UPDATE (as of June 20th, 2008): Breaking News

Australia has officially become the Fattest

Nation on Earth!

AUSTRALIA has become the fattest nation in the world, with more than 9 million adults now rated as obese or overweight, according to an alarming new report.

The most definitive picture of the national obesity crisis to date has found that Australians now outweigh Americans and face a future “fat bomb” that could cause 123,000 premature deaths over the next two decades.

Read the rest here.

In yet another futile attempt to humble imperialistic America off of her self-absorbed, “high and mighty” throne, Canadians and Europeans (both equally guilty on this one) remind us about the obesity epidemic in America on a daily basis… as if we didn’t know. “You yanks suck cuz you’re all FAT!” - I hear over and over and over again. I am genuinely clueless as to how our problem with obesity is affecting these people so much as to become obsessed with Fat America? Where is the hurt and anger coming from? Or is it one’s insecurity needing to be built up to feel secure? Is it about control? Is it envy? American Obesity is useful ammunition for those taking digs at the US. What does this accomplish, though? Nothing. Will we still be fat? Yes. Will we humble up and realize that we’re aren’t …. all that? No. Why? Because FAT-O-PHOBIA exists in the US as well…. believe it or not. Quite naturally, the BBC with an Anti-American agenda won’t tell you something like that. They want YOU to think we’re “obesity-loving”. They also fail to provide the correct facts. Let’s take a look at the REAL statistics. Sixty million Americans are obese. This is 20% of the population unlike the “over 50%” that you learned on the CBC or the BBC. Could it be that your media got us confused with the middle east where over 50% of the women are obese? Aaah… I’ll let that one slide. You ARE aware that over 300 million people live in the US, right? So, how would YOU explain for the 240 million that AREN’T obese? I’ll wait on that answer, but let’s continue…

A woman from Britain (living in the US) writes an article on this very topic relating to some controversial news that she read on the “Times Online” by a columnist from the UK.

The article postulates that fatness and obesity are directly related to poverty and ignorance; that rich, educated people are rarely fat. Also, it says, “Obese means not just podgy, but dangerously, disablingly, distastefully fat, as in American fat.”

Not just in this article, but whenever I travel outside this country, I find the topic comes up an inordinate number of times. “Oh, you live in America; isn’t everyone beastly and fat over there?” To which, after today’s article, I can now respond “No, only the poor, stupid ones, apparently.“

I’d like to take some time here and clear up some misconceptions that people all over the world have about American Obesity.

First off, we invented it. It’s ours. Stop copying us. Obesity is one of those precious freedoms our ancestors fought for. We get to keep it.

On a serious note, according to this article, Australia is tied with the US in the “fat wars“. (They ARE one competitive group, aren’t they?)

Australians are now equal with Americans as the most overweight people in the world, with a new study showing that the rate of obesity in Australia has more than doubled in the past 20 years.

Professor Zimmet said an obesity summit held in NSW last year estimated it costs the nation up to $13 billion a year.

Nearly a million Australians now have type 2 diabetes. The figure has quadrupled in the past 20 years and led experts to coin the term “diabesity”.

This site addresses issues regarding the obesity crisis among adolescents in Australia.

Unfortunately, weight problems are common among adolescents in Australia. At least 1 in 4 young people in high school in Australia are overweight or obese.

Additionally, in Australia, obesity weighs in as a $21 billion-a-year disease. Do they eat twinkies over there too?

OBESITY cost Australians $21 billion last year in direct spending, disability and premature death, according to a report to be released in Canberra today.

And it is likely to get worse, with the Access Economics report estimating that by 2025 as many as 7.2 million Australians or 28.9 per cent of the population could be obese — and that’s obese, not just overweight.

How much weight can we put into all these statistics? Are they really tied with America? Another source notes that Australia is the fifth largest nation in the world.

Australia is now one of the fattest nations in the developed world, according to a new international report which singles out the country’s sky-rocketing obesity rate.

But again, 1 in 4 Australians….

But it was one of the worst performers on obesity, thanks to new statistics showing almost one in every four Australians now has a body mass index (BMI) over 30.

As of March 2008, Mexico is now the 2nd fattest nation in the world. America is now tied with Mexico. Greece and England aren’t all too far behind.

I was surprised to read this:

Australians are gaining weight even faster than people in the US, a notoriously fat nation.

“Using consistent measures of obesity over time, the rate of obesity has more than doubled over the past 20 years in the United States, while it has almost tripled in Australia,” states the report, Health at a Glance 2007.

