It’s no longer a secret that the United States has a really big issue with obesity. Fast food chains and sugar based beverage companies, tagged along with sweets retailers have been longtime taking the blame for it. Coupled with lack of exercise, stressful lives, medication and poor education on nutrition, the rate of obesity in the United States is expected to double. By 2030, 42% of Americans will be obese.
This Monday, a dire forecast was released showing that the problem of obesity is not even close to a solution. Obesity specialist Dr. William Dietz with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the data shows the United States has “a very serious problem”.
The study was presented during a two day conference in Washington, called “Weight of the Nation”. The data presented is dire: by 2030 42% Americans will be obese. Justin G. Trogdon, one of the researchers behind the study, said: “If we don’t do anything, this is going to really hinder any efforts to contain future health-care costs”.
One quarter of that will be under the severely obese category, pushing health care costs up through the roof. This means that the number of obese Americans will double and so will the medical costs, estimated to reach $549.5 billion. At this point, as scientists say, any kind of improvements would allow for substantial savings.
But improvements are more challenging that imagined. The average American is struggling hard enough to find fresh vegetables and fruits at affordable prices, while keeping the bank account at a sustainable level. Unemployment, gas prices, groceries, eating and exercising education as well as the very affordable fast food, are all factors that make it hard to imagine Americans will change their ways in the following 18 years.
The estimate is based on the investigation of several studies and data that were collected starting as back as 1990. The study covers everything the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System had registered until 2008. You can read it all in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and see for yourself the factors at blame for the United States’ obesity problem.
