This is stupid but it's bothering me, it's "why are we". right?

Careful, the measures in that article are inconsistent.

In that top ten list, the sloppy implication is that they are talking about absolute numbers rather than percentages. China and India each have 4+ times the US population. When considering percentages, that would make the US at least four times as obese as either nation.

Correct.

Combination laziness and availability of food. If i get the nibbles at home, likely there's quite a bit of canned goods i can go for, and if i'm out and about, there's always a subway, or burger king or something not too far away, and it's lazier to reach into my wallet and pull out $20 for a meal than it is to make it myself, or to consider how much i've eaten and skip a meal.

If i were in the woods and my food was determined by what i grew or caught, i ensure you that i would ration my food a lot more, depending on weather conditions.

Well, first off, they're catching up on us and our obesity seems to be hitting some sort of a maximum point.

The reason why we're fat is kind of complicated, but it comes down to too much stress, not enough rest, poor quality of dietary advice.

The chemicals are probably not helping anything, but our dietary problems go way beyond that. We tend not to eat a large enough portion of our calories from fats and proteins, which makes us even more hungry than we would otherwise be. To make matters worse, we eat a lot of wheat and grains which are really not for human consumption.

If you're curious, you might take a look at death by food pyramid.

This maybe.

ZOMG! spurted water all over my kb ;-p

:D

Correct
Sorry:-)

That, I think. I haven't been in the US for 8 years or so, but before that I visited it quite a few times, and I regularly ate a $1 burger at McDonalds and found that enough, and even a full McDonalds meal was about a third of the price of a McDonalds meal here.

I think that most affluent countries suffer from a weight problems, and yes, we all have added stuff in our foodstuff that might not be that good, and that might contribute to it, but it's mostly because we can afford all the food we want and have sedentary lives.

American political pundits are always talking about how we're the best, freest country out there. Obviously the flaps and bloating most people confuse as body fat are where all that freedom is stored.

Don't worry, there are many countries with overweight problems, including Germany.
Personally I believe that there are several major factors but the most important are:
1) Portion size.
2) Replacing fat with sugar (many "light" products here work this way).
3) Tons of sweets.
4) Insufficient exercise.

Then again, while I'm really just the slightly athletic (I'm by NO means a bodybuilder or anything, please don't get me wrong on that) type I don't mind if my girlfriends are a BIT more curvy.
I also believe: do what you want. If you're happy like you are, that's fine for me, I'm not in the position to judge and even if I was: I don't want to.

Btw, I do agree that "we" - on average - cook more but that doesn't mean that our food is somehow better as - for example - traditional food in Bavaria isn't exactly healthy either. I love the Mediterranean kitchen so that's what I cook mostly.
Then again, convenience food is becoming more and more common here, too.

We now tend to think of "exercise" as something you do in your spare time, but it's the general way of life which has changed. When I was a kid in first grade I walked to school. Now, because it's a lot more dangerous to let a little kid walk alone, we drive them. So kids grow up feeling that they should be chauffeured around (and later drive) instead of walking.

Apparently in at least some places in the US it's really bad. Years ago my fencing instructor went to Texas to interview for a job, and he lived for a few days with a family there. Apart from being amazed by them eating steaks for breakfast, lunch and dinner, he was also amazed that the woman drove him from her home to her workplace -- which was just across the street.

I definitely agree with you. At my university we have one building with 8 floors and only two elevators (it really is an old building) so when our lectures end the elevators are usually full but instead of using the stairs(I mean they could take their time) they prefer to wait 5-10 minutes just to take the elevator. That's even the case when they only need to get one floor up .
I'm usually the only one taking the stairs up and even downwards people try to avoid them.

Concerning what I see on TV (I’ve never been in US) lots of people there eat out (not in fancy restaurants) or eat pre-processed food such as frozen pizzas etc. That kind of food is cheap and comes with wide array of form and shape but it is also stuffed with sugar, fat, salt etc.
In Poland majority of people still cook ‘like in the old times’ using basic ingredients (potatoes, raw meat, vegetables) and prepare them at home. We also don’t have many of those convenience dishes in stores and eating out in fast-foods is damn expensive.