Many smokers said this years ago -- first it's us, then it's going to be "Go to aerobics class or lose your health insurance" for the rest of you.
I moved from California (where I was born & raised) to Jersey in 1996 and lived there for 4 years. I had always been naturally on the lean side -- not skinny but not fat either.
In the first 9 months in Jersey I gained a whopping 17 pounds -- from 120 to 137 so fast it scared me! I had digestive problems that I hadn't had before that sent me to the doctor. (Yet even after to putting on that weight, I was still thinner than most of the women my age around me.) But I understand how I put the weight on and why Jersey has some of the fattest people I have ever seen.
I saw and ate foods in Jersey that I hadn't even seen since my 1960's childhood in CA-- big gooey cinnamon rolls at Sam's Club, so buttery that a dozen of them weighed as much as a bowling ball. Pizzas that were cheap, delicious and enormous. Plates of spaghetti, meatballs and garlic bread that would feed four, doled out as a "single serving". But with the exception of tomatoes and corn -- all the other fruits and vegetables tasted like cardboard to me after having come from a state that offers a year-round cornucopia of fresh fruits & veggies.
When the rest of the US changed to lighter more healthy foods and portions, Jersey did not. My husband, who is 57 and who was born in NYC and spent most of his life in New Jersey, still has the eating preferences of a seven year-old -- macaroni & cheese, hot dogs, hamburgers, bowls of spaghetti and a loaf of bread. He is also -- no big surprise -- borderline type-two diabetic. And the only reason that he is only "borderline" is me & his move to CA.
The other thing that contributes to fat Jersey-ites is that often times, with working mothers and ridiculous commute times, few women (or men) cook regularly. I worked with several women, who had husbands and children, who didn't even know how to cook!
My stepdaughter is one of those women -- a prominent attorney, married with two sons and no one in the house cooks. The whole family, including the two kids, are somewhere between overweight and obese because its is all eating out, or fast foods or snacking on chips instead of eating real meals. Eating homecooked foods is reserved for special ocassions at some Italian relative's house when the portions are huge and the foods are literally "special occasion" foods -- but the kids don't know that.
My take on it is that Jersey's weight problems are cultural, not just medical. And only a real cultural shift is going to change that, not some government office of "The Fat Police"!
Interesting take on the whole issue. Sometimes when you live in a place or do something for so long, you start to think it is normal. I thought that pork sausage pizza was common around the country. Now I know that it is not. Thank you. As a kid, I couldn't gain weight no matter how hard I tried. I was scrawny. I took Joe Weider weight gainer shakes, worked out at Gold's Gym for two hours a day to try to beat the horribly disease of scrawniness. This was back in the 80's.
As an adult I am now cursed with a muscular lean physique that I will have to live with for the rest of my life.
But think for a second about that last paragraph of your post. Cultural shift = Social Engineering. People should indeed eat less and excercize more. Nobody debates that.
I won't demand that the Gubmint make you and everyone else go through my rigorous workout regimen. No action is truly legitimate unless it is done voluntarily. I do it because I love it and I want to. Not because the Gubmint tells me to.
And that goes for Gubmint efforts to coerce people to get with the collectivist program to stop drinking, stop eating fries and stop smoking for the common good. It's none of the Gubmint's f'ing business what free citizens do.
"Your body belongs to the state. Your body belongs to the Fuhrer. Health is not a private matter."
---Nazi Socialist Party slogan