How Did Americans Get So Fat, In Seven Charts
Americans are fat. They are so fat very few would even bother to click on a hyperlink in this article explaining how fat they are, so instead we will present an animated chart showing the severity of the US obesity problem over the past 30 years.
Cartoons aside, here are the facts: today two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese. Half are afflicted with chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure that can often be prevented with better diets, but aren't and as a result debt-funded healthcare costs have exploded, and while this chronic obesity has made pharma companies richer beyond their wildest dreams, it means future US healthcare spending and welfare obligations are unsustainable.
America didn't get this way overnight. The average calories available to the average American increased 25 percent, to more than 2500, between 1970 and 2010, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There was no extra meal added to the day, instead an evolution in the type of foods Americans eat led to steady growth in calories.
Added fats and grains account for a growing share of total caloric intake. These two categories, which include oils and fats in processed foods and flour in cereals and breads, made up about 37 percent of our diet in 1970. By 2010, they were 46 percent—a larger share of the growing pie. One of the main factor: cost; the increasingly more caloric foods become progressively cheaper and more affordable. The result: more of the lower and middle classes gravitated toward it, leading to the epidemic shown above.
Here, courtesy of Bloomberg, are seven charts showing the detail behind America's troubling obesity trend.
First, this is where America's calories come from.
Cheese is replacing milk.
A lot more fat goes into our foods.
Calories from wheat, rice, and corn have increased. This includes refined grains like white bread that provide calories but are stripped of much of the nutrients in whole grains.
There are some indications that Americans are changing their diets to become healthier. For example, we're swapping red meat for chicken.
And though corn syrup boomed since the 1970s, the total amount of sweeteners we eat has declined. That's partly because Americans are drinking less soda.
These positive changes haven't negated the overall increase in calories on our plates. More than two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, compared to less than half in the 1970s.
The government's dietary guidelines are simple: "Almost all people in the United States could benefit from shifting choices to better support healthy eating patterns." Right, now if only the government would also subsidize this healthy - which means more expensive - eating. We won't hold our breath: after all the massive pharma lobby would generate far less profits for its clients if US obesity were to sharply decline as a result of someone doing the right thing.
So until something does take place to shock the US out of its fatty momentum, here is Family Guy.
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Yeah, but for God's sakes, have you ever looked at a weight chart at the doctor? I'd have to have cancer and the flu to get anywhere close.
Or a healthy diet. If you aren't lean you aren't healthy. Look at people more than 30-40 years ago
Look at Marilyn Monroe or Betty Grable.
Died at 36 and 56.. unrelated to weight though... but I would call Grable lean.
I suspect the growth hormones in our food is impacting each American's phisiology and how our bodies assimilate calories.
Uh...sorry, but Americans are not fat! We are just BIG BONED and THICK.
Big boned!?
Wtf?!
Bones don't Jiggle!
Boycott anything with high fructose corn syrup.
1. automobiles
2. television
3. internet
4. fast foods
5. high fructose corn syrup
Full of bullshit assumptions.
sing along with me...mo mo gmo, mo mo gmo
The most obvious thing I see on the charts is that as meat consumption has declined, obesity and diabetes has skyrocketed. A chart depicting meat consumtion and obesity has crosssing trendlines. Meat is nutrient dense and satisfies your appetite so you don't eat all day long.
It's all been covered by previous posters, but to recap and highlight:
1. BMI is dumb as f**k. Are there more fat people now? Most definitely, but BMI is still the dumbest metric to show this trend, and overstates it considerably. Lifting weights and other forms of High Intensity training are more popular in the US than in a majority of European countries, and the BMI does not differentiate between weight from muscle and weight from fat. How can a metric that ignores body composition entirely be used to show trends in how fat a population of people is?
