According to a recent report, Americans are continuing to get fatter and fatter, with obesity rates reaching 30 percent or more in nine states last year, as opposed to only three states in 2007.
This is trend reversal from a study release earlier this year that, obesity rates have remained constant for at least five years among men and for closer to 10 years among women and children.
In the eariler report, Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston. suggested that “we’ve reached a biological limit” to how obese people could get. When people eat more, he said, at first they gain weight; then a growing share of the calories go “into maintaining and moving around that excess tissue,” he continued, so that “a population doesn’t keep getting heavier and heavier indefinitely.”
Well, don't celebrate too early. The new study results really confuse and slap the faces of health officials. The revised data show that 2.4 million more people became obese from 2007 to 2009, bringing the total to 72.5 million, or 26.7 percent of the population. The numbers are part of a continuing and ominous trend.
The report estimates the medical costs of obesity to be as high as $147 billion a year, and notes that “past efforts and investments to prevent and control obesity have not been adequate.”
Researchers blame the usual suspects: too little exercise and too much of the wrong kind of food, which means not enough fruits and vegetables and too many high-calorie meals full of sugar and fat, like French fries, soda and other sweet drinks. Children do not get enough exercise during the school day; Dr. Frieden noted that even in gym classes, students are active for only about a third of the time.
So, where do we go from here?!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment