By: Laura Meyers
In a new report released by the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, researches say that now more Americans are obese as opposed to simply overweight.
In other words, we’re a bunch of fatties.
Based on a data collection between 2007 and 2012, as part of the NAtional Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, researches tallied that 67.6 million Americans over the age of 25 are obese while 65.2 million Americans of the same age are overweight.
And sorry ladies, but women are way more likely to be obese than overweight, with 37% of women in the former category and 30% in the latter. Two out every three women in the U.S. were above a normal weight, the reports says.
I blame the patriarchy.
African Americans had the highest rates of obesity among both men 39% and women 57%. And 17% of black women and 7% of black men were extremely obese, meaning their body mass index was over 40.
Extremely obese. ‘Murica.
The study says that with Mexican Americans, 38% of men and 43% of women are obese.
For whites, 35% of men and 34% of women were obese.
“This is a wake-up call to implement policies and practices designed to combat overweight and obesity,” said study co-author Lin Yang, a research associate in Washington University’s Prevention Research Center.
Or how about no? Maybe it’s kinda cool that people have so much access to food that overeating is a thing, opposed to starvation, when one in nine people on earth don’t have enough food.
When Britain’s heaviest man died this week at the age of 33, weighing 900 pounds, I didn’t think “Man, where were the feds to regulate that man’s 60 oz. Big Gulp?”
Instead, I think “Man, what kind of sick addiction did this guy have to food, how could his family or friends have helped him, and how come he was allowed to collect disability benefits for nearly 15 years like this?”
I also wonder, “How many Big Macs would it take to get to 900 pounds and where is the nearest McDonalds, because now I’m hungry.”
