Our love affair with fat has undoubtedly contributed to the obesity epidemic, but it's far from the sole culprit, Hill says. In fact, the percentage of fat in our diet has hardly budged in the last decade, the period when the obesity crisis really took off.
Everywhere, from coffee shops to restaurants, portion sizes have swelled beyond imagination. Department of Agriculture, the American diet has swelled by about calories a day over the past 35 years, theoretically enough to add 53 pounds to every person every year. We could always burn off those calories with a little extra exercise, but most of us are headed in the opposite direction.
I used to print them out and walk them down to the mailboxes. It wasn't exactly Olympic exercise. But now I just send an e-mail to everyone. Most of my job involves sitting in front of a computer. Many of us can relate. At work, we point and click instead of sweat and toil. And when work is done, we have every opportunity to take it easy. Why walk to the post office when you can drive?
Why walk around the mall when you can shop online? In addition, many of our towns aren't exactly conducive to walking. Who wants to stroll over to the nearest shopping center if you have to walk across a culvert and a freeway to get there? We're even keeping our children still. Physical education classes are disappearing across the country, and the ones that remain often aren't very demanding, Hill says.
And, of course, children are especially vulnerable to the pull of television and video games. Surgeon General David Satcher says. Schools are also to blame for not providing healthier food , he says. They should encourage kids to eat low-fat, healthy food and decrease the number of vending machines located on school grounds, he says.
Making a move in the right direction, in the Alliance for a Healthier Generation brokered a deal with U. Still, put it all together and you have a crisis with deep, intertwined roots. No single factor caused the epidemic, and no single solution will slow it down. Unless the country takes the obesity epidemic more seriously, we're in danger of losing many of the health gains in heart disease and other chronic health problems that we've made in recent decades, according to Satcher.
People who want to maintain a normal body weight should incorporate some form of exercise, according to the report issued by the Institute of Medicine. Adults and children should spend at least an hour a day doing moderately intense activities, such as walking, swimming, or bicycling. Currently only two states -- Illinois and New York -- require physical education each year from kindergarten through the 12th grade.
The report also recommended turning off vending machines at schools during mealtimes, creating more opportunities for physical activity at worksites, offering extracurricular recreation programs, and creating safe and accessible recreation facilities for people of all ages. Finally, the report urged better education about the benefits of breastfeeding, since studies show that babies who are breastfed are less likely to grow into overweight adults.
In response to growing national concerns, members of Congress have sought to fund a series of community programs aimed at reducing obesity, including exercise programs in daycare centers and nursing homes, the construction of bike paths, and nutrition education programs in schools.
Nutritionists have their own ideas of how to address the problem. For example, Peggy Agron, director of Project LEAN Leaders Encouraging Activity and Nutrition and a registered dietitian, feels that changing the food served in school cafeterias would benefit kids more than nutrition education programs. Still, experts say, all of these types of programs are a step in the right direction.
Physician Toni Martin of Berkeley, California agrees. Why don't we ban junk food advertising for children the way we banned cigarette advertising? We could give prizes to kids who bring a piece of fruit or a vegetable in their lunch every day, or make vending machine manufacturers offer a minimum number of healthy choices for the privilege of installing their machines on campus.
It doesn't make sense to me to call a problem an epidemic and then attempt to solve it individual by individual. Today, each American puts away an average of lbs of meat every year, compared to just lbs in the 's. Another study demonstrates the full effect added sugars from soda and energy drinks are wreaking havoc on American waistlines.
So it is not just how much we eat, but what we eat. The role of diet in the U. Consumers are sent wildly mixed messages when it comes to what to eat and how much. One one hand, larger portions, processed packaged food, and drive-thru meals are branded as almost classically American — fast, cheap, filling and delicious. It's no wonder we're looking for fast food and fast weight loss options, we spend more time at work and less time in our homes and kitchens than our parents did.
Sometimes you only have time to pack a leftover pizza slice and a slim-fast for lunch, irony be damned. This schizophrenic relationship with food is easy to explain in terms of marketing schemes. As decades of soda and tv dinners caught up with our waistlines, the U. Since the s, popular nutrition wisdom and fad diets have flamed in and out just as quickly as the Arch Deluxe or the McRib. In the s, our big enemy was fat. Low-fat and fat-free products flew off supermarket shelves.
It took us decades to learn that when something is fat-free and full-flavored, it's probably too good to be true. As it turns out, most food companies were just swapping hydrogenated oils and sugar in for the animal fats they removed from low-fat products. Recent research found the body has over 90 new gene regions that could help predict why some people are more likely to put on weight than others.
Obviously one of the major factors is what you eat. Certain types of food and drinks cause people to put on weight than others. For example, levels of obesity are higher in inner cities due the number of fast-food outlets near people's homes, a study found.
One of the biggest causes is a lack of exercise. This can become a vicious circle as when people get to a certain weight they feel unable or too shy to exercise. Public Health England says lack of exercise is the fourth greatest cause of ill health in the UK and a leading contributor to rising levels of obesity. Poor eating habits that can cause obesity also involve excessive protein and salt intake which are known to fuel the build-up of chemicals in the urine and lead to kidney stones.
The stigma attached to being obese can lead to mental health problems and increases vulnerability to depression, low self-esteem, poor body image, maladaptive eating behaviours and exercise avoidance. Obesity can cause potentially fatal health problems like heart disease and cancer. Obesity prevalence among 11 to 15 year olds was Changes to lifestyle - like exercising more and eating more healthily - are the best way to tackle it, although a problem is that many people feel they are beyond the change required.
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