Obesity

[Illuminattile]

Nine out of 10 US men aged over 60 years are now overweight, according to the first study to assess the long-term risk of piling on the pounds. The study ran from 1971 to 2001 and involved people aged between 30 and 59 at the beginning.

Furthermore, seven out of 10 women in the study were also overweight and at the end of the study one in three of both sexes was clinically obese. The study involved 4000 adults enrolled in an ongoing landmark study in Framingham, Massachusetts.

“National surveys and other studies have told us that the US has a major weight problem, but this study suggests that we could have an even more serious degree of overweight and obesity over the next few decades,” says Elizabeth Nabel, director of the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which funded the work, and co-chair of the NIH obesity research task force.

A 1999 to 2002 survey by the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suggested that 65% of US adults aged over 20 were either overweight or obese, with 30% being clinically obese.

“Our results, although not surprising, are worrisome,” says Ramachandran Vasan of Boston University School of Medicine, who led the new Framingham study. “If the trend continues, our country will continue to face substantial health problems related to excess weight.”
Middle-age spread

“It’s not terribly surprising,” agrees Andrew Prentice, professor of international nutrition at the London School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine, UK. “Americans have been gaining weight as a nation inexorably for the last 30 years. We know also that weight gain is a gradual phenomenon going into middle age.”

As people age, they tend to put on weight. The study notes that even if people remained svelte till middle age, this was no guarantee for staying at a healthy weight. One in four men, and one in five women who made it to middle age slim, were overweight four years later.

Nabel adds: “In addition, these results may underestimate the risk for some ethnic groups.” This is because the Framingham study includes only white Americans, and other studies have indicated that Hispanic and black individuals, particularly women, may be more likely to be overweight or obese than white counterparts.
Mortality risk

Being overweight is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) above 25, while a BMI of over 30 is classed as obese. Prentice points out that in some population groups in the US, the average BMI among women is over 30.

Being overweight or obese carries with it the risk of chronic illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes. Prentice notes that a controversial study in the US, published by Katherine Flegal at CDC in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April 2005 suggested that being overweight or obese might not carry an increased mortality risk compared with being a healthy weight.

However, he believes this may be because health care for managing related chronic diseases has improved over time. “It is keeping people healthy, but at a huge cost to the medical services,” he says. “That could be massively reduced by weight loss.”

“Overweight and obesity increase the risk of poor health. We hope these results will serve as a wake-up call to Americans of all ages,” urges Nabel.

Journal reference: Annals of Internal Medicine (vol 143, p 473)

Articles about old people, but obesity in general is a big topic at the moment.

How to we combat obesity without appearing shallow? There seem to be contradictory messages being given to kids. We deride celebrities for being too skinny, then turn around and tell kids that they need to lose weight. Obviously we're talking about extremes, but it's still a confusing thing to do.

 

[radkin]

I think that there is no way of trying to combat obesity without being seen as shallow, but I think that appearing shallow is the last thing the u.s should be worried about right now, a lot of people die because of obesity and it cost huge amounts of money each year and puts a massive strain on the health service.

I think whats needed is better education, I can only comment on u.k schools, but I was taught nothing about calories and obesity at school, all I can remember is them telling us what foods are bad and which are good, and although this is something, you can still become fat eating good foods quite easily.
Also food companies are partially to blame, for making their foods from shit just to save money and mislabelling their products, this is something that the government needs to get a grip on, they need to come down hard on these companies, but they aint doing shit at the moment.

 

[Amara]

Theoretically it should be easy to combat obesity without appearing shallow. The messages we should be sending is not that it is good to be thin but that it is good to have an active, healthy lifestyle. So rather than generating images of fat, food = bad and thin, no food = good, it's about eating lots of the best food, being as active and healthy and happy as you can. This is something I can see being driven home in the media here, the government has undertaken a big advertising campaign about healthy eating and exercise. So in doing so, there arent contradictory messages at all.

 

[DrugBa11ad]

Yeah but fuck advertising campaigns. Parents need to start taking responsibility. Not only that, poverty is a HUGE factor in obesiety. Who can afford healthy food when you can get a full meal at McDonalds for three bucks? Not only that, poor people have less knowledge about healthy eating so they are naturally going to be more ignorant in how to obtain cheaper healthy foods. It fuckin sucks man.

