re: Obesity is the real pandemic

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What can we do to make America less fat? It's a drain on our society.

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Most won't like the idea but providing places for kids and adults alike to walk and ride bikes and swim and encourage their use. I moved to Germany in November of 2006 and was shocked to see people in their 70's riding bikes in the snow and temperatures which would keep most Americans in the house. I thought it was because owning a car was too expensive. I did find that Germans are cheap bastards LOL but they ALL own cars and they drive them a heaping pile...but when they go to the grocery store or a doctors appointment they ride a bike or walk because they can do so without being ran down....they have sidewalks and walking / bicycle paths away from traffic. I even took up the practice of riding a bike to work (about 5 miles one way) and for most of my daily transportation....it was great. Very relaxing, no traffic, not parking head aches, less vehicle maintenance. This was in a small village in a fairly rural district but I could also ride a bike to a train station 2 miles from our house and go anywhere in the world. I even took to riding the thing for fun....going on 100 mile bike rides and hitting beer gardens and restaurants along the way. When I got back to the states 7 years later I decided my daughter and I would ride our bikes to school. About 2 miles. We came close to dying several times....never did it again, too risky. People would get so pissed off about our being in what passed for a bike lane in our area...like it was an insult to them for driving LOL. When in Rome, you know???

They also have massive indoor swimming pools and gymnasiums and tennis courts and they are affordable and people actually use them. They are clean, well maintained, have new equipment. We belonged to a swim and raquet club until just recently in the US....it cost us nearly $2K a year. And it was outdoors! We could afford it but it was pretty exclusive....almost no young families and mostly older people with older kids.

Thats the excercise part of it. Having places for people to get some excercise that doesn't cost a fortune and is clean, well maintained, safe and accessible will go a long way, but we also should stop paying industries to come up with "food" that is, for all intents and purposes, toxic to the human body. Eventually man will evolve to where prepared foods and things like corn syrup will be metabolized and not be a problem....but we are a LONG way from that happening. It is way to convenient to eat badly and way to costly to eat properly in the United States....at the very least we shouldn't make it financially attractive to load shite up with corn syrup, fat and salt. Folks will eat that shite if it costs a dollar or 10 dollars....but they will eat less of it if it costs 10 dollars.

I’m all for a cancer tax. If your actions or genetics cause you to have cancer then Tax the hell out of your and your children and your grandchildren. I’m tired of high insurance cost because of cancer rates.

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I’m all for a cancer tax. If your actions or genetics cause you to have cancer then Tax the hell out of your and your children and your grandchildren. I’m tired of high insurance cost because of cancer rates.

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You think you are being clever, but you are an idiot.

Cancer is not a result of choices made by that individual, in most instances. ETA: you can never smoke a minute of your life and still get lung cancer, you can never take a drink in your life and still get liver cancer.

Obesity is always the result of a choice.

Wrong. Most cancer in this country is directly related to smoking. Lung, bladder and pancreatic to name just a few. Then colon is directly related to nitrate consumption. You have the cancer you pay 10 times the premium.

Most non smokers who get lung cancer lived with a smoker. They made that choice. They got the cancer. Pay the 10X premium.

There are a ton of issues that is causing this.

1.) Dietary guidelines are wrong. Until this gets fixed we are screwed because all government incentives will incentivize poor choices. The food pyramid is a guide on how to get fat and unhealthy.

2.) We eat too frequently. We tell people to eat three meals a day plus “healthy” snacks and we wonder why people are consuming too many calories. Hell, you’re eating half the day while not doing physical exercise.

3.) The vast majority of Americans don’t realize what is healthy. I see people trying to lose weight drink shakes. WTF! You have a eating problem and you think the solution is to drink calories.

4.) We have sold the lie that 15 to 30 minutes of exercise is all any person needs, and that exercise is walking. Sure burn 100 calories or so and that will fix your weight problem

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Is it really cheaper than buying produce? Rice and beans are pretty cheap as well.

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Rice and beans are the problem. Seriously. Go to Mexico...loads of fat mexicans. They eat beans three meals a day. The problem is beans and rice taste good and they are filling and stick with you...but they ain't good for you the way we eat them in the west. When you eat rice and beans and have access to things like corn syrup the body stores all of that as fat for future famines. When there ain't no famine the body just keeps on storing it. The body can run on the energy from the junk. Rice and beans are fine if that is the only source of calories and the body is working to burn through it....but that is not the case in the US>

Well you aren't fixing it right away, but the two biggest things is

1) stop normalizing it trying to make people feel good about themselves. Stop acting like obese fricks are beautiful. This board is a perfect example, everytime BMI is brought up, posters say it doesn't apply to them because they lifted weights 10 years ago or bring up the 2-3% it doesn't work for as to why they are fat. We have lost site of what is normal. 15-18% bodyfat is normal in a traditional sense.

2) introduce a true PE program saturating in elementary similar to what we used to have. Every kid, every morning starts their day with it. Kindergarten through 12th grade. Have standards and have them tied to grades. JFK had it right in this regard and he was right that all the programs should be based on the LA Sierra high school program and should be based around traditional calisthenics, sprints and mile time.

For those not familiar with La Sierra HS, look it up. Look up the presidential fitness test if you aren't familiar with that. All PE should be based around classical physical education and be hard work.

Also health class should teach health and nutrition should be a class that is required.

It really starts young. Have you seen the amount of sugar in some formulas and don’t get me started on supplementing with rice for newborns. Babies should be breastfed, but because most mothers have to work a full time job so it’s nearly impossible.

Don’t give your babies formula. Breast is best!