But Schumer and Rubio have a plan to fix that.
The Awesomest Newspaper on Earth reports:
Mexico takes over from the U.S. as the fattest nation on earth, according to UN report
Around 70 percent of Mexican adults are now classified as overweight ...
Only 10 per cent overweight in 1989 - before fast food was widely available
The young and poor are the worst-affected groups
By OLIVIA WILLIAMS
The U.S. has finally lost its dubious honour of having the world's highest number of overweight and obese people.
Fuelled by a worsening diet of fizzy drinks and cheap fast food restaurants, Mexico has now become the fattest nation in the world.
Around 70 per cent of Mexican adults are now overweight and a third of them are obese, causing a range of serious health problems. ...
Mexico may still be battling malnutrition and hunger among some of its poor but now it is also managing to claim the largest number of overweight people, according to a UN report.
The fat epidemic is most prominent among the poor and the young - many of whom also suffer from malnourishment because of poor diet.
Part of the difficulty is that the crisis has taken hold rapidly - In 1989, fewer than 10 percent of Mexican adults had any weight problems. ...
This year was the first time Mexico has inched ahead into first place, with a 32.8 per cent obesity rate to America's 31.8 per cent.
However, this was only among the most populated countries of the world.
Both Mexico and the U.S. have nothing on the small countries such as American Samoa in the Pacific where the rate of overweight inhabitants has now reached 95 per cent.
LEAGUE TABLE OF OBESE NATIONS
Mexico - 32.8 per cent
United States - 31.8 per cent
Syria - 31.6 per cent
Venezuela, Libya - 30.8 per cent
Trinidad & Tobago - 30.0 per cent
Vanuatu - 29.8 per cent
Iraq, Argentina - 29.4 per cent
Turkey - 29.3 per cent
Chile - 29.1 per cent
Czech Republic - 28.7 per cent
Lebanon - 28.2 per cent
New Zealand, Slovenia - 27.0 per cent
El Salvador - 26.9 per cent
Malta - 26.6 per cent
Panama, Antigua - 25.8 per cent
Israel - 25.5 per cent
Australia, Saint Vincent - 25.1 per cent
Dominica - 25.0 per cent
UK, Russia - 24.9 per cent
Hungary - 24.8 per cent
This is, on the whole, a pretty cruddy list of countries that Mexico and America rule over: No Norway, while Syria, Libya, and Venezuela are third through fifth. Take that, ghost of Hugo Chavez -- your Bolivarian Republic is only Number T4!
Remember when George W. Bush announced in his third debate with John Kerry in 2004 on the subject of illegal immigrants: "you're going to come here if you're worth your salt, if you want to put food on the table for your families"? Much of the discussion of immigration seems to be predicated on the American ruling class's assumption that Mexicans are this close to starvation.
For more evidence that the U.S. if falling behind and can only retake it's rightful place at the top by importing more folks from the Global South, see this table. Fans of The Wire will be ashamed that Baltimore's down to #48 in the world.
The meso amerindian physical phenotype is not too good for the bustline.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7cvr7zmhug
ReplyDeleteI've seen the future, and it's a fat Mexican.
Mexicans eat a lot of sugar in their diet, it's a cheap calorie for them. Their soft drinks are syrupy-sweet fruit concoctions that make Coke or Pepsi taste like medicine. Combine all that sugar with a lot of masa de maiz and, carramba! you make the top of the 10 Most Fatty List.
ReplyDeleteStrange that the most obese Europeans are the Czechs.
ReplyDeleteThere are no East Asian countries on the list. As a whole we can say the obese are mostly in the Americas and the Near East.
The most populated area of Mexico is at an extremely high elevation, also. Those here and their progeny should end up even porkier as less exertion is required to waddle down to the Social Services building.
ReplyDeleteSteve posted a link to the Wiki list of cities by murder rate. I'm almost certain that the reason why Latin American cities are on top is that crime statistics are unreliable in Africa. You've got to have a somewhat functional government to collect accurate statistics.
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. has finally lost its dubious honour of having the world's highest number of overweight and obese people.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first sentence in the Daily Mail's article!
The USA is more than twice as populous as the EUM, so the USA has a much higher number of "overweight and obese people".
