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Message: <blockquote data-quote="apsuman" data-source="post: 318756" data-attributes="member: 1769">I have not read the whole thread, but here is my "answer"For thousands of years, the human condition was to eat when food was available.  We developed a taste for fat, carbs, and variety.  Now that food is readily available our hard wired tendancies are not doing us any good.Now that would explain why people in GENERAL are fatter than historically true, but as for us Americans...Americans are fat because we are rich.  This is not exclusive to America, but I believe that there are a number of factoer that make us more "rich" than other industrialized nations.First we grow a lot of food here.  Japan does not, they import much of their food, hence it costs more there.  More cost = less consumption.Next, we have a powerful currency, in the off months we import produce from other places (Chile comes to mind) but our low (non-existenet?) tarriffs and strong currency make for continued lower cost of food.  Less cost =  more consumption.  Here we differe from Canadians (I think) because our dollar is worth morewe can buy the apples and the twinkes for what it costs Canucks to buy just the apples.Also, as I understand it, America has (relative to the rest of the industrialized world) a low tax rate.  This means that more of what a person earns they get to keep.  this surplus cash goes into surplus goods, i.e. twinkies.I read that food costs less in America in both terms of actual dollars and as a percentage of income than any other industrialized nation.As a marginal factor I will add restaurants.  The cheapest part of a meal is the food.  Labor, energy, and advertising, are all larger parts of the bill.  The cheapest thing for a restaurant to change is food.  They can double their cost of the food (by either larger portions or higher quality, more fat, etc.) and pass that cost on to the consumer with the largest mark up.  g!</blockquote>

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