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No one is forcing anyone to eat prepackaged foods. Yes, they are filled with high fructose corn syrup and a lot of other crap. But these foods are not the reason people are obese. There is plenty of fresh food out there unadulterated by crap. Its just another excuse and not a valid argument. People choose to eat junk. If you can't figure out that that box with gazillion ingredients in it with the top one being HFS, or that fast food meal is making you unhealthy and fat then you have been living in a remote cave somewhere.
Changing family dynamics are a big factor IMO. = single parent households
No father figure= kids don't have much family time outings/hiking/biking/canoeing/fishing/camping/playing ball, etc.
Working mothers who have no time to cook= fast food for supper most nights or K.dinner and hotdogs
Less family outings involving physical fitness
My parents have been married for over 50 years, and we never had family outings involving physical fitness. If my dad ever suggested hiking or camping I'd wonder if he'd had a head injury. My mom was a stay at home mom who hated cooking, so we always had a meat, a starch, and a veggie that many time came from boxes or cans. No one in my family is obese
Yes, family dynamics have definitely changed, but even kids without fathers or who have working moms can live happy active lives. And there are plenty of intact families who all watch TV and eat junk together. People make the choices that appeal to them.
Changing family dynamics are a big factor IMO. = single parent households
No father figure= kids don't have much family time outings/hiking/biking/canoeing/fishing/camping/playing ball, etc.
Working mothers who have no time to cook= fast food for supper most nights or K.dinner and hotdogs
Less family outings involving physical fitness
living in low rent areas that aren't safe for even old kids to play alone at a nearby park
the push for technology in school rather than schooling for jobs requiring being physically fit
school drop-outs=no jobs= welfare= sitting on a couch in front of a TV or computer all day
My nephews may have parents who divorced after having them, but they are very active. Both of their parents are into skiing (Nordic and downhill - my brother is on Ski Patrol at Whiteface Mt.), hiking, mountain bike, canoeing... my nephews are growing up like typical Adirondack native sons. My oldest nephew is working at an outdoor outfitter business in Saranac Lake this summer.
They are also heavily into competitive sports - both do Nordic skiing, and my older nephew competes in x-country, and my younger nephew in track and football. They brought home 3 HS Sectional championships between them in the prior school year.
Obesity in adults has increased directly with the number of non-smokers. Nicotine is a powerful metabolic agent. Then there's the snacking, no postprandial cigarette, and that 'substitute "snacks" instead of lighting up' thing.
More than 1 variable though. People (from 8 - 5 PM) are way more sedentary today than they were just 50 years ago - I'm sure that contributes too. In 65 years I've never seen so many grotesquely fat people as I see today. It's very significant.
Smoke ciggies and get cancer, or walk around fat for most of your life. Not much of a choice anymore.
Lack of personal responsibility, like with so many other vices out there, though partly ignorance. They need to teach about diet and nutrition in school (versus serving unhealthy foods and providing vending machines filled with crap). I used to watch the junior high kids walk from school, and one boy was so heavy he basically had to throw his whole body to propel a leg to move forward.
Genetics? Look at photos of people from 100 years ago, yeah, not genetics.
It requires effort to eat healthy and exercise, and losing weight required even a higher effort. Most would rather just blame someone else (genetics, food industry) or blame anything or anyone rather than themselves. All the info they need is on the web for the taking.
Also, it is much cheaper to eat healthy foods than fast foods, ask anyone who has been poor thus discussed in the frugal living section of C-D many times.
I see them filling their carts with junk food, especially on welfare weekend (1st weekend of the month) with frozen pizza, snack cakes, 50 in a box of sugary tubes that go in the freezer and soda as the pale and unhealthy looking mother wheels the cart and the unhealthy overweight children trail along by her side.
Corporate advertising would be my guess as to one of the reasons many folks are so overweight. Corporate profits as well. Folks are bombarded with 'food' choices through out the day, but it's all fat layered on sugar and covered with salt. Break down manufactured and processed foods into servings of salt/fat/sugar and you'll see most of them have at least one if not multiple servings of each. Look at cheese fries. A harmless vegetable is layered in sugar, then in fat and salt added then slathered with more fat and salt. That's just a side dish.
What that does, though, is hits all your taste buds all at once. Which is pretty hard to resist. There's corporate scientists figuring out ways to make this stuff almost addictive if not outright addictive and whole marketing departments helping that along. Add in that it's a lot faster and easier to eat the much tastier manufactured food and most folks don't even have a chance. Add in some guilt for being over weight and then they're even more likely to want to stuff something tasty in their mouth so at least something feels good.
I'm starting to see the results of too many chemicals on our food supply. I raise rabbits and since 2011, the folks who regulate how crops are grown have allowed the fields to be sprayed with a chemical to 'ripen' them before harvest. Since 2011, litter sizes have dropped, even the litters appearing at all has dropped significantly. Before switching to organic feed, a whole year had gone by with no new baby bunnies. Which is appalling, these are rabbits after all, multiplying is one of their notable characteristics. I found out on a gardening forum that if you used manure from animals fed this product that there'd be enough herbicide left in the manure to cause die off in the garden.
What's all this chemical cocktail doing to our human population? Obesity? Infertility? Cancers? The food manufacturers may check one chemical and it's 'not harmful', (you notice they never claim them to be beneficial?) but what about when the same chemical has been used for years or when it's mixed with other chemicals? Even the 'organic' label is now being compromised, so I'd say corporate greed and willful ignorance may be part of the obesity problem.
Lack of personal responsibility for one's behavioral decisions is a big problem in general. So many (no I will not provide "links" to "statistics"), health problems - in addition to obesity- are due to behavioral/life-style choices. A climate of "fat-acceptance" doesn't help; when abnormal becomes the norm and everyone else starts looking like the unhealthy you, there is less pressure to change.
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