Americans are getting fatter at a pace never seen before while government-led attempts to hold in bulging waistlines are doomed to failure, a report claimed on Wednesday.
More than 119-million people, 64,5% of the US population, are now considered overweight or obese, according to the Trust for Americans’ Health, an independent advocacy group that says the nation has been let down by ineffective anti-obesity policies.
Experts are just as concerned at the escalating rate of the weight gain. Childhood obesity has doubled in 20 years and almost three-quarters of American adults could be overweight in less than three years’ time.
”The numbers are pretty staggering,” said Michael Earls, one of the report’s authors. ”The implications for the country are huge in terms of the financial cost and the toll on people’s health.”
Among the more significant findings of the report, based on figures from the US government’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, is the rise in states that consider more than 20% of their population to be obese. In 1985 it was none; this year it is 40.
America’s fattest state is Mississippi, where 29,5% of adults are obese, followed by Alabama (28,9%) and West Virginia (27,6%). Eighteen million adults in the US have diabetes, and more than nine million children are overweight or obese, twice as many as in 1980.
Sixteen per cent of active duty US military personnel are also obese, and it is the biggest reason for the discharge of soldiers.
Efforts to tackle the ”twin epidemic” of obesity and diabetes have failed miserably, the trust’s executive director, Shelley Hearne, said. ”We are in a state of policy paralysis in regards to obesity. We have a crisis of poor nutrition and physical inactivity and it’s time we dealt with it.”
The group acknowledges that some improvements have been made, with many schools replacing crisps and soft drinks in vending machines with healthier options such as yoghurts and low-fat snacks.
”These efforts are commendable but they are mere drops in a bucket,” Earls said.
Health officials also want the public to curb spending on fast food, which has risen from $16,1-billion in 1975 to $153,1-billion last year, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. – Guardian Unlimited Â