Because European and Japanese towns/cities are much closer together whereas in the US they're much further apart with much more rural/wilderness land?
Long drives in cramped cars _suck_.
The real dynamic is carmakers promoting huge trucks as Patriotic and American, with super bowl ads showing these trucks moving houses around.
That leads to a significant number of people buying these massive vehicles.
And once these vehicles are on poorly designed American roads where safety is barely an afterthought, everyone driving in more normal sized cars feel even more unsafe, leading them to replace their sedans (which are already oversized compared to Sedans even a couple of decades ago) with CUVs, SUVs and trucks.
You will see this dynamic play out in household to household where people are essentially being forced into buying bigger, harder to handle, and more expensive cars because it truly feels unsafe to be driving in a normal car next to these monster trucks.
And second, you seem to be quite an outlier when it comes to USA commute. The average daily commute in the USA seems to be over 40 miles [1]
[1] https://www.answerfinancial.com/insurance-center/which-state...
Never been to USA but <10km here (CEE) is short distance even for bicycle.
I live in a fairly dense US city, and there is a fair percentage of downtown office workers that live more that 40 miles out, which given the routes they have to take and the traffic involved can often take 45 minutes to an hour.
In Rome 1.5 million people a day come to the city to work, over a population of ~3 million residents.
In Milan it's 1 million people, over 1.5 million residents.
Still on average cars are much smaller than in NY or Los Angeles, I'll say that in Rome and Milan cars are much smaller than the Italian average, because parking space is very limited.
The western World is not that different everywhere you go, except some traits of US, which are not that western if you ask me, they are more similar to countries that just discovered market economy and consumerism.
Meanwhile I've been watching robcdee this past month bike across Japan on roads that are virtually 99% in a town of some kind with very little time spent anywhere undeveloped.
https://obesity.procon.org/global-obesity-levels/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...
US ranks very high
12 United States of America 36.2%
59% of the EU measures as overweight, per the WHO this month.[1]
Globally, human beings are moving in this direction and the reasons why are quite poorly understood.
[1]:https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220503-world-health-org...
so people overweight and not obese are less than 59%.
While in US
The U.S. adult obesity rate tops 40 percent; highest ever recorded.
The U.S. adult obesity rate stands at 42.4 percent, the first time the national rate has passed the 40 percent mark, and further evidence of the country’s obesity crisis. The national adult obesity rate has increased by 26 percent since 2008.
so the difference is still significant.
average weight shows that
Europe 70.8 kg (156.1 lb)
North America 80.7 kg (177.9 lb)
being overweight is not a severe condition, obesity is.
you're right
I've missed them
Anyway the difference is negligible.