Obsessed: America's Food Addiction--And My Own (8 page)

In 2012, four former members of the president’s cabinet—two secretaries of agriculture and two secretaries of health and human services—weighed in with a report titled
Lots to Lose: How America’s Health and Obesity Crisis Threatens Our Economic Future
. Their report called obesity “the most urgent public health problem in America today” and concluded that “the costs of obesity and chronic disease have become a major drag on the economy.” The report blamed escalating health care costs, which are “the main driver of our spiraling national debt,” and observed that “obesity-related illness comprises an increasingly large share of our massive health costs.”
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“The obesity epidemic is jeopardizing our global competitiveness,” concludes former US Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, who served under President George W. Bush. I’ve seen some variation in the estimates of what obesity will cost us as a nation, but a good study in
Health Economics
put the price tag at a gargantuan $190 billion every single year—about 21 percent of all medical spending. If we don’t reverse this epidemic, diabetes, one of the more costly conditions linked to
obesity, will affect one in three Americans in their lifetime, according to federal government predictions. Heart disease, asthma, and kidney failure are among many other expensive chronic conditions linked to obesity.

The obesity epidemic is jeopardizing our global competitiveness.—
former US Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman

Joint replacement is still another “incredible cost for our country,” said Claire McCaskill. The senator had a knee replaced and recognizes that the surgery might have been avoidable had she lost weight a decade earlier. “Any orthopedic surgeon, if they’re being honest, will say that a great number of those surgeries are a direct result of obesity. It’s the same thing with back problems and the same thing with the big elephant in the room—diabetes.”

Scientists at the Mayo Clinic say that the extra medical costs associated with obese patients are even greater than the additional costs associated with smoking.
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That’s a scary thought, considering that smoking adds about 20 percent a year to medical expenditures. Morbid obesity (BMI over 40) is even more expensive, leading to a 50 percent average hike in an individual’s medical bills.

People who are obese pay some of the costs out of their own pockets. Under the new federal health care law, employers can charge obese workers 30 to 50 percent more for health insurance if they decline to participate in a qualified wellness program. But in the end, we will all pay more. Working people will face higher taxes to cover Medicare and Medicaid, and they
will be charged more for private coverage, as insurance companies raise prices to cover their own costs.

Another harmful impact, according to Duke University researchers, is that obesity is slicing into the productivity of the US workforce, with obese workers taking more sick days than those with a healthy weight.
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That costs employers as much as $6.4 billion a year. And it’s not just health-related absenteeism that adds to their costs; they also have to cope with “presenteeism,” where workers report to work, but do not perform well due to health-related limitations.

Ka-ching, ka-ching. The dollar figures keep rising. And we haven’t even factored in the human cost of shorter life spans for obese Americans, or the misery of the chronic illnesses associated with excess weight.

The news looks even worse for our children. The American Heart Association says one in three kids is obese or overweight, triple the rate in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy defined physical fitness for youth as one of the goals of his administration.
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Fifty years and nine presidents after JFK, we are being warned that this generation of Americans may be the first that will not live as long as their parents did.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman has seen the change in her own practice. Nancy is now a cancer surgeon, senior medical editor at NBC News, and author of
Diet Myths That Keep Us Fat
, but she began her career as a pediatrician. When obese children came into her office in the early 1980s, she says, “We sent them to the endocrinologist because we were worried that they had a
hormone problem, or that they had a pituitary tumor. We never had parents who were overfeeding. If anything, the reason children came to the pediatrician with weight issues is because they were failing to thrive, and couldn’t keep weight on.”

Snyderman says childhood obesity has “caught us unaware, and frankly, unprepared for the onslaught of problems.” Conditions that were previously rare in children—like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes (which was called adult-onset diabetes until we began seeing so much of it in a younger population)—are becoming common.

And the impact on young people doesn’t end there. Partly as a reaction to bullying and teasing, obese children are more prone to low self-esteem and depression, which makes it a lot harder to do well in school. “There have been a number of studies in the past ten years showing that obese students are performing worse on generalized tests at school,” says Rebecca Puhl. “In the studies that we have done, kids who report they’re getting teased about their weight are much more likely to skip classes and are reporting that their grades are harmed by this.”

Bullying can start as early as preschool and continue for years. At first, researchers assumed that obese students were performing worse because they had some sort of learning challenges, but it turned out to be a response to the cruelty of their peers. “If we look at the teasing and bullying relationship, no wonder these kids aren’t performing well,” Puhl explains. “They have no support, they’re facing relentless teasing, and they can’t function at school.”

In one survey Puhl asked fifteen hundred Connecticut high school students why kids are teased or bullied at school.
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Out of ten options, body weight ranked number one. “It was
ahead of sexual orientation, it was ahead of race, it was ahead of everything else,” she reports. “The consequences for these kids are devastating. Kids who are teased about their weight are two to three times more likely to engage in suicidal thoughts and behaviors, compared to their overweight peers who are not teased.”

