What would our founders say if they could see us now? Americans like to believe that the rest of the world looks up to us, but the truth is that the rest of the world is laughing at us. It may be very difficult for us to admit, but the reality is that America has become a nation of slobs. And I am not just talking about being overweight. Today, Americans are physical, mental, emotional, moral, financial and political slobs. We are addicted to entertainment, we are addicted to shopping, we are addicted to food, we are addicted to prescription drugs, and we are addicted to anything else that gives us the pleasure that we crave. We allow our televisions to do our thinking for us and our families are falling apart. Our lives center around pleasing ourselves, and we have become one of the most narcissistic societies in the history of the world. We are like a middle-aged man that has totally let himself go. You know the guy who shows up for an important event in sandals, sweatpants and a stained t-shirt? That is us. We are only a shadow of what we once were as a nation, and we desperately need to change course.

So what is the solution?

Well, just like any addict, the first thing that we need to do is to admit that there is a problem. Until we admit how dramatically we have fallen, we are never going to be ready to make the changes that are necessary.

And yes, we have fallen a long, long way as a country.

The following are 24 facts that prove that America is a nation of slobs….

#1 Right now, approximately 36 percent of all Americans are obese. It is being projected that number will rise to 42 percent by 2030.

#2 Back in 1962, only 13 percent of all Americans were obese.

#3 Medical costs related to obesity in the United States are estimated to be approximately $147 billion a year.

#4 All over America, our infrastructure is crumbling. For example, in the most populated county in Alabama potholes the size of pizzas now litter the roads.

#5 The average American family purchases 200 pounds of meat per family member each year.

#6 Large numbers of cows that are killed for hamburger meat in America stand ankle-deep in their own manure all day long.

#7 The average American watches 28 hours of television every week.

#8 U.S. corporations sell more fast food and more soda than anyone else in the world by a very wide margin.

#9 The average American drinks more than 600 sodas every single year. That is by far the most in the world.

#10 Of all the major industrialized nations, America is the most obese. Mexico is in second place.

#11 Americans take more prescription drugs than anyone else on the planet.

#12 The United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use in the entire world.

#13 According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

#14 The United States has the highest divorce rate in the world by a very wide margin.

#15 According to one study, one out of every four teen girls in the United States has at least one sexually transmitted disease.

#16 The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate on the entire globe.

#17 The United States has the highest child abuse death rate on the entire globe.

#18 The United States produces more pornography than any other nation has in the history of the world.

#19 One survey found that an astounding 30 percent of all Internet traffic now goes to pornography websites.

#20 Consumer debt in America has increased by a staggering 1700% since 1971.

#21 There is more credit card debt in America than anywhere else in the world.

#22 There is more mortgage debt in America than anywhere else in the world.

#23 There is more student loan debt in America than anywhere else in the world.

#24 Nobody in the world gets more plastic surgery done than Americans do.

Have you read enough?

For even more signs that America is becoming a nation of slobs, you can check out one of my recent articles entitled “16 Signs That People Are Becoming Stupider“.

The sad truth is that this nation is a complete and total mess and the decline is accelerating.

Many want to blame our politicians for all of our problems, but replacing all of our politicians would not fix any of the things listed above.

Yes, we definitely need different leadership, but each one of us also needs to look into our own hearts.

It is not just the government that needs to change.

The American people need to change as well.

So what do you think about this article?

Am I being too harsh on the American people?

Am I not being harsh enough?

Please leave a comment with your opinion below….

According to Gallup, America is now fatter than it has ever been before.  But how can this possibly be?  After all, Americans spend an astounding 60 billion dollars a year on weight loss programs and products.  After putting so much time, effort and energy into losing weight, shouldn’t we be some of the healthiest people on the entire planet?  Sadly, the truth is that obesity has become a national epidemic, and we are known around the globe for our huge size.  The term “fat Americans” has become synonymous with overweight tourists, and other cultures mock us for our apparent sloth.  But could there be more to this than just the fact that we eat too much?  Could it be possible that we have been fattened up by design?

Before we get to that, let’s take a look at some of the cold, hard numbers.  The following are some of the statistics from the Gallup survey that I mentioned above…

-The national rate of obesity has risen to an all-time high of 27.7 percent. That is up from 27.1 percent in 2013, and it is much higher than the 25.5 percent number that we were sitting at in 2008.

