Are We Eating Ourselves to Death?

In an era of relative prosperity and overindulgence, it seems we’ve gone too far. Almost-daily news reports show that Americans are literally eating themselves to death. Two out of three adults and nine million children, say the media, are overweight or obese. Public health officials say it’s because physicians aren’t properly educating their patients about the consequences of gaining too much weight. The public blames the fast-food industry for selling unhealthy food.

A recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows that nearly half of the 2.4 million deaths in the U.S. in 2000 were from preventable causes.1 The causes of death, in order, were: tobacco, poor diet and physical inactivity, alcohol, microbial agents, toxic agents, motor vehicles, firearms, sexual behavior and illegal drug use. Of those, poor diet and physical inactivity caused 400,000 deaths, compared with 435,000 from tobacco use. The gap between the two is substantially narrower than in 1990, when poor diet and inactivity caused 300,000 deaths, compared with 400,000 for tobacco.

Authors of the study, which was undertaken by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, concluded that unless the trend toward overweight is not reversed over the next few years, poor diet and physical activity will overtake tobacco as the leading preventable cause of mortality. Like tobacco, obesity and inactivity increase the risks for the top three killers: heart disease, cancer and cerebrovascular ailments, including stroke.

The JAMA article concludes that the burden of chronic diseases is compounded by an aging population and the concomitant increased cost of illness. Their findings, say the authors, argue persuasively for the need to establish a more preventive orientation in U.S. healthcare and public health systems.

Reference

1. JAMA 291(10): Mar 10, 2004.

—MN