USA Today, November 10, 2010
Obesity is proving to be a heavy burden for the nation’s kids and teens.
Experts have known for years that hauling around extra pounds takes a huge toll on children’s health. It puts them at increased risk for type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, sleep apnea and other health problems.
A study in 2005 found that children today may lead shorter lives by two to five years than their parents because of obesity.
About a third of children and adolescents in the United States weigh too much. With so many …

FoxNews, Hollie McKay, September 16, 2010
When it comes to (over) weight-related shows on American television, there is quite the buffet selection.
We have NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” and “Losing it With Jillian”; ABC Family’s drama “Huge”; TLC’s “One Big Happy Family; Lifetime’s “Drop Dead Diva”; Fox’s “More to Love;” CBS’s new sitcom “Mike & Molly;” The Style Network’s “Too Fat For 15”; VH1’s “Celebrity Fit Club” – and that’s just to name a few.
“These shows are exploring an issue that’s on the minds of millions of Americans every day – …

The Guardian, Dennis Campbell, July 21, 2010
Overweight women should slim down and have counselling before they get pregnant because being fat poses such a serious risk of them having a premature baby, doctors warn today.
Women carrying excess weight have up to a 30% greater chance of having a baby before it reaches 37 weeks gestation, medical researchers in Canada write in todays British Medical Journal. Premature babies are at much higher risk of dying or suffering a range of illnesses and impairments.
Those who are overweight or obese have an extra 30% …

The New York Times, Roni Caryn Rabin, May 31, 2010
Obesity increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses, but a surprising new finding suggests it may not affect one’s health until after age 40.
The study compared medications taken by normal weight, overweight and obese Americans ages 25 to 70 who participated in National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from 1988-1994 and 2003-6. The surveys included 8,880 men and 9,071 women.
While obese people of all ages took slightly more medications than those of normal weight, the …

San Fransisco Chronicle, Susanne Leigh, May 24, 2010
Like many midlife adults, Ken Holmes noticed that the toned abs of his 20s had billowed into a fistful of flab. He blamed long drives from his Sunset District home to jobs as a program consultant in Silicon Valley and the East Bay, together with extended workdays spent deskbound tinkering with software. In his childless days, Holmes would have offset these sedentary periods with frequent punishing workouts. But now with two elementary-school-age children, the gym was relegated to the back burner.
Still, Holmes was …

WHEN most people think of hunger in America, the images that leap to mind are of ragged toddlers in Appalachia or rail-thin children in dingy apartments reaching for empty bottles of milk.
But a recent survey found that the most severe hunger-related problems in the nation are in the South Bronx, long one of the country’s capitals ofobesity. Experts say these are not parallel problems persisting in side-by-side neighborhoods, but plagues often seen in the same households, even the same person: the hungriest people in America today, statistically speaking, may well …

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. …

Reuters
Excess weight increases stroke risk, a new study including nearly 2.3 million people confirms. And the heavier a person is, the greater their risk.
“Being obese (but indeed even just overweight) puts an individual at significantly higher risk of ischemic stroke, with a serious possibility of permanent disability and reduced life expectancy,” Dr. Pasquale Strazzullo of Frederico II University of Naples Medical School in Naples, Italy, one of the study’s authors, told Reuters Health.
Ischemic strokes occur when blood vessels supplying the brain are blocked. Hemorrhagic strokes, caused by bleeding in the …

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 …