Americans are willing to spend money on healthy products. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they are less likely than other nationalities to make long lasting behavior changes, according to a new report from respected analyst Business Insights.
Obesity is consistently pinpointed as the number one health concern in the United States. No doubt, as it should be. However, attitudes towards obestity continue to treat the problem as superficial. This is a significant problem since the disease consequences both short and longer term are very serious indeed. Actually, it appears that Americans’ attitudes reflect a disordered and superficial cultural values system since the survey found that looking and feeling good drives consumers more than the actual fear of disease where obesity is concerned.
Worryingly, and I suspect quite surprisingly for many people, the report reveals the US has the lowest rate of life expectancy and proportionally has the greatest overweight or obese population among the following seven major developed countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, US and Japan.
Shockingly, according to the US Food & Drug Administration about 64 percent of all US adults are overweight, 30 percent of whom are obese. This has been identified as an indisputable contributing factor to the nation’s high death rate from heart disease. The American Heart Association states that cardiovascular disease claimed 910,614 lives in 2003. This figure amounts to 37.3 percent of all deaths. This is almost double the entire death toll for all forms of cancer combined in the same year. It should be noted that overweight and obesity also increase cancer incidence but heart disease is more dramatically impacted by these conditions.
The Business Insights report also found the US has the least healthy attitude towards health of the major developed countries. Japan ranks as the healthiest country when it comes to health attitudes.
How many "wake up" calls will America need? It appears now America leads the way towards the self-destruction of western civilization as people simply eat their way to disease and death. What an ignominious and immoral way to go.