Here’s my biggest problem: Nobody ever thinks to mention other parts of the world who are having similar problems. It’s always “The Americans“. My guess is that Americans get far way too much television and generalized media exposure across the globe. What can I say? We’re so “hated” that the world is obsessed with us. At the end of the day, Bush and the Iraqi War have very little to do with the collective bigotry toward Americans.

Also in regards to being simply over-weight, here’s an interesting chart that lists 194 countries and the “fat rank” in each one. And with that said, Canada doesn’t have TOO much to brag about.

To debunk another myth about obesity in America, it is thought by people from other countries that we are apathetic toward this crisis or even insomuch to embrace it with pity, adoration, and admiration. In this topic on Facebook, “Why does America have a bad image?“, one member suggests the following:

(sic) It’s a perculiar social quirke that drug addiction is often perceived as so evil, along with self-harm, and yet obesity is overlooked. Even though as you have said over-eating is a form of self medication and a form of self-harm. So shouldn’t that be looked upon in the same way?

It is probably due to misconceptions that obesity is a sign of wealth, that being fat is not looked down upon as drug addiction is.

Any Americans reading this with a half a brain would know that the above couldn’t be farther from the truth. While it IS true that Americans are more tolerant toward obese folk, fat people are far from being overlooked, and we ARE looked down upon *significantly* MORE than drug addicts.

Who’s going to get more pity: Fat people or druggies?

Druggies.

Who’s going to get more dates? Fat people or druggies?

Typically druggies are thin, so… druggies.

Who’s capable of giving a better first impression? Fat people or druggies?

Druggies. They aren’t stoned ALL the time. They are, again, mostly slender, and looks are EVERYTHING when it comes to 1st impressions.

America is just as superficial as every other country in the world.

In fact, in America the fat are looked down upon MORE than murderers/criminals. Criminals get all sorts of letters in prison from women and men all the time. The worse the crime, the more love letters they get. There is much lust in society even on a global level for serial killers. If you didn’t already know this, shame on you!

And for the love of all that’s ‘holy’, OBESITY IS *NOT* A SIGN OF WEATH. Rather, just the opposite is true. The media outlets in Europe and Canada (because they are the “peace-loving” elitists staunchly against the evil capitalists), want YOU to believe that Americans eat out of pure greed and are a part of the “I-want-it-ALL/Evil-Capitalist-hog-resource-leeching-syndrome”. Some of you Europeans and Canadians are conveniently confusing the general public with the Corporate Giants that rule the US. The rich make up the smaller percentage in the US.

Most obese people are poor.

At an upcoming conference at the University of Chicago, researchers will investigate why obesity is now a bigger threat to poor people than starvation in the United States, and is growing in danger across the world. As scientists declare a “global epidemic of fat,” the University’s Center for Gender Studies will host the Obesity and Poverty Conference on Friday and Saturday, March 1 and 2, to address the sometimes surprising cultural and medical reasons why the poor in post-industrial nations are now more likely than the rich to be dangerously overweight. This interdisciplinary conference will bring together doctors, scientists and humanists to analyze a paradoxical new world situation.

The ex-pat British blogger comments,

We shop at Whole Foods (a healthy, largely organic food supermarket) and Publix (a major supermarket chain). It is patently obvious upon simply perusing the receipts that when we do a weekly shop at Whole Foods, we are paying around $100 more than when we do it at Publix.

Healthy, natural foods are more expensive than processed crap. I recently heard an old lady in the checkout line explaining, as though ashamed since no one had asked her, that she was buying a loaf of 20 cent supermarket-brand white bread because it was all she could afford.

It is ridiculously cheap to buy fatty, greasy, and sugary food in the US compared to those foods that are healthy.

Eating right, new research shows, is getting so expensive that millions of Americans can’t afford it.

In what is believed to be the first study of its kind, researchers at the University of Washington focused on the cost of eating foods that are rich in nutrients, and low in calories, like fresh vegetables, whole grains, fish and lean meats. That’s the stuff we’re told we have to eat if we are going to shed a few pounds and remain healthy.

But when the researchers checked prices at numerous stores around the Seattle area, they found that the good, healthy foods had soared in price over a two-year period, jumping by nearly 20 percent compared to a 5 percent increase in the overall food price inflation. And during that same period, high-calorie foods had remained about the same price, and in some cases had actually dropped.

Research explains another reason why some poor people are fat.

Many of our stereotypes about fat people, besides being cruel, are myths. Recent medical research shows that being overweight may not be a sign of prosperity at all, but of past poverty and starvation. The body has natural defenses against starvation, and when it experiences enough of it, it slows down the body’s metabolism to make less food go further. Because poor people are more likely to go through periods of starvation than rich people, they are more likely to trigger these natural defense mechanisms.

