Overweight and obesity is an epidemic of just the past few decades and was not a problem 50 years ago.  In my high school  of 1400 students in the 1940s there were perhaps no more than a half dozen students of either sex that we would now call overweight and certainly no obese students.  The article below confirms this.

Since that time:

High fructose corn syrup - made from cornstarch, is added to zillions of processed food products including canned vegetables.  It is even found in imitation crab meat.  The process for this was not developed until the 1965-1970 era and coincides with our overweight epidemic.  This is the only sweetener now found in carbonated beverages and wasn't added until the corn starch conversion process was invented.

Omega 3 - used to be in all naturally raised animals as well as fish.  Free range cattle still get Omega 3 from the grasses they eat, but our corn and soy meal fed cattle and production line chickens no longer get this beneficial and overweight protective agent.  The native Inuit people of Greenland lived almost exclusively on fish, seals, and whales which included large amounts of blubber and other fats with very few vegetables and had no history of overweight, heart disease or stroke.  In the past 20 years they have acquired the Western lifestyle and diet and are becoming overweight and subject to all of our other ills.  Green leafy vegetables contain Omega 3.

Our bodies were designed before agriculture and were not designed for grains.  Studies of Egyptian mummies have found that they died of arthrosclerosis and other debilitating diseases, yet they were eating the American Heart Association diet - before white flour.  An excellent book regarding the debilitating effects of grains is the "No-Grain Diet, Conquer Carbohydrate Addiction and Stay Slim For Life" by Dr. Mercola.  My granddaughter who is a runner and not overweight read this book and went on the diet and lost 10 pounds in a week, most of it from around her middle.  Another diet of a similar type is the Paleolithic diet, which goes back to the pre-agricultural days.

Of course the availability of fast food is a big contributor.

Yes, over eating causes overweight and obesity.  However, there is something else driving it it because this is a new phenomenon world wide and you can't point your finger at just one thing.  Yet many, many people including several on Cure Zone will recognize that high fructose corn syrup has paralleled this rise.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288967,00.html

75 Percent of U.S. Adults Will Be Overweight by 2015, Study Says

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

The waistlines of Americans continue to grow and a new study estimates that by 2015, 75 percent of adults will be overweight and 41 percent will be obese.

The percentage of adults in the U.S. that were obese increased from 13 percent in the 1960s to 32 percent in 2004, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Human Nutrition.

“The obesity rate in the United States has increased at an alarming rate over the past three decades,” said Dr. Youfa Wang, lead author of the study and an assistant professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of International Health, in a press release.

The proportion of overweight and obese Americans has increased at an average rate of 0.3 to 0.8 percentage points a year. Poorer Americans and some minority groups have been affected disproportionately, according to the analysis, which was published online in advance of the 2007 issue of the journal Epidemiologic Reviews.

Specifically, the study found that women ages 20 to 34, regardless of race or ethnicity, are becoming obese and overweight at a faster rate than men and children. It also found that 80 percent of black women age 40 and older are currently overweight, while 50 percent are obese.

“Obesity is a public health crisis,” Wang added. “If the rate of obesity and overweight continues at this pace, by 2015, 75 percent of adults and nearly 24 percent of U.S. children and adolescents will be overweight or obese.”

more at the link....