The United States of Gluttony
American Spectator,
by
John Glynn
Original Article
Posted By: MissMolly,
5/11/2019 5:57:06 AM
There is a real crisis in America. The severity of the crisis transcends religious and political boundaries. It has nothing to do with the shrinking of the ice caps; it has everything to do with the expansion of the waistbands. Put down the burger. It’s time to hear some harsh truth. In a stinging piece for The Spectator USA, Will Lloyd noted, “just as the dapper, diffident, pink-cheeked gentleman was once the symbol of Britain’s international prestige, American power has its own archetypal figure: a greedy slob who cannot stop eating.” Is this an exaggeration? Absolutely not.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
MainelySane 5/11/2019 6:20:28 AM (No. 61168)
It isn´t just in the U.S., by the way. What I think is ironic about the obesity epidemic is that there weren´t supposed to be enough calories to go around... we were supposed to be having famines according to Paul Ehrlich in 1968.
17 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
F15 Gork 5/11/2019 8:02:49 AM (No. 61162)
“There was a time when obesity alarmed us”. There was also a time when a national debt of 22 trillion dollars would have alarmed us. Both those guys have been in the rear view mirror for quite some time now.
30 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
dolphin 5/11/2019 8:19:41 AM (No. 61167)
If you think global warming is fake science, you need to learn about fake dietary science.
Read The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz for more details.
24 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
GO3 5/11/2019 8:34:04 AM (No. 61147)
Well, when you hire someone else to walk your dog, clean your house, mow the yard, etc. no wonder people get fat.
17 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
StormCnter 5/11/2019 8:45:31 AM (No. 61153)
It´s true that too few of us get sufficient exercise. We don´t climb stairs, walk to work or the corner store, kids no longer have school recess, and we don´t eat properly too often. It´s easier to grab a drive-through hamburger and fries than to go home and cook something. Families with kids have conflicting schedules with work, school, after-school activities, so everyone just makes a PBJ sandwich when they are briefly in a kitchen. We eat in our cars or at our desk at work and we eat way too many sugar-laden sweets and drink too many soft drinks.
I have no answers, of course, just like everyone else.
24 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
chumley 5/11/2019 8:53:23 AM (No. 61156)
Boy. I am so glad for this article. I was running out of people to hate.
I´ve never met a bad person who was bad because they were fat, and I never met a good person who was good because they weren´t.
So it all boils down to whether or not we find them attractive and fantasize about them. If that´s the extent of what makes it anyone else´s business, it isn´t.
16 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
obdurate 5/11/2019 8:55:37 AM (No. 61152)
Want to see gluttony on steroids? Take a cruise, sight to behold!
14 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
udanja99 5/11/2019 9:01:20 AM (No. 61165)
#1 is correct. I travel to Australia and New Zealand every two years on business and sometimes to England, and the obesity problems are just as bad in those countries as they are here.
14 people like this.
The good news is that we fat generally people die earlier. That should make some happy in their own smug world.
8 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
franq 5/11/2019 9:27:00 AM (No. 61158)
Part of the blame lies on the Welfare State.
7 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
coldborezero 5/11/2019 9:49:51 AM (No. 61164)
The “blame” lies squarely (and completely) on the shoulders of the individual. No one else. I am obese and I am fully aware that I did it to myself. I know how and why it happened. Whether or not it is ever corrected rests solely with me. Nobody has ever forced me to eat anything. Nobody has ever forced me to sit on my butt.
14 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
red1066 5/11/2019 9:50:58 AM (No. 61163)
I saw a piece from someone who married a person from Argentina. She stated that one of the first things her husband noticed after arriving in the U.S., was that everything he ate, was sweet. Even food that wasn´t supposed to have a sweet taste, tasted sweet. I work with someone from Germany, and when I asked him if he had noticed the same thing, he immediately said yes. He stated in Germany, food tastes like it supposed to without any sweet taste at all. Have the food producers in this country been spiking out food?
