Obesity Caused by Overeating, Not Laziness
According to one Australian academic, Americans are fat because we eat too much, not because we’re lazy.
In remarks made at an obesity conference in Amsterdam, Professor Boyd Swinburn of Australia’s Deakin University said “There is no evidence that a marked reduction in physical activity has been a contributor to this obesity epidemic in the United States. The increase in energy intake… virtually explained all of the weight gain.”
According to the professor, all those physical education classes we were forced to take as kids really were the utter waste of time we thought they were — and any increases in the intensity of exercise will have no effect on the weight gain among Americans. Swinburn says the average American would need to engage in two hours of race-type walking each day in order to achieve a healthy weight while eating the current daily diet. And, odds are, that’s not going to happen soon.
Instead, he says, the solution is simply for all of us to eat less food — 350 calories less per day for kids, 500 calories less per day for adults. Doing so would return Americans to the average weight levels of the 1970s.
So if you think that hopping about in tights at the gym or speedwalking around the neighborhood is going to allow you to eat all the pizza and cheeseburgers you want, think again. Dr. Swinburn advises Americans to limit their expectations of what an increase in physical activity can achieve,and focus more on healthy eating habits than on physical activity.
In other words, put down the fork, America.
