History of Obesity
One of the most popular topics in the field of obesity is discussing the trends over time. Today, obesity is the second leading cause of death claiming the lives of approximately 300,000 people each year (this number comes from complications of poor dieting and physical inactivity that leads to terminal illnesses) (Mokdad). Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case a century ago or even simply a few decades ago. The rate of obesity is climbing at an alarming rate, so much so that it is predicted that in just 100 years everyone in the United States will be considered obese ("The Latest Statistics").
It is more difficult to find numbers of obese people from history for a few reasons. The first is that there wasn’t a uniform way of calculating and determining who was considered obese. The BMI calculator (a more accurate way of determining your ideal weight based on your height) was invented in the late 1850’s but wasn’t used as the uniform measurement by the World Health Organization until 1980. The second reason is simply that there weren’t as many people who were obese so doctors and researchers weren’t studying the issue as much as they are today, leaving us with limited information. The closest estimation made was that there were about 1 in 150 people classified as obese in the early 1900’s. And there wasn’t much of an increase from this time to the 1950’s. But ever since then, we have seen a rapid increase. There has been such an extreme incline that scientists had to incorporate another category of “extreme obese” in the 1990’s (Dillon and Haynes).
From 1960 to 2000 the percent of obese people more than doubled with an increase from 13.3 percent to 30.9 percent. And the more rapid part of the increase was in the last 10 years. In 1990, only 4 states had more than a 15 percent obesity rate, but currently every single state has a higher rate than 15 percent, a majority of states are over 20 percent at this point. You can see the rapid increase obesity rates across the United States from the image map below.
In the most recent news, as of January 2009 for the first time in history the number of obese people in the United States has surpassed the number of people who are overweight. The number of obese people is about 72 million adults; which correlates to 34 percent of our population, whereas the number of overweight people is currently 32.7 percent. Another pressing issue that has received its own category is childhood obesity. 16 percent of children are obese and almost 32 percent of children are overweight ("Obesity" NJK).
All of these trends have been, and are currently being studied and analyzed. There is medical testing, cultural analysis and societal perceptions that all seem to relate to the topic of obesity. Major changes have happened over history and they seem to have been taking a toll on our health. The major difference between when there were hardly any obese people (the early 1900’s) and today was the industrial revolution, which led to some extreme changes. People were no longer needed as much for manual labor. More families have two working parents now, leaving the children to fend for themselves, which ultimately gives them free choice to eat what they want even when they don’t have the appropriate knowledge as to what is best for them. There is an estimated decrease of 20 percent less free time since the 1960’s that has put an increase on people’s usage of fast food restaurants and unhealthy eating ("Obesity in America").