Obesity in America

pirateDeb

This chart does not surprise me. I was 250 at 5'7". WAY in the obese range, almost morbidly. I carried it well though, and locally, I was probably average looking, especially in the restaurant business. It wasn't until a vacation I saw some profile pictures of me, and I looked pregnant with triplets. It didn't take long for me to join a gym after that, lol. Before starting MyFitnessPal, I used another, crappier calorie tracking guide, and am down to 180ish(scale battery is dead!), my bmi is on the boarder of overweight and obese, and I hope by the end of the year to be down to the high side of my proper weight range.

My issue is that I cook for a living, and being surrounded by food all day every day(and not healthy stuff), makes it near impossible to eat right all of the time. However for the rest of America, I think the issue is with processed foods. Because of the highly processed sugars that are loaded into everything, they are more addictive. In addition, the cheaper ingredients also make the processed foods more easily available, and cheaper than healthy eating. Has anyone seen the price of beef lately? Fresh veggies? Personally speaking, I cant wait until next winter when I will be settled enough to start my own seedlings for a garden. Also, probably going to own chickens. Learning to hunt as well once garden is established. Healthy food is CRAZY expensive.

ShrinkingChelle

Here's an interesting (if depressing) bar chart that compares obesity rates across countries:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

If that's not a wake-up call for those of us in the USA, I don't know what is.

Im surprised we are #11, I thought Canada would have been closer to the top.

torie079

In fairness, I am an american, and I am Obese based on the BMI chart.............and probabaly will be forever. . . . It is possible to be "obese" and healthy........as odd as that sounds..............but i do understand that this is reference to a different situation..........but people like me also factor into those OBESE numbers

My husband is considered "obese" too.. But he's just muscular...

silentnacht

I didn't see the current report so I copied the method 2009's report, which was released in 2010. Same method though.

Interesting! I always like knowing the number of people actually surveyed.

The results don't surprise me, though. I ride the bus everywhere so I spend a lot of time watching people. It's kind of shocking how many overweight/obese people I see when I take the time to pay attention to body types, and even beyond that, a lot of the average/thin people don't seem fit/healthy. There are so many problems with activity levels, food and general health practices in this country. It's, quite frankly, angering.

Hoakiebs

That's corporatocracy for you. Make you cheap processed foods, cut your wages and your free time so that only the top 10% or so can afford to eat a healthy diet, then suck you into buying their cheap processed foods for your survival. Voila! FAT AMERICA!

Hoakiebs

i don't know about those numbers.. 30% of americans are obese? that mean every 3-4 people i see should be overweight and that doesn't seem right. i'll pay attention tomorrow.

No, 30% means 3 of 10 people you meet will be obese, which is defined as seriously overweight, so that doesn't include the people that are overweight. It comes with abundance and sedantary lifestyle. We have it too good in this country that we don't have to walk past our driveway, nor bike to the store, nor do much manual labor, UNLESS WE CHOOSE TO, at the gym. Most of the world probably has a much higher minimum calorie requirement just to get through the day because they don't have a machine that spits out paper towls or flushes the toilet for you.

pdworkman

Here's an interesting (if depressing) bar chart that compares obesity rates across countries:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity

If that's not a wake-up call for those of us in the USA, I don't know what is.

Im surprised we are #11, I thought Canada would have been closer to the top.

Canada's rates of overweight/obesity are quite a bit below the US, though still rising. Interesting, since we eat a lot of the same foods, have a lot of the same fast food chains, etc. Also, since our population is so much more spread out than in the US, we spend a lot more time in our cars rather than walking (just look at our greenhouse gas ratings), and because of our weather, probably don't spend as much time outside. The gyms cost a lot more money.

All the snow shovelling must be having an effect. LOL.

Pam

smcolton

Yeah Colorado!

pdworkman

One thing that I found when I first started trying to lose the weight (after years of refusing to weigh myself and considering myself healthy weight, not overweight) was that we really don't know what "normal" and "overweight" look like any more. And if I'm seeing that in Canada, it must be even more of an issue in the US.

Pull out some old 50's movies and take a look at the people's body shapes. Somebody who would be considered "normal" by today's standards would have been considered chunky back then. Look at the arms on the women and the shoulder width on the men. Put on an old episode of "Brady Bunch" and look at the kids and adults, then look around you.

Pam

i don't know about those numbers.. 30% of americans are obese? that mean every 3-4 people i see should be overweight and that doesn't seem right. i'll pay attention tomorrow.

No, 30% means 3 of 10 people you meet will be obese, which is defined as seriously overweight, so that doesn't include the people that are overweight. It comes with abundance and sedantary lifestyle. We have it too good in this country that we don't have to walk past our driveway, nor bike to the store, nor do much manual labor, UNLESS WE CHOOSE TO, at the gym. Most of the world probably has a much higher minimum calorie requirement just to get through the day because they don't have a machine that spits out paper towls or flushes the toilet for you.

mrsdizzyd84

Man this is so sad, but I know it's true and probably even worse than those numbers show. I'm overweight not obese, and I am often times one of the smallest people in a given store, restaurant, etc. The number of morbidly obese people I see on a given day is shocking. I'm in the South. One of my neighbors is probably over 500 pounds. She just about never comes out of the house, and when she does, she has to be on a motor scooter because she can't walk anymore. My heart breaks for her every time I see her.

heathersmilez

I would have to guess and say that this is because a bag of chips, a candy bar, a frozen pizza, a donut, a meal at any fast food chain costs less than a pound of veggies, or chicken.

