Diet is the leading cause of death in the US, responsible for more than five times the fatalities of gun violence and car accidents combined.

The number one cause of death

Bioethicist Daniel Callahan said people should be made to feel ashamed of being obese. “People don’t realize that they are obese or if they do realize it, it’s not enough to stir them to do anything about it". He kicked his cigarette habit due to shame, so is applying the same psychology to obesity.

Making people guilty about being fat

<ul><li>According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 80 %of adults and about one-third of children now meet the clinical definition of overweight or obese. More Americans live with “extreme obesity“ than with breast cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and HIV put together.</li><li>Studies have found that about one-third of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol.</li></ul>

Obesity: The Facts

Three separate studies have found that fat women are more likely to die from breast and cervical cancers than non-fat women, a result partially attributed to their reluctance to see doctors and get screenings/tests and timely diagnosis.

Reluctance to see a Doctor

All of our biological systems for regulating energy, hunger and satiety get thrown off by eating foods that are high in sugar (like Fructose, for instance), low in fiber and injected with additives, and which make up 60 percent of the calories we eat.

Sugar and Additives are killing us

More than 40 percent of Americans classified as obese say they experience stigma on a daily basis.

The Daily Stigma of being fat

60% of the calories Americans consume come from '"ultra-processed foods”, according to the British Medical Journal (2016).

Ultra-Processed Foods

For half a century, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or saved, millions of lives:<ul><li>Diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets.</li><li>Being fat does not necessarily mean being unhealthy.</li></ul>

Diets and Health

According to a 2015 survey, students receive an average of 19 hours of nutrition education over four years of school time—five hours fewer than they got in 2006.

Nutritional Information to youngsters

Since 1980, the obesity rate has doubled in 73 countries and increased in 113 others. No country has reduced its obesity rate in all these years.

The Obesity Rate

Doctors have shorter appointments with fat patients and have been reported to show less emotional rapport during the interaction.

Treating Obese patients

<ul><li>A 2016 study that followed participants for an average of 19 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fat people, who were relatively fit.</li><li>Americans spend more on dieting every year than on video games or movies.</li></ul>

About Diets

From the 16th century to the 19th, scurvy killed around 2 million sailors, more than warfare, shipwrecks and syphilis combined. It was an ugly, smelly death, too, beginning with rattling teeth and ending with a body so rotted out from the inside that its victims could literally be startled to death by a loud noise.

Diets and Health

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