There is a new term floating around:
Globesity!
Apparently, it's a worldwide epidemic.
Here's cut and paste that I took off an article on the web:
"Americans are not the heaviest people in the world. For example, 34 percent of American women are obese, nearly identical to the rate in Bahrain, Paraguay and Malta, according to IOTF estimates. But Pacific Islanders have the world's highest obesity rate - 75 percent among Samoan women.
What alarms IOTF and the World Health Organization is that three in five people in the world are not active enough to benefit their health. While planners in the United States envy European cities as models of active, pedestrian-friendly environments, some already walkable world cities have discovered the only way to pry people out of their cars is not with friendliness, but with force.
This year, the World Health Organization is pursuing grander and more aggressive goals than any imagined by American planners. Convinced that nagging individuals to eat less and move more won't work, it aims:
To stop the worldwide trend toward cheap, mass-produced processed foods.
To encourage the food industry to voluntarily alter advertising, pricing, labeling and marketing of junk food on a global scale.
To get people moving any way possible.
Driving the more urgent moves is the growing number of obese, unfit children. In the United States, 15 percent of elementary school children are overweight. But in countries like Egypt and Mexico, 25 percent are. Worldwide, one in five children weighs too much.
The other worrisome milestone: For the first time in history, the numbers of overweight people and underfed people in the world are equal. As is true in the United States, the poor are most at risk of obesity in developing and wealthy countries worldwide.
With nations now tied together by trade, pop culture, business and technology, and fast food, lifestyles in every country are looking more and more similar. But it is likely not just fast food and soda that are making the world fat. It is the spread of Western-style impatience.
"Americans say, enjoy today, don't wait for tomorrow. We want to eat now, we want the free refill of lemonade, we want to earn income now, we don't care how stressful our life is, or if we won't save, or if we die young," says health economist John Komlos, professor at the University of Munich in Germany. "They say, 'What do I care what happens 30 years from now?'"
Patricia
