Pudginess Plague

Do you remember the game “Where’s Waldo?” “Where’s Waldo?” was essentially a game of hide and seek on the page, the object of the game being to find Waldo. Waldo was in plain sight usually, but among a huge group of people, making it difficult to spot him.

There was a time when I could spend hours looking for that skinny, bespectacled character. One of the toughest “Where’s Waldos?” puzzles was one where everyone was dressed as Waldo; you had to find the actual Waldo.
Now imagine a country where everyone was the same. Because if things don’t change dramatically, we could all be living in a Waldo world by 2048.

No, I’m not saying we’ll all be dressed as Waldo or even look the same, but research suggests that if obesity trends continue to rise as they are now, the entire country will be overweight in 40 years. Everyone.

That’s probably hard to believe – for me included, as I and many I associate with put a high priority on health and maintaining a proper weight – but a government-funded study, published in the journal Obesity, says this is exactly what will happen if the trend continues at its current pace.

Today, according to the study, approximately two-thirds of American adults are overweight – that’s 66 percent! And if you thought that number was high, nearly 80 percent of African-American women in the country are considered overweight or obese! If that trend continues without change, the study projects, all African-American women will be considered overweight or obese in just 26 years. The prevalence of obesity is also quite significant among Mexican-American men.

Researchers came to these sobering conclusions after reviewing 30 years worth of government-funded survey data, stretching from the 1970s to 2004.

I grant you that these are just projections. As any researcher will tell you, projections often prove to be false. But at the very least, this study shows how prevalent obesity has become in this country and will continue being an issue if things aren’t done to change the “growing” trend.

What can be done? As the researchers say, it has to be more than imploring people to lose weight and start exercising. Clearly, such implorations aren’t working. The researchers say that more proactive steps need to be taken by state governments that make exercising daily and eating healthy easier. Government officials on Beacon Hill in Massachusetts deserve plaudits after recently installing more bicycle paths in and around the Boston area. Kudos to the California Legislature as well for their stance against trans fat and the law that forbids restaurants from using them (effective in 2010).

I’m not one that likes the government – federal, state or local – becoming involved in people’s lives. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, the most effective government is the one that governs least. But obesity is a lifestyle that affects all of us. For example, according to the researchers, the projections indicate that one in every six dollars spent in this country on healthcare will go toward diseases and conditions attributable to obesity if growing waistlines don’t start shrinking. And if universal healthcare is something the United States will be adopting – as some political pundits believe – then the government needs to get involved because one’s physical size will have an even larger impact on how others’ tax dollars are spent than today.

But society can prevent all this from happening… if it collectively decides to do what’s best for its survival: Make the notion of a “pudginess plague” an unrealistic projection.