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The American gene pool has not changed radically in the past few decades. What has changed is the nation’s way of eating and living. In simple terms: when people eat more and move less, they get fat. In the United States, people have become increasingly sedentary – driving to work instead of walking, performing little manual labor, driving to do errands, watching television, playing video games, and using a computer instead of exercising. Budget cuts have eliminated physical education programs at many schools. And the growth of the fast food industry has made an abundance of high-fat, inexpensive meals widely available.

The collapse of Soviet Communism has led to an unprecedented “Americanization” of the world, expressed in the growing popularity of movies, CDs, music videos, television shows, and clothing from the United States. Unlike those commodities, fast food is one form of American culture that foreign consumers literally consume. By eating like Americans, people all over the world are beginning to look more like Americans, at least in one respect. The United States now has the highest obesity rate of any industrialized nation in the world. More than half of all American adults and about one-quarter of all American children are now obese or overweight. Those proportions have soared during the last few decades, along with the consumption of fast food. The rate of obesity among American adults is twice as high today as it was in the early 1960s. The rate of obesity among American children is twice as high as it was in the late 1970s. No other nation in history has gotten so fat so fast.

Soda Consumption

Over the past forty years in the United States, per capita consumption of carbonated soft drinks has more than quadrupled. In 1978, the typical teenage boy in the United States drank about seven ounces of soda every day; today he drinks nearly three times that amount, deriving 9 percent of his daily caloric intake from soft drinks. Soda consumption among teenage girls has doubled within the same period, reaching an average of twelve ounces a day. A significant number of teenage boys are now drinking five or more cans of soda every day. Each can contains the equivalent of about ten teaspoons of sugar. Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Dr Pepper also contain caffeine. These sodas provide empty calories and have replaced far more nutritious beverages in the American diet. Excessive soda consumption in childhood can lead to calcium deficiencies and a greater likelihood of bone fractures. Twenty years ago, teenage boys in the United States drank twice as much milk as soda, now they drink twice as much soda as milk. Soft drink consumption has also become commonplace among American toddlers. About one-fifth of the nation’s one- and two-year-olds now drink soda. “In one of the most despicable marketing gambits,” Michael Jacobson, the author of “Liquid Candy” reports, “Pepsi, Dr Pepper and Seven-Up license their logos to a major maker of baby bottles, Munchkin Bottling, Inc.”

Coca-Cola, and Cadbury-Schweppes [the maker of Dr. Pepper] control 90 percent of the U.S. market. Americans already drink soda at an annual rate of about fifty-six gallons [six hundred twelve-ounce cans] per person.

Downside of Obesity

The cost of America’s obesity epidemic extends far beyond emotional pain and low self-esteem. Obesity is now second only to smoking as a cause of mortality in the United States. Obesity has been linked to heart disease, colon cancer, stomach cancer, breast cancer, diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure, infertility, and strokes. A 1999 study by the American Cancer Society found that overweight people had a much higher rate of premature death.

Obesity is extremely difficult to cure. During thousands of years of marked by food scarcity, human beings developed efficient physiological mechanisms to store energy as fat. Until recently, societies rarely enjoyed an overabundance of cheap food. As a result, our bodies are far more efficient at gaining weight than at losing it. Health officials have concluded that prevention, not treatment, offers the best hope of halting the worldwide obesity epidemic.

Epidemic Spreading Worldwide

The eating habits of American kids are widely considered a good example of what other countries must avoid. The obesity epidemic that began in the United States during the late 1970s is now spreading to the rest of the world, with fast food as one of its vectors. Between 1984 and 1993, the number of fast food restaurants in Great Britain roughly doubled – and so did the obesity rate among adults. The British now eat more fast food than any other nationality in Western Europe.

In China, the proportion of overweight teenagers has roughly tripled in the past decade. In Japan, eating hamburgers and French fries has made people any blonder, though it has made them fatter. Overweight people were once a rarity in Japan. The nation’s traditional diet of rice, fish, vegetables, and soy products has been deemed one of the healthiest in the world. And yet the Japanese are rapidly abandoning that diet. During the 1980s, the sale of fast food in Japan more than doubled; the rate of obesity among children soon doubled, too.

Study Finds Obesity Takes an Economic Toll on Workers, Firms

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/24/BUGC8PE0VN1.DTL

April 24, 2007

Obese employees lost many more workdays and filed twice as many workers' compensation claims, and those cases cost nearly seven times as much as those filed by their slimmer counterparts, according to a report released Monday.

