School Ties

Due to budget constraints and subsidies (a.k.a. fat's best friend), school lunches are linked with childhood obesity. One study found regular school lunch eaters to be 29 percent more likely to be obese than children who brought their lunches from home.

Other studies have put the number higher than that. Guess what? Kids are never going to choose enough vegetables if given the option to eat just hot dogs. Guess where the subsidies come from? They don't come from the powerful kale and tofu lobbies, because those don't exist. The subsidies come from the powerful meat and dairy industries, ensuring kids are fed more of the fattening foods they're already getting in excess.

For much of the 90s and early 2000s, Coca-Cola and Pepsi were controversially inching their way in to funding needy elementary and high school campuses with exclusive deals, as if children needed even more soda in their diets.

Food Deserts

A very significant class issue surrounding obesity is the lack of access to healthy foods in poverty-stricken areas. Housing projects and other low-income housing neighborhoods often have nothing but fast food eateries nearby, with no supermarkets or farmers markets in walking distance.

This phenomenon is called a food desert. A lot of the previously cited ways to get fat are individual choices, but a lack of access to affordable healthy foods, in households where no one is available to take the bus to buy wholesome foods during business hours, means a lack of choice.

Soft Drinks

Somehow, some Americans got the idea that sugar- and calorie-laden soda pop was a reasonable drink choice to enjoy all day long. This despite the fact that each 12-ounce can of Coca Cola contains 40.5 grams of sugar, which is equivalent to eating 20 sugar cubes. All that sugar means liquid calories flow into the body; even one soda per day packs on pounds over time. Drinking multiple soft drinks daily should henceforth be known as "taking the fat track to Diabeetusville."