- BOSTON (Reuters) - Most Americans
are too fat, are getting fatter faster, and aren't likely to get lean unless
drastic changes are made in diet and lifestyle, participants at a Harvard
University forum on obesity said on Wednesday.
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- A day after U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona called
America's obesity epidemic "the terror within," the forum heard
staggering data on the size and cost of America's weight problem.
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- "No part of the country has escaped it," Walter
Willett, chair of the Harvard School of Public Health's nutrition department,
said as he showed how obesity had spread across the United States over
the last two decades.
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- More than three in five Americans are overweight, and
nearly one in three is obese, meaning they carry so much extra weight that
their health is at real risk.
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- Obesity can lead to diabetes, heart disease, and several
forms of cancer -- and it costs the U.S. health care system more than $90
billion a year to treat people who are overweight or obese.
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- Patricia Gaquin is among those whose health is jeopardized
by their weight. At 269 pounds, she has waged a losing war against her
waistline for most of her life, and now it appears to be killing her.
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- "My excess weight has caused or exaggerated type-two
diabetes, high blood pressure, back and kidney problems, elevated cholesterol,"
Gaquin, choking back tears, told the forum.
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- Gaquin has also recently been diagnosed with early-stage
endometrial cancer -- a form of cancer linked to being overweight. Because
of the diagnosis, the 48-year-old patient has had to postpone gastric bypass
surgery that was designed to end her fight with weight once and for all.
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- CAUSES STILL DEBATED
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- The jury is still out on the causes of obesity, with
consumer advocates arguing that aggressive food industry advertising and
"super-sized" restaurant portions are to blame. Others fault
heredity and lifestyle.
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- When it came to examining the causes of her own obesity,
Gaquin pinned the blame in large part on her family background. Both her
parents, she said, were overweight, and two of her three siblings weigh
more than she does.
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- Genetics does play a part in deciding who is fat and
who is thin, but the increasingly sedentary lifestyle led by most Americans
is making it difficult for them to suppress the hunger gene, said Ellen
Ruppel Shell, a journalist and author who has written about the role a
person's DNA plays in deciding how much he or she eats.
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- As for ways to solve the obesity epidemic, Americans
have mixed feelings about the role of government.
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- A national poll commissioned by Harvard and released
on Wednesday showed that six in 10 Americans are in favor of requiring
restaurants to list nutrition information on their menus. By contrast,
most people oppose putting a special tax on junk food.
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- But when it comes to fighting childhood obesity, most
Americans welcome more government involvement, the poll said. More than
eight in 10 Americans support providing healthier school lunches, and three-quarters
said they back efforts to fight childhood obesity, even if it meant an
increase in their taxes.
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-
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- Comment
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- From Philip Camp
- camfin@amnetline.com
- 6-13-3
-
- Jeff - The epidemic may not be what is claimed, because
the medical profession recently moved the goalposts.
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- A few months ago, the definitions of "overweight"
and "obese" were changed to smaller tolerances. Millions of people
who were "overweight" became "obese" overnight, and
millions of normal people became "overweight".
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- A similar thing happened to me about two years ago, when
I suddenly developed high blood pressure. My readings had been 140/90 or
a bit less for years. 130 was "borderline" and 140 was "high"
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- Then everything over 130 became "high". This
was also blazed about as an"epidemic".
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- Now the argument in both cases has merit, namely that
there are studies to indicate that even sightly higher than normal blood
pressure or weight increase health problems. So changing the criteria would
make sense.
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- Calling this COMPLETELY ARTIFICIAL increase an "epidemic"
is another matter. This is just an outright lie, because the increase was
not caused by any actual overnight change in any disease condition.
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- The attendant publicity campaign, including calls for
government action, discredit those who know that nothing changed overnight.
Applying the courtroom principle that a juror who discovers that a witness
has lied once can disregard the rest of his testimony would then lead us
to question the studies themselves. That may be going overboard, but it
may not.
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- I think this is a splendid subject to look into further.
What do the medical "regulars" who post to the site think?
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