Re: Obesity to be a big problem soon.
As Pats states, obesity is already a big problem. I believe there is a wide range of causes that lead to people becoming . . . fat which, unless addressed, will see the problem escalate terribly in coming years.
It's patently obvious to me that "ordinary" people whose diets wouldn't normally result in them getting overly fat, are suffering because of the things that are being put into food stuffs. The problem is 2-fold. On the one hand there is the problem of the things being added, the sugars, sweeteners, chemicals, additives specifically designed to make you feel hungry when your body actually isn't and so on. On the other hand there is the whole issue surrounding how labelling laws are governed and how companies are routinely permitted to "do harm" to the populous by obfuscating the facts and using media campaigns to mis-inform.
Morally, we would not allow any company to put say cannabis or alcohol into children's foodstuffs, yet the powers that be quite happily allow the great sugar conglomerates to pile sugar into all manner of kids stuff from yoghurts (that ought to be healthy) to snacks and treats.
The adage of "you are what you eat" and glib statements like "it's your choice whether to put these foods in your mouth" are, imo, extremely mute. In days of old, yes, it might have had some merit, eat a lot of cream cakes and you will get fat. Today however those statements just don't wash simply because the human race has been nothing less than assaulted by conglomerates who have piled sugar into everything they can. Morally it should not be allowed, but our gov'ts and powers that be are far from moral.
People are effectively being drugged by sugar and by foodstuffs that are engineered or deliberately added to make humans feel hungry and / or to make them feel artificially happy/gratified after eating them. These things lead to people eating too much.
There will always be people who are genuinely gluttons but the bigger problem is not those people. It is the systematic assault by conglomerates on the human race. The production of "bad products" like fizzy drinks and the media advertising and all the ethos that goes with it to make people think that drinking such products is actually normal and not a bad thing.
Free choice is certainly worth having, but products should not have so much sugar in them that on a general basis your daily intake is way way more than it ought to be. Gov't should pass laws that products must not have more than x% of sugars or sweeteners in them. Hence with free choice if we wanted to eat that much sugar, we should be forced to eat lots and lots of the product to do that, rather than being able to have one yoghurt or fizzy drink that provides a ton of it !
The world is in a bad place at the moment in terms of food ingredients, additives and labelling laws. It needs a complete and utter clean out and a moral leadership in place to enforce moral and humane standards. Unfortunately, the world is currently in the hands of crooks who won't give up that power willingly.