All this talk of fat is starting to get to me. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held a conference last week on the bulging waistlines of Americans. That meeting came amid some unsettling news about the growth of fatness in this country. Two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese, and one in five children ages 6-11 is overweight, the CDC reported.
If you don't think that should concern you, consider this: Conference attendees were told the cost of treating obesity-related diseases rose from $74 billion in 1998 to $147 billion in 2008. Almost half of this medical bill is being paid with taxpayer dollars through Medicare and Medicaid.
Special-interest groups, such as the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, have stepped forward to defend the interests of portly people. The rise in obesity has also spawned talk of "fatism," which is the discrimination that fat people are made to suffer.
Weight controversy
Fatism, I suspect, is to blame for the criticism President Obama got for nominating Alabama Dr. Regina Benjamin as surgeon general. Her selection sends the wrong message, critics say. On the CDC's fat meter, Benjamin wouldn't pass the Barbie doll test for thinness. But in a club Saturday night, or a church pew Sunday morning, Benjamin might be seen, quite favorably, as pleasingly plump.
In official Washington, however, she should be judged only on her ability to help shape health care policies, not the size of her dress -- or how she appears to others.
If being overweight is as big a problem as the CDC says it is -- and there are some who disagree -- Benjamin has a difficult job ahead of her. She has to make the case for losing weight to a nation of people who are culturally conditioned to pile on extra pounds. That's because we're a country overrun with people who think life is a spectator sport.
Organized sports lacking
When I was in high school, virtually every student took physical education twice a week. Now few students do. I spent a good part of the summers of my youth playing organized sports in my hometown's public recreation centers. Now such places around this country are shuttered -- or are grossly understaffed.
Too many young people spend too much time sitting in front of a television set, or surfing the Internet, but not enough time in physical activities. Too many adults would rather watch a sport than play it, or ride a short distance than walk. Too many of them treat home exercise equipment like furniture, instead of like, well, exercise equipment. Too many of us stopped treating food as fuel long ago. Eating is too often a social event, or a response to some emotional stimulus.
All of these things, I'm convinced, are making us fat. So diet and exercise alone won't reduce the waistlines of Americans -- not without societal change.
The sedentary life most people in this country live is an outgrowth of the culture that was spawned by the so-called "information age." America has been transformed by the computer and the window it has opened onto the broader world.
The Internet and cable television have turned us into couch potatoes who view the world from the comfort of an armchair, or the convenience of a home office computer. And for too many of these people, the idea of exercise -- real physical exercise -- is a lost concept.
It's going to take a huge cultural shift, not a svelte surgeon general, to change this.
DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.
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