This should get AWD’s blood pumping on a Monday. Evidently the people producing this study have not seen Hunger Games. It will be tough to be obese when there is no food available and you are forced to work 14 hours per day in mines.
No Country For Thin Men: 75% Of Americans To Be Obese By 2020
Submitted by Tyler Durdenon 03/26/2012 10:25 -0400
While much heart palpitations are generated every month based on how much of a seasonal adjustment factor is used to fudge US employment, many forget that a much more serious long term issue for the US (assuming anyone cares what happens in the long run) is a far more ominous secular shift in US population – namely the fact that everyone is getting fatter fast, aka America’s “obesity epidemic.” And according to a just released analysis by BNY ConvergEx’ Nicholas Colas, things are about to get much worse, because as the OECD predicts, by 2020 75% of US the population will be obese. What this implies for the tens of trillions in underfunded healthcare “benefits” in the future is all too clear. In the meantime, thanks to today’s economic “news”, fat people everywhere can get even fatter courtesy of ever freer money from the Chairman, about to be paradropped once more to keep nominal prices high and devalue the dollar even more in the great “race to debase”. Our advices – just pretend you are going to college and take out a $100,000 loan, spending it all on Taco Bells. But don’t forget to save enough for the latest iPad, and the next latest to be released in a few weeks, ad inf.
From ConvergEx:
Summary: It’s a shocking anomaly that a highly developed country with the world’s largest GDP also has the world’s most obvious obesity endemic. Nearly 34% of United States citizens are obese, which is triple the rate of most of its peer countries. Notably, Americans both drink and smoke less than much of the industrialized world, making this problem all the more puzzling. The causes appear to be largely cultural, with low food costs playing a supporting role. Obesity in the U.S. is more prevalent along certain groups, but by some estimates an astounding 3 out of 4 Americans will be obese or overweight by 2020. The obvious comparison here is to smoking, a public health challenge that has declined in popularity for decades due to higher taxes and public awareness of the risks involved. The answers to the obesity problem will be much tougher, however. And with widespread use of government money for Food Stamps (+20% of all households) and school lunches (+30% of all children), the Federal government is squarely in the middle of the debate.
Consider some wacky “all-American” dining options. Burger King’s Manhattan Whopper Bar offers an aptly-named “Pizza Burger”– a ginormous cheeseburger accentuated by pepperoni and chopped into 6 slices. Denny’s spices up the classic but boring grilled cheese by driving 4 mozzarella sticks into the already gooey cheddar goodness (Fried Cheese Melt). And IHOP delivers fluffy pancakes stuffed with hunks of cheesecake drowning in whipped cream and splashed with powdered sugar (New York Cheesecake Pancakes). Not to mention they’re only 4 bucks.
Not to be outdone, Las Vegas is home to another appropriately named (and self-proclaimed) producer of “nutritional pornography” – the Heart Attack Grill. Menu options include a “Quadruple Bypass Burger,” “ButterFat Shake” and all-you-can-eat “Flatliner Fries.” If you’re over 350 pounds you eat for free, and shots are served in 4 ounce pours. The restaurant made headlines last month when a 40-something man suffered a heart attack (what else?) while chowing down in its dining room. Go ahead, you can chuckle – he’s alive and kicking somewhere out West. At the time of his heart attack he’d been eating the 6,000 calorie “Triple Bypass Burger” featuring 3 half-pound patties, half a fried onion, cheese, and 15 slices of bacon.
So is it really any surprise that 1 in 3 Americans are obese? The United States has a bigger obesity problem than any other industrialized country in the world, with a 33.8% obesity rate, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Note that obesity is defined according to a body mass index (BMI), which calculates human body fat based on weight and height. BMI readings of 30 or greater signify obesity, while a score between 25 and 30 indicates “overweightness.”
A typical man of 5’10” should weigh, for example, about 170 pounds. The U.S.’s next closest “competitor” is Mexico with a 30% obesity rate, while Canada and the U.K. have rates of 24% and 23%, respectively. Other highly developed countries such as Germany, Italy and France have rates below 15%, and Japan is all the way down at 3.9%. India’s citizens are the trimmest, with a 2.1% obesity rate. The average for the 34 OECD member countries is 16.9% – exactly half that of the United States.
Obesity is one obvious culprit for the exorbitant amount of money that Americans spend on health care. Health expenditures (including capital investment in health care infrastructure) are just shy of $8,000 a year per person, which is almost 50% more than in any other country, and represents nearly one-fifth of total GDP. Expenditures in Norway and Switzerland, numbers 2 and 3 on the list, represent a little more than $5,000 per person. The Brits spend about $3,500 a person, while the Japanese spend just $2,900 per person. Indonesia brings up the rear with only $99 spent per capita, although that comparison is obviously skewed by its emerging economy status.
