Mexico has "world's fattest" people, US second fattest
This article claims that the obesity is due to poverty, but has the percentage of the population that is obese increased over time? No. Just like increased poverty can't explain the increased obesity in the US over time. From the New York Post:
The United States no longer holds the title of the world’s most populous, obese nation; that designation has been passed on to Mexico.
According to a new report from the United Nations, nearly 70 percent of Mexican adults are overweight, and childhood obesity in the country has tripled within the past decade, Medical Daily reported. One-third of Mexican teenagers are also obese, and experts believe that four out of every five obese children will remain overweight for the rest of their lives.
Overall, 32.8 percent of Mexican adults are considered obese, compared to 31.8 percent of adults in the United States. Nearly 70,000 deaths in Mexico each year are caused by weight-related diabetes, and more than 400,000 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed annually. . . .
One researcher also believes the increase can be attributed to more Mexicans moving from rural to urban areas, where food prices are much higher and sedentary lifestyles are easier.
Ugh? Higher food prices cause obesity?
Labels: Health
posted by John Lott at 5:28 PM
1 Comments:
From a genetic standpoint, obesity is easily explained.
Whenever a population has evolved to adapt to an enviornment where food is scarce, one's body will store as much fat as possible in order to survive very lean times.
What we are seeing here is an abundance of food, yet our metabolisms are stuck in the past. So, now that we have moved past subsistence farming and into mechanized large scale agriculture combined with modern chemistry we have cheap and easy to obtain food. If we take into account for cheap processed food (urban areas), that would explain an increase in weight gains in said area, and not higher food prices.
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