memes

As an American, I can tell you it's true, and we don't realize it in large part because portion sizes in the US are crazy. A medium-sized beverage here would be a large in most other countries. Restaurants traditionally serve huge portions of food, supposedly originally so that no matter how big your appetite, everybody would get enough to eat and have leftovers to bring home. But now people just eat it all.

Add in all the sugar that's in our food (thanks to a health propaganda campaign that convinced people fat was bad, most fat is replaced with sugar - especially high-fructose corn syrup), which is way more fattening than actual fat, and the lack of pedestrian access to most things, and you've got a perfect recipe for an obesity epidemic of people who eat too much, drink too many sugary drinks, and don't exercise enough.