The big picture

The world is getting wider, says Charlotte Howard. What can be done about it?

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Readers' comments




Hmm, this article made me hungry

time to eat my double cheesburger with extra large fries and a milkshake and Diet coke (gotta watch my weight).


A worried man from Mexico, Even if you dont consume in excess sugar and salt you gain fat eating process food like ham, bacon, sausages, canned food, sliced bread, cookies, twinkies, and a long etc. We need consume more fruits and vegetables, salads, more natural water and less sodas, burgers, pizzas, lays, pringles. Its time to make some workout outdoor.

GH1618 in reply to HyunSmith

"Eat less and exercise more," while good advice, is simplistic. It is not as simple as that. The food available in supermarkets changes over time, and one important way that it has changed in the United States over the past few decades is the increased proportion of sugar. It has become so pervasive in commercially prepared food that it takes discipline to avoid it and more money as well. There is a shared responsibility here.

Dr. Robert Lustig explains this thoroughly in the lecture to which I linked earlier.


Video games = fat. The rise in video and computer games has dramatically reduced childhood exercise. No more "go out and play". Lack of exercise leads to increased girth, which then carries on into later life. Sad but true. What to do?

rocco1 in reply to GH1618

Thanks for connecting those dots.

The point behind my post was not that Hostess can't be partially responsible for the obesity epidemic because my personal BMI is low. I know that n=1 does not lead to a reliable conclusion. Rather, the point was that there is more to this story; processed and high-sugar foods have been prevalent for much longer than the obesity epidemic...I just wonder how many factors have converged on the present day to create the epidemic we now have.

Canadian Moxie in reply to Riobaldo

I was just at Copacabana and Ipanema Beaches and I was very surprised with how many overweight people in tiny swimsuits I saw. If that represents the slimmest of the Brazilians, no wonder the BMI index is high for them.


"Yes to orange jelly..." Either TE meant orange Jello (or gelatin, so as not to violate trademarked brand names), or the children of small-town Mississippi have developed a very British affinity for orange marmalade at their tea-time.


What a lazy article! Wouldn't the % of ingredients - corn, soy - in processed foods play a role? Aren't soy and corn present in 80% of processed foods? Don't nutritionists consider eating the same thing over and over again, day after day, to be a form of malnutrition (even if you only eat carrots and rabbits)?

kiwisimmo in reply to abu tayyi

Funny, I don't remember the creation of the UK National Health Service in 1945 leading to an immediate spike in obesity. I'm still with you on the junk food tax, if you'd like to decide the thresholds.
One of the problems with junk food is that it's so damn cheap. I'm guessing that you would have to tax the hell out of it to make a difference. Pictures of obese diabetes-ridden 60 year olds on your burger box would achieve the same effect a lot more efficiently.
Another method is to ban the fast food chains from your town. This is the case where I live in NZ. It's not an official ban, just a polite no thanks. 25% of the adverts on NZ tv are for junk food and we can't eat any of it. There are locally owned fast food joints, but they are twice as expensive. The kids at the local school have profiles similar to those of 1960's kids. They are encouraged to exercise as well. It's the culture here (not much else in the way of culture, but it will have to do).


It's not just a matter of eating less and more exercise though these might help. What you eat has as much to do with it. Research from the last 20 years has shown that high carbohydrate diets lead to obesity even if one counts calories. The body cannot allow the Glucose in the blood stream to rise too high. If the meal eaten has lots of starch in it that is converted to glucose starting in the mouth and the body immediately goes to work burning it off as energy. That leaves the fat, which can easily convert to body fat, behind. If all meals contain enough glucose to keep the fires burning so to speak, one will become fat pretty quickly. About 30 years ago we were told to cut down on fat to lose weight when the opposite is the truth. If one cuts down on carbs one can eat a lot of fat as the body converts to a fat burning metabolism using up the stores in the cells and in the bloodstream. It's actually pretty simple. High starch (sugar) foods taste good and are cheap. Hence the obesity epidemic. One bun on a MacDonald's hamburger has 70 grams of carb. I try to limit myself to about 100 grams of carb a day. So if I eat that bun I've taken in 70% of my daily allowance in the form of empty calories. These days I cook my meals, eat high fiber breads if I eat bread at all and the rest is meat and vegetables. My weight has been stable for a couple of years now with very little effort except the cooking. I usually get about 15 - 20 minutes of concentrated exercise a day the rest from daily activity. Simple.

bernardpalmer in reply to Michael Watson

"This ongoing pussy-footing and being 'politically correct' with regard to obesity is ridiculous, irresponsible, cowardly and silly. In the very near future governments will simply not have the finances to cover the medical care costs involved with caring for obese and overweight citizens."

So should Socialized medicine they just look after healthy people? If they did that would they cut my taxes? Don't you think it would be better if there was no Socialized medicine then we'd all pay for our own diseases? Is that what you are saying?

Here is a link to an article in the China Daily with a story how a Chinese researcher has supposedly found that obesity is caused by an infectious bacteria. Would that fit your criteria for receiving free Socialist health care if it were true?

"Diet and healthy eating habits is one of the most confused and confusing issues in our society and for no reason whatsoever."

Oh yes there is a reason. US government dictates what is healthy food and what isn't. And for 50 years they've been wrong about animal fats, grains and fruit.


I think the main problem is the calculation way of WHO. In fact so many people might be considered as overweight due to high muscle ratio and their fat level is less than 18%. the ratio must be rechecked different sort of variables should be taken into account.



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