ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 7, 1997 TAG: 9703070039
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
Now for the good news: Experts say it would take only minor behavior changes to slow down the pudge boom.
Americans have gotten relentlessly fatter over the past two decades, despite a nationwide obsession with dieting and urgent, repeated warnings from medical experts, the latest large-scale federal survey has found.
The segment of U.S. children and adolescents classified as overweight increased by 6 percent from 1980 to 1994, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in a report published today; incidence among adults grew by 9 percent in the same period.
The latest figures indicate that, thanks to overeating and sloth, 35 percent of the country's adults now weigh dangerously more than they should, along with 14 percent of children aged 6 to 11 and 12 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17. This is the heaviest the nation has been since the government began compiling comprehensive statistics in the 1960s.
``Americans need to do better in choosing a healthy diet and a sensible plan of physical activity,'' Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said.
Many experts believe that it would take relatively modest modifications in most people's behaviors to slow the pudge boom. ``It's really important for people not to think that they have to go on strict diets or join gyms,'' said epidemiologist Cynthia Ogden of the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, which produced the study. Last July the Surgeon General issued a report recommending 30 minutes of moderate physical activity - such as walking or gardening - per day. ``Basically, it's just moving around,'' Ogden said.
Any improvement, researchers have emphasized for years, would have a substantial impact on public health because being overweight is associated with many health hazards. Obesity and related conditions are regarded as the second-leading preventable cause of death after smoking.
The latest analysis, published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, shows that several groups are at disproportionate risk. For example, among all U.S. women surveyed, 36 percent were overweight. The rate was 50 percent, however, among Mexican-American women and 52 percent in non-Hispanic black women. The rate among males - 33 percent on average - did not vary much by race or ethnicity, the researchers found.
Across the board, the report suggests, Americans simply have been getting too much chow and too little exercise. Modern life does not oblige them to walk as much or use their muscles as hard as they did even a couple of decades ago. ``Changes that result in decreased energy expenditures,'' the authors write, ``may have occurred in transportation patterns, household work and time spent in inactivity [e.g., watching television and playing electronic games].''
The definitions used for ``overweight'' in the study varied by age but were determined by people's ``body-mass index.''
An adult 5 feet 6 inches tall had to weigh at least 170 pounds to qualify. Yet one-third of adults sampled met that definition, compared with about 25 percent in the 1960s, Ogden said.
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