• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

CDC Sees Significant Increase of Obese Americans, Reveals Most Overweight State

belmarduk

Member
It's West Virginia!

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released data showing that more than seven in 10 (73.6 percent) United States adults aged 20 or older are either overweight or obese. Although the rates in children and adolescents have decreased, the rates overall have seen a drastic rise in recent decades.

Obesity costs the health care system around $173 billion per year, and the diet and weight loss control industries rake in around $72 billion, according to WalletHub. That website also chronicled the most obese and least obese states in the nation, with West Virginia falling in the former category and Utah in the latter.

The recent CDC reporting also shows that around 72.2 million Americans over the age of 6 were completely inactive in 2021, and lack of physical activity remains a leading cause of obesity.

Yahoo!

That's pretty fuckin' sad, bro. Gonna need to move those jellyrolls!
KmOTgoA.jpg
 
Last edited:

GHG

Gold Member
What do you expect when "don't fat shame" is the message along with the bombardment of fast/unhealthy food advertising?

It starts with education and then people need to have a fire lit under their asses (motivation), even if that might result in them initially getting upset.

I don't understand why society has now embrased this and promotes people lying to one another about something that is fundamental to one's health and state of mind.

Just move. And if you can't move don't eat. It's pretty simple really.
 
Last edited:

Aesius

Member
The percentage of obese people is just going to keep going up. Walking through a grocery store is depressing. 90% of the food is junk food. Everything in the middle aisles aside from maybe brown rice should be avoided. But a shit ton of people exclusively eat stuff from those aisles. Prepackaged, processed junk.

Combine that with people not having the time/energy/motivation to work out and it's a damn disaster right now.
 

nush

Member
What do you expect when "don't fat shame" is the message along with the bombardment of fast/unhealthy food advertising?

It starts with education and then people need to have a fire lit under their asses (motivation), even if that might result in them initially getting upset.

I don't understand why society has now embrased this and promotes people lying to one another about something that is fundamental to one's health and state of mind.

Just move. And if you can't move don't eat. It's pretty simple really.

Plus sized beauties in advertising and then here we are.
 

Quasicat

Member
The USDA is put in charge of creating a healthy diet in the 1950s, so they make a bulk of it carbohydrates. Seriously, why are 300 grams of carbs a day considered healthy. In 2010 they update it so it’s not a pyramid, but still 45% of your diet is carbs and sugars? I wish I understood why the scientific community of the 20th century believed Ancel Keys and his ideas when the evidence was just not there.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
It's West Virginia!

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released data showing that more than seven in 10 (73.6 percent) United States adults aged 20 or older are either overweight or obese. Although the rates in children and adolescents have decreased, the rates overall have seen a drastic rise in recent decades.

Obesity costs the health care system around $173 billion per year, and the diet and weight loss control industries rake in around $72 billion, according to WalletHub. That website also chronicled the most obese and least obese states in the nation, with West Virginia falling in the former category and Utah in the latter.

The recent CDC reporting also shows that around 72.2 million Americans over the age of 6 were completely inactive in 2021, and lack of physical activity remains a leading cause of obesity.

Yahoo!

That's pretty fuckin' sad, bro. Gonna need to move those jellyrolls!
KmOTgoA.jpg
BRAP
 

GHG

Gold Member
fast food should be banned

Nothing wrong with fast food in moderation. In fact that goes for pretty much every food out there that you can think of.

The issue is that for most people portion control isn't a thing. When you combine that with the fact that if eaten consistently poorer/synthetic foods lack the necessary nutrition for a healthily functioning body and that results in the body still telling you you're "hungry" despite being full from a calorie perspective. This is the fundamental thing that leads to overeating in a lot of people, especially those with poorer quality diets.
 

TransTrender

Gold Member
I'm on board with the whole 'obesity is good for business' thought process here. Line that up with clown world body image stuff and harmful reinforcement of negative lifestyle choices and now you can't say anything because that's x-shaming or y-abelist. All this parallels with that weird child mutilation thing that's popular these days. Got to enroll them early, hard, and deep in to the medical industrial complex.
 

Kilau

Member
I’m not going to deny we have a severe health issue in this country with being overweight but it seems like they are still leaning heavily on the BMI for this.

It completely ignores bone density and muscle. It’s a flawed metric that doesn’t apply to our society or time. I got down to 175lbs to be just below “overweight” BMI at 6’ tall and everyone that knew me thought I was dying.
 

Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
I’m not going to deny we have a severe health issue in this country with being overweight but it seems like they are still leaning heavily on the BMI for this.

It completely ignores bone density and muscle. It’s a flawed metric that doesn’t apply to our society or time. I got down to 175lbs to be just below “overweight” BMI at 6’ tall and everyone that knew me thought I was dying.

Yep the article mentions BMI but not bodyfat percentage which is a more accurate measure. Maybe the cdc data itself mentions it.
 
Dork Dad PSA: Please make your kids do sport outside of the usual primary and high school. If not sport then it's on you to get working out, bushwalking or bike riding etc as a family. Health is easiest/best learnt at home, set yourself and your kids up for life with good eating and healthy activities. Once you change your mindset it's easy to whip up a tastier and healthier meal with your kids than that convenience garbage being shovelled down your throats at the drive thru or home deliveries.
 

