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One of the things that the husband and I noticed in Venice and Greece is that with the exception of American tourists, one did not see many significantly overweight people. Between a better diet and less enormous portions and much more walking and exercise, Europeans are far less obese than Americans. What's frightening is that obesity in America is increasing. The irony is that the far right likes to talk about America's exceptionalism. We are truly becoming exceptional - exceptionally fat. And where is obesity the worse? In the Bible Belt, of course. The sin of gluttony is apparently an unknown concept among the self-congratulatory "godly folk." An article in
The Atlantic looks at a recent study that ought to have Americans concerned. Here are highlights:
His proportions are based on averages from CDC anthropometric data.
As a U.S. male age 30 to 39, his body mass index (BMI) is 29; just one
shy of the medical definition of obese. At five-feet-nine-inches tall,
his waist is 39 inches.
The weight of everyone's destiny may be equal, but some countries are
fat, and others are not. The World Health Organization cares about that,
because understanding the differences should help to explicate causes.
Americans are also losing ground in height. For most of two centuries, until 60 years ago, the U.S. population was the tallest in the world.
Now the average American man is three inches shorter than the Dutch
man, who averages six feet. Japanese averages are also gaining on
Americans'. Anthropologists tie these recent changes primarily to diet
and lifestyle, as we've turned habitable wilderness into excess.
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