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NEW YORK (Reuters) - America's obesity epidemic is so deeply rooted that it will take dramatic and systemic measures - from overhauling farm policies and zoning laws to, possibly, introducing a soda tax - to fix it, the influential Institute of Medicine said on Tuesday.

In an ambitious 478-page report, the IOM refutes the idea that obesity is largely the result of a lack of willpower on the part of individuals. Instead, it embraces policy proposals that have met with stiff resistance from the food industry and lawmakers, arguing that multiple strategies will be needed to make the U.S. environment less "obesogenic."

The IOM, part of the National Academies, offers advice to the government and others on health issues. Its report was released at the Weight of the Nation conference, a three-day meeting hosted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cable channel HBO will air a documentary of the same name next week.

"People have heard the advice to eat less and move more for years, and during that time a large number of Americans have become obese," committee member Shiriki Kumanyika of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine told Reuters. "That advice will never be out of date. But when you see the increase in obesity you ask, what changed? And the answer is, the environment. The average person cannot maintain a healthy weight in this obesity-promoting environment."

A study funded by the CDC and released on Monday projected that by 2030, 42 percent of American adults will be obese, compared to 34 percent today and 11 percent will be severely obese, compared to 6 percent today.
http://news.yahoo.com/obesity-fight-mus ... ector.html

Most of my favorite factoids about obesity are historical ones, and they don’t make it into the new, four-part HBO documentary on the subject, The Weight of the Nation. Absent, for instance, is the fact that the very first childhood-obesity clinic in the United States was founded in the late 1930s at Columbia University by a young German physician, Hilde Bruch. As Bruch later told it, her inspiration was simple: she arrived in New York in 1934 and was “startled” by the number of fat kids she saw—“really fat ones, not only in clinics, but on the streets and subways, and in schools.”



What makes Bruch’s story relevant to the obesity problem today is that this was New York in the worst year of the Great Depression, an era of bread lines and soup kitchens, when 6 in 10 Americans were living in poverty. The conventional wisdom these days—promoted by government, obesity researchers, physicians, and probably your personal trainer as well—is that we get fat because we have too much to eat and not enough reasons to be physically active. But then why were the PC- and Big Mac–-deprived Depression-era kids fat? How can we blame the obesity epidemic on gluttony and sloth if we easily find epidemics of obesity throughout the past century in populations that barely had food to survive and had to work hard to earn it?

These seem like obvious questions to ask, but you won’t get the answers from the anti-obesity establishment, which this month has come together to unfold a major anti-fat effort, including The Weight of the Nation, which begins airing May 14 and “a nationwide community-based outreach campaign.” The project was created by a coalition among HBO and three key public-health institutions: the nonprofit Institute of Medicine, and two federal agencies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Indeed, it is unprecedented to have the IOM, CDC, and NIH all supporting a single television documentary, says producer John Hoffmann. The idea is to “sound the alarm” and motivate the nation to act.

At its heart is a simple “energy balance” idea: we get fat because we consume too many calories and expend too few. If we could just control our impulses—or at least control our environment, thereby removing temptation—and push ourselves to exercise, we’d be fine. This logic is everywhere you look in the official guidelines, commentary, and advice. “The same amount of energy IN and energy OUT over time = weight stays the same,” the NIH website counsels Americans, while the CDC site tells us, “Overweight and obesity result from an energy imbalance.”

The problem is, the solutions this multi-level campaign promotes are the same ones that have been used to fight obesity for a century—and they just haven’t worked. “We are struggling to figure this out,” NIH Director Francis Collins conceded to Newsweek last week. When I interviewed CDC obesity expert William Dietz back in 2001, he told me that his primary accomplishment had been getting childhood obesity “on the map.” “It’s now widely recognized as a major health problem in the United States,” he said then—and that was 10 years and a few million obese children ago.

Mickey O'neil wrote:I'm not gonna lie. Except for the ones I know personally, and they somewhat disgust me, I fucking hate fat people. Hipsters aren't far behind.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:No.