Despite access to high-quality health care services, facilities and infrastructure, Americans live 78.2 years on average, or more than a year less than the OECD member nation average of 79.5 years. Our neighbors to the north and nearly all of our European counterparts live somewhere between 80 and 82 years, while the Japanese live longer than anyone else (83 years).
Just to quickly check off a couple of obvious other behavioral/health boxes, we know our lives generally aren’t cut short by smoking or excessive alcohol consumption. Sixteen percent of Americans are daily smokers, compared with the OECD average of 22.1%. In France, for example, more than 1 in 4 people are regular smokers, while a whopping 40% of Greeks fess up to having at least one daily smoke. Comparatively we don’t drink that much either. On average for ages 15 and up, Americans consume 8.8 liters (298 ounces) of alcohol annually. The OECD average is 9.1 liters, and the French top the chart (surprise, surprise) at 12.3 liters.
There’s no denying that the mortality rate phenomenon is at least somewhat of an obesity issue. In the U.S., Japan and select industrialized European countries, the correlation between obesity rates and life expectancy is greater than 80% (refer to this chart and several others following the text ). Obesity is a disease and while it isn’t often listed as a “Cause of Death” the outcomes are deadly. Since the cardiovascular system is the number one affected area when someone is overweight, it should come as no surprise that more people die from heart attacks in the U.S. than in most other countries. For every 100,000 Americans, 129 die from a heart attack. The OECD average is 117, while in the “fit” countries of Japan and Korea heart attack fatalities occur in fewer than 40 out of 100,000 people.
As far as root causes, it’s a basic economic principle that people consume more of things that are cheaper, and food in the U.S. is relatively cheap compared to the rest of the world. The food component represents 14% of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), meaning that on average 14% of our total expenditures is spent on food.However, the “Food at home” component of the CPI is a mere 8%, and since most Americans eat most of their meals at home, this is likely a more logical number to use. In China and India, on the other hand, food weightings in their respective inflation indexes are 31% and 27%. Yes, this is clearly the result of lower incomes and food prices set to a large degree by global trends; the correlation/causation to consumption is still valid, however. The Chinese and Indians rank in the bottom 3 in terms of obesity rates, at 2.9% and 2.1%, respectively. As for more economically comparable countries, Canada (17% of CPI), Australia (17%), Italy (16%) and the U.K. (11%) have more similar food component cost weightings to the U.S.’s, and their citizens are substantially slimmer. Either way (economic or cultural explanation), mass industrialization of farms and food processing in the States has resulted in a dramatic lower food prices and an unmistakable trend to overconsumption.
Perhaps Americans work so much that we simply don’t have time to be active. After all, we work more than anyone else in the world, right? Wrong. We take less time off, but in terms of hours worked per week, we have it pretty good. At an average of 33.6 hours per week, Americans actually work less than the French (37.6 hours per week), who have a reputation for more slack work habits. People in the U.S. also work less than those in Japan (40.7 hours per week) and Turkey (49.7 hours per week), but the Japanese and Turkish have much lower obesity rates, as do the French.
However, while we work just as much as (if not more than) most other people, Americans take fewer vacation days. Including paid public holidays and voluntary vacation time, workers in the U.S. have an average of 25 days off per year. This compares with 40 in France, 36 in the U.K. and 31 in Italy, for example. Brazilians take the most time off (41 days), while Canadians take the least (19 days). Vacation time doesn’t appear to be correlated to obesity, but helps to validate the notion that Americans are among the hardest-working people in the world, even if hours worked are in line with other countries.
We’re left with a rather unspecific, and somewhat unsatisfying, conclusion that the obesity endemic in America is caused by broad cultural factors and personal responsibility issues. High-risk groups include African-American and Mexican-American women, who have respective obesity rates of 46% and 35%, and those in lower income groups. Women with lower levels of educational achievement are 1.3 times more likely to be obese, though virtually no disparity exists among men of varying education levels. And Southerners and Midwesterners carry more weight than their Northern and Western counterparts.
Nonetheless, 75% of Americans will be obese or overweight by 2020, according to OECD projections. We’ll have to see how the ongoing national health care debate plays out, but this undoubtedly means more government spending in terms of both preventative care and educational programs. In its food stamp program, the government has already begun educating recipients on nutrition, yet soft drinks, candy, cookies and ice cream are eligible items for purchase with food stamp benefits. I would expect this to change considering we’re on track to be 40% obese in the next decade, and likely even more government intervention will be necessary to curb some culturally-ingrained bad habits.
