Linda Gardner's Blog: US Obesity Keeps Rising – Not Stopped by Ridiculous Calorie-Counting Efforts

Eat less, run more. Watch your energy balance. That’s what Americans have been told for decades, yet obesity keeps rising.

NYT: Obesity Rises Despite All Efforts to Fight It, U.S. Health Officials Say

Newly published data shows that in 2013 and 2014 fully 38 percent of American adults were obese, a staggering number and a new record. The numbers have been rising steadily since the early 80s when around 15 percent were obese.

It’s clear that what we are doing is not working in the US, nor anywhere else. We’re attacking this from the wrong angle. We need to stop the ridiculous fixation on energy balance (a Coca-Cola sponsored concept).

What we eat determines how much we want to eat. This is a question of food quality – and then the quantity can take care of itself, via our natural hunger- and satiety signals.

It’s a question of the hormonal regulation of weight, not calorie counting. Obesity is not a physics or mathematics problem, it’s biology.

Until society gets the fundamental questions right we’ll never arrive at the solution.