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You can't tell me that parents feeding their children soda and Cheetos still haven't heard that the more calories you consume, the bigger you will be. This information is *everywhere*. Even the nutrition labels on the back of a pack of cookies has the most basic information possible: calories per serving, and the number of servings in the package. The information is on everything we purchase, literally in black and white.
What's the disconnect?
Poverty.
Weight is overwhelmingly a poor folks problem. Rich white people tend to be thin. It's poor people who tend to wear plus sizes.
Anyone here been urban, working poor? One has to rely on fast food and convenience food because it's cheap, easy and unlikely to go bad. Fresh veggies rot if you're working 60+ hours a week and don't have time to cook, and they're awfully expensive. Chips stay good indefinitely, though, as do things like cookies and frozen meals. Soda is tons cheaper than juice. Add to that the fact that your kids are probably going to be feeding themselves at a young age, and that the grocery store may be poorly stocked and inconveniently located, and you can start to see the problem.
The lectures are everywhere, yes, but there is very little by way of practical help when it comes to making changes. Whole wheat pasta is a more expensive than the white kind, and cooks differently. Ditto with rice. Fruits and veggies are horribly expensive and also take a bit of preparation. Lentils? They're cheap and relatively easy, but most people have no idea how to make them palatable.
I can turn lentils and brown rice into something young children will scarf down, but that's because I was raised by hippies. Most people were raised on meat and potatoes, and now eat the quickest, cheapest version they can find. The poor also tend to have crappy medical care, so conditions that co-exist with obesity go untreated for years.
Until everyone has access to decent food plus the time and knowledge to prepare it, we will have an obesity epidemic. As the middle class keeps sliding downward, the problem will continue to get worse.
