In the United States, 30 percent of the grown-up population has a" weight problem". To many people, the cause is clear: we eat too much. But scientific experiments do little to support this idea. Going back to the America of 1910, we find that people were thinner than today, yet they ate more food. In those days people worked harder physically, walked more, used machines much less, and didn't watch television.
Several modern studies, besides, have shown that fatter people do not eat more on average than thinner people. In fact, some research work, such as the 1979 study of 3,545 London office workers, reports that fat people eat less than thinner people on average. Studies show that thin people are more active than fat people. A study by the research group at Standford University School of Medicine found the following fact: the more the man ran, the greater body fat he lost. The more he ran, the greater was his need for food. Thus, those who ran the most ate the most, yet lost the greatest amount of body fat.
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