Synless

Gold Member
I thought for sure it was Michigan. Since I moved to this state from SC I have seen the most overweight people I have ever seen and consistently to boot.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I always find it amazing how fat people can become.

I'm overweight myself by a good 40 lbs. I eat junk half the time, dont exercise, worked at home sitting on my ass for 2 years due to covid (back at the office half the time since earlier in the year), and despite this I can only balloon up so big. I even do the evil thing and eat before bed sometimes which every fitness expert says dont do. It gets to a point eating a drinking like a pig SHOULD make you feel like shit that night and you stop. The human body should be making people feel lousy or even throw up if youre constantly eating adding 300 lbs to your frame. But they just keep eating.

In order to get fat to 300, 400, 500+ lbs you got to be eating like crazy like having two lunches or two dinners per day.
 
Last edited:

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
The percentage of obese people is just going to keep going up. Walking through a grocery store is depressing. 90% of the food is junk food. Everything in the middle aisles aside from maybe brown rice should be avoided. But a shit ton of people exclusively eat stuff from those aisles. Prepackaged, processed junk.

Combine that with people not having the time/energy/motivation to work out and it's a damn disaster right now.
Prices are out of whack too.

A lot of that cheap junk food is dirt cheap, especially when it goes on sale for $1 or $2. Despite this, the store and manufacturers can still make shit loads of profit from it, yet healthy shit grown out of the ground can be way more expensive. Makes no sense.

BUT, one reason why is a lot of healthy stuff has super high profit margins. Sometimes even higher than prepackaged stuff. So for whatever reason stores want to make more profit % off you and me on apples and oranges than a can of chef boy r dee. And anything branded with some kind of organic or eco-friendly badge are high margins too. No store or supplier is selling green boxed eco shit for low margins. That shit is jacked up because they know people will buy it. People think it's expensive because it costs more to make as if R&D invented some new formula. Not true. At our company, the eco stuff is actually cheaper to make as there's less dyes and chemicals in it. But we jack up the price to stores and thy jack it up even more.

Produce has about a 50% profit margin. Lots of prepackaged shit you see in the junk food aisles or pharmacy aisles will often skew lower to 25-40%. Just the way the market works.
 
Last edited:

Lasha

Member
I think that junk food availability is only part of the issue. Americans have a skewed concept of what eating healthy means. Iceburg lettuce salads are never going to satisfy your appetite. Organic produce can be nutritionally less dense than regular produce. Too much focus is spent on weird counting diets, super foods, and other health crazes instead of just eating simple economical dishes like beans. I would love it if US public schools would bolster nutritional education to instill better eating habits at an early age.
 

Husky

THE Prey 2 fanatic
w... what the fuck?!
HOW?!
Very recently I noticed that I wasn't seeing many fat people anymore. I thought, wow, have people gotten healthier? I spotted a fat woman and her child recently, and they really stuck out to me. Maybe I just live in a particularly healthy area. I'm in Massachusetts, which seems to consistently score well in that WalletHub article. Maybe I've gotten so used to fatties that I'm not even perceiving all of them as fat anymore. Myself, I'm a little bit underweight. Lightning fast metabolism.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I dont know if things have changed much, but exercise and being active isn't even promoted in high school. So if the educatin board doesnt want to teach kids health and nutrition, you cant expect the average kid to keep it up. Just like personal finances. The schools will have a million teachers covering geography, math and history, but I had none of those courses. The closest one is business administration, but that had nothing to do with personal loans and budgeting and life skills.

When I did high school in the 90s, I think gym class was mandatory for grade 9 and maybe grade 10 tops. I know for sure it wasnt for grade 11 and up. So what happens is a lot of kids drop gym class because as they get to senior grades because they got to focus on academic classes to get into college and university. Wasting a slot on gym class prevents you from taking other classes which are needed, like my high school had I think two accounting classes I took (I think there was two). But you needed to pass the first one to take the second one. Economics was the same. A starter course and the advanced course. When you got shit like that, you got to drop gym class to free up space.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I think that junk food availability is only part of the issue. Americans have a skewed concept of what eating healthy means. Iceburg lettuce salads are never going to satisfy your appetite. Organic produce can be nutritionally less dense than regular produce. Too much focus is spent on weird counting diets, super foods, and other health crazes instead of just eating simple economical dishes like beans. I would love it if US public schools would bolster nutritional education to instill better eating habits at an early age.
One thing that doesn't help is competition. In the US, there seems to be so many restaurants and fast food joints they got to compete. And the best way is low prices and giant portions. If you want to see buffets everywhere, visit a big US city.

When my buddies and I go over the border to Buffalo or Detroit, the food portions are giant compared to Toronto. Even for basic shit, you can get a 20 pc of Mcnuggets for like half the price. And the pizzas in the US are giant and really doughy. Beer is dirt cheap too. So the amount of easy cheap junky food is everywhere.
 
