The Rise In Body Weight In The United States Explained By Increased Food Intake Alone

And who could have seen this coming? Fitness Watch readers, of course.

"New research that uses an innovative approach to study, for the first time, the relative contributions of food and exercise habits to the development of the obesity epidemic has concluded that the rise in obesity in the United States since the 1970s was virtually all due to increased energy intake."

Duh.

"How much of the obesity epidemic has been caused by excess calorie intake and how much by reductions in physical activity has been long debated and while experts agree that making it easier for people to eat less and exercise more are both important for combating it, they debate where the public health focus should be."

Not debated here.

We have known all along that exercise is a terribly inefficient way to lose weight and that caloric intake control is the way to lose the pounds and that lack of caloric intake control is how the pounds got put on in the first place.

"'...This study demonstrates that the weight gain in the American population seems to be virtually all explained by eating more calories. It appears that changes in physical activity played a minimal role,' said the study's leader, Professor Boyd Swinburn, chair of population health and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University in Australia."

Yup.