One can exercise, right? After all, it’s free! Wrong. Eating nothing but crap makes you feel like crap, and the last thing that you want to do is exercise (especially if you suffer from depression). And before you call Americans, “lazy”, read this.

To also debunk the myth that most Americans just simply don’t care about their weight….

(sic) American society has a neurotic obsession about weight. It worships an ultra-thin “ideal” personified by gaunt models and waif-like celebrities. So intense is the social pressure to conform to this unnatural weight that 200,000 American women suffer anorexia nervosa each year from trying. (1)

The flip side of this neurosis is intolerance towards fat people. And when such people also claim to be poor, critics can — and often do — erupt in open hostility.

Like so many prejudices, this one is rooted in myth. Dr. Martin Seligman, an authority on obesity, writes: “Nineteen out of twenty studies show that obese people consume no more calories each day than non-obese people. In one remarkable experiment, a group of very obese people dieted down to only 60 percent overweight and stayed there. They needed one hundred fewer calories a day to stay at 60 percent overweight than normal people needed to stay at a normal weight.” (2)

What’s going on here? In 1995, Dr. Jules Hirsch of Rockefeller University published the results of a landmark study that proved that the body has a “thermostat” when it comes to maintaining its natural weight. His research team recruited 18 people who were obese and 23 who had never been overweight. They were required to live at a clinical center while their diet and activities were carefully controlled. In volunteers who gained weight, metabolism was speeded up by 10 percent to 15 percent. In those who lost weight, metabolism was 10 percent to 15 percent slower than normal. (3)

In other words, when people fall below their natural weight, their bodies slow down metabolism to try to regain it. When people gain weight, it speeds up metabolism to burn it off.

Feel free to read more here.

Other critics of fat people will accuse them of making up excuses and also think that fat people are happy.

My question is

1. Why would someone want to purposefully gain weight just for the sake of it?
2. How on earth could a fat person possibly be content in a world where they are globally harassed, mocked and ridiculed by the majority?

And if you’re still not convinced that fat-a-phobia doesn’t exist in the US, read this.

FEBRUARY 1–Mississippi legislators this week introduced a bill that would make it illegal for state-licensed restaurants to serve obese patrons. Bill No. 282, a copy of which you’ll find below, is the brainchild of three members of the state’s House of Representatives, Republicans W. T. Mayhall, Jr. and John Read, and Democrat Bobby Shows. The bill, which is likely dead on arrival, proposes that the state’s Department of Health establish weight criteria after consultation with Mississippi’s Council on Obesity. It does not detail what penalties an eatery would face if its grub was served to someone with an excessive body mass index.

More examples of fat-o-phobia in America can be found, here, here, and here.

Here are some more clues.

There are some diseases and other physiological problems that actually cause obesity. Let’s take a look at them.

• Prader-Willi Syndrome
• Leptin

Obesity has become an all too common condition in many of the world’s industrialized societies today and is continuing to rise at an alarming rate. In the United States, which currently has the highest rate of obesity of any country in the world, some 60 million (out of 300 million) adults are classed as being obese and a staggering 9 million adults are considered to be severely or morbidly obese.

Although at first sight it might seem that this is simply the result of changes to our diet and a dramatic drop in the level of physical activity for many Americans in recent years, the reality is that scientific studies into the causes of obesity show that the condition results from a complex combination of factors. One such factor which has come under increasing examination over the past ten years or so is genetics and, in particular, the genes involved in the regulation of leptin within the body.

Continued reading about Leptin here.

• Cushings Disease and Cushings Syndrome (watch the below video)

Last but not least, I’m getting tired of those from other western countries around the world whining that the reason their population is becoming so obese is “America’s fault” because of the “influence” we have on other countries. The last time I checked, the foods that you decide to eat are YOUR choice. The last time I checked, good parents watch after their children’s diet. No “evil Americans” have a gun to your head dictating you on how to live your life. Take responsibility for yourself! Additionally, if you get a disease that causes you to gain weight, that’s not “America’s fault” either. Quit playing the “blame game”. But I understand. It’s always easier to blame every little thing that goes wrong in your lives on the Americans.

In conclusion, America has problems. BIG ones. We’re aware of it. Bullying us is only going to cause the arrogant to become more arrogant, and the nice people to become arrogant. Hatred serves no purpose for the common good. Give us something to look up to. If your country is truly superior to America, lead by example. The last thing you want to do is be hostile as that’s the same word you use to describe Americans. Consequently, we won’t listen.