Thursday, May 10, 2012

Obesity Report

Original Article @ Lose Weight USA

Healthy Weight Loss

The influential Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a recent report which concluded that –

America's obesity epidemic is so deeply rooted that it will take dramatic and systemic measures - from overhauling farm policies and zoning laws to, possibly, introducing a soda tax – to fix it
. The IOM refutes the idea that obesity is largely the result of a lack of willpower on the part of individuals. Instead, it embraces policy proposals that have met with stiff resistance from the food industry and lawmakers, arguing that multiple strategies will be needed to make the U.S. environment less obese producing. The IOM, part of the National Academies, offers advice to the government and others on health issues. Its report was released at the Weight of the Nation conference, a three-day meeting hosted by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Cable channel HBO will air a documentary of the same name next week.
"People have heard the advice to eat less and move more for years, and during that time a large number of Americans have become obese,"
committee member Shiriki Kumanyika of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine told Reuters.
"That advice will never be out of date. But when you see the increase in obesity you ask, what changed? And the answer is, the environment. The average person cannot maintain a healthy weight in this obesity-promoting environment."

A study funded by the Centre of Disease Control(CDC) and released on Monday projected that by 2030, 42 percent of American adults will be obese, compared to 34 percent today and 11 percent will be severely obese, compared to 6 percent today.

Another one-third of American adults are overweight today, and one-third of children aged 2 to 19 are overweight or obese. Obesity is defined as having a body mass index – a measure of height to weight – of 30 or greater. Overweight means a BMI of 25 to 29.9.

Obesity is responsible for an additional $190 billion a year in healthcare costs, or one-fifth of all healthcare spending, Reuters reported last month, plus billions more in higher health insurance premiums, lost productivity and absenteeism.

"There has been a tendency to look for a single solution, like putting a big tax on soda or banning marketing (of unhealthy food) to children,"
panel chairman Dan Glickman, a senior fellow of the Bipartisan Policy Centre and a former secretary of the Department of Agriculture, said.

The committee also grappled with one of the third rails of American politics: farm policy. Price-support programs for wheat, cotton and other commodity crops prohibit participating farmers from planting fruits and vegetables on land enrolled in those programs. Partly as a result, U.S. farms do not produce enough fresh produce for all Americans to eat the recommended amounts, and the IOM panel calls for removing that ban.

The IOM report also calls for making schools the focus of anti-obesity efforts, since preventing obesity at a young age is easier than reversing it. According to the most recent data, only 4 percent of elementary schools, 8 percent of middle schools and 2 percent of high schools provided daily physical education for all students.

The IOM report recommends requiring primary and secondary schools to have at least 60 minutes of physical education and activity each day. It calls for banning sugar-sweetened drinks in schools and making drinking water freely available. The report also urges that healthy food and drinks be easily available everywhere Americans eat, from shopping centres to sports facilities and chain restaurants. The idea is that more people will eat healthier if little active choice is needed.

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