The United States lost the battle against bulging waistlines last year, when obesity rates rose in nearly half the 50 states and decreased in none, an annual report showed Wednesday.
But even though two-thirds of Americans are now obese or overweight, and Americans have been slow to take the obesity epidemic seriously, the fight against fat can still be won, experts said.
Obesity is scientifically defined as having a body mass index -- calculated by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by his or her height squared in meters -- greater than 30.
In health terms, it means a person is at greater risk of a whole host of maladies, ranging from high blood pressure to diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
That, in turn, puts a huge burden on the already stressed US health care system.
According to the report, obesity could account for one in six dollars spent on health care by 2030.
"Obesity is a critical ingredient in the equation if we are going to get our nation's arms around reducing health care costs," James Marks of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which co-authored the "F as in Fat" report with the Trust for America's Health, told AFP.
The report showed that in 31 states, more than a quarter of adults were obese. Only in the state of Colorado was the percentage of obese adults lower than 20 percent, and even there, the rate rose in the last year.
The southern state of Mississippi held onto the dubious distinction of being the fattest state with more than 32 percent of adults and a staggering 44 percent of 10- to 17-year-olds suffering from obesity, the report showed.
Mississippi is the poorest of the 50 states, the report said, pointing to strong ties between poverty and obesity.
In low-income US neighborhoods, fast-food restaurants and so-called convenience stores, which tend not to sell fresh produce, are much more common than in affluent areas, making it difficult to find healthy food.
Poor families have little disposable income to spend on healthy food, which is generally more expensive than convenience food.
And crime rates are usually higher in poor neighborhoods than in more affluent areas.
An unsafe neighborhood means fewer children will play outdoors or walk to school -- and, the report pointed out, the percentage of obese and overweight children aged 10-17 was at or above 30 percent in 30 states.
"Back in the 1970s and 80s, when the standards were first set, five percent of kids were obese. Now, it's 15 percent. When you combine overweight and obesity, you get a third of kids," said Marks.
Obese children are at higher risk of developing heart disease, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes, and are more likely to become obese adults, who are at risk from the very same health problems.
"F as in Fat" and other reports before it have warned that this generation of American children could be the first to live shorter, less healthy lives than their parents.
US children today are "far heavier on a proportionate basis than the current adults were at the same age," meaning a lot of cases of obesity will work their way through the system in the next few years, Marks said.
But, he added, there were signs that the United States could yet win the battle of the ballooning belly.
Americans are beginning to understand that solutions to the epidemic will come not from the medical world but from policy and lifestyle changes, said Marks.
"Solutions will be about what food schools serve, whether they allow children to be active," he said.
"They'll be about what our communities offer in terms of easily available, healthy, nutritious foods, safe and attractive places to be active, whether our children will spend less time in front of video screens and more time outside being active."
Just as solutions lie outside the medical realm, beating the US obesity epidemic will not come from corralling a mutant "fat" gene, Marks said.
"You come with genes that make you tall or short or heavy or thin, but that has nothing to do with this epidemic," according to Marks.
"The epidemic is in things we have in our environment, our policies and our practices," he said, adding that he and the other authors of the report believe the United States will be able to stop and reverse obesity by 2015.
Copyright AFP
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