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Clever Animated Map Showing Increase in Obesity in US Over Past 20 years

One word: DISGUSTING!

All I can say is that obesity is going to be this nation's downfall when no-one can afford health insurance and healthy people no longer will want to sponsor the health insurance of others who have no legitimate reason for being a fat ass.

daWeatherMan

Great map. Shows how quickly things have moved from satisfactory to critical, and how the trend of obesity is spreading across the country. It has always been my belief (whether accurate or not) that there is more obesity in the south- good southern cookin'

In my opinion, obesity IS the new smoking problem. It's a public health crisis if there ever were one. There aren't any "no-fat" sections of restaurants, or buildings that are "fat-free," and our own federal government has decided to recognize it as a "disease!" A mistake, I think.

Obesity is not just an unpleasant social condition, though... The higher rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, athsma, arthritis, and other afflictions should be a wake-up call to stop this trend from continuing.

But, the question is: HOW?

This chiquita is bringing sexy back to obese.

And the kiddies dig being fat.

The lead editorial in this morning's NY Times is about obesity, fast food and disclosure of calorie content:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/27/opinion/27sat4.html?hp

Cool viz

The calorie disclosure is good, because it doesn't involve taking away anyone's right to be a glutton. But a little enlightenment is a good start. I lost 20 lbs. after I researched the calories in what I thought was a healthy diet.

WAIT A SECOND!!! Red states and blue states!!! Well, loosely. I am surprised that WA and OR are above 25%

I find it irritating that some restaurant chains (Red Robin is an example) refuse to disclose nutritional information. It's not often that I eat at a restaurant, but when I do, I want to know what I've consumed. When I can't get nutritional information, I email a complaint to the company and promise never to eat there again. I'm very active and eat healthy foods most of the time, so it really isn't a big deal if I can't count calories for every single meal -- but it's the principle. There's no reason not to disclose nutritional information.

It's interesting, too, that states that traditionally have the highest rates of poverty (the Deep South) also have the highest rates of obesity.

I wish I had the answer or correlation there, but maybe it's access / ability to pay for healthy foods?

On the plus side, I want to move to Colorado! It seems like there may still be a few guys with abs there.

That's really good info Caslon, thanks for passing it along.

It's interesting that I was reading this thread and then happened to see this article in the Sydney, Australia online newspaper today.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/obesity-in-the-city/2007/10/27/1192941400161.html

Their findings point more toward laziness, although I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the foods they eat as well. However, when I was in Australia, I noticed there weren't nearly as many fast food places as there are here.

Mplsjock_writer... I grew up in Mississippi, and although poverty may have somewhat of an influence on obesity. I think the biggest influence is that we love the fried foods down there! :-) Fried chicken is still one of the first things Mom cooks for me when I go home for a visit.

looks like Colorado is the place to be

Obesity doesn't just "happen", any more than fitness "happens"... both states take a lot of energy to get there.

It took a lot of Ben & Jerry's and couch-sitting for me to get this fat, and it's going to take a lot of sweat to get fit. I think most people don't understand just what we as a nation have been doing to ourselves.

"I think most people don't understand just what we as a nation have been doing to ourselves."

Read this book, and you will understand: "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes

Waiting in the grocery checkout one day, a woman (very heavyset) was talking to her friend. She had the nerve to look me up and down, then with a hateful sneer, say, "He probably eats anything he wants!"

Her grocery cart was full of crap from the center isles, while almost everything in my cart was healthy. It wasn't difficult for me to see the problem. Why couldn't she see the problem?

dean_pdxHer grocery cart was full of crap from the center isles, while almost everything in my cart was healthy. It wasn't difficult for me to see the problem. Why couldn't she see the problem?

Some people think you have to be divinely gifted to be in good shape, and have no idea that what they're eating is making them fat. Some folks see that their entire family is fat, and think they have no choice but to be fat. Others just don't want to take any responsibility for their own choices.