2. The demonification of all dietary fats is also dumb as f**k. The industrial fats are bad for your system, but natural fats are quite good, and can in a very healthy individual serve as the primary fuel source for your body. Foods like Avacados, Salmon, butter from grass fed cows, olive oil, eggs from healthy chickens, coconuts are all high in fat, and given an overall healthy diet, will not make you fat.
3. Though not an advocate of eating a ton of cheese, particularly the heavily processed variety, the graph that laments the decline in the drinking of milk as some sort of bad thing is also dumb as f**k. Milk, the way the vast majority of Americans drink it, is not a health drink, and is generally high in sugars.
Hello TomG,
I agree with you on most facts. You make some valid points. Taking that to another notch americans in general are pragmatists. Sadly they are applying it for food. The concept of cooking is out the door in america already where advanced equipment is not helping food. It's a fact. Look at Indians. They eat oil every freaking day. Still they are skinny as hell. Some how food needs a soul and culture which we lack. For fuck sakes they didn't eat meat not too long ago till we nationalized the protein diets. With the culture and soul, time and availability added to them can be a powerful tool. Look at the beers Coors light, Miller lite, Budweiser. It's water not beer. Any ways have a nice weekend.
Almost evey person I have ment that complains about BMI are truly obese! There are the few exceptions that are truly musle bound but the majority are just fooling themselves saying that BMI doesnt work for them and they work out so they must not be fat...
BMI underestimates the adiposity of short people and overestimates it in tall people. It's a lot simpler to just look at waist to height or waist to hip ratios (healthy is < 0.5 and < 0.9 for men, respectively).
By far the cheapest items by weight in our snack machine is all the sweets because the American sugar industry is heavily subsidized. Get politicians out of our lives and there wouldn't be a reason for corporate lobbyists to bribe them with billions.
...and corn. The corn is so heavily subsidized that it has a presence in nearly every food consumed outside of the produce section (unless you're actually buying corn in the produce section...).
Food laws are written by corporate lawyers and then their lobbyists present them to legistlators to enact. No one is looking out for the health of the people. Government is bought and paid for. Doesn't matter which rented mule you vote for.
Watch that famoud Robert Lustig video 1.75 hours. Worth it. Then get off sugar.
Did you know dwarf wheat was funded by our friends the Rockefellers?
Can't make any money off you if you're healthy and considered ideal weight. Now can they. Change a definition there, a definition here and BAM, you're in multi billion dollar business.
Realy? I bet your one of the obese who says BMI doesnt work for you. Almost 95% of the people who say BMI doesnt work are OBESE and just trying to ignore the problem...
If you have more skeletal muscle than average, you are considered 'overweight' on the BMI scale. Atheletes and especially bodybuilders are not measured accurately by this scale.
No surprise at all , coz 99% of American food is just dietary garbage.
The only way exercise will make you lose weight is if you do a rediculous amount to counter the extra calories you consume. It will lead to vastly greater health though compared to not exercising either way. I lost ~40lbs over the last 2 years by switching my diet.
Went to no fast carbs and still ate too much, lost about half the weight. Went to a healthier diet on the no fast carb theme, lots of low calorie fiberous veggies coated in fat, that was good for about another 25% I'd say. For the last 25% I decided to only eat when I was truly hungry, and to avoid eating at least 4 hours before bedtime. I can't believe how much better I feel. I relapsed enough along the way to easily associate fast carbs with feeling worse, so I actually desire to eat food that I used to say no way to. It was a hard road, felt almost like a drug addiction, and I'm never going back. Try it you eventually won't regret it.
The food supply has been poisoned with:
1. GMOs
2. HFCS
3. Growth hormones in meat - designed to fatten up beef, poultry, etc.
We consume those hormones when eating that contaminated meat, get fat - DUH!
