Why We're Losing the War Against Obesity

American Demographics, Dec 1, 2003 by Louise Witt

Byline: LOUISE WITT

The first time Krista Pournaras, 16, remembers dieting was when she was 6 years old. She was gaining weight like "mad," packing on 30 pounds in one year alone. By second grade, it was obvious Pournaras was fat. That's when her mother, Lynn Katekovich, a nurse, took her to a pediatrician, who put the young girl on a strict diet that didn't allow any between-meal snacks, not even an apple.

That diet didn't work. Neither did the others. Pournaras went on low-fat diets, she tried Weight Watchers, she even took diet pills. She'd bike around the neighborhood, go to the gym and swim at the local YMCA. Pournaras would lose a few pounds, but then she'd gain them back or gain even more. This year, when Pournaras, who stands slightly taller than 5' 2", started her junior year at the local vo-tech in Conway, Pa., north of Pittsburgh, she weighed 245 pounds. She couldn't play with her dogs without becoming short of breath and feeling achy. This summer Pournaras discovered her weight had seriously affected her health: She had high blood pressure and elevated insulin levels, putting her at risk for Type 2 diabetes, and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, a condition in which a female has heightened levels of testosterone.

After Katekovich, who owns a medical staffing company, found out her daughter was likely to develop heart disease and diabetes, she cried. That's when she decided to talk to her about having bariatric surgery. Katekovich and her two sisters had had the drastic procedure in January 2003. Since then, the 44-year-old Katekovich, who had weighed 264, has lost 100 pounds. With bariatric surgery the stomach is reduced by 90 percent - to the size of the top joint of the thumb - and the large intestines are bypassed. On Nov. 12, Dr. Philip Schauer, director of Bariatric Surgery at Magee Women's Hospital in Pittsburgh, operated on Pournaras.

"I was against the surgery," Pournaras says. "But my mom and Dr. Schauer talked to me and said that if I didn't do something about my health, I'd die much younger, younger than usual. I want to be happier about myself and not have as many health problems."

Getting Worse Faster

Pournaras's extreme solution may be unusual, but her weight problem isn't. About 9 million children and adolescents in the U.S. are overweight or obese. That's roughly 15 percent of the children and adolescents between the ages of 6 and 19 who are overweight or obese, according to the latest data compiled during 1999 and 2000 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. Health officials and physicians blame children's poor eating habits - having supersized portions of junk food and sweetened soft drinks - and physical inactivity, such as watching TV, playing video games or clicking away on PCs, instead of playing. Just take a look at the numbers from a little more than 30 years earlier to see how rapidly children's health has deteriorated: In a similar CDC survey taken from 1971 to 1974, 4 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 11 were overweight or obese, and 6 percent of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19 were overweight or obese.

And, the nation's obesity problem will only worsen. As today's young people grow older, it's estimated that 3 in 4 overweight children will become fat adults and will suffer from obesity-related diseases at earlier ages than previous generations. Already, about two-thirds of all adults are overweight and about 31 percent of those are considered obese. Generally, if someone weighs more than 30 pounds above his ideal weight, then he's considered obese. The CDC considers someone overweight if his body mass index, or BMI, a calculation based on height and weight, is more than 25. If a person's BMI is over 30, then he is considered obese. Health officials have now deemed obesity in America a health epidemic.

By 2010, only six years away, about 40 percent of all adult Americans, or 68 million, will be obese. If trends continue, almost every single American will be overweight, or obese, (except the few that are genetically prone to have higher metabolisms) by 2040, says John Foreyt, director of Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "It may happen more quickly," he says. "Twenty years ago, it was unusual to see a 300-pound person in my clinic, now we see it all the time. And it used to be we'd see obesity only in adults, but now we see it in children. This may be the first generation of children who will die before their parents."

Foreyt based his projections on data collected from the CDC's Health and Nutritional Examination Surveys, which record actual weights and heights of Americans surveyed, showing that the U.S. population has become much heavier in the past 20 years. In 1980, 46 percent of the adult population was overweight or obese. In 1990, 56 percent was overweight or obese. In 2000, the percent jumped to 64.5 percent. That's 1 percentage point gain a year. Foreyt says part of the problem is that Americans eat 200 more calories a day than they did 10 years ago. Over a year, those extra calories add up to 20 pounds.