Harvard Scientists: Obesity Rate Will Reach 42 Percent

I don’t really know how to parse this news, so I’m just going to post the article.  This is so frightening.  And sad.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 4, 2010) — Researchers at Harvard University say America’s obesity epidemic won’t plateau until at least 42 percent of adults are obese, an estimate derived by applying mathematical modeling to 40 years of Framingham Heart Study data.

Their work, published this week in the journal PLoS Computational Biology, runs counter to recent assertions by some experts that the obesity rate, which has been at 34 percent for the past five years, may have peaked. An additional 34 percent of American adults are overweight but not obese, according to the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Harvard scientists say that their modeling shows that the proliferation of obesity among American adults in recent decades owes in large part to its accelerating spread via social networks.

“Our analysis suggests that while people have gotten better at gaining weight since 1971, they haven’t gotten any better at losing weight,” says lead author Alison L. Hill, a graduate student in Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Biophysics Program, and at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. “Specifically, the rate of weight gain due to social transmission has grown quite rapidly.”

Double It.

Study shows obesity care costs twice what we previously thought

A new study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research reveals that Obesity accounts for nearly 17% of all U.S. medical costs. (Previous estimates had pegged it at 9 percent).   The new study also suggests that obesity adds over $2,800 to an individual’s annual medical costs.

Sad news but just more evidence that it’s time to get very serious about prevention.

Study: Obesity care costs twice previous estimates [AP via WaPo]

We’re #1

OECD Report Confirms U.S. Has Highest Obesity Rates

Select obesity rates and projections by country (OECD)

A new Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development report confirms what is now a common assumption: The United States has the highest levels of obesity and overweight in the world.  The report also highlights the importance of unified public-private sector prevention strategies in order to avoid the dramatic economic and health costs of obesity on future generations.

From the report:

Rates are highest in the United States and Mexico and lowest in Japan and Korea, but have been growing virtually everywhere. Children have not been spared, with up to 1 in 3 currently overweight. Severely obese people die 8-10 years sooner than those of normal-weight, similar to smokers, and they are more likely to develop diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Obesity is a burden on health systems, with health care expenditure for an obese person at least 25% higher than for someone of normal weight.
Cooperation between governments and the private sector is key to the success of combating obesity.  A prevention strategy combining health promotion campaigns, government regulation and family doctors counselling their obese patients would avoid hundreds of thousands of deaths from chronic diseases every year. It would cost from USD 10 to USD 30 per person, depending on the country. Failure would impose heavy burdens of future generations.

Health: OECD Says Government Must Fight Fat [OECD]

Poverty and the Hierarchy of Food Needs

Can’t Touch This?

I recently read this post about the treatment of the overweight poor by (previously unknown to me) blogger Michelle Allison, who writes as The Fat Nutritionist.  The piece reads as a wrist slap to nutrition and healthy eating advocates who chastise the poor eating habits of people in low socioeconomic classes.

As a self-described member of the “fatosphere” and activist for fat acceptance, Allison is not an impartial source on this issue, (as is evident in this post as well as elsewhere in her blog), nevertheless I think she begs an interesting question which is worth considering:  Should we be judging the eating habits of those who can barely get enough to eat?

We should examine this question in the context of the strong correlation between socioeconomic status and obesity/ overweight. The poor are the most likely to suffer from overweight and related diseases, but are our efforts to change their poor dietary habits insensitive and counterproductive?

Ellen Gustafson, You are Ambitious

Can we fix our flawed food system in 30 years?

One of the developments I missed out on during my travels was the launch of the 30 Project, an initiative by Ellen Gustafson of the Feed Foundation which was announced at this spring’s TedxEast Conference (her Ted Talk video is above).

The premise of the 30 Project is the following:  there are a billion hungry people on this planet, and a billion who are overweight.  These two problems are about food and are attributable to the same source, which is our global food system.  So in order to address both hunger and obesity/overweight, we need to change the food system.  And since the changes in the food system that have happened in the last 30 years are largely at the root of the problems we see today, the objective is to achieve changes in the next 30 years that will scale back, or undo the negative consequences of our industrialized food system.

The reason I say this is extremely ambitious is because it requires diving headfirst into the equivalent of a political and economic death match.  In order to make a real impact, even over the course of 30 years, the changes Gustafson needs to make are radical.  And the opposition has great quantities of money and power invested in ensuring that the impact of reforms are minimal.

In order to achieve true changes to our food system, Gustafson and all those who are fighting the same mission must mobilize enough social and political capital in order to overcome these interests.  Whatever she does, it will have to be Big.

