Why Does America Have an Obesity Epidemic?

If you are or have ever been concerned about your weight - in other words, if you are reading this blog - you have no doubt noticed the abundance of diet and nutrition books and programs on the market . It's an industry that accounts for $40 billion in sales annually. The newest spin-off of our weighty crisis is books that are being written and published to help explain how we got in this fix to begin with.

A recent New Yorker article selected facts from several of these books that may give you some (ahem) food for thought!

"Eric Finkelstein is a health economist at a research institute in North Carolina. In “The Fattening of America”, written with Laurie Zuckerman, he argues that Americans started to put on pounds in the eighties because it made financial sense for them to do so. Relative to other goods and services, food has got cheaper in the past few decades, and fattening foods, in particular, have become a bargain. Between 1983 and 2005, the real cost of fats and oils declined by sixteen per cent. During the same period, the real cost of soft drinks dropped by more than twenty per cent.
“For most people, an ice cold Coca-Cola used to be a treat reserved for special occasions,” Finkelstein observes. Today, soft drinks account for about seven per cent of all the calories ingested in the United States, making them “the number one food consumed in the American diet.” If, instead of sweetened beverages, the average American drank water, Finkelstein calculates, he or she would weigh fifteen pounds less."
 Ordering fast, cheap food at drive-throughs as an alternative to shopping and cooking at home is another example of an action that used to be considered a "special occasion" treat but has now become a daily habit for too many of us. 

In “The End of Overeating” David A. Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration,  explains why this has contributed to our ever-expanding waistlines.
Fat, sugar, and salt are key ingredients in fast foods that are high in calories and are studied by the food industry to "hook" us into wanting more. Ever wonder why the burger, fries, and soda form the basic "meal" at a fast food restaurant? Fat, salt, sugar. We are well-programmed now to want that when we go to a fast food restaurant.

Going back to the days when most families sat down at the table to a home-cooked meal rather than opening the bag and unwrapping the burgers could be one important step in helping halt the growth of our girth. Not easy - but worth it!