-At 19.0 percent, Hawaii has the lowest rate of obesity in the entire country.

-At 35.2 percent, Mississippi has the highest rate of obesity in the entire country.

-The rest of the top 10 includes West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri.

And remember, those numbers just cover obesity.  You can definitely be overweight without meeting the official criteria for being “obese”.  According to CNN, 70 percent of all Americans are overweight at this point.  To say that we have a national crisis on our hands is a huge understatement.

One of the primary reasons why most of us are overweight is due to how our food is made.  The American diet is highly processed and it is absolutely packed with obesity-causing ingredients such as sugar and high fructose corn syrup.  And it is well documented that some of the additives that they put into our food are highly addictive and actually make you want to eat more.  In fact, it has been reported that some of the additives are about as addictive as “opiates“, “heroin” and “cocaine“.  The big food corporations want us to eat as much as possible, because when we eat more of their food they make more money.

Unfortunately, being overweight is not just an issue of not looking as good as we could.  As Gallup explained, a whole host of health problems are related to obesity…

The national obesity rate in 2014 was the highest that Gallup and Healthways have measured since starting to track this measure in 2008. In a handful of states, more than a third of the population is obese. Residents in these areas are less likely to eat healthily and exercise, and are more likely to suffer from chronic diseases like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, depression, diabetes, cancer and heart attacks. Obesity-related health problems could drive up healthcare costs and potentially have larger economic implications for states that suffer most.

The strong relationship between obesity and overall well-being suggests that interventions geared toward encouraging exercise and healthy eating, while important, may not be enough to reverse the upward trend in obesity. Gallup has found that Americans’ desire to lose weight is not matched by their efforts. The mismatch between desired weight loss and weight loss efforts may stem from deficits in other areas of well-being. For instance, if residents don’t have a strong sense of purpose, struggle financially or lack supportive relationships, it will be much more difficult for them to buy healthy food, exercise regularly and achieve their weight loss goals.

Cancer, heart disease and diabetes are all huge money makers for the medical establishment.  If you can believe it, 100 billion dollars was spent on cancer drugs last year alone.  So there are people out there that are becoming exceedingly wealthy from all of our misery.

In addition, it is a fact that being overweight shaves years off of our lives.  Just consider the following information that was shared by Natural News…

Published in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, a study comparing young men and women of healthy weights to young obese individuals found that those who were overweight lost about 8.4 years off of their lives if they were men and 6.1 years off of their lives if they were women.

Similarly, the young obese men suffered 18.8 more years of poor health leading up to their early deaths compared to men of healthy weight, while young obese women suffered 19.1 years of poor health. Even when obesity emerged just in old age, both men and women were found to lose years off of their lives: for men, an average of 3.7 years and for women about 5.3 years.

So why doesn’t the medical establishment do more to help us lose weight and keep it off?

Well, if we were all at a healthy weight they would lose a tremendous amount of money.  Right now, if the U.S. health care system was a separate country, it would be the 6th largest economy on the entire planet.  The sicker that all of us are, the more money the medical establishment makes.

And then of course there is the massively bloated weight loss industry.  As I mentioned above, 60 billion dollars a year is spent on weight loss programs and products in the United States.  If we were all at a healthy weight, we wouldn’t need to spend all of that money.

Tragically, most of those programs don’t work in the long run anyway.  At least that is what one scientific study discovered…

In the end, the advice and products offer virtually no long-term return on investment—measured, of course, in pounds permanently lost. According to a 2006 study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, most people who participate in weight-loss programs “regain about one-third of the weight lost during the next year and are typically back to baseline in three to five years.”

So what is the solution?

The key is to make healthy choices a lifestyle and not just a one time event.

If you “go on a diet” or you “do a cleanse”, but then you just go back and do the same things that you did before, you are going to end up at the exact same place you started.

If we want to be healthy, what we need to do is to design our lives so that we are doing the right things consistently.  We need to be physically active, we need to eat healthy (lots of fruits and vegetables), and we need to avoid the things that we know will make us fat.

In the end, it isn’t that complicated.  Thanks to the Internet, there is lots and lots of great health information out there that you can access for free.  But you have got to be willing to make the right choices and to do the right things consistently.

So what do you think?  Is there anything that you would like to add to this discussion about obesity?  Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…