Saw an episode of Biggest Loser recently where one of the trainers was at a high school, basically challenging the lunch room staff on the choices to feed garbage to kids. The lady's response was "Potatoes are now considered a vegetable"... and was later followed by a comment that she had to find ways to save money, and fresh fruit/veg spoils too fast.

LOL, I made a raid on Costco yesterday. It always looks like a blimp hanger to me, with all the spherical people waddling toward the entrance. I couldn't help noticing that just inside the entrance, there were prominent displays of A) Big-screen TVs B) Sofas and C) Godzilla-sized packages of snack chips.

Even at our local health food store, the snack chip section is one of the largest in the entire store.

high fructose corn syrup. there in lies a huge problem.

In this morning's news: Steelcase has introduced a combination treadmill and workstation, so that office-workers can burn more calories during the day.

Now if they'd just add an electrical generator so that the treadmill actually powers the computer, they'd really have something.

Mindgarden: LOL, I made a raid on Costco yesterday. It always looks like a blimp hanger to me, with all the spherical people waddling toward the entrance......

If one looks in the men's jeans section at our local Costco, they seem to stock up more size 46/30's than they do 32/30's (and the latter is only a recent addition).

Fucking Pringles are YUMMMMMY.

Fucking Pringles are YUMMMMMY.

trebor965high fructose corn syrup. there in lies a huge problem.

We have to use all that subsidized corn some way!

"We have to use all that subsidized corn some way!"

IMO, It'd be better if they just made ethanol out of it, and I'm no great fan of corn-based ethanol (make mine cellulosic, please.) But, I'd rather see it fuel cars than fatten people.

Ha! Wyoming was one of the last to fall into obesity!

I wonder how it would look if you made a similar map animation for the entire world.

That is: is this really just an American trend? Or is it a Western Culture trend? Or is it a World-Wide trend?

I'm sure everyone here has a guess about the answer... but it would be nice to see the actual data.

It's a worldwide trend. I posted this before, but this graphic ranks nations by their obesity incidence:

http://tinyurl.com/2sygtg

I better lay off the Captain Crunch!

It's hardly data, but after being in Europe for a month, the first thing I noticed going into the terminal at Zürich that hosts the US airlines, is how fat everyone was. (Interestingly, they're all segregated in a distant terminal - along with the mideast airlines. Perhaps they're hoping we'll knock each other off?)

Lifestyle
Culture
Genes
Socio ecomomic status
Literacy
Marketing

All play a role. Mostly, it's that fat folks are just plain as lazy. They've grown up not feeling good, and don't have a valid point of reference to good health. They view it as normal to gobble down Crestcor, Linsopril, and Norvasc. It is what it is.

It's not about saving lives. It's about making money for the powers that be. It's about control of those who are in the minority.

That's why we have a failed war on drugs despite the fact we only lose 3000 to illicit drug use, annually.

An interesting article initially about french wine labels, but gets into european efforts to curb obesity and other health issues.

New Health Warning on Wine Labels Has Many French Seeing Red

mindgardenNow if they'd just add an electrical generator so that the treadmill actually powers the computer, they'd really have something.

Check it. I sort of love the idea. Would've loved it more if they'd actually had a kidlet on the bike.

mindgarden, they were probably more hoping that the fat americans would eat the middle easterners.

we're exactly the same in the uk. apparently half the nation will be obese by 2050 recent reports suggest.

there's tons of info out there about our evolution not having kept up with the evolution of our food. ie grains and sugar. we simply can't cope with it.

i was looking around my local supermarket the other day, after the first couple of aisles devoted to fruit, veg and then meat and fish, the rest is absolute crap. refined, processed, chemically enhanced, ready meals, crisps, fizzy drinks, sweets, desserts. the average family doesn't stand a chance.

in the last 20 yrs we have had a total obsession with low fat products and yet look at us.

we need some serious thinking and legislation on this problem.

