Lineup of shirtless American, Japanese, Dutch, Frenchman (I NEED to Diet!)

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, this is soo not true. Obviously made by your home market I guess? Everyone knows America is the fattest nation on earth (though I fear we're catching up fast).

 

^Actually?
That's not true.

We're like....second or third.
If you consider the combined traits of Fat, Loud, Lazy, and Dumb?

Yeah.
We own that!
Add 'drunk' to the list and we're Animal House's 'Flounder'.
Merry Christmas!

 

Fattest countries in the world revealed: Extraordinary graphic charts the average body mass index of men and women in every country (with some surprising results) | Mail Online


There was a rerun of a 1975 Perry Como Christmas Special on one of the cable channels here the other night, which was fun to watch; traditional Christmas fare. But what surprised us was that EVERYONE was thin. Not just thin, but super thin. We'd class them as suffering an eating disorder today.

So what happened between 1975 and today? It wasn't fast food as America had had that since the mid 1950's. Was it the rise of prepared food? Maybe, but Americans all eat out now don't they as it's cheaper than buying and making it yourself. Growth hormones in food? Nah, can't be that. No possible scientific evidence other than circumstantial evidence that we all became massive a few years after it was introduced into our food.

 

Easy.
All you have to do is look in one of our grocery stores.
There is a mammoth parking lot outside with 150 parking spaces for the morbidly obese and the occasional legitimately handicapped person.

Inside?
You can creak along on an electric cart outfitted with a large basket so that you don't have to waddle down the aisle under your own steam gathering your beer and chips.
That's 'potato chips'...although there are plenty of your kind of chips as well.
They just don't taste nearly as good and they're not wrapped in newspaper.
The store is about 10-percent meats and produce and 90-percent prefabricated carbs.

Oh?
...and if you're one in about 5 Americans?
The government will pay for at least some of the food.



We're not exactly a nation of walkers.


Merry Christmas!!

 

The problem was when America shifted eating habits. We transitioned from meals being a batch process to a continuous injection process.

 

First thing I thought of when I saw that was Yatta

 

life is good.

 

OMG

 

I'm sure I read recently that Australians have overtaken Americans in the fat stakes.

And this has happened since I moved here. Coincidence, I'm sure.

 

As a foreigner who's been to America several times, I have a couple of points. And I'm not being critical of fat people here as I'm not exactly thin myself.

First, portion sizes.

I have a hell of an appetite. I eat a lot. This is why, if I were on the front page of a gossip magazine, I would be described as "celebrating my curves".

But whenever I've been to America, I've been shocked by portion sizes in restaurants. They're at least double what we see in Europe and Australia (with China, it's hard to judge because of communal serving). I have never been able to clear my plate at an American restaurant - there's just too much there. I assume you're supposed to finish the food. That has to lead to a change in eating habits on the part of customers: they're being pushed to eat more than can possibly be healthy

And second, ETC's comment about not being a nation of walkers.

With the exception of a couple of big cities (NY and SF), I've noticed a remarkable lack of sidewalks (see, I said it in American!) in America. I remember being in one of those big out-of-town stores and wanting to go to another store a couple of hundred metres away. There was no way to get from one store to the other without driving: there was no safe way to walk. So you have to drive, over distances that people in other countries would never dream of driving.

In fact, a few of my British and Hong Kong friends went to a wedding for a friend of ours in a smallish town in Indiana. They were staying in a hotel, and went to a bar about half a mile away. Being responsible people with every intention of getting very drunk, they didn't drive. On their way back to the hotel, they were stopped by the police. The policeman said they looked suspicious purely because they were walking.

So that really can't help either.

But, with all that said, we are fatter here in Australia. I'm sure immigration from the South Pacific is a factor here, but I reckon much of it is because, increasingly, we have that same sort of car-friendly, pedestrian-unfriendly infrastructure outside of the big cities.

 

Everything is bigger in America -- cars, houses, landholdings, war machines, egos, portion sizes, waists, and wastes. Small restaurant portions lead to bad reviews.

There is no social stigma to leaving some restaurant food uneaten, despite the obvious waste. Better is to ask for a box to take the extra with you, to use for a future meal of leftovers. These were once known as 'doggie bags', to feed the remainder to a pet dog at home, but the usual expectation now is that the customer will enjoy it him/herself. This is very widely expected by food service staff, and works best in cooler climates or where refrigeration is readily available.

Better still is to share menu items with another person, usually a family member or friend with whom you don't mind sharing germs. Careful use of this practice, especially when traveling with no ready facilities to refrigerate and reheat leftovers, can eliminate waste and sharply cut waist and cost.

 

Thanks for that.

The doggie-bag thing is very common in China too. But when you're on holiday and staying in a hotel, there's no easy way to re-heat it.

And regardless of the doggie-bag thing, I do think the bigger portions do put pressure on people to eat more.

I remember reading a while ago that even in homes, plates are bigger now than they were 30 years ago (this applies not just to America, but to lots of countries). The original reason was all that nouvelle cuisine stuff with lots of small towers of food and vast expanses of white empty plate. But now people use those big plates and just fill them.

 

Similar stories are told here too Crazy that you're looked on as a criminal for walking half a mile. You're supposed to drive or walk in the mountains, not the street.

A friend from work has returned from the US after seeing friends and said the portion sizes were way way too big to be healthy. He'd tried hard not to succumb but still put a few pounds on. Same with McDonalds and the like. Here our supersize meal is the size of their normal one! Whilst the US supersize would probably be classed as a family meal here.

I guess at the end of the day it's the capitalist way; give people what they want and bigger is better.

That's why the Toyota IQ is ridiculed just because it's small. Very few could see the additional benefits to a small car.

 

mmm they look pretty fat to me