This article is on the front page of USA Today’s web page.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-10-13-obese_x.htm
Scary stuff. Says that nearly 90% of Population will be overweight or obese by 2040. So are we obsessive or smart?
What does this mean besides…
Large seats in airplanes
Smaller grocery bills for us
Sales on 30-34 inch waist pants
Can you guys come up with how else this will affect us all?
I am obese. Perhaps what constitutes a healthy weight is changing. We won’t know until we’re all dead. Maybe our society is more muscular in nature. The article didn’t addess things like that, so we don’t know.
I think people are getting fatter. But that’s okay. Hopefully they’ll weed themselves out and give the rest of us more of a kickback from social security.
"Smaller grocery bills for us "
You’re kidding, right? Real food costs money, and when you’re ‘gainin’, the bill sure gets scary. A thing of Ramen soup is what? Like twelve cents? If you made real stew, that would cost a lot more. White bread is cheap, but real bread (sprouted, soaked, etc) costs a lot!
But hey, I hope GUYS get fatter and fatter. Cause the fatter guys get, the better I start looking! lol. I hope this is the case.
But maybe eventually we’ll feel like a dwarf would. Everything is too big and shit’s hard to get! I already can’t just buy shirts from the store and have them fit me. I think this will only get worse. Buy Big and Tall stock lol.
The effect on medical insurance is scary. Fatness is already a huge burdon on us now, let alone in 40 years! Just imagine the problems with this alone. We better get damn good discounts for health insurance or something. Like that one company that gives you money back if you don’t get into a car accident or something…we should get money back for exercising and not being fat asses.
The sad part is that I’m sure loved ones will be affected by this. I know my brother is, and I worry. He’ll probably be a diabetic, and all the other problems associated with his diet and lifestyle. And when they do want to get healthy, they might join a gym and have some personal trainer not change their physical appearance at all. My dad did this, and he’s looked the same for over a year. Granted, he doesn’t have the hormones I do, but he should see SOME change.
It’s all sad, really. But I just hope I can get some women out of it lol.
it is a mixed source problem. the baby boomer generation was sat in front of a tv and was raised on preserative filled food. they grew up with mountians of misinformation on food and exercise and told that there self esteem was important. this was a deadly combination that lead to lethargy, over eating because ‘it made them feel good’, and that food was filled with excessive carbs and chemicals that lowered there health and raised there pant size. this whole group of people is a scientific experiment that shows that clean food and exercise, the same as every generation before scientific study on it lived, was the best way to go. the number of obese is rising due to these people raising there kids the same way. to us it seems silly and most obvious, but i guess there will always be a never ending supply of sheeple that need to be told all the things the rest of us can figuire out with our ‘common’ sense.
Slut, according to the BMI and scale I could be considered overweight but I don’t think that is what is referring to. It is clear and very evident that the general population is “unfit”, overeats, and is getting fatter, not just bigger. We are a small percentage. There was another article I red the other day that said one out of 4 kids born in 2000 will be diabetic in their lifetime…Scary again.
Morg, just a guess but maybe if the demand for junk food keeps on rising so will its price (basic rule of supply and demand) while eggs, protein, veggies and fruit will stay the same or go down…given that it is a more limited supply and farmers would definitely have to grow less due to less demand or lower prices to attract other buyers - Just a theory. Additionally, cooking and preparing your own food at home is always cheaper than eating out at Cheesecake Factory or Olive Garden don’t you think?
Walk on, I think you are right on. I think the more hectic our lifestyles become the less we pay attention to what our kids are doing and eating. No more soccer or baseball, just get some Burger King and a Playstaion and they are taken care of. I remember when I was a kid and I couldn’t wait to get home and skateboard or ride my bike for a while. Now days they probably can’t wait to play the newest game or download more music.
This article is from Sunday’s NY Times, and traces the rise in obesity to the creation of the current agriculture policies in the 70’s.
The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of Obesity
By MICHAEL POLLAN
Published: October 12, 2003
The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of Obesity
You’ll need to register if you don’t have an account, but that only takes a second. Great story and makes quite a bit of sense.
Cravell,
“Morg, just a guess but maybe if the demand for junk food keeps on rising so will its price (basic rule of supply and demand) while eggs, protein, veggies and fruit will stay the same or go down…”
Ahhh, let’s hope so! But I’d love to have my own mini farm some day just for me and my family to eat real fresh food.
Yeah, it’s cheaper to prepare food at home. I guess reheating prepared foods is even too much work for people (cause tossing a frozen pizza in the oven for a bit is NOT cooking 
), so they’d rather drive through the drive-thru. I guess fast food is becomming more popular, and it sickens me that people don’t make time (or won’t) to eat real food. They’ll pay for it down the road, though.