It would take a complete elimination of welfare for able-bodied individuals, child care creches, and a return to agricultural society and the social unit of 'small town'.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:MICKEY, if you hate hipsters, go check out Dunn's favorite band. You might get on your 14" mountain bike and ride until you find him, then punch him in the balls....hahaah.

Ed Zachary wrote:

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:MICKEY, if you hate hipsters, go check out Dunn's favorite band. You might get on your 14" mountain bike and ride until you find him, then punch him in the balls....hahaah.

LOL

Shaf is on fire today.

BucketHead wrote:Jezzy, I gotta call bullshit. Does Taubes have any evidence that there was a childhood obesity problem in the 30s?

Bruch began researching obesity in children in 1937. Her work in this area would prove to be groundbreaking. Yet she left this research in 1941 to study psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University. Returning to New York in 1943, she established a private psychoanalytic practice and joined the faculty at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. While at Columbia, she published Don't Be Afraid of Your Child: A Guide for Perplexed Parents (1952).

In New York, and at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, where she joined the faculty in 1964, Bruch's research increasingly focused on the underlying causes of anorexia nervosa. She published both scholarly and popular articles on eating disorders, schizophrenia, and psychoanalysis, and continued to see patients until her 80th birthday. Her collected work, published as Eating Disorders: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa and the Person Within in 1973, is still considered a definitive work on the subject. Bruch died in Houston in December, 1984.

BucketHead wrote:She was a phych looking at eating disorders!

Fuck Taubes

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:No.

It would take a complete elimination of welfare for able-bodied individuals, child care creches, and a return to agricultural society and the social unit of 'small town'.

In American society today, they are going to be unable to legislate obesity reduction...Saw a 400# asshole come out of Walmart with a bag full of chips and the .$69 2L soda bottles with his bridge card in the other hand.

I say you get no diabeetus treatment if you give the beetus to yourself...no fucking amigos, or wheelchairs either.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - America's obesity epidemic is so deeply rooted that it will take dramatic and systemic measures - from overhauling farm policies and zoning laws to, possibly, introducing a soda tax - to fix it, the influential Institute of Medicine said on Tuesday.

Alfred_E._Neuman wrote:Our farm policies are what give us corporate agriculture that provides us with high fructose everything at damn near no cost at the consumer level. That's why you can get a half gallon belly washer soda for $.50 to go with your trash bag size bag of doritos.

Alfred_E._Neuman wrote:[Our farm policies are what give us corporate agriculture that provides us with high fructose everything at damn near no cost at the consumer level.

Men:
Height (inches): 69.4
Weight (pounds): 194.7
Waist circumference (inches): 39.7

Women:
Height (inches): 63.8
Weight (pounds): 164.7
Waist circumference (inches): 37.0

Dave Chesser wrote:I love it! My customer base will explode. For once I made a smart career decision. At the rate this is going, I might even be able to retire.

Alfred_E._Neuman wrote:At some point we will have to make a decision as a society as to whether or not we can treat diseases that people directly bring upon themselves. That goes for the beetus from a diet of soda to lung cancer from smoking 2 packs a day.

Terry B. wrote:

Dave Chesser wrote:I love it! My customer base will explode. For once I made a smart career decision. At the rate this is going, I might even be able to retire.

Dialysis machines? Fast food chain? Wheelchairs?

terra wrote:

Alfred_E._Neuman wrote:At some point we will have to make a decision as a society as to whether or not we can treat diseases that people directly bring upon themselves. That goes for the beetus from a diet of soda to lung cancer from smoking 2 packs a day.

We are already past that point (current generation will never pay off the bill for the healthcare of the baby boomers), but no government is brave enough to make the call.

Tax will sort it out. Money talks... No, money shouts.
Health tax!

Having spent time with ex-pat Scandinavians, who seem healthy and fit to a number.
The answer seems to be, esteem in self, a love of being outdoors/in nature, the ability to actually cook well and (I can't believe i'm saying this) - military service.
Plus smashingly hot blonde girls to relentlessly shag.