The underlying measurement used here is the BMI. Check out a calculator with a different formula here:

http://www.mines.edu/~gmurray/BMIApplet/BMIApplet.html

I think the misuse of the BMI is another example of the media not understanding (or simply ignoring) the fact that co-relational studies do not equal cause and effect and not knowing enough about the topic on which they're reporting.

I'd like to see some of these maps use something other than the BMI and see if we truly ARE getting that much more obese than we were, or if at the same time we're also getting taller, with stronger bones and more muscle from generally better nutrition. Thereby making other variables skew the numbers.

I'm not sayin we're getting any skinnier, frankly we probably are getting fatter, but not as fast and not as drastically as the health food industry and the sensationalist media would like us to believe; and part of this problem is that we're globally adopting a flawed method of measuring the problem.

Chuckystud

Lifestyle
Culture
Genes
Socio ecomomic status
Literacy
Marketing

All play a role. Mostly, it's that fat folks are just plain as lazy. They've grown up not feeling good, and don't have a valid point of reference to good health.

So, first you say there are several mitigating factors which have played a role in the rise of obesity. Then, from the other side of your mouth, you say it's all their own fault.

Are you for real?

Someone should capitalize on this and start the miracle "Colorado Diet".

Oh. My. God.

Truly disheartening to see it so widespread -- but I wonder, too, what the map would look like county by county (I wonder if some parts of states are "fatter" than others).

Obesity is a serious problem BUT(!) is it really a disease? I think we've seriously gone off the rails with this line of thinking...unless we're calling obesity a psychological/psychopathological disease?

Americans are fat for many reasons, including lifestyle, access to cheap produce, sedentary encouragement, declining education (in nutrition), and a lack of public space/civic engagement. Americans also use 25% of the world's oil and account for 25% of the world's prison population (2,200,000 people roughly)...pick up FAST FOOD NATION to read about these connections as well as a book called AFFLUENZA for more info (sorry I don't have the authors' names).

This is based off of bmi, correct?

That is crazy! People just aren't educated about food. Alot of people think that to eat healthy, means depriving themselves of food they actually can enjoy.

People in CO just weigh less because of the decreased gravity.

"sedentary encouragement"

It'd be interesting to see a chart of bicycle, roller skate, and video game sales over the last 20 years.

"civic engagement"

A fat, incapable population is good for an administration that might otherwise fear grabbing more power than they were originally designed to have.

Men's Fitness ranks US cities for "fitness" and "fatness" based on some relatively random criteria.

One of the "fitness" criteria is the number of bicycle and sporting goods shops. (I think one of the "fatness" criteria is the number of pizza and donut shops.) For some reason, I can't find it on their own page, but here's another reference.

http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20050105/americas-fittest-fattest-cities

Lesson learned: if you don't want to live where there's a high obesity index, go to Colorado, or one of the Great Lakes.

Nowadays I'm studying Pharmacy and Biochemistry, and I've been told that the obesity problem is spreaded in the Western society, but it's the problem is much more important in the US. Even some anti-American European scientists have accused to the US to spread, the American obesity-tending lifestyle.

You as US citizens, do you agree that your world-wide influency and our (as Europeans) receptiveness is important to spread this Western-world problem?

Pardon me for being somewhat skeptical of the results, but, I am. I do not deny that from personal observation, I've seen or at least noticed more chubby, fat and obese people around me but to actually quantify it into hard numbers is what I'm skeptical about.
Just like the number of gays to straights is illusive to quantify, so is the number of fat people in the US. I have some training and experience with the News Media and I find it difficult to trust them, especially CNN and CBS.
One of the things I've noticed is that the poorest Americans are usually the most obese. I haven't done a scientific study or anything but poor people are usually pretty fat here in Toledo. Wealthier people, those of us who make an income, are usually pretty fit.
There are some exceptions though, when the UAW had their one day strike, I noticed a lot of fat UAW workers picketing on television news.

The obese poor phenomenon is due to diets full of cheap carbs and less produce and meat.

