The Nation's Climbing Obesity Situation

Being overweight is one of those topics that everyone has been hearing about for the past couple years. It seems that suddenly everybody woke up one day and found a milkshake in one hand and a bacon burger in the other. The United States has the greatest obesity rate in the developed world. In the last 25 years the amount of overweight adults and children have risen by 100%. 32% of all adults over 20 and seventeen percent of all children were obese in 2004. Basically the amount of people who are risking their health by being too fat ranges in the millions. The prevalence of obesity continues to rise in America and other developed nations and is considered one of the biggest health threats in the country. What happened to make us all so big? Many environmental factors that are now an American way of life are believed to be the causes of this general increased girth.

Americans began to change factors of daily activity that made them more sedentary in the 1980's. Eating habits was the first thing. Meals that used to be eaten at home and prepared by the homemaker are now more and more often eaten in restaurants and fast food chains. Fast food portions that were standard in the 60's are two to three times larger in today's competitive restaurants. A cheeseburger in many of today's most popular sit-down restaurants can be double or triple the size of a McDonald's Big Mac, even though the popular chain has been under fire the last few years as the leading culprit for America's weight problem. Just one of these super-sized meals can be a person's entire day's necessary calories.

Obesity has also grown due to American affluence. The need to conserve goods and foods diminishes gradually as people in developed nations acquire more and more wealth. Bigger and more varied choices are now available to children as opposed to a generation or two back where a family's budget would limit this. With parents that eat out constantly because disposable income allows them to, children form their earliest eating habits with rich, high calorie restaurant foods. More Americans are less concerned about where their food comes from and concentrate more on their personal cravings in a country that produces nearly triple what it's whole population eats.

Many Americans have a sedentary lifestyle, another major factor of obesity. Nowadays, even if it is a very short distance, many Americans will drive their cars. Many people have difficulty finding the time to work out because of busy lifestyles or hectic work schedules. As technology is advanced more jobs are becoming less physically active. So now Americans who come home from work and rest because they are tired from their job will get little or no physical activity all day long.

Whether obese or not, you are still being affected by the growing obesity rate. In the airline industry, lawsuits to widen passenger seats that are brought against airlines by obese people and the extra fuel that it takes to haul all this extra weight is now costing Americans an estimated 275,000,000 dollars a year now in increased air fares. A yearly cost of 78,500,000,000 dollars is the cost of treating the number of health complications brought on by obesity, as it makes up nearly 10% of all medical expenditures. The cheeseburger bill of 2004 was introduced by lawmakers to attempt to offer some protection for food producers after lawsuits with obese plaintiffs became so prevalent.

Obesity is measured with a body mass index, or BMI. The higher the BMI, the more likely the person is to have serious health issues. There are three levels of obesity; mild obesity with a BMI of 30+, morbid obesity at BMI 40+, and malignant obesity with a BMI of 50+. A person that is forty percent overweight is twice as likely to suffer a fatal medical problem prematurely than an average person. Obesity kills an estimated 112,000 Americans per year. Just some of the possible ailments that come along with being overweight are; cancer, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, and liver disease. Swollen legs, loss of bowel control, breathing problems, and depression are just a few examples of symptoms of obesity that are not fatal but could quickly develop into that.

Michael Usry is the author of the online instructional articles "Beauty and Health in Plain English" and a top affiliate of weight loss one of the premier women's health websites.