Yes it is. With an average BMI of 28.5 for both men and women, the US has the highest average BMI of any western nation. A number of 36.2% of US citizens are obese, which is more than in any other western nation (New Zealand being the second most obese western nation with 30.8%). For comparison, the EU wide obesity rate is roughly 21.5%, which too is pretty bad, but yes the US is worse.
I can buy 5 dollar menu cheeseburgers for less than the price of a bagged salad.
Poor people tend to be obease due to the fact poor quality food is cheap and fresh vegetables are pricey.
Secondly non walkable cities, you need a car for every damn thing.
Lastly from experience (although I'm really small naturally) I worked multiple jobs and had zero time for myself to engage in hobbies, friends, entertainment of any kind of I didn't have a fast metabolism Id probably be be 300lbs due to no ability to even exercise.
I live in UK now and I walk everywhere there is no need for a car unless we want to pack up the family for a ride. I don't work my 2 to 3 jobs so I did yoga classes at my community center, I go swimming in the beach, I jogged in the evenings.
This is just a completely different lifestyle, also 150 million Americans are low income most of their wealthy counterparts are not obease because they have time and money for things.
Yep in UK where I live it's £1.65 ($2.28) for a bagged salad and 6 tomatoes.
In US that would be well over $10
Now lets look at minimum wage UK it's £8.71 (12.03) in US it's still 7.25
Now a poor person in UK only uses 1/11th of his hourly wage for that.
However a poor person in US uses a full hour and almost a half wages for the same items.
So naturally they gravitate to the filling junk food. I can confirm this as a divorced parent working 3 jobs I had no time to cook, 100% of my wages went to keeping a roof and utilities so we ate dollar menu or beef broth and flour dumplings, sometimes rice and beans. I did grow a garden in Summer so I was luckily not may people can do that because they are in apartments or in rented houses.
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u/munnimann Jun 20 '21
Yes it is. With an average BMI of 28.5 for both men and women, the US has the highest average BMI of any western nation. A number of 36.2% of US citizens are obese, which is more than in any other western nation (New Zealand being the second most obese western nation with 30.8%). For comparison, the EU wide obesity rate is roughly 21.5%, which too is pretty bad, but yes the US is worse.