Obesity in America Continues to Expand

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter Tue Aug 23,11:46 PM ET

TUESDAY, Aug. 23 (HealthDayNews) -- Obesity rates continue to climb in every state except Oregon, and government policies and actions offer little hope of reversing the trend, according to a new report Tuesday from the Trust for America's Health.

The report, F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America, 2005, found that Mississippi is the heaviest state, while Colorado is the least heavy.

More than 25 percent of adults in 10 states are obese -- Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana and South Carolina.

"Across the board, we have every state failing to meet the national goal of 15 percent or less of the population being obese," Shelley Hearne, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, told a press conference.

"Bulging waistlines are growing, and they are going to cost taxpayers more dollars, and it's going to cost us in years of life and quality of life, regardless of where you live," Hearne added. "We can, and must, do better to start to turn around this obesity epidemic."

Added study co-author Parris Glendening, president of the Smart Growth Leadership Institute: "About 119 million Americans are either overweight or obese. That's 64.5 percent of adult Americans."

Excess weight is known to cause a variety of health problems, including heart disease, hypertension and diabetes.

The number of obese American adults rose from 23.7 percent in 2003 to 24.5 percent in 2004. The U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services set a national goal that obesity would be reduced by 15 percent by 2010. An estimated 16 percent of active duty U.S. military personnel are obese, and obesity is the biggest reason for discharging soldiers, Glendening noted.

In addition, people on food stamps are more likely to be obese compared with higher income individuals, Glendening said. "There is a link between obesity and those with lower incomes and less education," he added.

Glendening said that to fight the obesity epidemic, a combination of individual responsibility and government policy is needed.

"While it is indisputable that individual behavior -- eating less and exercising more -- is critical to addressing obesity, the government and private industry also have important roles to play in setting policies and taking actions that make it easier to help people make healthy choices," he said.

The report criticizes government policies as insufficient and too narrowly focused to have a significant impact on countering the obesity problem.

"The bottom line is that there is a lot more that could and should be done to help people with nutrition and exercise," Glendening said.

Glendening and Hearne believe that both state and federal governments can institute policies to help Americans shape up. They include combating suburban sprawl by increasing recreation space, and improving nutrition and physical education in schools.

"To really see a change in people's health, these programs must grow significantly," Glendening said.

"We have a crisis in poor nutrition and physical activity in this country," Hearne added. "It's simple math: we are eating more and exercising less. And it's time we deal with it in a much more systematic and realistic way."

An outside expert put it even more starkly.

"Obesity is arguably the gravest public health threat in the United States today," said Dr. David L. Katz, the director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine.

Obesity is among the root causes of almost every major chronic disease you face, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, breathing disorders and cancer, he added.

"This new report indicating that we are not doing enough to control obesity should come as no surprise," Katz said. "We are, in fact, doing quite a lot to make obesity worse. New technologies that decreases our physical activity; new processed food products that combine tasty calories with poor nutrition; time wasted on silly distractions such as fad diets, and policies and politics that squeeze physical activity and opportunities for good nutrition out of the typical work and school day all conspire against us."

Katz said that it will take a massive and comprehensive effort to turn around the array of "obesigenic" factors that conspire against everyone.

"But the effort will be worth it," he added. "Without it, we face rising rates of chronic disease for as far ahead as we can see. That is simply not a future any of us can accept."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...ntinuestoexpand

Oregon's Obesity Rate Remains Steady, Why?

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; 5:28 AM

PORTLAND, Ore. -- To shed the pounds that crept around her waistline, Linda Ginenthal began riding her bike to work _ an easy 3 1/2-mile trip.

It's not a marathon, nor is it a grueling hike. Yet diet experts say it's the kind of daily activity that could hold the secret to why Oregon is the only state in the nation where the obesity rate did not increase in the past year.

According to a study released Tuesday by the Washington, D.C.-based Trust for America's Health, the percentage of overweight Oregonians held steady at 21 percent last year, a sharp contrast to Alabama, where the rate of obesity increased 1.5 percentage points to 27.7 percent.

What makes Oregon different is its emphasis on urban design, which encourages outdoor activities like biking to work, the study's authors said.

Ten percent of Portland residents pedal to the office on a system of bike paths that crisscross the city like arteries, just as they do in Boulder, Colo. _ another bike-friendly metropolis, located in the leanest state in the nation. Only 16.4 percent of Coloradans are obese, according to the study.

"The solution to obesity is not that everyone should run a marathon," said Michael Earls, co-author of the study. "It's the little things that begin to make a dent in the problem, like taking the stairs instead of the elevator or riding your bike to work."

If a city or town is built in such a way that it forces residents to drive long distances, instead of walking or cycling, then physical activity becomes something that has to be planned rather than an activity which can be woven into the fabric of everyday life, he said.

Obesity expert Tom Farley, the author of "Prescription for a Healthy Nation," said research in the field has moved away from the notion of personal responsibility to the idea of creating environments that foster healthy living.

"Physical activity has been engineered out of our world," he said. "It should be natural and normal to be physically active, instead of having to go to the gym."

For Ginenthal, Portland's layout has made it convenient for her to ride to work following a familiar path of arching trees. Moreover, her employer, the City of Portland, provides financial incentives, such as a $25 bonus each month for riding her bike to work at least 80 percent of the time.

"It means I get 45 minutes of activity every single day without even thinking about it," said Ginenthal, who dropped 25 pounds since she began riding to work in the 1990s.

Another factor that might explain Oregon's stagnant obesity rate is healthier eating. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in Oregon increased by about 50 percent from 1974 to 2002, a period when many farms across the country were going up on the auction block.

As a result, Oregon's cities have seen a mushrooming of farmer's markets _ "from just one tiny Saturday market tucked away in a corner of Portland, to one for practically every day of the week," said organic farmer Shari Raider, who delivers a bounty of fresh greens to area restaurants.

The study, however, has its critics, including state epidemiologist Melvin Kohn, who said that while the findings look impressive on paper, nearly 59 percent of adult Oregonians are classified as either "obese" or "overweight."

"That's almost two-thirds of Oregonians," said Kohn. "I don't think we can rest on our laurels and say we don't have a problem."

And others say that the study _ which compared two three-year intervals, 2001 through 2003 and 2002 through 2004 _ is not long enough to be significant.

"Why would Washington state be that different from Oregon?" said obesity surgeon Peter LePort, the medical director of the Center for Obesity in Fountain Valley, Calif. "The fact that it didn't increase over one period could be a statistical fluke."

The obesity rate in neighboring Washington is 21.7 percent, up 1 percentage point, according to the survey.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...5082400255.html

In any survey of the states, there has to be one state that comes out the best. This doesn't mean that that state is doing anything right, just that it happened to be the one state that happeded to have the best statistics.

Oregon is touting all the reasons that it's obesity rate didn't increase. Colorado is touting all the reasons that it has the lowest obesity rate. Both states still have totally too high obesity levels in their population.

The obesity rates in Colorado, Oregon, Massachusetts, etc. are higher than the highest southern states were not too many years ago.



Every time that I see these numbers (10%) of people who allegedly cycle to work, I am baffled. I have been to a lot of the cities (and lived in a few) that claim to have large number of commuters cycling to work. I can say that on any given day, there are nowhere near 10%. I cycle into Boulder about twice a week. I see lots and lots of cars with commuters in them and almost no cycling commuters. If its a 1% rate, I would be amazed. The 10% rate must be the percentage who have ever cycled to work in their lives.