Wes Dudgeon, assistant professor of exercise science, wasn’t surprised by a recent study that found a large portion of the world’s population is fat and getting fatter and that Americans are leading the charge.
Wes Dudgeon
In fact, Dudgeon just returned from the Annual Meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine/5th World Congress on Exercise, where lecture and presentation titles such as “Move to Live! Should Couches be Sold with a Health Warning” and “Obesity is Now a Disease: Is Exercise or Weight Loss the Best Treatment,” made clear that obesity is a global health crisis.
About 671 million people, roughly one-third of the world’s population, are considered obese, meaning they have a body mass index of 30 or higher. America is by far the fattest country, with some 87 million obese people, according to the obesity study in the medical journal The Lancet.
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Dudgeon explains why declining activity levels, poor diets and cultural shifts are causing Americans’ waist sizes to expand and what can be done about it.
Q: What are the biggest contributors to the obesity epidemic in the U.S.?
A: It is impossible to determine the exact cause(s) of obesity, as the millions of dollars in research money each year suggest, but I think experts agree that the two main contributors would be lack of exercise/physical activity and diet.
Not to exclude those with genuine medical causes of obesity, but those folks typically need interventions beyond just changes in activity and diet.
Physical activity continues to decline in the lives of Americans. A recent report by Dr. Tim Church and colleagues estimates that from 1968-2008 the number of calories expended during a day’s work has decreased by 140 for men and 124 for women. Further, Dr. Ed Archer and colleagues recently showed that from 1965-2010 household activity dropped by 12.5 hours, equaling another 250 calories not burned each day.
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So, regardless of diet, it appears that over the last roughly 40 years, adults are burning around 350-400 fewer calories per day in job and household activities. This may not look alarming at first glance, but multiply 400 calories by 365 days and, well, you get the picture!
While the physical activity habits of Americans have changed drastically over the last 40 years, so has the American diet. Gone are the days of making food from raw ingredients, replaced by quick, easy and usually unhealthy choices. We are in an unprecedented time in the history of the United States where food is almost universally available (133 billion pounds of available food was wasted in 2010 according to the USDA) due in large part to improvements in agriculture. We have seen the explosive use of corn in many of the foods we eat and yields from soybeans have greatly increased.
While the availability of affordable food is commendable, the impact of these foods on our health is yet to be seen. It is obvious that in order for foods to remain “fresh” on our grocers’ shelves or in our pantries they must be altered from their original form or have preservatives added. One example would be the hydrogenation of vegetable oils (very cheap compared to animal fats), which changes these liquids to solids. The most common example of this process is margarine. While it may be beneficial to take cheap food sources and apply them to many different cooking/eating applications, the impact on our health is drastic, as these foods have a strong link with heart disease.
Q: With the increased attention in recent years on issues such as childhood obesity and new trends in exercise and diets, why aren’t things getting better?
A: The U.S. is blessed with more resources than many countries around the world. However, our excess may be to our detriment. Speaking in generalities, most of us can afford cars, so we chose to drive to work rather than walk or cycle. Many of us work longer hours to have more (of just about everything!), so we choose fast/easy foods, which are usually more calorie dense and less nutritious.
On the flip side, those in the U.S. who are struggling to get by are many times forced to purchase cheaper foods. However, these cheaper foods tend to be more processed – whether it be a fast food burger or processed food at the market – and detrimental to our health when eaten regularly. This becomes a question of lifestyle choice, legislation (to make healthy foods more affordable), and personal responsibility. It’s really a complex issue.
Q: What will it take to solve this problem?
A: Given the complex nature of obesity, the solution is also complex. Some common suggestions from the literature about steps to maintain a healthy weight include:
- Increase exercise/physical activity to 150 minutes per week (250 minutes per week for weight loss) [ACSM]
- Increase vegetable consumption to 2.5-3 cups per day [USDA]
- Increase fruit consumption to 1.5-2 cups per day [USDA]
- Make more foods from scratch and thus choose less processed foods
