One-third of world now overweight, with US leading the way

[SecularMotion]

Source: CNN

(CNN)More than 2 billion adults and children globally are overweight or obese and suffer health problems because of their weight, a new study reports.

This equates to one-third of the world's population carrying excess weight, fueled by urbanization, poor diets and reduced physical activity.

The United States has the greatest percentage of obese children and young adults, at 13%, while Egypt led in terms of adult obesity, with almost 35%, among the 195 countries and territories included in the study.

While 2.2 billion people were obese or overweight in 2015, more than 710 million of them were classed as obese, with 5% of all children and 12% of adults fitting into this category.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/12/health/global-obesity-study/index.html

[yuiyoshida]

1. USA! USA! USA!

WE'RE NUMBER ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE! USA! USA! USA!

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Strap on the feed bag

put another dime in the juke box, baby

[Underground-Panther]

17. Stop the fat shaming

People got enough pain and sorrow in life. Fat people are very aware of their condition they don't need any more pain because of it.

[bucolic_frolic]

19. You could say that about the whole article if we're not allowed to discuss

anything to do with the word "overweight". Has it occurred to you that
overweight people eat too much?

[LanternWaste]

36. Simplistic and fallacious conclusions are often the most convenient to our biases

"Has it occurred to you that overweight people eat too much?"

Simplistic and fallacious conclusions are often the most convenient to our biases, and offer a most wonderful way to rationalize our intolerance and cruelty as something more righteous than actually is...

[bucolic_frolic]

37. Intolerance and Cruelty? Really??

Caloric intake is cruelty when mentioned?

That's a real stretch.

[3catwoman3]

3. We're #1!

We're #1!

We're #1!

American Exceptionalism (whatever the hell it was initially supposed to mean) is going to need to be redefined - exceptionally ignorant. exceptionally unhealthy, exceptionally mean-spirited.

[Lonestarblue]

4. Most of our food is filled with sugar.

Almost every type of packaged or processed food lists sugar or fructose or corn syrup as an ingredient. It's difficult to find a product without it. Even many soups have sugar in them. And check out your Chinese food; most of it has a lot of sugar in dishes modified for American tastes. Over the years, our taste buds have been trained to prefer sweet tastes. Add GMO foods, which are not as nutritious as non-GMO, and our food supply is definitely challenging. No wonder many Europeans refuse to import much of our food, calling it Frankenfood.

[LittleGirl]

6. It is Frankenfood!

Welcome to DU. After researching food and corporations, I cook most of my meals by hand so I know exactly what is in it. I don't bake anymore either. I don't eat gluten or dairy. all of those are frankenfood to me

[Skittles]

9. I eat pretty much nothing but junk food and I have never been overweight

I do, however, move - a LOT

[HockeyMom]

11. Never ate Junk Food AND move a lot

Quit working in an office because I couldn't sit for 8 hours a day. Back in the 50's as a child I refused to eat "new" McD's. Mom, do they have salads? Fries? Gross. My Irish Aunt went berserk when she heard I that refused to eat Potatoes, until she learned unless they were RAW. She was fine with that one. Growing up, the kids in school called me Bugs Bunny and it wasn't because of my teeth. Closet Vegetarian in my youth. My parents had nothing to do with this, purely my own tastes in food.

I weighed 100 lbs when I was 10 and still do at 68; exception being for pregnancy at 129 lbs. What am I doing WRONG????

I guess it is true. You are what you eat, with some genes thrown into the mix.

[bucolic_frolic]

24. You're not eating enough ice cream

and sugar. I binge, then lose my appetite. Nothing puts it on like a pint of ice cream a day.
Sugar gets burned off, and the fat and all the other food gets stored. But after 5 days, my
binge is over for a year or two. Same thing with pizza.

[Skittles]

28. you nail it

I do the occasional sugar binge too

I have never been on a diet

[HockeyMom]

41. My ice cream binge is ONE small sundae

on a hot Summer day once a year when the mood or convenience strikes me. I do have my snack of coffee and cake after dinner every night, but apparently that isn't enough to put on the weight. The amount I eat at dinners is very small, cannot eat big portions, so I suppose my dessert makes up for what I don't eat at dinner?

[HockeyMom]

5. Sad,it really is

Skinny me (100 lbs.) is my husband's scapegoat. "Her cooking" makes me FAT"? What????? I have even gone so far as to accompany him to his doctor visits and their mouths drop when they see me. MY cooking? No, try all those Fast Food Lunches (going to Lowe's right at Lunch
time), buy bagels (butter and cream cheese) and donuts to snack on, and reclining in a chair (retired) for hours watching TV or falling asleep, while I am cleaning all over the house.

