Examiner-
Adult obesity rates increased in 23 states last year, decreased in none. In 30 states more than 30% of kids are obese. Just published in the 4th annual Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (RWJF) report.
Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, and Tennessee led the list with 30-33% of all adults obese. Colorado, Massachusetts and Connecticut had the lowest rate with 20%. That’s still one out of five. Far too many.
From the Body Mass Index Table published by the National Institutes of Health: If you’re 5’4” tall, 145 lbs is overweight, 174 obese. If you’re 5’10’ tall, 174 is overweight, 207 obese. The BMI Table to look up your height and weight is readily available on-line. A staggering two thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.
In Mississippi, 45% of children are obese, with Arkansas, Georgia and Kentucky next at 37% each. Minnesota and Utah were at the bottom of this list with 23%, still almost one out of four.
Baby-boomers in the 55-64 age group are more obese than those over 65. Every day more of them are becoming eligible for Medicare, shifting much of the cost of their care to the taxpayers.
It’s pretty clear that obesity is a root cause of epidemic diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, heart attack, stroke, and cancer, hip and knee degeneration. Many with these diseases sacrifice 10 to 20 years of robust health and die younger than their own parents and grandparents, all for the sake of cheeseburgers and sugary soft drinks.
Obese adults on Medicare are much sicker than normal weight folks the same age. Their Medicare health care costs $1400 to $6000 more per year than their thin physically active counterparts.
But BMI media continues to perpetuate 'thin myth' and steers focus from health...
NY Times - Adolphe Quetelet, invented the BMI index formula in the 1830s. But it wasn't until the 1980s that public health agencies adopted it as a way of identifying individuals at risk for heart attacks, hypertension, diabetes, stroke and some cancers.
In 1998, two branches of the National Institutes of Health created new guidelines which divided people into categories: You were "normal" if your index rating was between 18.5 and 24.9; "overweight'' if it was 25 to 29.9; and "obese" if it was 30 or higher.
After the change, many doctors and lay people were up in arms. By the revised standards, nearly 55 percent of the American adult population in 1998, was considered overweight or obese, according to the N.I.H. (Today, 66.3 percent of adults are overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
The massive media 'focus on BMI' is causing kid to lose hope, mind and health
- E Magazine reports on the disputed condition known as orthorexia nervosa, in which people become obsessed with healthy eating habits to the point of developing an eating disorder. Orthorexia nervosa begins with a benign, even beneficial drive toward improving one's diet. But over time, "even if physical and emotional health begin to falter, the sufferer continues a harsh dietary regime," E reports. "Eventually, the all-consuming drive for nutritional purity can become a kind of spiritual quest."
