If you are overweight or obese, it’s probably not your fault alone. Personal responsibility plays a part, but you’re fighting an uphill battle in a society that revolves around eating too much and moving too little.
If you’re overweight or obese, it’s not just your problem. Health problems related to obesity consume 10 percent of the state’s Medicaid budget, according to Dr. Jason Eberhart-Phillips, Kansas State Health Officer. That’s money that, in the current economic climate, the state would like to have for other purposes. The direct medical cost of obesity in the United States is $147 billion, he said.
Kansas is now the 16th most obese state in the fattest nation on earth, according to figures released last month by the Trust for America’s Health. The level of adult obesity in Kansas jumped from less than 15 percent in the mid-1990s to about 29 percent today. What happened to nearly double the obesity rate in about 15 years and triple the childhood obesity rate in a generation?
“We’re eating far more calories, about 300 to 500 more per day, and we’ve engineered so much physical activity out of our lives there are fewer and fewer opportunities to burn the calores,” Eberhart-Phillips explained.
Since the 1960s, consumption of carbonated beverages has increased by 500 percent, the single largest change in calorie consumption. Among young people, sodas have displaced healthier foods like lowfat milk, putting all but about 14 percent of teenage girls at risk for developing osteoporosis when they reach menopause.
Personal responsibility to eat healthy foods and maintain an exercise program isn’t enough and education isn’t enough, according to Eberhart-Phillips.
“It’s about changing the culture, the physical environment and the policy environment to make it easier to acquire and enjoy healthy foods,” he believes.
He argues that he is not advocating the legislation of one’s eating habits nor interfering with free enterprise. He is adamant, however, about the need for change.
“Obesity is now so prevalent that it threatens to undermine our nation’s future prosperity,” he wrote as director of health for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. “Obesity is everyone’s problem, and together we need to get serious about finding solutions that will work for Kansas.”
