Posted on 03/18/2005 1:11:59 AM PST by ChicagoGuy123
Researchers report that the current obesity epidemic will have a negative impact on life expectancy in the United States.
University of Illinois at Chicago researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine that obesity will cut between two to five years off life expectancy in the next 50 years.
Currently, the team said obesity reduces life expectancy by up to nine months.
U.S. life expectancy is currently 77.6 years and the predicted decline due to obesity represents more than the impact of cancer and heart disease
Longevity researcher Dr. Jay Olshansky said today's younger generation will have shorter and less healthy lives than their parents for the first time in modern history unless something is done to intervene.
The findings, if proved true could have a real impact on U.S. Social Security. "One of the consequences of our prediction is that Social Security does not appear to be in nearly as bad a shape as we think," Dr. Olshansky said in a prepared statement.
Obesity is associated with an increased risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and is the second leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.
About two-thirds of adults in the U.S. are overweight or obese and close to 30 percent of children in the country are considered overweight. The number of children diagnosed with diabetes in the U.S. has increased 10-times over the past 25 years.
Stop eating junk food or way too big portions, people! I guess this is even more toward people in Chicago, which apparently is one of the "fattest" cities.
The only problem with the article is that both of my grandmothers were very large ladies and both lived to their mid-nineties. Kind of blows the theory.
My mother is a tiny lady and is always harping on fat people until one told her that skinny people die too. That shut her up.
"Obesity is associated with an increased risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and is the second leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. "
This may come as a major shock to some folks, but living is bad for your health.
Problem is....It's to easy to eat....fast food on every block in every major city......
Next we need a study to see if there is any correlation between the fat areas and the red/blue areas.
I don't think over-eating is what the bible refers to when it talks about gluttony.
So, only nine months shorter a life span? That makes dieting hardly seem worthwhile. People get fat for many other reasons besides eating too much. Sometimes it's just genetic.
My grandmother was a very fat lady, but she lived to 101, while my other grandmother, a large-boned Polish workhorse and rancher's wife, was not fat at all, but died younger, at age 89.
In regards to my fat grandmother, she wasn't a big eater, she just got fat after having alot of kids. She was a great cook, preparing meals in the traditional Ukrainian fashion, also a farmers wife. She spent her whole life growing and cooking, preserving food for the winter, all the food for the whole extended family until she died. People don't do that anymore. Fortunately I learned to cook like she did, so the tradition lives on.
Actually, death itself is hardly the problem. What makes it so bad is the quality of life in the years preceding death. And it's the same thing with smoking.
How about a federally funded study to test the link between dependence on government programs and clinical depression as manifested in household clutter and obesity?
This story is scaring me....I need comfort food.....
Yes, yes, but when they say "obese" what are they really talking about? There are so many inconsistencies in the definition of obese I question everything they come up with.
They need to clarify what obese IS before they can make claims. I imagine there are plenty of other factors to consider other than simply a person's weight.
Obese is....when you wake up in the morning and grunt to get out of bed....
For those that read all the information available on a subject instead of just the headlines, the way "obesity" is calculated is very suspect. Additionally, we are getting fast and loose with terms like "epidemic," "crisis," etc.
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I a NYer who spends a fair amount of time in the non-Florida South (Georgia and Missisippi). My observation is that there are tons more folks down there who appear to be unhealthily overweight. Maybe it's simply because NYers walk everywhere.
Well, post 8 has this note on link: Notes: Obese is defined as having a body mass index greater than or equal to 30.0 kg/meters sq.
Here we go.....how long before bacon is illegal?
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