Having a degree in Food and Nutrition and now being a Food Technology teacher I could go on about this subject for a very long time, but I won't (we'll I'll try not to).
In some ways I agree with Stokie in that it is only a problem because that is the way we allow ourselves to view the situation. However having worked with obese people in a professional capacity, I cannot stop myself seeing it as a problem! Whilst we can say it's there choice and if they are happy then why should we stop them, the truth is that many obese people are not happy but just do a good job of hiding this fact.
The trouble it is is so much harder to loose the weight than gain it and that is why in an ideal world prevention is better than cure!
There have been a hundred and one different suggestions for the cause, cure, prevention of obesity, some of them more convincing than others, but the problem still persists.
For me the two biggest changes in lifestyle in the last decade or so have been the amount of excercise people get (and I don't just mean going to the gym, dancing etc, but how much people move their body within their daily routines) and the growing number of processed foods people are eating.
I avoid processed food as much as I can, infact if the choice is processed or nothing at all, I am often found to go for the nothing at all option. Our bodies were not designed to eat these foods. Scientific studies will show that there has been very little change in the way the human body works, yet many of us are filling our bodies with a fuel that our bodies are clearly not designed to run on! Is it any wonder that people who eat freshly prepared foods with no additives etc have less health problems than those living on junk!
Plus couple the fact that processed food tends to be higher in Calories than freshly prepared food, with the fact the people get a lot less exercise today than in the past then you will have an even bigger gap between the Calories in and the energy out causing people to gain weight at an ever increasing rate!
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