In America, the Very Fat Are Getting Fatter

[TexasStooge]

CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) - The proportion of Americans who are severely obese, weighing 100 pounds or more than they should, has quadrupled in recent years, to one in 50 adults from one in 200, a study reported on Monday.

"The most dramatic part of the 'obesity epidemic' has remained hidden, namely, that the prevalence of clinically severe obesity is increasing twice as fast as the prevalence of obesity," said Roland Sturm of the RAND Corp., in Santa Monica, California.

According to a Journal of the American Medical Association Web site, a person is considered obese when the extra pounds they carry around add up to more than 30 percent of their ideal body weight.

About one in five Americans is considered obese. While that problem has gotten publicity, the growth in the severely obese has gone unnoticed, Sturm said.

"Clinically severe obesity, far from being a pathological condition that only affects a fixed percentage of genetically vulnerable individuals, appears to be an integral part of the U.S. population's weight distribution," he said.

The finding is significant, Sturm said, because people who weigh 100 to 200 pounds or more than they should suffer different health problems. Many doctors' offices and hospitals are not equipped for severely obese patients, who may not fit standard imaging equipment, operating tables or wheel chairs, the study said.

"Accommodating severely obese patients will no longer be a rare event, and providers have to prepare to treat such patients on a regular basis," he added.

The typical severely obese man weighs 300 pounds at a height of 5 feet 10 inches, while the typical severely obese woman weighs 250 pounds at a height of 5 feet 4 inches, the report said.

The findings, published in the current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, were based on an analysis of data from a government's telephone survey of 1.5 million adults conducted between 1986 and 2000. The survey included a question about weight.

Because people tend to underestimate what they weigh as they gain more, "these estimates (based on self-reported weight) are most likely to underestimate this trend," he added.

Sturm said the surveys found the number of Americans classified as obese roughly doubled between 1986 and 2000 to one in five from about one in 10. But those overweight by 100 pounds or more quadrupled during the same period, to one in 50 from about one in 200.

[bfez1]

I just heard Paul Harvey talking about this on the radio.
Americans are spending millions of dollars on diet products, exercise equipment, pills, etc and we are still obese. What's up with that??

The bottom line is portion control and exercise. There is no other way to do it. Plain and simple!

[GalvestonDuck]

I just heard Paul Harvey talking about this on the radio.

Me too.