Obesity and health care in the US

[Dystopia]

As an European I'm interest in knowing why is obesity so prevalent in the USA and, as stated by the OP, in Canada... I'm just curious? Is it processed food? Social acceptance? I'm not here to fat shame or anything, I'll treat obesity as a medical condition and nothing else, and as with always patient blaming is an idea I don't accept.

There are some things the US has better though, for example they smoke less than Europe particularly France.

[The Grand Nudger]

Appears to be a combination of factors.

-We have an incredibly productive set of food policies.
-We have the wealth to buy the produce of others.
-The products we manufacture with the inputs from our ag sector (and our purchasing power) are more focused on profit than nutrition or health.
-We have a "food culture".
-We appear to be trending, genetically, towards a population with more and more people possessing more and more of the genes associated with obesity in these past few generations.
-Our overall attitude -towards- obesity was first one of ambivalence (if not encouragement - see above) and then one of avoidance. We excused ourselves from the discussion and said "Meh, those fatties should deal with it themselves if they don't like it - it's all on their own fortitude".)

Hell, sounds like the perfect storm, huh?

[abaris]

Here's an article from the New England Journal of Medicine looking a little bit deeper into the report.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0910064

Given the vast number of preventable deaths associated with smoking (465,000 per year), hypertension (395,000), obesity (216,000), physical inactivity (191,000), high blood glucose levels (190,000), high levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (113,000), and other dietary risk factors, there are huge opportunities to enact policies that could make a substantial difference in health system performance — and in the population's health.

[The Grand Nudger]

-ah, but have we reached the point where those policies become a faustian bargain?

[Dystopia]

Enlightening as always

All of the above goes without saying in European health care systems. You get immediate treatment when you need it and you don't have to pay an additional dime to what your social security provides. They also provide preventive care systems. That's one of the answers why the US doesn't rank that good when compared internationally. Availability of health care or lack thereoff. Another would be the overall high costs per capita. In France they spend an average of about 4000 Dollars per patient, in the US, as far as I'm informed it's about 8000 dollars. Other factors are the actual positive or negative outcomes of treatments and life expectancy. It's a bit lower in the US than it is for example in most European countries.

Preventive care like what? I've never had preventive care excluding appointments with doctors I have to pay.

It is a myth that Europe has these perfect HC systems - Last week in Portugal a man died waiting over half a day in the urgency room when he clearly had a dangerous condition with worrying symptoms - There's stil a lot to be done. Another thing I should note is that you pay a lot of taxes for healthcare and by definition governments put a lot of them in politicians' pockets, you never know accurately where your tax money goes, or how many of your money goes for actual HC, you just know it will be useful for someone/something.

Overall it's preferable to America but there's still a lot to work on - Something that is worrying is a tendency for citizens to constantly blame people who supposedly have "self-inflicted" conditions, like smokers, obesity, diabetes, accusing them of being burdens.

As a smoker, I'm offended when my government raises taxes on cigarettes but still keeps products to quit a lot more expensive, and says it is for my own good. I'm also offended how people criticize smokers as being a burden on HC system when in 2011 smokers paid 1500million € in taxes and only 1000million € makes up for the additional costs with smokers - That's part of the reason I'm smoking natural tobacco leafs that don't pay taxes, I'm tired to be a part of the system that at the same time wants to babysit me but simultaneously doesn't help and exploits people.