to actually get some physical activity. This can make exercising and getting in shape seem economically prohibitive to those without means.

I think the problem is really complex. There's no one demon-food or policy or company to blame here.

Obesity is caused by excess intake on a regular basis.

What goes into that is a whole myriad of things: cheap high-calorie low-nutrient content food, portion sizes getting bigger and bigger, rising prices of fresh produce, the rise in the number of sedentary jobs, technological dependence reducing face-to-face contact, the rise of a society in which we are encouraged to do things with haste and not so much quality, removal of physical education classes all over the country, lack of proper nutrition and fitness education, etc. There are so many factors at work here.

The real question is what do we do about it? Will it continue to get worse as we move forward or will we actually start dealing with this on a policy-level?

the weight problem in america is due to high fat diets (fast food, junk food, etc.) and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle thanks in part to tv and computers

I think diet has most to do with it.

Lack of knowledge about nutrition or what bad food does to your body.

Portion sizes.

Greed. People want what they like and they want it now!

Convinience. Everything is there, ready and waiting for you.

And partly laziness. To not want to learn or spend time making good, real food.

Advertising plays a big part, we're never told on an advert how many calories and fat a BK Whopper Meal or Big Mac has and they don't exactly shove it in your face. They just make it out to be the best thing in the world!

Various reasons:

1. Technology has taken over work that used to require muscle power, thus people are not burning off the calories that they eat.

2. Children are wrapped up in technology and no longer play outside.

3. Crime prevents many people from taking part in activities outside and parents are fearful for the safety of their children outside, so they keep their children inside if they can't be outside to watch them.

4. The food industry has been using many things to sale their products. Two of the major things used is sugar and fat. This makes their products taste better and people will eat more and buy more.

5. Food is made salty in order to get people to eat more and, in restaurants, salt causes you to drink more. Bars often serve salty food to boost their sales of alcohol.

6. The food industry has been supersizing meals and people will buy them. People buy them because they believe that they are getting more bang for their buck. Unfortunately, they don't realize that this kind of eating is costing them healthwise.

7. Food is less nutritious than it was in the 1940s and 1950s. It takes two apples today to match the nutrition of one apple from the 1940s. The calories are the same, but your body is going to be screaming for the nutrients, causing you to eat more. The reasons for this are several, one being that the ground is being stripped of its nutrients and the second being that GMO food is often less nutritious than organic.

8. Animals are being raised in feedlots and confined barns. This means the animal is not moving around and will have more fat than animals that are raised in open pastures. This fat is passed off in the food we eat. In the 1960s, chicken used to be about 13%-17% fat. Now they are around 25% fat.

9. Hormones that are given to animals to make them grow bigger and faster are passed down through the food chain and being eaten by humans. Thus, those hormones are affecting the growth patterns of humans.

10. Wheat has been hybridized to the point that the gluten content is very high. This is because when wheat is bred, the total number of gluten genes will be from the combination of both wheat forms used to hybridize the wheat. In order words, if wheat A has 12 gluten genes and wheat B has 5 gluten genes, then the new form of wheat will have 17 gluten genes. Why is this important? Because gluten has detrimental effects on the pancreas and insulin levels. It causes the body to store fat more readily, especially around the waist. Fat around the waist places the person at high risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Think of all the foods you eat that is made from flour and you will understand why this is affecting the weight of Americans.

11. Hidden sugar, high fructose corn syrup, flour, and other elements in our food. Sugar is a poison to the body. It affects just about every system in the body, but mostly the pancreas, liver, and nervous systems. If sugar is a poison, then high fructose corn syrup is the devil itself. HFCS is not metabolized the same way sugar is metabolized. The body is not satiated when HFCS is used, thus leaving the person hungry. HFCS is deposited as fat on the body. This means that the person has ingested 150-200 calories of HFCS and they are still hungry. That's 150-200 calories that are empty calories.

12. People are ignorant about what the food industry is thrusting upon us as food. Many 'foods' that people eat are actually food-like materials concocted in a laboratory. Like that yogurt that comes in the tube: It is all chemicals without one ingredient that even resembles real food.

13. People are so busy running here and there that they don't have time to cook. So these people pull out the latest convenience food that is loaded with either sugar or fat, or maybe both, to make them taste good and think that they are eating healthy. Additionally, labeling is deceptive. Something that is marketed as 'fat free' may not be any better for a person that the original that has fat in it. With all the running around that people do, they may be eating out more often. I look at some of my friends' journals and some eat out or use package foods all the time. They may not cook a single meal! Maybe they cook for Thanksgiving.

14. Deceptive packaging doesn't help. If you buy a package of chips, it may say that it contains 2.5 servings. Are you going to eat just under half the bag in order to get that 1 serving or the whole bag, since they taste so good?

In general, it is not about laziness or over-eating. There are a myriad of reasons why people are getting fatter and the food industry doesn't help with their deceptive advertising and making foods taste good so that they can sell more and more of the product. It used to be that even a simple-minded person could eat healthy. Now you almost need a PhD in order to understand the various reasons why people are obese and how to avoid becoming so yourself.