It’s all very sad.
Cravell, if I recall, it just mentioned people being “obese” and defined it as being “about” 30lbs or more “over a healthy weight”. It doesn’t sound to me like they took body composition into consideration (or if body comp even matters at all).
Most uses of obesity (in general) refer to being over a certain BMI, but being outside of a “healthy” range isn’t going to be mathematically much different.
I agree that those that we may make up a smaller percentage of the population, but there could be other causes for the population putting on more muscle in general. I believe the United States is getting fatter, but I don’t know if the studies publicized really “proove” this.
Ignorant Slut,
I find it very difficult to believe that the population would put on more muscle despite eating junk and being lazy asses. Sure, if you move a bit and are a fat ass, you’ll have larger leg muscles, but this doesn’t count. I would be interested to know how you think the population could possibly put on more muscle despite the degration of food and exercise.
It sure will feel good to be a T-man in 7 years… lets take all their women! But seriously, a large part of your body size comes from your own personal choices. Why choose to overeat and not work out? Why not choose to have the best body you can? - lumbernac
lumbernac,
But often times people DO want to actually look better and chose to make sacrifices to do so, but they don’t ever reach their goals because they were grossly misinformed. I mean, look at the whole fat issue. People still think it’s terrible for you and don’t eat good foods because of it. They’d rather eat insulin in a bowl (read Corn Flakes) than a steak. They think this is healthy because of the crap info out there. And all the crap info about exercise, too.
Damn, there’s a lot of crap.
morg,
Defining “putting on more mucsle” can be tricky, because, like you said, fat asses have a lot more muscle than skinny bastards. So before we go into that, we really have to start taking the population’s body comp into consideration. If we were all 20% on average 30 years ago, and still are today, that means we just got larger as a whole, not become “fatter”.
Like I’ve said twice here, I believe, I believe that our nation is getting fatter (for a myriad of reasons). I just hate seeing the conclusion drawn that we’re getting fatter when we’re only definitely putting on more weight.
What if the average protein content of our diets increased over the past 30 years due to costs, availability, etc.? Then living the same lives, we’d probably have more muscle (regardless of fat). There are ways muscle could be increased, but again, I don’t think that’s the case; I just don’t think the article addresses that possibility whatsoever.
I just heard today that my hospital is getting a new CT scanner that was originally used for elephants.
Scrub, your hospital must have a lot of muscular patients;-)
Scrub-
I sell medical equipment and I can guarantee you that isn?t muscle they are cutting through when they are fixing an acetabular fracture. It takes two hospital beds these days for some of the people they bring in.
newsflash: 100% of Wisconsin obese by 2003!!
The problem with these sorts of statistics is that it takes what’s happening now, combines it with what’s been happening the last few years, and then figures that out and extrapolates that trend into the future.
But there are too many things that could change between now and 2010: famine, war, new anti-obesity drugs, a shift in American priorities and policies, anti-fast-food taxes, etc. etc. This problem is further compounded if you try to say things like “90% of Americans obese by 2040.”
That statistic, to me, means nothing. You can tell me what the rates are now, you can tell me what the rates were a few years ago, but that doesn’t tell me shit about the future.
Add to this the inherently fuzzy nature of the definition of “obesity” (defined in terms of a BMI of 30 or higher) and you have clearly healthy people who are quite muscular who are considered “obese” despite a healthy bodyfat percentage. Obviously not a LOT of them, but many T-men will fall into this category.
The bottom line is to keep doing what you are doing: what you’re doing is right (watching what you eat and working out).
Dan
I agree with you Dan and think you very clear on these numbers would be skewed for most T-men, however I think there is a trend that is fairly alarming with the general population. In my opinion the pendulum is already shifting back but not sure how hard or how steady.
The article didn’t say anything about a BMI. It said being 30lbs over a healthy weight is obese. According to a couple of sources a 5’9" person?s health range ceiling is 170. That would make a 200+ person obese. I would think that there are very few people that fall into this category. I think that there are even a majority on this forum that aspire to be 5’9" 200+lbs and >12% BF (seen a thread or two on this topic).
Damn, I feel that way now!
When I was younger I remember the “healthy” bodyfat level for men was 15%. Now, they say 20%.
Just imagine if these statistics went by what we considered obese!
A quote to prove that Seinfeld was way ahead of his time:
I wish there were pigmen. You get a few of these pigmen walking around, I’m looking a whole lot better. Then if somebody wants to fix me up, at least they could say, “Hey, at least he’s no pig-man!”
-George Costanza