Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
by Marion Nestle
Jan
15
2009
Obese Americans outnumber the overweight
The National Center for Health Statistics, which tracks such things, reports that the percentage of Americans defined as obese now exceeds the percent who are just overweight, 34% as opposed to just under 33%. This means that while the prevalence of obesity (BMI >30) has doubled since 1980, the prevalence of overweight (BMI 25-29) has stayed about the same. The big are getting bigger. Some overweight people are moving into the obese category. And their places are filled by the formerly non-obese. It doesn’t look like this problem is going to go away soon.
