Hi
I still don't know if I understood your message well (the one from August 9), but here is some information anyways.
It's important to consider the different kinds of sugars in your analysis. We have seen the same thing with fats : in the beginning, experts told that all fats where bad, but now they hnow that different fats have different effects on the body, ranging from good (unsaturated), bad (saturated) and really bad (trans). Multiple studies are starting to show that different sugars have different effects on the body. The worst sugar seems to be high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Guess who is the major user of HFCS in the world: the USA. Since 3 decades, they have gradually replaced sucrose with HFCS. Many countries which are big consumers of sucrose are not using HFCS yet (or not a lot). I'm not saying that sucrose is good, I'm saying that HFCS seems to be worse than sucrose.
Here are some examples from the National Library of Medicine:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsumhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsumhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsumhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsumFor more details, you can check this study :
http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/CERU/Articles...406-224-OWI.pdfI know you asked for studies outside the US, but don't give credit to a study by it's origin; it's the content that matters. Also, since HFCS is new to many countries, long studies could not have been made outside the US.
I also found a recent article publish in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which said that there was no link between HFCS and obesity. The author of that article was from the National Soft Drink Association... He said that the body cannot see the difference between sucrose and HFCS since they are very similar. Expert who created trans fats said the same thing at the beginning: it's almost identical to a natural fat... but that little difference makes a big difference in our body.
I'm not sure quantities of gyms per capita worldwide would be the best indicator in this debate. Something you have to understand is that our way of living in early ages will affect our body and our metabolism the rest of our life. I previously said that experts already knew 300 genes that are associated to obesity. The key aspect here is that the majority of these 300 genes are not "bad" since many generations, they "become bad" with our bad lifestyles. You would be surprise how some deficiencies from our mother during pregnancy can affect the expression of some of these genes during all our life. Same thing during the first years of your life. In fact, these critical periods will determine things like our number of fat cells (adipocytes). These cells can grow a lot in size (hypertrophy), but contrary to what we used to think, to can also grow in number (hyperplasia). This hyperplasia happens mostly in the beginning of our life and generally stops around 15 years old. A bad lifestyle early in life will lead to more hyperplasia and the lipid metabolism will be "changed" forever. An obese child has 70% of being an obese adult. The later he will try to change is lifestyle, the harder it will be for him because his metabolism will not let him loose weight. It would be too long to cite all the studies I have red about this subject, but it you want to see some of them, I could post them later.
With that in mind, I think it would be more interesting to try to find the activity level per capita worldwide during childhood and adolescence. I have not search for this kind of information, but i'm pretty sure that developed countries are not too active with the presence of television, video games, computers, etc.
I think everything I said supports you conclusion that "evolution is not keeping up". I'd prefer to say it like that: our bodies are having problems adapting to rapid changing environments (or lifestyles).