Here in Canada, the obesity problem is getting so bad that children are showing diseases only found in older people. The Canadian government has started an ad campaign to draw attention to it.

Here is the article in the National Post.

Interesting fact in the article Obesity costs the Canadian economy an estimated $5.7-billion a year in lost productivity and the health-care system an estimated $2.1-billion.

I know there are a lot of fat people in my blue-collar city of 45,000.

Another interesting thing, have you ever noticed that TV stations can shoot the faces of people who are smoking but you can't identify people when talking about obesity. It's all shots of waistlines and people walking with no heads.

Bill

haha I love how the shallowest states are the skinniest whoooo NY CA FL!

New York isn't that shallow. It has hills and mountains.


California, too, for that matter.

"New York isn't that shallow."

Philosophically?

yeah lol...its the major cities for entertainment and business...I meant shallow as in people lol not geo.

The funny thing is i am from Colorado. And Yes most of the peopel there are far from fat. Reason - Turist state all 4 climates availble in 2 hours.

Normally 340 days of sun.

If it blizzards it melts the next day or few days lol but its sunny. Clean air and you can walk everywehere.

I moved to FtCambell with my ex in Jan of 2003. Had to change jobs from white collar tech to blue color factory worker then after 4y10m with my ex. I moved to Nash.

I left colorado at 230 lbs which I agree on 6'2 frame is overweight but not bad. After break up with my ex and down in nashville... I gained up to 398 lbs now. Been struggling to get it off. There is No sidewalks down here and no real places for recreations outside. Even food wise people are so fat. They actually make it hard to find healthy foods and do not really promote working out nore much of anything else healthy.

They do promote fad dieting here and drugs to get thin,

I started journy to get it off finally about 10 mo ago with some health bumps in middle.. I am now getting back on wagon.

I am back to working out 5x week for 2 hours to 2 1/2 hours.

Its a real challenge here to get fit let alone no real community here eigher. Just a lot of shallow men who stick it in everythign they can and live in bars lol.

So I tell ya when i can ... I am moving back to home in colorado. The people are nice there the men are nice there and its beutiful. Clean air tons of jobs and inudustry and a lot of fun things to do.

I work for Large computer company here and thats only thing keeping me here outside of my best friends.

Its extramly scary state to be in. When they promote you eating deep fried snickers and marshmellows lol.

I did a map project of the obesity epidemic for a geography class in college -- I did exactly what the CNN graphic did. I showed, with color representation, how the obesity rates worsened and worsened. I based this from BMI data.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a similar graphic to CNN's on their website here: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/index.htm

We need to see a study correlating:

BMI (eventhough I hate using it)
population growth
increase in commute times
decrease in school/gym class funding
growth in chain restaurants (including Starbucks)

In the 10 years I've lived in CA I've seen a switch.
The further you get away from the beach the less fit the population appears (and I feel like a bean pole when I go back to Chicago to visit).

I have no problem believing those numbers. It's amazing to me, when out and about, to see how out of shape almost everyone is. The sheer number of VERY overweight people is astonishing. And now, they're considered "the norm." An example:

A few months ago, I went shopping for some pants. My waist is 30. At one place, waist sizes STARTED at 34, and they only had a few of those. Most of the pants were 40 and above. The clerk told me they quit carrying my size; they'd have to special-order for me, or tailor-make a pair.

Went to another place -- also supposedly "high-end." They had ONE pair of 30s. They were trying to get rid of it "because nobody's that size anymore." It retailed for $185. Got it for -- $19.

I guess what got me the most is that I was kind of treated like a freak because I'm in decent shape. Like there was something odd about a guy with what I consider a normal-sized waist. I felt like I'd taken a trip through the looking glass.

Have you noticed how pants sizes seem to go in some weird sequence, like there are tons of 32/36 but not 32/30 jeans but then there are many 42/29 jeans. It's as if the fatter you get, the shorter you get... And why is there no size 33?