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Nationally, more than 30 percent of adults are obese. The South and Midwest have the highest adult obesity rates, making up 23 of the 25 states with rates now topping 30 percent. In 42 states, blacks have obesity rates of 30 percent or more, as do Hispanics in 30 states. Obesity rates of 30 percent or more among whites are found in 13 states. In addition, nearly 17 percent of 2- to year-olds and more than 8 percent of children aged 2 to 5 are obese, according to the report. The highest obesity rate was posted in Arkansas, at Colorado had the lowest rate, at In three states -- Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia -- the obesity rate was greater than 35 percent. Obesity And The United States Healthcare System

From the 16th century to the 19th, scurvy killed around 2 million sailors, more than warfare, shipwrecks and syphilis combined. It was an ugly, smelly death, too, beginning with rattling teeth and ending with a body so rotted out from the inside that its victims could literally be startled to death by a loud noise. Just as horrifying as the disease itself, though, is that for most of those years, medical experts knew how to prevent it and simply failed to.

Nearly 17 percent of 2- to 19-year-olds and over 8 percent of children aged 2 to 5 are obese

The British Navy, wary of the cost of expanding the treatment, turned to malt wort, a mashed and cooked byproduct of barley which had the advantage of being cheaper but the disadvantage of doing nothing whatsoever to cure scurvy. Ina British doctor named James Lind conducted an experiment where he gave one group of sailors citrus slices and the others vinegar or seawater or cider. The crewmen who ate fruit improved so quickly that they were able to help care for the others as they languished. Lind published his findings, but died before anyone got around to implementing them nearly 50 years later.

Why Is Junk Food Better Than Fast Food

This kind of myopia repeats throughout history. The first confirmed death from asbestos exposure was recorded inbut the U. Every discovery in public health, no matter how significant, must compete with the traditions, assumptions and financial incentives of the society implementing it.

Which brings us to one of the largest gaps between science and practice in our own time. Years from now, we will look back in horror at the counterproductive ways we addressed the obesity epidemic and the barbaric ways we treated fat people—long after we knew there was a better path. About 40 years ago, Americans started getting much larger. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 80 percent of adults and about one-third of children now Obesity And The United States Healthcare System the clinical definition of overweight or obese. Obesity, we are told, is a personal failing that strains our health care system, shrinks our GDP and saps our military strength. It is also an excuse to bully fat people in one sentence and then inform them in the next that you are doing it for their own good.

Nearly half of 3- to 6- year old girls say they worry about being fat. The emotional costs are incalculable. I have never written a story where so many of my sources cried during interviews, where they double- and triple-checked that I would not reveal their names, where they shook with Healthhcare describing their interactions with doctors and strangers and their own families. My interest in this issue is slightly more than journalistic.

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Last year, for the first time, we talked about read article weight in detail. For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Sinceresearch has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back Obesity And The United States Healthcare System than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. As early asresearch showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism—a body-wide starvation response that blasts you with hunger hormones and drops your internal temperature until you rise back to your highest weight.

The second big lesson the medical establishment has learned and rejected over and over again is that weight and health are not perfect synonyms.]