Imagine that there’s a killer on the loose in communities across the United States, threatening the health and well-being of 67% of our population. Is this enemy on the FBI’s Most Wanted list? Not exactly, because this killer is obesity. We’ve heard the statistics. The prevalence of obesity is increasing at an alarming rate in the United States. For the first time in American history, the number of obese people outnumbers those who are overweight. Adult men and women are on average 25 pounds heavier than they were in 1960. …

Time Magazine, TIFFANY O’CALLAGHAN March 25, 2010
If there is any reason for hope among the data on national obesity rates in the U.S. (the numbers should be familiar by now: two-thirds of adults and nearly one-third of children are overweight or obese in the country), it is that they finally seem to be leveling off. According to the most recently published reports by epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), long-term federal obesity data suggest that after decades of ballooning in size, American adults and children may have …

One-third of America’s youth is now overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In Norwood, Massachusetts, 14-year-old Maria Caprigno no longer wants to be one of those statistics.
Maria has been overweight since she was about 3 years old and as she got older, she just got heavier. She told CNN her eating habits were to blame.
“I’m a junk-food person and because I’m a couch potato I don’t like to get off the couch,” she said. “It’s also kind of just like my genes: Both my parents …

Read the article, or listen to the NPR show. Americans are not only getting fatter, but they’re still smoking and they’re not exercising enough. Every few years the federal government releases the findings of its survey of health behaviors among U.S. adults. This year’s report covers 2005 to 2007 — and it’s not really good news.
“Stubborn” is how Charlotte Schoenborn describes the health habits of U.S. adults. Schoenborn is a statistician with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which oversees and analyzes the collection of information on U.S. health behaviors.
“It’s …

BBC News, February 13, 2010
The “tipping point” that sets children on the way to a lifetime of obesity often occurs before the age of two, say US researchers. A study of more than 100 obese children and teenagers found more than half were overweight by 24 months and 90% were overweight by the age of five.
A quarter were overweight before they were five months old, the researchers reported in Clinical Pediatrics. In the UK, around 27% of children are now overweight. The children in the study – who had an average age of …

BBC News, February 15, 2010
Young children who are regularly looked after by their grandparents have an increased risk of being overweight, an extensive British study has suggested.
Analysis of 12,000 three-year olds suggested the risk was 34% higher if grandparents cared for them full time. Children who went to nursery or had a childminder had no increased risk of weight problems, the International Journal of Obesity reported.
Nearly a quarter of preschool children in the UK are overweight or obese. The researchers said very little research had been done on the influence of childcare …

Reuters, February 9, 2010
Alarmed that nearly a third of U.S. children are obese or overweight — and likely to stay that way all their lives — President Barack Obama launched an initiative on Tuesday to roll back the numbers and put his wife in charge of promoting it.
“I have set a goal to solve the problem of childhood obesity within a generation so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight,” Obama said in signing the order at the White House.
He assigned his cabinet officers to meet …

The New York Times, Hannah Wallace, February 5, 2010
About 20 high school students stood behind the butcher counter, staring at a 160-pound piece of meat from a recently slaughtered cow.
“All of our meat comes from local farms, and we get it all whole,” said Tom Mylan, 33, one of three butchers at the Meat Hook, a new butcher shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that buys its meat locally and prizes nose-to-tail eating. “We don’t just buy steaks or pork chops or whatever.”
“How much does the whole cow cost?” one boy in …

The Huffington Post, Jeffrey Levi, February 1, 2010
One of the biggest public health crises our country has ever faced is finally getting serious attention.
During the State of the Union address Wednesday night, President Obama announced that First Lady Michelle Obama was going to take on the childhood obesity epidemic. I’d say the epidemic better watch out! It now has a worthy adversary.
Mrs. Obama is stepping up to provide leadership, recognizing if we don’t take serious measures now, this generation of kids could be the first in U.S. history to live …

Rob Stein, Washington Post, January 22, 2010

One out of every five U.S. teenagers has a cholesterol level that increases the risk of heart disease, federal health officials reported Thursday, providing striking new evidence that obesity is making more children prone to illnesses once primarily limited to adults.

A nationally representative survey of blood test results in American teenagers found that more than 20 percent of those ages 12 to 19 had at least one abnormal level of fat. The rate jumped to 43 percent among those adolescents who were obese.
Previous studies had …