Curious How it Ended?

I finished Food Nation while avoiding report card writing and learned the following:

- As the fast food chains have moved overseas, obesity rates have risen. The British eat more fast food than any other nation in Western Europe...and they also have the highest obesity rate. It baffles me that the "relationship between a nation's fast food consumption and its rate of obesity has not been definitively established..."!! How is that possible? Overweight teenagers in China tripled in the 1990s. Overweight people were rare with Japan's ultra healthy diet of rice, vegetables, and fish. The Japanese were considered some of the healthiest people in the world. Now? Their eating habits have shifted and the obesity rates in children have doubled along with the sale of fast food. Japanese men who settled in the US and switched to a Western diet doubled their risk of heart disease and tripled their risk of stroke (p. 242-243)
- Over the past 50 years in the US, per capita consumption of soft drinks has more than quadrupled. During the late 1950s, the typical soft drink was 8oz...today (1999) a child order is 12oz. The super size fries at McDonalds were 3x larger than what was offered a generation ago (p. 241).
- Health officials have concluded that prevention, not treatment, offers the best hope of stopping the now worldwide epidemic of obesity. Stopping ads geared to children may help, especially since American children are now getting 1/4 of their vegetable servings from chips or french fries (p. 243).
- In his afterward (2012), Schlosser reported that 2/3 of adults in the US are now overweight or obese and the obesity rate among preschoolers has doubled in the past 30 years. The rate among children from 6-11 has tripled (p. 271).

All-in-all I enjoyed the book. It was sad and scary, but very interesting. Some parts were dry and out of date, but when reading the afterward and learning that what he wrote about over 10 years ago is now worse and not better, I guess it wasn't as out of date as I'd thought.

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I'm currently reading Salt, Sugar, and Fat by Michael Moss. It is American but is current (2013). It's along the same lines as Fast Food Nation except it's based on the food industry as a whole (think anything you buy in a can or box...even the products you think are healthy), not just fast food. Steve thinks I'm getting a little obsessed with this food stuff, but the more I learn, the more fascinated I become with the topic. I have to learn more because this is my health. And Brennan's health. The more I learn about what I've been putting in my body unbeknownst to me, the more I am able to reject crappy food. Sure it tastes great and is very satisfying. Until you learn what is really in it and why it tastes so damned good. And once you know that, you won't want to have it anymore. Even though it always smells SOOOOO delicious.

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What have you learned about health-related topics lately?