It's true, people do get fat from overeating and   underexercising...and I am not one to try and place blame for personal behavior on some instutution...but one of the interesting points made on this program is that government subsidies for farms do not go to growers of fruits and vegetables, but to growers of corn (not sweet corn as vegetable but corn which is made into sweeteners and oils) and soybeans (more hydrogenated oils for junk food) and producers of meat and dairy products; this is in complete opposition to the so-called "fopod pyramid" guidelines the government suposedly has been swearing by for years! These sugar and trans-fat filled non-foods FILL our supermarkets; all the aisles in the middle of the store are virtually made of nothing else. Cereals, cookies, candy, chips, crackers, "power bars" and the insidious boxed "meals" made with noodles or rice that are so full of chemicals it's hard to see why we'd eat them.

One theory as to why obese people continue to overeat is that the food they do eat is so lacking in nutrients that their bodies constantly crave more food. But instead of eating the fresh fruits and vegetables and lean fish and whole grains they need, these people gorge on McDonald's and Burger King and cookies and soda and chips, and wonder why they're fat when they only eat three "meals" a day...

The spokesman for the Health and Human Services dept.   Tommy Thompson would not agree that there was any connection between government subsdies and obesity in America. It certainly is not    *the* cause, but it seems clear to me that it is an important underlying factor and that the system did not get this way overnight.
Also indicted: advertising that targets kids and that causes kids to beg for food from parents who don't want to say no/argue.

The program was only an hour long and I suppose a multi-part program might go into why no one exercises anymore: kids get rides to school, phys ed classes have been cut from school budgets, kids are only interested in TV and video games, people live in sidewalkless neighborhoods, etc. But it was refershing to see the focus on the plague of junk food that dominates our culture, so much so that it has become a normal part of our routine. I watched the footage from a 1979 FTC hearing where lobbyists were trying to pass a law forbidding the commercial pitching of sweetened cereals to kids with cartoon characters during children's programing hours (practices, BTW, adopted in a number of European and Asian countries);   politicians against it were blathering about how this is   an infringement of free speech. But if people are so weak-willed they can't resist advertising, then do they desrve freedom of speech?

Twelve year olds dropping from coronary occlusion; ten-year-olds with type 2 diabetes; is this what it takes for us to change our habits and get healthy again?

Jennings compared the public health crisis of obesity to that of    smoking, saying it took many years before the governent would step in and implement laws. Is junk food the new tobacco?