• Living XXL
Living XXL
At long last, an international survey in which American teens finish first. That’s the good news.
The bad news? This was a survey of teen obesity, and our kids are the undisputed world heavyweights. About one in six American 15-year-olds is obese and about three in 10 are overweight. Kids in this country are about five times more likely to be obese, and half as likely to be overweight, as those in food-loving France.
The survey results, published this month in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, hardly come as a surprise. Americans of all ages are losing the battle of the bulge. More than half of adults in this country are overweight and about one-third are obese. The number of disabled people between the ages of 30 and 49 jumped by more than half between 1984 and 2000. The leading causes were conditions like diabetes and back problems that are linked to obesity. Our losing struggle for weight control is reflected in the twin epidemics of diabetes and heart disease that grip this nation as tightly as our waistbands after Thanksgiving dinner.
It’s no mystery why American kids are getting so big. They’re driven to school and back. Instead of a ball field, they play on an Xbox. And, of course, they consume plenty of fatty fast food and sugary soft drinks. About one-third of American kids eat fast food on any given day, a recent study found.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that – at least not in moderation. But we Americans do moderation badly, at best. And when it comes to fast food, little excesses can add up quickly. A Big Mac, large fries and a regular Coke contain about three-quarters of the recommended daily caloric intake and more than 90 percent of the recommended total of fats.It’s fair to ask what difference it makes if our kids are heavier than we were, or weigh more than their counterparts around the globe. There’s plenty of time for diets and exercise when they get older, isn’t there?
Perhaps. But there’s always a price to pay, and on a national scale it’s about $100 billion annually. That’s the estimated cost of treating obesity-related diseases in this country. Last year, a coalition called the Washington Business Group on Health promised to take on the problem. The big corporations that make up the coalition – General Mills, PepsiCo, and IBM, among others – promised to share ideas that help workers control their weight and the companies’ costs.
In the long run, though, the solution will likely come from those with more skin in the game. Government and employer-provided insurance covers many expenses associated with obesity, but there remain some costs that only the individual pays.
It’s estimated that about 300,000 Americans die each year as a result of obesity. That makes it the second leading cause of preventable deaths in this country after smoking. At the age of 20, a very obese black woman can expect to live five fewer years than her healthier contemporaries. Obese white women live an average of eight fewer years than white women of normal weight. For men, the diminished life expectancy is even greater: 13 years less for obese white men and a staggering two decades less for obese black men.
The sad truth is that you can live large or you can live long, but you can’t live large long.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
