Nearly Half of America’s Overweight People Don’t Realize They’re Overweight

Washington Post ^ | 12/1

[nickcarraway]

As you prepare to pack on your holiday pounds this winter, consider this: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more Americans than ever are overweight. But according to some new Gallup data, far fewer of us actually think we're overweight.

In recent years, the gap between how fat we think we are and how fat we are is wider than it's ever been.

The chart above tells the story. In 1990 (not that long ago, all things considered), about 56 percent of Americans qualified as obese or overweight, according to the CDC. Back then, we were pretty honest with ourselves about the state of our waistlines, although we fudged it just a bit — 48 percent considered themselves "very" or "somewhat" overweight, according to Gallup.

But over the years, that eight-point gap between perception and reality has ballooned along with our waistlines. Today, 7 in 10 Americans are obese or overweight, but only 36 percent think they have a weight problem. In other words, close to half the people who are overweight or obese don't think they're overweight or obese.

[Look at how much weight you're going to gain]

"What seems to be happening is a resetting of norms" about weight, said Yale University's Nicholas Christakis, a physician and sociologist who has written extensively on how our social context influences our biological behavior (like eating).

"As a person's social contacts gain weight, it seems to change the person’s idea about what an acceptable body size is," Christakis says. "This may result in the person him/herself gaining weight, or, even if it does not, it makes the person more accepting of other people’s weight gain."

You can see this latter effect in action in the chart below, plotting the differences between men and women's average self-reported actual and

[Grimmy]

How much of that is noticing only what and when the constant “Americans are fat” crap sensitizes us to seeing and noticing?

You see one fata** and it registers in your mind. You see 1000 non-fata**es and no register.

[Yardstick]

The BMI was designed as a simple metric for tracking changes in body composition of populations over time. It was never meant to say anything about individuals. When it’s used as intended it’s a good tool. The problem is it has been totally misapplied and misinterpreted.

[greatvikingone]

How much of that is noticing only what and when the constant
__________________________________________________________________

It is less obvious on the coasts, but in my beloved fly over states you can’t see skinny people through the wall of clammy adipose.

[x_plus_one]

95 million unemployed with a weight problem is not a bad thing. If they were starving the picture would be different.

[blam]

"95 million unemployed with a weight problem is not a bad thing. If they were starving the picture would be different."

Doesn't that illustrate a level of sufficency that has never been realized in human history.

What was it, a century ago, that 40% of the population was employed in the production of food.

Automation is on the way to making more unemployed.

New John Deere tractors are so sophisticated and patented that anything you try to fix contains proprietary information and is against the law for you to do.

Farmers can’t legally fix their own John Deere tractors due to copyright laws

"I live in Oklahoma. Farm country. I took this assignment because it infuriated me. I do not farm, but I have friends and family that make their living farming. John Deere has been synonymous with farming for as long as I can remember and for good reason: they make a good product. Their latest statements have me worried and you should be worried too, even if you don’t farm."

"John Deere recently submitted a letter to the U.S. Copyright Office asking to forbid their customers from modifying the software that operates its machines. What on Earth do copyright laws have to do with tractors?"

[Lizavetta]

It was put in place to create an overnight industry so that medical folks could get 11-12 million new patients instantly by reclassifying what “overweight” was.

Same thing with alcoholism. Call it a disease and all of a sudden you get paid to treat it.

[onyx]

The average American woman weighs 166.2 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As reddit recently pointed out, that's almost exactly as much as the average American man weighed in the early 1960s.

Men, you're not looking too hot in this scenario either. Over the same time period you gained nearly 30 pounds, from 166.3 in the 60s to 195.5 today. Doing the same comparison as above, today's American man weighs almost as much as 1.5 American women from the 1960s. At 195.5 pounds, put five American guys in a room and you've gathered roughly half a ton of manhood.

Overall weight gain since 1960 is slightly greater for women (18.5 percent) than for men (17.6 percent). And both sexes have gained roughly an inch in height over the same period, which accounts for some of that weight gain.

But story is mostly one of growing girth, and it basically boils down to three factors: we're eating less healthy food, we're eating more of it, and we're not moving around as much. According to a study published in 2012 in the journal BMC Public Health, Americans are now the world's third-heaviest people, behind only the Pacific island nations of Tonga and Micronesia.

The average American is 33 pounds heavier than the average Frenchman, 40 pounds heavier than the average Japanese citizen, and a whopping 70 pounds heavier than the average citizen of Bangladesh. To add up to one ton of total mass, it takes 20 Bangladeshis but only 12.2 Americans.

Together, the world's adult human beings added up to 287 million tons of biomass in 2005, according to the BMC Public Health study. But if every country had the same weight distribution as the U.S., the world would be 58 million tons fatter, an increase of 20 percent.

The study concludes that "tackling population fatness may be critical to world food security and ecological sustainability." And as with so many of the world's problems, the solutions start at home -- on the bathroom scale in this case. But boy, those donuts sure do look delicious.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest's Xtreme Eating Awards went to nine "winning" chain restaurant meals especially high in calories, fat, sugar and salt. The Cheesecake Factory got three of them.

[Leep]

It’s the cookie cutter world we live in. Hmmm...cookies.

[Ransomed]

I don’t think there has ever been unrest or uprisings when the poorest also tend to be the fattest. Of course the poorest being the fattest is a really new thing, so who knows.

Freegards

[MadIsh32]

Lack of responsibility by Americans.

Most Americans are too lazy to move and grow their own plants, and not smart enough to cook their own food

[GailA]

Does no one take in Heredity? Many of us are large boned or heavy muscle build, or big busted even at a decent weight.

[Verginius Rufus]

I’ll have to admit I have gained a lot more than 30 pounds since 1960. But a disturbing percentage of the men who weighed 166 pounds in 1960 are now dead.

[RooRoobird20]

..............does this article include the FLOTUS, who at this point appears to be twice the girth of her husband? (”I see fat people......they don’t know they’re fat....”)

[x_plus_one]

Wonder what the tipping point is for John Deere equipment. Cost of ownership vs profit generated.

[blam]

"I’ll have to admit I have gained a lot more than 30 pounds since 1960. But a disturbing percentage of the men who weighed 166 pounds in 1960 are now dead."

Yup. tenth grade in HS. 230 pounds now.