In an admittedly altruistic way, the U.S. government is a major enabler to the obesity problem. While we’re not debating the necessity of food stamps, they do provide incremental spending power, and the fact that lower-income people are more likely to be obese means that the government has a profound responsibility to ramp up nutritional education and hone in on the obesity problem. With +20% of households using food stamps, keep in mind that any policy shift will be significant for a wide swath of companies from supermarkets to producers of food.
So far government efforts have been mostly ineffective “nudges.” Policies enacted in the past few years that mandate calorie labeling in fast-food and chain restaurants have thus far had no impact on calorie consumption, according to a recently-published study (link below). While relying on people to use nutritional information to make healthier meal choices wasn’t effective, giving customers at a fast-food restaurant the option of downsizing their dishes did in fact work. About a third of customers opted for the smaller portion (versus less than 1% who asked to downsize on their own) and subsequently ate less. And accepting the downsized option had no effect on the amount of food uneaten at the end of the meal, translating into even more calorie savings. People in the study generally didn’t have the self-control to make smarter nutritional choices on their own, but it seems that some sense of self-control was activated when they were pushed to make healthier decisions.
With proof that intervention can in fact work, the Federal government has a role to play, whether it likes it or not. When you’re handing over money for food to 1 in 5 households and when about a third of all children are in notoriously non-nutritious subsidized school lunch programs, there’s certainly a moral responsibility.
Obesity is essentially the “Smoking” of the 21st century. And just as smoking rates were lessened thanks to government intervention, the obesity problem will need governmental action as well. Yes, it’s been written about countless times and there aren’t any immediate investment implications, but this topic is worth having in the back of your mind. The answers here are not as obvious as cigarette smoking; no one is going to back higher food taxes to reduce consumption. But the problem is significant and costly to the U.S. economy.
Link to study on effectiveness of calorie-labeling: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/31/2/399.abstract
Stucky says:
And Jimmeh — good sport that he is — tosses a fucking lob ball at AWD.
I see a grand slam a ‘comin’.
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26th March 2012 at 12:21 pm
Administrator says:
Burger King’s Pizza Burger. What’s the hubbub bub?
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26th March 2012 at 12:38 pm
TeresaE says:
“Notably, Americans both drink and smoke less than much of the industrialized world, making this problem all the more puzzling.”
Yet we spend billions making health scape-goats and examples out of those groups.
While obesity, which costs health care MUCH more in the long run, is practically verboten to criticize.
We have to be #1 in the intentional mis-statement of problems. This habit of ours benefits the few at the top, the government and slaughters us in the name of saving us.
I love my country, I truly, really, hate the government and where they have led us with our health.
Over the weekend I read an article written by a heart surgeon and decrying the idiocy of our dietary recommendations. He, rightly, points out that the government seems to release recommendations based more on lobbyists than actual nutrition studies.
If the recommended low-fat, high fake food, diets were good for us (and our waistlines) we would not be the fattest bunch of lazy bastards in the world.
And we are.
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26th March 2012 at 12:46 pm
AWD says:
“Health expenditures (including capital investment in health care infrastructure) are just shy of $8,000 a year per person, which is almost 50% more than in any other country, and represents nearly one-fifth of total GDP”
Great article. Just the facts man. I’m glad I’m not the only one noticing. We spend so much money on healthcare for obese people it is mind boggling. Research has shown a McShit’s burger ends up cost more than $20 each if you factor in healthcare/obesity costs.
If you are thin (abnormal) you are paying for all the fatties out there. It’s a losing battle, the fatties are getting fatter every week. It’s a land-slide, and earthquake, a tsunami, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. It will bankrupt this country (if the criminals in Washington don’t do it first). 20% of our GDP, everything we produce, goes to fatties so they can continue to eat, eat, and then eat some more. Shoveling food into their faces as fast and as much as they can. It’s beyond belief.
You can thank the baby boomers; the most obese generation in the history of mankind, then they made it socially acceptable to be morbidly obese. Obese kids are getting their gallbladders out at 12, and will be getting toes and feet amputated at 30 due to diabetes. I just don’t care anymore, sorry. The fatties will be easier to hit with rifled slugs, .223, or 9mm ammo, you just have to expend a few more rounds. They’ll be used to make soap, after you boil down the lard, and food for pets.
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26th March 2012 at 12:51 pm
Administrator says:
Everyone needs to start their day with a hearty breakfast of pancakes stuffed with cheesecake.
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26th March 2012 at 12:53 pm
AWD says:
Stuckenporker:
This was on Zero Hedge. Not exactly lobbing me a whopper, or triple-bypass burger.
