The recent press about United Airlines joining the ranks of other major carriers in establishing a tough policy about seating obese passengers brings up the larger issue of what we can do to stop the epidemic of obesity in this country.
As a preventive cardiologist in Miami Beach and the author of The South Beach Diet Supercharged, I see the consequences of the obesity epidemic every day in my practice. Not only am I treating patients with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome, prediabetes, diabetes, and advanced heart disease, but also patients with related ailments like sleep apnea, joint issues, and depression.
Today an unbelievable two-thirds (66.5 percent) of Americans are either overweight or obese and that number appears to be growing, not shrinking.
3 Steps to Preventing Obesity
I firmly believe that the first step in stopping this epidemic lies with the insurance system, which currently pays more for doctors to perform procedures than to listen to and educate patients. Today primary-care doctors often find themselves having trouble meeting overhead and so they try to see more people in less time, leaving the patients feeling rushed and neglected. Doctors have little time to practice preventive medicine--to teach obese patients, for example, about the value of a proper diet and exercise program or to get to the root cause of a person's weight problem. This simply can't be done in a typical 10-minute doctor visit. Until incentives for prevention can be built into our health-care system, until doctors can afford the time they'd like to spend with patients, the problem of obesity and so many other chronic diseases will continue to persist in this country.
The second step in halting the obesity epidemic lies with getting rid of our fast-food, supersized-is-better mentality. Do I need to say more?
The third step lies with families themselves. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that by 2020 a third of all children in this country will be overweight or obese. As we know, fat children often become fat adults. In fact, a child who is overweight during adolescence stands a 70 percent chance of being overweight as an adult and an 80 percent chance of being overweight if his or her mom or dad is. There is no question that our empty-calorie, sedentary lifestyle (kids not only need to eat right, but they also need to also exercise on school playgrounds and in the park, not on video games) may be trumping medical advances in the prevention and treatment of coronary disease, and that this generation of kids may have more heart disease and die earlier than their parents--unless sustained changes are made.
Overfed Yet Undernourished
I often say that our children are overfed yet undernourished. That's because most children are not getting the foods they need to thrive. Like their parents, these children are eating a steady diet of nutrient-deficient, highly processed foods that are high in sugar and saturated and trans fats and very low in fiber. And they're washing it all down with a glass or two of sugary soda. If we are to stop the epidemic of obesity in this country, parents must take a good look at what kids have on their plates.
Regardless of a person's age, an optimal diet is one that contains whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, lean protein, good fats, and plenty of fiber. I am not advocating that an already overworked parent needs to prepare a special meal for every member of the household, but no extra work is required to make a sandwich with whole-wheat bread instead of refined white bread, or to make spaghetti using whole-wheat pasta instead of refined white pasta, or to offer a piece of fresh fruit instead of chocolate cake for dessert. The point is--good nutrition begins at home. Our President is leading by example by establishing a vegetable garden on the White House grounds.
But while parents can begin to work on this problem now, changing our health-care system and weaning ourselves off of fast food are clearly going to take some time. In the meantime, we need to support, not discriminate against, the obese in this country and we need to urge our government to provide the incentives to stop this health crisis in its tracks.