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Health
- Reuters
Thu Jun 12,10:25 AM ET
By
Greg Frost
BOSTON
(Reuters) - Most Americans are too fat, are getting fatter faster,
and aren't likely to get lean unless drastic changes are made in
diet and lifestyle, participants at a Harvard University forum on
obesity say.
A
day after U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona called America's
obesity epidemic "the terror within," the forum heard
staggering data on the size and cost of America's weight problem.
"No part of the country has escaped it," Walter Willett,
chair of the Harvard School of Public Health's nutrition department,
said Wednesday as he showed how obesity had spread across the United
States over the last two decades.
More than three in five Americans are overweight, and nearly one
in three is obese, meaning they carry so much extra weight that
their health is at real risk.
Obesity can lead to diabetes, heart disease, and several forms of
cancer -- and it costs the U.S. health care system more than $90
billion a year to treat people who are overweight or obese.
Patricia Gaquin is among those whose health is jeopardized by their
weight. At 269 pounds, she has waged a losing war against her waistline
for most of her life, and now it appears to be killing her.
"My excess weight has caused or exaggerated type 2 diabetes,
high blood pressure, back and kidney problems, elevated cholesterol,"
Gaquin, choking back tears, told the forum.
Gaquin has also recently been diagnosed with early-stage endometrial
cancer -- a form of cancer linked to being overweight. Because of
the diagnosis, the 48-year-old patient has had to postpone gastric
bypass surgery that was designed to end her fight with weight once
and for all.
CAUSES STILL DEBATED
The jury is still out on the causes of obesity, with consumer advocates
arguing that aggressive food industry advertising and "super-sized"
restaurant portions are to blame. Others fault heredity and lifestyle.
When it came to examining the causes of her own obesity, Gaquin
pinned the blame in large part on her family background. Both her
parents, she said, were overweight, and two of her three siblings
weigh more than she does.
Genetics does play a part in deciding who is fat and who is thin,
but the increasingly sedentary lifestyle led by most Americans is
making it difficult for them to suppress the hunger gene, said Ellen
Ruppel Shell, a journalist and author who has written about the
role a person's DNA plays in deciding how much he or she eats.
As for ways to solve the obesity epidemic, Americans have mixed
feelings about the role of government.
A national poll commissioned by Harvard and released on Wednesday
showed that six in 10 Americans are in favor of requiring restaurants
to list nutrition information on their menus. By contrast, most
people oppose putting a special tax on junk food.
But when it comes to fighting childhood obesity, most Americans
welcome more government involvement, the poll said. More than eight
in 10 Americans support providing healthier school lunches, and
three-quarters said they back efforts to fight childhood obesity,
even if it meant an increase in their taxes.
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