It seems we've found another major newspaper that doesn't employ editors.
Someone should notify Bryan Caplan. He keeps writing that the US must admit more Mexicans to save them from starvation.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, obesity used to be the prototypical "disease of affluence." No people who are fat are poor in an absolute sense. They may have less money than Bill Gates, but even a boneheaded utilitarian cannot reasonably assert that middle-class Americans should sacrifice their own incomes to rescue fat foreigners from their supposed poverty.
I am surprised Tonga and Samoa did not make this list.
ReplyDeleteI would say around 90 percent of Pacific Islanders I have met have been chunky in the weight department.
I live in the Bay Area which has a sizable Pacific Islander population.
The difference between Pacific Islanders and Mexicans is that a lot of Samoans and Tongans tend to be tall and fat, while Mexicans mostly tend to be short and fat.
I personally know a Tongan guy at my work place who is fat, but he is 6 foot 3.
How many fat Mexicans are 6 foot 3 ? Not many that's for damn sure. Your average fat Mexican is more like 5 foot 3.
Re New Zealand, you might find the following Wikipedia entry of interest:
ReplyDeleteMāori, Asians and Pacific Islanders
In the 2008 report, adults of Māori and other Polynesian descent had a much higher rate of obesity than white New Zealanders.[1] The rate for the Pacific peoples were nearly triple the white average, while Māori reported nearly double the white rate. 65% of adult Pacific New Zealanders and 43% of adult Māori were obese, compared to 23% of white adults.[1] 12% of Asian New Zealanders were obese. Out of all the ethnic groups surveyed, only the Asians reported a large increase in obesity from the 2002 statistics.[1]
I love the elastic definition of malnourishment. Nowadays, it seems, you can be malnourished and fat at the same time!
ReplyDelete(Yes, I understand you can be fat and technically malnourished due to a shortage of some specific nutrient. It's just that when I was young, not so long ago, newspaper stories about "malnourished" people were concerned with people who lacked sufficient calories to grow to a normal size.
(Indeed, I still have copies of scientific journal articles arguing over the proposition that malnourished people needed more calories overall, not just more protein (kwashkiorkor) or iodine (cretinism), or vitamins (e.g., beri-beri), etc. The "more calories" (with adequate. balance of nutrients) folks basically won, which is why charitable feeding efforts now concentrate on bulk foods, not pills.)
I think it is purely a politically-correct fashion for today's newswriters to claim that all dark skinned people are malnourished. "Malnourishment" is said to cause both emaciation and obesity. It is the all-purpose label for failure to possess the socially-preferred body morphology. It is especially favored because it implies a lack of agency by the afflicted. Even grossly fat American blacks, obviously affluent enough to obtain merely "adequate" nutrition, are said to require more government-supplied food to address their "malnourishment!"
Norway's not on the list because everything's so outrageously, ludicrously expensive there that no one wants to ever eat out. A bottle of coke at a rural gas station costs $5. A draft beer at a bar costs $14. Dinner at a central Oslo restaurant runs $100 a person. A minivan taxi costs $10/minute.
ReplyDeleteAt those prices any rational Norwegian will take his high salary, but expensive cost of living, and just save up to vacation and eventually retire in a low-cost country. Don't buy too much food, don't go out and enjoy life, walk everywhere.
Strange that the most obese Europeans are the Czechs.
ReplyDeleteMaybe something to do with this. Though the pork with every meal, almost every course actually, deep fried cheese, and dumplings probably don't help.
Mexicans eat a lot of sugar in their diet, it's a cheap calorie for them. Their soft drinks are syrupy-sweet fruit concoctions that make Coke or Pepsi taste like medicine.
What the Czechs are to beer the Mexicans are to Coca Cola - Link
No doubt there are fat people in U.S and Mexico but I have to question the list when it mentions Turkey,Israel,Lebanon,Iraq,Czech?!
ReplyDeleteHaving been to all these places,except for Czech I can assure you I have seen very few fat people.
My former company was based in Bratislava and many of my colleagues were Czech and my non Czech friends and colleagues travelled to Prague frequently. They mentioned that the women were attractive, though a bit languid, no one said anything about fat!
What exactly is the criteria for measuring obesity?
