Obesity In America

June 7, 2004

It’s hardly news anymore that Americans are just too fat.

Fully two-thirds of U.S. adults are officially overweight, and about half of those have graduated to full-blown obesity. The rates for African Americans and Latinos are even higher. Among kids between 6 and 19 years old, 15%, or 1 in 6, are overweight, and another 15% are headed that way. Even our pets are pudgy: a depressing 25% of dogs and cats are heavier than they should be.

From 1996 to 2001, 2 million teenagers and young adults joined the ranks of the clinically obese (see “What Is BMI?”).

It wouldn’t be such a big deal if the problem were simply aesthetic. But excess poundage takes a terrible toll on the human body, significantly increasing the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, infertility, gall-bladder disease, osteoarthritis and many forms of cancer.

So why is it happening? The obvious, almost trivial answer is that we eat too much high-calorie food and don’t burn it off with enough exercise.

If you can’t pry those SpongeBob Cheez-It crackers from your kid’s hands, you’re not alone. Public-health advocates say food advertising aimed at children has spun out of control—infiltrating schools, sports arenas, the Web and, of course, TV, where it has become ubiquitous, thanks to the explosion of 24/7 children’s programming on cable and satellite.

The problem goes way beyond the old Saturday-morning cartoon shows. Children are now exposed to 40,000 TV ads a year, up from 20,000 in the 1970s, according to a report by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Up to 70% of those ads are for food (though some researchers put the figure much lower, at a still considerable 25%). Ads for high-fat, high-salt foods have more than doubled since the 1980s, while commercials for fruits and vegetables remain in short supply.

For now, the government’s most salient media campaign to reduce childhood obesity is an initiative called Verb, which encourages kids to be more physically active. Absent from its promotional materials, however, is any mention of the need for children to cut back on junk food.

Some of the most important anti-obesity lessons must be delivered in the gymnasium. Sallis and the others want the nation’s schools to revive the tradition of daily physical-education classes and make sure those classes provide an adequate workout. Studies have shown that in a typical elementary-school gym class, each kid engages in moderate to vigorous activity for only about 3 minutes.

Some parents fear that more time in the gym means less achievement in class, but Sallis’ SPARK research suggests otherwise. Academic performance can actually improve with more activity. There may be other benefits as well. Ludwig observes that during years in which phys ed has declined, the nation has seen big increases in attention-deficit disorder and childhood depression. “It shouldn’t be so surprising that low physical-activity levels would have adverse effects on a child’s emotional health,” he says. “Exercise benefits overall well-being, not just body weight.”

Kids, of course, are not the only ones who can benefit from regular workouts. In a new TIME/ABC News poll, “lack of exercise” was seen as the No. 1 cause of the obesity epidemic, edging out even “poor eating habits.” Fewer than one-quarter of the 1,202 adults polled said they exercised vigorously three times a week for at least 20 minutes, as many health experts recommend.