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Obesity means having a Body Mass Index, or BMI, of over 30, or in common
parlance being at least 30 pounds overweight. The trend is very alarming.
Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in this country. Between 1991 and 1998
– in less than a decade – the proportion of obese people in the United
States has increased 50%; from 12 percent to 17.9 percent. Some groups –
people between the ages of 18 and 29, Hispanics, and people with some college
education – accounted for the largest increases. The largest regional
increases were in the South.
Obesity is much less common among college graduates than among the rest of
the population. A college education translates into a variety of income and
lifestyle advantages that make this so. For example, a recent survey of American
adults found that 37% of college graduates participate in regular physical
activities, while only 18% of people who did not graduate from high school do
so. This is quite a departure from the early years of this century, when
lower-income people incorporated more physical activity into their daily lives
through labor and walking, while higher-income people had the luxury of being
lazier and eating richer diets.
Currently, nearly 248,000 of deaths among adults each year – 11.6% of all
deaths – are attributed to obesity. If prevalence rates were the same for
everyone as they are for college graduates, 73,000 deaths (or 3 percent of all
deaths), could be averted. |
