Why America is soo fat?

I put a question mark at the end of the title because I feel I only have part of the answer.  I would like to do some thorough research and get some figures and statistics for you all in a future blog.

I have lived in seven countries, including the United States and travelled to many more.  I have found that while living abroad and coming back to the U.S. for a visit, I always ate like a pig.  I would eat even when I wasn't hungry.  I never understood why until I returned to the U.S. last year.

I know part of it is because there is a lot of food you can get in the U.S. that you can't get or is very limited overseas so whenever I would return to America for a visit I would eat everything I couldn't eat abroad.  For one thing, Mexican food is virtually non-existent in the countries I have been overseas.  I don't understand it really; everyone likes rice, tortillas, tacos and burritos but for some reason that cuisine just doesn't work. Italian food works in every country.

A sandwich overseas just doesn't compare to what is available here in the U.S.  Go to Katz's deli in New York and you will see what I mean.    There used to be a place in Washington D.C. on M street that had killer steak and cheese sandwiches and I would always make that one of my first stops when I visited D.C.

One of the most noticeable things about living abroad is there is less processed food available.  You can find potato chips, sodas, frozen food and other convenience items but it is nothing compared to here.  Christ man, you go down the snack food aisle at any grocery store in America and the selection takes up an entire aisle. 

Overseas you may have three to four flavors of potato chips but here.....Holy Shit! Ranch flavored, BBQ, Cajun spiced, sour cream and onion, mesquite smoked, jalapeno, black pepper, baked, oh and of course, regular flaovred.  Did I leave any flavors out?  Then there are different cuts of potato chips too.  Thick, crinkle cut, thin, shoestring cut, etc. That is just potato chips I am talking about. I haven't even gotten into the countless varieties of cereals, frozen dinners, granola bars, candy, etc.

I have also noticed that some companies change the flavor of their product to suit different tastes in different countries.  Mountain Dew is my favorite soft drink but in every country I have been it tastes like medicine so I never drank it abroad.  Coca Cola seems to be the most consistent, however in the Maldives it tastes funny.  Sometimes things you may not expect or be aware of come into play.  I knew one dude who worked in the Seychelles and he told me that the Sprite had a cloudy, muddy type color.  Come to find out, the Seychelles had run out of white sugar so they substituted brown sugar when bottling the Sprite.  Can you believe that?  How funny is that? An entire country ran out of white sugar.  Hilarious!

I also noticed that processed junk food is not so prevelant overseas as well.  I just never noticed it before.  I went to the auto store a few weeks ago and what did I see on a rack right as I walked in?  A rack of candy and other junk food. I mean, this is a friggin' auto store for Christ sake.  There should be oil filters and spark plugs there, not junk food.  That got me thinking about how in the U.S. we are constantly surrounded and bombarded by junk food and processed food.  Think about it.  Junk food is everywhere. Gas stations now are more like a supermarket.  It is almost like the gas is an amenity to the supermarket. You can eat a complete meal in a supermarket nowadays. I had a pizza from one last week and I must say, it rivaled Domino's. Go to your local video store and the checkout aisles are filled with junkfood. I went to the bookstore yesterday and again, junkfood lined the checkout aisles.  Watch TV and all the food commercials are for junk food.

Unfortunately it is also cheaper to eat junk food than heating natural food. Have you ever noticed that in your average supermarket about 90% of the stock in the store is processed food?

Our nation's children: What is also unfortunate is that some of these food companies that serve and sell this unhealthy, processed food pay schools to serve it. Yes, the shools make money by having junk food vending machines in their schools. How would you like your kids eating some processed, unhealthy food day in and day out over the course of each year they are in school? Plus, with the hormones some of these companies are injecting into their meat it is no wonder boys are starting to grow tits during puberty and teenage girls are filling out more quickly.

I was watching a documentary on this very subject and at the time, Governor Schwarzenneger of California signed a bill banning junk food vending machines in all schools in California. This documentary showed parents protesting and even handing their kids junk food through the school fence since they couldn't get it in the school.  Maybe in america we want to be fat.

In America we are lucky to have such an abundance of readily available healthy food, but we are some of the most obese peole on the planet.  Something just doesn't add up.