Understanding the American Obesity Epidemic
Obesity — everyone knows it’s bad and that it’s everywhere.
Nearly 78 million adults and 13 million children in the United States deal with the health and emotional effects of obesity every day. The solution to their problem could sound deceptively simple — take in fewer calories a day, while cranking up the calorie-burning process with regular exercise.
But it’s not just a matter of obese people deciding they’re going to eat less, says Donna H. Ryan, M.D., co-chair of the committee that wrote the recent obesity guidelines and professor emerita at Louisiana State University’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge.