I hope not, a bag of frozen veggies is <$1.50 for 1kg bag that would last you 2 weeks if you had it daily and a donut is $0.90. An extremely budget friendly nutritional meal with ½ can tuna (60 cents can) and 1 cup of veggies would be about 30 cents a serving, 1/3 the cost of a donut.

pdworkman

Percent of adults age 20 years and over who are obese: 33.9% (2007-2008)
Percent of adults age 20 years and over who are overweight (and not obese): 34.4% (2007-2008)
Source: Prevalence of Overweight, Obesity, and Extreme Obesity Among Adults: United States, Trends 1960–1962 Through 2007–2008 [PDF - 195 KB]

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/overwt.htm

So actually, out of every 100 people, 68 are overweight or obese. Every second or third person you see. That is why when you approach healthy weight, everyone starts to tell you that you are too skinny or are losing too much weight. We don't even know what healthy weight looks like any more.

Pictures of what healthy weight looks like (M4-M5 and F4-F5):

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/1/figure/F1?highres=y

Pam

i don't know about those numbers.. 30% of americans are obese? that mean every 3-4 people i see should be overweight and that doesn't seem right. i'll pay attention tomorrow.

No, 30% means 3 of 10 people you meet will be obese, which is defined as seriously overweight, so that doesn't include the people that are overweight. It comes with abundance and sedantary lifestyle. We have it too good in this country that we don't have to walk past our driveway, nor bike to the store, nor do much manual labor, UNLESS WE CHOOSE TO, at the gym. Most of the world probably has a much higher minimum calorie requirement just to get through the day because they don't have a machine that spits out paper towls or flushes the toilet for you.

Silverkittycat

1998. Overweight and obesity redefined.

Who Was Behind the Redefinition of "Obese"

In 1997 a front-page exposé in the Newark Star-Ledger noted:
"Eight of the nine members of the National Institutes of Health task force on prevention and treatment of obesity have ties to the weight-loss industry, either as consultants to pharmaceutical companies, recipients of research money from them, or advisers to for-profit groups such as Weight Watchers."
Case Western Reserve University professor Paul Ernsberger describes how financially conflicted researchers control the government’s pronouncements on obesity:
"Medical beliefs about obesity are shaped by expert panels that are highly selective in the data they consider. Experts included on government consensus panels have been disproportionately drawn from the ranks of diet clinic directors, which might explain the congruence between panel recommendations and the economic interests of the diet industry. In short, economic factors encourage a systematic exaggeration of the health risks of obesity."
Many of America’s most influential obesity experts receive significant financial support from the $46 billion weight-loss industry. These experts help drive obesity hype by churning out a steady stream of studies, alarmist public pronouncements, and treatment guidelines.

The notion that 65 percent of Americans are overweight or obese derives in part from a 1998 decision to redefine "overweight," which cast more than 35 million Americans into that category. This decision was made by a National Institutes of Health obesity panel chaired by Xavier Pi-Sunyer, one of the most influential obesity researchers in the country.

Over the years, Pi-Sunyer has received support from virtually every leading weight-loss company, including Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, Ortho-McNeil, Wyeth-Ayerst, Knoll, Weight Watchers, and Roche. He has served on the advisory boards of Wyeth-Ayerst, Knoll, Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, and McNeil Nutritionals. He once headed up the Weight Watchers Foundation and is currently a board member of that organization. Pi-Sunyer gave the "obesity overview" presentation on behalf of Knoll, maker of the weight-loss drug Meridia, at a 1996 FDA advisory panel hearing on the drug. He has also been paid to sign his name to ghost-written journal articles used to promote the dangerous weight-loss combination known as "fen-phen."

Xavier Pi-Sunyer is an advisory council member of the American Obesity Association, which is best described as the lobbying arm of the weight-loss industry and is examined in greater detail later in this report. He is the former president of the pharmaceutical industry–funded North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NAASO is also examined later in this report) and heads a NAASO-affiliated research institute that is also supported by the weight-loss industry. He has influenced international obesity policy through his membership in the pharmaceutical industry– funded International Obesity Task Force, which plays a key role in determining policy for the World Health Organization.

Pi-Sunyer has chaired the National Institutes of Health Task Force on the Treatment of Obesity since 1995, when he also led the industry-funded NAASO. In 1998, when his NIH panel redefined the official standard for "overweight," he served as editor of NAASO’s journal, Obesity Research.

In addition to Pi-Sunyer, the 1998 NIH panel included a number of other financially conflicted researchers, such as Claude Bouchard, Graham Colditz, and Shiriki Kumanyika, each of whom is profiled later in this report.

The decision to redefine "overweight" was a big boost to the diet drug industry. In April 2005 The New York Times reported: "[M]any drug industry analysts see a potentially even bigger market if such a drug also catches on among the more than 60 percent of adults in this country who are statistically overweight, those with a body mass index of 25 or more."

The weight-loss industry appears to appreciate the flawed BMI standard. In 2001, Roche, maker of the weight-loss pill Xenical, promised a donation to NAASO for every individual screened during "BMI Awareness Week." In 2005, the American Cancer Society ran an event called the "Great American Weigh In" at Weight Watchers.