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26th March 2012 at 12:56 pm
Administrator says:
The Many, The Obese, The Marines
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26th March 2012 at 12:57 pm
Administrator says:
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26th March 2012 at 12:58 pm
AWD says:
looks like he’s hungry…
At least she’s exercising
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26th March 2012 at 1:00 pm
Ron says:
So im an advanced prototype.Actually i was much trimmer than most,i once sat in a room of forty people and was the only person that weighed less than three hundred pounds.(230)Theyre starting young,my kids school has many little truck driver looking kids.Im sure sitting around playing video games well head this off.
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26th March 2012 at 1:01 pm
Stucky says:
Forgive me for posting this again. But the visual is so striking !!
Americans drink 6,000 cubes of sugar per year … just on sodas.
TeresaE said, ….. “Now throw in the reality that in the US it isn’t sugar, it is a chemically derived sweetener (high fructose corn syrup, or death in a liquid as I call it) and/or chemically derived “artificial” sweeteners. We would be better off it were real sugar, I believe. Seems that the addiction levels to the crap went up with the advent of chemically derived sweeteners.
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26th March 2012 at 1:12 pm
matt says:
I was at Disneyland last week with my kids. The scooter patrol and morbidly obese were in full force. Most of the foreigners, you could tell by the many different languages being spoken, were not too bad. The mexicans and our own countrymen were breaking rides left and right underneath their unyeilding tonnage. By 2020 you say? That’s optimistic if you ask me.
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26th March 2012 at 1:14 pm
AWD says:
That is a great visual Stuck. Every fat fuck you see waddling around has a 44oz coke or mt. dew in their mitts. The portion size of “soft drinks”, well, of every food item is off the charts. People eat 3000-4000 at one sitting, 3 times a day, and wonder why they can’t walk anymore.
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26th March 2012 at 1:20 pm
AWD says:
Matt:
Going out in public is always a horror show now. Obesity will officially be 50% some time next year. I think 75% by 2020 is VERY optimistic. It’s a damn shame it takes so long for fatties to drop dead.
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26th March 2012 at 1:24 pm
TeresaE says:
AWD says, “…You can thank the baby boomers; the most obese generation in the history of mankind, then they made it socially acceptable to be morbidly obese. Obese kids are getting their gallbladders out at 12, and will be getting toes and feet amputated at 30 due to diabetes. I just don’t care anymore, sorry. The fatties will be easier to hit with rifled slugs, .223, or 9mm ammo, you just have to expend a few more rounds. They’ll be used to make soap, after you boil down the lard, and food for pets…”
Just caught the first 30 minutes of Zombieland last night (had seen the movie, but not the very beginning). The main kid has a list of rules for survival, the first one being Cardio. He points out that the obese population were zombiefied within hours of the epidemic hitting.
That is reason enough (for me) to add a few minutes more of sweating to my day.
We can prepare, we can store, we can buy ammo, but if we can’t run we might just be fucked anyway.
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26th March 2012 at 1:26 pm
AWD says:
Good point. During the zombie Apocalypse, when the boomers can’t get their diabetes, HTN, statins, ED, prostate, pain pills, and the 12 other meds they’re taking, they will start dropping like flies. Maybe this zombie thing won’t be so bad after all.
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26th March 2012 at 1:44 pm
Dragline says:
How about the fact we subsidize corn to the extent that corn products and sugars are in almost everything people in the U.S. eat? Your tax dollars at work — making everybody fat. If people had to pay the real, unsubsidized cost of Doritos, Coke and Mickee-D’s they might choose differently.
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26th March 2012 at 2:41 pm
TeresaE says:
Dragline, +100
The only question is are we seeing the unintended consequences in the thighs of our fellow citizens, or was this the intention all along?
A huge strata of our population cannot fight back, and inertia is a very real physical condition. The more that are completely incapable of fighting, the easier we are controlled.
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26th March 2012 at 3:11 pm
DaveL says:
“75% Of Americans To Be Obese By 2020″.
Shit, if I worked at it I could be obese in about two months. On the other hand, by 2020 I expect to be about a pound of ashes.
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26th March 2012 at 3:12 pm
flash says:
Everywhere
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26th March 2012 at 3:17 pm
SSS says:
After so many fat photos, it’s time to hit the reset button.
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26th March 2012 at 5:13 pm
SSS says:
WTF? 5,4,3,2,1……..reset.
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26th March 2012 at 5:17 pm
Zara says:
Stucky, I’m not sure that sugar cube comparison is accurate. Sodapop is roughly 12% sugar, by weight.
