While obesity exists all over the world, Americans in particular are just too fat. So fat in fact that our individual weight problems have become a national crisis. Statistics show that two-thirds of adults and one-third of children in the United States are overweight or obese. This trend has persisted for the last decade and currently shows no signs of ending.
The issue with obesity is not just one of aesthetics. While it is true obesity is not considered to be very physically attractive, the bigger issue is the health related issues the excess weight tends to cause. Obesity has been linked to such diseases as high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, an increased risk of heart disease, infertility, gall-bladder disease, osteoarthritis and many forms of cancer.
Not only is obesity aesthetically unappealing and critically unhealthy, treatment for obesity related diseases is also extremely expensive. In 2004 the total medical expense for illnesses related to obesity was $117 billion a year. According to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, if the obesity trend continues, it will account for more than $860 billion of health care expenditures in the United States by the year 2030.
Despite the advancements in modern medicine, it is a very sad fact that unless there is a strategy to reverse this epidemic, today’s generation of children and adolescents may experience disability and even death at earlier ages than their parents, reversing a pattern of general health improvement, and quality of life.
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