Books that I have read: (Ones with * are very good. The more *, the better the book.)

****Food, Inc. (edited by Karl Weber) The movie is good, too)
****Eating Animals (Jonathan Safran Foer)
***The Omnivore's Dilemma (Michael Pollan)
*****Food Politics (Marion Nestle) I can't push this book enough. You have to read it.
Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser)
****In Defense of Food (Michael Pollan)
******This Crazy Vegan Life (Christina Pirello) Not just for vegans.
***Animal Factory (David Kirby)
Body Ecology Diet (Donna Gates)
*******What to Eat (Marion Nestle)
*******Mindless Eating (Brian Wansink)
***Diet for a New America (John Robbins)
****Wheatbelly (Currently on loan, so can't tell you the author and too lazy to look it up. LOL)
****Whitewashed (Currently on loan, so can't tell you the author and too lazy to look it up. LOL)

Easily available bad foods. So many people have bad habits like drinking coffee loaded with sugar and/or cream every morning and probably accompany it with a scone, large muffin or over-sized bagel.

Also ignorance. Your most reliable customer is one who is ignorant and food companies know this. People want the results of a healthy lifestyle with no effort. Most don't even read nutrition fact and ingredient labels. Companies take advantage of this by hopping on the "healthy" food bandwagon through a marketing perspective. They throw words like "natural" "whole grain" and "fiber" on the label, when often these words are meaningless overall to the product. For example, I prefer real natural peanut butter. The only ingredient is peanuts (sometimes salt if I want saltier PB). It separates and you have to stir it every time. I had to laugh when recently my mom bought some "natural" peanut butter by Planters. I could look at it and see that it was just typical peanut butter. Then I read the label and saw that like other commercial PB, the ingredients were peanuts, palm oil, sugar and salt. What a joke.

I also think there's ignorance regarding activity levels. A lot of people here said laziness is the cause of obesity, but I have to disagree. Yes, physical activity is important for many reasons, but exercise does not make you thin. You can never out-exercise a bad diet. And people usually overestimate the calories they burn exercising by a lot. If my BMR burns 2,000 calories a day and I eat a 2500 calorie restaurant meal (along with my other meals during the day) my 300 calorie burn from going out jogging doesn't really do anything. I think a lot of people do initially put in an effort to exercise to lose weight because they're always told "just exercise." They stop or get discouraged when that doesn't work. Just exercising does not work. It's about the food. Past generations did not have to spend hours in the gym to avoid obesity.

I don't understand how people don't "know" that food is bad for them?!

How can you be that uneducated and out of touch with reality? Seriously?!?!?

Really? Considering how many myths there are about what's good and what's bad and how to properly structure a diet

How many people started MFP and had to adjust to the idea that cereal, while tasty, is essentially useless? How many people found their concept for a "moderate" sandwich, soup or salad, entered the calories and had their minds blown? People try to eat in moderation all the time, find little success and ultimately give up figuring that if they aren't going to be able to get healthy, they might as well enjoy the crap food they are familiar with.

You are the one who is way out of touch with reality if you think every person out there has the same kind of leisure time you do to research and understand the nuances of moderation and healthiness.

And don't forget juice. I thought it was healthy. It's not. Stripped of the fiber in the pulp of the fruit, it's basically like soda. I'm still trying to get over that one.

Ignorance.
Apathy.

Most people don't know what 500 calories looks like. Even people GOOD at eyeballing a plate for calories can be fooled. We Americans have our big plates and our big restaurant portions and it's "normal" because everywhere you go, you are overfed. Restaurants, cook-outs, work potlucks, and people will pressure you to eat more if you're trying to diet. Eating with people is accepting people, somehow. It's a social event, and it's "weird" if you don't eat much. And eating an actually normal amount definitely looks like not eating much when you're at a restaurant with friends where everyone else is eating an entree that's actually enough food for a 300 pound line backer.

Also, since it's become so normal to eat so much more than a healthy amount, most people don't CARE. If all of your friends are obese and you're in a relationship, a lot of people lack the motivation to get healthy. Why bother? No one else is doing it. This is partly because they don't really understand the health risks involved with being overweight for a long period of time. And partly just because it's too hard for some to imagine a different lifestyle.

We've made being this way easy. Think about it. If you're at a luncheon, it's rude to say to a chubby person "you're going to eat ALL that?" but no one thinks twice before saying to the normal weight or thin person "is that ALL you're going to eat??" All the pressure is on normal eaters to eat more.

We spend more time in the office.

We actually eat fewer calories than past generations, but we spend so much more time at work, rather than mowing the lawn, carrying in/cutting wood, walking to work, vacuuming, etc. that we are gaining weight.

I think this can all be chalked up to the fact that people don't care anymore. Personal responsibility and accountability are lost concepts these days. And it's going to get even worse now that insurance companies can no longer turn people away for being obese. There's no need to try to be healthy when you can just wait till you get sick to buy insurance ... which completely defeats the purpose of having insurance.