40% of Americans are Obese. Say what?
People started talking about an “obesity epidemic” in the late 1990s. By the early aughts, the alarm bells were raging. But in the…
42% of Americans are Obese. Say what?
People started talking about an “obesity epidemic” in the late 1990s. By the early aughts, the alarm bells were raging. But in the following decade, the panic, at least in the media, subsided. The adult obesity rate dropped slightly in the mid-aughts, and there was an appropriate backlash against fat shaming, and the rise of a “body acceptance” movement. Wellness was on the rise, and there other things to worry about like a crashing economy, climate change, opioid epidemics, and the carnivalesque spectacle of our national politics. Count me as one of the people who paid a bit less attention, and thought that perhaps we had turned that ship around, at least slightly. Count me among those that were wrong. The CDC has released the results of its latest annual survey, and the adult obesity rate has now hit 42%. More than four out of ten adult Americans are obese, and nine out of ten are severely obese. The human and financial costs of these numbers are difficult to fully grasp, and sad to contemplate.
If nothing else, these new numbers strengthen my commitment to Count.It.
