American obesity rate exaggerated?

In my neighborhood, at work, at mall, at hangouts, I rarely see people with obesity problem, even though people are in all kinds of shapes, and most don't look like Hollywood celerbrities. I also see tons of people going to gym, or jogging wherever I go in America. Yet, I hear about this alarming increase in obesity rate in the news and TV. Isn't this American obesity epidemic somewhat exaggerated??? Maybe to boost health care or fitness industry? Or do most real obese people just stay in door and not work and staty on some sort of financial support?

Yeah I think that may be the case. Propaganda is everywhere.

What are you talking about. Everywhere I go I see overweight or obese people. You must not know what obese is. A person is obese if the are about 30 pounds over their normal weight. Report It

um, i think compared to the previous generation, society has gone a bit obese.

Thank you! i barely see anyone overwieght now compared to what i used to. its all in people's heads!

/what planet are you from? there are obese people all over the place, you see that guy with the beer gut, he is obese. obese only means fifty lbs overweight, and they are everywhere. look at the people in the gym, maybe two thirds are at a healthy weight, the other third are 20 lbs or more overweight, open your eyes man.

I see a lot of fat people. I also see a lot of short muscular men (short men seem to lift weights in order to compensate for their stature). Short strong people may register as overweight on BMI scale and overweight short strong people could easily appear to be obese. The same holds true for muscular people of all sizes.

Nope. When I was a kid, the kids were not fat like they are now. If you were slightly over weight, you were called fat. But now, you see lots of really fat kids. That is from the ME Generation feeding their kids anything they want.