The 30 Project

The Feed Foundation

Ellen Gustafson Bio

Earlier: Cheap Food is Expensive

Nutrition Conference Fail

What do Europe’s top public health experts eat at a conference on nutrition and obesity prevention?  If you’re picturing apple slices and carrot sticks, or (since we’re in Spain) a Spanish potato omelet, you’d be wrong. Dead wrong.

Snacks at Spain’s NAOS Conference on Obesity Prevention

I spent yesterday morning at Spain’s Ministry of Health for it’s annual Strategy for Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity Prevention (NAOS) Conference, a gathering of public health experts from Europe and around the world who discuss issues related to obesity prevention.  NAOS is kind of the Spanish equivalent of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign (their slogan is “Eat Healthy and Move”) although it has been in place since 2005.

This year, the NAOS conference focused on how to curb marketing of junk food — now known as HFSS, for High Fat, Salt and Sugar — products to kids.  The morning’s distinguished speakers included a panel of public health experts from Spain, France, Norway, Portugal, and the U.K.,  as well as the head of obesity prevention at the World Health Organization.

The issues were interesting and I’m happy I went.  But something left me with a very bad taste in my mouth.  So I’m not even going to talk about the conference here — I’m going to talk about the coffee break.

USDA Releases New Dietary Guidelines

News From DC

New USDA Dietary Guidelines For Americans have been released today.  Per U.S. law, these guidelines are revised and re-released every five years.  For the next month, the USDA will be vetting comments on the guidelines in advance of the release of the final document.

Unfortunately this means that for the next month food industry lawyers/scientists/lobbyists will be figuring out how to warp, discredit, or water down many of the recommendations.  (In the past they have generally succeeded at this.  For a thorough documentation of how this process works, and how incredibly political this document is, please read Marion Nestle’s Food Politics.)

The report is absolutely huge, but the sections I’ve looked at do look promising with respect to what the panel recommends.  For one thing, the focus on the need to prevent obesity and overweight is clear  (USA Today’s article on the guidelines is headlined  “Obesity is century’s greatest public health threat.”)

In order to address the obesity issue from a preventative standpoint, the panel recommends a “total diet” approach to eating, which they define as the following:

Cheap Food is Expensive

It’s not our fruits and vegetables that get the major subsidies

I strongly suggest checking out Tom Laskawy’s post today over at Mark Bittman’s blog, where he points out the way simplistic economic portrayals of our food costs conceal the high price we pay for cheap food.

He especially takes issue (and I agree with him) with the following quote from an NPR interview with Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack:

“I would say consumers do benefit from the way in which we structured our farm programs, at least as of today, because of the fact that our food is less expensive than it is any place else in the world. Folks in America have a great deal more discretion of what to do with their paycheck.”

While it’s true that food is “less expensive” in the U.S. — Americans spend less of their income on food than any other country — it conceals the truth of why and what kind of food is so much less expensive.  Namely, it’s the highly processed (mostly corn- and soy-based) packaged foods, which are also the least healthy.  And why are they cheap?  Because our government pours huge subsidies into these crops, encouraging industrial farms to overproduce, which artificially depresses the price.

Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Where Does All That Food $ Go?

Thanks to Jesse for the hat tip on this great Bundle article about food spending in America.  The authors crunch numbers related to food dollar distribution by city, demographic group, and grocery vs. restaurant spending.  The findings are fascinating (and accompanied by supercool graphics).

Dining out vs. Grocery Spending in the U.S. (Bundle)

Relative spending on food (as a percentage of income) varies widely across geographic location and demographic groups.  Check out their two nifty infographics on grocery vs. restaurant spending by city and the demographic breakdown of food spending.

Some conclusions:

• The average American household spent $3,778 on groceries in 2009, and another $2,736 in restaurants and bars.
• The top food-spending cities are somewhat surprising: Austin (TX), Arlington (VA), San Jose (CA), Raleigh (NC) and Durham (NC) top the list.
• Relative to income, Denver spends the most on food and drink (22 percent)
• Atlanta spends the most in dining out (57 percent of their food budget, about 28 percent more than the national average.)
• Austin is the top food-spending U.S. city

Bundle Special: The Truth About Food Spending in America [Bundle]

The 2010 Bundle Report: How America Spends [Bundle]

Mapping Obesity and How We Eat Across the U.S.

The Daily Yonder has an interesting article featuring neat maps which describe the geographical distribution of obesity, fast food consumption, and physical activity across the United States.

It’s pretty fascinating to see a visual representation of the differences in health and food consumption based on where people live.  And should give us a good idea of where we need to focus our attention and resources in order to fight the problem.