Look How Quickly the U.S. Got Fat

It spreads from the South! I blame barbecue.

I live in Colorado; we're as mystified as everyone else. There are plenty of heavyset folks here.

But on any given day, rain or shine throughout the year, you'll find my neighbors out walking, jogging, hiking, biking, skateboarding, playing golf, and generally puttering around outdoors. Most days the weather is sunny; the view is inspiring. It's the kinda state that says, 'Come on, let's go do something!'

It's interesting when you view it against the FDA approval of synthetic recombinant Bovine somatotropin or growth hormone ( rbST or rbGH) in 1990 and the effects of the late 1970's U.S. sugar tariffs that made manufacturers switch to high fructose corn syrup causing consumer consumption to triple between 1985 and present. Correlation perhaps??? partial cause???

Of course (although we LOVE to beat ourselves up as a country, because it's not really *us* but some undefined *them* who are doing things wrong) the chart does not reflect a couple of things. First, a whole lot of people were suddenly dumped into the overweight and obese category when the powers that be got rid of the small, medium, and large body frame divisions. And, second, a lot fewer people are smoking today than they did in 1985, which also impacts weight. (I always loved this quote from Dead Like Me -- Daisy Adair: I died in 1938, for exercise we drank sloe gin and smoked Lucky Strikes.) I'm not saying people haven't gotten heavier but that the issue is more complicated than it looks.

What about the fact that they changed the definition of "obese" in 1998, in order to make more people medically obese, without anyone actually gaining weight? The last statistics I saw, since the 80's the average American has only actually gone up about 14 pounds.

I did not leave the ranks of healthy people. They left me.

I have been trying to buy a backpack for the last two months. None of them fit because they are built for adult males with waist sizes of 32" (references on request).

I wish you could freeze that graphic on each year. Would love to look at it at a slower pace.

Somebody's messing with the gravitational constant.