Last edited:

6502

Member
One thing that doesn't help is competition. In the US, there seems to be so many restaurants and fast food joints they got to compete. And the best way is low prices and giant portions. If you want to see buffets everywhere, visit a big US city.

When my buddies and I go over the border to Buffalo or Detroit, the food portions are giant compared to Toronto. Even for basic shit, you can get a 20 pc of Mcnuggets for like half the price. And the pizzas in the US are giant and really doughy. Beer is dirt cheap too. So the amount of easy cheap junky food is everywhere.
The portion sizes in usa are horrific. Reducing it all to "british size" as they put it on some tourist menus would be a big help. Cut it further or increase quality more like Europe would probably solve it.

And stop chlorinating chickens and roiding up your beef. USA food standards is an oxymoron.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
The portion sizes in usa are horrific. Reducing it all to "british size" as they put it on some tourist menus would be a big help. Cut it further or increase quality more like Europe would probably solve it.

And stop chlorinating chickens and roiding up your beef. USA food standards is an oxymoron.
When I'm watching a US channel, the fast food deals are insane. You got 99 cent tacos, some kind of crazy Wendy's deal like 4 things for $4, etc.... At Wendy's Canada, the cheapest thing you can get on the menu is like a small burger for about $2.50. In the US, you can get a mini combo for $4.

The food to price ratio is really out of whack. Great for bargain hunters, but health wise it's awful.
 

Cyberpunkd

Gold Member
Might be controversial me saying this but it should never have been allowed.
It could be allowed, but the same was as tobacco and alcohol products it should come with a warning that obesity is a medical condition dangerous to your health.

I don’t know how much it helps but in France we have a few things:
1. Every food item has caloric information but also green-red A-E system to quickly glance if something is healthy or not.
2. Every single food product advertising has obligatory mention to eat 5 fruits and vegetables a day
 

Meicyn

Gold Member
I’m not going to deny we have a severe health issue in this country with being overweight but it seems like they are still leaning heavily on the BMI for this.

It completely ignores bone density and muscle. It’s a flawed metric that doesn’t apply to our society or time. I got down to 175lbs to be just below “overweight” BMI at 6’ tall and everyone that knew me thought I was dying.
It’s not a flawed metric. It’s useful for population studies but was never intended to be used as an assessment at the individual level. Of course it ignores bone density and muscle, people are using BMI incorrectly.
 

Lasha

Member
One thing that doesn't help is competition. In the US, there seems to be so many restaurants and fast food joints they got to compete. And the best way is low prices and giant portions. If you want to see buffets everywhere, visit a big US city.

When my buddies and I go over the border to Buffalo or Detroit, the food portions are giant compared to Toronto. Even for basic shit, you can get a 20 pc of Mcnuggets for like half the price. And the pizzas in the US are giant and really doughy. Beer is dirt cheap too. So the amount of easy cheap junky food is everywhere.

Subsidies are the bigger cause. Government payments make up around a fifth of all income in an agricultural sector that already operates at scale. Cheap inputs put into a food processing system that also operates at scale drives down prices further. Food is generally pretty cheap in America compared to many places. Food consisting of sugar, flour, and other fillers which are subsidized just skew the perception.

This. As a visitor to your fair shores. Unhealthy is cheap. Healthy food is expensive. What is a person low on money going to buy?

I ate many permutations of beans, cabbage, and eggs with the occasional seasonal vegetable or chicken when my family was on food stamps. We couldn't buy fast food or other "luxury" items using food benefits during that time. Eating healthy at home and packing lunches isn't as expensive as eating healthy while dining out.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
This. As a visitor to your fair shores. Unhealthy is cheap. Healthy food is expensive. What is a person low on money going to buy? Especially someone who needs to feed a family and has to work all the hours.
Healthy food can be cheap, the problem is time. Also the way soil is treated leading to impoverishment and less nutritional value.

If you have time to cook for yourself or your family, you can eat more healthily and still without wasting a fortune. Problem is that ingredients sometimes are not always great, compare tomatoes or salad you buy in stores in the UK vs the ones you grow yourself is already a giant difference especially for tomatoes.

Problem is that a lot of people, especially in some countries, do not have all that time for one reason or another (sometimes personal choices too).
 
Last edited:

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
It could be allowed, but the same was as tobacco and alcohol products it should come with a warning that obesity is a medical condition dangerous to your health.

I don’t know how much it helps but in France we have a few things:
1. Every food item has caloric information but also green-red A-E system to quickly glance if something is healthy or not.
2. Every single food product advertising has obligatory mention to eat 5 fruits and vegetables a day
France and Italy definitely have more of a slim culture to be fair… but then more people cook/make time for meals or under eat… that too :).
 

belmarduk

Member
I’m not going to deny we have a severe health issue in this country with being overweight but it seems like they are still leaning heavily on the BMI for this.

It completely ignores bone density and muscle. It’s a flawed metric that doesn’t apply to our society or time. I got down to 175lbs to be just below “overweight” BMI at 6’ tall and everyone that knew me thought I was dying.

Oh yes, "I'm not fat, I'm big boned." Hadn't heard that in a while.
 
Top Bottom