An epidemic that can be controlled

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12:51 PM Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Just in time for your New Year’s resolution planning pleasure, a new report reveals, sadly, what many of us already know all too well: Ohio is fat and getting fatter.

Emory University’s health care economist Ken Thorpe predicts that half of adult Ohioans will be obese in 10 years. Not just fat. Obese.

Currently Ohio is weighing in at 34 percent of the population considered obese — that is, with a body mass index of 30 or higher. Thorpe, executive director of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease, says that rate will rise to 50.9 percent in 2018 — if we continue to have our cake, eat it and then look around for another cake.

Some ironies to consider:

• Americans love to complain about our dependence on foreign oil and rising gas prices, but are loath to leave the car parked and walk to a destination — or use a bicycle for trips to the store. Lack of physical exercise is one of the primary causes of obesity.

• While two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that 49 million Americans didn’t have enough to eat last year, an increase of 13 million since 2007. That’s the highest rate of hunger in the U.S. since the government began tracking it. Those contradictory statistics likely are related to struggling families’ reliance on cheap, high-calorie foods, rather than healthier fruits and vegetables.

• Our nation is engrossed in a furious debate over health care reform, and yet we have the key to reducing many health costs in our hands — and in our stomachs. If Ohio’s obesity rate hits 50.9 by 2018, each adult’s lifetime health costs will rise by $1,877, according to Thorpe. “This study demonstrates that, as policy-makers seek to make health care more affordable, addressing the obesity epidemic is vital,” he said. “It threatens to ‘break the bank’ of our health care system. ...”

Experts say that more than 85 percent of all diabetes cases are due to excess weight. Coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes, cancer, arthritis and a host of other diseases can often be traced to your weight. “They are not to be taken lightly,” says weight expert Steven Arnold. “These are epidemic numbers. ... We are dying.”

And the worst part? What are we doing to our children?

Academic Pediatrics has reported that the rates of severe childhood obesity have tripled in the last 25 years. “No wonder some scientists have said that this might be the first generation of Americans in 200 years to have shorter life spans than their parents,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said earlier this year.

The warning signs couldn’t be clearer. Will we put down our forks and listen? We can’t afford not to.

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