Odds of Hanging On

Odds of Hanging On

Your odds of hanging on are really good, unfortunately. We say "unfortunately" because it means that your success is fortified by the bad eating habits of others. While more Americans are becoming health nuts, many more are getting fatter. If Americans continue on this wide path to fatdom, eighty percent or so of us will be overweight or obese in the next decade.

There are a number of different factors that contribute to the expanding country. Authors Michael L. Power and Jay Schulkin in The Evolution of Obesity explain that our brains still crave highly caloric food, as they did when we first evolved (source). However, we aren't running around and clubbing our food to death anymore (unless that steak is really rare). We pay people to do that now.

We still desire highly caloric food, but more often than not, we're unable to burn off the calories. While this theory is just one of the many theories out there, no one's really sure why Americans are gaining so much weight. But hey, that's what you're here to figure out, right?