[xrp]

300,000 deaths a year

Being fat kills 300,000 more Americans a year than marijuana. We need to outlaw being fat!

[FreeKnight]

The key is to not combine carbs with fat. Lo carbs or low fat, but not both. Exercise is good, but Big Brother solutions create a new area for the liberals to play dictator.

[Mr. Mulliner]

It's true, a lot of the culture does have to change to solve our weight problem.

When one of my friends from China first immigrated to America, she found it very funny that Americans would talk about their need to exercise more, but then spend 5 minutes driving around the parking lot at the mall to try to get a parking place near the door instead of walking just a little farther.

[Dante3]

But it is fun and profitable to become fat. Instead of being active you lounger about stuffing yourself with all the delicious food. Then you sue McDonald's for millions.

And if McDonald's refused to sell you or doesn't serve you fast enough or their hot coffee is hot, you can sue again.

[SamAdams76]

Just a comment on the huge portions served up in restaurants. I've lost 44 pounds since April 1 and on Friday night, I went to a popular Mexican restaurant (On The Border) and ordered Blackend Chicken Fajitas. The portion was so huge that it came on three separate dishes. One plate was covered with beans and cheese, shredded cheese, Mexican rice and diced tomatoes and onions with sour cream and guacamole (sp). A meal in itself. The main plate had the blackened chicken with mushrooms, summer squash, onions, and a container of rich sauce to dip the chicken in. Then you had the dish with three tortillas.

All of the above for just $9.99! And don't forget, they give you a huge plate of tortilla chips before the meal even comes with free refills!

Now three months ago, before this diet and exercise madness began, I would of easily packed this away as well as the tortilla chips. And then I might have ordered dessert and an appetizer as well.

Suffice to say that I only ate about half the food they brought. Until I put myself on a diet and watched what I ate, I never realized just how insanely huge restaurant portions really were.

[BlackVeil]

The article mentions excessive tv watching as a cause of obesity, esp as people eat while watching, then go out and buy the junk food advertised. Yikes!

Another factor might be excessive internet use, with people sitting at the screen for their leisure, rather than taking a walk, etc. Except that, instead of food ads, the internet gives one scary stories about fat epidemics, that put one off ones next meal.

[wardaddy]

I'd guess 40% of America in lower income areas are over 20% overweight just from observing at Wal Marts.

Cracker Barrels (which I like) are also heavily frequented by heavies.

This is a fairly new trend....when I was growing up in the 60s, in the South (where I now live again) lower income folks were more often thin and weathered looking from a life of hard work.

[wardaddy]

This article attempts to blame the producers rather than consumers.

The producers are making what the consumers want.

It's about discipline and personal responsibility baring a thyroid disorder.

I go to McDonalds for the indoor play area for my children and I eat the meat out of a burger and a diet drink and don't gorge...in fact I did just that with my 3 year old this afternoon.

As a teen and with a higher metabolism and more active life, I probably would have had a Big Mac and fries and large sweet pop.

Americans consume huge amounts of simple carbs...incredible amounts really...usually in the form of sugar or starches....and fat is the fall guy.

You can eat a no fat diet loaded with carbs and reach whale proportions.

[budanski]

We're not alone. :)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/853988/posts

[GrandMoM]

BUMP FOR LATER READafter I have my dinner of steak, baked potatoe and fried mushrooms and onions

[Panzerfaust]

Amazing, the article spends all sorts of time talking about genetics and then details how people eat ho-ho's and double cheeseburgers and get fat. A corpse would gain weight on a diet of junk like that. Mr Neal gets no exercise and eats like a pig, but he's a victim of genetics

[aSkeptic]

I've lost 30 lbs on the double cheeseburger diet plan.

[ijcr]

Force feed skinny people, what in God's name will these idiots say when they are told they are dying of nothing!

[Nick Danger]

Dear Carb Solutions,

I'm trying to lose a few pounds and last night I tried your Carb Solutions Taste Sensations - Creamy Chocolate Peanut Butter (Serial Number: MC53097 BEST BY040704) for the first time. The bar was a substitute for my dinner because I was on the road.

I want you to know that I have discovered your secret formula for weight loss and I plan on stealing it. I too will make something so truly disgusting in taste that it makes the victim... err, uhhh... "dieter" not want to eat anything because they're physically nauseous.

This morning I defecated an exact replica of the bar I ate last night. I plan on taking my feces and your bar to shopping malls and asking people to take a bite of each and see if they can tell the difference.

It is true that my butt won't be able to produce as many "Taste Sensations" as your company can, but at over $2 a bar it will be a nice second income for me. Like your company, I will probably only be able to sell one bar to a customer before they decide never to buy from me again -- so I'll have to keep moving all of the time. They'll probably make a movie about me.

Soon to be your competitor...

xxxxxxxx
Bellingham, Massachusetts

[aruanan]

America: Land of the Fat

This is simply another way of saying, America: Land of the Rich.

There are countries in which a person who has accumulated body weight is told that he looks prosperous or rich. The only significant reasons people in the U.S. and Western world are getting fat:

1. Large amounts of very cheap, highly nutritious, energy dense, highly palatable food that is easily obtained.
2. Relatively no necessity of physical exertion in their day-to-day lives.
3. Recreational eating.

[Milwaukee_Guy]

It's not the meat in our diets but the sugar and gross amounts of starch that has been accepted by nutritionists over the last few decades.

A bowl of beans and rice is 1 gram of fat but a whopping 60 grams of carbohydrates for example. One ear of sweet corn can go over 20 grams of carbs, wash it down with a bottle of root beer and that's another 54 grams of carbs.

One is allowed over 250 grams of carbohydrates by current government guidlines. That is excessive and most people go way over that. The Atkins diet allows only -20- grams of carbs per day when first starting out and tops out at 50 carbs a day when one is at their target weight.

One clue as to how wrong the currently accepted diet is, is the epidemic of childhood and adult diabetes. All those carbs wreck havoc with your blood sugar levels.

Low carb diets are sweeping the land because they work and they work very well at keeping the fat down. Triglycerites and cholesteral plummet on a low carb diet.

Dr. Atkins has the answer. Not the hippie "beans and sprout" nutritionist crowd currently holding reign over the nations health.

Part of the puzzle is a major revamping of the food triangle.

[annyokie]

Thanks for the post. How's the diet and walking thing working for you?

[Porterville]

Drug addicts, obese people,high risk lifestyles are some of nature's way of thinning the herd. Like rats that share too much space, the population controls itself by murder or self-mutilation-suicide.

[mombonn]

He drives everywhere--even two blocks to the corner store.

To pick up his Suzy Qs, doughnuts and a fruit pie, no doubt.

Barf, I get sick just thinking about that much sweet stuff!

[Dr Warmoose]

Humans evolved fat genes during their hunter-gatherer period, when it was feast or famine. To help survive times of scarcity, early humans evolved a taste for energy-rich sugars and fats and the ability to efficiently convert these calories to body fat. But with the development of agriculture, food supplies became more consistent. To protect against obesity, humans began evolving lean genes that made the body less efficient at converting calories into body fat. Today, different people carry fat and lean genes in different combinations.

Other than the fact this is totally unprovable, with this kind of argument, all we have to do is lay around and wait for our genes to evolve. Problem Solved. No need for government to come in and wreck the natural order.