Everyone in USA could be obese by mid-21st century

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Experts say that if current trends continue, every child in the US will be obese by 2044 and every adult by 2058.
There has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the USA in recent years. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia put this down to an incompatibility between human genes and societal messages. We are getting less exercise but our genes were made to support a good deal of physical activity. The result - obesity. Experiments in rats carried out by these experts showed that 48 hours of inactivity will lead to an increase in the amount of fat and fat cells in the body.

In human terms, decreasing the amount of activity by less than four minutes a day can result in a person gaining a pound of fat a year. We must, therefore, do more to keep active and, indeed, increase activity levels.

Source
American College of Sports Medicine meeting 1st June 2005

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