After having spent time in New Zealand and Disneyland in the last ten days, I am once again reminded that Americans are fat. Not just a little pudgy. Fat. Fat. Fat.
Every population has a distribution, but my God, there are a lot of incredibly huge Americans; what's more criminal is that there are literally tons of fat American kids. To heck with bird flu, AIDS, and lung cancer. Obesity is an American problem of seemingly epidemic proportions, one which we'll all wind up paying for through higher insurance rates and taxes (and airline fuel bills, etc.).
I have some theories about how this is all the government's fault, with all of the subsidies on corn and other agricultural commodities driving the price of calories to nothing, but at the end of the day, people control what they put their pie holes and how much they exercise.
'Nuff said.
Keri Henare Reply
And our government keeps tell us that obesity is a huge (excuse the pun) issue in New Zealand. We're trying to slim down as a nation. I think that there's a better idea of health in general in New Zealand.
Andrew Reply
Bruce is right: it's the damn corn syrup. All those fat people, I just want to scream at them: "just stop drinking so much friggin soda, you idiot!" It'd probably cut their calorie intake in half.
It's worth reading Michael Pollan's new book "The Omnivore's Dillema" on the state of food in the US in 2006. He's the fantastic author of "The Botany of Desire" and a few others.
Kevin Reply
More people need to know about this high fructose corn syrup thing. Let's start something.
Juha Reply
Keri, while NZers aren't as huge yet as Americans, it's probably a good idea to create awareness around the issue.
Wish there was something useful done about it though, like making it easier for people to commute "manually" to work for instance - a footbridge for pedestrians and cyclists across the Harbour would be a great start.
Much of the problem is no doubt caused by excessive computer use. A few years ago, I noted that UNIX system administrators tended to be fat, really very fat indeed. Windows admins on the other hand were slimmer.
The reason for that was that the UNIX admins were able to do their work from one networked computer and didn't have to move around much; the Windows admins on the other hand couldn't do as much remote management and had to attend to and reboot each workstation in-situ. Plenty of exercise on big sites in other words.
Moral of that story is... want to be a fit geek? Run Windows.
/me removes tongue from cheek