11 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
franq 5/11/2019 9:53:41 AM (No. 61166)
Say what you want, but being able to sit at home and draw a monthly survival check and EBT card doesn´t encourage healthy activity...
10 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
Strike3 5/11/2019 10:26:39 AM (No. 61146)
Take a walk down the street or through WalMart and put your Politically Correct glasses in your pocket. The truly obese are usually female, minority or part of the parasite class. Not to say that some white men aren´t carrying a few extra pounds but the gross examples can be put into obvious categories. Don´t blame it on donuts, blame it on the half dozen that they eat at one time.
15 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
HPmatt 5/11/2019 10:56:49 AM (No. 61155)
Food has been taken over by multinationals, chain restaurants.
Salt, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, all churned out by factory companies to sell and taste good. Remember in the 60s when going to the hamburger stand once a week was a big deal; when getting a 6oz Coke at church was a big deal. Otherwise you ate what mom and grandmother cooked for you every night. Remember when jello and Kool aid were big deals.
Now your fridge is full of high calorie corporate rolled-up foods and drinks. You can eat out breakfast lunch and dinner, with thousands of calories a meal, compared to hundreds.
17 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
F16 guy 5/11/2019 11:41:54 AM (No. 61148)
Another great read is The Case Against Sugar (Taubes) and Undoctored (Davis).
Wanna lose weight simply? Avoid carbs and sugar. Lose 100# in 1 year. Seriously. Research Vinnietortorich.com.
8 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
Chuzzles 5/11/2019 12:14:10 PM (No. 61149)
It isn´t that we don´t stop eating. High Fructose corn syrup in so much of our food is a big time culprit as well. I have stopped eating that product whenever possible for over a year now, and I have dropped at least 30 pounds. When the processors stopped using actual sugar in food, that is when the slide towards obesity started happening. But like all Leftists, blame the public instead of looking at the real problems behind the problem.
9 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
TXknitter 5/11/2019 12:46:43 PM (No. 61150)
You are right, #1. When we go to various areas of England and Scotland to visit relatives, the obesity is awful whether in the city or the more remote villages. . All ages too.
11 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
Zarin 5/11/2019 1:26:46 PM (No. 61154)
We have enough to eat - I would hate the alternative. Don´t forget that modern science saves lives. We also have people alive today who in another era would be dead. Several of my friends are overweight because they are are various life saving medications. They would be dead with those meds - even tho´ the medicine has added to their weight.
6 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
DVC 5/11/2019 2:51:53 PM (No. 61157)
When I was traveling in a number of former states of the Soviet Union, one of the biggest differences that I saw, and once I noticed it, it became glaring, was the lack of obese young people.
Where I would estimate that only 25% of American women at age 25 are less thatn 40 or 50 lbs overwieght, it seemed that in the former soviet countries, only about 5% at that age were even 25 lbs overweight, essentially none in the 50-75 lb overweight range. Similar for young men, although it seems a bit less serious here for males.
Their older women over there tended to be overweight, by 50 it seemed common to be plump, perhaps 30 or 50 lbs overweight.
I weigh about 8 lbs more at age 68 than I did in my first year of college, was never "fat". My wife may weigh 5 or 10 lbs more, and still runs 5Ks and such.
It is sad to see what Americans are doing to themselves.
6 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 5/11/2019 4:28:11 PM (No. 61160)
Go to Hong Kong. I was amazed to see my mental image of Chinese people as thin and productive running around. What I saw were young people who would fit into any public place in the USA. Overweight, eating Lays potato chips (seriously brand conscious over there), while texting on their iPhones. Only the the older people were thin and moving about.
The issue is unlimited carbohydrate and sugar intake stemming from mass marketing and "nutrition boards" who are 100% in-bed with the packaged-food industry. Try the Ketogenic lifestyle for one month, and not only will you lose weight, but your arthritic pain will decrease. Stay with it and eventually you´ll be able to eliminate some of the drugs you now take. Watch the documentary "The Magic Pill," currently on NetFlix and you´ll see the proof.
5 people like this.
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