Technology has adversely affected the life style and health of Americans. Everywhere in the world, the richest people build the biggest homes, but as the world's wealthiest nation, the United States is also building the biggest bodies. It's hardly cause for patriotic pride. "We're leading a race we shouldn't want to win," says associate professor of pediatrics David Ludwig. Many foreigners already view Americans as rich, greedy over-consumers, stuffing themselves with far more than their share of the planet's resources, and obese American travelers waddling through international airports and hotel lobbies only reinforce that image. Yet our fat problem is becoming a global one as food corporations export our sugary, salty, fatty diet: Beijing has more than a hundred McDonald's franchises, which advertise and price the same food in the same way, and with the same level of success.
Two-thirds of American adults are overweight, and half of these are obese. (Overweight means having a body mass index, or BMI, of 25 or greater, obese, 30 or greater: to calculate BMI, a widely used measure, take the square of your height in inches and then divide your weight, in pounds, by that number; then multiply the result by 703. Or calculate it on-line at www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/bmi/calc-bmi.htm.) Even adults in the upper end of the "normal" range, who have BMIs of 22 to 24, would generally live longer if they lost some fat; add in these people and it appears that "up to 80 percent of American adults should weigh less than they do," says Walter C. Willett, M.D., D.P.H. '80, Stare professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the School of Public Health.
The epidemic of obesity is a vast and growing public health problem......