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26th March 2012 at 6:30 pm
llpoh says:
The last chart re life expectancy needs a bit of explanation, as it is slanted if the point that is being made is that obesity is killing us off more so than in other countries. That is not true – the EXTREMELY good healthcare available in the US offsets much of the mortality associated with obesity.
The fact is, if murders are removed from the stats, the US life expectancy is in the top 2 or 3 world-wide, ranking right up there with the Japs. The 15,000 or so murders per year greatly distorts the life-expectancy figures, and MASSIVELY distorts the life expectancy figures for blacks, who kill themselves off at an amazing rate, and primary affects young blacks under 30.
There are statistics, and there are damn lies.
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26th March 2012 at 6:43 pm
Mikey says:
Oh jesus…. I’m acutally feeling ill looking at those pictures. That ‘burger’ —- ugh. I am totally lost as to how someone can consider that appetising.
well, all except that last one from SSS.
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26th March 2012 at 9:14 pm
Kill Bill says:
Its a bad idea, AWD, to run with scissors in your hand or viagra in your system.
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26th March 2012 at 9:24 pm
Novista says:
AWD
Soap? Meh. If used cooking fat can be rendered into fuel, how much mileage would you get from a fat boomer? This could be the new Soylent Green energy independence plan.
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26th March 2012 at 9:36 pm
Mikey says:
@Novista
good point Novista! It doesn’t take much effort to make a diesel effort work with liquified animal fats. It was developed after all to work on plant oils.
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26th March 2012 at 11:45 pm
Novista says:
LOL, Mikey
And Henry Ford’s original effort was designed to work on ethanol. Is it possible there is a ‘connect the dots’ between that and the 18th Amendment?
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26th March 2012 at 6:55 am
BlubberLover says:
I love my women extremely fat so I don’t really see a problem with this so-called obesity epidemic.
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26th March 2012 at 1:37 pm
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
If there is one bright spot in the putrid cesspool that is Obamacare, now the fed.gov has the power to tax your behaviour.
So, here it goes, time for the FAT TAX!
You have to pay $100/month per every 10 pounds you are over your ideal weight.
Alternatively, you get a tax rebate, say $10/month for every month you are at or below your ideal weight.
Problem solved.
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26th March 2012 at 1:53 pm
SAH says:
Until they come up with a cure for stupidity and math illiteracy, the fatness will just continue. No offense to anyone here who may be over their ideal weight – but obesity is just stupidity plain and simple.
All of the information and tools necessary to maintain a healthy weight are well known and essentially FREE, or even make/save you money (for example WALK, eat less – that saves money). Maintaining a healthy weight is as simple as accepting the math equation: calories consumed – calories burned= ?.
The fact that people are so incredibly lazy and stupid that they can’t do this simple daily math for their own health just assures us that everyone is too stupid to care about Federal Spending, Taxes, the Deficit, TARP, Obamacare, etc etc. People can’t even accurately estimate the number of calories they shovel into their faces each day, and they can’t even find the motivation to WALK once in a while – how are they going to grasp numbers in the Billions and Trillions, and what are they going to do – waddle their way over to DC and march? They can’t even waddle upstairs without running out of breath. Fat people shovel every bite into their mouth, and choose to sit and click all day instead of exercise. Should be rounded up and slaughtered like fat cows.
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26th March 2012 at 3:59 pm
SAH says:
P.S. I’m not normally an advocate of rounding people up and slaughtering them, but this is the funny thing about the “we’re all in this together” Liberal Mega-Government mentality – when I’m forced to subsidize Other People’s Stupidity on numerous levels (Farm Subsidies, SNAP, Corporate Welfare for junk food companies, Obamacare Health Care) it makes my normally live-and-let-live personality turn slightly vengeful. I’d like a free-market in health care – one in which I could choose an insurance plan for non-smoking, thin people only. If that were the case, maybe I wouldn’t feel fatties need to be slaughtered like cows, just sayin’.
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26th March 2012 at 4:11 pm
SAH says:
@Zara Re: Grams of sugar in Soda Pop and the accuracy of Stucky’s photo…
A sugar cube is = 1 teaspoon, or roughly 4.2 grams of Sugar.
A 12 oz Coke has 39 grams of Sugar. The 12 oz Coke has a stack of 10 Sugar cubes next to it = 42 Grams of Sugar. I guess you could remove 2/3 of 1 Sugar cube and it would be more accurate… but if you take one entire cube away and stack 9 cubes there ( 37.8 Grams) – that stack of 9 Sugar cubes would be LESS SUGAR than the can of Coke has.
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26th March 2012 at 4:28 pm
Colma Rising says:
SAH:
Continuing heroic TBP commentary like a champ.
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26th March 2012 at 5:04 pm