Obesity and the decline of healthy eating

The obesity epidemic is fraught with challenges ranging from how to effectively encourage healthy lifestyle choices to making good foods available to everyone. Samuel Klein, MD, explains the many challenges of obesity.

Transcript

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SAMUEL KLEIN: In terms of nutrition for underserved populations, we're terrible. So in school systems, in poor communities,

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in terms of availability of healthy foods, the cost of healthy, low-calorie fruits and vegetables,

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we really do quite poorly. [MUSIC PLAYING]

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The data really show that around 1980s is when we, uh, really had this marked increase in the prevalence of obesity.

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Uh, from the '60s it was much lower. Then, in the '80s, much higher. Even though the average weight gain in this country has been steadily increasing for more than 100 years,

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the prevalence of obesity has really taken off since around 1980. There is an infectious quality to obesity.

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And we know that now from recent studies showing this connectivity between social structures, that

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obesity may be catching from one person to another. So obese people tend to be associated with other obese

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people. And those habits can be transmitted and transformed to others. Overweight and obesity accounts for about 2/3

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of the population. Obesity itself is about 35% of the US adult population. And about 30% of children are overweight or obese,

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which is really the saddest part of the whole equation. I think this really requires a multi-level approach

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to food, which really starts at the government legislating policies to really help support the production

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of healthy fruits and vegetables and limit-- more limit the production of food products that are not so healthy.

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Our government subsidizes the growth of corn and high fructose corn syrup, which really adds a lot of calories to foods.

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And so if you consider obesity as a major problem, which is the balance between how much you eat and how much you burn up, we have a very obesogenic

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environment in our country, where we have tremendous amounts of inexpensive, high-calorie,

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good-tasting foods that really drive people to consume excessive amounts of calories. Even though they know what they should do,

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they're not capable of actually translating that into action in the big picture. So our obesity clinic is full of people

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who are extremely knowledgeable of exactly what they need to do to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight. But they're unable to implement those lifestyle changes.

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Because the one hour a week we spend with them in behavior therapy, which is much more than any physician will spend with a patient, is--

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is useless compared to the bombardment 24/7 that they have once they leave the clinic. [HEARTBEAT] [BEEPING]