neal
suspect the charts are suggesting more is going on than just the usual aspects we discuss
What are the usual suspects?
Universal socialized health care or health insurance versus the American system.
(If the US is an outlier in your charts, its also an outlier in this feature of society)
The quality and quantity of food intake. Particularly fast food, and snack food. )
General activity levels of populace.
What else is there?
There are different elements of society that affect why people eat the way they do and why there are varying levels of activity. But if you factor out the complexities of how we arrive at the diet we take in, and the exercise we put out it comes down to a pretty simple three part problem.
All three are long term situations that have long lasting effects on the numbers you've selected as indicators. You aren't going to change the diet of Americans quickly, although its apparent when Wal-Mart starts to lead the charge that there will be significant attempts at change. You aren't going to change their exercise and activity levels over night, although this could be the easiest of the three factors to fix. And the health care system is going to take years of reform to get to where it can compete with other systems in terms of delivering overall efficiency and effectiveness.
There is one element that no ones entered into, I'm not sure its a real factor, but perhaps it is...
Americans seem to have a fetish for life. By that I mean, many societies seem to deal with end of life issues better. There seems to be an acceptance of death as a part of life, and the heroic battles to add a few more months or weeks of heavily medicated existence onto some ones life doesn't seem to be pursued with the same vigor as in America. I know the last few years of most peoples lives is usually where the majority of their use of the health care system resides.... In the US it seems to go on to a greater extent as heroic efforts are often made when in other societies its more a "make the end as comfortable and dignified as possible