Obesity and Capitalism

I was sitting in a typical bakery in East Berlin, drooling at all those great looking cakes and pastries. Since I am ridden by guilt by even looking at those things, not mentioning but succumbing to my desires. And I wondered (perhaps in order to put myself off those pastries, which did not work): are there more obese East Germans since 1989?

Obesity is in a way a capitalist disease. We gain weight because we eat fast food that we shouldn't, because we eat less salads and more precooked frozen food. Because we work a lot and have less time. In the former GDR, for example, there were bakeries, of course, and cafes, and confectionaries and even hot dogs stands, but there haven't been so many fast food restaurants, there haven't been so many frozen meals. People ate what they cooked, people took with them a sandwich or an apple, and did not count on the fact that if they're hungry, they can always buy themselves something at the nearest McSomething.

A study done in 2000 revealed my suspicion to be correct: in the years 1985 to 1995, every schoolchild in the former-GDR has gained 2 kilograms in average; and every enlisted young man was 5 kilo heavier. Babies are also heavier and larger (more in German, from the Berliner Zeitung: here)

A study done in 2008 in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt (which is part of the former GDR) has found that in the years between 1990 and 2007, the percentage of obese children and of asthma cases has doubled. Most of the cases are in poorer families. At least one illness is less prevalent since the fall of the Berlin Wall: the cases of bronchitis are reduced from 56,9% to 30,7% (more than half of the communists coughed all the time, and apparently, it wasn't an attempt to encode messages to avoid the Stasi). Saxony-Anhalt was notorious, even in the GDR, as being a polluted state - with the city of Bitterfeld leading the grey lung chart. There is also a huge reduction in smoking in the past 17 years (more in German, from Spiegel in 2008, here)

In the meanwhile, it seems that the poorest German states- the former GDR states - have quickly covered that gap in obesity rates:

Obesity by Bundesland: dark blue in the bottom map: BMI of more than 30 kg/m. Worst states:

• Saxony Anhalt 28,3% (former GDR)
• Brandenburg 26,1% (former GDR)
• Mecklenburg Vorpommerania 25,2% (former GDR)
• Lower Saxony 24,3% (former BRD, the only one in the top-five list)
• Thuringia 23,9% (former GDR)

However, it could be worse - from the 50 US states, only 10 measure as "leaner" than Germany's 5 worse states:

• Colorado 18.5%
• Massachusetts 20.9 %
• Connecticut21.0 %
• Rhode Island 21.5 %
• Washington DC 21.8%
• Utah 22.5%
• Hawaii 22.6 %
• Vermont 22.7%
• California 23.7 %
• New Jersey 22.9%

The "worst" US state, is Mississippi, with 32.8% of the population defined as obese, that is, with BMI higher than 30.

More interesting sociological studies on the social aspects of obesity (not in Germany)
* From the US: Discrimination against the obese (as a way to combat obesity) is on the rise. Because many obese people are also poor, it also raises questions on new forms of exclusion against poor people. And I am also wondering: some people are obese because they have e.g. metabolic problems - are discriminating places going to perfom medical tests on people, to know whether they are obese because they eat junk food or because they have e.g. Cushing's Syndrome?
* From the UK: Obesity is "contagious" , that is - people are more likely to be obese if people around them are.