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A new national report on obesity has been released this week and, as newsletters go by, things are not as good for America. The latest data from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation show that seven states are now reporting adult obesity rates above 35 percent, compared with five states last year.
Oprah may look in great shape these days – the rest of us, not so much. No states have seen declining rates of obesity, and Illinois is still ranked in 27th place, with 31% of adults suffering from obesity.
According to the TFAH, obesity is the most prevalent public health crisis in the country, resulting in an estimated annual cost of $ 149 billion in health care and $ 66 billion in productivity costs, such as workplace absenteeism. working.
"Obesity is a major challenge in almost every state, and our role as public health leaders is to make sure we do everything in our power to address it," said John Wiesman, president of the Ministry of Health. Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
Wiesman and others who are working to raise awareness of this problem say that there are measures to fight the crisis effectively. The problem is that these measures are not applied in the same way; According to the latest report, your obesity factors can be predicted by only one factor: your postal code.
In this way, the figures for obesity seem to reinforce perceptions of places to an almost comical degree. Colorado, a state of the outdoors with a lifestyle that seems to focus on health and physical activity: the lowest obesity rates in the country, with a relatively slender incidence of 22% in adults. Iowa, famous for a state fair that relies heavily on art made from butter: still heavy, at 36%.
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Not for nothing Oprah, known for a long time for its fights with the weight, abandons Chicago, more robust, to move in California (with a rate of obesity of only 25%). But the numbers go beyond the lifestyle.
Obesity, tragically, is another story of haves and have-nots. A 2008 study by the Sinai Urban Health Institute showed that in Chicago, obesity rates were three times higher in a West Side Hispanic community and five times higher in African American communities on the south side only in a predominantly white neighborhood. North Coast.
Many factors influence the data, including the lack of safe spaces to practice and the availability of healthy food choices in affected neighborhoods, not just a food justice issue, but a major health inequity for these communities. .
"The good news is that there is growing evidence that some prevention programs can reverse these trends," said John Auerbach, president and CEO of Trust for America's Health. These programs, detailed in a list of 40 recommended actions include 60 minutes of mandatory physical education time in schools, healthy standards for school lunches and snacks, redesigned dietary guidelines for all Americans, Medicare coverage for anti-obesity training and the elimination of Auerbach warns, "we will not see any significant decline in national and national obesity rates as long as they will not implemented throughout the country and will receive sustainable support ".
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