Obesity Rates Decrease Quality of Life in U.S.

Obesity in the USA

There appears to be no end in sight for the American cycle of eating itself to death. The economy hasn’t gotten much better, and the medical community consistently points out a lack of messaging and programming to stop the alarming increase in American obesity.

New information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that obesity is up among both sexes, among every race, and in all 50 states. Overall obesity rates were up about 4 percent in 2009 as compared to 2007 – which translates to 26.7 of the American population being obese, up from 25.6 in 2007.

Any person that has a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher is considered to be clinically obese. The numbers above could be even worse, and actually are, when a person’s height and weight is manually measured – which is exactly what the folks do at National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). That organization’s numbers show that 33.9% of Americans are obese. The CDC studies rely on people to provide their own height and weight. Who wouldn’t like to be a little taller and skinnier?

Additional CDC studies show that America is well on its way to essentially canceling out many health benefits provided by recent and upcoming breakthroughs in science and technology, as well as the benefits enjoyed by the decrease in tobacco use.

The average number of healthy days that Americans lost to obesity doubled between 1993 and 2008. The number was 7.5 in 1993 and now stands at 17 or more.  The study followed 3.5 million Americans, and it also showed that the obesity rate in America almost doubled from 14 to 27 percent between 1993 and 2008.

Obesity has been shown to increase disease, including diabetes, various cancers, high blood pressure, depression, heart disease, osteoarthritis and more. Yet, Americans continue to eat foods high in fat and calories, and low in essential nutrients and vitamins. One study showed that obese people spend more than $1,400 per year on health-related issues than non-obese people.

Not only are obese people hurting themselves and driving up healthcare costs (they will work fewer years and require more social support), they will eventually necessitate many social and cultural changes unless the obesity trend can be stopped. Public facilities will need to accommodate obese people in new, often more expensive ways. More elevators will need to carry people who can’t walk up stairs, etc.

Understandably, many in the healthcare industry are calling for an all-out assault on obesity – increasing education and changing public policy, making better food available in the school systems, and more. These activists will need to be aggressive to make headway any time soon, at least according to the stats