On the heels of the wake-up call from 'FED UP', the just released documentary on obesity, it is no surprise that the CDC's (U.S. Center for Disease Control) obesity statistics are grossly under reported. Meredith Luce RD, MS, LDN and Joan Breibart, two veteran diet and exercise professionals, have converted the data with the Hamwi Method used by dieticians: Adult America is 55% obese, not 35% (http://origin-qps.onstreammedia.com/origin/multivu_archive/PRNA/ENR/Physicalmind-Institute-US-Obesity-Statistics.pdf)
Worse, even the higher estimate may be too low: self-reported obesity data has a minimum 21% error rate: (http://www.bls.gov/osmr/pdf/ec140020.pdf). With this adjustment the CDC number jumps to 43% and the hamwi 55% sizes up to a whopping 66%. It is easy to verify the stats now that it's summer and people are out and uncovered. Fifty percent of the bodies will be without waists or looking like they are in the third trimester. No other conclusion is possible when the CDC's website has an average American woman at 5'4" and 163 pounds and her male counterpart at 5'9" and 196 pounds.
"America has morphed from normal sized to obese in just 50 years. And business is booming: today we have thousands of diet companies and a global Wellness Industry that we created growing at 12% annually with a Trillion in sales," says Joan Breibart.
How did we get so big in sales and size? Numerous nutrient manipulations and each builds business: sales of gluten free foods are estimated to reach $16 billion by 2016. "Eating healthy" changes constantly: butter; coffee; alcohol; fat; sugar; salt meat have all been demonized and then resurrected, causing millions to change their diets and experiment with their bodies. Pseudo-science solutions make for huge sales growth while simple, free, common sense and obvious strategies fail to gain the media's attention.
Food companies are happy to accommodate the latest food war as long as the public buys huge quantities -- perpetuating the limitless American stomach. We know that the simple, commonsense solution: eat and drink less can succeed even after decades of dieting failures. The public message should be reduce food consumption as the first goal -- even before caloric reduction -- because digesting less food lowers insulin production, an accepted contributor to excess body fat. "Keep in mind, it is the repeated stretching and over-stretching of the stomach which unbalances our ghrelin/leptin hunger regulating hormones leading us to eat too much, too often," says Meredith Luce, MS, RD, LDN.
'Fed Up' tries to rally support so the food industry immediately removes sugar from thousands of products and our government taxes sugared beverages. What can American consumers do? Pressure these corporations with their best weapon -- their purchasing power. The national mantra should be, "Close the Mouth Sooner & Open it Less Often." And for the kids, give them what they enjoy: a rap and a cartoon character.
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