Wonder if rampant hypothyroidism has anything to do with it

[vocalEK]

Half of U.S. Adults Obese by 2030?

medpagetoday.com/endocrinol...

I suspect that properly treating people with hypothyroidism would roll back that problem quite a bit.

Are there any predictions about the future of obesity in the UK?

[dtate2016]

Oh yes - absolutely. Many factors contributing, including the US / American diet, ie, eating out 75% of the time. Recent quote: “You can’t lose weight from a drive through window.” But yes, rampant hypothyroidism no doubt.

[penny]

Some years ago a relative gave me a copy of a medical article in The Reader’s Digest which stated that obesity is nothing more than over-eating and hormonal problems, such as hypothyroidism, had nothing to do with it. With that sort of attitude it’s no wonder we don’t get the proper treatment.

I do wonder if the rise in obesity and heart-attacks is due to the increase in the use of statins.

[humanbean]

I would blame diet. The amount of sugar in the diet is immense and horrendous. And it gets hidden under so many different names.

Names for sugar found on food products in the USA :

sugarscience.ucsf.edu/hidde...

Names for sugar found on food products in the UK :

bhf.org.uk/informationsuppo...

Names for sugar found on food products in Australia :

jetts.com.au/jetts-life/nut...

[vocalEK in reply to humanbean]

What ticks me off is when manufacturers add sugar to foods that have no business tasting sweet! I was about to buy some chicken salad at Costco today. Looked freshly made in store. Good thing I looked at the label. The 3rd ingredient was potato starch, then there was some other type of starch, and sure enough, sugar. Chicken salad does not need sweetening, nor starching. In fact, it doesn't need any more than 3 or 4 ingredients. They took a perfectly low-carb dish and added a bunch of carbs to iit.

[helvella Administrator in reply to vocalEK]

And when the (long) list of ingredients includes multiple variations on sugar:

agave syrup

dextrose

liquid glucose

glucose-fructose syrup

dates

maltodextrin

molasses

And, despite these, all too often there are artificial sweeteners as well!

[LAHs in reply to vocalEK]

Yes, I feel the same way about butter. Would you fry a steak in sweet cream butter? Almost all the butters are "sweet", only "Danish Creameries" butter is unsweetened - and that is the one I buy.

[Lora7again]

Here in the UK there are a lot of clinically obese people. Visiting my GPs to pick up my referral letter the receptionist was massive, she could hardly get out of her chair to get my letter. Also another large woman entered on sticks and she was also very big. She had thin hair and I did try to look at her neck but she had so many double chins I could not tell if she had as goitre or not. I am 60 now and when I was a child there was about one or two overweight children in the whole school now there is a lot more. Also I rarely saw any overweight adults because every one worked hard including my single mum who had to work to support me because there were no benefits. We also did not have any fast food chains. When my mum married my step-dad once a month we would have a treat of fish n chips eaten out of newspaper lol. Crisps were only eaten as a treat with a bottle of vimto if we went to the cinema or sat in the car in the pub carpark because children were not allowed in pubs when I was little. Times have changed and not for the better. When I worked for the NHS in the 80s the hospital I worked for tried to have a healthy canteen menu but people moaned and even Doctors were not happy and wanted chips back on the menu. I think all the pizza places and burger places not to mention take-away curries and chinese's have all contributed to the amount of overweight people in this country.