Short of each of us getting our own personal feeder has social obesity about maximized in the developed world? How could we go any further?
Guy in Mexico got up to 1200 lbs. He set the bar at a pretty high level.
I think the core of the problem is that some people are genetically more inclined to obesity given sufficient food supplies, and, in the developed world, food supplies are practically unlimited, so unless obese people have more children and pass down their obese genes, I don’t think the genetic inclination to become obese is going to expand further. However, there certainly could be a reduction in the inclination of people naturally destined to be obese to do something about it, like diet and exercise. So I don’t think the percentage of “obese-candidates” is going to get bigger, but the percentage of actually obese people could.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
“Social obesity”?
Depends on what you mean by “reached maximum levels.” If you mean, “can individuals get any fatter?” the answer is “not by much”–those people are pushing the limit of how large an individual can be and still be alive. If you mean “can the average weight of humans get higher?” then the answer is: there are a lot of us who aren’t (yet) doing our part to over-consume food and get the average weight up to where it could be.
You’re kidding me, right? Nauru, for instance, is closing in on 95% of the population with a BMI over 25.
The South Pacific is kicking our ass and we have got to step it up. They have us beat by 20% of the population, according to this article from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/worlds-fattest-countries-forbeslife-cx_ls_0208worldfat_2.html
Very disappointing. I like the personal feeder idea and I hope the stimulus package had some money in it for this. I mean, it’s gotta create jobs to supply more food.
I am only making fun of the situation, and not your question. Off to get my pizza. The link is useful, I hope.
People just aren’t trying hard enough. Given enough resources, you could build a personal floatation tank that could be flushed on a daily basis, kind of like a giant toilet. Given such a device, and an extremely tall individual, I’ll bet someone could hit 1500 pounds.
No! nothing will be enough until we all live like the people in Wall-E! 
Seriously, though. I think human obesity HAS reached a maximum, but it has nothing to do with biology. Biologically speaking, we’re all prone to getting fat. The very system that lets us get really fat has made a huge amount of biological sense until very, very, very recently.
Let’s say we have critter A and critter B. Critter A can store unlimited amounts of fat. Critter B will be sleek and thin for life. It will always eat reasonably meals and stop eating the moment it gets full. Yay Critter B, right?
But wait! Bother of these creatures live in an environment where the food supply is erratic. Sometimes there’s lots, and sometimes there’s none.
Critters A and B stumble upon a large supply of food.
Critter B has a nice, sensible meal, and buggers off.
Critter A completely oinks out, eats a HUGE meal, and rests content in knowing that most of that meal will be converted to fat.
Contented? But fat is BAD! Or is it?
Critters A and B will go a long, long time before finding any more food. Critter A has heavy fat reserves, which are like money in the bank, biologically speaking. Critter B, however, gets thinner, and thinner, and thinner… Critter B, in fact, might not make it, and certainly will not be in the best of health come spring and mating season, when it’s time for the Darwin Bowl and everyone competes for a mate.
So evolution has heavily selected for the Critter A gene, which makes you take full advantage of any and all food supplies, and furthermore, makes you habitually hungry enough to be highly motivated to find those calories you’re going to need so badly.
Think of the undustrious squirrel, hoarding acorns. But instead of an acord supply just waitng for someone else to come take it, Critter A puts his acorns where he can best defend them and keep an eye on them… on his body.
And this was smart for us humans all the way until the 20th century, and arguably, into part of it as well. Until we got to the point, in some of the world, where famine was unknown, it still made sense to pack on the fat when the food was plentiful, and then live on your fat stores when it wasn’t.
So we’ve had 80 years, tops, for biology to catch up to the change in how we live. We can all, more or less, eat however much we want of whatever we want, whenever we want. And so those old Critter A instincts and metabolisms, which were so useful for millions of years, are now killing us off in large numbers. VERY large numbers.
However, to steer this discussion back to the topic (I didn’t forget), I think we’ve reached roughly the peak of world obesity because I think there’s a lot of money and effort being put into a technological solution, thanks to all you baby bloomers suddenly blossoming into big ol’ fatties like myself.
So within the next ten to twenty years, there will be some major technological help. Yes, it would be great if everyone suddenly developed perfect self-discipline, ate healthy, lost the weight, and lived like the people in Parts : The Clonus Horror..
But we have NO IDEA how to do that. It’s a free society and that means it’s pretty much impossible to “enlighten” everyone, especially in the face of millions of years of biology and genetics working against us.
So the real solution will come from technology. We might invent a pill that simply turns off the fat-storing gene (safely), or a revolutionary new food technology that makes it possible to make healthy versions of naughty foods that taste eactly like the naughty versions. Or perhaps we’ll all get fat-busting nanobots. There’s a lot of possibilities, and you can bet, every single one of them is being pursued by Big Pharma in their quest to live, as it were, off the fat of the land.
So to sum up, to answer your question : Yes.
Keep making cheap high calorie food? Make it even cheaper? More flavors? Add cocaine? Is this a marketing challenge or a food technician challenge?
We really don’t know enough about appetite and weight regulation at this point to say we know if people will get fatter. Many of the hormones that control weight were only discovered in the last 15 years or so, and our understanding is really not that great. So I don’t know.