[gardener]

BicepBlaster? A troll here, methinks--and probably one who is thoroughly familiar with J-P Fitness and who probably posts here under another name, also a pseudonym. I mean, what is the probability that someone whould sign up now and almost immediately go bac k a year and join a thread from then as his first participation? Also, the style is pretty abrasuve for a newcomer. And this character dsoesn't really respond to the topic of the thread.But I’ll pretend that this is an honest post, as dubious as that may be.

First, it is an established fact that obesity in the US has increased dramatically in the past two decades. Go to a library that keeps bound copies of popular magazines and look at copies of Life or Look magazines prior to 1950. You'll hardly find a slightly pudgy person in sight in crowd scenes, much less someone who is morbidly obese. Back then, 300 pound women were fat ladies in carnival side shows. We paid to see them and we gawked because they were out of the ordinary. Today, well just go to Wal-Mart and look around. Or go to the grocery store and check out the fat guys and gals using a motorized cart. Or go as I’ve been doing to preteens girls softball games. The players may be mostly lithe and slim, but most of the mothers are tubs, and there are always a few chubby kids in the stands. Why has obesity increased? There are only two reasons. People are eating too much and not getting enough exercise, ingesting too much energy and expending too little.


But “too much energy in, too little energy out” explains how people become overweight or obese. A further question is why this imbalance takes place. The notion that people are exercising insufficient personal responsibility may be correct in part, if simple-minded, but there’s still a further question: if people are exercising less personal responsibility than they did in, say, 1949, why is this so? Has human nature changed in some way? My best answer is that yes, there has been an epidemic of obesity in the US over the past twenty years and multiple causes combined to bring this about

You guys can blame "corporate America" as much as you want, however the the only fault in this situation lies on the consumers.

And yes, I will blame corporate America where I think iit bears some responsibility, and of course it would be to the great advantage of these corporations to be excused from any share of the blame. That’s why they hire lobbyists who set up fancy founding centers and foundations and why they put pressure on legislators to make laws that are in their interest, not the public interest. They may even convince some BicepBlaster to jump into a year-old, serious discussion of the causes of an obesity epidemic with a bunch of bullying dogmatic assertions with little foundation in fact. I don’t know whether Bluto the BicepBlaster believes what he’s saying. Maybe the food lobbyists have brainwashed him. (“Solitaire, anyone?”) Or maybe he’s a food lobbyist himself, a hired shill.

You have to remember that corporations like McDonalds are publicly owned and people (all kinds of people not just stock option fat-cats) rely on their growth and profits to feed into their retirement accounts, IRAs, 401 Ks, etc..

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Thanks for the patronizing explanation of high finance, but I don’t need it. I am retired, and for thirty-five years before I retired I took steps to make certain I would not have to rely on the Social Security checks that are now about 17% of my joint assets. I have an active account with a good broker. I own certain individual equities that I like--QCOM, AAPL, EBAY, Adobe Systems, plus various municipal bonds, CDs, REITs, and so stors can have social consciences, after all. Warren Buffet does. Big Business does better when someone is keeping a wary eye on it on. Right now I’m only taking interest from these account, amounting to another 17% of joint annual income. The remaining 64% comes entirely from investments in a pension system. I imagine that there might be some mutual funds with holdings in McDonald’s, Sara Lee, Unilever, and so on, and perhaps in Big Pharma. I do know that none of my money goes to tobacco or to energy companies or weapons manufacturers. But basically I don’t need some idiotic, simplistic piffle about the virtues of capitalism. I bought QCOM very early, lots of it, and I sold 75% just before it peaked. At the outset I picked a good account and financial planner, and found a broker who doesn’t keep churning my portfolios

And I don’t see any reason why owning part of corporate America means I’m a bought guy and should just shut up and enjoy the guilty profits I also see no reason to follow this defective reasoning: you own stock in AAPL. AAPL is big business, especially with its iPODl McDonalds is also big business. Therefore you should shut up about corporate America. NOT!

the companies only loyalty should be to their stockholders.

Basura, shortsighted crap. What about loyalty to employees? What about concern for the well-being of the communities companies inhabit? What about following laws that govern clean air and water.
And furthermore, your precious big corporations haven’t exactly been loyal to stockholders at all, in cases like Enron. I took a $5000 beating on Worldcom and another on Global Crossing. Crooks!

Now we get to BidetBuster’s reason why companies’ sole loyalty is to stockholders


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because being able to retire on time, provide your children college education and take care of yourself and your dependents in old age is more important than trying to help someone who won't make an effort on their own to be healthy.

These are what stockholders may want as individuals. The corporations don’[t care about your personal goals, And when you say you’re not going to help someone who won;t help himself, you’re just expressing your total indifference to others outside your tidy little circle

It's like people who criticize Hollywood for lack of originality, well if people didn't buy movies like "Air Bud" they wouldn't have made Air Bud 2-6. Movie production companies are driven by profit not creativity, just like fast food companies are driven by profit and not health concerns

No, “it’s NOT like” Hollywood at all. The analogy doesn’t hold. A bad movie that caters to the public taste for crap isn’t like food that will weaken or destroy your health. Even Scott MCClellan couldn’t get away with that one.

Further, it should not be done through litigation but through educated consumerism, it is a matter of personal responsibility, period.

Personal responsibility-the mantra of the Center for Consumer Freedom--which got started to help Phillip Morris spread the notion that smoking was our divine right, A sleaze ball outfit!

The desire of corporate America to escape litigation is understandable but craven. Bush has paid off some of his johns with tort reform. The PR folks spread stories about how ridiculous that lawsuit over too hot coffee at McDonalds was--but when you look into it, the company really was at fault and grievously so.

So, everybody, forget BicepBlubber. He’s a troll through and through.
The causes of the widening of America are many and various, but here are a few.

1. Increase in portion size and calorie count in chain restaurants.
2. Overuse of high fructose corn syrup in products where it has no function, like catsup.
3, In our schools, as Brody pointed out,“Overburdened and under financed school systems throughout the country have invited fast-food purveyors and soft-drink vending machines to their premises, often with monetary or equipment kickbacks from the producers. The push to raise academic scores has squeezed out many physical education programs and athletic activities.”
4. Parental shopping habits translate into their offspring’s lifetime eating habits. (Snoop in your fellow customers’ carts!)
5. Ads directed at children.
6. At present, deliberate government suppression of information, as in Tommy Thompson’s effort last year to meddle with recommendations in a WHO report on obesity that were considered unfriendly by the sugar and grocery manufacturers’s powerful, Republican-oriented lobbies.
7. Campaigns of public disinformation by outfits like the Center for Consumer Freedom, Citizens for the Integrity of Science, American Council on Science and Health,Center for Global Food Issues,
Competitive Enterprise Institute,Consumer Alert, National Center for Public Policy Analysis
8. Suburban real estate development patterns with no sidewalks and with no public transportation that must be walked to to reach. Over 5 decades of public planning to discourage transportation other than by private car.