ABSTRACT
The epidemic of obesity in the United States is both remarkable and alarming. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 68 percent of Americans were overweight in 2008 and 34 percent were obese, making the US the fattest country in the world. Mexico actually had more overweight citizens (70 percent) but not quite as many obese (30 percent), and both were well over the troubling average of 50 percent overweight and 16 percent obese in the thirty-four countries of the OECD, including the US, European states, Japan, Israel, Mexico, and Turkey. There are many reasons for this weight gain, some related to what has been called “diseases of development” or the kinds of health habits and problems that rich industrialized societies face. Developed countries can simply afford to eat more, and they tend to eat more fatty and sugary foods. Their residents also tend to get less physical activity, between sedentary jobs and screen-based entertainment on televisions, computers, and handheld devices. Some scientists have even tied weight gain to chemicals in the environment, like bisphenol A and other “endocrine disruptors” that appear to signal the body to store fat; bisphenol A is used in many modern products from plastics to the linings of cans, making it almost impossible to avoid. But modern lifestyles do not explain the recent and unequal spread of obesity. The Centers for Disease Control report that in 1990 no state in the US had an obesity rate above 15 percent and ten states had a rate under 10 percent; by 2007, every state except Colorado had a rate above 20 percent, most states had a rate over 25 percent, and three southern states (Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee) suffered an obesity rate over 30 percent. Obesity is also more common among African Americans and Mexican Americans than among whites (see discussion and table below).
