[ameen]

As an Indian in the states - my observation was that obesity in the US seems like a class issue. Most well-off folks are fit and working out is woven into their lifestyles. Others can't as they're probably working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet.

[birksherty]

It's not work out or time but diet that makes people obese. They probably eat fast food, sugary drinks, packaged food a lot everyday instead of unprocessed food like meat, veg, fruits, nuts.

Edit: Poor people in India are thin and rich are fat, quite opposite, again due to diet. Indian poor can't afford fast food in chain restaurants daily, must cook which is cheaper.

[ajuc]

Wealth is relative. Yes you can be so poor that you can't afford enough calories to become obese. It's rare in the developed world.

But you can also be so poor that you can afford calories, alcohol and little more as an entertainment. It's easy to get obese then.

[Broken_Hippo]

Meat, veg, fruits and nuts are expensive - and they go bad. You simply can't always afford them and sometimes you can't actually buy fresh stuff.

You see, a fair amount of poor folks get paid once a month, and since there aren't a lot of little grocery stores nearby, folks wind up buying food once and hoping it lasts the month.

Poor folks don't always have steady electricity nor a refrigeration, either: Living without a fridge makes your diet go to crap pretty quickly.

Time is another luxury poor folks have issues with, which also makes diets go awry.

[medvezhenok]

Indeed - the U.S. has some of the most extreme health differences between the top end and bottom end of the income spectrum (roughly correlated to class). At the top end, the outcomes (and health measures) are better than anywhere in the world, while at the bottom end they are below most first-world nations:

http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/

[dan-robertson]

For an apples-to-apples comparison, one must look at the corresponding distributions in other developed countries. It could be that the poorest people live significantly shorter lives in other countries but that the middle do better than in the states.

[dkarl]

It's not time (very few people who exercise regularly do so to an extent that would undo significant overweight) but more likely a combination of chronic stress and a cultural norm among their family and friends. For younger and more educated people, it's a strong cultural norm to be at a healthy weight, so even people for whom it doesn't come naturally have a very strong social incentive, and they are surrounded by cultural norms that support them. For people in other classes who find it difficult to stay lean, there's much less cultural support (serving sizes, "normal" foods, etc.) and also less social downside to giving up and allowing their weight to drift up.

[novok]

Another thing is india tends to be one of the fatter poor states due to its diet. If you came from east or south east asia, americans would seem fatter to you even if your in a fitter place. Same with many europeans.

[ethbr0]

(As an American) I used to think we had too much sugar in our culture, then a couple of friends extolled the virtue of and convinced me to try gulab jamun...

[fellellor]

Are there no wealthy people, over there, who just don’t want to work out?

[jlawson]

Not being obese has basically nothing to do with "working out". It's all about diet. Nobody worked out before 1960 and nobody was fat (and lots of people were poor). Nobody in India is fat and nobody work out and they're largely poor.

To your question - Lots of them. I'm (relatively) wealthy and I don't want to diet. But I do it anyway because it's worth the short-term suffering for the long-term gain. It's a super obvious good mid and long term investment with a great RoR.

Parent commenter had the causality reversed. Being poor doesn't make you fat; high time preference makes you both poor and fat.

i.e. Someone poor with low time preference won't stay poor for long. The kind of person who stays poor in America for years and years is generally the kind who also has too high time preference to stop eating a full bag of chips every day.

[lotsofpulp]

There are, but it is seen as a moral failing or lack of discipline in the circles I am familiar with (on the coasts).

[no1lives4ever]

Nothing like that. There are a large number of wealthy people in India who are into exercise and keeping fit. But there are also a a huge number who are overweight because they can afford to stuff themselves with a lot of food.

Poorer people in India end up getting more exercise and being either undernourished or eating just about enough calories to not get fat. As a general rule, poorer people will not be using cars or other forms of mechanised transport for shorter trips and will be more into manual work than the richer people. Also, the average poor person in India can not afford junk food or aereated sugary drinks.