He had a heart attack 3 years ago. You would think after that he would change his ways? Did for a short amount of time, but now is back to and worse than before. He is invincible because he survived? I don't get it. I eat when I am truly hungry, not when I am BORED, or that I will never have a meal again.

We moved out of state 6 months ago. He still has not found new doctors in the area. Afraid they will read him the riot act for his weight and cholesterol levels?

What can I possibly do except for still making dietetic, low fat dinners, keeping quiet, and eating extra myself in between to keep UP my own weight? Is he somehow jealous of me? Nothing I can do about my genes or taste in foods, but I cannot help if he doesn't want to help himself. Resign myself that he is an adult, and his heath is up to him, and only HIM? I am very afraid he is going to have another heart attack soon the way he is now living.

He screams at me if I ever mention about how he eats. "NEVER tell me I am eating too much" I give up.

[LittleGirl]

7. well

maybe you should have a "talk" with him about his funeral arrangements so that you can be prepared when the time comes. Go over all of the finances and tell him you need to know this stuff in case he dies suddenly.

If you do all of the finances, maybe you should go over it with him saying "in case something happens to me".

he sounds hopeless. Hugs.

[politicat]

13. That's psychology, not gastroenterology or cardiology.

You have described emotional eating. Anxiety, frustration, consolation. Boredom is also an emotion.

Carb "addiction" is probably going too far, but both the brain and the microbiome (which has a lot to do with mood regulation, possibly more than we can observe right now) react to different micro and macronutrients. Sugars and the simpler carbs can prop up adrenaline, while fat and sugar or fat and salt seem to bump dopamine. Emotional eating can be a mask for or a symptom of situational or cyclic or unipolar depression or general anxiety or social anxiety or unarticulated feelings of inadequacy or trauma. And once the gut microbiome gets disordered, it can stay disordered. We know now that gut flora matters for what nutrients we can absorb, and how quickly we absorb them. This then turns into a vicious cycle -- when gut flora is disrupted, it can trigger faulty production of neurotransmitters, which makes the brain have to compensate, which disrupts the gut.

Lots of insurance plans, including Medicare, have House call doctors on their in-network rosters now. (It makes sense, especially for those doing some level of geriatrics.) Most plans have photos of their doctors, too. Find him a physician who is also fat.

And disordered eating -- be it emotional eating, anorexia, bulimia, binging to exert control, binging as rebellion -- these are symptoms, they are not evils. It's not a personal flaw, it's not a failure. Being judgmental and disapproving is not helping.

[The_jackalope]

22. Well said!

I've seen, up close and personal, how foods affect my moods, sometimes dramatically. Noticing that my sudden, violent mood swings always followed my consumption of cereal products was how I first diagnosed my gluten intolerance. The mood swings largely stabilized when I took the plunge and cut all carbs from my diet. A few years after that I discovered that I suffer from dopamine deficient depression, which explains why the carbs agitated me and the meats and fats calmed me. Now I'm on Wellbutrin, and my relationship to food is a lot healthier. But still no gluten. For me, that stuff is poisonous.

When I cut the carbs, I also lost 50 lb, which I had not previously been able to lose. Judging me as a weak or bad person wouldn't have helped my metabolic disorder.

[bucolic_frolic]

42. A cousin tells me

that mental rigidity is a male thing. My mom used to call my dad "rockhead".

So I do understand. You can lead a horse to water ....

[Boomer]

8. High Fructuose Corn Syrup

Capitalism at work... to destroy our health.

[olddad56]

31. that isn't helping, but I think allowing the people who raise beef, pork and poultry..

to feed their livestock antibiotics is a bigger issue, in my opinion. That makes the animals fatter, and the ranchers wallets fatter, but eating that food also puts a lot of obesity promoting bacteria in a person's gut. Not to mention what it does to a human brain.

[mucifer]

35. Many of us vegans are fat, too. Most aren't but some of us eat lots of junk foods.

[Sneederbunk]

10. And the other two-thirds have bad breath.

[HockeyMom]

12. Coming from Italian hertiage

I will give you that GARLIC gives you bad breath but at least it tastes good and is good for you.

[Underground-Panther]

14. Time to give up

That old wives tale of calories in calories out.90percent of diets fail.why?.

Time to look at pollution body burden,and inflammation,poisoned air water and food,substances chemicals a man made cocktail of chemicals all over the environment. All sorts of chemicals interactions happening to bodies ..genetics breaking down thyriods,other mechanisms of metabolism being destroyed by the body burden. Kids nowadays are born with mercury already in their bloodstream not so 6 generations ago.

