WORLDWIDE - obesity is threat to world health

Children who watch television five or more hours a day are five times as likely to be overweight as those who watch less than two hours a day. Time spent playing computer games and surfing the Internet in lieu of playing outside is also contributing to the surge of obesity.

A common impulse among those who are overweight is to go on a diet in an attempt to reduce caloric intake to the level of caloric use. Unfortunately, this is physiologically difficult given the abnormally low calorie use associated with many people's sedentary lifestyles. Ninety-five percent of Americans who attempt to achieve a healthy body weight by dieting alone fail.

Another manifestation of diet failure is the extent to which people are turning to liposuction to remove body fat. Resorting to this risky surgical procedure, which literally vacuums fat from under the Skin, is a desperate last measure for those whose diets have failed. In 1998, there were some 400,000 liposuction procedures in the United States.

For many of those who are overweight, achieving a healthy body weight depends on both reducing caloric intake and burning more calories through exercise. Metabolically, we are hunter-gatherers. Given our heritage, exercise may be a genetic imperative.

Restoring exercise in our daily lives will not be easy. Because they're designed for automobiles, today's cities are leading to a life-threatening level of exercise deprivation. Our health depends on creating neighborhoods that are conducive to walking, jogging and bicycling.

The challenge is to redesign communities, making public transportation the centerpiece of urban transport and augmenting it with sidewalks, jogging trails and bikeways. This also means replacing parking lots with parks, playgrounds and athletic, fields. Unless we can design an environment and develop a lifestyle that systematically restores exercise to our daily routines, the obesity epidemic--and the health deterioration associated with it--will continue to spread.

References

* Gardner, Gary and Brian Halweil, "Underfed and Overfed: The Global Epidemic of Malnutrition," Worldwatch Paper 150, Worldwatch Institute, 2000.

* Dietz, William H. "Battling Obesity: Notes from the Front," Chronic Disease Notes & Reports, 13, no. 1, (Winter 2000).

* Friedman, J.M., "Obesity in the New Millennium," Nature 404, (6 April 2000).

* Kopelman, Peter J. "Obesity as a Medical Problem," Nature 404, (6 April 2000).

* Koplan, Jeffrey O., and William H. Dietz, "Caloric Imbalance and Public Health Policy," JAMA 282, no. 16, (27 October 1999).

* Preventing Obesity Among Children, Chronic Disease Notes & Reports, 13, no. 1, (Winter 2000).

* Mokdad, Ali H. et al., "The Continuing Epidemic of Obesity in the United States," JAMA 284, no. 13, (4 October 2000).

* Popkin, Barry M. "Urbanization and the Nutrition Transition," Brief 7 in Focus 3: Achieving Urban Food and Nutrition Security in the Developing World, International Food Policy Research Institute (August 2000).