 

[Duke]

Personally, i've always seen lack of physical excercise as the main ally of obesity. Moreso than "food". People need to walk more, use their car less, hit the gym more often.

Simply put.

 

[Flipmo]

Mother fuckers should just stop eating.

 

[KAMIKAZI]

Mother fuckers should just stop eating.

For real... some people are so fat that they have to ride on scooter shopping carts just to shop for food which made them so FUCKIN FAT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

 

[Amara]

Yeah but fuck advertising campaigns. Parents need to start taking responsibility. Not only that, poverty is a HUGE factor in obesiety. Who can afford healthy food when you can get a full meal at McDonalds for three bucks? Not only that, poor people have less knowledge about healthy eating so they are naturally going to be more ignorant in how to obtain cheaper healthy foods. It fuckin sucks man.

Healthy food isnt expensive. Fruits and vegetables are among the cheapest things you can get. Fast food isnt that cheap here, and besides there does seem to be a shift underway to increase the nutritional content in these places because more people are interested in good food and as a result are turning to options such Subway as opposed to McDonalds if they want a quick meal. I do agree though that the emphasis on healthy eating should start at home and the sooner people realise that eating good food can be just as economical and tasty, then the better people will be for it.

 

[critikaldesignz]

are you saying we should all be 110 pounds?

 

[Duke]

^^ No one is, are they?

 

[Jeremy]

are you saying we should all be 110 pounds?

Well it depends on your height to determine if you are over weight or not. I do think obesity is a big problem. I see so many fat little kids its pathetic and the parents are fat as hell also. I blame the parents for the most part. They should be cooking more healthy foods and stop letting their kids eat so much.

 

[The.Menace]

To be healthy doesn't mean you have 2 less. What about doin some sport....? Man, you can eat as much as you want as long as you burn it.

 

[Jokerman]

We need to combat obesity by focusing on health and not looks. We need to educate kids in school about the wonderful diet they are eating.

The typical American gobbles three burgers and four orders of fries every week. Toss in the pizzas, the popcorn, the sugary breakfast cereals, the sodas, the snack cakes, candy bars, ice cream and everything else we eat in lieu of real food in this society, and your body is like an eighteen wheeler roaring down a high-fat highway straight to obesity and an early grave.

Fast food is bad food. It's loaded with bad stuff like fat and sugar and sodium. It's packed with chemicals that are in there to make it taste and smell like it's real food. What it lacks is vitamins, minerals, fiber, all the stuff you really need.

Now you tell me, is it just a coincidence that the World Health Organization has identified a global obesity epidemic happening at the same time as the global expansion of fast-food chains?

Since the first McDonald's opened in China in 1990, they've spread all over the country like poison toadstools. There are now over 600 of them, and the company plans to open another 400 by 2008, just in time for the Beijing Olympics.

Guess what? Obesity levels in China have tripled in the past 15 years. 200 million citizens are now judged overweight. More than 160 million have high blood pressure and over 20 million have diabetes. Same thing has happened in India.

More than a billion adults worldwide are now overweight--and at least 300 million of them are clinically obese. AS more and more ppl live like Americans, work like us, laze around like us and eat junk like us, they're getting fat and sick like us.

Forget about Bush and the US. The fast-food companies are taking over the world. This is true of KFC, about Taco Bell, about McDonald's. They're globalizing the American way of eating, which is a way of death, really.

 

[Devious]

Healthy food isnt expensive. Fruits and vegetables are among the cheapest things you can get. Fast food isnt that cheap here, and besides there does seem to be a shift underway to increase the nutritional content in these places because more people are interested in good food and as a result are turning to options such Subway as opposed to McDonalds if they want a quick meal. I do agree though that the emphasis on healthy eating should start at home and the sooner people realise that eating good food can be just as economical and tasty, then the better people will be for it.

I actually just watched a show talking about this very thing. The truth is that while fruits and vegetables are cheap, most areas with high levels of poverty do not have markets with fresh fruits, but they have a McDonalds or a Burger King on every corner. It is harder for a low income family to get fresh fruits and veggies than it is for a higer income family, because almost every mid to high income neighborhood has a market where fresh furits and veggies are easily available. That is one of the main reasons that blacks and other minorities have such high obesity rates.