Why is there an obesity epidemic?

I was also under the impression the government redefined what "obese" and "overweight" was awhile ago

Who Was Behind the Redefinition of "Obese"

In 1997 a front-page exposé in the Newark Star-Ledger noted:

"Eight of the nine members of the National Institutes of Health task force on prevention and treatment of obesity have ties to the weight-loss industry, either as consultants to pharmaceutical companies, recipients of research money from them, or advisers to for-profit groups such as Weight Watchers."

Case Western Reserve University professor Paul Ernsberger describes how financially conflicted researchers control the government’s pronouncements on obesity:

"Medical beliefs about obesity are shaped by expert panels that are highly selective in the data they consider. Experts included on government consensus panels have been disproportionately drawn from the ranks of diet clinic directors, which might explain the congruence between panel recommendations and the economic interests of the diet industry. In short, economic factors encourage a systematic exaggeration of the health risks of obesity."

Many of America’s most influential obesity experts receive significant financial support from the $46 billion weight-loss industry. These experts help drive obesity hype by churning out a steady stream of studies, alarmist public pronouncements, and treatment guidelines.

The notion that 65 percent of Americans are overweight or obese derives in part from a 1998 decision to redefine "overweight," which cast more than 35 million Americans into that category. This decision was made by a National Institutes of Health obesity panel chaired by Xavier Pi-Sunyer, one of the most influential obesity researchers in the country.

Over the years, Pi-Sunyer has received support from virtually every leading weight-loss company, including Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, Ortho-McNeil, Wyeth-Ayerst, Knoll, Weight Watchers, and Roche. He has served on the advisory boards of Wyeth-Ayerst, Knoll, Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, and McNeil Nutritionals. He once headed up the Weight Watchers Foundation and is currently a board member of that organization. Pi-Sunyer gave the "obesity overview" presentation on behalf of Knoll, maker of the weight-loss drug Meridia, at a 1996 FDA advisory panel hearing on the drug. He has also been paid to sign his name to ghost-written journal articles used to promote the dangerous weight-loss combination known as "fen-phen."

Xavier Pi-Sunyer is an advisory council member of the American Obesity Association, which is best described as the lobbying arm of the weight-loss industry and is examined in greater detail later in this report. He is the former president of the pharmaceutical industry–funded North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NAASO is also examined later in this report) and heads a NAASO-affiliated research institute that is also supported by the weight-loss industry. He has influenced international obesity policy through his membership in the pharmaceutical industry– funded International Obesity Task Force, which plays a key role in determining policy for the World Health Organization.

Pi-Sunyer has chaired the National Institutes of Health Task Force on the Treatment of Obesity since 1995, when he also led the industry-funded NAASO. In 1998, when his NIH panel redefined the official standard for "overweight," he served as editor of NAASO’s journal, Obesity Research.

In addition to Pi-Sunyer, the 1998 NIH panel included a number of other financially conflicted researchers, such as Claude Bouchard, Graham Colditz, and Shiriki Kumanyika, each of whom is profiled later in this report.

The decision to redefine "overweight" was a big boost to the diet drug industry. In April 2005 The New York Times reported: "[M]any drug industry analysts see a potentially even bigger market if such a drug also catches on among the more than 60 percent of adults in this country who are statistically overweight, those with a body mass index of 25 or more."

The weight-loss industry appears to appreciate the flawed BMI standard. In 2001, Roche, maker of the weight-loss pill Xenical, promised a donation to NAASO for every individual screened during "BMI Awareness Week." In 2005, the American Cancer Society ran an event called the "Great American Weigh In" at Weight Watchers.

I am not in America and have never been there - but if 2/3 are overweight and 1/3 are obese, that means nobody is normal weight or underweight as 3/3 equals the whole total??

Surely your figures are not right - absolutely everyone cant be overweight or obese?

2/3 are overweight and OF THOSE, half are obese. America isn't alone - in the UK 39% of the population is overweight and an additional 22% are obese. The real brain teaser is why poor people in both the US and UK have a much greater likelihood of obesity than middle or upper income people. People like to say it's about high calorie food being cheaper, but I seriously doubt that poor obese folk are sitting around snarfing up fried pork rinds but wishing they could afford broccoli. So are people fat because they're poor, or are they poor because they're fat? Some of each, I think.

Because food tastes good and we're intrinsically slobs with no self control.

I am too drinkies and too lazy to read this thread. I'll tell you what I told my daughter recently, when explaining to her why we're trying to eat more whole foods...

Once upon a time, people had farms. They grew things and they sent them around the country for people to eat. Growing things and sending things started costing more money, so they started stretching out the food--using fillers and preservatives so it would last longer and be cheaper to produce. People just wanted to fill their bellies, so they were happy with this fake, stretched out food. Companies realized they could make a profit around it, and found new and "improved" ways to make it "taste good" to the consumers. They used less and less Real Food and made more and more Profit. We were already used to this 'compromised' food, so the companies--now actually Corporations--decided we need ways to make "food" even more "convenient" and came up with more and more ways to pump us full of filling, but ultimately unFULLfilling, food-type products. And now we're in a position where we are eating a diet of chemicals that is full of 'energy' (calories) and thinking it 'tastes good,' instead of actual food that is nourishing to our bodies. And because our bodies are not being nourished, we desire more and more of this fake food, with all of its 'energy,' to fulFILL us, and it never can.

You know, or something.

...they asked obese adult women when they started dieting. Almost two-thirds had gone on their first diet before the age of fourteen, and the heaviest woman had started earlier and more often than the rest.

...they asked obese adult women when they started dieting. Almost two-thirds had gone on their first diet before the age of fourteen, and the heaviest woman had started earlier and more often than the rest.

Wouldn't that be because they were overweight as children, and the heaviest women now were also the fattest children so they started earlier and more often? I hate when people try to imply causation that doesn't exist - if they could prove that all these obese adult women went on diets as children even thought they were of normal weight, then that would be something to prove the hypothesis that diets cause obesity. But asking obese people when they first went on a diet is meaningless. They were probably fat kids too.

Everybody knows cigarettes are bad for you, but not everybody knows that Cheetos are bad too.

I don't think it's the above so much as it is that most just don't care. Do we really believe there are people out there stupid enough to think that a diet composed entirely of chicken nuggets, cheetos and coca-cola is healthy?

On second thought, don't answer that question - because there is a large contingent who believes that starving yourself, taking diet pills, fasting and sticking a hose up your rear end to "cleanse/detox" is healthy too....but heaven forbid they eat sugar, eewwww, teh unhealthy poisonzzz!

It is simply a case of these factors in my opinion:

*Calories are EASY to get hold of.
*You can consume HIGH CAL DENSITY foods easily.
*These foods do not keep you full for long so you go for more.
*We live in a world where we do not require exercise in order to achieve daily tasks.
*Life is more complex because of the environment we live in and thus, we are more stressed, developing direct links between food and emotional relief.

There are many more, but I consider these to be some of the most important.

Agreed. And also add that calorie-dense foods taste good and our brains release all kinds of pleasant hormones when we eat them. That falls under your last category to some extent...more stress equals more pleasure-eating.