Bigger Waistlines Through Modern Living

Okay, I couldn't just let this go without some comment. The New York Times recently published an article linking obesity rates in the U.S. to modern sedentary jobs. Apparently, the less you move, the more you're likely to store excess calories as fat.
Well, duh! Of course the more you're sedentary, the more likely you're going to sport a muffin top! I could have told you that. So, I'm sure, could thousands of other people around the world. It's not exactly rocket science.
Here's an anecdotal story: From 1988 until about 2006 or so, I worked as a bicycle messenger. I had always been a chubby (read: fat) child growing up, and was a bit paunchy in high school. When I became a messenger, the fat magically disappeared. I dropped to 155 lbs., the lightest I have ever been. My wife was able to wrap her arms about my middle and nearly have them come back around.
And I was always hungry. Constantly. I'd eat breakfast and already be thinking about lunch. I'd eat lunch and already be looking forward to dinner. My wife commented that it was like living with a vulture: She'd be finished with her plate when we went out to eat, and then I'd swoop in (she has a small appetite, and serving sizes are, well, enormous).
Now, bicycle messenger is about as un-sedentary a job as you can think of. I was in the saddle for eight, sometimes more, hours a day, covering perhaps on average 20 miles per day. My wife and I calculated that I was burning about 5000 calories per day (exercise plus my basal metabolic rate together). Naturally, however, this isn't feasible for most Americans.
While there are still physical jobs in the U.S., for the most part they are seen as undesirable, and low-paying. As a result, not a lot of people are going to look at a job like bicycle messenger as the ideal position. Office work is the rule of the day, and that means less calories burned.
Or does it? According to the International Health, Racquet, and Sports Club Association (IHRSA), in April of 2010 there were 45.3 million gym memberships around the country. Many more Americans exercise in non-gym settings. Clearly, one does not have to have a physical job in order to get moving. So what else is going on here?
One thing that has been getting some play in the media but also a lot of obfuscation is high-fructose corn syrup. One can argue the dangers of using this sweetener as opposed to sugar, but one thing about it that cannot be argued is its ubiquitousness. The damn stuff is everywhere. Look on almost any food label, and you'll see HFCS. People are ingesting it in every increasing amounts, and with ever more alarming results.
On my last visit to Puerto Rico, I saw something I had never quite seen before. People in the supermarkets buying entire cases of 64 ounce bottles of soft drinks. The brand is irrelevant; what is important is the fact that that is a ton of HFCS being consumed (if it had been sugar, it would have been just as alarming). I also saw something else that is relevant, in my last trip to P.R. A lot of fast food joints that I never saw when I was a small boy visiting La Isla.
This tide of cheap, fast food is having an effect that is incredibly far-reaching, on both our health and our environment. The old adage of "you get what you pay for" seems to apply here in spades. Sure, the Popeye's meal was cheap, but what did you get for it? Not much apparently, except, perhaps, an expanding waistline. Devoid of actual nutrients, the empty calories serve to satisfy in the short run, but it's not long before your body, feeling gipped at not having gotten the nutrients it needs, starts feeling hungry again. So, you eat again, maybe ice cream, or something, and the vicious cycle continues.
Diabetes has been called, "starvation in the midst of plenty." Modern food practices seem to have taken that model of ill health and turned it into a way of life. We have something peculiar to the modern world; people who are obese yet at the same time they're starving.
In essence, what we have is the perfect storm of unhealthy vectors all colliding at the same time. More sedentary lifestyles; plentiful, cheap, yet unhealthy food; and advertising that encourages less work for more payoff, in the form of diet pills, and energy boost drinks. Like karma, the bill for that kind of laziness will come due in the long run. Nobody is going to want to pay it.