A report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation goes Sesame Street on us and explains what the ‘F’ in ‘fat’ means for America. It means American waistlines are getting astonishingly larger, despite the multi-million dollars spent on public health campaigns and policy changes. While this is not shocking news, the numbers are still unnerving.
The report states,
Twenty years ago, no state had an obesity rate above 15 percent. Today, more than two out of three states, 38 total, have obesity rates over 25 percent, and just one has a rate lower than 20 percent. Since 1995, when data was available for every state, obesity rates have doubled in seven states and increased by at least 90 percent in 10 others. Obesity rates have grown fastest in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Tennessee, and slowest in Washington, D.C., Colorado, and Connecticut.
The South is the fattest region of the country, according to the report, and minorities and people with less education are more likely to be obese than their Caucasian and better educated neighbors. The consequences of obesity include greater incidence of hypertension and diabetes, as well as millions of dollars spent to treat people with those conditions.
If America continues to get fatter each year, does that mean that anti-obesity health communication campaigns have failed? Or, is public policy to blame? In a time of severe budget cuts, will the long-term costs of obesity be factored into short-term budgets across the country? What changes could health communicators in their campaigns and tactics in order to help slim down America?
This was reported on my local news the other night. I was watching over the shoulder of the watchman at the Elk's Lodge where my boyfriend's band was playing. A local official explained that we (North Dakota) didn't fare as well as other states because the thinner states all had more hospitable climate. Of course, by that logic, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama would be doing pretty good in comparison, right? The funny thing is, if you sorted BMI's by age, you would find our old people are rarely obese I think. Could be that they're all old farmers, could be the heavy ones died a lot earlier, or it could be that all the oldsters are dancing at the Elk's Lodge on a Friday night.
I think we are going to be the first generation to not live as long as our parents. My father, 94, learned he had high cholesterol when about 45 years ago and cut consumption of his beloved Golden Gurnsey high butterfat milk immediately. When we went on road trips in the 1960s my mom packed carrot and celery sticks as our snack. We recently went to the Herr's Snack Foods factory tour near here in Nottingham, PA. The historical film at the beginning gleefully said that the company really took off as television was introduced and kids started snacking on those potato chips Herr's was making. Yup, it's the snack food companies who are profiting from the calamity.