OBESITY RATES IN THE USA

I read another interesting article in the NY Times yesterday:

Obesity Rates Keep Rising, Troubling Health Officials

There are now 9 states that have obesity rates greater than 30% (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia), with the national average coming in at 26.7%!  That means 72.5 million people in the United States are considered obese.

The real scary thing is that the data was collected by telephone surveys of 400,000 people.  The simple survey consisted of asking them their height and weight.  Maybe I'm a skeptic, but I seriously doubt that people really gave accurate information, and I tend to think that people would underestimate their true weight.  Just think what the real numbers could be!!


Now just to be fair, the researchers used BMI to determine if these people are obese, and BMI is not really a good measure (it is just a function of height and weight and ignores things like muscle mass).  It may work well for a large scale research project, but at the individual level it simply is not the best approach.  For instance, my BMI (I'm 5'11" and 195 lbs) is 27.2 which puts me right in the middle of the "overweight" category (obese is greater than 30.0).  HINT: I'm not overweight.

What's probably the most disheartening thing about this article is that the annual medical cost of obesity is estimated to be $147 billion!

FAVORITE EXCERPTS
Researchers blame the usual suspects: too little exercise and too much of the wrong kind of food, which means not enough fruits and vegetables and too many high-calorie meals full of sugar and fat, like French fries, soda and other sweet drinks. Children do not get enough exercise during the school day; Dr. Frieden noted that even in gym classes, students are active for only about a third of the time.

The nine states with obesity rates of 30 percent or more are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia. The highest rate, 34.4 percent, was in Mississippi.

Only Colorado and Washington, D.C., had obesity rates under 20 percent. Researchers are not sure why. Dr. William Dietz, director of the nutrition, physical activity and obesity division, said that Colorado had spent money from a state lottery on biking and walking trails and that many people were using them. The state seems to have “a culture of physical activity,” he said.