Lowing The Obesity Levels In The United States

It seems like people of the past were way skinnier then the men and women of today and this may be because of the overly processed foods that lie on the grocery store shelves and in the freezer cases throughout the United States. So many experts try to turn heads and make men and women think that it's the fast food industry that is to blame for the growing size of Americans. In actual fact, fast food has little to do with this growing problem and many American's are confused by this as they watch their children gaining weight and watch themselves gaining weight and know that they are not consuming very much fast food at all.

This statement seems to be something that just serves to deflect attention from the actual problem, which are the foods that we are purchasing in the grocery store and preparing at home. So much attention has been paid to the fact that families in the 60's, 70's, and 80's were virtually committing suicide with the amounts of butter they were consuming and the extremely high starch and fatty foods that they were eating as well as the endless numbers of carbohydrates.

The truth still remains that men and women back then focused much less on what they were consuming and yet if you look at pictures from way back there were very few obese individuals. Looking at these pictures can really help to put in perspective where the American diet has truly gone to. Those individuals who were paying little attention to the foods they were consuming were skinnier than those of us who are watching our weight and counting fat and calories and so forth.

Of course, some of this has to do with the contents of the foods that we are ingesting and some of it has to do with the packaging, as many foods aren't coming in serving sizes but in multiple serving sizes to mislead people into over eating. This of course doesn't happen if you read the labels but you might be surprised to find out that many people take the time and when they pick up a small bottle of soda, a sandwich, and a small bag of chips they might be thinking that each of these is the equivalent of one serving size when in actual fact the soda may be two or three servings and the chip bag may contain as many as five servings.

In this way many people are being mislead by the foods that they are eating and think that they are eating in a portion controlled manner when they really are not. Obviously, it not the fault of the food manufacturers that consumers aren't reading the labels but this is one of the many ways in which American's are being led to a more sedentary way of life with obesity becoming more and more prevalent.