Obesity History In America

Obesity is alternately defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than what you should or having a body mass index of 30 or more. The body mass index compares your height and weight but is not accurate for everyone. Being fat was a mark of wealth and health before the 1900s because it indicated you had the resources to get lots of food. In the 1990s and 2000s, though, obesity is more an indicator of current and future health problems.

Background

People used to have to do relatively intense labor just to live their everyday lives. Cooking food from scratch, walking most places and doing most things by hand rather than machine even in sedentary jobs meant calorie needs were high. Food wasn't easy to get if you were poor. Even after machines like dishwashers and vacuum cleaners came into use, walking somewhere was still common, and in 1960, only about 13.3 percent of people in America were obese, according to the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics.

Growth and Plateau

The percentage of the population considered obese jumped drastically between the 1980s and 2009. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control tracked the growth in each state between 1985 and 2009, and illustrated the change in a series of color-coded graphics. States such as Tennessee leaped from having between 10 and 14 percent of the population as obese to having over 30 percent of the population qualify as obese. The states in the western portion of the southeastern United States and up to Midwestern states like Oklahoma and Missouri had the highest rates of obesity in 2009. The "New York Times" reported in 2010 that this might be the highest the country could see; the CDC had said the numbers had appeared to stabilize over the past five years.

Causes

Certain aspects of society and food production are known to play a role in the increase in obesity over the past decades. Among the culprits are portion sizes, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture says have increased substantially, such as a hamburger growing from 1 oz. in 1957 to nearly 6 oz. in 1997. Marion Nestle, writing in her book "Food Politics," also says that in general, survey respondents were reporting an extra 200 calories eaten per day in 1996 compared to the 1970s. Over 365 days, that's over 20 lbs. of gained weight. The lack of physical activity from reduced physical education classes in schools to doing little but sitting in front of electronic devices all day, has reduced the number of calories people expend.

Solutions and Prevention

Cities and school districts have taken steps to reduce calorie intake and increase physical activity by banning junk food and soda, restricting contracts with private companies and passing laws controlling how fast-food restaurants market their food. The Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, created standards for drinks sold on campus that required fruit drinks to have at least 50 percent juice content and restricted the types of beverages that campuses could sell. The city of San Francisco managed to ban fast-food restaurants from offering toys with meals that didn't meet a set of standards, to go into effect in December 2011. CBS News reported in 2010 that a community group in Baldwin Park, California, stopped new fast-food outlets from opening in the city, which already had six times more fast-food restaurants than fresh produce stores.