Is it bullshit like BMI?
re DR
Yup Norway is ridiculously expensive,my friend just returned from there and lost 15 pounds in 3 weeks because the food is so prohibitively expensive as well as transportation costs.
I think a Big Mac put him back 14$ or so!
New policy. Mexicans must come here to work in order to sweat off the calories and lose weight.
ReplyDeleteIt is the new human right. Right to immigrate to other nations to lose weight.
Seriously, waist size should be one of those objectively measurable factors that goes into the decision. If it's an adult male, and the waistline is over 32 inches, he's doing fine -- doesn't need to come here to eat well.
ReplyDeleteYou guys ever seen Levi's for sale at Sears with a 28-inch inseam but a 36-inch waist? If it wasn't clear from other signs, that's a wake-up call that your area is being invaded by Mexicans.
The waistline requirement would also keep out the ogre / gangbanger types as well.
What would be the USA's obesity rates and where would we rank if you extracted from from our numbers all of the illegal Mexicans living here plus their progeny?
ReplyDeleteCertainly below Syria, and possibly below Libya and Venezuela.
Then exclude all Hispanics who have arrived since ~1965, of which there are perhaps 40 million. Where then? We might not be even in the top 10.
The U.S. would likely be battling head to head with Vanuatu, Island of Depleted Guano.
ReplyDeleteHow many fat Mexicans are 6 foot 3 ?
ReplyDeleteVicente Fox, who also happens to be blond.
[QUOTE]Vicente Fox, who also happens to be blond.[/QUOTE]
ReplyDeleteVicente Fox is not blond at all. His hair color is clearly dark brown judging by this picture.
http://blog.seattlepi.com/marijuana/files/2013/05/vicente-fox.jpg
However he has become gray haired recently, but that is not the same thing as being blond.
If it were, than the vast majority of senior citizen men on the planet are blond.
Use Google image search, you will not find a single picture of Vicente Fox with hair as light as the average Norwegian.
Good Lord!
ReplyDeleteSo Syrians are #3 in the chubster stakes!
Curiously, I've seen no evidence of little fat beerguts (if beer is allowed) running around with the Jihadis along with ZZ Top style beards and beanie caps. Young Assad himself is a model of John Cleese style trimness.
Beer guts, face-stuffing, pigging-out. The past-time of the uber-proles and not the neat-and-trim new bourgeousie. The days when a 'stately-pot' was the mark of the well-fed landed gentry and boniness was the stamp of the laboring poor are long since gone.
As in the new American caste system - black is god, white is pariah, the hierarchy of fattiness has taken on an historical inversion in the land of the brave and the home of nutty political theories.
"The U.S. would likely be battling head to head with Vanuatu, Island of Depleted Guano."
ReplyDeleteI think you mean Nauru Steve.
Sugar is the culprit,and worsened since stupid western nutritionists have derided coconut oil and cream.
The table shows what percentage of people in each country is obese, but it doesn't tell how you HOW obese they are.
ReplyDeleteNever been to Mexico but the first time I landed in America from Europe, I was really struck by how fat people were - and this was in San Francisco! Also, a total shock to the system landing in America from Japan where the only fat people you ever see are Sumo wrestlers on TV channels!
ReplyDeleteI am somewhat surprised by Mexico's position in that list but I shouldn't be I guess. Mexican food is mostly unhealthy cr@p and if you eat a lot of it, you WILL get fat.
America must import--indiscriminately-- millions and millions more of bottom-of-the-barrel "star performers" from every third-world dump on earth, if she's to stay on top.
ReplyDeleteIt's plain as day, and anyone who objects is a racist.
All hail our Cognitive Elites!
Wonder if Mexico has the regional variations the US has?
ReplyDeleteColorado has a much lower percentage of obesity than Mississippi, Louisiana, West VA, etc.
I sat in a pretty park in a Mexican agricultural town once, two hours outside Mexico City, and counted the obese people going by at the Sunday festival.
ReplyDeleteI counted forty obese people in a row before I got tired of looking at them. Men, women, teens, abuelitas, and even little children were going by shaped like beach balls. There was not a single regular sized person or even mildly plump person in the mix. Every one was obese.
Back in Mexico City, the story is very different. A small minority is obese and somewhat more are overweight but most chilangos are healthily shaped.