[Major Nikon]

26. Sure, it's not the calories, but the chemicals that are making people fat

90% of diets fail because people get the calories in, calories out part backwards.

[janx]

32. OK

[EX500rider]

44. Not...

....I or anyone could lose weight eating anything you pick, pure FCS, pure lard, ice cream, sugar, any junk food in the world if i only consumed 500 calories a day...in fact you would starve to death at some point if you were a full sized adult.

[japple]

15. We're a consumer society. That's what we have been programmed to do. Gotta have this,

gotta have that. If it's not cheap crap from China, it's fast food from those companies that advertise on tv. It's the American way.

[bucolic_frolic]

38. Life is a long collection of little habits

we eat as easily as we turn on the TV or must have music blasting in our earbuds

to control your habits is to control your destiny

[llmart]

16. OK, I feel the need to weigh in on this article...

(no pun intended). It isn't high fructose corn syrup's fault, or eating meat's fault or trans fat's fault, etc., etc., etc. In excess those are all not good for you. It's that Americans EAT TOO MUCH AND MOVE TOO LITTLE!!!

Like HockyMom I am 68 and weigh exactly what I did at 19. I'm 5'4" and 125 lbs. Except for my pregnancies I've only varied up or down 5 lbs. I don't deprive myself of an ice cream cone or a steak or cheese or bread - you name it. However, I don't eat that stuff often (well, except for bread) on a regular basis. I rarely drink soda but every once in awhile I'll have a root beer in the summertime.

I just hate that all these food fads think they're coming up with the solution to our problems. I have been active my entire life doing all sorts of things, none of which involve a gym membership. Growing up in the '50's you got regular portions, three meals a day and not every occasion revolved around food. Also, people/families rarely ate out. Eating out was for special occasions. The cost of food in relation to salaries was much higher than it is now. Food is cheap and mediocre at best. As in most things in our country, people prefer quantity to quality. Me? I prefer quality to quantity in most everything.

But then again, Americans have lost so much common sense I don't recognize the country I grew up in.

[EllieBC]

21. Portion sizes keep getting bigger.

Everyone up here marvels at how much food you get at US restaurants but the portion sizes are growing here too.

Any good restaurateur will say if you are giving your patrons so much food they can take home some for another meal, you're doing it wrong.

[llmart]

23. Americans are now accustomed to the large portions...

If they go to a decent (not chain) restaurant they complain about how expensive it was and "you don't even get that much". Most Americans wouldn't know quality food if it hit them in the arse. They wolf it down so they can't even taste their food. They rarely have home cooked meals. There's a reason that your local grocery store has one entire row in the frozen foods section just for frozen pizza! That always amazes me.

[EllieBC]

25. Regarding processed foods, some people just don't have time.

And rely on them between jobs or commuting or whatever.

But plenty DO have time and prefer the convenience.

[llmart]

27. A lot of them have plenty of time...

to sit on their behinds watching reality TV shows or staring at their smart phones like they are going to receive some very important text from the UN asking for their opinion on how to finally have world peace.

A good, tasty meal doesn't really have to involve hours of standing on your feet and cooking. Besides, they actually have more resources now via the internet for finding recipes and meal ideas.

[rock]

18. Trump really brings up our average

[C_U_L8R]

30. If we deport His Portliness

it would certainly be good for this country's heart.

[Igel]

20. Look at the positives.

It's carbon sequestration.

[Not Ruth]

29. What does urbanization have to do with it?

[Yavin4]

40. Makes people sedentary

You sit in cars and sit at work. You don't burn off the calories.

[iamateacher]

33. Traveling a lot these past 4 years all over the world

We go to local grocery stores to buy food and the aisles they are missing are revealing. No soda, no candy (except maybe chocolate), no chips or junk food. No bakery, except bread. No big problem with obesity. Carbs are the problem, processed foods, and sugar.

[Fix The Stupid]

34. Anyone ever watch "My 600lb life"?

Fascinating television.

Always the enablers who make it worse. How can a 700lb. person feed themselves? That's right...they can't...

I see a lot of munchausen-by-proxy on that show.

[Yavin4]

39. I just got a FitBit, and I was amazed at how little calories I burn every day

And I walk to work.

[Sunlei]

43. here's how to see easy why USA is fat today, even our pets are overweight. see what they eat ;)

apple in every school lunch pail, slender happy cats looking for a fish from their humans. most kids slender with only a couple of exceptions probably medical.