Word: overweightness
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...fact, the latest results from a long-term study conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the number of Americans who are seriously overweight, after holding steady for 20 years at about a quarter of the population, jumped to one-third in the 1980s, an increase of more than 30%. According to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, some 58 million people in the U.S. weigh at least 20% more than their ideal body weight -- making them, in the unforgiving terminology of dietary science, obese...
Moreover, there are alarming signs that the next generation may be in even worse shape by the time it comes of age. The percentage of teens who are overweight, which held steady at about 15% through the 1970s, rose to 21% by 1991. "The kids eat nothing but junk food," says Liam Hennessey, a special- ed teacher from San Francisco who watches students on school trips open the lunches their parents pack for them, gobble up the Oreos and Pop-Tarts and toss out the sandwiches...
...Department of Health unveiled the Healthy People 2000 Goals, an ambitious framework of 22 programs aimed at disease prevention. One goal was to reduce the percentage of overweight Americans from 25% to 20% by the turn of the century. It was, for the Bush Administration, an unusually activist experiment in preventive medicine, with the added purpose of helping curb health costs. Now the U.S. is not only unlikely to meet that target, says Robert Kuczmarski, lead author of the big CDC study, "but it's going in the opposite direction." Just when the country needs to reduce its health-care...
...obesity, especially in rural areas and among certain racial and ethnic groups. The CDC study found that the prevalence of obesity was nearly 50% for black and Mexican-American women -- compared with 33.5% for white women. In some Native American communities, up to 70% of adults are dangerously overweight...
They say we're a race of orally compulsive piggies. At least this seems to be the going explanation for America's latest leap into pandemic obesity -- 33% of U.S. adults 20 years of age or older are estimated to be overweight. It almost doesn't matter what we eat, the obesity experts say. Give us low-fat foodstuffs, and we'll binge on them in megacalorie doses; turn your back for a moment, and we'll be scarfing down a Mallomar or whatever other substance comes to hand. What we really need is love, according to the mass-neurosis...