Sinking attraction boat
Fat people look in the Western countries always surprise Japanese. In particular, fat people in United States are outstandingly extraordinary. Recently the rate of fat people in Japan has increased as well but the way growing fat is beyond imagination about both quality and quantity.For example, It is diary scenes to see people like sumo wrestler weight around150kg and in the shape of pear walking around every town in the United States.
When I research information about fatness aimlessly, I stumbled one article of a website which was written about renovation of attraction in Disneyland in the United States. Firstly I wondered why google results brought up this information with the keyword of "fat". I came to understand the reason.
Disneyland California took one year to remodel the popular attraction of "It's a small world" in 2009. An official reason for remodeling was deterioration of the facility. But the truth was said that attraction boats' bottom dragged the ground underneath water and often got stuck by sinking boats because of fat people.
the point of renovation was said to operate this attraction smoothly even if fat visitors come to get a lift so the Disneyland strengthened the floatation system of boats and deepened the waterway.
In addition, in the United States, there was a news that a airline rejected fat passengers and San Francisco enacted municipal bylaw which proclaimed employment discrimination by people's weight. Obesity is a serious social problem in the United Sates.
Michelle Obama has been developing large-scale campaign named "Let's move" for extermination of children's obesity.
Generally, numerical value which is demanded by dividing a square of height (m) into weight(kg) is called BMI (Body Mass Index) which is ponderal index. WHO classifies a level of obesity as obese and overweight. Obese is more than 30 BMI. Overweight is 25 BMI or more but less than 30 BMI. For example in case of person with 170 tall, if his weight is more than 86.7kg he is seen as obese.
Hunting people preparing for starvation by saving fat
According to a data from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a rate of obesity adult population in the United States (which occupies the entire adult population in the world ) is 33.8 % which is the top rate in the world.People in the United States who is included the definition of fat standard as "overweight" fixed by WHO even exist 30% of total entire population in the world. People in ordinary shape is only one person in three. By the way, the rate of obesity in Japan is 3.9%.
Why are American so fat? According to a doctor belonging to a diabetes research institution in a university hospital, who research on obsety problems, this is the problem of social background in addition to the factor of anthropology.
The factor of anthropology he talks about is that white people from the West has racially a nature of hunting. Some days they may be successful in hunting but other days not so they need to save their fat into their body to get ready for not capturing game otherwise their risks of death get higher and higher, therefore white people naturally have a tendency to be fat.
On the other hand, Japanese people have racially feature of agricultural tribe, who develop feild to harvest crops which has advantage of saving through whole year so is able to bring crops from a warehouse when eating as much as needed. Ancient Japanese people didn't need to save extra nutrition into their body to survive starvation. Therefore Japanese people instinctively keep a slim shape.
However, my impression about obesity people in the United States are more like diseased. Actually, number of deaths in the United States caused by heart disease, stroke and cancer brought by excessive obesity is getting more and more. Bodily functions of saving fat to prevent from starvation brings worse situation in the age of gluttony.
One more reason for obesity is a background of social factors. When I saw the statistical report about the problem of obesity released by the Government of the United States, it seems to be 1980s that "obesity" started to treat as one of a social problem.
"Obesity" is regarded as synonym for "poverty"
Firstly, started to develop the food service industry which mainly provide first food. The competition environment among first food chain become more intense, which made the food prices get cheaper and cheaper year after year then. 1980 was the very starting year of age of gluttony. The amount of foods Americans eat every day has clearly got increased in recent 30 years.Secondly, the pork-barrel policy to farmers by the government brings the condition that corn which becomes livestock feed for a farm animal and ingredients of sweetener was in mass production, therefore prices of high calorie pop drinks and junk foods went down. Excessive intake of foods was spurred on.
Thirdly the interval between wealth and poverty has gone on widening among nations since the economic policy of "Limited government" after Reagan so the low income bracket had a tendency to depend on cheap junk foods for everyday meal.
This social problem of obesity has now not only been taken up in the United States but also has also concerned other countries. In China, prevalence of adults' diabetes was now over 11% compared with the one in 1980s which had been less than 1%. In Kuwait, People who have obese treatment operation has increased 10 times as many as people have 10 years ago.
We Japanese must not say it's no skin off our nose now.