Weight Matters

The scales don't lie.

Despite all the publicity and hand-wringing about American obesity, we're now fatter than ever. According to a report issued this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30% or more of the people in 9 states are now obese. This figure is up from 2007 when only 3 states reported this rate.

The maps that accompany the report, published in The New York Times, show a fungus-like disease spreading throughout the South, starting in Louisiana and Mississippi and moving northward to Missouri on the west and to West Virginia on the east. The fungus skirts North Carolina, though we are just one notch below the others, with 25-30% of our population obese. Frankly, no state comes out a winner: not a single state met the "Healthy People 2010" obesity target of 15%.

When reports such as these are issued,I often think back to my childhood and recall that almost no kids were fat. Those who were would be considered, by today's standards, pleasantly plump. Why is it so different now? We see overweight children and adults everywhere we go, from doctor's offices to grocery stores to elementary schools.

It's odd, too, that obesity is rising in our culture at a time when abnormal and unhealthy thinness is still considered the ideal. Rates of eating disorders in the United States are alarming. The incidence in anorexia among young women ages 15-19 has risen every decade since 1930. And up to 24 million Americans of all ages and genders suffer from eating disorders.

Clearly we have an unhealthy relationship to food and body image, and these have only gotten worse. What will it take to change?