Have you read the article on the most obese cities in the nation?

Forbes created a list of the most obese cities in the nation with Memphis, Tenn. being number 1. Do you think this so called obesity epidemic ( as if its similar to smallpox and tuberculosis) is over exaggerated? They came up with the list based on surverys of peoples weight and height and came up with a BMI number for each individual. I think this tool is useless in determining how healthy a person is. I believe there is more to a person’s weight than the number on the scale. Last, I think that health problems are caused by not eating a healthy diet and not getting enough exercise versus it being weight.
Yeah some people can eat a healthy diet, exercise and still be obese. Also explain how can a skinny person eat a lot of food never gain weight but get high cholesterol or some other health problem? A persons weight is part genetic and part environment, the ratio is yet to be determined. But really what I’m concerned about is the use of the BMI because it does not accurately determine if a person is healthy or unhealthy or what they eat. Also a person can weigh a lot and be thin and vice versa. Do you think basketball players are overweight or obese? The BMI says so.

The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published an article titled “?

“The Spread of Obesity Epidemic in the United States”. Here is a plot of the percent of adults who are obese in each of the 45 states that participated in a large study. The data are in percents and tenths of a percent. For example, 19.5% of Indiana adults are obese.
12/7
13/8
14/047777
15/233479
16/068
17/0456899
18/25777
19/003558899
20/2777
21/3
22/09
The median percent of obese adults in these 45 states is:
A: 17.69%
B: 17.8%
C: 17.85%
D: 17.9%
E: 23%

Can someone please help find the author’s argument in the article below? Thank you! Sorry, I cant finish it.?

The world is too fat. Too bad
WHEN the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor
were thin, and right-thinking people worried about how to feed
the hungry. Now, in much of the world, the rich are thin, the poor
are fat, and right-thinking people are worrying about obesity.
Evolution is mostly to blame. It has designed mankind to cope
with deprivation, not plenty. People are perfectly tuned to store
energy in good years to see them through lean ones. But when
bad times never come, they are stuck with that energy, stored
around their expanding bellies.
Thanks to rising agricultural productivity, lean years are rarer all
over the globe. Modern-day Malthusians, who used to draw
graphs proving that the world was shortly going to run out of
food, have gone rather quiet lately. According to the UN, the
number of people short of food fell from 920m in 1980 to 799m
20 years later, even though the world’s population increased by
1.6 billion over the period. This is mostly a cause for celebration.
Mankind has won what was, for most of his time on this planet,
his biggest battle: to ensure that he and his offspring had enough
to eat. But every silver lining has a cloud, and the consequence
of prosperity is a new plague that brings with it a host of
interesting policy dilemmas.
As a scourge of the modern world, obesity has an image problem.
It is easier to associate with Father Christmas than with the four
horses of the apocalypse. But it has a good claim to lumber along
beside them, for it is the world’s biggest public-health issue today
—the main cause of heart disease, which kills more people these
days than AIDS, malaria, war; the principal risk factor in
diabetes; heavily implicated in cancer and other diseases. Since
the World Health Organisation labelled obesity an “epidemic” in
2000, reports on its fearful consequences have come thick and
fast.
Will public-health warnings, combined with media pressure,
persuade people to get thinner, just as they finally put them off
tobacco? Possibly. In the rich world, sales of healthier foods are
booming (see survey) and new figures suggest that over the past
year Americans got very slightly thinner for the first time in
recorded history. But even if Americans are losing a few ounces,
it will be many years before the country solves the health
problems caused by half a century’s dining to excess. And,
everywhere else in the world, people are still piling on the
pounds. That’s why there is now a consensus among doctors that
governments should do something to stop them.
Diet by fiat?
There’s nothing radical about the idea that governments should
intervene in the food business. They’ve been at it since 1202,
when King John of England first banned the adulteration of bread.
Governments and people seem to agree that ensuring the safety
and stability of the food supply is part of the state’s job. But
obesity is a more complicated issue than food safety. It is not
about ensuring that people don’t get poisoned: it is about
changing their behaviour. Should governments be trying to do
anything about it at all?
There is a bad reason for doing something, and a couple of good
ones. The bad reason is that governments should help citizens
look after themselves. People, the argument goes, are misled by
their genes, which are constantly trying to pack away a few more
calories just in case of a famine around the corner. Governments
should help guide them towards better eating habits. But that
argument is weaker in the case of food than it is for tobacco
—nicotine is addictive, chocolate is not—and no better than it is
in any other area where people have a choice of being sensible or
silly. People are constantly torn by the battle between their better
and worse selves. It’s up to them, not governments, to decide
who should win.
Get them young
A better argument for intervention is that dietary habits are
established early in childhood. Once people get fat, it is hard for
them to get thin; once they are used to breakfasting on chips and
Coke, that’s hard to change. The state, which has some
responsibility for moulding minors, should try to ensure that its
small citizens aren’t mainlining sugar at primary school.
Britain’s government is gesturing towards tough restrictions on
advertising junk food to children. That seems unlikely to have
much effect. Sweden already bans advertising to children, and its
young people are as porky as those in comparable countries.
Other moves, such as banning junk food from schools, might
work better. In some countries, such as America, soft-drinks
companies bribe schools to let them install vending machines.
That should stop.
A second plausible argument for intervention is that thin people
subsidise fat people through health care. If everybody is forced
to carry the weight of the seriously fat, then everybody has an
interest

What do you think of MeMe Roth?

I have read several articles where she cites, “high fructose corn syrup” as the rea enemy of Americans, but completely overlooks the economic as well as cultural factors fueling the obesity epidemic in our country. To me she sounds almost child-like, thinking that things are as transparent as they seem, as though if high fructose syrup went away obesity would as well. As though the price the underprivileged pay in time as well as in money would cease to exist as well. Surely she is mistaken, but what is your opinion in all of this?

Obesity among Immigrants? WHY? It was deleted, so it shall be repeated- IN ENGLISH!?

Here’s the same article from the Spanish language newspaper “Mundo Hispanico”- with THEIR provided English translation. Looks like I’ve got the trigger-happy “delete” gerbils riled, now!
The article follows:
THE RESIDENT HISPANIC CHILDREN IN THE UNITED STATES ARE FATTEST OF THE WORLD

A fat problem
The problem of obesity is affecting Georgia, where it is estimated that annually almost 7 thousand people die because they are overweight or obese. The epidemic also is affecting the Hispanic community, prone genetically to acquire this disease, causing them to have high indices of diabetes and diseases related to the heart.

Delete THAT!
Genetics- HA! ANOTHER excuse! Why don’t we just make it harder for illegals to get WIC and Food Stamps, thus solving two problems at once?
“Einstein”- If you’re such a damn genius, how come you can’t tell Rodney Dangerfield apart from Hulk Hogan? “I don’t get NO respect!”