"We all know obesity is bad for the individual, but it isn't solely a personal medical problem -- it spills over into the workplace and has concrete economic costs," Dr. Truls Ostbye, a study author and professor of community and family medicine, said in a statement.

Crematoria Struggle with Obese

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6566953.stm

April 18, 2007

Crematoria are struggling to deal with spiraling rates of obesity. Expanding waistlines are forcing many councils to spend thousands widening their furnaces. Local authorities are finding that many of their furnaces are too narrow to deal with these larger coffins.

Obese Aussies Get Big Ambulances

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6494117.stm

Mar 25, 2007

Australia's obesity crisis has forced health officials to revamp their fleet of ambulances to cope with a sharp rise in overweight patients. Super-sized vehicles have been introduced and new air ambulances will be remodelled to carry heavier people. Studies estimate that 67% of Australian men and over half of all women aged over 25 are overweight or obese. So many Australians are now bulging at the waistline that ambulances are being equipped with heavy-duty stretchers.

Average European 'is overweight'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6148456.stm

Nov 14, 2006

The Maltese and the Greeks are the heavyweights of Europe, figures from the European Commission reveal. The Italians and French the most trim, while the average Briton - like the average European - is slightly over the ideal weight.

Obesity, which is linked to a range of health problems, including heart disease, is a growing problem across much of the developed world. Most blamed a sedentary life for restricting their scope to be healthier. Less than one third said they engaged in regular "intensive" physical activity.

Ageing and Obesity Plague China

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B6389A1F-ED4C-4328-8B30-766510A608D5.htm

August 21, 2006

China is facing the prospect of an increasingly ageing and obese population that could adversely affect the country's economy, according to new reports. That older population is also likely to see the explosion of an obesity time bomb, according to another report on Monday. "China was once considered to have one of the thinnest populations but it is fast catching up with the West in terms of the prevalence of children who are overweight," said Yang Guiren, a senior official in the education ministry.

New study finds overweight patients can't fit into X-ray scanners

http://bodyandhealth.canada.com/channel_health_news_details.asp?news_id=10323&news_channel_id=1055&channel_id=1055&rot=11

July 27, 2006

Hospitals may be missing small tumours in obese patients because the patients either can't fit into an X-ray scanner or the machine has trouble penetrating the fat, according to a new study.

McNeil pointed out that the hospital will rent over-sized equipment as needed but patients who are very obese are sometimes sent to nearby veterinary colleges. "The MRI and X-ray machines there are designed for horses," McNeil said. "How would you feel?"

Rising Obesity Rates have Japanese Officials Worried

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0219japan-diet0219.html

Feb. 19, 2006

The Japanese are a long way from being as fat as Americans. Only 24 percent of Japanese age 15 and older are believed to be overweight, compared with about 65 percent of adults in the United States. But concern is growing. Instead of the fish, rice and miso soup of their grandparents' generation, younger Japanese are increasingly wolfing down fast food like burgers, fried chicken and instant noodles.

Even the French are Getting Fat -- Especially the Young

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/24/MNGUSFTMJS1.DTL

November 24, 2005

Analysts cite plenty of factors shaping the nation's expanding waistline. Like Americans, French are spending less time exercising and more time in front of their television sets than a generation ago.

Anti-globalization activist Jose Bove may have rammed his tractor into a McDonald's in 1999 to protest "bad food," but millions in France are ardent fans of cheeseburgers and fries. "MacDo," as the French call it, is the No. 1 franchise in France, with more than 1,000 outlets around the country.

'Burger Bill' passed by US House

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4360014.stm

20 October 2005

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill aimed at making it harder for people to sue the food industry for causing obesity. Lawmakers voted 306-120 in favour of the Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act - or the "cheeseburger bill", as it has been nicknamed.

US People Getting Fatter, Fast

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4183086.stm

25 August 2005

Americans are getting fatter at a rate never seen before, a report shows. In the past year, the adult obesity rate rose in 48 of America's states, and nationally from 23.7% to 24.5%, Trust for America's Health found. In 10 states, over a quarter of adults are now obese, despite campaigns alerting people to the dangers of over-eating. Mississippi, famous for its calorific mud pie, ranked the highest, followed by Alabama and West Virginia.