It made a strong impression. I think you'd see the same difference between New York City and rural Georgia, so maybe it's not just Mexicans.
In addition, the entire BMI index is probably like IQ - great for analyzing large groups of people, but more limiting on an individual basis.
ReplyDeleteIf you work out a lot and have a lot of muscle, you can still score w/ a high BMI. We had dudes who were ripped and short back in the military who got taped because their BMIs were too high. Ironically, those guys from Guam and other island nations were often part of that group despite most being in pretty good shape.
"Sugar is the culprit,and worsened since stupid western nutritionists have derided coconut oil and cream."
Ansel Keys' flawed research is the original culprit. This led BigAg to cut the fats, increase the sugar (including the ultra-cheap corn syrup) and Congress exacerbated w/ subsidies to farmers to grow that stuff. Lots of good stuff out there on this, including the movie King Corn and Food, Inc.; Lew Rockwell's stuff on food has been pretty amazing (he also lost like 50 lbs on a paleo-style diet).
Even grossly fat American blacks, obviously affluent enough to obtain merely "adequate" nutrition, are said to require more government-supplied food ...
ReplyDeleteThese people are 'underserved', sir.
"Norway's not on the list because everything's so outrageously, ludicrously expensive there that no one wants to ever eat out. A bottle of coke at a rural gas station costs $5. A draft beer at a bar costs $14. Dinner at a central Oslo restaurant runs $100 a person. A minivan taxi costs $10/minute.
ReplyDeleteAt those prices any rational Norwegian will take his high salary, but expensive cost of living, and just save up to vacation and eventually retire in a low-cost country. Don't buy too much food, don't go out and enjoy life, walk everywhere."
"Yup Norway is ridiculously expensive,my friend just returned from there and lost 15 pounds in 3 weeks because the food is so prohibitively expensive as well as transportation costs.
I think a Big Mac put him back 14$ or so!"
I wonder what would happen in the U.S. if we taxed junk food through the nose.
Ansel Keys' flawed research is the original culprit. This led BigAg to cut the fats, increase the sugar (including the ultra-cheap corn syrup) and Congress exacerbated w/ subsidies to farmers to grow that stuff. Lots of good stuff out there on this, including the movie King Corn and Food, Inc.; Lew Rockwell's stuff on food has been pretty amazing (he also lost like 50 lbs on a paleo-style diet).
ReplyDeleteThe USA is pretty much the only industrialized country that sweetens everything with high-fructose corn syrup instead of sugar. It's been demonstrated that HFCS makes people fat, but the ag lobby has prevented any fixing of the problem thus far.
You would think the SWPLs would notice that Mexicans evince many of the traits that liberals so dislike in their fellow Americans.
ReplyDeletePortly, middlebrow, unintellectual white prole = bad person
Obese, tacky, dim Mexican = good person
What matters is crushing the former, so a great deal of cognitive dissonance can be maintained with respect to the latter.
Here is a great way for turning Hispanics into Republicans.
ReplyDeleteIn the amnesty bill, include a provision that guarantees free health club membership for all 'non-citizens'.
Slightly O/T but I wonder how Ramadan is going to affect the current unrest in Egypt. Not being able to eat or drink during daylight hours would drive me crazy. (Crazier than I normally am, I mean.)
ReplyDelete"Strange that the most obese Europeans are the Czechs.
ReplyDeleteThere are no East Asian countries on the list. As a whole we can say the obese are mostly in the Americas and the Near East."
Obesity here is determined by BMI (weight in kilos divided by height in meters squared). If your BMI is over 25, irregardless of your age, gender, muscle mass or bone structure, they regard you as overweight, if it's over 30 you're considered obese. Some populations clearly have more fat free mass on average than others at a given height - e.g. - Polynesians generally weigh a lot more than whites at the same height. Some of that difference is fat, but they also have a lot more bone and muscle on average. East and South Asians on the other hand tend to have smaller frames.
I've always found BMI preposterous. My BMI is 28.4, but I have a 32" waist and 13.2% body fat. According to BMI stats, I'm overweight bordering on obese. What also doesn't make sense is that BMI squares height. Why not cube it? Aren't we three dimensional or are we cartoons like the Simpsons?