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

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.

DEFINITELY- people, esp. coworkers and others who I'm not close with, constantly put the pressure on to eat more... because if I'm smaller than them and am STILL trying to lose weight, what does that say about them? The peer pressure element is huge for people I know.

In the late 90s, the BMI limit for a healthy weight was lowered from 27 to 25, causing millions to become overweight overnight. So that "chubby" 5'3 150lb woman would have been considered normal in 1997. And studies have shown that people with slightly overweight BMIs live longer, so....

A lot of valid points in the thread. The most contributing factor is portion control. You can be lazy all you want, stressed, eat overly-processed foods but at the end of the day, if you didn't portion your meals, you will gain weight.

Agreed -- how many of us grew up with this "Clean your plate, there are starving kids all over the world".... and as portions got larger, well guess what happened when we still cleaned our plate. What is scarier isn't the adults, its the kids! Take a look around, there are so many overweight kids! I attribute this to:

* More moms were home, cooking balanced meals for their kids -- also -- did you dare go into the kitchen when it wasn't meal time? NEVER
* Playing with friends meant biking or walking to the park, or basketball courts. Even in harsh winters - mom always kicked us outside!
* The only good TV for Kids was Saturday morning. And you had to wake up at 7am , cuz if you slept until 10, you'd miss them all!
* Video games, for those who had them, got old after a few weeks - there were only 3 games and 5 different levels. It was much more fun to play the REAL thing -- remember the problems Dungeons and Dragons caused? My mom was convinced they were nothing but a source of evil.
* Eating out was limited to take=n= bake Pizza on Friday nights, , , cuz Mom's were home cooking for their families!


People worked just as hard, if not harder "back in the day", but usually only one spouse worked, while the other concentrated on the well being of everyone. Money made was spent very carefully. you bought a NEW car when you wer in your 40 's if you were lucky. You lived in the same house for 50 years, things were paid for, you enjoyed people's company, not their things, and the list goes on. But I do agree a large part of us are "waking" up... I just hope we pass that onto our kids!

I know I am guilty of many of those faults -- and on my way to correting them!

The most egregious is the genetic predisposition to obesity which hovers around 70%.

I don't think 70% of us have a "predisposition to obesity." Otherwise we would, as a culture, have always been fat. It's a recent trend, this "growing" of modern man.

well for one thing when I went to Russia they eat 1/6 less on their portions then we do. America eats super sized meals, like you mentioned laziness where it used to be kids played outside and got exercise now days the watch tv, play video games or go on the computer.

some want a quick fix to weight loss and don't want to make the effort to work at it. there are no quick fixes.

*Size of plates for restaurants are bigger than in the past so calories are out of control - most are carb based or even fried
*Release of corn syrup into majority of food products
*Less time / more work - people in the past had more time for recreation (we work to live now)
*Fast food is not nutritional - mostly carbs - even hamburgers had pink slime (they went bankrupt thank goodness)
*Soda is now the dominant drink of the time - insane sizes released to the public
*Breads are refined and not whole grains - almost everyone is eating the white stuff
*Genetic modification of foods and hormones are running rampant in the USA (look up monsanto)
*Cooking was the way of the past - mom's didn't buy pre-prepared with all sort of chemicals to keep food fresh - now we do
*Communities had places for kids to play - emphasis is play
*Kids are having gym class removed because it's more important to be tested and spend time reading/writing/math - the federal regulations are causing kids to learn that exercise is just not important (future obesity epidemic)
*Kids in schools are eating poorly - food programs feed things like burgers, pizza, cheese sticks - lack of healthy veggies or fruits that are appealing - sometimes they give whole fruits but can't can't easily peel them so they bypass them
*Increased access to cookies/chips - high calorie items
*The real food (healthy, raw, nutritional) of the past is now so expensive that families can't always afford them

Those are just some of the reasons.

*sigh*

We're not actually "lazy" as Americans. In fact, our average caloric burn is consistent with high-energy output cultures. By and large, we don't eat actual food any more, though. There's no capital gain and it's hard to market straight up meat and veggies. Corporate giants need profit margin - and that comes in marketing campaigns and tacking on packaging costs. it behooves a capitalist culture to create "food products" because there can be a corresponding "fix" product via pharmaceuticals, diet industry, insurance costs...

More than anything, we've convenience-fooded ourselves into obesity and poor health.

Way more 'Convenience" to "make life easier" here in America.....

while i love the concept ...it DID make me adopt habits that steadily got me used to having things done the easier way.

Back home in India..we had to do everything with very few gadgets....food cooked from scratch..and i mean...grinding the ginger/garlic paste on a grinding stone.. my gramma's village had a grinding stone for wheat ( you should have seen those womens' toned arms!!)...i had to walk a long time to catch the local bus to school....we walked everywhere, until my dad got a motorbike ( which is as common as a car is here ) and even that was used only for sunday church and when he went to work...

i was SO healthy and slim and had such a tight body just until 6 years ago when i 'got off the boat' to the US....i guess i was so blown away with how cool everything was in the kitchen and being able to drive everywhere...lol...i started to love it a bit too much i know. The US has such inventive geniuses.... but yes.. too much of a good thing is not so good :grumble:

Kids no longer walk to school, they ride the bus. The bus likely picks them up at the end of their driveway and I've actually seen Moms driving their kids to the end of the drive way to wait for the school bus.

Kids no longer walk to the playground or an empty field for a pickup game of baseball any and all times they please. Instead Mom chauffeurs them to organized sports at appointed times 3 times a week.

Kids no longer eat meals cooked by mom on a daily basis. McDonald's is a common occurrence, as is Hamburger Helper.

Kids no longer play outside after school and all summer long. They don't play tag, kick the can or red rover. Instead they stay indoors and play video games.

It's been that way for about 20 years, maybe more. Enough time for those to grow up into adults and have kids of their own to perpetuate the cycle.

I think we are getting fat because we are lazy. It's so easy to go to taco bell...