[freepertoo]

Of course obesity had grown in the last thirty years! Duh, there are NOW two or three fast food restaurants on every corner!

[taxcontrol]

Must be nice for this author to be holier than thou.

[theDentist]

Hey, I eat salad for breakfast and lunch. dinner is veggies and chicken or fish. no chocolates. 2 beers on the weekend. exercise daily. I’m still well above what my doctor wants. put most of it on thru meds. i’ll take it off, but it’s much slower than it went on. the trick is: exercise daily, no exceptions, and resist overindulging.

[rock_lobsta]

Which reminds me... it’s time for my hourly Triple Whopper, Super Size Onion Rings and bladder-buster Coke.

With one of those hot-fudge sundaes...

And a cookie...

To go...

Damn skinny people...

[/s]

[John Jorsett]

This article makes me hungry. Damn you!

[Calpernia]

I hate these articles. They never touch upon instant foods. Instant foods have no nutritional value and conga lines of ingredience that do nothing but make you fat and unhealthy.

And the nutritional value charts on the sides of the boxes can list vitamin info if supplements are added. Guess what? The supplements will not be processed without other components found in raw foods.

So, people not only gain weight; they become malnutritioned.

[guppas]

I wish these dumb ass scientists would quit telling me what I should and shouldn’t be doing and invent no calorie bacon! It’s easy to say the consumer is ignorant - that must be the problem. And, you can always get more grant money to study it! Where’s the no calorie cream cheese?

[Old Grumpy]

I’ve been fighting the “battle of the bulge” for too many years to count. My excuse: I just love food.

[CarrotAndStick]

Our bodies are genetically adapted to a starvation diet. Even when food is no longer a scarcity to most, the body’s mechanisms still functions to store/convert to fat as much of food as possible.

The only ways this system can be changed are either through drastic diet control coupled with strict, rigorous exercise(not the 20-minute-walk-per-day nonsense), artificial gene/body manipulation, or wait for natural selection to start taking out the morbidly obese ones before they reproduce, leaving the lean ones to be allowed to have more offspring.

[IamConservative]

I recently hired a guy from Australia - a legal immigrant - and he said something that really struck home. He was commenting about having to watch his weight because: “American food is so rich and cheesy and is served is such huge portions.”

My wife and I anymore just order one entre’ and two dinner salads when we go out and still rarely eat it all.

Another thing that I think has changed our overall health is the computer. We’re not out clearing forests, digging ditches and herding cattle anymore, we are doing knowledge work sitting on our duffs.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

"Our genes haven't changed since before the Stone Age - yet obesity has escalated in the last 30 years."

It sure has, and it continues to do so in the US, Europe, and now Asia as well, as China and India start to climb out of poverty. Our genes haven't changed - it's our access to food and ingredients like corn syrup and trans-fats. Throughout most of man's history and pre-history and those of the primates we evolved from, our problem has been chronic food shortage. We've evolved to desire as much food as possible when available and store fat for the lean times. In today's more prosperous societies, there will never be a lean time - we always have access to cheap food, often made with substances we later learn to be harmful.

[50sDad]

Ok, since we are living in a society that is equal to all, when may I expect these same questions to be asked of unwed mothers? "Why did you get pregnant? Are you just a loose whore with no control? Have you no restraint of any kind over yourself, or do you just like to give yourself over to pleasure without any thought of the consequences for you or for society? Don't you know that you are consuming valuable medical services that should go to others by making your completely voluntary choices to pursue pleasure?"

For that matter, why in our tolerant society am I assailed by Pious Liberals over my choice to (gasp!) eat meat, when they wouldn't think in a million years of asking the questions above of a (voluntary) AIDS victim?

My name is 50sDad, and dang, I love food!

[woollyone]

calories
consumed
verses
calories
burnt

[Havok]

Who cares. We are all gonna die of something. Just dont expect me to float your hospital bill while you try to avoid meeting God

[RockinRight]

Nobody to blame but me. I like good food, not salads and tofu sh*t, and I eat big portions. Yeah, I eat big portions because restaurants and my parents served them to me, and therefore, I’m used to that...but I lift the spoon to my own mouth.

[MEGoody]

These are some of the reasons the overweight give to explain their size because they are too ashamed to admit they simply eat too much, according to a study.

Well, some overweight people. Not all.

[TomGuy]

"Our genes haven't changed since before the Stone Age - yet obesity has escalated in the last 30 years."

Some families do have a propensity for experiencing weight gain. That can be genetic.

There is also another possibility:

In the last 40 years or so, there are increased populations, and that requires increased food production. To maximize the food production, producers use certain enzymes/growth hormones that cause an increase in the product's content weight. Basically, the additives tell the product to grow, to increase its weight. Those additives are not necessarily cooked out of the product during food preparation. Thus, some of the additives are passed to the consumer, digested, and entered into the consumer's body. Those additives basically tell the body to gain weight.

[t_skoz]

People walk less and eat horrible food and drink tons of sodas here. I just got back from 2 weeks in Sweden where people eat sensibly and don’t drink soda, and walk EVERYWHERE, or at least to the subway or bus station.

The good news is that in 2 weeks I got into great shape. The bad news is I’m now a functioning alcoholic.

But on a serious note, it’s not a hard issue to figure out. We eat too much crappy food and don’t exercise. Duh!

[HungarianGypsy]

I barely eat and put on weight. The little guy who eats all the food in our house before anyone can get to it is a skinny little fellow.

[subterfuge]

Did the author stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night?

There are legitimate hereditary factors that come into play regarding weight. If I were prone to gain weight I’d be huge with the way I eat, for example.

My wife, runs 7 to 10 miles every day or two and eats a low low low fat diet, yet her doctor had to prescribe medication for cholesteral that was well over 300. That IS hereditary, fwiw.