It used to be that rich and fat were terms associated with people,
not dessert. A portly shape, in fact, signaled the good life. If you
ever saw the musical
Oliver!, you may recall the number, "Food,
Glorious Food," in which a stage full of scrawny orphans pine for the
gluttony that money can buy: "Rich gentlemen have it boys,
In-di-gestion!" Today, however, we often see the reverse scenario: the
leaner your wallet, the fatter you are.
"You have this coexistence of obesity and food insecurity in
America," says Susan Blumenthal, former U.S. assistant surgeon general,
clinical professor at Georgetown and Tufts University medical schools,
and director of the Health and Medicine Program at the Center for the
Study of the Presidency and Congress. Finding, and affording, healthy ood along with safe places to exercise, are among the challenges that
low-income populations face.
So perhaps it's not surprising that the statistics released Monday
by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that
Mississippi, the poorest state in America, has the nation's highest
obesity rate, at 34.9 percent. States in the South and Midwest, which,
in some cases, represent the poorest parts of the country, showed the
highest incidences of obesity. While financial health has a bearing on
physical health, the correlation is a complicated one. Culture, gender,
education, biology, and even politics, play a role. America's
so-called "red" states tend to have higher rates of obesity, experts
note. Plus, the prevalence of cheap, processed foods, the layout of our
neighborhoods, and access to parks and public transportation also
factor into one's risk for obesity and, consequently, disease. And
while poor Americans may find it especially challenging to access the
ingredients of a healthy lifestyle, obesity is clearly not limited to
the province of the poor. More than one-third of the nation is obese,
according to some data sets, and that cuts across all income levels.
"There is no single, simple answer to explain the obesity patterns"
in America, says Walter Willett, who chairs the department of nutrition
at the Harvard School of Public Health. "Part of this is due to lower
incomes and education, which result in purchases of cheap foods that
are high in refined starch and sugar. More deeply, this also reflects
lower public investment in education, public transportation, and
recreational facilities," he says. The bottom line: cheap, unhealthy
foods mixed with a sedentary lifestyle has made obesity the new normal
in America. And that makes it even harder to change, Willett says.
In 1990, not one U.S. state had an obesity rate greater than 14
percent, according to the CDC. Ten years later, 23 states reported an
obesity rate between 20 to 24 percent. And in 2010, 36 states had an
obesity rate of at least 25 percent, with 12 states reporting an
obesity rate beyond 30 percent. (The CDC notes that it used a new
methodology for its 2011 survey, rendering comparisons with past years
rather rough.)
"We now see that life expectancy is for the first time decreasing in many parts of the South and Southeast," says Willett.
Obesity puts people at risk for heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and
cancer. These illnesses, of course, exact a financial toll too. In
2008, this country spent approximately $147 billion on medical costs,
the CDC says. If every American were to lose an average of 10 pounds,
the United States would save roughly $29 billion a year within five
years, says Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Trust for America's
Health, a nonprofit organization promoting national health. "If you
really want to bend the cost curves, it isn't doing things at the
margins" that counts, he says, but "taking on the fundamental challenge
of preventing and reversing chronic disease."
But the CDC's state-by-state picture of America's obesity epidemic
may not be the best way to understand, let alone tackle, the issue.
Obesity is tied not to states, per se, but to certain populations
who reside in those states, says Barbara Ormond, senior research
associate at the Health Policy Center of the Urban Institute, a
Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Each of these populations grapple
with specific problems, she explains. "Take, for example, comfort food,
she says, which varies by culture and nutritional quality.
According to the CDC, non-Hispanic blacks have the highest rates of
obesity, followed by Mexican Americans, all Hispanics, and non-Hispanic
whites. When it comes to socioeconomic status, the data differ by
gender. For example, college-educated women and women who earn higher
incomes are less likely to be obese than women who didn't graduate high
school or earn lower salaries. However, such correlations don't exist
among men, for whom obesity is roughly the same across income levels.
In fact, higher incomes were associated with increased obesity rates
among non-Hispanic black and Mexican-American men, the CDC reports.
Such complexities explain Ormond's caveat against labeling obesity a
poverty problem. It's a "shorthand way of looking at it" that reduces
it almost to something that's hard to do anything about, she says. "You
can't make everybody not poor, but you could give them good schools,
or you could make sure the school lunch you're serving is nutritious."
Fixing this problem is going to take a proverbial village, public health experts say.
"We need to mobilize all sectors of society," Blumenthal says,
calling for policies that will create more places to walk and exercise,
as well as physical and health education in schools and healthier
choices in vending machines, for example. But communities can begin the
intervention, she says, noting the Affordable Care Act's Prevention
and Public Health Fund, which can seed local efforts. Neighborhoods
might come together to organize a health fair, coordinate a race to
motivate community weight loss, or plant community gardens, she
advises.
And beyond that, those working to fight obesity in this country
ought to be patient and persistent, Ormond says. "It took us many, many
years to get as fat as we are as a nation, and it's going to take us a
similar number of years, or certainly a lot of effort to reverse that
trend."
source: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2012/08/16/why-were-so-fat-whats-behind-the-latest-obesity-rates?page=2
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grind up the almonds and pecans until they are a course/crumbly
texture.
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