As fat children grow into fat young men and women, we also face a national security challenge unlike any we have seen before. Mission: Readiness, an organization of retired senior military officers committed to supporting smart investments in America’s children, calculates that 9 million young people ages seventeen to twenty-seven are “too fat to fight”; that is, too heavy to be accepted into the military. That’s more than one-quarter of that age group. According to Sam Kass, the senior policy advisor for healthy food initiatives in the Obama White House, delivering a keynote address at a CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) conference, “Obesity may be our nation’s greatest national security threat.”
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It’s the number one disqualification for military service.

That’s especially troubling because the military has already become more selective in its recruiting than it used to be. “It’s not the old paradigm of anybody can be in the military,” according to Rear Admiral Jamie Barnett (retired). The military has gone high tech, and it “increasingly needs people who can handle complex systems: sensors, weapons, aircraft, submarines. Now we have to have really smart people, and here’s a whole category of people who are smart and who want to serve who can’t get in because of the weight barrier.”

Ultimately, Barnett says, the nation could face a situation where it simply doesn’t have the people it needs, particularly
in specialty areas of the military. “We have to address this,” he emphasized. Otherwise, the military will lose out on much-needed talent, the nation will lose out on the protection it needs, and whole groups of young people will lose opportunities for well-paying, secure jobs.

“There’s significant research that the rise of the middle class after World War II was in large part due to GI benefits: education, housing, things like that. Now we have a huge number of young people who won’t even get a shot at that,” warns Barnett. “It may take a while to understand what that means for America.”

I’m completely on board with what all of these findings suggest—that there is real value in being thin. But hitting that target is not going to be easy, not for us as a nation, and not for any of us individually. I get angry when I see weight-loss commercials with women holding jeans that are ten sizes too large for them and saying, “This used to be me.” They throw the jeans off to the side and show a newly slim body to the camera. Everything is now just perfect. In all our media we are bombarded by messages that seem to say, “This is how easy it is. Follow this diet and you’ll be happy.” Take it from me: maintaining a healthy weight
is a lot of work, and it is forever. Constant
. It’s difficult.

We are not “done” after we lose the pounds. It’s not as though we can finish the dieting process and then just start eating again. It doesn’t work that way. Obesity experts will tell you that losing weight is difficult; keeping it off is nearly impossible for many people. That’s why we need to be much more
strategic about how we address this difficulty. And we need to do it together.

It begins with sharing our stories, both the ones that show the value of being thin and the ones that reveal just how hard that is. As a country, a community, and a family, we have to be open about all of this. We should be able to talk about obesity just as we talk about smoking or diabetes or heart disease or cancer. When we see someone who has cancer, we don’t think,
Oh, they’re undisciplined, they did something wrong
. We feel sympathy, and we want to help.

We need to bring the same compassion to obesity. We can’t spend so much time judging people; it’s not fair, and it doesn’t get us anywhere. And it doesn’t help to keep blaming and shaming ourselves either.

Instead, we have to have real conversations, just as I did with my friend Diane.

D
iane saw my daughter Carlie before I did.

My husband, Jim, was out of town when Carlie decided it was time to be born. Jim and Diane had been colleagues when he was a news anchor and reporter at WTNH-TV in Connecticut. I was in a panic when I called Diane in the middle of the night to say I was in labor and needed help.

Diane met me at the hospital. After sixteen hours of labor, the doctor said, “It’s still going to be awhile,” and left the hospital to pick up a pizza. Moments later, I told Diane, “I think it’s time for me to push.” Her answer: “Close your legs and hang on while I get a nurse.” It didn’t work out that way. Five minutes later, my friend had a view of me only a medical professional should ever have as she caught my baby.

What can tie two women together more than that? We had forged a bond through the pain, emotion, and exhilaration that
comes with bringing a beautiful new life into the world. And since then we have been the closest of confidantes. Nothing has been off the table about our marriages, our families, and the ups and downs of our careers. The only topic we ever skirted was weight and food, despite the huge role it played in both of our lives.

When we first met, Diane was probably about a size 12. She wasn’t skinny, but she was a tall, blonde beauty. Over the next few years I watched her weight steadily climb, as Diane gradually went from statuesque to obese. Every time she lost a few pounds she seemed to put them right back on, plus a little more. Whenever we got together, I couldn’t help but notice the change. It seemed as though Diane was sabotaging her TV career. I remember thinking to myself,
Why is she letting this go on?

I remember thinking to myself,
Why is she letting this go on?—Mika

Diane is smart, driven, and competent. I mean, this is one talented woman: she’s earned several Emmy awards, has been recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for lifetime achievement, and has been honored by the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame. A TV news anchor, reporter, radio talk show host, documentary producer, and author of six previous books, she has been on the air in Connecticut for more than twenty-five years. But I doubted other people were seeing all that when they looked at her. Given what I have learned about the value of being thin, I’d guess her weight was making them think instead,
This woman doesn’t
have it together. She doesn’t even have the discipline to lose weight and get in shape
.