Second this highly recommended video:
Sugar: the bitter truth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
Just watch TV... Almost every commercial is either junk food or a pill to fix you for eating the same junk food. There is a ton of money behind keeping Americans sick and dependent on health care to treat their symptoms. Along with that money comes paid for polititions so dont expect anything but lip service to this problem. We should invest in any corporation that profits from erectile disfunction, heart diseas, diabetes, sleep apnea, and acid reflux as they are a sure thing. 90% of Americans now lack the intelligence to be able to figure out how to eat helathy and maintain their own health...
What is the source of the animated chart?
Can't find the link.
If people had to pay for their own health care instead of wanting other people to pay thru group insurance you would see alot more healther people. It angers me to see the sick fat slobs at the end of their lives crying as they face death and wanting somebody else to pay for their very large medical bills...
With the high premium, copay, and deductible prevalent in the individual coverage market, plenty of people ARE paying for their own healthcare and paying into the risk pool too.
The BMI index is a joke. I'm 6'4" and the BMI says I should weight 185 lbs. My weigh-in for hockey my senior year of high school was 190. That was with me still having a high metabolism and skating 4 times a week while having off-ice training 4 times a week. There is no way I could weigh 185 and consider myself healthy, I'd be as thin and grotesque as those skinny jean wearing hipsters.
How the US got fat though is easy. Corn, corn syrup, and steroids pumped into the meats combined with everyone working behind a desk in front of a computer. Corporate america is to blame as well, they slave drive their employees loading everyone up with unnecessary stress while not allowing for ample time to exercise. There should be a gym in every corporate office building, and everyone should be allotted at least a half hour a day to go and sweat.
A joke because as an obese adult you now want to blame the chart instead of changing your life style and becoming healthy.
In the family guy episode above evey one of them would complain about the BMI chart and how it doesnt work for them...
Make people responsible for paying for their own health care instead of group insurance and you would see a vast improvement in the health of our population.
it is so disgusting how many fat ppl there are.
At my place where i work I have to look at this for 8 hours a day from too many ppl
and what is really disgusting is that some of these overweight 250 + lbs women wear
spandex type pants.
you would think they would be embarrassed of emphasizing all that fat
And the best part, they all believe they deserve a ripped, handsome, wealthy man. Pathetic.
Easy BMI Index test to see if you are an exception to the rule. Does the BMI index lable you obese and you and everybody else can see your "six pack" abs? Yes, then you are a true exception to the rule. No "six pack" then you are a fatty with a denile problem. You might work out on a regular basis and you might be strong, but you are carrying too much fat and your problem is not the test.
i was thinking i should try to bring back the baggy pant look
maybe then some of these girls will stop wearing the tight spandex and i won't have to see all the blubber...
lol
If they can breath better in the baggy clothes, they'll grow into them.
lol guess u have a good point here
Free shitters! Sucking up the health care premiums from responsible Americans.
Correlation is not causation, but am I the only one who noticed that all the obesity started after Richard Simmons retired?
Just saying.
In 2045 this era will become known as the Bollockaust:
https://jeremystocks.wordpress.com/2016/01/17/chronicles-of-the-bollocka...
I would suggest that we also look at the pharmaceutical industry for causes as well. As an example, STATINS, one of the most highly prescribed drugs in America, have been shown to cause diabetes. STATINS are prescibed to lower blood cholesterol levels. The treatment for diabetes is insulin, the use of which causes weight gain.
There are many other instances of medications causing side effects that require other medications to overcome. The catch all phrase is, the side effects of the medication is somehow worth the risk.
Forgot growth hormones? Looks to me like massively outgrown bone structures beyond the aggregation of fat cells in a sugar excess!? Do not intend to say growth hormones are bad for your health!
Sale price:
Chicken : $0.77/lb.
Top sirloin $6.99/lb
You think it's for better health reasons that Americans are eating more chicken than beef?
Vampirism
Cannibalism
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The victims
http://www.wsj.com/articles/image-of-syrian-boy-washed-up-on-beach-hits-...
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/572731277584219152/
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There is much moar
simply google it
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its the satan American policy :
Live & Let Die