Tuesday, April 13, 2004

B"H

How Did The World Get So Fat In Just One Generation?

I'd like to pose a question. On the link below we find
the following excerpt.

http://64.227.194.66/brett/news.htm

The percentage of overweight Americans has increased by about one-
third in the last 20 years. This disturbing trend even afflicts our
young people with more than 25% of today's children overweight. The
National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys show that 23
percent of adults were obese in 1994 compared with 15 percent in
1980. The percentage of overweight or obese Americans is even greater
now. "Today about 65 percent of U.S. adults are overweight or obese,"
according to Surgeon General Richard Carmona," and more than two-
thirds of all adults are trying to keep it off."

Americans who live in the States me tell me that from glancing around
they think that a 65% figure for obesity in the US may be very
conservative. Do those members of M-Vegetarian who live in the States
agree?

I left the US in 1982. That was a little less than two decades after
Twiggy supplanted "The Shrimp" as the most famous model in the world.
It was the time before George Bush promised a "kinder gentler nation"
(whether or not be delivered on his promise is not the issue here).
1982 was a time of "You can never be rich or think enough." It was
the time of women executives proving themselves in the corporate
world, donning rather severe business suites on rail thin bodies,
projecting an aura of workaholic chic. It was a time of regarding
people of normal weight as being "chubby", not to mention those who
were overweight as being eyesores. It was a cruel and heartless time
in which the impossible was expected of people professionally,
personally and in the way they looked.

Now, a mere ~20 years later, obesity is rampant in the US and is
spreading like wildfire in all of the countries that are in the US
sphere of economica and cultural influence. What do you think
happened? Feel free to speculate wildly.

Doreen